The Web of the Sun (Adventure Magazine, 1922)/Chapter 12

S LASSITER crossed the great piazza on his strange mission as an advocate of infanticide, he was amazed that he had not discovered long before the existence of that practise in Motobatl. Every incident he could now recall pointed so simply in that direction. On every hand he had heard the sun myth, which veiled the custom with the thinnest drapery.

Moreover Lassiter had known that almost every barbarous people indulged in the practise: China, Japan, India, the South Seas; the history of the Jews record it; America feels prenatal infanticide; France taxes childlessness. And yet with the solution of mystery of Motobatl written across every page of history, Lassiter had not seen it. The promoter was chagrined at himself.

It was dawn now, and as the gray light increased, the glare of the burning trees gave way to an atmosphere filled with smoke. The vast walls of the crater were hidden and revealed by the accident of the smoke. It hung over the lake in long draperies that stirred with the breath of day. It was aromatic with the odor of unknown resina, and now and then, by some fortuity of the breeze, he obtained a view of the whole of Motobatl, a vast censor among the Andes.

On his way westward down the beach, Lassiter paused for a moment beside the net of the Sun to speculate for the hundredth time on its enigma. This time he attacked the problem with a certain freshness, because the discovery of infanticide suggested the net must be just as simple if he could only lay a finger on the clew.

So he stood studying the net, reviewing critically every incident connected with it—Chombo Meone's tale; his own mules on the rim; the vicuna; the murder of Chacala; the winding of the unearthly cord about the victims; and at last, the ghastly dried shells of the murdered. And alongside this there popped into his mind the immobile figure kneeling in the cavern. But certainly that had nothing to do with the others

No doubt it was all perfectly simple—as simple as infanticide. When it was explained to him, he would be just as chagrined, just as amazed at his own stupidity—He went over the phenomena minutely — rope — glue — sheep — mules — men

His brain seemed on the very fringe of the solution. He could feel the answer formulating. Just one more tiny advance. An adumbration came, a sort of indistinct horror. It grew clearer. He had it! The truth of the net was—then, just as he was deciphering the shadowy solution, there came that miserable sensation as if something just in sight had silently faded. He felt as if something inside his head which was opening, had gently closed. Such profound exasperations are familiar to every thinker.

Lassiter stodged forward fighting obstinately to recapture the flair, the mental connection. But it was gone. That cell of his brain was closed and lost; that picture in his mind was faded and vanished. He tramped on still struggling. There was something sinister, almost tragic in this near-illumination, in this warning he had almost heard, and which had died in silence.

The promoter moved on toward the tumult in the west. That noise he heard was swinging Birdsong into power, it was transforming an Arkansas squatter into an equatorial hierarch. For the first time it dawned on Lassiter that he was witnessing one of those marvels of history that crowned Brooke in Borneo, that created Clive, Cortez, and the Emperor of the Sahara— For the first time he suspected himself of having overlooked an opportunity to study at first-hand one of those men about whom history gossips.

It was with some idea of rectifying his oversight that Lassiter hurried forward, when, some two hundred yards down the beach, a group of men appeared palely drawn in the midst of the smoke. They were marching up the beach toward Lassiter, and at the head of the column, under guard, walked a man with his hands tied behind him.

The New Yorker moved on down to meet them, not knowing quite who were the captors nor who the captured. He peered through the smoke, trying to make out to which side the god of battles leaned, when to his amazement, he saw the prisoner was Nunes.

The promoter stopped stock still at the abrupt reversal of what he had fancied. These, then, were Gogoma's men who had captured the Colombian and his automatic. What the warriors of the sun would do with Nunes was too easy to guess. Thought of the Colombian being cast into the net horrified Lassiter. Certainly the muleteer was no favorite with the New Yorker, nevertheless he decided he would use his influence to obtain clemency.

The promoter was about to turn back to the temple, when still other soldiers streamed into sight out of the smoke; long ranks of spearmen, slingers, archers, followed by women and children in the van. The warriors wore the feathered armor of the Incans, and their polychrome hues made a fine show of color through the drifting smoke.

A spearman in front lifted his weapon, waved it like a long baton, and suddenly the whole throng broke into singing. This was extraordinary, but to Lassiter's further amazement, he recognized one of the colporteur's songs. The Indians chanted it like thunder:

These words were sung to the dismal tune of Old Hundred, but instead of adhering to the major scale of the Anglo-Saxon, the Indians fell into their own wierd [sic] mode. It filled jungle and lake with an unutterable melancholy. It was the folk music of an imprisoned people, of infanticides wounded to death by their own vital pressure.

In the midst of this chanting army, the promoter caught sight of Birdsong. The colporteur was not singing, but was threading his way to the fore ranks of his victorious army.

HE whole situation was incomprehensible to Lassiter. He hurried down to intercept the chieftain. A number of lances made way to admit the promoter to their ranks. The song continued without interruption.

