Henry Brocken by Walter J. de la Mare

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He slackened his pace then, and, thus running, we came in sight at
length of what appeared to be a vast wooden shed, or barn, with one
rude chimney, and surrounded by a thick fence, or stockade, many feet
high and apparently of immense strength and stability.

In the gateway of this fence stood the master of these solitudes, his
eyes fixed strangely on my coming with an intense, I had almost said
incredulous, interest. Nor did he cease so to regard me, while the
creature that had conducted me thither, told, I suppose, where he had
found me, and poured out with childish zeal his own amazement and
delight. By this time, too, his voice had begun to lose its first
strangeness, and to take a meaning for me. And I was presently fully
persuaded he spoke a kind of English, and that not unpleasingly, with
a liquid, shrill, voluminous ease. His master listened patiently
awhile, but at last bade his servant be silent, and himself addressed
me.

"I am informed, Yahoo," he said with peculiar deliberation, "that you
have been borne down into my meadows by the river, and fetched out
thence by my servant. Be aware, then, that all these lands from
horizon to horizon are mine and my people's. I desire no tidings of
what follies may be beyond my boundaries, no aid, and no amity. I
admit no trespasser here and will bear with none. It appears, however,
that your life has passed beyond your own keeping: I may not,
therefore, refuse you shelter and food, and to have you conducted in
safety beyond my borders. Have the courtesy, then, to keep within
shelter of these walls till the night be over. Else"--he gazed out
across the verdant undulations--"else, Yahoo, I have no power to
protect you."

He turned once more, and regarded me with a lofty yet tender
recognition, as if, little though his speech might profess it, he very
keenly desired my safety.

He then stepped aside and bade me rather sharply enter the gate before
him. I tried to show none of the mistrust I felt at passing out of
these open lands into this repellent yard. I glanced at the
shock-haired creature, alert, half-human, beside me; across the
limitless savannah around me, echoing yet, it seemed, with the rumour
of innumerable hoofs; and bowing, as it were, to odds, I went in.

On the other hand, I felt my host had been frank with me. If this was
indeed the same Lemuel Gulliver whose repute my infancy had prized so
well, I need have no fear of blood and treachery at his hands, however
primitive and disgusting his household, or distorted his intellect
might be. He who had proved no tyrant in Lilliput, nor quailed before
the enormities of Brobdingnag, might abhor the sight of me; he would
not play me false.

His servant, or whatsoever else he might be, I considered not quite
so calmly. Yet even in _his_ broad countenance dwelt a something like
bright honesty, less malice than simplicity.

Wherefore, I say, I ordered down my cowardice, and, looking both of
them as squarely in the face as I knew how, passed out of the open
into the appalling yard of this wooden house.

I say "appalling," but without much reason. Perhaps it was the
unseemly hugeness of its balks, the foul piles of skins, the mounds of
refuse that lay about within; perhaps the all-pervading beastly
stench, the bareness and filthiness under so glassy-clear and fierce a
sun that revolted me. All man's seemliness and affection for the
natural things of earth were absent. Here was only a brutal and bald
order, as of an intelligence like that of the yellow-locked,
swift-footed creature behind me. Perhaps also it was the mere
unfamiliarity of much I saw there that estranged me. All lay in
neglect, cracked and marred with rough usage,--coarse strands of a
kind of rope, strips of hide, gaping tubs, a huge and rusty brazier,
and in one corner a great cage, many feet square and surmounted with
an iron ring.

I know not. I almost desired Sallow at my side, and would to heaven
Rosinante's nose lay in my palm.

Within the house a wood-fire burned in the sun, its smoke ascending to
the roof, and flowing thence through a rude chimney. A pot steamed
over the fire, burdening the air with a savour at first somewhat faint
and disgusting,--perhaps because it was merely strange to me. The
walls of this lofty room were of rough, substantial timber, bare and
weatherproof; the floor was of the colour of earth, seemingly earth
itself. A few rude stools, a bench, and a four-legged table stood
beside the unshuttered window. And from this stretched the beauteous
green of the grass-land or prairie beyond the stockade.

The house, then, was built on the summit of a gentle mound, and
doubtless commanded from its upper window the extreme reaches of this
sea of verdure.

I sat down where Mr. Gulliver directed me, and was not displeased with
the warmth of the fire, despite the sun. I was cold after that long,
watery lullaby, and cold too with exhaustion after running so far at
the heels of the creature who had found me. And I dwelt in a kind of
dream on the transparent flames, and watched vacantly the seething
pot, and smelt till slowly appetite returned the smoke of the stuff
that bubbled beneath its lid.

