The Lost World MEGAPACK: 22 Modern and Classic Tales
Author: Lin Carter; Arthur Conan Doyle; Rudyard Kipling; Eando Binder; Edgar Rice Burroughs
Date: 2014-10-16 00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fiction; Fantasy; General; Science Fiction; Action & Adventure
Description: The Lost World MEGAPACK™ explores strange lands and peoples lost from the rest of civilization -- strange continents, hidden valleys, microscopic worlds, and underground kingdoms are just the tip of the iceberg! With classic stories from well-known authors like Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arthur Conan Doyle to more recent works by Lin Carter, Don Wilcox, Eando Binder, and many others, this is the lost world collection you've been waiting for. Even if you're a connoisseur of lost world fiction, you'll find stories here that you've never encountered before. Or if you're new to the gen
Publisher: Wildside Press

Contents

COPYRIGHT INFO

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series

THE LOST WORLD, by Arthur Conan Doyle

PEOPLE OF THE PYRAMIDS, by William P. McGivern

KING SOLOMON’S MINES, by H. Rider Haggard [Part 1]

KING SOLOMON’S MINES, by H. Rider Haggard [Part 2]

LAND OF THE SHADOW DRAGONS, by Eando Binder

JOURNEY TO THE UNDERGROUND WORLD, by Lin Carter

PART I: THE LOST LAND

PART II: THE UNDERGROUND WORLD

PART III: MEN OF THE STONE AGE

PART IV: APEMEN OF KOR

PART V: THARN OF THANDAR

PART VI: WAR IN THE STONE AGE

APPENDIX: A STONE AGE GLOSSARY

THE MOON POOL, by A. Merritt [Part 1]

THE MOON POOL [Part 2]

THE MOON POOL [Part 3]

THE METAL MONSTER, by A. Merritt [Part 1]

THE METAL MONSTER [Part 2]

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 1]

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 2]

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 3]

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, by Rudyard Kipling

THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 1]

THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 2]

THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 3]

TERROR ISLAND, by Alex Shell Briscoe

AT THE EARTH’S CORE, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

PELLUCIDAR, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

OUT OF TIME’S ABYSS, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

UNDER THE ANDES, by Rex Stout [Part 1]

UNDER THE ANDES, by Rex Stout [Part 2]

THE MAN WHO MEASURED THE WIND, by Harold Lamb

DWELLERS OF THE DEEP, by Don Wilcox

VRIL, THE POWER OF THE COMING RACE, by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton

SYMZONIA: VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY, by Adam Seaborn

A STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER, by James De Mille [Part 1]

A STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER, by James De Mille [Part 2]

COPYRIGHT INFO

The Lost World MEGAPACK™ is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press, LLC. Cover by Alien Cat / Fotolia.

The MEGAPACK™ ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

* * * *

Original copyright and publication information, when available, is now located immediately following the title as you read this ebook.

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

I have always enjoyed lost world and lost race stories. (They are often related!) The Lost World MEGAPACK™ explores strange lands and peoples lost from the rest of civilation—strange continents, hidden valleys, microscopic worlds, and underground kingdoms are just the tip of the iceberg! With classic stories from well-known authors like Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Arthur Conan to more modern works by Lin Carter, Don Wilcox, Eando Binder, and many others, this is the lost world collection you’ve been waiting for. Even if you’re a connoisseur of lost world fiction, you’ll find stories here that you’ve never encountered before. Or if you’re new to the genre, you will find this collection a treasure-trove of fantastic fiction from cover to cover!

Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com

About the MEGAPACK™ ebook series

Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK™ series of ebook anthologies has grown to be among our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

The MEGAPACK™ ebooks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK™ series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

TYPOS

Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.

WHY NOVELS ARE BROKEN INTO PARTS

We use the same production file for multiple ebook formats. Unfortunately, some early ebook readers—which are still in use—cannot handle stories longer than about 120 pages, so we break longer works into pieces. Books that do not comply with this length restriction are rejected by one of our ebook distributors. We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause, but hopefully you can read through this restriction with no problems.

The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series

MYSTERY

The First Mystery Megapack™

The Second Mystery Megapack™

The Achmed Abdullah Megapack™

The Bulldog Drummond Megapack™*

The Carolyn Wells Mystery Megapack™

The Charlie Chan Megapack™*

The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack™

The Detective Megapack™

The Father Brown Megapack™

The Girl Detective Megapack™

The Second Girl Detective Megapack™

The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack™

The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack™*

The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack™*

The Jacques Futrelle Megapack™

The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack™

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The Pulp Fiction Megapack™

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The Red Finger Pulp Mystery Megapack™, by Arthur Leo Zagat*

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The Wilkie Collins Megapack™

GENERAL INTEREST

The Adventure Megapack™

The Baseball Megapack™

The Cat Story Megapack™

The Second Cat Story Megapack™

The Third Cat Story Megapack™

The Third Cat Story Megapack™

The Christmas Megapack™

The Second Christmas Megapack™

The Classic American Short Stories Megapack™, Vol. 1.

The Classic Humor Megapack™

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The Doll Story Megapack™

The Horse Story Megapack™

The Military Megapack™

The Pirate Story Megapack™

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The Utopia Megapack™

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION

1. Winston K. Marks

2. Mark Clifton

3. Poul Anderson

4. Clifford D. Simak

5. Lester del Rey

6. Charles L. Fontenay

7. H.B. Fyfe

8. Milton Lesser (Stephen Marlowe)

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

The First Science Fiction Megapack™

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The Ninth Science Fiction Megapack™

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The Ray Cummings Megapack™

The Philip K. Dick Megapack™

The Dragon Megapack™

The Randall Garrett Megapack™

The Second Randall Garrett Megapack™

The Edmond Hamilton Megapack™

The C.J. Henderson Megapack™

The Murray Leinster Megapack™***

The Second Murray Leinster Megapack™***

The Jack London Science Fiction Megapack™

The Lost Worlds Megapack™

The Mad Scientist Megapack™

The Martian Megapack™

The A. Merritt Megapack™*

The E. Nesbit Megapack™

The Andre Norton Megapack™

The H. Beam Piper Megapack™

The Pulp Fiction Megapack™

The Mack Reynolds Megapack™

The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack™

The Science-Fantasy Megapack™

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The Steampunk Megapack™

The Time Travel Megapack™

The Second Time Travel Megapack™

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The William Hope Hodgson Megapack™

The First Willam P. McGivern Science Fiction Megapack™

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The Willam P. McGivern Fantasy Megapack™

The Wizard of Oz Megapack™

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The Horror Megapack™

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The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack™

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The Frederick Douglass Megapack™

The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack™

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Megapack™

The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack™

The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack™*

The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack™*

The Jacques Futrelle Megapack™

The Randall Garrett Megapack™

The Second Randall Garrett Megapack™

The Anna Katharine Green Megapack™

The Zane Grey Megapack™

The Edmond Hamilton Megapack™

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The Jonas Lie Megapack™

The Arthur Machen Megapack™**

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The William P. McGivern Fantasy Megapack™

The First William P. McGivern Science Fiction Megapack™

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The Lon Williams Weird Western Megapack™

The Virginia Woolf Megapack™

The Arthur Leo Zagat Science Fiction Megapack™

* Not available in the United States

** Not available in the European Union

***Out of print.

OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY

The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany MEGAPACK™”)

The Wildside Book of Fantasy

The Wildside Book of Science Fiction

Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries

THE LOST WORLD, by Arthur Conan Doyle

Originally published in 1912.

CHAPTER I

“There Are Heroisms All Round Us”

Mr. Hungerton, her father, really was the most tactless person upon earth,—a fluffy, feathery, untidy cockatoo of a man, perfectly good-natured, but absolutely centered upon his own silly self. If anything could have driven me from Gladys, it would have been the thought of such a father-in-law. I am convinced that he really believed in his heart that I came round to the Chestnuts three days a week for the pleasure of his company, and very especially to hear his views upon bimetallism, a subject upon which he was by way of being an authority.

For an hour or more that evening I listened to his monotonous chirrup about bad money driving out good, the token value of silver, the depreciation of the rupee, and the true standards of exchange.

“Suppose,” he cried with feeble violence, “that all the debts in the world were called up simultaneously, and immediate payment insisted upon,—what under our present conditions would happen then?”

I gave the self-evident answer that I should be a ruined man, upon which he jumped from his chair, reproved me for my habitual levity, which made it impossible for him to discuss any reasonable subject in my presence, and bounced off out of the room to dress for a Masonic meeting.

At last I was alone with Gladys, and the moment of Fate had come! All that evening I had felt like the soldier who awaits the signal which will send him on a forlorn hope; hope of victory and fear of repulse alternating in his mind.

She sat with that proud, delicate profile of hers outlined against the red curtain. How beautiful she was! And yet how aloof! We had been friends, quite good friends; but never could I get beyond the same comradeship which I might have established with one of my fellow-reporters upon the Gazette,—perfectly frank, perfectly kindly, and perfectly unsexual. My instincts are all against a woman being too frank and at her ease with me. It is no compliment to a man. Where the real sex feeling begins, timidity and distrust are its companions, heritage from old wicked days when love and violence went often hand in hand. The bent head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure—these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true signals of passion. Even in my short life I had learned as much as that—or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

Gladys was full of every womanly quality. Some judged her to be cold and hard; but such a thought was treason. That delicately bronzed skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair, the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,—all the stigmata of passion were there. But I was sadly conscious that up to now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth. However, come what might, I should have done with suspense and bring matters to a head to-night. She could but refuse me, and better be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.

So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the long and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked round at me, and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof. “I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned. I do wish you wouldn’t; for things are so much nicer as they are.”

I drew my chair a little nearer. “Now, how did you know that I was going to propose?” I asked in genuine wonder.

“Don’t women always know? Do you suppose any woman in the world was ever taken unawares? But—oh, Ned, our friendship has been so good and so pleasant! What a pity to spoil it! Don’t you feel how splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able to talk face to face as we have talked?”

“I don’t know, Gladys. You see, I can talk face to face with—with the station-master.” I can’t imagine how that official came into the matter; but in he trotted, and set us both laughing. “That does not satisfy me in the least. I want my arms round you, and your head on my breast, and—oh, Gladys, I want—”

She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed to demonstrate some of my wants. “You’ve spoiled everything, Ned,” she said. “It’s all so beautiful and natural until this kind of thing comes in! It is such a pity! Why can’t you control yourself?”

“I didn’t invent it,” I pleaded. “It’s nature. It’s love.”

“Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different. I have never felt it.”

“But you must—you, with your beauty, with your soul! Oh, Gladys, you were made for love! You must love!”

“One must wait till it comes.”

“But why can’t you love me, Gladys? Is it my appearance, or what?”

She did unbend a little. She put forward a hand—such a gracious, stooping attitude it was—and she pressed back my head. Then she looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.

“No it isn’t that,” she said at last. “You’re not a conceited boy by nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that. It’s deeper.”

“My character?”

She nodded severely.

“What can I do to mend it? Do sit down and talk it over. No, really, I won’t if you’ll only sit down!”

She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to my mind than her whole-hearted confidence. How primitive and bestial it looks when you put it down in black and white!—and perhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar to myself. Anyhow, she sat down.

“Now tell me what’s amiss with me?”

“I’m in love with somebody else,” said she.

It was my turn to jump out of my chair.

“It’s nobody in particular,” she explained, laughing at the expression of my face: “only an ideal. I’ve never met the kind of man I mean.”

“Tell me about him. What does he look like?”

“Oh, he might look very much like you.”

“How dear of you to say that! Well, what is it that he does that I don’t do? Just say the word,—teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut, theosophist, superman. I’ll have a try at it, Gladys, if you will only give me an idea what would please you.”

She laughed at the elasticity of my character. “Well, in the first place, I don’t think my ideal would speak like that,” said she. “He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl’s whim. But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had won; for they would be reflected upon me. Think of Richard Burton! When I read his wife’s life of him I could so understand her love! And Lady Stanley! Did you ever read the wonderful last chapter of that book about her husband? These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul, and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love, honored by all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds.”

She looked so beautiful in her enthusiasm that I nearly brought down the whole level of the interview. I gripped myself hard, and went on with the argument.

“We can’t all be Stanleys and Burtons,” said I; “besides, we don’t get the chance,—at least, I never had the chance. If I did, I should try to take it.”

“But chances are all around you. It is the mark of the kind of man I mean that he makes his own chances. You can’t hold him back. I’ve never met him, and yet I seem to know him so well. There are heroisms all round us waiting to be done. It’s for men to do them, and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men. Look at that young Frenchman who went up last week in a balloon. It was blowing a gale of wind; but because he was announced to go he insisted on starting. The wind blew him fifteen hundred miles in twenty-four hours, and he fell in the middle of Russia. That was the kind of man I mean. Think of the woman he loved, and how other women must have envied her! That’s what I should like to be,—envied for my man.”

“I’d have done it to please you.”

“But you shouldn’t do it merely to please me. You should do it because you can’t help yourself, because it’s natural to you, because the man in you is crying out for heroic expression. Now, when you described the Wigan coal explosion last month, could you not have gone down and helped those people, in spite of the choke-damp?”

“I did.”

“You never said so.”

“There was nothing worth bucking about.”

“I didn’t know.” She looked at me with rather more interest. “That was brave of you.”

“I had to. If you want to write good copy, you must be where the things are.”

“What a prosaic motive! It seems to take all the romance out of it. But, still, whatever your motive, I am glad that you went down that mine.” She gave me her hand; but with such sweetness and dignity that I could only stoop and kiss it. “I dare say I am merely a foolish woman with a young girl’s fancies. And yet it is so real with me, so entirely part of my very self, that I cannot help acting upon it. If I marry, I do want to marry a famous man!”

“Why should you not?” I cried. “It is women like you who brace men up. Give me a chance, and see if I will take it! Besides, as you say, men ought to MAKE their own chances, and not wait until they are given. Look at Clive—just a clerk, and he conquered India! By George! I’ll do something in the world yet!”

She laughed at my sudden Irish effervescence. “Why not?” she said. “You have everything a man could have,—youth, health, strength, education, energy. I was sorry you spoke. And now I am glad—so glad—if it wakens these thoughts in you!”

“And if I do—”

Her dear hand rested like warm velvet upon my lips. “Not another word, Sir! You should have been at the office for evening duty half an hour ago; only I hadn’t the heart to remind you. Some day, perhaps, when you have won your place in the world, we shall talk it over again.”

And so it was that I found myself that foggy November evening pursuing the Camberwell tram with my heart glowing within me, and with the eager determination that not another day should elapse before I should find some deed which was worthy of my lady. But who—who in all this wide world could ever have imagined the incredible shape which that deed was to take, or the strange steps by which I was led to the doing of it?

And, after all, this opening chapter will seem to the reader to have nothing to do with my narrative; and yet there would have been no narrative without it, for it is only when a man goes out into the world with the thought that there are heroisms all round him, and with the desire all alive in his heart to follow any which may come within sight of him, that he breaks away as I did from the life he knows, and ventures forth into the wonderful mystic twilight land where lie the great adventures and the great rewards. Behold me, then, at the office of the Daily Gazette, on the staff of which I was a most insignificant unit, with the settled determination that very night, if possible, to find the quest which should be worthy of my Gladys! Was it hardness, was it selfishness, that she should ask me to risk my life for her own glorification? Such thoughts may come to middle age; but never to ardent three-and-twenty in the fever of his first love.

CHAPTER II

“Try Your Luck with Professor Challenger”

I always liked McArdle, the crabbed, old, round-backed, red-headed news editor, and I rather hoped that he liked me. Of course, Beaumont was the real boss; but he lived in the rarefied atmosphere of some Olympian height from which he could distinguish nothing smaller than an international crisis or a split in the Cabinet. Sometimes we saw him passing in lonely majesty to his inner sanctum, with his eyes staring vaguely and his mind hovering over the Balkans or the Persian Gulf. He was above and beyond us. But McArdle was his first lieutenant, and it was he that we knew. The old man nodded as I entered the room, and he pushed his spectacles far up on his bald forehead.

“Well, Mr. Malone, from all I hear, you seem to be doing very well,” said he in his kindly Scotch accent.

I thanked him.

“The colliery explosion was excellent. So was the Southwark fire. You have the true descreeptive touch. What did you want to see me about?”

“To ask a favor.”

He looked alarmed, and his eyes shunned mine. “Tut, tut! What is it?”

“Do you think, Sir, that you could possibly send me on some mission for the paper? I would do my best to put it through and get you some good copy.”

“What sort of meesion had you in your mind, Mr. Malone?”

“Well, Sir, anything that had adventure and danger in it. I really would do my very best. The more difficult it was, the better it would suit me.”

“You seem very anxious to lose your life.”

“To justify my life, Sir.”

“Dear me, Mr. Malone, this is very—very exalted. I’m afraid the day for this sort of thing is rather past. The expense of the ‘special meesion’ business hardly justifies the result, and, of course, in any case it would only be an experienced man with a name that would command public confidence who would get such an order. The big blank spaces in the map are all being filled in, and there’s no room for romance anywhere. Wait a bit, though!” he added, with a sudden smile upon his face. “Talking of the blank spaces of the map gives me an idea. What about exposing a fraud—a modern Munchausen—and making him rideeculous? You could show him up as the liar that he is! Eh, man, it would be fine. How does it appeal to you?”

“Anything—anywhere—I care nothing.”

McArdle was plunged in thought for some minutes.

“I wonder whether you could get on friendly—or at least on talking terms with the fellow,” he said, at last. “You seem to have a sort of genius for establishing relations with people—seempathy, I suppose, or animal magnetism, or youthful vitality, or something. I am conscious of it myself.”

“You are very good, sir.”

“So why should you not try your luck with Professor Challenger, of Enmore Park?”

I dare say I looked a little startled.

“Challenger!” I cried. “Professor Challenger, the famous zoologist! Wasn’t he the man who broke the skull of Blundell, of the Telegraph?”

The news editor smiled grimly.

“Do you mind? Didn’t you say it was adventures you were after?”

“It is all in the way of business, sir,” I answered.

“Exactly. I don’t suppose he can always be so violent as that. I’m thinking that Blundell got him at the wrong moment, maybe, or in the wrong fashion. You may have better luck, or more tact in handling him. There’s something in your line there, I am sure, and the Gazette should work it.”

“I really know nothing about him,” said I. “I only remember his name in connection with the police-court proceedings, for striking Blundell.”

“I have a few notes for your guidance, Mr. Malone. I’ve had my eye on the Professor for some little time.” He took a paper from a drawer. “Here is a summary of his record. I give it you briefly:—

“‘Challenger, George Edward. Born: Largs, N. B., 1863. Educ.: Largs Academy; Edinburgh University. British Museum Assistant, 1892. Assistant-Keeper of Comparative Anthropology Department, 1893. Resigned after acrimonious correspondence same year. Winner of Crayston Medal for Zoological Research. Foreign Member of’—well, quite a lot of things, about two inches of small type—‘Societe Belge, American Academy of Sciences, La Plata, etc., etc. Ex-President Palaeontological Society. Section H, British Association’—so on, so on!—‘Publications: “Some Observations Upon a Series of Kalmuck Skulls”; “Outlines of Vertebrate Evolution”; and numerous papers, including “The underlying fallacy of Weissmannism,” which caused heated discussion at the Zoological Congress of Vienna. Recreations: Walking, Alpine climbing. Address: Enmore Park, Kensington, W.’

“There, take it with you. I’ve nothing more for you to-night.”

I pocketed the slip of paper.

“One moment, sir,” I said, as I realized that it was a pink bald head, and not a red face, which was fronting me. “I am not very clear yet why I am to interview this gentleman. What has he done?”

The face flashed back again.

“Went to South America on a solitary expedeetion two years ago. Came back last year. Had undoubtedly been to South America, but refused to say exactly where. Began to tell his adventures in a vague way, but somebody started to pick holes, and he just shut up like an oyster. Something wonderful happened—or the man’s a champion liar, which is the more probable supposeetion. Had some damaged photographs, said to be fakes. Got so touchy that he assaults anyone who asks questions, and heaves reporters down the stairs. In my opinion he’s just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science. That’s your man, Mr. Malone. Now, off you run, and see what you can make of him. You’re big enough to look after yourself. Anyway, you are all safe. Employers’ Liability Act, you know.”

A grinning red face turned once more into a pink oval, fringed with gingery fluff; the interview was at an end.

I walked across to the Savage Club, but instead of turning into it I leaned upon the railings of Adelphi Terrace and gazed thoughtfully for a long time at the brown, oily river. I can always think most sanely and clearly in the open air. I took out the list of Professor Challenger’s exploits, and I read it over under the electric lamp. Then I had what I can only regard as an inspiration. As a Pressman, I felt sure from what I had been told that I could never hope to get into touch with this cantankerous Professor. But these recriminations, twice mentioned in his skeleton biography, could only mean that he was a fanatic in science. Was there not an exposed margin there upon which he might be accessible? I would try.

I entered the club. It was just after eleven, and the big room was fairly full, though the rush had not yet set in. I noticed a tall, thin, angular man seated in an arm-chair by the fire. He turned as I drew my chair up to him. It was the man of all others whom I should have chosen—Tarp Henry, of the staff of Nature, a thin, dry, leathery creature, who was full, to those who knew him, of kindly humanity. I plunged instantly into my subject.

“What do you know of Professor Challenger?”

“Challenger?” He gathered his brows in scientific disapproval. “Challenger was the man who came with some cock-and-bull story from South America.”

“What story?”

“Oh, it was rank nonsense about some queer animals he had discovered. I believe he has retracted since. Anyhow, he has suppressed it all. He gave an interview to Reuter’s, and there was such a howl that he saw it wouldn’t do. It was a discreditable business. There were one or two folk who were inclined to take him seriously, but he soon choked them off.”

“How?”

“Well, by his insufferable rudeness and impossible behavior. There was poor old Wadley, of the Zoological Institute. Wadley sent a message: ‘The President of the Zoological Institute presents his compliments to Professor Challenger, and would take it as a personal favor if he would do them the honor to come to their next meeting.’ The answer was unprintable.”

“You don’t say?”

“Well, a bowdlerized version of it would run: ‘Professor Challenger presents his compliments to the President of the Zoological Institute, and would take it as a personal favor if he would go to the devil.’”

“Good Lord!”

“Yes, I expect that’s what old Wadley said. I remember his wail at the meeting, which began: ‘In fifty years experience of scientific intercourse—’ It quite broke the old man up.”

“Anything more about Challenger?”

“Well, I’m a bacteriologist, you know. I live in a nine-hundred-diameter microscope. I can hardly claim to take serious notice of anything that I can see with my naked eye. I’m a frontiersman from the extreme edge of the Knowable, and I feel quite out of place when I leave my study and come into touch with all you great, rough, hulking creatures. I’m too detached to talk scandal, and yet at scientific conversaziones I HAVE heard something of Challenger, for he is one of those men whom nobody can ignore. He’s as clever as they make ’em—a full-charged battery of force and vitality, but a quarrelsome, ill-conditioned faddist, and unscrupulous at that. He had gone the length of faking some photographs over the South American business.”

“You say he is a faddist. What is his particular fad?”

“He has a thousand, but the latest is something about Weissmann and Evolution. He had a fearful row about it in Vienna, I believe.”

“Can’t you tell me the point?”

“Not at the moment, but a translation of the proceedings exists. We have it filed at the office. Would you care to come?”

“It’s just what I want. I have to interview the fellow, and I need some lead up to him. It’s really awfully good of you to give me a lift. I’ll go with you now, if it is not too late.”

* * * *

Half an hour later I was seated in the newspaper office with a huge tome in front of me, which had been opened at the article “Weissmann versus Darwin,” with the sub heading, “Spirited Protest at Vienna. Lively Proceedings.” My scientific education having been somewhat neglected, I was unable to follow the whole argument, but it was evident that the English Professor had handled his subject in a very aggressive fashion, and had thoroughly annoyed his Continental colleagues. “Protests,” “Uproar,” and “General appeal to the Chairman” were three of the first brackets which caught my eye. Most of the matter might have been written in Chinese for any definite meaning that it conveyed to my brain.

“I wish you could translate it into English for me,” I said, pathetically, to my help-mate.

“Well, it is a translation.”

“Then I’d better try my luck with the original.”

“It is certainly rather deep for a layman.”

“If I could only get a single good, meaty sentence which seemed to convey some sort of definite human idea, it would serve my turn. Ah, yes, this one will do. I seem in a vague way almost to understand it. I’ll copy it out. This shall be my link with the terrible Professor.”

“Nothing else I can do?”

“Well, yes; I propose to write to him. If I could frame the letter here, and use your address it would give atmosphere.”

“We’ll have the fellow round here making a row and breaking the furniture.”

“No, no; you’ll see the letter—nothing contentious, I assure you.”

“Well, that’s my chair and desk. You’ll find paper there. I’d like to censor it before it goes.”

It took some doing, but I flatter myself that it wasn’t such a bad job when it was finished. I read it aloud to the critical bacteriologist with some pride in my handiwork.

“DEAR PROFESSOR CHALLENGER,” it said, “As a humble student of Nature, I have always taken the most profound interest in your speculations as to the differences between Darwin and Weissmann. I have recently had occasion to refresh my memory by re-reading—”

“You infernal liar!” murmured Tarp Henry.

—“by re-reading your masterly address at Vienna. That lucid and admirable statement seems to be the last word in the matter. There is one sentence in it, however—namely: ‘I protest strongly against the insufferable and entirely dogmatic assertion that each separate id is a microcosm possessed of an historical architecture elaborated slowly through the series of generations.’ Have you no desire, in view of later research, to modify this statement? Do you not think that it is over-accentuated? With your permission, I would ask the favor of an interview, as I feel strongly upon the subject, and have certain suggestions which I could only elaborate in a personal conversation. With your consent, I trust to have the honor of calling at eleven o’clock the day after to-morrow (Wednesday) morning.

“I remain, Sir, with assurances of profound respect, yours very truly,

EDWARD D. MALONE.”

“How’s that?” I asked, triumphantly.

“Well if your conscience can stand it—”

“It has never failed me yet.”

“But what do you mean to do?”

“To get there. Once I am in his room I may see some opening. I may even go the length of open confession. If he is a sportsman he will be tickled.”

“Tickled, indeed! He’s much more likely to do the tickling. Chain mail, or an American football suit—that’s what you’ll want. Well, good-bye. I’ll have the answer for you here on Wednesday morning—if he ever deigns to answer you. He is a violent, dangerous, cantankerous character, hated by everyone who comes across him, and the butt of the students, so far as they dare take a liberty with him. Perhaps it would be best for you if you never heard from the fellow at all.”

CHAPTER III

“He is a Perfectly Impossible Person”

My friend’s fear or hope was not destined to be realized. When I called on Wednesday there was a letter with the West Kensington postmark upon it, and my name scrawled across the envelope in a handwriting which looked like a barbed-wire railing. The contents were as follows:—

“ENMORE PARK, W.

“SIR,—I have duly received your note, in which you claim to endorse my views, although I am not aware that they are dependent upon endorsement either from you or anyone else. You have ventured to use the word ‘speculation’ with regard to my statement upon the subject of Darwinism, and I would call your attention to the fact that such a word in such a connection is offensive to a degree. The context convinces me, however, that you have sinned rather through ignorance and tactlessness than through malice, so I am content to pass the matter by. You quote an isolated sentence from my lecture, and appear to have some difficulty in understanding it. I should have thought that only a sub-human intelligence could have failed to grasp the point, but if it really needs amplification I shall consent to see you at the hour named, though visits and visitors of every sort are exceeding distasteful to me. As to your suggestion that I may modify my opinion, I would have you know that it is not my habit to do so after a deliberate expression of my mature views. You will kindly show the envelope of this letter to my man, Austin, when you call, as he has to take every precaution to shield me from the intrusive rascals who call themselves ‘journalists.’

“Yours faithfully,

“GEORGE EDWARD CHALLENGER.”

This was the letter that I read aloud to Tarp Henry, who had come down early to hear the result of my venture. His only remark was, “There’s some new stuff, cuticura or something, which is better than arnica.” Some people have such extraordinary notions of humor.

It was nearly half-past ten before I had received my message, but a taxicab took me round in good time for my appointment. It was an imposing porticoed house at which we stopped, and the heavily-curtained windows gave every indication of wealth upon the part of this formidable Professor. The door was opened by an odd, swarthy, dried-up person of uncertain age, with a dark pilot jacket and brown leather gaiters. I found afterwards that he was the chauffeur, who filled the gaps left by a succession of fugitive butlers. He looked me up and down with a searching light blue eye.

“Expected?” he asked.

“An appointment.”

“Got your letter?”

I produced the envelope.

“Right!” He seemed to be a person of few words. Following him down the passage I was suddenly interrupted by a small woman, who stepped out from what proved to be the dining-room door. She was a bright, vivacious, dark-eyed lady, more French than English in her type.

“One moment,” she said. “You can wait, Austin. Step in here, sir. May I ask if you have met my husband before?”

“No, madam, I have not had the honor.”

“Then I apologize to you in advance. I must tell you that he is a perfectly impossible person—absolutely impossible. If you are forewarned you will be the more ready to make allowances.”

“It is most considerate of you, madam.”

“Get quickly out of the room if he seems inclined to be violent. Don’t wait to argue with him. Several people have been injured through doing that. Afterwards there is a public scandal and it reflects upon me and all of us. I suppose it wasn’t about South America you wanted to see him?”

I could not lie to a lady.

“Dear me! That is his most dangerous subject. You won’t believe a word he says—I’m sure I don’t wonder. But don’t tell him so, for it makes him very violent. Pretend to believe him, and you may get through all right. Remember he believes it himself. Of that you may be assured. A more honest man never lived. Don’t wait any longer or he may suspect. If you find him dangerous—really dangerous—ring the bell and hold him off until I come. Even at his worst I can usually control him.”

With these encouraging words the lady handed me over to the taciturn Austin, who had waited like a bronze statue of discretion during our short interview, and I was conducted to the end of the passage. There was a tap at a door, a bull’s bellow from within, and I was face to face with the Professor.

He sat in a rotating chair behind a broad table, which was covered with books, maps, and diagrams. As I entered, his seat spun round to face me. His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size which took one’s breath away—his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top-hat, had I ever ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-gray under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.

“Well?” said he, with a most insolent stare. “What now?”

I must keep up my deception for at least a little time longer, otherwise here was evidently an end of the interview.

“You were good enough to give me an appointment, sir,” said I, humbly, producing his envelope.

He took my letter from his desk and laid it out before him.

“Oh, you are the young person who cannot understand plain English, are you? My general conclusions you are good enough to approve, as I understand?”

“Entirely, sir—entirely!” I was very emphatic.

“Dear me! That strengthens my position very much, does it not? Your age and appearance make your support doubly valuable. Well, at least you are better than that herd of swine in Vienna, whose gregarious grunt is, however, not more offensive than the isolated effort of the British hog.” He glared at me as the present representative of the beast.

“They seem to have behaved abominably,” said I.

“I assure you that I can fight my own battles, and that I have no possible need of your sympathy. Put me alone, sir, and with my back to the wall. G. E. C. is happiest then. Well, sir, let us do what we can to curtail this visit, which can hardly be agreeable to you, and is inexpressibly irksome to me. You had, as I have been led to believe, some comments to make upon the proposition which I advanced in my thesis.”

There was a brutal directness about his methods which made evasion difficult. I must still make play and wait for a better opening. It had seemed simple enough at a distance. Oh, my Irish wits, could they not help me now, when I needed help so sorely? He transfixed me with two sharp, steely eyes. “Come, come!” he rumbled.

“I am, of course, a mere student,” said I, with a fatuous smile, “hardly more, I might say, than an earnest inquirer. At the same time, it seemed to me that you were a little severe upon Weissmann in this matter. Has not the general evidence since that date tended to—well, to strengthen his position?”

“What evidence?” He spoke with a menacing calm.

“Well, of course, I am aware that there is not any what you might call DEFINITE evidence. I alluded merely to the trend of modern thought and the general scientific point of view, if I might so express it.”

He leaned forward with great earnestness.

“I suppose you are aware,” said he, checking off points upon his fingers, “that the cranial index is a constant factor?”

“Naturally,” said I.

“And that telegony is still sub judice?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“And that the germ plasm is different from the parthenogenetic egg?”

“Why, surely!” I cried, and gloried in my own audacity.

“But what does that prove?” he asked, in a gentle, persuasive voice.

“Ah, what indeed?” I murmured. “What does it prove?”

“Shall I tell you?” he cooed.

“Pray do.”

“It proves,” he roared, with a sudden blast of fury, “that you are the damnedest imposter in London—a vile, crawling journalist, who has no more science than he has decency in his composition!”

He had sprung to his feet with a mad rage in his eyes. Even at that moment of tension I found time for amazement at the discovery that he was quite a short man, his head not higher than my shoulder—a stunted Hercules whose tremendous vitality had all run to depth, breadth, and brain.

“Gibberish!” he cried, leaning forward, with his fingers on the table and his face projecting. “That’s what I have been talking to you, sir—scientific gibberish! Did you think you could match cunning with me—you with your walnut of a brain? You think you are omnipotent, you infernal scribblers, don’t you? That your praise can make a man and your blame can break him? We must all bow to you, and try to get a favorable word, must we? This man shall have a leg up, and this man shall have a dressing down! Creeping vermin, I know you! You’ve got out of your station. Time was when your ears were clipped. You’ve lost your sense of proportion. Swollen gas-bags! I’ll keep you in your proper place. Yes, sir, you haven’t got over G. E. C. There’s one man who is still your master. He warned you off, but if you WILL come, by the Lord you do it at your own risk. Forfeit, my good Mr. Malone, I claim forfeit! You have played a rather dangerous game, and it strikes me that you have lost it.”

“Look here, sir,” said I, backing to the door and opening it; “you can be as abusive as you like. But there is a limit. You shall not assault me.”

“Shall I not?” He was slowly advancing in a peculiarly menacing way, but he stopped now and put his big hands into the side-pockets of a rather boyish short jacket which he wore. “I have thrown several of you out of the house. You will be the fourth or fifth. Three pound fifteen each—that is how it averaged. Expensive, but very necessary. Now, sir, why should you not follow your brethren? I rather think you must.” He resumed his unpleasant and stealthy advance, pointing his toes as he walked, like a dancing master.

I could have bolted for the hall door, but it would have been too ignominious. Besides, a little glow of righteous anger was springing up within me. I had been hopelessly in the wrong before, but this man’s menaces were putting me in the right.

“I’ll trouble you to keep your hands off, sir. I’ll not stand it.”

“Dear me!” His black moustache lifted and a white fang twinkled in a sneer. “You won’t stand it, eh?”

“Don’t be such a fool, Professor!” I cried. “What can you hope for? I’m fifteen stone, as hard as nails, and play center three-quarter every Saturday for the London Irish. I’m not the man—”

It was at that moment that he rushed me. It was lucky that I had opened the door, or we should have gone through it. We did a Catharine-wheel together down the passage. Somehow we gathered up a chair upon our way, and bounded on with it towards the street. My mouth was full of his beard, our arms were locked, our bodies intertwined, and that infernal chair radiated its legs all round us. The watchful Austin had thrown open the hall door. We went with a back somersault down the front steps. I have seen the two Macs attempt something of the kind at the halls, but it appears to take some practise to do it without hurting oneself. The chair went to matchwood at the bottom, and we rolled apart into the gutter. He sprang to his feet, waving his fists and wheezing like an asthmatic.

“Had enough?” he panted.

“You infernal bully!” I cried, as I gathered myself together.

Then and there we should have tried the thing out, for he was effervescing with fight, but fortunately I was rescued from an odious situation. A policeman was beside us, his notebook in his hand.

“What’s all this? You ought to be ashamed” said the policeman. It was the most rational remark which I had heard in Enmore Park. “Well,” he insisted, turning to me, “what is it, then?”

“This man attacked me,” said I.

“Did you attack him?” asked the policeman.

The Professor breathed hard and said nothing.

“It’s not the first time, either,” said the policeman, severely, shaking his head. “You were in trouble last month for the same thing. You’ve blackened this young man’s eye. Do you give him in charge, sir?”

I relented.

“No,” said I, “I do not.”

“What’s that?” said the policeman.

“I was to blame myself. I intruded upon him. He gave me fair warning.”

The policeman snapped up his notebook.

“Don’t let us have any more such goings-on,” said he. “Now, then! Move on, there, move on!” This to a butcher’s boy, a maid, and one or two loafers who had collected. He clumped heavily down the street, driving this little flock before him. The Professor looked at me, and there was something humorous at the back of his eyes.

“Come in!” said he. “I’ve not done with you yet.”

The speech had a sinister sound, but I followed him none the less into the house. The man-servant, Austin, like a wooden image, closed the door behind us.

CHAPTER IV

“It’s Just the very Biggest Thing in the World”

Hardly was it shut when Mrs. Challenger darted out from the dining-room. The small woman was in a furious temper. She barred her husband’s way like an enraged chicken in front of a bulldog. It was evident that she had seen my exit, but had not observed my return.

“You brute, George!” she screamed. “You’ve hurt that nice young man.”

He jerked backwards with his thumb.

“Here he is, safe and sound behind me.”

She was confused, but not unduly so.

“I am so sorry, I didn’t see you.”

“I assure you, madam, that it is all right.”

“He has marked your poor face! Oh, George, what a brute you are! Nothing but scandals from one end of the week to the other. Everyone hating and making fun of you. You’ve finished my patience. This ends it.”

“Dirty linen,” he rumbled.

“It’s not a secret,” she cried. “Do you suppose that the whole street—the whole of London, for that matter— Get away, Austin, we don’t want you here. Do you suppose they don’t all talk about you? Where is your dignity? You, a man who should have been Regius Professor at a great University with a thousand students all revering you. Where is your dignity, George?”

“How about yours, my dear?”

“You try me too much. A ruffian—a common brawling ruffian—that’s what you have become.”

“Be good, Jessie.”

“A roaring, raging bully!”

“That’s done it! Stool of penance!” said he.

To my amazement he stooped, picked her up, and placed her sitting upon a high pedestal of black marble in the angle of the hall. It was at least seven feet high, and so thin that she could hardly balance upon it. A more absurd object than she presented cocked up there with her face convulsed with anger, her feet dangling, and her body rigid for fear of an upset, I could not imagine.

“Let me down!” she wailed.

“Say ‘please.’”

“You brute, George! Let me down this instant!”

“Come into the study, Mr. Malone.”

“Really, sir—!” said I, looking at the lady.

“Here’s Mr. Malone pleading for you, Jessie. Say ‘please,’ and down you come.”

“Oh, you brute! Please! please!”

He took her down as if she had been a canary.

“You must behave yourself, dear. Mr. Malone is a Pressman. He will have it all in his rag to-morrow, and sell an extra dozen among our neighbors. ‘Strange story of high life’—you felt fairly high on that pedestal, did you not? Then a sub-title, ‘Glimpse of a singular menage.’ He’s a foul feeder, is Mr. Malone, a carrion eater, like all of his kind—porcus ex grege diaboli—a swine from the devil’s herd. That’s it, Malone—what?”

“You are really intolerable!” said I, hotly.

He bellowed with laughter.

“We shall have a coalition presently,” he boomed, looking from his wife to me and puffing out his enormous chest. Then, suddenly altering his tone, “Excuse this frivolous family badinage, Mr. Malone. I called you back for some more serious purpose than to mix you up with our little domestic pleasantries. Run away, little woman, and don’t fret.” He placed a huge hand upon each of her shoulders. “All that you say is perfectly true. I should be a better man if I did what you advise, but I shouldn’t be quite George Edward Challenger. There are plenty of better men, my dear, but only one G. E. C. So make the best of him.” He suddenly gave her a resounding kiss, which embarrassed me even more than his violence had done. “Now, Mr. Malone,” he continued, with a great accession of dignity, “this way, if YOU please.”

We re-entered the room which we had left so tumultuously ten minutes before. The Professor closed the door carefully behind us, motioned me into an arm-chair, and pushed a cigar-box under my nose.

“Real San Juan Colorado,” he said. “Excitable people like you are the better for narcotics. Heavens! don’t bite it! Cut—and cut with reverence! Now lean back, and listen attentively to whatever I may care to say to you. If any remark should occur to you, you can reserve it for some more opportune time.

“First of all, as to your return to my house after your most justifiable expulsion”—he protruded his beard, and stared at me as one who challenges and invites contradiction—“after, as I say, your well-merited expulsion. The reason lay in your answer to that most officious policeman, in which I seemed to discern some glimmering of good feeling upon your part—more, at any rate, than I am accustomed to associate with your profession. In admitting that the fault of the incident lay with you, you gave some evidence of a certain mental detachment and breadth of view which attracted my favorable notice. The sub-species of the human race to which you unfortunately belong has always been below my mental horizon. Your words brought you suddenly above it. You swam up into my serious notice. For this reason I asked you to return with me, as I was minded to make your further acquaintance. You will kindly deposit your ash in the small Japanese tray on the bamboo table which stands at your left elbow.”

All this he boomed forth like a professor addressing his class. He had swung round his revolving chair so as to face me, and he sat all puffed out like an enormous bull-frog, his head laid back and his eyes half-covered by supercilious lids. Now he suddenly turned himself sideways, and all I could see of him was tangled hair with a red, protruding ear. He was scratching about among the litter of papers upon his desk. He faced me presently with what looked like a very tattered sketch-book in his hand.

“I am going to talk to you about South America,” said he. “No comments if you please. First of all, I wish you to understand that nothing I tell you now is to be repeated in any public way unless you have my express permission. That permission will, in all human probability, never be given. Is that clear?”

“It is very hard,” said I. “Surely a judicious account—”

He replaced the notebook upon the table.

“That ends it,” said he. “I wish you a very good morning.”

“No, no!” I cried. “I submit to any conditions. So far as I can see, I have no choice.”

“None in the world,” said he.

“Well, then, I promise.”

“Word of honor?”

“Word of honor.”

He looked at me with doubt in his insolent eyes.

“After all, what do I know about your honor?” said he.

“Upon my word, sir,” I cried, angrily, “you take very great liberties! I have never been so insulted in my life.”

He seemed more interested than annoyed at my outbreak.

“Round-headed,” he muttered. “Brachycephalic, gray-eyed, black-haired, with suggestion of the negroid. Celtic, I presume?”

“I am an Irishman, sir.”

“Irish Irish?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That, of course, explains it. Let me see; you have given me your promise that my confidence will be respected? That confidence, I may say, will be far from complete. But I am prepared to give you a few indications which will be of interest. In the first place, you are probably aware that two years ago I made a journey to South America—one which will be classical in the scientific history of the world? The object of my journey was to verify some conclusions of Wallace and of Bates, which could only be done by observing their reported facts under the same conditions in which they had themselves noted them. If my expedition had no other results it would still have been noteworthy, but a curious incident occurred to me while there which opened up an entirely fresh line of inquiry.

“You are aware—or probably, in this half-educated age, you are not aware—that the country round some parts of the Amazon is still only partially explored, and that a great number of tributaries, some of them entirely uncharted, run into the main river. It was my business to visit this little-known back-country and to examine its fauna, which furnished me with the materials for several chapters for that great and monumental work upon zoology which will be my life’s justification. I was returning, my work accomplished, when I had occasion to spend a night at a small Indian village at a point where a certain tributary—the name and position of which I withhold—opens into the main river. The natives were Cucama Indians, an amiable but degraded race, with mental powers hardly superior to the average Londoner. I had effected some cures among them upon my way up the river, and had impressed them considerably with my personality, so that I was not surprised to find myself eagerly awaited upon my return. I gathered from their signs that someone had urgent need of my medical services, and I followed the chief to one of his huts. When I entered I found that the sufferer to whose aid I had been summoned had that instant expired. He was, to my surprise, no Indian, but a white man; indeed, I may say a very white man, for he was flaxen-haired and had some characteristics of an albino. He was clad in rags, was very emaciated, and bore every trace of prolonged hardship. So far as I could understand the account of the natives, he was a complete stranger to them, and had come upon their village through the woods alone and in the last stage of exhaustion.

“The man’s knapsack lay beside the couch, and I examined the contents. His name was written upon a tab within it—Maple White, Lake Avenue, Detroit, Michigan. It is a name to which I am prepared always to lift my hat. It is not too much to say that it will rank level with my own when the final credit of this business comes to be apportioned.

“From the contents of the knapsack it was evident that this man had been an artist and poet in search of effects. There were scraps of verse. I do not profess to be a judge of such things, but they appeared to me to be singularly wanting in merit. There were also some rather commonplace pictures of river scenery, a paint-box, a box of colored chalks, some brushes, that curved bone which lies upon my inkstand, a volume of Baxter’s ‘Moths and Butterflies,’ a cheap revolver, and a few cartridges. Of personal equipment he either had none or he had lost it in his journey. Such were the total effects of this strange American Bohemian.

“I was turning away from him when I observed that something projected from the front of his ragged jacket. It was this sketch-book, which was as dilapidated then as you see it now. Indeed, I can assure you that a first folio of Shakespeare could not be treated with greater reverence than this relic has been since it came into my possession. I hand it to you now, and I ask you to take it page by page and to examine the contents.”

He helped himself to a cigar and leaned back with a fiercely critical pair of eyes, taking note of the effect which this document would produce.

I had opened the volume with some expectation of a revelation, though of what nature I could not imagine. The first page was disappointing, however, as it contained nothing but the picture of a very fat man in a pea-jacket, with the legend, “Jimmy Colver on the Mail-boat,” written beneath it. There followed several pages which were filled with small sketches of Indians and their ways. Then came a picture of a cheerful and corpulent ecclesiastic in a shovel hat, sitting opposite a very thin European, and the inscription: “Lunch with Fra Cristofero at Rosario.” Studies of women and babies accounted for several more pages, and then there was an unbroken series of animal drawings with such explanations as “Manatee upon Sandbank,” “Turtles and Their Eggs,” “Black Ajouti under a Miriti Palm”—the matter disclosing some sort of pig-like animal; and finally came a double page of studies of long-snouted and very unpleasant saurians. I could make nothing of it, and said so to the Professor.

“Surely these are only crocodiles?”

“Alligators! Alligators! There is hardly such a thing as a true crocodile in South America. The distinction between them—”

“I meant that I could see nothing unusual—nothing to justify what you have said.”

He smiled serenely.

“Try the next page,” said he.

I was still unable to sympathize. It was a full-page sketch of a landscape roughly tinted in color—the kind of painting which an open-air artist takes as a guide to a future more elaborate effort. There was a pale-green foreground of feathery vegetation, which sloped upwards and ended in a line of cliffs dark red in color, and curiously ribbed like some basaltic formations which I have seen. They extended in an unbroken wall right across the background. At one point was an isolated pyramidal rock, crowned by a great tree, which appeared to be separated by a cleft from the main crag. Behind it all, a blue tropical sky. A thin green line of vegetation fringed the summit of the ruddy cliff.

“Well?” he asked.

“It is no doubt a curious formation,” said I “but I am not geologist enough to say that it is wonderful.”

“Wonderful!” he repeated. “It is unique. It is incredible. No one on earth has ever dreamed of such a possibility. Now the next.”

I turned it over, and gave an exclamation of surprise. There was a full-page picture of the most extraordinary creature that I had ever seen. It was the wild dream of an opium smoker, a vision of delirium. The head was like that of a fowl, the body that of a bloated lizard, the trailing tail was furnished with upward-turned spikes, and the curved back was edged with a high serrated fringe, which looked like a dozen cocks’ wattles placed behind each other. In front of this creature was an absurd mannikin, or dwarf, in human form, who stood staring at it.

“Well, what do you think of that?” cried the Professor, rubbing his hands with an air of triumph.

“It is monstrous—grotesque.”

“But what made him draw such an animal?”

“Trade gin, I should think.”

“Oh, that’s the best explanation you can give, is it?”

“Well, sir, what is yours?”

“The obvious one that the creature exists. That is actually sketched from the life.”

I should have laughed only that I had a vision of our doing another Catharine-wheel down the passage.

“No doubt,” said I, “no doubt,” as one humors an imbecile. “I confess, however,” I added, “that this tiny human figure puzzles me. If it were an Indian we could set it down as evidence of some pigmy race in America, but it appears to be a European in a sun-hat.”

The Professor snorted like an angry buffalo. “You really touch the limit,” said he. “You enlarge my view of the possible. Cerebral paresis! Mental inertia! Wonderful!”

He was too absurd to make me angry. Indeed, it was a waste of energy, for if you were going to be angry with this man you would be angry all the time. I contented myself with smiling wearily. “It struck me that the man was small,” said I.

“Look here!” he cried, leaning forward and dabbing a great hairy sausage of a finger on to the picture. “You see that plant behind the animal; I suppose you thought it was a dandelion or a Brussels sprout—what? Well, it is a vegetable ivory palm, and they run to about fifty or sixty feet. Don’t you see that the man is put in for a purpose? He couldn’t really have stood in front of that brute and lived to draw it. He sketched himself in to give a scale of heights. He was, we will say, over five feet high. The tree is ten times bigger, which is what one would expect.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Then you think the beast was— Why, Charing Cross station would hardly make a kennel for such a brute!”

“Apart from exaggeration, he is certainly a well-grown specimen,” said the Professor, complacently.

“But,” I cried, “surely the whole experience of the human race is not to be set aside on account of a single sketch”—I had turned over the leaves and ascertained that there was nothing more in the book—“a single sketch by a wandering American artist who may have done it under hashish, or in the delirium of fever, or simply in order to gratify a freakish imagination. You can’t, as a man of science, defend such a position as that.”

For answer the Professor took a book down from a shelf.

“This is an excellent monograph by my gifted friend, Ray Lankester!” said he. “There is an illustration here which would interest you. Ah, yes, here it is! The inscription beneath it runs: ‘Probable appearance in life of the Jurassic Dinosaur Stegosaurus. The hind leg alone is twice as tall as a full-grown man.’ Well, what do you make of that?”

He handed me the open book. I started as I looked at the picture. In this reconstructed animal of a dead world there was certainly a very great resemblance to the sketch of the unknown artist.

“That is certainly remarkable,” said I.

“But you won’t admit that it is final?”

“Surely it might be a coincidence, or this American may have seen a picture of the kind and carried it in his memory. It would be likely to recur to a man in a delirium.”

“Very good,” said the Professor, indulgently; “we leave it at that. I will now ask you to look at this bone.” He handed over the one which he had already described as part of the dead man’s possessions. It was about six inches long, and thicker than my thumb, with some indications of dried cartilage at one end of it.

“To what known creature does that bone belong?” asked the Professor.

I examined it with care and tried to recall some half-forgotten knowledge.

“It might be a very thick human collar-bone,” I said.

My companion waved his hand in contemptuous deprecation.

“The human collar-bone is curved. This is straight. There is a groove upon its surface showing that a great tendon played across it, which could not be the case with a clavicle.”

“Then I must confess that I don’t know what it is.”

“You need not be ashamed to expose your ignorance, for I don’t suppose the whole South Kensington staff could give a name to it.” He took a little bone the size of a bean out of a pill-box. “So far as I am a judge this human bone is the analogue of the one which you hold in your hand. That will give you some idea of the size of the creature. You will observe from the cartilage that this is no fossil specimen, but recent. What do you say to that?”

“Surely in an elephant—”

He winced as if in pain.

“Don’t! Don’t talk of elephants in South America. Even in these days of Board schools—”

“Well,” I interrupted, “any large South American animal—a tapir, for example.”

“You may take it, young man, that I am versed in the elements of my business. This is not a conceivable bone either of a tapir or of any other creature known to zoology. It belongs to a very large, a very strong, and, by all analogy, a very fierce animal which exists upon the face of the earth, but has not yet come under the notice of science. You are still unconvinced?”

“I am at least deeply interested.”

“Then your case is not hopeless. I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it. We will now leave the dead American and proceed with my narrative. You can imagine that I could hardly come away from the Amazon without probing deeper into the matter. There were indications as to the direction from which the dead traveler had come. Indian legends would alone have been my guide, for I found that rumors of a strange land were common among all the riverine tribes. You have heard, no doubt, of Curupuri?”

“Never.”

“Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something malevolent, something to be avoided. None can describe its shape or nature, but it is a word of terror along the Amazon. Now all tribes agree as to the direction in which Curupuri lives. It was the same direction from which the American had come. Something terrible lay that way. It was my business to find out what it was.”

“What did you do?” My flippancy was all gone. This massive man compelled one’s attention and respect.

“I overcame the extreme reluctance of the natives—a reluctance which extends even to talk upon the subject—and by judicious persuasion and gifts, aided, I will admit, by some threats of coercion, I got two of them to act as guides. After many adventures which I need not describe, and after traveling a distance which I will not mention, in a direction which I withhold, we came at last to a tract of country which has never been described, nor, indeed, visited save by my unfortunate predecessor. Would you kindly look at this?”

He handed me a photograph—half-plate size.

“The unsatisfactory appearance of it is due to the fact,” said he, “that on descending the river the boat was upset and the case which contained the undeveloped films was broken, with disastrous results. Nearly all of them were totally ruined—an irreparable loss. This is one of the few which partially escaped. This explanation of deficiencies or abnormalities you will kindly accept. There was talk of faking. I am not in a mood to argue such a point.”

The photograph was certainly very off-colored. An unkind critic might easily have misinterpreted that dim surface. It was a dull gray landscape, and as I gradually deciphered the details of it I realized that it represented a long and enormously high line of cliffs exactly like an immense cataract seen in the distance, with a sloping, tree-clad plain in the foreground.

“I believe it is the same place as the painted picture,” said I.

“It is the same place,” the Professor answered. “I found traces of the fellow’s camp. Now look at this.”

It was a nearer view of the same scene, though the photograph was extremely defective. I could distinctly see the isolated, tree-crowned pinnacle of rock which was detached from the crag.

“I have no doubt of it at all,” said I.

“Well, that is something gained,” said he. “We progress, do we not? Now, will you please look at the top of that rocky pinnacle? Do you observe something there?”

“An enormous tree.”

“But on the tree?”

“A large bird,” said I.

He handed me a lens.

“Yes,” I said, peering through it, “a large bird stands on the tree. It appears to have a considerable beak. I should say it was a pelican.”

“I cannot congratulate you upon your eyesight,” said the Professor. “It is not a pelican, nor, indeed, is it a bird. It may interest you to know that I succeeded in shooting that particular specimen. It was the only absolute proof of my experiences which I was able to bring away with me.”

“You have it, then?” Here at last was tangible corroboration.

“I had it. It was unfortunately lost with so much else in the same boat accident which ruined my photographs. I clutched at it as it disappeared in the swirl of the rapids, and part of its wing was left in my hand. I was insensible when washed ashore, but the miserable remnant of my superb specimen was still intact; I now lay it before you.”

From a drawer he produced what seemed to me to be the upper portion of the wing of a large bat. It was at least two feet in length, a curved bone, with a membranous veil beneath it.

“A monstrous bat!” I suggested.

“Nothing of the sort,” said the Professor, severely. “Living, as I do, in an educated and scientific atmosphere, I could not have conceived that the first principles of zoology were so little known. Is it possible that you do not know the elementary fact in comparative anatomy, that the wing of a bird is really the forearm, while the wing of a bat consists of three elongated fingers with membranes between? Now, in this case, the bone is certainly not the forearm, and you can see for yourself that this is a single membrane hanging upon a single bone, and therefore that it cannot belong to a bat. But if it is neither bird nor bat, what is it?”

My small stock of knowledge was exhausted.

“I really do not know,” said I.

He opened the standard work to which he had already referred me.

“Here,” said he, pointing to the picture of an extraordinary flying monster, “is an excellent reproduction of the dimorphodon, or pterodactyl, a flying reptile of the Jurassic period. On the next page is a diagram of the mechanism of its wing. Kindly compare it with the specimen in your hand.”

A wave of amazement passed over me as I looked. I was convinced. There could be no getting away from it. The cumulative proof was overwhelming. The sketch, the photographs, the narrative, and now the actual specimen—the evidence was complete. I said so—I said so warmly, for I felt that the Professor was an ill-used man. He leaned back in his chair with drooping eyelids and a tolerant smile, basking in this sudden gleam of sunshine.

“It’s just the very biggest thing that I ever heard of!” said I, though it was my journalistic rather than my scientific enthusiasm that was roused. “It is colossal. You are a Columbus of science who has discovered a lost world. I’m awfully sorry if I seemed to doubt you. It was all so unthinkable. But I understand evidence when I see it, and this should be good enough for anyone.”

The Professor purred with satisfaction.

“And then, sir, what did you do next?”

“It was the wet season, Mr. Malone, and my stores were exhausted. I explored some portion of this huge cliff, but I was unable to find any way to scale it. The pyramidal rock upon which I saw and shot the pterodactyl was more accessible. Being something of a cragsman, I did manage to get half way to the top of that. From that height I had a better idea of the plateau upon the top of the crags. It appeared to be very large; neither to east nor to west could I see any end to the vista of green-capped cliffs. Below, it is a swampy, jungly region, full of snakes, insects, and fever. It is a natural protection to this singular country.”

“Did you see any other trace of life?”

“No, sir, I did not; but during the week that we lay encamped at the base of the cliff we heard some very strange noises from above.”

“But the creature that the American drew? How do you account for that?”

“We can only suppose that he must have made his way to the summit and seen it there. We know, therefore, that there is a way up. We know equally that it must be a very difficult one, otherwise the creatures would have come down and overrun the surrounding country. Surely that is clear?”

“But how did they come to be there?”

“I do not think that the problem is a very obscure one,” said the Professor; “there can only be one explanation. South America is, as you may have heard, a granite continent. At this single point in the interior there has been, in some far distant age, a great, sudden volcanic upheaval. These cliffs, I may remark, are basaltic, and therefore plutonic. An area, as large perhaps as Sussex, has been lifted up en bloc with all its living contents, and cut off by perpendicular precipices of a hardness which defies erosion from all the rest of the continent. What is the result? Why, the ordinary laws of Nature are suspended. The various checks which influence the struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or altered. Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear. You will observe that both the pterodactyl and the stegosaurus are Jurassic, and therefore of a great age in the order of life. They have been artificially conserved by those strange accidental conditions.”

“But surely your evidence is conclusive. You have only to lay it before the proper authorities.”

“So in my simplicity, I had imagined,” said the Professor, bitterly. “I can only tell you that it was not so, that I was met at every turn by incredulity, born partly of stupidity and partly of jealousy. It is not my nature, sir, to cringe to any man, or to seek to prove a fact if my word has been doubted. After the first I have not condescended to show such corroborative proofs as I possess. The subject became hateful to me—I would not speak of it. When men like yourself, who represent the foolish curiosity of the public, came to disturb my privacy I was unable to meet them with dignified reserve. By nature I am, I admit, somewhat fiery, and under provocation I am inclined to be violent. I fear you may have remarked it.”

I nursed my eye and was silent.

“My wife has frequently remonstrated with me upon the subject, and yet I fancy that any man of honor would feel the same. To-night, however, I propose to give an extreme example of the control of the will over the emotions. I invite you to be present at the exhibition.” He handed me a card from his desk. “You will perceive that Mr. Percival Waldron, a naturalist of some popular repute, is announced to lecture at eight-thirty at the Zoological Institute’s Hall upon ‘The Record of the Ages.’ I have been specially invited to be present upon the platform, and to move a vote of thanks to the lecturer. While doing so, I shall make it my business, with infinite tact and delicacy, to throw out a few remarks which may arouse the interest of the audience and cause some of them to desire to go more deeply into the matter. Nothing contentious, you understand, but only an indication that there are greater deeps beyond. I shall hold myself strongly in leash, and see whether by this self-restraint I attain a more favorable result.”

“And I may come?” I asked eagerly.

“Why, surely,” he answered, cordially. He had an enormously massive genial manner, which was almost as overpowering as his violence. His smile of benevolence was a wonderful thing, when his cheeks would suddenly bunch into two red apples, between his half-closed eyes and his great black beard. “By all means, come. It will be a comfort to me to know that I have one ally in the hall, however inefficient and ignorant of the subject he may be. I fancy there will be a large audience, for Waldron, though an absolute charlatan, has a considerable popular following. Now, Mr. Malone, I have given you rather more of my time than I had intended. The individual must not monopolize what is meant for the world. I shall be pleased to see you at the lecture to-night. In the meantime, you will understand that no public use is to be made of any of the material that I have given you.”

“But Mr. McArdle—my news editor, you know—will want to know what I have done.”

“Tell him what you like. You can say, among other things, that if he sends anyone else to intrude upon me I shall call upon him with a riding-whip. But I leave it to you that nothing of all this appears in print. Very good. Then the Zoological Institute’s Hall at eight-thirty to-night.” I had a last impression of red cheeks, blue rippling beard, and intolerant eyes, as he waved me out of the room.

CHAPTER V

“Question!”

What with the physical shocks incidental to my first interview with Professor Challenger and the mental ones which accompanied the second, I was a somewhat demoralized journalist by the time I found myself in Enmore Park once more. In my aching head the one thought was throbbing that there really was truth in this man’s story, that it was of tremendous consequence, and that it would work up into inconceivable copy for the Gazette when I could obtain permission to use it. A taxicab was waiting at the end of the road, so I sprang into it and drove down to the office. McArdle was at his post as usual.

“Well,” he cried, expectantly, “what may it run to? I’m thinking, young man, you have been in the wars. Don’t tell me that he assaulted you.”

“We had a little difference at first.”

“What a man it is! What did you do?”

“Well, he became more reasonable and we had a chat. But I got nothing out of him—nothing for publication.”

“I’m not so sure about that. You got a black eye out of him, and that’s for publication. We can’t have this reign of terror, Mr. Malone. We must bring the man to his bearings. I’ll have a leaderette on him to-morrow that will raise a blister. Just give me the material and I will engage to brand the fellow for ever. Professor Munchausen—how’s that for an inset headline? Sir John Mandeville redivivus—Cagliostro—all the imposters and bullies in history. I’ll show him up for the fraud he is.”

“I wouldn’t do that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Because he is not a fraud at all.”

“What!” roared McArdle. “You don’t mean to say you really believe this stuff of his about mammoths and mastodons and great sea sairpents?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I don’t think he makes any claims of that kind. But I do believe he has got something new.”

“Then for Heaven’s sake, man, write it up!”

“I’m longing to, but all I know he gave me in confidence and on condition that I didn’t.” I condensed into a few sentences the Professor’s narrative. “That’s how it stands.”

McArdle looked deeply incredulous.

“Well, Mr. Malone,” he said at last, “about this scientific meeting to-night; there can be no privacy about that, anyhow. I don’t suppose any paper will want to report it, for Waldron has been reported already a dozen times, and no one is aware that Challenger will speak. We may get a scoop, if we are lucky. You’ll be there in any case, so you’ll just give us a pretty full report. I’ll keep space up to midnight.”

My day was a busy one, and I had an early dinner at the Savage Club with Tarp Henry, to whom I gave some account of my adventures. He listened with a sceptical smile on his gaunt face, and roared with laughter on hearing that the Professor had convinced me.

“My dear chap, things don’t happen like that in real life. People don’t stumble upon enormous discoveries and then lose their evidence. Leave that to the novelists. The fellow is as full of tricks as the monkey-house at the Zoo. It’s all bosh.”

“But the American poet?”

“He never existed.”

“I saw his sketch-book.”

“Challenger’s sketch-book.”

“You think he drew that animal?”

“Of course he did. Who else?”

“Well, then, the photographs?”

“There was nothing in the photographs. By your own admission you only saw a bird.”

“A pterodactyl.”

“That’s what HE says. He put the pterodactyl into your head.”

“Well, then, the bones?”

“First one out of an Irish stew. Second one vamped up for the occasion. If you are clever and know your business you can fake a bone as easily as you can a photograph.”

I began to feel uneasy. Perhaps, after all, I had been premature in my acquiescence. Then I had a sudden happy thought.

“Will you come to the meeting?” I asked.

Tarp Henry looked thoughtful.

“He is not a popular person, the genial Challenger,” said he. “A lot of people have accounts to settle with him. I should say he is about the best-hated man in London. If the medical students turn out there will be no end of a rag. I don’t want to get into a bear-garden.”

“You might at least do him the justice to hear him state his own case.”

“Well, perhaps it’s only fair. All right. I’m your man for the evening.”

When we arrived at the hall we found a much greater concourse than I had expected. A line of electric broughams discharged their little cargoes of white-bearded professors, while the dark stream of humbler pedestrians, who crowded through the arched door-way, showed that the audience would be popular as well as scientific. Indeed, it became evident to us as soon as we had taken our seats that a youthful and even boyish spirit was abroad in the gallery and the back portions of the hall. Looking behind me, I could see rows of faces of the familiar medical student type. Apparently the great hospitals had each sent down their contingent. The behavior of the audience at present was good-humored, but mischievous. Scraps of popular songs were chorused with an enthusiasm which was a strange prelude to a scientific lecture, and there was already a tendency to personal chaff which promised a jovial evening to others, however embarrassing it might be to the recipients of these dubious honors.

Thus, when old Doctor Meldrum, with his well-known curly-brimmed opera-hat, appeared upon the platform, there was such a universal query of “Where DID you get that tile?” that he hurriedly removed it, and concealed it furtively under his chair. When gouty Professor Wadley limped down to his seat there were general affectionate inquiries from all parts of the hall as to the exact state of his poor toe, which caused him obvious embarrassment. The greatest demonstration of all, however, was at the entrance of my new acquaintance, Professor Challenger, when he passed down to take his place at the extreme end of the front row of the platform. Such a yell of welcome broke forth when his black beard first protruded round the corner that I began to suspect Tarp Henry was right in his surmise, and that this assemblage was there not merely for the sake of the lecture, but because it had got rumored abroad that the famous Professor would take part in the proceedings.

There was some sympathetic laughter on his entrance among the front benches of well-dressed spectators, as though the demonstration of the students in this instance was not unwelcome to them. That greeting was, indeed, a frightful outburst of sound, the uproar of the carnivora cage when the step of the bucket-bearing keeper is heard in the distance. There was an offensive tone in it, perhaps, and yet in the main it struck me as mere riotous outcry, the noisy reception of one who amused and interested them, rather than of one they disliked or despised. Challenger smiled with weary and tolerant contempt, as a kindly man would meet the yapping of a litter of puppies. He sat slowly down, blew out his chest, passed his hand caressingly down his beard, and looked with drooping eyelids and supercilious eyes at the crowded hall before him. The uproar of his advent had not yet died away when Professor Ronald Murray, the chairman, and Mr. Waldron, the lecturer, threaded their way to the front, and the proceedings began.

Professor Murray will, I am sure, excuse me if I say that he has the common fault of most Englishmen of being inaudible. Why on earth people who have something to say which is worth hearing should not take the slight trouble to learn how to make it heard is one of the strange mysteries of modern life. Their methods are as reasonable as to try to pour some precious stuff from the spring to the reservoir through a non-conducting pipe, which could by the least effort be opened. Professor Murray made several profound remarks to his white tie and to the water-carafe upon the table, with a humorous, twinkling aside to the silver candlestick upon his right. Then he sat down, and Mr. Waldron, the famous popular lecturer, rose amid a general murmur of applause. He was a stern, gaunt man, with a harsh voice, and an aggressive manner, but he had the merit of knowing how to assimilate the ideas of other men, and to pass them on in a way which was intelligible and even interesting to the lay public, with a happy knack of being funny about the most unlikely objects, so that the precession of the Equinox or the formation of a vertebrate became a highly humorous process as treated by him.

It was a bird’s-eye view of creation, as interpreted by science, which, in language always clear and sometimes picturesque, he unfolded before us. He told us of the globe, a huge mass of flaming gas, flaring through the heavens. Then he pictured the solidification, the cooling, the wrinkling which formed the mountains, the steam which turned to water, the slow preparation of the stage upon which was to be played the inexplicable drama of life. On the origin of life itself he was discreetly vague. That the germs of it could hardly have survived the original roasting was, he declared, fairly certain. Therefore it had come later. Had it built itself out of the cooling, inorganic elements of the globe? Very likely. Had the germs of it arrived from outside upon a meteor? It was hardly conceivable. On the whole, the wisest man was the least dogmatic upon the point. We could not—or at least we had not succeeded up to date in making organic life in our laboratories out of inorganic materials. The gulf between the dead and the living was something which our chemistry could not as yet bridge. But there was a higher and subtler chemistry of Nature, which, working with great forces over long epochs, might well produce results which were impossible for us. There the matter must be left.

This brought the lecturer to the great ladder of animal life, beginning low down in molluscs and feeble sea creatures, then up rung by rung through reptiles and fishes, till at last we came to a kangaroo-rat, a creature which brought forth its young alive, the direct ancestor of all mammals, and presumably, therefore, of everyone in the audience. (“No, no,” from a sceptical student in the back row.) If the young gentleman in the red tie who cried “No, no,” and who presumably claimed to have been hatched out of an egg, would wait upon him after the lecture, he would be glad to see such a curiosity. (Laughter.) It was strange to think that the climax of all the age-long process of Nature had been the creation of that gentleman in the red tie. But had the process stopped? Was this gentleman to be taken as the final type—the be-all and end-all of development? He hoped that he would not hurt the feelings of the gentleman in the red tie if he maintained that, whatever virtues that gentleman might possess in private life, still the vast processes of the universe were not fully justified if they were to end entirely in his production. Evolution was not a spent force, but one still working, and even greater achievements were in store.

Having thus, amid a general titter, played very prettily with his interrupter, the lecturer went back to his picture of the past, the drying of the seas, the emergence of the sand-bank, the sluggish, viscous life which lay upon their margins, the overcrowded lagoons, the tendency of the sea creatures to take refuge upon the mud-flats, the abundance of food awaiting them, their consequent enormous growth. “Hence, ladies and gentlemen,” he added, “that frightful brood of saurians which still affright our eyes when seen in the Wealden or in the Solenhofen slates, but which were fortunately extinct long before the first appearance of mankind upon this planet.”

“Question!” boomed a voice from the platform.

Mr. Waldron was a strict disciplinarian with a gift of acid humor, as exemplified upon the gentleman with the red tie, which made it perilous to interrupt him. But this interjection appeared to him so absurd that he was at a loss how to deal with it. So looks the Shakespearean who is confronted by a rancid Baconian, or the astronomer who is assailed by a flat-earth fanatic. He paused for a moment, and then, raising his voice, repeated slowly the words: “Which were extinct before the coming of man.”

“Question!” boomed the voice once more.

Waldron looked with amazement along the line of professors upon the platform until his eyes fell upon the figure of Challenger, who leaned back in his chair with closed eyes and an amused expression, as if he were smiling in his sleep.

“I see!” said Waldron, with a shrug. “It is my friend Professor Challenger,” and amid laughter he renewed his lecture as if this was a final explanation and no more need be said.

But the incident was far from being closed. Whatever path the lecturer took amid the wilds of the past seemed invariably to lead him to some assertion as to extinct or prehistoric life which instantly brought the same bulls’ bellow from the Professor. The audience began to anticipate it and to roar with delight when it came. The packed benches of students joined in, and every time Challenger’s beard opened, before any sound could come forth, there was a yell of “Question!” from a hundred voices, and an answering counter cry of “Order!” and “Shame!” from as many more. Waldron, though a hardened lecturer and a strong man, became rattled. He hesitated, stammered, repeated himself, got snarled in a long sentence, and finally turned furiously upon the cause of his troubles.

“This is really intolerable!” he cried, glaring across the platform. “I must ask you, Professor Challenger, to cease these ignorant and unmannerly interruptions.”

There was a hush over the hall, the students rigid with delight at seeing the high gods on Olympus quarrelling among themselves. Challenger levered his bulky figure slowly out of his chair.

“I must in turn ask you, Mr. Waldron,” he said, “to cease to make assertions which are not in strict accordance with scientific fact.”

The words unloosed a tempest. “Shame! Shame!” “Give him a hearing!” “Put him out!” “Shove him off the platform!” “Fair play!” emerged from a general roar of amusement or execration. The chairman was on his feet flapping both his hands and bleating excitedly. “Professor Challenger—personal—views—later,” were the solid peaks above his clouds of inaudible mutter. The interrupter bowed, smiled, stroked his beard, and relapsed into his chair. Waldron, very flushed and warlike, continued his observations. Now and then, as he made an assertion, he shot a venomous glance at his opponent, who seemed to be slumbering deeply, with the same broad, happy smile upon his face.

At last the lecture came to an end—I am inclined to think that it was a premature one, as the peroration was hurried and disconnected. The thread of the argument had been rudely broken, and the audience was restless and expectant. Waldron sat down, and, after a chirrup from the chairman, Professor Challenger rose and advanced to the edge of the platform. In the interests of my paper I took down his speech verbatim.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he began, amid a sustained interruption from the back. “I beg pardon—Ladies, Gentlemen, and Children—I must apologize, I had inadvertently omitted a considerable section of this audience” (tumult, during which the Professor stood with one hand raised and his enormous head nodding sympathetically, as if he were bestowing a pontifical blessing upon the crowd), “I have been selected to move a vote of thanks to Mr. Waldron for the very picturesque and imaginative address to which we have just listened. There are points in it with which I disagree, and it has been my duty to indicate them as they arose, but, none the less, Mr. Waldron has accomplished his object well, that object being to give a simple and interesting account of what he conceives to have been the history of our planet. Popular lectures are the easiest to listen to, but Mr. Waldron” (here he beamed and blinked at the lecturer) “will excuse me when I say that they are necessarily both superficial and misleading, since they have to be graded to the comprehension of an ignorant audience.” (Ironical cheering.) “Popular lecturers are in their nature parasitic.” (Angry gesture of protest from Mr. Waldron.) “They exploit for fame or cash the work which has been done by their indigent and unknown brethren. One smallest new fact obtained in the laboratory, one brick built into the temple of science, far outweighs any second-hand exposition which passes an idle hour, but can leave no useful result behind it. I put forward this obvious reflection, not out of any desire to disparage Mr. Waldron in particular, but that you may not lose your sense of proportion and mistake the acolyte for the high priest.” (At this point Mr. Waldron whispered to the chairman, who half rose and said something severely to his water-carafe.) “But enough of this!” (Loud and prolonged cheers.) “Let me pass to some subject of wider interest. What is the particular point upon which I, as an original investigator, have challenged our lecturer’s accuracy? It is upon the permanence of certain types of animal life upon the earth. I do not speak upon this subject as an amateur, nor, I may add, as a popular lecturer, but I speak as one whose scientific conscience compels him to adhere closely to facts, when I say that Mr. Waldron is very wrong in supposing that because he has never himself seen a so-called prehistoric animal, therefore these creatures no longer exist. They are indeed, as he has said, our ancestors, but they are, if I may use the expression, our contemporary ancestors, who can still be found with all their hideous and formidable characteristics if one has but the energy and hardihood to seek their haunts. Creatures which were supposed to be Jurassic, monsters who would hunt down and devour our largest and fiercest mammals, still exist.” (Cries of “Bosh!” “Prove it!” “How do you know?” “Question!”) “How do I know, you ask me? I know because I have visited their secret haunts. I know because I have seen some of them.” (Applause, uproar, and a voice, “Liar!”) “Am I a liar?” (General hearty and noisy assent.) “Did I hear someone say that I was a liar? Will the person who called me a liar kindly stand up that I may know him?” (A voice, “Here he is, sir!” and an inoffensive little person in spectacles, struggling violently, was held up among a group of students.) “Did you venture to call me a liar?” (“No, sir, no!” shouted the accused, and disappeared like a jack-in-the-box.) “If any person in this hall dares to doubt my veracity, I shall be glad to have a few words with him after the lecture.” (“Liar!”) “Who said that?” (Again the inoffensive one plunging desperately, was elevated high into the air.) “If I come down among you—” (General chorus of “Come, love, come!” which interrupted the proceedings for some moments, while the chairman, standing up and waving both his arms, seemed to be conducting the music. The Professor, with his face flushed, his nostrils dilated, and his beard bristling, was now in a proper Berserk mood.) “Every great discoverer has been met with the same incredulity—the sure brand of a generation of fools. When great facts are laid before you, you have not the intuition, the imagination which would help you to understand them. You can only throw mud at the men who have risked their lives to open new fields to science. You persecute the prophets! Galileo! Darwin, and I—” (Prolonged cheering and complete interruption.)

All this is from my hurried notes taken at the time, which give little notion of the absolute chaos to which the assembly had by this time been reduced. So terrific was the uproar that several ladies had already beaten a hurried retreat. Grave and reverend seniors seemed to have caught the prevailing spirit as badly as the students, and I saw white-bearded men rising and shaking their fists at the obdurate Professor. The whole great audience seethed and simmered like a boiling pot. The Professor took a step forward and raised both his hands. There was something so big and arresting and virile in the man that the clatter and shouting died gradually away before his commanding gesture and his masterful eyes. He seemed to have a definite message. They hushed to hear it.

“I will not detain you,” he said. “It is not worth it. Truth is truth, and the noise of a number of foolish young men—and, I fear I must add, of their equally foolish seniors—cannot affect the matter. I claim that I have opened a new field of science. You dispute it.” (Cheers.) “Then I put you to the test. Will you accredit one or more of your own number to go out as your representatives and test my statement in your name?”

Mr. Summerlee, the veteran Professor of Comparative Anatomy, rose among the audience, a tall, thin, bitter man, with the withered aspect of a theologian. He wished, he said, to ask Professor Challenger whether the results to which he had alluded in his remarks had been obtained during a journey to the headwaters of the Amazon made by him two years before.

Professor Challenger answered that they had.

Mr. Summerlee desired to know how it was that Professor Challenger claimed to have made discoveries in those regions which had been overlooked by Wallace, Bates, and other previous explorers of established scientific repute.

Professor Challenger answered that Mr. Summerlee appeared to be confusing the Amazon with the Thames; that it was in reality a somewhat larger river; that Mr. Summerlee might be interested to know that with the Orinoco, which communicated with it, some fifty thousand miles of country were opened up, and that in so vast a space it was not impossible for one person to find what another had missed.

Mr. Summerlee declared, with an acid smile, that he fully appreciated the difference between the Thames and the Amazon, which lay in the fact that any assertion about the former could be tested, while about the latter it could not. He would be obliged if Professor Challenger would give the latitude and the longitude of the country in which prehistoric animals were to be found.

Professor Challenger replied that he reserved such information for good reasons of his own, but would be prepared to give it with proper precautions to a committee chosen from the audience. Would Mr. Summerlee serve on such a committee and test his story in person?

Mr. Summerlee: “Yes, I will.” (Great cheering.)

Professor Challenger: “Then I guarantee that I will place in your hands such material as will enable you to find your way. It is only right, however, since Mr. Summerlee goes to check my statement that I should have one or more with him who may check his. I will not disguise from you that there are difficulties and dangers. Mr. Summerlee will need a younger colleague. May I ask for volunteers?”

It is thus that the great crisis of a man’s life springs out at him. Could I have imagined when I entered that hall that I was about to pledge myself to a wilder adventure than had ever come to me in my dreams? But Gladys—was it not the very opportunity of which she spoke? Gladys would have told me to go. I had sprung to my feet. I was speaking, and yet I had prepared no words. Tarp Henry, my companion, was plucking at my skirts and I heard him whispering, “Sit down, Malone! Don’t make a public ass of yourself.” At the same time I was aware that a tall, thin man, with dark gingery hair, a few seats in front of me, was also upon his feet. He glared back at me with hard angry eyes, but I refused to give way.

“I will go, Mr. Chairman,” I kept repeating over and over again.

“Name! Name!” cried the audience.

“My name is Edward Dunn Malone. I am the reporter of the Daily Gazette. I claim to be an absolutely unprejudiced witness.”

“What is YOUR name, sir?” the chairman asked of my tall rival.

“I am Lord John Roxton. I have already been up the Amazon, I know all the ground, and have special qualifications for this investigation.”

“Lord John Roxton’s reputation as a sportsman and a traveler is, of course, world-famous,” said the chairman; “at the same time it would certainly be as well to have a member of the Press upon such an expedition.”

“Then I move,” said Professor Challenger, “that both these gentlemen be elected, as representatives of this meeting, to accompany Professor Summerlee upon his journey to investigate and to report upon the truth of my statements.”

And so, amid shouting and cheering, our fate was decided, and I found myself borne away in the human current which swirled towards the door, with my mind half stunned by the vast new project which had risen so suddenly before it. As I emerged from the hall I was conscious for a moment of a rush of laughing students—down the pavement, and of an arm wielding a heavy umbrella, which rose and fell in the midst of them. Then, amid a mixture of groans and cheers, Professor Challenger’s electric brougham slid from the curb, and I found myself walking under the silvery lights of Regent Street, full of thoughts of Gladys and of wonder as to my future.

Suddenly there was a touch at my elbow. I turned, and found myself looking into the humorous, masterful eyes of the tall, thin man who had volunteered to be my companion on this strange quest.

“Mr. Malone, I understand,” said he. “We are to be companions—what? My rooms are just over the road, in the Albany. Perhaps you would have the kindness to spare me half an hour, for there are one or two things that I badly want to say to you.”

CHAPTER VI

“I was the Flail of the Lord”

Lord John Roxton and I turned down Vigo Street together and through the dingy portals of the famous aristocratic rookery. At the end of a long drab passage my new acquaintance pushed open a door and turned on an electric switch. A number of lamps shining through tinted shades bathed the whole great room before us in a ruddy radiance. Standing in the doorway and glancing round me, I had a general impression of extraordinary comfort and elegance combined with an atmosphere of masculine virility. Everywhere there were mingled the luxury of the wealthy man of taste and the careless untidiness of the bachelor. Rich furs and strange iridescent mats from some Oriental bazaar were scattered upon the floor. Pictures and prints which even my unpractised eyes could recognize as being of great price and rarity hung thick upon the walls. Sketches of boxers, of ballet-girls, and of racehorses alternated with a sensuous Fragonard, a martial Girardet, and a dreamy Turner. But amid these varied ornaments there were scattered the trophies which brought back strongly to my recollection the fact that Lord John Roxton was one of the great all-round sportsmen and athletes of his day. A dark-blue oar crossed with a cherry-pink one above his mantel-piece spoke of the old Oxonian and Leander man, while the foils and boxing-gloves above and below them were the tools of a man who had won supremacy with each. Like a dado round the room was the jutting line of splendid heavy game-heads, the best of their sort from every quarter of the world, with the rare white rhinoceros of the Lado Enclave drooping its supercilious lip above them all.

In the center of the rich red carpet was a black and gold Louis Quinze table, a lovely antique, now sacrilegiously desecrated with marks of glasses and the scars of cigar-stumps. On it stood a silver tray of smokables and a burnished spirit-stand, from which and an adjacent siphon my silent host proceeded to charge two high glasses. Having indicated an arm-chair to me and placed my refreshment near it, he handed me a long, smooth Havana. Then, seating himself opposite to me, he looked at me long and fixedly with his strange, twinkling, reckless eyes—eyes of a cold light blue, the color of a glacier lake.

Through the thin haze of my cigar-smoke I noted the details of a face which was already familiar to me from many photographs—the strongly-curved nose, the hollow, worn cheeks, the dark, ruddy hair, thin at the top, the crisp, virile moustaches, the small, aggressive tuft upon his projecting chin. Something there was of Napoleon III., something of Don Quixote, and yet again something which was the essence of the English country gentleman, the keen, alert, open-air lover of dogs and of horses. His skin was of a rich flower-pot red from sun and wind. His eyebrows were tufted and overhanging, which gave those naturally cold eyes an almost ferocious aspect, an impression which was increased by his strong and furrowed brow. In figure he was spare, but very strongly built—indeed, he had often proved that there were few men in England capable of such sustained exertions. His height was a little over six feet, but he seemed shorter on account of a peculiar rounding of the shoulders. Such was the famous Lord John Roxton as he sat opposite to me, biting hard upon his cigar and watching me steadily in a long and embarrassing silence.

“Well,” said he, at last, “we’ve gone and done it, young fellah my lad.” (This curious phrase he pronounced as if it were all one word—“young-fellah-me-lad.”) “Yes, we’ve taken a jump, you an’ me. I suppose, now, when you went into that room there was no such notion in your head—what?”

“No thought of it.”

“The same here. No thought of it. And here we are, up to our necks in the tureen. Why, I’ve only been back three weeks from Uganda, and taken a place in Scotland, and signed the lease and all. Pretty goin’s on—what? How does it hit you?”

“Well, it is all in the main line of my business. I am a journalist on the Gazette.”

“Of course—you said so when you took it on. By the way, I’ve got a small job for you, if you’ll help me.”

“With pleasure.”

“Don’t mind takin’ a risk, do you?”

“What is the risk?”

“Well, it’s Ballinger—he’s the risk. You’ve heard of him?”

“No.”

“Why, young fellah, where HAVE you lived? Sir John Ballinger is the best gentleman jock in the north country. I could hold him on the flat at my best, but over jumps he’s my master. Well, it’s an open secret that when he’s out of trainin’ he drinks hard—strikin’ an average, he calls it. He got delirium on Toosday, and has been ragin’ like a devil ever since. His room is above this. The doctors say that it is all up with the old dear unless some food is got into him, but as he lies in bed with a revolver on his coverlet, and swears he will put six of the best through anyone that comes near him, there’s been a bit of a strike among the serving-men. He’s a hard nail, is Jack, and a dead shot, too, but you can’t leave a Grand National winner to die like that—what?”

“What do you mean to do, then?” I asked.

“Well, my idea was that you and I could rush him. He may be dozin’, and at the worst he can only wing one of us, and the other should have him. If we can get his bolster-cover round his arms and then phone up a stomach-pump, we’ll give the old dear the supper of his life.”

It was a rather desperate business to come suddenly into one’s day’s work. I don’t think that I am a particularly brave man. I have an Irish imagination which makes the unknown and the untried more terrible than they are. On the other hand, I was brought up with a horror of cowardice and with a terror of such a stigma. I dare say that I could throw myself over a precipice, like the Hun in the history books, if my courage to do it were questioned, and yet it would surely be pride and fear, rather than courage, which would be my inspiration. Therefore, although every nerve in my body shrank from the whisky-maddened figure which I pictured in the room above, I still answered, in as careless a voice as I could command, that I was ready to go. Some further remark of Lord Roxton’s about the danger only made me irritable.

“Talking won’t make it any better,” said I. “Come on.”

I rose from my chair and he from his. Then with a little confidential chuckle of laughter, he patted me two or three times on the chest, finally pushing me back into my chair.

“All right, sonny my lad—you’ll do,” said he. I looked up in surprise.

“I saw after Jack Ballinger myself this mornin’. He blew a hole in the skirt of my kimono, bless his shaky old hand, but we got a jacket on him, and he’s to be all right in a week. I say, young fellah, I hope you don’t mind—what? You see, between you an’ me close-tiled, I look on this South American business as a mighty serious thing, and if I have a pal with me I want a man I can bank on. So I sized you down, and I’m bound to say that you came well out of it. You see, it’s all up to you and me, for this old Summerlee man will want dry-nursin’ from the first. By the way, are you by any chance the Malone who is expected to get his Rugby cap for Ireland?”

“A reserve, perhaps.”

“I thought I remembered your face. Why, I was there when you got that try against Richmond—as fine a swervin’ run as I saw the whole season. I never miss a Rugby match if I can help it, for it is the manliest game we have left. Well, I didn’t ask you in here just to talk sport. We’ve got to fix our business. Here are the sailin’s, on the first page of the Times. There’s a Booth boat for Para next Wednesday week, and if the Professor and you can work it, I think we should take it—what? Very good, I’ll fix it with him. What about your outfit?”

“My paper will see to that.”

“Can you shoot?”

“About average Territorial standard.”

“Good Lord! as bad as that? It’s the last thing you young fellahs think of learnin’. You’re all bees without stings, so far as lookin’ after the hive goes. You’ll look silly, some o’ these days, when someone comes along an’ sneaks the honey. But you’ll need to hold your gun straight in South America, for, unless our friend the Professor is a madman or a liar, we may see some queer things before we get back. What gun have you?”

He crossed to an oaken cupboard, and as he threw it open I caught a glimpse of glistening rows of parallel barrels, like the pipes of an organ.

“I’ll see what I can spare you out of my own battery,” said he.

One by one he took out a succession of beautiful rifles, opening and shutting them with a snap and a clang, and then patting them as he put them back into the rack as tenderly as a mother would fondle her children.

“This is a Bland’s .577 axite express,” said he. “I got that big fellow with it.” He glanced up at the white rhinoceros. “Ten more yards, and he’d would have added me to his collection.

‘On that conical bullet his one chance hangs, ’Tis the weak one’s advantage fair.’

Hope you know your Gordon, for he’s the poet of the horse and the gun and the man that handles both. Now, here’s a useful tool—.470, telescopic sight, double ejector, point-blank up to three-fifty. That’s the rifle I used against the Peruvian slave-drivers three years ago. I was the flail of the Lord up in those parts, I may tell you, though you won’t find it in any Blue-book. There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again. That’s why I made a little war on my own. Declared it myself, waged it myself, ended it myself. Each of those nicks is for a slave murderer—a good row of them—what? That big one is for Pedro Lopez, the king of them all, that I killed in a backwater of the Putomayo River. Now, here’s something that would do for you.” He took out a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle. “Well rubbered at the stock, sharply sighted, five cartridges to the clip. You can trust your life to that.” He handed it to me and closed the door of his oak cabinet.

“By the way,” he continued, coming back to his chair, “what do you know of this Professor Challenger?”

“I never saw him till to-day.”

“Well, neither did I. It’s funny we should both sail under sealed orders from a man we don’t know. He seemed an uppish old bird. His brothers of science don’t seem too fond of him, either. How came you to take an interest in the affair?”

I told him shortly my experiences of the morning, and he listened intently. Then he drew out a map of South America and laid it on the table.

“I believe every single word he said to you was the truth,” said he, earnestly, “and, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like that. South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it right through from Darien to Fuego, it’s the grandest, richest, most wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. People don’t know it yet, and don’t realize what it may become. I’ve been up an’ down it from end to end, and had two dry seasons in those very parts, as I told you when I spoke of the war I made on the slave-dealers. Well, when I was up there I heard some yarns of the same kind—traditions of Indians and the like, but with somethin’ behind them, no doubt. The more you knew of that country, young fellah, the more you would understand that anythin’ was possible—ANYTHIN’! There are just some narrow water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all darkness. Now, down here in the Matto Grande”—he swept his cigar over a part of the map—“or up in this corner where three countries meet, nothin’ would surprise me. As that chap said to-night, there are fifty-thousand miles of water-way runnin’ through a forest that is very near the size of Europe. You and I could be as far away from each other as Scotland is from Constantinople, and yet each of us be in the same great Brazilian forest. Man has just made a track here and a scrape there in the maze. Why, the river rises and falls the best part of forty feet, and half the country is a morass that you can’t pass over. Why shouldn’t somethin’ new and wonderful lie in such a country? And why shouldn’t we be the men to find it out? Besides,” he added, his queer, gaunt face shining with delight, “there’s a sportin’ risk in every mile of it. I’m like an old golf-ball—I’ve had all the white paint knocked off me long ago. Life can whack me about now, and it can’t leave a mark. But a sportin’ risk, young fellah, that’s the salt of existence. Then it’s worth livin’ again. We’re all gettin’ a deal too soft and dull and comfy. Give me the great waste lands and the wide spaces, with a gun in my fist and somethin’ to look for that’s worth findin’. I’ve tried war and steeplechasin’ and aeroplanes, but this huntin’ of beasts that look like a lobster-supper dream is a brand-new sensation.” He chuckled with glee at the prospect.

Perhaps I have dwelt too long upon this new acquaintance, but he is to be my comrade for many a day, and so I have tried to set him down as I first saw him, with his quaint personality and his queer little tricks of speech and of thought. It was only the need of getting in the account of my meeting which drew me at last from his company. I left him seated amid his pink radiance, oiling the lock of his favorite rifle, while he still chuckled to himself at the thought of the adventures which awaited us. It was very clear to me that if dangers lay before us I could not in all England have found a cooler head or a braver spirit with which to share them.

That night, wearied as I was after the wonderful happenings of the day, I sat late with McArdle, the news editor, explaining to him the whole situation, which he thought important enough to bring next morning before the notice of Sir George Beaumont, the chief. It was agreed that I should write home full accounts of my adventures in the shape of successive letters to McArdle, and that these should either be edited for the Gazette as they arrived, or held back to be published later, according to the wishes of Professor Challenger, since we could not yet know what conditions he might attach to those directions which should guide us to the unknown land. In response to a telephone inquiry, we received nothing more definite than a fulmination against the Press, ending up with the remark that if we would notify our boat he would hand us any directions which he might think it proper to give us at the moment of starting. A second question from us failed to elicit any answer at all, save a plaintive bleat from his wife to the effect that her husband was in a very violent temper already, and that she hoped we would do nothing to make it worse. A third attempt, later in the day, provoked a terrific crash, and a subsequent message from the Central Exchange that Professor Challenger’s receiver had been shattered. After that we abandoned all attempt at communication.

And now my patient readers, I can address you directly no longer. From now onwards (if, indeed, any continuation of this narrative should ever reach you) it can only be through the paper which I represent. In the hands of the editor I leave this account of the events which have led up to one of the most remarkable expeditions of all time, so that if I never return to England there shall be some record as to how the affair came about. I am writing these last lines in the saloon of the Booth liner Francisca, and they will go back by the pilot to the keeping of Mr. McArdle. Let me draw one last picture before I close the notebook—a picture which is the last memory of the old country which I bear away with me. It is a wet, foggy morning in the late spring; a thin, cold rain is falling. Three shining mackintoshed figures are walking down the quay, making for the gang-plank of the great liner from which the blue-peter is flying. In front of them a porter pushes a trolley piled high with trunks, wraps, and gun-cases. Professor Summerlee, a long, melancholy figure, walks with dragging steps and drooping head, as one who is already profoundly sorry for himself. Lord John Roxton steps briskly, and his thin, eager face beams forth between his hunting-cap and his muffler. As for myself, I am glad to have got the bustling days of preparation and the pangs of leave-taking behind me, and I have no doubt that I show it in my bearing. Suddenly, just as we reach the vessel, there is a shout behind us. It is Professor Challenger, who had promised to see us off. He runs after us, a puffing, red-faced, irascible figure.

“No thank you,” says he; “I should much prefer not to go aboard. I have only a few words to say to you, and they can very well be said where we are. I beg you not to imagine that I am in any way indebted to you for making this journey. I would have you to understand that it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, and I refuse to entertain the most remote sense of personal obligation. Truth is truth, and nothing which you can report can affect it in any way, though it may excite the emotions and allay the curiosity of a number of very ineffectual people. My directions for your instruction and guidance are in this sealed envelope. You will open it when you reach a town upon the Amazon which is called Manaos, but not until the date and hour which is marked upon the outside. Have I made myself clear? I leave the strict observance of my conditions entirely to your honor. No, Mr. Malone, I will place no restriction upon your correspondence, since the ventilation of the facts is the object of your journey; but I demand that you shall give no particulars as to your exact destination, and that nothing be actually published until your return. Good-bye, sir. You have done something to mitigate my feelings for the loathsome profession to which you unhappily belong. Good-bye, Lord John. Science is, as I understand, a sealed book to you; but you may congratulate yourself upon the hunting-field which awaits you. You will, no doubt, have the opportunity of describing in the Field how you brought down the rocketing dimorphodon. And good-bye to you also, Professor Summerlee. If you are still capable of self-improvement, of which I am frankly unconvinced, you will surely return to London a wiser man.”

So he turned upon his heel, and a minute later from the deck I could see his short, squat figure bobbing about in the distance as he made his way back to his train. Well, we are well down Channel now. There’s the last bell for letters, and it’s good-bye to the pilot. We’ll be “down, hull-down, on the old trail” from now on. God bless all we leave behind us, and send us safely back.

CHAPTER VII

“To-morrow we Disappear into the Unknown”

I will not bore those whom this narrative may reach by an account of our luxurious voyage upon the Booth liner, nor will I tell of our week’s stay at Para (save that I should wish to acknowledge the great kindness of the Pereira da Pinta Company in helping us to get together our equipment). I will also allude very briefly to our river journey, up a wide, slow-moving, clay-tinted stream, in a steamer which was little smaller than that which had carried us across the Atlantic. Eventually we found ourselves through the narrows of Obidos and reached the town of Manaos. Here we were rescued from the limited attractions of the local inn by Mr. Shortman, the representative of the British and Brazilian Trading Company. In his hospital Fazenda we spent our time until the day when we were empowered to open the letter of instructions given to us by Professor Challenger. Before I reach the surprising events of that date I would desire to give a clearer sketch of my comrades in this enterprise, and of the associates whom we had already gathered together in South America. I speak freely, and I leave the use of my material to your own discretion, Mr. McArdle, since it is through your hands that this report must pass before it reaches the world.

The scientific attainments of Professor Summerlee are too well known for me to trouble to recapitulate them. He is better equipped for a rough expedition of this sort than one would imagine at first sight. His tall, gaunt, stringy figure is insensible to fatigue, and his dry, half-sarcastic, and often wholly unsympathetic manner is uninfluenced by any change in his surroundings. Though in his sixty-sixth year, I have never heard him express any dissatisfaction at the occasional hardships which we have had to encounter. I had regarded his presence as an encumbrance to the expedition, but, as a matter of fact, I am now well convinced that his power of endurance is as great as my own. In temper he is naturally acid and sceptical. From the beginning he has never concealed his belief that Professor Challenger is an absolute fraud, that we are all embarked upon an absurd wild-goose chase and that we are likely to reap nothing but disappointment and danger in South America, and corresponding ridicule in England. Such are the views which, with much passionate distortion of his thin features and wagging of his thin, goat-like beard, he poured into our ears all the way from Southampton to Manaos. Since landing from the boat he has obtained some consolation from the beauty and variety of the insect and bird life around him, for he is absolutely whole-hearted in his devotion to science. He spends his days flitting through the woods with his shot-gun and his butterfly-net, and his evenings in mounting the many specimens he has acquired. Among his minor peculiarities are that he is careless as to his attire, unclean in his person, exceedingly absent-minded in his habits, and addicted to smoking a short briar pipe, which is seldom out of his mouth. He has been upon several scientific expeditions in his youth (he was with Robertson in Papua), and the life of the camp and the canoe is nothing fresh to him.

Lord John Roxton has some points in common with Professor Summerlee, and others in which they are the very antithesis to each other. He is twenty years younger, but has something of the same spare, scraggy physique. As to his appearance, I have, as I recollect, described it in that portion of my narrative which I have left behind me in London. He is exceedingly neat and prim in his ways, dresses always with great care in white drill suits and high brown mosquito-boots, and shaves at least once a day. Like most men of action, he is laconic in speech, and sinks readily into his own thoughts, but he is always quick to answer a question or join in a conversation, talking in a queer, jerky, half-humorous fashion. His knowledge of the world, and very especially of South America, is surprising, and he has a whole-hearted belief in the possibilities of our journey which is not to be dashed by the sneers of Professor Summerlee. He has a gentle voice and a quiet manner, but behind his twinkling blue eyes there lurks a capacity for furious wrath and implacable resolution, the more dangerous because they are held in leash. He spoke little of his own exploits in Brazil and Peru, but it was a revelation to me to find the excitement which was caused by his presence among the riverine natives, who looked upon him as their champion and protector. The exploits of the Red Chief, as they called him, had become legends among them, but the real facts, as far as I could learn them, were amazing enough.

These were that Lord John had found himself some years before in that no-man’s-land which is formed by the half-defined frontiers between Peru, Brazil, and Columbia. In this great district the wild rubber tree flourishes, and has become, as in the Congo, a curse to the natives which can only be compared to their forced labor under the Spaniards upon the old silver mines of Darien. A handful of villainous half-breeds dominated the country, armed such Indians as would support them, and turned the rest into slaves, terrorizing them with the most inhuman tortures in order to force them to gather the india-rubber, which was then floated down the river to Para. Lord John Roxton expostulated on behalf of the wretched victims, and received nothing but threats and insults for his pains. He then formally declared war against Pedro Lopez, the leader of the slave-drivers, enrolled a band of runaway slaves in his service, armed them, and conducted a campaign, which ended by his killing with his own hands the notorious half-breed and breaking down the system which he represented.

No wonder that the ginger-headed man with the silky voice and the free and easy manners was now looked upon with deep interest upon the banks of the great South American river, though the feelings he inspired were naturally mixed, since the gratitude of the natives was equaled by the resentment of those who desired to exploit them. One useful result of his former experiences was that he could talk fluently in the Lingoa Geral, which is the peculiar talk, one-third Portuguese and two-thirds Indian, which is current all over Brazil.

I have said before that Lord John Roxton was a South Americomaniac. He could not speak of that great country without ardor, and this ardor was infectious, for, ignorant as I was, he fixed my attention and stimulated my curiosity. How I wish I could reproduce the glamour of his discourses, the peculiar mixture of accurate knowledge and of racy imagination which gave them their fascination, until even the Professor’s cynical and sceptical smile would gradually vanish from his thin face as he listened. He would tell the history of the mighty river so rapidly explored (for some of the first conquerors of Peru actually crossed the entire continent upon its waters), and yet so unknown in regard to all that lay behind its ever-changing banks.

“What is there?” he would cry, pointing to the north. “Wood and marsh and unpenetrated jungle. Who knows what it may shelter? And there to the south? A wilderness of swampy forest, where no white man has ever been. The unknown is up against us on every side. Outside the narrow lines of the rivers what does anyone know? Who will say what is possible in such a country? Why should old man Challenger not be right?” At which direct defiance the stubborn sneer would reappear upon Professor Summerlee’s face, and he would sit, shaking his sardonic head in unsympathetic silence, behind the cloud of his briar-root pipe.

