Drums of Mer. Ion Idriess
silence, not even the swish of a night bird’s wing. The island, towering black, big Gelam with its little hills sloping away down to the indistinct lands. A stone’s throw across the water was shadowed the precipitous peak of tiny Dauar with the castellated cliffs of Waiar, isle of evil, beside it; and over all a dome of velvet-blue pierced by a million stars. It seemed that the curtains of heaven were withdrawn, so that angels might gaze upon Mer.
Mer the terrible! Mer the beautiful: chief lodge of the Zogo-le!
Within the Sacred Grove the tenseness was such that the people breathed fear. The sacred Wongais encircled the grove, their massive, twisted branches, their grey-green leaves still and silent.
In the centre loomed a dome-shaped thatch like a mammoth beehive. It was the chief Zogo-house of the Eastern Group, and it housed one of the most powerful gods known to Island peoples. Pressed back upon the sacred trees, as far from the Zogo-house as they could squeeze, waited a thousand men and women.
Not a large meeting, for this was but a local thanksgiving to the Au-gud for a successful raid, made spectacular by the young son of the Mamoose having brought back a prisoner.
Pregnant silence in the Grove; the captive’s ears tingled to the sigh of hostile people breathing around him in the dark. And often at a movement came a gleam half seen and frightening – the eyes of savage people nearly hysterical from an ecstasy of excitement and fear.
Suddenly, as if propelled from a giant’s searchlight, a flame of liquid gold shot from the sea towards the sky. It crinkled while it grew, as if the long-drawn “Ah” of the people fanned it to a flame that crept up behind the black summit of Gelam. From flaring silhouette the crater’s edge turned into fire of gold as the long grass leapt into view. A bath of silver dashed upon the sea. Hills, trees, villages leapt to form, adorned in silver coats. The hill-crests gleamed, a crimson line.
From somewhere came a rumble that broke into a concerted throb of drums. Those shark-jaw drums of Mer! Throbbing a passion that echoed in the beating hearts of men. Far out across the Strait the leathery snakelike head of a turtle clove the water and floated wonderingly.
A circle tip of molten gold pierced the crimson line. The crowd in frantic accord raised their arms and roared a chant, fierce yet strangely sweet, while the tip swelled to a disk that shot clean above the hill-top to the quickening pulse of the drums.
Burnished gold, swimming in its own brightness, this wonder moon of the Coral Sea! They gloried in its majesty while it sped up, up, up, and strikingly were its beams reflected within the Sacred Grove, until the straws upon the Zogo-house were visible as in the day. Perhaps some property in the ground, or shrewd advantaging of trees and rocks and hills, was responsible for this fierce white reflection.
Bamboo masts (the Sarokag) stood around the Zogo-house, arranged mathematically to form a sign of the Bomai-Malu, each mast capped by a symbol upon which the light was reflected mirror-like. These symbols were skulls. Crowning a coral dais was a gigantic clam-shell of pure white, mothering the Zogo-stone, round and black and glistening, for it had just been anointed with human oil. The moon beams licked upon the living as if by its light imbuing their bodies with life of itself. Warriors and women, youths and maids, of splendid stature with arms upstretched and faces transformed above the meaning of their song. These were the Miriam-le, all the people of the villages of Mer.
The village men of Mer were tall heavily-built savages, dark brown men in colour, strong limbed. Their faces were broad, with features uncompromising under jet-black brows which shadowed keen aggressive eyes. Their hair, in thick ringlets, fell back over the shoulders; their beards were divided into ringlets of three dark coils speckled with ivory of crocodiles’ teeth; sharks’ teeth gleamed along the double edge of their broad, heavy swords. Among these darker peoples of the Miriam-le, some, men of Las village stood out like the bronzed statues of a sculptor’s dream. Their faces were arrestingly pleasing, their black-brown eyes keenly alive, while their finely chiselled features and haughty carriage irresistibly reminded the one white onlooker of the arrogance of Spain. The black eyes of their women flashed merriment and coquetry, while their athletic figures made the onlooker resentful that their skin was not pure white. The single petticoat of fig-tree root, teased into strands of silk, clung from supple waists to just above the knee. The maids not yet initiated into womanhood, however, adorned the many leaved croton, while a hibiscus necklace in scarlet flowers toyed across their breasts. Their hazily pretty hair was a wave of profuse strands, all of minute crinkles. Pridefully cared for, it fringed the forehead in massed waves where every strand lay in place combed back over the head to the nape of the neck, where it was gathered by a gleaming clasp of mother-of-pearl to spread out and up like a peacock’s tail, a fan-shaped mass of fine black hair. A brown colour at the tips was due to constant diving and swimming in the sea. Strange that among these people were numbers with the countenance of Jew and Arab!