Mr. Gulliver himself brought me my platter of this pottage, and though
it tasted of nothing in my experience--a kind of sweet, cloying
meat--I was so tired of the fruits to which enterprise had as yet
condemned me, I ate of it hungrily and heartily. Yet not so fast as
that the young "Gulliver" had not finished his before me, and sat at
length watching every mouthful I took from beneath his sun-enticing
thatch of hair. Ever and again he would toss up his chin with a shrill
guffaw, or stoop his head till his eyeballs were almost hidden
beneath their thick lashes, so regarding me for minutes together with
a delightful simulation of intelligence, yet with that peculiar
wistful affection his master had himself exhibited at first sight of
me.

But when our meal was done, Mr. Gulliver ordered him about his
business. Without a murmur, with one last, long, brotherly glance at
me, he withdrew. And presently after I heard from afar his high,
melancholy "cooee," and the crack of his thong in the afternoon air as
he hastened out to his charges.

My companion did not stir. Only the flames waved silently along the
logs. The beam of sunlight drew across the floor. The crisp air of the
pasture flowed through the window. What wonder, then, that, sitting on
my stool, I fell asleep!

VIII

_If I see all, ye're nine to ane!_

--OLD BALLAD.

I was awoke by a sustained sound as of an orator speaking in an
unknown tongue, and found myself in a sunny-shadowy loft, whither I
suppose I must have been carried in my sleep. In a delicious languor
between sleeping and waking I listened with imperturbable curiosity
awhile to that voice of the unknown. Indeed, I was dozing again when a
different sound, enormous, protracted, abruptly aroused me. I got up,
hot and trembling, not yet quite my own master, to discover its cause.

Through a narrow slit between the timbers I could view the country
beneath me, far and wide. I saw near at hand the cumbrous gate of the
stockade ajar, and at a little distance on the farther side Mr.
Gulliver and his half-human servant standing. In front of them was an
empty space--a narrow semicircle of which Gulliver was the centre. And
beyond--wild-eyed, dishevelled, stretching their necks as if to see,
inclining their heads as if to hearken, ranging in multitude almost to
the sky's verge--stood assembled, it seemed to me, all the horses of
the universe.

Even in my first sensation of fear admiration irresistibly stirred.
The superb freedom of their unbridled heads, the sun-nurtured
arrogance of their eyes, the tumultuous, sea-like tossing of crest and
tail, their keenness and ardour and might, and also in simple truth
their numbers--how could one marvel if this solitary fanatic dreamed
they heard him and understood?

Unarmed, bareheaded, he faced the brutal discontent of his people.
Words I could not distinguish; but there was little chance of
misapprehending the haughty anguish with which he threatened, pleaded,
cajoled. Clear and unfaltering his voice rose and fell. He dealt out
fearlessly, foolishly, to that long-snouted, little-brained,
wild-eyed multitude, reason beyond their instinct, persuasion beyond
their savagery, love beyond their heed.

But even while I listened, one thing I knew those sleek malcontents
heard too--the Spirit of man in that small voice of his--perplexed,
perhaps, and perverted, and out of tether; but none the less
unconquerable and sublime.

What less, thought I, than power unearthly could long maintain that
stern, impassable barrier of green vacancy between their hoofs and
him? And I suppose for the very reason that these were beasts of a
long-sharpened sagacity, wild-hearted, rebellious, yet not the slaves
of impulse, he yet kept himself their king who was, in fact, their
captive.

"Houyhnhnms?" I heard him cry; "pah--Yahoos!" His voice fell; he stood
confronting in silence that vast circumference of restless beauty. And
again broke out inhuman, inarticulate, immeasurable revolt. Far across
over the tossing host, rearing, leaping, craning dishevelled heads,
went pealing and eddying that hostile, brutal voice.

Gulliver lifted his hand, and a tempestuous silence fell once more.
"Yahoos! Yahoos!" he bawled again. Then he turned, and passed back
into his hideous garden. The gate was barred and bolted behind him.

