Web by John Wyndham
We sat there for a bit longer watching the mud bubbles bloat like horrid stomachs filling, waiting in fascinated distaste for the soggy plops of their collapse. Our captor, too, seemed unable to take his eyes off them. After a time, however, he rose, and motioned us on to our feet again with the pistol.
We went on round the rim of the crater until we came to the saddle joining it to the other hill. There we turned left and kept to the top of the ridge. It was easy walking on coarse, wiry grass. Halfway along it was an arrangement of stones, forming a kind of rectangular table about three feet high, set at a slight, obviously intentional, angle to the run of the ridge. We looked at it curiously. It was the sole constructional work of the former inhabitants that we had seen since we landed: possibly their only monument. It had been carefully built, too, and topped with a couple of flat stones.
“Could it be some sort of altar?” Camilla suggested.
When we reached it any doubt about that was dispelled. The top of it was smeared with dark, caked blood. We had no time to stop and examine it. Our guard marched us on past it.
An unpleasant possibility began to trouble me. I hesitated, then I said:
“Do you think – ?”
Camilla cut me short. The same idea had evidently occurred to her. “No,” she said. “It’s been there for a week at least, probably longer. Besides, there wasn’t enough of it.” After a pause, she added: “All the same, it’d be interesting to know what they found here to make a sacrifice.”
The ridge came to an end. There were some two hundred yards of hillside to climb. Then we found ourselves on the rim of the northern crater.
This one had clearly been inactive for a very long time. Slips of rock from the sides had blocked it long enough ago for soil to form. Clumps of vegetation clung to the walls, and down at the bottom were thickets of bushes and a sizeable grove of trees. A rough path led zig-zag down the crater wall towards them.
Our guard startled both of us by giving a loud hail, which echoed back and forth across the crater.
Presently two dark-skinned men emerged from the trees and stood at the foot of the path, looking up.
Our captor shouted something unintelligible, and received an equally unintelligible reply. He slipped the revolver into his belt and drew his machete. With it he cut the cords on our wrists before urging us down the path ahead of him.
It was as well he did. The way was steep, and tricky in places. I doubt whether I could have made it with my arms tied together.
At the bottom we walked towards the two men who stood waiting for us.
One of them I recognized at once. He had been noticeably older than the rest of the party we had taken aboard at Uijanji. It was the streaks of grey in his fuzzy black hair that identified him for me. Without that I should not have known him as he was now, clad only in a loin cloth like the others, and with a bone ornament piercing the septum of his nostrils.
But he was ornamented in another way, too. A design had been daubed on his chest with yellow paint like a crude heraldic emblem. The centre of the device was a pearshaped blob. From it radiated eight strokes, each hooked at the end. The significance of it was lost on me until I noticed Camilla stare at it fixedly, and raise her eyes to the man’s face with a puzzled look in them. Then I looked at the emblem again and suddenly saw it for what it was: a childlike representation of a spider…
Seven
The man with the spider emblem looked at us briefly, and then turned to question our captor. He listened thoughtfully to the reply and put several more questions. Then he turned to his companion, and gave an order. The man stepped forward and laid hold of my haversack. It would have been pointless to resist. I let go.
They discovered the spray-gun, sniffed at it, nodded, unscrewed the filler cap and poured the contents on to the ground. Then they discovered the spare tin of insecticide and that, too, was poured away. The rest of the contents did not interest them. They took Camilla’s haversack, dealt similarly with her spray-gun, and threw it away.
The ornamented man regarded us again. He stepped closer, lifted my arm, sniffed at my sleeve, and nodded.
“Take off your clothes,” he said, in English. “You too,” he added, to Camilla.
When we hesitated our captor made a move with his machete. There was nothing for it but to obey. I was allowed to retain my pants, and Camilla her panties. Both of us kept our shoes.
The third man bundled our discarded clothing together and carried it off into the trees. The ornamented man turned to our captor and said something, holding out his hand. With some reluctance the other drew the revolver from his belt, and passed it to him, then at a gesture of dismissal turned and started back up the wall of the crater. The ornamented man examined the revolver with satisfaction before thrusting it into his own belt. He turned to regard us for a moment, then, without speaking, made his way back into the trees, leaving us alone. We watched him until he disappeared.
Camilla sat down on the ground.
“And that’s that,” she said. “Very simple. Very effective.”
It required no comment from me. There was no need to guard us. Without our clothing to protect us from the spiders we could not attempt to go back by the way we had come. Without machetes to clear a path we could not hope to make our way north and then west keeping clear of spider country – nor could we be sure that we were indeed keeping clear of it. It was, as she said, very simple.
I dropped down beside her, and we sat for some little time in silent contemplation of the situation.
Presently Camilla shook her head.
“I don’t understand it,” she said. “They could easily have killed us. The others would simply have thought the spiders had got us. Why didn’t they?”
“Come to that, why did they want to jump the ship and stay here, at all?” I countered.
There was silence for some moments.