* * * *

So much, for the moment, for my two white companions, whose characters and limitations will be further exposed, as surely as my own, as this narrative proceeds. But already we have enrolled certain retainers who may play no small part in what is to come. The first is a gigantic negro named Zambo, who is a black Hercules, as willing as any horse, and about as intelligent. Him we enlisted at Para, on the recommendation of the steamship company, on whose vessels he had learned to speak a halting English.

It was at Para also that we engaged Gomez and Manuel, two half-breeds from up the river, just come down with a cargo of redwood. They were swarthy fellows, bearded and fierce, as active and wiry as panthers. Both of them had spent their lives in those upper waters of the Amazon which we were about to explore, and it was this recommendation which had caused Lord John to engage them. One of them, Gomez, had the further advantage that he could speak excellent English. These men were willing to act as our personal servants, to cook, to row, or to make themselves useful in any way at a payment of fifteen dollars a month. Besides these, we had engaged three Mojo Indians from Bolivia, who are the most skilful at fishing and boat work of all the river tribes. The chief of these we called Mojo, after his tribe, and the others are known as Jose and Fernando. Three white men, then, two half-breeds, one negro, and three Indians made up the personnel of the little expedition which lay waiting for its instructions at Manaos before starting upon its singular quest.

At last, after a weary week, the day had come and the hour. I ask you to picture the shaded sitting-room of the Fazenda St. Ignatio, two miles inland from the town of Manaos. Outside lay the yellow, brassy glare of the sunshine, with the shadows of the palm trees as black and definite as the trees themselves. The air was calm, full of the eternal hum of insects, a tropical chorus of many octaves, from the deep drone of the bee to the high, keen pipe of the mosquito. Beyond the veranda was a small cleared garden, bounded with cactus hedges and adorned with clumps of flowering shrubs, round which the great blue butterflies and the tiny humming-birds fluttered and darted in crescents of sparkling light. Within we were seated round the cane table, on which lay a sealed envelope. Inscribed upon it, in the jagged handwriting of Professor Challenger, were the words:—

“Instructions to Lord John Roxton and party. To be opened at Manaos upon July 15th, at 12 o’clock precisely.”

Lord John had placed his watch upon the table beside him.

“We have seven more minutes,” said he. “The old dear is very precise.”

Professor Summerlee gave an acid smile as he picked up the envelope in his gaunt hand.

“What can it possibly matter whether we open it now or in seven minutes?” said he. “It is all part and parcel of the same system of quackery and nonsense, for which I regret to say that the writer is notorious.”

“Oh, come, we must play the game accordin’ to rules,” said Lord John. “It’s old man Challenger’s show and we are here by his good will, so it would be rotten bad form if we didn’t follow his instructions to the letter.”

“A pretty business it is!” cried the Professor, bitterly. “It struck me as preposterous in London, but I’m bound to say that it seems even more so upon closer acquaintance. I don’t know what is inside this envelope, but, unless it is something pretty definite, I shall be much tempted to take the next down-river boat and catch the Bolivia at Para. After all, I have some more responsible work in the world than to run about disproving the assertions of a lunatic. Now, Roxton, surely it is time.”

“Time it is,” said Lord John. “You can blow the whistle.” He took up the envelope and cut it with his penknife. From it he drew a folded sheet of paper. This he carefully opened out and flattened on the table. It was a blank sheet. He turned it over. Again it was blank. We looked at each other in a bewildered silence, which was broken by a discordant burst of derisive laughter from Professor Summerlee.

“It is an open admission,” he cried. “What more do you want? The fellow is a self-confessed humbug. We have only to return home and report him as the brazen imposter that he is.”

“Invisible ink!” I suggested.

“I don’t think!” said Lord Roxton, holding the paper to the light. “No, young fellah my lad, there is no use deceiving yourself. I’ll go bail for it that nothing has ever been written upon this paper.”

“May I come in?” boomed a voice from the veranda.

The shadow of a squat figure had stolen across the patch of sunlight. That voice! That monstrous breadth of shoulder! We sprang to our feet with a gasp of astonishment as Challenger, in a round, boyish straw-hat with a colored ribbon—Challenger, with his hands in his jacket-pockets and his canvas shoes daintily pointing as he walked—appeared in the open space before us. He threw back his head, and there he stood in the golden glow with all his old Assyrian luxuriance of beard, all his native insolence of drooping eyelids and intolerant eyes.

“I fear,” said he, taking out his watch, “that I am a few minutes too late. When I gave you this envelope I must confess that I had never intended that you should open it, for it had been my fixed intention to be with you before the hour. The unfortunate delay can be apportioned between a blundering pilot and an intrusive sandbank. I fear that it has given my colleague, Professor Summerlee, occasion to blaspheme.”

“I am bound to say, sir,” said Lord John, with some sternness of voice, “that your turning up is a considerable relief to us, for our mission seemed to have come to a premature end. Even now I can’t for the life of me understand why you should have worked it in so extraordinary a manner.”

Instead of answering, Professor Challenger entered, shook hands with myself and Lord John, bowed with ponderous insolence to Professor Summerlee, and sank back into a basket-chair, which creaked and swayed beneath his weight.

“Is all ready for your journey?” he asked.

“We can start to-morrow.”

“Then so you shall. You need no chart of directions now, since you will have the inestimable advantage of my own guidance. From the first I had determined that I would myself preside over your investigation. The most elaborate charts would, as you will readily admit, be a poor substitute for my own intelligence and advice. As to the small ruse which I played upon you in the matter of the envelope, it is clear that, had I told you all my intentions, I should have been forced to resist unwelcome pressure to travel out with you.”

“Not from me, sir!” exclaimed Professor Summerlee, heartily. “So long as there was another ship upon the Atlantic.”

Challenger waved him away with his great hairy hand.

“Your common sense will, I am sure, sustain my objection and realize that it was better that I should direct my own movements and appear only at the exact moment when my presence was needed. That moment has now arrived. You are in safe hands. You will not now fail to reach your destination. From henceforth I take command of this expedition, and I must ask you to complete your preparations to-night, so that we may be able to make an early start in the morning. My time is of value, and the same thing may be said, no doubt, in a lesser degree of your own. I propose, therefore, that we push on as rapidly as possible, until I have demonstrated what you have come to see.”

Lord John Roxton has chartered a large steam launch, the Esmeralda, which was to carry us up the river. So far as climate goes, it was immaterial what time we chose for our expedition, as the temperature ranges from seventy-five to ninety degrees both summer and winter, with no appreciable difference in heat. In moisture, however, it is otherwise; from December to May is the period of the rains, and during this time the river slowly rises until it attains a height of nearly forty feet above its low-water mark. It floods the banks, extends in great lagoons over a monstrous waste of country, and forms a huge district, called locally the Gapo, which is for the most part too marshy for foot-travel and too shallow for boating. About June the waters begin to fall, and are at their lowest at October or November. Thus our expedition was at the time of the dry season, when the great river and its tributaries were more or less in a normal condition.

The current of the river is a slight one, the drop being not greater than eight inches in a mile. No stream could be more convenient for navigation, since the prevailing wind is south-east, and sailing boats may make a continuous progress to the Peruvian frontier, dropping down again with the current. In our own case the excellent engines of the Esmeralda could disregard the sluggish flow of the stream, and we made as rapid progress as if we were navigating a stagnant lake. For three days we steamed north-westwards up a stream which even here, a thousand miles from its mouth, was still so enormous that from its center the two banks were mere shadows upon the distant skyline. On the fourth day after leaving Manaos we turned into a tributary which at its mouth was little smaller than the main stream. It narrowed rapidly, however, and after two more days’ steaming we reached an Indian village, where the Professor insisted that we should land, and that the Esmeralda should be sent back to Manaos. We should soon come upon rapids, he explained, which would make its further use impossible. He added privately that we were now approaching the door of the unknown country, and that the fewer whom we took into our confidence the better it would be. To this end also he made each of us give our word of honor that we would publish or say nothing which would give any exact clue as to the whereabouts of our travels, while the servants were all solemnly sworn to the same effect. It is for this reason that I am compelled to be vague in my narrative, and I would warn my readers that in any map or diagram which I may give the relation of places to each other may be correct, but the points of the compass are carefully confused, so that in no way can it be taken as an actual guide to the country. Professor Challenger’s reasons for secrecy may be valid or not, but we had no choice but to adopt them, for he was prepared to abandon the whole expedition rather than modify the conditions upon which he would guide us.

It was August 2nd when we snapped our last link with the outer world by bidding farewell to the Esmeralda. Since then four days have passed, during which we have engaged two large canoes from the Indians, made of so light a material (skins over a bamboo framework) that we should be able to carry them round any obstacle. These we have loaded with all our effects, and have engaged two additional Indians to help us in the navigation. I understand that they are the very two—Ataca and Ipetu by name—who accompanied Professor Challenger upon his previous journey. They appeared to be terrified at the prospect of repeating it, but the chief has patriarchal powers in these countries, and if the bargain is good in his eyes the clansman has little choice in the matter.

So to-morrow we disappear into the unknown. This account I am transmitting down the river by canoe, and it may be our last word to those who are interested in our fate. I have, according to our arrangement, addressed it to you, my dear Mr. McArdle, and I leave it to your discretion to delete, alter, or do what you like with it. From the assurance of Professor Challenger’s manner—and in spite of the continued scepticism of Professor Summerlee—I have no doubt that our leader will make good his statement, and that we are really on the eve of some most remarkable experiences.

CHAPTER VIII

“The Outlying Pickets of the New World”

Our friends at home may well rejoice with us, for we are at our goal, and up to a point, at least, we have shown that the statement of Professor Challenger can be verified. We have not, it is true, ascended the plateau, but it lies before us, and even Professor Summerlee is in a more chastened mood. Not that he will for an instant admit that his rival could be right, but he is less persistent in his incessant objections, and has sunk for the most part into an observant silence. I must hark back, however, and continue my narrative from where I dropped it. We are sending home one of our local Indians who is injured, and I am committing this letter to his charge, with considerable doubts in my mind as to whether it will ever come to hand.

When I wrote last we were about to leave the Indian village where we had been deposited by the Esmeralda. I have to begin my report by bad news, for the first serious personal trouble (I pass over the incessant bickerings between the Professors) occurred this evening, and might have had a tragic ending. I have spoken of our English-speaking half-breed, Gomez—a fine worker and a willing fellow, but afflicted, I fancy, with the vice of curiosity, which is common enough among such men. On the last evening he seems to have hid himself near the hut in which we were discussing our plans, and, being observed by our huge negro Zambo, who is as faithful as a dog and has the hatred which all his race bear to the half-breeds, he was dragged out and carried into our presence. Gomez whipped out his knife, however, and but for the huge strength of his captor, which enabled him to disarm him with one hand, he would certainly have stabbed him. The matter has ended in reprimands, the opponents have been compelled to shake hands, and there is every hope that all will be well. As to the feuds of the two learned men, they are continuous and bitter. It must be admitted that Challenger is provocative in the last degree, but Summerlee has an acid tongue, which makes matters worse. Last night Challenger said that he never cared to walk on the Thames Embankment and look up the river, as it was always sad to see one’s own eventual goal. He is convinced, of course, that he is destined for Westminster Abbey. Summerlee rejoined, however, with a sour smile, by saying that he understood that Millbank Prison had been pulled down. Challenger’s conceit is too colossal to allow him to be really annoyed. He only smiled in his beard and repeated “Really! Really!” in the pitying tone one would use to a child. Indeed, they are children both—the one wizened and cantankerous, the other formidable and overbearing, yet each with a brain which has put him in the front rank of his scientific age. Brain, character, soul—only as one sees more of life does one understand how distinct is each.

The very next day we did actually make our start upon this remarkable expedition. We found that all our possessions fitted very easily into the two canoes, and we divided our personnel, six in each, taking the obvious precaution in the interests of peace of putting one Professor into each canoe. Personally, I was with Challenger, who was in a beatific humor, moving about as one in a silent ecstasy and beaming benevolence from every feature. I have had some experience of him in other moods, however, and shall be the less surprised when the thunderstorms suddenly come up amidst the sunshine. If it is impossible to be at your ease, it is equally impossible to be dull in his company, for one is always in a state of half-tremulous doubt as to what sudden turn his formidable temper may take.

For two days we made our way up a good-sized river some hundreds of yards broad, and dark in color, but transparent, so that one could usually see the bottom. The affluents of the Amazon are, half of them, of this nature, while the other half are whitish and opaque, the difference depending upon the class of country through which they have flowed. The dark indicate vegetable decay, while the others point to clayey soil. Twice we came across rapids, and in each case made a portage of half a mile or so to avoid them. The woods on either side were primeval, which are more easily penetrated than woods of the second growth, and we had no great difficulty in carrying our canoes through them. How shall I ever forget the solemn mystery of it? The height of the trees and the thickness of the boles exceeded anything which I in my town-bred life could have imagined, shooting upwards in magnificent columns until, at an enormous distance above our heads, we could dimly discern the spot where they threw out their side-branches into Gothic upward curves which coalesced to form one great matted roof of verdure, through which only an occasional golden ray of sunshine shot downwards to trace a thin dazzling line of light amidst the majestic obscurity. As we walked noiselessly amid the thick, soft carpet of decaying vegetation the hush fell upon our souls which comes upon us in the twilight of the Abbey, and even Professor Challenger’s full-chested notes sank into a whisper. Alone, I should have been ignorant of the names of these giant growths, but our men of science pointed out the cedars, the great silk cotton trees, and the redwood trees, with all that profusion of various plants which has made this continent the chief supplier to the human race of those gifts of Nature which depend upon the vegetable world, while it is the most backward in those products which come from animal life. Vivid orchids and wonderful colored lichens smoldered upon the swarthy tree-trunks and where a wandering shaft of light fell full upon the golden allamanda, the scarlet star-clusters of the tacsonia, or the rich deep blue of ipomaea, the effect was as a dream of fairyland. In these great wastes of forest, life, which abhors darkness, struggles ever upwards to the light. Every plant, even the smaller ones, curls and writhes to the green surface, twining itself round its stronger and taller brethren in the effort. Climbing plants are monstrous and luxuriant, but others which have never been known to climb elsewhere learn the art as an escape from that somber shadow, so that the common nettle, the jasmine, and even the jacitara palm tree can be seen circling the stems of the cedars and striving to reach their crowns. Of animal life there was no movement amid the majestic vaulted aisles which stretched from us as we walked, but a constant movement far above our heads told of that multitudinous world of snake and monkey, bird and sloth, which lived in the sunshine, and looked down in wonder at our tiny, dark, stumbling figures in the obscure depths immeasurably below them. At dawn and at sunset the howler monkeys screamed together and the parrakeets broke into shrill chatter, but during the hot hours of the day only the full drone of insects, like the beat of a distant surf, filled the ear, while nothing moved amid the solemn vistas of stupendous trunks, fading away into the darkness which held us in. Once some bandy-legged, lurching creature, an ant-eater or a bear, scuttled clumsily amid the shadows. It was the only sign of earth life which I saw in this great Amazonian forest.

And yet there were indications that even human life itself was not far from us in those mysterious recesses. On the third day out we were aware of a singular deep throbbing in the air, rhythmic and solemn, coming and going fitfully throughout the morning. The two boats were paddling within a few yards of each other when first we heard it, and our Indians remained motionless, as if they had been turned to bronze, listening intently with expressions of terror upon their faces.

“What is it, then?” I asked.

“Drums,” said Lord John, carelessly; “war drums. I have heard them before.”

“Yes, sir, war drums,” said Gomez, the half-breed. “Wild Indians, bravos, not mansos; they watch us every mile of the way; kill us if they can.”

“How can they watch us?” I asked, gazing into the dark, motionless void.

The half-breed shrugged his broad shoulders.

“The Indians know. They have their own way. They watch us. They talk the drum talk to each other. Kill us if they can.”

By the afternoon of that day—my pocket diary shows me that it was Tuesday, August 18th—at least six or seven drums were throbbing from various points. Sometimes they beat quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes in obvious question and answer, one far to the east breaking out in a high staccato rattle, and being followed after a pause by a deep roll from the north. There was something indescribably nerve-shaking and menacing in that constant mutter, which seemed to shape itself into the very syllables of the half-breed, endlessly repeated, “We will kill you if we can. We will kill you if we can.” No one ever moved in the silent woods. All the peace and soothing of quiet Nature lay in that dark curtain of vegetation, but away from behind there came ever the one message from our fellow-man. “We will kill you if we can,” said the men in the east. “We will kill you if we can,” said the men in the north.

All day the drums rumbled and whispered, while their menace reflected itself in the faces of our colored companions. Even the hardy, swaggering half-breed seemed cowed. I learned, however, that day once for all that both Summerlee and Challenger possessed that highest type of bravery, the bravery of the scientific mind. Theirs was the spirit which upheld Darwin among the gauchos of the Argentine or Wallace among the head-hunters of Malaya. It is decreed by a merciful Nature that the human brain cannot think of two things simultaneously, so that if it be steeped in curiosity as to science it has no room for merely personal considerations. All day amid that incessant and mysterious menace our two Professors watched every bird upon the wing, and every shrub upon the bank, with many a sharp wordy contention, when the snarl of Summerlee came quick upon the deep growl of Challenger, but with no more sense of danger and no more reference to drum-beating Indians than if they were seated together in the smoking-room of the Royal Society’s Club in St. James’s Street. Once only did they condescend to discuss them.

“Miranha or Amajuaca cannibals,” said Challenger, jerking his thumb towards the reverberating wood.

“No doubt, sir,” Summerlee answered. “Like all such tribes, I shall expect to find them of poly-synthetic speech and of Mongolian type.”

“Polysynthetic certainly,” said Challenger, indulgently. “I am not aware that any other type of language exists in this continent, and I have notes of more than a hundred. The Mongolian theory I regard with deep suspicion.”

“I should have thought that even a limited knowledge of comparative anatomy would have helped to verify it,” said Summerlee, bitterly.

Challenger thrust out his aggressive chin until he was all beard and hat-rim. “No doubt, sir, a limited knowledge would have that effect. When one’s knowledge is exhaustive, one comes to other conclusions.” They glared at each other in mutual defiance, while all round rose the distant whisper, “We will kill you—we will kill you if we can.”

That night we moored our canoes with heavy stones for anchors in the center of the stream, and made every preparation for a possible attack. Nothing came, however, and with the dawn we pushed upon our way, the drum-beating dying out behind us. About three o’clock in the afternoon we came to a very steep rapid, more than a mile long—the very one in which Professor Challenger had suffered disaster upon his first journey. I confess that the sight of it consoled me, for it was really the first direct corroboration, slight as it was, of the truth of his story. The Indians carried first our canoes and then our stores through the brushwood, which is very thick at this point, while we four whites, our rifles on our shoulders, walked between them and any danger coming from the woods. Before evening we had successfully passed the rapids, and made our way some ten miles above them, where we anchored for the night. At this point I reckoned that we had come not less than a hundred miles up the tributary from the main stream.

It was in the early forenoon of the next day that we made the great departure. Since dawn Professor Challenger had been acutely uneasy, continually scanning each bank of the river. Suddenly he gave an exclamation of satisfaction and pointed to a single tree, which projected at a peculiar angle over the side of the stream.

“What do you make of that?” he asked.

“It is surely an Assai palm,” said Summerlee.

“Exactly. It was an Assai palm which I took for my landmark. The secret opening is half a mile onwards upon the other side of the river. There is no break in the trees. That is the wonder and the mystery of it. There where you see light-green rushes instead of dark-green undergrowth, there between the great cotton woods, that is my private gate into the unknown. Push through, and you will understand.”

It was indeed a wonderful place. Having reached the spot marked by a line of light-green rushes, we poled out two canoes through them for some hundreds of yards, and eventually emerged into a placid and shallow stream, running clear and transparent over a sandy bottom. It may have been twenty yards across, and was banked in on each side by most luxuriant vegetation. No one who had not observed that for a short distance reeds had taken the place of shrubs, could possibly have guessed the existence of such a stream or dreamed of the fairyland beyond.

For a fairyland it was—the most wonderful that the imagination of man could conceive. The thick vegetation met overhead, interlacing into a natural pergola, and through this tunnel of verdure in a golden twilight flowed the green, pellucid river, beautiful in itself, but marvelous from the strange tints thrown by the vivid light from above filtered and tempered in its fall. Clear as crystal, motionless as a sheet of glass, green as the edge of an iceberg, it stretched in front of us under its leafy archway, every stroke of our paddles sending a thousand ripples across its shining surface. It was a fitting avenue to a land of wonders. All sign of the Indians had passed away, but animal life was more frequent, and the tameness of the creatures showed that they knew nothing of the hunter. Fuzzy little black-velvet monkeys, with snow-white teeth and gleaming, mocking eyes, chattered at us as we passed. With a dull, heavy splash an occasional cayman plunged in from the bank. Once a dark, clumsy tapir stared at us from a gap in the bushes, and then lumbered away through the forest; once, too, the yellow, sinuous form of a great puma whisked amid the brushwood, and its green, baleful eyes glared hatred at us over its tawny shoulder. Bird life was abundant, especially the wading birds, stork, heron, and ibis gathering in little groups, blue, scarlet, and white, upon every log which jutted from the bank, while beneath us the crystal water was alive with fish of every shape and color.

For three days we made our way up this tunnel of hazy green sunshine. On the longer stretches one could hardly tell as one looked ahead where the distant green water ended and the distant green archway began. The deep peace of this strange waterway was unbroken by any sign of man.

“No Indian here. Too much afraid. Curupuri,” said Gomez.

“Curupuri is the spirit of the woods,” Lord John explained. “It’s a name for any kind of devil. The poor beggars think that there is something fearsome in this direction, and therefore they avoid it.”

On the third day it became evident that our journey in the canoes could not last much longer, for the stream was rapidly growing more shallow. Twice in as many hours we stuck upon the bottom. Finally we pulled the boats up among the brushwood and spent the night on the bank of the river. In the morning Lord John and I made our way for a couple of miles through the forest, keeping parallel with the stream; but as it grew ever shallower we returned and reported, what Professor Challenger had already suspected, that we had reached the highest point to which the canoes could be brought. We drew them up, therefore, and concealed them among the bushes, blazing a tree with our axes, so that we should find them again. Then we distributed the various burdens among us—guns, ammunition, food, a tent, blankets, and the rest—and, shouldering our packages, we set forth upon the more laborious stage of our journey.

An unfortunate quarrel between our pepper-pots marked the outset of our new stage. Challenger had from the moment of joining us issued directions to the whole party, much to the evident discontent of Summerlee. Now, upon his assigning some duty to his fellow-Professor (it was only the carrying of an aneroid barometer), the matter suddenly came to a head.

“May I ask, sir,” said Summerlee, with vicious calm, “in what capacity you take it upon yourself to issue these orders?”

Challenger glared and bristled.

“I do it, Professor Summerlee, as leader of this expedition.”

“I am compelled to tell you, sir, that I do not recognize you in that capacity.”

“Indeed!” Challenger bowed with unwieldy sarcasm. “Perhaps you would define my exact position.”

“Yes, sir. You are a man whose veracity is upon trial, and this committee is here to try it. You walk, sir, with your judges.”

“Dear me!” said Challenger, seating himself on the side of one of the canoes. “In that case you will, of course, go on your way, and I will follow at my leisure. If I am not the leader you cannot expect me to lead.”

Thank heaven that there were two sane men—Lord John Roxton and myself—to prevent the petulance and folly of our learned Professors from sending us back empty-handed to London. Such arguing and pleading and explaining before we could get them mollified! Then at last Summerlee, with his sneer and his pipe, would move forwards, and Challenger would come rolling and grumbling after. By some good fortune we discovered about this time that both our savants had the very poorest opinion of Dr. Illingworth of Edinburgh. Thenceforward that was our one safety, and every strained situation was relieved by our introducing the name of the Scotch zoologist, when both our Professors would form a temporary alliance and friendship in their detestation and abuse of this common rival.

Advancing in single file along the bank of the stream, we soon found that it narrowed down to a mere brook, and finally that it lost itself in a great green morass of sponge-like mosses, into which we sank up to our knees. The place was horribly haunted by clouds of mosquitoes and every form of flying pest, so we were glad to find solid ground again and to make a circuit among the trees, which enabled us to outflank this pestilent morass, which droned like an organ in the distance, so loud was it with insect life.

On the second day after leaving our canoes we found that the whole character of the country changed. Our road was persistently upwards, and as we ascended the woods became thinner and lost their tropical luxuriance. The huge trees of the alluvial Amazonian plain gave place to the Phoenix and coco palms, growing in scattered clumps, with thick brushwood between. In the damper hollows the Mauritia palms threw out their graceful drooping fronds. We traveled entirely by compass, and once or twice there were differences of opinion between Challenger and the two Indians, when, to quote the Professor’s indignant words, the whole party agreed to “trust the fallacious instincts of undeveloped savages rather than the highest product of modern European culture.” That we were justified in doing so was shown upon the third day, when Challenger admitted that he recognized several landmarks of his former journey, and in one spot we actually came upon four fire-blackened stones, which must have marked a camping-place.

The road still ascended, and we crossed a rock-studded slope which took two days to traverse. The vegetation had again changed, and only the vegetable ivory tree remained, with a great profusion of wonderful orchids, among which I learned to recognize the rare Nuttonia Vexillaria and the glorious pink and scarlet blossoms of Cattleya and odontoglossum. Occasional brooks with pebbly bottoms and fern-draped banks gurgled down the shallow gorges in the hill, and offered good camping-grounds every evening on the banks of some rock-studded pool, where swarms of little blue-backed fish, about the size and shape of English trout, gave us a delicious supper.

On the ninth day after leaving the canoes, having done, as I reckon, about a hundred and twenty miles, we began to emerge from the trees, which had grown smaller until they were mere shrubs. Their place was taken by an immense wilderness of bamboo, which grew so thickly that we could only penetrate it by cutting a pathway with the machetes and billhooks of the Indians. It took us a long day, traveling from seven in the morning till eight at night, with only two breaks of one hour each, to get through this obstacle. Anything more monotonous and wearying could not be imagined, for, even at the most open places, I could not see more than ten or twelve yards, while usually my vision was limited to the back of Lord John’s cotton jacket in front of me, and to the yellow wall within a foot of me on either side. From above came one thin knife-edge of sunshine, and fifteen feet over our heads one saw the tops of the reeds swaying against the deep blue sky. I do not know what kind of creatures inhabit such a thicket, but several times we heard the plunging of large, heavy animals quite close to us. From their sounds Lord John judged them to be some form of wild cattle. Just as night fell we cleared the belt of bamboos, and at once formed our camp, exhausted by the interminable day.

Early next morning we were again afoot, and found that the character of the country had changed once again. Behind us was the wall of bamboo, as definite as if it marked the course of a river. In front was an open plain, sloping slightly upwards and dotted with clumps of tree-ferns, the whole curving before us until it ended in a long, whale-backed ridge. This we reached about midday, only to find a shallow valley beyond, rising once again into a gentle incline which led to a low, rounded sky-line. It was here, while we crossed the first of these hills, that an incident occurred which may or may not have been important.

Professor Challenger, who with the two local Indians was in the van of the party, stopped suddenly and pointed excitedly to the right. As he did so we saw, at the distance of a mile or so, something which appeared to be a huge gray bird flap slowly up from the ground and skim smoothly off, flying very low and straight, until it was lost among the tree-ferns.

“Did you see it?” cried Challenger, in exultation. “Summerlee, did you see it?”

His colleague was staring at the spot where the creature had disappeared.

“What do you claim that it was?” he asked.

“To the best of my belief, a pterodactyl.”

Summerlee burst into derisive laughter “A pter-fiddlestick!” said he. “It was a stork, if ever I saw one.”

Challenger was too furious to speak. He simply swung his pack upon his back and continued upon his march. Lord John came abreast of me, however, and his face was more grave than was his wont. He had his Zeiss glasses in his hand.

“I focused it before it got over the trees,” said he. “I won’t undertake to say what it was, but I’ll risk my reputation as a sportsman that it wasn’t any bird that ever I clapped eyes on in my life.”

So there the matter stands. Are we really just at the edge of the unknown, encountering the outlying pickets of this lost world of which our leader speaks? I give you the incident as it occurred and you will know as much as I do. It stands alone, for we saw nothing more which could be called remarkable.

And now, my readers, if ever I have any, I have brought you up the broad river, and through the screen of rushes, and down the green tunnel, and up the long slope of palm trees, and through the bamboo brake, and across the plain of tree-ferns. At last our destination lay in full sight of us. When we had crossed the second ridge we saw before us an irregular, palm-studded plain, and then the line of high red cliffs which I have seen in the picture. There it lies, even as I write, and there can be no question that it is the same. At the nearest point it is about seven miles from our present camp, and it curves away, stretching as far as I can see. Challenger struts about like a prize peacock, and Summerlee is silent, but still sceptical. Another day should bring some of our doubts to an end. Meanwhile, as Jose, whose arm was pierced by a broken bamboo, insists upon returning, I send this letter back in his charge, and only hope that it may eventually come to hand. I will write again as the occasion serves. I have enclosed with this a rough chart of our journey, which may have the effect of making the account rather easier to understand.

CHAPTER IX

“Who could have Foreseen it?”

A dreadful thing has happened to us. Who could have foreseen it? I cannot foresee any end to our troubles. It may be that we are condemned to spend our whole lives in this strange, inaccessible place. I am still so confused that I can hardly think clearly of the facts of the present or of the chances of the future. To my astounded senses the one seems most terrible and the other as black as night.

No men have ever found themselves in a worse position; nor is there any use in disclosing to you our exact geographical situation and asking our friends for a relief party. Even if they could send one, our fate will in all human probability be decided long before it could arrive in South America.

We are, in truth, as far from any human aid as if we were in the moon. If we are to win through, it is only our own qualities which can save us. I have as companions three remarkable men, men of great brain-power and of unshaken courage. There lies our one and only hope. It is only when I look upon the untroubled faces of my comrades that I see some glimmer through the darkness. Outwardly I trust that I appear as unconcerned as they. Inwardly I am filled with apprehension.

Let me give you, with as much detail as I can, the sequence of events which have led us to this catastrophe.

When I finished my last letter I stated that we were within seven miles from an enormous line of ruddy cliffs, which encircled, beyond all doubt, the plateau of which Professor Challenger spoke. Their height, as we approached them, seemed to me in some places to be greater than he had stated—running up in parts to at least a thousand feet—and they were curiously striated, in a manner which is, I believe, characteristic of basaltic upheavals. Something of the sort is to be seen in Salisbury Crags at Edinburgh. The summit showed every sign of a luxuriant vegetation, with bushes near the edge, and farther back many high trees. There was no indication of any life that we could see.

That night we pitched our camp immediately under the cliff—a most wild and desolate spot. The crags above us were not merely perpendicular, but curved outwards at the top, so that ascent was out of the question. Close to us was the high thin pinnacle of rock which I believe I mentioned earlier in this narrative. It is like a broad red church spire, the top of it being level with the plateau, but a great chasm gaping between. On the summit of it there grew one high tree. Both pinnacle and cliff were comparatively low—some five or six hundred feet, I should think.

“It was on that,” said Professor Challenger, pointing to this tree, “that the pterodactyl was perched. I climbed half-way up the rock before I shot him. I am inclined to think that a good mountaineer like myself could ascend the rock to the top, though he would, of course, be no nearer to the plateau when he had done so.”

As Challenger spoke of his pterodactyl I glanced at Professor Summerlee, and for the first time I seemed to see some signs of a dawning credulity and repentance. There was no sneer upon his thin lips, but, on the contrary, a gray, drawn look of excitement and amazement. Challenger saw it, too, and reveled in the first taste of victory.

“Of course,” said he, with his clumsy and ponderous sarcasm, “Professor Summerlee will understand that when I speak of a pterodactyl I mean a stork—only it is the kind of stork which has no feathers, a leathery skin, membranous wings, and teeth in its jaws.” He grinned and blinked and bowed until his colleague turned and walked away.

In the morning, after a frugal breakfast of coffee and manioc—we had to be economical of our stores—we held a council of war as to the best method of ascending to the plateau above us.

Challenger presided with a solemnity as if he were the Lord Chief Justice on the Bench. Picture him seated upon a rock, his absurd boyish straw hat tilted on the back of his head, his supercilious eyes dominating us from under his drooping lids, his great black beard wagging as he slowly defined our present situation and our future movements.

Beneath him you might have seen the three of us—myself, sunburnt, young, and vigorous after our open-air tramp; Summerlee, solemn but still critical, behind his eternal pipe; Lord John, as keen as a razor-edge, with his supple, alert figure leaning upon his rifle, and his eager eyes fixed eagerly upon the speaker. Behind us were grouped the two swarthy half-breeds and the little knot of Indians, while in front and above us towered those huge, ruddy ribs of rocks which kept us from our goal.

“I need not say,” said our leader, “that on the occasion of my last visit I exhausted every means of climbing the cliff, and where I failed I do not think that anyone else is likely to succeed, for I am something of a mountaineer. I had none of the appliances of a rock-climber with me, but I have taken the precaution to bring them now. With their aid I am positive I could climb that detached pinnacle to the summit; but so long as the main cliff overhangs, it is vain to attempt ascending that. I was hurried upon my last visit by the approach of the rainy season and by the exhaustion of my supplies. These considerations limited my time, and I can only claim that I have surveyed about six miles of the cliff to the east of us, finding no possible way up. What, then, shall we now do?”

“There seems to be only one reasonable course,” said Professor Summerlee. “If you have explored the east, we should travel along the base of the cliff to the west, and seek for a practicable point for our ascent.”

“That’s it,” said Lord John. “The odds are that this plateau is of no great size, and we shall travel round it until we either find an easy way up it, or come back to the point from which we started.”

“I have already explained to our young friend here,” said Challenger (he has a way of alluding to me as if I were a school child ten years old), “that it is quite impossible that there should be an easy way up anywhere, for the simple reason that if there were the summit would not be isolated, and those conditions would not obtain which have effected so singular an interference with the general laws of survival. Yet I admit that there may very well be places where an expert human climber may reach the summit, and yet a cumbrous and heavy animal be unable to descend. It is certain that there is a point where an ascent is possible.”

“How do you know that, sir?” asked Summerlee, sharply.

“Because my predecessor, the American Maple White, actually made such an ascent. How otherwise could he have seen the monster which he sketched in his notebook?”

“There you reason somewhat ahead of the proved facts,” said the stubborn Summerlee. “I admit your plateau, because I have seen it; but I have not as yet satisfied myself that it contains any form of life whatever.”

“What you admit, sir, or what you do not admit, is really of inconceivably small importance. I am glad to perceive that the plateau itself has actually obtruded itself upon your intelligence.” He glanced up at it, and then, to our amazement, he sprang from his rock, and, seizing Summerlee by the neck, he tilted his face into the air. “Now sir!” he shouted, hoarse with excitement. “Do I help you to realize that the plateau contains some animal life?”

I have said that a thick fringe of green overhung the edge of the cliff. Out of this there had emerged a black, glistening object. As it came slowly forth and overhung the chasm, we saw that it was a very large snake with a peculiar flat, spade-like head. It wavered and quivered above us for a minute, the morning sun gleaming upon its sleek, sinuous coils. Then it slowly drew inwards and disappeared.

Summerlee had been so interested that he had stood unresisting while Challenger tilted his head into the air. Now he shook his colleague off and came back to his dignity.

“I should be glad, Professor Challenger,” said he, “if you could see your way to make any remarks which may occur to you without seizing me by the chin. Even the appearance of a very ordinary rock python does not appear to justify such a liberty.”

“But there is life upon the plateau all the same,” his colleague replied in triumph. “And now, having demonstrated this important conclusion so that it is clear to anyone, however prejudiced or obtuse, I am of opinion that we cannot do better than break up our camp and travel to westward until we find some means of ascent.”

The ground at the foot of the cliff was rocky and broken so that the going was slow and difficult. Suddenly we came, however, upon something which cheered our hearts. It was the site of an old encampment, with several empty Chicago meat tins, a bottle labeled “Brandy,” a broken tin-opener, and a quantity of other travelers’ débris. A crumpled, disintegrated newspaper revealed itself as the Chicago Democrat, though the date had been obliterated.

“Not mine,” said Challenger. “It must be Maple White’s.”

Lord John had been gazing curiously at a great tree-fern which overshadowed the encampment. “I say, look at this,” said he. “I believe it is meant for a sign-post.”

A slip of hard wood had been nailed to the tree in such a way as to point to the westward.

“Most certainly a sign-post,” said Challenger. “What else? Finding himself upon a dangerous errand, our pioneer has left this sign so that any party which follows him may know the way he has taken. Perhaps we shall come upon some other indications as we proceed.”

We did indeed, but they were of a terrible and most unexpected nature. Immediately beneath the cliff there grew a considerable patch of high bamboo, like that which we had traversed in our journey. Many of these stems were twenty feet high, with sharp, strong tops, so that even as they stood they made formidable spears. We were passing along the edge of this cover when my eye was caught by the gleam of something white within it. Thrusting in my head between the stems, I found myself gazing at a fleshless skull. The whole skeleton was there, but the skull had detached itself and lay some feet nearer to the open.

With a few blows from the machetes of our Indians we cleared the spot and were able to study the details of this old tragedy. Only a few shreds of clothes could still be distinguished, but there were the remains of boots upon the bony feet, and it was very clear that the dead man was a European. A gold watch by Hudson, of New York, and a chain which held a stylographic pen, lay among the bones. There was also a silver cigarette-case, with “J. C., from A. E. S.,” upon the lid. The state of the metal seemed to show that the catastrophe had occurred no great time before.

“Who can he be?” asked Lord John. “Poor devil! every bone in his body seems to be broken.”

“And the bamboo grows through his smashed ribs,” said Summerlee. “It is a fast-growing plant, but it is surely inconceivable that this body could have been here while the canes grew to be twenty feet in length.”

“As to the man’s identity,” said Professor Challenger, “I have no doubt whatever upon that point. As I made my way up the river before I reached you at the fazenda I instituted very particular inquiries about Maple White. At Para they knew nothing. Fortunately, I had a definite clew, for there was a particular picture in his sketch-book which showed him taking lunch with a certain ecclesiastic at Rosario. This priest I was able to find, and though he proved a very argumentative fellow, who took it absurdly amiss that I should point out to him the corrosive effect which modern science must have upon his beliefs, he none the less gave me some positive information. Maple White passed Rosario four years ago, or two years before I saw his dead body. He was not alone at the time, but there was a friend, an American named James Colver, who remained in the boat and did not meet this ecclesiastic. I think, therefore, that there can be no doubt that we are now looking upon the remains of this James Colver.”

“Nor,” said Lord John, “is there much doubt as to how he met his death. He has fallen or been chucked from the top, and so been impaled. How else could he come by his broken bones, and how could he have been stuck through by these canes with their points so high above our heads?”

A hush came over us as we stood round these shattered remains and realized the truth of Lord John Roxton’s words. The beetling head of the cliff projected over the cane-brake. Undoubtedly he had fallen from above. But had he fallen? Had it been an accident? Or—already ominous and terrible possibilities began to form round that unknown land.

We moved off in silence, and continued to coast round the line of cliffs, which were as even and unbroken as some of those monstrous Antarctic ice-fields which I have seen depicted as stretching from horizon to horizon and towering high above the mast-heads of the exploring vessel.

In five miles we saw no rift or break. And then suddenly we perceived something which filled us with new hope. In a hollow of the rock, protected from rain, there was drawn a rough arrow in chalk, pointing still to the westwards.

“Maple White again,” said Professor Challenger. “He had some presentiment that worthy footsteps would follow close behind him.”

“He had chalk, then?”

“A box of colored chalks was among the effects I found in his knapsack. I remember that the white one was worn to a stump.”

“That is certainly good evidence,” said Summerlee. “We can only accept his guidance and follow on to the westward.”

We had proceeded some five more miles when again we saw a white arrow upon the rocks. It was at a point where the face of the cliff was for the first time split into a narrow cleft. Inside the cleft was a second guidance mark, which pointed right up it with the tip somewhat elevated, as if the spot indicated were above the level of the ground.

It was a solemn place, for the walls were so gigantic and the slit of blue sky so narrow and so obscured by a double fringe of verdure, that only a dim and shadowy light penetrated to the bottom. We had had no food for many hours, and were very weary with the stony and irregular journey, but our nerves were too strung to allow us to halt. We ordered the camp to be pitched, however, and, leaving the Indians to arrange it, we four, with the two half-breeds, proceeded up the narrow gorge.

It was not more than forty feet across at the mouth, but it rapidly closed until it ended in an acute angle, too straight and smooth for an ascent. Certainly it was not this which our pioneer had attempted to indicate. We made our way back—the whole gorge was not more than a quarter of a mile deep—and then suddenly the quick eyes of Lord John fell upon what we were seeking. High up above our heads, amid the dark shadows, there was one circle of deeper gloom. Surely it could only be the opening of a cave.

The base of the cliff was heaped with loose stones at the spot, and it was not difficult to clamber up. When we reached it, all doubt was removed. Not only was it an opening into the rock, but on the side of it there was marked once again the sign of the arrow. Here was the point, and this the means by which Maple White and his ill-fated comrade had made their ascent.

We were too excited to return to the camp, but must make our first exploration at once. Lord John had an electric torch in his knapsack, and this had to serve us as light. He advanced, throwing his little clear circlet of yellow radiance before him, while in single file we followed at his heels.

The cave had evidently been water-worn, the sides being smooth and the floor covered with rounded stones. It was of such a size that a single man could just fit through by stooping. For fifty yards it ran almost straight into the rock, and then it ascended at an angle of forty-five. Presently this incline became even steeper, and we found ourselves climbing upon hands and knees among loose rubble which slid from beneath us. Suddenly an exclamation broke from Lord Roxton.

“It’s blocked!” said he.

Clustering behind him we saw in the yellow field of light a wall of broken basalt which extended to the ceiling.

“The roof has fallen in!”

In vain we dragged out some of the pieces. The only effect was that the larger ones became detached and threatened to roll down the gradient and crush us. It was evident that the obstacle was far beyond any efforts which we could make to remove it. The road by which Maple White had ascended was no longer available.

Too much cast down to speak, we stumbled down the dark tunnel and made our way back to the camp.

One incident occurred, however, before we left the gorge, which is of importance in view of what came afterwards.

We had gathered in a little group at the bottom of the chasm, some forty feet beneath the mouth of the cave, when a huge rock rolled suddenly downwards—and shot past us with tremendous force. It was the narrowest escape for one or all of us. We could not ourselves see whence the rock had come, but our half-breed servants, who were still at the opening of the cave, said that it had flown past them, and must therefore have fallen from the summit. Looking upwards, we could see no sign of movement above us amidst the green jungle which topped the cliff. There could be little doubt, however, that the stone was aimed at us, so the incident surely pointed to humanity—and malevolent humanity—upon the plateau.

We withdrew hurriedly from the chasm, our minds full of this new development and its bearing upon our plans. The situation was difficult enough before, but if the obstructions of Nature were increased by the deliberate opposition of man, then our case was indeed a hopeless one. And yet, as we looked up at that beautiful fringe of verdure only a few hundreds of feet above our heads, there was not one of us who could conceive the idea of returning to London until we had explored it to its depths.

On discussing the situation, we determined that our best course was to continue to coast round the plateau in the hope of finding some other means of reaching the top. The line of cliffs, which had decreased considerably in height, had already begun to trend from west to north, and if we could take this as representing the arc of a circle, the whole circumference could not be very great. At the worst, then, we should be back in a few days at our starting-point.

We made a march that day which totaled some two-and-twenty miles, without any change in our prospects. I may mention that our aneroid shows us that in the continual incline which we have ascended since we abandoned our canoes we have risen to no less than three thousand feet above sea-level. Hence there is a considerable change both in the temperature and in the vegetation. We have shaken off some of that horrible insect life which is the bane of tropical travel. A few palms still survive, and many tree-ferns, but the Amazonian trees have been all left behind. It was pleasant to see the convolvulus, the passion-flower, and the begonia, all reminding me of home, here among these inhospitable rocks. There was a red begonia just the same color as one that is kept in a pot in the window of a certain villa in Streatham—but I am drifting into private reminiscence.

That night—I am still speaking of the first day of our circumnavigation of the plateau—a great experience awaited us, and one which for ever set at rest any doubt which we could have had as to the wonders so near us.

You will realize as you read it, my dear Mr. McArdle, and possibly for the first time that the paper has not sent me on a wild-goose chase, and that there is inconceivably fine copy waiting for the world whenever we have the Professor’s leave to make use of it. I shall not dare to publish these articles unless I can bring back my proofs to England, or I shall be hailed as the journalistic Munchausen of all time. I have no doubt that you feel the same way yourself, and that you would not care to stake the whole credit of the Gazette upon this adventure until we can meet the chorus of criticism and scepticism which such articles must of necessity elicit. So this wonderful incident, which would make such a headline for the old paper, must still wait its turn in the editorial drawer.

And yet it was all over in a flash, and there was no sequel to it, save in our own convictions.

What occurred was this. Lord John had shot an ajouti—which is a small, pig-like animal—and, half of it having been given to the Indians, we were cooking the other half upon our fire. There is a chill in the air after dark, and we had all drawn close to the blaze. The night was moonless, but there were some stars, and one could see for a little distance across the plain. Well, suddenly out of the darkness, out of the night, there swooped something with a swish like an aeroplane. The whole group of us were covered for an instant by a canopy of leathery wings, and I had a momentary vision of a long, snake-like neck, a fierce, red, greedy eye, and a great snapping beak, filled, to my amazement, with little, gleaming teeth. The next instant it was gone—and so was our dinner. A huge black shadow, twenty feet across, skimmed up into the air; for an instant the monster wings blotted out the stars, and then it vanished over the brow of the cliff above us. We all sat in amazed silence round the fire, like the heroes of Virgil when the Harpies came down upon them. It was Summerlee who was the first to speak.

“Professor Challenger,” said he, in a solemn voice, which quavered with emotion, “I owe you an apology. Sir, I am very much in the wrong, and I beg that you will forget what is past.”

It was handsomely said, and the two men for the first time shook hands. So much we have gained by this clear vision of our first pterodactyl. It was worth a stolen supper to bring two such men together.

But if prehistoric life existed upon the plateau it was not superabundant, for we had no further glimpse of it during the next three days. During this time we traversed a barren and forbidding country, which alternated between stony desert and desolate marshes full of many wild-fowl, upon the north and east of the cliffs. From that direction the place is really inaccessible, and, were it not for a hardish ledge which runs at the very base of the precipice, we should have had to turn back. Many times we were up to our waists in the slime and blubber of an old, semi-tropical swamp. To make matters worse, the place seemed to be a favorite breeding-place of the Jaracaca snake, the most venomous and aggressive in South America. Again and again these horrible creatures came writhing and springing towards us across the surface of this putrid bog, and it was only by keeping our shot-guns for ever ready that we could feel safe from them. One funnel-shaped depression in the morass, of a livid green in color from some lichen which festered in it, will always remain as a nightmare memory in my mind. It seems to have been a special nest of these vermins, and the slopes were alive with them, all writhing in our direction, for it is a peculiarity of the Jaracaca that he will always attack man at first sight. There were too many for us to shoot, so we fairly took to our heels and ran until we were exhausted. I shall always remember as we looked back how far behind we could see the heads and necks of our horrible pursuers rising and falling amid the reeds. Jaracaca Swamp we named it in the map which we are constructing.

The cliffs upon the farther side had lost their ruddy tint, being chocolate-brown in color; the vegetation was more scattered along the top of them, and they had sunk to three or four hundred feet in height, but in no place did we find any point where they could be ascended. If anything, they were more impossible than at the first point where we had met them. Their absolute steepness is indicated in the photograph which I took over the stony desert.

“Surely,” said I, as we discussed the situation, “the rain must find its way down somehow. There are bound to be water-channels in the rocks.”

“Our young friend has glimpses of lucidity,” said Professor Challenger, patting me upon the shoulder.

“The rain must go somewhere,” I repeated.

“He keeps a firm grip upon actuality. The only drawback is that we have conclusively proved by ocular demonstration that there are no water channels down the rocks.”

“Where, then, does it go?” I persisted.

“I think it may be fairly assumed that if it does not come outwards it must run inwards.”

“Then there is a lake in the center.”

“So I should suppose.”

“It is more than likely that the lake may be an old crater,” said Summerlee. “The whole formation is, of course, highly volcanic. But, however that may be, I should expect to find the surface of the plateau slope inwards with a considerable sheet of water in the center, which may drain off, by some subterranean channel, into the marshes of the Jaracaca Swamp.”

“Or evaporation might preserve an equilibrium,” remarked Challenger, and the two learned men wandered off into one of their usual scientific arguments, which were as comprehensible as Chinese to the layman.

On the sixth day we completed our first circuit of the cliffs, and found ourselves back at the first camp, beside the isolated pinnacle of rock. We were a disconsolate party, for nothing could have been more minute than our investigation, and it was absolutely certain that there was no single point where the most active human being could possibly hope to scale the cliff. The place which Maple White’s chalk-marks had indicated as his own means of access was now entirely impassable.

What were we to do now? Our stores of provisions, supplemented by our guns, were holding out well, but the day must come when they would need replenishment. In a couple of months the rains might be expected, and we should be washed out of our camp. The rock was harder than marble, and any attempt at cutting a path for so great a height was more than our time or resources would admit. No wonder that we looked gloomily at each other that night, and sought our blankets with hardly a word exchanged. I remember that as I dropped off to sleep my last recollection was that Challenger was squatting, like a monstrous bull-frog, by the fire, his huge head in his hands, sunk apparently in the deepest thought, and entirely oblivious to the good-night which I wished him.

But it was a very different Challenger who greeted us in the morning—a Challenger with contentment and self-congratulation shining from his whole person. He faced us as we assembled for breakfast with a deprecating false modesty in his eyes, as who should say, “I know that I deserve all that you can say, but I pray you to spare my blushes by not saying it.” His beard bristled exultantly, his chest was thrown out, and his hand was thrust into the front of his jacket. So, in his fancy, may he see himself sometimes, gracing the vacant pedestal in Trafalgar Square, and adding one more to the horrors of the London streets.

“Eureka!” he cried, his teeth shining through his beard. “Gentlemen, you may congratulate me and we may congratulate each other. The problem is solved.”

“You have found a way up?”

“I venture to think so.”

“And where?”

For answer he pointed to the spire-like pinnacle upon our right.

Our faces—or mine, at least—fell as we surveyed it. That it could be climbed we had our companion’s assurance. But a horrible abyss lay between it and the plateau.

“We can never get across,” I gasped.

“We can at least all reach the summit,” said he. “When we are up I may be able to show you that the resources of an inventive mind are not yet exhausted.”

After breakfast we unpacked the bundle in which our leader had brought his climbing accessories. From it he took a coil of the strongest and lightest rope, a hundred and fifty feet in length, with climbing irons, clamps, and other devices. Lord John was an experienced mountaineer, and Summerlee had done some rough climbing at various times, so that I was really the novice at rock-work of the party; but my strength and activity may have made up for my want of experience.

It was not in reality a very stiff task, though there were moments which made my hair bristle upon my head. The first half was perfectly easy, but from there upwards it became continually steeper until, for the last fifty feet, we were literally clinging with our fingers and toes to tiny ledges and crevices in the rock. I could not have accomplished it, nor could Summerlee, if Challenger had not gained the summit (it was extraordinary to see such activity in so unwieldy a creature) and there fixed the rope round the trunk of the considerable tree which grew there. With this as our support, we were soon able to scramble up the jagged wall until we found ourselves upon the small grassy platform, some twenty-five feet each way, which formed the summit.

The first impression which I received when I had recovered my breath was of the extraordinary view over the country which we had traversed. The whole Brazilian plain seemed to lie beneath us, extending away and away until it ended in dim blue mists upon the farthest sky-line. In the foreground was the long slope, strewn with rocks and dotted with tree-ferns; farther off in the middle distance, looking over the saddle-back hill, I could just see the yellow and green mass of bamboos through which we had passed; and then, gradually, the vegetation increased until it formed the huge forest which extended as far as the eyes could reach, and for a good two thousand miles beyond.

I was still drinking in this wonderful panorama when the heavy hand of the Professor fell upon my shoulder.

“This way, my young friend,” said he; “vestigia nulla retrorsum. Never look rearwards, but always to our glorious goal.”

The level of the plateau, when I turned, was exactly that on which we stood, and the green bank of bushes, with occasional trees, was so near that it was difficult to realize how inaccessible it remained. At a rough guess the gulf was forty feet across, but, so far as I could see, it might as well have been forty miles. I placed one arm round the trunk of the tree and leaned over the abyss. Far down were the small dark figures of our servants, looking up at us. The wall was absolutely precipitous, as was that which faced me.

“This is indeed curious,” said the creaking voice of Professor Summerlee.

I turned, and found that he was examining with great interest the tree to which I clung. That smooth bark and those small, ribbed leaves seemed familiar to my eyes. “Why,” I cried, “it’s a beech!”

“Exactly,” said Summerlee. “A fellow-countryman in a far land.”

“Not only a fellow-countryman, my good sir,” said Challenger, “but also, if I may be allowed to enlarge your simile, an ally of the first value. This beech tree will be our saviour.”

“By George!” cried Lord John, “a bridge!”

“Exactly, my friends, a bridge! It is not for nothing that I expended an hour last night in focusing my mind upon the situation. I have some recollection of once remarking to our young friend here that G. E. C. is at his best when his back is to the wall. Last night you will admit that all our backs were to the wall. But where will-power and intellect go together, there is always a way out. A drawbridge had to be found which could be dropped across the abyss. Behold it!”

It was certainly a brilliant idea. The tree was a good sixty feet in height, and if it only fell the right way it would easily cross the chasm. Challenger had slung the camp axe over his shoulder when he ascended. Now he handed it to me.

“Our young friend has the thews and sinews,” said he. “I think he will be the most useful at this task. I must beg, however, that you will kindly refrain from thinking for yourself, and that you will do exactly what you are told.”

Under his direction I cut such gashes in the sides of the trees as would ensure that it should fall as we desired. It had already a strong, natural tilt in the direction of the plateau, so that the matter was not difficult. Finally I set to work in earnest upon the trunk, taking turn and turn with Lord John. In a little over an hour there was a loud crack, the tree swayed forward, and then crashed over, burying its branches among the bushes on the farther side. The severed trunk rolled to the very edge of our platform, and for one terrible second we all thought it was over. It balanced itself, however, a few inches from the edge, and there was our bridge to the unknown.

All of us, without a word, shook hands with Professor Challenger, who raised his straw hat and bowed deeply to each in turn.

“I claim the honor,” said he, “to be the first to cross to the unknown land—a fitting subject, no doubt, for some future historical painting.”

He had approached the bridge when Lord John laid his hand upon his coat.

“My dear chap,” said he, “I really cannot allow it.”

“Cannot allow it, sir!” The head went back and the beard forward.

“When it is a matter of science, don’t you know, I follow your lead because you are by way of bein’ a man of science. But it’s up to you to follow me when you come into my department.”

“Your department, sir?”

“We all have our professions, and soldierin’ is mine. We are, accordin’ to my ideas, invadin’ a new country, which may or may not be chock-full of enemies of sorts. To barge blindly into it for want of a little common sense and patience isn’t my notion of management.”

The remonstrance was too reasonable to be disregarded. Challenger tossed his head and shrugged his heavy shoulders.

“Well, sir, what do you propose?”

“For all I know there may be a tribe of cannibals waitin’ for lunch-time among those very bushes,” said Lord John, looking across the bridge. “It’s better to learn wisdom before you get into a cookin’-pot; so we will content ourselves with hopin’ that there is no trouble waitin’ for us, and at the same time we will act as if there were. Malone and I will go down again, therefore, and we will fetch up the four rifles, together with Gomez and the other. One man can then go across and the rest will cover him with guns, until he sees that it is safe for the whole crowd to come along.”

Challenger sat down upon the cut stump and groaned his impatience; but Summerlee and I were of one mind that Lord John was our leader when such practical details were in question. The climb was a more simple thing now that the rope dangled down the face of the worst part of the ascent. Within an hour we had brought up the rifles and a shot-gun. The half-breeds had ascended also, and under Lord John’s orders they had carried up a bale of provisions in case our first exploration should be a long one. We had each bandoliers of cartridges.

“Now, Challenger, if you really insist upon being the first man in,” said Lord John, when every preparation was complete.

“I am much indebted to you for your gracious permission,” said the angry Professor; for never was a man so intolerant of every form of authority. “Since you are good enough to allow it, I shall most certainly take it upon myself to act as pioneer upon this occasion.”

Seating himself with a leg overhanging the abyss on each side, and his hatchet slung upon his back, Challenger hopped his way across the trunk and was soon at the other side. He clambered up and waved his arms in the air.

“At last!” he cried; “at last!”

I gazed anxiously at him, with a vague expectation that some terrible fate would dart at him from the curtain of green behind him. But all was quiet, save that a strange, many-colored bird flew up from under his feet and vanished among the trees.

Summerlee was the second. His wiry energy is wonderful in so frail a frame. He insisted upon having two rifles slung upon his back, so that both Professors were armed when he had made his transit. I came next, and tried hard not to look down into the horrible gulf over which I was passing. Summerlee held out the butt-end of his rifle, and an instant later I was able to grasp his hand. As to Lord John, he walked across—actually walked without support! He must have nerves of iron.

And there we were, the four of us, upon the dreamland, the lost world, of Maple White. To all of us it seemed the moment of our supreme triumph. Who could have guessed that it was the prelude to our supreme disaster? Let me say in a few words how the crushing blow fell upon us.

We had turned away from the edge, and had penetrated about fifty yards of close brushwood, when there came a frightful rending crash from behind us. With one impulse we rushed back the way that we had come. The bridge was gone!

Far down at the base of the cliff I saw, as I looked over, a tangled mass of branches and splintered trunk. It was our beech tree. Had the edge of the platform crumbled and let it through? For a moment this explanation was in all our minds. The next, from the farther side of the rocky pinnacle before us a swarthy face, the face of Gomez the half-breed, was slowly protruded. Yes, it was Gomez, but no longer the Gomez of the demure smile and the mask-like expression. Here was a face with flashing eyes and distorted features, a face convulsed with hatred and with the mad joy of gratified revenge.

“Lord Roxton!” he shouted. “Lord John Roxton!”

“Well,” said our companion, “here I am.”

A shriek of laughter came across the abyss.

“Yes, there you are, you English dog, and there you will remain! I have waited and waited, and now has come my chance. You found it hard to get up; you will find it harder to get down. You cursed fools, you are trapped, every one of you!”

We were too astounded to speak. We could only stand there staring in amazement. A great broken bough upon the grass showed whence he had gained his leverage to tilt over our bridge. The face had vanished, but presently it was up again, more frantic than before.

“We nearly killed you with a stone at the cave,” he cried; “but this is better. It is slower and more terrible. Your bones will whiten up there, and none will know where you lie or come to cover them. As you lie dying, think of Lopez, whom you shot five years ago on the Putomayo River. I am his brother, and, come what will I will die happy now, for his memory has been avenged.” A furious hand was shaken at us, and then all was quiet.

Had the half-breed simply wrought his vengeance and then escaped, all might have been well with him. It was that foolish, irresistible Latin impulse to be dramatic which brought his own downfall. Roxton, the man who had earned himself the name of the Flail of the Lord through three countries, was not one who could be safely taunted. The half-breed was descending on the farther side of the pinnacle; but before he could reach the ground Lord John had run along the edge of the plateau and gained a point from which he could see his man. There was a single crack of his rifle, and, though we saw nothing, we heard the scream and then the distant thud of the falling body. Roxton came back to us with a face of granite.

“I have been a blind simpleton,” said he, bitterly, “It’s my folly that has brought you all into this trouble. I should have remembered that these people have long memories for blood-feuds, and have been more upon my guard.”

“What about the other one? It took two of them to lever that tree over the edge.”

“I could have shot him, but I let him go. He may have had no part in it. Perhaps it would have been better if I had killed him, for he must, as you say, have lent a hand.”

Now that we had the clue to his action, each of us could cast back and remember some sinister act upon the part of the half-breed—his constant desire to know our plans, his arrest outside our tent when he was over-hearing them, the furtive looks of hatred which from time to time one or other of us had surprised. We were still discussing it, endeavoring to adjust our minds to these new conditions, when a singular scene in the plain below arrested our attention.

A man in white clothes, who could only be the surviving half-breed, was running as one does run when Death is the pacemaker. Behind him, only a few yards in his rear, bounded the huge ebony figure of Zambo, our devoted negro. Even as we looked, he sprang upon the back of the fugitive and flung his arms round his neck. They rolled on the ground together. An instant afterwards Zambo rose, looked at the prostrate man, and then, waving his hand joyously to us, came running in our direction. The white figure lay motionless in the middle of the great plain.

Our two traitors had been destroyed, but the mischief that they had done lived after them. By no possible means could we get back to the pinnacle. We had been natives of the world; now we were natives of the plateau. The two things were separate and apart. There was the plain which led to the canoes. Yonder, beyond the violet, hazy horizon, was the stream which led back to civilization. But the link between was missing. No human ingenuity could suggest a means of bridging the chasm which yawned between ourselves and our past lives. One instant had altered the whole conditions of our existence.

It was at such a moment that I learned the stuff of which my three comrades were composed. They were grave, it is true, and thoughtful, but of an invincible serenity. For the moment we could only sit among the bushes in patience and wait the coming of Zambo. Presently his honest black face topped the rocks and his Herculean figure emerged upon the top of the pinnacle.

“What I do now?” he cried. “You tell me and I do it.”

It was a question which it was easier to ask than to answer. One thing only was clear. He was our one trusty link with the outside world. On no account must he leave us.

“No no!” he cried. “I not leave you. Whatever come, you always find me here. But no able to keep Indians. Already they say too much Curupuri live on this place, and they go home. Now you leave them me no able to keep them.”

It was a fact that our Indians had shown in many ways of late that they were weary of their journey and anxious to return. We realized that Zambo spoke the truth, and that it would be impossible for him to keep them.

“Make them wait till to-morrow, Zambo,” I shouted; “then I can send letter back by them.”

“Very good, sarr! I promise they wait till to-morrow,” said the negro. “But what I do for you now?”

There was plenty for him to do, and admirably the faithful fellow did it. First of all, under our directions, he undid the rope from the tree-stump and threw one end of it across to us. It was not thicker than a clothes-line, but it was of great strength, and though we could not make a bridge of it, we might well find it invaluable if we had any climbing to do. He then fastened his end of the rope to the package of supplies which had been carried up, and we were able to drag it across. This gave us the means of life for at least a week, even if we found nothing else. Finally he descended and carried up two other packets of mixed goods—a box of ammunition and a number of other things, all of which we got across by throwing our rope to him and hauling it back. It was evening when he at last climbed down, with a final assurance that he would keep the Indians till next morning.

And so it is that I have spent nearly the whole of this our first night upon the plateau writing up our experiences by the light of a single candle-lantern.

We supped and camped at the very edge of the cliff, quenching our thirst with two bottles of Apollinaris which were in one of the cases. It is vital to us to find water, but I think even Lord John himself had had adventures enough for one day, and none of us felt inclined to make the first push into the unknown. We forbore to light a fire or to make any unnecessary sound.

To-morrow (or to-day, rather, for it is already dawn as I write) we shall make our first venture into this strange land. When I shall be able to write again—or if I ever shall write again—I know not. Meanwhile, I can see that the Indians are still in their place, and I am sure that the faithful Zambo will be here presently to get my letter. I only trust that it will come to hand.

P.S.—The more I think the more desperate does our position seem. I see no possible hope of our return. If there were a high tree near the edge of the plateau we might drop a return bridge across, but there is none within fifty yards. Our united strength could not carry a trunk which would serve our purpose. The rope, of course, is far too short that we could descend by it. No, our position is hopeless—hopeless!

CHAPTER X

“The most Wonderful Things have Happened”

The most wonderful things have happened and are continually happening to us. All the paper that I possess consists of five old note-books and a lot of scraps, and I have only the one stylographic pencil; but so long as I can move my hand I will continue to set down our experiences and impressions, for, since we are the only men of the whole human race to see such things, it is of enormous importance that I should record them whilst they are fresh in my memory and before that fate which seems to be constantly impending does actually overtake us. Whether Zambo can at last take these letters to the river, or whether I shall myself in some miraculous way carry them back with me, or, finally, whether some daring explorer, coming upon our tracks with the advantage, perhaps, of a perfected monoplane, should find this bundle of manuscript, in any case I can see that what I am writing is destined to immortality as a classic of true adventure.

On the morning after our being trapped upon the plateau by the villainous Gomez we began a new stage in our experiences. The first incident in it was not such as to give me a very favorable opinion of the place to which we had wandered. As I roused myself from a short nap after day had dawned, my eyes fell upon a most singular appearance upon my own leg. My trouser had slipped up, exposing a few inches of my skin above my sock. On this there rested a large, purplish grape. Astonished at the sight, I leaned forward to pick it off, when, to my horror, it burst between my finger and thumb, squirting blood in every direction. My cry of disgust had brought the two professors to my side.

“Most interesting,” said Summerlee, bending over my shin. “An enormous blood-tick, as yet, I believe, unclassified.”

“The first-fruits of our labors,” said Challenger in his booming, pedantic fashion. “We cannot do less than call it Ixodes Maloni. The very small inconvenience of being bitten, my young friend, cannot, I am sure, weigh with you as against the glorious privilege of having your name inscribed in the deathless roll of zoology. Unhappily you have crushed this fine specimen at the moment of satiation.”

“Filthy vermin!” I cried.

Professor Challenger raised his great eyebrows in protest, and placed a soothing paw upon my shoulder.

“You should cultivate the scientific eye and the detached scientific mind,” said he. “To a man of philosophic temperament like myself the blood-tick, with its lancet-like proboscis and its distending stomach, is as beautiful a work of Nature as the peacock or, for that matter, the aurora borealis. It pains me to hear you speak of it in so unappreciative a fashion. No doubt, with due diligence, we can secure some other specimen.”

“There can be no doubt of that,” said Summerlee, grimly, “for one has just disappeared behind your shirt-collar.”

Challenger sprang into the air bellowing like a bull, and tore frantically at his coat and shirt to get them off. Summerlee and I laughed so that we could hardly help him. At last we exposed that monstrous torso (fifty-four inches, by the tailor’s tape). His body was all matted with black hair, out of which jungle we picked the wandering tick before it had bitten him. But the bushes round were full of the horrible pests, and it was clear that we must shift our camp.

But first of all it was necessary to make our arrangements with the faithful negro, who appeared presently on the pinnacle with a number of tins of cocoa and biscuits, which he tossed over to us. Of the stores which remained below he was ordered to retain as much as would keep him for two months. The Indians were to have the remainder as a reward for their services and as payment for taking our letters back to the Amazon. Some hours later we saw them in single file far out upon the plain, each with a bundle on his head, making their way back along the path we had come. Zambo occupied our little tent at the base of the pinnacle, and there he remained, our one link with the world below.

And now we had to decide upon our immediate movements. We shifted our position from among the tick-laden bushes until we came to a small clearing thickly surrounded by trees upon all sides. There were some flat slabs of rock in the center, with an excellent well close by, and there we sat in cleanly comfort while we made our first plans for the invasion of this new country. Birds were calling among the foliage—especially one with a peculiar whooping cry which was new to us—but beyond these sounds there were no signs of life.

Our first care was to make some sort of list of our own stores, so that we might know what we had to rely upon. What with the things we had ourselves brought up and those which Zambo had sent across on the rope, we were fairly well supplied. Most important of all, in view of the dangers which might surround us, we had our four rifles and one thousand three hundred rounds, also a shot-gun, but not more than a hundred and fifty medium pellet cartridges. In the matter of provisions we had enough to last for several weeks, with a sufficiency of tobacco and a few scientific implements, including a large telescope and a good field-glass. All these things we collected together in the clearing, and as a first precaution, we cut down with our hatchet and knives a number of thorny bushes, which we piled round in a circle some fifteen yards in diameter. This was to be our headquarters for the time—our place of refuge against sudden danger and the guard-house for our stores. Fort Challenger, we called it.

It was midday before we had made ourselves secure, but the heat was not oppressive, and the general character of the plateau, both in its temperature and in its vegetation, was almost temperate. The beech, the oak, and even the birch were to be found among the tangle of trees which girt us in. One huge gingko tree, topping all the others, shot its great limbs and maidenhair foliage over the fort which we had constructed. In its shade we continued our discussion, while Lord John, who had quickly taken command in the hour of action, gave us his views.

“So long as neither man nor beast has seen or heard us, we are safe,” said he. “From the time they know we are here our troubles begin. There are no signs that they have found us out as yet. So our game surely is to lie low for a time and spy out the land. We want to have a good look at our neighbors before we get on visitin’ terms.”

“But we must advance,” I ventured to remark.

“By all means, sonny my boy! We will advance. But with common sense. We must never go so far that we can’t get back to our base. Above all, we must never, unless it is life or death, fire off our guns.”

“But YOU fired yesterday,” said Summerlee.

“Well, it couldn’t be helped. However, the wind was strong and blew outwards. It is not likely that the sound could have traveled far into the plateau. By the way, what shall we call this place? I suppose it is up to us to give it a name?”

There were several suggestions, more or less happy, but Challenger’s was final.

“It can only have one name,” said he. “It is called after the pioneer who discovered it. It is Maple White Land.”

Maple White Land it became, and so it is named in that chart which has become my special task. So it will, I trust, appear in the atlas of the future.

The peaceful penetration of Maple White Land was the pressing subject before us. We had the evidence of our own eyes that the place was inhabited by some unknown creatures, and there was that of Maple White’s sketch-book to show that more dreadful and more dangerous monsters might still appear. That there might also prove to be human occupants and that they were of a malevolent character was suggested by the skeleton impaled upon the bamboos, which could not have got there had it not been dropped from above. Our situation, stranded without possibility of escape in such a land, was clearly full of danger, and our reasons endorsed every measure of caution which Lord John’s experience could suggest. Yet it was surely impossible that we should halt on the edge of this world of mystery when our very souls were tingling with impatience to push forward and to pluck the heart from it.

We therefore blocked the entrance to our zareba by filling it up with several thorny bushes, and left our camp with the stores entirely surrounded by this protecting hedge. We then slowly and cautiously set forth into the unknown, following the course of the little stream which flowed from our spring, as it should always serve us as a guide on our return.

Hardly had we started when we came across signs that there were indeed wonders awaiting us. After a few hundred yards of thick forest, containing many trees which were quite unknown to me, but which Summerlee, who was the botanist of the party, recognized as forms of conifera and of cycadaceous plants which have long passed away in the world below, we entered a region where the stream widened out and formed a considerable bog. High reeds of a peculiar type grew thickly before us, which were pronounced to be equisetacea, or mare’s-tails, with tree-ferns scattered amongst them, all of them swaying in a brisk wind. Suddenly Lord John, who was walking first, halted with uplifted hand.

“Look at this!” said he. “By George, this must be the trail of the father of all birds!”

An enormous three-toed track was imprinted in the soft mud before us. The creature, whatever it was, had crossed the swamp and had passed on into the forest. We all stopped to examine that monstrous spoor. If it were indeed a bird—and what animal could leave such a mark?—its foot was so much larger than an ostrich’s that its height upon the same scale must be enormous. Lord John looked eagerly round him and slipped two cartridges into his elephant-gun.

“I’ll stake my good name as a shikarree,” said he, “that the track is a fresh one. The creature has not passed ten minutes. Look how the water is still oozing into that deeper print! By Jove! See, here is the mark of a little one!”

Sure enough, smaller tracks of the same general form were running parallel to the large ones.

“But what do you make of this?” cried Professor Summerlee, triumphantly, pointing to what looked like the huge print of a five-fingered human hand appearing among the three-toed marks.

“Wealden!” cried Challenger, in an ecstasy. “I’ve seen them in the Wealden clay. It is a creature walking erect upon three-toed feet, and occasionally putting one of its five-fingered forepaws upon the ground. Not a bird, my dear Roxton—not a bird.”

“A beast?”

“No; a reptile—a dinosaur. Nothing else could have left such a track. They puzzled a worthy Sussex doctor some ninety years ago; but who in the world could have hoped—hoped—to have seen a sight like that?”

His words died away into a whisper, and we all stood in motionless amazement. Following the tracks, we had left the morass and passed through a screen of brushwood and trees. Beyond was an open glade, and in this were five of the most extraordinary creatures that I have ever seen. Crouching down among the bushes, we observed them at our leisure.

There were, as I say, five of them, two being adults and three young ones. In size they were enormous. Even the babies were as big as elephants, while the two large ones were far beyond all creatures I have ever seen. They had slate-colored skin, which was scaled like a lizard’s and shimmered where the sun shone upon it. All five were sitting up, balancing themselves upon their broad, powerful tails and their huge three-toed hind-feet, while with their small five-fingered front-feet they pulled down the branches upon which they browsed. I do not know that I can bring their appearance home to you better than by saying that they looked like monstrous kangaroos, twenty feet in length, and with skins like black crocodiles.

I do not know how long we stayed motionless gazing at this marvelous spectacle. A strong wind blew towards us and we were well concealed, so there was no chance of discovery. From time to time the little ones played round their parents in unwieldy gambols, the great beasts bounding into the air and falling with dull thuds upon the earth. The strength of the parents seemed to be limitless, for one of them, having some difficulty in reaching a bunch of foliage which grew upon a considerable-sized tree, put his fore-legs round the trunk and tore it down as if it had been a sapling. The action seemed, as I thought, to show not only the great development of its muscles, but also the small one of its brain, for the whole weight came crashing down upon the top of it, and it uttered a series of shrill yelps to show that, big as it was, there was a limit to what it could endure. The incident made it think, apparently, that the neighborhood was dangerous, for it slowly lurched off through the wood, followed by its mate and its three enormous infants. We saw the shimmering slaty gleam of their skins between the tree-trunks, and their heads undulating high above the brush-wood. Then they vanished from our sight.

I looked at my comrades. Lord John was standing at gaze with his finger on the trigger of his elephant-gun, his eager hunter’s soul shining from his fierce eyes. What would he not give for one such head to place between the two crossed oars above the mantelpiece in his snuggery at the Albany! And yet his reason held him in, for all our exploration of the wonders of this unknown land depended upon our presence being concealed from its inhabitants. The two professors were in silent ecstasy. In their excitement they had unconsciously seized each other by the hand, and stood like two little children in the presence of a marvel, Challenger’s cheeks bunched up into a seraphic smile, and Summerlee’s sardonic face softening for the moment into wonder and reverence.

“Nunc dimittis!” he cried at last. “What will they say in England of this?”

“My dear Summerlee, I will tell you with great confidence exactly what they will say in England,” said Challenger. “They will say that you are an infernal liar and a scientific charlatan, exactly as you and others said of me.”

“In the face of photographs?”

“Faked, Summerlee! Clumsily faked!”

“In the face of specimens?”

“Ah, there we may have them! Malone and his filthy Fleet Street crew may be all yelping our praises yet. August the twenty-eighth—the day we saw five live iguanodons in a glade of Maple White Land. Put it down in your diary, my young friend, and send it to your rag.”

“And be ready to get the toe-end of the editorial boot in return,” said Lord John. “Things look a bit different from the latitude of London, young fellah my lad. There’s many a man who never tells his adventures, for he can’t hope to be believed. Who’s to blame them? For this will seem a bit of a dream to ourselves in a month or two. WHAT did you say they were?”

“Iguanodons,” said Summerlee. “You’ll find their footmarks all over the Hastings sands, in Kent, and in Sussex. The South of England was alive with them when there was plenty of good lush green-stuff to keep them going. Conditions have changed, and the beasts died. Here it seems that the conditions have not changed, and the beasts have lived.”

“If ever we get out of this alive, I must have a head with me,” said Lord John. “Lord, how some of that Somaliland-Uganda crowd would turn a beautiful pea-green if they saw it! I don’t know what you chaps think, but it strikes me that we are on mighty thin ice all this time.”

I had the same feeling of mystery and danger around us. In the gloom of the trees there seemed a constant menace and as we looked up into their shadowy foliage vague terrors crept into one’s heart. It is true that these monstrous creatures which we had seen were lumbering, inoffensive brutes which were unlikely to hurt anyone, but in this world of wonders what other survivals might there not be—what fierce, active horrors ready to pounce upon us from their lair among the rocks or brushwood? I knew little of prehistoric life, but I had a clear remembrance of one book which I had read in which it spoke of creatures who would live upon our lions and tigers as a cat lives upon mice. What if these also were to be found in the woods of Maple White Land!

It was destined that on this very morning—our first in the new country—we were to find out what strange hazards lay around us. It was a loathsome adventure, and one of which I hate to think. If, as Lord John said, the glade of the iguanodons will remain with us as a dream, then surely the swamp of the pterodactyls will forever be our nightmare. Let me set down exactly what occurred.

We passed very slowly through the woods, partly because Lord Roxton acted as scout before he would let us advance, and partly because at every second step one or other of our professors would fall, with a cry of wonder, before some flower or insect which presented him with a new type. We may have traveled two or three miles in all, keeping to the right of the line of the stream, when we came upon a considerable opening in the trees. A belt of brushwood led up to a tangle of rocks—the whole plateau was strewn with boulders. We were walking slowly towards these rocks, among bushes which reached over our waists, when we became aware of a strange low gabbling and whistling sound, which filled the air with a constant clamor and appeared to come from some spot immediately before us. Lord John held up his hand as a signal for us to stop, and he made his way swiftly, stooping and running, to the line of rocks. We saw him peep over them and give a gesture of amazement. Then he stood staring as if forgetting us, so utterly entranced was he by what he saw. Finally he waved us to come on, holding up his hand as a signal for caution. His whole bearing made me feel that something wonderful but dangerous lay before us.

Creeping to his side, we looked over the rocks. The place into which we gazed was a pit, and may, in the early days, have been one of the smaller volcanic blow-holes of the plateau. It was bowl-shaped and at the bottom, some hundreds of yards from where we lay, were pools of green-scummed, stagnant water, fringed with bullrushes. It was a weird place in itself, but its occupants made it seem like a scene from the Seven Circles of Dante. The place was a rookery of pterodactyls. There were hundreds of them congregated within view. All the bottom area round the water-edge was alive with their young ones, and with hideous mothers brooding upon their leathery, yellowish eggs. From this crawling flapping mass of obscene reptilian life came the shocking clamor which filled the air and the mephitic, horrible, musty odor which turned us sick. But above, perched each upon its own stone, tall, gray, and withered, more like dead and dried specimens than actual living creatures, sat the horrible males, absolutely motionless save for the rolling of their red eyes or an occasional snap of their rat-trap beaks as a dragon-fly went past them. Their huge, membranous wings were closed by folding their fore-arms, so that they sat like gigantic old women, wrapped in hideous web-colored shawls, and with their ferocious heads protruding above them. Large and small, not less than a thousand of these filthy creatures lay in the hollow before us.

Our professors would gladly have stayed there all day, so entranced were they by this opportunity of studying the life of a prehistoric age. They pointed out the fish and dead birds lying about among the rocks as proving the nature of the food of these creatures, and I heard them congratulating each other on having cleared up the point why the bones of this flying dragon are found in such great numbers in certain well-defined areas, as in the Cambridge Green-sand, since it was now seen that, like penguins, they lived in gregarious fashion.

Finally, however, Challenger, bent upon proving some point which Summerlee had contested, thrust his head over the rock and nearly brought destruction upon us all. In an instant the nearest male gave a shrill, whistling cry, and flapped its twenty-foot span of leathery wings as it soared up into the air. The females and young ones huddled together beside the water, while the whole circle of sentinels rose one after the other and sailed off into the sky. It was a wonderful sight to see at least a hundred creatures of such enormous size and hideous appearance all swooping like swallows with swift, shearing wing-strokes above us; but soon we realized that it was not one on which we could afford to linger. At first the great brutes flew round in a huge ring, as if to make sure what the exact extent of the danger might be. Then, the flight grew lower and the circle narrower, until they were whizzing round and round us, the dry, rustling flap of their huge slate-colored wings filling the air with a volume of sound that made me think of Hendon aerodrome upon a race day.

“Make for the wood and keep together,” cried Lord John, clubbing his rifle. “The brutes mean mischief.”

The moment we attempted to retreat the circle closed in upon us, until the tips of the wings of those nearest to us nearly touched our faces. We beat at them with the stocks of our guns, but there was nothing solid or vulnerable to strike. Then suddenly out of the whizzing, slate-colored circle a long neck shot out, and a fierce beak made a thrust at us. Another and another followed. Summerlee gave a cry and put his hand to his face, from which the blood was streaming. I felt a prod at the back of my neck, and turned dizzy with the shock. Challenger fell, and as I stooped to pick him up I was again struck from behind and dropped on the top of him. At the same instant I heard the crash of Lord John’s elephant-gun, and, looking up, saw one of the creatures with a broken wing struggling upon the ground, spitting and gurgling at us with a wide-opened beak and blood-shot, goggled eyes, like some devil in a medieval picture. Its comrades had flown higher at the sudden sound, and were circling above our heads.

“Now,” cried Lord John, “now for our lives!”

We staggered through the brushwood, and even as we reached the trees the harpies were on us again. Summerlee was knocked down, but we tore him up and rushed among the trunks. Once there we were safe, for those huge wings had no space for their sweep beneath the branches. As we limped homewards, sadly mauled and discomfited, we saw them for a long time flying at a great height against the deep blue sky above our heads, soaring round and round, no bigger than wood-pigeons, with their eyes no doubt still following our progress. At last, however, as we reached the thicker woods they gave up the chase, and we saw them no more.

“A most interesting and convincing experience,” said Challenger, as we halted beside the brook and he bathed a swollen knee. “We are exceptionally well informed, Summerlee, as to the habits of the enraged pterodactyl.”

Summerlee was wiping the blood from a cut in his forehead, while I was tying up a nasty stab in the muscle of the neck. Lord John had the shoulder of his coat torn away, but the creature’s teeth had only grazed the flesh.

“It is worth noting,” Challenger continued, “that our young friend has received an undoubted stab, while Lord John’s coat could only have been torn by a bite. In my own case, I was beaten about the head by their wings, so we have had a remarkable exhibition of their various methods of offence.”

“It has been touch and go for our lives,” said Lord John, gravely, “and I could not think of a more rotten sort of death than to be outed by such filthy vermin. I was sorry to fire my rifle, but, by Jove! there was no great choice.”

“We should not be here if you hadn’t,” said I, with conviction.

“It may do no harm,” said he. “Among these woods there must be many loud cracks from splitting or falling trees which would be just like the sound of a gun. But now, if you are of my opinion, we have had thrills enough for one day, and had best get back to the surgical box at the camp for some carbolic. Who knows what venom these beasts may have in their hideous jaws?”

But surely no men ever had just such a day since the world began. Some fresh surprise was ever in store for us. When, following the course of our brook, we at last reached our glade and saw the thorny barricade of our camp, we thought that our adventures were at an end. But we had something more to think of before we could rest. The gate of Fort Challenger had been untouched, the walls were unbroken, and yet it had been visited by some strange and powerful creature in our absence. No foot-mark showed a trace of its nature, and only the overhanging branch of the enormous ginko tree suggested how it might have come and gone; but of its malevolent strength there was ample evidence in the condition of our stores. They were strewn at random all over the ground, and one tin of meat had been crushed into pieces so as to extract the contents. A case of cartridges had been shattered into matchwood, and one of the brass shells lay shredded into pieces beside it. Again the feeling of vague horror came upon our souls, and we gazed round with frightened eyes at the dark shadows which lay around us, in all of which some fearsome shape might be lurking. How good it was when we were hailed by the voice of Zambo, and, going to the edge of the plateau, saw him sitting grinning at us upon the top of the opposite pinnacle.

“All well, Massa Challenger, all well!” he cried. “Me stay here. No fear. You always find me when you want.”

His honest black face, and the immense view before us, which carried us half-way back to the affluent of the Amazon, helped us to remember that we really were upon this earth in the twentieth century, and had not by some magic been conveyed to some raw planet in its earliest and wildest state. How difficult it was to realize that the violet line upon the far horizon was well advanced to that great river upon which huge steamers ran, and folk talked of the small affairs of life, while we, marooned among the creatures of a bygone age, could but gaze towards it and yearn for all that it meant!

One other memory remains with me of this wonderful day, and with it I will close this letter. The two professors, their tempers aggravated no doubt by their injuries, had fallen out as to whether our assailants were of the genus pterodactylus or dimorphodon, and high words had ensued. To avoid their wrangling I moved some little way apart, and was seated smoking upon the trunk of a fallen tree, when Lord John strolled over in my direction.

“I say, Malone,” said he, “do you remember that place where those beasts were?”

“Very clearly.”

“A sort of volcanic pit, was it not?”

“Exactly,” said I.

“Did you notice the soil?”

“Rocks.”

“But round the water—where the reeds were?”

“It was a bluish soil. It looked like clay.”

“Exactly. A volcanic tube full of blue clay.”

“What of that?” I asked.

“Oh, nothing, nothing,” said he, and strolled back to where the voices of the contending men of science rose in a prolonged duet, the high, strident note of Summerlee rising and falling to the sonorous bass of Challenger. I should have thought no more of Lord John’s remark were it not that once again that night I heard him mutter to himself: “Blue clay—clay in a volcanic tube!” They were the last words I heard before I dropped into an exhausted sleep.

CHAPTER XI

“For once I was the Hero”

Lord John Roxton was right when he thought that some specially toxic quality might lie in the bite of the horrible creatures which had attacked us. On the morning after our first adventure upon the plateau, both Summerlee and I were in great pain and fever, while Challenger’s knee was so bruised that he could hardly limp. We kept to our camp all day, therefore, Lord John busying himself, with such help as we could give him, in raising the height and thickness of the thorny walls which were our only defense. I remember that during the whole long day I was haunted by the feeling that we were closely observed, though by whom or whence I could give no guess.

So strong was the impression that I told Professor Challenger of it, who put it down to the cerebral excitement caused by my fever. Again and again I glanced round swiftly, with the conviction that I was about to see something, but only to meet the dark tangle of our hedge or the solemn and cavernous gloom of the great trees which arched above our heads. And yet the feeling grew ever stronger in my own mind that something observant and something malevolent was at our very elbow. I thought of the Indian superstition of the Curupuri—the dreadful, lurking spirit of the woods—and I could have imagined that his terrible presence haunted those who had invaded his most remote and sacred retreat.

That night (our third in Maple White Land) we had an experience which left a fearful impression upon our minds, and made us thankful that Lord John had worked so hard in making our retreat impregnable. We were all sleeping round our dying fire when we were aroused—or, rather, I should say, shot out of our slumbers—by a succession of the most frightful cries and screams to which I have ever listened. I know no sound to which I could compare this amazing tumult, which seemed to come from some spot within a few hundred yards of our camp. It was as ear-splitting as any whistle of a railway-engine; but whereas the whistle is a clear, mechanical, sharp-edged sound, this was far deeper in volume and vibrant with the uttermost strain of agony and horror. We clapped our hands to our ears to shut out that nerve-shaking appeal. A cold sweat broke out over my body, and my heart turned sick at the misery of it. All the woes of tortured life, all its stupendous indictment of high heaven, its innumerable sorrows, seemed to be centered and condensed into that one dreadful, agonized cry. And then, under this high-pitched, ringing sound there was another, more intermittent, a low, deep-chested laugh, a growling, throaty gurgle of merriment which formed a grotesque accompaniment to the shriek with which it was blended. For three or four minutes on end the fearsome duet continued, while all the foliage rustled with the rising of startled birds. Then it shut off as suddenly as it began. For a long time we sat in horrified silence. Then Lord John threw a bundle of twigs upon the fire, and their red glare lit up the intent faces of my companions and flickered over the great boughs above our heads.

“What was it?” I whispered.

“We shall know in the morning,” said Lord John. “It was close to us—not farther than the glade.”

“We have been privileged to overhear a prehistoric tragedy, the sort of drama which occurred among the reeds upon the border of some Jurassic lagoon, when the greater dragon pinned the lesser among the slime,” said Challenger, with more solemnity than I had ever heard in his voice. “It was surely well for man that he came late in the order of creation. There were powers abroad in earlier days which no courage and no mechanism of his could have met. What could his sling, his throwing-stick, or his arrow avail him against such forces as have been loose to-night? Even with a modern rifle it would be all odds on the monster.”

“I think I should back my little friend,” said Lord John, caressing his Express. “But the beast would certainly have a good sporting chance.”

Summerlee raised his hand.

“Hush!” he cried. “Surely I hear something?”

From the utter silence there emerged a deep, regular pat-pat. It was the tread of some animal—the rhythm of soft but heavy pads placed cautiously upon the ground. It stole slowly round the camp, and then halted near our gateway. There was a low, sibilant rise and fall—the breathing of the creature. Only our feeble hedge separated us from this horror of the night. Each of us had seized his rifle, and Lord John had pulled out a small bush to make an embrasure in the hedge.

“By George!” he whispered. “I think I can see it!”

I stooped and peered over his shoulder through the gap. Yes, I could see it, too. In the deep shadow of the tree there was a deeper shadow yet, black, inchoate, vague—a crouching form full of savage vigor and menace. It was no higher than a horse, but the dim outline suggested vast bulk and strength. That hissing pant, as regular and full-volumed as the exhaust of an engine, spoke of a monstrous organism. Once, as it moved, I thought I saw the glint of two terrible, greenish eyes. There was an uneasy rustling, as if it were crawling slowly forward.

“I believe it is going to spring!” said I, cocking my rifle.

“Don’t fire! Don’t fire!” whispered Lord John. “The crash of a gun in this silent night would be heard for miles. Keep it as a last card.”

“If it gets over the hedge we’re done,” said Summerlee, and his voice crackled into a nervous laugh as he spoke.

“No, it must not get over,” cried Lord John; “but hold your fire to the last. Perhaps I can make something of the fellow. I’ll chance it, anyhow.”

It was as brave an act as ever I saw a man do. He stooped to the fire, picked up a blazing branch, and slipped in an instant through a sallyport which he had made in our gateway. The thing moved forward with a dreadful snarl. Lord John never hesitated, but, running towards it with a quick, light step, he dashed the flaming wood into the brute’s face. For one moment I had a vision of a horrible mask like a giant toad’s, of a warty, leprous skin, and of a loose mouth all beslobbered with fresh blood. The next, there was a crash in the underwood and our dreadful visitor was gone.

“I thought he wouldn’t face the fire,” said Lord John, laughing, as he came back and threw his branch among the faggots.

“You should not have taken such a risk!” we all cried.

“There was nothin’ else to be done. If he had got among us we should have shot each other in tryin’ to down him. On the other hand, if we had fired through the hedge and wounded him he would soon have been on the top of us—to say nothin’ of giving ourselves away. On the whole, I think that we are jolly well out of it. What was he, then?”

Our learned men looked at each other with some hesitation.

“Personally, I am unable to classify the creature with any certainty,” said Summerlee, lighting his pipe from the fire.

“In refusing to commit yourself you are but showing a proper scientific reserve,” said Challenger, with massive condescension. “I am not myself prepared to go farther than to say in general terms that we have almost certainly been in contact to-night with some form of carnivorous dinosaur. I have already expressed my anticipation that something of the sort might exist upon this plateau.”

“We have to bear in mind,” remarked Summerlee, “that there are many prehistoric forms which have never come down to us. It would be rash to suppose that we can give a name to all that we are likely to meet.”

“Exactly. A rough classification may be the best that we can attempt. To-morrow some further evidence may help us to an identification. Meantime we can only renew our interrupted slumbers.”

“But not without a sentinel,” said Lord John, with decision. “We can’t afford to take chances in a country like this. Two-hour spells in the future, for each of us.”

“Then I’ll just finish my pipe in starting the first one,” said Professor Summerlee; and from that time onwards we never trusted ourselves again without a watchman.

In the morning it was not long before we discovered the source of the hideous uproar which had aroused us in the night. The iguanodon glade was the scene of a horrible butchery. From the pools of blood and the enormous lumps of flesh scattered in every direction over the green sward we imagined at first that a number of animals had been killed, but on examining the remains more closely we discovered that all this carnage came from one of these unwieldy monsters, which had been literally torn to pieces by some creature not larger, perhaps, but far more ferocious, than itself.

Our two professors sat in absorbed argument, examining piece after piece, which showed the marks of savage teeth and of enormous claws.

“Our judgment must still be in abeyance,” said Professor Challenger, with a huge slab of whitish-colored flesh across his knee. “The indications would be consistent with the presence of a saber-toothed tiger, such as are still found among the breccia of our caverns; but the creature actually seen was undoubtedly of a larger and more reptilian character. Personally, I should pronounce for allosaurus.”

“Or megalosaurus,” said Summerlee.

“Exactly. Any one of the larger carnivorous dinosaurs would meet the case. Among them are to be found all the most terrible types of animal life that have ever cursed the earth or blessed a museum.” He laughed sonorously at his own conceit, for, though he had little sense of humor, the crudest pleasantry from his own lips moved him always to roars of appreciation.

“The less noise the better,” said Lord Roxton, curtly. “We don’t know who or what may be near us. If this fellah comes back for his breakfast and catches us here we won’t have so much to laugh at. By the way, what is this mark upon the iguanodon’s hide?”

On the dull, scaly, slate-colored skin somewhere above the shoulder, there was a singular black circle of some substance which looked like asphalt. None of us could suggest what it meant, though Summerlee was of opinion that he had seen something similar upon one of the young ones two days before. Challenger said nothing, but looked pompous and puffy, as if he could if he would, so that finally Lord John asked his opinion direct.

“If your lordship will graciously permit me to open my mouth, I shall be happy to express my sentiments,” said he, with elaborate sarcasm. “I am not in the habit of being taken to task in the fashion which seems to be customary with your lordship. I was not aware that it was necessary to ask your permission before smiling at a harmless pleasantry.”

It was not until he had received his apology that our touchy friend would suffer himself to be appeased. When at last his ruffled feelings were at ease, he addressed us at some length from his seat upon a fallen tree, speaking, as his habit was, as if he were imparting most precious information to a class of a thousand.

“With regard to the marking,” said he, “I am inclined to agree with my friend and colleague, Professor Summerlee, that the stains are from asphalt. As this plateau is, in its very nature, highly volcanic, and as asphalt is a substance which one associates with Plutonic forces, I cannot doubt that it exists in the free liquid state, and that the creatures may have come in contact with it. A much more important problem is the question as to the existence of the carnivorous monster which has left its traces in this glade. We know roughly that this plateau is not larger than an average English county. Within this confined space a certain number of creatures, mostly types which have passed away in the world below, have lived together for innumerable years. Now, it is very clear to me that in so long a period one would have expected that the carnivorous creatures, multiplying unchecked, would have exhausted their food supply and have been compelled to either modify their flesh-eating habits or die of hunger. This we see has not been so. We can only imagine, therefore, that the balance of Nature is preserved by some check which limits the numbers of these ferocious creatures. One of the many interesting problems, therefore, which await our solution is to discover what that check may be and how it operates. I venture to trust that we may have some future opportunity for the closer study of the carnivorous dinosaurs.”

“And I venture to trust we may not,” I observed.

The Professor only raised his great eyebrows, as the schoolmaster meets the irrelevant observation of the naughty boy.

“Perhaps Professor Summerlee may have an observation to make,” he said, and the two savants ascended together into some rarefied scientific atmosphere, where the possibilities of a modification of the birth-rate were weighed against the decline of the food supply as a check in the struggle for existence.

That morning we mapped out a small portion of the plateau, avoiding the swamp of the pterodactyls, and keeping to the east of our brook instead of to the west. In that direction the country was still thickly wooded, with so much undergrowth that our progress was very slow.

I have dwelt up to now upon the terrors of Maple White Land; but there was another side to the subject, for all that morning we wandered among lovely flowers—mostly, as I observed, white or yellow in color, these being, as our professors explained, the primitive flower-shades. In many places the ground was absolutely covered with them, and as we walked ankle-deep on that wonderful yielding carpet, the scent was almost intoxicating in its sweetness and intensity. The homely English bee buzzed everywhere around us. Many of the trees under which we passed had their branches bowed down with fruit, some of which were of familiar sorts, while other varieties were new. By observing which of them were pecked by the birds we avoided all danger of poison and added a delicious variety to our food reserve. In the jungle which we traversed were numerous hard-trodden paths made by the wild beasts, and in the more marshy places we saw a profusion of strange footmarks, including many of the iguanodon. Once in a grove we observed several of these great creatures grazing, and Lord John, with his glass, was able to report that they also were spotted with asphalt, though in a different place to the one which we had examined in the morning. What this phenomenon meant we could not imagine.

We saw many small animals, such as porcupines, a scaly ant-eater, and a wild pig, piebald in color and with long curved tusks. Once, through a break in the trees, we saw a clear shoulder of green hill some distance away, and across this a large dun-colored animal was traveling at a considerable pace. It passed so swiftly that we were unable to say what it was; but if it were a deer, as was claimed by Lord John, it must have been as large as those monstrous Irish elk which are still dug up from time to time in the bogs of my native land.

Ever since the mysterious visit which had been paid to our camp we always returned to it with some misgivings. However, on this occasion we found everything in order.

That evening we had a grand discussion upon our present situation and future plans, which I must describe at some length, as it led to a new departure by which we were enabled to gain a more complete knowledge of Maple White Land than might have come in many weeks of exploring. It was Summerlee who opened the debate. All day he had been querulous in manner, and now some remark of Lord John’s as to what we should do on the morrow brought all his bitterness to a head.

“What we ought to be doing to-day, to-morrow, and all the time,” said he, “is finding some way out of the trap into which we have fallen. You are all turning your brains towards getting into this country. I say that we should be scheming how to get out of it.”

“I am surprised, sir,” boomed Challenger, stroking his majestic beard, “that any man of science should commit himself to so ignoble a sentiment. You are in a land which offers such an inducement to the ambitious naturalist as none ever has since the world began, and you suggest leaving it before we have acquired more than the most superficial knowledge of it or of its contents. I expected better things of you, Professor Summerlee.”

“You must remember,” said Summerlee, sourly, “that I have a large class in London who are at present at the mercy of an extremely inefficient locum tenens. This makes my situation different from yours, Professor Challenger, since, so far as I know, you have never been entrusted with any responsible educational work.”

“Quite so,” said Challenger. “I have felt it to be a sacrilege to divert a brain which is capable of the highest original research to any lesser object. That is why I have sternly set my face against any proffered scholastic appointment.”

“For example?” asked Summerlee, with a sneer; but Lord John hastened to change the conversation.

“I must say,” said he, “that I think it would be a mighty poor thing to go back to London before I know a great deal more of this place than I do at present.”

“I could never dare to walk into the back office of my paper and face old McArdle,” said I. (You will excuse the frankness of this report, will you not, sir?) “He’d never forgive me for leaving such unexhausted copy behind me. Besides, so far as I can see it is not worth discussing, since we can’t get down, even if we wanted.”

“Our young friend makes up for many obvious mental lacunae by some measure of primitive common sense,” remarked Challenger. “The interests of his deplorable profession are immaterial to us; but, as he observes, we cannot get down in any case, so it is a waste of energy to discuss it.”

“It is a waste of energy to do anything else,” growled Summerlee from behind his pipe. “Let me remind you that we came here upon a perfectly definite mission, entrusted to us at the meeting of the Zoological Institute in London. That mission was to test the truth of Professor Challenger’s statements. Those statements, as I am bound to admit, we are now in a position to endorse. Our ostensible work is therefore done. As to the detail which remains to be worked out upon this plateau, it is so enormous that only a large expedition, with a very special equipment, could hope to cope with it. Should we attempt to do so ourselves, the only possible result must be that we shall never return with the important contribution to science which we have already gained. Professor Challenger has devised means for getting us on to this plateau when it appeared to be inaccessible; I think that we should now call upon him to use the same ingenuity in getting us back to the world from which we came.”

I confess that as Summerlee stated his view it struck me as altogether reasonable. Even Challenger was affected by the consideration that his enemies would never stand confuted if the confirmation of his statements should never reach those who had doubted them.

“The problem of the descent is at first sight a formidable one,” said he, “and yet I cannot doubt that the intellect can solve it. I am prepared to agree with our colleague that a protracted stay in Maple White Land is at present inadvisable, and that the question of our return will soon have to be faced. I absolutely refuse to leave, however, until we have made at least a superficial examination of this country, and are able to take back with us something in the nature of a chart.”

Professor Summerlee gave a snort of impatience.

“We have spent two long days in exploration,” said he, “and we are no wiser as to the actual geography of the place than when we started. It is clear that it is all thickly wooded, and it would take months to penetrate it and to learn the relations of one part to another. If there were some central peak it would be different, but it all slopes downwards, so far as we can see. The farther we go the less likely it is that we will get any general view.”

It was at that moment that I had my inspiration. My eyes chanced to light upon the enormous gnarled trunk of the gingko tree which cast its huge branches over us. Surely, if its bole exceeded that of all others, its height must do the same. If the rim of the plateau was indeed the highest point, then why should this mighty tree not prove to be a watchtower which commanded the whole country? Now, ever since I ran wild as a lad in Ireland I have been a bold and skilled tree-climber. My comrades might be my masters on the rocks, but I knew that I would be supreme among those branches. Could I only get my legs on to the lowest of the giant off-shoots, then it would be strange indeed if I could not make my way to the top. My comrades were delighted at my idea.

“Our young friend,” said Challenger, bunching up the red apples of his cheeks, “is capable of acrobatic exertions which would be impossible to a man of a more solid, though possibly of a more commanding, appearance. I applaud his resolution.”

“By George, young fellah, you’ve put your hand on it!” said Lord John, clapping me on the back. “How we never came to think of it before I can’t imagine! There’s not more than an hour of daylight left, but if you take your notebook you may be able to get some rough sketch of the place. If we put these three ammunition cases under the branch, I will soon hoist you on to it.”