Thus loosed and unrestrained, surged as if the wind drove them, that
concourse upon the stockade. Heavy though its timbers were, they
seemed to stoop at the impact. A kind of fury rose in me. I lusted to
go down and face the mutiny of the brutes; bit, and saddle, and
scourge into obedience man's serfs of the centuries. I watched, on
fire, the flame of the declining sun upon those sleek, vehement
creatures of the dust. And then, I know not by what subtle irony, my
zeal turned back--turned back and faded away into simple longing for
my lost friend, my peaceful beast-of-evening, Rosinante. I sat down
again in the litter of my bed and earnestly wished myself home;
wished, indeed, if I must confess it, for the familiar face of my Aunt
Sophia, my books, my bed. If these were this land's horses, I thought,
what men might here be met! The unsavouriness, the solitude, the
neighing and tumult and prancing induced in me nothing but dulness at
last and disgust.

But at length, dismissing all such folly, at least from my face, I
lifted the trap-door and descended the steep ladder into the room
beneath.

Mr. Gulliver sat where I had left him. Defeat stared from his eyes.
Lines of insane thought disfigured his face. Yet he sat, stubborn and
upright, heedless of the uproar, heedless even that the late beams of
the sun had found him out in his last desolation. So I too sat down
without speech, and waited till he should come up out of his gloom,
and find a friend in a stranger.

But day waned; the sunlight went out of the great wooden room; the
tumult diminished; and finally silence and evening shadow descended on
the beleaguered house. And I was looking out of the darkened window at
a star that had risen and stood shining in the sky, when I was
startled by a voice so low and so different from any I had yet heard
that I turned to convince myself it was indeed Mr. Gulliver's.

"And the people of the Yahoos, Traveller," he said, "do they still
lie, and flatter, and bribe, and spill blood, and lust, and covet? Are
there yet in the country whence you come the breadless bellies, the
sores and rags and lamentations of the poor? Ay, Yahoo, and do vicious
men rule, and attain riches; and impious women pomp and
flattery?--hypocrites, pandars, envious, treacherous, proud?" He
stared with desolate sorrow and wrath into my eyes.

Words in disorder flocked to my tongue. I grew hot and eager, yet by
some instinct held my peace. The fluttering of the dying flames, the
starry darkness, silence itself; what were we who sat together?
Transient shadows both, phantom, unfathomable, mysterious as these.

I fancied he might speak again. Once he started, raised his arm, and
cried out as if acting again in dream some frenzy of the past. And
once he wheeled on me extraordinary eyes, as if he half-recognised
some idol of the irrevocable in my face. These were momentary,
however. Gloom returned to his forehead, vacancy to his eyes.

I heard the outer gate flung open, and a light, strange footfall. So
we seated ourselves, all three, for a while round the smouldering
fire. Mr. Gulliver's servant scarcely took his eyes from my face. And,
a little to my confusion, his first astonishment of me had now passed
away, and in its stead had fallen such a gentleness and humour as I
should not have supposed possible in his wild countenance. He busied
himself over his strips of skin, but if he caught my eye upon his own
he would smile out broadly, and nod his great, hairy head at me, till
I fancied myself a child again and he some vast sweetheart of my
nurse.

When we had supped (sitting together in the great room), I climbed the
ladder into the loft and was soon fast asleep. But from dreams
distracted with confusion I awoke at the first shafts of dawn. I stood
beside the narrow window in the wall of the loft and watched the
distant river change to silver, the bright green of the grass appear.

This seemed a place of few and timorous birds, and of fewer trees. But
all across the dews of the grasses lay a tinge of powdered gold, as
if yellow flowers were blooming in abundance there. I saw no horses,
no sign of life; heard no sound but the cadent wail of the ash-grey
birds in their flights. And when I turned my eyes nearer home, and
compared the distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds
with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the
window with a determination to be gone as soon as possible from a
country so uncongenial.

Moreover, Mr. Gulliver, it appeared, had returned during the night to
his first mistrust of my company. He made no sign he saw me, and left
his uncouth servant to attend on me. For him, indeed, I began to feel
a kind of affection springing up; he seemed so eager to befriend me.
And whose is the heart quite hardened against a simple admiration? I
rose very gladly when, after having stuffed a wallet with food, he
signed to me to follow him. I turned to Mr. Gulliver and held out my
hand.

"I wish, sir, I might induce you to accompany me," I said. "Some day
we would win our way back to the country we have abandoned. I have
known and loved your name, sir, since first I browsed on
pictures--Being measured for your first coat in Lilliput by the little
tailors:--Straddling the pinnacled city. Ay, sir, and when the farmers
picked you up 'twixt finger and thumb from among their cornstalks...."

