invitingly well-covered), aimed and, with all the force and accuracy of a champion
foot-and-mouth-baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.
Eight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio was on sale in the streets of
London. "HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HAS COCCYX KICKED BY MYSTERY SAVAGE,"
ran the headlines on the front page. "SENSATION IN SURREY."
"Sensation even in London," thought the reporter when, on his return, he read the
words. And a very painful sensation, what was more. He sat down gingerly to his
luncheon.
Undeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleague's coccyx, four other
reporters, representing the New York Times, the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional
Continuum, The Fordian Science Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, called that afternoon at
the lighthouse and met with receptions of progressively increasing violence.
From a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, "Benighted fool!" shouted the
man from The Fordian Science Monitor, "why don't you take soma?"
"Get away!" The Savage shook his fist.
The other retreated a few steps then turned round again. "Evil's an unreality if you
take a couple of grammes."
"Kohakwa iyathtokyai!" The tone was menacingly derisive.
"Pain's a delusion."
"Oh, is it?" said the Savage and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.
The man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter.
After that the Savage was left for a time in peace. A few helicopters came and
hovered inquisitively round the tower. He shot an arrow into the importunately
nearest of them. It pierced the aluminum floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell,
and the machine went rocketing up into the air with all the acceleration that its
super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kept their distance respectfully.
Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in his imagination to one of
the suitors of the Maiden of Mátsaki, unmoved and persistent among the winged
vermin), the Savage dug at what was to be his garden. After a time the vermin
evidently became bored and flew away; for hours at a stretch the sky above his
head was empty and, but for the larks, silent.
The weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in the air. He had dug all the
morning and was resting, stretched out along the floor. And suddenly the thought of
Lenina was a real presence, naked and tangible, saying "Sweet!" and "Put your
arms round me!"–in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh,
her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our
lips and eyes. Lenina … No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he
was, ran out of the house. At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper
bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body of his
desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked
him. He tried to think of poor Linda, breathless and dumb, with her clutching hands
and the unutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Linda whom he had sworn to remember.
But it was still the presence of Lenina that haunted him. Lenina whom he had
promised to forget. Even through the stab and stmg of the juniper needles, his
wincing fiesh was aware of her, unescapably real. "Sweet, sweet … And if you wanted
me too, why didn't you …"
The whip was hanging on a nail by the door, ready to hand against the arrival of
reporters. In a frenzy the Savage ran back to the house, seized it, whirled it. The
knotted cords bit into his flesh.
"Strumpet! Strumpet!" he shouted at every blow as though it were Lenina (and how
frantically, without knowing it, he wished it were), white, warm, scented, infamous
Lenina that he was dogging thus. "Strumpet!" And then, in a voice of despair, "Oh,
Linda, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I'm bad. I'm wicked. I'm … No, no, you
strumpet, you strumpet!"
From his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres away, Darwin
Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's most expert big game photographer had
watched the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent
three days sitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nights crawling on
his belly through the heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes, burying wires in
the soft grey sand. Seventy-two hours of profound discomfort. But now me great
moment had come–the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as he
moved among his instruments, the greatest since his taking of the famous
all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas' wedding. "Splendid," he said to
himself, as the Savage started his astonishing performance. "Splendid!" He kept his
telescopic cameras carefully aimed–glued to their moving objective; clapped on a
higher power to get a close-up of the frantic and distorted face (admirable!);
switched over, for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comical effect, he
promised himself); listened in, meanwhile, to the blows, the groans, the wild and
raving words that were being recorded on the sound-track at the edge of his film,
tried the effect of a little amplification (yes, that was decidedly better); was
delighted to hear, in a momentary lull, the shrill singing of a lark; wished the
Savage would turn round so that he could get a good close-up of the blood on his
back–and almost instantly (what astonishing luck!) the accommodating fellow did
turn round, and he was able to take a perfect close-up.
"Well, that was grand!" he said to himself when it was all over. "Really grand!" He
mopped his face. When they had put in the feely effects at the studio, it would be a
wonderful film. Almost as good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale's
Love-Life–and that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!