And upon all the Miriam-le alike there shimmered beautiful ornaments, insignia of office, dibi-dibi pendants of warriorhood, leg-bands, brow-combs, breast ornaments of gleaming mother-of-pearl, of sparkling nautilus shell, of mottled tortoise-shell, the armlet-shell rare and carved, necklaces of brilliant corals and tiny vividly-coloured shells; the insignia of the Zogo-le and Mamooses were cut and carved and polished with a highly artistic taste.
Surrounding the chief of each tribal group and holding themselves apart, were arrogant men from whose brows floated the ominous black feathers of one of the most feared societies ever formed, the Bomai-Malu Cult. Standing in cynical isolation, his huge arms haughtily folded, was a giant clad in the dread insignia of Waiat. From his glance all maids trembled away, seeking to hide their faces and figures among the crowd. All the clans of Mer were there, all except one, the Gamard-Bauer, outcasts and ghouls of the night. And joining with the song of the Miriam-le chanted the graceful people of Las, taken out of themselves in adoration of a “Something” which they but dimly realized. “Gesu! Gesu! Gesu!” “Oh Au-gudeem! Oh Au-gudeem! Oh Au-gudeem!”
Among the black warriors of Mer there sang a Las man, or, rather, such he seemed to be for his skin was kissed a deep, rich brown from the sun .and sea. There the resemblance ended. He was not so tall as the Las, but his body, now afire with tense emotions, was as lithely muscular as theirs. He wore the badge of the men of Mer, he shook on high a sword of Mer, his hair was as long as theirs, only his was brown. He wore the crescent mai, proud insignia of a chief. The square jaw was beardless, unlike some young men around him, numbers of whom too wore the hair cut short. Strangely, among that black-eyed throng, his eyes were grey. Once a boyish laughing grey, they had grown cold and steely and cruel, alive with a snaky quickness that registered every happening in the grove, eyes that reacted to some ever-present fear of the mind.
Outwardly he was just like the others as his vibrant voice sang praise of Bomai, of Malu, of Segar, of Kulka, of the Au-gud, and of the Zogo and the Zogo-le.
The drums ceased – silence gripped all as the moon, now satisfied that the men of Mer paid homage, proceeded majestically up into the skies to veil its face with wispy cloud-lace of pink, a wondrous moon, the golden moon of Torres Strait.
With lowered arms the people trembled – fear hushed the grove – the walls of the Zogo-house slid within themselves, the interior opened. A thousand people fell upon their knees, with heads bowed to the earth and crying, “Oh Au-gudeem! Oh Au-gudeem! Oh Au-gudeem!” From deep among the men of Mer the brown man peered up from under his eyebrows, intent upon the chief Zogo, not the fearsome Au-gud. Even at that distance he strove to combat the master mind behind the gigantic mask, to seek out its camouflaged thoughts, its secret intentions towards himself. As the trapped rat stares at the waiting snake so he stared but with his mind alone, never with his eyes when perhaps others might notice.
C’Zarcke the Zogo, the great Au-Zogo-zogo-le and Au-Maid-maid-le, master of hypnotic sorcery, chief and head of the Bomai-Malu, gazed out over the bowed crowd, his strong teeth gritted in an ecstasy of power. Full well he knew that he could, if he wished, call on these people and they would turn and slay until not one man or woman was left alive. And these were merely a handful of the multitude to whom but a thought from him could bring death. Chief Zogo of the most powerful Island group and Geregere-le (the Beizam-boai who had charge of