I had talked on in hope to see his face relax; but he made no sign he
saw or heard me. I very speedily dropped my hand and went out. But
when my guide and I had advanced about thirty yards from the stockade,
I cast a glance over my shoulder towards the house that had given me
shelter. It rose, sad-coloured and solitary, between the green and
blue. But, if it was not fancy, Mr. Gulliver stood looking down on me
from the very window whence I had looked down on him. And there I do
not doubt he stayed till his fellow-yahoo had passed across his
inhospitable lands out of his sight for ever.

I was glad to be gone, and did not, at first, realise that the least
danger lay before us. But soon, observing the extraordinary vigilance
and caution my companion showed, I began to watch and hearken, too.
Evidently our departure had not passed unseen. Far away to left and to
right of us I descried at whiles now a few, now many, swift-moving
shapes. But whether they were advancing with us, or gathering behind
us, in hope to catch their tyrant alone and unaware, I could not
properly distinguish.

Once, for a cause not apparent to me, my guide raised himself to his
full height, and, thrusting back his head, uttered a most piercing
cry. After that, however, we saw no more for a while of the beasts
that haunted our journey.

All morning, till the sun was high, and the air athrob with heat and
stretched like a great fiddlestring to a continuous, shrill vibration,
we went steadily forward. And when at last I was faint with heat and
thirst, my companion lifted me up like a child on to his back and set
off again at his great, easy stride. It was useless to protest. I
merely buried my hands in his yellow hair to keep my balance in such a
camel-like motion.

A little after noon we stayed to rest by a shallow brook, beneath a
cluster of trees scented, though not in blossom, like an English
hawthorn. There we ate our meal, or rather I ate and my companion
watched, running out ever and again for a wider survey, and returning
to me like a faithful dog, to shout snatches of his inconceivable
language at me.

Sometimes I seemed to catch his meaning, bidding me take courage, have
no fear, he would protect me. And once he shaded his eyes and pointed
afar with extreme perturbation, whining or murmuring while he stared.

Again we set off from beneath the sweet-scented shade, and now no
doubt remained that I was the object of very hostile evolutions.
Sometimes these smooth-hooved battalions would advance, cloudlike, to
within fifty yards of us, and, snorting, ruffle their manes and wheel
swiftly away; only once more in turn to advance, and stand, with heads
exalted, gazing wildly on us till we were passed on a little. But my
guide gave them very little heed. Did they pause a moment too long in
our path, or gallop down on us but a stretch or two beyond the limit
his instinct had set for my safety, he whirled his thong above his
head, and his yell resounded, and like a shadow upon wheat the furious
companies melted away.

Evidently these were not the foes he looked for, but a subtler, a more
indomitable. It was at last, I conjectured, at scent, or sight, or
rumour of these that he suddenly swept me on to his shoulders again,
and with a great sneeze or bellow leapt off at a speed he had, as yet,
given me no hint of.

Looking back as best I could, I began to discern somewhat to the left
of us a numerous herd in pursuit, sorrel in colour, and of a more
magnificent aspect than those forming the other bands. It was obvious,
too, despite their plunging and rearing, that they were gaining on
us--drew, indeed, so near at last that I could count the foremost of
them, and mark (not quite callously) their power and fleetness and
symmetry, even the sun's gold upon their reddish skins.

Then in a flash my captor set me down, toppled me over (in plain
words) into the thick herbage, and, turning, rushed bellowing,
undeviating towards their leaders, till it seemed he must inevitably
be borne down beneath their brute weight, and so--farewell to summer.
But almost at the impact, the baffled creatures reared, neighing
fearfully in consort, and at the gibberish hurled back on them by
their flamed-eyed master, broke in rout, and fled.

Whereupon, unpausing, he ran back to me, only just in time to rescue
me from the nearer thunder yet of those who had seized the very acme
of their opportunity to beat out my brains.

It was a long and arduous and unequal contest. I wished very heartily
I could bear a rather less passive part. But this fearless creature
scarcely heeded me; used me like a helpless child, half tenderly, half
roughly, displaying ever and again over his shoulder only a fleeting
glance of the shallow glories of his eyes, as if to reassure me of his
power and my safety.

But the latter, those distant savannahs will bear witness, seemed
forlorn enough. My eyes swam with weariness of these crested,
earth-disdaining battalions. I sickened of the heat of the sun, the
incessant sidelong jolting, the amazing green. But on we went, fleet
and stubborn, into ever-thickening danger. How feeble a quarry amid so
many hunters!