He stood on the boxes while I faced the trunk, and was gently raising me when Challenger sprang forward and gave me such a thrust with his huge hand that he fairly shot me into the tree. With both arms clasping the branch, I scrambled hard with my feet until I had worked, first my body, and then my knees, onto it. There were three excellent off-shoots, like huge rungs of a ladder, above my head, and a tangle of convenient branches beyond, so that I clambered onwards with such speed that I soon lost sight of the ground and had nothing but foliage beneath me. Now and then I encountered a check, and once I had to shin up a creeper for eight or ten feet, but I made excellent progress, and the booming of Challenger’s voice seemed to be a great distance beneath me. The tree was, however, enormous, and, looking upwards, I could see no thinning of the leaves above my head. There was some thick, bush-like clump which seemed to be a parasite upon a branch up which I was swarming. I leaned my head round it in order to see what was beyond, and I nearly fell out of the tree in my surprise and horror at what I saw.

A face was gazing into mine—at the distance of only a foot or two. The creature that owned it had been crouching behind the parasite, and had looked round it at the same instant that I did. It was a human face—or at least it was far more human than any monkey’s that I have ever seen. It was long, whitish, and blotched with pimples, the nose flattened, and the lower jaw projecting, with a bristle of coarse whiskers round the chin. The eyes, which were under thick and heavy brows, were bestial and ferocious, and as it opened its mouth to snarl what sounded like a curse at me I observed that it had curved, sharp canine teeth. For an instant I read hatred and menace in the evil eyes. Then, as quick as a flash, came an expression of overpowering fear. There was a crash of broken boughs as it dived wildly down into the tangle of green. I caught a glimpse of a hairy body like that of a reddish pig, and then it was gone amid a swirl of leaves and branches.

“What’s the matter?” shouted Roxton from below. “Anything wrong with you?”

“Did you see it?” I cried, with my arms round the branch and all my nerves tingling.

“We heard a row, as if your foot had slipped. What was it?”

I was so shocked at the sudden and strange appearance of this ape-man that I hesitated whether I should not climb down again and tell my experience to my companions. But I was already so far up the great tree that it seemed a humiliation to return without having carried out my mission.

After a long pause, therefore, to recover my breath and my courage, I continued my ascent. Once I put my weight upon a rotten branch and swung for a few seconds by my hands, but in the main it was all easy climbing. Gradually the leaves thinned around me, and I was aware, from the wind upon my face, that I had topped all the trees of the forest. I was determined, however, not to look about me before I had reached the very highest point, so I scrambled on until I had got so far that the topmost branch was bending beneath my weight. There I settled into a convenient fork, and, balancing myself securely, I found myself looking down at a most wonderful panorama of this strange country in which we found ourselves.

The sun was just above the western sky-line, and the evening was a particularly bright and clear one, so that the whole extent of the plateau was visible beneath me. It was, as seen from this height, of an oval contour, with a breadth of about thirty miles and a width of twenty. Its general shape was that of a shallow funnel, all the sides sloping down to a considerable lake in the center. This lake may have been ten miles in circumference, and lay very green and beautiful in the evening light, with a thick fringe of reeds at its edges, and with its surface broken by several yellow sandbanks, which gleamed golden in the mellow sunshine. A number of long dark objects, which were too large for alligators and too long for canoes, lay upon the edges of these patches of sand. With my glass I could clearly see that they were alive, but what their nature might be I could not imagine.

From the side of the plateau on which we were, slopes of woodland, with occasional glades, stretched down for five or six miles to the central lake. I could see at my very feet the glade of the iguanodons, and farther off was a round opening in the trees which marked the swamp of the pterodactyls. On the side facing me, however, the plateau presented a very different aspect. There the basalt cliffs of the outside were reproduced upon the inside, forming an escarpment about two hundred feet high, with a woody slope beneath it. Along the base of these red cliffs, some distance above the ground, I could see a number of dark holes through the glass, which I conjectured to be the mouths of caves. At the opening of one of these something white was shimmering, but I was unable to make out what it was. I sat charting the country until the sun had set and it was so dark that I could no longer distinguish details. Then I climbed down to my companions waiting for me so eagerly at the bottom of the great tree. For once I was the hero of the expedition. Alone I had thought of it, and alone I had done it; and here was the chart which would save us a month’s blind groping among unknown dangers. Each of them shook me solemnly by the hand.

But before they discussed the details of my map I had to tell them of my encounter with the ape-man among the branches.

“He has been there all the time,” said I.

“How do you know that?” asked Lord John.

“Because I have never been without that feeling that something malevolent was watching us. I mentioned it to you, Professor Challenger.”

“Our young friend certainly said something of the kind. He is also the one among us who is endowed with that Celtic temperament which would make him sensitive to such impressions.”

“The whole theory of telepathy—” began Summerlee, filling his pipe.

“Is too vast to be now discussed,” said Challenger, with decision. “Tell me, now,” he added, with the air of a bishop addressing a Sunday-school, “did you happen to observe whether the creature could cross its thumb over its palm?”

“No, indeed.”

“Had it a tail?”

“No.”

“Was the foot prehensile?”

“I do not think it could have made off so fast among the branches if it could not get a grip with its feet.”

“In South America there are, if my memory serves me—you will check the observation, Professor Summerlee—some thirty-six species of monkeys, but the anthropoid ape is unknown. It is clear, however, that he exists in this country, and that he is not the hairy, gorilla-like variety, which is never seen out of Africa or the East.” (I was inclined to interpolate, as I looked at him, that I had seen his first cousin in Kensington.) “This is a whiskered and colorless type, the latter characteristic pointing to the fact that he spends his days in arboreal seclusion. The question which we have to face is whether he approaches more closely to the ape or the man. In the latter case, he may well approximate to what the vulgar have called the ‘missing link.’ The solution of this problem is our immediate duty.”

“It is nothing of the sort,” said Summerlee, abruptly. “Now that, through the intelligence and activity of Mr. Malone” (I cannot help quoting the words), “we have got our chart, our one and only immediate duty is to get ourselves safe and sound out of this awful place.”

“The flesh-pots of civilization,” groaned Challenger.

“The ink-pots of civilization, sir. It is our task to put on record what we have seen, and to leave the further exploration to others. You all agreed as much before Mr. Malone got us the chart.”

“Well,” said Challenger, “I admit that my mind will be more at ease when I am assured that the result of our expedition has been conveyed to our friends. How we are to get down from this place I have not as yet an idea. I have never yet encountered any problem, however, which my inventive brain was unable to solve, and I promise you that to-morrow I will turn my attention to the question of our descent.” And so the matter was allowed to rest.

But that evening, by the light of the fire and of a single candle, the first map of the lost world was elaborated. Every detail which I had roughly noted from my watch-tower was drawn out in its relative place. Challenger’s pencil hovered over the great blank which marked the lake.

“What shall we call it?” he asked.

“Why should you not take the chance of perpetuating your own name?” said Summerlee, with his usual touch of acidity.

“I trust, sir, that my name will have other and more personal claims upon posterity,” said Challenger, severely. “Any ignoramus can hand down his worthless memory by imposing it upon a mountain or a river. I need no such monument.”

Summerlee, with a twisted smile, was about to make some fresh assault when Lord John hastened to intervene.

“It’s up to you, young fellah, to name the lake,” said he. “You saw it first, and, by George, if you choose to put ‘Lake Malone’ on it, no one has a better right.”

“By all means. Let our young friend give it a name,” said Challenger.

“Then,” said I, blushing, I dare say, as I said it, “let it be named Lake Gladys.”

“Don’t you think the Central Lake would be more descriptive?” remarked Summerlee.

“I should prefer Lake Gladys.”

Challenger looked at me sympathetically, and shook his great head in mock disapproval. “Boys will be boys,” said he. “Lake Gladys let it be.”

CHAPTER XII

“It was Dreadful in the Forest”

I have said—or perhaps I have not said, for my memory plays me sad tricks these days—that I glowed with pride when three such men as my comrades thanked me for having saved, or at least greatly helped, the situation. As the youngster of the party, not merely in years, but in experience, character, knowledge, and all that goes to make a man, I had been overshadowed from the first. And now I was coming into my own. I warmed at the thought. Alas! for the pride which goes before a fall! That little glow of self-satisfaction, that added measure of self-confidence, were to lead me on that very night to the most dreadful experience of my life, ending with a shock which turns my heart sick when I think of it.

It came about in this way. I had been unduly excited by the adventure of the tree, and sleep seemed to be impossible. Summerlee was on guard, sitting hunched over our small fire, a quaint, angular figure, his rifle across his knees and his pointed, goat-like beard wagging with each weary nod of his head. Lord John lay silent, wrapped in the South American poncho which he wore, while Challenger snored with a roll and rattle which reverberated through the woods. The full moon was shining brightly, and the air was crisply cold. What a night for a walk! And then suddenly came the thought, “Why not?” Suppose I stole softly away, suppose I made my way down to the central lake, suppose I was back at breakfast with some record of the place—would I not in that case be thought an even more worthy associate? Then, if Summerlee carried the day and some means of escape were found, we should return to London with first-hand knowledge of the central mystery of the plateau, to which I alone, of all men, would have penetrated. I thought of Gladys, with her “There are heroisms all round us.” I seemed to hear her voice as she said it. I thought also of McArdle. What a three column article for the paper! What a foundation for a career! A correspondentship in the next great war might be within my reach. I clutched at a gun—my pockets were full of cartridges—and, parting the thorn bushes at the gate of our zareba, quickly slipped out. My last glance showed me the unconscious Summerlee, most futile of sentinels, still nodding away like a queer mechanical toy in front of the smouldering fire.

I had not gone a hundred yards before I deeply repented my rashness. I may have said somewhere in this chronicle that I am too imaginative to be a really courageous man, but that I have an overpowering fear of seeming afraid. This was the power which now carried me onwards. I simply could not slink back with nothing done. Even if my comrades should not have missed me, and should never know of my weakness, there would still remain some intolerable self-shame in my own soul. And yet I shuddered at the position in which I found myself, and would have given all I possessed at that moment to have been honorably free of the whole business.

It was dreadful in the forest. The trees grew so thickly and their foliage spread so widely that I could see nothing of the moon-light save that here and there the high branches made a tangled filigree against the starry sky. As the eyes became more used to the obscurity one learned that there were different degrees of darkness among the trees—that some were dimly visible, while between and among them there were coal-black shadowed patches, like the mouths of caves, from which I shrank in horror as I passed. I thought of the despairing yell of the tortured iguanodon—that dreadful cry which had echoed through the woods. I thought, too, of the glimpse I had in the light of Lord John’s torch of that bloated, warty, blood-slavering muzzle. Even now I was on its hunting-ground. At any instant it might spring upon me from the shadows—this nameless and horrible monster. I stopped, and, picking a cartridge from my pocket, I opened the breech of my gun. As I touched the lever my heart leaped within me. It was the shot-gun, not the rifle, which I had taken!

Again the impulse to return swept over me. Here, surely, was a most excellent reason for my failure—one for which no one would think the less of me. But again the foolish pride fought against that very word. I could not—must not—fail. After all, my rifle would probably have been as useless as a shot-gun against such dangers as I might meet. If I were to go back to camp to change my weapon I could hardly expect to enter and to leave again without being seen. In that case there would be explanations, and my attempt would no longer be all my own. After a little hesitation, then, I screwed up my courage and continued upon my way, my useless gun under my arm.

The darkness of the forest had been alarming, but even worse was the white, still flood of moonlight in the open glade of the iguanodons. Hid among the bushes, I looked out at it. None of the great brutes were in sight. Perhaps the tragedy which had befallen one of them had driven them from their feeding-ground. In the misty, silvery night I could see no sign of any living thing. Taking courage, therefore, I slipped rapidly across it, and among the jungle on the farther side I picked up once again the brook which was my guide. It was a cheery companion, gurgling and chuckling as it ran, like the dear old trout-stream in the West Country where I have fished at night in my boyhood. So long as I followed it down I must come to the lake, and so long as I followed it back I must come to the camp. Often I had to lose sight of it on account of the tangled brush-wood, but I was always within earshot of its tinkle and splash.

As one descended the slope the woods became thinner, and bushes, with occasional high trees, took the place of the forest. I could make good progress, therefore, and I could see without being seen. I passed close to the pterodactyl swamp, and as I did so, with a dry, crisp, leathery rattle of wings, one of these great creatures—it was twenty feet at least from tip to tip—rose up from somewhere near me and soared into the air. As it passed across the face of the moon the light shone clearly through the membranous wings, and it looked like a flying skeleton against the white, tropical radiance. I crouched low among the bushes, for I knew from past experience that with a single cry the creature could bring a hundred of its loathsome mates about my ears. It was not until it had settled again that I dared to steal onwards upon my journey.

The night had been exceedingly still, but as I advanced I became conscious of a low, rumbling sound, a continuous murmur, somewhere in front of me. This grew louder as I proceeded, until at last it was clearly quite close to me. When I stood still the sound was constant, so that it seemed to come from some stationary cause. It was like a boiling kettle or the bubbling of some great pot. Soon I came upon the source of it, for in the center of a small clearing I found a lake—or a pool, rather, for it was not larger than the basin of the Trafalgar Square fountain—of some black, pitch-like stuff, the surface of which rose and fell in great blisters of bursting gas. The air above it was shimmering with heat, and the ground round was so hot that I could hardly bear to lay my hand on it. It was clear that the great volcanic outburst which had raised this strange plateau so many years ago had not yet entirely spent its forces. Blackened rocks and mounds of lava I had already seen everywhere peeping out from amid the luxuriant vegetation which draped them, but this asphalt pool in the jungle was the first sign that we had of actual existing activity on the slopes of the ancient crater. I had no time to examine it further for I had need to hurry if I were to be back in camp in the morning.

It was a fearsome walk, and one which will be with me so long as memory holds. In the great moonlight clearings I slunk along among the shadows on the margin. In the jungle I crept forward, stopping with a beating heart whenever I heard, as I often did, the crash of breaking branches as some wild beast went past. Now and then great shadows loomed up for an instant and were gone—great, silent shadows which seemed to prowl upon padded feet. How often I stopped with the intention of returning, and yet every time my pride conquered my fear, and sent me on again until my object should be attained.

At last (my watch showed that it was one in the morning) I saw the gleam of water amid the openings of the jungle, and ten minutes later I was among the reeds upon the borders of the central lake. I was exceedingly dry, so I lay down and took a long draught of its waters, which were fresh and cold. There was a broad pathway with many tracks upon it at the spot which I had found, so that it was clearly one of the drinking-places of the animals. Close to the water’s edge there was a huge isolated block of lava. Up this I climbed, and, lying on the top, I had an excellent view in every direction.

The first thing which I saw filled me with amazement. When I described the view from the summit of the great tree, I said that on the farther cliff I could see a number of dark spots, which appeared to be the mouths of caves. Now, as I looked up at the same cliffs, I saw discs of light in every direction, ruddy, clearly-defined patches, like the port-holes of a liner in the darkness. For a moment I thought it was the lava-glow from some volcanic action; but this could not be so. Any volcanic action would surely be down in the hollow and not high among the rocks. What, then, was the alternative? It was wonderful, and yet it must surely be. These ruddy spots must be the reflection of fires within the caves—fires which could only be lit by the hand of man. There were human beings, then, upon the plateau. How gloriously my expedition was justified! Here was news indeed for us to bear back with us to London!

For a long time I lay and watched these red, quivering blotches of light. I suppose they were ten miles off from me, yet even at that distance one could observe how, from time to time, they twinkled or were obscured as someone passed before them. What would I not have given to be able to crawl up to them, to peep in, and to take back some word to my comrades as to the appearance and character of the race who lived in so strange a place! It was out of the question for the moment, and yet surely we could not leave the plateau until we had some definite knowledge upon the point.

Lake Gladys—my own lake—lay like a sheet of quicksilver before me, with a reflected moon shining brightly in the center of it. It was shallow, for in many places I saw low sandbanks protruding above the water. Everywhere upon the still surface I could see signs of life, sometimes mere rings and ripples in the water, sometimes the gleam of a great silver-sided fish in the air, sometimes the arched, slate-colored back of some passing monster. Once upon a yellow sandbank I saw a creature like a huge swan, with a clumsy body and a high, flexible neck, shuffling about upon the margin. Presently it plunged in, and for some time I could see the arched neck and darting head undulating over the water. Then it dived, and I saw it no more.

My attention was soon drawn away from these distant sights and brought back to what was going on at my very feet. Two creatures like large armadillos had come down to the drinking-place, and were squatting at the edge of the water, their long, flexible tongues like red ribbons shooting in and out as they lapped. A huge deer, with branching horns, a magnificent creature which carried itself like a king, came down with its doe and two fawns and drank beside the armadillos. No such deer exist anywhere else upon earth, for the moose or elks which I have seen would hardly have reached its shoulders. Presently it gave a warning snort, and was off with its family among the reeds, while the armadillos also scuttled for shelter. A new-comer, a most monstrous animal, was coming down the path.

For a moment I wondered where I could have seen that ungainly shape, that arched back with triangular fringes along it, that strange bird-like head held close to the ground. Then it came back, to me. It was the stegosaurus—the very creature which Maple White had preserved in his sketch-book, and which had been the first object which arrested the attention of Challenger! There he was—perhaps the very specimen which the American artist had encountered. The ground shook beneath his tremendous weight, and his gulpings of water resounded through the still night. For five minutes he was so close to my rock that by stretching out my hand I could have touched the hideous waving hackles upon his back. Then he lumbered away and was lost among the boulders.

Looking at my watch, I saw that it was half-past two o’clock, and high time, therefore, that I started upon my homeward journey. There was no difficulty about the direction in which I should return for all along I had kept the little brook upon my left, and it opened into the central lake within a stone’s-throw of the boulder upon which I had been lying. I set off, therefore, in high spirits, for I felt that I had done good work and was bringing back a fine budget of news for my companions. Foremost of all, of course, were the sight of the fiery caves and the certainty that some troglodytic race inhabited them. But besides that I could speak from experience of the central lake. I could testify that it was full of strange creatures, and I had seen several land forms of primeval life which we had not before encountered. I reflected as I walked that few men in the world could have spent a stranger night or added more to human knowledge in the course of it.

I was plodding up the slope, turning these thoughts over in my mind, and had reached a point which may have been half-way to home, when my mind was brought back to my own position by a strange noise behind me. It was something between a snore and a growl, low, deep, and exceedingly menacing. Some strange creature was evidently near me, but nothing could be seen, so I hastened more rapidly upon my way. I had traversed half a mile or so when suddenly the sound was repeated, still behind me, but louder and more menacing than before. My heart stood still within me as it flashed across me that the beast, whatever it was, must surely be after ME. My skin grew cold and my hair rose at the thought. That these monsters should tear each other to pieces was a part of the strange struggle for existence, but that they should turn upon modern man, that they should deliberately track and hunt down the predominant human, was a staggering and fearsome thought. I remembered again the blood-beslobbered face which we had seen in the glare of Lord John’s torch, like some horrible vision from the deepest circle of Dante’s hell. With my knees shaking beneath me, I stood and glared with starting eyes down the moonlit path which lay behind me. All was quiet as in a dream landscape. Silver clearings and the black patches of the bushes—nothing else could I see. Then from out of the silence, imminent and threatening, there came once more that low, throaty croaking, far louder and closer than before. There could no longer be a doubt. Something was on my trail, and was closing in upon me every minute.

I stood like a man paralyzed, still staring at the ground which I had traversed. Then suddenly I saw it. There was movement among the bushes at the far end of the clearing which I had just traversed. A great dark shadow disengaged itself and hopped out into the clear moonlight. I say “hopped” advisedly, for the beast moved like a kangaroo, springing along in an erect position upon its powerful hind legs, while its front ones were held bent in front of it. It was of enormous size and power, like an erect elephant, but its movements, in spite of its bulk, were exceedingly alert. For a moment, as I saw its shape, I hoped that it was an iguanodon, which I knew to be harmless, but, ignorant as I was, I soon saw that this was a very different creature. Instead of the gentle, deer-shaped head of the great three-toed leaf-eater, this beast had a broad, squat, toad-like face like that which had alarmed us in our camp. His ferocious cry and the horrible energy of his pursuit both assured me that this was surely one of the great flesh-eating dinosaurs, the most terrible beasts which have ever walked this earth. As the huge brute loped along it dropped forward upon its fore-paws and brought its nose to the ground every twenty yards or so. It was smelling out my trail. Sometimes, for an instant, it was at fault. Then it would catch it up again and come bounding swiftly along the path I had taken.

Even now when I think of that nightmare the sweat breaks out upon my brow. What could I do? My useless fowling-piece was in my hand. What help could I get from that? I looked desperately round for some rock or tree, but I was in a bushy jungle with nothing higher than a sapling within sight, while I knew that the creature behind me could tear down an ordinary tree as though it were a reed. My only possible chance lay in flight. I could not move swiftly over the rough, broken ground, but as I looked round me in despair I saw a well-marked, hard-beaten path which ran across in front of me. We had seen several of the sort, the runs of various wild beasts, during our expeditions. Along this I could perhaps hold my own, for I was a fast runner, and in excellent condition. Flinging away my useless gun, I set myself to do such a half-mile as I have never done before or since. My limbs ached, my chest heaved, I felt that my throat would burst for want of air, and yet with that horror behind me I ran and I ran and ran. At last I paused, hardly able to move. For a moment I thought that I had thrown him off. The path lay still behind me. And then suddenly, with a crashing and a rending, a thudding of giant feet and a panting of monster lungs the beast was upon me once more. He was at my very heels. I was lost.

Madman that I was to linger so long before I fled! Up to then he had hunted by scent, and his movement was slow. But he had actually seen me as I started to run. From then onwards he had hunted by sight, for the path showed him where I had gone. Now, as he came round the curve, he was springing in great bounds. The moonlight shone upon his huge projecting eyes, the row of enormous teeth in his open mouth, and the gleaming fringe of claws upon his short, powerful forearms. With a scream of terror I turned and rushed wildly down the path. Behind me the thick, gasping breathing of the creature sounded louder and louder. His heavy footfall was beside me. Every instant I expected to feel his grip upon my back. And then suddenly there came a crash—I was falling through space, and everything beyond was darkness and rest.

As I emerged from my unconsciousness—which could not, I think, have lasted more than a few minutes—I was aware of a most dreadful and penetrating smell. Putting out my hand in the darkness I came upon something which felt like a huge lump of meat, while my other hand closed upon a large bone. Up above me there was a circle of starlit sky, which showed me that I was lying at the bottom of a deep pit. Slowly I staggered to my feet and felt myself all over. I was stiff and sore from head to foot, but there was no limb which would not move, no joint which would not bend. As the circumstances of my fall came back into my confused brain, I looked up in terror, expecting to see that dreadful head silhouetted against the paling sky. There was no sign of the monster, however, nor could I hear any sound from above. I began to walk slowly round, therefore, feeling in every direction to find out what this strange place could be into which I had been so opportunely precipitated.

It was, as I have said, a pit, with sharply-sloping walls and a level bottom about twenty feet across. This bottom was littered with great gobbets of flesh, most of which was in the last state of putridity. The atmosphere was poisonous and horrible. After tripping and stumbling over these lumps of decay, I came suddenly against something hard, and I found that an upright post was firmly fixed in the center of the hollow. It was so high that I could not reach the top of it with my hand, and it appeared to be covered with grease.

Suddenly I remembered that I had a tin box of wax-vestas in my pocket. Striking one of them, I was able at last to form some opinion of this place into which I had fallen. There could be no question as to its nature. It was a trap—made by the hand of man. The post in the center, some nine feet long, was sharpened at the upper end, and was black with the stale blood of the creatures who had been impaled upon it. The remains scattered about were fragments of the victims, which had been cut away in order to clear the stake for the next who might blunder in. I remembered that Challenger had declared that man could not exist upon the plateau, since with his feeble weapons he could not hold his own against the monsters who roamed over it. But now it was clear enough how it could be done. In their narrow-mouthed caves the natives, whoever they might be, had refuges into which the huge saurians could not penetrate, while with their developed brains they were capable of setting such traps, covered with branches, across the paths which marked the run of the animals as would destroy them in spite of all their strength and activity. Man was always the master.

The sloping wall of the pit was not difficult for an active man to climb, but I hesitated long before I trusted myself within reach of the dreadful creature which had so nearly destroyed me. How did I know that he was not lurking in the nearest clump of bushes, waiting for my reappearance? I took heart, however, as I recalled a conversation between Challenger and Summerlee upon the habits of the great saurians. Both were agreed that the monsters were practically brainless, that there was no room for reason in their tiny cranial cavities, and that if they have disappeared from the rest of the world it was assuredly on account of their own stupidity, which made it impossible for them to adapt themselves to changing conditions.

To lie in wait for me now would mean that the creature had appreciated what had happened to me, and this in turn would argue some power connecting cause and effect. Surely it was more likely that a brainless creature, acting solely by vague predatory instinct, would give up the chase when I disappeared, and, after a pause of astonishment, would wander away in search of some other prey? I clambered to the edge of the pit and looked over. The stars were fading, the sky was whitening, and the cold wind of morning blew pleasantly upon my face. I could see or hear nothing of my enemy. Slowly I climbed out and sat for a while upon the ground, ready to spring back into my refuge if any danger should appear. Then, reassured by the absolute stillness and by the growing light, I took my courage in both hands and stole back along the path which I had come. Some distance down it I picked up my gun, and shortly afterwards struck the brook which was my guide. So, with many a frightened backward glance, I made for home.

And suddenly there came something to remind me of my absent companions. In the clear, still morning air there sounded far away the sharp, hard note of a single rifle-shot. I paused and listened, but there was nothing more. For a moment I was shocked at the thought that some sudden danger might have befallen them. But then a simpler and more natural explanation came to my mind. It was now broad daylight. No doubt my absence had been noticed. They had imagined, that I was lost in the woods, and had fired this shot to guide me home. It is true that we had made a strict resolution against firing, but if it seemed to them that I might be in danger they would not hesitate. It was for me now to hurry on as fast as possible, and so to reassure them.

I was weary and spent, so my progress was not so fast as I wished; but at last I came into regions which I knew. There was the swamp of the pterodactyls upon my left; there in front of me was the glade of the iguanodons. Now I was in the last belt of trees which separated me from Fort Challenger. I raised my voice in a cheery shout to allay their fears. No answering greeting came back to me. My heart sank at that ominous stillness. I quickened my pace into a run. The zareba rose before me, even as I had left it, but the gate was open. I rushed in. In the cold, morning light it was a fearful sight which met my eyes. Our effects were scattered in wild confusion over the ground; my comrades had disappeared, and close to the smouldering ashes of our fire the grass was stained crimson with a hideous pool of blood.

I was so stunned by this sudden shock that for a time I must have nearly lost my reason. I have a vague recollection, as one remembers a bad dream, of rushing about through the woods all round the empty camp, calling wildly for my companions. No answer came back from the silent shadows. The horrible thought that I might never see them again, that I might find myself abandoned all alone in that dreadful place, with no possible way of descending into the world below, that I might live and die in that nightmare country, drove me to desperation. I could have torn my hair and beaten my head in my despair. Only now did I realize how I had learned to lean upon my companions, upon the serene self-confidence of Challenger, and upon the masterful, humorous coolness of Lord John Roxton. Without them I was like a child in the dark, helpless and powerless. I did not know which way to turn or what I should do first.

After a period, during which I sat in bewilderment, I set myself to try and discover what sudden misfortune could have befallen my companions. The whole disordered appearance of the camp showed that there had been some sort of attack, and the rifle-shot no doubt marked the time when it had occurred. That there should have been only one shot showed that it had been all over in an instant. The rifles still lay upon the ground, and one of them—Lord John’s—had the empty cartridge in the breech. The blankets of Challenger and of Summerlee beside the fire suggested that they had been asleep at the time. The cases of ammunition and of food were scattered about in a wild litter, together with our unfortunate cameras and plate-carriers, but none of them were missing. On the other hand, all the exposed provisions—and I remembered that there were a considerable quantity of them—were gone. They were animals, then, and not natives, who had made the inroad, for surely the latter would have left nothing behind.

But if animals, or some single terrible animal, then what had become of my comrades? A ferocious beast would surely have destroyed them and left their remains. It is true that there was that one hideous pool of blood, which told of violence. Such a monster as had pursued me during the night could have carried away a victim as easily as a cat would a mouse. In that case the others would have followed in pursuit. But then they would assuredly have taken their rifles with them. The more I tried to think it out with my confused and weary brain the less could I find any plausible explanation. I searched round in the forest, but could see no tracks which could help me to a conclusion. Once I lost myself, and it was only by good luck, and after an hour of wandering, that I found the camp once more.

Suddenly a thought came to me and brought some little comfort to my heart. I was not absolutely alone in the world. Down at the bottom of the cliff, and within call of me, was waiting the faithful Zambo. I went to the edge of the plateau and looked over. Sure enough, he was squatting among his blankets beside his fire in his little camp. But, to my amazement, a second man was seated in front of him. For an instant my heart leaped for joy, as I thought that one of my comrades had made his way safely down. But a second glance dispelled the hope. The rising sun shone red upon the man’s skin. He was an Indian. I shouted loudly and waved my handkerchief. Presently Zambo looked up, waved his hand, and turned to ascend the pinnacle. In a short time he was standing close to me and listening with deep distress to the story which I told him.

“Devil got them for sure, Massa Malone,” said he. “You got into the devil’s country, sah, and he take you all to himself. You take advice, Massa Malone, and come down quick, else he get you as well.”

“How can I come down, Zambo?”

“You get creepers from trees, Massa Malone. Throw them over here. I make fast to this stump, and so you have bridge.”

“We have thought of that. There are no creepers here which could bear us.”

“Send for ropes, Massa Malone.”

“Who can I send, and where?”

“Send to Indian villages, sah. Plenty hide rope in Indian village. Indian down below; send him.”

“Who is he?

“One of our Indians. Other ones beat him and take away his pay. He come back to us. Ready now to take letter, bring rope,—anything.”

To take a letter! Why not? Perhaps he might bring help; but in any case he would ensure that our lives were not spent for nothing, and that news of all that we had won for Science should reach our friends at home. I had two completed letters already waiting. I would spend the day in writing a third, which would bring my experiences absolutely up to date. The Indian could bear this back to the world. I ordered Zambo, therefore, to come again in the evening, and I spent my miserable and lonely day in recording my own adventures of the night before. I also drew up a note, to be given to any white merchant or captain of a steam-boat whom the Indian could find, imploring them to see that ropes were sent to us, since our lives must depend upon it. These documents I threw to Zambo in the evening, and also my purse, which contained three English sovereigns. These were to be given to the Indian, and he was promised twice as much if he returned with the ropes.

So now you will understand, my dear Mr. McArdle, how this communication reaches you, and you will also know the truth, in case you never hear again from your unfortunate correspondent. To-night I am too weary and too depressed to make my plans. To-morrow I must think out some way by which I shall keep in touch with this camp, and yet search round for any traces of my unhappy friends.

CHAPTER XIII

“A Sight which I shall Never Forget”

Just as the sun was setting upon that melancholy night I saw the lonely figure of the Indian upon the vast plain beneath me, and I watched him, our one faint hope of salvation, until he disappeared in the rising mists of evening which lay, rose-tinted from the setting sun, between the far-off river and me.

It was quite dark when I at last turned back to our stricken camp, and my last vision as I went was the red gleam of Zambo’s fire, the one point of light in the wide world below, as was his faithful presence in my own shadowed soul. And yet I felt happier than I had done since this crushing blow had fallen upon me, for it was good to think that the world should know what we had done, so that at the worst our names should not perish with our bodies, but should go down to posterity associated with the result of our labors.

It was an awesome thing to sleep in that ill-fated camp; and yet it was even more unnerving to do so in the jungle. One or the other it must be. Prudence, on the one hand, warned me that I should remain on guard, but exhausted Nature, on the other, declared that I should do nothing of the kind. I climbed up on to a limb of the great gingko tree, but there was no secure perch on its rounded surface, and I should certainly have fallen off and broken my neck the moment I began to doze. I got down, therefore, and pondered over what I should do. Finally, I closed the door of the zareba, lit three separate fires in a triangle, and having eaten a hearty supper dropped off into a profound sleep, from which I had a strange and most welcome awakening. In the early morning, just as day was breaking, a hand was laid upon my arm, and starting up, with all my nerves in a tingle and my hand feeling for a rifle, I gave a cry of joy as in the cold gray light I saw Lord John Roxton kneeling beside me.

It was he—and yet it was not he. I had left him calm in his bearing, correct in his person, prim in his dress. Now he was pale and wild-eyed, gasping as he breathed like one who has run far and fast. His gaunt face was scratched and bloody, his clothes were hanging in rags, and his hat was gone. I stared in amazement, but he gave me no chance for questions. He was grabbing at our stores all the time he spoke.

“Quick, young fellah! Quick!” he cried. “Every moment counts. Get the rifles, both of them. I have the other two. Now, all the cartridges you can gather. Fill up your pockets. Now, some food. Half a dozen tins will do. That’s all right! Don’t wait to talk or think. Get a move on, or we are done!”

Still half-awake, and unable to imagine what it all might mean, I found myself hurrying madly after him through the wood, a rifle under each arm and a pile of various stores in my hands. He dodged in and out through the thickest of the scrub until he came to a dense clump of brush-wood. Into this he rushed, regardless of thorns, and threw himself into the heart of it, pulling me down by his side.

“There!” he panted. “I think we are safe here. They’ll make for the camp as sure as fate. It will be their first idea. But this should puzzle ’em.”

“What is it all?” I asked, when I had got my breath. “Where are the professors? And who is it that is after us?”

“The ape-men,” he cried. “My God, what brutes! Don’t raise your voice, for they have long ears—sharp eyes, too, but no power of scent, so far as I could judge, so I don’t think they can sniff us out. Where have you been, young fellah? You were well out of it.”

In a few sentences I whispered what I had done.

“Pretty bad,” said he, when he had heard of the dinosaur and the pit. “It isn’t quite the place for a rest cure. What? But I had no idea what its possibilities were until those devils got hold of us. The man-eatin’ Papuans had me once, but they are Chesterfields compared to this crowd.”

“How did it happen?” I asked.

“It was in the early mornin’. Our learned friends were just stirrin’. Hadn’t even begun to argue yet. Suddenly it rained apes. They came down as thick as apples out of a tree. They had been assemblin’ in the dark, I suppose, until that great tree over our heads was heavy with them. I shot one of them through the belly, but before we knew where we were they had us spread-eagled on our backs. I call them apes, but they carried sticks and stones in their hands and jabbered talk to each other, and ended up by tyin’ our hands with creepers, so they are ahead of any beast that I have seen in my wanderin’s. Ape-men—that’s what they are—Missin’ Links, and I wish they had stayed missin’. They carried off their wounded comrade—he was bleedin’ like a pig—and then they sat around us, and if ever I saw frozen murder it was in their faces. They were big fellows, as big as a man and a deal stronger. Curious glassy gray eyes they have, under red tufts, and they just sat and gloated and gloated. Challenger is no chicken, but even he was cowed. He managed to struggle to his feet, and yelled out at them to have done with it and get it over. I think he had gone a bit off his head at the suddenness of it, for he raged and cursed at them like a lunatic. If they had been a row of his favorite Pressmen he could not have slanged them worse.”

“Well, what did they do?” I was enthralled by the strange story which my companion was whispering into my ear, while all the time his keen eyes were shooting in every direction and his hand grasping his cocked rifle.

“I thought it was the end of us, but instead of that it started them on a new line. They all jabbered and chattered together. Then one of them stood out beside Challenger. You’ll smile, young fellah, but ’pon my word they might have been kinsmen. I couldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. This old ape-man—he was their chief—was a sort of red Challenger, with every one of our friend’s beauty points, only just a trifle more so. He had the short body, the big shoulders, the round chest, no neck, a great ruddy frill of a beard, the tufted eyebrows, the ‘What do you want, damn you!’ look about the eyes, and the whole catalogue. When the ape-man stood by Challenger and put his paw on his shoulder, the thing was complete. Summerlee was a bit hysterical, and he laughed till he cried. The ape-men laughed too—or at least they put up the devil of a cacklin’—and they set to work to drag us off through the forest. They wouldn’t touch the guns and things—thought them dangerous, I expect—but they carried away all our loose food. Summerlee and I got some rough handlin’ on the way—there’s my skin and my clothes to prove it—for they took us a bee-line through the brambles, and their own hides are like leather. But Challenger was all right. Four of them carried him shoulder high, and he went like a Roman emperor. What’s that?”

It was a strange clicking noise in the distance not unlike castanets.

“There they go!” said my companion, slipping cartridges into the second double barrelled “Express.” “Load them all up, young fellah my lad, for we’re not going to be taken alive, and don’t you think it! That’s the row they make when they are excited. By George! they’ll have something to excite them if they put us up. The ‘Last Stand of the Grays’ won’t be in it. ‘With their rifles grasped in their stiffened hands, mid a ring of the dead and dyin’,’ as some fathead sings. Can you hear them now?”

“Very far away.”

“That little lot will do no good, but I expect their search parties are all over the wood. Well, I was telling you my tale of woe. They got us soon to this town of theirs—about a thousand huts of branches and leaves in a great grove of trees near the edge of the cliff. It’s three or four miles from here. The filthy beasts fingered me all over, and I feel as if I should never be clean again. They tied us up—the fellow who handled me could tie like a bosun—and there we lay with our toes up, beneath a tree, while a great brute stood guard over us with a club in his hand. When I say ‘we’ I mean Summerlee and myself. Old Challenger was up a tree, eatin’ pines and havin’ the time of his life. I’m bound to say that he managed to get some fruit to us, and with his own hands he loosened our bonds. If you’d seen him sitting up in that tree hob-nobbin’ with his twin brother—and singin’ in that rollin’ bass of his, ‘Ring out, wild bells,’ cause music of any kind seemed to put ’em in a good humor, you’d have smiled; but we weren’t in much mood for laughin’, as you can guess. They were inclined, within limits, to let him do what he liked, but they drew the line pretty sharply at us. It was a mighty consolation to us all to know that you were runnin’ loose and had the archives in your keepin’.

“Well, now, young fellah, I’ll tell you what will surprise you. You say you saw signs of men, and fires, traps, and the like. Well, we have seen the natives themselves. Poor devils they were, down-faced little chaps, and had enough to make them so. It seems that the humans hold one side of this plateau—over yonder, where you saw the caves—and the ape-men hold this side, and there is bloody war between them all the time. That’s the situation, so far as I could follow it. Well, yesterday the ape-men got hold of a dozen of the humans and brought them in as prisoners. You never heard such a jabberin’ and shriekin’ in your life. The men were little red fellows, and had been bitten and clawed so that they could hardly walk. The ape-men put two of them to death there and then—fairly pulled the arm off one of them—it was perfectly beastly. Plucky little chaps they are, and hardly gave a squeak. But it turned us absolutely sick. Summerlee fainted, and even Challenger had as much as he could stand. I think they have cleared, don’t you?”

We listened intently, but nothing save the calling of the birds broke the deep peace of the forest. Lord Roxton went on with his story.

“I think you have had the escape of your life, young fellah my lad. It was catchin’ those Indians that put you clean out of their heads, else they would have been back to the camp for you as sure as fate and gathered you in. Of course, as you said, they have been watchin’ us from the beginnin’ out of that tree, and they knew perfectly well that we were one short. However, they could think only of this new haul; so it was I, and not a bunch of apes, that dropped in on you in the morning. Well, we had a horrid business afterwards. My God! what a nightmare the whole thing is! You remember the great bristle of sharp canes down below where we found the skeleton of the American? Well, that is just under ape-town, and that’s the jumpin’-off place of their prisoners. I expect there’s heaps of skeletons there, if we looked for ’em. They have a sort of clear parade-ground on the top, and they make a proper ceremony about it. One by one the poor devils have to jump, and the game is to see whether they are merely dashed to pieces or whether they get skewered on the canes. They took us out to see it, and the whole tribe lined up on the edge. Four of the Indians jumped, and the canes went through ’em like knittin’ needles through a pat of butter. No wonder we found that poor Yankee’s skeleton with the canes growin’ between his ribs. It was horrible—but it was doocedly interestin’ too. We were all fascinated to see them take the dive, even when we thought it would be our turn next on the spring-board.

“Well, it wasn’t. They kept six of the Indians up for to-day—that’s how I understood it—but I fancy we were to be the star performers in the show. Challenger might get off, but Summerlee and I were in the bill. Their language is more than half signs, and it was not hard to follow them. So I thought it was time we made a break for it. I had been plottin’ it out a bit, and had one or two things clear in my mind. It was all on me, for Summerlee was useless and Challenger not much better. The only time they got together they got slangin’ because they couldn’t agree upon the scientific classification of these red-headed devils that had got hold of us. One said it was the dryopithecus of Java, the other said it was pithecanthropus. Madness, I call it—Loonies, both. But, as I say, I had thought out one or two points that were helpful. One was that these brutes could not run as fast as a man in the open. They have short, bandy legs, you see, and heavy bodies. Even Challenger could give a few yards in a hundred to the best of them, and you or I would be a perfect Shrubb. Another point was that they knew nothin’ about guns. I don’t believe they ever understood how the fellow I shot came by his hurt. If we could get at our guns there was no sayin’ what we could do.

“So I broke away early this mornin’, gave my guard a kick in the tummy that laid him out, and sprinted for the camp. There I got you and the guns, and here we are.”

“But the professors!” I cried, in consternation.

“Well, we must just go back and fetch ’em. I couldn’t bring ’em with me. Challenger was up the tree, and Summerlee was not fit for the effort. The only chance was to get the guns and try a rescue. Of course they may scupper them at once in revenge. I don’t think they would touch Challenger, but I wouldn’t answer for Summerlee. But they would have had him in any case. Of that I am certain. So I haven’t made matters any worse by boltin’. But we are honor bound to go back and have them out or see it through with them. So you can make up your soul, young fellah my lad, for it will be one way or the other before evenin’.”

I have tried to imitate here Lord Roxton’s jerky talk, his short, strong sentences, the half-humorous, half-reckless tone that ran through it all. But he was a born leader. As danger thickened his jaunty manner would increase, his speech become more racy, his cold eyes glitter into ardent life, and his Don Quixote moustache bristle with joyous excitement. His love of danger, his intense appreciation of the drama of an adventure—all the more intense for being held tightly in—his consistent view that every peril in life is a form of sport, a fierce game betwixt you and Fate, with Death as a forfeit, made him a wonderful companion at such hours. If it were not for our fears as to the fate of our companions, it would have been a positive joy to throw myself with such a man into such an affair. We were rising from our brushwood hiding-place when suddenly I felt his grip upon my arm.

“By George!” he whispered, “here they come!”

From where we lay we could look down a brown aisle, arched with green, formed by the trunks and branches. Along this a party of the ape-men were passing. They went in single file, with bent legs and rounded backs, their hands occasionally touching the ground, their heads turning to left and right as they trotted along. Their crouching gait took away from their height, but I should put them at five feet or so, with long arms and enormous chests. Many of them carried sticks, and at the distance they looked like a line of very hairy and deformed human beings. For a moment I caught this clear glimpse of them. Then they were lost among the bushes.

“Not this time,” said Lord John, who had caught up his rifle. “Our best chance is to lie quiet until they have given up the search. Then we shall see whether we can’t get back to their town and hit ’em where it hurts most. Give ’em an hour and we’ll march.”

We filled in the time by opening one of our food tins and making sure of our breakfast. Lord Roxton had had nothing but some fruit since the morning before and ate like a starving man. Then, at last, our pockets bulging with cartridges and a rifle in each hand, we started off upon our mission of rescue. Before leaving it we carefully marked our little hiding-place among the brush-wood and its bearing to Fort Challenger, that we might find it again if we needed it. We slunk through the bushes in silence until we came to the very edge of the cliff, close to the old camp. There we halted, and Lord John gave me some idea of his plans.

“So long as we are among the thick trees these swine are our masters,” said he. “They can see us and we cannot see them. But in the open it is different. There we can move faster than they. So we must stick to the open all we can. The edge of the plateau has fewer large trees than further inland. So that’s our line of advance. Go slowly, keep your eyes open and your rifle ready. Above all, never let them get you prisoner while there is a cartridge left—that’s my last word to you, young fellah.”

When we reached the edge of the cliff I looked over and saw our good old black Zambo sitting smoking on a rock below us. I would have given a great deal to have hailed him and told him how we were placed, but it was too dangerous, lest we should be heard. The woods seemed to be full of the ape-men; again and again we heard their curious clicking chatter. At such times we plunged into the nearest clump of bushes and lay still until the sound had passed away. Our advance, therefore, was very slow, and two hours at least must have passed before I saw by Lord John’s cautious movements that we must be close to our destination. He motioned to me to lie still, and he crawled forward himself. In a minute he was back again, his face quivering with eagerness.

“Come!” said he. “Come quick! I hope to the Lord we are not too late already!”

I found myself shaking with nervous excitement as I scrambled forward and lay down beside him, looking out through the bushes at a clearing which stretched before us.

It was a sight which I shall never forget until my dying day—so weird, so impossible, that I do not know how I am to make you realize it, or how in a few years I shall bring myself to believe in it if I live to sit once more on a lounge in the Savage Club and look out on the drab solidity of the Embankment. I know that it will seem then to be some wild nightmare, some delirium of fever. Yet I will set it down now, while it is still fresh in my memory, and one at least, the man who lay in the damp grasses by my side, will know if I have lied.

A wide, open space lay before us—some hundreds of yards across—all green turf and low bracken growing to the very edge of the cliff. Round this clearing there was a semi-circle of trees with curious huts built of foliage piled one above the other among the branches. A rookery, with every nest a little house, would best convey the idea. The openings of these huts and the branches of the trees were thronged with a dense mob of ape-people, whom from their size I took to be the females and infants of the tribe. They formed the background of the picture, and were all looking out with eager interest at the same scene which fascinated and bewildered us.

In the open, and near the edge of the cliff, there had assembled a crowd of some hundred of these shaggy, red-haired creatures, many of them of immense size, and all of them horrible to look upon. There was a certain discipline among them, for none of them attempted to break the line which had been formed. In front there stood a small group of Indians—little, clean-limbed, red fellows, whose skins glowed like polished bronze in the strong sunlight. A tall, thin white man was standing beside them, his head bowed, his arms folded, his whole attitude expressive of his horror and dejection. There was no mistaking the angular form of Professor Summerlee.

In front of and around this dejected group of prisoners were several ape-men, who watched them closely and made all escape impossible. Then, right out from all the others and close to the edge of the cliff, were two figures, so strange, and under other circumstances so ludicrous, that they absorbed my attention. The one was our comrade, Professor Challenger. The remains of his coat still hung in strips from his shoulders, but his shirt had been all torn out, and his great beard merged itself in the black tangle which covered his mighty chest. He had lost his hat, and his hair, which had grown long in our wanderings, was flying in wild disorder. A single day seemed to have changed him from the highest product of modern civilization to the most desperate savage in South America. Beside him stood his master, the king of the ape-men. In all things he was, as Lord John had said, the very image of our Professor, save that his coloring was red instead of black. The same short, broad figure, the same heavy shoulders, the same forward hang of the arms, the same bristling beard merging itself in the hairy chest. Only above the eyebrows, where the sloping forehead and low, curved skull of the ape-man were in sharp contrast to the broad brow and magnificent cranium of the European, could one see any marked difference. At every other point the king was an absurd parody of the Professor.

All this, which takes me so long to describe, impressed itself upon me in a few seconds. Then we had very different things to think of, for an active drama was in progress. Two of the ape-men had seized one of the Indians out of the group and dragged him forward to the edge of the cliff. The king raised his hand as a signal. They caught the man by his leg and arm, and swung him three times backwards and forwards with tremendous violence. Then, with a frightful heave they shot the poor wretch over the precipice. With such force did they throw him that he curved high in the air before beginning to drop. As he vanished from sight, the whole assembly, except the guards, rushed forward to the edge of the precipice, and there was a long pause of absolute silence, broken by a mad yell of delight. They sprang about, tossing their long, hairy arms in the air and howling with exultation. Then they fell back from the edge, formed themselves again into line, and waited for the next victim.

This time it was Summerlee. Two of his guards caught him by the wrists and pulled him brutally to the front. His thin figure and long limbs struggled and fluttered like a chicken being dragged from a coop. Challenger had turned to the king and waved his hands frantically before him. He was begging, pleading, imploring for his comrade’s life. The ape-man pushed him roughly aside and shook his head. It was the last conscious movement he was to make upon earth. Lord John’s rifle cracked, and the king sank down, a tangled red sprawling thing, upon the ground.

“Shoot into the thick of them! Shoot! sonny, shoot!” cried my companion.

There are strange red depths in the soul of the most commonplace man. I am tenderhearted by nature, and have found my eyes moist many a time over the scream of a wounded hare. Yet the blood lust was on me now. I found myself on my feet emptying one magazine, then the other, clicking open the breech to re-load, snapping it to again, while cheering and yelling with pure ferocity and joy of slaughter as I did so. With our four guns the two of us made a horrible havoc. Both the guards who held Summerlee were down, and he was staggering about like a drunken man in his amazement, unable to realize that he was a free man. The dense mob of ape-men ran about in bewilderment, marveling whence this storm of death was coming or what it might mean. They waved, gesticulated, screamed, and tripped up over those who had fallen. Then, with a sudden impulse, they all rushed in a howling crowd to the trees for shelter, leaving the ground behind them spotted with their stricken comrades. The prisoners were left for the moment standing alone in the middle of the clearing.

Challenger’s quick brain had grasped the situation. He seized the bewildered Summerlee by the arm, and they both ran towards us. Two of their guards bounded after them and fell to two bullets from Lord John. We ran forward into the open to meet our friends, and pressed a loaded rifle into the hands of each. But Summerlee was at the end of his strength. He could hardly totter. Already the ape-men were recovering from their panic. They were coming through the brushwood and threatening to cut us off. Challenger and I ran Summerlee along, one at each of his elbows, while Lord John covered our retreat, firing again and again as savage heads snarled at us out of the bushes. For a mile or more the chattering brutes were at our very heels. Then the pursuit slackened, for they learned our power and would no longer face that unerring rifle. When we had at last reached the camp, we looked back and found ourselves alone.

So it seemed to us; and yet we were mistaken. We had hardly closed the thornbush door of our zareba, clasped each other’s hands, and thrown ourselves panting upon the ground beside our spring, when we heard a patter of feet and then a gentle, plaintive crying from outside our entrance. Lord Roxton rushed forward, rifle in hand, and threw it open. There, prostrate upon their faces, lay the little red figures of the four surviving Indians, trembling with fear of us and yet imploring our protection. With an expressive sweep of his hands one of them pointed to the woods around them, and indicated that they were full of danger. Then, darting forward, he threw his arms round Lord John’s legs, and rested his face upon them.

“By George!” cried our peer, pulling at his moustache in great perplexity, “I say—what the deuce are we to do with these people? Get up, little chappie, and take your face off my boots.”

Summerlee was sitting up and stuffing some tobacco into his old briar.

“We’ve got to see them safe,” said he. “You’ve pulled us all out of the jaws of death. My word! it was a good bit of work!”

“Admirable!” cried Challenger. “Admirable! Not only we as individuals, but European science collectively, owe you a deep debt of gratitude for what you have done. I do not hesitate to say that the disappearance of Professor Summerlee and myself would have left an appreciable gap in modern zoological history. Our young friend here and you have done most excellently well.”

He beamed at us with the old paternal smile, but European science would have been somewhat amazed could they have seen their chosen child, the hope of the future, with his tangled, unkempt head, his bare chest, and his tattered clothes. He had one of the meat-tins between his knees, and sat with a large piece of cold Australian mutton between his fingers. The Indian looked up at him, and then, with a little yelp, cringed to the ground and clung to Lord John’s leg.

“Don’t you be scared, my bonnie boy,” said Lord John, patting the matted head in front of him. “He can’t stick your appearance, Challenger; and, by George! I don’t wonder. All right, little chap, he’s only a human, just the same as the rest of us.”

“Really, sir!” cried the Professor.

“Well, it’s lucky for you, Challenger, that you ARE a little out of the ordinary. If you hadn’t been so like the king—”

“Upon my word, Lord John, you allow yourself great latitude.”

“Well, it’s a fact.”

“I beg, sir, that you will change the subject. Your remarks are irrelevant and unintelligible. The question before us is what are we to do with these Indians? The obvious thing is to escort them home, if we knew where their home was.”

“There is no difficulty about that,” said I. “They live in the caves on the other side of the central lake.”

“Our young friend here knows where they live. I gather that it is some distance.”

“A good twenty miles,” said I.

Summerlee gave a groan.

“I, for one, could never get there. Surely I hear those brutes still howling upon our track.”

As he spoke, from the dark recesses of the woods we heard far away the jabbering cry of the ape-men. The Indians once more set up a feeble wail of fear.

“We must move, and move quick!” said Lord John. “You help Summerlee, young fellah. These Indians will carry stores. Now, then, come along before they can see us.”

In less than half-an-hour we had reached our brushwood retreat and concealed ourselves. All day we heard the excited calling of the ape-men in the direction of our old camp, but none of them came our way, and the tired fugitives, red and white, had a long, deep sleep. I was dozing myself in the evening when someone plucked my sleeve, and I found Challenger kneeling beside me.

“You keep a diary of these events, and you expect eventually to publish it, Mr. Malone,” said he, with solemnity.

“I am only here as a Press reporter,” I answered.

“Exactly. You may have heard some rather fatuous remarks of Lord John Roxton’s which seemed to imply that there was some—some resemblance—”

“Yes, I heard them.”

“I need not say that any publicity given to such an idea—any levity in your narrative of what occurred—would be exceedingly offensive to me.”

“I will keep well within the truth.”

“Lord John’s observations are frequently exceedingly fanciful, and he is capable of attributing the most absurd reasons to the respect which is always shown by the most undeveloped races to dignity and character. You follow my meaning?”

“Entirely.”

“I leave the matter to your discretion.” Then, after a long pause, he added: “The king of the ape-men was really a creature of great distinction—a most remarkably handsome and intelligent personality. Did it not strike you?”

“A most remarkable creature,” said I.

And the Professor, much eased in his mind, settled down to his slumber once more.

CHAPTER XIV

“Those Were the Real Conquests”

We had imagined that our pursuers, the ape-men, knew nothing of our brush-wood hiding-place, but we were soon to find out our mistake. There was no sound in the woods—not a leaf moved upon the trees, and all was peace around us—but we should have been warned by our first experience how cunningly and how patiently these creatures can watch and wait until their chance comes. Whatever fate may be mine through life, I am very sure that I shall never be nearer death than I was that morning. But I will tell you the thing in its due order.

We all awoke exhausted after the terrific emotions and scanty food of yesterday. Summerlee was still so weak that it was an effort for him to stand; but the old man was full of a sort of surly courage which would never admit defeat. A council was held, and it was agreed that we should wait quietly for an hour or two where we were, have our much-needed breakfast, and then make our way across the plateau and round the central lake to the caves where my observations had shown that the Indians lived. We relied upon the fact that we could count upon the good word of those whom we had rescued to ensure a warm welcome from their fellows. Then, with our mission accomplished and possessing a fuller knowledge of the secrets of Maple White Land, we should turn our whole thoughts to the vital problem of our escape and return. Even Challenger was ready to admit that we should then have done all for which we had come, and that our first duty from that time onwards was to carry back to civilization the amazing discoveries we had made.

We were able now to take a more leisurely view of the Indians whom we had rescued. They were small men, wiry, active, and well-built, with lank black hair tied up in a bunch behind their heads with a leathern thong, and leathern also were their loin-clothes. Their faces were hairless, well formed, and good-humored. The lobes of their ears, hanging ragged and bloody, showed that they had been pierced for some ornaments which their captors had torn out. Their speech, though unintelligible to us, was fluent among themselves, and as they pointed to each other and uttered the word “Accala” many times over, we gathered that this was the name of the nation. Occasionally, with faces which were convulsed with fear and hatred, they shook their clenched hands at the woods round and cried: “Doda! Doda!” which was surely their term for their enemies.

“What do you make of them, Challenger?” asked Lord John. “One thing is very clear to me, and that is that the little chap with the front of his head shaved is a chief among them.”

It was indeed evident that this man stood apart from the others, and that they never ventured to address him without every sign of deep respect. He seemed to be the youngest of them all, and yet, so proud and high was his spirit that, upon Challenger laying his great hand upon his head, he started like a spurred horse and, with a quick flash of his dark eyes, moved further away from the Professor. Then, placing his hand upon his breast and holding himself with great dignity, he uttered the word “Maretas” several times. The Professor, unabashed, seized the nearest Indian by the shoulder and proceeded to lecture upon him as if he were a potted specimen in a class-room.

“The type of these people,” said he in his sonorous fashion, “whether judged by cranial capacity, facial angle, or any other test, cannot be regarded as a low one; on the contrary, we must place it as considerably higher in the scale than many South American tribes which I can mention. On no possible supposition can we explain the evolution of such a race in this place. For that matter, so great a gap separates these ape-men from the primitive animals which have survived upon this plateau, that it is inadmissible to think that they could have developed where we find them.”

“Then where the dooce did they drop from?” asked Lord John.

“A question which will, no doubt, be eagerly discussed in every scientific society in Europe and America,” the Professor answered. “My own reading of the situation for what it is worth—” he inflated his chest enormously and looked insolently around him at the words—“is that evolution has advanced under the peculiar conditions of this country up to the vertebrate stage, the old types surviving and living on in company with the newer ones. Thus we find such modern creatures as the tapir—an animal with quite a respectable length of pedigree—the great deer, and the ant-eater in the companionship of reptilian forms of jurassic type. So much is clear. And now come the ape-men and the Indian. What is the scientific mind to think of their presence? I can only account for it by an invasion from outside. It is probable that there existed an anthropoid ape in South America, who in past ages found his way to this place, and that he developed into the creatures we have seen, some of which”—here he looked hard at me—“were of an appearance and shape which, if it had been accompanied by corresponding intelligence, would, I do not hesitate to say, have reflected credit upon any living race. As to the Indians I cannot doubt that they are more recent immigrants from below. Under the stress of famine or of conquest they have made their way up here. Faced by ferocious creatures which they had never before seen, they took refuge in the caves which our young friend has described, but they have no doubt had a bitter fight to hold their own against wild beasts, and especially against the ape-men who would regard them as intruders, and wage a merciless war upon them with a cunning which the larger beasts would lack. Hence the fact that their numbers appear to be limited. Well, gentlemen, have I read you the riddle aright, or is there any point which you would query?”

Professor Summerlee for once was too depressed to argue, though he shook his head violently as a token of general disagreement. Lord John merely scratched his scanty locks with the remark that he couldn’t put up a fight as he wasn’t in the same weight or class. For my own part I performed my usual role of bringing things down to a strictly prosaic and practical level by the remark that one of the Indians was missing.

“He has gone to fetch some water,” said Lord Roxton. “We fitted him up with an empty beef tin and he is off.”

“To the old camp?” I asked.

“No, to the brook. It’s among the trees there. It can’t be more than a couple of hundred yards. But the beggar is certainly taking his time.”

“I’ll go and look after him,” said I. I picked up my rifle and strolled in the direction of the brook, leaving my friends to lay out the scanty breakfast. It may seem to you rash that even for so short a distance I should quit the shelter of our friendly thicket, but you will remember that we were many miles from Ape-town, that so far as we knew the creatures had not discovered our retreat, and that in any case with a rifle in my hands I had no fear of them. I had not yet learned their cunning or their strength.

I could hear the murmur of our brook somewhere ahead of me, but there was a tangle of trees and brushwood between me and it. I was making my way through this at a point which was just out of sight of my companions, when, under one of the trees, I noticed something red huddled among the bushes. As I approached it, I was shocked to see that it was the dead body of the missing Indian. He lay upon his side, his limbs drawn up, and his head screwed round at a most unnatural angle, so that he seemed to be looking straight over his own shoulder. I gave a cry to warn my friends that something was amiss, and running forwards I stooped over the body. Surely my guardian angel was very near me then, for some instinct of fear, or it may have been some faint rustle of leaves, made me glance upwards. Out of the thick green foliage which hung low over my head, two long muscular arms covered with reddish hair were slowly descending. Another instant and the great stealthy hands would have been round my throat. I sprang backwards, but quick as I was, those hands were quicker still. Through my sudden spring they missed a fatal grip, but one of them caught the back of my neck and the other one my face. I threw my hands up to protect my throat, and the next moment the huge paw had slid down my face and closed over them. I was lifted lightly from the ground, and I felt an intolerable pressure forcing my head back and back until the strain upon the cervical spine was more than I could bear. My senses swam, but I still tore at the hand and forced it out from my chin. Looking up I saw a frightful face with cold inexorable light blue eyes looking down into mine. There was something hypnotic in those terrible eyes. I could struggle no longer. As the creature felt me grow limp in his grasp, two white canines gleamed for a moment at each side of the vile mouth, and the grip tightened still more upon my chin, forcing it always upwards and back. A thin, oval-tinted mist formed before my eyes and little silvery bells tinkled in my ears. Dully and far off I heard the crack of a rifle and was feebly aware of the shock as I was dropped to the earth, where I lay without sense or motion.

I awoke to find myself on my back upon the grass in our lair within the thicket. Someone had brought the water from the brook, and Lord John was sprinkling my head with it, while Challenger and Summerlee were propping me up, with concern in their faces. For a moment I had a glimpse of the human spirits behind their scientific masks. It was really shock, rather than any injury, which had prostrated me, and in half-an-hour, in spite of aching head and stiff neck, I was sitting up and ready for anything.

“But you’ve had the escape of your life, young fellah my lad,” said Lord Roxton. “When I heard your cry and ran forward, and saw your head twisted half-off and your stohwassers kickin’ in the air, I thought we were one short. I missed the beast in my flurry, but he dropped you all right and was off like a streak. By George! I wish I had fifty men with rifles. I’d clear out the whole infernal gang of them and leave this country a bit cleaner than we found it.”

It was clear now that the ape-men had in some way marked us down, and that we were watched on every side. We had not so much to fear from them during the day, but they would be very likely to rush us by night; so the sooner we got away from their neighborhood the better. On three sides of us was absolute forest, and there we might find ourselves in an ambush. But on the fourth side—that which sloped down in the direction of the lake—there was only low scrub, with scattered trees and occasional open glades. It was, in fact, the route which I had myself taken in my solitary journey, and it led us straight for the Indian caves. This then must for every reason be our road.

One great regret we had, and that was to leave our old camp behind us, not only for the sake of the stores which remained there, but even more because we were losing touch with Zambo, our link with the outside world. However, we had a fair supply of cartridges and all our guns, so, for a time at least, we could look after ourselves, and we hoped soon to have a chance of returning and restoring our communications with our negro. He had faithfully promised to stay where he was, and we had not a doubt that he would be as good as his word.

It was in the early afternoon that we started upon our journey. The young chief walked at our head as our guide, but refused indignantly to carry any burden. Behind him came the two surviving Indians with our scanty possessions upon their backs. We four white men walked in the rear with rifles loaded and ready. As we started there broke from the thick silent woods behind us a sudden great ululation of the ape-men, which may have been a cheer of triumph at our departure or a jeer of contempt at our flight. Looking back we saw only the dense screen of trees, but that long-drawn yell told us how many of our enemies lurked among them. We saw no sign of pursuit, however, and soon we had got into more open country and beyond their power.

As I tramped along, the rearmost of the four, I could not help smiling at the appearance of my three companions in front. Was this the luxurious Lord John Roxton who had sat that evening in the Albany amidst his Persian rugs and his pictures in the pink radiance of the tinted lights? And was this the imposing Professor who had swelled behind the great desk in his massive study at Enmore Park? And, finally, could this be the austere and prim figure which had risen before the meeting at the Zoological Institute? No three tramps that one could have met in a Surrey lane could have looked more hopeless and bedraggled. We had, it is true, been only a week or so upon the top of the plateau, but all our spare clothing was in our camp below, and the one week had been a severe one upon us all, though least to me who had not to endure the handling of the ape-men. My three friends had all lost their hats, and had now bound handkerchiefs round their heads, their clothes hung in ribbons about them, and their unshaven grimy faces were hardly to be recognized. Both Summerlee and Challenger were limping heavily, while I still dragged my feet from weakness after the shock of the morning, and my neck was as stiff as a board from the murderous grip that held it. We were indeed a sorry crew, and I did not wonder to see our Indian companions glance back at us occasionally with horror and amazement on their faces.

In the late afternoon we reached the margin of the lake, and as we emerged from the bush and saw the sheet of water stretching before us our native friends set up a shrill cry of joy and pointed eagerly in front of them. It was indeed a wonderful sight which lay before us. Sweeping over the glassy surface was a great flotilla of canoes coming straight for the shore upon which we stood. They were some miles out when we first saw them, but they shot forward with great swiftness, and were soon so near that the rowers could distinguish our persons. Instantly a thunderous shout of delight burst from them, and we saw them rise from their seats, waving their paddles and spears madly in the air. Then bending to their work once more, they flew across the intervening water, beached their boats upon the sloping sand, and rushed up to us, prostrating themselves with loud cries of greeting before the young chief. Finally one of them, an elderly man, with a necklace and bracelet of great lustrous glass beads and the skin of some beautiful mottled amber-colored animal slung over his shoulders, ran forward and embraced most tenderly the youth whom we had saved. He then looked at us and asked some questions, after which he stepped up with much dignity and embraced us also each in turn. Then, at his order, the whole tribe lay down upon the ground before us in homage. Personally I felt shy and uncomfortable at this obsequious adoration, and I read the same feeling in the faces of Roxton and Summerlee, but Challenger expanded like a flower in the sun.

“They may be undeveloped types,” said he, stroking his beard and looking round at them, “but their deportment in the presence of their superiors might be a lesson to some of our more advanced Europeans. Strange how correct are the instincts of the natural man!”

It was clear that the natives had come out upon the war-path, for every man carried his spear—a long bamboo tipped with bone—his bow and arrows, and some sort of club or stone battle-axe slung at his side. Their dark, angry glances at the woods from which we had come, and the frequent repetition of the word “Doda,” made it clear enough that this was a rescue party who had set forth to save or revenge the old chief’s son, for such we gathered that the youth must be. A council was now held by the whole tribe squatting in a circle, whilst we sat near on a slab of basalt and watched their proceedings. Two or three warriors spoke, and finally our young friend made a spirited harangue with such eloquent features and gestures that we could understand it all as clearly as if we had known his language.

“What is the use of returning?” he said. “Sooner or later the thing must be done. Your comrades have been murdered. What if I have returned safe? These others have been done to death. There is no safety for any of us. We are assembled now and ready.” Then he pointed to us. “These strange men are our friends. They are great fighters, and they hate the ape-men even as we do. They command,” here he pointed up to heaven, “the thunder and the lightning. When shall we have such a chance again? Let us go forward, and either die now or live for the future in safety. How else shall we go back unashamed to our women?”

The little red warriors hung upon the words of the speaker, and when he had finished they burst into a roar of applause, waving their rude weapons in the air. The old chief stepped forward to us, and asked us some questions, pointing at the same time to the woods. Lord John made a sign to him that he should wait for an answer and then he turned to us.

“Well, it’s up to you to say what you will do,” said he; “for my part I have a score to settle with these monkey-folk, and if it ends by wiping them off the face of the earth I don’t see that the earth need fret about it. I’m goin’ with our little red pals and I mean to see them through the scrap. What do you say, young fellah?”

“Of course I will come.”

“And you, Challenger?”

“I will assuredly co-operate.”

“And you, Summerlee?”

“We seem to be drifting very far from the object of this expedition, Lord John. I assure you that I little thought when I left my professional chair in London that it was for the purpose of heading a raid of savages upon a colony of anthropoid apes.”

“To such base uses do we come,” said Lord John, smiling. “But we are up against it, so what’s the decision?”

“It seems a most questionable step,” said Summerlee, argumentative to the last, “but if you are all going, I hardly see how I can remain behind.”

“Then it is settled,” said Lord John, and turning to the chief he nodded and slapped his rifle.

The old fellow clasped our hands, each in turn, while his men cheered louder than ever. It was too late to advance that night, so the Indians settled down into a rude bivouac. On all sides their fires began to glimmer and smoke. Some of them who had disappeared into the jungle came back presently driving a young iguanodon before them. Like the others, it had a daub of asphalt upon its shoulder, and it was only when we saw one of the natives step forward with the air of an owner and give his consent to the beast’s slaughter that we understood at last that these great creatures were as much private property as a herd of cattle, and that these symbols which had so perplexed us were nothing more than the marks of the owner. Helpless, torpid, and vegetarian, with great limbs but a minute brain, they could be rounded up and driven by a child. In a few minutes the huge beast had been cut up and slabs of him were hanging over a dozen camp fires, together with great scaly ganoid fish which had been speared in the lake.

Summerlee had lain down and slept upon the sand, but we others roamed round the edge of the water, seeking to learn something more of this strange country. Twice we found pits of blue clay, such as we had already seen in the swamp of the pterodactyls. These were old volcanic vents, and for some reason excited the greatest interest in Lord John. What attracted Challenger, on the other hand, was a bubbling, gurgling mud geyser, where some strange gas formed great bursting bubbles upon the surface. He thrust a hollow reed into it and cried out with delight like a schoolboy then he was able, on touching it with a lighted match, to cause a sharp explosion and a blue flame at the far end of the tube. Still more pleased was he when, inverting a leathern pouch over the end of the reed, and so filling it with the gas, he was able to send it soaring up into the air.

“An inflammable gas, and one markedly lighter than the atmosphere. I should say beyond doubt that it contained a considerable proportion of free hydrogen. The resources of G. E. C. are not yet exhausted, my young friend. I may yet show you how a great mind molds all Nature to its use.” He swelled with some secret purpose, but would say no more.

There was nothing which we could see upon the shore which seemed to me so wonderful as the great sheet of water before us. Our numbers and our noise had frightened all living creatures away, and save for a few pterodactyls, which soared round high above our heads while they waited for the carrion, all was still around the camp. But it was different out upon the rose-tinted waters of the central lake. It boiled and heaved with strange life. Great slate-colored backs and high serrated dorsal fins shot up with a fringe of silver, and then rolled down into the depths again. The sand-banks far out were spotted with uncouth crawling forms, huge turtles, strange saurians, and one great flat creature like a writhing, palpitating mat of black greasy leather, which flopped its way slowly to the lake. Here and there high serpent heads projected out of the water, cutting swiftly through it with a little collar of foam in front, and a long swirling wake behind, rising and falling in graceful, swan-like undulations as they went. It was not until one of these creatures wriggled on to a sand-bank within a few hundred yards of us, and exposed a barrel-shaped body and huge flippers behind the long serpent neck, that Challenger, and Summerlee, who had joined us, broke out into their duet of wonder and admiration.

“Plesiosaurus! A fresh-water plesiosaurus!” cried Summerlee. “That I should have lived to see such a sight! We are blessed, my dear Challenger, above all zoologists since the world began!”

It was not until the night had fallen, and the fires of our savage allies glowed red in the shadows, that our two men of science could be dragged away from the fascinations of that primeval lake. Even in the darkness as we lay upon the strand, we heard from time to time the snort and plunge of the huge creatures who lived therein.

At earliest dawn our camp was astir and an hour later we had started upon our memorable expedition. Often in my dreams have I thought that I might live to be a war correspondent. In what wildest one could I have conceived the nature of the campaign which it should be my lot to report! Here then is my first despatch from a field of battle:

Our numbers had been reinforced during the night by a fresh batch of natives from the caves, and we may have been four or five hundred strong when we made our advance. A fringe of scouts was thrown out in front, and behind them the whole force in a solid column made their way up the long slope of the bush country until we were near the edge of the forest. Here they spread out into a long straggling line of spearmen and bowmen. Roxton and Summerlee took their position upon the right flank, while Challenger and I were on the left. It was a host of the stone age that we were accompanying to battle—we with the last word of the gunsmith’s art from St. James’ Street and the Strand.

We had not long to wait for our enemy. A wild shrill clamor rose from the edge of the wood and suddenly a body of ape-men rushed out with clubs and stones, and made for the center of the Indian line. It was a valiant move but a foolish one, for the great bandy-legged creatures were slow of foot, while their opponents were as active as cats. It was horrible to see the fierce brutes with foaming mouths and glaring eyes, rushing and grasping, but forever missing their elusive enemies, while arrow after arrow buried itself in their hides. One great fellow ran past me roaring with pain, with a dozen darts sticking from his chest and ribs. In mercy I put a bullet through his skull, and he fell sprawling among the aloes. But this was the only shot fired, for the attack had been on the center of the line, and the Indians there had needed no help of ours in repulsing it. Of all the ape-men who had rushed out into the open, I do not think that one got back to cover.

But the matter was more deadly when we came among the trees. For an hour or more after we entered the wood, there was a desperate struggle in which for a time we hardly held our own. Springing out from among the scrub the ape-men with huge clubs broke in upon the Indians and often felled three or four of them before they could be speared. Their frightful blows shattered everything upon which they fell. One of them knocked Summerlee’s rifle to matchwood and the next would have crushed his skull had an Indian not stabbed the beast to the heart. Other ape-men in the trees above us hurled down stones and logs of wood, occasionally dropping bodily on to our ranks and fighting furiously until they were felled. Once our allies broke under the pressure, and had it not been for the execution done by our rifles they would certainly have taken to their heels. But they were gallantly rallied by their old chief and came on with such a rush that the ape-men began in turn to give way. Summerlee was weaponless, but I was emptying my magazine as quick as I could fire, and on the further flank we heard the continuous cracking of our companion’s rifles.

Then in a moment came the panic and the collapse. Screaming and howling, the great creatures rushed away in all directions through the brushwood, while our allies yelled in their savage delight, following swiftly after their flying enemies. All the feuds of countless generations, all the hatreds and cruelties of their narrow history, all the memories of ill-usage and persecution were to be purged that day. At last man was to be supreme and the man-beast to find forever his allotted place. Fly as they would the fugitives were too slow to escape from the active savages, and from every side in the tangled woods we heard the exultant yells, the twanging of bows, and the crash and thud as ape-men were brought down from their hiding-places in the trees.

I was following the others, when I found that Lord John and Challenger had come across to join us.

“It’s over,” said Lord John. “I think we can leave the tidying up to them. Perhaps the less we see of it the better we shall sleep.”

Challenger’s eyes were shining with the lust of slaughter.

“We have been privileged,” he cried, strutting about like a gamecock, “to be present at one of the typical decisive battles of history—the battles which have determined the fate of the world. What, my friends, is the conquest of one nation by another? It is meaningless. Each produces the same result. But those fierce fights, when in the dawn of the ages the cave-dwellers held their own against the tiger folk, or the elephants first found that they had a master, those were the real conquests—the victories that count. By this strange turn of fate we have seen and helped to decide even such a contest. Now upon this plateau the future must ever be for man.”

It needed a robust faith in the end to justify such tragic means. As we advanced together through the woods we found the ape-men lying thick, transfixed with spears or arrows. Here and there a little group of shattered Indians marked where one of the anthropoids had turned to bay, and sold his life dearly. Always in front of us we heard the yelling and roaring which showed the direction of the pursuit. The ape-men had been driven back to their city, they had made a last stand there, once again they had been broken, and now we were in time to see the final fearful scene of all. Some eighty or a hundred males, the last survivors, had been driven across that same little clearing which led to the edge of the cliff, the scene of our own exploit two days before. As we arrived the Indians, a semicircle of spearmen, had closed in on them, and in a minute it was over, Thirty or forty died where they stood. The others, screaming and clawing, were thrust over the precipice, and went hurtling down, as their prisoners had of old, on to the sharp bamboos six hundred feet below. It was as Challenger had said, and the reign of man was assured forever in Maple White Land. The males were exterminated, Ape Town was destroyed, the females and young were driven away to live in bondage, and the long rivalry of untold centuries had reached its bloody end.

For us the victory brought much advantage. Once again we were able to visit our camp and get at our stores. Once more also we were able to communicate with Zambo, who had been terrified by the spectacle from afar of an avalanche of apes falling from the edge of the cliff.

“Come away, Massas, come away!” he cried, his eyes starting from his head. “The debbil get you sure if you stay up there.”

“It is the voice of sanity!” said Summerlee with conviction. “We have had adventures enough and they are neither suitable to our character or our position. I hold you to your word, Challenger. From now onwards you devote your energies to getting us out of this horrible country and back once more to civilization.”

CHAPTER XV

“Our Eyes have seen Great Wonders”

I write this from day to day, but I trust that before I come to the end of it, I may be able to say that the light shines, at last, through our clouds. We are held here with no clear means of making our escape, and bitterly we chafe against it. Yet, I can well imagine that the day may come when we may be glad that we were kept, against our will, to see something more of the wonders of this singular place, and of the creatures who inhabit it.

The victory of the Indians and the annihilation of the ape-men, marked the turning point of our fortunes. From then onwards, we were in truth masters of the plateau, for the natives looked upon us with a mixture of fear and gratitude, since by our strange powers we had aided them to destroy their hereditary foe. For their own sakes they would, perhaps, be glad to see the departure of such formidable and incalculable people, but they have not themselves suggested any way by which we may reach the plains below. There had been, so far as we could follow their signs, a tunnel by which the place could be approached, the lower exit of which we had seen from below. By this, no doubt, both ape-men and Indians had at different epochs reached the top, and Maple White with his companion had taken the same way. Only the year before, however, there had been a terrific earthquake, and the upper end of the tunnel had fallen in and completely disappeared. The Indians now could only shake their heads and shrug their shoulders when we expressed by signs our desire to descend. It may be that they cannot, but it may also be that they will not, help us to get away.

At the end of the victorious campaign the surviving ape-folk were driven across the plateau (their wailings were horrible) and established in the neighborhood of the Indian caves, where they would, from now onwards, be a servile race under the eyes of their masters. It was a rude, raw, primeval version of the Jews in Babylon or the Israelites in Egypt. At night we could hear from amid the trees the long-drawn cry, as some primitive Ezekiel mourned for fallen greatness and recalled the departed glories of Ape Town. Hewers of wood and drawers of water, such were they from now onwards.

We had returned across the plateau with our allies two days after the battle, and made our camp at the foot of their cliffs. They would have had us share their caves with them, but Lord John would by no means consent to it considering that to do so would put us in their power if they were treacherously disposed. We kept our independence, therefore, and had our weapons ready for any emergency, while preserving the most friendly relations. We also continually visited their caves, which were most remarkable places, though whether made by man or by Nature we have never been able to determine. They were all on the one stratum, hollowed out of some soft rock which lay between the volcanic basalt forming the ruddy cliffs above them, and the hard granite which formed their base.

The openings were about eighty feet above the ground, and were led up to by long stone stairs, so narrow and steep that no large animal could mount them. Inside they were warm and dry, running in straight passages of varying length into the side of the hill, with smooth gray walls decorated with many excellent pictures done with charred sticks and representing the various animals of the plateau. If every living thing were swept from the country the future explorer would find upon the walls of these caves ample evidence of the strange fauna—the dinosaurs, iguanodons, and fish lizards—which had lived so recently upon earth.

Since we had learned that the huge iguanodons were kept as tame herds by their owners, and were simply walking meat-stores, we had conceived that man, even with his primitive weapons, had established his ascendancy upon the plateau. We were soon to discover that it was not so, and that he was still there upon tolerance.

It was on the third day after our forming our camp near the Indian caves that the tragedy occurred. Challenger and Summerlee had gone off together that day to the lake where some of the natives, under their direction, were engaged in harpooning specimens of the great lizards. Lord John and I had remained in our camp, while a number of the Indians were scattered about upon the grassy slope in front of the caves engaged in different ways. Suddenly there was a shrill cry of alarm, with the word “Stoa” resounding from a hundred tongues. From every side men, women, and children were rushing wildly for shelter, swarming up the staircases and into the caves in a mad stampede.

Looking up, we could see them waving their arms from the rocks above and beckoning to us to join them in their refuge. We had both seized our magazine rifles and ran out to see what the danger could be. Suddenly from the near belt of trees there broke forth a group of twelve or fifteen Indians, running for their lives, and at their very heels two of those frightful monsters which had disturbed our camp and pursued me upon my solitary journey. In shape they were like horrible toads, and moved in a succession of springs, but in size they were of an incredible bulk, larger than the largest elephant. We had never before seen them save at night, and indeed they are nocturnal animals save when disturbed in their lairs, as these had been. We now stood amazed at the sight, for their blotched and warty skins were of a curious fish-like iridescence, and the sunlight struck them with an ever-varying rainbow bloom as they moved.

We had little time to watch them, however, for in an instant they had overtaken the fugitives and were making a dire slaughter among them. Their method was to fall forward with their full weight upon each in turn, leaving him crushed and mangled, to bound on after the others. The wretched Indians screamed with terror, but were helpless, run as they would, before the relentless purpose and horrible activity of these monstrous creatures. One after another they went down, and there were not half-a-dozen surviving by the time my companion and I could come to their help. But our aid was of little avail and only involved us in the same peril. At the range of a couple of hundred yards we emptied our magazines, firing bullet after bullet into the beasts, but with no more effect than if we were pelting them with pellets of paper. Their slow reptilian natures cared nothing for wounds, and the springs of their lives, with no special brain center but scattered throughout their spinal cords, could not be tapped by any modern weapons. The most that we could do was to check their progress by distracting their attention with the flash and roar of our guns, and so to give both the natives and ourselves time to reach the steps which led to safety. But where the conical explosive bullets of the twentieth century were of no avail, the poisoned arrows of the natives, dipped in the juice of strophanthus and steeped afterwards in decayed carrion, could succeed. Such arrows were of little avail to the hunter who attacked the beast, because their action in that torpid circulation was slow, and before its powers failed it could certainly overtake and slay its assailant. But now, as the two monsters hounded us to the very foot of the stairs, a drift of darts came whistling from every chink in the cliff above them. In a minute they were feathered with them, and yet with no sign of pain they clawed and slobbered with impotent rage at the steps which would lead them to their victims, mounting clumsily up for a few yards and then sliding down again to the ground. But at last the poison worked. One of them gave a deep rumbling groan and dropped his huge squat head on to the earth. The other bounded round in an eccentric circle with shrill, wailing cries, and then lying down writhed in agony for some minutes before it also stiffened and lay still. With yells of triumph the Indians came flocking down from their caves and danced a frenzied dance of victory round the dead bodies, in mad joy that two more of the most dangerous of all their enemies had been slain. That night they cut up and removed the bodies, not to eat—for the poison was still active—but lest they should breed a pestilence. The great reptilian hearts, however, each as large as a cushion, still lay there, beating slowly and steadily, with a gentle rise and fall, in horrible independent life. It was only upon the third day that the ganglia ran down and the dreadful things were still.

Some day, when I have a better desk than a meat-tin and more helpful tools than a worn stub of pencil and a last, tattered note-book, I will write some fuller account of the Accala Indians—of our life amongst them, and of the glimpses which we had of the strange conditions of wondrous Maple White Land. Memory, at least, will never fail me, for so long as the breath of life is in me, every hour and every action of that period will stand out as hard and clear as do the first strange happenings of our childhood. No new impressions could efface those which are so deeply cut. When the time comes I will describe that wondrous moonlit night upon the great lake when a young ichthyosaurus—a strange creature, half seal, half fish, to look at, with bone-covered eyes on each side of his snout, and a third eye fixed upon the top of his head—was entangled in an Indian net, and nearly upset our canoe before we towed it ashore; the same night that a green water-snake shot out from the rushes and carried off in its coils the steersman of Challenger’s canoe. I will tell, too, of the great nocturnal white thing—to this day we do not know whether it was beast or reptile—which lived in a vile swamp to the east of the lake, and flitted about with a faint phosphorescent glimmer in the darkness. The Indians were so terrified at it that they would not go near the place, and, though we twice made expeditions and saw it each time, we could not make our way through the deep marsh in which it lived. I can only say that it seemed to be larger than a cow and had the strangest musky odor. I will tell also of the huge bird which chased Challenger to the shelter of the rocks one day—a great running bird, far taller than an ostrich, with a vulture-like neck and cruel head which made it a walking death. As Challenger climbed to safety one dart of that savage curving beak shore off the heel of his boot as if it had been cut with a chisel. This time at least modern weapons prevailed and the great creature, twelve feet from head to foot—phororachus its name, according to our panting but exultant Professor—went down before Lord Roxton’s rifle in a flurry of waving feathers and kicking limbs, with two remorseless yellow eyes glaring up from the midst of it. May I live to see that flattened vicious skull in its own niche amid the trophies of the Albany. Finally, I will assuredly give some account of the toxodon, the giant ten-foot guinea pig, with projecting chisel teeth, which we killed as it drank in the gray of the morning by the side of the lake.

All this I shall some day write at fuller length, and amidst these more stirring days I would tenderly sketch in these lovely summer evenings, when with the deep blue sky above us we lay in good comradeship among the long grasses by the wood and marveled at the strange fowl that swept over us and the quaint new creatures which crept from their burrows to watch us, while above us the boughs of the bushes were heavy with luscious fruit, and below us strange and lovely flowers peeped at us from among the herbage; or those long moonlit nights when we lay out upon the shimmering surface of the great lake and watched with wonder and awe the huge circles rippling out from the sudden splash of some fantastic monster; or the greenish gleam, far down in the deep water, of some strange creature upon the confines of darkness. These are the scenes which my mind and my pen will dwell upon in every detail at some future day.

But, you will ask, why these experiences and why this delay, when you and your comrades should have been occupied day and night in the devising of some means by which you could return to the outer world? My answer is, that there was not one of us who was not working for this end, but that our work had been in vain. One fact we had very speedily discovered: The Indians would do nothing to help us. In every other way they were our friends—one might almost say our devoted slaves—but when it was suggested that they should help us to make and carry a plank which would bridge the chasm, or when we wished to get from them thongs of leather or liana to weave ropes which might help us, we were met by a good-humored, but an invincible, refusal. They would smile, twinkle their eyes, shake their heads, and there was the end of it. Even the old chief met us with the same obstinate denial, and it was only Maretas, the youngster whom we had saved, who looked wistfully at us and told us by his gestures that he was grieved for our thwarted wishes. Ever since their crowning triumph with the ape-men they looked upon us as supermen, who bore victory in the tubes of strange weapons, and they believed that so long as we remained with them good fortune would be theirs. A little red-skinned wife and a cave of our own were freely offered to each of us if we would but forget our own people and dwell forever upon the plateau. So far all had been kindly, however far apart our desires might be; but we felt well assured that our actual plans of a descent must be kept secret, for we had reason to fear that at the last they might try to hold us by force.

In spite of the danger from dinosaurs (which is not great save at night, for, as I may have said before, they are mostly nocturnal in their habits) I have twice in the last three weeks been over to our old camp in order to see our negro who still kept watch and ward below the cliff. My eyes strained eagerly across the great plain in the hope of seeing afar off the help for which we had prayed. But the long cactus-strewn levels still stretched away, empty and bare, to the distant line of the cane-brake.

“They will soon come now, Massa Malone. Before another week pass Indian come back and bring rope and fetch you down.” Such was the cheery cry of our excellent Zambo.

I had one strange experience as I came from this second visit which had involved my being away for a night from my companions. I was returning along the well-remembered route, and had reached a spot within a mile or so of the marsh of the pterodactyls, when I saw an extraordinary object approaching me. It was a man who walked inside a framework made of bent canes so that he was enclosed on all sides in a bell-shaped cage. As I drew nearer I was more amazed still to see that it was Lord John Roxton. When he saw me he slipped from under his curious protection and came towards me laughing, and yet, as I thought, with some confusion in his manner.

“Well, young fellah,” said he, “who would have thought of meetin’ you up here?”

“What in the world are you doing?” I asked.

“Visitin’ my friends, the pterodactyls,” said he.

“But why?”

“Interestin’ beasts, don’t you think? But unsociable! Nasty rude ways with strangers, as you may remember. So I rigged this framework which keeps them from bein’ too pressin’ in their attentions.”

“But what do you want in the swamp?”

He looked at me with a very questioning eye, and I read hesitation in his face.

“Don’t you think other people besides Professors can want to know things?” he said at last. “I’m studyin’ the pretty dears. That’s enough for you.”

“No offense,” said I.

His good-humor returned and he laughed.

“No offense, young fellah. I’m goin’ to get a young devil chick for Challenger. That’s one of my jobs. No, I don’t want your company. I’m safe in this cage, and you are not. So long, and I’ll be back in camp by night-fall.”

He turned away and I left him wandering on through the wood with his extraordinary cage around him.

If Lord John’s behavior at this time was strange, that of Challenger was more so. I may say that he seemed to possess an extraordinary fascination for the Indian women, and that he always carried a large spreading palm branch with which he beat them off as if they were flies, when their attentions became too pressing. To see him walking like a comic opera Sultan, with this badge of authority in his hand, his black beard bristling in front of him, his toes pointing at each step, and a train of wide-eyed Indian girls behind him, clad in their slender drapery of bark cloth, is one of the most grotesque of all the pictures which I will carry back with me. As to Summerlee, he was absorbed in the insect and bird life of the plateau, and spent his whole time (save that considerable portion which was devoted to abusing Challenger for not getting us out of our difficulties) in cleaning and mounting his specimens.

Challenger had been in the habit of walking off by himself every morning and returning from time to time with looks of portentous solemnity, as one who bears the full weight of a great enterprise upon his shoulders. One day, palm branch in hand, and his crowd of adoring devotees behind him, he led us down to his hidden work-shop and took us into the secret of his plans.

The place was a small clearing in the center of a palm grove. In this was one of those boiling mud geysers which I have already described. Around its edge were scattered a number of leathern thongs cut from iguanodon hide, and a large collapsed membrane which proved to be the dried and scraped stomach of one of the great fish lizards from the lake. This huge sack had been sewn up at one end and only a small orifice left at the other. Into this opening several bamboo canes had been inserted and the other ends of these canes were in contact with conical clay funnels which collected the gas bubbling up through the mud of the geyser. Soon the flaccid organ began to slowly expand and show such a tendency to upward movements that Challenger fastened the cords which held it to the trunks of the surrounding trees. In half an hour a good-sized gas-bag had been formed, and the jerking and straining upon the thongs showed that it was capable of considerable lift. Challenger, like a glad father in the presence of his first-born, stood smiling and stroking his beard, in silent, self-satisfied content as he gazed at the creation of his brain. It was Summerlee who first broke the silence.

“You don’t mean us to go up in that thing, Challenger?” said he, in an acid voice.

“I mean, my dear Summerlee, to give you such a demonstration of its powers that after seeing it you will, I am sure, have no hesitation in trusting yourself to it.”

“You can put it right out of your head now, at once,” said Summerlee with decision, “nothing on earth would induce me to commit such a folly. Lord John, I trust that you will not countenance such madness?”

“Dooced ingenious, I call it,” said our peer. “I’d like to see how it works.”

“So you shall,” said Challenger. “For some days I have exerted my whole brain force upon the problem of how we shall descend from these cliffs. We have satisfied ourselves that we cannot climb down and that there is no tunnel. We are also unable to construct any kind of bridge which may take us back to the pinnacle from which we came. How then shall I find a means to convey us? Some little time ago I had remarked to our young friend here that free hydrogen was evolved from the geyser. The idea of a balloon naturally followed. I was, I will admit, somewhat baffled by the difficulty of discovering an envelope to contain the gas, but the contemplation of the immense entrails of these reptiles supplied me with a solution to the problem. Behold the result!”

He put one hand in the front of his ragged jacket and pointed proudly with the other.

By this time the gas-bag had swollen to a goodly rotundity and was jerking strongly upon its lashings.

“Midsummer madness!” snorted Summerlee.

Lord John was delighted with the whole idea. “Clever old dear, ain’t he?” he whispered to me, and then louder to Challenger. “What about a car?”

“The car will be my next care. I have already planned how it is to be made and attached. Meanwhile I will simply show you how capable my apparatus is of supporting the weight of each of us.”

“All of us, surely?”

“No, it is part of my plan that each in turn shall descend as in a parachute, and the balloon be drawn back by means which I shall have no difficulty in perfecting. If it will support the weight of one and let him gently down, it will have done all that is required of it. I will now show you its capacity in that direction.”

He brought out a lump of basalt of a considerable size, constructed in the middle so that a cord could be easily attached to it. This cord was the one which we had brought with us on to the plateau after we had used it for climbing the pinnacle. It was over a hundred feet long, and though it was thin it was very strong. He had prepared a sort of collar of leather with many straps depending from it. This collar was placed over the dome of the balloon, and the hanging thongs were gathered together below, so that the pressure of any weight would be diffused over a considerable surface. Then the lump of basalt was fastened to the thongs, and the rope was allowed to hang from the end of it, being passed three times round the Professor’s arm.

“I will now,” said Challenger, with a smile of pleased anticipation, “demonstrate the carrying power of my balloon.” As he said so he cut with a knife the various lashings that held it.

Never was our expedition in more imminent danger of complete annihilation. The inflated membrane shot up with frightful velocity into the air. In an instant Challenger was pulled off his feet and dragged after it. I had just time to throw my arms round his ascending waist when I was myself whipped up into the air. Lord John had me with a rat-trap grip round the legs, but I felt that he also was coming off the ground. For a moment I had a vision of four adventurers floating like a string of sausages over the land that they had explored. But, happily, there were limits to the strain which the rope would stand, though none apparently to the lifting powers of this infernal machine. There was a sharp crack, and we were in a heap upon the ground with coils of rope all over us. When we were able to stagger to our feet we saw far off in the deep blue sky one dark spot where the lump of basalt was speeding upon its way.

“Splendid!” cried the undaunted Challenger, rubbing his injured arm. “A most thorough and satisfactory demonstration! I could not have anticipated such a success. Within a week, gentlemen, I promise that a second balloon will be prepared, and that you can count upon taking in safety and comfort the first stage of our homeward journey.” So far I have written each of the foregoing events as it occurred. Now I am rounding off my narrative from the old camp, where Zambo has waited so long, with all our difficulties and dangers left like a dream behind us upon the summit of those vast ruddy crags which tower above our heads. We have descended in safety, though in a most unexpected fashion, and all is well with us. In six weeks or two months we shall be in London, and it is possible that this letter may not reach you much earlier than we do ourselves. Already our hearts yearn and our spirits fly towards the great mother city which holds so much that is dear to us.

It was on the very evening of our perilous adventure with Challenger’s home-made balloon that the change came in our fortunes. I have said that the one person from whom we had had some sign of sympathy in our attempts to get away was the young chief whom we had rescued. He alone had no desire to hold us against our will in a strange land. He had told us as much by his expressive language of signs. That evening, after dusk, he came down to our little camp, handed me (for some reason he had always shown his attentions to me, perhaps because I was the one who was nearest his age) a small roll of the bark of a tree, and then pointing solemnly up at the row of caves above him, he had put his finger to his lips as a sign of secrecy and had stolen back again to his people.

I took the slip of bark to the firelight and we examined it together. It was about a foot square, and on the inner side there was a singular arrangement of lines, which I here reproduce:

They were neatly done in charcoal upon the white surface, and looked to me at first sight like some sort of rough musical score.

“Whatever it is, I can swear that it is of importance to us,” said I. “I could read that on his face as he gave it.”

“Unless we have come upon a primitive practical joker,” Summerlee suggested, “which I should think would be one of the most elementary developments of man.”

“It is clearly some sort of script,” said Challenger.

“Looks like a guinea puzzle competition,” remarked Lord John, craning his neck to have a look at it. Then suddenly he stretched out his hand and seized the puzzle.

“By George!” he cried, “I believe I’ve got it. The boy guessed right the very first time. See here! How many marks are on that paper? Eighteen. Well, if you come to think of it there are eighteen cave openings on the hill-side above us.”

“He pointed up to the caves when he gave it to me,” said I.

“Well, that settles it. This is a chart of the caves. What! Eighteen of them all in a row, some short, some deep, some branching, same as we saw them. It’s a map, and here’s a cross on it. What’s the cross for? It is placed to mark one that is much deeper than the others.”

“One that goes through,” I cried.

“I believe our young friend has read the riddle,” said Challenger. “If the cave does not go through I do not understand why this person, who has every reason to mean us well, should have drawn our attention to it. But if it does go through and comes out at the corresponding point on the other side, we should not have more than a hundred feet to descend.”

“A hundred feet!” grumbled Summerlee.

“Well, our rope is still more than a hundred feet long,” I cried. “Surely we could get down.”

“How about the Indians in the cave?” Summerlee objected.

“There are no Indians in any of the caves above our heads,” said I. “They are all used as barns and store-houses. Why should we not go up now at once and spy out the land?”

There is a dry bituminous wood upon the plateau—a species of araucaria, according to our botanist—which is always used by the Indians for torches. Each of us picked up a faggot of this, and we made our way up weed-covered steps to the particular cave which was marked in the drawing. It was, as I had said, empty, save for a great number of enormous bats, which flapped round our heads as we advanced into it. As we had no desire to draw the attention of the Indians to our proceedings, we stumbled along in the dark until we had gone round several curves and penetrated a considerable distance into the cavern. Then, at last, we lit our torches. It was a beautiful dry tunnel with smooth gray walls covered with native symbols, a curved roof which arched over our heads, and white glistening sand beneath our feet. We hurried eagerly along it until, with a deep groan of bitter disappointment, we were brought to a halt. A sheer wall of rock had appeared before us, with no chink through which a mouse could have slipped. There was no escape for us there.

We stood with bitter hearts staring at this unexpected obstacle. It was not the result of any convulsion, as in the case of the ascending tunnel. The end wall was exactly like the side ones. It was, and had always been, a cul-de-sac.

“Never mind, my friends,” said the indomitable Challenger. “You have still my firm promise of a balloon.”

Summerlee groaned.

“Can we be in the wrong cave?” I suggested.

“No use, young fellah,” said Lord John, with his finger on the chart. “Seventeen from the right and second from the left. This is the cave sure enough.”

I looked at the mark to which his finger pointed, and I gave a sudden cry of joy.

“I believe I have it! Follow me! Follow me!”

I hurried back along the way we had come, my torch in my hand. “Here,” said I, pointing to some matches upon the ground, “is where we lit up.”

“Exactly.”

“Well, it is marked as a forked cave, and in the darkness we passed the fork before the torches were lit. On the right side as we go out we should find the longer arm.”

It was as I had said. We had not gone thirty yards before a great black opening loomed in the wall. We turned into it to find that we were in a much larger passage than before. Along it we hurried in breathless impatience for many hundreds of yards. Then, suddenly, in the black darkness of the arch in front of us we saw a gleam of dark red light. We stared in amazement. A sheet of steady flame seemed to cross the passage and to bar our way. We hastened towards it. No sound, no heat, no movement came from it, but still the great luminous curtain glowed before us, silvering all the cave and turning the sand to powdered jewels, until as we drew closer it discovered a circular edge.

“The moon, by George!” cried Lord John. “We are through, boys! We are through!”

It was indeed the full moon which shone straight down the aperture which opened upon the cliffs. It was a small rift, not larger than a window, but it was enough for all our purposes. As we craned our necks through it we could see that the descent was not a very difficult one, and that the level ground was no very great way below us. It was no wonder that from below we had not observed the place, as the cliffs curved overhead and an ascent at the spot would have seemed so impossible as to discourage close inspection. We satisfied ourselves that with the help of our rope we could find our way down, and then returned, rejoicing, to our camp to make our preparations for the next evening.

What we did we had to do quickly and secretly, since even at this last hour the Indians might hold us back. Our stores we would leave behind us, save only our guns and cartridges. But Challenger had some unwieldy stuff which he ardently desired to take with him, and one particular package, of which I may not speak, which gave us more labor than any. Slowly the day passed, but when the darkness fell we were ready for our departure. With much labor we got our things up the steps, and then, looking back, took one last long survey of that strange land, soon I fear to be vulgarized, the prey of hunter and prospector, but to each of us a dreamland of glamour and romance, a land where we had dared much, suffered much, and learned much—OUR land, as we shall ever fondly call it. Along upon our left the neighboring caves each threw out its ruddy cheery firelight into the gloom. From the slope below us rose the voices of the Indians as they laughed and sang. Beyond was the long sweep of the woods, and in the center, shimmering vaguely through the gloom, was the great lake, the mother of strange monsters. Even as we looked a high whickering cry, the call of some weird animal, rang clear out of the darkness. It was the very voice of Maple White Land bidding us good-bye. We turned and plunged into the cave which led to home.

Two hours later, we, our packages, and all we owned, were at the foot of the cliff. Save for Challenger’s luggage we had never a difficulty. Leaving it all where we descended, we started at once for Zambo’s camp. In the early morning we approached it, but only to find, to our amazement, not one fire but a dozen upon the plain. The rescue party had arrived. There were twenty Indians from the river, with stakes, ropes, and all that could be useful for bridging the chasm. At least we shall have no difficulty now in carrying our packages, when to-morrow we begin to make our way back to the Amazon.

And so, in humble and thankful mood, I close this account. Our eyes have seen great wonders and our souls are chastened by what we have endured. Each is in his own way a better and deeper man. It may be that when we reach Para we shall stop to refit. If we do, this letter will be a mail ahead. If not, it will reach London on the very day that I do. In either case, my dear Mr. McArdle, I hope very soon to shake you by the hand.

CHAPTER XVI

“A Procession! A Procession!”

I should wish to place upon record here our gratitude to all our friends upon the Amazon for the very great kindness and hospitality which was shown to us upon our return journey. Very particularly would I thank Senhor Penalosa and other officials of the Brazilian Government for the special arrangements by which we were helped upon our way, and Senhor Pereira of Para, to whose forethought we owe the complete outfit for a decent appearance in the civilized world which we found ready for us at that town. It seemed a poor return for all the courtesy which we encountered that we should deceive our hosts and benefactors, but under the circumstances we had really no alternative, and I hereby tell them that they will only waste their time and their money if they attempt to follow upon our traces. Even the names have been altered in our accounts, and I am very sure that no one, from the most careful study of them, could come within a thousand miles of our unknown land.