“Why,” she asked uneasily, “should they carry spiders about in those bags?”
“If it was spiders in them,” I said.
“Of course it was. The contents were moving, weren’t they? What else could it have been?” she replied impatiently.
We pondered that, too, for a time.
I gave it up, and reached for my haversack, still lying where it had been dropped. The contents, save for the spray and the insecticide, were intact: even the field-glasses which I should have expected to arouse covetousness – except, of course, that they were of little use hemmed in as we were by the crater wall. There was also the remains of our food. I gave Camilla a sandwich, and took one myself.
After that we shared a bar of chocolate. Then there was nothing to do.
The sun sank lower. The shadow of the crater wall crept over us. We decided to move into the trees and collect branches and leaves to give us a couch and at least a sort of covering for the night. What we achieved was far from comfortable. In spite of the layer of leaves the branches formed hard ridges, twigs scratched and dug into sensitive parts, furthermore as there were no spiders here there were insects. Also our attempts to cover ourselves with leaves, at least, to keep ourselves covered with leaves, were unsuccessful.
Soon after darkness had fallen the two Islanders lit a fire. We lay and watched its flickering through the trees for an hour or more. Camilla moved restlessly. Suddenly she sat up.
“Damn this,” she said, decisively. “Come what may, I’m going to get warm by that fire.”
“You can’t do that,” I protested. “You’ll probably be – well, I mean to say, it’d be asking for trouble.”
She got to her feet.
“I don’t care,” she announced. “It couldn’t be more uncomfortable than this.” And she started to walk off.
I perforce followed her.
The two Islanders were sitting close to the fire staring into the flames. They couldn’t have helped hearing our approach, but we might not have existed for all the notice they took of us. Camilla kept straight on. Even when we were quite close they neit
After some minutes the second man leaned forward. With a twig he stirred something that was cooking in a cut-down tin can. As he leant back again, I became aware that the ornamented man, without moving, was watching us.
I tried to judge his expression, but the uncertain light, as well as the effect on his countenance of his bone spike through his nose, made it difficult to determine. His eyes, gleaming now and then as they caught the flames were steady. I decided that they looked more contemplative than dangerous.
After a period of prolonged and reflective study he asked, without any preliminary:
“Why you come here?”
Camilla stretched her hands to the fire again.
“To keep warm,” she said.
Without any change of expression the man said:
“Why you come to Tanakuatua?”
Camilla looked at him thoughtfully.
“Why are you here? Isn’t Tanakuatua tabu for you? It is not tabu for us.”
The man frowned.
“Tanakuatua is tabu for all men – and women, too. We came only, to help the Little Sisters. It is permitted.” He frowned again, and went on: “Tanakuatua is our island, our home, ours.”
Camilla said, mildly:
“We were given to understand that it was sold to the British Government, who sold it to us.”
“Tanakuatua was taken from us by a trick,” the man started.
Camilla looked interested.
“What was this trick?” she asked.
The man did not reply at once. He regarded us both as if making up his mind. Then he decided to tell the story.
“It was in the time of Nokiki, my father…” he began. He told us the tale in fluent English, his occasionally quaint phrases and unfamiliar turns of speech giving it an added fascination, so there by the fire which the other man fed with an occasional handful of sticks, we heard for the first time of the Curse of Nokiki, and his sacrifice. The account was, not unnaturally, somewhat biased, but the man, whose name we now learned to be Naeta, gave it with sincerity and emotion. Those parts of it we were able to check later differed from it only in unimportant details – and in the point of view.
The tale took some time in telling, but once started Naeta was not to be diverted. Twice in the course of it the other man offered him the food cooking in the tin, but each time he waved it aside, and the other man with a shrug returned it to the embers to keep warm. Not until he had finished, leaving us with a picture of the last four Tanakuatuans paddling their canoe away across the empty ocean, leaving their forbidden island behind them for ever, did he take up the tin and help himself to its contents.
We sat silent until he had finished, then Camilla said:
“But, surely, if you could not live here again, the only sensible thing to do was to sell the island?”
Naeta glared at her grimly.
“We did not sell, Tanakuatua is ours,” he said angrily.
He went on to explain that there had been compensation paid.
It was only right that the Government who had tricked them into leaving the island, and so was responsible for the curse that was put on it, should find them another place to live, but that did not mean that they had sold their island. Neither they nor anyone else could live there, so why should they sell it, and why should anyone be willing to buy it? It was useless, therefore it stood to reason that no one had bought it. But though it was no longer of use, it remained their island. They had conquered it, they had held it, and it was there that the bones of their ancestors rested. They had accepted the situation – until they had heard that the Government had tricked them again by selling Tanakuatua, which was not theirs to sell.
At this point he became so heated, and his account so involved that we could not follow it then. Only by patient inquiries later did I manage to get it more or less sorted out.