Birdsong glanced up and nodded at Lassiter in the midst of the chanting. The colporteur's face, was ashen under its tan, and there were lines in it that Lassiter had never seen before.

The Stendill agent waited impatiently for the singing to cease, curious to know what had brought Nunes to handcuffs. The Colombian was in no wise downcast. He strode along among his guards, chin up, swinging his green velvet shoulders from side to side. From a side view, Lassiter thought he was smiling. The whole affair might have been a play in which Balthasar refused to take his part seriously.

After many stanzas of the scarlet song were finished, Birdsong spoke first. He sounded less as if he were starting a sentence, than continuing aloud some troubled train of thought.

“I want to do what's right and merciful, Brother Lassiter. It's my hope and prayer—I want to act exactly like Christ would”

The promoter surmised this referred to Birdsong's future treatment of the priests of the sun.

“The difficulty is, Christ set you no precedent there, Birdsong; He lost, you won.”

“I was talking about Brother Nunes, Brother Lassiter.”

“Oh—I was wondering about Nunes. That's the queerest reverse I ever heard of— Did he run from the enemy?”

“Oh no, no indeed!” cried the colporteur. “He was the lion of Judah, Brother Lassiter; he saved my life twicet from the priests of Ball”

“Then what did he do?”

Birdsong tramped silently for several minutes. Once he lifted an arm and wiped the corner of his eyes with the back of his hand. Finally he said—

“He misused the power God gave him, Brother Lassiter.”

“The automatic?”

“The matches.”

Lassiter looked at the colporteur, then at the muleteer trying to construe this information into sense, He repeated the word, “matches” carefully, as if some secondary meaning might pop out of it.

“I mean, Brother Lassiter, that Brother Nunes with his matches convinced some of the wives of my men that he was an angel from heaven, and he—he—didn't use them right, Brother Lassiter”

“You don't mean”

And the promoter broke off with a slack jaw.

And yet, now that it had happened, it was as much like Nunes as his own picture. Just what one might have expected. But it was such a fantastic sacrilege!

“The men who are guarding him are the husbands,” explained the colporteur somberly.

Lassiter looked at the seven guards around the gallant.

The muleteer himself maintained his jaunty swagger. Now and then he glanced around at the women in the rear ranks. Once he caught Lassiter's incredulous eyes. He waved gracefully, called a brilliant “Buenas dias, señor,” and smiled.

It was evident that his position at the head of the column as prisoner, the crimes he had committed, and whatever punishment was in store for him, preened his vanity. He was by far the jauntiest man in the ranks. His call to Lassiter aroused a twitter among the women in the van.

“What are they going to do with him?” asked Lassiter at length.

“Chuck him in the net, Brother Lassiter,” the colporteur nodded woodenly up the lake.

“Birdsong, you are not going to allow that!”

“It's the law of Motobatl, Brother Lassiter.”

“What if it is!” cried Lassiter in horror. “You are in charge of Motobatl now. You've won!”

“'Render unto Caæar the things that are Cæsar's,' Brother Lassiter.”

“But, man!” cried the promoter aroused. “I tell you it's horrible! You should have seen Chacala. He was a shell, a crust. I fished him out of the whirlpool—” The New Yorker shivered. “Make 'em shoot the poor devil with his own automatic, Birdsong.”

The colporteur tramped on with the thick skin of his brow corrugated into three wrinkles. It was the cool of the morning, but sweat beaded his face.

“Brother Lassiter,” he said at last, “this is the worst stump I ever plowed into—I don't know what to do—The Good Book says that David was the same kind of a man that Brother Nunes is—Uriah's wife—and David was a man after God's own heart— Aye me, Brother Lassiter—I dunno what to do”

He crooked his forefinger and flung the water from his forehead with a plowman's gesture.

The marching men rounded the point of palms and came into sight of the huge façade of the temple. Over the line ran a breathing, an audible tribute to the wonder and hugeness of that façade wrung even from an apostate army. They were in sight, also, of the cumulus which hid the sinister net of the sun.

Lassiter looked at it with dry lips. He could feel the muscles of his legs as distinctly as if he himself were to be thrown onto its limed and twisted ropes. He made one last mental effort to fathom the secret of the contrivance, and for the last time, failed.

The muleteer strode ahead in his soiled green jacket, and all that Lassiter knew of that gay, irresponsible roué revisited his mind. He thought of the piquante girls in Quito, of the Indian girls along the trail, of the fact that he, Lassiter, had persuaded Nunes to come down into the crater, of how Nunes had helped carry him down the precipice, and of how they had fought over Tilita. And as he stared at the condemned man, Lassiter realized that something in his heart had wrapped itself around this capering irrepressible animal. He could hear the fool saying—

“Señorita, when I look at you, I have a yearning, a wild, uncontrollable”

Poor devil, perhaps he had!

T THE foot of the hummock the guards halted their prisoner. The army filed past and took up a semicircle around the executioners and the condemned. Lassiter glanced at the great piazza. It was deserted save for a shapeless brown form in the great entrance. It was Gogoma waiting for Birdsong's men to come and slay him.