The excitement which had been caused through those parts of South America which we had to traverse was imagined by us to be purely local, and I can assure our friends in England that we had no notion of the uproar which the mere rumor of our experiences had caused through Europe. It was not until the Ivernia was within five hundred miles of Southampton that the wireless messages from paper after paper and agency after agency, offering huge prices for a short return message as to our actual results, showed us how strained was the attention not only of the scientific world but of the general public. It was agreed among us, however, that no definite statement should be given to the Press until we had met the members of the Zoological Institute, since as delegates it was our clear duty to give our first report to the body from which we had received our commission of investigation. Thus, although we found Southampton full of Pressmen, we absolutely refused to give any information, which had the natural effect of focussing public attention upon the meeting which was advertised for the evening of November 7th. For this gathering, the Zoological Hall which had been the scene of the inception of our task was found to be far too small, and it was only in the Queen’s Hall in Regent Street that accommodation could be found. It is now common knowledge the promoters might have ventured upon the Albert Hall and still found their space too scanty.

It was for the second evening after our arrival that the great meeting had been fixed. For the first, we had each, no doubt, our own pressing personal affairs to absorb us. Of mine I cannot yet speak. It may be that as it stands further from me I may think of it, and even speak of it, with less emotion. I have shown the reader in the beginning of this narrative where lay the springs of my action. It is but right, perhaps, that I should carry on the tale and show also the results. And yet the day may come when I would not have it otherwise. At least I have been driven forth to take part in a wondrous adventure, and I cannot but be thankful to the force that drove me.

And now I turn to the last supreme eventful moment of our adventure. As I was racking my brain as to how I should best describe it, my eyes fell upon the issue of my own Journal for the morning of the 8th of November with the full and excellent account of my friend and fellow-reporter Macdona. What can I do better than transcribe his narrative—head-lines and all? I admit that the paper was exuberant in the matter, out of compliment to its own enterprise in sending a correspondent, but the other great dailies were hardly less full in their account. Thus, then, friend Mac in his report:

THE NEW WORLD

GREAT MEETING AT THE QUEEN’S HALL

SCENES OF UPROAR

EXTRAORDINARY INCIDENT

WHAT WAS IT?

NOCTURNAL RIOT IN REGENT STREET
(Special)

“The much-discussed meeting of the Zoological Institute, convened to hear the report of the Committee of Investigation sent out last year to South America to test the assertions made by Professor Challenger as to the continued existence of prehistoric life upon that Continent, was held last night in the greater Queen’s Hall, and it is safe to say that it is likely to be a red letter date in the history of Science, for the proceedings were of so remarkable and sensational a character that no one present is ever likely to forget them.” (Oh, brother scribe Macdona, what a monstrous opening sentence!) “The tickets were theoretically confined to members and their friends, but the latter is an elastic term, and long before eight o’clock, the hour fixed for the commencement of the proceedings, all parts of the Great Hall were tightly packed. The general public, however, which most unreasonably entertained a grievance at having been excluded, stormed the doors at a quarter to eight, after a prolonged melee in which several people were injured, including Inspector Scoble of H. Division, whose leg was unfortunately broken. After this unwarrantable invasion, which not only filled every passage, but even intruded upon the space set apart for the Press, it is estimated that nearly five thousand people awaited the arrival of the travelers. When they eventually appeared, they took their places in the front of a platform which already contained all the leading scientific men, not only of this country, but of France and of Germany. Sweden was also represented, in the person of Professor Sergius, the famous Zoologist of the University of Upsala. The entrance of the four heroes of the occasion was the signal for a remarkable demonstration of welcome, the whole audience rising and cheering for some minutes. An acute observer might, however, have detected some signs of dissent amid the applause, and gathered that the proceedings were likely to become more lively than harmonious. It may safely be prophesied, however, that no one could have foreseen the extraordinary turn which they were actually to take.

“Of the appearance of the four wanderers little need be said, since their photographs have for some time been appearing in all the papers. They bear few traces of the hardships which they are said to have undergone. Professor Challenger’s beard may be more shaggy, Professor Summerlee’s features more ascetic, Lord John Roxton’s figure more gaunt, and all three may be burned to a darker tint than when they left our shores, but each appeared to be in most excellent health. As to our own representative, the well-known athlete and international Rugby football player, E. D. Malone, he looks trained to a hair, and as he surveyed the crowd a smile of good-humored contentment pervaded his honest but homely face.” (All right, Mac, wait till I get you alone!)

“When quiet had been restored and the audience resumed their seats after the ovation which they had given to the travelers, the chairman, the Duke of Durham, addressed the meeting. ‘He would not,’ he said, ‘stand for more than a moment between that vast assembly and the treat which lay before them. It was not for him to anticipate what Professor Summerlee, who was the spokesman of the committee, had to say to them, but it was common rumor that their expedition had been crowned by extraordinary success.’ (Applause.) ‘Apparently the age of romance was not dead, and there was common ground upon which the wildest imaginings of the novelist could meet the actual scientific investigations of the searcher for truth. He would only add, before he sat down, that he rejoiced—and all of them would rejoice—that these gentlemen had returned safe and sound from their difficult and dangerous task, for it cannot be denied that any disaster to such an expedition would have inflicted a well-nigh irreparable loss to the cause of Zoological science.’ (Great applause, in which Professor Challenger was observed to join.)

“Professor Summerlee’s rising was the signal for another extraordinary outbreak of enthusiasm, which broke out again at intervals throughout his address. That address will not be given in extenso in these columns, for the reason that a full account of the whole adventures of the expedition is being published as a supplement from the pen of our own special correspondent. Some general indications will therefore suffice. Having described the genesis of their journey, and paid a handsome tribute to his friend Professor Challenger, coupled with an apology for the incredulity with which his assertions, now fully vindicated, had been received, he gave the actual course of their journey, carefully withholding such information as would aid the public in any attempt to locate this remarkable plateau. Having described, in general terms, their course from the main river up to the time that they actually reached the base of the cliffs, he enthralled his hearers by his account of the difficulties encountered by the expedition in their repeated attempts to mount them, and finally described how they succeeded in their desperate endeavors, which cost the lives of their two devoted half-breed servants.” (This amazing reading of the affair was the result of Summerlee’s endeavors to avoid raising any questionable matter at the meeting.)

“Having conducted his audience in fancy to the summit, and marooned them there by reason of the fall of their bridge, the Professor proceeded to describe both the horrors and the attractions of that remarkable land. Of personal adventures he said little, but laid stress upon the rich harvest reaped by Science in the observations of the wonderful beast, bird, insect, and plant life of the plateau. Peculiarly rich in the coleoptera and in the lepidoptera, forty-six new species of the one and ninety-four of the other had been secured in the course of a few weeks. It was, however, in the larger animals, and especially in the larger animals supposed to have been long extinct, that the interest of the public was naturally centered. Of these he was able to give a goodly list, but had little doubt that it would be largely extended when the place had been more thoroughly investigated. He and his companions had seen at least a dozen creatures, most of them at a distance, which corresponded with nothing at present known to Science. These would in time be duly classified and examined. He instanced a snake, the cast skin of which, deep purple in color, was fifty-one feet in length, and mentioned a white creature, supposed to be mammalian, which gave forth well-marked phosphorescence in the darkness; also a large black moth, the bite of which was supposed by the Indians to be highly poisonous. Setting aside these entirely new forms of life, the plateau was very rich in known prehistoric forms, dating back in some cases to early Jurassic times. Among these he mentioned the gigantic and grotesque stegosaurus, seen once by Mr. Malone at a drinking-place by the lake, and drawn in the sketch-book of that adventurous American who had first penetrated this unknown world. He described also the iguanodon and the pterodactyl—two of the first of the wonders which they had encountered. He then thrilled the assembly by some account of the terrible carnivorous dinosaurs, which had on more than one occasion pursued members of the party, and which were the most formidable of all the creatures which they had encountered. Thence he passed to the huge and ferocious bird, the phororachus, and to the great elk which still roams upon this upland. It was not, however, until he sketched the mysteries of the central lake that the full interest and enthusiasm of the audience were aroused. One had to pinch oneself to be sure that one was awake as one heard this sane and practical Professor in cold measured tones describing the monstrous three-eyed fish-lizards and the huge water-snakes which inhabit this enchanted sheet of water. Next he touched upon the Indians, and upon the extraordinary colony of anthropoid apes, which might be looked upon as an advance upon the pithecanthropus of Java, and as coming therefore nearer than any known form to that hypothetical creation, the missing link. Finally he described, amongst some merriment, the ingenious but highly dangerous aeronautic invention of Professor Challenger, and wound up a most memorable address by an account of the methods by which the committee did at last find their way back to civilization.

“It had been hoped that the proceedings would end there, and that a vote of thanks and congratulation, moved by Professor Sergius, of Upsala University, would be duly seconded and carried; but it was soon evident that the course of events was not destined to flow so smoothly. Symptoms of opposition had been evident from time to time during the evening, and now Dr. James Illingworth, of Edinburgh, rose in the center of the hall. Dr. Illingworth asked whether an amendment should not be taken before a resolution.

“THE CHAIRMAN: ‘Yes, sir, if there must be an amendment.’

“DR. ILLINGWORTH: ‘Your Grace, there must be an amendment.’

“THE CHAIRMAN: ‘Then let us take it at once.’

“PROFESSOR SUMMERLEE (springing to his feet): ‘Might I explain, your Grace, that this man is my personal enemy ever since our controversy in the Quarterly Journal of Science as to the true nature of Bathybius?’

“THE CHAIRMAN: ‘I fear I cannot go into personal matters. Proceed.’

“Dr. Illingworth was imperfectly heard in part of his remarks on account of the strenuous opposition of the friends of the explorers. Some attempts were also made to pull him down. Being a man of enormous physique, however, and possessed of a very powerful voice, he dominated the tumult and succeeded in finishing his speech. It was clear, from the moment of his rising, that he had a number of friends and sympathizers in the hall, though they formed a minority in the audience. The attitude of the greater part of the public might be described as one of attentive neutrality.

“Dr. Illingworth began his remarks by expressing his high appreciation of the scientific work both of Professor Challenger and of Professor Summerlee. He much regretted that any personal bias should have been read into his remarks, which were entirely dictated by his desire for scientific truth. His position, in fact, was substantially the same as that taken up by Professor Summerlee at the last meeting. At that last meeting Professor Challenger had made certain assertions which had been queried by his colleague. Now this colleague came forward himself with the same assertions and expected them to remain unquestioned. Was this reasonable? (‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ and prolonged interruption, during which Professor Challenger was heard from the Press box to ask leave from the chairman to put Dr. Illingworth into the street.) A year ago one man said certain things. Now four men said other and more startling ones. Was this to constitute a final proof where the matters in question were of the most revolutionary and incredible character? There had been recent examples of travelers arriving from the unknown with certain tales which had been too readily accepted. Was the London Zoological Institute to place itself in this position? He admitted that the members of the committee were men of character. But human nature was very complex. Even Professors might be misled by the desire for notoriety. Like moths, we all love best to flutter in the light. Heavy-game shots liked to be in a position to cap the tales of their rivals, and journalists were not averse from sensational coups, even when imagination had to aid fact in the process. Each member of the committee had his own motive for making the most of his results. (‘Shame! shame!’) He had no desire to be offensive. (‘You are!’ and interruption.) The corroboration of these wondrous tales was really of the most slender description. What did it amount to? Some photographs. {Was it possible that in this age of ingenious manipulation photographs could be accepted as evidence?} What more? We have a story of a flight and a descent by ropes which precluded the production of larger specimens. It was ingenious, but not convincing. It was understood that Lord John Roxton claimed to have the skull of a phororachus. He could only say that he would like to see that skull.

“LORD JOHN ROXTON: ‘Is this fellow calling me a liar?’ (Uproar.)

“THE CHAIRMAN: ‘Order! order! Dr. Illingworth, I must direct you to bring your remarks to a conclusion and to move your amendment.’

“DR. ILLINGWORTH: ‘Your Grace, I have more to say, but I bow to your ruling. I move, then, that, while Professor Summerlee be thanked for his interesting address, the whole matter shall be regarded as ‘non-proven,’ and shall be referred back to a larger, and possibly more reliable Committee of Investigation.’

“It is difficult to describe the confusion caused by this amendment. A large section of the audience expressed their indignation at such a slur upon the travelers by noisy shouts of dissent and cries of, ‘Don’t put it!’ ‘Withdraw!’ ‘Turn him out!’ On the other hand, the malcontents—and it cannot be denied that they were fairly numerous—cheered for the amendment, with cries of ‘Order!’ ‘Chair!’ and ‘Fair play!’ A scuffle broke out in the back benches, and blows were freely exchanged among the medical students who crowded that part of the hall. It was only the moderating influence of the presence of large numbers of ladies which prevented an absolute riot. Suddenly, however, there was a pause, a hush, and then complete silence. Professor Challenger was on his feet. His appearance and manner are peculiarly arresting, and as he raised his hand for order the whole audience settled down expectantly to give him a hearing.

“‘It will be within the recollection of many present,’ said Professor Challenger, ‘that similar foolish and unmannerly scenes marked the last meeting at which I have been able to address them. On that occasion Professor Summerlee was the chief offender, and though he is now chastened and contrite, the matter could not be entirely forgotten. I have heard to-night similar, but even more offensive, sentiments from the person who has just sat down, and though it is a conscious effort of self-effacement to come down to that person’s mental level, I will endeavor to do so, in order to allay any reasonable doubt which could possibly exist in the minds of anyone.’ (Laughter and interruption.) ‘I need not remind this audience that, though Professor Summerlee, as the head of the Committee of Investigation, has been put up to speak to-night, still it is I who am the real prime mover in this business, and that it is mainly to me that any successful result must be ascribed. I have safely conducted these three gentlemen to the spot mentioned, and I have, as you have heard, convinced them of the accuracy of my previous account. We had hoped that we should find upon our return that no one was so dense as to dispute our joint conclusions. Warned, however, by my previous experience, I have not come without such proofs as may convince a reasonable man. As explained by Professor Summerlee, our cameras have been tampered with by the ape-men when they ransacked our camp, and most of our negatives ruined.’ (Jeers, laughter, and ‘Tell us another!’ from the back.) ‘I have mentioned the ape-men, and I cannot forbear from saying that some of the sounds which now meet my ears bring back most vividly to my recollection my experiences with those interesting creatures.’ (Laughter.) ‘In spite of the destruction of so many invaluable negatives, there still remains in our collection a certain number of corroborative photographs showing the conditions of life upon the plateau. Did they accuse them of having forged these photographs?’ (A voice, ‘Yes,’ and considerable interruption which ended in several men being put out of the hall.) ‘The negatives were open to the inspection of experts. But what other evidence had they? Under the conditions of their escape it was naturally impossible to bring a large amount of baggage, but they had rescued Professor Summerlee’s collections of butterflies and beetles, containing many new species. Was this not evidence?’ (Several voices, ‘No.’) ‘Who said no?’

“DR. ILLINGWORTH (rising): ‘Our point is that such a collection might have been made in other places than a prehistoric plateau.’ (Applause.)

“PROFESSOR CHALLENGER: ‘No doubt, sir, we have to bow to your scientific authority, although I must admit that the name is unfamiliar. Passing, then, both the photographs and the entomological collection, I come to the varied and accurate information which we bring with us upon points which have never before been elucidated. For example, upon the domestic habits of the pterodactyl—’(A voice: ‘Bosh,’ and uproar)—‘I say, that upon the domestic habits of the pterodactyl we can throw a flood of light. I can exhibit to you from my portfolio a picture of that creature taken from life which would convince you—’

“DR. ILLINGWORTH: ‘No picture could convince us of anything.’

“PROFESSOR CHALLENGER: ‘You would require to see the thing itself?’

“DR. ILLINGWORTH: ‘Undoubtedly.’

“PROFESSOR CHALLENGER: ‘And you would accept that?’

“DR. ILLINGWORTH (laughing): ‘Beyond a doubt.’

“It was at this point that the sensation of the evening arose—a sensation so dramatic that it can never have been paralleled in the history of scientific gatherings. Professor Challenger raised his hand in the air as a signal, and at once our colleague, Mr. E. D. Malone, was observed to rise and to make his way to the back of the platform. An instant later he re-appeared in company of a gigantic negro, the two of them bearing between them a large square packing-case. It was evidently of great weight, and was slowly carried forward and placed in front of the Professor’s chair. All sound had hushed in the audience and everyone was absorbed in the spectacle before them. Professor Challenger drew off the top of the case, which formed a sliding lid. Peering down into the box he snapped his fingers several times and was heard from the Press seat to say, ‘Come, then, pretty, pretty!’ in a coaxing voice. An instant later, with a scratching, rattling sound, a most horrible and loathsome creature appeared from below and perched itself upon the side of the case. Even the unexpected fall of the Duke of Durham into the orchestra, which occurred at this moment, could not distract the petrified attention of the vast audience. The face of the creature was like the wildest gargoyle that the imagination of a mad medieval builder could have conceived. It was malicious, horrible, with two small red eyes as bright as points of burning coal. Its long, savage mouth, which was held half-open, was full of a double row of shark-like teeth. Its shoulders were humped, and round them were draped what appeared to be a faded gray shawl. It was the devil of our childhood in person. There was a turmoil in the audience—someone screamed, two ladies in the front row fell senseless from their chairs, and there was a general movement upon the platform to follow their chairman into the orchestra. For a moment there was danger of a general panic. Professor Challenger threw up his hands to still the commotion, but the movement alarmed the creature beside him. Its strange shawl suddenly unfurled, spread, and fluttered as a pair of leathery wings. Its owner grabbed at its legs, but too late to hold it. It had sprung from the perch and was circling slowly round the Queen’s Hall with a dry, leathery flapping of its ten-foot wings, while a putrid and insidious odor pervaded the room. The cries of the people in the galleries, who were alarmed at the near approach of those glowing eyes and that murderous beak, excited the creature to a frenzy. Faster and faster it flew, beating against walls and chandeliers in a blind frenzy of alarm. ‘The window! For heaven’s sake shut that window!’ roared the Professor from the platform, dancing and wringing his hands in an agony of apprehension. Alas, his warning was too late! In a moment the creature, beating and bumping along the wall like a huge moth within a gas-shade, came upon the opening, squeezed its hideous bulk through it, and was gone. Professor Challenger fell back into his chair with his face buried in his hands, while the audience gave one long, deep sigh of relief as they realized that the incident was over.

“Then—oh! how shall one describe what took place then—when the full exuberance of the majority and the full reaction of the minority united to make one great wave of enthusiasm, which rolled from the back of the hall, gathering volume as it came, swept over the orchestra, submerged the platform, and carried the four heroes away upon its crest?” (Good for you, Mac!) “If the audience had done less than justice, surely it made ample amends. Every one was on his feet. Every one was moving, shouting, gesticulating. A dense crowd of cheering men were round the four travelers. ‘Up with them! up with them!’ cried a hundred voices. In a moment four figures shot up above the crowd. In vain they strove to break loose. They were held in their lofty places of honor. It would have been hard to let them down if it had been wished, so dense was the crowd around them. ‘Regent Street! Regent Street!’ sounded the voices. There was a swirl in the packed multitude, and a slow current, bearing the four upon their shoulders, made for the door. Out in the street the scene was extraordinary. An assemblage of not less than a hundred thousand people was waiting. The close-packed throng extended from the other side of the Langham Hotel to Oxford Circus. A roar of acclamation greeted the four adventurers as they appeared, high above the heads of the people, under the vivid electric lamps outside the hall. ‘A procession! A procession!’ was the cry. In a dense phalanx, blocking the streets from side to side, the crowd set forth, taking the route of Regent Street, Pall Mall, St. James’s Street, and Piccadilly. The whole central traffic of London was held up, and many collisions were reported between the demonstrators upon the one side and the police and taxi-cabmen upon the other. Finally, it was not until after midnight that the four travelers were released at the entrance to Lord John Roxton’s chambers in the Albany, and that the exuberant crowd, having sung ‘They are Jolly Good Fellows’ in chorus, concluded their program with ‘God Save the King.’ So ended one of the most remarkable evenings that London has seen for a considerable time.”

So far my friend Macdona; and it may be taken as a fairly accurate, if florid, account of the proceedings. As to the main incident, it was a bewildering surprise to the audience, but not, I need hardly say, to us. The reader will remember how I met Lord John Roxton upon the very occasion when, in his protective crinoline, he had gone to bring the “Devil’s chick” as he called it, for Professor Challenger. I have hinted also at the trouble which the Professor’s baggage gave us when we left the plateau, and had I described our voyage I might have said a good deal of the worry we had to coax with putrid fish the appetite of our filthy companion. If I have not said much about it before, it was, of course, that the Professor’s earnest desire was that no possible rumor of the unanswerable argument which we carried should be allowed to leak out until the moment came when his enemies were to be confuted.

One word as to the fate of the London pterodactyl. Nothing can be said to be certain upon this point. There is the evidence of two frightened women that it perched upon the roof of the Queen’s Hall and remained there like a diabolical statue for some hours. The next day it came out in the evening papers that Private Miles, of the Coldstream Guards, on duty outside Marlborough House, had deserted his post without leave, and was therefore courtmartialed. Private Miles’ account, that he dropped his rifle and took to his heels down the Mall because on looking up he had suddenly seen the devil between him and the moon, was not accepted by the Court, and yet it may have a direct bearing upon the point at issue. The only other evidence which I can adduce is from the log of the SS. Friesland, a Dutch-American liner, which asserts that at nine next morning, Start Point being at the time ten miles upon their starboard quarter, they were passed by something between a flying goat and a monstrous bat, which was heading at a prodigious pace south and west. If its homing instinct led it upon the right line, there can be no doubt that somewhere out in the wastes of the Atlantic the last European pterodactyl found its end.

And Gladys—oh, my Gladys!—Gladys of the mystic lake, now to be re-named the Central, for never shall she have immortality through me. Did I not always see some hard fiber in her nature? Did I not, even at the time when I was proud to obey her behest, feel that it was surely a poor love which could drive a lover to his death or the danger of it? Did I not, in my truest thoughts, always recurring and always dismissed, see past the beauty of the face, and, peering into the soul, discern the twin shadows of selfishness and of fickleness glooming at the back of it? Did she love the heroic and the spectacular for its own noble sake, or was it for the glory which might, without effort or sacrifice, be reflected upon herself? Or are these thoughts the vain wisdom which comes after the event? It was the shock of my life. For a moment it had turned me to a cynic. But already, as I write, a week has passed, and we have had our momentous interview with Lord John Roxton and—well, perhaps things might be worse.

Let me tell it in a few words. No letter or telegram had come to me at Southampton, and I reached the little villa at Streatham about ten o’clock that night in a fever of alarm. Was she dead or alive? Where were all my nightly dreams of the open arms, the smiling face, the words of praise for her man who had risked his life to humor her whim? Already I was down from the high peaks and standing flat-footed upon earth. Yet some good reasons given might still lift me to the clouds once more. I rushed down the garden path, hammered at the door, heard the voice of Gladys within, pushed past the staring maid, and strode into the sitting-room. She was seated in a low settee under the shaded standard lamp by the piano. In three steps I was across the room and had both her hands in mine.

“Gladys!” I cried, “Gladys!”

She looked up with amazement in her face. She was altered in some subtle way. The expression of her eyes, the hard upward stare, the set of the lips, was new to me. She drew back her hands.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Gladys!” I cried. “What is the matter? You are my Gladys, are you not—little Gladys Hungerton?”

“No,” said she, “I am Gladys Potts. Let me introduce you to my husband.”

How absurd life is! I found myself mechanically bowing and shaking hands with a little ginger-haired man who was coiled up in the deep arm-chair which had once been sacred to my own use. We bobbed and grinned in front of each other.

“Father lets us stay here. We are getting our house ready,” said Gladys.

“Oh, yes,” said I.

“You didn’t get my letter at Para, then?”

“No, I got no letter.”

“Oh, what a pity! It would have made all clear.”

“It is quite clear,” said I.

“I’ve told William all about you,” said she. “We have no secrets. I am so sorry about it. But it couldn’t have been so very deep, could it, if you could go off to the other end of the world and leave me here alone. You’re not crabby, are you?”

“No, no, not at all. I think I’ll go.”

“Have some refreshment,” said the little man, and he added, in a confidential way, “It’s always like this, ain’t it? And must be unless you had polygamy, only the other way round; you understand.” He laughed like an idiot, while I made for the door.

I was through it, when a sudden fantastic impulse came upon me, and I went back to my successful rival, who looked nervously at the electric push.

“Will you answer a question?” I asked.

“Well, within reason,” said he.

“How did you do it? Have you searched for hidden treasure, or discovered a pole, or done time on a pirate, or flown the Channel, or what? Where is the glamour of romance? How did you get it?”

He stared at me with a hopeless expression upon his vacuous, good-natured, scrubby little face.

“Don’t you think all this is a little too personal?” he said.

“Well, just one question,” I cried. “What are you? What is your profession?”

“I am a solicitor’s clerk,” said he. “Second man at Johnson and Merivale’s, 41 Chancery Lane.”

“Good-night!” said I, and vanished, like all disconsolate and broken-hearted heroes, into the darkness, with grief and rage and laughter all simmering within me like a boiling pot.

One more little scene, and I have done. Last night we all supped at Lord John Roxton’s rooms, and sitting together afterwards we smoked in good comradeship and talked our adventures over. It was strange under these altered surroundings to see the old, well-known faces and figures. There was Challenger, with his smile of condescension, his drooping eyelids, his intolerant eyes, his aggressive beard, his huge chest, swelling and puffing as he laid down the law to Summerlee. And Summerlee, too, there he was with his short briar between his thin moustache and his gray goat’s-beard, his worn face protruded in eager debate as he queried all Challenger’s propositions. Finally, there was our host, with his rugged, eagle face, and his cold, blue, glacier eyes with always a shimmer of devilment and of humor down in the depths of them. Such is the last picture of them that I have carried away.

It was after supper, in his own sanctum—the room of the pink radiance and the innumerable trophies—that Lord John Roxton had something to say to us. From a cupboard he had brought an old cigar-box, and this he laid before him on the table.

“There’s one thing,” said he, “that maybe I should have spoken about before this, but I wanted to know a little more clearly where I was. No use to raise hopes and let them down again. But it’s facts, not hopes, with us now. You may remember that day we found the pterodactyl rookery in the swamp—what? Well, somethin’ in the lie of the land took my notice. Perhaps it has escaped you, so I will tell you. It was a volcanic vent full of blue clay.” The Professors nodded.

“Well, now, in the whole world I’ve only had to do with one place that was a volcanic vent of blue clay. That was the great De Beers Diamond Mine of Kimberley—what? So you see I got diamonds into my head. I rigged up a contraption to hold off those stinking beasts, and I spent a happy day there with a spud. This is what I got.”

He opened his cigar-box, and tilting it over he poured about twenty or thirty rough stones, varying from the size of beans to that of chestnuts, on the table.

“Perhaps you think I should have told you then. Well, so I should, only I know there are a lot of traps for the unwary, and that stones may be of any size and yet of little value where color and consistency are clean off. Therefore, I brought them back, and on the first day at home I took one round to Spink’s, and asked him to have it roughly cut and valued.”

He took a pill-box from his pocket, and spilled out of it a beautiful glittering diamond, one of the finest stones that I have ever seen.

“There’s the result,” said he. “He prices the lot at a minimum of two hundred thousand pounds. Of course it is fair shares between us. I won’t hear of anythin’ else. Well, Challenger, what will you do with your fifty thousand?”

“If you really persist in your generous view,” said the Professor, “I should found a private museum, which has long been one of my dreams.”

“And you, Summerlee?”

“I would retire from teaching, and so find time for my final classification of the chalk fossils.”

“I’ll use my own,” said Lord John Roxton, “in fitting a well-formed expedition and having another look at the dear old plateau. As to you, young fellah, you, of course, will spend yours in gettin’ married.”

“Not just yet,” said I, with a rueful smile. “I think, if you will have me, that I would rather go with you.”

Lord Roxton said nothing, but a brown hand was stretched out to me across the table.

PEOPLE OF THE PYRAMIDS, by William P. McGivern

First published in the December 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

“Come, come,” the fat, brown-skinned proprietor of the gaudy little shop in Cairo cried with more enthusiasm than coherence. “Lukka, lukka,” he said proudly, waving a fat arm at the piles of merchandise stacked in the interior of his shop.

Neal Kirby grinned good-naturedly and allowed himself to be half-dragged, half-led into the establishment. He knew he was perfectly secure against the wiles of the fat shop-keeper for he only had one American dollar in his pocket. And his appetite had already staked a claim on that dollar for dinner.

With the proprietor pattering hopefully at his heels he browsed up and down the narrow aisles examining the ropes of cheap beads, the gayly colorful silks and satins and the thousand-and-one sleepy-looking Buddhas, of all sizes and shapes, that stared at him from the shelves.

He was turning to leave when a steely glitter in a corner caught his eye. Looking closely he saw that it was a narrow silver casket with a glass top that had caught the light. Through the glass top he could see a slim stiletto-like knife resting on a pad of red silk. Strangely, it excited his curiosity. He wondered vaguely why a piece of merchandise of such obvious value should be tucked away in the darkest corner of the shop.

“How much?” he asked, pointing to the casket.

The proprietor shook his head until his fat jowls quivered like cups of jelly.

“No sale, no sale,” he said breathlessly. He grabbed Neal by the arm. “Come, come,” he waved to the displays on the opposite side of the shop. “Lukka, lukka.”

Neal shook his head. Stubbornness had been added to his curiosity now. Disregarding the angry squeals of the fat shopkeeper, he bent and picked up the casket. Opening the casket, he almost gasped at the incredible beauty of the knife.

The blade, about eight inches long, gleamed as if it had been delicately forged from pure silver and the handle was formed in the shape of a man’s torso, from some strange red metal that glowed with a fiery luminescence. A small, cunningly chiseled head topped the handle of the knife, and at the neckline where it joined the torso, it was circled by a cluster of small, but perfect diamonds.

Neal whistled in admiration. He was no judge of precious stones and metals but anyone could see that the knife would be worth a Rajah’s ransom. So absorbed was he in the contemplation of the fabulously beautiful knife that he did not hear the sudden sharp exclamation that sounded from the wheezing proprietor. He didn’t hear the footsteps behind him, but he did hear the quiet, sibilant voice that cut through the silence.

“Give me that knife!”

Neal turned in surprise. Two people stood behind him.

One was a man of medium height with a thin, arrogant face and sandy hair but Neal did not take time to notice anything else about him, for he was too busy staring in admiration at the girl who was with him.

She was tall, with hauntingly blue eyes, and fine blonde hair that cascaded in graceful waves almost to her shoulders. Her slender, charmingly feminine figure was accentuated by the smartly tailored white gabardine suit she wore. She looked cool and fresh and American.

Neal smiled suddenly. Just seeing a girl like this made him feel certain that Cairo was a fine place after all.

“It’s a small world, isn’t it?” he said to her.

She looked anxiously at the man she was with and murmured something under her breath that he didn’t hear. Neal’s smile faded as he looked closely at the girl. There was a hidden fear lurking in the depths of her eyes and he saw that the small handkerchief in her hands had been twisted into a small, crushed ball.

Her companion held out his hand imperiously.

“Will you give me the knife?” he snapped. “Or must I summon the police?”

Neal stiffened at the man’s tone. There was something so definitely insulting in it that he felt a hot flush of anger staining his face. His big hands closed spasmodically over the knife in his hands.

“You might get better results,” he suggested as coolly as he could, “if you’d stop snarling at people and improve your manners. The word ‘please’ can work wonders in a lot of cases. You might look it up some time.”

The man swallowed a reply and his jaw clamped shut. His face had drained white and his small, steel-blue eyes hardened into pin-points of angry light.

“Will you give me that knife?” he almost whispered. His hand slipped slowly into the outside pocket of his coat, where a suspicious bulge showed.

Neal straightened slowly, his eyes narrowing to mere slits. He had not missed the gesture or its significance. In spite of the tenseness of the situation he was able to realize that the incident was strange in every respect. The man’s rage and impatience were wholly unreasonable, completely out of proportion to the trifling affair. The girl was looking imploringly at her companion and her hands were clasped tensely together as if in silent supplication.

THE fat, waddling shopkeeper shoved himself between them at that instant, stammering breathless apologies. And as suddenly and abruptly as that the incident was over. The thin man with the arrogant face withdrew his hand from his pocket and went about the business of lighting a cigarette. Neal relaxed slowly. He couldn’t quite convince himself that it was all over. One instant, he knew, the man opposite him was ready to draw his gun and fire. And now he was placidly lighting a cigarette with fingers that were as steady as rocks.

The girl had been talking to the shopkeeper, showing h i m a withered paper in her hand, and now he turned to Neal, smiling nervously.

He pointed to the knife which Neal still held in his hand.

“Give to Missy,” he said imploringly. “Belong her.”

Neal hesitated an instant, and he was aware that the burning eyes of the girl’s companion were resting unwaveringly on him.

“Please,” the girl said simply.

Neal shrugged and handed the girl the knife. As his fingers met hers, he felt paper crackle under his fingers, felt a closely wadded note pushed against his palm. His fingers closed on it automatically and he shoved his fist in his pocket.

“Thank you,” the girl said quickly.

She dropped the brilliantly gleaming knife into her handbag, turned and left the shop. The thin, arrogant, steel-eyed man followed her without a backward glance.

“Go,” the fat shopkeeper said nervously. “Go, please.”

Neal pulled out the wad of paper and spread it flat against his hand. The only information it contained was the name of a hotel and a room number. Neal frowned and shoved it back into his pocket. That didn’t tell him much about the screwy business.

He sauntered from the shop, his thoughts churning futilely. Quiet deliberation was not his most successful accomplishment and he felt queerly impotent and helpless. There was only one thing to do, he decided, after a few moments of anxious cogitation. He pulled the paper that the girl had slipped to him from his pocket and noted the address and room number. Then he walked on whistling.

* * * *

The soft Egyptian night had dropped its black mantle over Cairo, lending an almost mystic enchantment to the intertwined streets and the murmuring voices of natives. Under the merciful light of a full pale moon, the desert stretches surrounding the silent city, looked cool and calm and inviting. But those who knew the desert were aware of its ruthless reality, its cruelty, its danger.

The lobby of the Hotel Internationale was practically deserted when Neal Kirby strolled across its polished floor and stopped at the desk of the blandly polite young native who acted as clerk and receptionist.

“Is the young lady in 402 in?” he asked.

The clerk nodded.

“Did you have an—”

“She’s expecting me,” Neal said quickly. Turning, he strode to the elevator. He realized disgustedly that he had acted tactlessly. The girl had taken such precautions in slipping him the note that it was obvious she didn’t want it known that he was to see her. He had spoiled that by inquiring for her like a breathless sophomore.

He stepped from the elevator at the fourth floor. The hotel was completely modern, with luxuriously thick carpeting and walls paneled with smooth, dark oak. The heavy rug smothered the sounds of his footsteps as he started down the corridor, looking for 402.

He passed three doors before he found it. Suddenly he began to feel nervous. He paused before the door, his throat strangely dry. Maybe this whole thing was a joke of some sort. Or maybe he had received the note by mistake. A dozen other disturbing thoughts occurred to him, but he dismissed them all with a characteristic shrug. He raised his hand to knock when he heard a sudden scuffling noise from inside the room. It was followed by a quick, gasping cry of terror.

Neal hesitated for only a bare instant and then he grabbed the door-knob, shook it violently.

The door was locked. Neal drew back and lunged at the door, driving his heavy shoulders against its hard surface. A splintering crack sounded and the door swung inward suddenly, almost throwing him off balance.

The room was dark, but there was enough moonlight to show him the shadowy outline of two figures struggling near the window. In spite of the uncertain illumination he recognized one of the figures as the girl he had met in the curio shop. She was struggling helplessly against a man whose both hands were wrapped about her neck.

The man looked up as Neal charged into the room. He dropped the limp body of the girl and sprang toward the window, which opened on the fire escape.

Neal dove across the room and his shoulder drove into the man’s back, slamming him against the wall. He heard a grunt of pain escape the man’s lips, but like an eel, the dark figure squirmed from his grasp and dove for the window.

Neal lunged after him, his right fist swinging in a wild looping arc. It crashed into the side of the man’s head as he scrambled over the window ledge, knocking him out onto the balcony formed by the fire escape.

Neal threw the window open wider, but before he could clamber out his intended victim scrambled to his feet and darted down the steps. Neal had one quick look at the man’s dark terrified features before he disappeared.

Wheeling from the window, Neal stepped quickly across the room and closed the door that he had forced. He groped about until he found a lamp and switched it on. He knew there would be no chance of catching the native who had fled down the fire escape, and the girl might be seriously hurt. She was lying on the floor next to a sofa, unconscious. There were angry red marks on her throat, but he could see the rise and fall of her breast under the light flimsy dressing gown she was wearing-

He lifted her carefully in his arms, stretched her on the sofa and rubbed her hands anxiously. After a moment or so her eyelids flickered and he noticed a touch of color returning to her cheeks. With her long, fine hair framing her white face she looked more like an angel than a human being.

She was breathing more normally now, Neal noticed. He poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the coffee table, tilted her head slightly and poured some of its contents down her throat.

She coughed weakly and opened her eyes. For an instant she stared blankly at him, and then, as recognition came to her, she smiled tremulously.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she murmured. Her hands moved slowly to her throat, touched the abrasions on her skin.

“Don’t talk if it hurts,” Neal said, concerned. “What you need is rest.”

“It doesn’t hurt,” the girl assured him. “I’m still a little frightened, that’s all. Silly of me. I should be getting used to it by now.”

“You mean this has happened before?” Neal asked incredulously.

The girl was silent an instant, and then she turned her eyes full on Neal. In them was mirrored the tragic finality of despair.

“I was wrong to involve you in my troubles,” she said brokenly. “Please go now while there is still time. I—it may be dangerous for you to stay another minute.”

Neal grinned cheerfully and tossed his hat onto an empty chair. He lighted a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling expansively.

“You can’t get rid of me that easily,” he chuckled.

“Oh please,” the girl said miserably. “You think it’s something of a lark, something amusing. Can’t you see I’m serious?

Neal’s face sobered.

“The cute little chap who was trying to strangle you was serious too,” he said drily. “That’s why I’m sticking around until I know what’s up. Funny streak in me. I dislike seeing young girls murdered. I don’t know why. But everybody has their peculiarities and that happens to be mine.”

“Would you like me to start at the beginning?” she asked abruptly.

“Now you’re talking,” Neal grinned. “I may not be of any help, but I’m in your corner from now on.”

The girl relaxed as if a heavy weight had been removed from her shoulders.

“Thank you,” she said simply. She was silent for a few seconds before resuming.

“My name is Jane Manners,” she said quietly. “My father was a well-known archaeologist. When he died several years ago he left me a manuscript which contained a map and directions for reaching a city somewhere in the Egyptian desert. He had visited the city years before and it had been his consuming ambition to return there before he died. His last wish was that I would go there and complete the archaeological work he had begun. I didn’t have the necessary funds so I put the trip off. Then I received an offer of help. It came from an Austrian, Max Zaraf, who said that he had known my father in Egypt.”

“Was he the gent I met today?” Neal interrupted.

“Yes. He financed the expedition. At first I was delighted by the assistance, but things have happened which make me believe I made a very serious mistake.”

“What sort of things?” Neal asked. “In the first place,” Jane answered, “he insisted that I let him keep the map. I gave it to him without hesitation. That same night I was almost killed by a heavy piece of iron that dropped from the deck above me. The officers on the boat were unable to explain the accident. Again, three nights later, I was almost killed by a knife hurled through my porthole. It missed me by inches.”

Neal whistled silently.

“Why didn’t you ask Zaraf to return the map to you and call the whole deal off?”

Jane shook her head miserably.

“I wasn’t sure he had anything to do with it. I’m not yet, for that matter. And if I back out I may never get another opportunity to carry out Dad’s last wishes.”

Neal glanced down at his knuckles. “Did it occur to you that it was too late to back out? That is, if Zaraf is the little dark boy in the woodpile. If he made two attempts on your life he certainly wouldn’t give you back the map now and let you walk out on him at this late date. If you tried you’d just be sealing your own death warrant.”

“I thought of that,” Jane answered. “There wasn’t anything to do but go along with him and hope for the best.”

“Which won’t be any too good, if I’m any judge of character,” Neal said drily. “But what about the knife you got at the curio shop? How does that fit into the picture?”

“I don’t know,” Jane answered, frowning. “In Dad’s manuscript he made it very clear that before starting the trip I should stop here in Cairo and pick up that knife. He left it here on his last trip. It must be important or he wouldn’t have been so insistent about it. The shopkeeper knew him and had promised to keep the knife until he returned for it, or sent for it. The paper which I showed the shopkeeper was written by Dad and was a sort of a claim-check on the knife.”

“One more question,” Neal grinned. “How did you happen to pick me for a Boy Scout?”

The girl smiled slightly.

“Maybe,” she answered, “because you look like a Boy Scout. I scribbled my address on a piece of paper while you and Max were glaring at each other in the curio shop. Afterward I told myself that I had acted foolishly, that you’d never bother to investigate a silly, impulsive gesture like that.”

“That was a serious mistake in judgment,” Neal told her lightly.

As he finished speaking a hinge creaked faintly behind him. Then a suave icy voice said:

“A very serious mistake, indeed!”

Neal didn’t turn. Instead he watched Jane Manners. Her eyes looking over his shoulders were filled with a sudden, shocked fear.

“Max!” she whispered.

Neal stood up and turned slowly. Unconsciously his big hands tightened into hard, blocky fists. In the doorway, smiling without humor, stood Max Zaraf. The trailing smoke from the cigarette in his hand curled up past his lean, saturnine face, dimming slightly the cold, deadly glitter of his eyes. But Neal, watching the man closely, was sure there was disappointment in those eyes. Disappointment and a slight trace of uncertainty.

“Are you all right, my dear?” Zaraf asked softly, ignoring Neal.

Neal grinned, a tight mirthless grin. Zaraf acted as if he hadn’t been expecting to find things quite as they were.

“Why shouldn’t she be?” Neal asked, before Jane could answer.

Zaraf shrugged and stepped into the room. His eyes flicked meaningly to the shattered lock of the door.

“Logical question, isn’t it?” he asked silkily. “Door forced open. Room upset. A tempestuous young American violating the privacy of a young woman’s room. It all adds up, does it not?”

“Max!” Jane said sharply. “You’re being insulting.

“You’re also being very careless of your health,” Neal said pointedly.

Zaraf turned slightly and looked straight at Neal. The slight smile vanished from his features. Neal saw a new, wary look creep into Zaraf’s cold eyes, and he realized that the man had just recognized him as the American he had encountered at the curio shop.

“What is your game, my young friend?” he asked coolly. “This couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. If it is, let me assure you that it might be a most unlucky one—for you.”

“It is not a coincidence,” Jane said quietly. “I asked Mister—” she faltered, and Neal realized that he hadn’t told her his name.

“Kirby,” he said quickly. “Neal Kirby. You must have forgot.”

“Thank you,” Jane said gratefully. “I asked Mr. Kirby to come here,” she resumed, “because I thought I might need him.”

“For what?” Zaraf asked.

Neal wondered what reason the girl would give for asking him here. To tell the truth would reveal to Zaraf her suspicions concerning him. He looked at her, and her eyes met his in an imploring glance, before she faced Zaraf. Her slender body stiffened and her chin raised slightly as she said:

“I have hired Mr. Kirby,” she said clearly, “as consulting archaeologist. He will leave with us tomorrow morning.”

Zaraf’s steely calm was shaken. “Are you out of your mind?” he asked hoarsely.

Neal stared at Jane in amazement. It was preposterous, out of the question, completely unthinkable. He didn’t know a thing about archaeology in the first place, and secondly, why should he be wandering over the desert looking for lost cities? It didn’t make sense.

Then he looked at Jane, and suddenly it did make sense. For some crazy reason it became the most logical thing in the world for him to go anywhere, do anything this girl wanted. She was looking at him beseechingly, hope and confidence shining in her eyes.

He turned to Zaraf, smiling faintly at the man’s obvious consternation.

“That’s right,” he said cheerfully. “I’m the new archaeologist. I’m not such a hot archaeologist, but I’m a pretty good shot and I hear the desert is just full of snakes and rats.”

Zaraf struggled to restrain his anger. His cheeks were touched with red and his cold eyes were twin pools of hate. But his voice was as soft as silk as he said:

“You have to shoot a snake before it stings you. Remember that my young friend.” He turned then, and with a mocking bow to the girl, left the room.

“Lovely fellow,” Neal murmured.

“He’s dangerous and cruel,” Jane said worriedly. “I—I shouldn’t have gotten you into this. I have a terrible feeling that I’ll hate myself for it. If anything should happen to you, I’d feel as if it were my fault.”

Neal picked up his hat and smiled down at her.

“Forget it,” he said. He sauntered to the door, and grinned back at her. “I wasn’t kidding, you know, when I told our chum that I was a pretty good shot. The fact is I’m a damn good shot. See you tomorrow.”

* * * *

The tiny caravan of four camels and three attendants wound its way from Cairo the following day, as the blazing morning sun served notice that the day would be scorching hot.

Each camel carried a passenger, and was led by a native attendant at the end of a stout rope. The fourth camel carried huge leather sacks of water. It was roped to the last camel in the train and clumped awkwardly along, apparently unimpressed by the fact that it carried the most precious commodity of the desert—water.

On the lead camel rode Max Zaraf. Behind him rode Jane Manners and bringing up the rear was Neal Kirby, swaying awkwardly o n h i s lurching steed, and feeling uncomfortable and strange in his pith helmet and breeches and boots.

Zaraf had the map in his possession and gave the directions of travel to the native guides. For two days the trip was monotonously uneventful, varying little in detail from hour to hour. They traveled for the most part in the cool of the morning and evening and laid up during the blistering heat of the day. The terrain was endlessly unchanging. Slight rises of sand gave way to sloping valleys that led only to still another hill.

On the evening of the third day Zaraf waved them to a stop and Neal climbed stiffly from his camel, glad to ease his muscles after a hard four-hour stretch. He walked through the soft sifting sand and assisted Jane Manners to alight. Zaraf was walking back toward them from his camel. They had stopped just below the summit of a rather high hill, and the fine top sand was blowing down on them in swirling, uncomfortable clouds.

“We stop here,” Zaraf announced, coming up to them.

“Here?” Neal echoed. “Let’s go over the hill to the valley. We’ll get out of this wind that way.”

The native drivers, dark-skinned and inscrutable, waited stolidly for orders. They were a proud, silent breed of men, neither volunteering information, nor expecting it. As long as they received their money for the day’s work, it didn’t matter what their white-skinned masters did.

Zaraf glared bale fully at Neal.

“I have said we will stop here,” he repeated angrily. “I’m deciding on our course and if I decide to stop here it’s because I have excellent reasons for doing so.”

Neal shrugged. It seemed a small matter to argue about. Maybe Zaraf did have a good reason for stopping here.

“Okay,” he said, “if you can stand the sand I guess Jane and I can put up with it.”

Zaraf turned without a word and walked back to his camel. The natives went to work building a shelter, and preparing the evening meal. The camels, relieved of their packs, settled placidly down on their haunches, like so many quiet cows.

Darkness fell swiftly. Neal said good-night to Jane and turned in early. The fires burned out in a few hours and before the moon came up the tiny camp was slumbering.

* * * *

Neal awoke the following morning as the first rays of the rising sun slanted into his eyes. He blinked sleepily and yawned. His first thought was of water. Every morning he awoke thirsty, for the desert’s searing heat dried out the moisture in his body as he slept. He climbed to his feet, stuck his feet into his boots and pulled on his shirt. Then he crawled out of the narrow pup tent, straightened up and looked around.

For an instant he stared about unbelievingly. The camels and the native guides were nowhere in sight. The black ashes of the evening’s fire still showed as cancerous spots against the whiteness of the sand, but the natives’ sleeping gear and packs—and more vital, the camels—w ere vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed them.

For seconds Neal was too stupefied to act. All he could do was stare in numbed bewilderment at the bleak expanse of the desert.

When his dazed senses finally recovered, he wheeled and charged toward the other two sleeping tents.

“Zaraf! Jane!” he shouted. “On your feet. Our guides have pulled a fade-out with the equipment and camels.”

He was so excited that he did not notice the abysmal silence that seemed to stretch over the desert like a Vast tight blanket.

Reaching Zaraf’s tent he jerked open the flap. He opened his mouth but the excited words on his lips died there. For Zaraf’s sleeping pad was undisturbed. It had obviously not been used that night.

Neal felt the cold of panic close over his heart. For a silent, timeless instant he stared incredulously at Zaraf’s empty tent—then he was racing madly through the thick sand toward Jane’s tent. He shouted her name wildly and the hills threw back the mockery of an echo.

He ripped open the flap without waiting for an answer to his shout. One glance showed him it was empty. The sleeping pad had been used, for it was twisted and tossed into a jumbled heap. Neal’s eyes picked quickly about the interior, noticing the generally disarrayed condition of the sleeping articles and clothes. One corner of the tent sagged drunkenly inward, and he could see that the rope and peg had pulled out of place. Everything pointed to a struggle or rough house of some sort. Neal stood up, a frantic fear clawing at his attempted calmness. As far as his eye could reach, the desert sands spread in a never-varying, never-ending expanse of sun and heat.

“Jane!” he shouted desperately.

“Jane!…Jane!”

The echo mocked him.

Neal peered into Jane’s tent again. A comb and hair brush were lying on the canvas floor, along with her wrist watch and a ring she usually wore. Neal’s frown deepened. Jane wouldn’t have left things like that if—if—

One inevitable conclusion forced itself on him. Zaraf had taken Jane by force, and with the camels and water, deserted in the dark of the night. There was no other conclusion possible. Neal realized then, with sickening abruptness, that in all probability this had been in Zaraf’s mind from the outset.

Neal rested on his haunches in Jane’s tent and thought carefully for a few moments. He had no water, no food and no means of transportation. His revolver had three shots left in it. The rest of the ammunition was in the camel packs. Except for the sun he had not the slightest means of gauging direction or ascertaining a definite course even if he had one to follow.

Approximately, he had thirty-six hours to live.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself. The pleasantness had gone from his features; leaving his face a stiff, expressionless mask. “It’s a slim chance, but I’ll take it. I may not find you, Max Zaraf but God help you if I do!”

He was crawling from Jane’s tent when his hand touched the rent in the canvas. It was an inch-long rip close to the flap opening.

Obeying a strange impulse, Neal examined it closely. He shoved his finger through the tear and wiggled it about in the warm sand beneath the flooring. Suddenly his finger touched something that was not sand. Something that was as cool and hard and smooth as—steel!

Quickly Neal ripped the canvas flooring aside and dug into the sand with both hands. A second later he drew from the sand a glittering object which he recognized instantly.

It was the be-jeweled knife which he had accidently stumbled on in the curio shop in Cairo. He recognized it instantly by the handle, formed as a human torso, and the human head which topped it. The flashing necklace of diamonds scintillated brilliantly in the dim light of the tent.

Neal laughed bitterly and shoved it into his pocket. It was worth a great amount of money, men had probably fought and died over it, but it couldn’t buy him a drop of water now.

He retrieved his pith helmet from his own tent and started out. Plowing awkwardly through the burning sand, he headed for the top of the hill, that led, he knew with bitter irony, to just another hill. But still he had to keep on. There was something inside of him, as strong as life itself, which would drive him on until…

* * * *

Neal Kirby had given himself thirty-six hours of life. Now, he realized vaguely, as he lurched forward, he was twelve hours past that limit already. Living on borrowed time so to speak. His face was matted with sand-clogged beard and his red-rimmed eyes were like hot points of fire in the blackness of his face.

For two days he had staggered through the blinding heat of the desert without food, without water. He had passed the limits of human endurance, but still he lurched on, some inner voice lashing him forward when his flagging body would quit.

He fell often. Sometimes he lay stretched on the burning sands for minutes before he could crawl back to his feet and stagger on again.

It was almost noon, now, and the sun seemed to be hanging suspended in the sky about a hundred feet above his aching head. He could actually feel the weight of the heat settling on him like a dense, smothering pall. Overhead soaring vultures were converging on his stumbling figure in ever narrowing circles.

Staggering over the top of a hill Neal saw the first sight to relieve the deadly monotony of the desert. Just what it was he couldn’t tell, but it looked like a bundle of rags thrown together in a pile at the foot of the slight rise. With a strange flickering hope burning in his breast, Neal made a pathetic effort to run. He fell and slid most of the way, but at the foot of the hill he regained his feet and staggered on. Suddenly from the cluttered dark bundles which he had seen there arose a small cloud of birds, their hideously flapping wings carrying them away from this one other thing on the desert that lived beside themselves.

Neal stopped short, almost gagging. He was close enough to recognize the bundles now as three human forms. Numbly he approached them. Sprawled on the sand with bullet holes in their heads, were the three native guides who had accompanied Zaraf into the desert. Neal stared at them for seconds in dumb silence. Zaraf’s treachery had not ended with deserting him in the desert. Here was mute testimony of that.

In spite of everything Neal felt a vicious satisfaction course through him. The bodies of the native guides were unmistakable signposts telling him that he was at least on the right track. The canteens of the native guides were empty so he staggered on again, somehow strengthened by the realization that he couldn’t be many hours behind Jane and Zaraf.

* * * *

An hour later, he fell. He was on top of another hill overlooking a broad, sloping valley, identical to the other interminable valleys he had crossed, except that this one seemed longer and wider than most of the others. For a half-hour he lay on his stomach trying to find the will and the strength to go on. He heard a faint whirr above and turned weakly just as a huge cadaverous vulture was settling on him. With a hoarse croak of fright the bird veered off and glided down into the valley. Neal hoisted himself painfully to his knees and drew his gun. Why he was so bent on killing the bird he couldn’t have told himself. He rested the revolver on his forearm and sighted carefully. The bird was gliding into the valley soaring within six feet of the ground when Neal fired.

He missed. The bird flapped great wings and climbed into the sky to resume his endless circling. But a strange reverberating echo had started across the valley. It magnified the report of the pistol a dozen times until it seemed as if mighty hammers were drumming maddeningly on the ground. Neal listened wonderingly.

Suddenly he noticed a peculiar distortion of the heat waves that were dancing in front of his eyes. Their gossamer lightness and fantastically odd shapes were dissolving and reassorting themselves before his eyes. It was as if all the light waves and heat waves of the valley were broken to bits by the crescendoing clamor of the echoes which were booming across the valley.

The entire atmosphere of the valley, he noticed, was vibrating visibly. Crazy lances of light shot into the sky and the distorted refractions of sun and heat waves merged together into what looked like solid blocks of light. In the center of the valley there appeared a shining shaft of pure white light that was growing wider by the second.

Neal climbed shakily to his feet, stunned.

The shaft continued to widen and he saw then that it was not composed of light, but some material that looked like white marble.

The thunderous drumming of the echo culminated in one great crash that seemed mighty enough to shatter the heavens. Then silence settled oppressively over the valley.

The white shaft of marble was widening swiftly now, as if some vast invisible curtain was being drawn back in front of it. Neal watched in fascination as a mighty structure of marble appeared before his eyes, filling the entire valley and almost piercing the clouds with its majestic peak of glittering white. It was formed in the shape of a pyramid, alabaster white, incredibly huge.

The silence was complete now and the fantastic distortions of the atmosphere had ceased. The valley was quiet and tranquil as when he first saw it. Everything was the same except for the appearance of the magnificent white pyramid towering into the heavens.

Neal sagged to his knees. If it was a mirage, it was the most impressive and authentic he’d ever heard of. He was still looking at the gigantic pyramid when he saw the orange bolt of flame flash from its base. It seemed a whip of flame with a large ball of some brightly burning matter attached to it. When he saw that it was heading for him he tried to run, as a man runs from the unknown, but it was too late. Something caressed the back of his head like a hot breath and he stumbled onto his face. The next instant a smothering blanket of blackness settled over him and everything faded out abruptly.

* * * *

When Neal came to he was lying on a narrow cot in a small room.

There were no windows that he could see, only one small opening that might be a door. He struggled to a sitting position on the cot. The first thing he realized was that he wasn’t thirsty. His lips were still cracked and tender, but he knew from their feel that water had passed over them. His hand touched his matted three-day beard experimentally, and his eyes traveled in mild disgust over his dirty, ragged breeches and scuffed boots.

He leaned back and wondered where he was. Thinking accurately was a difficult proposition. His conscious memory was that of a fantastic white pyramid which had materialized before him on the desert. Before that he had been close on the trail of Max Zaraf and Jane Manners. That thought jolted him.

He climbed to his feet and looked around. The walls were of a peculiar porous material and they seemed to be the source of the pale, glareless illumination that flooded the tiny room. There was no furniture other than the narrow cot, and the small door was locked in some manner from the outside. The problem of getting out, he decided, was not going to be easy.

He sank back onto the cot despairingly. All he could do was wait. An hour passed before he heard a clicking on the outside of the door. Then it swung inward. Neal saw a highly polished boot, white whipcord breeches, and then the tall, gaunt figure of Max Zaraf filled the narrow doorway. His freshly shaven features were touched with a mocking smile and his cold eyes gleamed with sardonic amusement.

“This is a pleasure I hadn’t counted on,” he said, smiling.

For a stunned instant Neal was too dazed to speak. Even in his astonishment, however, one thing was obvious. Zaraf was in the saddle now or he wouldn’t be so completely cool and nonchalant. Every instinct in his body urged him to hurl himself at Zaraf’s relaxed figure and throttle the life from the man, but a bump of common sense warned him to proceed cautiously and wait for an opportunity.

“I don’t imagine you had counted on seeing me again,” he said as easily as he could. “Most men stranded in the desert die there.”

“But you didn’t,” Zaraf smiled. “How persistent of you.”

“I had something to live for,” Neal answered quietly.

Zaraf shrugged.

“The past is dead,” he said, still smiling. “Since you lived through the desert I might give you the chance to continue living. However, that is up to you. If you are willing to do as I say, it can be arranged. If not,” he spread his hands in an expressive gesture, “your gallant fight through the desert will be of no avail.”

“It is my great pleasure,” Neal said recklessly, “to tell you to go to hell. If I had nine lives I’d sacrifice ’em all before I’d lower myself to bargain with a treacherous, rotten snake like you.” Zaraf continued to smile, but two hot flags of color fluttered in his cheeks.

“I came here to offer you a chance for your life. You could have helped me here but that is not to be. For your information we are approximately five hundred feet underground right now. We are in the lost city which Professor Manners discovered. It was never actually a lost city, but rather a hidden city. A strange race of people have developed here, many of them childishly simple in many ways. It is to be my privilege to teach them the benefits of commercialization. You might have helped me and done very well for yourself. It was only an accident that you discovered the secret of the pyramid, but it is an accident which might have been profitable to you.” He smiled blandly down at Neal. “Many of the charmingly simple people love pageantry and drama so I’ll have to devise a spectacular manner in which to usher you into the Great Beyond.”

“Where is Jane?” Neal asked suddenly.

“Ahh,” Zaraf smiled. “That worries you, does it? Well Jane is not too happy, but I have strong hopes that under my persuasive technique I can make her learn to enjoy the existence I’ve planned for her.”

As he finished speaking he bowed slightly and stepped through the door. It closed immediately behind him.

* * * *

Neal paced the narrow room nervously for the next hour. The realization that Jane was near him, possibly within a few hundred feet of him, was maddening. Maddening too, was the realization that she was in Zaraf’s hands, helpless. Another hour, as nearly as he could judge, had passed when he heard the faint click of the lock. He paused and watched the door carefully. It swung inward, an inch at a time, until it stood open.

Neal doubled his fists and spread his legs. If a chance to smash his way out of this cell presented itself he was going to grab it.

Seconds later a young girl stepped cautiously into the room. Her skin was a pallid white in color and her large eyes were twin mirrors of fright. She was small and her thin body was trembling under the loose white garment she wore. Her hair was long, and would have been considered beautiful, were it not so dull and lustreless.

Neal unclenched his fists slowly. He had been prepared for just about anything, but this peculiar looking, frightened girl stopped him completely. Her eyes were on his now, and she seemed trying desperately to make him understand something. Finally she held her fingers over her mouth and Neal gathered that she wanted him to keep silent.

Then she reached out and took his hand in her own and pointed through the doorway with her other hand. Her meaning was clear enough to Neal. She wanted him to follow her, but why? Neal didn’t stop to argue the question with himself. It might be a trap, but it wasn’t likely that they would go to such elaborate lengths to lure him from the cell. Anyway it was better than doing nothing. He decided to follow the girl.

“Lead on, sister,” he whispered. “If you’re on the level, God bless you.”

The girl led him into the corridor that flanked the room in which he had been confined. Looking about he could tell nothing about where he was or where he was going. The walls were blue, and of the same porous composition that constituted the walls of the room he had just left. The corridor stretched ahead endlessly and Neal noticed that every six feet or so a door was built into the wall, identical with the one that led to the room which he had just left. The ceiling was high and vaulted, but was without ornamentation of any sort.

The girl crept softly ahead of him, glancing frequently back to see that he was still following. In another hundred feet they turned at right angles and followed another corridor. For fifteen or twenty minutes they continued, twisting and turning through the labyrinthine passages that interlaced each other at odd angles. Finally the girl stopped at a door, that seemed to Neal identical to the hundreds of others they had passed, and pressed her ear against its surface.

After a silent interval she opened the door cautiously and motioned for Neal to go in. Neal hesitated an instant. If there was anything phoney about the set-up this was where the pay-off would be. With a mental shrug he stepped over the threshold and into the room.

“Neal, darling!” a wonderfully familiar voice cried.

“Jane!” Neal whispered unbelievingly. For an instant he stood rooted to the spot, too amazed to move. This had been the farthest thing from his thoughts. She was standing at the opposite side of the room, and in her eyes was relief and joy that made his heart pound faster. She was wearing a loose flowing gown of white and it gave her blonde beauty an almost ethereal quality.

Recovering he crossed to her, took her hands in his.

“Honey,” he said fervently, “you’re the most welcome sight I’ve seen in all my life. Are you all right? Has that swine done anything to you?”

“I’m all right,” she said breathlessly. “I heard that you had been brought here and the little girl who is my attendant was willing to take a message to you. Finally she thought she could bring you here easier. She’s watching in the hall now so we have a few minutes to talk.”

“What’s this all about?” Neal asked. “Where are we?”

“We’re in the city my father discovered,” she answered. “It’s underground. A whole tribe of people—offshoots of some highly cultivated desert group—built it as a retreat against their more savage neighbors centuries ago. Here they have progressed amazingly well along certain lines, in electricity for instance, but in other fields they are childishly ignorant.

“Zaraf knew my father years ago and knew that he made this discovery. So his offer to help me was because he wanted access to this city for purposes of exploitation. We arrived here just a few days ahead of you, but fortunately for Zaraf, an evil element of the natives has been planning a revolution against the established ruling system. Being an opportunist Zaraf jumped right in with the revolters and helped them overthrow their ruler.”

“And that makes him ace-high with the new management,” Neal said reflectively.

Jane nodded.

“He told me all his plans the day after he kidnaped me and left you stranded in the desert. He was sure you were out of the picture forever. He intends to work himself into a position of power, regiment these natives, sell their produce and electrical equipment to the highest bidders. He must be stopped, Neal, he must. These natives are, for the most part, simple and kindly, but they’re easily influenced by white people because they worshipped my father. He was very kind and good to them during the years he stayed here, and Zaraf is trading on that.”

“Our big job,” Neal said, “is to get out of here as fast as we can. Do you have any idea of the size of this place? Or where we are now in relation to the nearest exit?”

Jane shook her head.

“I’m completely lost,” she confessed. “I know, however, that we are in one of the larger sleeping sections now. Everyone is up at the throne hall at this time to hear the new instructions from the new ruler. His name is Horjak. That’s why it was safe to bring you here through the halls. All the rooms are deserted now. Most of the natives here aren’t sympathetic with the new regime, but they are helpless because they have no leader or weapons.”

Neal started to speak but a shrill terrified shriek from beyond the door interrupted him. It was followed instantly by a loud banging on the panels.

Neal heard a harsh voice snapping commands and he knew that Zaraf was outside.

Jane was clinging to his arm desperately.

“You’ve got to get out of here, darling,” she cried.

This was the grim truth, Neal admitted, but there was no other exit from the room. He disengaged Jane’s frantic grip on his arm and shoved her into a corner, just as the door crashed inword.

Three small, but heavily muscled men, with the same pallid expression and lusterless hair of the young native girl, spilled into the room. They wore crimson tunics that dropped to the middle of their thighs and sandals with soft spongy soles. They sprang at Neal with a concerted ferocity that amazed him. The first soldier went down under a sledge hammer right hook that carried all of Neal’s heavy shoulder behind it. But before he could swing again the other two grabbed his arms. More of the crimson-tuniced guards poured into the room and the struggle was over. Panting, he was dragged from the room into the corridor to face the coldy sneering presence of Max Zaraf.

“I gave you your chance,” Zaraf snapped. “You refused it. Now you can accept your alternate choice.” He motioned imperiously to the guards. “To the throne room. Quickly!”

Before the guards could move to obey his order Jane rushed into the corridor and blocked their path with outstretched hands.

“You can’t do this,” she cried to Zaraf. “I won’t let you.”

Zaraf smiled at her, cynically.

“Since you are so perturbed as to his fate,” he said silkily, “I think it would be interesting if you would witness the execution yourself. There’s nothing like the presence of a lovely woman to inspire a man to die a hero’s death.” He nodded to two of the guards. “Take her along.”

The husky, crimson-tuniced guards sprang to obey, and after a brief, unequal struggle, the girl was carried away after Neal.

* * * *

The throne room was a vast hall lined with tier upon tier of seats extending up to the highest reaches of the amphitheater. In the center of the throne room a huge unadorned dias was erected and on it sprawled a corpulent figure with an overly large head and dense stupid features.

Neal saw all this in one quick glance as he was shoved through a lower tier aisle and led to the large oval enclosure that faced the throne. The entire hall was brilliantly illuminated by the same sort of indirect lighting he had noticed before. Standing next to the figure on the throne was Max Zaraf, a gloating smile of anticipation on his face.

The throne room was quiet, but the tiers of seats were jammed with the native population of the underground city. Neal noticed the silence particularly. It was the brooding silence of a death block before an execution.

Zaraf bowed slightly to the figure on the dias and stepped down to face Neal.

“Very shortly,” he said, “you are going to die in a quite spectacular manner. You are a fool and you deserve it. These people are incredibly brilliant in many things, many things which the outside world will pay steeply for. Their invisibility screen with which they surround their central pyramid is one instance. Your pistol shot accidentally disrupted the force field and thus you accidentally stumbled onto the pyramid.

“The blue death, which they can send for fifty feet or fifty miles is one of the most destructive weapons the world will ever know. In your case they used a light charge which knocked you out, but they can use it to wipe out whole cities.

“Things like that are more valuable than diamonds in the world today. With clever exploitation who knows how far I can go?” Zaraf smiled and there was a sinister ugliness in the effort. “You, however, Mr. Meddler are not going any farther at all. At my demand Horjak, the new ruler, has ordered your execution. It will be followed by wholesale executions of those who oppose the reign of Horjak.”

“A very nice set-up,” Neal said quietly. “Those you don’t approve of, or who don’t approve of you, just get wiped out. It may work, Zaraf, but you’ll find living with yourself quite a job.”

“I can stand it, I think,” Zaraf chuckled mirthlessly. “Now to get down to business. My real reason in coming down here was to point out the highly ingenious method I have selected for your elimination.”

He pointed to a rack-like affair that was raised from the floor six or seven feet.

“In words of one syllable,” Zaraf continued with relish, “you will be spread-eagled there, tied hand and foot to each of the four posts. Then at a signal from me, the executioner cuts a very slender cord and the most amazing thing happens.”

He pointed up to the right and left of the rack, and Neal saw for the first time that a half dozen huge knives were suspended by ropes from the ceiling, parallel to the rack.

“The knives swing down,” Zaraf said softly. “They are heavy and will travel very fast. They will pass through your suspended body and that will be that! Your wrists and ankles will still be attached to the posts but the rest of your body will be sliced as neatly as a sausage. Clever, isn’t it?”

In Spite of himself, Neal felt a horrible revulsion crawling over him. To die was one thing. But to die like a butchered hog in front of a howling mob of savages was quite another.

His eyes circled the arena desperately. Every exit was guarded with a dozen men, every aisle clogged with spectators. His gaze swung back to Zaraf and he used every ounce of will power in his control to force a smile over his features.

“Am I supposed to be frightened?” he asked softly. “Am I supposed to be trembling and begging for mercy now? Sorry to disappoint you, Zaraf, but it doesn’t worry me that much.”

Zaraf’s face flushed an angry red, but without another word, he turned and marched up the steps to the dais. Neal’s eyes followed him and then he saw Jane.

Pale and regal, she was standing next to the dais, her arms bound behind her. Neal felt a cold sweat break out on his body. They couldn’t let her watch. It wasn’t human.

Zaraf turned and smiled down at Neal.

“Remember to be your most heroic,” he said mockingly. “We have distinguished company present.”

The crimson-tuniced guards stepped forward now and grabbed Neal by the arms. His eyes were on Jane, and he hardly felt them shoving him toward the rack. He was trying desperately, frantically to tell her with his eyes that he loved her and would always love her, wherever he might be. He had never said the things he wanted to say to her and this was his last opportunity.

Suddenly a clear, terrible scream of anguish sounded through the vast, packed throne room.

“You can’t! You can’t! Let me die with him!” It was Jane sobbing and crying frantically, stumbling down the steps of the dais toward the execution rack.

“You fool!” shouted Zaraf. “Come back here!”

Leaping from his chair he plunged down the steps after her. Shouts and yells sounded through the throne room, as the natives lent their voices to the excitement.

Neal turned at Jane’s scream. The two guards holding him relaxed their grip in the general confusion. With a sudden writhing twist Neal was free. He was weakened from his exposure in the desert, but his right hook was still a dangerous weapon. His first swing caught the guard off balance and dumped him in a complete somersault to the ground. Two more guards rushed at him, but he sidestepped them with a quick leap. As he landed he felt something jab into his thigh with an agonizing pain. Instinctively his hand moved to the spot, his fingers touched a slim, hard object close to his thigh. A surge of hope shot through him, not that he could hope to win, but that at least he could put up an excellent account for himself.

The two guards were closing in on him now, but before they could grab him, his hand flashed from his pocket grasping the strange, diamond-studded knife that he had first seen in the Cairo curio shop and secondly, when he had found it under the canvas flooring of Jane’s tent. He had shoved it into his pocket then and forgotten it. His hand closed about the torso-handle of the knife now, and the diamond necklace that topped the torso flashed in a thousand scintillating sparkles as he drew his arm back to slash out at the two guards who were pressing him.

But his arm did not fall! It remained rigidly aloft as though frozen.

* * * *

For the two guards were staring at the knife, fearfully, tremblingly. Hoarse, guttural pleas sounded inarticulately from their throats as they backed away from him, terror-stricken. When they were eight feet from him they suddenly hurled themselves to the floor and grovelled there, mouthing strange incantations. Neal wheeled, and as he flashed the knife about his head, the other guards dropped to their knees, their voices blending with the first two guards.

Taking advantage of this sudden, but inexplicable break, Neal leaped toward the base of the dais where Jane was struggling helplessly with Zaraf.

Horkak, the new ruler, saw Neal charge toward the dais brandishing the scintillating knife in his hand like an avenging angel. With a soft moan of terror he sank to his knees, babbling incoherently.

Zaraf flung Jane to one side and leaped past Neal. He sprinted to the oval enclosure where the guards were moaning and grovelling on their faces.

“Get up!” he screamed. “Get up you yellow hounds. Grab the prisoner and tear him apart with your hands. Get up! Get up!”

But he might have been talking to lumps of clay or sodden logs for all the attention the guards paid his hysterical commands. There was a swelling moaning noise coming now from the rows of packed seats. On their knees and on their faces the natives moaned and chanted their mysterious mumbling incantations.

Neal clasped Jane to him and slashed her bonds with the glittering knife, then he jumped from the dais and started after Zaraf.

Zaraf saw him coming. With one last frantic scream at the oblivious natives, he turned blindly and dashed under the rack. His foot caught on a silken cord and hurled him to the ground, but he clambered quickly to his feet.

Then he screamed—madly and hysterically, once.

Neal saw it happen, saw the complete, incredibly horrible death by which Max Zaraf paid for his sins.

His foot had tripped the knife release under the rack, and when he sprang to his feet, the heavy, speeding knives—poised for Neal’s execution—flashed downward with the devastating force of razor-sharp cleavers. Twelve blades there were, and each one found at least part of its target.

* * * *

Shaken, Neal made his way to Jane’s side. She was slumped at the foot of the dais, sobbing. He slipped his arm around her shoulder.

“It’s all over darling,” he murmured softly. “I think we can straighten things out now.”

He looked up as a calm, wise looking old man with long white hair approached slowly.

“I am a friend,” the old man said softly. “I am not afraid of the knife of Sali, the Goddess of Death. For I gave it to Professor Manners when he was here so many years ago. It was a pledge of our friendship and he always promised that he would bring it with him on his return.”

“Why are the people afraid of it?” Neal asked.

The old man shrugged.

“People are afraid of things they do not understand. Years, centuries ago, it was believed by my people that Death was a woman who chose her victims in the dark and killed them with just such a knife as you hold in your hand. That knife was venerated by our people and prayed to, that it might spare them its sting. It was believed invincible.

“As ruler, I discouraged such outmoded beliefs, and to further eliminate the belief I gave the sacred knife of Sali to Professor Manners. But I have been deposed as ruler, and under the influences of barbaric customs once again, you see how quickly,my children revert to the beliefs and customs of their fathers.”

“A lucky thing for us they did,” Neal said. “What goes now? Will you take your job back as ruler around here?”

The white haired old man smiled.

“If my people want me,” he said simply, “I will be happy to retain my authority.”

Neal put his hand under Jane’s chin and lifted her head up.

“No more crying now,” he whispered. “Everything’s all set. The regular ruler is stepping back into the job and he’s a great old guy. Why—why I’ll bet he can even marry people!”

KING SOLOMON’S MINES, by H. Rider Haggard [Part 1]

DEDICATION

This faithful but unpretending record of a remarkable adventure is hereby respectfully dedicated by the narrator, ALLAN QUATERMAIN, to all the big and little boys who read it.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The author ventures to take this opportunity to thank his readers for the kind reception they have accorded to the successive editions of this tale during the last twelve years. He hopes that in its present form it will fall into the hands of an even wider public, and that in years to come it may continue to afford amusement to those who are still young enough at heart to love a story of treasure, war, and wild adventure.

Ditchingham,

11 March, 1898.

POST SCRIPTUM

Now, in 1907, on the occasion of the issue of this edition, I can only add how glad I am that my romance should continue to please so many readers. Imagination has been verified by fact; the King Solomon’s Mines I dreamed of have been discovered, and are putting out their gold once more, and, according to the latest reports, their diamonds also; the Kukuanas or, rather, the Matabele, have been tamed by the white man’s bullets, but still there seem to be many who find pleasure in these simple pages. That they may continue so to do, even to the third and fourth generation, or perhaps longer still, would, I am sure, be the hope of our old and departed friend, Allan Quatermain.

H. Rider Haggard.

Ditchingham, 1907.

INTRODUCTION

Now that this book is printed, and about to be given to the world, a sense of its shortcomings both in style and contents, weighs very heavily upon me. As regards the latter, I can only say that it does not pretend to be a full account of everything we did and saw. There are many things connected with our journey into Kukuanaland that I should have liked to dwell upon at length, which, as it is, have been scarcely alluded to. Amongst these are the curious legends which I collected about the chain armour that saved us from destruction in the great battle of Loo, and also about the “Silent Ones” or Colossi at the mouth of the stalactite cave. Again, if I had given way to my own impulses, I should have wished to go into the differences, some of which are to my mind very suggestive, between the Zulu and Kukuana dialects. Also a few pages might have been given up profitably to the consideration of the indigenous flora and fauna of Kukuanaland.1 Then there remains the most interesting subject—that, as it is, has only been touched on incidentally—of the magnificent system of military organisation in force in that country, which, in my opinion, is much superior to that inaugurated by Chaka in Zululand, inasmuch as it permits of even more rapid mobilisation, and does not necessitate the employment of the pernicious system of enforced celibacy. Lastly, I have scarcely spoken of the domestic and family customs of the Kukuanas, many of which are exceedingly quaint, or of their proficiency in the art of smelting and welding metals. This science they carry to considerable perfection, of which a good example is to be seen in their “tollas,” or heavy throwing knives, the backs of these weapons being made of hammered iron, and the edges of beautiful steel welded with great skill on to the iron frames. The fact of the matter is, I thought, with Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, that the best plan would be to tell my story in a plain, straightforward manner, and to leave these matters to be dealt with subsequently in whatever way ultimately may appear to be desirable. In the meanwhile I shall, of course, be delighted to give all information in my power to anybody interested in such things.

And now it only remains for me to offer apologies for my blunt way of writing. I can but say in excuse of it that I am more accustomed to handle a rifle than a pen, and cannot make any pretence to the grand literary flights and flourishes which I see in novels—for sometimes I like to read a novel. I suppose they—the flights and flourishes—are desirable, and I regret not being able to supply them; but at the same time I cannot help thinking that simple things are always the most impressive, and that books are easier to understand when they are written in plain language, though perhaps I have no right to set up an opinion on such a matter. “A sharp spear,” runs the Kukuana saying, “needs no polish”; and on the same principle I venture to hope that a true story, however strange it may be, does not require to be decked out in fine words.

—Allan Quatermain.

1 I discovered eight varieties of antelope, with which I was previously totally unacquainted, and many new species of plants, for the most part of the bulbous tribe.—A.Q.

1 I discovered eight varieties of antelope, with which I was previously totally unacquainted, and many new species of plants, for the most part of the bulbous tribe.—A.Q.

CHAPTER I

I MEET SIR HENRY CURTIS

It is a curious thing that at my age—fifty-five last birthday—I should find myself taking up a pen to try to write a history. I wonder what sort of a history it will be when I have finished it, if ever I come to the end of the trip! I have done a good many things in my life, which seems a long one to me, owing to my having begun work so young, perhaps. At an age when other boys are at school I was earning my living as a trader in the old Colony. I have been trading, hunting, fighting, or mining ever since. And yet it is only eight months ago that I made my pile. It is a big pile now that I have got it—I don’t yet know how big—but I do not think I would go through the last fifteen or sixteen months again for it; no, not if I knew that I should come out safe at the end, pile and all. But then I am a timid man, and dislike violence; moreover, I am almost sick of adventure. I wonder why I am going to write this book: it is not in my line. I am not a literary man, though very devoted to the Old Testament and also to the “Ingoldsby Legends.” Let me try to set down my reasons, just to see if I have any.

First reason: Because Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good asked me.

Second reason: Because I am laid up here at Durban with the pain in my left leg. Ever since that confounded lion got hold of me I have been liable to this trouble, and being rather bad just now, it makes me limp more than ever. There must be some poison in a lion’s teeth, otherwise how is it that when your wounds are healed they break out again, generally, mark you, at the same time of year that you got your mauling? It is a hard thing when one has shot sixty-five lions or more, as I have in the course of my life, that the sixty-sixth should chew your leg like a quid of tobacco. It breaks the routine of the thing, and putting other considerations aside, I am an orderly man and don’t like that. This is by the way.

Third reason: Because I want my boy Harry, who is over there at the hospital in London studying to become a doctor, to have something to amuse him and keep him out of mischief for a week or so. Hospital work must sometimes pall and grow rather dull, for even of cutting up dead bodies there may come satiety, and as this history will not be dull, whatever else it may be, it will put a little life into things for a day or two while Harry is reading of our adventures.

Fourth reason and last: Because I am going to tell the strangest story that I remember. It may seem a queer thing to say, especially considering that there is no woman in it—except Foulata. Stop, though! there is Gagaoola, if she was a woman, and not a fiend. But she was a hundred at least, and therefore not marriageable, so I don’t count her. At any rate, I can safely say that there is not a petticoat in the whole history.

Well, I had better come to the yoke. It is a stiff place, and I feel as though I were bogged up to the axle. But, “sutjes, sutjes,” as the Boers say—I am sure I don’t know how they spell it—softly does it. A strong team will come through at last, that is, if they are not too poor. You can never do anything with poor oxen. Now to make a start.

I, Allan Quatermain, of Durban, Natal, Gentleman, make oath and say—That’s how I headed my deposition before the magistrate about poor Khiva’s and Ventvögel’s sad deaths; but somehow it doesn’t seem quite the right way to begin a book. And, besides, am I a gentleman? What is a gentleman? I don’t quite know, and yet I have had to do with niggers—no, I will scratch out that word “niggers,” for I do not like it. I’ve known natives who are, and so you will say, Harry, my boy, before you have done with this tale, and I have known mean whites with lots of money and fresh out from home, too, who are not.

At any rate, I was born a gentleman, though I have been nothing but a poor travelling trader and hunter all my life. Whether I have remained so I known not, you must judge of that. Heaven knows I’ve tried. I have killed many men in my time, yet I have never slain wantonly or stained my hand in innocent blood, but only in self-defence. The Almighty gave us our lives, and I suppose He meant us to defend them, at least I have always acted on that, and I hope it will not be brought up against me when my clock strikes. There, there, it is a cruel and a wicked world, and for a timid man I have been mixed up in a great deal of fighting. I cannot tell the rights of it, but at any rate I have never stolen, though once I cheated a Kafir out of a herd of cattle. But then he had done me a dirty turn, and it has troubled me ever since into the bargain.

Well, it is eighteen months or so ago since first I met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good. It was in this way. I had been up elephant hunting beyond Bamangwato, and had met with bad luck. Everything went wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the fever badly. So soon as I was well enough I trekked down to the Diamond Fields, sold such ivory as I had, together with my wagon and oxen, discharged my hunters, and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens, which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to go back to Natal by the Dunkeld, then lying at the docks waiting for the Edinburgh Castle due in from England. I took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers from the Edinburgh Castle transhipped, and we weighed and put to sea.

Among these passengers who came on board were two who excited my curiosity. One, a gentleman of about thirty, was perhaps the biggest-chested and longest-armed man I ever saw. He had yellow hair, a thick yellow beard, clear-cut features, and large grey eyes set deep in his head. I never saw a finer-looking man, and somehow he reminded me of an ancient Dane. Not that I know much of ancient Danes, though I knew a modern Dane who did me out of ten pounds; but I remember once seeing a picture of some of those gentry, who, I take it, were a kind of white Zulus. They were drinking out of big horns, and their long hair hung down their backs. As I looked at my friend standing there by the companion-ladder, I thought that if he only let his grow a little, put one of those chain shirts on to his great shoulders, and took hold of a battle-axe and a horn mug, he might have sat as a model for that picture. And by the way it is a curious thing, and just shows how the blood will out, I discovered afterwards that Sir Henry Curtis, for that was the big man’s name, is of Danish blood.2 He also reminded me strongly of somebody else, but at the time I could not remember who it was.

The other man, who stood talking to Sir Henry, was stout and dark, and of quite a different cut. I suspected at once that he was a naval officer; I don’t know why, but it is difficult to mistake a navy man. I have gone shooting trips with several of them in the course of my life, and they have always proved themselves the best and bravest and nicest fellows I ever met, though sadly given, some of them, to the use of profane language. I asked a page or two back, what is a gentleman? I’ll answer the question now: A Royal Naval officer is, in a general sort of way, though of course there may be a black sheep among them here and there. I fancy it is just the wide seas and the breath of God’s winds that wash their hearts and blow the bitterness out of their minds and make them what men ought to be.

Well, to return, I proved right again; I ascertained that the dark man was a naval officer, a lieutenant of thirty-one, who, after seventeen years’ service, had been turned out of her Majesty’s employ with the barren honour of a commander’s rank, because it was impossible that he should be promoted. This is what people who serve the Queen have to expect: to be shot out into the cold world to find a living just when they are beginning really to understand their work, and to reach the prime of life. I suppose they don’t mind it, but for my own part I had rather earn my bread as a hunter. One’s halfpence are as scarce perhaps, but you do not get so many kicks.

The officer’s name I found out—by referring to the passengers’ lists—was Good—Captain John Good. He was broad, of medium height, dark, stout, and rather a curious man to look at. He was so very neat and so very clean-shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye. It seemed to grow there, for it had no string, and he never took it out except to wipe it. At first I thought he used to sleep in it, but afterwards I found that this was a mistake. He put it in his trousers pocket when he went to bed, together with his false teeth, of which he had two beautiful sets that, my own being none of the best, have often caused me to break the tenth commandment. But I am anticipating.

Soon after we had got under way evening closed in, and brought with it very dirty weather. A keen breeze sprung up off land, and a kind of aggravated Scotch mist soon drove everybody from the deck. As for the Dunkeld, she is a flat-bottomed punt, and going up light as she was, she rolled very heavily. It almost seemed as though she would go right over, but she never did. It was quite impossible to walk about, so I stood near the engines where it was warm, and amused myself with watching the pendulum, which was fixed opposite to me, swinging slowly backwards and forwards as the vessel rolled, and marking the angle she touched at each lurch.

“That pendulum’s wrong; it is not properly weighted,” suddenly said a somewhat testy voice at my shoulder. Looking round I saw the naval officer whom I had noticed when the passengers came aboard.

“Indeed, now what makes you think so?” I asked.

“Think so. I don’t think at all. Why there”—as she righted herself after a roll—“if the ship had really rolled to the degree that thing pointed to, then she would never have rolled again, that’s all. But it is just like these merchant skippers, they are always so confoundedly careless.”

Just then the dinner-bell rang, and I was not sorry, for it is a dreadful thing to have to listen to an officer of the Royal Navy when he gets on to that subject. I only know one worse thing, and that is to hear a merchant skipper express his candid opinion of officers of the Royal Navy.

Captain Good and I went down to dinner together, and there we found Sir Henry Curtis already seated. He and Captain Good were placed together, and I sat opposite to them. The captain and I soon fell into talk about shooting and what not; he asking me many questions, for he is very inquisitive about all sorts of things, and I answering them as well as I could. Presently he got on to elephants.

“Ah, sir,” called out somebody who was sitting near me, “you’ve reached the right man for that; Hunter Quatermain should be able to tell you about elephants if anybody can.”

Sir Henry, who had been sitting quite quiet listening to our talk, started visibly.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, leaning forward across the table, and speaking in a low deep voice, a very suitable voice, it seemed to me, to come out of those great lungs. “Excuse me, sir, but is your name Allan Quatermain?”

I said that it was.

The big man made no further remark, but I heard him mutter “fortunate” into his beard.

Presently dinner came to an end, and as we were leaving the saloon Sir Henry strolled up and asked me if I would come into his cabin to smoke a pipe. I accepted, and he led the way to the Dunkeld deck cabin, and a very good cabin it is. It had been two cabins, but when Sir Garnet Wolseley or one of those big swells went down the coast in the Dunkeld, they knocked away the partition and have never put it up again. There was a sofa in the cabin, and a little table in front of it. Sir Henry sent the steward for a bottle of whisky, and the three of us sat down and lit our pipes.

“Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry Curtis, when the man had brought the whisky and lit the lamp, “the year before last about this time, you were, I believe, at a place called Bamangwato, to the north of the Transvaal.”

“I was,” I answered, rather surprised that this gentleman should be so well acquainted with my movements, which were not, so far as I was aware, considered of general interest.

“You were trading there, were you not?” put in Captain Good, in his quick way.

“I was. I took up a wagon-load of goods, made a camp outside the settlement, and stopped till I had sold them.”

Sir Henry was sitting opposite to me in a Madeira chair, his arms leaning on the table. He now looked up, fixing his large grey eyes full upon my face. There was a curious anxiety in them, I thought.

“Did you happen to meet a man called Neville there?”

“Oh, yes; he outspanned alongside of me for a fortnight to rest his oxen before going on to the interior. I had a letter from a lawyer a few months back, asking me if I knew what had become of him, which I answered to the best of my ability at the time.”

“Yes,” said Sir Henry, “your letter was forwarded to me. You said in it that the gentleman called Neville left Bamangwato at the beginning of May in a wagon with a driver, a voorlooper, and a Kafir hunter called Jim, announcing his intention of trekking if possible as far as Inyati, the extreme trading post in the Matabele country, where he would sell his wagon and proceed on foot. You also said that he did sell his wagon, for six months afterwards you saw the wagon in the possession of a Portuguese trader, who told you that he had bought it at Inyati from a white man whose name he had forgotten, and that he believed the white man with the native servant had started off for the interior on a shooting trip.”

“Yes.”

Then came a pause.

“Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry suddenly, “I suppose you know or can guess nothing more of the reasons of my—of Mr. Neville’s journey to the northward, or as to what point that journey was directed?”

“I heard something,” I answered, and stopped. The subject was one which I did not care to discuss.

Sir Henry and Captain Good looked at each other, and Captain Good nodded.

“Mr. Quatermain,” went on the former, “I am going to tell you a story, and ask your advice, and perhaps your assistance. The agent who forwarded me your letter told me that I might rely on it implicitly, as you were,” he said, “well known and universally respected in Natal, and especially noted for your discretion.”

I bowed and drank some whisky and water to hide my confusion, for I am a modest man—and Sir Henry went on.

“Mr. Neville was my brother.”

“Oh,” I said, starting, for now I knew of whom Sir Henry had reminded me when first I saw him. His brother was a much smaller man and had a dark beard, but now that I thought of it, he possessed eyes of the same shade of grey and with the same keen look in them: the features too were not unlike.

“He was,” went on Sir Henry, “my only and younger brother, and till five years ago I do not suppose that we were ever a month away from each other. But just about five years ago a misfortune befell us, as sometimes does happen in families. We quarrelled bitterly, and I behaved unjustly to my brother in my anger.”

Here Captain Good nodded his head vigorously to himself. The ship gave a big roll just then, so that the looking-glass, which was fixed opposite us to starboard, was for a moment nearly over our heads, and as I was sitting with my hands in my pockets and staring upwards, I could see him nodding like anything.

“As I daresay you know,” went on Sir Henry, “if a man dies intestate, and has no property but land, real property it is called in England, it all descends to his eldest son. It so happened that just at the time when we quarrelled our father died intestate. He had put off making his will until it was too late. The result was that my brother, who had not been brought up to any profession, was left without a penny. Of course it would have been my duty to provide for him, but at the time the quarrel between us was so bitter that I did not—to my shame I say it (and he sighed deeply)—offer to do anything. It was not that I grudged him justice, but I waited for him to make advances, and he made none. I am sorry to trouble you with all this, Mr. Quatermain, but I must to make things clear, eh, Good?”

“Quite so, quite so,” said the captain. “Mr. Quatermain will, I am sure, keep this history to himself.”

“Of course,” said I, for I rather pride myself on my discretion, for which, as Sir Henry had heard, I have some repute.

“Well,” went on Sir Henry, “my brother had a few hundred pounds to his account at the time. Without saying anything to me he drew out this paltry sum, and, having adopted the name of Neville, started off for South Africa in the wild hope of making a fortune. This I learned afterwards. Some three years passed, and I heard nothing of my brother, though I wrote several times. Doubtless the letters never reached him. But as time went on I grew more and more troubled about him. I found out, Mr. Quatermain, that blood is thicker than water.”

“That’s true,” said I, thinking of my boy Harry.

“I found out, Mr. Quatermain, that I would have given half my fortune to know that my brother George, the only relation I possess, was safe and well, and that I should see him again.”

“But you never did, Curtis,” jerked out Captain Good, glancing at the big man’s face.

“Well, Mr. Quatermain, as time went on I became more and more anxious to find out if my brother was alive or dead, and if alive to get him home again. I set enquiries on foot, and your letter was one of the results. So far as it went it was satisfactory, for it showed that till lately George was alive, but it did not go far enough. So, to cut a long story short, I made up my mind to come out and look for him myself, and Captain Good was so kind as to come with me.”

“Yes,” said the captain; “nothing else to do, you see. Turned out by my Lords of the Admiralty to starve on half pay. And now perhaps, sir, you will tell us what you know or have heard of the gentleman called Neville.”

2 Mr. Quatermain’s ideas about ancient Danes seem to be rather confused; we have always understood that they were dark-haired people. Probably he was thinking of Saxons.—Editor.

2 Mr. Quatermain’s ideas about ancient Danes seem to be rather confused; we have always understood that they were dark-haired people. Probably he was thinking of Saxons.—Editor.

CHAPTER II

THE LEGEND OF SOLOMON’S MINES

“What was it that you heard about my brother’s journey at Bamangwato?” asked Sir Henry, as I paused to fill my pipe before replying to Captain Good.

“I heard this,” I answered, “and I have never mentioned it to a soul till today. I heard that he was starting for Solomon’s Mines.”

“Solomon’s Mines?” ejaculated both my hearers at once. “Where are they?”

“I don’t know,” I said; “I know where they are said to be. Once I saw the peaks of the mountains that border them, but there were a hundred and thirty miles of desert between me and them, and I am not aware that any white man ever got across it save one. But perhaps the best thing I can do is to tell you the legend of Solomon’s Mines as I know it, you passing your word not to reveal anything I tell you without my permission. Do you agree to that? I have my reasons for asking.”

Sir Henry nodded, and Captain Good replied, “Certainly, certainly.”

“Well,” I began, “as you may guess, generally speaking, elephant hunters are a rough set of men, who do not trouble themselves with much beyond the facts of life and the ways of Kafirs. But here and there you meet a man who takes the trouble to collect traditions from the natives, and tries to make out a little piece of the history of this dark land. It was such a man as this who first told me the legend of Solomon’s Mines, now a matter of nearly thirty years ago. That was when I was on my first elephant hunt in the Matabele country. His name was Evans, and he was killed the following year, poor fellow, by a wounded buffalo, and lies buried near the Zambesi Falls. I was telling Evans one night, I remember, of some wonderful workings I had found whilst hunting koodoo and eland in what is now the Lydenburg district of the Transvaal. I see they have come across these workings again lately in prospecting for gold, but I knew of them years ago. There is a great wide wagon road cut out of the solid rock, and leading to the mouth of the working or gallery. Inside the mouth of this gallery are stacks of gold quartz piled up ready for roasting, which shows that the workers, whoever they were, must have left in a hurry. Also, about twenty paces in, the gallery is built across, and a beautiful bit of masonry it is.”

“‘Ay,’ said Evans, ‘but I will spin you a queerer yarn than that’; and he went on to tell me how he had found in the far interior a ruined city, which he believed to be the Ophir of the Bible, and, by the way, other more learned men have said the same long since poor Evans’s time. I was, I remember, listening open-eared to all these wonders, for I was young at the time, and this story of an ancient civilisation and of the treasures which those old Jewish or Phoenician adventurers used to extract from a country long since lapsed into the darkest barbarism took a great hold upon my imagination, when suddenly he said to me, ‘Lad, did you ever hear of the Suliman Mountains up to the north-west of the Mushakulumbwe country?’ I told him I never had. ‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘that is where Solomon really had his mines, his diamond mines, I mean.’

“‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

“‘Know it! why, what is “Suliman” but a corruption of Solomon?3 Besides, an old Isanusi or witch doctoress up in the Manica country told me all about it. She said that the people who lived across those mountains were a “branch” of the Zulus, speaking a dialect of Zulu, but finer and bigger men even; that there lived among them great wizards, who had learnt their art from white men when “all the world was dark,” and who had the secret of a wonderful mine of “bright stones.”’

“Well, I laughed at this story at the time, though it interested me, for the Diamond Fields were not discovered then, but poor Evans went off and was killed, and for twenty years I never thought any more of the matter. However, just twenty years afterwards—and that is a long time, gentlemen; an elephant hunter does not often live for twenty years at his business—I heard something more definite about Suliman’s Mountains and the country which lies beyond them. I was up beyond the Manica country, at a place called Sitanda’s Kraal, and a miserable place it was, for a man could get nothing to eat, and there was but little game about. I had an attack of fever, and was in a bad way generally, when one day a Portugee arrived with a single companion—a half-breed. Now I know your low-class Delagoa Portugee well. There is no greater devil unhung in a general way, battening as he does upon human agony and flesh in the shape of slaves. But this was quite a different type of man to the mean fellows whom I had been accustomed to meet; indeed, in appearance he reminded me more of the polite doms I have read about, for he was tall and thin, with large dark eyes and curling grey mustachios. We talked together for a while, for he could speak broken English, and I understood a little Portugee, and he told me that his name was José Silvestre, and that he had a place near Delagoa Bay. When he went on next day with his half-breed companion, he said ‘Good-bye,’ taking off his hat quite in the old style.

“‘Good-bye, senor,’ he said; ‘if ever we meet again I shall be the richest man in the world, and I will remember you.’ I laughed a little—I was too weak to laugh much—and watched him strike out for the great desert to the west, wondering if he was mad, or what he thought he was going to find there.

“A week passed, and I got the better of my fever. One evening I was sitting on the ground in front of the little tent I had with me, chewing the last leg of a miserable fowl I had bought from a native for a bit of cloth worth twenty fowls, and staring at the hot red sun sinking down over the desert, when suddenly I saw a figure, apparently that of a European, for it wore a coat, on the slope of the rising ground opposite to me, about three hundred yards away. The figure crept along on its hands and knees, then it got up and staggered forward a few yards on its legs, only to fall and crawl again. Seeing that it must be somebody in distress, I sent one of my hunters to help him, and presently he arrived, and who do you suppose it turned out to be?”

“José Silvestre, of course,” said Captain Good.

“Yes, José Silvestre, or rather his skeleton and a little skin. His face was a bright yellow with bilious fever, and his large dark eyes stood nearly out of his head, for all the flesh had gone. There was nothing but yellow parchment-like skin, white hair, and the gaunt bones sticking up beneath.

“‘Water! for the sake of Christ, water!’ he moaned and I saw that his lips were cracked, and his tongue, which protruded between them, was swollen and blackish.

“I gave him water with a little milk in it, and he drank it in great gulps, two quarts or so, without stopping. I would not let him have any more. Then the fever took him again, and he fell down and began to rave about Suliman’s Mountains, and the diamonds, and the desert. I carried him into the tent and did what I could for him, which was little enough; but I saw how it must end. About eleven o’clock he grew quieter, and I lay down for a little rest and went to sleep. At dawn I woke again, and in the half light saw Silvestre sitting up, a strange, gaunt form, and gazing out towards the desert. Presently the first ray of the sun shot right across the wide plain before us till it reached the faraway crest of one of the tallest of the Suliman Mountains more than a hundred miles away.

“‘There it is!’ cried the dying man in Portuguese, and pointing with his long, thin arm, ‘but I shall never reach it, never. No one will ever reach it!’

“Suddenly, he paused, and seemed to take a resolution. ‘Friend,’ he said, turning towards me, ‘are you there? My eyes grow dark.’

“‘Yes,’ I said; ‘yes, lie down now, and rest.’

“‘Ay,’ he answered, ‘I shall rest soon, I have time to rest—all eternity. Listen, I am dying! You have been good to me. I will give you the writing. Perhaps you will get there if you can live to pass the desert, which has killed my poor servant and me.’

“Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope. It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not. He handed it to me. ‘Untie it,’ he said. I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow linen on which something was written in rusty letters. Inside this rag was a paper.

“Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: ‘The paper has all that is on the linen. It took me years to read. Listen: my ancestor, a political refugee from Lisbon, and one of the first Portuguese who landed on these shores, wrote that when he was dying on those mountains which no white foot ever pressed before or since. His name was José da Silvestra, and he lived three hundred years ago. His slave, who waited for him on this side of the mountains, found him dead, and brought the writing home to Delagoa. It has been in the family ever since, but none have cared to read it, till at last I did. And I have lost my life over it, but another may succeed, and become the richest man in the world—the richest man in the world. Only give it to no one, senor; go yourself!’

“Then he began to wander again, and in an hour it was all over.

“God rest him! he died very quietly, and I buried him deep, with big boulders on his breast; so I do not think that the jackals can have dug him up. And then I came away.”

“Ay, but the document?” said Sir Henry, in a tone of deep interest.

“Yes, the document; what was in it?” added the captain.

“Well, gentlemen, if you like I will tell you. I have never showed it to anybody yet except to a drunken old Portuguese trader who translated it for me, and had forgotten all about it by the next morning. The original rag is at my home in Durban, together with poor Dom José’s translation, but I have the English rendering in my pocket-book, and a facsimile of the map, if it can be called a map. Here it is.”

“I, José da Silvestra, who am now dying of hunger in the little cave where no snow is on the north side of the nipple of the southernmost of the two mountains I have named Sheba’s Breasts, write this in the year 1590 with a cleft bone upon a remnant of my raiment, my blood being the ink. If my slave should find it when he comes, and should bring it to Delagoa, let my friend (name illegible) bring the matter to the knowledge of the king, that he may send an army which, if they live through the desert and the mountains, and can overcome the brave Kukuanes and their devilish arts, to which end many priests should be brought, will make him the richest king since Solomon. With my own eyes I have seen the countless diamonds stored in Solomon’s treasure chamber behind the white Death; but through the treachery of Gagool the witch-finder I might bring nought away, scarcely my life. Let him who comes follow the map, and climb the snow of Sheba’s left breast till he reaches the nipple, on the north side of which is the great road Solomon made, from whence three days’ journey to the King’s Palace. Let him kill Gagool. Pray for my soul. Farewell. —José da Silvestra.”4

When I had finished reading the above, and shown the copy of the map, drawn by the dying hand of the old Dom with his blood for ink, there followed a silence of astonishment.

“Well,” said Captain Good, “I have been round the world twice, and put in at most ports, but may I be hung for a mutineer if ever I heard a yarn like this out of a story book, or in it either, for the matter of that.”