Apparently the news that Tanakuatua had been sold reached the Tanakuatuan exiles in their new home on the island of Imu as a rumour, but even unconfirmed it had immediately aroused strong feelings. When it was later authenticated it split the community into several factions.
Kusake, now Chief in succession to his father, Tatake, was shocked, but he was not a man to be governed by his reflexes. From his father he had learnt, both by precept and example, the qualities required of a contemporary Chief. He fully understood, as some of his people still did not, that whatever the provocations of injustice, the modern world held a very poor future for a romantic leader of warriors. Legendary heroes were a part of a proud history, still to be venerated, but no longer to be imitated. The task of a Chief, in the ebb of his people’s fortunes, was to hold them together, to prevent the tribe from disintegrating, to conserve its entity against the time when the tide should turn again. Until that happened the leader must be primarily politician; and warriors, workers. Valour must be hidden beneath cunning; ferocity beneath cold determination. Pride and faith must be kept burning – but in a darkened lantern.
Kusake’s private views regarding the sale of Tanakuatua were emotionally confused, but as a politician he saw the situation clearly: the British Government had not only deprived them of their homeland, it had then gone on to sell that homeland for a sum far in excess of that paid in compensation, thus making a handsome profit on the deal; the Government had been guilty of sharp practice in selling an island under a tabu to a purchaser who would not be able to make use of it. The whole affair was nothing less than a crying scandal from several points of view. Having considered the matter, Kusake decided upon plans A and B. Plan A was to take legal advice. Should that be discouraging, plan B was to appeal to those members of the Opposition who had been responsible for contriving the move from the reservation to Imu, to raise the matter in the House.
Unfortunately, however sound this approach may have been in policy, it lacked appeal to the more vigorous of his subjects, and opposition to it crystallized around Naeta.
Naeta, son of Nokiki, had as a young man been one of the three who had kept his father company on Tanakuatua until the last. This had brought him considerable prestige, and led, in the course of time, to his succeeding his father as chief medicine man of the tribe.
His indignation over the sale of the island went even further than his Chief’s in claiming that Tanakuatua was not even the property of the Government to sell. The compensation, he asserted, was not money given in purchase; it was a conscience-payment, since it was as a result of the Government’s action that Tanakuatua now lay under tabu.
Furthermore, Nokiki’s stand and eventual self-sacrifice had made the island, though forbidden, forever sacred ground to the tribe, and doubly sacred to members of Nokiki’s totem-clan.
In such circumstances the claim which Kusake was proposing, and which, if successful, would result in merely another monetary gesture of compensation, was nugatory and irrelevant. He was indeed shocked that the honour and sacred places of a proud people should be considered matters for barter. It was a disgrace to set the ghosts of their ancestors wailing in the Happy Land. The time had come for action.
Dancer-on-the-Waves, who also held prestige as the woman who had been privileged to weave Nokiki’s burial mat, took a variant of this view. It was known, she said, that a dreadful form of death now awaited all who set foot on Tanakuatua. Nakaa had kept faith with Nokiki. Therefore there was no need to take action as Naeta was suggesting. What was important now, she insisted, was for them to show their faith in Nakaa; to do homage to him, to make repentance for their sins, to atone for the weakness of those who had strayed towards the white God, to confess the lack of faith which had rendered them incapable of defending their own island, thus bringing Nokiki’s curse upon it; and to pray for just vengeance to fall upon their
To this Naeta retorted that to leave all the work of retribution to Nakaa would be evidence that they were still a spiritless people. If they were to continue to let matters drift while strangers dwelt on the sacred ground and trampled the groves of their ancestors, no one need be surprised when new, and worse, tribulations fell upon them. What was needed now was positive affirmation of faith in Nakaa’s laws; deeds of dedication; action, not on their own behalf, but on Nakaa’s: action which would restore them to the favour of the old gods, and set the ghosts of their ancestors rejoicing.
The old and the middle-aged divided, some in favour of Kusake’s policy, some supporting Dancer-on-the-Waves. The young too, were divided, but differently. Some of the men who, as Tatake had complained, had ceased to believe in anything, remained cynical, though interested in any further compensation that might be extracted; but there were others who rallied to Naeta, and held councils of action.
One of the stumbling blocks was finance. Several plans were laid before Kusake and the elders. Each as forthrightly rejected until it became quite clear that any hope of assistance from the tribal treasury was in vain.
“Very well,” proclaimed Naeta, “these timid men have shown us where we stand. Our valiant ancestors had no need of this white man’s invention of money. Their wealth was the goodwill of the gods. So let us do what they would have done. Let us pray to the gods for guidance. If we show faith in them, they will show us how we may become instruments of their vengeance.”
For many months the gods had appeared to be deaf. Then, one day, came the news that an agent in Uijanji was attempting to enlist a party to help with the landing on Tanakuatua. Unsurprisingly, in view of the island’s well-known reputation, he was having no success.
When he heard this Naeta became thoughtful, and after a time he thanked the gods for showing him the way.
In the evening he called his followers together, and outlined his plan.