Krakatit/Chapter 25
CHAPTER XXV
It was six months since Prokop had had any chemical apparatus in his hands.
He examined one instrument after another; everything of which he had ever dreamed was there, gleaming, brand-new and arranged with pedantic precision. There was a desk and a technical library, an enormous table covered with chemicals, cupboards containing delicate instruments, a chamber for experimental explosions, a room containing transformers, and apparatus of which he had never even heard. He had looked over about half these marvels when, following a sudden impulse, he rushed to the table for a certain barium salt, some nitrate acid, a few other things, and began an experiment in the course of which he succeeded in burning his fingers, smashing a test-tube to fragments and burning a hole in his coat. Satisfied with this beginning he sat down at the writing-table and jotted down two or three notes.
Then he had another look round the laboratory. It reminded him rather of a newly instituted perfumery. Everything was arranged too carefully; but after changing the places of a few things it became more to his taste, more intimate. In the midst of the most intense work he suddenly stopped himself.
“Aha!” he said, “this is how they're trying to catch me! In a minute Carson will arrive and begin talking about becoming a big man and that sort of thing.”
He sat down morosely on the palliasse and waited. When no one appeared he sat like a thief at the desk and began again on the barium salt. Anyway, he was here for the last time, he told himself. The attempt proved perfectly successful: the stuff burst with a long tongue of flame and cracked the glass case containing the balance. “Now I shall catch it,” he said to himself guiltily, when he saw the extent of the damage, and crept out of the laboratory like a schoolboy who had broken a window. Outside it was already dusk and a fine rain was falling. Ten paces in front of the shed stood a military guard.
Prokop slowly walked back to the castle along the road by which he had come. The park was deserted; a fine rain hissed in the branches of the trees, lights began to appear in the castle and the triumphant notes of a piano resounded in the darkness. Prokop made his way to a lonely part of the park between the main entrance and the terrace. Here all the paths had been overgrown and he plunged into the wet underbrush like a boar, every now and then stopping for a moment to listen and then making a way for himself again through the crackling bushes. At last he reached the edge of this jungle where the bushes stretched over an old wall not more than nine feet high. Prokop seized an overhanging branch so as to drop from it onto the other side of the wall; but under his solid weight the branch gave way with a sharp crack like a pistol shot, and Prokop fell heavily onto qa sort of rubbish heap. He remained seated with a beating heart. Surely someone would come after him now. But he heard nothing more than the dripping of the rain. He picked himself up and noticed a wall with a green gate, as he had seen it in his dream.
It was just the same save in one detail; the gate was open. He was greatly disconcerted. Either some one had just gone out of it or was shortly returning; in either case it meant that there was a person in the vicinity. What should he do? Suddenly decided, Prokop kicked the gate open and came out on the main road; and, sure enough, there outside was stumping about a short man in a mackintosh, smoking a pipe. They stood opposite one another, somewhat embarrassed as to how to begin. Naturally the more agile Prokop was the first to take action. Having chosen instantaneously one of a number of possibilities, he threw himself with all his force on the man with a pipe, and, butting him like a goat, threw him into the mud. Then he pressed his chest and elbows into the ground, rather doubtful as to what to do next; for he could hardly wring his neck like a chicken’s. The man underneath him never even let the pipe fall from his mouth and evidently was awaiting developments. “Surrender!” roared Prokop; but at that moment he received a blow from the man’s knee in the stomach and another from his fist under the chin, as a result of which he rolled into a ditch.
When he began to pick himself up he was greeted with another blow, while the man with the pipe remained quietly watching him from the road. “Again?” he said through his teeth. Prokop shook his head. Then the fellow fetched out an extraordinarily dirty hankerchief and began to clean Prokop’s clothes. “Mud,” he remarked and rubbed him assiduously.
“Back!” he said finally, and indicated the green gate. Prokop weakly assented. The man with the pipe led him as far as the old wall, and bent down, his hands on his knees. “Climb up,” he ordered. Prokop clambered on to his shoulders, the man drew himself up sharply with an “Up!” and Prokop, seizing an overhanging branch, found himself on the top of the wall. He was almost crying with shame.