“It’s a queer tale, Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry. “I suppose you are not hoaxing us? It is, I know, sometimes thought allowable to take in a greenhorn.”

“If you think that, Sir Henry,” I said, much put out, and pocketing my paper—for I do not like to be thought one of those silly fellows who consider it witty to tell lies, and who are for ever boasting to newcomers of extraordinary hunting adventures which never happened—“if you think that, why, there is an end to the matter,” and I rose to go.

Sir Henry laid his large hand upon my shoulder. “Sit down, Mr. Quatermain,” he said, “I beg your pardon; I see very well you do not wish to deceive us, but the story sounded so strange that I could hardly believe it.”

“You shall see the original map and writing when we reach Durban,” I answered, somewhat mollified, for really when I came to consider the question it was scarcely wonderful that he should doubt my good faith.

“But,” I went on, “I have not told you about your brother. I knew the man Jim who was with him. He was a Bechuana by birth, a good hunter, and for a native a very clever man. That morning on which Mr. Neville was starting I saw Jim standing by my wagon and cutting up tobacco on the disselboom.

“‘Jim,’ said I, ‘where are you off to this trip? It is elephants?’

“‘No, Baas,’ he answered, ‘we are after something worth much more than ivory.’

“‘And what might that be?’ I said, for I was curious. ‘Is it gold?’

“‘No, Baas, something worth more than gold,’ and he grinned.

“I asked no more questions, for I did not like to lower my dignity by seeming inquisitive, but I was puzzled. Presently Jim finished cutting his tobacco.

“‘Baas,’ said he.

“I took no notice.

“‘Baas,’ said he again.

“‘Eh, boy, what is it?’ I asked.

“‘Baas, we are going after diamonds.’

“‘Diamonds! why, then, you are steering in the wrong direction; you should head for the Fields.’

“‘Baas, have you ever heard of Suliman’s Berg?’—that is, Solomon’s Mountains, Sir Henry.

“‘Ay!’

“‘Have you ever heard of the diamonds there?’

“‘I have heard a foolish story, Jim.’

“‘It is no story, Baas. Once I knew a woman who came from there, and reached Natal with her child, she told me:—she is dead now.’

“‘Your master will feed the assvögels’—that is, vultures—‘Jim, if he tries to reach Suliman’s country, and so will you if they can get any pickings off your worthless old carcass,’ said I.

“He grinned. ‘Mayhap, Baas. Man must die; I’d rather like to try a new country myself; the elephants are getting worked out about here.’

“‘Ah! my boy,’ I said, ‘you wait till the “pale old man” gets a grip of your yellow throat, and then we shall hear what sort of a tune you sing.’

“Half an hour after that I saw Neville’s wagon move off. Presently Jim came back running. ‘Good-bye, Baas,’ he said. ‘I didn’t like to start without bidding you good-bye, for I daresay you are right, and that we shall never trek south again.’

“‘Is your master really going to Suliman’s Berg, Jim, or are you lying?’

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘he is going. He told me he was bound to make his fortune somehow, or try to; so he might as well have a fling for the diamonds.’

“‘Oh!’ I said; ‘wait a bit, Jim; will you take a note to your master, Jim, and promise not to give it to him till you reach Inyati?’ which was some hundred miles off.

“‘Yes, Baas.’

“So I took a scrap of paper, and wrote on it, ‘Let him who comes…climb the snow of Sheba’s left breast, till he reaches the nipple, on the north side of which is Solomon’s great road.’

“‘Now, Jim,’ I said, ‘when you give this to your master, tell him he had better follow the advice on it implicitly. You are not to give it to him now, because I don’t want him back asking me questions which I won’t answer. Now be off, you idle fellow, the wagon is nearly out of sight.’

“Jim took the note and went, and that is all I know about your brother, Sir Henry; but I am much afraid—”

“Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry, “I am going to look for my brother; I am going to trace him to Suliman’s Mountains, and over them if necessary, till I find him, or until I know that he is dead. Will you come with me?”

I am, as I think I have said, a cautious man, indeed a timid one, and this suggestion frightened me. It seemed to me that to undertake such a journey would be to go to certain death, and putting other considerations aside, as I had a son to support, I could not afford to die just then.

“No, thank you, Sir Henry, I think I had rather not,” I answered. “I am too old for wild-goose chases of that sort, and we should only end up like my poor friend Silvestre. I have a son dependent on me, so I cannot afford to risk my life foolishly.”

Both Sir Henry and Captain Good looked very disappointed.

“Mr. Quatermain,” said the former, “I am well off, and I am bent upon this business. You may put the remuneration for your services at whatever figure you like in reason, and it shall be paid over to you before we start. Moreover, I will arrange in the event of anything untoward happening to us or to you, that your son shall be suitably provided for. You will see from this offer how necessary I think your presence. Also if by chance we should reach this place, and find diamonds, they shall belong to you and Good equally. I do not want them. But of course that promise is worth nothing at all, though the same thing would apply to any ivory we might get. You may pretty well make your own terms with me, Mr. Quatermain; and of course I shall pay all expenses.”

“Sir Henry,” said I, “this is the most liberal proposal I ever had, and one not to be sneezed at by a poor hunter and trader. But the job is the biggest I have come across, and I must take time to think it over. I will give you my answer before we get to Durban.”

“Very good,” answered Sir Henry.

Then I said good-night and turned in, and dreamt about poor long-dead Silvestre and the diamonds.

3 Suliman is the Arabic form of Solomon.—Editor.

4 Eu José da Silvestra que estou morrendo de fome ná pequena cova onde não ha neve ao lado norte do bico mais ao sul das duas montanhas que chamei scio de Sheba; escrevo isto no anno 1590; escrevo isto com um pedaço d’ôsso n’ um farrapo de minha roupa e com sangue meu por tinta; se o meu escravo dêr com isto quando venha ao levar para Lourenzo Marquez, que o meu amigo ————- leve a cousa ao conhecimento d’ El Rei, para que possa mandar um exercito que, se desfiler pelo deserto e pelas montonhas e mesmo sobrepujar os bravos Kukuanes e suas artes diabolicas, pelo que se deviam trazer muitos padres Far o Rei mais rico depois de Salomão Com meus proprios olhos vé os di amantes sem conto guardados nas camaras do thesouro de Salomão a traz da morte branca, mas pela traição de Gagoal a feiticeira achadora, nada poderia levar, e apenas a minha vida. Quem vier siga o mappa e trepe pela neve de Sheba peito à esquerda até chegar ao bica, do lado norte do qual està a grande estrada do Solomão por elle feita, donde ha tres dias de jornada até ao Palacio do Rei. Mate Gagoal. Reze por minha alma. Adeos. José da Silvestra.

3 Suliman is the Arabic form of Solomon.—Editor.

4 Eu José da Silvestra que estou morrendo de fome ná pequena cova onde não ha neve ao lado norte do bico mais ao sul das duas montanhas que chamei scio de Sheba; escrevo isto no anno 1590; escrevo isto com um pedaço d’ôsso n’ um farrapo de minha roupa e com sangue meu por tinta; se o meu escravo dêr com isto quando venha ao levar para Lourenzo Marquez, que o meu amigo ————- leve a cousa ao conhecimento d’ El Rei, para que possa mandar um exercito que, se desfiler pelo deserto e pelas montonhas e mesmo sobrepujar os bravos Kukuanes e suas artes diabolicas, pelo que se deviam trazer muitos padres Far o Rei mais rico depois de Salomão Com meus proprios olhos vé os di amantes sem conto guardados nas camaras do thesouro de Salomão a traz da morte branca, mas pela traição de Gagoal a feiticeira achadora, nada poderia levar, e apenas a minha vida. Quem vier siga o mappa e trepe pela neve de Sheba peito à esquerda até chegar ao bica, do lado norte do qual està a grande estrada do Solomão por elle feita, donde ha tres dias de jornada até ao Palacio do Rei. Mate Gagoal. Reze por minha alma. Adeos. José da Silvestra.

CHAPTER III

UMBOPA ENTERS OUR SERVICE

It takes from four to five days, according to the speed of the vessel and the state of the weather, to run up from the Cape to Durban. Sometimes, if the landing is bad at East London, where they have not yet made that wonderful harbour they talk so much of, and sink such a mint of money in, a ship is delayed for twenty-four hours before the cargo boats can get out to take off the goods. But on this occasion we had not to wait at all, for there were no breakers on the Bar to speak of, and the tugs came out at once with the long strings of ugly flat-bottomed boats behind them, into which the packages were bundled with a crash. It did not matter what they might be, over they went slap-bang; whether they contained china or woollen goods they met with the same treatment. I saw one case holding four dozen of champagne smashed all to bits, and there was the champagne fizzing and boiling about in the bottom of the dirty cargo boat. It was a wicked waste, and evidently so the Kafirs in the boat thought, for they found a couple of unbroken bottles, and knocking off the necks drank the contents. But they had not allowed for the expansion caused by the fizz in the wine, and, feeling themselves swelling, rolled about in the bottom of the boat, calling out that the good liquor was “tagati”—that is, bewitched. I spoke to them from the vessel, and told them it was the white man’s strongest medicine, and that they were as good as dead men. Those Kafirs went to the shore in a very great fright, and I do not think that they will touch champagne again.

Well, all the time that we were steaming up to Natal I was thinking over Sir Henry Curtis’s offer. We did not speak any more on the subject for a day or two, though I told them many hunting yarns, all true ones. There is no need to tell lies about hunting, for so many curious things happen within the knowledge of a man whose business it is to hunt; but this is by the way.

At last, one beautiful evening in January, which is our hottest month, we steamed past the coast of Natal, expecting to make Durban Point by sunset. It is a lovely coast all along from East London, with its red sandhills and wide sweeps of vivid green, dotted here and there with Kafir kraals, and bordered by a ribbon of white surf, which spouts up in pillars of foam where it hits the rocks. But just before you come to Durban there is a peculiar richness about the landscape. There are the sheer kloofs cut in the hills by the rushing rains of centuries, down which the rivers sparkle; there is the deepest green of the bush, growing as God planted it, and the other greens of the mealie gardens and the sugar patches, while now and again a white house, smiling out at the placid sea, puts a finish and gives an air of homeliness to the scene. For to my mind, however beautiful a view may be, it requires the presence of man to make it complete, but perhaps that is because I have lived so much in the wilderness, and therefore know the value of civilisation, though to be sure it drives away the game. The Garden of Eden, no doubt, looked fair before man was, but I always think that it must have been fairer when Eve adorned it.

To return, we had miscalculated a little, and the sun was well down before we dropped anchor off the Point, and heard the gun which told the good folks of Durban that the English Mail was in. It was too late to think of getting over the Bar that night, so we went comfortably to dinner, after seeing the Mails carried off in the life-boat.

When we came up again the moon was out, and shining so brightly over sea and shore that she almost paled the quick, large flashes from the lighthouse. From the shore floated sweet spicy odours that always remind me of hymns and missionaries, and in the windows of the houses on the Berea sparkled a hundred lights. From a large brig lying near also came the music of the sailors as they worked at getting the anchor up in order to be ready for the wind. Altogether it was a perfect night, such a night as you sometimes get in Southern Africa, and it threw a garment of peace over everybody as the moon threw a garment of silver over everything. Even the great bulldog, belonging to a sporting passenger, seemed to yield to its gentle influences, and forgetting his yearning to come to close quarters with the baboon in a cage on the foc’sle, snored happily at the door of the cabin, dreaming no doubt that he had finished him, and happy in his dream.

We three—that is, Sir Henry Curtis, Captain Good, and myself—went and sat by the wheel, and were quiet for a while.

“Well, Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry presently, “have you been thinking about my proposals?”

“Ay,” echoed Captain Good, “what do you think of them, Mr. Quatermain? I hope that you are going to give us the pleasure of your company so far as Solomon’s Mines, or wherever the gentleman you knew as Neville may have got to.”

I rose and knocked out my pipe before I answered. I had not made up my mind, and wanted an additional moment to decide. Before the burning tobacco had fallen into the sea I had decided; just that little extra second did the trick. It is often the way when you have been bothering a long time over a thing.

“Yes, gentlemen,” I said, sitting down again, “I will go, and by your leave I will tell you why, and on what conditions. First for the terms which I ask.

“1. You are to pay all expenses, and any ivory or other valuables we may get is to be divided between Captain Good and myself.

“2. That you give me £500 for my services on the trip before we start, I undertaking to serve you faithfully till you choose to abandon the enterprise, or till we succeed, or disaster overtakes us.

“3. That before we trek you execute a deed agreeing, in the event of my death or disablement, to pay my boy Harry, who is studying medicine over there in London, at Guy’s Hospital, a sum of £200 a year for five years, by which time he ought to be able to earn a living for himself if he is worth his salt. That is all, I think, and I daresay you will say quite enough too.”

“No,” answered Sir Henry, “I accept them gladly. I am bent upon this project, and would pay more than that for your help, considering the peculiar and exclusive knowledge which you possess.”

“Pity I did not ask it, then, but I won’t go back on my word. And now that I have got my terms I will tell you my reasons for making up my mind to go. First of all, gentlemen, I have been observing you both for the last few days, and if you will not think me impertinent I may say that I like you, and believe that we shall come up well to the yoke together. That is something, let me tell you, when one has a long journey like this before one.

“And now as to the journey itself, I tell you flatly, Sir Henry and Captain Good, that I do not think it probable we can come out of it alive, that is, if we attempt to cross the Suliman Mountains. What was the fate of the old Dom da Silvestra three hundred years ago? What was the fate of his descendant twenty years ago? What has been your brother’s fate? I tell you frankly, gentlemen, that as their fates were so I believe ours will be.”

I paused to watch the effect of my words. Captain Good looked a little uncomfortable, but Sir Henry’s face did not change. “We must take our chance,” he said.

“You may perhaps wonder,” I went on, “why, if I think this, I, who am, as I told you, a timid man, should undertake such a journey. It is for two reasons. First I am a fatalist, and believe that my time is appointed to come quite without reference to my own movements and will, and that if I am to go to Suliman’s Mountains to be killed, I shall go there and shall be killed. God Almighty, no doubt, knows His mind about me, so I need not trouble on that point. Secondly, I am a poor man. For nearly forty years I have hunted and traded, but I have never made more than a living. Well, gentlemen, I don’t know if you are aware that the average life of an elephant hunter from the time he takes to the trade is between four and five years. So you see I have lived through about seven generations of my class, and I should think that my time cannot be far off, anyway. Now, if anything were to happen to me in the ordinary course of business, by the time my debts are paid there would be nothing left to support my son Harry whilst he was getting in the way of earning a living, whereas now he will be set up for five years. There is the whole affair in a nutshell.”

“Mr. Quatermain,” said Sir Henry, who had been giving me his most serious attention, “your motives for undertaking an enterprise which you believe can only end in disaster reflect a great deal of credit on you. Whether or not you are right, of course time and the event alone can show. But whether you are right or wrong, I may as well tell you at once that I am going through with it to the end, sweet or bitter. If we are to be knocked on the head, all I have to say is, that I hope we get a little shooting first, eh, Good?”

“Yes, yes,” put in the captain. “We have all three of us been accustomed to face danger, and to hold our lives in our hands in various ways, so it is no good turning back now. And now I vote we go down to the saloon and take an observation just for luck, you know.” And we did—through the bottom of a tumbler.

Next day we went ashore, and I put up Sir Henry and Captain Good at the little shanty I have built on the Berea, and which I call my home. There are only three rooms and a kitchen in it, and it is constructed of green brick with a galvanised iron roof, but there is a good garden with the best loquot trees in it that I know, and some nice young mangoes, of which I hope great things. The curator of the botanical gardens gave them to me. It is looked after by an old hunter of mine named Jack, whose thigh was so badly broken by a buffalo cow in Sikukunis country that he will never hunt again. But he can potter about and garden, being a Griqua by birth. You will never persuade a Zulu to take much interest in gardening. It is a peaceful art, and peaceful arts are not in his line.

Sir Henry and Good slept in a tent pitched in my little grove of orange trees at the end of the garden, for there was no room for them in the house, and what with the smell of the bloom, and the sight of the green and golden fruit—in Durban you will see all three on the tree together—I daresay it is a pleasant place enough, for we have few mosquitos here on the Berea, unless there happens to come an unusually heavy rain.

Well, to get on—for if I do not, Harry, you will be tired of my story before ever we fetch up at Suliman’s Mountains—having once made up my mind to go I set about making the necessary preparations. First I secured the deed from Sir Henry, providing for you, my boy, in case of accidents. There was some difficulty about its legal execution, as Sir Henry was a stranger here, and the property to be charged is over the water; but it was ultimately got over with the help of a lawyer, who charged £20 for the job—a price that I thought outrageous. Then I pocketed my cheque for £500.

Having paid this tribute to my bump of caution, I purchased a wagon and a span of oxen on Sir Henry’s behalf, and beauties they were. It was a twenty-two-foot wagon with iron axles, very strong, very light, and built throughout of stink wood; not quite a new one, having been to the Diamond Fields and back, but, in my opinion, all the better for that, for I could see that the wood was well seasoned. If anything is going to give in a wagon, or if there is green wood in it, it will show out on the first trip. This particular vehicle was what we call a “half-tented” wagon, that is to say, only covered in over the after twelve feet, leaving all the front part free for the necessaries we had to carry with us. In this after part were a hide “cartle,” or bed, on which two people could sleep, also racks for rifles, and many other little conveniences. I gave £125 for it, and think that it was cheap at the price.

Then I bought a beautiful team of twenty Zulu oxen, which I had kept my eye on for a year or two. Sixteen oxen is the usual number for a team, but I took four extra to allow for casualties. These Zulu cattle are small and light, not more than half the size of the Africander oxen, which are generally used for transport purposes; but they will live where the Africanders would starve, and with a moderate load can make five miles a day better going, being quicker and not so liable to become footsore. What is more, this lot were thoroughly “salted,” that is, they had worked all over South Africa, and so had become proof, comparatively speaking, against red water, which so frequently destroys whole teams of oxen when they get on to strange “veldt” or grass country. As for “lung sick,” which is a dreadful form of pneumonia, very prevalent in this country, they had all been inoculated against it. This is done by cutting a slit in the tail of an ox, and binding in a piece of the diseased lung of an animal which has died of the sickness. The result is that the ox sickens, takes the disease in a mild form, which causes its tail to drop off, as a rule about a foot from the root, and becomes proof against future attacks. It seems cruel to rob the animal of his tail, especially in a country where there are so many flies, but it is better to sacrifice the tail and keep the ox than to lose both tail and ox, for a tail without an ox is not much good, except to dust with. Still it does look odd to trek along behind twenty stumps, where there ought to be tails. It seems as though Nature made a trifling mistake, and stuck the stern ornaments of a lot of prize bull-dogs on to the rumps of the oxen.

Next came the question of provisioning and medicines, one which required the most careful consideration, for what we had to do was to avoid lumbering the wagon, and yet to take everything absolutely necessary. Fortunately, it turned out that Good is a bit of a doctor, having at some point in his previous career managed to pass through a course of medical and surgical instruction, which he has more or less kept up. He is not, of course, qualified, but he knows more about it than many a man who can write M.D. after his name, as we found out afterwards, and he had a splendid travelling medicine chest and a set of instruments. Whilst we were at Durban he cut off a Kafir’s big toe in a way which it was a pleasure to see. But he was quite nonplussed when the Kafir, who had sat stolidly watching the operation, asked him to put on another, saying that a “white one” would do at a pinch.

There remained, when these questions were satisfactorily settled, two further important points for consideration, namely, that of arms and that of servants. As to the arms I cannot do better than put down a list of those which we finally decided on from among the ample store that Sir Henry had brought with him from England, and those which I owned. I copy it from my pocket-book, where I made the entry at the time.

“Three heavy breech-loading double-eight elephant guns, weighing about fifteen pounds each, to carry a charge of eleven drachms of black powder.” Two of these were by a well-known London firm, most excellent makers, but I do not know by whom mine, which is not so highly finished, was made. I have used it on several trips, and shot a good many elephants with it, and it has always proved a most superior weapon, thoroughly to be relied on.

“Three double-500 Expresses, constructed to stand a charge of six drachms,” sweet weapons, and admirable for medium-sized game, such as eland or sable antelope, or for men, especially in an open country and with the semi-hollow bullet.

“One double No. 12 central-fire Keeper’s shot-gun, full choke both barrels.” This gun proved of the greatest service to us afterwards in shooting game for the pot.

“Three Winchester repeating rifles (not carbines), spare guns.

“Three single-action Colt’s revolvers, with the heavier, or American pattern of cartridge.”

This was our total armament, and doubtless the reader will observe that the weapons of each class were of the same make and calibre, so that the cartridges were interchangeable, a very important point. I make no apology for detailing it at length, as every experienced hunter will know how vital a proper supply of guns and ammunition is to the success of an expedition.

Now as to the men who were to go with us. After much consultation we decided that their number should be limited to five, namely, a driver, a leader, and three servants.

The driver and leader I found without much difficulty, two Zulus, named respectively Goza and Tom; but to get the servants proved a more difficult matter. It was necessary that they should be thoroughly trustworthy and brave men, as in a business of this sort our lives might depend upon their conduct. At last I secured two, one a Hottentot named Ventvögel, or “windbird,” and one a little Zulu named Khiva, who had the merit of speaking English perfectly. Ventvögel I had known before; he was one of the most perfect “spoorers,” that is, game trackers, I ever had to do with, and tough as whipcord. He never seemed to tire. But he had one failing, so common with his race, drink. Put him within reach of a bottle of gin and you could not trust him. However, as we were going beyond the region of grog-shops this little weakness of his did not so much matter.

Having secured these two men I looked in vain for a third to suit my purpose, so we determined to start without one, trusting to luck to find a suitable man on our way up country. But, as it happened, on the evening before the day we had fixed for our departure the Zulu Khiva informed me that a Kafir was waiting to see me. Accordingly, when we had done dinner, for we were at table at the time, I told Khiva to bring him in. Presently a tall, handsome-looking man, somewhere about thirty years of age, and very light-coloured for a Zulu, entered, and lifting his knob-stick by way of salute, squatted himself down in the corner on his haunches, and sat silent. I did not take any notice of him for a while, for it is a great mistake to do so. If you rush into conversation at once, a Zulu is apt to think you a person of little dignity or consequence. I observed, however, that he was a “Keshla” or ringed man; that is, he wore on his head the black ring, made of a species of gum polished with fat and worked up in the hair, which is usually assumed by Zulus on attaining a certain age or dignity. Also it struck me that his face was familiar to me.

“Well,” I said at last, “What is your name?”

“Umbopa,” answered the man in a slow, deep voice.

“I have seen your face before.”

“Yes; the Inkoosi, the chief, my father, saw my face at the place of the Little Hand”—that is, Isandhlwana—“on the day before the battle.”

Then I remembered. I was one of Lord Chelmsford’s guides in that unlucky Zulu War, and had the good fortune to leave the camp in charge of some wagons on the day before the battle. While I was waiting for the cattle to be inspanned I fell into conversation with this man, who held some small command among the native auxiliaries, and he had expressed to me his doubts as to the safety of the camp. At the time I told him to hold his tongue, and leave such matters to wiser heads; but afterwards I thought of his words.

“I remember,” I said; “what is it you want?”

“It is this, ‘Macumazahn.’” That is my Kafir name, and means the man who gets up in the middle of the night, or, in vulgar English, he who keeps his eyes open. “I hear that you go on a great expedition far into the North with the white chiefs from over the water. Is it a true word?”

“It is.”

“I hear that you go even to the Lukanga River, a moon’s journey beyond the Manica country. Is this so also, ‘Macumazahn?’”

“Why do you ask whither we go? What is it to you?” I answered suspiciously, for the objects of our journey had been kept a dead secret.

“It is this, O white men, that if indeed you travel so far I would travel with you.”

There was a certain assumption of dignity in the man’s mode of speech, and especially in his use of the words “O white men,” instead of “O Inkosis,” or chiefs, which struck me.

“You forget yourself a little,” I said. “Your words run out unawares. That is not the way to speak. What is your name, and where is your kraal? Tell us, that we may know with whom we have to deal.”

“My name is Umbopa. I am of the Zulu people, yet not of them. The house of my tribe is in the far North; it was left behind when the Zulus came down here a ‘thousand years ago,’ long before Chaka reigned in Zululand. I have no kraal. I have wandered for many years. I came from the North as a child to Zululand. I was Cetewayo’s man in the Nkomabakosi Regiment, serving there under the great Captain, Umslopogaasi of the Axe,5 who taught my hands to fight. Afterwards I ran away from Zululand and came to Natal because I wanted to see the white man’s ways. Next I fought against Cetewayo in the war. Since then I have been working in Natal. Now I am tired, and would go North again. Here is not my place. I want no money, but I am a brave man, and am worth my place and meat. I have spoken.”

I was rather puzzled by this man and his way of speech. It was evident to me from his manner that in the main he was telling the truth, but somehow he seemed different from the ordinary run of Zulus, and I rather mistrusted his offer to come without pay. Being in a difficulty, I translated his words to Sir Henry and Good, and asked them their opinion.

Sir Henry told me to ask him to stand up. Umbopa did so, at the same time slipping off the long military great coat which he wore, and revealing himself naked except for the moocha round his centre and a necklace of lions’ claws. Certainly he was a magnificent-looking man; I never saw a finer native. Standing about six foot three high he was broad in proportion, and very shapely. In that light, too, his skin looked scarcely more than dark, except here and there where deep black scars marked old assegai wounds. Sir Henry walked up to him and looked into his proud, handsome face.

“They make a good pair, don’t they?” said Good; “one as big as the other.”

“I like your looks, Mr. Umbopa, and I will take you as my servant,” said Sir Henry in English.

Umbopa evidently understood him, for he answered in Zulu, “It is well”; and then added, with a glance at the white man’s great stature and breadth, “We are men, thou and I.”

5 For the history of Umslopogaasi and his Axe, the reader is referred to the books called “Allan Quatermain” and “Nada the Lily.”—Editor.

5 For the history of Umslopogaasi and his Axe, the reader is referred to the books called “Allan Quatermain” and “Nada the Lily.”—Editor.

CHAPTER IV

AN ELEPHANT HUNT

Now I do not propose to narrate at full length all the incidents of our long travel up to Sitanda’s Kraal, near the junction of the Lukanga and Kalukwe Rivers. It was a journey of more than a thousand miles from Durban, the last three hundred or so of which we had to make on foot, owing to the frequent presence of the dreadful “tsetse” fly, whose bite is fatal to all animals except donkeys and men.

We left Durban at the end of January, and it was in the second week of May that we camped near Sitanda’s Kraal. Our adventures on the way were many and various, but as they are of the sort which befall every African hunter—with one exception to be presently detailed—I shall not set them down here, lest I should render this history too wearisome.

At Inyati, the outlying trading station in the Matabele country, of which Lobengula (a great and cruel scoundrel) is king, with many regrets we parted from our comfortable wagon. Only twelve oxen remained to us out of the beautiful span of twenty which I had bought at Durban. One we lost from the bite of a cobra, three had perished from “poverty” and the want of water, one strayed, and the other three died from eating the poisonous herb called “tulip.” Five more sickened from this cause, but we managed to cure them with doses of an infusion made by boiling down the tulip leaves. If administered in time this is a very effective antidote.

The wagon and the oxen we left in the immediate charge of Goza and Tom, our driver and leader, both trustworthy boys, requesting a worthy Scotch missionary who lived in this distant place to keep an eye on them. Then, accompanied by Umbopa, Khiva, Ventvögel, and half a dozen bearers whom we hired on the spot, we started off on foot upon our wild quest. I remember we were all a little silent on the occasion of this departure, and I think that each of us was wondering if we should ever see our wagon again; for my part I never expected to do so. For a while we tramped on in silence, till Umbopa, who was marching in front, broke into a Zulu chant about how some brave men, tired of life and the tameness of things, started off into a vast wilderness to find new things or die, and how, lo and behold! when they had travelled far into the wilderness they found that it was not a wilderness at all, but a beautiful place full of young wives and fat cattle, of game to hunt and enemies to kill.

Then we all laughed and took it for a good omen. Umbopa was a cheerful savage, in a dignified sort of way, when he was not suffering from one of his fits of brooding, and he had a wonderful knack of keeping up our spirits. We all grew very fond of him.

And now for the one adventure to which I am going to treat myself, for I do dearly love a hunting yarn.

About a fortnight’s march from Inyati we came across a peculiarly beautiful bit of well-watered woodland country. The kloofs in the hills were covered with dense bush, “idoro” bush as the natives call it, and in some places, with the “wacht-een-beche,” or “wait-a-little thorn,” and there were great quantities of the lovely “machabell” tree, laden with refreshing yellow fruit having enormous stones. This tree is the elephant’s favourite food, and there were not wanting signs that the great brutes had been about, for not only was their spoor frequent, but in many places the trees were broken down and even uprooted. The elephant is a destructive feeder.

One evening, after a long day’s march, we came to a spot of great loveliness. At the foot of a bush-clad hill lay a dry river-bed, in which, however, were to be found pools of crystal water all trodden round with the hoof-prints of game. Facing this hill was a park-like plain, where grew clumps of flat-topped mimosa, varied with occasional glossy-leaved machabells, and all round stretched the sea of pathless, silent bush.

As we emerged into this river-bed path suddenly we started a troop of tall giraffes, who galloped, or rather sailed off, in their strange gait, their tails screwed up over their backs, and their hoofs rattling like castanets. They were about three hundred yards from us, and therefore practically out of shot, but Good, who was walking ahead, and who had an express loaded with solid ball in his hand, could not resist temptation. Lifting his gun, he let drive at the last, a young cow. By some extraordinary chance the ball struck it full on the back of the neck, shattering the spinal column, and that giraffe went rolling head over heels just like a rabbit. I never saw a more curious thing.

“Curse it!” said Good—for I am sorry to say he had a habit of using strong language when excited—contracted, no doubt, in the course of his nautical career; “curse it! I’ve killed him.”

“Ou, Bougwan,” ejaculated the Kafirs; “ou! ou!”

They called Good “Bougwan,” or Glass Eye, because of his eye-glass.

“Oh, ‘Bougwan!’” re-echoed Sir Henry and I, and from that day Good’s reputation as a marvellous shot was established, at any rate among the Kafirs. Really he was a bad one, but whenever he missed we overlooked it for the sake of that giraffe.

Having set some of the “boys” to cut off the best of the giraffe’s meat, we went to work to build a “scherm” near one of the pools and about a hundred yards to its right. This is done by cutting a quantity of thorn bushes and piling them in the shape of a circular hedge. Then the space enclosed is smoothed, and dry tambouki grass, if obtainable, is made into a bed in the centre, and a fire or fires lighted.

By the time the “scherm” was finished the moon peeped up, and our dinners of giraffe steaks and roasted marrow-bones were ready. How we enjoyed those marrow-bones, though it was rather a job to crack them! I know of no greater luxury than giraffe marrow, unless it is elephant’s heart, and we had that on the morrow. We ate our simple meal by the light of the moon, pausing at times to thank Good for his wonderful shot; then we began to smoke and yarn, and a curious picture we must have made squatting there round the fire. I, with my short grizzled hair sticking up straight, and Sir Henry with his yellow locks, which were getting rather long, were rather a contrast, especially as I am thin, and short, and dark, weighing only nine stone and a half, and Sir Henry is tall, and broad, and fair, and weighs fifteen. But perhaps the most curious-looking of the three, taking all the circumstances of the case into consideration, was Captain John Good, R.N. There he sat upon a leather bag, looking just as though he had come in from a comfortable day’s shooting in a civilised country, absolutely clean, tidy, and well dressed. He wore a shooting suit of brown tweed, with a hat to match, and neat gaiters. As usual, he was beautifully shaved, his eye-glass and his false teeth appeared to be in perfect order, and altogether he looked the neatest man I ever had to do with in the wilderness. He even sported a collar, of which he had a supply, made of white gutta-percha.

“You see, they weigh so little,” he said to me innocently, when I expressed my astonishment at the fact; “and I always like to turn out like a gentleman.” Ah! if he could have foreseen the future and the raiment prepared for him.

Well, there we three sat yarning away in the beautiful moonlight, and watching the Kafirs a few yards off sucking their intoxicating “daccha” from a pipe of which the mouthpiece was made of the horn of an eland, till one by one they rolled themselves up in their blankets and went to sleep by the fire, that is, all except Umbopa, who was a little apart, his chin resting on his hand, and thinking deeply. I noticed that he never mixed much with the other Kafirs.

Presently, from the depths of the bush behind us, came a loud “woof, woof!” “That’s a lion,” said I, and we all started up to listen. Hardly had we done so, when from the pool, about a hundred yards off, we heard the strident trumpeting of an elephant. “Unkungunklovo! Indlovu!” “Elephant! Elephant!” whispered the Kafirs, and a few minutes afterwards we saw a succession of vast shadowy forms moving slowly from the direction of the water towards the bush.

Up jumped Good, burning for slaughter, and thinking, perhaps, that it was as easy to kill elephant as he had found it to shoot giraffe, but I caught him by the arm and pulled him down.

“It’s no good,” I whispered, “let them go.”

“It seems that we are in a paradise of game. I vote we stop here a day or two, and have a go at them,” said Sir Henry, presently.

I was rather surprised, for hitherto Sir Henry had always been for pushing forward as fast as possible, more especially since we ascertained at Inyati that about two years ago an Englishman of the name of Neville had sold his wagon there, and gone on up country. But I suppose his hunter instincts got the better of him for a while.

Good jumped at the idea, for he was longing to have a shot at those elephants; and so, to speak the truth, did I, for it went against my conscience to let such a herd as that escape without a pull at them.

“All right, my hearties,” said I. “I think we want a little recreation. And now let’s turn in, for we ought to be off by dawn, and then perhaps we may catch them feeding before they move on.”

The others agreed, and we proceeded to make our preparations. Good took off his clothes, shook them, put his eye-glass and his false teeth into his trousers pocket, and folding each article neatly, placed it out of the dew under a corner of his mackintosh sheet. Sir Henry and I contented ourselves with rougher arrangements, and soon were curled up in our blankets, and dropping off into the dreamless sleep that rewards the traveller.

Going, going, go—What was that?

Suddenly, from the direction of the water came sounds of violent scuffling, and next instant there broke upon our ears a succession of the most awful roars. There was no mistaking their origin; only a lion could make such a noise as that. We all jumped up and looked towards the water, in the direction of which we saw a confused mass, yellow and black in colour, staggering and struggling towards us. We seized our rifles, and slipping on our veldtschoons, that is shoes made of untanned hide, ran out of the scherm. By this time the mass had fallen, and was rolling over and over on the ground, and when we reached the spot it struggled no longer, but lay quite still.

Now we saw what it was. On the grass there lay a sable antelope bull—the most beautiful of all the African antelopes—quite dead, and transfixed by its great curved horns was a magnificent black-maned lion, also dead. Evidently what had happened was this: The sable antelope had come down to drink at the pool where the lion—no doubt the same which we had heard—was lying in wait. While the antelope drank, the lion had sprung upon him, only to be received upon the sharp curved horns and transfixed. Once before I saw a similar thing happen. Then the lion, unable to free himself, had torn and bitten at the back and neck of the bull, which, maddened with fear and pain, had rushed on until it dropped dead.

As soon as we had examined the beasts sufficiently we called the Kafirs, and between us managed to drag their carcases up to the scherm. After that we went in and lay down, to wake no more till dawn.

With the first light we were up and making ready for the fray. We took with us the three eight-bore rifles, a good supply of ammunition, and our large water-bottles, filled with weak cold tea, which I have always found the best stuff to shoot on. After swallowing a little breakfast we started, Umbopa, Khiva, and Ventvögel accompanying us. The other Kafirs we left with instructions to skin the lion and the sable antelope, and to cut up the latter.

We had no difficulty in finding the broad elephant trail, which Ventvögel, after examination, pronounced to have been made by between twenty and thirty elephants, most of them full-grown bulls. But the herd had moved on some way during the night, and it was nine o’clock, and already very hot, before, by the broken trees, bruised leaves and bark, and smoking droppings, we knew that we could not be far from them.

Presently we caught sight of the herd, which numbered, as Ventvögel had said, between twenty and thirty, standing in a hollow, having finished their morning meal, and flapping their great ears. It was a splendid sight, for they were only about two hundred yards from us. Taking a handful of dry grass, I threw it into the air to see how the wind was; for if once they winded us I knew they would be off before we could get a shot. Finding that, if anything, it blew from the elephants to us, we crept on stealthily, and thanks to the cover managed to get within forty yards or so of the great brutes. Just in front of us, and broadside on, stood three splendid bulls, one of them with enormous tusks. I whispered to the others that I would take the middle one; Sir Henry covering the elephant to the left, and Good the bull with the big tusks.

“Now,” I whispered.

Boom! boom! boom! went the three heavy rifles, and down came Sir Henry’s elephant dead as a hammer, shot right through the heart. Mine fell on to its knees and I thought that he was going to die, but in another moment he was up and off, tearing along straight past me. As he went I gave him the second barrel in the ribs, and this brought him down in good earnest. Hastily slipping in two fresh cartridges I ran close up to him, and a ball through the brain put an end to the poor brute’s struggles. Then I turned to see how Good had fared with the big bull, which I had heard screaming with rage and pain as I gave mine its quietus. On reaching the captain I found him in a great state of excitement. It appeared that on receiving the bullet the bull had turned and come straight for his assailant, who had barely time to get out of his way, and then charged on blindly past him, in the direction of our encampment. Meanwhile the herd had crashed off in wild alarm in the other direction.

For awhile we debated whether to go after the wounded bull or to follow the herd, and finally deciding for the latter alternative, departed, thinking that we had seen the last of those big tusks. I have often wished since that we had. It was easy work to follow the elephants, for they had left a trail like a carriage road behind them, crushing down the thick bush in their furious flight as though it were tambouki grass.

But to come up with them was another matter, and we had struggled on under the broiling sun for over two hours before we found them. With the exception of one bull, they were standing together, and I could see, from their unquiet way and the manner in which they kept lifting their trunks to test the air, that they were on the look-out for mischief. The solitary bull stood fifty yards or so to this side of the herd, over which he was evidently keeping sentry, and about sixty yards from us. Thinking that he would see or wind us, and that it would probably start them off again if we tried to get nearer, especially as the ground was rather open, we all aimed at this bull, and at my whispered word, we fired. The three shots took effect, and down he went dead. Again the herd started, but unfortunately for them about a hundred yards further on was a nullah, or dried-out water track, with steep banks, a place very much resembling the one where the Prince Imperial was killed in Zululand. Into this the elephants plunged, and when we reached the edge we found them struggling in wild confusion to get up the other bank, filling the air with their screams, and trumpeting as they pushed one another aside in their selfish panic, just like so many human beings. Now was our opportunity, and firing away as quickly as we could load, we killed five of the poor beasts, and no doubt should have bagged the whole herd, had they not suddenly given up their attempts to climb the bank and rushed headlong down the nullah. We were too tired to follow them, and perhaps also a little sick of slaughter, eight elephants being a pretty good bag for one day.

So after we were rested a little, and the Kafirs had cut out the hearts of two of the dead elephants for supper, we started homewards, very well pleased with our day’s work, having made up our minds to send the bearers on the morrow to chop away the tusks.

Shortly after we re-passed the spot where Good had wounded the patriarchal bull we came across a herd of eland, but did not shoot at them, as we had plenty of meat. They trotted past us, and then stopped behind a little patch of bush about a hundred yards away, wheeling round to look at us. As Good was anxious to get a near view of them, never having seen an eland close, he handed his rifle to Umbopa, and, followed by Khiva, strolled up to the patch of bush. We sat down and waited for him, not sorry of the excuse for a little rest.

The sun was just going down in its reddest glory, and Sir Henry and I were admiring the lovely scene, when suddenly we heard an elephant scream, and saw its huge and rushing form with uplifted trunk and tail silhouetted against the great fiery globe of the sun. Next second we saw something else, and that was Good and Khiva tearing back towards us with the wounded bull—for it was he—charging after them. For a moment we did not dare to fire—though at that distance it would have been of little use if we had done so—for fear of hitting one of them, and the next a dreadful thing happened—Good fell a victim to his passion for civilised dress. Had he consented to discard his trousers and gaiters like the rest of us, and to hunt in a flannel shirt and a pair of veldt-schoons, it would have been all right. But as it was, his trousers cumbered him in that desperate race, and presently, when he was about sixty yards from us, his boot, polished by the dry grass, slipped, and down he went on his face right in front of the elephant.

We gave a gasp, for we knew that he must die, and ran as hard as we could towards him. In three seconds it had ended, but not as we thought. Khiva, the Zulu boy, saw his master fall, and brave lad as he was, turned and flung his assegai straight into the elephant’s face. It stuck in his trunk.

With a scream of pain, the brute seized the poor Zulu, hurled him to the earth, and placing one huge foot on to his body about the middle, twined its trunk round his upper part and tore him in two.

We rushed up mad with horror, and fired again and again, till presently the elephant fell upon the fragments of the Zulu.

As for Good, he rose and wrung his hands over the brave man who had given his life to save him, and, though I am an old hand, I felt a lump grow in my throat. Umbopa stood contemplating the huge dead elephant and the mangled remains of poor Khiva.

“Ah, well,” he said presently, “he is dead, but he died like a man!”

CHAPTER V

OUR MARCH INTO THE DESERT

We had killed nine elephants, and it took us two days to cut out the tusks, and having brought them into camp, to bury them carefully in the sand under a large tree, which made a conspicuous mark for miles round. It was a wonderfully fine lot of ivory. I never saw a better, averaging as it did between forty and fifty pounds a tusk. The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva scaled one hundred and seventy pounds the pair, so nearly as we could judge.

As for Khiva himself, we buried what remained of him in an ant-bear hole, together with an assegai to protect himself with on his journey to a better world. On the third day we marched again, hoping that we might live to return to dig up our buried ivory, and in due course, after a long and wearisome tramp, and many adventures which I have not space to detail, we reached Sitanda’s Kraal, near the Lukanga River, the real starting-point of our expedition. Very well do I recollect our arrival at that place. To the right was a scattered native settlement with a few stone cattle kraals and some cultivated lands down by the water, where these savages grew their scanty supply of grain, and beyond it stretched great tracts of waving “veld” covered with tall grass, over which herds of the smaller game were wandering. To the left lay the vast desert. This spot appears to be the outpost of the fertile country, and it would be difficult to say to what natural causes such an abrupt change in the character of the soil is due. But so it is.

Just below our encampment flowed a little stream, on the farther side of which is a stony slope, the same down which, twenty years before, I had seen poor Silvestre creeping back after his attempt to reach Solomon’s Mines, and beyond that slope begins the waterless desert, covered with a species of karoo shrub.

It was evening when we pitched our camp, and the great ball of the sun was sinking into the desert, sending glorious rays of many-coloured light flying all over its vast expanse. Leaving Good to superintend the arrangement of our little camp, I took Sir Henry with me, and walking to the top of the slope opposite, we gazed across the desert. The air was very clear, and far, far away I could distinguish the faint blue outlines, here and there capped with white, of the Suliman Berg.

“There,” I said, “there is the wall round Solomon’s Mines, but God knows if we shall ever climb it.”

“My brother should be there, and if he is, I shall reach him somehow,” said Sir Henry, in that tone of quiet confidence which marked the man.

“I hope so,” I answered, and turned to go back to the camp, when I saw that we were not alone. Behind us, also gazing earnestly towards the far-off mountains, stood the great Kafir Umbopa.

The Zulu spoke when he saw that I had observed him, addressing Sir Henry, to whom he had attached himself.

“Is it to that land that thou wouldst journey, Incubu?” (a native word meaning, I believe, an elephant, and the name given to Sir Henry by the Kafirs), he said, pointing towards the mountain with his broad assegai.

I asked him sharply what he meant by addressing his master in that familiar way. It is very well for natives to have a name for one among themselves, but it is not decent that they should call a white man by their heathenish appellations to his face. The Zulu laughed a quiet little laugh which angered me.

“How dost thou know that I am not the equal of the Inkosi whom I serve?” he said. “He is of a royal house, no doubt; one can see it in his size and by his mien; so, mayhap, am I. At least, I am as great a man. Be my mouth, O Macumazahn, and say my words to the Inkoos Incubu, my master, for I would speak to him and to thee.”

I was angry with the man, for I am not accustomed to be talked to in that way by Kafirs, but somehow he impressed me, and besides I was curious to know what he had to say. So I translated, expressing my opinion at the same time that he was an impudent fellow, and that his swagger was outrageous.

“Yes, Umbopa,” answered Sir Henry, “I would journey there.”

“The desert is wide and there is no water in it, the mountains are high and covered with snow, and man cannot say what lies beyond them behind the place where the sun sets; how shalt thou come thither, Incubu, and wherefore dost thou go?”

I translated again.

“Tell him,” answered Sir Henry, “that I go because I believe that a man of my blood, my brother, has gone there before me, and I journey to seek him.”

“That is so, Incubu; a Hottentot I met on the road told me that a white man went out into the desert two years ago towards those mountains with one servant, a hunter. They never came back.”

“How do you know it was my brother?” asked Sir Henry.

“Nay, I know not. But the Hottentot, when I asked what the white man was like, said that he had thine eyes and a black beard. He said, too, that the name of the hunter with him was Jim; that he was a Bechuana hunter and wore clothes.”

“There is no doubt about it,” said I; “I knew Jim well.”

Sir Henry nodded. “I was sure of it,” he said. “If George set his mind upon a thing he generally did it. It was always so from his boyhood. If he meant to cross the Suliman Berg he has crossed it, unless some accident overtook him, and we must look for him on the other side.”

Umbopa understood English, though he rarely spoke it.

“It is a far journey, Incubu,” he put in, and I translated his remark.

“Yes,” answered Sir Henry, “it is far. But there is no journey upon this earth that a man may not make if he sets his heart to it. There is nothing, Umbopa, that he cannot do, there are no mountains he may not climb, there are no deserts he cannot cross, save a mountain and a desert of which you are spared the knowledge, if love leads him and he holds his life in his hands counting it as nothing, ready to keep it or lose it as Heaven above may order.”

I translated.

“Great words, my father,” answered the Zulu—I always called him a Zulu, though he was not really one—“great swelling words fit to fill the mouth of a man. Thou art right, my father Incubu. Listen! what is life? It is a feather, it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if that seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it wills. It is well to try and journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner. I will go with thee across the desert and over the mountains, unless perchance I fall to the ground on the way, my father.”

He paused awhile, and then went on with one of those strange bursts of rhetorical eloquence that Zulus sometimes indulge in, which to my mind, full though they are of vain repetitions, show that the race is by no means devoid of poetic instinct and of intellectual power.

“What is life? Tell me, O white men, who are wise, who know the secrets of the world, and of the world of stars, and the world that lies above and around the stars; who flash your words from afar without a voice; tell me, white men, the secret of our life—whither it goes and whence it comes!

“You cannot answer me; you know not. Listen, I will answer. Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go. Like a storm-driven bird at night we fly out of the Nowhere; for a moment our wings are seen in the light of the fire, and, lo! we are gone again into the Nowhere. Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the Hand with which we hold off Death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset.”

“You are a strange man,” said Sir Henry, when he had ceased.

Umbopa laughed. “It seems to me that we are much alike, Incubu. Perhaps I seek a brother over the mountains.”

I looked at him suspiciously. “What dost thou mean?” I asked; “what dost thou know of those mountains?”

“A little; a very little. There is a strange land yonder, a land of witchcraft and beautiful things; a land of brave people, and of trees, and streams, and snowy peaks, and of a great white road. I have heard of it. But what is the good of talking? It grows dark. Those who live to see will see.”

Again I looked at him doubtfully. The man knew too much.

“You need not fear me, Macumazahn,” he said, interpreting my look. “I dig no holes for you to fall in. I make no plots. If ever we cross those mountains behind the sun I will tell what I know. But Death sits upon them. Be wise and turn back. Go and hunt elephants, my masters. I have spoken.”

And without another word he lifted his spear in salutation, and returned towards the camp, where shortly afterwards we found him cleaning a gun like any other Kafir.

“That is an odd man,” said Sir Henry.

“Yes,” answered I, “too odd by half. I don’t like his little ways. He knows something, and will not speak out. But I suppose it is no use quarrelling with him. We are in for a curious trip, and a mysterious Zulu won’t make much difference one way or another.”

Next day we made our arrangements for starting. Of course it was impossible to drag our heavy elephant rifles and other kit with us across the desert, so, dismissing our bearers, we made an arrangement with an old native who had a kraal close by to take care of them till we returned. It went to my heart to leave such things as those sweet tools to the tender mercies of an old thief of a savage whose greedy eyes I could see gloating over them. But I took some precautions.

First of all I loaded all the rifles, placing them at full cock, and informed him that if he touched them they would go off. He tried the experiment instantly with my eight-bore, and it did go off, and blew a hole right through one of his oxen, which were just then being driven up to the kraal, to say nothing of knocking him head over heels with the recoil. He got up considerably startled, and not at all pleased at the loss of the ox, which he had the impudence to ask me to pay for, and nothing would induce him to touch the guns again.

“Put the live devils out of the way up there in the thatch,” he said, “or they will murder us all.”

Then I told him that, when we came back, if one of those things was missing I would kill him and his people by witchcraft; and if we died and he tried to steal the rifles I would come and haunt him and turn his cattle mad and his milk sour till life was a weariness, and would make the devils in the guns come out and talk to him in a way he did not like, and generally gave him a good idea of judgment to come. After that he promised to look after them as though they were his father’s spirit. He was a very superstitious old Kafir and a great villain.

Having thus disposed of our superfluous gear we arranged the kit we five—Sir Henry, Good, myself, Umbopa, and the Hottentot Ventvögel—were to take with us on our journey. It was small enough, but do what we would we could not get its weight down under about forty pounds a man. This is what it consisted of:—

The three express rifles and two hundred rounds of ammunition.

The two Winchester repeating rifles (for Umbopa and Ventvögel), with two hundred rounds of cartridge.

Five Cochrane’s water-bottles, each holding four pints.

Five blankets.

Twenty-five pounds’ weight of biltong—i.e. sun-dried game flesh.

Ten pounds’ weight of best mixed beads for gifts.

A selection of medicine, including an ounce of quinine, and one or two small surgical instruments.

Our knives, a few sundries, such as a compass, matches, a pocket filter, tobacco, a trowel, a bottle of brandy, and the clothes we stood in.

This was our total equipment, a small one indeed for such a venture, but we dared not attempt to carry more. Indeed, that load was a heavy one per man with which to travel across the burning desert, for in such places every additional ounce tells. But we could not see our way to reducing the weight. There was nothing taken but what was absolutely necessary.

With great difficulty, and by the promise of a present of a good hunting-knife each, I succeeded in persuading three wretched natives from the village to come with us for the first stage, twenty miles, and to carry a large gourd holding a gallon of water apiece. My object was to enable us to refill our water-bottles after the first night’s march, for we determined to start in the cool of the evening. I gave out to these natives that we were going to shoot ostriches, with which the desert abounded. They jabbered and shrugged their shoulders, saying that we were mad and should perish of thirst, which I must say seemed probable; but being desirous of obtaining the knives, which were almost unknown treasures up there, they consented to come, having probably reflected that, after all, our subsequent extinction would be no affair of theirs.

All next day we rested and slept, and at sunset ate a hearty meal of fresh beef washed down with tea, the last, as Good remarked sadly, we were likely to drink for many a long day. Then, having made our final preparations, we lay down and waited for the moon to rise. At last, about nine o’clock, up she came in all her glory, flooding the wild country with light, and throwing a silver sheen on the expanse of rolling desert before us, which looked as solemn and quiet and as alien to man as the star-studded firmament above. We rose up, and in a few minutes were ready, and yet we hesitated a little, as human nature is prone to hesitate on the threshold of an irrevocable step. We three white men stood by ourselves. Umbopa, assegai in hand and a rifle across his shoulders, looked out fixedly across the desert a few paces ahead of us; while the hired natives, with the gourds of water, and Ventvögel, were gathered in a little knot behind.

“Gentlemen,” said Sir Henry presently, in his deep voice, “we are going on about as strange a journey as men can make in this world. It is very doubtful if we can succeed in it. But we are three men who will stand together for good or for evil to the last. Now before we start let us for a moment pray to the Power who shapes the destinies of men, and who ages since has marked out our paths, that it may please Him to direct our steps in accordance with His will.”

Taking off his hat, for the space of a minute or so, he covered his face with his hands, and Good and I did likewise.

I do not say that I am a first-rate praying man, few hunters are, and as for Sir Henry, I never heard him speak like that before, and only once since, though deep down in his heart I believe that he is very religious. Good too is pious, though apt to swear. Anyhow I do not remember, excepting on one single occasion, ever putting up a better prayer in my life than I did during that minute, and somehow I felt the happier for it. Our future was so completely unknown, and I think that the unknown and the awful always bring a man nearer to his Maker.

“And now,” said Sir Henry, “trek!”

So we started.

We had nothing to guide ourselves by except the distant mountains and old José da Silvestre’s chart, which, considering that it was drawn by a dying and half-distraught man on a fragment of linen three centuries ago, was not a very satisfactory sort of thing to work with. Still, our sole hope of success depended upon it, such as it was. If we failed in finding that pool of bad water which the old Dom marked as being situated in the middle of the desert, about sixty miles from our starting-point, and as far from the mountains, in all probability we must perish miserably of thirst. But to my mind the chances of our finding it in that great sea of sand and karoo scrub seemed almost infinitesimal. Even supposing that da Silvestra had marked the pool correctly, what was there to prevent its having been dried up by the sun generations ago, or trampled in by game, or filled with the drifting sand?

On we tramped silently as shades through the night and in the heavy sand. The karoo bushes caught our feet and retarded us, and the sand worked into our veldtschoons and Good’s shooting-boots, so that every few miles we had to stop and empty them; but still the night kept fairly cool, though the atmosphere was thick and heavy, giving a sort of creamy feel to the air, and we made fair progress. It was very silent and lonely there in the desert, oppressively so indeed. Good felt this, and once began to whistle “The Girl I left behind me,” but the notes sounded lugubrious in that vast place, and he gave it up.

Shortly afterwards a little incident occurred which, though it startled us at the time, gave rise to a laugh. Good was leading, as the holder of the compass, which, being a sailor, of course he understood thoroughly, and we were toiling along in single file behind him, when suddenly we heard the sound of an exclamation, and he vanished. Next second there arose all around us a most extraordinary hubbub, snorts, groans, and wild sounds of rushing feet. In the faint light, too, we could descry dim galloping forms half hidden by wreaths of sand. The natives threw down their loads and prepared to bolt, but remembering that there was nowhere to run to, they cast themselves upon the ground and howled out that it was ghosts. As for Sir Henry and myself, we stood amazed; nor was our amazement lessened when we perceived the form of Good careering off in the direction of the mountains, apparently mounted on the back of a horse and halloaing wildly. In another second he threw up his arms, and we heard him come to the earth with a thud.

Then I saw what had happened; we had stumbled upon a herd of sleeping quagga, on to the back of one of which Good actually had fallen, and the brute naturally enough got up and made off with him. Calling out to the others that it was all right, I ran towards Good, much afraid lest he should be hurt, but to my great relief I found him sitting in the sand, his eye-glass still fixed firmly in his eye, rather shaken and very much frightened, but not in any way injured.

After this we travelled on without any further misadventure till about one o’clock, when we called a halt, and having drunk a little water, not much, for water was precious, and rested for half an hour, we started again.

On, on we went, till at last the east began to blush like the cheek of a girl. Then there came faint rays of primrose light, that changed presently to golden bars, through which the dawn glided out across the desert. The stars grew pale and paler still, till at last they vanished; the golden moon waxed wan, and her mountain ridges stood out against her sickly face like the bones on the cheek of a dying man. Then came spear upon spear of light flashing far away across the boundless wilderness, piercing and firing the veils of mist, till the desert was draped in a tremulous golden glow, and it was day.

Still we did not halt, though by this time we should have been glad enough to do so, for we knew that when once the sun was fully up it would be almost impossible for us to travel. At length, about an hour later, we spied a little pile of boulders rising out of the plain, and to this we dragged ourselves. As luck would have it, here we found an overhanging slab of rock carpeted beneath with smooth sand, which afforded a most grateful shelter from the heat. Underneath this we crept, and each of us having drunk some water and eaten a bit of biltong, we lay down and soon were sound asleep.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon before we woke, to find our bearers preparing to return. They had seen enough of the desert already, and no number of knives would have tempted them to come a step farther. So we took a hearty drink, and having emptied our water-bottles, filled them up again from the gourds that they had brought with them, and then watched them depart on their twenty miles’ tramp home.

At half-past four we also started. It was lonely and desolate work, for with the exception of a few ostriches there was not a single living creature to be seen on all the vast expanse of sandy plain. Evidently it was too dry for game, and with the exception of a deadly-looking cobra or two we saw no reptiles. One insect, however, we found abundant, and that was the common or house fly. There they came, “not as single spies, but in battalions,” as I think the Old Testament6 says somewhere. He is an extraordinary insect is the house fly. Go where you will you find him, and so it must have been always. I have seen him enclosed in amber, which is, I was told, quite half a million years old, looking exactly like his descendant of today, and I have little doubt but that when the last man lies dying on the earth he will be buzzing round—if this event happens to occur in summer—watching for an opportunity to settle on his nose.

At sunset we halted, waiting for the moon to rise. At last she came up, beautiful and serene as ever, and, with one halt about two o’clock in the morning, we trudged on wearily through the night, till at last the welcome sun put a period to our labours. We drank a little and flung ourselves down on the sand, thoroughly tired out, and soon were all asleep. There was no need to set a watch, for we had nothing to fear from anybody or anything in that vast untenanted plain. Our only enemies were heat, thirst, and flies, but far rather would I have faced any danger from man or beast than that awful trinity. This time we were not so lucky as to find a sheltering rock to guard us from the glare of the sun, with the result that about seven o’clock we woke up experiencing the exact sensations one would attribute to a beefsteak on a gridiron. We were literally being baked through and through. The burning sun seemed to be sucking our very blood out of us. We sat up and gasped.

“Phew,” said I, grabbing at the halo of flies which buzzed cheerfully round my head. The heat did not affect them.

“My word!” said Sir Henry.

“It is hot!” echoed Good.

It was hot, indeed, and there was not a bit of shelter to be found. Look where we would there was no rock or tree, nothing but an unending glare, rendered dazzling by the heated air that danced over the surface of the desert as it dances over a red-hot stove.

“What is to be done?” asked Sir Henry; “we can’t stand this for long.”

We looked at each other blankly.

“I have it,” said Good, “we must dig a hole, get in it, and cover ourselves with the karoo bushes.”

It did not seem a very promising suggestion, but at least it was better than nothing, so we set to work, and, with the trowel we had brought with us and the help of our hands, in about an hour we succeeded in delving out a patch of ground some ten feet long by twelve wide to the depth of two feet. Then we cut a quantity of low scrub with our hunting-knives, and creeping into the hole, pulled it over us all, with the exception of Ventvögel, on whom, being a Hottentot, the heat had no particular effect. This gave us some slight shelter from the burning rays of the sun, but the atmosphere in that amateur grave can be better imagined than described. The Black Hole of Calcutta must have been a fool to it; indeed, to this moment I do not know how we lived through the day. There we lay panting, and every now and again moistening our lips from our scanty supply of water. Had we followed our inclinations we should have finished all we possessed in the first two hours, but we were forced to exercise the most rigid care, for if our water failed us we knew that very soon we must perish miserably.

But everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it, and somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening. About three o’clock in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no longer. It would be better to die walking that to be killed slowly by heat and thirst in this dreadful hole. So taking each of us a little drink from our fast diminishing supply of water, now warmed to about the same temperature as a man’s blood, we staggered forward.

We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness. If the reader will refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra’s map, he will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across, and the “pan bad water” is set down as being about in the middle of it. Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if any should really exist.

Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely doing more than a mile and a half in an hour. At sunset we rested again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to get some sleep.

Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At the distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to sleep I fell to wondering what it could be.

With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and suffering tortures from thirst and prickly heat. Nobody who has not felt it can know what we went through. We walked no longer, we staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion, and being obliged to call a halt every hour or so. We had scarcely energy left in us to speak. Up to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry fellow; but now he had not a joke in him.

At last, about two o’clock, utterly worn out in body and mind, we came to the foot of the queer hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight resembled a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and covering at the base nearly two acres of ground.

Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate thirst, sucked down our last drops of water. We had but half a pint a head, and each of us could have drunk a gallon.

Then we lay down. Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard Umbopa remark to himself in Zulu—

“If we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises tomorrow.”

I shuddered, hot as it was. The near prospect of such an awful death is not pleasant, but even the thought of it could not keep me from sleeping.

6 Readers must beware of accepting Mr. Quatermain’s references as accurate, as, it has been found, some are prone to do. Although his reading evidently was limited, the impression produced by it upon his mind was mixed. Thus to him the Old Testament and Shakespeare were interchangeable authorities.—Editor.

6 Readers must beware of accepting Mr. Quatermain’s references as accurate, as, it has been found, some are prone to do. Although his reading evidently was limited, the impression produced by it upon his mind was mixed. Thus to him the Old Testament and Shakespeare were interchangeable authorities.—Editor.

CHAPTER VI

WATER! WATER!

Two hours later, that is, about four o’clock, I woke up, for so soon as the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied, the torturing thirst from which I was suffering asserted itself. I could sleep no more. I had been dreaming that I was bathing in a running stream, with green banks and trees upon them, and I awoke to find myself in this arid wilderness, and to remember, as Umbopa had said, that if we did not find water this day we must perish miserably. No human creature could live long without water in that heat. I sat up and rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands, as my lips and eyelids were stuck together, and it was only after some friction and with an effort that I was able to open them. It was not far from dawn, but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was thick with a hot murkiness that I cannot describe. The others were still sleeping.

Presently it began to grow light enough to read, so I drew out a little pocket copy of the “Ingoldsby Legends” which I had brought with me, and read “The Jackdaw of Rheims.” When I got to where

“A nice little boy held a golden ewer,

Embossed, and filled with water as pure

As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,”

literally I smacked my cracking lips, or rather tried to smack them. The mere thought of that pure water made me mad. If the Cardinal had been there with his bell, book, and candle, I would have whipped in and drunk his water up; yes, even if he had filled it already with the suds of soap “worthy of washing the hands of the Pope,” and I knew that the whole consecrated curse of the Catholic Church should fall upon me for so doing. I almost think that I must have been a little light-headed with thirst, weariness and the want of food; for I fell to thinking how astonished the Cardinal and his nice little boy and the jackdaw would have looked to see a burnt up, brown-eyed, grizzly-haired little elephant hunter suddenly bound between them, put his dirty face into the basin, and swallow every drop of the precious water. The idea amused me so much that I laughed or rather cackled aloud, which woke the others, and they began to rub their dirty faces and drag their gummed-up lips and eyelids apart.

As soon as we were all well awake we began to discuss the situation, which was serious enough. Not a drop of water was left. We turned the bottles upside down, and licked their tops, but it was a failure; they were dry as a bone. Good, who had charge of the flask of brandy, got it out and looked at it longingly; but Sir Henry promptly took it away from him, for to drink raw spirit would only have been to precipitate the end.

“If we do not find water we shall die,” he said.

“If we can trust to the old Dom’s map there should be some about,” I said; but nobody seemed to derive much satisfaction from this remark. It was so evident that no great faith could be put in the map. Now it was gradually growing light, and as we sat staring blankly at each other, I observed the Hottentot Ventvögel rise and begin to walk about with his eyes on the ground. Presently he stopped short, and uttering a guttural exclamation, pointed to the earth.

“What is it?” we exclaimed; and rising simultaneously we went to where he was standing staring at the sand.

“Well,” I said, “it is fresh Springbok spoor; what of it?”

“Springbucks do not go far from water,” he answered in Dutch.

“No,” I answered, “I forgot; and thank God for it.”

This little discovery put new life into us; for it is wonderful, when a man is in a desperate position, how he catches at the slightest hope, and feels almost happy. On a dark night a single star is better than nothing.

Meanwhile Ventvögel was lifting his snub nose, and sniffing the hot air for all the world like an old Impala ram who scents danger. Presently he spoke again.

“I smell water,” he said.

Then we felt quite jubilant, for we knew what a wonderful instinct these wild-bred men possess.

Just at that moment the sun came up gloriously, and revealed so grand a sight to our astonished eyes that for a moment or two we even forgot our thirst.

There, not more than forty or fifty miles from us, glittering like silver in the early rays of the morning sun, soared Sheba’s Breasts; and stretching away for hundreds of miles on either side of them ran the great Suliman Berg. Now that, sitting here, I attempt to describe the extraordinary grandeur and beauty of that sight, language seems to fail me. I am impotent even before its memory. Straight before us, rose two enormous mountains, the like of which are not, I believe, to be seen in Africa, if indeed there are any other such in the world, measuring each of them at least fifteen thousand feet in height, standing not more than a dozen miles apart, linked together by a precipitous cliff of rock, and towering in awful white solemnity straight into the sky. These mountains placed thus, like the pillars of a gigantic gateway, are shaped after the fashion of a woman’s breasts, and at times the mists and shadows beneath them take the form of a recumbent woman, veiled mysteriously in sleep. Their bases swell gently from the plain, looking at that distance perfectly round and smooth; and upon the top of each is a vast hillock covered with snow, exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast. The stretch of cliff that connects them appears to be some thousands of feet in height, and perfectly precipitous, and on each flank of them, so far as the eye can reach, extent similar lines of cliff, broken only here and there by flat table-topped mountains, something like the world-famed one at Cape Town; a formation, by the way, that is very common in Africa.

To describe the comprehensive grandeur of that view is beyond my powers. There was something so inexpressibly solemn and overpowering about those huge volcanoes—for doubtless they are extinct volcanoes—that it quite awed us. For a while the morning lights played upon the snow and the brown and swelling masses beneath, and then, as though to veil the majestic sight from our curious eyes, strange vapours and clouds gathered and increased around the mountains, till presently we could only trace their pure and gigantic outlines, showing ghostlike through the fleecy envelope. Indeed, as we afterwards discovered, usually they were wrapped in this gauze-like mist, which doubtless accounted for our not having seen them more clearly before.

Sheba’s Breasts had scarcely vanished into cloud-clad privacy, before our thirst—literally a burning question—reasserted itself.

It was all very well for Ventvögel to say that he smelt water, but we could see no signs of it, look which way we would. So far as the eye might reach there was nothing but arid sweltering sand and karoo scrub. We walked round the hillock and gazed about anxiously on the other side, but it was the same story, not a drop of water could be found; there was no indication of a pan, a pool, or a spring.

“You are a fool,” I said angrily to Ventvögel; “there is no water.”

But still he lifted his ugly snub nose and sniffed.

“I smell it, Baas,” he answered; “it is somewhere in the air.”

“Yes,” I said, “no doubt it is in the clouds, and about two months hence it will fall and wash our bones.”

Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is on the top of the hill,” he suggested.

“Rot,” said Good; “whoever heard of water being found at the top of a hill!”

“Let us go and look,” I put in, and hopelessly enough we scrambled up the sandy sides of the hillock, Umbopa leading. Presently he stopped as though he was petrified.

“Nanzia manzie!” that is, “Here is water!” he cried with a loud voice.

We rushed up to him, and there, sure enough, in a deep cut or indentation on the very top of the sand koppie, was an undoubted pool of water. How it came to be in such a strange place we did not stop to inquire, nor did we hesitate at its black and unpleasant appearance. It was water, or a good imitation of it, and that was enough for us. We gave a bound and a rush, and in another second we were all down on our stomachs sucking up the uninviting fluid as though it were nectar fit for the gods. Heavens, how we did drink! Then when we had done drinking we tore off our clothes and sat down in the pool, absorbing the moisture through our parched skins. You, Harry, my boy, who have only to turn on a couple of taps to summon “hot” and “cold” from an unseen, vasty cistern, can have little idea of the luxury of that muddy wallow in brackish tepid water.

After a while we rose from it, refreshed indeed, and fell to on our “biltong,” of which we had scarcely been able to touch a mouthful for twenty-four hours, and ate our fill. Then we smoked a pipe, and lay down by the side of that blessed pool, under the overhanging shadow of its bank, and slept till noon.

All that day we rested there by the water, thanking our stars that we had been lucky enough to find it, bad as it was, and not forgetting to render a due share of gratitude to the shade of the long-departed da Silvestra, who had set its position down so accurately on the tail of his shirt. The wonderful thing to us was that the pan should have lasted so long, and the only way in which I can account for this is on the supposition that it is fed by some spring deep down in the sand.

Having filled both ourselves and our water-bottles as full as possible, in far better spirits we started off again with the moon. That night we covered nearly five-and-twenty miles; but, needless to say, found no more water, though we were lucky enough the following day to get a little shade behind some ant-heaps. When the sun rose, and, for awhile, cleared away the mysterious mists, Suliman’s Berg with the two majestic Breasts, now only about twenty miles off, seemed to be towering right above us, and looked grander than ever. At the approach of evening we marched again, and, to cut a long story short, by daylight next morning found ourselves upon the lowest slopes of Sheba’s left breast, for which we had been steadily steering. By this time our water was exhausted once more, and we were suffering severely from thirst, nor indeed could we see any chance of relieving it till we reached the snow line far, far above us. After resting an hour or two, driven to it by our torturing thirst, we went on, toiling painfully in the burning heat up the lava slopes, for we found that the huge base of the mountain was composed entirely of lava beds belched from the bowels of the earth in some far past age.

By eleven o’clock we were utterly exhausted, and, generally speaking, in a very bad state indeed. The lava clinker, over which we must drag ourselves, though smooth compared with some clinker I have heard of, such as that on the Island of Ascension, for instance, was yet rough enough to make our feet very sore, and this, together with our other miseries, had pretty well finished us. A few hundred yards above us were some large lumps of lava, and towards these we steered with the intention of lying down beneath their shade. We reached them, and to our surprise, so far as we had a capacity for surprise left in us, on a little plateau or ridge close by we saw that the clinker was covered with a dense green growth. Evidently soil formed of decomposed lava had rested there, and in due course had become the receptacle of seeds deposited by birds. But we did not take much further interest in the green growth, for one cannot live on grass like Nebuchadnezzar. That requires a special dispensation of Providence and peculiar digestive organs.

So we sat down under the rocks and groaned, and for one I wished heartily that we had never started on this fool’s errand. As we were sitting there I saw Umbopa get up and hobble towards the patch of green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting like a maniac, and waving something green. Off we all scrambled towards him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that he had found water.

“What is it, Umbopa, son of a fool?” I shouted in Zulu.

“It is food and water, Macumazahn,” and again he waved the green thing.

Then I saw what he had found. It was a melon. We had hit upon a patch of wild melons, thousands of them, and dead ripe.

“Melons!” I yelled to Good, who was next me; and in another minute his false teeth were fixed in one of them.

I think we ate about six each before we had done, and poor fruit as they were, I doubt if I ever thought anything nicer.

But melons are not very nutritious, and when we had satisfied our thirst with their pulpy substance, and put a stock to cool by the simple process of cutting them in two and setting them end on in the hot sun to grow cold by evaporation, we began to feel exceedingly hungry. We had still some biltong left, but our stomachs turned from biltong, and besides, we were obliged to be very sparing of it, for we could not say when we should find more food. Just at this moment a lucky thing chanced. Looking across the desert I saw a flock of about ten large birds flying straight towards us.

“Skit, Baas, skit!” “Shoot, master, shoot!” whispered the Hottentot, throwing himself on his face, an example which we all followed.

Then I saw that the birds were a flock of pauw or bustards, and that they would pass within fifty yards of my head. Taking one of the repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and then jumped to my feet. On seeing me the pauw bunched up together, as I expected that they would, and I fired two shots straight into the thick of them, and, as luck would have it, brought one down, a fine fellow, that weighed about twenty pounds. In half an hour we had a fire made of dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we made such a feed as we had not tasted for a week. We ate that pauw; nothing was left of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt not a little the better afterwards.

That night we went on again with the moon, carrying as many melons as we could with us. As we ascended we found the air grew cooler and cooler, which was a great relief to us, and at dawn, so far as we could judge, we were not more than about a dozen miles from the snow line. Here we discovered more melons, and so had no longer any anxiety about water, for we knew that we should soon get plenty of snow. But the ascent had now become very precipitous, and we made but slow progress, not more than a mile an hour. Also that night we ate our last morsel of biltong. As yet, with the exception of the pauw, we had seen no living thing on the mountain, nor had we come across a single spring or stream of water, which struck us as very odd, considering the expanse of snow above us, which must, we thought, melt sometimes. But as we afterwards discovered, owing to a cause which it is quite beyond my power to explain, all the streams flowed down upon the north side of the mountains.

Now we began to grow very anxious about food. We had escaped death by thirst, but it seemed probable that it was only to die of hunger. The events of the next three miserable days are best described by copying the entries made at the time in my note-book.

“21st May.—Started 11 a.m., finding the atmosphere quite cold enough to travel by day, and carrying some water-melons with us. Struggled on all day, but found no more melons, having evidently passed out of their district. Saw no game of any sort. Halted for the night at sundown, having had no food for many hours. Suffered much during the night from cold.

“22nd.—Started at sunrise again, feeling very faint and weak. Only made about five miles all day; found some patches of snow, of which we ate, but nothing else. Camped at night under the edge of a great plateau. Cold bitter. Drank a little brandy each, and huddled ourselves together, each wrapped up in his blanket, to keep ourselves alive. Are now suffering frightfully from starvation and weariness. Thought that Ventvögel would have died during the night.

“23rd.—Struggled forward once more as soon as the sun was well up, and had thawed our limbs a little. We are now in a dreadful plight, and I fear that unless we get food this will be our last day’s journey. But little brandy left. Good, Sir Henry, and Umbopa bear up wonderfully, but Ventvögel is in a very bad way. Like most Hottentots, he cannot stand cold. Pangs of hunger not so bad, but have a sort of numb feeling about the stomach. Others say the same. We are now on a level with the precipitous chain, or wall of lava, linking the two Breasts, and the view is glorious. Behind us the glowing desert rolls away to the horizon, and before us lie mile upon mile of smooth hard snow almost level, but swelling gently upwards, out of the centre of which the nipple of the mountain, that appears to be some miles in circumference, rises about four thousand feet into the sky. Not a living thing is to be seen. God help us; I fear that our time has come.”

And now I will drop the journal, partly because it is not very interesting reading; also what follows requires telling rather more fully.

All that day—the 23rd May—we struggled slowly up the incline of snow, lying down from time to time to rest. A strange gaunt crew we must have looked, while, laden as we were, we dragged our weary feet over the dazzling plain, glaring round us with hungry eyes. Not that there was much use in glaring, for we could see nothing to eat. We did not accomplish more than seven miles that day. Just before sunset we found ourselves exactly under the nipple of Sheba’s left Breast, which towered thousands of feet into the air, a vast smooth hillock of frozen snow. Weak as we were, we could not but appreciate the wonderful scene, made even more splendid by the flying rays of light from the setting sun, which here and there stained the snow blood-red, and crowned the great dome above us with a diadem of glory.

“I say,” gasped Good, presently, “we ought to be somewhere near that cave the old gentleman wrote about.”

“Yes,” said I, “if there is a cave.”

“Come, Quatermain,” groaned Sir Henry, “don’t talk like that; I have every faith in the Dom; remember the water! We shall find the place soon.”

“If we don’t find it before dark we are dead men, that is all about it,” was my consolatory reply.

For the next ten minutes we trudged in silence, when suddenly Umbopa, who was marching along beside me, wrapped in his blanket, and with a leather belt strapped so tightly round his stomach, to “make his hunger small,” as he said, that his waist looked like a girl’s, caught me by the arm.

“Look!” he said, pointing towards the springing slope of the nipple.

I followed his glance, and some two hundred yards from us perceived what appeared to be a hole in the snow.

“It is the cave,” said Umbopa.

We made the best of our way to the spot, and found sure enough that the hole was the mouth of a cavern, no doubt the same as that of which da Silvestra wrote. We were not too soon, for just as we reached shelter the sun went down with startling rapidity, leaving the world nearly dark, for in these latitudes there is but little twilight. So we crept into the cave, which did not appear to be very big, and huddling ourselves together for warmth, swallowed what remained of our brandy—barely a mouthful each—and tried to forget our miseries in sleep. But the cold was too intense to allow us to do so, for I am convinced that at this great altitude the thermometer cannot have marked less than fourteen or fifteen degrees below freezing point. What such a temperature meant to us, enervated as we were by hardship, want of food, and the great heat of the desert, the reader may imagine better than I can describe. Suffice it to say that it was something as near death from exposure as I have ever felt. There we sat hour after hour through the still and bitter night, feeling the frost wander round and nip us now in the finger, now in the foot, now in the face. In vain did we huddle up closer and closer; there was no warmth in our miserable starved carcases. Sometimes one of us would drop into an uneasy slumber for a few minutes, but we could not sleep much, and perhaps this was fortunate, for if we had I doubt if we should have ever woke again. Indeed, I believe that it was only by force of will that we kept ourselves alive at all.

Not very long before dawn I heard the Hottentot Ventvögel, whose teeth had been chattering all night like castanets, give a deep sigh. Then his teeth stopped chattering. I did not think anything of it at the time, concluding that he had gone to sleep. His back was resting against mine, and it seemed to grow colder and colder, till at last it felt like ice.

At length the air began to grow grey with light, then golden arrows sped across the snow, and at last the glorious sun peeped above the lava wall and looked in upon our half-frozen forms. Also it looked upon Ventvögel, sitting there amongst us, stone dead. No wonder his back felt cold, poor fellow. He had died when I heard him sigh, and was now frozen almost stiff. Shocked beyond measure, we dragged ourselves from the corpse—how strange is that horror we mortals have of the companionship of a dead body—and left it sitting there, its arms clasped about its knees.

By this time the sunlight was pouring its cold rays, for here they were cold, straight into the mouth of the cave. Suddenly I heard an exclamation of fear from someone, and turned my head.

And this is what I saw: Sitting at the end of the cavern—it was not more than twenty feet long—was another form, of which the head rested on its chest and the long arms hung down. I stared at it, and saw that this too was a dead man, and, what was more, a white man.

The others saw also, and the sight proved too much for our shattered nerves. One and all we scrambled out of the cave as fast as our half-frozen limbs would carry us.

CHAPTER VII

SOLOMON’S ROAD

Outside the cavern we halted, feeling rather foolish.

“I am going back,” said Sir Henry.

“Why?” asked Good.

“Because it has struck me that—what we saw—may be my brother.”

This was a new idea, and we re-entered the place to put it to the proof. After the bright light outside, our eyes, weak as they were with staring at the snow, could not pierce the gloom of the cave for a while. Presently, however, they grew accustomed to the semi-darkness, and we advanced towards the dead man.

Sir Henry knelt down and peered into his face.

“Thank God,” he said, with a sigh of relief, “it is not my brother.”

Then I drew near and looked. The body was that of a tall man in middle life with aquiline features, grizzled hair, and a long black moustache. The skin was perfectly yellow, and stretched tightly over the bones. Its clothing, with the exception of what seemed to be the remains of a woollen pair of hose, had been removed, leaving the skeleton-like frame naked. Round the neck of the corpse, which was frozen perfectly stiff, hung a yellow ivory crucifix.

“Who on earth can it be?” said I.

“Can’t you guess?” asked Good.

I shook my head.

“Why, the old Dom, José da Silvestra, of course—who else?”

“Impossible,” I gasped; “he died three hundred years ago.”

“And what is there to prevent him from lasting for three thousand years in this atmosphere, I should like to know?” asked Good. “If only the temperature is sufficiently low, flesh and blood will keep fresh as New Zealand mutton for ever, and Heaven knows it is cold enough here. The sun never gets in here; no animal comes here to tear or destroy. No doubt his slave, of whom he speaks on the writing, took off his clothes and left him. He could not have buried him alone. Look!” he went on, stooping down to pick up a queerly-shaped bone scraped at the end into a sharp point, “here is the ‘cleft bone’ that Silvestra used to draw the map with.”

We gazed for a moment astonished, forgetting our own miseries in this extraordinary and, as it seemed to us, semi-miraculous sight.

“Ay,” said Sir Henry, “and this is where he got his ink from,” and he pointed to a small wound on the Dom’s left arm. “Did ever man see such a thing before?”

There was no longer any doubt about the matter, which for my own part I confess perfectly appalled me. There he sat, the dead man, whose directions, written some ten generations ago, had led us to this spot. Here in my own hand was the rude pen with which he had written them, and about his neck hung the crucifix that his dying lips had kissed. Gazing at him, my imagination could reconstruct the last scene of the drama, the traveller dying of cold and starvation, yet striving to convey to the world the great secret which he had discovered:—the awful loneliness of his death, of which the evidence sat before us. It even seemed to me that I could trace in his strongly-marked features a likeness to those of my poor friend Silvestre his descendant, who had died twenty years before in my arms, but perhaps that was fancy. At any rate, there he sat, a sad memento of the fate that so often overtakes those who would penetrate into the unknown; and there doubtless he will still sit, crowned with the dread majesty of death, for centuries yet unborn, to startle the eyes of wanderers like ourselves, if ever any such should come again to invade his loneliness. The thing overpowered us, already almost perished as we were with cold and hunger.

“Let us go,” said Sir Henry in a low voice; “stay, we will give him a companion,” and lifting up the dead body of the Hottentot Ventvögel, he placed it near to that of the old Dom. Then he stooped, and with a jerk broke the rotten string of the crucifix which hung round da Silvestra’s neck, for his fingers were too cold to attempt to unfasten it. I believe that he has it still. I took the bone pen, and it is before me as I write—sometimes I use it to sign my name.

Then leaving these two, the proud white man of a past age, and the poor Hottentot, to keep their eternal vigil in the midst of the eternal snows, we crept out of the cave into the welcome sunshine and resumed our path, wondering in our hearts how many hours it would be before we were even as they are.

When we had walked about half a mile we came to the edge of the plateau, for the nipple of the mountain does not rise out of its exact centre, though from the desert side it had seemed to do so. What lay below us we could not see, for the landscape was wreathed in billows of morning fog. Presently, however, the higher layers of mist cleared a little, and revealed, at the end of a long slope of snow, a patch of green grass, some five hundred yards beneath us, through which a stream was running. Nor was this all. By the stream, basking in the bright sun, stood and lay a group of from ten to fifteen large antelopes—at that distance we could not see of what species.

The sight filled us with an unreasoning joy. If only we could get it, there was food in plenty. But the question was how to do so. The beasts were fully six hundred yards off, a very long shot, and one not to be depended on when our lives hung on the results.

Rapidly we discussed the advisability of trying to stalk the game, but in the end dismissed it reluctantly. To begin with, the wind was not favourable, and further, we must certainly be perceived, however careful we were, against the blinding background of snow, which we should be obliged to traverse.

“Well, we must have a try from where we are,” said Sir Henry. “Which shall it be, Quatermain, the repeating rifles or the expresses?”

Here again was a question. The Winchester repeaters—of which we had two, Umbopa carrying poor Ventvögel’s as well as his own—were sighted up to a thousand yards, whereas the expresses were only sighted to three hundred and fifty, beyond which distance shooting with them was more or less guess-work. On the other hand, if they did hit, the express bullets, being “expanding,” were much more likely to bring the game down. It was a knotty point, but I made up my mind that we must risk it and use the expresses.

“Let each of us take the buck opposite to him. Aim well at the point of the shoulder and high up,” said I; “and Umbopa, do you give the word, so that we may all fire together.”

Then came a pause, each of us aiming his level best, as indeed a man is likely to do when he knows that life itself depends upon the shot.

“Fire,” said Umbopa in Zulu, and at almost the same instant the three rifles rang out loudly; three clouds of smoke hung for a moment before us, and a hundred echoes went flying over the silent snow. Presently the smoke cleared, and revealed—oh, joy!—a great buck lying on its back and kicking furiously in its death agony. We gave a yell of triumph—we were saved—we should not starve. Weak as we were, we rushed down the intervening slope of snow, and in ten minutes from the time of shooting, that animal’s heart and liver were lying before us. But now a new difficulty arose, we had no fuel, and therefore could make no fire to cook them. We gazed at each other in dismay.

“Starving men should not be fanciful,” said Good; “we must eat raw meat.”

There was no other way out of the dilemma, and our gnawing hunger made the proposition less distasteful than it would otherwise have been. So we took the heart and liver and buried them for a few minutes in a patch of snow to cool them. Then we washed them in the ice-cold water of the stream, and lastly ate them greedily. It sounds horrible enough, but honestly, I never tasted anything so good as that raw meat. In a quarter of an hour we were changed men. Our life and vigour came back to us, our feeble pulses grew strong again, and the blood went coursing through our veins. But mindful of the results of over-feeding on starved stomachs, we were careful not to eat too much, stopping whilst we were still hungry.

“Thank Heaven!” said Sir Henry; “that brute has saved our lives. What is it, Quatermain?”

I rose and went to look at the antelope, for I was not certain. It was about the size of a donkey, with large curved horns. I had never seen one like it before; the species was new to me. It was brown in colour, with faint red stripes, and grew a thick coat. I afterwards discovered that the natives of that wonderful country call these bucks “inco.” They are very rare, and only found at a great altitude where no other game will live. This animal was fairly hit high up in the shoulder, though whose bullet brought it down we could not, of course, discover. I believe that Good, mindful of his marvellous shot at the giraffe, secretly set it down to his own prowess, and we did not contradict him.

We had been so busy satisfying our hunger that hitherto we had not found time to look about us. But now, having set Umbopa to cut off as much of the best meat as we were likely to be able to carry, we began to inspect our surroundings. The mist had cleared away, for it was eight o’clock, and the sun had sucked it up, so we were able to take in all the country before us at a glance. I know not how to describe the glorious panorama which unfolded itself to our gaze. I have never seen anything like it before, nor shall, I suppose, again.

Behind and over us towered Sheba’s snowy Breasts, and below, some five thousand feet beneath where we stood, lay league on league of the most lovely champaign country. Here were dense patches of lofty forest, there a great river wound its silvery way. To the left stretched a vast expanse of rich, undulating veld or grass land, whereon we could just make out countless herds of game or cattle, at that distance we could not tell which. This expanse appeared to be ringed in by a wall of distant mountains. To the right the country was more or less mountainous; that is, solitary hills stood up from its level, with stretches of cultivated land between, amongst which we could see groups of dome-shaped huts. The landscape lay before us as a map, wherein rivers flashed like silver snakes, and Alp-like peaks crowned with wildly twisted snow wreaths rose in grandeur, whilst over all was the glad sunlight and the breath of Nature’s happy life.

Two curious things struck us as we gazed. First, that the country before us must lie at least three thousand feet higher than the desert we had crossed, and secondly, that all the rivers flowed from south to north. As we had painful reason to know, there was no water upon the southern side of the vast range on which we stood, but on the northern face were many streams, most of which appeared to unite with the great river we could see winding away farther than our eyes could follow.

We sat down for a while and gazed in silence at this wonderful view. Presently Sir Henry spoke.

“Isn’t there something on the map about Solomon’s Great Road?” he said.

I nodded, for I was still gazing out over the far country.

“Well, look; there it is!” and he pointed a little to our right.

Good and I looked accordingly, and there, winding away towards the plain, was what appeared to be a wide turnpike road. We had not seen it at first because, on reaching the plain, it turned behind some broken country. We did not say anything, at least, not much; we were beginning to lose the sense of wonder. Somehow it did not seem particularly unnatural that we should find a sort of Roman road in this strange land. We accepted the fact, that was all.

“Well,” said Good, “it must be quite near us if we cut off to the right. Hadn’t we better be making a start?”

This was sound advice, and so soon as we had washed our faces and hands in the stream we acted on it. For a mile or more we made our way over boulders and across patches of snow, till suddenly, on reaching the top of the little rise, we found the road at our feet. It was a splendid road cut out of the solid rock, at least fifty feet wide, and apparently well kept; though the odd thing was that it seemed to begin there. We walked down and stood on it, but one single hundred paces behind us, in the direction of Sheba’s Breasts, it vanished, the entire surface of the mountain being strewn with boulders interspersed with patches of snow.

“What do you make of this, Quatermain?” asked Sir Henry.

I shook my head, I could make nothing of the thing.

“I have it!” said Good; “the road no doubt ran right over the range and across the desert on the other side, but the sand there has covered it up, and above us it has been obliterated by some volcanic eruption of molten lava.”

This seemed a good suggestion; at any rate, we accepted it, and proceeded down the mountain. It proved a very different business travelling along down hill on that magnificent pathway with full stomachs from what it was travelling uphill over the snow quite starved and almost frozen. Indeed, had it not been for melancholy recollections of poor Ventvögel’s sad fate, and of that grim cave where he kept company with the old Dom, we should have felt positively cheerful, notwithstanding the sense of unknown dangers before us. Every mile we walked the atmosphere grew softer and balmier, and the country before us shone with a yet more luminous beauty. As for the road itself, I never saw such an engineering work, though Sir Henry said that the great road over the St. Gothard in Switzerland is very similar. No difficulty had been too great for the Old World engineer who laid it out. At one place we came to a ravine three hundred feet broad and at least a hundred feet deep. This vast gulf was actually filled in with huge blocks of dressed stone, having arches pierced through them at the bottom for a waterway, over which the road went on sublimely. At another place it was cut in zigzags out of the side of a precipice five hundred feet deep, and in a third it tunnelled through the base of an intervening ridge, a space of thirty yards or more.

Here we noticed that the sides of the tunnel were covered with quaint sculptures, mostly of mailed figures driving in chariots. One, which was exceedingly beautiful, represented a whole battle scene with a convoy of captives being marched off in the distance.

“Well,” said Sir Henry, after inspecting this ancient work of art, “it is very well to call this Solomon’s Road, but my humble opinion is that the Egyptians had been here before Solomon’s people ever set a foot on it. If this isn’t Egyptian or Phoenician handiwork, I must say that it is very like it.”

By midday we had advanced sufficiently down the mountain to search the region where wood was to be met with. First we came to scattered bushes which grew more and more frequent, till at last we found the road winding through a vast grove of silver trees similar to those which are to be seen on the slopes of Table Mountain at Cape Town. I had never before met with them in all my wanderings, except at the Cape, and their appearance here astonished me greatly.

“Ah!” said Good, surveying these shining-leaved trees with evident enthusiasm, “here is lots of wood, let us stop and cook some dinner; I have about digested that raw heart.”

Nobody objected to this, so leaving the road we made our way to a stream which was babbling away not far off, and soon had a goodly fire of dry boughs blazing. Cutting off some substantial hunks from the flesh of the inco which we had brought with us, we proceeded to toast them on the end of sharp sticks, as one sees the Kafirs do, and ate them with relish. After filling ourselves, we lit our pipes and gave ourselves up to enjoyment that, compared with the hardships we had recently undergone, seemed almost heavenly.

The brook, of which the banks were clothed with dense masses of a gigantic species of maidenhair fern interspersed with feathery tufts of wild asparagus, sung merrily at our side, the soft air murmured through the leaves of the silver trees, doves cooed around, and bright-winged birds flashed like living gems from bough to bough. It was a Paradise.

The magic of the place combined with an overwhelming sense of dangers left behind, and of the promised land reached at last, seemed to charm us into silence. Sir Henry and Umbopa sat conversing in a mixture of broken English and Kitchen Zulu in a low voice, but earnestly enough, and I lay, with my eyes half shut, upon that fragrant bed of fern and watched them.

Presently I missed Good, and I looked to see what had become of him. Soon I observed him sitting by the bank of the stream, in which he had been bathing. He had nothing on but his flannel shirt, and his natural habits of extreme neatness having reasserted themselves, he was actively employed in making a most elaborate toilet. He had washed his gutta-percha collar, had thoroughly shaken out his trousers, coat and waistcoat, and was now folding them up neatly till he was ready to put them on, shaking his head sadly as he scanned the numerous rents and tears in them, which naturally had resulted from our frightful journey. Then he took his boots, scrubbed them with a handful of fern, and finally rubbed them over with a piece of fat, which he had carefully saved from the inco meat, till they looked, comparatively speaking, respectable. Having inspected them judiciously through his eye-glass, he put the boots on and began a fresh operation. From a little bag that he carried he produced a pocket-comb in which was fixed a tiny looking-glass, and in this he surveyed himself. Apparently he was not satisfied, for he proceeded to do his hair with great care. Then came a pause whilst he again contemplated the effect; still it was not satisfactory. He felt his chin, on which the accumulated scrub of a ten days’ beard was flourishing.

“Surely,” thought I, “he is not going to try to shave.” But so it was. Taking the piece of fat with which he had greased his boots, Good washed it thoroughly in the stream. Then diving again into the bag he brought out a little pocket razor with a guard to it, such as are bought by people who are afraid of cutting themselves, or by those about to undertake a sea voyage. Then he rubbed his face and chin vigorously with the fat and began. Evidently it proved a painful process, for he groaned very much over it, and I was convulsed with inward laughter as I watched him struggling with that stubbly beard. It seemed so very odd that a man should take the trouble to shave himself with a piece of fat in such a place and in our circumstances. At last he succeeded in getting the hair off the right side of his face and chin, when suddenly I, who was watching, became conscious of a flash of light that passed just by his head.

Good sprang up with a profane exclamation (if it had not been a safety razor he would certainly have cut his throat), and so did I, without the exclamation, and this was what I saw. Standing not more than twenty paces from where I was, and ten from Good, were a group of men. They were very tall and copper-coloured, and some of them wore great plumes of black feathers and short cloaks of leopard skins; this was all I noticed at the moment. In front of them stood a youth of about seventeen, his hand still raised and his body bent forward in the attitude of a Grecian statue of a spear-thrower. Evidently the flash of light had been caused by a weapon which he had hurled.

As I looked an old soldier-like man stepped forward out of the group, and catching the youth by the arm said something to him. Then they advanced upon us.

Sir Henry, Good, and Umbopa by this time had seized their rifles and lifted them threateningly. The party of natives still came on. It struck me that they could not know what rifles were, or they would not have treated them with such contempt.

“Put down your guns!” I halloed to the others, seeing that our only chance of safety lay in conciliation. They obeyed, and walking to the front I addressed the elderly man who had checked the youth.

“Greeting,” I said in Zulu, not knowing what language to use. To my surprise I was understood.

“Greeting,” answered the old man, not, indeed, in the same tongue, but in a dialect so closely allied to it that neither Umbopa nor myself had any difficulty in understanding him. Indeed, as we afterwards found out, the language spoken by this people is an old-fashioned form of the Zulu tongue, bearing about the same relationship to it that the English of Chaucer does to the English of the nineteenth century.

“Whence come you?” he went on, “who are you? and why are the faces of three of you white, and the face of the fourth as the face of our mother’s sons?” and he pointed to Umbopa. I looked at Umbopa as he said it, and it flashed across me that he was right. The face of Umbopa was like the faces of the men before me, and so was his great form like their forms. But I had not time to reflect on this coincidence.

“We are strangers, and come in peace,” I answered, speaking very slowly, so that he might understand me, “and this man is our servant.”

“You lie,” he answered; “no strangers can cross the mountains where all things perish. But what do your lies matter?—if ye are strangers then ye must die, for no strangers may live in the land of the Kukuanas. It is the king’s law. Prepare then to die, O strangers!”

I was slightly staggered at this, more especially as I saw the hands of some of the men steal down to their sides, where hung on each what looked to me like a large and heavy knife.

“What does that beggar say?” asked Good.

“He says we are going to be killed,” I answered grimly.

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Good; and, as was his way when perplexed, he put his hand to his false teeth, dragging the top set down and allowing them to fly back to his jaw with a snap. It was a most fortunate move, for next second the dignified crowd of Kukuanas uttered a simultaneous yell of horror, and bolted back some yards.

“What’s up?” said I.

“It’s his teeth,” whispered Sir Henry excitedly. “He moved them. Take them out, Good, take them out!”

He obeyed, slipping the set into the sleeve of his flannel shirt.

In another second curiosity had overcome fear, and the men advanced slowly. Apparently they had now forgotten their amiable intention of killing us.

“How is it, O strangers,” asked the old man solemnly, “that this fat man (pointing to Good, who was clad in nothing but boots and a flannel shirt, and had only half finished his shaving), whose body is clothed, and whose legs are bare, who grows hair on one side of his sickly face and not on the other, and who wears one shining and transparent eye—how is it, I ask, that he has teeth which move of themselves, coming away from the jaws and returning of their own will?”

“Open your mouth,” I said to Good, who promptly curled up his lips and grinned at the old gentleman like an angry dog, revealing to his astonished gaze two thin red lines of gum as utterly innocent of ivories as a new-born elephant. The audience gasped.

“Where are his teeth?” they shouted; “with our eyes we saw them.”

Turning his head slowly and with a gesture of ineffable contempt, Good swept his hand across his mouth. Then he grinned again, and lo, there were two rows of lovely teeth.

Now the young man who had flung the knife threw himself down on the grass and gave vent to a prolonged howl of terror; and as for the old gentleman, his knees knocked together with fear.

“I see that ye are spirits,” he said falteringly; “did ever man born of woman have hair on one side of his face and not on the other, or a round and transparent eye, or teeth which moved and melted away and grew again? Pardon us, O my lords.”

Here was luck indeed, and, needless to say, I jumped at the chance.

“It is granted,” I said with an imperial smile. “Nay, ye shall know the truth. We come from another world, though we are men such as ye; we come,” I went on, “from the biggest star that shines at night.”

“Oh! oh!” groaned the chorus of astonished aborigines.

“Yes,” I went on, “we do, indeed”; and again I smiled benignly, as I uttered that amazing lie. “We come to stay with you a little while, and to bless you by our sojourn. Ye will see, O friends, that I have prepared myself for this visit by the learning of your language.”

“It is so, it is so,” said the chorus.

“Only, my lord,” put in the old gentleman, “thou hast learnt it very badly.”

I cast an indignant glance at him, and he quailed.

“Now friends,” I continued, “ye might think that after so long a journey we should find it in our hearts to avenge such a reception, mayhap to strike cold in death the imperious hand that—that, in short—threw a knife at the head of him whose teeth come and go.”

“Spare him, my lords,” said the old man in supplication; “he is the king’s son, and I am his uncle. If anything befalls him his blood will be required at my hands.”

“Yes, that is certainly so,” put in the young man with great emphasis.

“Ye may perhaps doubt our power to avenge,” I went on, heedless of this by-play. “Stay, I will show you. Here, thou dog and slave (addressing Umbopa in a savage tone), give me the magic tube that speaks”; and I tipped a wink towards my express rifle.

Umbopa rose to the occasion, and with something as nearly resembling a grin as I have ever seen on his dignified face he handed me the gun.

“It is here, O Lord of Lords,” he said with a deep obeisance.

Now just before I had asked for the rifle I had perceived a little klipspringer antelope standing on a mass of rock about seventy yards away, and determined to risk the shot.

“Ye see that buck,” I said, pointing the animal out to the party before me. “Tell me, is it possible for man born of woman to kill it from here with a noise?”

“It is not possible, my lord,” answered the old man.

“Yet shall I kill it,” I said quietly.

The old man smiled. “That my lord cannot do,” he answered.

I raised the rifle and covered the buck. It was a small animal, and one which a man might well be excused for missing, but I knew that it would not do to miss.

I drew a deep breath, and slowly pressed on the trigger. The buck stood still as a stone.

“Bang! thud!” The antelope sprang into the air and fell on the rock dead as a door nail.

A groan of simultaneous terror burst from the group before us.

“If you want meat,” I remarked coolly, “go fetch that buck.”

The old man made a sign, and one of his followers departed, and presently returned bearing the klipspringer. I noticed with satisfaction that I had hit it fairly behind the shoulder. They gathered round the poor creature’s body, gazing at the bullet-hole in consternation.

“Ye see,” I said, “I do not speak empty words.”

There was no answer.

“If ye yet doubt our power,” I went on, “let one of you go stand upon that rock that I may make him as this buck.”

None of them seemed at all inclined to take the hint, till at last the king’s son spoke.

“It is well said. Do thou, my uncle, go stand upon the rock. It is but a buck that the magic has killed. Surely it cannot kill a man.”

The old gentleman did not take the suggestion in good part. Indeed, he seemed hurt.

“No! no!” he ejaculated hastily, “my old eyes have seen enough. These are wizards, indeed. Let us bring them to the king. Yet if any should wish a further proof, let him stand upon the rock, that the magic tube may speak with him.”

There was a most general and hasty expression of dissent.

“Let not good magic be wasted on our poor bodies,” said one; “we are satisfied. All the witchcraft of our people cannot show the like of this.”

“It is so,” remarked the old gentleman, in a tone of intense relief; “without any doubt it is so. Listen, children of the Stars, children of the shining Eye and the movable Teeth, who roar out in thunder, and slay from afar. I am Infadoos, son of Kafa, once king of the Kukuana people. This youth is Scragga.”

“He nearly scragged me,” murmured Good.

“Scragga, son of Twala, the great king—Twala, husband of a thousand wives, chief and lord paramount of the Kukuanas, keeper of the great Road, terror of his enemies, student of the Black Arts, leader of a hundred thousand warriors, Twala the One-eyed, the Black, the Terrible.”

“So,” said I superciliously, “lead us then to Twala. We do not talk with low people and underlings.”

“It is well, my lords, we will lead you; but the way is long. We are hunting three days’ journey from the place of the king. But let my lords have patience, and we will lead them.”

“So be it,” I said carelessly; “all time is before us, for we do not die. We are ready, lead on. But Infadoos, and thou Scragga, beware! Play us no monkey tricks, set for us no foxes’ snares, for before your brains of mud have thought of them we shall know and avenge. The light of the transparent eye of him with the bare legs and the half-haired face shall destroy you, and go through your land; his vanishing teeth shall affix themselves fast in you and eat you up, you and your wives and children; the magic tubes shall argue with you loudly, and make you as sieves. Beware!”