Two things grew clearer to me each instant. First, that every movement
and feint of our pursuers was of design. Not a beast that wheeled but
wheeled to purpose; while the main body never swerved, thundered
superbly on toward the inevitable end. And next I perceived with even
keener assurance that my guide knew his country and his enemy and his
own power and aim as perfectly and consummately; knew, too--this was
the end.

Far distant in front of us there appeared to be a break in the level
green, a fringe of bushes, rougher ground. For this refuge he was
making, and from this our mutinous Houyhnhnms meant to keep us.

There was no pausing now, not a glance behind. His every effort was
bent on speed. Speed indeed it was. The wind roared in my ears. Yet
above its surge I heard the neighing and squealing, the
ever-approaching shudder of hoofs. My eyes distorted all they looked
on. I seemed now floating twenty feet in air; now skimming within
touch of ground. Now that sorrel squadron behind me swelled and
nodded; now dwindled to an extreme minuteness of motion.

Then, of a sudden, a last, shrill paean rose high; the hosts of our
pursuers paused, billow-like, reared, and scattered--my poor Yahoo
leapt clear.

For an instant once again in this wild journey I was poised, as it
were, in space, then fell with a crash, still clutched, sure and
whole, to the broad shoulders of my rescuer.

When my first confusion had passed away, I found that I was lying in a
dense green glen at the foot of a cliff. For some moments I could
think of nothing but my extraordinary escape from destruction. Within
reach of my hand lay the creature who had carried me, huddled and
motionless; and to left and to right of me, and one a little nearer
the base of the cliff, five of those sorrel horses that had been
chief of our pursuers. One only of them was alive, and he, also,
broken and unable to rise--unable to do else than watch with fierce,
untamed, glazing eyes (a bloody froth at his muzzle,) every movement
and sign of life I made.

I myself, though bruised and bleeding, had received no serious injury.
But my Yahoo would rise no more. His master was left alone amidst his
people. I stooped over him and bathed his brow and cheeks with the
water that trickled from the cliffs close at hand. I pushed back the
thick strands of matted yellow hair from his eyes. He made no sign.
Even while I watched him the life of the poor beast near at hand
welled away: he whinnied softly, and dropped his head upon the
bracken. I was alone in the unbroken silence.

It seemed a graceless thing to leave the carcasses of these brave
creatures uncovered there. So I stripped off branches of the trees,
and gathered bundles of fern and bracken, with which to conceal awhile
their bones from wolf and fowl. And him whom I had begun to love I
covered last, desiring he might but return, if only for a moment, to
bid me his strange farewell.

This done, I pushed through the undergrowth from the foot of the sunny
cliffs, and after wandering in the woods, came late in the afternoon,
tired out, to a ruinous hut. Here I rested, refreshing myself with the
unripe berries that grew near by.

I remained quite still in this mouldering hut looking out on the glens
where fell the sunlight. Some homely bird warbled endlessly on in her
retreat, lifted her small voice till every hollow resounded with her
content. Silvery butterflies wavered across the sun's pale beams,
sipped, and flew in wreaths away. The infinite hordes of the dust
raised their universal voice till, listening, it seemed to me their
tiny Babel was after all my own old, far-off English, sweet of the
husk.

Fate leads a man through danger to his delight. Me she had led among
woods. Nameless though many of the cups and stars and odours of the
flowers were to me, unfamiliar the little shapes that gamboled in fur
and feather before my face, here dwelt, mummy of all earth's summers,
some old ghost of me, sipper of sap, coucher in moss, quieter than
dust.

So sitting, so rhapsodising, I began to hear presently another
sound--the rich, juicy munch-munch of jaws, a little blunted maybe,
which yet, it seemed, could never cry Enough! to these sweet,
succulent grasses. I made no sign, waited with eyes towards the sound,
and pulses beating as if for a sweetheart. And soon, placid,
unsurprised, at her extreme ease, loomed into sight who but my
ox-headed Rosinante in these dells, cropping her delightful way along
in search of her drowned master.

I could but whistle and receive the slow, soft scrutiny of her
familiar eyes. I fancied even her bland face smiled, as might
elderliness on youth. She climbed near with bridle broken and
trailing, thrust out her nose to me, and so was mine again.

Sunlight left the woods. Wind passed through the upper branches. So,
with rain in the air, I went forward once more; not quite so headily,
perhaps, yet, I hope, with undiminished courage, like all earth's
travellers before me, who have deemed truth potent as modesty, and
themselves worth scanning print after.

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