We were yelling and jumping and whirling through terrified lanes, feet pounding, drums and skulls keeping pace. And meanwhile the sky was filling with hot, gray, long shadows, rain clouds, but to my eyes of an abnormal form, pressed together like organ pipes or like the ocean ammonites of Paleozoic times. With swollen throats the amazons cried and howled, and I, lumbering with them, tried to remember who I was. Me. With the slime-plastered leaves drying on my skin. The king of the rain. It came to me that still and all there must be some distinction in this, but of what kind I couldn’t say.
Under the thickened rain clouds, a heated, darkened breeze sprang up. It had a smoky odor. This was something oppressive, insinuating, choky, sultry, icky. Desirous, the air was, and it felt tumescent, heavy. It was very heavy. It yearned for discharge, like a living thing. Covered with sweat, the generaless with her arm urged me, rolling great eyes and panting. The mud dried stiffly and made a kind of earth costume for me. Inside it I felt like Vesuvius, all the upper part flame and the blood banging upward like the pitch or magma. The whips were hissing and gave a dry, mean sound, and I wondered what in the hell are they doing. After the gust of breeze came deeper darkness, like the pungent heat of the trains when they pass into Grand Central tunnel on a devastated day of August, which is like darkness eternal. At that moment I have always closed my eyes.
But I couldn’t close them now. We ran back to the arena, where the tribesmen of the Wariri were waiting. As the rain was still held back, so were their voices from my hearing, by a very thin dam, one of the thinnest. I heard Dahfu saying to me, “After all, Mr. Henderson, you may lose the wager.” For we were again in front of his box. He gave an order to Tatu, the generaless, and we all turned and rushed into the arena-I with the rest, spinning around inspired, in spite of my great weight, in spite of the angry cuts on my feet. My heart rioting, my head dazed, and filled with something like the fulgor of that vacant Pacific scene beside which I had walked with Edward. Nothing but white, seething, and the birds arguing over the herrings, with great clouds about. On the many-figured white stones I saw the people standing, leaping, frantic, under the oppression of Mummah’s great clouds, those colossal tuberous forms almost breaking. There was a great delirium. They were shrieking, shrieking. And of all these shrieks, my head, the rain king’s head, was the hive. All were flying toward me, entering my brain. Above all this I heard the roaring of lions, while the dust was shivering under my feet.
The women about me were dancing, if you want to call it that. They were bounding and screaming and banging their bodies into me. All together we were nearing the gods who stood in their group, with Hummat and Mummah looking over the heads of the rest. And now I wanted to fall on the ground to avoid any share in what seemed to be a terrible thing, for these women, the amazons, were rushing upon the figures of the gods with those short whips of theirs and striking them. “Stop!” I yelled. “Quit it! What’s the matter? Are you crazy?” It would have been different, perhaps, if this had been a token whipping and the gods were merely touched with the thick leather straps. But great violence was loosed on these figures, so that the smaller ones rocked as they were beaten while the bigger without any changes of face bore it defenseless. Those children of darkness, the tribe, rose and screamed like gulls on stormy water. And then I did fall to the ground. Naked, I threw myself down, roaring, “No, no, no!” But Tatu grasped me by the arm and with an effort raised me to my knees. So that, on my knees, I was pulled forward into this, crawling on the ground. My hand, which had the whip still in it, was lifted once or twice and brought down so that against my will I was made to perform the duty of the rain king. “Oh, I can’t do this. You’ll never make me,” I was saying. “Oh, batter me and kill me. Run a spit up me and bake me over the fire.” I tried to hide against the earth and in this posture was struck on the back of the head with a whip and afterward on the face as well, as the women were swinging in all directions now and struck one another as well as me and the gods. Caught up in this madness, I fended off blows from my position on my knees, for it seemed to me that I was fighting for my life, and I yelled. Until a thunder clap was heard.
And then, after a great, neighing, cold blast of wind, the clouds opened and the rain began to fall. Gouts of water like hand grenades burst all about and on me. The face of Mummah, which had been streaked by the whips, was now covered with silver bubbles, and the ground began to foam. The amazons with their wet bodies began to embrace me. I was too stunned to push them off. I have never seen such water. It was like the Dutch flood that swept over Alva’s men when the sea walls were opened. In this torrent the people were hidden from me. I looked for Dahfu’s box concealed in the storm and I worked my way around the arena, following the white stone with my hand. Then I met Romilayu, who recoiled from me as if I were dangerous to him. His hair was hugely flattened by the storm and his face showed great fear. “Romilayu,” I said, “please, man, you’ve got to help me. Look at the condition I’m in. Find my clothes. Where is the king? Where are they all? Pick up my clothes-my helmet,” I said. “I’ve got to have my helmet.”
Naked, I held on to him and bent over, my feet slipping as he led me to the king’s box. Four women were holding a cover over Dahfu to keep off the rain and his hammock had been raised. They were carrying him away.
“King, King,” I cried.
He drew aside the edge of the cover they had thrown over him. Under it I saw him there in his broad-brimmed hat. I cried out to him, “What has struck us?”
He said simply, “It is rain.”
“Rain? What rain? It’s the deluge. It feels like the end …”
“Mr. Henderson,” he said, “it is a great thing you have performed for us, after which pains we must give you some pleasure, too.” And seeing the look on my face he said, “Do you see, Mr. Henderson, the gods know us.” And as he was carried from me in his hammock, the eight women supporting the poles, he said, “You have lost the wager.”
I was left standing in my coat of earth, like a giant turnip.
XV
This is how I became the rain king. I guess it served me right for mixing into matters that were none of my damned business. But the thing had been irresistible, one of those drives which there was no question of fighting. And what had I got myself into? What were the consequences? On the ground floor of the palace, filthy, naked, and bruised, I lay in a little room. The rain was falling, drowning the town, dropping from the roof in heavy fringes, witchlike and gloomy. Shivering, I covered myself with hides and stared with circular eyes, wrapped to the chin in the skins of unknown animals, I kept saying, “Oh, Romilayu, don’t be down on me. How was I supposed to know what I was getting myself into?” My upper lip grew long and my nose was distorted; it was aching with the whiplashes and I felt my eyes had grown black and huge. “Oh, I’m in a bad way. I lost the bet and am at the guy’s mercy.”
But as before Romilayu came through for me. He tried to hearten me a little and said he didn’t think that worse was to be expected, and indicated that it was premature for me to feel trapped. He made very good sense. Then he said, “You sleep, sah. T’ink tomorrow.”