This magnificent address did not fail of its effect; indeed, it might almost have been spared, so deeply were our friends already impressed with our powers.

The old man made a deep obeisance, and murmured the words, “Koom Koom,” which I afterwards discovered was their royal salute, corresponding to the Bayéte of the Zulus, and turning, addressed his followers. These at once proceeded to lay hold of all our goods and chattels, in order to bear them for us, excepting only the guns, which they would on no account touch. They even seized Good’s clothes, that, as the reader may remember, were neatly folded up beside him.

He saw and made a dive for them, and a loud altercation ensued.

“Let not my lord of the transparent Eye and the melting Teeth touch them,” said the old man. “Surely his slave shall carry the things.”

“But I want to put ’em on!” roared Good, in nervous English.

Umbopa translated.

“Nay, my lord,” answered Infadoos, “would my lord cover up his beautiful white legs (although he is so dark Good has a singularly white skin) from the eyes of his servants? Have we offended my lord that he should do such a thing?”

Here I nearly exploded with laughing; and meanwhile one of the men started on with the garments.

“Damn it!” roared Good, “that black villain has got my trousers.”

“Look here, Good,” said Sir Henry; “you have appeared in this country in a certain character, and you must live up to it. It will never do for you to put on trousers again. Henceforth you must exist in a flannel shirt, a pair of boots, and an eye-glass.”

“Yes,” I said, “and with whiskers on one side of your face and not on the other. If you change any of these things the people will think that we are impostors. I am very sorry for you, but, seriously, you must. If once they begin to suspect us our lives will not be worth a brass farthing.”

“Do you really think so?” said Good gloomily.

“I do, indeed. Your ‘beautiful white legs’ and your eye-glass are now the features of our party, and as Sir Henry says, you must live up to them. Be thankful that you have got your boots on, and that the air is warm.”

Good sighed, and said no more, but it took him a fortnight to become accustomed to his new and scant attire.

CHAPTER VIII

WE ENTER KUKUANALAND

All that afternoon we travelled along the magnificent roadway, which trended steadily in a north-westerly direction. Infadoos and Scragga walked with us, but their followers marched about one hundred paces ahead.

“Infadoos,” I said at length, “who made this road?”

“It was made, my lord, of old time, none know how or when, not even the wise woman Gagool, who has lived for generations. We are not old enough to remember its making. None can fashion such roads now, but the king suffers no grass to grow upon it.”

“And whose are the writings on the wall of the caves through which we have passed on the road?” I asked, referring to the Egyptian-like sculptures that we had seen.

“My lord, the hands that made the road wrote the wonderful writings. We know not who wrote them.”

“When did the Kukuana people come into this country?”

“My lord, the race came down here like the breath of a storm ten thousand thousand moons ago, from the great lands which lie there beyond,” and he pointed to the north. “They could travel no further because of the high mountains which ring in the land, so say the old voices of our fathers that have descended to us the children, and so says Gagool, the wise woman, the smeller out of witches,” and again he pointed to the snow-clad peaks. “The country, too, was good, so they settled here and grew strong and powerful, and now our numbers are like the sea sand, and when Twala the king calls up his regiments their plumes cover the plain so far as the eye of man can reach.”

“And if the land is walled in with mountains, who is there for the regiments to fight with?”

“Nay, my lord, the country is open there towards the north, and now and again warriors sweep down upon us in clouds from a land we know not, and we slay them. It is the third part of the life of a man since there was a war. Many thousands died in it, but we destroyed those who came to eat us up. So since then there has been no war.”

“Your warriors must grow weary of resting on their spears, Infadoos.”

“My lord, there was one war, just after we destroyed the people that came down upon us, but it was a civil war; dog ate dog.”

“How was that?”

“My lord the king, my half-brother, had a brother born at the same birth, and of the same woman. It is not our custom, my lord, to suffer twins to live; the weaker must always die. But the mother of the king hid away the feebler child, which was born the last, for her heart yearned over it, and that child is Twala the king. I am his younger brother, born of another wife.”

“Well?”

“My lord, Kafa, our father, died when we came to manhood, and my brother Imotu was made king in his place, and for a space reigned and had a son by his favourite wife. When the babe was three years old, just after the great war, during which no man could sow or reap, a famine came upon the land, and the people murmured because of the famine, and looked round like a starved lion for something to rend. Then it was that Gagool, the wise and terrible woman, who does not die, made a proclamation to the people, saying, ‘The king Imotu is no king.’ And at the time Imotu was sick with a wound, and lay in his kraal not able to move.

“Then Gagool went into a hut and led out Twala, my half-brother, and twin brother to the king, whom she had hidden among the caves and rocks since he was born, and stripping the ‘moocha’ (waist-cloth) off his loins, showed the people of the Kukuanas the mark of the sacred snake coiled round his middle, wherewith the eldest son of the king is marked at birth, and cried out loud, ‘Behold your king whom I have saved for you even to this day!’

“Now the people being mad with hunger, and altogether bereft of reason and the knowledge of truth, cried out—‘The king! The king!’ but I knew that it was not so, for Imotu my brother was the elder of the twins, and our lawful king. Then just as the tumult was at its height Imotu the king, though he was very sick, crawled from his hut holding his wife by the hand, and followed by his little son Ignosi—that is, by interpretation, the Lightning.

“‘What is this noise?’ he asked. ‘Why cry ye The king! The king!’

“Then Twala, his twin brother, born of the same woman, and in the same hour, ran to him, and taking him by the hair, stabbed him through the heart with his knife. And the people being fickle, and ever ready to worship the rising sun, clapped their hands and cried, ‘Twala is king! Now we know that Twala is king!’”

“And what became of Imotu’s wife and her son Ignosi? Did Twala kill them too?”

“Nay, my lord. When she saw that her lord was dead the queen seized the child with a cry and ran away. Two days afterward she came to a kraal very hungry, and none would give her milk or food, now that her lord the king was dead, for all men hate the unfortunate. But at nightfall a little child, a girl, crept out and brought her corn to eat, and she blessed the child, and went on towards the mountains with her boy before the sun rose again, and there she must have perished, for none have seen her since, nor the child Ignosi.”

“Then if this child Ignosi had lived he would be the true king of the Kukuana people?”

“That is so, my lord; the sacred snake is round his middle. If he lives he is king; but, alas! he is long dead.”

“See, my lord,” and Infadoos pointed to a vast collection of huts surrounded by a fence, which was in its turn encircled by a great ditch, that lay on the plain beneath us. “That is the kraal where the wife of Imotu was last seen with the child Ignosi. It is there that we shall sleep tonight, if, indeed,” he added doubtfully, “my lords sleep at all upon this earth.”

“When we are among the Kukuanas, my good friend Infadoos, we do as the Kukuanas do,” I said majestically, and turned round quickly to address Good, who was tramping along sullenly behind, his mind fully occupied with unsatisfactory attempts to prevent his flannel shirt from flapping in the evening breeze. To my astonishment I butted into Umbopa, who was walking along immediately behind me, and very evidently had been listening with the greatest interest to my conversation with Infadoos. The expression on his face was most curious, and gave me the idea of a man who was struggling with partial success to bring something long ago forgotten back into his mind.

All this while we had been pressing on at a good rate towards the undulating plain beneath us. The mountains we had crossed now loomed high above our heads, and Sheba’s Breasts were veiled modestly in diaphanous wreaths of mist. As we went the country grew more and more lovely. The vegetation was luxuriant, without being tropical; the sun was bright and warm, but not burning; and a gracious breeze blew softly along the odorous slopes of the mountains. Indeed, this new land was little less than an earthly paradise; in beauty, in natural wealth, and in climate I have never seen its like. The Transvaal is a fine country, but it is nothing to Kukuanaland.

So soon as we started Infadoos had despatched a runner to warn the people of the kraal, which, by the way, was in his military command, of our arrival. This man had departed at an extraordinary speed, which Infadoos informed me he would keep up all the way, as running was an exercise much practised among his people.

The result of this message now became apparent. When we arrived within two miles of the kraal we could see that company after company of men were issuing from its gates and marching towards us.

Sir Henry laid his hand upon my arm, and remarked that it looked as though we were going to meet with a warm reception. Something in his tone attracted Infadoos’ attention.

“Let not my lords be afraid,” he said hastily, “for in my breast there dwells no guile. This regiment is one under my command, and comes out by my orders to greet you.”

I nodded easily, though I was not quite easy in my mind.

About half a mile from the gates of this kraal is a long stretch of rising ground sloping gently upwards from the road, and here the companies formed. It was a splendid sight to see them, each company about three hundred strong, charging swiftly up the rise, with flashing spears and waving plumes, to take their appointed place. By the time we reached the slope twelve such companies, or in all three thousand six hundred men, had passed out and taken up their positions along the road.

Presently we came to the first company, and were able to gaze in astonishment on the most magnificent set of warriors that I have ever seen. They were all men of mature age, mostly veterans of about forty, and not one of them was under six feet in height, whilst many stood six feet three or four. They wore upon their heads heavy black plumes of Sakaboola feathers, like those which adorned our guides. About their waists and beneath the right knees were bound circlets of white ox tails, while in their left hands they carried round shields measuring about twenty inches across. These shields are very curious. The framework is made of an iron plate beaten out thin, over which is stretched milk-white ox-hide.

The weapons that each man bore were simple, but most effective, consisting of a short and very heavy two-edged spear with a wooden shaft, the blade being about six inches across at the widest part. These spears are not used for throwing but like the Zulu “bangwan,” or stabbing assegai, are for close quarters only, when the wound inflicted by them is terrible. In addition to his bangwan every man carried three large and heavy knives, each knife weighing about two pounds. One knife was fixed in the ox-tail girdle, and the other two at the back of the round shield. These knives, which are called “tollas” by the Kukuanas, take the place of the throwing assegai of the Zulus. The Kukuana warriors can cast them with great accuracy to a distance of fifty yards, and it is their custom on charging to hurl a volley of them at the enemy as they come to close quarters.

Each company remained still as a collection of bronze statues till we were opposite to it, when at a signal given by its commanding officer, who, distinguished by a leopard skin cloak, stood some paces in front, every spear was raised into the air, and from three hundred throats sprang forth with a sudden roar the royal salute of “Koom.” Then, so soon as we had passed, the company formed up behind us and followed us towards the kraal, till at last the whole regiment of the “Greys”—so called from their white shields—the crack corps of the Kukuana people, was marching in our rear with a tread that shook the ground.

At length, branching off from Solomon’s Great Road, we came to the wide fosse surrounding the kraal, which is at least a mile round, and fenced with a strong palisade of piles formed of the trunks of trees. At the gateway this fosse is spanned by a primitive drawbridge, which was let down by the guard to allow us to pass in. The kraal is exceedingly well laid out. Through the centre runs a wide pathway intersected at right angles by other pathways so arranged as to cut the huts into square blocks, each block being the quarters of a company. The huts are dome-shaped, and built, like those of the Zulus, of a framework of wattle, beautifully thatched with grass; but, unlike the Zulu huts, they have doorways through which men could walk. Also they are much larger, and surrounded by a verandah about six feet wide, beautifully paved with powdered lime trodden hard.

All along each side of this wide pathway that pierces the kraal were ranged hundreds of women, brought out by curiosity to look at us. These women, for a native race, are exceedingly handsome. They are tall and graceful, and their figures are wonderfully fine. The hair, though short, is rather curly than woolly, the features are frequently aquiline, and the lips are not unpleasantly thick, as is the case among most African races. But what struck us most was their exceedingly quiet and dignified air. They were as well-bred in their way as the habituées of a fashionable drawing-room, and in this respect they differ from Zulu women and their cousins the Masai who inhabit the district beyond Zanzibar. Their curiosity had brought them out to see us, but they allowed no rude expressions of astonishment or savage criticism to pass their lips as we trudged wearily in front of them. Not even when old Infadoos with a surreptitious motion of the hand pointed out the crowning wonder of poor Good’s “beautiful white legs,” did they suffer the feeling of intense admiration which evidently mastered their minds to find expression. They fixed their dark eyes upon this new and snowy loveliness, for, as I think I have said, Good’s skin is exceedingly white, and that was all. But it was quite enough for Good, who is modest by nature.

When we reached the centre of the kraal, Infadoos halted at the door of a large hut, which was surrounded at a distance by a circle of smaller ones.

“Enter, Sons of the Stars,” he said, in a magniloquent voice, “and deign to rest awhile in our humble habitations. A little food shall be brought to you, so that ye may have no need to draw your belts tight from hunger; some honey and some milk, and an ox or two, and a few sheep; not much, my lords, but still a little food.”

“It is good,” said I. “Infadoos; we are weary with travelling through realms of air; now let us rest.”

Accordingly we entered the hut, which we found amply prepared for our comfort. Couches of tanned skins were spread for us to lie on, and water was placed for us to wash in.

Presently we heard a shouting outside, and stepping to the door, saw a line of damsels bearing milk and roasted mealies, and honey in a pot. Behind these were some youths driving a fat young ox. We received the gifts, and then one of the young men drew the knife from his girdle and dexterously cut the ox’s throat. In ten minutes it was dead, skinned, and jointed. The best of the meat was then cut off for us, and the rest, in the name of our party, I presented to the warriors round us, who took it and distributed the “white lords’ gift.”

Umbopa set to work, with the assistance of an extremely prepossessing young woman, to boil our portion in a large earthenware pot over a fire which was built outside the hut, and when it was nearly ready we sent a message to Infadoos, and asked him and Scragga, the king’s son, to join us.

Presently they came, and sitting down upon little stools, of which there were several about the hut, for the Kukuanas do not in general squat upon their haunches like the Zulus, they helped us to get through our dinner. The old gentleman was most affable and polite, but it struck me that the young one regarded us with doubt. Together with the rest of the party, he had been overawed by our white appearance and by our magic properties; but it seemed to me that, on discovering that we ate, drank, and slept like other mortals, his awe was beginning to wear off, and to be replaced by a sullen suspicion—which made me feel rather uncomfortable.

In the course of our meal Sir Henry suggested to me that it might be well to try to discover if our hosts knew anything of his brother’s fate, or if they had ever seen or heard of him; but, on the whole, I thought that it would be wiser to say nothing of the matter at this time. It was difficult to explain a relative lost from “the Stars.”

After supper we produced our pipes and lit them; a proceeding which filled Infadoos and Scragga with astonishment. The Kukuanas were evidently unacquainted with the divine delights of tobacco-smoke. The herb is grown among them extensively; but, like the Zulus, they use it for snuff only, and quite failed to identify it in its new form.

Presently I asked Infadoos when we were to proceed on our journey, and was delighted to learn that preparations had been made for us to leave on the following morning, messengers having already departed to inform Twala the king of our coming.

It appeared that Twala was at his principal place, known as Loo, making ready for the great annual feast which was to be held in the first week of June. At this gathering all the regiments, with the exception of certain detachments left behind for garrison purposes, are brought up and paraded before the king; and the great annual witch-hunt, of which more by-and-by, is held.

We were to start at dawn; and Infadoos, who was to accompany us, expected that we should reach Loo on the night of the second day, unless we were detained by accident or by swollen rivers.

When they had given us this information our visitors bade us good-night; and, having arranged to watch turn and turn about, three of us flung ourselves down and slept the sweet sleep of the weary, whilst the fourth sat up on the look-out for possible treachery.

CHAPTER IX

TWALA THE KING

It will not be necessary for me to detail at length the incidents of our journey to Loo. It took two full days’ travelling along Solomon’s Great Road, which pursued its even course right into the heart of Kukuanaland. Suffice it to say that as we went the country seemed to grow richer and richer, and the kraals, with their wide surrounding belts of cultivation, more and more numerous. They were all built upon the same principles as the first camp which we had reached, and were guarded by ample garrisons of troops. Indeed, in Kukuanaland, as among the Germans, the Zulus, and the Masai, every able-bodied man is a soldier, so that the whole force of the nation is available for its wars, offensive or defensive. As we travelled we were overtaken by thousands of warriors hurrying up to Loo to be present at the great annual review and festival, and more splendid troops I never saw.

At sunset on the second day, we stopped to rest awhile upon the summit of some heights over which the road ran, and there on a beautiful and fertile plain before us lay Loo itself. For a native town it is an enormous place, quite five miles round, I should say, with outlying kraals projecting from it, that serve on grand occasions as cantonments for the regiments, and a curious horseshoe-shaped hill, with which we were destined to become better acquainted, about two miles to the north. It is beautifully situated, and through the centre of the kraal, dividing it into two portions, runs a river, which appeared to be bridged in several places, the same indeed that we had seen from the slopes of Sheba’s Breasts. Sixty or seventy miles away three great snow-capped mountains, placed at the points of a triangle, started out of the level plain. The conformation of these mountains is unlike that of Sheba’s Breasts, being sheer and precipitous, instead of smooth and rounded.

Infadoos saw us looking at them, and volunteered a remark.

“The road ends there,” he said, pointing to the mountains known among the Kukuanas as the “Three Witches.”

“Why does it end?” I asked.

“Who knows?” he answered with a shrug; “the mountains are full of caves, and there is a great pit between them. It is there that the wise men of old time used to go to get whatever it was they came for to this country, and it is there now that our kings are buried in the Place of Death.”

“What was it they came for?” I asked eagerly.

“Nay, I know not. My lords who have dropped from the Stars should know,” he answered with a quick look. Evidently he knew more than he chose to say.

“Yes,” I went on, “you are right, in the Stars we learn many things. I have heard, for instance, that the wise men of old came to these mountains to find bright stones, pretty playthings, and yellow iron.”

“My lord is wise,” he answered coldly; “I am but a child and cannot talk with my lord on such matters. My lord must speak with Gagool the old, at the king’s place, who is wise even as my lord,” and he went away.

So soon as he was gone I turned to the others, and pointed out the mountains. “There are Solomon’s diamond mines,” I said.

Umbopa was standing with them, apparently plunged in one of the fits of abstraction which were common to him, and caught my words.

“Yes, Macumazahn,” he put in, in Zulu, “the diamonds are surely there, and you shall have them, since you white men are so fond of toys and money.”

“How dost thou know that, Umbopa?” I asked sharply, for I did not like his mysterious ways.

He laughed. “I dreamed it in the night, white men;” then he too turned on his heel and went.

“Now what,” said Sir Henry, “is our black friend driving at? He knows more than he chooses to say, that is clear. By the way, Quatermain, has he heard anything of—of my brother?”

“Nothing; he has asked everyone he has become friendly with, but they all declare that no white man has ever been seen in the country before.”

“Do you suppose that he got here at all?” suggested Good; “we have only reached the place by a miracle; is it likely he could have reached it without the map?”

“I don’t know,” said Sir Henry gloomily, “but somehow I think that I shall find him.”

Slowly the sun sank, then suddenly darkness rushed down on the land like a tangible thing. There was no breathing-space between the day and night, no soft transformation scene, for in these latitudes twilight does not exist. The change from day to night is as quick and as absolute as the change from life to death. The sun sank and the world was wreathed in shadows. But not for long, for see in the west there is a glow, then come rays of silver light, and at last the full and glorious moon lights up the plain and shoots its gleaming arrows far and wide, filling the earth with a faint refulgence.

We stood and watched the lovely sight, whilst the stars grew pale before this chastened majesty, and felt our hearts lifted up in the presence of a beauty that I cannot describe. Mine has been a rough life, but there are a few things I am thankful to have lived for, and one of them is to have seen that moon shine over Kukuanaland.

Presently our meditations were broken in upon by our polite friend Infadoos.

“If my lords are rested we will journey on to Loo, where a hut is made ready for my lords tonight. The moon is now bright, so that we shall not fall by the way.”

We assented, and in an hour’s time were at the outskirts of the town, of which the extent, mapped out as it was by thousands of camp fires, appeared absolutely endless. Indeed, Good, who is always fond of a bad joke, christened it “Unlimited Loo.” Soon we came to a moat with a drawbridge, where we were met by the rattling of arms and the hoarse challenge of a sentry. Infadoos gave some password that I could not catch, which was met with a salute, and we passed on through the central street of the great grass city. After nearly half an hour’s tramp, past endless lines of huts, Infadoos halted at last by the gate of a little group of huts which surrounded a small courtyard of powdered limestone, and informed us that these were to be our “poor” quarters.

We entered, and found that a hut had been assigned to each of us. These huts were superior to any that we had yet seen, and in each was a most comfortable bed made of tanned skins, spread upon mattresses of aromatic grass. Food too was ready for us, and so soon as we had washed ourselves with water, which stood ready in earthenware jars, some young women of handsome appearance brought us roasted meats, and mealie cobs daintily served on wooden platters, and presented them to us with deep obeisances.

We ate and drank, and then, the beds having been all moved into one hut by our request, a precaution at which the amiable young ladies smiled, we flung ourselves down to sleep, thoroughly wearied with our long journey.

When we woke it was to find the sun high in the heavens, and the female attendants, who did not seem to be troubled by any false shame, already standing inside the hut, having been ordered to attend and help us to “make ready.”

“Make ready, indeed,” growled Good; “when one has only a flannel shirt and a pair of boots, that does not take long. I wish you would ask them for my trousers, Quatermain.”

I asked accordingly, but was informed that these sacred relics had already been taken to the king, who would see us in the forenoon.

Somewhat to their astonishment and disappointment, having requested the young ladies to step outside, we proceeded to make the best toilet of which the circumstances admitted. Good even went the length of again shaving the right side of his face; the left, on which now appeared a very fair crop of whiskers, we impressed upon him he must on no account touch. As for ourselves, we were contented with a good wash and combing our hair. Sir Henry’s yellow locks were now almost upon his shoulders, and he looked more like an ancient Dane than ever, while my grizzled scrub was fully an inch long, instead of half an inch, which in a general way I considered my maximum length.

By the time that we had eaten our breakfast, and smoked a pipe, a message was brought to us by no less a personage than Infadoos himself that Twala the king was ready to see us, if we would be pleased to come.

We remarked in reply that we should prefer to wait till the sun was a little higher, we were yet weary with our journey, &c., &c. It is always well, when dealing with uncivilised people, not to be in too great a hurry. They are apt to mistake politeness for awe or servility. So, although we were quite as anxious to see Twala as Twala could be to see us, we sat down and waited for an hour, employing the interval in preparing such presents as our slender stock of goods permitted—namely, the Winchester rifle which had been used by poor Ventvögel, and some beads. The rifle and ammunition we determined to present to his royal highness, and the beads were for his wives and courtiers. We had already given a few to Infadoos and Scragga, and found that they were delighted with them, never having seen such things before. At length we declared that we were ready, and guided by Infadoos, started off to the audience, Umbopa carrying the rifle and beads.

After walking a few hundred yards we came to an enclosure, something like that surrounding the huts which had been allotted to us, only fifty times as big, for it could not have covered less than six or seven acres of ground. All round the outside fence stood a row of huts, which were the habitations of the king’s wives. Exactly opposite the gateway, on the further side of the open space, was a very large hut, built by itself, in which his majesty resided. All the rest was open ground; that is to say, it would have been open had it not been filled by company after company of warriors, who were mustered there to the number of seven or eight thousand. These men stood still as statues as we advanced through them, and it would be impossible to give an adequate idea of the grandeur of the spectacle which they presented, with their waving plumes, their glancing spears, and iron-backed ox-hide shields.

The space in front of the large hut was empty, but before it were placed several stools. On three of these, at a sign from Infadoos, we seated ourselves, Umbopa standing behind us. As for Infadoos, he took up a position by the door of the hut. So we waited for ten minutes or more in the midst of a dead silence, but conscious that we were the object of the concentrated gaze of some eight thousand pairs of eyes. It was a somewhat trying ordeal, but we carried it off as best we could. At length the door of the hut opened, and a gigantic figure, with a splendid tiger-skin karross flung over its shoulders, stepped out, followed by the boy Scragga, and what appeared to us to be a withered-up monkey, wrapped in a fur cloak. The figure seated itself upon a stool, Scragga took his stand behind it, and the withered-up monkey crept on all fours into the shade of the hut and squatted down.

Still there was silence.

Then the gigantic figure slipped off the karross and stood up before us, a truly alarming spectacle. It was that of an enormous man with the most entirely repulsive countenance we had ever beheld. This man’s lips were as thick as a Negro’s, the nose was flat, he had but one gleaming black eye, for the other was represented by a hollow in the face, and his whole expression was cruel and sensual to a degree. From the large head rose a magnificent plume of white ostrich feathers, his body was clad in a shirt of shining chain armour, whilst round the waist and right knee were the usual garnishes of white ox-tail. In his right hand was a huge spear, about the neck a thick torque of gold, and bound on the forehead shone dully a single and enormous uncut diamond.

Still there was silence; but not for long. Presently the man, whom we rightly guessed to be the king, raised the great javelin in his hand. Instantly eight thousand spears were lifted in answer, and from eight thousand throats rang out the royal salute of “Koom.” Three times this was repeated, and each time the earth shook with the noise, that can only be compared to the deepest notes of thunder.

“Be humble, O people,” piped out a thin voice which seemed to come from the monkey in the shade, “it is the king.”

“It is the king,” boomed out the eight thousand throats in answer. “Be humble, O people, it is the king.”

Then there was silence again—dead silence. Presently, however, it was broken. A soldier on our left dropped his shield, which fell with a clatter on to the limestone flooring.

Twala turned his one cold eye in the direction of the noise.

“Come hither, thou,” he said, in a cold voice.

A fine young man stepped out of the ranks, and stood before him.

“It was thy shield that fell, thou awkward dog. Wilt thou make me a reproach in the eyes of these strangers from the Stars? What hast thou to say for thyself?”

We saw the poor fellow turn pale under his dusky skin.

“It was by chance, O Calf of the Black Cow,” he murmured.

“Then it is a chance for which thou must pay. Thou hast made me foolish; prepare for death.”

“I am the king’s ox,” was the low answer.

“Scragga,” roared the king, “let me see how thou canst use thy spear. Kill me this blundering fool.”

Scragga stepped forward with an ill-favoured grin, and lifted his spear. The poor victim covered his eyes with his hand and stood still. As for us, we were petrified with horror.

“Once, twice,” he waved the spear, and then struck, ah! right home—the spear stood out a foot behind the soldier’s back. He flung up his hands and dropped dead. From the multitude about us rose something like a murmur, it rolled round and round, and died away. The tragedy was finished; there lay the corpse, and we had not yet realised that it had been enacted. Sir Henry sprang up and swore a great oath, then, overpowered by the sense of silence, sat down again.

“The thrust was a good one,” said the king; “take him away.”

Four men stepped out of the ranks, and lifting the body of the murdered man, carried it thence.

“Cover up the blood-stains, cover them up,” piped out the thin voice that proceeded from the monkey-like figure; “the king’s word is spoken, the king’s doom is done!”

Thereupon a girl came forward from behind the hut, bearing a jar filled with powdered lime, which she scattered over the red mark, blotting it from sight.

Sir Henry meanwhile was boiling with rage at what had happened; indeed, it was with difficulty that we could keep him still.

“Sit down, for heaven’s sake,” I whispered; “our lives depend on it.”

He yielded and remained quiet.

Twala sat silent until the traces of the tragedy had been removed, then he addressed us.

“White people,” he said, “who come hither, whence I know not, and why I know not, greeting.”

“Greeting, Twala, King of the Kukuanas,” I answered.

“White people, whence come ye, and what seek ye?”

“We come from the Stars, ask us not how. We come to see this land.”

“Ye journey from far to see a little thing. And that man with you,” pointing to Umbopa, “does he also come from the Stars?”

“Even so; there are people of thy colour in the heavens above; but ask not of matters too high for thee, Twala the king.”

“Ye speak with a loud voice, people of the Stars,” Twala answered in a tone which I scarcely liked. “Remember that the Stars are far off, and ye are here. How if I make you as him whom they bore away?”

I laughed out loud, though there was little laughter in my heart.

“O king,” I said, “be careful, walk warily over hot stones, lest thou shouldst burn thy feet; hold the spear by the handle, lest thou should cut thy hands. Touch but one hair of our heads, and destruction shall come upon thee. What, have not these”—pointing to Infadoos and Scragga, who, young villain that he was, was employed in cleaning the blood of the soldier off his spear—“told thee what manner of men we are? Hast thou seen the like of us?” and I pointed to Good, feeling quite sure that he had never seen anybody before who looked in the least like him as he then appeared.

“It is true, I have not,” said the king, surveying Good with interest.

“Have they not told thee how we strike with death from afar?” I went on.

“They have told me, but I believe them not. Let me see you kill. Kill me a man among those who stand yonder”—and he pointed to the opposite side of the kraal—“and I will believe.”

“Nay,” I answered; “we shed no blood of men except in just punishment; but if thou wilt see, bid thy servants drive in an ox through the kraal gates, and before he has run twenty paces I will strike him dead.”

“Nay,” laughed the king, “kill me a man and I will believe.”

“Good, O king, so be it,” I answered coolly; “do thou walk across the open space, and before thy feet reach the gate thou shalt be dead; or if thou wilt not, send thy son Scragga” (whom at that moment it would have given me much pleasure to shoot).

On hearing this suggestion Scragga uttered a sort of howl, and bolted into the hut.

Twala frowned majestically; the suggestion did not please him.

“Let a young ox be driven in,” he said.

Two men at once departed, running swiftly.

“Now, Sir Henry,” said I, “do you shoot. I want to show this ruffian that I am not the only magician of the party.”

Sir Henry accordingly took his “express,” and made ready.

“I hope I shall make a good shot,” he groaned.

“You must,” I answered. “If you miss with the first barrel, let him have the second. Sight for 150 yards, and wait till the beast turns broadside on.”

Then came a pause, until presently we caught sight of an ox running straight for the kraal gate. It came on through the gate, then, catching sight of the vast concourse of people, stopped stupidly, turned round, and bellowed.

“Now’s your time,” I whispered.

Up went the rifle.

Bang! thud! and the ox was kicking on his back, shot in the ribs. The semi-hollow bullet had done its work well, and a sigh of astonishment went up from the assembled thousands.

I turned round coolly—

“Have I lied, O king?”

“Nay, white man, it is the truth,” was the somewhat awed answer.

“Listen, Twala,” I went on. “Thou hast seen. Now know we come in peace, not in war. See,” and I held up the Winchester repeater; “here is a hollow staff that shall enable thee to kill even as we kill, only I lay this charm upon it, thou shalt kill no man with it. If thou liftest it against a man, it shall kill thee. Stay, I will show thee. Bid a soldier step forty paces and place the shaft of a spear in the ground so that the flat blade looks towards us.”

In a few seconds it was done.

“Now, see, I will break yonder spear.”

Taking a careful sight I fired. The bullet struck the flat of the spear, and shattered the blade into fragments.

Again the sigh of astonishment went up.

“Now, Twala, we give this magic tube to thee, and by-and-by I will show thee how to use it; but beware how thou turnest the magic of the Stars against a man of earth,” and I handed him the rifle.

The king took it very gingerly, and laid it down at his feet. As he did so I observed the wizened monkey-like figure creeping from the shadow of the hut. It crept on all fours, but when it reached the place where the king sat it rose upon its feet, and throwing the furry covering from its face, revealed a most extraordinary and weird countenance. Apparently it was that of a woman of great age so shrunken that in size it seemed no larger than the face of a year-old child, although made up of a number of deep and yellow wrinkles. Set in these wrinkles was a sunken slit, that represented the mouth, beneath which the chin curved outwards to a point. There was no nose to speak of; indeed, the visage might have been taken for that of a sun-dried corpse had it not been for a pair of large black eyes, still full of fire and intelligence, which gleamed and played under the snow-white eyebrows, and the projecting parchment-coloured skull, like jewels in a charnel-house. As for the head itself, it was perfectly bare, and yellow in hue, while its wrinkled scalp moved and contracted like the hood of a cobra.

The figure to which this fearful countenance belonged, a countenance so fearful indeed that it caused a shiver of fear to pass through us as we gazed on it, stood still for a moment. Then suddenly it projected a skinny claw armed with nails nearly an inch long, and laying it on the shoulder of Twala the king, began to speak in a thin and piercing voice—

“Listen, O king! Listen, O warriors! Listen, O mountains and plains and rivers, home of the Kukuana race! Listen, O skies and sun, O rain and storm and mist! Listen, O men and women, O youths and maidens, and O ye babes unborn! Listen, all things that live and must die! Listen, all dead things that shall live again—again to die! Listen, the spirit of life is in me and I prophesy. I prophesy! I prophesy!”

The words died away in a faint wail, and dread seemed to seize upon the hearts of all who heard them, including our own. This old woman was very terrible.

“Blood! blood! blood! rivers of blood; blood everywhere. I see it, I smell it, I taste it—it is salt! it runs red upon the ground, it rains down from the skies.

“Footsteps! footsteps! footsteps! the tread of the white man coming from afar. It shakes the earth; the earth trembles before her master.

“Blood is good, the red blood is bright; there is no smell like the smell of new-shed blood. The lions shall lap it and roar, the vultures shall wash their wings in it and shriek with joy.

“I am old! I am old! I have seen much blood; ha, ha! but I shall see more ere I die, and be merry. How old am I, think ye? Your fathers knew me, and their fathers knew me, and their fathers’ fathers’ fathers. I have seen the white man and know his desires. I am old, but the mountains are older than I. Who made the great road, tell me? Who wrote the pictures on the rocks, tell me? Who reared up the three Silent Ones yonder, that gaze across the pit, tell me?” and she pointed towards the three precipitous mountains which we had noticed on the previous night.

“Ye know not, but I know. It was a white people who were before ye are, who shall be when ye are not, who shall eat you up and destroy you. Yea! yea! yea!

“And what came they for, the White Ones, the Terrible Ones, the skilled in magic and all learning, the strong, the unswerving? What is that bright stone upon thy forehead, O king? Whose hands made the iron garments upon thy breast, O king? Ye know not, but I know. I the Old One, I the Wise One, I the Isanusi, the witch doctress!”

Then she turned her bald vulture-head towards us.

“What seek ye, white men of the Stars—ah, yes, of the Stars? Do ye seek a lost one? Ye shall not find him here. He is not here. Never for ages upon ages has a white foot pressed this land; never except once, and I remember that he left it but to die. Ye come for bright stones; I know it—I know it; ye shall find them when the blood is dry; but shall ye return whence ye came, or shall ye stop with me? Ha! ha! ha!

“And thou, thou with the dark skin and the proud bearing,” and she pointed her skinny finger at Umbopa, “who art thou, and what seekest thou? Not stones that shine, not yellow metal that gleams, these thou leavest to ‘white men from the Stars.’ Methinks I know thee; methinks I can smell the smell of the blood in thy heart. Strip off the girdle—”

Here the features of this extraordinary creature became convulsed, and she fell to the ground foaming in an epileptic fit, and was carried into the hut.

The king rose up trembling, and waved his hand. Instantly the regiments began to file off, and in ten minutes, save for ourselves, the king, and a few attendants, the great space was left empty.

“White people,” he said, “it passes in my mind to kill you. Gagool has spoken strange words. What say ye?”

I laughed. “Be careful, O king, we are not easy to slay. Thou hast seen the fate of the ox; wouldst thou be as the ox is?”

The king frowned. “It is not well to threaten a king.”

“We threaten not, we speak what is true. Try to kill us, O king, and learn.”

The great savage put his hand to his forehead and thought.

“Go in peace,” he said at length. “Tonight is the great dance. Ye shall see it. Fear not that I shall set a snare for you. Tomorrow I will think.”

“It is well, O king,” I answered unconcernedly, and then, accompanied by Infadoos, we rose and went back to our kraal.

CHAPTER X

THE WITCH-HUNT

On reaching our hut I motioned to Infadoos to enter with us.

“Now, Infadoos,” I said, “we would speak with thee.”

“Let my lords say on.”

“It seems to us, Infadoos, that Twala the king is a cruel man.”

“It is so, my lords. Alas! the land cries out because of his cruelties. Tonight ye shall see. It is the great witch-hunt, and many will be smelt out as wizards and slain. No man’s life is safe. If the king covets a man’s cattle, or a man’s wife, or if he fears a man that he should excite a rebellion against him, then Gagool, whom ye saw, or some of the witch-finding women whom she has taught, will smell that man out as a wizard, and he will be killed. Many must die before the moon grows pale tonight. It is ever so. Perhaps I too shall be killed. As yet I have been spared because I am skilled in war, and am beloved by the soldiers; but I know not how long I have to live. The land groans at the cruelties of Twala the king; it is wearied of him and his red ways.”

“Then why is it, Infadoos, that the people do not cast him down?”

“Nay, my lords, he is the king, and if he were killed Scragga would reign in his place, and the heart of Scragga is blacker than the heart of Twala his father. If Scragga were king his yoke upon our neck would be heavier than the yoke of Twala. If Imotu had never been slain, or if Ignosi his son had lived, it might have been otherwise; but they are both dead.”

“How knowest thou that Ignosi is dead?” said a voice behind us. We looked round astonished to see who spoke. It was Umbopa.

“What meanest thou, boy?” asked Infadoos; “who told thee to speak?”

“Listen, Infadoos,” was the answer, “and I will tell thee a story. Years ago the king Imotu was killed in this country and his wife fled with the boy Ignosi. Is it not so?”

“It is so.”

“It was said that the woman and her son died upon the mountains. Is it not so?”

“It is even so.”

“Well, it came to pass that the mother and the boy Ignosi did not die. They crossed the mountains and were led by a tribe of wandering desert men across the sands beyond, till at last they came to water and grass and trees again.”

“How knowest thou this?”

“Listen. They travelled on and on, many months’ journey, till they reached a land where a people called the Amazulu, who also are of the Kukuana stock, live by war, and with them they tarried many years, till at length the mother died. Then the son Ignosi became a wanderer again, and journeyed into a land of wonders, where white people live, and for many more years he learned the wisdom of the white people.”

“It is a pretty story,” said Infadoos incredulously.

“For years he lived there working as a servant and a soldier, but holding in his heart all that his mother had told him of his own place, and casting about in his mind to find how he might journey thither to see his people and his father’s house before he died. For long years he lived and waited, and at last the time came, as it ever comes to him who can wait for it, and he met some white men who would seek this unknown land, and joined himself to them. The white men started and travelled on and on, seeking for one who is lost. They crossed the burning desert, they crossed the snow-clad mountains, and at last reached the land of the Kukuanas, and there they found thee, O Infadoos.”

“Surely thou art mad to talk thus,” said the astonished old soldier.

“Thou thinkest so; see, I will show thee, O my uncle.

“I am Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas!”

Then with a single movement Umbopa slipped off his “moocha” or girdle, and stood naked before us.

“Look,” he said; “what is this?” and he pointed to the picture of a great snake tattooed in blue round his middle, its tail disappearing into its open mouth just above where the thighs are set into the body.

Infadoos looked, his eyes starting nearly out of his head. Then he fell upon his knees.

“Koom! Koom!” he ejaculated; “it is my brother’s son; it is the king.”

“Did I not tell thee so, my uncle? Rise; I am not yet the king, but with thy help, and with the help of these brave white men, who are my friends, I shall be. Yet the old witch Gagool was right, the land shall run with blood first, and hers shall run with it, if she has any and can die, for she killed my father with her words, and drove my mother forth. And now, Infadoos, choose thou. Wilt thou put thy hands between my hands and be my man? Wilt thou share the dangers that lie before me, and help me to overthrow this tyrant and murderer, or wilt thou not? Choose thou.”

The old man put his hand to his head and thought. Then he rose, and advancing to where Umbopa, or rather Ignosi, stood, he knelt before him, and took his hand.

“Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas, I put my hand between thy hands, and am thy man till death. When thou wast a babe I dandled thee upon my knees, now shall my old arm strike for thee and freedom.”

“It is well, Infadoos; if I conquer, thou shalt be the greatest man in the kingdom after its king. If I fail, thou canst only die, and death is not far off from thee. Rise, my uncle.”

“And ye, white men, will ye help me? What have I to offer you! The white stones! If I conquer and can find them, ye shall have as many as ye can carry hence. Will that suffice you?”

I translated this remark.

“Tell him,” answered Sir Henry, “that he mistakes an Englishman. Wealth is good, and if it comes in our way we will take it; but a gentleman does not sell himself for wealth. Still, speaking for myself, I say this. I have always liked Umbopa, and so far as lies in me I will stand by him in this business. It will be very pleasant to me to try to square matters with that cruel devil Twala. What do you say, Good, and you, Quatermain?”

“Well,” said Good, “to adopt the language of hyperbole, in which all these people seem to indulge, you can tell him that a row is surely good, and warms the cockles of the heart, and that so far as I am concerned I’m his boy. My only stipulation is that he allows me to wear trousers.”

I translated the substance of these answers.

“It is well, my friends,” said Ignosi, late Umbopa; “and what sayest thou, Macumazahn, art thou also with me, old hunter, cleverer than a wounded buffalo?”

I thought awhile and scratched my head.

“Umbopa, or Ignosi,” I said, “I don’t like revolutions. I am a man of peace and a bit of a coward”—here Umbopa smiled—“but, on the other hand, I stick up for my friends, Ignosi. You have stuck to us and played the part of a man, and I will stick by you. But mind you, I am a trader, and have to make my living, so I accept your offer about those diamonds in case we should ever be in a position to avail ourselves of it. Another thing: we came, as you know, to look for Incubu’s (Sir Henry’s) lost brother. You must help us to find him.”

“That I will do,” answered Ignosi. “Stay, Infadoos, by the sign of the snake about my middle, tell me the truth. Has any white man to thy knowledge set his foot within the land?”

“None, O Ignosi.”

“If any white man had been seen or heard of, wouldst thou have known?”

“I should certainly have known.”

“Thou hearest, Incubu,” said Ignosi to Sir Henry; “he has not been here.”

“Well, well,” said Sir Henry, with a sigh; “there it is; I suppose that he never got so far. Poor fellow, poor fellow! So it has all been for nothing. God’s will be done.”

“Now for business,” I put in, anxious to escape from a painful subject. “It is very well to be a king by right divine, Ignosi, but how dost thou propose to become a king indeed?”

“Nay, I know not. Infadoos, hast thou a plan?”

“Ignosi, Son of the Lightning,” answered his uncle, “tonight is the great dance and witch-hunt. Many shall be smelt out and perish, and in the hearts of many others there will be grief and anguish and fury against the king Twala. When the dance is over, then I will speak to some of the great chiefs, who in turn, if I can win them over, will speak to their regiments. I shall speak to the chiefs softly at first, and bring them to see that thou art indeed the king, and I think that by tomorrow’s light thou shalt have twenty thousand spears at thy command. And now I must go and think, and hear, and make ready. After the dance is done, if I am yet alive, and we are all alive, I will meet thee here, and we can talk. At the best there must be war.”

At this moment our conference was interrupted by the cry that messengers had come from the king. Advancing to the door of the hut we ordered that they should be admitted, and presently three men entered, each bearing a shining shirt of chain armour, and a magnificent battle-axe.

“The gifts of my lord the king to the white men from the Stars!” said a herald who came with them.

“We thank the king,” I answered; “withdraw.”

The men went, and we examined the armour with great interest. It was the most wonderful chain work that either of us had ever seen. A whole coat fell together so closely that it formed a mass of links scarcely too big to be covered with both hands.

“Do you make these things in this country, Infadoos?” I asked; “they are very beautiful.”

“Nay, my lord, they came down to us from our forefathers. We know not who made them, and there are but few left.7 None but those of royal blood may be clad in them. They are magic coats through which no spear can pass, and those who wear them are well-nigh safe in the battle. The king is well pleased or much afraid, or he would not have sent these garments of steel. Clothe yourselves in them tonight, my lords.”

The remainder of that day we spent quietly, resting and talking over the situation, which was sufficiently exciting. At last the sun went down, the thousand watch fires glowed out, and through the darkness we heard the tramp of many feet and the clashing of hundreds of spears, as the regiments passed to their appointed places to be ready for the great dance. Then the full moon shone out in splendour, and as we stood watching her rays, Infadoos arrived, clad in his war dress, and accompanied by a guard of twenty men to escort us to the dance. As he recommended, we had already donned the shirts of chain armour which the king had sent us, putting them on under our ordinary clothing, and finding to our surprise that they were neither very heavy nor uncomfortable. These steel shirts, which evidently had been made for men of a very large stature, hung somewhat loosely upon Good and myself, but Sir Henry’s fitted his magnificent frame like a glove. Then strapping our revolvers round our waists, and taking in our hands the battle-axes which the king had sent with the armour, we started.

On arriving at the great kraal, where we had that morning been received by the king, we found that it was closely packed with some twenty thousand men arranged round it in regiments. These regiments were in turn divided into companies, and between each company ran a little path to allow space for the witch-finders to pass up and down. Anything more imposing than the sight that was presented by this vast and orderly concourse of armed men it is impossible to conceive. There they stood perfectly silent, and the moon poured her light upon the forest of their raised spears, upon their majestic forms, waving plumes, and the harmonious shading of their various-coloured shields. Wherever we looked were line upon line of dim faces surmounted by range upon range of shimmering spears.

“Surely,” I said to Infadoos, “the whole army is here?”

“Nay, Macumazahn,” he answered, “but a third of it. One third is present at this dance each year, another third is mustered outside in case there should be trouble when the killing begins, ten thousand more garrison the outposts round Loo, and the rest watch at the kraals in the country. Thou seest it is a great people.”

“They are very silent,” said Good; and indeed the intense stillness among such a vast concourse of living men was almost overpowering.

“What says Bougwan?” asked Infadoos.

I translated.

“Those over whom the shadow of Death is hovering are silent,” he answered grimly.

“Will many be killed?”

“Very many.”

“It seems,” I said to the others, “that we are going to assist at a gladiatorial show arranged regardless of expense.”

Sir Henry shivered, and Good said he wished that we could get out of it.

“Tell me,” I asked Infadoos, “are we in danger?”

“I know not, my lords, I trust not; but do not seem afraid. If ye live through the night all may go well with you. The soldiers murmur against the king.”

All this while we had been advancing steadily towards the centre of the open space, in the midst of which were placed some stools. As we proceeded we perceived another small party coming from the direction of the royal hut.

“It is the king Twala, Scragga his son, and Gagool the old; and see, with them are those who slay,” said Infadoos, pointing to a little group of about a dozen gigantic and savage-looking men, armed with spears in one hand and heavy kerries in the other.

The king seated himself upon the centre stool, Gagool crouched at his feet, and the others stood behind him.

“Greeting, white lords,” Twala cried, as we came up; “be seated, waste not precious time—the night is all too short for the deeds that must be done. Ye come in a good hour, and shall see a glorious show. Look round, white lords; look round,” and he rolled his one wicked eye from regiment to regiment. “Can the Stars show you such a sight as this? See how they shake in their wickedness, all those who have evil in their hearts and fear the judgment of ‘Heaven above.’”

“Begin! begin!” piped Gagool, in her thin piercing voice; “the hyænas are hungry, they howl for food. Begin! begin!”

Then for a moment there was intense stillness, made horrible by a presage of what was to come.

The king lifted his spear, and suddenly twenty thousand feet were raised, as though they belonged to one man, and brought down with a stamp upon the earth. This was repeated three times, causing the solid ground to shake and tremble. Then from a far point of the circle a solitary voice began a wailing song, of which the refrain ran something as follows:—

“What is the lot of man born of woman?”

Back came the answer rolling out from every throat in that vast company—

“Death!”

Gradually, however, the song was taken up by company after company, till the whole armed multitude were singing it, and I could no longer follow the words, except in so far as they appeared to represent various phases of human passions, fears, and joys. Now it seemed to be a love song, now a majestic swelling war chant, and last of all a death dirge ending suddenly in one heart-breaking wail that went echoing and rolling away in a volume of blood-curdling sound.

Again silence fell upon the place, and again it was broken by the king lifting his hand. Instantly we heard a pattering of feet, and from out of the masses of warriors strange and awful figures appeared running towards us. As they drew near we saw that these were women, most of them aged, for their white hair, ornamented with small bladders taken from fish, streamed out behind them. Their faces were painted in stripes of white and yellow; down their backs hung snake-skins, and round their waists rattled circlets of human bones, while each held a small forked wand in her shrivelled hand. In all there were ten of them. When they arrived in front of us they halted, and one of them, pointing with her wand towards the crouching figure of Gagool, cried out—

“Mother, old mother, we are here.”

“Good! good! good!” answered that aged Iniquity. “Are your eyes keen, Isanusis [witch doctresses], ye seers in dark places?”

“Mother, they are keen.”

“Good! good! good! Are your ears open, Isanusis, ye who hear words that come not from the tongue?”

“Mother, they are open.”

“Good! good! good! Are your senses awake, Isanusis—can ye smell blood, can ye purge the land of the wicked ones who compass evil against the king and against their neighbours? Are ye ready to do the justice of ‘Heaven above,’ ye whom I have taught, who have eaten of the bread of my wisdom, and drunk of the water of my magic?”

“Mother, we can.”

“Then go! Tarry not, ye vultures; see, the slayers”—pointing to the ominous group of executioners behind—“make sharp their spears; the white men from afar are hungry to see. Go!”

With a wild yell Gagool’s horrid ministers broke away in every direction, like fragments from a shell, the dry bones round their waists rattling as they ran, and headed for various points of the dense human circle. We could not watch them all, so we fixed our eyes upon the Isanusi nearest to us. When she came to within a few paces of the warriors she halted and began to dance wildly, turning round and round with an almost incredible rapidity, and shrieking out sentences such as “I smell him, the evil-doer!” “He is near, he who poisoned his mother!” “I hear the thoughts of him who thought evil of the king!”

Quicker and quicker she danced, till she lashed herself into such a frenzy of excitement that the foam flew in specks from her gnashing jaws, till her eyes seemed to start from her head, and her flesh to quiver visibly. Suddenly she stopped dead and stiffened all over, like a pointer dog when he scents game, and then with outstretched wand she began to creep stealthily towards the soldiers before her. It seemed to us that as she came their stoicism gave way, and that they shrank from her. As for ourselves, we followed her movements with a horrible fascination. Presently, still creeping and crouching like a dog, the Isanusi was before them. Then she halted and pointed, and again crept on a pace or two.

Suddenly the end came. With a shriek she sprang in and touched a tall warrior with her forked wand. Instantly two of his comrades, those standing immediately next to him, seized the doomed man, each by one arm, and advanced with him towards the king.

He did not resist, but we saw that he dragged his limbs as though they were paralysed, and that his fingers, from which the spear had fallen, were limp like those of a man newly dead.

As he came, two of the villainous executioners stepped forward to meet him. Presently they met, and the executioners turned round, looking towards the king as though for orders.

“Kill!” said the king.

“Kill!” squeaked Gagool.

“Kill!” re-echoed Scragga, with a hollow chuckle.

Almost before the words were uttered the horrible dead was done. One man had driven his spear into the victim’s heart, and to make assurance double sure, the other had dashed out his brains with a great club.

“One,” counted Twala the king, just like a black Madame Defarge, as Good said, and the body was dragged a few paces away and stretched out.

Hardly was the thing done before another poor wretch was brought up, like an ox to the slaughter. This time we could see, from the leopard-skin cloak which he wore, that the man was a person of rank. Again the awful syllables were spoken, and the victim fell dead.

“Two,” counted the king.

And so the deadly game went on, till about a hundred bodies were stretched in rows behind us. I have heard of the gladiatorial shows of the Cæsars, and of the Spanish bull-fights, but I take the liberty of doubting if either of them could be half so horrible as this Kukuana witch-hunt. Gladiatorial shows and Spanish bull-fights at any rate contributed to the public amusement, which certainly was not the case here. The most confirmed sensation-monger would fight shy of sensation if he knew that it was well on the cards that he would, in his own proper person, be the subject of the next “event.”

Once we rose and tried to remonstrate, but were sternly repressed by Twala.

“Let the law take its course, white men. These dogs are magicians and evil-doers; it is well that they should die,” was the only answer vouchsafed to us.

About half-past ten there was a pause. The witch-finders gathered themselves together, apparently exhausted with their bloody work, and we thought that the performance was done with. But it was not so, for presently, to our surprise, the ancient woman, Gagool, rose from her crouching position, and supporting herself with a stick, staggered off into the open space. It was an extraordinary sight to see this frightful vulture-headed old creature, bent nearly double with extreme age, gather strength by degrees, until at last she rushed about almost as actively as her ill-omened pupils. To and fro she ran, chanting to herself, till suddenly she made a dash at a tall man standing in front of one of the regiments, and touched him. As she did this a sort of groan went up from the regiment which evidently he commanded. But two of its officers seized him all the same, and brought him up for execution. We learned afterwards that he was a man of great wealth and importance, being indeed a cousin of the king.

He was slain, and Twala counted one hundred and three. Then Gagool again sprang to and fro, gradually drawing nearer and nearer to ourselves.

“Hang me if I don’t believe she is going to try her games on us,” ejaculated Good in horror.

“Nonsense!” said Sir Henry.

As for myself, when I saw that old fiend dancing nearer and nearer, my heart positively sank into my boots. I glanced behind us at the long rows of corpses, and shivered.

Nearer and nearer waltzed Gagool, looking for all the world like an animated crooked stick or comma, her horrid eyes gleaming and glowing with a most unholy lustre.

Nearer she came, and yet nearer, every creature in that vast assemblage watching her movements with intense anxiety. At last she stood still and pointed.

“Which is it to be?” asked Sir Henry to himself.

In a moment all doubts were at rest, for the old hag had rushed in and touched Umbopa, alias Ignosi, on the shoulder.

“I smell him out,” she shrieked. “Kill him, kill him, he is full of evil; kill him, the stranger, before blood flows from him. Slay him, O king.”

There was a pause, of which I instantly took advantage.

“O king,” I called out, rising from my seat, “this man is the servant of thy guests, he is their dog; whosoever sheds the blood of our dog sheds our blood. By the sacred law of hospitality I claim protection for him.”

“Gagool, mother of the witch-finders, has smelt him out; he must die, white men,” was the sullen answer.

“Nay, he shall not die,” I replied; “he who tries to touch him shall die indeed.”

“Seize him!” roared Twala to the executioners; who stood round red to the eyes with the blood of their victims.

They advanced towards us, and then hesitated. As for Ignosi, he clutched his spear, and raised it as though determined to sell his life dearly.

“Stand back, ye dogs!” I shouted, “if ye would see tomorrow’s light. Touch one hair of his head and your king dies,” and I covered Twala with my revolver. Sir Henry and Good also drew their pistols, Sir Henry pointing his at the leading executioner, who was advancing to carry out the sentence, and Good taking a deliberate aim at Gagool.

Twala winced perceptibly as my barrel came in a line with his broad chest.

“Well,” I said, “what is it to be, Twala?”

Then he spoke.

“Put away your magic tubes,” he said; “ye have adjured me in the name of hospitality, and for that reason, but not from fear of what ye can do, I spare him. Go in peace.”

“It is well,” I answered unconcernedly; “we are weary of slaughter, and would sleep. Is the dance ended?”

“It is ended,” Twala answered sulkily. “Let these dead dogs,” pointing to the long rows of corpses, “be flung out to the hyænas and the vultures,” and he lifted his spear.

Instantly the regiments began to defile through the kraal gateway in perfect silence, a fatigue party only remaining behind to drag away the corpses of those who had been sacrificed.

Then we rose also, and making our salaam to his majesty, which he hardly deigned to acknowledge, we departed to our huts.

“Well,” said Sir Henry, as we sat down, having first lit a lamp of the sort used by the Kukuanas, of which the wick is made from the fibre of a species of palm leaf, and the oil from clarified hippopotamus fat, “well, I feel uncommonly inclined to be sick.”

“If I had any doubts about helping Umbopa to rebel against that infernal blackguard,” put in Good, “they are gone now. It was as much as I could do to sit still while that slaughter was going on. I tried to keep my eyes shut, but they would open just at the wrong time. I wonder where Infadoos is. Umbopa, my friend, you ought to be grateful to us; your skin came near to having an air-hole made in it.”

“I am grateful, Bougwan,” was Umbopa’s answer, when I had translated, “and I shall not forget. As for Infadoos, he will be here by-and-by. We must wait.”

So we lit our pipes and waited.

KING SOLOMON’S MINES, by H. Rider Haggard [Part 2]

7 In the Soudan swords and coats of mail are still worn by Arabs, whose ancestors must have stripped them from the bodies of Crusaders.—Editor.

7 In the Soudan swords and coats of mail are still worn by Arabs, whose ancestors must have stripped them from the bodies of Crusaders.—Editor.

CHAPTER XI

WE GIVE A SIGN

For a long while—two hours, I should think—we sat there in silence, being too much overwhelmed by the recollection of the horrors we had seen to talk. At last, just as we were thinking of turning in—for the night drew nigh to dawn—we heard a sound of steps. Then came the challenge of a sentry posted at the kraal gate, which apparently was answered, though not in an audible tone, for the steps still advanced; and in another second Infadoos had entered the hut, followed by some half-dozen stately-looking chiefs.

“My lords,” he said, “I have come according to my word. My lords and Ignosi, rightful king of the Kukuanas, I have brought with me these men,” pointing to the row of chiefs, “who are great men among us, having each one of them the command of three thousand soldiers, that live but to do their bidding, under the king’s. I have told them of what I have seen, and what my ears have heard. Now let them also behold the sacred snake around thee, and hear thy story, Ignosi, that they may say whether or no they will make cause with thee against Twala the king.”

By way of answer Ignosi again stripped off his girdle, and exhibited the snake tattooed about him. Each chief in turn drew near and examined the sign by the dim light of the lamp, and without saying a word passed on to the other side.

Then Ignosi resumed his moocha, and addressing them, repeated the history he had detailed in the morning.

“Now ye have heard, chiefs,” said Infadoos, when he had done, “what say ye: will ye stand by this man and help him to his father’s throne, or will ye not? The land cries out against Twala, and the blood of the people flows like the waters in spring. Ye have seen tonight. Two other chiefs there were with whom I had it in my mind to speak, and where are they now? The hyænas howl over their corpses. Soon shall ye be as they are if ye strike not. Choose then, my brothers.”

The eldest of the six men, a short, thick-set warrior, with white hair, stepped forward a pace and answered—

“Thy words are true, Infadoos; the land cries out. My own brother is among those who died tonight; but this is a great matter, and the thing is hard to believe. How know we that if we lift our spears it may not be for a thief and a liar? It is a great matter, I say, of which none can see the end. For of this be sure, blood will flow in rivers before the deed is done; many will still cleave to the king, for men worship the sun that still shines bright in the heavens, rather than that which has not risen. These white men from the Stars, their magic is great, and Ignosi is under the cover of their wing. If he be indeed the rightful king, let them give us a sign, and let the people have a sign, that all may see. So shall men cleave to us, knowing of a truth that the white man’s magic is with them.”

“Ye have the sign of the snake,” I answered.

“My lord, it is not enough. The snake may have been placed there since the man’s childhood. Show us a sign, and it will suffice. But we will not move without a sign.”

The others gave a decided assent, and I turned in perplexity to Sir Henry and Good, and explained the situation.

“I think that I have it,” said Good exultingly; “ask them to give us a moment to think.”

I did so, and the chiefs withdrew. So soon as they had gone Good went to the little box where he kept his medicines, unlocked it, and took out a note-book, in the fly-leaves of which was an almanack. “Now look here, you fellows, isn’t tomorrow the 4th of June?” he said.

We had kept a careful note of the days, so were able to answer that it was.

“Very good; then here we have it—’4 June, total eclipse of the moon commences at 8.15 Greenwich time, visible in Teneriffe—South Africa, &c.’ There’s a sign for you. Tell them we will darken the moon tomorrow night.”

The idea was a splendid one; indeed, the only weak spot about it was a fear lest Good’s almanack might be incorrect. If we made a false prophecy on such a subject, our prestige would be gone for ever, and so would Ignosi’s chance of the throne of the Kukuanas.

“Suppose that the almanack is wrong,” suggested Sir Henry to Good, who was busily employed in working out something on a blank page of the book.

“I see no reason to suppose anything of the sort,” was his answer. “Eclipses always come up to time; at least that is my experience of them, and it especially states that this one will be visible in South Africa. I have worked out the reckonings as well as I can, without knowing our exact position; and I make out that the eclipse should begin here about ten o’clock tomorrow night, and last till half-past twelve. For an hour and a half or so there should be almost total darkness.”

“Well,” said Sir Henry, “I suppose we had better risk it.”

I acquiesced, though doubtfully, for eclipses are queer cattle to deal with—it might be a cloudy night, for instance, or our dates might be wrong—and sent Umbopa to summon the chiefs back. Presently they came, and I addressed them thus—

“Great men of the Kukuanas, and thou, Infadoos, listen. We love not to show our powers, for to do so is to interfere with the course of nature, and to plunge the world into fear and confusion. But since this matter is a great one, and as we are angered against the king because of the slaughter we have seen, and because of the act of the Isanusi Gagool, who would have put our friend Ignosi to death, we have determined to break a rule, and to give such a sign as all men may see. Come hither”; and I led them to the door of the hut and pointed to the red ball of the moon. “What see ye there?”

“We see the sinking moon,” answered the spokesman of the party.

“It is so. Now tell me, can any mortal man put out that moon before her hour of setting, and bring the curtain of black night down upon the land?”

The chief laughed a little at the question. “No, my lord, that no man can do. The moon is stronger than man who looks on her, nor can she vary in her courses.”

“Ye say so. Yet I tell you that tomorrow night, about two hours before midnight, we will cause the moon to be eaten up for a space of an hour and half an hour. Yes, deep darkness shall cover the earth, and it shall be for a sign that Ignosi is indeed king of the Kukuanas. If we do this thing, will ye be satisfied?”

“Yea, my lords,” answered the old chief with a smile, which was reflected on the faces of his companions; “if ye do this thing, we will be satisfied indeed.”

“It shall be done; we three, Incubu, Bougwan, and Macumazahn, have said it, and it shall be done. Dost thou hear, Infadoos?”

“I hear, my lord, but it is a wonderful thing that ye promise, to put out the moon, the mother of the world, when she is at her full.”

“Yet shall we do it, Infadoos.”

“It is well, my lords. Today, two hours after sunset, Twala will send for my lords to witness the girls dance, and one hour after the dance begins the girl whom Twala thinks the fairest shall be killed by Scragga, the king’s son, as a sacrifice to the Silent Ones, who sit and keep watch by the mountains yonder,” and he pointed towards the three strange-looking peaks where Solomon’s road was supposed to end. “Then let my lords darken the moon, and save the maiden’s life, and the people will believe indeed.”

“Ay,” said the old chief, still smiling a little, “the people will believe indeed.”

“Two miles from Loo,” went on Infadoos, “there is a hill curved like a new moon, a stronghold, where my regiment, and three other regiments which these chiefs command, are stationed. This morning we will make a plan whereby two or three other regiments may be moved there also. Then, if in truth my lords can darken the moon, in the darkness I will take my lords by the hand and lead them out of Loo to this place, where they shall be safe, and thence we can make war upon Twala the king.”

“It is good,” said I. “Let leave us to sleep awhile and to make ready our magic.”

Infadoos rose, and, having saluted us, departed with the chiefs.

“My friends,” said Ignosi, so soon as they were gone, “can ye do this wonderful thing, or were ye speaking empty words to the captains?”

“We believe that we can do it, Umbopa—Ignosi, I mean.”

“It is strange,” he answered, “and had ye not been Englishmen I would not have believed it; but I have learned that English ‘gentlemen’ tell no lies. If we live through the matter, be sure that I will repay you.”

“Ignosi,” said Sir Henry, “promise me one thing.”

“I will promise, Incubu, my friend, even before I hear it,” answered the big man with a smile. “What is it?”

“This: that if ever you come to be king of this people you will do away with the smelling out of wizards such as we saw last night; and that the killing of men without trial shall no longer take place in the land.”

Ignosi thought for a moment after I had translated this request, and then answered—

“The ways of black people are not as the ways of white men, Incubu, nor do we value life so highly. Yet I will promise. If it be in my power to hold them back, the witch-finders shall hunt no more, nor shall any man die the death without trial or judgment.”

“That’s a bargain, then,” said Sir Henry; “and now let us get a little rest.”

Thoroughly wearied out, we were soon sound asleep, and slept till Ignosi woke us about eleven o’clock. Then we rose, washed, and ate a hearty breakfast. After that we went outside the hut and walked about, amusing ourselves with examining the structure of the Kukuana huts and observing the customs of the women.

“I hope that eclipse will come off,” said Sir Henry presently.

“If it does not it will soon be all up with us,” I answered mournfully; “for so sure as we are living men some of those chiefs will tell the whole story to the king, and then there will be another sort of eclipse, and one that we shall certainly not like.”

Returning to the hut we ate some dinner, and passed the rest of the day in receiving visits of ceremony and curiosity. At length the sun set, and we enjoyed a couple of hours of such quiet as our melancholy forebodings would allow to us. Finally, about half-past eight, a messenger came from Twala to bid us to the great annual “dance of girls” which was about to be celebrated.

Hastily we put on the chain shirts that the king had sent us, and taking our rifles and ammunition with us, so as to have them handy in case we had to fly, as suggested by Infadoos, we started boldly enough, though with inward fear and trembling. The great space in front of the king’s kraal bore a very different appearance from that which it had presented on the previous evening. In place of the grim ranks of serried warriors were company after company of Kukuana girls, not over-dressed, so far as clothing went, but each crowned with a wreath of flowers, and holding a palm leaf in one hand and a white arum lily in the other. In the centre of the open moonlit space sat Twala the king, with old Gagool at his feet, attended by Infadoos, the boy Scragga, and twelve guards. There were also present about a score of chiefs, amongst whom I recognised most of our friends of the night before.

Twala greeted us with much apparent cordiality, though I saw him fix his one eye viciously on Umbopa.

“Welcome, white men from the Stars,” he said; “this is another sight from that which your eyes gazed on by the light of last night’s moon, but it is not so good a sight. Girls are pleasant, and were it not for such as these,” and he pointed round him, “we should none of us be here this day; but men are better. Kisses and the tender words of women are sweet, but the sound of the clashing of the spears of warriors, and the smell of men’s blood, are sweeter far! Would ye have wives from among our people, white men? If so, choose the fairest here, and ye shall have them, as many as ye will,” and he paused for an answer.

As the prospect did not seem to be without attractions for Good, who, like most sailors, is of a susceptible nature,—being elderly and wise, foreseeing the endless complications that anything of the sort would involve, for women bring trouble so surely as the night follows the day, I put in a hasty answer—

“Thanks to thee, O king, but we white men wed only with white women like ourselves. Your maidens are fair, but they are not for us!”

The king laughed. “It is well. In our land there is a proverb which runs, ‘Women’s eyes are always bright, whatever the colour,’ and another that says, ‘Love her who is present, for be sure she who is absent is false to thee;’ but perhaps these things are not so in the Stars. In a land where men are white all things are possible. So be it, white men; the girls will not go begging! Welcome again; and welcome, too, thou black one; if Gagool here had won her way, thou wouldst have been stiff and cold by now. It is lucky for thee that thou too camest from the Stars; ha! ha!”

“I can kill thee before thou killest me, O king,” was Ignosi’s calm answer, “and thou shalt be stiff before my limbs cease to bend.”

Twala started. “Thou speakest boldly, boy,” he replied angrily; “presume not too far.”

“He may well be bold in whose lips are truth. The truth is a sharp spear which flies home and misses not. It is a message from ‘the Stars,’ O king.”

Twala scowled, and his one eye gleamed fiercely, but he said nothing more.

“Let the dance begin,” he cried, and then the flower-crowned girls sprang forward in companies, singing a sweet song and waving the delicate palms and white lilies. On they danced, looking faint and spiritual in the soft, sad light of the risen moon; now whirling round and round, now meeting in mimic warfare, swaying, eddying here and there, coming forward, falling back in an ordered confusion delightful to witness. At last they paused, and a beautiful young woman sprang out of the ranks and began to pirouette in front of us with a grace and vigour which would have put most ballet girls to shame. At length she retired exhausted, and another took her place, then another and another, but none of them, either in grace, skill, or personal attractions, came up to the first.

When the chosen girls had all danced, the king lifted his hand.

“Which deem ye the fairest, white men?” he asked.

“The first,” said I unthinkingly. Next second I regretted it, for I remembered that Infadoos had told us that the fairest woman must be offered up as a sacrifice.

“Then is my mind as your minds, and my eyes as your eyes. She is the fairest! and a sorry thing it is for her, for she must die!”

“Ay, must die!” piped out Gagool, casting a glance of her quick eyes in the direction of the poor girl, who, as yet ignorant of the awful fate in store for her, was standing some ten yards off in front of a company of maidens, engaged in nervously picking a flower from her wreath to pieces, petal by petal.

“Why, O king?” said I, restraining my indignation with difficulty; “the girl has danced well, and pleased us; she is fair too; it would be hard to reward her with death.”

Twala laughed as he answered—

“It is our custom, and the figures who sit in stone yonder,” and he pointed towards the three distant peaks, “must have their due. Did I fail to put the fairest girl to death today, misfortune would fall upon me and my house. Thus runs the prophecy of my people: ‘If the king offer not a sacrifice of a fair girl, on the day of the dance of maidens, to the Old Ones who sit and watch on the mountains, then shall he fall, and his house.’ Look ye, white men, my brother who reigned before me offered not the sacrifice, because of the tears of the woman, and he fell, and his house, and I reign in his stead. It is finished; she must die!” Then turning to the guards—“Bring her hither; Scragga, make sharp thy spear.”

Two of the men stepped forward, and as they advanced, the girl, for the first time realising her impending fate, screamed aloud and turned to fly. But the strong hands caught her fast, and brought her, struggling and weeping, before us.

“What is thy name, girl?” piped Gagool. “What! wilt thou not answer? Shall the king’s son do his work at once?”

At this hint, Scragga, looking more evil than ever, advanced a step and lifted his great spear, and at that moment I saw Good’s hand creep to his revolver. The poor girl caught the faint glint of steel through her tears, and it sobered her anguish. She ceased struggling, and clasping her hands convulsively, stood shuddering from head to foot.

“See,” cried Scragga in high glee, “she shrinks from the sight of my little plaything even before she has tasted it,” and he tapped the broad blade of his spear.

“If ever I get the chance you shall pay for that, you young hound!” I heard Good mutter beneath his breath.

“Now that thou art quiet, give us thy name, my dear. Come, speak out, and fear not,” said Gagool in mockery.

“Oh, mother,” answered the girl, in trembling accents, “my name is Foulata, of the house of Suko. Oh, mother, why must I die? I have done no wrong!”

“Be comforted,” went on the old woman in her hateful tone of mockery. “Thou must die, indeed, as a sacrifice to the Old Ones who sit yonder,” and she pointed to the peaks; “but it is better to sleep in the night than to toil in the daytime; it is better to die than to live, and thou shalt die by the royal hand of the king’s own son.”

The girl Foulata wrung her hands in anguish, and cried out aloud, “Oh, cruel! and I so young! What have I done that I should never again see the sun rise out of the night, or the stars come following on his track in the evening, that I may no more gather the flowers when the dew is heavy, or listen to the laughing of the waters? Woe is me, that I shall never see my father’s hut again, nor feel my mother’s kiss, nor tend the lamb that is sick! Woe is me, that no lover shall put his arm around me and look into my eyes, nor shall men children be born of me! Oh, cruel, cruel!”

And again she wrung her hands and turned her tear-stained flower-crowned face to Heaven, looking so lovely in her despair—for she was indeed a beautiful woman—that assuredly the sight of her would have melted the hearts of any less cruel than were the three fiends before us. Prince Arthur’s appeal to the ruffians who came to blind him was not more touching than that of this savage girl.

But it did not move Gagool or Gagool’s master, though I saw signs of pity among the guards behind, and on the faces of the chiefs; and as for Good, he gave a fierce snort of indignation, and made a motion as though to go to her assistance. With all a woman’s quickness, the doomed girl interpreted what was passing in his mind, and by a sudden movement flung herself before him, and clasped his “beautiful white legs” with her hands.

“Oh, white father from the Stars!” she cried, “throw over me the mantle of thy protection; let me creep into the shadow of thy strength, that I may be saved. Oh, keep me from these cruel men and from the mercies of Gagool!”

“All right, my hearty, I’ll look after you,” sang out Good in nervous Saxon. “Come, get up, there’s a good girl,” and he stooped and caught her hand.

Twala turned and motioned to his son, who advanced with his spear lifted.

“Now’s your time,” whispered Sir Henry to me; “what are you waiting for?”

“I am waiting for that eclipse,” I answered; “I have had my eye on the moon for the last half-hour, and I never saw it look healthier.”

“Well, you must risk it now, or the girl will be killed. Twala is losing patience.”

Recognising the force of the argument, and having cast one more despairing look at the bright face of the moon, for never did the most ardent astronomer with a theory to prove await a celestial event with such anxiety, I stepped with all the dignity that I could command between the prostrate girl and the advancing spear of Scragga.

“King,” I said, “it shall not be; we will not endure this thing; let the girl go in safety.”

Twala rose from his seat in wrath and astonishment, and from the chiefs and serried ranks of maidens who had closed in slowly upon us in anticipation of the tragedy came a murmur of amazement.

“Shall not be! thou white dog, that yappest at the lion in his cave; shall not be! art thou mad? Be careful, lest this chicken’s fate overtake thee, and those with thee. How canst thou save her or thyself? Who art thou that thou settest thyself between me and my will? Back, I say. Scragga, kill her! Ho, guards! seize these men.”

At his cry armed men ran swiftly from behind the hut, where they had evidently been placed beforehand.

Sir Henry, Good, and Umbopa ranged themselves alongside of me, and lifted their rifles.

“Stop!” I shouted boldly, though at the moment my heart was in my boots. “Stop! we, the white men from the Stars, say that it shall not be. Come but one pace nearer, and we will put out the moon like a wind-blown lamp, as we who dwell in her House can do, and plunge the land in darkness. Dare to disobey, and ye shall taste of our magic.”

My threat produced an effect; the men halted, and Scragga stood still before us, his spear lifted.

“Hear him! hear him!” piped Gagool; “hear the liar who says that he will put out the moon like a lamp. Let him do it, and the girl shall be speared. Yes, let him do it, or die by the girl, he and those with him.”

I glanced up at the moon despairingly, and now to my intense joy and relief saw that we—or rather the almanack—had made no mistake. On the edge of the great orb lay a faint rim of shadow, while a smoky hue grew and gathered upon its bright surface. Never shall I forget that supreme, that superb moment of relief.

Then I lifted my hand solemnly towards the sky, an example which Sir Henry and Good followed, and quoted a line or two from the “Ingoldsby Legends” at it in the most impressive tones that I could command. Sir Henry followed suit with a verse out of the Old Testament, and something about Balbus building a wall, in Latin, whilst Good addressed the Queen of Night in a volume of the most classical bad language which he could think of.

Slowly the penumbra, the shadow of a shadow, crept on over the bright surface, and as it crept I heard deep gasps of fear rising from the multitude around.

“Look, O king!” I cried; “look, Gagool! Look, chiefs and people and women, and see if the white men from the Stars keep their word, or if they be but empty liars!

“The moon grows black before your eyes; soon there will be darkness—ay, darkness in the hour of the full moon. Ye have asked for a sign; it is given to you. Grow dark, O Moon! withdraw thy light, thou pure and holy One; bring the proud heart of usurping murderers to the dust, and eat up the world with shadows.”

A groan of terror burst from the onlookers. Some stood petrified with dread, others threw themselves upon their knees and cried aloud. As for the king, he sat still and turned pale beneath his dusky skin. Only Gagool kept her courage.

“It will pass,” she cried; “I have often seen the like before; no man can put out the moon; lose not heart; sit still—the shadow will pass.”

“Wait, and ye shall see,” I replied, hopping with excitement. “O Moon! Moon! Moon! wherefore art thou so cold and fickle?” This appropriate quotation was from the pages of a popular romance that I chanced to have read recently, though now I come to think of it, it was ungrateful of me to abuse the Lady of the Heavens, who was showing herself to be the truest of friends to us, however she may have behaved to the impassioned lover in the novel. Then I added: “Keep it up, Good, I can’t remember any more poetry. Curse away, there’s a good fellow.”

Good responded nobly to this tax upon his inventive faculties. Never before had I the faintest conception of the breadth and depth and height of a naval officer’s objurgatory powers. For ten minutes he went on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever repeated himself.

Meanwhile the dark ring crept on, while all that great assembly fixed their eyes upon the sky and stared and stared in fascinated silence. Strange and unholy shadows encroached upon the moonlight, an ominous quiet filled the place. Everything grew still as death. Slowly and in the midst of this most solemn silence the minutes sped away, and while they sped the full moon passed deeper and deeper into the shadow of the earth, as the inky segment of its circle slid in awful majesty across the lunar craters. The great pale orb seemed to draw near and to grow in size. She turned a coppery hue, then that portion of her surface which was unobscured as yet grew grey and ashen, and at length, as totality approached, her mountains and her plains were to be seen glowing luridly through a crimson gloom.

On, yet on, crept the ring of darkness; it was now more than half across the blood-red orb. The air grew thick, and still more deeply tinged with dusky crimson. On, yet on, till we could scarcely see the fierce faces of the group before us. No sound rose now from the spectators, and at last Good stopped swearing.

“The moon is dying—the white wizards have killed the moon,” yelled the prince Scragga at last. “We shall all perish in the dark,” and animated by fear or fury, or by both, he lifted his spear and drove it with all his force at Sir Henry’s breast. But he forgot the mail shirts that the king had given us, and which we wore beneath our clothing. The steel rebounded harmless, and before he could repeat the blow Curtis had snatched the spear from his hand and sent it straight through him.

Scragga dropped dead.

At the sight, and driven mad with fear of the gathering darkness, and of the unholy shadow which, as they believed, was swallowing the moon, the companies of girls broke up in wild confusion, and ran screeching for the gateways. Nor did the panic stop there. The king himself, followed by his guards, some of the chiefs, and Gagool, who hobbled away after them with marvellous alacrity, fled for the huts, so that in another minute we ourselves, the would-be victim Foulata, Infadoos, and most of the chiefs who had interviewed us on the previous night, were left alone upon the scene, together with the dead body of Scragga, Twala’s son.

“Chiefs,” I said, “we have given you the sign. If ye are satisfied, let us fly swiftly to the place of which ye spoke. The charm cannot now be stopped. It will work for an hour and the half of an hour. Let us cover ourselves in the darkness.”

“Come,” said Infadoos, turning to go, an example which was followed by the awed captains, ourselves, and the girl Foulata, whom Good took by the arm.

Before we reached the gate of the kraal the moon went out utterly, and from every quarter of the firmament the stars rushed forth into the inky sky.

Holding each other by the hand we stumbled on through the darkness.

CHAPTER XII

BEFORE THE BATTLE

Luckily for us, Infadoos and the chiefs knew all the paths of the great town perfectly, so that we passed by side-ways unmolested, and notwithstanding the gloom we made fair progress.

For an hour or more we journeyed on, till at length the eclipse began to pass, and that edge of the moon which had disappeared the first became again visible. Suddenly, as we watched, there burst from it a silver streak of light, accompanied by a wondrous ruddy glow, which hung upon the blackness of the sky like a celestial lamp, and a wild and lovely sight it was. In another five minutes the stars began to fade, and there was sufficient light to see our whereabouts. We then discovered that we were clear of the town of Loo, and approaching a large flat-topped hill, measuring some two miles in circumference. This hill, which is of a formation common in South Africa, is not very high; indeed, its greatest elevation is scarcely more than 200 feet, but it is shaped like a horseshoe, and its sides are rather precipitous and strewn with boulders. On the grass table-land at its summit is ample camping-ground, which had been utilised as a military cantonment of no mean strength. Its ordinary garrison was one regiment of three thousand men, but as we toiled up the steep side of the mountain in the returning moonlight we perceived that there were several of such regiments encamped there.

Reaching the table-land at last, we found crowds of men roused from their sleep, shivering with fear and huddled up together in the utmost consternation at the natural phenomenon which they were witnessing. Passing through these without a word, we gained a hut in the centre of the ground, where we were astonished to find two men waiting, laden with our few goods and chattels, which of course we had been obliged to leave behind in our hasty flight.

“I sent for them,” explained Infadoos; “and also for these,” and he lifted up Good’s long-lost trousers.

With an exclamation of rapturous delight Good sprang at them, and instantly proceeded to put them on.

“Surely my lord will not hide his beautiful white legs!” exclaimed Infadoos regretfully.

But Good persisted, and once only did the Kukuana people get the chance of seeing his beautiful legs again. Good is a very modest man. Henceforward they had to satisfy their æsthetic longings with his one whisker, his transparent eye, and his movable teeth.

Still gazing with fond remembrance at Good’s trousers, Infadoos next informed us that he had commanded the regiments to muster so soon as the day broke, in order to explain to them fully the origin and circumstances of the rebellion which was decided on by the chiefs, and to introduce to them the rightful heir to the throne, Ignosi.

Accordingly, when the sun was up, the troops—in all some twenty thousand men, and the flower of the Kukuana army—were mustered on a large open space, to which we went. The men were drawn up in three sides of a dense square, and presented a magnificent spectacle. We took our station on the open side of the square, and were speedily surrounded by all the principal chiefs and officers.

These, after silence had been proclaimed, Infadoos proceeded to address. He narrated to them in vigorous and graceful language—for, like most Kukuanas of high rank, he was a born orator—the history of Ignosi’s father, and of how he had been basely murdered by Twala the king, and his wife and child driven out to starve. Then he pointed out that the people suffered and groaned under Twala’s cruel rule, instancing the proceedings of the previous night, when, under pretence of their being evil-doers, many of the noblest in the land had been dragged forth and wickedly done to death. Next he went on to say that the white lords from the Stars, looking down upon their country, had perceived its trouble, and determined, at great personal inconvenience, to alleviate its lot: That they had accordingly taken the real king of the Kukuanas, Ignosi, who was languishing in exile, by the hand, and led him over the mountains: That they had seen the wickedness of Twala’s doings, and for a sign to the wavering, and to save the life of the girl Foulata, actually, by the exercise of their high magic, had put out the moon and slain the young fiend Scragga; and that they were prepared to stand by them, and assist them to overthrow Twala, and set up the rightful king, Ignosi, in his place.

He finished his discourse amidst a murmur of approbation. Then Ignosi stepped forward and began to speak. Having reiterated all that Infadoos his uncle had said, he concluded a powerful speech in these words:—

“O chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people, ye have heard my words. Now must ye make choice between me and him who sits upon my throne, the uncle who killed his brother, and hunted his brother’s child forth to die in the cold and the night. That I am indeed the king these”—pointing to the chiefs—“can tell you, for they have seen the snake about my middle. If I were not the king, would these white men be on my side with all their magic? Tremble, chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people! Is not the darkness they have brought upon the land to confound Twala and cover our flight, darkness even in the hour of the full moon, yet before your eyes?”

“It is,” answered the soldiers.

“I am the king; I say to you, I am the king,” went on Ignosi, drawing up his great stature to its full, and lifting his broad-bladed battle-axe above his head. “If there be any man among you who says that it is not so, let him stand forth and I will fight him now, and his blood shall be a red token that I tell you true. Let him stand forth, I say;” and he shook the great axe till it flashed in the sunlight.

As nobody seemed inclined to respond to this heroic version of “Dilly, Dilly, come and be killed,” our late henchman proceeded with his address.

“I am indeed the king, and should ye stand by my side in the battle, if I win the day ye shall go with me to victory and honour. I will give you oxen and wives, and ye shall take place of all the regiments; and if ye fall, I will fall with you.

“And behold, I give you this promise, that when I sit upon the seat of my fathers, bloodshed shall cease in the land. No longer shall ye cry for justice to find slaughter, no longer shall the witch-finder hunt you out so that ye may be slain without a cause. No man shall die save he who offends against the laws. The ‘eating up’ of your kraals shall cease; each one of you shall sleep secure in his own hut and fear naught, and justice shall walk blindfold throughout the land. Have ye chosen, chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people?”

“We have chosen, O king,” came back the answer.

“It is well. Turn your heads and see how Twala’s messengers go forth from the great town, east and west, and north and south, to gather a mighty army to slay me and you, and these my friends and protectors. Tomorrow, or perchance the next day, he will come against us with all who are faithful to him. Then I shall see the man who is indeed my man, the man who fears not to die for his cause; and I tell you that he shall not be forgotten in the time of spoil. I have spoken, O chiefs, captains, soldiers, and people. Now go to your huts and make you ready for war.”

There was a pause, till presently one of the chiefs lifted his hand, and out rolled the royal salute, “Koom.” It was a sign that the soldiers accepted Ignosi as their king. Then they marched off in battalions.

Half an hour afterwards we held a council of war, at which all the commanders of regiments were present. It was evident to us that before very long we should be attacked in overwhelming force. Indeed, from our point of vantage on the hill we could see troops mustering, and runners going forth from Loo in every direction, doubtless to summon soldiers to the king’s assistance. We had on our side about twenty thousand men, composed of seven of the best regiments in the country. Twala, so Infadoos and the chiefs calculated, had at least thirty to thirty-five thousand on whom he could rely at present assembled in Loo, and they thought that by midday on the morrow he would be able to gather another five thousand or more to his aid. It was, of course, possible that some of his troops would desert and come over to us, but it was not a contingency which could be reckoned on. Meanwhile, it was clear that active preparations were being made by Twala to subdue us. Already strong bodies of armed men were patrolling round and round the foot of the hill, and there were other signs also of coming assault.

Infadoos and the chiefs, however, were of opinion that no attack would take place that day, which would be devoted to preparation and to the removal of every available means of the moral effect produced upon the minds of the soldiery by the supposed magical darkening of the moon. The onslaught would be on the morrow, they said, and they proved to be right.

Meanwhile, we set to work to strengthen the position in all ways possible. Almost every man was turned out, and in the course of the day, which seemed far too short, much was done. The paths up the hill—that was rather a sanatorium than a fortress, being used generally as the camping place of regiments suffering from recent service in unhealthy portions of the country—were carefully blocked with masses of stones, and every other approach was made as impregnable as time would allow. Piles of boulders were collected at various spots to be rolled down upon an advancing enemy, stations were appointed to the different regiments, and all preparation was made which our joint ingenuity could suggest.

Just before sundown, as we rested after our toil, we perceived a small company of men advancing towards us from the direction of Loo, one of whom bore a palm leaf in his hand for a sign that he came as a herald.

As he drew near, Ignosi, Infadoos, one or two chiefs and ourselves, went down to the foot of the mountain to meet him. He was a gallant-looking fellow, wearing the regulation leopard-skin cloak.

“Greeting!” he cried, as he came; “the king’s greeting to those who make unholy war against the king; the lion’s greeting to the jackals that snarl around his heels.”

“Speak,” I said.

“These are the king’s words. Surrender to the king’s mercy ere a worse thing befall you. Already the shoulder has been torn from the black bull, and the king drives him bleeding about the camp.”8

“What are Twala’s terms?” I asked from curiosity.

“His terms are merciful, worthy of a great king. These are the words of Twala, the one-eyed, the mighty, the husband of a thousand wives, lord of the Kukuanas, keeper of the Great Road (Solomon’s Road), beloved of the Strange Ones who sit in silence at the mountains yonder (the Three Witches), Calf of the Black Cow, Elephant whose tread shakes the earth, Terror of the evil-doer, Ostrich whose feet devour the desert, huge One, black One, wise One, king from generation to generation! these are the words of Twala: ‘I will have mercy and be satisfied with a little blood. One in every ten shall die, the rest shall go free; but the white man Incubu, who slew Scragga my son, and the black man his servant, who pretends to my throne, and Infadoos my brother, who brews rebellion against me, these shall die by torture as an offering to the Silent Ones.’ Such are the merciful words of Twala.”

After consulting with the others a little, I answered him in a loud voice, so that the soldiers might hear, thus—

“Go back, thou dog, to Twala, who sent thee, and say that we, Ignosi, veritable king of the Kukuanas, Incubu, Bougwan, and Macumazahn, the wise ones from the Stars, who make dark the moon, Infadoos, of the royal house, and the chiefs, captains, and people here gathered, make answer and say, ‘That we will not surrender; that before the sun has gone down twice, Twala’s corpse shall stiffen at Twala’s gate, and Ignosi, whose father Twala slew, shall reign in his stead.’ Now go, ere we whip thee away, and beware how thou dost lift a hand against such as we are.”

The herald laughed loudly. “Ye frighten not men with such swelling words,” he cried out. “Show yourselves as bold tomorrow, O ye who darken the moon. Be bold, fight, and be merry, before the crows pick your bones till they are whiter than your faces. Farewell; perhaps we may meet in the fight; fly not to the Stars, but wait for me, I pray, white men.” With this shaft of sarcasm he retired, and almost immediately the sun sank.

That night was a busy one, for weary as we were, so far as was possible by the moonlight all preparations for the morrow’s fight were continued, and messengers were constantly coming and going from the place where we sat in council. At last, about an hour after midnight, everything that could be done was done, and the camp, save for the occasional challenge of a sentry, sank into silence. Sir Henry and I, accompanied by Ignosi and one of the chiefs, descended the hill and made a round of the pickets. As we went, suddenly, from all sorts of unexpected places, spears gleamed out in the moonlight, only to vanish again when we uttered the password. It was clear to us that none were sleeping at their posts. Then we returned, picking our way warily through thousands of sleeping warriors, many of whom were taking their last earthly rest.

The moonlight flickering along their spears, played upon their features and made them ghastly; the chilly night wind tossed their tall and hearse-like plumes. There they lay in wild confusion, with arms outstretched and twisted limbs; their stern, stalwart forms looking weird and unhuman in the moonlight.

“How many of these do you suppose will be alive at this time tomorrow?” asked Sir Henry.

I shook my head and looked again at the sleeping men, and to my tired and yet excited imagination it seemed as though Death had already touched them. My mind’s eye singled out those who were sealed to slaughter, and there rushed in upon my heart a great sense of the mystery of human life, and an overwhelming sorrow at its futility and sadness. Tonight these thousands slept their healthy sleep, tomorrow they, and many others with them, ourselves perhaps among them, would be stiffening in the cold; their wives would be widows, their children fatherless, and their place know them no more for ever. Only the old moon would shine on serenely, the night wind would stir the grasses, and the wide earth would take its rest, even as it did æons before we were, and will do æons after we have been forgotten.

Yet man dies not whilst the world, at once his mother and his monument, remains. His name is lost, indeed, but the breath he breathed still stirs the pine-tops on the mountains, the sound of the words he spoke yet echoes on through space; the thoughts his brain gave birth to we have inherited today; his passions are our cause of life; the joys and sorrows that he knew are our familiar friends—the end from which he fled aghast will surely overtake us also!

Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyard spectres, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again for ever.

All sorts of reflections of this nature passed through my mind—for as I grow older I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me—while I stood and stared at those grim yet fantastic lines of warriors, sleeping, as their saying goes, “upon their spears.”

“Curtis,” I said, “I am in a condition of pitiable fear.”

Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard and laughed, as he answered—

“I have heard you make that sort of remark before, Quatermain.”

“Well, I mean it now. Do you know, I very much doubt if one of us will be alive tomorrow night. We shall be attacked in overwhelming force, and it is quite a chance if we can hold this place.”

“We’ll give a good account of some of them, at any rate. Look here, Quatermain, this business is nasty, and one with which, properly speaking, we ought not to be mixed up, but we are in for it, so we must make the best of our job. Speaking personally, I had rather be killed fighting than any other way, and now that there seems little chance of our finding my poor brother, it makes the idea easier to me. But fortune favours the brave, and we may succeed. Anyway, the battle will be awful, and having a reputation to keep up, we shall need to be in the thick of the thing.”

He made this last remark in a mournful voice, but there was a gleam in his eye which belied its melancholy. I have an idea Sir Henry Curtis actually likes fighting.

After this we went to sleep for a couple of hours or so.

Just about dawn we were awakened by Infadoos, who came to say that great activity was to be observed in Loo, and that parties of the king’s skirmishers were driving in our outposts.

We rose and dressed ourselves for the fray, each putting on his chain armour shirt, for which garments at the present juncture we felt exceedingly thankful. Sir Henry went the whole length about the matter, and dressed himself like a native warrior. “When you are in Kukuanaland, do as the Kukuanas do,” he remarked, as he drew the shining steel over his broad breast, which it fitted like a glove. Nor did he stop there. At his request Infadoos had provided him with a complete set of native war uniform. Round his throat he fastened the leopard-skin cloak of a commanding officer, on his brows he bound the plume of black ostrich feathers worn only by generals of high rank, and about his middle a magnificent moocha of white ox-tails. A pair of sandals, a leglet of goat’s hair, a heavy battle-axe with a rhinoceros-horn handle, a round iron shield covered with white ox-hide, and the regulation number of tollas, or throwing-knives, made up his equipment, to which, however, he added his revolver. The dress was, no doubt, a savage one, but I am bound to say that I seldom saw a finer sight than Sir Henry Curtis presented in this guise. It showed off his magnificent physique to the greatest advantage, and when Ignosi arrived presently, arrayed in a similar costume, I thought to myself that I had never before seen two such splendid men.

As for Good and myself, the armour did not suit us nearly so well. To begin with, Good insisted upon keeping on his new-found trousers, and a stout, short gentleman with an eye-glass, and one half of his face shaved, arrayed in a mail shirt, carefully tucked into a very seedy pair of corduroys, looks more remarkable than imposing. In my case, the chain shirt being too big for me, I put it on over all my clothes, which caused it to bulge in a somewhat ungainly fashion. I discarded my trousers, however, retaining only my veldtschoons, having determined to go into battle with bare legs, in order to be the lighter for running, in case it became necessary to retire quickly. The mail coat, a spear, a shield, that I did not know how to use, a couple of tollas, a revolver, and a huge plume, which I pinned into the top of my shooting hat, in order to give a bloodthirsty finish to my appearance, completed my modest equipment. In addition to all these articles, of course we had our rifles, but as ammunition was scarce, and as they would be useless in case of a charge, we arranged that they should be carried behind us by bearers.

When at length we had equipped ourselves, we swallowed some food hastily, and then started out to see how things were going on. At one point in the table-land of the mountain, there was a little koppie of brown stone, which served the double purpose of head-quarters and of a conning tower. Here we found Infadoos surrounded by his own regiment, the Greys, which was undoubtedly the finest in the Kukuana army, and the same that we had first seen at the outlying kraal. This regiment, now three thousand five hundred strong, was being held in reserve, and the men were lying down on the grass in companies, and watching the king’s forces creep out of Loo in long ant-like columns. There seemed to be no end to the length of these columns—three in all, and each of them numbering, as we judged, at least eleven or twelve thousand men.

As soon as they were clear of the town the regiments formed up. Then one body marched off to the right, one to the left, and the third came on slowly towards us.

“Ah,” said Infadoos, “they are going to attack us on three sides at once.”

This seemed rather serious news, for our position on the top of the mountain, which measured a mile and a half in circumference, being an extended one, it was important to us to concentrate our comparatively small defending force as much as possible. But since it was impossible for us to dictate in what way we should be assailed, we had to make the best of it, and accordingly sent orders to the various regiments to prepare to receive the separate onslaughts.

8 This cruel custom is not confined to the Kukuanas, but is by no means uncommon amongst African tribes on the occasion of the outbreak of war or any other important public event.—A.Q.

8 This cruel custom is not confined to the Kukuanas, but is by no means uncommon amongst African tribes on the occasion of the outbreak of war or any other important public event.—A.Q.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ATTACK

Slowly, and without the slightest appearance of haste or excitement, the three columns crept on. When within about five hundred yards of us, the main or centre column halted at the root of a tongue of open plain which ran up into the hill, to give time to the other divisions to circumvent our position, which was shaped more or less in the form of a horse-shoe, with its two points facing towards the town of Loo. The object of this manoeuvre was that the threefold assault should be delivered simultaneously.

“Oh, for a gatling!” groaned Good, as he contemplated the serried phalanxes beneath us. “I would clear that plain in twenty minutes.”

“We have not got one, so it is no use yearning for it; but suppose you try a shot, Quatermain,” said Sir Henry. “See how near you can go to that tall fellow who appears to be in command. Two to one you miss him, and an even sovereign, to be honestly paid if ever we get out of this, that you don’t drop the bullet within five yards.”

This piqued me, so, loading the express with solid ball, I waited till my friend walked some ten yards out from his force, in order to get a better view of our position, accompanied only by an orderly; then, lying down and resting the express on a rock, I covered him. The rifle, like all expresses, was only sighted to three hundred and fifty yards, so to allow for the drop in trajectory I took him half-way down the neck, which ought, I calculated, to find him in the chest. He stood quite still and gave me every opportunity, but whether it was the excitement or the wind, or the fact of the man being a long shot, I don’t know, but this was what happened. Getting dead on, as I thought, a fine sight, I pressed, and when the puff of smoke had cleared away, to my disgust, I saw my man standing there unharmed, whilst his orderly, who was at least three paces to the left, was stretched upon the ground apparently dead. Turning swiftly, the officer I had aimed at began to run towards his men in evident alarm.

“Bravo, Quatermain!” sang out Good; “you’ve frightened him.”

This made me very angry, for, if possible to avoid it, I hate to miss in public. When a man is master of only one art he likes to keep up his reputation in that art. Moved quite out of myself at my failure, I did a rash thing. Rapidly covering the general as he ran, I let drive with the second barrel. Instantly the poor man threw up his arms, and fell forward on to his face. This time I had made no mistake; and—I say it as a proof of how little we think of others when our own safety, pride, or reputation is in question—I was brute enough to feel delighted at the sight.

The regiments who had seen the feat cheered wildly at this exhibition of the white man’s magic, which they took as an omen of success, while the force the general had belonged to—which, indeed, as we ascertained afterwards, he had commanded—fell back in confusion. Sir Henry and Good now took up their rifles and began to fire, the latter industriously “browning” the dense mass before him with another Winchester repeater, and I also had another shot or two, with the result, so far as we could judge, that we put some six or eight men hors de combat before they were out of range.

Just as we stopped firing there came an ominous roar from our far right, then a similar roar rose on our left. The two other divisions were engaging us.

At the sound, the mass of men before us opened out a little, and advanced towards the hill and up the spit of bare grass land at a slow trot, singing a deep-throated song as they ran. We kept up a steady fire from our rifles as they came, Ignosi joining in occasionally, and accounted for several men, but of course we produced no more effect upon that mighty rush of armed humanity than he who throws pebbles does on the breaking wave.

On they came, with a shout and the clashing of spears; now they were driving in the pickets we had placed among the rocks at the foot of the hill. After that the advance was a little slower, for though as yet we had offered no serious opposition, the attacking forces must climb up hill, and they came slowly to save their breath. Our first line of defence was about half-way down the side of the slope, our second fifty yards further back, while our third occupied the edge of the plateau.

On they stormed, shouting their war-cry, “Twala! Twala! Chiele! Chiele!” (Twala! Twala! Smite! Smite!) “Ignosi! Ignosi! Chiele! Chiele!” answered our people. They were quite close now, and the tollas, or throwing-knives, began to flash backwards and forwards, and now with an awful yell the battle closed in.

To and fro swayed the mass of struggling warriors, men falling fast as leaves in an autumn wind; but before long the superior weight of the attacking force began to tell, and our first line of defence was slowly pressed back till it merged into the second. Here the struggle was very fierce, but again our people were driven back and up, till at length, within twenty minutes of the commencement of the fight, our third line came into action.

But by this time the assailants were much exhausted, and besides had lost many men killed and wounded, and to break through that third impenetrable hedge of spears proved beyond their powers. For a while the seething lines of savages swung backwards and forwards, in the fierce ebb and flow of battle, and the issue was doubtful. Sir Henry watched the desperate struggle with a kindling eye, and then without a word he rushed off, followed by Good, and flung himself into the hottest of the fray. As for myself, I stopped where I was.

The soldiers caught sight of his tall form as he plunged into battle, and there rose a cry of—

“Nanzia Incubu! Nanzia Unkungunklovo!” (Here is the Elephant!) “Chiele! Chiele!”

From that moment the end was no longer in doubt. Inch by inch, fighting with splendid gallantry, the attacking force was pressed back down the hillside, till at last it retreated upon its reserves in something like confusion. At that instant, too, a messenger arrived to say that the left attack had been repulsed; and I was just beginning to congratulate myself, believing that the affair was over for the present, when, to our horror, we perceived our men who had been engaged in the right defence being driven towards us across the plain, followed by swarms of the enemy, who had evidently succeeded at this point.

Ignosi, who was standing by me, took in the situation at a glance, and issued a rapid order. Instantly the reserve regiment around us, the Greys, extended itself.

Again Ignosi gave a word of command, which was taken up and repeated by the captains, and in another second, to my intense disgust, I found myself involved in a furious onslaught upon the advancing foe. Getting as much as I could behind Ignosi’s huge frame, I made the best of a bad job, and toddled along to be killed as though I liked it. In a minute or two—we were plunging through the flying groups of our men, who at once began to re-form behind us, and then I am sure I do not know what happened. All I can remember is a dreadful rolling noise of the meeting of shields, and the sudden apparition of a huge ruffian, whose eyes seemed literally to be starting out of his head, making straight at me with a bloody spear. But—I say it with pride—I rose—or rather sank—to the occasion. It was one before which most people would have collapsed once and for all. Seeing that if I stood where I was I must be killed, as the horrid apparition came I flung myself down in front of him so cleverly that, being unable to stop himself, he took a header right over my prostrate form. Before he could rise again, I had risen and settled the matter from behind with my revolver.

Shortly after this somebody knocked me down, and I remember no more of that charge.

When I came to I found myself back at the koppie, with Good bending over me holding some water in a gourd.

“How do you feel, old fellow?” he asked anxiously.

I got up and shook myself before replying.

“Pretty well, thank you,” I answered.

“Thank Heaven! When I saw them carry you in, I felt quite sick; I thought you were done for.”