And, to add to everything, when, scratched and swollen, and covered with mud, he crept humiliated up the steps of the castle to his suite, he met Princess Willy on the stairs, Prokop tried to pretend that he wasn’t there, or that he did not recognize her, or something of the sort, omitted to salute her and dashed upstairs like a statue made of mud. But just as he was passing her he caught her astonished, haughty, highly offended look. He stopped stockstill. “Wait,” he cried and rushed up to her. “Go,” he cried, “and tell them, tell them that . . . that I don’t care twopence for them and that . . . I don’t consent to be imprisoned, see? I don’t consent!” he roared and brought down his fist on the banisters so that they rattled, after which he dashed into the park again, leaving the Princess behind him pale and dumbfounded.
A few moments later some one almost obliterated by mud rushed into the porter’s house, knocked the old man over with an oak table, seized Bob by the throat and dashed his head against the wall so violently that he lost consciousness, after which he possessed himself of the key, opened the door and ran out. Outside he came up against a sentry, who immediately challenged him and raised his rifle, but before he could fire somebody was shaking him violently, tore the gun out of his hands and broke his collar-bone with the butt. Then two sentries on duty near by ran up; the black being threw the rifle at them and slipped back into the park. Almost at the same moment the night guard at exit C was also attacked; something large and black, appearing from nowhere, suddenly began to hammer his lower jaw. The sentry, a blonde giant, was too astonished for a moment to whistle for assistance. Then this somebody, cursing terribly, let him go and ran back into the dark park. The guard was called out and a number of patrols began to search the grounds.
At about midnight somebody demolished the balustrade on the terrace and threw stones twenty Pounds in weight at the guard, which was passing thirty feet below. A soldier fired, producing from above a string of political insults—and then all was quiet. At that moment a detachment of cavalry arrived from Dikkeln, while the whole of the Balttin garrison were occupied in thrusting their bayonets into the underbrush. In the castle nobody attempted to sleep. At one a. m. an unconscious soldier without a rifle was found on the tennis court. Shortly afterwards an exchange of shots was heard in the birch wood; luckily nobody was injured. Mr. Carson, with a serious and careworn expression, insisted on sending Princess Willy back to the castle. Trembling through the cold more than anything else, she had ventured, for some reason or other, on to the battlefield. But the Princess, her eyes unusually widely open, asked him to be so good as to leave her alone. Mr. Carson shrugged his shoulders and let her have her own mad way.
Although people were gathered round the castle as thick as flies, somebody continued to break the windows methodically from the bushes. There was a panic, accentuated by the fact that at the same time three or four rifle shots were heard from the main road. Mr. Carson looked exceedingly anxious.
Meanwhile the Princess was silently walking along an avenue of beech trees. Suddenly there appeared before her an enormous black creature, which stood still for a moment, clenched its fists, muttered something to the effect that it was a shame and a scandal, and then dived into the bushes again. The Princess turned back and stopped the patrol, saying that there was nobody there. Her eyes were wide and shining, as if she were feverish. A moment afterwards firing was heard from the bushes behind the lake; according to the noise it came from shotguns. Mr. Carson grumbled, saying that if the yard boys mixed themselves up in it he would pull their ears for them. He did not know that at that moment somebody had thrown a heavy stone at a valuable Danish hound.
At dawn they found Prokop sleeping soundly on a bench in the Japanese summer-house. He was terribly scratched and befouled and his clothes hung in rags; on his forehead he had a lump as big as his fist and his hair was clotted with blood. Mr. Carson shook his head over the sleeping hero of the night. Then Mr. Paul shuffled forward and carefully covered the snoring sleeper with a warm rug, produced a basin full of water, a towel, some clean linen and a brand-new tweed suit made by Mr. Drehbein and went away on tiptoe.
Two inconspicuous persons in plain clothes, with revolvers in their hip pockets, strolled up and down in the neighbourhood of the Japanese summer-house until morning with the unconcerned air of people who are waiting to observe the sunrise.