1.02.07. Book 2: Ch 7. Counter Fire

CHAPTER VII

JUST above our forest house is a huge round head of rock, jet black in certain lights, deep violet in others. It is at this moment covered in patches with grass of emerald green, greener far than any grass elsewhere. In the dry nullah running along­side this boulder head, all the scrub is ruby and amber coloured, beyond that come bamboos, a great thick field of them through which we threaded our difficult way when we tried to reach the upper water­shed last year. This bamboo field is a maize yellow; round it, below, and far above hang the dark green forests, clinging like moss to the crags. A month ago a fire raged in this valley. This is why the colours are now so beautiful. We in Dohnavur watched it through the telescope, saw it crawl round the headlands and slowly descend the ravine, licking the black rocks with great orange tongues, springing high in air sometimes, as it caught some new clump of bushes or tall tree, a wonderful, but to us a most unwelcome sight.

We knew the forest people would be up, they had seen the fire long before it had turned the corner into our valley. We knew they would be fighting it hard; but what are a few puny men to a forest fire? So we knelt down by the telescope and asked that the Lord our God would be a Wall of Fire round our forest house, and protect the men now trying to beat it out, and then, for we could do nothing more, we went to sleep in peace. My verandah faces that valley. I woke several times, and always saw that bright, glowing, orange cloud hanging over it. The whole ravine was one rich glow. An awkward little thumb of rock which juts out from a foothill between Dohnavur and the valley kept us from seeing much below that fire-­licked head, but we had seen enough to send us up early next day to help, if we could.

Going up, carried by four stalwarts in a kind of canvas hammock, I listened to their talk, which was not cheering, for they were sure we should find the coffee garden, if not the house, a charred heap, till I told them about our prayers round the telescope, which reassured them; and they turned to lighter matter. One delightful bit of information I gleaned, "That spider’s web (it was a glistening sheet high in air suspended between trees) is like the web the spider wove over the mouth of the cave where David hid when he was flying from Saul."

We got up to find the forest people exhausted after three hard nights and days’ fight with the ten­-mile-long snake of fire. They had run short of food, and were too tired to stir even though that snake was still crawling on. It had just reached our ground, had crossed the border, and was six feet in, the very hour we got up. No harm was done to the place, not a bush scorched, only a little grass burned. The Wall of Fire had been round about it. That evening, fed and rested, the forest guard and coolies came to our house for a meeting. As they sat round the fire whose hearthstone is the uprooted Siva’s symbol, they saw it and quite visibly started. Then we told them the story of the prayer round the telescope, and to our joy the headman exclaimed, "Why, that was reasonable. We fight a fire with counter-fire." And they described how, and told of the awful devouring power of the counter-fire, and of how one of themselves had been burnt to a cinder in it only a year ago. "The presence of your God was the Counter-Fire. No wonder your whole place was kept safe. The fire knew the Fire." Not often has a missionary’s text such illustrations: the impotent hearthstone, the Almighty Counter­-Fire (the memory of that devouring fire that had slain their comrade suggested another thought: "A fire shall go forth from His wrath and who shall quench it?"); together they preached in words as vivid as flames. And the men listened, and we knew they understood. Which things are allegories. As indeed is every­thing one sees in this glorious open-air world of God. Look at the fresh grass where the fire licked the rock. Is there nothing there? no word for the desolated of all time? But the story flashes across the years to the Brownie, flings its radiance and its glory round that story of those years, of that walk, and that arrival, writes in bright letters over the page of the life of a simple Indian girl these great words "The merciful and gracious Lord hath so done His mar­vellous works that they ought to be had in re­membrance. Among the gods there is none like unto Thee, 0 Lord: there is not one that can do as Thou doest."

Glow-worms’ Eggs

Neither compared I unto her any precious stone, because all gold in respect of her is as a little sand, and silver shall be counted as clay before her. Above health and comeliness I loved her, and I chose to have her rather than light, because her bright shining is never laid to rest.- Wis 7:9-10. R.V.