“Not this time, my boy. I fancy I only got a rap on the head, which knocked me stupid. How has it ended?”

“They are repulsed at every point for a while. The loss is dreadfully heavy; we have quite two thousand killed and wounded, and they must have lost three. Look, there’s a sight!” and he pointed to long lines of men advancing by fours.

In the centre of every group of four, and being borne by it, was a kind of hide tray, of which a Kukuana force always carries a quantity, with a loop for a handle at each corner. On these trays—and their number seemed endless—lay wounded men, who as they arrived were hastily examined by the medicine men, of whom ten were attached to a regiment. If the wound was not of a fatal character the sufferer was taken away and attended to as carefully as circumstances would allow. But if, on the other hand, the injured man’s condition proved hopeless, what followed was very dreadful, though doubtless it may have been the truest mercy. One of the doctors, under pretence of carrying out an examination, swiftly opened an artery with a sharp knife, and in a minute or two the sufferer expired painlessly. There were many cases that day in which this was done. In fact, it was done in the majority of cases when the wound was in the body, for the gash made by the entry of the enormously broad spears used by the Kukuanas generally rendered recovery impossible. In most instances the poor sufferers were already unconscious, and in others the fatal “nick” of the artery was inflicted so swiftly and painlessly that they did not seem to notice it. Still it was a ghastly sight, and one from which we were glad to escape; indeed, I never remember anything of the kind that affected me more than seeing those gallant soldiers thus put out of pain by the red-handed medicine men, except, indeed, on one occasion when, after an attack, I saw a force of Swazis burying their hopelessly wounded alive.

Hurrying from this dreadful scene to the further side of the koppie, we found Sir Henry, who still held a battle-axe in his hand, Ignosi, Infadoos, and one or two of the chiefs in deep consultation.

“Thank Heaven, here you are, Quatermain! I can’t quite make out what Ignosi wants to do. It seems that though we have beaten off the attack, Twala is now receiving large reinforcements, and is showing a disposition to invest us, with the view of starving us out.”

“That’s awkward.”

“Yes; especially as Infadoos says that the water supply has given out.”

“My lord, that is so,” said Infadoos; “the spring cannot supply the wants of so great a multitude, and it is failing rapidly. Before night we shall all be thirsty. Listen, Macumazahn. Thou art wise, and hast doubtless seen many wars in the lands from whence thou camest—that is if indeed they make wars in the Stars. Now tell us, what shall we do? Twala has brought up many fresh men to take the place of those who have fallen. Yet Twala has learnt his lesson; the hawk did not think to find the heron ready; but our beak has pierced his breast; he fears to strike at us again. We too are wounded, and he will wait for us to die; he will wind himself round us like a snake round a buck, and fight the fight of ‘sit down.’”

“I hear thee,” I said.

“So, Macumazahn, thou seest we have no water here, and but a little food, and we must choose between these three things—to languish like a starving lion in his den, or to strive to break away towards the north, or”—and here he rose and pointed towards the dense mass of our foes—“to launch ourselves straight at Twala’s throat. Incubu, the great warrior—for today he fought like a buffalo in a net, and Twala’s soldiers went down before his axe like young corn before the hail; with these eyes I saw it—Incubu says ‘Charge’; but the Elephant is ever prone to charge. Now what says Macumazahn, the wily old fox, who has seen much, and loves to bite his enemy from behind? The last word is in Ignosi the king, for it is a king’s right to speak of war; but let us hear thy voice, O Macumazahn, who watchest by night, and the voice too of him of the transparent eye.”

“What sayest thou, Ignosi,” I asked.

“Nay, my father,” answered our quondam servant, who now, clad as he was in the full panoply of savage war, looked every inch a warrior king, “do thou speak, and let me, who am but a child in wisdom beside thee, hearken to thy words.”

Thus adjured, after taking hasty counsel with Good and Sir Henry, I delivered my opinion briefly to the effect that, being trapped, our best chance, especially in view of the failure of our water supply, was to initiate an attack upon Twala’s forces. Then I recommended that the attack should be delivered at once, “before our wounds grew stiff,” and also before the sight of Twala’s overpowering force caused the hearts of our soldiers “to wax small like fat before a fire.” Otherwise, I pointed out, some of the captains might change their minds, and, making peace with Twala, desert to him, or even betray us into his hands.

This expression of opinion seemed, on the whole, to be favourably received; indeed, among the Kukuanas my utterances met with a respect which has never been accorded to them before or since. But the real decision as to our plans lay with Ignosi, who, since he had been recognised as rightful king, could exercise the almost unbounded rights of sovereignty, including, of course, the final decision on matters of generalship, and it was to him that all eyes were now turned.

At length, after a pause, during which he appeared to be thinking deeply, he spoke.

“Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, brave white men, and my friends; Infadoos, my uncle, and chiefs; my heart is fixed. I will strike at Twala this day, and set my fortunes on the blow, ay, and my life—my life and your lives also. Listen; thus will I strike. Ye see how the hill curves round like the half-moon, and how the plain runs like a green tongue towards us within the curve?”

“We see,” I answered.

“Good; it is now mid-day, and the men eat and rest after the toil of battle. When the sun has turned and travelled a little way towards the darkness, let thy regiment, my uncle, advance with one other down to the green tongue, and it shall be that when Twala sees it he will hurl his force at it to crush it. But the spot is narrow, and the regiments can come against thee one at a time only; so may they be destroyed one by one, and the eyes of all Twala’s army shall be fixed upon a struggle the like of which has not been seen by living man. And with thee, my uncle, shall go Incubu my friend, that when Twala sees his battle-axe flashing in the first rank of the Greys his heart may grow faint. And I will come with the second regiment, that which follows thee, so that if ye are destroyed, as it might happen, there may yet be a king left to fight for; and with me shall come Macumazahn the wise.”

“It is well, O king,” said Infadoos, apparently contemplating the certainty of the complete annihilation of his regiment with perfect calmness. Truly, these Kukuanas are a wonderful people. Death has no terrors for them when it is incurred in the course of duty.

“And whilst the eyes of the multitude of Twala’s soldiers are thus fixed upon the fight,” went on Ignosi, “behold, one-third of the men who are left alive to us (i.e. about 6,000) shall creep along the right horn of the hill and fall upon the left flank of Twala’s force, and one-third shall creep along the left horn and fall upon Twala’s right flank. And when I see that the horns are ready to toss Twala, then will I, with the men who remain to me, charge home in Twala’s face, and if fortune goes with us the day will be ours, and before Night drives her black oxen from the mountains to the mountains we shall sit in peace at Loo. And now let us eat and make ready; and, Infadoos, do thou prepare, that the plan be carried out without fail; and stay, let my white father Bougwan go with the right horn, that his shining eye may give courage to the captains.”

The arrangements for attack thus briefly indicated were set in motion with a rapidity that spoke well for the perfection of the Kukuana military system. Within little more than an hour rations had been served out and devoured, the divisions were formed, the scheme of onslaught was explained to the leaders, and the whole force, numbering about 18,000 men, was ready to move, with the exception of a guard left in charge of the wounded.

Presently Good came up to Sir Henry and myself.

“Good-bye, you fellows,” he said; “I am off with the right wing according to orders; and so I have come to shake hands, in case we should not meet again, you know,” he added significantly.

We shook hands in silence, and not without the exhibition of as much emotion as Anglo-Saxons are wont to show.

“It is a queer business,” said Sir Henry, his deep voice shaking a little, “and I confess I never expect to see tomorrow’s sun. So far as I can make out, the Greys, with whom I am to go, are to fight until they are wiped out in order to enable the wings to slip round unawares and outflank Twala. Well, so be it; at any rate, it will be a man’s death. Good-bye, old fellow. God bless you! I hope you will pull through and live to collar the diamonds; but if you do, take my advice and don’t have anything more to do with Pretenders!”

In another second Good had wrung us both by the hand and gone; and then Infadoos came up and led off Sir Henry to his place in the forefront of the Greys, whilst, with many misgivings, I departed with Ignosi to my station in the second attacking regiment.

CHAPTER XIV

THE LAST STAND OF THE GREYS

In a few more minutes the regiments destined to carry out the flanking movements had tramped off in silence, keeping carefully to the lee of the rising ground in order to conceal their advance from the keen eyes of Twala’s scouts.

Half an hour or more was allowed to elapse between the setting out of the horns or wings of the army before any stir was made by the Greys and their supporting regiment, known as the Buffaloes, which formed its chest, and were destined to bear the brunt of the battle.

Both of these regiments were almost perfectly fresh, and of full strength, the Greys having been in reserve in the morning, and having lost but a small number of men in sweeping back that part of the attack which had proved successful in breaking the line of defence, on the occasion when I charged with them and was stunned for my pains. As for the Buffaloes, they had formed the third line of defence on the left, and since the attacking force at that point had not succeeded in breaking through the second, they had scarcely come into action at all.

Infadoos, who was a wary old general, and knew the absolute importance of keeping up the spirits of his men on the eve of such a desperate encounter, employed the pause in addressing his own regiment, the Greys, in poetical language: explaining to them the honour that they were receiving in being put thus in the forefront of the battle, and in having the great white warrior from the Stars to fight with them in their ranks; and promising large rewards of cattle and promotion to all who survived in the event of Ignosi’s arms being successful.

I looked down the long lines of waving black plumes and stern faces beneath them, and sighed to think that within one short hour most, if not all, of those magnificent veteran warriors, not a man of whom was under forty years of age, would be laid dead or dying in the dust. It could not be otherwise; they were being condemned, with that wise recklessness of human life which marks the great general, and often saves his forces and attains his ends, to certain slaughter, in order to give their cause and the remainder of the army a chance of success. They were foredoomed to die, and they knew the truth. It was to be their task to engage regiment after regiment of Twala’s army on the narrow strip of green beneath us, till they were exterminated or till the wings found a favourable opportunity for their onslaught. And yet they never hesitated, nor could I detect a sign of fear upon the face of a single warrior. There they were—going to certain death, about to quit the blessed light of day for ever, and yet able to contemplate their doom without a tremor. Even at that moment I could not help contrasting their state of mind with my own, which was far from comfortable, and breathing a sigh of envy and admiration. Never before had I seen such an absolute devotion to the idea of duty, and such a complete indifference to its bitter fruits.

“Behold your king!” ended old Infadoos, pointing to Ignosi; “go fight and fall for him, as is the duty of brave men, and cursed and shameful for ever be the name of him who shrinks from death for his king, or who turns his back to the foe. Behold your king, chiefs, captains, and soldiers! Now do your homage to the sacred Snake, and then follow on, that Incubu and I may show you a road to the heart of Twala’s host.”

There was a moment’s pause, then suddenly a murmur arose from the serried phalanxes before us, a sound like the distant whisper of the sea, caused by the gentle tapping of the handles of six thousand spears against their holders’ shields. Slowly it swelled, till its growing volume deepened and widened into a roar of rolling noise, that echoed like thunder against the mountains, and filled the air with heavy waves of sound. Then it decreased, and by faint degrees died away into nothing, and suddenly out crashed the royal salute.

Ignosi, I thought to myself, might well be a proud man that day, for no Roman emperor ever had such a salutation from gladiators “about to die.”

Ignosi acknowledged this magnificent act of homage by lifting his battle-axe, and then the Greys filed off in a triple-line formation, each line containing about one thousand fighting men, exclusive of officers. When the last companies had advanced some five hundred yards, Ignosi put himself at the head of the Buffaloes, which regiment was drawn up in a similar three-fold formation, and gave the word to march, and off we went, I, needless to say, uttering the most heartfelt prayers that I might emerge from that entertainment with a whole skin. Many a queer position have I found myself in, but never before in one quite so unpleasant as the present, or one in which my chance of coming off safe was smaller.

By the time that we reached the edge of the plateau the Greys were already half-way down the slope ending in the tongue of grass land that ran up into the bend of the mountain, something as the frog of a horse’s foot runs up into the shoe. The excitement in Twala’s camp on the plain beyond was very great, and regiment after regiment was starting forward at a long swinging trot in order to reach the root of the tongue of land before the attacking force could emerge into the plain of Loo.

This tongue, which was some four hundred yards in depth, even at its root or widest part was not more than six hundred and fifty paces across, while at its tip it scarcely measured ninety. The Greys, who, in passing down the side of the hill and on to the tip of the tongue, had formed into a column, on reaching the spot where it broadened out again, reassumed their triple-line formation, and halted dead.

Then we—that is, the Buffaloes—moved down the tip of the tongue and took our stand in reserve, about one hundred yards behind the last line of the Greys, and on slightly higher ground. Meanwhile we had leisure to observe Twala’s entire force, which evidently had been reinforced since the morning attack, and could not now, notwithstanding their losses, number less than forty thousand, moving swiftly up towards us. But as they drew near the root of the tongue they hesitated, having discovered that only one regiment could advance into the gorge at a time, and that there, some seventy yards from the mouth of it, unassailable except in front, on account of the high walls of boulder-strewn ground on each side, stood the famous regiment of Greys, the pride and glory of the Kukuana army, ready to hold the way against their power as the three Romans once held the bridge against thousands.

They hesitated, and finally stopped their advance; there was no eagerness to cross spears with these three grim ranks of warriors who stood so firm and ready. Presently, however, a tall general, wearing the customary head-dress of nodding ostrich plumes, appeared, attended by a group of chiefs and orderlies, being, I thought, none other than Twala himself. He gave an order, and the first regiment, raising a shout, charged up towards the Greys, who remained perfectly still and silent till the attacking troops were within forty yards, and a volley of tollas, or throwing-knives, came rattling among their ranks.

Then suddenly with a bound and a roar, they sprang forward with uplifted spears, and the regiment met in deadly strife. Next second the roll of the meeting shields came to our ears like the sound of thunder, and the plain seemed to be alive with flashes of light reflected from the shimmering spears. To and fro swung the surging mass of struggling, stabbing humanity, but not for long. Suddenly the attacking lines began to grow thinner, and then with a slow, long heave the Greys passed over them, just as a great wave heaves up its bulk and passes over a sunken ridge. It was done; that regiment was completely destroyed, but the Greys had but two lines left now; a third of their number were dead.

Closing up shoulder to shoulder, once more they halted in silence and awaited attack; and I was rejoiced to catch sight of Sir Henry’s yellow beard as he moved to and fro arranging the ranks. So he was yet alive!

Meanwhile we moved on to the ground of the encounter, which was cumbered by about four thousand prostrate human beings, dead, dying, and wounded, and literally stained red with blood. Ignosi issued an order, which was rapidly passed down the ranks, to the effect that none of the enemy’s wounded were to be killed, and so far as we could see this command was scrupulously carried out. It would have been a shocking sight, if we had found time to think of such things.

But now a second regiment, distinguished by white plumes, kilts, and shields, was moving to the attack of the two thousand remaining Greys, who stood waiting in the same ominous silence as before, till the foe was within forty yards or so, when they hurled themselves with irresistible force upon them. Again there came the awful roll of the meeting shields, and as we watched the tragedy repeated itself.

But this time the issue was left longer in doubt; indeed, it seemed for awhile almost impossible that the Greys should again prevail. The attacking regiment, which was formed of young men, fought with the utmost fury, and at first seemed by sheer weight to be driving the veterans back. The slaughter was truly awful, hundreds falling every minute; and from among the shouts of the warriors and the groans of the dying, set to the music of clashing spears, came a continuous hissing undertone of “S’gee, s’gee,” the note of triumph of each victor as he passed his assegai through and through the body of his fallen foe.

But perfect discipline and steady and unchanging valour can do wonders, and one veteran soldier is worth two young ones, as soon became apparent in the present case. For just when we thought that it was all over with the Greys, and were preparing to take their place so soon as they made room by being destroyed, I heard Sir Henry’s deep voice ringing out through the din, and caught a glimpse of his circling battle-axe as he waved it high above his plumes. Then came a change; the Greys ceased to give; they stood still as a rock, against which the furious waves of spearmen broke again and again, only to recoil. Presently they began to move once more—forward this time; as they had no firearms there was no smoke, so we could see it all. Another minute and the onslaught grew fainter.

“Ah, these are men, indeed; they will conquer again,” called out Ignosi, who was grinding his teeth with excitement at my side. “See, it is done!”

Suddenly, like puffs of smoke from the mouth of a cannon, the attacking regiment broke away in flying groups, their white head-dresses streaming behind them in the wind, and left their opponents victors, indeed, but, alas! no more a regiment. Of the gallant triple line, which forty minutes before had gone into action three thousand strong, there remained at most some six hundred blood-spattered men; the rest were under foot. And yet they cheered and waved their spears in triumph, and then, instead of falling back upon us as we expected, they ran forward, for a hundred yards or so, after the flying groups of foemen, took possession of a rising knoll of ground, and, resuming their triple formation, formed a threefold ring around its base. And there, thanks be to Heaven, standing on the top of the mound for a minute, I saw Sir Henry, apparently unharmed, and with him our old friend Infadoos. Then Twala’s regiments rolled down upon the doomed band, and once more the battle closed in.

As those who read this history will probably long ago have gathered, I am, to be honest, a bit of a coward, and certainly in no way given to fighting, though somehow it has often been my lot to get into unpleasant positions, and to be obliged to shed man’s blood. But I have always hated it, and kept my own blood as undiminished in quantity as possible, sometimes by a judicious use of my heels. At this moment, however, for the first time in my life, I felt my bosom burn with martial ardour. Warlike fragments from the “Ingoldsby Legends,” together with numbers of sanguinary verses in the Old Testament, sprang up in my brain like mushrooms in the dark; my blood, which hitherto had been half-frozen with horror, went beating through my veins, and there came upon me a savage desire to kill and spare not. I glanced round at the serried ranks of warriors behind us, and somehow, all in an instant, I began to wonder if my face looked like theirs. There they stood, the hands twitching, the lips apart, the fierce features instinct with the hungry lust of battle, and in the eyes a look like the glare of a bloodhound when after long pursuit he sights his quarry.

Only Ignosi’s heart, to judge from his comparative self-possession, seemed, to all appearances, to beat as calmly as ever beneath his leopard-skin cloak, though even he still ground his teeth. I could bear it no longer.

“Are we to stand here till we put out roots, Umbopa—Ignosi, I mean—while Twala swallows our brothers yonder?” I asked.

“Nay, Macumazahn,” was the answer; “see, now is the ripe moment: let us pluck it.”

As he spoke a fresh regiment rushed past the ring upon the little mound, and wheeling round, attacked it from the hither side.

Then, lifting his battle-axe, Ignosi gave the signal to advance, and, screaming the wild Kukuana war-cry, the Buffaloes charged home with a rush like the rush of the sea.

What followed immediately on this it is out of my power to tell. All I can remember is an irregular yet ordered advance, that seemed to shake the ground; a sudden change of front and forming up on the part of the regiment against which the charge was directed; then an awful shock, a dull roar of voices, and a continuous flashing of spears, seen through a red mist of blood.

When my mind cleared I found myself standing inside the remnant of the Greys near the top of the mound, and just behind no less a person than Sir Henry himself. How I got there I had at the moment no idea, but Sir Henry afterwards told me that I was borne up by the first furious charge of the Buffaloes almost to his feet, and then left, as they in turn were pressed back. Thereon he dashed out of the circle and dragged me into shelter.

As for the fight that followed, who can describe it? Again and again the multitudes surged against our momentarily lessening circle, and again and again we beat them back.

“The stubborn spearmen still made good

The dark impenetrable wood,

Each stepping where his comrade stood

The instant that he fell,”

as someone or other beautifully says.

It was a splendid thing to see those brave battalions come on time after time over the barriers of their dead, sometimes lifting corpses before them to receive our spear-thrusts, only to leave their own corpses to swell the rising piles. It was a gallant sight to see that old warrior, Infadoos, as cool as though he were on parade, shouting out orders, taunts, and even jests, to keep up the spirit of his few remaining men, and then, as each charge rolled on, stepping forward to wherever the fighting was thickest, to bear his share in its repulse. And yet more gallant was the vision of Sir Henry, whose ostrich plumes had been shorn off by a spear thrust, so that his long yellow hair streamed out in the breeze behind him. There he stood, the great Dane, for he was nothing else, his hands, his axe, and his armour all red with blood, and none could live before his stroke. Time after time I saw it sweeping down, as some great warrior ventured to give him battle, and as he struck he shouted “O-hoy! O-hoy!” like his Berserkir forefathers, and the blow went crashing through shield and spear, through head-dress, hair, and skull, till at last none would of their own will come near the great white “umtagati,” the wizard, who killed and failed not.

But suddenly there rose a cry of “Twala, y’ Twala,” and out of the press sprang forward none other than the gigantic one-eyed king himself, also armed with battle-axe and shield, and clad in chain armour.

“Where art thou, Incubu, thou white man, who slewest Scragga my son—see if thou canst slay me!” he shouted, and at the same time hurled a tolla straight at Sir Henry, who fortunately saw it coming, and caught it on his shield, which it transfixed, remaining wedged in the iron plate behind the hide.

Then, with a cry, Twala sprang forward straight at him, and with his battle-axe struck him such a blow upon the shield that the mere force and shock of it brought Sir Henry, strong man as he is, down upon his knees.

But at this time the matter went no further, for that instant there rose from the regiments pressing round us something like a shout of dismay, and on looking up I saw the cause.

To the right and to the left the plain was alive with the plumes of charging warriors. The outflanking squadrons had come to our relief. The time could not have been better chosen. All Twala’s army, as Ignosi predicted would be the case, had fixed their attention on the bloody struggle which was raging round the remnant of the Greys and that of the Buffaloes, who were now carrying on a battle of their own at a little distance, which two regiments had formed the chest of our army. It was not until our horns were about to close upon them that they had dreamed of their approach, for they believed these forces to be hidden in reserve upon the crest of the moon-shaped hill. And now, before they could even assume a proper formation for defence, the outflanking Impis had leapt, like greyhounds, on their flanks.

In five minutes the fate of the battle was decided. Taken on both flanks, and dismayed at the awful slaughter inflicted upon them by the Greys and Buffaloes, Twala’s regiments broke into flight, and soon the whole plain between us and Loo was scattered with groups of running soldiers making good their retreat. As for the hosts that had so recently surrounded us and the Buffaloes, they melted away as though by magic, and presently we were left standing there like a rock from which the sea has retreated. But what a sight it was! Around us the dead and dying lay in heaped-up masses, and of the gallant Greys there remained but ninety-five men upon their feet. More than three thousand four hundred had fallen in this one regiment, most of them never to rise again.

“Men,” said Infadoos calmly, as between the intervals of binding a wound on his arm he surveyed what remained to him of his corps, “ye have kept up the reputation of your regiment, and this day’s fighting will be well spoken of by your children’s children.” Then he turned round and shook Sir Henry Curtis by the hand. “Thou art a great captain, Incubu,” he said simply; “I have lived a long life among warriors, and have known many a brave one, yet have I never seen a man like unto thee.”

At this moment the Buffaloes began to march past our position on the road to Loo, and as they went a message was brought to us from Ignosi requesting Infadoos, Sir Henry, and myself to join them. Accordingly, orders having been issued to the remaining ninety men of the Greys to employ themselves in collecting the wounded, we joined Ignosi, who informed us that he was pressing on to Loo to complete the victory by capturing Twala, if that should be possible. Before we had gone far, suddenly we discovered the figure of Good sitting on an ant-heap about one hundred paces from us. Close beside him was the body of a Kukuana.

“He must be wounded,” said Sir Henry anxiously. As he made the remark, an untoward thing happened. The dead body of the Kukuana soldier, or rather what had appeared to be his dead body, suddenly sprang up, knocked Good head over heels off the ant-heap, and began to spear him. We rushed forward in terror, and as we drew near we saw the brawny warrior making dig after dig at the prostrate Good, who at each prod jerked all his limbs into the air. Seeing us coming, the Kukuana gave one final and most vicious dig, and with a shout of “Take that, wizard!” bolted away. Good did not move, and we concluded that our poor comrade was done for. Sadly we came towards him, and were astonished to find him pale and faint indeed, but with a serene smile upon his face, and his eyeglass still fixed in his eye.

“Capital armour this,” he murmured, on catching sight of our faces bending over him. “How sold that beggar must have been,” and then he fainted. On examination we discovered that he had been seriously wounded in the leg by a tolla in the course of the pursuit, but that the chain armour had prevented his last assailant’s spear from doing anything more than bruise him badly. It was a merciful escape. As nothing could be done for him at the moment, he was placed on one of the wicker shields used for the wounded, and carried along with us.

On arriving before the nearest gate of Loo we found one of our regiments watching it in obedience to orders received from Ignosi. The other regiments were in the same way guarding the different exits to the town. The officer in command of this regiment saluted Ignosi as king, and informed him that Twala’s army had taken refuge in the town, whither Twala himself had also escaped, but he thought that they were thoroughly demoralised, and would surrender. Thereupon Ignosi, after taking counsel with us, sent forward heralds to each gate ordering the defenders to open, and promising on his royal word life and forgiveness to every soldier who laid down his arms, but saying that if they did not do so before nightfall he would certainly burn the town and all within its gates. This message was not without its effect. Half an hour later, amid the shouts and cheers of the Buffaloes, the bridge was dropped across the fosse, and the gates upon the further side were flung open.

Taking due precautions against treachery, we marched on into the town. All along the roadways stood thousands of dejected warriors, their heads drooping, and their shields and spears at their feet, who, headed by their officers, saluted Ignosi as king as he passed. On we marched, straight to Twala’s kraal. When we reached the great space, where a day or two previously we had seen the review and the witch hunt, we found it deserted. No, not quite deserted, for there, on the further side, in front of his hut, sat Twala himself, with but one attendant—Gagool.

It was a melancholy sight to see him seated, his battle-axe and shield by his side, his chin upon his mailed breast, with but one old crone for companion, and notwithstanding his crimes and misdeeds, a pang of compassion shot through me as I looked upon Twala thus “fallen from his high estate.” Not a soldier of all his armies, not a courtier out of the hundreds who had cringed round him, not even a solitary wife, remained to share his fate or halve the bitterness of his fall. Poor savage! he was learning the lesson which Fate teaches to most of us who live long enough, that the eyes of mankind are blind to the discredited, and that he who is defenceless and fallen finds few friends and little mercy. Nor, indeed, in this case did he deserve any.

Filing through the kraal gate, we marched across the open space to where the ex-king sat. When within about fifty yards of him the regiment was halted, and accompanied only by a small guard we advanced towards him, Gagool reviling us bitterly as we came. As we drew near, Twala, for the first time, lifted his plumed head, and fixed his one eye, which seemed to flash with suppressed fury almost as brightly as the great diamond bound round his forehead, upon his successful rival—Ignosi.

“Hail, O king!” he said, with bitter mockery; “thou who hast eaten of my bread, and now by the aid of the white man’s magic hast seduced my regiments and defeated mine army, hail! What fate hast thou in store for me, O king?”

“The fate thou gavest to my father, whose throne thou hast sat on these many years!” was the stern answer.

“It is good. I will show thee how to die, that thou mayest remember it against thine own time. See, the sun sinks in blood,” and he pointed with his battle-axe towards the setting orb; “it is well that my sun should go down in its company. And now, O king! I am ready to die, but I crave the boon of the Kukuana royal House9 to die fighting. Thou canst not refuse it, or even those cowards who fled today will hold thee shamed.”

“It is granted. Choose—with whom wilt thou fight? Myself I cannot fight with thee, for the king fights not except in war.”

Twala’s sombre eye ran up and down our ranks, and I felt, as for a moment it rested on myself, that the position had developed a new horror. What if he chose to begin by fighting me? What chance should I have against a desperate savage six feet five high, and broad in proportion? I might as well commit suicide at once. Hastily I made up my mind to decline the combat, even if I were hooted out of Kukuanaland as a consequence. It is, I think, better to be hooted than to be quartered with a battle-axe.

Presently Twala spoke.

“Incubu, what sayest thou, shall we end what we began today, or shall I call thee coward, white—even to the liver?”

“Nay,” interposed Ignosi hastily; “thou shalt not fight with Incubu.”

“Not if he is afraid,” said Twala.

Unfortunately Sir Henry understood this remark, and the blood flamed up into his cheeks.

“I will fight him,” he said; “he shall see if I am afraid.”

“For Heaven’s sake,” I entreated, “don’t risk your life against that of a desperate man. Anybody who saw you today will know that you are brave enough.”

“I will fight him,” was the sullen answer. “No living man shall call me a coward. I am ready now!” and he stepped forward and lifted his axe.

I wrung my hands over this absurd piece of Quixotism; but if he was determined on this deed, of course I could not stop him.

“Fight not, my white brother,” said Ignosi, laying his hand affectionately on Sir Henry’s arm; “thou hast fought enough, and if aught befell thee at his hands it would cut my heart in twain.”

“I will fight, Ignosi,” was Sir Henry’s answer.

“It is well, Incubu; thou art a brave man. It will be a good fray. Behold, Twala, the Elephant is ready for thee.”

The ex-king laughed savagely, and stepping forward faced Curtis. For a moment they stood thus, and the light of the sinking sun caught their stalwart frames and clothed them both in fire. They were a well-matched pair.

Then they began to circle round each other, their battle-axes raised.

Suddenly Sir Henry sprang forward and struck a fearful blow at Twala, who stepped to one side. So heavy was the stroke that the striker half overbalanced himself, a circumstance of which his antagonist took a prompt advantage. Circling his massive battle-axe round his head, he brought it down with tremendous force. My heart jumped into my mouth; I thought that the affair was already finished. But no; with a quick upward movement of the left arm Sir Henry interposed his shield between himself and the axe, with the result that its outer edge was shorn away, the axe falling on his left shoulder, but not heavily enough to do any serious damage. In another moment Sir Henry got in a second blow, which was also received by Twala upon his shield.

Then followed blow upon blow, that were, in turn, either received upon the shields or avoided. The excitement grew intense; the regiment which was watching the encounter forgot its discipline, and, drawing near, shouted and groaned at every stroke. Just at this time, too, Good, who had been laid upon the ground by me, recovered from his faint, and, sitting up, perceived what was going on. In an instant he was up, and catching hold of my arm, hopped about from place to place on one leg, dragging me after him, and yelling encouragements to Sir Henry—

“Go it, old fellow!” he hallooed. “That was a good one! Give it him amidships,” and so on.

Presently Sir Henry, having caught a fresh stroke upon his shield, hit out with all his force. The blow cut through Twala’s shield and through the tough chain armour behind it, gashing him in the shoulder. With a yell of pain and fury Twala returned the blow with interest, and, such was his strength, shore right through the rhinoceros’ horn handle of his antagonists battle-axe, strengthened as it was with bands of steel, wounding Curtis in the face.

A cry of dismay rose from the Buffaloes as our hero’s broad axe-head fell to the ground; and Twala, again raising his weapon, flew at him with a shout. I shut my eyes. When I opened them again it was to see Sir Henry’s shield lying on the ground, and Sir Henry himself with his great arms twined round Twala’s middle. To and fro they swung, hugging each other like bears, straining with all their mighty muscles for dear life, and dearer honour. With a supreme effort Twala swung the Englishman clean off his feet, and down they came together, rolling over and over on the lime paving, Twala striking out at Curtis’ head with the battle-axe, and Sir Henry trying to drive the tolla he had drawn from his belt through Twala’s armour.

It was a mighty struggle, and an awful thing to see.

“Get his axe!” yelled Good; and perhaps our champion heard him.

At any rate, dropping the tolla, he snatched at the axe, which was fastened to Twala’s wrist by a strip of buffalo hide, and still rolling over and over, they fought for it like wild cats, drawing their breath in heavy gasps. Suddenly the hide string burst, and then, with a great effort, Sir Henry freed himself, the weapon remaining in his hand. Another second and he was upon his feet, the red blood streaming from the wound in his face, and so was Twala. Drawing the heavy tolla from his belt, he reeled straight at Curtis and struck him in the breast. The stab came home true and strong, but whoever it was who made that chain armour, he understood his art, for it withstood the steel. Again Twala struck out with a savage yell, and again the sharp knife rebounded, and Sir Henry went staggering back. Once more Twala came on, and as he came our great Englishman gathered himself together, and swinging the big axe round his head with both hands, hit at him with all his force.

There was a shriek of excitement from a thousand throats, and, behold! Twala’s head seemed to spring from his shoulders: then it fell and came rolling and bounding along the ground towards Ignosi, stopping just at his feet. For a second the corpse stood upright; then with a dull crash it came to the earth, and the gold torque from its neck rolled away across the pavement. As it did so Sir Henry, overpowered by faintness and loss of blood, fell heavily across the body of the dead king.

In a second he was lifted up, and eager hands were pouring water on his face. Another minute, and the grey eyes opened wide.

He was not dead.

Then I, just as the sun sank, stepping to where Twala’s head lay in the dust, unloosed the diamond from the dead brows, and handed it to Ignosi.

“Take it,” I said, “lawful king of the Kukuanas—king by birth and victory.”

Ignosi bound the diadem upon his brows. Then advancing, he placed his foot upon the broad chest of his headless foe and broke out into a chant, or rather a pæan of triumph, so beautiful, and yet so utterly savage, that I despair of being able to give an adequate version of his words. Once I heard a scholar with a fine voice read aloud from the Greek poet Homer, and I remember that the sound of the rolling lines seemed to make my blood stand still. Ignosi’s chant, uttered as it was in a language as beautiful and sonorous as the old Greek, produced exactly the same effect on me, although I was exhausted with toil and many emotions.

“Now,” he began, “now our rebellion is swallowed up in victory, and our evil-doing is justified by strength.

“In the morning the oppressors arose and stretched themselves; they bound on their harness and made them ready to war.

“They rose up and tossed their spears: the soldiers called to the captains, ‘Come, lead us’—and the captains cried to the king, ‘Direct thou the battle.’

“They laughed in their pride, twenty thousand men, and yet a twenty thousand.

“Their plumes covered the valleys as the plumes of a bird cover her nest; they shook their shields and shouted, yea, they shook their shields in the sunlight; they lusted for battle and were glad.

“They came up against me; their strong ones ran swiftly to slay me; they cried, ‘Ha! ha! he is as one already dead.’

“Then breathed I on them, and my breath was as the breath of a wind, and lo! they were not.

“My lightnings pierced them; I licked up their strength with the lightning of my spears; I shook them to the ground with the thunder of my shoutings.

“They broke—they scattered—they were gone as the mists of the morning.

“They are food for the kites and the foxes, and the place of battle is fat with their blood.

“Where are the mighty ones who rose up in the morning?

“Where are the proud ones who tossed their spears and cried, ‘He is as a man already dead’?

“They bow their heads, but not in sleep; they are stretched out, but not in sleep.

“They are forgotten; they have gone into the blackness; they dwell in the dead moons; yea, others shall lead away their wives, and their children shall remember them no more.

“And I—! the king—like an eagle I have found my eyrie.

“Behold! far have I flown in the night season, yet have I returned to my young at the daybreak.

“Shelter ye under the shadow of my wings, O people, and I will comfort you, and ye shall not be dismayed.

“Now is the good time, the time of spoil.

“Mine are the cattle on the mountains, mine are the virgins in the kraals.

“The winter is overpast with storms, the summer is come with flowers.

“Now Evil shall cover up her face, now Mercy and Gladness shall dwell in the land.

“Rejoice, rejoice, my people!

“Let all the stars rejoice in that this tyranny is trodden down, in that I am the king.”

Ignosi ceased his song, and out of the gathering gloom came back the deep reply—

“Thou art the king!”

Thus was my prophecy to the herald fulfilled, and within the forty-eight hours Twala’s headless corpse was stiffening at Twala’s gate.

9 It is a law amongst the Kukuanas that no man of the direct royal blood can be put to death, unless by his own consent, which is, however, never refused. He is allowed to choose a succession of antagonists, to be approved by the king, with whom he fights, till one of them kills him.—A.Q.

9 It is a law amongst the Kukuanas that no man of the direct royal blood can be put to death, unless by his own consent, which is, however, never refused. He is allowed to choose a succession of antagonists, to be approved by the king, with whom he fights, till one of them kills him.—A.Q.

CHAPTER XV

GOOD FALLS SICK

After the fight was ended, Sir Henry and Good were carried into Twala’s hut, where I joined them. They were both utterly exhausted by exertion and loss of blood, and, indeed, my own condition was little better. I am very wiry, and can stand more fatigue than most men, probably on account of my light weight and long training; but that night I was quite done up, and, as is always the case with me when exhausted, that old wound which the lion gave me began to pain. Also my head was aching violently from the blow I had received in the morning, when I was knocked senseless. Altogether, a more miserable trio than we were that evening it would have been difficult to discover; and our only comfort lay in the reflection that we were exceedingly fortunate to be there to feel miserable, instead of being stretched dead upon the plain, as so many thousands of brave men were that night, who had risen well and strong in the morning.

Somehow, with the assistance of the beautiful Foulata, who, since we had been the means of saving her life, had constituted herself our handmaiden, and especially Good’s, we managed to get off the chain shirts, which had certainly saved the lives of two of us that day. As I expected, we found that the flesh underneath was terribly contused, for though the steel links had kept the weapons from entering, they had not prevented them from bruising. Both Sir Henry and Good were a mass of contusions, and I was by no means free. As a remedy Foulata brought us some pounded green leaves, with an aromatic odour, which, when applied as a plaster, gave us considerable relief.

But though the bruises were painful, they did not give us such anxiety as Sir Henry’s and Good’s wounds. Good had a hole right through the fleshy part of his “beautiful white leg,” from which he had lost a great deal of blood; and Sir Henry, with other hurts, had a deep cut over the jaw, inflicted by Twala’s battle-axe. Luckily Good is a very decent surgeon, and so soon as his small box of medicines was forthcoming, having thoroughly cleansed the wounds, he managed to stitch up first Sir Henry’s and then his own pretty satisfactorily, considering the imperfect light given by the primitive Kukuana lamp in the hut. Afterwards he plentifully smeared the injured places with some antiseptic ointment, of which there was a pot in the little box, and we covered them with the remains of a pocket-handkerchief which we possessed.

Meanwhile Foulata had prepared us some strong broth, for we were too weary to eat. This we swallowed, and then threw ourselves down on the piles of magnificent karrosses, or fur rugs, which were scattered about the dead king’s great hut. By a very strange instance of the irony of fate, it was on Twala’s own couch, and wrapped in Twala’s own particular karross, that Sir Henry, the man who had slain him, slept that night.

I say slept; but after that day’s work, sleep was indeed difficult. To begin with, in very truth the air was full

“Of farewells to the dying

And mournings for the dead.”

From every direction came the sound of the wailing of women whose husbands, sons, and brothers had perished in the battle. No wonder that they wailed, for over twelve thousand men, or nearly a fifth of the Kukuana army, had been destroyed in that awful struggle. It was heart-rending to lie and listen to their cries for those who never would return; and it made me understand the full horror of the work done that day to further man’s ambition. Towards midnight, however, the ceaseless crying of the women grew less frequent, till at length the silence was only broken at intervals of a few minutes by a long piercing howl that came from a hut in our immediate rear, which, as I afterwards discovered, proceeded from Gagool “keening” over the dead king Twala.

After that I got a little fitful sleep, only to wake from time to time with a start, thinking that I was once more an actor in the terrible events of the last twenty-four hours. Now I seemed to see that warrior whom my hand had sent to his last account charging at me on the mountain-top; now I was once more in that glorious ring of Greys, which made its immortal stand against all Twala’s regiments upon the little mound; and now again I saw Twala’s plumed and gory head roll past my feet with gnashing teeth and glaring eye.

At last, somehow or other, the night passed away; but when dawn broke I found that my companions had slept no better than myself. Good, indeed, was in a high fever, and very soon afterwards began to grow light-headed, and also, to my alarm, to spit blood, the result, no doubt, of some internal injury, inflicted during the desperate efforts made by the Kukuana warrior on the previous day to force his big spear through the chain armour. Sir Henry, however, seemed pretty fresh, notwithstanding his wound on the face, which made eating difficult and laughter an impossibility, though he was so sore and stiff that he could scarcely stir.

About eight o’clock we had a visit from Infadoos, who appeared but little the worse—tough old warrior that he was—for his exertions in the battle, although he informed us that he had been up all night. He was delighted to see us, but much grieved at Good’s condition, and shook our hands cordially. I noticed, however, that he addressed Sir Henry with a kind of reverence, as though he were something more than man; and, indeed, as we afterwards found out, the great Englishman was looked on throughout Kukuanaland as a supernatural being. No man, the soldiers said, could have fought as he fought or, at the end of a day of such toil and bloodshed, could have slain Twala, who, in addition to being the king, was supposed to be the strongest warrior in the country, in single combat, shearing through his bull-neck at a stroke. Indeed, that stroke became proverbial in Kukuanaland, and any extraordinary blow or feat of strength was henceforth known as “Incubu’s blow.”

Infadoos told us also that all Twala’s regiments had submitted to Ignosi, and that like submissions were beginning to arrive from chiefs in the outlying country. Twala’s death at the hands of Sir Henry had put an end to all further chance of disturbance; for Scragga had been his only legitimate son, so there was no rival claimant to the throne left alive.

I remarked that Ignosi had swum to power through blood. The old chief shrugged his shoulders. “Yes,” he answered; “but the Kukuana people can only be kept cool by letting their blood flow sometimes. Many are killed, indeed, but the women are left, and others must soon grow up to take the places of the fallen. After this the land would be quiet for a while.”

Afterwards, in the course of the morning, we had a short visit from Ignosi, on whose brows the royal diadem was now bound. As I contemplated him advancing with kingly dignity, an obsequious guard following his steps, I could not help recalling to my mind the tall Zulu who had presented himself to us at Durban some few months back, asking to be taken into our service, and reflecting on the strange revolutions of the wheel of fortune.

“Hail, O king!” I said, rising.

“Yes, Macumazahn. King at last, by the might of your three right hands,” was the ready answer.

All was, he said, going well; and he hoped to arrange a great feast in two weeks’ time in order to show himself to the people.

I asked him what he had settled to do with Gagool.

“She is the evil genius of the land,” he answered, “and I shall kill her, and all the witch doctors with her! She has lived so long that none can remember when she was not very old, and she it is who has always trained the witch-hunters, and made the land wicked in the sight of the heavens above.”

“Yet she knows much,” I replied; “it is easier to destroy knowledge, Ignosi, than to gather it.”

“That is so,” he said thoughtfully. “She, and she only, knows the secret of the ‘Three Witches,’ yonder, whither the great road runs, where the kings are buried, and the Silent Ones sit.”

“Yes, and the diamonds are. Forget not thy promise, Ignosi; thou must lead us to the mines, even if thou hast to spare Gagool alive to show the way.”

“I will not forget, Macumazahn, and I will think on what thou sayest.”

After Ignosi’s visit I went to see Good, and found him quite delirious. The fever set up by his wound seemed to have taken a firm hold of his system, and to be complicated with an internal injury. For four or five days his condition was most critical; indeed, I believe firmly that had it not been for Foulata’s indefatigable nursing he must have died.

Women are women, all the world over, whatever their colour. Yet somehow it seemed curious to watch this dusky beauty bending night and day over the fevered man’s couch, and performing all the merciful errands of a sick-room swiftly, gently, and with as fine an instinct as that of a trained hospital nurse. For the first night or two I tried to help her, and so did Sir Henry as soon as his stiffness allowed him to move, but Foulata bore our interference with impatience, and finally insisted upon our leaving him to her, saying that our movements made him restless, which I think was true. Day and night she watched him and tended him, giving him his only medicine, a native cooling drink made of milk, in which was infused juice from the bulb of a species of tulip, and keeping the flies from settling on him. I can see the whole picture now as it appeared night after night by the light of our primitive lamp; Good tossing to and fro, his features emaciated, his eyes shining large and luminous, and jabbering nonsense by the yard; and seated on the ground by his side, her back resting against the wall of the hut, the soft-eyed, shapely Kukuana beauty, her face, weary as it was with her long vigil, animated by a look of infinite compassion—or was it something more than compassion?

For two days we thought that he must die, and crept about with heavy hearts.

Only Foulata would not believe it.

“He will live,” she said.

For three hundred yards or more around Twala’s chief hut, where the sufferer lay, there was silence; for by the king’s order all who lived in the habitations behind it, except Sir Henry and myself, had been removed, lest any noise should come to the sick man’s ears. One night, it was the fifth of Good’s illness, as was my habit, I went across to see how he was doing before turning in for a few hours.

I entered the hut carefully. The lamp placed upon the floor showed the figure of Good tossing no more, but lying quite still.

So it had come at last! In the bitterness of my heart I gave something like a sob.

“Hush—h—h!” came from the patch of dark shadow behind Good’s head.

Then, creeping closer, I saw that he was not dead, but sleeping soundly, with Foulata’s taper fingers clasped tightly in his poor white hand. The crisis had passed, and he would live. He slept like that for eighteen hours; and I scarcely like to say it, for fear I should not be believed, but during the entire period did this devoted girl sit by him, fearing that if she moved and drew away her hand it would wake him. What she must have suffered from cramp and weariness, to say nothing of want of food, nobody will ever know; but it is the fact that, when at last he woke, she had to be carried away—her limbs were so stiff that she could not move them.

After the turn had once been taken, Good’s recovery was rapid and complete. It was not till he was nearly well that Sir Henry told him of all he owed to Foulata; and when he came to the story of how she sat by his side for eighteen hours, fearing lest by moving she should wake him, the honest sailor’s eyes filled with tears. He turned and went straight to the hut where Foulata was preparing the mid-day meal, for we were back in our old quarters now, taking me with him to interpret in case he could not make his meaning clear to her, though I am bound to say that she understood him marvellously as a rule, considering how extremely limited was his foreign vocabulary.

“Tell her,” said Good, “that I owe her my life, and that I will never forget her kindness to my dying day.”

I interpreted, and under her dark skin she actually seemed to blush.

Turning to him with one of those swift and graceful motions that in her always reminded me of the flight of a wild bird, Foulata answered softly, glancing at him with her large brown eyes—

“Nay, my lord; my lord forgets! Did he not save my life, and am I not my lord’s handmaiden?”

It will be observed that the young lady appeared entirely to have forgotten the share which Sir Henry and myself had taken in her preservation from Twala’s clutches. But that is the way of women! I remember my dear wife was just the same. Well, I retired from that little interview sad at heart. I did not like Miss Foulata’s soft glances, for I knew the fatal amorous propensities of sailors in general, and of Good in particular.

There are two things in the world, as I have found out, which cannot be prevented: you cannot keep a Zulu from fighting, or a sailor from falling in love upon the slightest provocation!

It was a few days after this last occurrence that Ignosi held his great “indaba,” or council, and was formally recognised as king by the “indunas,” or head men, of Kukuanaland. The spectacle was a most imposing one, including as it did a grand review of troops. On this day the remaining fragments of the Greys were formally paraded, and in the face of the army thanked for their splendid conduct in the battle. To each man the king made a large present of cattle, promoting them one and all to the rank of officers in the new corps of Greys which was in process of formation. An order was also promulgated throughout the length and breadth of Kukuanaland that, whilst we honoured the country by our presence, we three were to be greeted with the royal salute, and to be treated with the same ceremony and respect that was by custom accorded to the king. Also the power of life and death was publicly conferred upon us. Ignosi, too, in the presence of his people, reaffirmed the promises which he had made, to the effect that no man’s blood should be shed without trial, and that witch-hunting should cease in the land.

When the ceremony was over we waited upon Ignosi, and informed him that we were now anxious to investigate the mystery of the mines to which Solomon’s Road ran, asking him if he had discovered anything about them.

“My friends,” he answered, “I have discovered this. It is there that the three great figures sit, who here are called the ‘Silent Ones,’ and to whom Twala would have offered the girl Foulata as a sacrifice. It is there, too, in a great cave deep in the mountain, that the kings of the land are buried; there ye shall find Twala’s body, sitting with those who went before him. There, also, is a deep pit, which, at some time, long-dead men dug out, mayhap for the stones ye speak of, such as I have heard men in Natal tell of at Kimberley. There, too, in the Place of Death is a secret chamber, known to none but the king and Gagool. But Twala, who knew it, is dead, and I know it not, nor know I what is in it. Yet there is a legend in the land that once, many generations gone, a white man crossed the mountains, and was led by a woman to the secret chamber and shown the wealth hidden in it. But before he could take it she betrayed him, and he was driven by the king of that day back to the mountains, and since then no man has entered the place.”

“The story is surely true, Ignosi, for on the mountains we found the white man,” I said.

“Yes, we found him. And now I have promised you that if ye can come to that chamber, and the stones are there—”

“The gem upon thy forehead proves that they are there,” I put in, pointing to the great diamond I had taken from Twala’s dead brows.

“Mayhap; if they are there,” he said, “ye shall have as many as ye can take hence—if indeed ye would leave me, my brothers.”

“First we must find the chamber,” said I.

“There is but one who can show it to thee—Gagool.”

“And if she will not?”

“Then she must die,” said Ignosi sternly. “I have saved her alive but for this. Stay, she shall choose,” and calling to a messenger he ordered Gagool to be brought before him.

In a few minutes she came, hurried along by two guards, whom she was cursing as she walked.

“Leave her,” said the king to the guards.

So soon as their support was withdrawn, the withered old bundle—for she looked more like a bundle than anything else, out of which her two bright and wicked eyes gleamed like those of a snake—sank in a heap on to the floor.

“What will ye with me, Ignosi?” she piped. “Ye dare not touch me. If ye touch me I will slay you as ye sit. Beware of my magic.”

“Thy magic could not save Twala, old she-wolf, and it cannot hurt me,” was the answer. “Listen; I will this of thee, that thou reveal to us the chamber where are the shining stones.”

“Ha! ha!” she piped, “none know its secret but I, and I will never tell thee. The white devils shall go hence empty-handed.”

“Thou shalt tell me. I will make thee tell me.”

“How, O king? Thou art great, but can thy power wring the truth from a woman?”

“It is difficult, yet will I do so.”

“How, O king?”

“Nay, thus; if thou tellest not thou shalt slowly die.”

“Die!” she shrieked in terror and fury; “ye dare not touch me—man, ye know not who I am. How old think ye am I? I knew your fathers, and your fathers’ fathers’ fathers. When the country was young I was here; when the country grows old I shall still be here. I cannot die unless I be killed by chance, for none dare slay me.”

“Yet will I slay thee. See, Gagool, mother of evil, thou art so old that thou canst no longer love thy life. What can life be to such a hag as thou, who hast no shape, nor form, nor hair, nor teeth—hast naught, save wickedness and evil eyes? It will be mercy to make an end of thee, Gagool.”

“Thou fool,” shrieked the old fiend, “thou accursed fool, deemest thou that life is sweet only to the young? It is not so, and naught thou knowest of the heart of man to think it. To the young, indeed, death is sometimes welcome, for the young can feel. They love and suffer, and it wrings them to see their beloved pass to the land of shadows. But the old feel not, they love not, and, ha! ha! they laugh to see another go out into the dark; ha! ha! they laugh to see the evil that is done under the stars. All they love is life, the warm, warm sun, and the sweet, sweet air. They are afraid of the cold, afraid of the cold and the dark, ha! ha! ha!” and the old hag writhed in ghastly merriment on the ground.

“Cease thine evil talk and answer me,” said Ignosi angrily. “Wilt thou show the place where the stones are, or wilt thou not? If thou wilt not thou diest, even now,” and he seized a spear and held it over her.

“I will not show it; thou darest not kill me, darest not! He who slays me will be accursed for ever.”

Slowly Ignosi brought down the spear till it pricked the prostrate heap of rags.

With a wild yell Gagool sprang to her feet, then fell again and rolled upon the floor.

“Nay, I will show thee. Only let me live, let me sit in the sun and have a bit of meat to suck, and I will show thee.”

“It is well. I thought that I should find a way to reason with thee. Tomorrow shalt thou go with Infadoos and my white brothers to the place, and beware how thou failest, for if thou showest it not, then thou shalt slowly die. I have spoken.”

“I will not fail, Ignosi. I always keep my word—ha! ha! ha! Once before a woman showed the chamber to a white man, and behold! evil befell him,” and here her wicked eyes glinted. “Her name was Gagool also. Perchance I was that woman.”

“Thou liest,” I said, “that was ten generations gone.”

“Mayhap, mayhap; when one lives long one forgets. Perhaps it was my mother’s mother who told me; surely her name was Gagool also. But mark, ye will find in the place where the bright things are a bag of hide full of stones. The man filled that bag, but he never took it away. Evil befell him, I say, evil befell him! Perhaps it was my mother’s mother who told me. It will be a merry journey—we can see the bodies of those who died in the battle as we go. Their eyes will be gone by now, and their ribs will be hollow. Ha! ha! ha!”

CHAPTER XVI

THE PLACE OF DEATH

It was already dark on the third day after the scene described in the previous chapter when we camped in some huts at the foot of the “Three Witches,” as the triangle of mountains is called to which Solomon’s Great Road runs. Our party consisted of our three selves and Foulata, who waited on us—especially on Good—Infadoos, Gagool, who was borne along in a litter, inside which she could be heard muttering and cursing all day long, and a party of guards and attendants. The mountains, or rather the three peaks of the mountain, for the mass was evidently the result of a solitary upheaval, were, as I have said, in the form of a triangle, of which the base was towards us, one peak being on our right, one on our left, and one straight in front of us. Never shall I forget the sight afforded by those three towering peaks in the early sunlight of the following morning. High, high above us, up into the blue air, soared their twisted snow-wreaths. Beneath the snow-line the peaks were purple with heaths, and so were the wild moors that ran up the slopes towards them. Straight before us the white ribbon of Solomon’s Great Road stretched away uphill to the foot of the centre peak, about five miles from us, and there stopped. It was its terminus.

I had better leave the feelings of intense excitement with which we set out on our march that morning to the imagination of those who read this history. At last we were drawing near to the wonderful mines that had been the cause of the miserable death of the old Portuguese Dom three centuries ago, of my poor friend, his ill-starred descendant, and also, as we feared, of George Curtis, Sir Henry’s brother. Were we destined, after all that we had gone through, to fare any better? Evil befell them, as that old fiend Gagool said; would it also befall us? Somehow, as we were marching up that last stretch of beautiful road, I could not help feeling a little superstitious about the matter, and so I think did Good and Sir Henry.

For an hour and a half or more we tramped on up the heather-fringed way, going so fast in our excitement that the bearers of Gagool’s hammock could scarcely keep pace with us, and its occupant piped out to us to stop.

“Walk more slowly, white men,” she said, projecting her hideous shrivelled countenance between the grass curtains, and fixing her gleaming eyes upon us; “why will ye run to meet the evil that shall befall you, ye seekers after treasure?” and she laughed that horrible laugh which always sent a cold shiver down my back, and for a while quite took the enthusiasm out of us.

However, on we went, till we saw before us, and between ourselves and the peak, a vast circular hole with sloping sides, three hundred feet or more in depth, and quite half a mile round.

“Can’t you guess what this is?” I said to Sir Henry and Good, who were staring in astonishment at the awful pit before us.

They shook their heads.

“Then it is clear that you have never seen the diamond diggings at Kimberley. You may depend on it that this is Solomon’s Diamond Mine. Look there,” I said, pointing to the strata of stiff blue clay which were yet to be seen among the grass and bushes that clothed the sides of the pit, “the formation is the same. I’ll be bound that if we went down there we should find ‘pipes’ of soapy brecciated rock. Look, too,” and I pointed to a series of worn flat slabs of stone that were placed on a gentle slope below the level of a watercourse which in some past age had been cut out of the solid rock; “if those are not tables once used to wash the ‘stuff,’ I’m a Dutchman.”

At the edge of this vast hole, which was none other than the pit marked on the old Dom’s map, the Great Road branched into two and circumvented it. In many places, by the way, this surrounding road was built entirely out of blocks of stone, apparently with the object of supporting the edges of the pit and preventing falls of reef. Along this path we pressed, driven by curiosity to see what were the three towering objects which we could discern from the hither side of the great gulf. As we drew near we perceived that they were Colossi of some sort or another, and rightly conjectured that before us sat the three “Silent Ones” that are held in such awe by the Kukuana people. But it was not until we were quite close to them that we recognised the full majesty of these “Silent Ones.”

There, upon huge pedestals of dark rock, sculptured with rude emblems of the Phallic worship, separated from each other by a distance of forty paces, and looking down the road which crossed some sixty miles of plain to Loo, were three colossal seated forms—two male and one female—each measuring about thirty feet from the crown of its head to the pedestal.

The female form, which was nude, was of great though severe beauty, but unfortunately the features had been injured by centuries of exposure to the weather. Rising from either side of her head were the points of a crescent. The two male Colossi, on the contrary, were draped, and presented a terrifying cast of features, especially the one to our right, which had the face of a devil. That to our left was serene in countenance, but the calm upon it seemed dreadful. It was the calm of that inhuman cruelty, Sir Henry remarked, which the ancients attributed to beings potent for good, who could yet watch the sufferings of humanity, if not without rejoicing, at least without sorrow. These three statues form a most awe-inspiring trinity, as they sit there in their solitude, and gaze out across the plain for ever.

Contemplating these “Silent Ones,” as the Kukuanas call them, an intense curiosity again seized us to know whose were the hands which had shaped them, who it was that had dug the pit and made the road. Whilst I was gazing and wondering, suddenly it occurred to me—being familiar with the Old Testament—that Solomon went astray after strange gods, the names of three of whom I remembered—“Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Zidonians, Chemosh, the god of the Moabites, and Milcom, the god of the children of Ammon”—and I suggested to my companions that the figures before us might represent these false and exploded divinities.

“Hum,” said Sir Henry, who is a scholar, having taken a high degree in classics at college, “there may be something in that; Ashtoreth of the Hebrews was the Astarte of the Phoenicians, who were the great traders of Solomon’s time. Astarte, who afterwards became the Aphrodite of the Greeks, was represented with horns like the half-moon, and there on the brow of the female figure are distinct horns. Perhaps these Colossi were designed by some Phoenician official who managed the mines. Who can say?”10

Before we had finished examining these extraordinary relics of remote antiquity, Infadoos came up, and having saluted the “Silent Ones” by lifting his spear, asked us if we intended entering the “Place of Death” at once, or if we would wait till after we had taken food at mid-day. If we were ready to go at once, Gagool had announced her willingness to guide us. As it was not later than eleven o’clock—driven to it by a burning curiosity—we announced our intention of proceeding instantly, and I suggested that, in case we should be detained in the cave, we should take some food with us. Accordingly Gagool’s litter was brought up, and that lady herself assisted out of it. Meanwhile Foulata, at my request, stored some “biltong,” or dried game-flesh, together with a couple of gourds of water, in a reed basket with a hinged cover. Straight in front of us, at a distance of some fifty paces from the backs of the Colossi, rose a sheer wall of rock, eighty feet or more in height, that gradually sloped upwards till it formed the base of the lofty snow-wreathed peak, which soared into the air three thousand feet above us. As soon as she was clear of her hammock, Gagool cast one evil grin upon us, and then, leaning on a stick, hobbled off towards the face of this wall. We followed her till we came to a narrow portal solidly arched that looked like the opening of a gallery of a mine.

Here Gagool was waiting for us, still with that evil grin upon her horrid face.

“Now, white men from the Stars,” she piped; “great warriors, Incubu, Bougwan, and Macumazahn the wise, are ye ready? Behold, I am here to do the bidding of my lord the king, and to show you the store of bright stones. Ha! ha! ha!”

“We are ready,” I said.

“Good, good! Make strong your hearts to bear what ye shall see. Comest thou too, Infadoos, thou who didst betray thy master?”

Infadoos frowned as he answered—

“Nay, I come not; it is not for me to enter there. But thou, Gagool, curb thy tongue, and beware how thou dealest with my lords. At thy hands will I require them, and if a hair of them be hurt, Gagool, be’st thou fifty times a witch, thou shalt die. Hearest thou?”

“I hear Infadoos; I know thee, thou didst ever love big words; when thou wast a babe I remember thou didst threaten thine own mother. That was but the other day. But, fear not, fear not, I live only to do the bidding of the king. I have done the bidding of many kings, Infadoos, till in the end they did mine. Ha! ha! I go to look upon their faces once more, and Twala’s also! Come on, come on, here is the lamp,” and she drew a large gourd full of oil, and fitted with a rush wick, from under her fur cloak.

“Art thou coming, Foulata?” asked Good in his villainous Kitchen Kukuana, in which he had been improving himself under that young lady’s tuition.

“I fear, my lord,” the girl answered timidly.

“Then give me the basket.”

“Nay, my lord, whither thou goest there I go also.”

“The deuce you will!” thought I to myself; “that may be rather awkward if we ever get out of this.”

Without further ado Gagool plunged into the passage, which was wide enough to admit of two walking abreast, and quite dark. We followed the sound of her voice as she piped to us to come on, in some fear and trembling, which was not allayed by the flutter of a sudden rush of wings.

“Hullo! what’s that?” halloed Good; “somebody hit me in the face.”

“Bats,” said I; “on you go.”

When, so far as we could judge, we had gone some fifty paces, we perceived that the passage was growing faintly light. Another minute, and we were in perhaps the most wonderful place that the eyes of living man have beheld.

Let the reader picture to himself the hall of the vastest cathedral he ever stood in, windowless indeed, but dimly lighted from above, presumably by shafts connected with the outer air and driven in the roof, which arched away a hundred feet above our heads, and he will get some idea of the size of the enormous cave in which we found ourselves, with the difference that this cathedral designed by nature was loftier and wider than any built by man. But its stupendous size was the least of the wonders of the place, for running in rows adown its length were gigantic pillars of what looked like ice, but were, in reality, huge stalactites. It is impossible for me to convey any idea of the overpowering beauty and grandeur of these pillars of white spar, some of which were not less than twenty feet in diameter at the base, and sprang up in lofty and yet delicate beauty sheer to the distant roof. Others again were in process of formation. On the rock floor there was in these cases what looked, Sir Henry said, exactly like a broken column in an old Grecian temple, whilst high above, depending from the roof, the point of a huge icicle could be dimly seen.

Even as we gazed we could hear the process going on, for presently with a tiny splash a drop of water would fall from the far-off icicle on to the column below. On some columns the drops only fell once in two or three minutes, and in these cases it would be an interesting calculation to discover how long, at that rate of dripping, it would take to form a pillar, say eighty feet by ten in diameter. That the process, in at least one instance, was incalculably slow, the following example will suffice to show. Cut on one of these pillars we discovered the crude likeness of a mummy, by the head of which sat what appeared to be the figure of an Egyptian god, doubtless the handiwork of some old-world labourer in the mine. This work of art was executed at the natural height at which an idle fellow, be he Phoenician workman or British cad, is in the habit of trying to immortalise himself at the expense of nature’s masterpieces, namely, about five feet from the ground. Yet at the time that we saw it, which must have been nearly three thousand years after the date of the execution of the carving, the column was only eight feet high, and was still in process of formation, which gives a rate of growth of a foot to a thousand years, or an inch and a fraction to a century. This we knew because, as we were standing by it, we heard a drop of water fall.

Sometimes the stalagmites took strange forms, presumably where the dropping of the water had not always been on the same spot. Thus, one huge mass, which must have weighed a hundred tons or so, was in the shape of a pulpit, beautifully fretted over outside with a design that looked like lace. Others resembled strange beasts, and on the sides of the cave were fanlike ivory tracings, such as the frost leaves upon a pane.

Out of the vast main aisle there opened here and there smaller caves, exactly, Sir Henry said, as chapels open out of great cathedrals. Some were large, but one or two—and this is a wonderful instance of how nature carries out her handiwork by the same unvarying laws, utterly irrespective of size—were tiny. One little nook, for instance, was no larger than an unusually big doll’s house, and yet it might have been a model for the whole place, for the water dropped, tiny icicles hung, and spar columns were forming in just the same way.

We had not, however, enough time to examine this beautiful cavern so thoroughly as we should have liked to do, since unfortunately, Gagool seemed to be indifferent as to stalactites, and only anxious to get her business over. This annoyed me the more, as I was particularly anxious to discover, if possible, by what system the light was admitted into the cave, and whether it was by the hand of man or by that of nature that this was done; also if the place had been used in any way in ancient times, as seemed probable. However, we consoled ourselves with the idea that we would investigate it thoroughly on our way back, and followed on at the heels of our uncanny guide.

On she led us, straight to the top of the vast and silent cave, where we found another doorway, not arched as the first was, but square at the top, something like the doorways of Egyptian temples.

“Are ye prepared to enter the Place of Death, white men?” asked Gagool, evidently with a view to making us feel uncomfortable.

“Lead on, Macduff,” said Good solemnly, trying to look as though he was not at all alarmed, as indeed we all did except Foulata, who caught Good by the arm for protection.

“This is getting rather ghastly,” said Sir Henry, peeping into the dark passageway. “Come on, Quatermain—seniores priores. We mustn’t keep the old lady waiting!” and he politely made way for me to lead the van, for which inwardly I did not bless him.

Tap, tap, went old Gagool’s stick down the passage, as she trotted along, chuckling hideously; and still overcome by some unaccountable presentiment of evil, I hung back.

“Come, get on, old fellow,” said Good, “or we shall lose our fair guide.”

Thus adjured, I started down the passage, and after about twenty paces found myself in a gloomy apartment some forty feet long, by thirty broad, and thirty high, which in some past age evidently had been hollowed, by hand-labour, out of the mountain. This apartment was not nearly so well lighted as the vast stalactite ante-cave, and at the first glance all I could discern was a massive stone table running down its length, with a colossal white figure at its head, and life-sized white figures all round it. Next I discovered a brown thing, seated on the table in the centre, and in another moment my eyes grew accustomed to the light, and I saw what all these things were, and was tailing out of the place as hard as my legs could carry me.

I am not a nervous man in a general way, and very little troubled with superstitions, of which I have lived to see the folly; but I am free to own that this sight quite upset me, and had it not been that Sir Henry caught me by the collar and held me, I do honestly believe that in another five minutes I should have been outside the stalactite cave, and that a promise of all the diamonds in Kimberley would not have induced me to enter it again. But he held me tight, so I stopped because I could not help myself. Next second, however, his eyes became accustomed to the light, and he let go of me, and began to mop the perspiration off his forehead. As for Good, he swore feebly, while Foulata threw her arms round his neck and shrieked.

Only Gagool chuckled loud and long.

It was a ghastly sight. There at the end of the long stone table, holding in his skeleton fingers a great white spear, sat Death himself, shaped in the form of a colossal human skeleton, fifteen feet or more in height. High above his head he held the spear, as though in the act to strike; one bony hand rested on the stone table before him, in the position a man assumes on rising from his seat, whilst his frame was bent forward so that the vertebræ of the neck and the grinning, gleaming skull projected towards us, and fixed its hollow eye-places upon us, the jaws a little open, as though it were about to speak.

“Great heavens!” said I faintly, at last, “what can it be?”

“And what are those things?” asked Good, pointing to the white company round the table.

“And what on earth is that thing?” said Sir Henry, pointing to the brown creature seated on the table.

“Hee! hee! hee!” laughed Gagool. “To those who enter the Hall of the Dead, evil comes. Hee! hee! hee! ha! ha!”

“Come, Incubu, brave in battle, come and see him thou slewest;” and the old creature caught Curtis’ coat in her skinny fingers, and led him away towards the table. We followed.

Presently she stopped and pointed at the brown object seated on the table. Sir Henry looked, and started back with an exclamation; and no wonder, for there, quite naked, the head which Curtis’ battle-axe had shorn from the body resting on its knees, was the gaunt corpse of Twala, the last king of the Kukuanas. Yes, there, the head perched upon the knees, it sat in all its ugliness, the vertebræ projecting a full inch above the level of the shrunken flesh of the neck, for all the world like a black double of Hamilton Tighe.11 Over the surface of the corpse there was gathered a thin glassy film, that made its appearance yet more appalling, for which we were, at the moment, quite unable to account, till presently we observed that from the roof of the chamber the water fell steadily, drip! drop! drip! on to the neck of the corpse, whence it ran down over the entire surface, and finally escaped into the rock through a tiny hole in the table. Then I guessed what the film was—Twala’s body was being transformed into a stalactite.

A look at the white forms seated on the stone bench which ran round that ghastly board confirmed this view. They were human bodies indeed, or rather they had been human; now they were stalactites. This was the way in which the Kukuana people had from time immemorial preserved their royal dead. They petrified them. What the exact system might be, if there was any, beyond the placing of them for a long period of years under the drip, I never discovered, but there they sat, iced over and preserved for ever by the siliceous fluid.

Anything more awe-inspiring than the spectacle of this long line of departed royalties (there were twenty-seven of them, the last being Ignosi’s father), wrapped, each of them, in a shroud of ice-like spar, through which the features could be dimly discovered, and seated round that inhospitable board, with Death himself for a host, it is impossible to imagine. That the practice of thus preserving their kings must have been an ancient one is evident from the number, which, allowing for an average reign of fifteen years, supposing that every king who reigned was placed here—an improbable thing, as some are sure to have perished in battle far from home—would fix the date of its commencement at four and a quarter centuries back.

But the colossal Death, who sits at the head of the board, is far older than that, and, unless I am much mistaken, owes his origin to the same artist who designed the three Colossi. He is hewn out of a single stalactite, and, looked at as a work of art, is most admirably conceived and executed. Good, who understands such things, declared that, so far as he could see, the anatomical design of the skeleton is perfect down to the smallest bones.

My own idea is, that this terrific object was a freak of fancy on the part of some old-world sculptor, and that its presence had suggested to the Kukuanas the idea of placing their royal dead under its awful presidency. Or perhaps it was set there to frighten away any marauders who might have designs upon the treasure chamber beyond. I cannot say. All I can do is to describe it as it is, and the reader must form his own conclusion.

Such, at any rate, was the White Death and such were the White Dead!

10 Compare Milton, “Paradise Lost,” Book i.:—

“With these in troop

Came Ashtoreth, whom the Phoenicians called

Astarté, Queen of Heaven, with crescent horns;

To whose bright image nightly by the moon

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs.”

11 “Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see How he sits there and glowers with his head on his knee.”

10 Compare Milton, “Paradise Lost,” Book i.:—

11 “Now haste ye, my handmaidens, haste and see How he sits there and glowers with his head on his knee.”

CHAPTER XVII

SOLOMON’S TREASURE CHAMBER

While we were engaged in recovering from our fright, and in examining the grisly wonders of the Place of Death, Gagool had been differently occupied. Somehow or other—for she was marvellously active when she chose—she had scrambled on to the great table, and made her way to where our departed friend Twala was placed, under the drip, to see, suggested Good, how he was “pickling,” or for some dark purpose of her own. Then, after bending down to kiss his icy lips as though in affectionate greeting, she hobbled back, stopping now and again to address the remark, the tenor of which I could not catch, to one or other of the shrouded forms, just as you or I might welcome an old acquaintance. Having gone through this mysterious and horrible ceremony, she squatted herself down on the table immediately under the White Death, and began, so far as I could make out, to offer up prayers. The spectacle of this wicked creature pouring out supplications, evil ones no doubt, to the arch enemy of mankind, was so uncanny that it caused us to hasten our inspection.

“Now, Gagool,” said I, in a low voice—somehow one did not dare to speak above a whisper in that place—“lead us to the chamber.”

The old witch promptly scrambled down from the table.

“My lords are not afraid?” she said, leering up into my face.

“Lead on.”

“Good, my lords;” and she hobbled round to the back of the great Death. “Here is the chamber; let my lords light the lamp, and enter,” and she placed the gourd full of oil upon the floor, and leaned herself against the side of the cave. I took out a match, of which we had still a few in a box, and lit a rush wick, and then looked for the doorway, but there was nothing before us except the solid rock. Gagool grinned. “The way is there, my lords. Ha! ha! ha!”

“Do not jest with us,” I said sternly.

“I jest not, my lords. See!” and she pointed at the rock.

As she did so, on holding up the lamp we perceived that a mass of stone was rising slowly from the floor and vanishing into the rock above, where doubtless there is a cavity prepared to receive it. The mass was of the width of a good-sized door, about ten feet high and not less than five feet thick. It must have weighed at least twenty or thirty tons, and was clearly moved upon some simple balance principle of counter-weights, probably the same as that by which the opening and shutting of an ordinary modern window is arranged. How the principle was set in motion, of course none of us saw; Gagool was careful to avoid this; but I have little doubt that there was some very simple lever, which was moved ever so little by pressure at a secret spot, thereby throwing additional weight on to the hidden counter-balances, and causing the monolith to be lifted from the ground.

Very slowly and gently the great stone raised itself, till at last it had vanished altogether, and a dark hole presented itself to us in the place which the door had filled.

Our excitement was so intense, as we saw the way to Solomon’s treasure chamber thrown open at last, that I for one began to tremble and shake. Would it prove a hoax after all, I wondered, or was old Da Silvestra right? Were there vast hoards of wealth hidden in that dark place, hoards which would make us the richest men in the whole world? We should know in a minute or two.

“Enter, white men from the Stars,” said Gagool, advancing into the doorway; “but first hear your servant, Gagool the old. The bright stones that ye will see were dug out of the pit over which the Silent Ones are set, and stored here, I know not by whom, for that was done longer ago than even I remember. But once has this place been entered since the time that those who hid the stones departed in haste, leaving them behind. The report of the treasure went down indeed among the people who lived in the country from age to age, but none knew where the chamber was, nor the secret of the door. But it happened that a white man reached this country from over the mountains—perchance he too came ‘from the Stars’—and was well received by the king of that day. He it is who sits yonder,” and she pointed to the fifth king at the table of the Dead. “And it came to pass that he and a woman of the country who was with him journeyed to this place, and that by chance the woman learnt the secret of the door—a thousand years might ye search, but ye should never find that secret. Then the white man entered with the woman, and found the stones, and filled with stones the skin of a small goat, which the woman had with her to hold food. And as he was going from the chamber he took up one more stone, a large one, and held it in his hand.”

Here she paused.

“Well,” I asked, breathless with interest as we all were, “what happened to Da Silvestra?”

The old hag started at the mention of the name.

“How knowest thou the dead man’s name?” she asked sharply; and then, without waiting for an answer, went on—

“None can tell what happened; but it came about that the white man was frightened, for he flung down the goat-skin, with the stones, and fled out with only the one stone in his hand, and that the king took, and it is the stone which thou, Macumazahn, didst take from Twala’s brow.”

“Have none entered here since?” I asked, peering again down the dark passage.

“None, my lords. Only the secret of the door has been kept, and every king has opened it, though he has not entered. There is a saying, that those who enter there will die within a moon, even as the white man died in the cave upon the mountain, where ye found him, Macumazahn, and therefore the kings do not enter. Ha! ha! mine are true words.”

Our eyes met as she said it, and I turned sick and cold. How did the old hag know all these things?

“Enter, my lords. If I speak truth, the goat-skin with the stones will lie upon the floor; and if there is truth as to whether it is death to enter here, that ye will learn afterwards. Ha! ha! ha!” and she hobbled through the doorway, bearing the light with her; but I confess that once more I hesitated about following.

“Oh, confound it all!” said Good; “here goes. I am not going to be frightened by that old devil;” and followed by Foulata, who, however, evidently did not at all like the business, for she was shivering with fear, he plunged into the passage after Gagool—an example which we quickly followed.

A few yards down the passage, in the narrow way hewn out of the living rock, Gagool had paused, and was waiting for us.

“See, my lords,” she said, holding the light before her, “those who stored the treasure here fled in haste, and bethought them to guard against any who should find the secret of the door, but had not the time,” and she pointed to large square blocks of stone, which, to the height of two courses (about two feet three), had been placed across the passage with a view to walling it up. Along the side of the passage were similar blocks ready for use, and, most curious of all, a heap of mortar and a couple of trowels, which tools, so far as we had time to examine them, appeared to be of a similar shape and make to those used by workmen to this day.

Here Foulata, who had been in a state of great fear and agitation throughout, said that she felt faint and could go no farther, but would wait there. Accordingly we set her down on the unfinished wall, placing the basket of provisions by her side, and left her to recover.

Following the passage for about fifteen paces farther, we came suddenly to an elaborately painted wooden door. It was standing wide open. Whoever was last there had either not found the time to shut it, or had forgotten to do so.

Across the threshold of this door lay a skin bag, formed of a goat-skin, that appeared to be full of pebbles.

“Hee! hee! white men,” sniggered Gagool, as the light from the lamp fell upon it. “What did I tell you, that the white man who came here fled in haste, and dropped the woman’s bag—behold it! Look within also and ye will find a water-gourd amongst the stones.”

Good stooped down and lifted it. It was heavy and jingled.

“By Jove! I believe it’s full of diamonds,” he said, in an awed whisper; and, indeed, the idea of a small goat-skin full of diamonds is enough to awe anybody.

“Go on,” said Sir Henry impatiently. “Here, old lady, give me the lamp,” and taking it from Gagool’s hand, he stepped through the doorway and held it high above his head.

We pressed in after him, forgetful for the moment of the bag of diamonds, and found ourselves in King Solomon’s treasure chamber.

At first, all that the somewhat faint light given by the lamp revealed was a room hewn out of the living rock, and apparently not more than ten feet square. Next there came into sight, stored one on the other to the arch of the roof, a splendid collection of elephant-tusks. How many of them there were we did not know, for of course we could not see to what depth they went back, but there could not have been less than the ends of four or five hundred tusks of the first quality visible to our eyes. There, alone, was enough ivory to make a man wealthy for life. Perhaps, I thought, it was from this very store that Solomon drew the raw material for his “great throne of ivory,” of which “there was not the like made in any kingdom.”

On the opposite side of the chamber were about a score of wooden boxes, something like Martini-Henry ammunition boxes, only rather larger, and painted red.

“There are the diamonds,” cried I; “bring the light.”

Sir Henry did so, holding it close to the top box, of which the lid, rendered rotten by time even in that dry place, appeared to have been smashed in, probably by Da Silvestra himself. Pushing my hand through the hole in the lid I drew it out full, not of diamonds, but of gold pieces, of a shape that none of us had seen before, and with what looked like Hebrew characters stamped upon them.

“Ah!” I said, replacing the coin, “we shan’t go back empty-handed, anyhow. There must be a couple of thousand pieces in each box, and there are eighteen boxes. I suppose this was the money to pay the workmen and merchants.”

“Well,” put in Good, “I think that is the lot; I don’t see any diamonds, unless the old Portuguese put them all into his bag.”

“Let my lords look yonder where it is darkest, if they would find the stones,” said Gagool, interpreting our looks. “There my lords will find a nook, and three stone chests in the nook, two sealed and one open.”

Before translating this to Sir Henry, who carried the light, I could not resist asking how she knew these things, if no one had entered the place since the white man, generations ago.

“Ah, Macumazahn, the watcher by night,” was the mocking answer, “ye who dwell in the stars, do ye not know that some live long, and that some have eyes which can see through rock? Ha! ha! ha!”

“Look in that corner, Curtis,” I said, indicating the spot Gagool had pointed out.

“Hullo, you fellows,” he cried, “here’s a recess. Great heavens! see here.”

We hurried up to where he was standing in a nook, shaped something like a small bow window. Against the wall of this recess were placed three stone chests, each about two feet square. Two were fitted with stone lids, the lid of the third rested against the side of the chest, which was open.

“See!” he repeated hoarsely, holding the lamp over the open chest. We looked, and for a moment could make nothing out, on account of a silvery sheen which dazzled us. When our eyes grew used to it we saw that the chest was three-parts full of uncut diamonds, most of them of considerable size. Stooping, I picked some up. Yes, there was no doubt of it, there was the unmistakable soapy feel about them.

I fairly gasped as I dropped them.

“We are the richest men in the whole world,” I said. “Monte Christo was a fool to us.”

“We shall flood the market with diamonds,” said Good.

“Got to get them there first,” suggested Sir Henry.

We stood still with pale faces and stared at each other, the lantern in the middle and the glimmering gems below, as though we were conspirators about to commit a crime, instead of being, as we thought, the most fortunate men on earth.

“Hee! hee! hee!” cackled old Gagool behind us, as she flitted about like a vampire bat. “There are the bright stones ye love, white men, as many as ye will; take them, run them through your fingers, eat of them, hee! hee! drink of them, ha! ha!”

At that moment there was something so ridiculous to my mind at the idea of eating and drinking diamonds, that I began to laugh outrageously, an example which the others followed, without knowing why. There we stood and shrieked with laughter over the gems that were ours, which had been found for us thousands of years ago by the patient delvers in the great hole yonder, and stored for us by Solomon’s long-dead overseer, whose name, perchance, was written in the characters stamped on the faded wax that yet adhered to the lids of the chest. Solomon never got them, nor David, or Da Silvestra, nor anybody else. We had got them: there before us were millions of pounds’ worth of diamonds, and thousands of pounds’ worth of gold and ivory only waiting to be taken away.

Suddenly the fit passed off, and we stopped laughing.

“Open the other chests, white men,” croaked Gagool, “there are surely more therein. Take your fill, white lords! Ha! ha! take your fill.”

Thus adjured, we set to work to pull up the stone lids on the other two, first—not without a feeling of sacrilege—breaking the seals that fastened them.

Hoorah! they were full too, full to the brim; at least, the second one was; no wretched burglarious Da Silvestra had been filling goat-skins out of that. As for the third chest, it was only about a fourth full, but the stones were all picked ones; none less than twenty carats, and some of them as large as pigeon-eggs. A good many of these bigger ones, however, we could see by holding them up to the light, were a little yellow, “off coloured,” as they call it at Kimberley.

What we did not see, however, was the look of fearful malevolence that old Gagool favoured us with as she crept, crept like a snake, out of the treasure chamber and down the passage towards the door of solid rock.

* * * *

Hark! Cry upon cry comes ringing up the vaulted path. It is Foulata’s voice!

“Oh, Bougwan! help! help! the stone falls!”

“Leave go, girl! Then—”

“Help! help! she has stabbed me!”

By now we are running down the passage, and this is what the light from the lamp shows us. The door of the rock is closing down slowly; it is not three feet from the floor. Near it struggle Foulata and Gagool. The red blood of the former runs to her knee, but still the brave girl holds the old witch, who fights like a wild cat. Ah! she is free! Foulata falls, and Gagool throws herself on the ground, to twist like a snake through the crack of the closing stone. She is under—ah! god! too late! too late! The stone nips her, and she yells in agony. Down, down it comes, all the thirty tons of it, slowly pressing her old body against the rock below. Shriek upon shriek, such as we have never heard, then a long sickening crunch, and the door was shut just as, rushing down the passage, we hurled ourselves against it.

It was all done in four seconds.

Then we turned to Foulata. The poor girl was stabbed in the body, and I saw that she could not live long.

“Ah! Bougwan, I die!” gasped the beautiful creature. “She crept out—Gagool; I did not see her, I was faint—and the door began to fall; then she came back, and was looking up the path—I saw her come in through the slowly falling door, and caught her and held her, and she stabbed me, and I die, Bougwan!”

“Poor girl! poor girl!” Good cried in his distress; and then, as he could do nothing else, he fell to kissing her.

“Bougwan,” she said, after a pause, “is Macumazahn there? It grows so dark, I cannot see.”

“Here I am, Foulata.”

“Macumazahn, be my tongue for a moment, I pray thee, for Bougwan cannot understand me, and before I go into the darkness I would speak to him a word.”

“Say on, Foulata, I will render it.”

“Say to my lord, Bougwan, that—I love him, and that I am glad to die because I know that he cannot cumber his life with such as I am, for the sun may not mate with the darkness, nor the white with the black.

“Say that, since I saw him, at times I have felt as though there were a bird in my bosom, which would one day fly hence and sing elsewhere. Even now, though I cannot lift my hand, and my brain grows cold, I do not feel as though my heart were dying; it is so full of love that it could live ten thousand years, and yet be young. Say that if I live again, mayhap I shall see him in the Stars, and that—I will search them all, though perchance there I should still be black and he would—still be white. Say—nay, Macumazahn, say no more, save that I love—Oh, hold me closer, Bougwan, I cannot feel thine arms—oh! oh!”

“She is dead—she is dead!” muttered Good, rising in grief, the tears running down his honest face.

“You need not let that trouble you, old fellow,” said Sir Henry.

“Eh!” exclaimed Good; “what do you mean?”

“I mean that you will soon be in a position to join her. Man, don’t you see that we are buried alive?”

Until Sir Henry uttered these words I do not think that the full horror of what had happened had come home to us, preoccupied as we were with the sight of poor Foulata’s end. But now we understood. The ponderous mass of rock had closed, probably for ever, for the only brain which knew its secret was crushed to powder beneath its weight. This was a door that none could hope to force with anything short of dynamite in large quantities. And we were on the wrong side!

For a few minutes we stood horrified, there over the corpse of Foulata. All the manhood seemed to have gone out of us. The first shock of this idea of the slow and miserable end that awaited us was overpowering. We saw it all now; that fiend Gagool had planned this snare for us from the first.

It would have been just the jest that her evil mind would have rejoiced in, the idea of the three white men, whom, for some reason of her own, she had always hated, slowly perishing of thirst and hunger in the company of the treasure they had coveted. Now I saw the point of that sneer of hers about eating and drinking the diamonds. Probably somebody had tried to serve the poor old Dom in the same way, when he abandoned the skin full of jewels.

“This will never do,” said Sir Henry hoarsely; “the lamp will soon go out. Let us see if we can’t find the spring that works the rock.”

We sprang forward with desperate energy, and, standing in a bloody ooze, began to feel up and down the door and the sides of the passage. But no knob or spring could we discover.

“Depend on it,” I said, “it does not work from the inside; if it did Gagool would not have risked trying to crawl underneath the stone. It was the knowledge of this that made her try to escape at all hazards, curse her.”

“At all events,” said Sir Henry, with a hard little laugh, “retribution was swift; hers was almost as awful an end as ours is likely to be. We can do nothing with the door; let us go back to the treasure room.”

We turned and went, and as we passed it I perceived by the unfinished wall across the passage the basket of food which poor Foulata had carried. I took it up, and brought it with me to the accursed treasure chamber that was to be our grave. Then we returned and reverently bore in Foulata’s corpse, laying it on the floor by the boxes of coin.

Next we seated ourselves, leaning our backs against the three stone chests which contained the priceless treasure.

“Let us divide the food,” said Sir Henry, “so as to make it last as long as possible.” Accordingly we did so. It would, we reckoned, make four infinitesimally small meals for each of us, enough, say, to support life for a couple of days. Besides the “biltong,” or dried game-flesh, there were two gourds of water, each of which held not more than a quart.

“Now,” said Sir Henry grimly, “let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

We each ate a small portion of the “biltong,” and drank a sip of water. Needless to say, we had but little appetite, though we were sadly in need of food, and felt better after swallowing it. Then we got up and made a systematic examination of the walls of our prison-house, in the faint hope of finding some means of exit, sounding them and the floor carefully.

There was none. It was not probable that there would be any to a treasure chamber.

The lamp began to burn dim. The fat was nearly exhausted.

“Quatermain,” said Sir Henry, “what is the time—your watch goes?”

I drew it out, and looked at it. It was six o’clock; we had entered the cave at eleven.

“Infadoos will miss us,” I suggested. “If we do not return tonight he will search for us in the morning, Curtis.”

“He may search in vain. He does not know the secret of the door, nor even where it is. No living person knew it yesterday, except Gagool. Today no one knows it. Even if he found the door he could not break it down. All the Kukuana army could not break through five feet of living rock. My friends, I see nothing for it but to bow ourselves to the will of the Almighty. The search for treasure has brought many to a bad end; we shall go to swell their number.”

The lamp grew dimmer yet.

Presently it flared up and showed the whole scene in strong relief, the great mass of white tusks, the boxes of gold, the corpse of the poor Foulata stretched before them, the goat-skin full of treasure, the dim glimmer of the diamonds, and the wild, wan faces of us three white men seated there awaiting death by starvation.

Then the flame sank and expired.

CHAPTER XVIII

WE ABANDON HOPE

I can give no adequate description of the horrors of the night which followed. Mercifully they were to some extent mitigated by sleep, for even in such a position as ours wearied nature will sometimes assert itself. But I, at any rate, found it impossible to sleep much. Putting aside the terrifying thought of our impending doom—for the bravest man on earth might well quail from such a fate as awaited us, and I never made any pretensions to be brave—the silence itself was too great to allow of it. Reader, you may have lain awake at night and thought the quiet oppressive, but I say with confidence that you can have no idea what a vivid, tangible thing is perfect stillness. On the surface of the earth there is always some sound or motion, and though it may in itself be imperceptible, yet it deadens the sharp edge of absolute silence. But here there was none. We were buried in the bowels of a huge snow-clad peak. Thousands of feet above us the fresh air rushed over the white snow, but no sound of it reached us. We were separated by a long tunnel and five feet of rock even from the awful chamber of the Dead; and the dead make no noise. Did we not know it who lay by poor Foulata’s side? The crashing of all the artillery of earth and heaven could not have come to our ears in our living tomb. We were cut off from every echo of the world—we were as men already in the grave.

Then the irony of the situation forced itself upon me. There around us lay treasures enough to pay off a moderate national debt, or to build a fleet of ironclads, and yet we would have bartered them all gladly for the faintest chance of escape. Soon, doubtless, we should be rejoiced to exchange them for a bit of food or a cup of water, and, after that, even for the privilege of a speedy close to our sufferings. Truly wealth, which men spend their lives in acquiring, is a valueless thing at the last.

And so the night wore on.

“Good,” said Sir Henry’s voice at last, and it sounded awful in the intense stillness, “how many matches have you in the box?”

“Eight, Curtis.”

“Strike one and let us see the time.”

He did so, and in contrast to the dense darkness the flame nearly blinded us. It was five o’clock by my watch. The beautiful dawn was now blushing on the snow-wreaths far over our heads, and the breeze would be stirring the night mists in the hollows.

“We had better eat something and keep up our strength,” I suggested.

“What is the good of eating?” answered Good; “the sooner we die and get it over the better.”

“While there is life there is hope,” said Sir Henry.

Accordingly we ate and sipped some water, and another period of time elapsed. Then Sir Henry suggested that it might be well to get as near the door as possible and halloa, on the faint chance of somebody catching a sound outside. Accordingly Good, who, from long practice at sea, has a fine piercing note, groped his way down the passage and set to work. I must say that he made a most diabolical noise. I never heard such yells; but it might have been a mosquito buzzing for all the effect they produced.

After a while he gave it up and came back very thirsty, and had to drink. Then we stopped yelling, as it encroached on the supply of water.

So we sat down once more against the chests of useless diamonds in that dreadful inaction which was one of the hardest circumstances of our fate; and I am bound to say that, for my part, I gave way in despair. Laying my head against Sir Henry’s broad shoulder I burst into tears; and I think that I heard Good gulping away on the other side, and swearing hoarsely at himself for doing so.

Ah, how good and brave that great man was! Had we been two frightened children, and he our nurse, he could not have treated us more tenderly. Forgetting his own share of miseries, he did all he could to soothe our broken nerves, telling stories of men who had been in somewhat similar circumstances, and miraculously escaped; and when these failed to cheer us, pointing out how, after all, it was only anticipating an end which must come to us all, that it would soon be over, and that death from exhaustion was a merciful one (which is not true). Then, in a diffident sort of way, as once before I had heard him do, he suggested that we should throw ourselves on the mercy of a higher Power, which for my part I did with great vigour.

His is a beautiful character, very quiet, but very strong.

And so somehow the day went as the night had gone, if, indeed, one can use these terms where all was densest night, and when I lit a match to see the time it was seven o’clock.

Once more we ate and drank, and as we did so an idea occurred to me.

“How is it,” said I, “that the air in this place keeps fresh? It is thick and heavy, but it is perfectly fresh.”

“Great heavens!” said Good, starting up, “I never thought of that. It can’t come through the stone door, for it’s air-tight, if ever a door was. It must come from somewhere. It there were no current of air in the place we should have been stifled or poisoned when we first came in. Let us have a look.”

It was wonderful what a change this mere spark of hope wrought in us. In a moment we were all three groping about on our hands and knees, feeling for the slightest indication of a draught. Presently my ardour received a check. I put my hand on something cold. It was dead Foulata’s face.

For an hour or more we went on feeling about, till at last Sir Henry and I gave it up in despair, having been considerably hurt by constantly knocking our heads against tusks, chests, and the sides of the chamber. But Good still persevered, saying, with an approach to cheerfulness, that it was better than doing nothing.

“I say, you fellows,” he said presently, in a constrained sort of voice, “come here.”

Needless to say we scrambled towards him quickly enough.

“Quatermain, put your hand here where mine is. Now, do you feel anything?”

“I think I feel air coming up.”

“Now listen.” He rose and stamped upon the place, and a flame of hope shot up in our hearts. It rang hollow.

With trembling hands I lit a match. I had only three left, and we saw that we were in the angle of the far corner of the chamber, a fact that accounted for our not having noticed the hollow sound of the place during our former exhaustive examination. As the match burnt we scrutinised the spot. There was a join in the solid rock floor, and, great heavens! there, let in level with the rock, was a stone ring. We said no word, we were too excited, and our hearts beat too wildly with hope to allow us to speak. Good had a knife, at the back of which was one of those hooks that are made to extract stones from horses’ hoofs. He opened it, and scratched round the ring with it. Finally he worked it under, and levered away gently for fear of breaking the hook. The ring began to move. Being of stone it had not rusted fast in all the centuries it had lain there, as would have been the case had it been of iron. Presently it was upright. Then he thrust his hands into it and tugged with all his force, but nothing budged.

“Let me try,” I said impatiently, for the situation of the stone, right in the angle of the corner, was such that it was impossible for two to pull at once. I took hold and strained away, but no results.

Then Sir Henry tried and failed.

Taking the hook again, Good scratched all round the crack where we felt the air coming up.

“Now, Curtis,” he said, “tackle on, and put your back into it; you are as strong as two. Stop,” and he took off a stout black silk handkerchief, which, true to his habits of neatness, he still wore, and ran it through the ring. “Quatermain, get Curtis round the middle and pull for dear life when I give the word. Now.”

Sir Henry put out all his enormous strength, and Good and I did the same, with such power as nature had given us.

“Heave! heave! it’s giving,” gasped Sir Henry; and I heard the muscles of his great back cracking. Suddenly there was a grating sound, then a rush of air, and we were all on our backs on the floor with a heavy flag-stone upon the top of us. Sir Henry’s strength had done it, and never did muscular power stand a man in better stead.

“Light a match, Quatermain,” he said, so soon as we had picked ourselves up and got our breath; “carefully, now.”

I did so, and there before us, Heaven be praised! was the first step of a stone stair.

“Now what is to be done?” asked Good.

“Follow the stair, of course, and trust to Providence.”

“Stop!” said Sir Henry; “Quatermain, get the bit of biltong and the water that are left; we may want them.”

I went, creeping back to our place by the chests for that purpose, and as I was coming away an idea struck me. We had not thought much of the diamonds for the last twenty-four hours or so; indeed, the very idea of diamonds was nauseous, seeing what they had entailed upon us; but, reflected I, I may as well pocket some in case we ever should get out of this ghastly hole. So I just put my fist into the first chest and filled all the available pockets of my old shooting-coat and trousers, topping up—this was a happy thought—with a few handfuls of big ones from the third chest. Also, by an afterthought, I stuffed Foulata’s basket, which, except for one water-gourd and a little biltong, was empty now, with great quantities of the stones.

“I say, you fellows,” I sang out, “won’t you take some diamonds with you? I’ve filled my pockets and the basket.”

“Oh, come on, Quatermain! and hang the diamonds!” said Sir Henry. “I hope that I may never see another.”

As for Good, he made no answer. He was, I think, taking his last farewell of all that was left of the poor girl who had loved him so well. And curious as it may seem to you, my reader, sitting at home at ease and reflecting on the vast, indeed the immeasurable, wealth which we were thus abandoning, I can assure you that if you had passed some twenty-eight hours with next to nothing to eat and drink in that place, you would not have cared to cumber yourself with diamonds whilst plunging down into the unknown bowels of the earth, in the wild hope of escape from an agonising death. If from the habits of a lifetime, it had not become a sort of second nature with me never to leave anything worth having behind if there was the slightest chance of my being able to carry it away, I am sure that I should not have bothered to fill my pockets and that basket.

“Come on, Quatermain,” repeated Sir Henry, who was already standing on the first step of the stone stair. “Steady, I will go first.”

“Mind where you put your feet, there may be some awful hole underneath,” I answered.

“Much more likely to be another room,” said Sir Henry, while he descended slowly, counting the steps as he went.

When he got to “fifteen” he stopped. “Here’s the bottom,” he said. “Thank goodness! I think it’s a passage. Follow me down.”

Good went next, and I came last, carrying the basket, and on reaching the bottom lit one of the two remaining matches. By its light we could just see that we were standing in a narrow tunnel, which ran right and left at right angles to the staircase we had descended. Before we could make out any more, the match burnt my fingers and went out. Then arose the delicate question of which way to go. Of course, it was impossible to know what the tunnel was, or where it led to, and yet to turn one way might lead us to safety, and the other to destruction. We were utterly perplexed, till suddenly it struck Good that when I had lit the match the draught of the passage blew the flame to the left.

“Let us go against the draught,” he said; “air draws inwards, not outwards.”

We took this suggestion, and feeling along the wall with our hands, whilst trying the ground before us at every step, we departed from that accursed treasure chamber on our terrible quest for life. If ever it should be entered again by living man, which I do not think probable, he will find tokens of our visit in the open chests of jewels, the empty lamp, and the white bones of poor Foulata.

When we had groped our way for about a quarter of an hour along the passage, suddenly it took a sharp turn, or else was bisected by another, which we followed, only in course of time to be led into a third. And so it went on for some hours. We seemed to be in a stone labyrinth that led nowhere. What all these passages are, of course I cannot say, but we thought that they must be the ancient workings of a mine, of which the various shafts and adits travelled hither and thither as the ore led them. This is the only way in which we could account for such a multitude of galleries.

At length we halted, thoroughly worn out with fatigue and with that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and ate up our poor remaining piece of biltong and drank our last sup of water, for our throats were like lime-kilns. It seemed to us that we had escaped Death in the darkness of the treasure chamber only to meet him in the darkness of the tunnels.

As we stood, once more utterly depressed, I thought that I caught a sound, to which I called the attention of the others. It was very faint and very far off, but it was a sound, a faint, murmuring sound, for the others heard it too, and no words can describe the blessedness of it after all those hours of utter, awful stillness.

“By heaven! it’s running water,” said Good. “Come on.”

Off we started again in the direction from which the faint murmur seemed to come, groping our way as before along the rocky walls. I remember that I laid down the basket full of diamonds, wishing to be rid of its weight, but on second thoughts took it up again. One might as well die rich as poor, I reflected. As we went the sound became more and more audible, till at last it seemed quite loud in the quiet. On, yet on; now we could distinctly make out the unmistakable swirl of rushing water. And yet how could there be running water in the bowels of the earth? Now we were quite near it, and Good, who was leading, swore that he could smell it.

“Go gently, Good,” said Sir Henry, “we must be close.” Splash! and a cry from Good.

He had fallen in.

“Good! Good! where are you?” we shouted, in terrified distress. To our intense relief an answer came back in a choky voice.

“All right; I’ve got hold of a rock. Strike a light to show me where you are.”

Hastily I lit the last remaining match. Its faint gleam discovered to us a dark mass of water running at our feet. How wide it was we could not see, but there, some way out, was the dark form of our companion hanging on to a projecting rock.

“Stand clear to catch me,” sung out Good. “I must swim for it.”

Then we heard a splash, and a great struggle. Another minute and he had grabbed at and caught Sir Henry’s outstretched hand, and we had pulled him up high and dry into the tunnel.

“My word!” he said, between his gasps, “that was touch and go. If I hadn’t managed to catch that rock, and known how to swim, I should have been done. It runs like a mill-race, and I could feel no bottom.”

We dared not follow the banks of the subterranean river for fear lest we should fall into it again in the darkness. So after Good had rested a while, and we had drunk our fill of the water, which was sweet and fresh, and washed our faces, that needed it sadly, as well as we could, we started from the banks of this African Styx, and began to retrace our steps along the tunnel, Good dripping unpleasantly in front of us. At length we came to another gallery leading to our right.

“We may as well take it,” said Sir Henry wearily; “all roads are alike here; we can only go on till we drop.”

Slowly, for a long, long while, we stumbled, utterly exhausted, along this new tunnel, Sir Henry now leading the way. Again I thought of abandoning that basket, but did not.

Suddenly he stopped, and we bumped up against him.

“Look!” he whispered, “is my brain going, or is that light?”

We stared with all our eyes, and there, yes, there, far ahead of us, was a faint, glimmering spot, no larger than a cottage window pane. It was so faint that I doubt if any eyes, except those which, like ours, had for days seen nothing but blackness, could have perceived it at all.

With a gasp of hope we pushed on. In five minutes there was no longer any doubt; it was a patch of faint light. A minute more and a breath of real live air was fanning us. On we struggled. All at once the tunnel narrowed. Sir Henry went on his knees. Smaller yet it grew, till it was only the size of a large fox’s earth—it was earth now, mind you; the rock had ceased.

A squeeze, a struggle, and Sir Henry was out, and so was Good, and so was I, dragging Foulata’s basket after me; and there above us were the blessed stars, and in our nostrils was the sweet air. Then suddenly something gave, and we were all rolling over and over and over through grass and bushes and soft, wet soil.

The basket caught in something and I stopped. Sitting up I halloed lustily. An answering shout came from below, where Sir Henry’s wild career had been checked by some level ground. I scrambled to him, and found him unhurt, though breathless. Then we looked for Good. A little way off we discovered him also, hammed in a forked root. He was a good deal knocked about, but soon came to himself.

We sat down together, there on the grass, and the revulsion of feeling was so great that really I think we cried with joy. We had escaped from that awful dungeon, which was so near to becoming our grave. Surely some merciful Power guided our footsteps to the jackal hole, for that is what it must have been, at the termination of the tunnel. And see, yonder on the mountains the dawn we had never thought to look upon again was blushing rosy red.