Nunes mounted to the top of the hillock and struck a fine pose against the sky. His eyes barely rested on the net, then swept over lake and palisades to the peaks beyond. Lassiter thought again how he had persuaded the Colombian to come down into the crater.

“Señors,” said the captive to the archers, “if you will permit it, I would like to jump into the net myself with free hands. It is for the sake of the señoras. I have friends—” he made a graceful gesture toward them—“who would prefer to see me go a freeman”

Birdsong walked up the little acclivity and stood beside the muleteer. The way he laid his hand on Nunes' shoulder made Lassiter realize there was a bond between the muleteer and the son of the moonshiner that he had never suspected. He was much the same size and build as Balthasar. Lassiter thought he was going to cut the rope. Instead, Birdsong said very simply:

“Soldiers of God, this brother ain't ready to die. I know it is the law in Motobatl for adulterers to be thrown into the net, so I'm going in Brother Nunes' place.”

A gasp of horror, a breaking out of protest along the ranks. Men left the line and came running in with dissuasions.

The colporteur waved them all down.

“I tell you!” he cried in his nasal voice, “Brother Nunes ain't ready to appear before his God! He'll go to hell shore, forever and ever! He saved my life twicet. He stood by me when every man-jack left me”

A woman wailed.

“But Gogoma will kill our niñas!”

“No, he won't sister. Our men have won. If I am necessary for the salvation of Motobatl, you know God ain't going to let nothing happen to me in that net!”

“But, señor, nobody ever has escaped”

“And nobody ever come out of a lion's den neither till Dan'l done it; and nobody ever walked through a f'ary furnace, neither, till the three Hebrew children done it. Don't you know our God that made Motobatl, an' all it contains, can save me from a few ropes and some glue if He wants to?”

Lassiter was by his friend's side.

“Listen, Birdsong,” he begged, “you are not fooling with matches now. Don't risk that thing— Turn Nunes loose!”

“Brother Lassiter, if God had to crucify His only begotten Son to save the human race, don't you know there ain't no sich thing as jest turnin' a sinner aloose? Sin's got to be paid for.”

The fundamental difference between the two men angered Lassiter for the last time.

“But how? Why? What good does suffering do? it, man, there's no connection between one man's guilt and another man's suffering. It's not only unjust, its shameful, its revolting! Stop! Stop! I tell you a man in a rage wouldn't kill a friend because his enemy had—For God's sake, Birdsong!”

“a debt”

Birdsong was striding down to the net.

“But hell isn't a debt!” yelled Lassiter. “Punishment is simply corrective or revengeful— Don't— Don't go on thatthing—your whole scheme is as immoral as”

Suddenly the promoter gave up howling and ran to Nunes, whom his captors had reluctantly loosed.

“Get your automatic, Nunes!” he yelled in the confusion. “Those priests are not going to work their burning trick on Birdsong!”

Nunes motioned toward one of the spearmen. Lassiter jumped at the man.

“Gimme that gun!”

He had it before the Indian could assent or object. He thrust it into the Colombian's hand and hurried with him down to the water's edge.

“Now, sit right here, with that gun drawn! Shoot any fired thing you see move!”

By this time Birdsong was in the limed meshes. He was trying to walk across the viscous strands. When he pulled up a foot, the cord untwisted but stuck and stretched. As he tried to go forward with both feet fast, he lost his balance and his hands went down. He shoved with one hand and tried to loose the other. At every straining effort other parts of his body inevitably touched the viscid tubes. He seemed to be pulling the unearthly ropes up over him self. It held his clothes and the struggles of the gigantic little man ripped the seams. His clothing. slowly parted and tore off. The stuff laid its grip on his white skin. He was prone with one arm outspread and the other twisted under him. His efforts distorted the net. His muscles balled up. The thing gave to his efforts. He struggled against nothing.

Lassiter could endure it no longer.

“Get a pole,” he shouted, and as nobody made a move, the promoter leaped up and sprinted over the little rise toward a bamboo that had drifted ashore.

Then he realized that all the army were kneeling toward the rising sun droning the prayer that Tilita had taught him.

The promoter reached the pole. He flew back up the slope. The net was empty. He rushed to Nunes who sat, with automatic still outstretched, staring white-eyed at the empty strands.

“Did he get out, Nunes?” chattered Lassiter. “Did he get out? Where is he?”

He shook the man with the poised firearm. Nunes closed his mouth, wet his lips and stared at Lassiter.

A great horror came over the promoter—

“Nunes—my God!—where is he?”

The Colombian seemed dazed.

“S-Señor,” he chattered. “Didn't you see him? Didn't you see what went with him?” Nunes shook his head.

Lassiter looked at the net; then back at Nunes.

“I—I—took my eyes off just a second—only an instant”

“God in heaven, man, What for?”

Nunes moistened his lips and suddenly fell to sobbing—

“I—I was looking at a w-woman”