Twelve days later The Savage of Surrey had been released and could be seen,
heard and felt in every first-class feely-palace in Western Europe.
The effect of Darwin Bonaparte's film was immediate and enormous. On the
afternoon which followed the evening of its release John's rustic solitude was
suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters.
He was digging in his garden–digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up
the substance of his thought. Death–and he drove in his spade once, and again,
and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. A
convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth.
Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than
human and at last … He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on
his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are
we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed
themselves true–truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had
called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft
provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep.
Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it
up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams? …
A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow, there
was something between the sun and him. He looked up, startled, from his digging,
from his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled bewilderment, his mind still wandering in
that other world of truer-than-truth, still focused on the immensities of death and
deity; looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines. Like
locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him on the heather. And
from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in white
viscose-flannels, women (for the weather was hot) in acetate-shantung pyjamas or
velveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzippered singlets–one couple from each. In
a few minutes there were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle round the
lighthouse, staring, laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape)
peanuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum, pan-glanduar petite beurres. And
every moment–for across the Hog's Back the stream of traffic now flowed
unceasingly–their numbers increased. As in a nightmare, the dozens became
scores, the scores hundreds.
The Savage had retreated towards cover, and now, in the posture of an animal at
bay, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring from face to face in
speechless horror, like a man out of his senses.
From this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality by the
impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A shock of startling
pain–and he was broad awake, awake and fiercely angry.
"Go away!" he shouted.
The ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping. "Good old
Savage! Hurrah, hurrah!" And through the babel he heard cries of: "Whip, whip, the
whip!"
Acting on the word's suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its nail
behind the door and shook it at his tormentors.
There was a yell of ironical applause.
Menacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered
at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood firm. The
consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage
which the Savage had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted and looked
round.
"Why don't you leave me alone?" There was an almost plaintive note in his anger.
"Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!" said the man who, if the Savage were to
advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a packet. "They're really
very good, you know," he added, with a rather nervous smile of propitation. "And
the magnesium salts will help to keep you young."
The Savage ignored his offer. "What do you want with me?" he asked, turning from
one grinning face to another. "What do you want with me?"
"The whip," answered a hundred voices confusedly. "Do the whipping stunt. Let's see
the whipping stunt."
Then, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, "We-want-the whip," shouted a group
at the end of the line. "We–want–the whip."
Others at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again
and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth
reiteration, no other word was being spoken. "We–want–the whip."
They were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the
sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for
hours-almost indefinitely. But at about the twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings
were startlingly interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hog's
Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of where the
Savage was standing, in the open space between the line of sightseers and the
lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as
the machine touched the ground and the engines were turned off: "We–want–the
whip; we–want–the whip," broke out again in the same loud, insistent monotone.
The door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fair and ruddy-faced
young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young
woman.
At the sight of the young woman, the Savage started, recoiled, turned pale.
The young woman stood, smiling at him–an uncertain, imploring, almost abject
smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the
sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.
"We–want–the whip! We–want–the whip!"
The young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on that peach-bright,
doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely incongrous expression of yearning
distress. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears
rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick,
impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Savage, stepped forward.
"We–want–the whip! We–want …"
And all of a sudden they had what they wanted.
"Strumpet!" The Savage had rushed at her like a madman. "Fitchew!" Like a
madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords.
Terrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in the heather. "Henry,
Henry!" she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harm's way
behind the helicopter.
With a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was a convergent
stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was a fascinating horror.
"Fry, lechery, fry!" Frenzied, the Savage slashed again.
Hungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough.
"Oh, the flesh!" The Savage ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that
the whip descended. "Kill it, kill it!"
Drawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that
habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their
conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy
of his gestures, striking at one another as the Savage struck at his own rebellious
flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet.
"Kill it, kill it, kill it …" The Savage went on shouting.
Then suddenly somebody started singing "Orgy-porgy" and, in a moment, they had
all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and
round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy …
It was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by
soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Savage lay sleeping