Presently the grey light stole down the slopes, and we saw that we were at the bottom, or rather, nearly at the bottom, of the vast pit in front of the entrance to the cave. Now we could make out the dim forms of the three Colossi who sat upon its verge. Doubtless those awful passages, along which we had wandered the livelong night, had been originally in some way connected with the great diamond mine. As for the subterranean river in the bowels of the mountain, Heaven only knows what it is, or whence it flows, or whither it goes. I, for one, have no anxiety to trace its course.

Lighter it grew, and lighter yet. We could see each other now, and such a spectacle as we presented I have never set eyes on before or since. Gaunt-cheeked, hollow-eyed wretches, smeared all over with dust and mud, bruised, bleeding, the long fear of imminent death yet written on our countenances, we were, indeed, a sight to frighten the daylight. And yet it is a solemn fact that Good’s eye-glass was still fixed in Good’s eye. I doubt whether he had ever taken it out at all. Neither the darkness, nor the plunge in the subterranean river, nor the roll down the slope, had been able to separate Good and his eye-glass.

Presently we rose, fearing that our limbs would stiffen if we stopped there longer, and commenced with slow and painful steps to struggle up the sloping sides of the great pit. For an hour or more we toiled steadfastly up the blue clay, dragging ourselves on by the help of the roots and grasses with which it was clothed. But now I had no more thought of leaving the basket; indeed, nothing but death should have parted us.

At last it was done, and we stood by the great road, on that side of the pit which is opposite to the Colossi.

At the side of the road, a hundred yards off, a fire was burning in front of some huts, and round the fire were figures. We staggered towards them, supporting one another, and halting every few paces. Presently one of the figures rose, saw us and fell on to the ground, crying out for fear.

“Infadoos, Infadoos! it is we, thy friends.”

He rose; he ran to us, staring wildly, and still shaking with fear.

“Oh, my lords, my lords, it is indeed you come back from the dead!—come back from the dead!”

And the old warrior flung himself down before us, and clasping Sir Henry’s knees, he wept aloud for joy.

CHAPTER XIX

IGNOSI’S FAREWELL

Ten days from that eventful morning found us once more in our old quarters at Loo; and, strange to say, but little the worse for our terrible experience, except that my stubbly hair came out of the treasure cave about three shades greyer than it went in, and that Good never was quite the same after Foulata’s death, which seemed to move him very greatly. I am bound to say, looking at the thing from the point of view of an oldish man of the world, that I consider her removal was a fortunate occurrence, since, otherwise, complications would have been sure to ensue. The poor creature was no ordinary native girl, but a person of great, I had almost said stately, beauty, and of considerable refinement of mind. But no amount of beauty or refinement could have made an entanglement between Good and herself a desirable occurrence; for, as she herself put it, “Can the sun mate with the darkness, or the white with the black?”

I need hardly state that we never again penetrated into Solomon’s treasure chamber. After we had recovered from our fatigues, a process which took us forty-eight hours, we descended into the great pit in the hope of finding the hole by which we had crept out of the mountain, but with no success. To begin with, rain had fallen, and obliterated our spoor; and what is more, the sides of the vast pit were full of ant-bear and other holes. It was impossible to say to which of these we owed our salvation. Also, on the day before we started back to Loo, we made a further examination of the wonders of the stalactite cave, and, drawn by a kind of restless feeling, even penetrated once more into the Chamber of the Dead. Passing beneath the spear of the White Death we gazed, with sensations which it would be quite impossible for me to describe, at the mass of rock that had shut us off from escape, thinking the while of priceless treasures beyond, of the mysterious old hag whose flattened fragments lay crushed beneath it, and of the fair girl of whose tomb it was the portal. I say gazed at the “rock,” for, examine as we could, we could find no traces of the join of the sliding door; nor, indeed, could we hit upon the secret, now utterly lost, that worked it, though we tried for an hour or more. It is certainly a marvellous bit of mechanism, characteristic, in its massive and yet inscrutable simplicity, of the age which produced it; and I doubt if the world has such another to show.

At last we gave it up in disgust; though, if the mass had suddenly risen before our eyes, I doubt if we should have screwed up courage to step over Gagool’s mangled remains, and once more enter the treasure chamber, even in the sure and certain hope of unlimited diamonds. And yet I could have cried at the idea of leaving all that treasure, the biggest treasure probably that in the world’s history has ever been accumulated in one spot. But there was no help for it. Only dynamite could force its way through five feet of solid rock.

So we left it. Perhaps, in some remote unborn century, a more fortunate explorer may hit upon the “Open Sesame,” and flood the world with gems. But, myself, I doubt it. Somehow, I seem to feel that the tens of millions of pounds’ worth of jewels which lie in the three stone coffers will never shine round the neck of an earthly beauty. They and Foulata’s bones will keep cold company till the end of all things.

With a sigh of disappointment we made our way back, and next day started for Loo. And yet it was really very ungrateful of us to be disappointed; for, as the reader will remember, by a lucky thought, I had taken the precaution to fill the wide pockets of my old shooting coat and trousers with gems before we left our prison-house, also Foulata’s basket, which held twice as many more, notwithstanding that the water bottle had occupied some of its space. A good many of these fell out in the course of our roll down the side of the pit, including several of the big ones, which I had crammed in on the top in my coat pockets. But, comparatively speaking, an enormous quantity still remained, including ninety-three large stones ranging from over two hundred to seventy carats in weight. My old shooting coat and the basket still held sufficient treasure to make us all, if not millionaires as the term is understood in America, at least exceedingly wealthy men, and yet to keep enough stones each to make the three finest sets of gems in Europe. So we had not done so badly.

On arriving at Loo we were most cordially received by Ignosi, whom we found well, and busily engaged in consolidating his power, and reorganising the regiments which had suffered most in the great struggle with Twala.

He listened with intense interest to our wonderful story; but when we told him of old Gagool’s frightful end he grew thoughtful.

“Come hither,” he called, to a very old Induna or councillor, who was sitting with others in a circle round the king, but out of ear-shot. The ancient man rose, approached, saluted, and seated himself.

“Thou art aged,” said Ignosi.

“Ay, my lord the king! Thy father’s father and I were born on the same day.”

“Tell me, when thou wast little, didst thou know Gagaoola the witch doctress?”

“Ay, my lord the king!”

“How was she then—young, like thee?”

“Not so, my lord the king! She was even as she is now and as she was in the days of my great grandfather before me; old and dried, very ugly, and full of wickedness.”

“She is no more; she is dead.”

“So, O king! then is an ancient curse taken from the land.”

“Go!”

“Koom! I go, Black Puppy, who tore out the old dog’s throat. Koom!”

“Ye see, my brothers,” said Ignosi, “this was a strange woman, and I rejoice that she is dead. She would have let you die in the dark place, and mayhap afterwards she had found a way to slay me, as she found a way to slay my father, and set up Twala, whom her black heart loved, in his place. Now go on with the tale; surely there never was its like!”

After I had narrated all the story of our escape, as we had agreed between ourselves that I should, I took the opportunity to address Ignosi as to our departure from Kukuanaland.

“And now, Ignosi,” I said, “the time has come for us to bid thee farewell, and start to see our own land once more. Behold, Ignosi, thou camest with us a servant, and now we leave thee a mighty king. If thou art grateful to us, remember to do even as thou didst promise: to rule justly, to respect the law, and to put none to death without a cause. So shalt thou prosper. Tomorrow, at break of day, Ignosi, thou wilt give us an escort who shall lead us across the mountains. Is it not so, O king?”

Ignosi covered his face with his hands for a while before answering.

“My heart is sore,” he said at last; “your words split my heart in twain. What have I done to you, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, that ye should leave me desolate? Ye who stood by me in rebellion and in battle, will ye leave me in the day of peace and victory? What will ye—wives? Choose from among the maidens! A place to live in? Behold, the land is yours as far as ye can see. The white man’s houses? Ye shall teach my people how to build them. Cattle for beef and milk? Every married man shall bring you an ox or a cow. Wild game to hunt? Does not the elephant walk through my forests, and the river-horse sleep in the reeds? Would ye make war? My Impis wait your word. If there is anything more which I can give, that will I give you.”

“Nay, Ignosi, we want none of these things,” I answered; “we would seek our own place.”

“Now do I learn,” said Ignosi bitterly, and with flashing eyes, “that ye love the bright stones more than me, your friend. Ye have the stones; now ye would go to Natal and across the moving black water and sell them, and be rich, as it is the desire of a white man’s heart to be. Cursed for your sake be the white stones, and cursed he who seeks them. Death shall it be to him who sets foot in the place of Death to find them. I have spoken. White men, ye can go.”

I laid my hand upon his arm. “Ignosi,” I said, “tell us, when thou didst wander in Zululand, and among the white people of Natal, did not thine heart turn to the land thy mother told thee of, thy native place, where thou didst see the light, and play when thou wast little, the land where thy place was?”

“It was even so, Macumazahn.”

“In like manner, Ignosi, do our hearts turn to our land and to our own place.”

Then came a silence. When Ignosi broke it, it was in a different voice.

“I do perceive that now as ever thy words are wise and full of reason, Macumazahn; that which flies in the air loves not to run along the ground; the white man loves not to live on the level of the black or to house among his kraals. Well, ye must go, and leave my heart sore, because ye will be as dead to me, since from where ye are no tidings can come to me.

“But listen, and let all your brothers know my words. No other white man shall cross the mountains, even if any man live to come so far. I will see no traders with their guns and gin. My people shall fight with the spear, and drink water, like their forefathers before them. I will have no praying-men to put a fear of death into men’s hearts, to stir them up against the law of the king, and make a path for the white folk who follow to run on. If a white man comes to my gates I will send him back; if a hundred come I will push them back; if armies come, I will make war on them with all my strength, and they shall not prevail against me. None shall ever seek for the shining stones: no, not an army, for if they come I will send a regiment and fill up the pit, and break down the white columns in the caves and choke them with rocks, so that none can reach even to that door of which ye speak, and whereof the way to move it is lost. But for you three, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, the path is always open; for, behold, ye are dearer to me than aught that breathes.

“And ye would go. Infadoos, my uncle, and my Induna, shall take you by the hand and guide you with a regiment. There is, as I have learned, another way across the mountains that he shall show you. Farewell, my brothers, brave white men. See me no more, for I have no heart to bear it. Behold! I make a decree, and it shall be published from the mountains to the mountains; your names, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, shall be “hlonipa” even as the names of dead kings, and he who speaks them shall die.12 So shall your memory be preserved in the land for ever.

“Go now, ere my eyes rain tears like a woman’s. At times as ye look back down the path of life, or when ye are old and gather yourselves together to crouch before the fire, because for you the sun has no more heat, ye will think of how we stood shoulder to shoulder, in that great battle which thy wise words planned, Macumazahn; of how thou wast the point of the horn that galled Twala’s flank, Bougwan; whilst thou stood in the ring of the Greys, Incubu, and men went down before thine axe like corn before a sickle; ay, and of how thou didst break that wild bull Twala’s strength, and bring his pride to dust. Fare ye well for ever, Incubu, Macumazahn, and Bougwan, my lords and my friends.”

Ignosi rose and looked earnestly at us for a few seconds. Then he threw the corner of his karross over his head, so as to cover his face from us.

We went in silence.

Next day at dawn we left Loo, escorted by our old friend Infadoos, who was heart-broken at our departure, and by the regiment of Buffaloes. Early as was the hour, all the main street of the town was lined with multitudes of people, who gave us the royal salute as we passed at the head of the regiment, while the women blessed us for having rid the land of Twala, throwing flowers before us as we went. It was really very affecting, and not the sort of thing one is accustomed to meet with from natives.

One ludicrous incident occurred, however, which I rather welcomed, as it gave us something to laugh at.

Just before we reached the confines of the town, a pretty young girl, with some lovely lilies in her hand, ran forward and presented them to Good—somehow they all seemed to like Good; I think his eye-glass and solitary whisker gave him a fictitious value—and then said that she had a boon to ask.

“Speak on,” he answered.

“Let my lord show his servant his beautiful white legs, that his servant may look upon them, and remember them all her days, and tell of them to her children; his servant has travelled four days’ journey to see them, for the fame of them has gone throughout the land.”

“I’ll be hanged if I do!” exclaimed Good excitedly.

“Come, come, my dear fellow,” said Sir Henry, “you can’t refuse to oblige a lady.”

“I won’t,” replied Good obstinately; “it is positively indecent.”

However, in the end he consented to draw up his trousers to the knee, amidst notes of rapturous admiration from all the women present, especially the gratified young lady, and in this guise he had to walk till we got clear of the town.

Good’s legs, I fear, will never be so greatly admired again. Of his melting teeth, and even of his “transparent eye,” the Kukuanas wearied more or less, but of his legs never.

As we travelled, Infadoos told us that there was another pass over the mountains to the north of the one followed by Solomon’s Great Road, or rather that there was a place where it was possible to climb down the wall of cliff which separates Kukuanaland from the desert, and is broken by the towering shapes of Sheba’s Breasts. It appeared, also, that rather more than two years previously a party of Kukuana hunters had descended this path into the desert in search of ostriches, whose plumes are much prized among them for war head-dresses, and that in the course of their hunt they had been led far from the mountains and were much troubled by thirst. Seeing trees on the horizon, however, they walked towards them, and discovered a large and fertile oasis some miles in extent, and plentifully watered. It was by way of this oasis that Infadoos suggested we should return, and the idea seemed to us a good one, for it appeared that we should thus escape the rigours of the mountain pass. Also some of the hunters were in attendance to guide us to the oasis, from which, they stated, they could perceive other fertile spots far away in the desert.13

Travelling easily, on the night of the fourth day’s journey we found ourselves once more on the crest of the mountains that separate Kukuanaland from the desert, which rolled away in sandy billows at our feet, and about twenty-five miles to the north of Sheba’s Breasts.

At dawn on the following day, we were led to the edge of a very precipitous chasm, by which we were to descend the precipice, and gain the plain two thousand and more feet below.

Here we bade farewell to that true friend and sturdy old warrior, Infadoos, who solemnly wished all good upon us, and nearly wept with grief. “Never, my lords,” he said, “shall mine old eyes see the like of you again. Ah! the way that Incubu cut his men down in the battle! Ah! for the sight of that stroke with which he swept off my brother Twala’s head! It was beautiful—beautiful! I may never hope to see such another, except perchance in happy dreams.”

We were very sorry to part from him; indeed, Good was so moved that he gave him as a souvenir—what do you think?—an eye-glass; afterwards we discovered that it was a spare one. Infadoos was delighted, foreseeing that the possession of such an article would increase his prestige enormously, and after several vain attempts he actually succeeded in screwing it into his own eye. Anything more incongruous than the old warrior looked with an eye-glass I never saw. Eye-glasses do not go well with leopard-skin cloaks and black ostrich plumes.

Then, after seeing that our guides were well laden with water and provisions, and having received a thundering farewell salute from the Buffaloes, we wrung Infadoos by the hand, and began our downward climb. A very arduous business it proved to be, but somehow that evening we found ourselves at the bottom without accident.

“Do you know,” said Sir Henry that night, as we sat by our fire and gazed up at the beetling cliffs above us, “I think that there are worse places than Kukuanaland in the world, and that I have known unhappier times than the last month or two, though I have never spent such queer ones. Eh! you fellows?”

“I almost wish I were back,” said Good, with a sigh.

As for myself, I reflected that all’s well that ends well; but in the course of a long life of shaves, I never had such shaves as those which I had recently experienced. The thought of that battle makes me feel cold all over, and as for our experience in the treasure chamber—!

Next morning we started on a toilsome trudge across the desert, having with us a good supply of water carried by our five guides, and camped that night in the open, marching again at dawn on the morrow.

By noon of the third day’s journey we could see the trees of the oasis of which the guides spoke, and within an hour of sundown we were walking once more upon grass and listening to the sound of running water.

12 This extraordinary and negative way of showing intense respect is by no means unknown among African people, and the result is that if, as is usual, the name in question has a significance, the meaning must be expressed by an idiom or other word. In this way a memory is preserved for generations, or until the new word utterly supplants the old.

13 It often puzzled all of us to understand how it was possible that Ignosi’s mother, bearing the child with her, should have survived the dangers of her journey across the mountains and the desert, dangers which so nearly proved fatal to ourselves. It has since occurred to me, and I give the idea to the reader for what it is worth, that she must have taken this second route, and wandered out like Hagar into the wilderness. If she did so, there is no longer anything inexplicable about the story, since, as Ignosi himself related, she may well have been picked up by some ostrich hunters before she or the child was exhausted, was led by them to the oasis, and thence by stages to the fertile country, and so on by slow degrees southwards to Zululand.—A.Q.

12 This extraordinary and negative way of showing intense respect is by no means unknown among African people, and the result is that if, as is usual, the name in question has a significance, the meaning must be expressed by an idiom or other word. In this way a memory is preserved for generations, or until the new word utterly supplants the old.

13 It often puzzled all of us to understand how it was possible that Ignosi’s mother, bearing the child with her, should have survived the dangers of her journey across the mountains and the desert, dangers which so nearly proved fatal to ourselves. It has since occurred to me, and I give the idea to the reader for what it is worth, that she must have taken this second route, and wandered out like Hagar into the wilderness. If she did so, there is no longer anything inexplicable about the story, since, as Ignosi himself related, she may well have been picked up by some ostrich hunters before she or the child was exhausted, was led by them to the oasis, and thence by stages to the fertile country, and so on by slow degrees southwards to Zululand.—A.Q.

CHAPTER XX

FOUND

And now I come to perhaps the strangest adventure that happened to us in all this strange business, and one which shows how wonderfully things are brought about.

I was walking along quietly, some way in front of the other two, down the banks of the stream which runs from the oasis till it is swallowed up in the hungry desert sands, when suddenly I stopped and rubbed my eyes, as well I might. There, not twenty yards in front of me, placed in a charming situation, under the shade of a species of fig-tree, and facing to the stream, was a cosy hut, built more or less on the Kafir principle with grass and withes, but having a full-length door instead of a bee-hole.

“What the dickens,” said I to myself, “can a hut be doing here?” Even as I said it the door of the hut opened, and there limped out of it a white man clothed in skins, and with an enormous black beard. I thought that I must have got a touch of the sun. It was impossible. No hunter ever came to such a place as this. Certainly no hunter would ever settle in it. I stared and stared, and so did the other man, and just at that juncture Sir Henry and Good walked up.

“Look here, you fellows,” I said, “is that a white man, or am I mad?”

Sir Henry looked, and Good looked, and then all of a sudden the lame white man with a black beard uttered a great cry, and began hobbling towards us. When he was close he fell down in a sort of faint.

With a spring Sir Henry was by his side.

“Great Powers!” he cried, “it is my brother George!”

At the sound of this disturbance, another figure, also clad in skins, emerged from the hut, a gun in his hand, and ran towards us. On seeing me he too gave a cry.

“Macumazahn,” he halloed, “don’t you know me, Baas? I’m Jim the hunter. I lost the note you gave me to give to the Baas, and we have been here nearly two years.” And the fellow fell at my feet, and rolled over and over, weeping for joy.

“You careless scoundrel!” I said; “you ought to be well sjambocked”—that is, hided.

Meanwhile the man with the black beard had recovered and risen, and he and Sir Henry were pump-handling away at each other, apparently without a word to say. But whatever they had quarrelled about in the past—I suspect it was a lady, though I never asked—it was evidently forgotten now.

“My dear old fellow,” burst out Sir Henry at last, “I thought you were dead. I have been over Solomon’s Mountains to find you. I had given up all hope of ever seeing you again, and now I come across you perched in the desert, like an old assvögel.”14

“I tried to cross Solomon’s Mountains nearly two years ago,” was the answer, spoken in the hesitating voice of a man who has had little recent opportunity of using his tongue, “but when I reached here a boulder fell on my leg and crushed it, and I have been able to go neither forward nor back.”

Then I came up. “How do you do, Mr. Neville?” I said; “do you remember me?”

“Why,” he said, “isn’t it Hunter Quatermain, eh, and Good too? Hold on a minute, you fellows, I am getting dizzy again. It is all so very strange, and, when a man has ceased to hope, so very happy!”

That evening, over the camp fire, George Curtis told us his story, which, in its way, was almost as eventful as our own, and, put shortly, amounted to this. A little less than two years before, he had started from Sitanda’s Kraal, to try to reach Suliman’s Berg. As for the note I had sent him by Jim, that worthy lost it, and he had never heard of it till today. But, acting upon information he had received from the natives, he headed not for Sheba’s Breasts, but for the ladder-like descent of the mountains down which we had just come, which is clearly a better route than that marked out in old Dom Silvestra’s plan. In the desert he and Jim had suffered great hardships, but finally they reached this oasis, where a terrible accident befell George Curtis. On the day of their arrival he was sitting by the stream, and Jim was extracting the honey from the nest of a stingless bee which is to be found in the desert, on the top of a bank immediately above him. In so doing he loosened a great boulder of rock, which fell upon George Curtis’s right leg, crushing it frightfully. From that day he had been so lame that he found it impossible to go either forward or back, and had preferred to take the chances of dying in the oasis to the certainty of perishing in the desert.

As for food, however, they got on pretty well, for they had a good supply of ammunition, and the oasis was frequented, especially at night, by large quantities of game, which came thither for water. These they shot, or trapped in pitfalls, using the flesh for food, and, after their clothes wore out, the hides for clothing.

“And so,” George Curtis ended, “we have lived for nearly two years, like a second Robinson Crusoe and his man Friday, hoping against hope that some natives might come here to help us away, but none have come. Only last night we settled that Jim should leave me, and try to reach Sitanda’s Kraal to get assistance. He was to go tomorrow, but I had little hope of ever seeing him back again. And now you, of all people in the world, you, who, as I fancied, had long ago forgotten all about me, and were living comfortably in old England, turn up in a promiscuous way and find me where you least expected. It is the most wonderful thing that I have ever heard of, and the most merciful too.”

Then Sir Henry set to work, and told him the main facts of our adventures, sitting till late into the night to do it.

“By Jove!” said George Curtis, when I showed him some of the diamonds: “well, at least you have got something for your pains, besides my worthless self.”

Sir Henry laughed. “They belong to Quatermain and Good. It was a part of the bargain that they should divide any spoils there might be.”

This remark set me thinking, and having spoken to Good, I told Sir Henry that it was our joint wish that he should take a third portion of the diamonds, or, if he would not, that his share should be handed to his brother, who had suffered even more than ourselves on the chance of getting them. Finally, we prevailed upon him to consent to this arrangement, but George Curtis did not know of it until some time afterwards.

* * * *

Here, at this point, I think that I shall end my history. Our journey across the desert back to Sitanda’s Kraal was most arduous, especially as we had to support George Curtis, whose right leg was very weak indeed, and continually threw out splinters of bone. But we did accomplish it somehow, and to give its details would only be to reproduce much of what happened to us on the former occasion.

Six months from the date of our re-arrival at Sitanda’s, where we found our guns and other goods quite safe, though the old rascal in charge was much disgusted at our surviving to claim them, saw us all once more safe and sound at my little place on the Berea, near Durban, where I am now writing. Thence I bid farewell to all who have accompanied me through the strangest trip I ever made in the course of a long and varied experience.

P.S.—Just as I had written the last word, a Kafir came up my avenue of orange trees, carrying a letter in a cleft stick, which he had brought from the post. It turned out to be from Sir Henry, and as it speaks for itself I give it in full.

October 1, 1884.

Brayley Hall, Yorkshire.

My Dear Quatermain,

I send you a line a few mails back to say that the three of us, George, Good, and myself, fetched up all right in England. We got off the boat at Southampton, and went up to town. You should have seen what a swell Good turned out the very next day, beautifully shaved, frock coat fitting like a glove, brand new eye-glass, etc., etc. I went and walked in the park with him, where I met some people I know, and at once told them the story of his “beautiful white legs.”

He is furious, especially as some ill-natured person has printed it in a Society paper.

To come to business, Good and I took the diamonds to Streeter’s to be valued, as we arranged, and really I am afraid to tell you what they put them at, it seems so enormous. They say that of course it is more or less guess-work, as such stones have never to their knowledge been put on the market in anything like such quantities. It appears that (with the exception of one or two of the largest) they are of the finest water, and equal in every way to the best Brazilian stones. I asked them if they would buy them, but they said that it was beyond their power to do so, and recommended us to sell by degrees, over a period of years indeed, for fear lest we should flood the market. They offer, however, a hundred and eighty thousand for a very small portion of them.

You must come home, Quatermain, and see about these things, especially if you insist upon making the magnificent present of the third share, which does not belong to me, to my brother George. As for Good, he is no good. His time is too much occupied in shaving, and other matters connected with the vain adorning of the body. But I think he is still down on his luck about Foulata. He told me that since he had been home he hadn’t seen a woman to touch her, either as regards her figure or the sweetness of her expression.

I want you to come home, my dear old comrade, and to buy a house near here. You have done your day’s work, and have lots of money now, and there is a place for sale quite close which would suit you admirably. Do come; the sooner the better; you can finish writing the story of our adventures on board ship. We have refused to tell the tale till it is written by you, for fear lest we shall not be believed. If you start on receipt of this you will reach here by Christmas, and I book you to stay with me for that. Good is coming, and George; and so, by the way, is your boy Harry (there’s a bribe for you). I have had him down for a week’s shooting, and like him. He is a cool young hand; he shot me in the leg, cut out the pellets, and then remarked upon the advantages of having a medical student with every shooting party!

Good-bye, old boy; I can’t say any more, but I know that you will come, if it is only to oblige

Your sincere friend,

Henry Curtis.

P.S.—The tusks of the great bull that killed poor Khiva have now been put up in the hall here, over the pair of buffalo horns you gave me, and look magnificent; and the axe with which I chopped off Twala’s head is fixed above my writing-table. I wish that we could have managed to bring away the coats of chain armour. Don’t lose poor Foulata’s basket in which you brought away the diamonds.

—H.C.

Today is Tuesday. There is a steamer going on Friday, and I really think that I must take Curtis at his word, and sail by her for England, if it is only to see you, Harry, my boy, and to look after the printing of this history, which is a task that I do not like to trust to anybody else.

—ALLAN QUATERMAIN

14 Vulture.

14 Vulture.

LAND OF THE SHADOW DRAGONS, by Eando Binder

Originally published in Fantastic Adventures, May 1941.

The chartered plane’s motor roared as it left Chicago’s Municipal Airport. A low-winged cabin ship, it raised sluggishly, loaded almost to capacity with crated supplies.

Pilot Hugh Crane tensed at the controls. The ship was acting almost as though it were overloaded! He gunned for altitude desperately. Far down the field were high-tension wires. Once a plane had blundered into them, ending up a broken, burning mass of junk.

Why wasn’t the plane rising normally? The motor hummed smooth as silk and Crane had full control of ailerons. Yet the craft inched itself from the ground with agonizing reluctance.

The suspense was over in seconds. The plane barely cleared the wires. The margin had been uncomfortably close. If the undercarriage had not been retractable, the ship would have crashed.

Crane unclamped his lower lip from his teeth. In his years of piloting, he had never come that near to disaster. But now the plane slanted up into the safe aerial highways.

He turned to his two passengers wondering if they had noticed.

“Rather a poor take-off, wasn’t it?” Paul Harlan said sharply. “We were careful not to overload the ship, according to airport instructions and inspection.”

Crane knew he wasn’t going to like Harlan. Tall and dark, he seemed about Crane’s age, under thirty. His bearing was stiff and cold, his lips straight and thin. A man who would play his own game, given the chance.

Ignoring the words, Hugh Crane addressed the girl in the side seat. “Where to, Miss Damon?”

She did not reply at once.

Dawn’s glowing red arc brightened in the east, revealing the girl more clearly. Crane’s brief glance formed a staccato impression. Figure tall, slender. Features regular except for a slight upturned nose. Type, titian blond. Clothing mannish for roughing it—boots, leather breeches, suede jacket, tam o’shanter. Total effect, not bad!

“You will fly due northwest,” the girl directed. Her tone was preoccupied.

“To what, or where?”

“Our destination is near Great Bear Lake, Canada.”

“Which side of it?” Crane pursued. A frosty stare accompanied the girl’s response.

“As I told the airport officials, that’s my business. I paid for the privilege of having an uninquisitive pilot!”

“Ouch!” Crane said mentally. What kind of trip was this? Why all the secrecy? He took a longer look at the girl. No, she wasn’t just a wealthy madcap, out for a lark. There was quiet purpose in her hazel-brown eyes. Almost grimness.

“I can’t go by those general directions,” Crane ventured. “Not all the way. A plane isn’t something you can amble around in aimlessly. After all, Miss Damon—”

Jondra Damon interrupted with a toss of her head.

“You’re being difficult. When we reach Great Bear Lake, I’ll give you more specific instructions. If that doesn’t satisfy you, turn back! I’ll get another pilot.”

For a moment they glared at each other. Then Crane shrugged and turned eyes front. The girl was within her rights. He had been instructed to fly where she wished, within the range of risk to life and ship. Beyond that, the officials had said—or known—nothing of the eccentric arrangement.

What was it all about? Crane began to feel he was flying in some sort of mystery. To Crane it wasn’t exactly an unpleasant thought.

The girl’s hand touched his shoulder. She was suddenly smiling.

“I didn’t mean to be so abrupt. But I really can’t explain much more at present. My father is up there—Dr. Sewell Damon. He’s conducting experiments. Mr. Paul Harlan, who answered my ad last week for an experienced chemist, is to assist him. The exact destination is being kept secret as long as possible at my father’s request.”

She added, after a moment’s hesitation, “I think he fears—well, spies.”

“Spies!” Crane echoed the word with a start. “What sort of experimenting is he doing?”

The girl shook her head, but not angrily. Her eyes suddenly gleamed with worry. She spoke in a low murmur. “I think he may be in danger!”

She arose, as though to pace the narrow cabin floor.

“Sit down!” Crane snapped. Hastily he added, “Sorry, but it’s the best thing to do while flying.”

But before the girl could obey, the ship lurched through an air pocket. The girl seemed about to stumble and fall backward. But miraculously she didn’t, as if a hand had caught her arm just in time.

“Thanks!” she smiled at Harlan, gaining her seat.

Harlan stared at her blankly. He had had no chance to help her, half sliding out of his seat himself.

“What—” he began, but then shrugged. It was hard to talk above the drone of the propeller.

Crane’s quick glance behind him had taken in the episode. Again things seemed verging on the mysterious. First the plane, apparently overloaded. Then the queer mission they were on. Now the girl, acting as though an unseen passenger had assisted her.

But there was no such passenger. She had imagined that someone had helped her keep her balance.

* * * *

The plane drummed northwest. The countryside below became steadily more bleak and rugged with each degree of northern latitude.

Ten hours later, Hugh Crane turned to Jondra Damon, dozing in her seat. He hated to disturb her, but now was the time for directions. She looked like she hadn’t had proper sleep for a week, in preparation for this strange venture.

“We’re within a hundred miles of Great Bear Lake. Might tell me now exactly where you want to go.”

Jondra Damon rubbed her eyes. “Fifty miles east of Great Bear, directly on the Arctic Circle.”

Minutes later, a snow squall came up, chilling the heated cabin.

Crane pondered. “If the snow gets thicker,” he said, “I’ll have to land on the first level stretch. But maybe we can make it to your destination. What are we looking for? Any landmark you can name?”

“It’s a valley,” the girl responded shortly, lighting a cigarette.

Crane looked helplessly at Harlan.

Harlan shrugged. “I know as little about it as you do,” he grunted.

At the same time he eyed the girl as though he, too, resented being kept so much in the dark.

Jondra Damon blew out a cloud of smoke imperturbably.

“I thought it was women who were always curious. Now look, you’re both paid to do as you’re told, and paid well. You, Mr. Harlan, were hired at ten dollars a day to help my father when we arrive. You, Mr. Crane, were engaged to land the plane where I state, help unload the supplies, and then leave. It’s simple enough, isn’t it?”

“But the valley!” Crane said patiently. “I presume there’s a big sign somewhere saying valley in big red letters?”

The girl flushed. “Oh! Well, it’s a sunken valley. Father informed me that it should stand out from the air by itself.”

Crane shook his head, but went back to his controls.

Reaching Great Bear Lake, he cruised over its eastern shore, and swung gradually away in a wide circle. The snow thickened, making a landing imperative within an hour. Crane swept his eyes from horizon to horizon for the valley. A sunken valley. What in the world would it look like?

A hand gripped his shoulder suddenly, turning him slightly. Then Crane saw it himself—a dark gash in the general whiteness of snow-tufted land.

“Yes, that must be it!” Crane said, wondering why Harlan was so mysterious, grasping his shoulder and not saying a word. He looked around, but Harlan was now beside the girl, peering down.

What was the man’s game? Crane thought fleetingly. Had he known how the valley would look, despite his pretended ignorance of the whole thing? Was he keeping things from the girl, as well as the other way around? What was in that valley—gold, radium?

He’d soon find out. Crane zoomed for the spot. Circling and lowering, he made out the barren floor of the valley, with only an evergreen here and there. A landing could easily be made in the valley itself. It was sunken, all right, at least three hundred feet below general level, with sheer cliffs at every side.

“How queer it looks!” Jondra Damon was murmuring at his side, peering through the windshield. “Watch out for the snow…”

It struck Crane too. Swirls of snowflakes dropped into the valley and seemed to hang. Momentarily, they seemed to form the ghost-shapes of tall trees. Crane felt a qualm of uneasiness, but quickly killed it. One could see anything in clouds or snowstorms, with a dash of imagination.

“No time to waste,” he warned. “We’re going down. Hold on!” Heading into the wind, Crane slanted down for the broad, smooth area at one end of the valley. There should be no trouble.

Suddenly a tiny figure emerged from some hidden shelter below, near a cliff-face. It ran madly into the open, swinging its arms wildly.

“It must be father!” Jondra cried. She peered closely. “He seems to be warning us away. I don’t understand, there’s something wrong!”

Harlan gasped. “The man’s mad! He’s firing his gun at us!”

Above the roar of the propeller sounded the sharp bark of a rifle. The man below was firing not at them, but in warning not to land! To stay away!

“I’m going to land anyway!” Crane yelled. “I’ve got to! Blinding snowstorm up above, and getting worse. This is a safer chance.”

A hundred feet above ground, Crane gasped through tight-pressed lips.

Something had brushed against the undercarriage! He felt it jar through the ship, though he saw nothing! A keen instinct of danger knifed through him. He tried instantly to zoom upward again, but again something struck the ship.

This time it had been at the right wingtip, almost wrenching the wheel out of his hands. The plane dipped groundward sickeningly, like a wounded bird. With desperate strength, Crane straightened the craft just as the wheels touched ground.

Bouncing badly, the plane rumbled over the rough terrain. It rolled almost to a stop, but abruptly struck something with a stunning impact, shivering through its entire length. Crane found himself thrown in a tangled heap with his two passengers on the tilted cabin floor.

The motor coughed to silence, luckily, eliminating the danger of fire if any gas had spurted out of the wing tanks.

CHAPTER II

The Invisible Specter

Hugh Crane picked himself up dazedly, then pulled the girl to her feet. She lay limp in his arms for a moment, half stunned. Finally her eyelids flew open. The warm color of her eyes was washed over with terror that faded, and wonder that grew.

“What happened?” she asked weakly. “Why did the plane act as if it had struck something?”

“Struck something!” Paul Harlan stood beside them, dark face glowering, a bruise over his right eye. “Bad piloting, that’s all,” he growled. “First he nearly wrecks the ship in taking off at Chicago. Now he nearly puts us down in pieces!”

His voice rose harshly. “Spies! Your father is worried about spies, you say. I just wonder if this Hugh Crane is a licensed pilot at all. Or if he’s using his right name!”

Jondra Damon’s eyes widened. She stepped back from Crane.

“Father warned me to be very careful, and now—”

“Good God!” Crane exploded. He’d had to bite his lips to keep from swinging at Harlan. Now the stark suspicion in the girl’s eyes added fuel to a mounting rage. He didn’t have to take this from anybody!

He lunged at Harlan, driving his fist forward.

The blow never landed. Crane was not quite sure why it didn’t. Some force seemed to grasp his wrist and hold his arm back. He tried again, more enraged than ever.

“Stop!”

Crane whirled. The new voice had come from the swung-open door of the plane’s cabin, with a bark of authority. A man leaned there, rifle upraised. Tall and thin, gray-haired, unshaven, boots and pants muddy, he looked the part of some desperate character. But there was intelligence in his high brow and level gray eyes.

“Dad!”

With the one word, Jondra flew to embrace him. He patted her head, then disengaged her gently, facing the two men again.

“I heard your little quarrel,” he said casually. “Your nerves are upset by the close escape you had. Calm down, please.”

Crane relaxed, anger draining from him as suddenly as it had come.

“You’re Dr. Sewell Damon, of course,” he said, and introduced himself and Harlan. He went on, grinning ruefully, “I was supposed to just land, and unload, and go. But I guess now I’ll have to stay till I can make repairs.”

The scientist’s lips pursed behind a week’s growth of beard.

Crane snapped, “If you think that’s a spy’s trick, so that I can stay and horn in on whatever you’re doing here—” He shrugged indifferently.

Dr. Damon’s eyes narrowed. His hand tightened on the rifle.

“If there’s any spying, it wouldn’t be healthy. The secret of this valley—”

“I don’t want a dime of it,” Crane growled. “Just tell me one thing—what spoiled my landing? Bad air-currents rising from the valley?”

Dr. Damon stared. “You haven’t guessed?” he said slowly.

“Guessed what?” Crane looked blankly at Harlan, who was equally mystified.

The scientist turned. “Follow me.” The four stepped from the cabin. Dr. Damon dodged under the right wing and stood erect beside the motor cowling. There was a large round dent in the front wing-edge. Crane gaped at it.

“Exactly as though I’d struck a tree there, just before the plane stopped rolling.”

“You did,” Dr. Damon said.

“What? Where’s the tree?” Crane looked around for the fallen tree, but there was no sign of one within hundreds of yards. “Look, Dr. Damon,” he grunted, “I’m not in the mood for humor—”

A startled cry from Harlan interrupted. He had passed back of Crane, stretching his cramped muscles. Now he was toppling to the ground, for no visible reason—as if his legs had been knocked from under him!

Rising to his elbow, looking foolish, he slowly stretched out his hand near the ground. Crane watched in utter fascination as Harlan’s hand seemed to meet something, and explore its outline. Harlan looked up with his foolish expression altered to one of ghastly shock.

With a smothered curse, Crane kneeled and stretched out his hand to the same spot. In mid-air he felt something—the bark of a tree! Solid and real to his sense of touch, but unseen by his eyes.

Harlan’s whisper seemed to shatter the quiet air.

“It’s—invisible!”

For a moment nothing more was said. The three newcomers to the valley looked at one another in dumb amazement, as human beings must when confronted by a wonder out of the realms of fantasy. Invisibility! A dream of science—and of superstition before that—come true!

Hugh Crane followed the length of the fallen trunk before he was satisfied. With his hands he felt the bole, the lower branches, and the upper foliage of some pine-like tree with needles and cones, knocked over by the plane.

He came back facing the scientist.

“So that’s the secret of this valley, Dr. Damon! Not gold or minerals, but invisibility!”

The elderly man nodded slowly.

“It’s a miracle that you landed without smashing up completely.” He swept an arm around. “The valley looks bare to the eye, doesn’t it? As a matter of fact, it teems with life! Trees, bushes, grass and animals. All invisible!”

The others looked around. The level stretch of the valley floor was naked, to their eyes. Yet they realized now that between them and the cliffs must be a thousand unseen things. Jondra shivered. Crane could hardly keep from doing the same, overwhelmed by the eerie mystery.

Dr. Damon resumed. “By blind, lucky chance, you brought the ship down in a cleared patch of bush growths. Almost any other spot you would have cracked up against rows of trees.”

“Fools luck,” agreed Crane. “But why weren’t we warned?”

“I tried to warn you away,” the scientist reminded. “I fired my gun, hoping you’d go back and land up above somewhere.”

“But why wasn’t your daughter warned, before we even arrived?” Crane eyed the man accusingly. “You risked your daughter’s life by keeping that so secretive!”

“No, I was told,” the girl spoke up. “That is, father mentioned invisibility in a message to me. But he didn’t tell me the whole story—that the valley is crammed with invisible trees and life.”

“I couldn’t,” Dr. Damon said gently. “You might have thought I was mad.” Then his voice sharpened. “But Jondra, I did warn you not to let the plane be landed in the valley, in my second message—”

“Second message?” The girl stared at him. “I didn’t get a second one!”

Dr. Damon whirled.

“Pierre!” he cried. “Didn’t you deliver my second message?”

Crane stalled as another figure silently stepped forth from the shadow of the plane. He had come up so quietly that the others hadn’t known he was there. Black eyes, sleek black hair, emotionless features and buckskin garments tabbed him instantly as a French-Canadian guide and a roamer of the north country.

“Pierre, my guide,” Dr, Damon informed them parenthetically. Then again he demanded: “The second message, Pierre. By heaven, if you failed to send it—”

“I send it,” Pierre protested in a hoarse, taciturn voice. “I mail it from Good Hope, t’ree week ago.”

“Then it was lost in the mails,” Dr. Damon sighed. “Well, things have been uncertain right along, since the war. Thank heaven you’re here safe and sound, Jondra. And you, Crane and Harlan. Sorry about your ship, Crane. I’ll pay for the damages.

“You can stay as long as you need to repair it. Plenty of food supplies came with Jondra. I have a comfortable cave-home in the nearby cliff. Well, you’re all probably tired and hungry. We can unload the plane tomorrow. Follow me.”

The night was coming on. The three who had spent a dozen hours in the air were ready for food and rest. And shelter. A chill wind swept down into the valley, protected though it was.

As Crane stepped away from the plane, a thought ground forward in mind.

“Who turned off the motor, just after the landing?” he asked aloud. “Harlan, Miss Damon and I were on the floor, helpless. You, Dr. Damon, and Pierre were approaching. It couldn’t be any of us.” He grasped the scientist’s arm. “There wouldn’t happen to be—invisible men?”

Dr. Damon started. “Not that I know of,” he vouched. “It’s a preposterous thought. Your motor died by itself.”

Crane shook his head. “I’d like to believe that. But the ignition key was turned off.”

“Then the jar of landing turned it,” Dr. Damon retorted. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you.”

Imagination? Imagination that the plane at take-off had been heavily loaded? That Jondra Damon had kept on her feet in the bouncing air pocket? That a strange force had withheld his blow at Harlan? That a shock-cushioned ignition key had been turned by a human hand?

All imagination? Or did it add up to some mystery, strangely linked with this phenomenal valley of invisibility?

Crane didn’t know. But he was determined to find out, one way or another.

CHAPTER III

Sabotage

Pierre and Dr. Damon led the way.

Harlan, Jondra and Crane followed in single file, carefully stepping in the exact path they broke. Blundering into an unseen tree would not be pleasant.

Dr. Damon kept one hand directly before him like a sleepwalker, for emergency, but seemed able to avoid invisible trees by some instinct. He stepped along sure-footedly, as did Pierre.

“From experience,” he confided, “I can make out the trees. They aren’t absolutely invisible. Nothing can be, except air and colorless gases. The trees throw a faint shadow that my eyes—and Pierre’s—have learned to watch for. With the sun setting, the shadows are longer and more definite. Do you see them at all?”

Crane gradually made out the faintest of shadows slanting over what seemed barren ground. Like eyes adjusting themselves to gloom, he could squint and bring them up slightly. He sucked in his breath. There were hundreds of those long, faint shadow-streaks. A whole forest towered around them!

A forest of trees as solid as the ground, but as vagrant to the eye as smoke. Light went through them with less hindrance than through glass. It was amazing, almost incredible.

The ground was not barren, however, upon closer inspection. A carpeting of dead needles lay decaying over the ground, as in any pine forest. Here and there they stepped over legs and fallen trees, completely visible. Dead branches and sticks were in the visible spectrum.

“This valley’s invisibility is confined solely to its living life-forms,” Dr. Damon explained. “When a tree or animal dies, it passes into the visible.” He stopped, pointing. “Look—a rabbit!”

Crane barely made out a faint trail of mist streaking across their path. Invisible animals roamed these invisible forest glens.

“There are also fox, deer, and I think bear,” Dr. Damon elaborated. “It—”

He was interrupted by a blood-chilling roar that sounded faintly from far across the valley. Both Pierre and the scientist jerked their heads, exchanged a glance, and gripped their rifles more firmly.

“Lynx,” stated Dr. Damon briefly.

“Are you sure it wasn’t anything bigger?” Crane asked. “I just thought I saw a shadow thrown momentarily across the far cliff wall, near where the sound came from. It was the outline of—”

Crane stopped. He had been about to say something preposterous.

“Lynx,” repeated Dr. Damon tersely.

Crane saw the scientist’s surreptitious glance at his daughter. He kept still. But the shadow aside, the roar itself had never issued from the throat of a mere lynx. Of that Crane was dead certain.

* * * *

A natural rock overhang formed the roof of Dr. Damon’s valley dwelling. It extended back fifty feet in the base of the east cliff wall, which was three hundred feet high. Logs set upright to enclose the sides of the rock pocket were of Pierre’s handiwork.

The space within was warm, dry, with a hard-packed floor. Pierre, with his kind’s resourcefulness, had also fashioned several items of crude furniture—chairs, tables and low bunks cushioned with pine needles. One new bunk had been added, obviously for Harlan.

“You hadn’t meant for me to stay, then,” Jondra said. “There’s danger here, Dad! You wouldn’t say it in the message, but there is danger. I can feel it!”

Already unnerved by the hazardous landing, the girl’s face was strained. It was not a light shock suddenly to see—or not see—a valley of shadow-things in an otherwise normal world.

“Danger of stubbing your toe!” Dr. Damon forced a laugh and chucked his daughter under the chin. “Food and sleep are what you need, all of you.”

Pierre had already begun boiling a stew of jerked beef and onions over a stone stove just outside the pine-slab door. They ate looking out over the now dark valley. It was not so eerie with darkness substituting for invisibility. The unseen forest creaked and rustled under a whipping wind from regions above.

Crane woke twice in the night, on his unaccustomed bed of pine needles. Pierre sat dozing before the smoldering fire he kept up against the night chill of the northern latitude.

But the second time Crane woke up, Pierre was standing erect, staring out over the valley of shadow-life. His expression in the firelight was strange—fierce and determined.

Pierre would bear watching too, Crane told himself. Had he delivered that second message, or not? If not, why not?

* * * *

Unloading the plane took the better part of the next day. Pierre, Harlan and Hugh Crane shuttled between the plane and cave with arms full, Pierre leading. Besides food supplies for an extended stay, there were crates of apparatus and chemicals.

Dr. Damon unpacked the latter eagerly, and set the items up on a long table previously made for the purpose, at the back of the cave. His laboratory workbench. Crane felt growing wonder at the array of test-tubes, flasks, hypodermic needles, morphine, alcohol and more complicated reagents.

“Now I’ll get somewhere,” the biologist asserted, rubbing his hands together. “Pierre wasn’t able to pack more than a few pounds of equipment here to me from the small town of Good Hope, northwest of here. I’ll have the answer soon.”

“Answer to what?” ventured Crane, nettled at the man’s secretiveness.

Dr. Damon’s gray eyes veiled themselves.

“How long will it take you to repair your ship?” he countered in a tone that meant, “How soon will you get out of my way?”

“I don’t know, probably a week or two,” Crane lied.

Brief examination had shown him that the ship could leave now. The motor was intact, also the fuel tanks. The left wing was rather badly ripped, and the undercarriage out of line, but with most of its former load gone, the plane would take off easily in the same cleared stretch they had miraculously landed in.

* * * *

The plane was ready to go, but Crane wasn’t. Not till he was sure Jondra Damon was in no danger.

He couldn’t leave a girl—any girl, of course—in the midst of unknown risks.

“You have a radio in the plane?” Dr. Damon said. “If you contact your airport, to tell them of the delay, I’ll trust you not to reveal this valley’s exact location. Name your price and you’ll go back with my bank draft—”

“No sale,” Crane snapped, angered at the cheap approach. He turned on his heel, aware that the scientist was staring after him with narrowed eyes.

He trudged to the plane, following the trail now marked with stones, winding through trees that he could feel with his hands in passing, but whose bulks were as transparent as air.

The wonder of it was somewhat subdued this second day. His thoughts revolved more around the undertow of human cross-currents gradually shaping themselves.

He passed Pierre on the trail, lugging a box on his broad shoulders. Reaching the plane, Crane stepped into the cabin. Harlan was there, and he turned with a startled air.

“The doctor’s supplies are all in the fuselage compartment, not here,” Crane said coldly.

Harlan’s shrug was studied.

“I suppose now I’m some sort of spy?” he retorted sarcastically. He stepped out to hoist a box to his shoulders, leaving.

Crane glanced around the ship. What had Harlan been doing? Then he saw…

When he left a minute later with the last box, his eyes were hard. He strode rapidly. He set the box down inside the doorway of the cave, and straightened with grim accusation on his face.

“Who smashed the plane’s radio?” he demanded, eying them one after another. His glance came back to Harlan. “You were there last, Harlan.”

“You’d have heard it if I did it,” Harlan returned easily. “I was just ahead of you—don’t you remember?” His eyes flicked to Pierre significantly.

Pierre’s beady eyes met Crane’s, then shifted.

“Pierre wouldn’t do it,” Dr. Damon declared quickly. “I know him too well.”

Crane ground his teeth.

“Someone did it! It was done between the time I talked to you last, and went to the plane.” He smiled grimly. “If Harlan and Pierre are eliminated, that leaves—”

“How dare you!” Jondra Damon blazed, stepping before him. “Neither Dad nor I would do such a thing. You could have done it yourself, since accusations are in order!”

Crane threw up his hands.

“I’m getting tired of all this!” he exploded. “That radio was our only emergency contact with the outside world, since the plane is damaged. Someone in this group smashed it, for reasons of his own. What’s more—” He stopped suddenly and ripped free a lath of the crate he had last brought. Reaching within excelsior packing, he drew out something by a handle and held it up.

“Grenades!” he hissed. “Potato-masher type. You say there is no danger here, Dr. Damon, yet you had your daughter bring rifles and hand grenades. Are the mosquitoes that big here?”

Jondra had shuddered at sight of the grenades She clutched her father’s arm.

“Why did you have me bring them? You must tell me!”

A swift, disturbed look came over the scientist’s face. Then he drew a smile over his features.

“You’re both being foolish,” he laughed. “The grenades are handy for any number of things, like blasting down trees.”

He turned away, in dismissal of the subject.

“All right,” Crane said calmly. “I’m going to repair the radio if I can. Then I’m going to signal the authorities and ask for an investigation. Something isn’t right here!”

He stamped back to the ship. In the cabin he sat down and waited, without touching the radio. The set was beyond repair. He knew that from the start. His threat, he hoped, would smoke out something. Far worse than groping through an invisible forest was this groping through undefined human purposes.

Who would come sneaking around now, to see if he was repairing the radio? Who was it that wished them isolated from the outside world—and why?

He tensed at a sound—the soft pad of feet under the wing outside. He slowly inched up till his eyes peered over the windshield ledge. Not a soul was there! Puzzled, Crane sank back.

The sound repeated itself & while later, just outside the cabin door. Crane crouched, waiting. When the sound was near, he rushed out, arms extended, ready to knock away a gun if the intruder carried that.

He gasped in chorus with a startled shriek. Jondra Damon was tight in his closing arms. Releasing her, he stepped back.

“You, Miss Damon? But—” Crane was more confused than at any time before.

Color flushed into the girl’s paled cheeks. And then suspicion leaped into her eyes. Crane was almost grimly amused. He realized his actions must be as queer in her eyes, as hers in his.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “Let’s call it quits between us. Frankly, I thought the one who had smashed the radio would show up, not you.”

“Thanks for the implication.” She answered his grin with a smile. “I came to ask you something—”

“Yes?”

Her hand touched his arm, before she went on.

“I trust you, somehow. I want you to guard my father, every minute of the day!” The words came in a rush now. “I feel his life is in danger. I feel there’s something in this valley—something horrible—that threatens him. Maybe all of us! Will you guard him for me, Mr. Crane?”

Suddenly she was in his arms again, but not by accident. He crushed her to him.

“Yes,” he whispered fiercely. “And I’ll guard you too—Jondra!”

She struggled free, her eyes wide, startled. She turned.

“Let’s go back to camp,” she said quietly.

CHAPTER IV

Ally Unseen

Jondra Damon hurried down the trail, Crane following. The redolence of pine forest was around them, and the rustle of branches in the wind. Almost, Crane could vision the trees themselves, and the girl tripping lithely through them. She glanced around once or twice, her hazel eyes glad to have him as an avowed friend in this queer adventure.

A hundred yards from the plane he caught her hand, striding beside her despite the danger of colliding with a lurking shadow-tree. He wanted to say something.

“Jondra—”

Crane was interrupted by an ear-splitting roar. They froze in their tracks. Then there sounded the crackling of undergrowth, and the lumbering of some form through the forest toward them!

Jondra cowered in his arms.

“Something’s coming at us!” she cried. “Something big—and invisible!”

Crane had already come to that conclusion. He shoved the girl ahead of him, back toward the plane. It was nearer than the camp. They sped as fast as they dared down the marked trail. Invisible bushes dragged at their ankles. Behind them sounded the heavy tread of some nameless beast, snorting and growling ferociously.

“If we could only see it!” Crane groaned.

But on second thought, perhaps it was better not to. No bear or tiger, or any creature Crane could think of had made the noises they heard. Its roar had come from a huge, rumbling chest. Its ponderous feet thumped against the ground with more than elephantine force.

In the name of the universe, what frightful monster was pursuing them, uncatalogued in any zoo or book on Earth?

Crane prodded the girl ahead faster, feeling blind and helpless. What chance to escape the invisible horror? Its growlings drew nearer, and imagination or not, Crane felt a hot fetid breath on his neck. Once it seemed to squeeze between two close-set trees. There was a crack, as one tree gave way.

Just as they reached the wing-edge of the plane, Jondra stopped short with a shrill scream. Crane saw it at the same moment—the ghostly shadow of the creature, cast ahead of them against the nearest cliff-wall.

Crane’s own mind and muscles turned numb. A mighty body reared in silhouette, at least twenty feet high.

Great triangular spines ran the length of it. Two thick legs pumped thunderously, upholding the body like a kangaroo. The short forelegs displayed claws that could rend apart an elephant at one stroke. At the end of a serpentine neck slavered huge ridged jaws of more than crocodile magnitude.

Unwisely, Crane shouted the one word to describe it.

“It’s a dragon!”

Jondra went limp with a little moan of utter terror, slumping against the wing-edge. Crane half swept her in his arms for a desperate run to the cabin, but released her. There wasn’t time. By the size of the shadow ahead, the behemoth behind must be within striking distance.

Sobbing in haste, Crane ripped open his jacket and drew out the masher-grenade he carried. He thanked his stars for suspecting he might need it, after discovering he’d brought them here. He gripped its handle, facing the oncoming beast.

If he could only see to throw!

Pulling the pin, he flung it blindly, judging as best he could by sound and instinct where the creature was.

There was a dull roar as Crane flung himself over the girl’s form, head down. A second later he heard the majestic crackling of a shattered tree, toppling and crashing its length through the other pines. Branches whipped across his pilot’s uniform, bruising him through the fabric. The tree had very nearly smashed down on them.

The grenade had done that—blown down a tree. But had it stopped the beast? The monster’s roar had echoed the explosion.

And now the beast’s bellow sounded again—nearer and utterly enraged. Crane had missed! In another second ferocious jaws would crunch through him and Jondra, snuffing out their lives. Crane winced, waiting for the death stroke.

He wasn’t sure what happened then. The whole sequence was a blur of sound. He seemed to hear a second grenade explosion, just after his own, clipping off the beast’s angry roar. And then from its throat issued a scream so piercing that Crane quivered as if stabbed.

Head ringing, he could hear little more. He sensed that the beast had gone. Picking himself up dazedly, he looked around. But he could see nothing!

That was the ghastly part of it. He couldn’t see the fallen tree, or the retreating monster, or any sign of the explosion save a swirl of settling dust. It was like a nightmare. Figures suddenly catapulted through the dust clouds, shouting. Dr. Damon was in the lead, with a grenade, Harlan and Pierre behind with rifles. Pierre shaded his eyes and stared down the valley, evidently at the fleeing beast.

Dr. Damon picked up his daughter, rubbing his cheek against hers, muttering.

“So, that’s what the grenades were for!” Crane hissed. “Why didn’t you warn us that dragons run around loose here? You pretty nearly fed Jondra to them, you old fool!”

“Let me explain,” Dr. Damon said tiredly. He eased the girl back, and continued.

“Six months ago I trekked with Pierre past Great Bear Lake, for firsthand glimpses of Arctic life-forms. I’m a government biologist, retired. We stumbled into this valley. It’s almost undetectable from ground level. I doubt if any white man has ever been here before. We almost fell into it before we knew it was here.”

He went on, as though finally aware he must tell the whole story.

“We circled the cliffs and found one spot where you could climb down, at some risk. Finding the astounding phenomenon of invisible life-forms here, I decided to stay for a study, sending Pierre back now and then for pack supplies. Finally I sent the message to Jondra, for more material, in order to make a more permanent stay.

“My idea was simply to have the supplies delivered, and then Jondra would return with you. I didn’t want to tell of the dragons, for then she would either insist on staying with me, or worry herself to death back home.

“I still hoped, after the bad landing, that that you would repair the ship and leave with her before the dragons became evident. I was only trying to keep it all from Jondra, for her own peace of mind.

“Not knowing you, Crane, I couldn’t tell you either and be certain you wouldn’t tell her.” He gulped for breath and went on. “So now you know the final secret of this valley. If there’s been any mystery about all this, it’s cleared up now.”

“Is it?” challenged Crane. “I’m not so sure.” He shrugged. “Anyway, I begin to understand a few things. Thanks, Dr. Damon, for tossing your grenade in time.”

The scientist stared. “I didn’t throw one. I wasn’t near enough to, before it was over.”

“Then who did?” Crane asked slowly. “I could swear my grenade missed the beast. A second one went off immediately after, chasing the beast away. Didn’t you hear two explosions?”

Dr. Damon shook his head, Harlan and Pierre following suit.

“We heard one explosion, then a tree trashing and the beast screaming. There was so much confusion of noise that you merely imagined you heard another grenade.”

“Take the credit due you,” Harlan said dryly. “Your grenade did the trick. You’re a hero.”

Crane ignored the sarcasm, but started a little, meeting Jondra’s eyes. She had come to quietly. There was no sarcasm in her eyes, only a deep silent thanks that made him turn away, flushing.

The girl sat up. “I heard every word you said, dad,” she stated, “about the dragons. If you’re staying, so am I.”

Dr. Damon looked at Crane helplessly. That was that!

* * * *

Back at the camp, the excitement over, Crane addressed the scientist while they ate their evening meal.

“Why not explain the rest, Dr. Damon?” he suggested. “What experimentation are you carrying on? And why have you wanted the valley’s location kept secret from public channels? I think Harlan and I are entitled to know.”

The scientist stiffened, as though to refuse. But when Jondra touched his arm, he relaxed. He smiled self-consciously.

“I suppose I have the foibles of any scientist who has stumbled on a great thing. This is one of those phenomena that crop up only once a century. If the world heard about it, a hundred biologists would be swarming up here overnight.

“Can you blame me for wanting to keep it to myself—for a short while anyway? Studying it, recording data, and then announcing it in one grand moment?”

Crane smiled. All his suspicions of Dr. Damon’s motives vanished in a flash. He was simply a scientist-miser with a bag of gold, figuratively. He had heard before that, contrary to general belief, scientists were often childishly jealous of their individual discoveries, and loved the limelight as well as any other human soul.

That took care of the scientist. But what of Harlan? And Pierre? Why had they acted strangely at times?

Crane temporarily shelved the matter.

“What accounts for the invisibility?” he queried.

The bustle of arriving and unpacking, and the battle with the shadow-dragon, had kept them busy. But now the thought loomed—why should this isolated valley bear only invisible life-forms? It was unheard of in the annals of science.

Dr. Damon’s tone became academic.

“I’ve learned a little, and surmised a lot, in the six months I’ve been here. It traces down to a certain type of grass, which has the property of invisibility. The herbivorous creatures eat the grass—rabbits, deer, etc. The carnivores—bear, fox, weasel, lynx—eat them. Excrement and decaying bodies go back to the soil—and back to the vegetation, including trees, bushes, moss. It’s a closed cycle, mutually kept up, as it would be in any isolated valley.”

“But what causes the invisibility itself?” It was Harlan who asked, leaning forward.

Dr. Damon’s tone became vague, dreamy.

“Perhaps it goes back a long way, in evolution. Evolution tries anything and everything. What does vegetation—to personify it—fear most? Being eaten. And being seen! If it were invisible, it might escape the crunching jaws of plant-eaters.

“Thus ages ago evolution may have tried this offshoot species, protected by invisibility. It failed, because of the animal sense of smell. It vanished in evolution, as so many abortive life-forms have. Only here in this valley it survived, and stayed to the present day.”

He waved a hand. “Sheer speculation, I admit. But however it happened, the invisible vegetation is here, and the resulting invisible animal life.”

“But what is the exact agent of invisibility?” Harlan insisted.

Crane didn’t like the tenseness in the chemist’s voice, nor the eager way he waited for an answer.

“That’s what I want to find out,” Dr. Damon returned. “And where you come in. Between us, we may be able to find out. I suspect it’s a hormone, a gland-product. Transparent life-forms are not unknown, of course—jellyfish, many worms, tropical fish, etc.

“A jellyfish is practically invisible in water. Thus it is hidden from its enemies. Its protoplasm is no different from ours, but contains gland-products that render it highly transparent.

“The same thing, to a much more marvelous degree, has occurred with this valley’s life-forms. Their protoplasm is just as material as ours, but almost completely transparent to light.” Crane nodded. “Clear enough,” he punned.

“But the dragons!” he asked in the next breath. “Why should there be invisible beasts never heard of before?”

“Not dragons—dinosaurs,” smiled the biologist. “A species of them closely related to the extinct Tyrannosaurus Rex, fiercest of them all. The dinosaurs died out, millions of years ago, in competition with rising mammalian life. But this invisible species had just enough edge to survive, though it has narrowed down to this lone valley.”

Dr. Damon’s voice lowered almost in awe.

“What we’ve stumbled on, in this protected valley, is the last vestige of one of nature’s great experiments—invisibility. It’s like finding live saber-toothed tigers, or mastodons, or submen.”

They all felt it—an air of having been projected into a strange and ancient vault of Earth’s long past. Empires of life had risen and fallen, like empires of man. Perhaps the Unseen Life had once lorded it over Earth, only to give way before keener-nosed, sharper-eyed species.

It was a chapter of evolution that had been totally unsuspected. The dead forms of the Unseen had all fossilized into opaque stone, leaving no slightest clue to their one-time invisibility in life.

Harlan broke the silence.

“You think, then, that you and I may be able to isolate this invisibility hormone?”

“Not here,” Dr. Damon demurred. “It would take years of work, in a well-equipped laboratory. The best we can do is collect samples of blood from these creatures and bring them back to civilization for that laborious research. The blood will contain the hormone. That’s our job, Harlan.”

The scientist rose. “Let’s get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we’re going out hunting—for invisible game!”

“You kill?”

Crane started. It was a surprise to hear the taciturn Pierre speak up of his own volition. The French-Canadian’s expression was again strange—almost protesting.

“Yes, why not, Pierre?” Dr. Damon said, surprised.

“Hard job,” Pierre grunted, turning away.

But Crane felt he hadn’t said what he meant. What went on in the guide’s secretive mind? And secondly, why was Harlan so keen on the invisibility angle itself?

When he went to bed, Crane asked himself another startling question. He had counted the grenades. There were four cases, containing six each, according to the bill of lading.

Two were missing!

Who had flung the second grenade?

CHAPTER V

The Man in the Mists

The hunt the next day proved a strange one.

“I know something of the layout,” Dr. Damon asserted. “Pierre and I explored the valley quite a bit. I even made a map.”

He displayed it before they started. The valley was roughly five miles long and a mile wide. It was densely wooded in the center, but more thinly at the ends where sunlight was often excluded. The invisible vegetation needed life-giving rays the same as any normal growths, absorbing nourishment through a colorless form of chlorophyll in their transparent leaves.

“Deer browse and sleep in the central section,” the biologist resumed. “We’re after them.”

“Where do the dragons hang out?” Crane wanted to know more practically. “Anywhere,” Dr. Damon said briefly. “I’m going along,” Jondra declared firmly. “I won’t stay at camp and bite my nails.”

The scientist shrugged, without an argument. “Well, we have the grenades,” he said.

“I’m going along too,” Crane stated.

“But the plane—”

“Will keep,” Crane finished shortly. “Besides, I’m a good shot.”

The scientist seemed pleased. “We can use another man with a rifle. Let’s go.”

Pierre leading, they trekked single file toward the center of the valley, brushing past unseen vegetation.

Crane looked around. Sheer, steep cliffs on all sides. They had kept the outside world out, and the things within from escaping. But the average temperature, it occurred to Crane suddenly, was hardly Arctic. In two days, none of them had been forced to wear more than mackinaw jackets.

“There are steam springs in the central area,” Dr. Damon explained. “This valley was formed, ages ago, by the sinking of land into a volcanic bed. The underlying heat works up through the soil, keeping the valley warm.

“No seeds flying up out of the valley can take root in the cold, snow-covered regions above. Thus the invisible vegetation has been confined.”

They saw the steam springs soon after, puffs of vapor rising from porous ground and curling vagrantly into the air. Often the ghostly shapes of trees and flowers would be outlined for a moment, revealing the verdant character of the invisible forest before them.

Singularly, here and there an ordinary pine stood plainly in view, green and solid.

“Some seeds drift down into the valley from above and take root. Seeds of the common visible variety.”

Crane suddenly chuckled. “Hunting invisible deer! Most hunters have a devil of a job bagging one they can see!”

“You think we’re fools to try?” countered Dr. Damon imperturbably. “Wait and see—”

He broke off and held up a warning hand. The line stopped. The scientist pointed ahead.

Two hundred yards beyond, a steam spring’s vapor wound lazily around and around a clump of bushes. Off and on, like the shutter of a blinking light, it outlined the form of a deer lying hidden. Sensing human presence and the consequent danger, the creature was on its haunches, ready to leap away.

But it was still there—a perfect target. The steam silhouette betrayed it, robbing it of the advantage of invisibility.

Pierre was slowly bringing up his rifle, with the caution of an experienced hunter. The others held their breaths. The gun steadied, then barked, sending echoes crashing back and forth between the cliffs.

Crane saw that Pierre had missed. The deer had leaped away at the crack of the gun, with all the lithe grace of its kind. It vanished utterly, passing beyond the steam curtain like a fading dream.

“What’s the matter with you, Pierre?” Dr. Damon snapped irritably. “First time I knew you to miss a perfect shot like that.”

The French-Canadian stood dazed, looking at his rifle in stark disbelief.

“Something push barrel,” he mumbled. “Spoil shot.”

“If that’s the best excuse you can think of—” The scientist glared at the man, then waved the party on. “Well, we’ll try our original scheme. We won’t find any more deer lying that conveniently in view.”

He explained his plan. “You’ve said frankly you’re a poor shot, Harlan. So you be our beater. Make a circle near the cliff edge quietly, and then cut straight toward us. Any deer you scare up will run our way.

“Now, there are three main springs ahead. Pierre, the one at the left. Crane, the middle one. I’ll take the right one. Between the three of us, we eventually should bag a steam-silhouetted deer.” The scheme was carried out. Harlan, carefully picking his way through the invisible forest, made a wide circle, then stamped noisily toward the three men with ready rifles. Two deer were seen leaping through the steam curtains—but away instead of toward them. Disconcerted, Crane’s shot went wild. Pierre and Dr. Damon hadn’t even tried to fire.

“Deer gone here now,” the scientist muttered. “We’ll try again in an hour.” The results were the same. The deer were again leaping away from them, at an angle they were unprepared for. No one fired.

“What’s wrong?” Dr. Damon rasped, his temper short. “You must make too much noise circling, Harlan.”

“I don’t!” the chemist snapped back. “If you ask me, something else scares them first, before I get near—and from the other direction.”

“A dragon?” Jondra gasped in alarm. “Of course not,” her father snorted. “We’d easily hear him.”

An hour later, Harlan tried again.

Three deer came leaping. At the instant Crane saw a silhouette over his steam spring, he tensed to swing his rifle from right to left. The deer’s motion the other way—from left to right—completely disconcerted him. There was no use to shoot blindly, a second later, at the portion of thin air into which the deer had dissolved.

“Damn!” he grunted. “We’ll never get them that way. They just don’t come from the right direction. What’s doing it?”

Harlan came back with a sober, almost frightened face.

“I think I saw—” he gulped.

“A dragon?” Jondra asked again.

“—the shape of a man!” Harlan finished.

His four listeners gasped. The thought of an invisible man, more than even the frightful dragons, sent chills down their spines.

“I saw it way ahead, running through the steam curtain, swinging its arms and chasing the deer away before I could get near. He must have made enough noise to scare the deer, though they couldn’t see him.”

“Nonsense!” Dr. Damon had recovered and almost yelled the word. “You’re all letting your nerves go. Pierre and I have been here six months without running across this mythical invisible man. It was a bear walking upright, naturally.

“Now scare up the deer again, Harlan. And don’t picture your grandmother in the mists next!”

Crane this time deliberately watched for the deer to be scared up from some point opposite Harlan. When a steam silhouette did appear, he had the exact bead. The crash of his gun hurled from the nearest cliff.

In his eagerness, arriving first at the spot, he yelped as an invisible hoof cracked him smartly on the shin. He stared down. On the grass before him lay a creature kicking in its dying reflexes. He could actually see only one thing—the mushroomed bullet hanging apparently in mid-air, lodged in an invisible heart.

Then he saw more. A pool of liquid was slowly outlined at his feet and began to tinge with a faint ruddy hue.

“Quick, Jondra!” Dr. Damon panted, running up. “The incisor and pump.”

Jondra opened the case she had carried all morning, handing over the instruments. With the skill and speed of experience, the biologist inserted a large hypodermic in an invisible jugular vein. Crane and Harlan sat on invisible animal legs that were still striking out. Dr. Damon attached rubber tubing and pumped transparent blood into a series of flasks.

“Haemolin—sodium citrate!” he barked at Harlan.

Harlan dumped the prepared solutions in the flasks, reagents that prevented coagulation and deterioration. It was all done in a minute.

The blood-drained body beneath Crane shuddered, gave a final heave, and was still.

“Watch!” Dr. Damon commanded.

Slowly the corpse took form. Inner organs misted into being, rapidly solidifying to visibility. Then overlying tissue precipitated out of thin air. Muscles sprang into being. A vast network of veins and arteries snaked into vision. Finally hide, hair and hooves appeared.

In the space of fifteen minutes, an ordinary deer lay before them, no different from its cousins in the outer world. With the passing of life and the breakdown of the delicate invisibility hormone, flesh hidden from human eyes had dropped into the visible spectrum.

It was uncanny, eerie, like a magician’s trick perfected to an impossible degree.

“But its blood is still invisible!” Dr. Damon crowed, holding one flask up.

To all appearances the flask was empty, clean. Even the refractive index of the solutions added had been largely erased.

“The secret of invisibility—in a flask!” Harlan murmured.

Crane glanced at him sharply. The man’s eyes were enigmatic.

Jondra shuddered and turned away from the scene.

“Let’s go back to camp—”

“What? Without taking along delicious cuts of venison?” her father scoffed.

Pierre already had his knife out and was expertly skinning the carcass. Soon after he was carving off choice steaks. The strong, salty smell of fresh meat rose into the air.

Crane fidgeted. “Isn’t this rather risky, in case one of the dragons—”

As if at a signal, a blasting roar thundered against the confining cliffs. A dragon had crept close, attracted by the smell, its noises camouflaged by the steady hiss of the surrounding steam spring. A treetop cracked, no more than a hundred feet away. In seconds the monster would be upon them, clawing and rending.

The five froze into the paralysis of fear.

Crane broke from it with a groan and fumbled for the grenade slung on his belt. Dr. Damon and Harlan were too stupefied to even remember them, or bring up their rifles.

Crane pulled at the pin with fingers of rubber. Before he could draw it, a hand clutched his wrist in a grip of steel.

“Pierre, you fool!” Crane snarled. “Let me go—”

“No kill beast!” Pierre muttered.

They struggled. The sound of monsters feet pounding heavily against their ears. Only seconds were left…

The grenade’s roar drowned out the triumphant bellow of the behemoth about to overtake them. A frightful scream shattered the air, as of a creature mortally wounded. Violent threshing sounded, as a mighty body writhed in death agony. A tree crackled and toppled, brushing at the five humans now stumbling away.

They stopped and faced one another, a hundred feet from the danger spot, pale, trembling, shaken to the roots of their souls at the narrow escape.

Dr. Damon suddenly let out a jubilant shout.

“It’s dying right on the spot! More blood! Come on, all of you, back to camp for more bottles—”

Not till an hour later, after they had returned, did the reptilian monster give its final gusty sigh of death. One last swish of an invisible tail flung dirt, needles and splintered branches in all directions. Then all was quiet.

The scientist brought up with a jerk as Crane held him from running close.

“Let go!” Dr. Damon screeched. “I have to pump that blood out before it’s too late.”

“You’ll wait five minutes, till we’re sure he hasn’t one last kick in him,” Crane said firmly, holding the biologist tight. “That tail, if I know anything about dinosaurs, could bash in the side of a locomotive.”

Jondra touched his hand and flashed him a smile of thanks.

But the monster lay still, and in fifteen minutes they had drained gallons of viscid fluid into the jars they had lugged from camp. Harlan dumped in wholesale quantities of his preserving chemicals.

Then they watched, gasping, as the corpse passed, by degrees, into the optical realm. Thirty feet long, from snout to tail-tip, spined, armor-plated, huge as a house, it lay in a mass of trampled vegetation and half-splintered trees which more slowly assumed a visible status in death.

It was the first dinosaur seen by human or near-human eyes for an unthinkable age.

“Look what it took to kill it!” Harlan said, awed.

The exploding grenade had torn out its entire chest. Bullets alone would have been a laughable farce against the gargantuan creature.

“Thank heaven for the grenades!” Dr. Damon breathed. “I’m wondering now how Pierre and I dared to sneak around for six months with our pea-shooters, under their very noses!”

He turned with a glowing face, waving at the bottles filled with invisible blood.

“We owe you our lives, as well as this, Crane. You tossed that grenade just in time!”

Crane said nothing. Obviously the others, paralyzed in blind terror, hadn’t seen that desperate moment when he struggled with Pierre. He looked at Pierre, but the impassive face avoided his. Pierre had no explanation for his astounding act.

But what bothered Crane the most was something else.

He hadn’t thrown the grenade! Nor had Pierre or the others! An unseen hand had done it.

Had there been a man’s shape in the steam mists?

CHAPTER VI

The Invisible Robin Hood

The following day dawned clear and bright. But there was a cloud in Crane’s mind. He watched Dr. Damon and Harlan busily transferring the blood to sealed cans, at the workbench.

Jondra watched moodily. This was not the right environment for her. Her feminine nerves would give way in a few more days.

Pierre sat in the sun, staring out over the valley, as though observing the shadow-life.

Crane’s churning mind strove to put the jigsaw puzzle together. Why had Pierre wanted the dragon to live? And what lay veiled in Harlan’s cold eyes?

And was there a fifth man—invisible—in the valley?

Crane strode to his plane, in sudden alarm. This was their only way of getting out of the valley—as a group. If someone had other plans.

Too late! He knew it the moment he entered the cabin. The panel-board lay smashed by a wrench from the tool chest. The drive-wheel had been battered to bits, and the steering post bent and twisted out of shape. The plane was useless, beyond repair!

They were trapped, in the valley of invisibility!

Crane stood cursing. It had been done the night before. Harlan or Pierre? Or—a chill went down his spine—the unknown presence?

Returning on the trail to camp, Crane held his rifle grimly. Harlan, Pierre or the invisible man? It surged through his mind like the beat of a drum.

Pierre still sat impassively before the cave entrance. His beady eyes did not turn. Crane watched him for a long, cautious moment. Was he shamming, fully aware that Crane must know of the ruined instrument board? Was he waiting for Crane to make the first hostile move…

“I’d advise you to drop your gun!”

Crane whirled. It was Harlan in the doorway, half smiling. An automatic in his hand pointed straight for Crane’s heart.

Caught off guard, Crane had little choice. He dropped his rifle. Pierre, starting from his daze, was tensing preparatory to lunging for his rifle, a yard away.

“Easy, Pierre!” Harlan warned, and the French-Canadian relaxed. “Now step to the right, both of you, away from your guns.”

As they complied, Dr. Damon and Jondra came running out.

“What is this, Harlan?” the scientist demanded testily. “What—”

He gasped, seeing the gun.

Harlan herded them all together, unarmed and helpless before his automatic. He looked from one to the other with undisguised triumph.

“So it was you, Harlan!” Crane said. “You smashed the instrument panel so we couldn’t leave the valley. What’s your game?”

“I can say it in one word—invisibility!” Harlan retorted.

“You mean you want the secret of invisibility for yourself?” Dr. Damon guessed belatedly. “Why? For what earthly purpose? Harlan, this is outrageous—”

“Shut up!” Harlan grinned strangely. “For what purpose? Can’t you guess? You mumbled about it all morning. That a person could take a dose of that animal blood with its invisibility hormone—and become invisible himself!”

Crane cursed, but at himself. Why hadn’t he seen that before? The secret of invisibility was of incalculable significance. From the first, Harlan must have plotted to hog it.

Harlan resumed. “Last night, Crane, after smashing the panel-board, I used your batteries. They furnished power for a little private radio in my belt. I sent a prearranged signal, to friends of mine. They should arrive, by plane, in an hour or so. You called my hand, but a little too late.

“We’ll take all those cans of blood. And then we’ll leave the valley—alone!”

The plain, brutal threat sent icy rage through Hugh Crane. His muscles knotted, and a growl rasped from his throat.

“Watch yourself, Crane!” Harlan yarned. “I prefer to let my less squeamish friends do the job. But if I have to, I’ll fill you full of lead! This is too big a thing to stop at anything. No one will ever find the four bodies rotting away in an undiscovered valley on the Arctic Circle.”

Crane leaped away. It was a desperate gamble, but Pierre might have a chance to get at Harlan afterward. Better the try than tamely to wait for certain death later.

Crane’s big body lunged forward like a football tackier, toes digging in the dirt. Head low, he aimed for Harlan’s legs.

Jondra screamed. Crane knew he could never make it. The ugly snout of the automatic leveled straight for him. Harlan’s finger began to squeeze. Crane mentally winced, waiting for the slugs that would churn through his brain.

A shot rang out…

Harlan had missed! Another shot…four more shots…and still no bullet touched Crane!

It was an impossible miracle. And then Crane gasped. He stopped short, staring at the amazing phenomenon occurring before him.

Harlan stood in a strangely unnatural position. His right arm was stiff before him, the wrist bent, the automatic pointed upward where he had pumped the useless shots. It was exactly as though a man had grasped Harlan’s wrist from the side, jerked his arm up, and twisted the wrist!

Yet there was no man there.

Harlan gave a shriek suddenly, as his wrist almost turned in a complete circle. His arm looped awkwardly back and he staggered in an off-balance position. A moment later the automatic dropped to the dust from Harlan’s nerveless fingers.

The automatic bounced once, then miraculously rose into the air by Itself, pointing at Harlan. The chemist reeled back, groaning with the pain of his bruised wrist, and at the unnerving sight of his own gun, unsupported, threatening him.

“It’s an invisible man!” Jondra whispered.

Crane tensed himself again. Friend or enemy? Had they been rescued from Harlan only to face a new menace?

“Who are you?” he demanded.

A low, quiet voice issued weirdly from a spot just above the gun, held by an invisible hand.

“I’m known as the Invisible Robin Hood.”

Crane’s mouth fell open.

“The Invisible Robin Hood? You mean that publicity myth that stirred up the country last year?”

“Publicity myth?” The unseen man chuckled. “Yes, I suppose most of you hard-headed people never did quite believe I actually existed as an invisible man. For a year I spied and tracked down criminal rings, and still no one believes I exist. No one except the criminals whose careers I ended, and my one confidant and contact man. Well—”

Crane could almost see the invisible shrug. Then he gasped, as his thoughts pierced back and back, through haze of mystery.

“You were with us all the time!” he exclaimed. “The take-off at Chicago—the plane was overloaded because of your added weight. During the flight, you once kept Jondra from falling. It was your hand on my shoulder that first indicated the valley to me, from the air.

“You kept me from striking Harlan, when he criticized my landing. You turned off the ignition key, to prevent danger of fire!” Crane gulped for breath. It was all so clear now! He could see dawning looks of understanding on the others’ faces.

“Yes,” came from the Invisible Robin Hood, “and I also threw the second grenade, when the dragon attacked you and Jondra. I was the one sneaking around the plane, when Jondra appeared, after the radio was smashed.

“Yesterday, I threw the grenade when you and Pierre struggled together, killing the second dragon.”

“You saved our lives?” Dr. Damon murmured. “Then you’re our friend—”

“Is he?” Crane’s face was suddenly grim. “It must have been you that spoiled Pierre’s first shot, and later chased away the deer, Mr. Invisible Robin Hood. And you also smashed the plane’s radio! You, as much as Harlan, have wanted to keep us locked in this valley without outside communication. Why?”

The unseen man seemed to ponder for a moment, silently. Then his disembodied voice, ignoring the accusations, addressed the dazed, crestfallen Harlan.

“I’ve tracked you from the start, Paul Harlan. I knew you would reveal yourself—Agent R-616!”

Harlan started. “You mean you know—”

The Invisible Robin Hood made an affirmative sound.

“Everything.” He addressed the others. “This man is a quisling—a member of the fifth column operating in North America!”

“Fifth column!” Dr. Damon gasped. “What do they want up here in this godforsaken—”

“Your invisibility, of course,” the answer came back sharply. “They got on the track of it when Pierre, delivering your first message, took time out for a few drinks. He slipped, mentioning the valley of invisibility. No one paid any attention except a fifth column spy. They’re all over, with their ears and eyes open for everything.

“Their headquarters was informed, in Chicago, and a certain masked Commander “Z” met a certain agent R-616 in a cheap hotel room, to give him his instructions. When Jondra put an ad in the paper for a chemist, Agent R-616 answered. Paul Harlan is an expert chemist, in real life. But he is also a fifth columnist—working for them, not you!”

“Good Lord!” Dr. Damon shook his head dazedly. “I never dreamed—”

“How do you know all that, Invisible Robin Hood?” Crane asked.

They could sense his peculiar smile.

“I am silent as the wind, swift as the tiger. I am unseen, undetectable. I see all, know all, hear all. At any moment I may be at your elbow, any where!”

He chuckled. “At least, that was my publicity, during my campaign against crime, for the benefit of those who needed to fear me. As a matter of fact, I stumbled on this accidentally.

“Since the European war, I’ve been investigating fifth column activities, the greatest menace on this continent today. For a year I was on the trail. It wasn’t an easy job.

“The fifth column has spawned and spread almost unhindered, like a malignant cancer. They are very clever, no quisling knowing more than one other quisling by name. The vast anonymous network has but one common basis—the undermining of the North American peoples. They envision the day when in one stunning upheaval, America the unconquerable will be fast in their grip.

“They have gained recruits—renegades to their country—from every walk of life, and by any and all means. Particularly they appeal to ambition and dissatisfaction.

“Paul Harlan is a typical example. He is ambitious. The fifth column converts have more ambition per square head than any other group in the country. And the fifth column G.H.Q. lavishes promises faster than any blitzkrieg ever took objectives.

“That’s what I’m up against—for I’ve vowed to smash the fifth column. The only way will be to reach the top men. I had laboriously tracked my way as high as Commander Z. But when he gave R-616 his instructions to get the secret of invisibility, I had to follow that branch trail.

“I was at Paul Harlan’s elbow when he met Commander Z. I was at Paul Harlan’s elbow when he stepped into the plane at the airport.”

Crane had to laugh at Harlan’s crushed air.

“You didn’t have a chance at all, Harlan, in your double-crossing—”

He broke off, lifting his head. They all heard it—a faint drone from the sky. A tiny plane sparkling high in the air, in the south. It rapidly enlarged into a two-motored cabin ship. It swooped, circling the valley.

“Harlan’s fifth columnist friends!” Crane whirled to the scientist. “What’s the way out of the valley by foot, that you and Pierre found? The sooner we leave, the better. We can pack enough food along to reach some town—”

Harlan was grinning. “The one trail out of the valley,” he put in, “is at the other end. I saw it on Dr. Damon’s map. There is also a clearing there, wide enough for a plane landing. I told my men to come down there!”

“We’re cut off!” the scientist groaned. “There’s no other way out!” They watched helplessly as the plane zoomed down, landing five miles away in the clearing at that end of the valley.

“They’ll be here soon, probably with sub-machine guns,” Crane muttered. “Their job is to mow us down.”

He automatically patted Jondra’s shoulder as she crept into his arms. They all knew without saying that the fifth column revolutionists were more brutal in their methods than any in history. There was no escape, and no quarter from which to expect help.

CHAPTER VII

The Fifth Column

The Invisible Robin Hood’s voice rang out.

“It isn’t over yet. We have guns. Stand them off. Lock Harlan up in the cave.”

His authoritative voice broke up the indecision of the others. They accepted his leadership instantly. Somehow, invisible though he was, there was an air of confidence and resourcefulness about him.

Crane and Pierre shoved Harlan into the cave, after removing all guns, ammunition and grenades. The solid pine door was swung shut and barred from outside. Harlan would have no chance to aid his fellow quislings.

Then Crane, Dr. Damon and Pierre distributed themselves at separate points just behind the outjutting logs of the crude walls. They would not be easy targets in the shadow of the rock overhang. Jondra stood beside Crane, a rifle gripped in her hands with grim determination. Crane squeezed her shoulder.

“Be brave, Jondra,” he whispered. “The Invisible Robin Hood will have a trick or two up his sleeve, if the stories about him are at all true.”

But for the present, he had simply done as they had—taken a strategic position. A rifle hung eerily at shoulder height, waiting for the adversary.

The enemy appeared within two hours, picking their way gingerly through the invisible forest. Harlan had evidently given them enough details of the valley and its strange unseen life to allow them planned action. They came directly toward the cave.

Crane’s heart sank. Six of them, hard-looking men, trained by the fifth column for just this sort of bloody work. Each carried a rifle, a knapsack of grenades, and three of them carried the parts of a portable automatic gun. They wore metal helmets and dull-gray uniforms. They were as efficiently prepared for their mission as any spearhead unit of a mechanized army in the European war.

The fifth column did nothing by halves, in their subversive program to undermine the thus far adamant American hemisphere.

The party stopped five hundred yards away, out of range of any but superb marksmanship. One man raised a speaking tube to his mouth and yelled across.

“You have Paul Harlan prisoner?” Sensing the Invisible Robin Hood did not wish to reveal his presence, Crane cupped his lips and shouted back the affirmative.

“Give yourselves up!” came back. “You have no chance against us. If you surrender quietly, we promise you safe passage back. We do not want your lives, only the secret of invisibility!”

“A lie, of course,” the Invisible Robin Hood’s whisper came. “The fifth column doesn’t know what the word ‘honor’ is. If we surrender, we’ll be shot down like dogs!”

Crane’s voice was an enraged taunt. “Come and get us!”

The leader waved a hand instantly, as though knowing that would be the answer. The men scattered in a semicircle and began creeping within gun range. Rifles barked. Shots tore around them viciously.

Crane shot six times, taking careful beads, and then cursed lividly. Not one of those clearly exposed men had dropped or even faltered.

“The invisible forest protects them,” Jondra said. “They’re running from invisible tree to invisible tree.”

Crane ground his teeth at the irony. Imponderable light went through the trees, but not bullets. The raiders had a perfect protective medium. They crept closer steadily, firing slowly, waiting to get within effective range.

Their tactics were mercilessly efficient. At three hundred yards, three men scurried together, and began hastily assembling their machine gun. The other three poured a withering rifle barrage toward the cave, to disconcert the defenders’ aim.

The gun was set up in seconds. Two men dashed away and the third threw himself full length behind the gun. In a moment its raking fire began systematically to cover every inch of the defended area.

Flinging Jondra flat on the ground behind the log wall, Crane himself shrank back. Solid sheets of lead were prying into every nook and corner. Splinters of wood flew viciously.

“What can we do?” came Dr. Damon’s wail from the other side. “We can’t fire a shot back!”

Crane knew there was one thing to try. Waiting till the swinging muzzle had arced away from him, he desperately ran out, hurling a grenade. It fell far short, digging a uselesss pit. The horrible chatter of the automatic weapon went on unabated, filling the valley with a rattling thunder.

As though his grenade had been the signal, the other five invaders ran forward boldly, grenades in their hands. In a few seconds, within range, they would bomb down the log walls.

“We’ve got to do something, Invisible Robin Hood!” Crane shouted. “For God’s sake, think of something! We’ll be murdered where we stand—” Crane suddenly realized he was talking to himself. The spot where the invisible man had stood seemed no different except for one thing—there was no rifle hanging mysteriously without support.

“Damn him!” Crane raged. “He’s deserted us! I knew I shouldn’t have trusted him—”

His voice was drowned out by a furious roar. The grenades! Then already the enemy were within range!

Crane waited for the log walls to crash around their ears, leaving them defenseless.

Instead, the roar was followed by the familiar crackling of a splintered tree. Then a ground-shaking thump, as its invisible bulk smashed down and measured its length on the ground.

Another roar. Again a tree gave its death wail and sought its grave.

Roar!—Crash!

Roar!—Crash!

Crane looked out. The five advancing attackers had halted in their tracks, grenades unthrown. They looked about, frightened, as the invisible forest seemed to have gone mad, threatening to crush them with hundred-foot falling juggernauts.

Hugh Crane let out a whoop of joy. The enemy couldn’t know that an invisible man was among them, tossing grenades at trees and bringing them down. It was as though a giant were uprooting them as clubs and beating the ground to blindly obliterate the invaders.

So it must have seemed to the thoroughly astounded fifth columnists. They fled back, like scared rabbits. They had been ready for anything, but not trees falling like leaves.

The man at the machine gun courageously stuck to his post, until invisible branches of a crashing tree knocked his weapon twenty feet through the air, and himself into a thicket of invisible brambles.

They retreated, but not in panic. Well trained, even in the face of a staggering surprise, they unhitched the machine gun and left at a dog-trot. One man ran smack into an invisible tree, knocking himself out. Two others put their arms under his shoulders and dragged him along. One man covered the rear at a slower pace, glancing back as often as he could, rifle ready.

Crane restrained himself from ordering a counter-attack. They were still a formidable force, in their well-organized retreat. Let them go. Crane contented himself with taking a careful bead, estimating the invisible trees by their winding path, and seeing one man jerk and clutch his arm. They would take back one wound, as well as their bruises from the falling trees.

“Well, how was that?”

Crane started. The Invisible Robin Hood’s voice had spoken beside his ear.

“Great!” Crane commended. “You saved the day! But why not follow them now? You could pick them off one by one—”

“No. If I tried that, they would radio to the plane. They are always in radio contact. The men at the plane—perhaps three or four men left on guard—would then know of an invisible man. They’d plan against me.

“I’ve seen enough of fifth column methods to know it’s a mistake to underestimate them. They’re not brainless, blundering gangsters. They’re intelligent, clever, efficient to the highest degree.”

His voice became low, thoughtful. “We have a tough fight ahead of us—to escape them. They’ll come back next with light field guns, perhaps, hurling shells from a mile or two back.”

“Good Lord!” shuddered Dr. Damon. “Just like the war in Europe—machines against men. We haven’t a ghost of a chance of holding out!”

A pair of invisible fingers snapped. “We have one good chance. Their whole mission is to bring back the secret of invisibility. Suppose we spill all the blood samples, and then let them know that Harlan will be killed by us.

“They might be willing to bargain for his life, since they would lose time starting at scratch again. One of the fifth column’s main creeds is speed, speed. Let’s talk to Harlan.”

“Spill the samples—no!” Dr. Daman almost shouted it. “I won’t allow it. I—”

Crane could feel the invisible man’s cold stare at the scientist.

“Have you thought of invisible fifth columnists, Dr. Damon? They would have a noose around America before we could say mechanized unit! They must not get that secret!”

Damon gasped. “Invisible fifth columnists!” He made no further objections.

Pierre swung open the barred door.

“Come out, Harlan,” Crane commanded. “We want to talk to you.”

There was no answer. Crane repeated his words, then stepped in impatiently.

“If I have to drag you out, like a stubborn child—”

His voice ground to a startled halt.

The interior of the cave-space was empty! The others crowded in, gaping. Harlan was simply not there, only his clothing piled in a heap.

“How could he have escaped?” Crane said dazedly. “Through solid log walls and a barred door?”

Jondra screamed. “That shadow at the door—”

They whirled. Something shadowy and vague was plunging through the doorway. It was in the shape of a man.

“Harlan!”

Crane leaped, but something shouldered him aside at the door. The Invisible Robin Hood had leaped first, and was chasing the escaping man.

Running outside, the rest saw only a translucent silhouette racing away into the forest, pursued by something they could not see at all.

Five minutes later the Invisible Robin Hood’s voice sounded before them, panting.

“Got away. Wasn’t quite invisible, but in the sunlight it was like keeping your eye on a flitting shadow. I lost him.”

“He injected some of the blood solution into his veins!” Dr. Damon cried. “I should have known he’d try it. The invisibility hormone is so powerful it works within an hour. He’ll be completely invisible soon, and stay that way till the dose wears off—probably twenty-four hours.”

“An invisible man against us!” Jondra whispered.

Crane looked at the Invisible Robin Hood—or the spot he occupied. “That complicates matters. Harlan, invisible, can come sneaking back and—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. It would sound too horrible to say it. But suddenly he did say it, in altered form.

“Why not sneak to their camp and murder them in their sleep?” he demanded. “Every minute that goes by endangers us. And all America! You’re invisible. They can’t touch you. Take a gun and shoot them down like they would have shot us down.

“I know it won’t be an easy thing to do. Any decent man’s soul revolts at being a cowardly assassin. But you’ve got to, Robin Hood. It’s the only way!”

The others looked at each other, shuddering. It was a stark, merciless suggestion. The height, perhaps, of sheer deliberate murder. But the stakes were equally in proportion.

There was silence from the Invisible Robin Hood for a long moment. Then a deep, grim sigh.

“Give me a rifle and twelve bullets,” he said.

A moment later he was gone, as unseen and silent as the wind.

CHAPTER VIII

Under Fire

Crane said little to Jondra as they waited, his arm across her shoulder. Dr. Damon seemed to find the ground interesting. Pierre stared out over the invisible forest, his black eyes enigmatic as always.

They strained their ears to hear shots. The shots that would announce human beings murdered without a chance, by an invisible assassin. It was a grim, soul-searing game that was being played out in a sunken valley, far north of the teeming cities of America.

Crane started. A twig had crackled, somewhere out at the fringe of the invisible forest. He jumped up. Their invisible friend was returning.

“Robin Hood? You—”

A shot rang out. The bullet whistled past Crane’s ear and thunked into the logs behind.

Jondra screamed. “Look there—a gun pointing at us!”

Two hundred feet ahead, a gun hung in the air.

“Harlan!” groaned Dr. Damon. “He’s invisible now and he’ll kill us!”

Another shot split the air, as they all leaped for the cave door. Harlan, a poor shot, had missed again. But if he pumped shots at their massed group, entering the doorway, he couldn’t fail to get one or two. Then he would stalk them inside, shoot them down one by one…

Even as he ducked and whirled, Crane saw what happened. Something wrenched the gun from Harlan’s hands. It swung around as a club. It whacked against an invisible tree, the stock shattering. For a moment it hung, then began moving toward them, at the pace of a man walking.

The battle of the invisible men had been short.

“Did you get him, Robin Hood?” Crane queried eagerly.

“No.” The bodiless voice was weary, defeated. “I tried to club him, but he slipped away. He’s completely invisible now. And that’s why I failed in everything…”

“Failed? You didn’t get the other men?”

Again a weary, “No.”

“Everything seemed perfect,” the voice went on. “The men were all outside the plane—ten of them altogether. Creeping close, I shot one.” He seemed to shudder a little.

“But when I aimed for the second, a shot rang back. Harlan had been expecting me. Guessing my position by the hang of the visible rifle, he could get me eventually, poor shot though he is. I couldn’t get him. He was behind the plane.

“There was only one thing to do. I had to drop my giveaway—the rifle—and leave. Still, I hung around a few minutes, debating some other plan. For instance, using a grenade, and blasting plane and all apart.

“Suddenly, it came to me like a blow. Harlan now knew I was there. Therefore he would run to this camp and murder you, not having me to fear. He could do his job much quicker than I could do mine, and still have time to return and rescue whatever men remained. That’s how the fifth columnists figure those things—in plain, cold, emotionless figures.

“I guess I came back just in time, running all the way. Harlan’s first shot told me where he was. I ran to him—and you know the rest.”

Crane pondered. “Invisible man against invisible man! No matter what you do, he can duplicate it. And Harlan has the advantage. He has more men and more arms. Good Lord, what can we do?”

It was not stalemate. It was certain victory for the enemy.

* * * *

Dusk came, as the sun slowly sank. Darkness settled over the valley of invisibility and terror. And menace.

“Suppose they attack at night?” Jondra breathed.

“I doubt it,” the Invisible Robin Hood said. “Darkness gives us more advantage than they, on the defensive. All blitzkrieg tactics take full advantage of the best, not the worst of conditions. However, we’ll take precautions. I’ll stand guard outside. Crane, you sleep at the door. The rest back in the cave.”

The night hours wore away. Crane awoke from the doze he had achieved, disturbed by some sound in the forest’s night quiet. The stealthy pad of feet! Closer they came, silently shrieking of threat.

Where was the Invisible Robin Hood? Why wasn’t he on the job? Had he left them exposed to throat-slitting by the invisible Harlan?

Quivering at the frightful thought, Crane raised his rifle. He felt blind and helpless, as so often before. How could he fight an unseen presence who could come from any side, strike at any unannounced moment?

Was a sharp knife even at that moment sweeping toward his unprotected back?

The next sound Crane heard was the most welcome in the world. It was a sniff. An animal sniff, followed by the low growl of an invisible bear, snooping around the camp for tidbits of food, most likely.

Crane fumbled for a piece of the deer meat and tossed it out.

“Here you are, old top,” he whispered. “I’m glad it’s you rather than a certain invisible snake. Hope all your children are visible. Now scram.”

A pleased grunt sounded, and the slice of meat floated off into the starlit night.

Crane didn’t doze any more. Dawn was breaking. A new day was here—the day that would tell the story, one way or another.

A hand gripped his shoulder.

“I’m back, Crane.”

“Robin Hood! Where were you? Damn you, man, do you realize you left us at the mercy of Harlan, if he had come?”

“I knew he wouldn’t,” the unseen man said calmly. “He was too busy guarding his own camp. Besides, it’s chilly at night. Don’t forget, he has to run around naked. His clothes are still visible.

“I went to their camp. I had grenades along. I thought of blowing the plane up, with them all inside. But only four were in. The rest were elsewhere, in some cliff cave I’d have to search for all night. If I did eliminate the four, Harlan would again have raced here and bombed this camp to smithereens. Any way I looked at it, they would come out ahead.”

His voice changed to bafflement.

“I’ve been thinking all night, hoping to figure out some other plan. We must try something soon, now that day is here—”

“For Pete’s sake!” Crane exclaimed, thumping his head with his knuckles. “What am I waiting for? If Harlan could become invisible, why can’t I? Two invisible men against one and we can get him!”

He was already ducking into the cave, striding for the work bench at the rear and its bottles and cans of invisible blood. He picked up a flask, apparently empty, but heavy with its unseen contents.

Pulling out the stopper, Crane filled a hypodermic lying nearby. Eagerly he brought the needle close to his left arm’s largest vein, for injection.

A hand knocked the hypodermic away, shattering it on the ground.

Dr. Damon had watched, rubbing his eyes, and then bounded from his bunk.

“You fool!” he barked. “That stuff is poison. I would have suggested it yesterday, except for that. Any animal blood is poison in a human being’s veins, except certain types of anthropoid blood. Harlan will be dead before this day is over!”

“Did he know that?” Crane gasped.

The scientist nodded.

“The fifth columnists are fanatics,” the Invisible Robin Hood remarked. “Harlan sacrificed his life for the cause.”

The words seemed to echo in the cave.

Crane picked up another hypodermic, grimly.

“Two invisible men against one, and we have a chance—”

Dr. Damon looked at him, but said nothing. The Invisible Robin Hood made no move to interfere. They would have to stand aside now, and watch deliberate suicide.

With a tightening of his lips, Crane prepared to plunge the needle home. Again it was knocked out of his hands.

“I can’t let you!” Jondra sobbed. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

She was facing the spot at which the Invisible Robin Hood stood, bitterly. “In smashing the fifth column, Mr. Robin Hood, you’re smashing us just as ruthlessly. You started all this—by not exposing Harlan at the beginning. You played the game your way, and we suffer as pawns. There’s probably no room for emotion—love, for instance—in your career of giant-killing. You’re just a cold, unfeeling human robot—”

The tirade ended in a choke, as the girl buried her head against Crane’s chest.

Love! That was a queer thing to bring up in this valley of hate and death and menace.

An aura of sudden sadness radiated from the unseen man. Crane could feel it. Hard he might be at times, striving for his goals at any cost, but beneath it he was human. And somewhere, something had seared his soul—but still left him human.

There was the merest murmur.

“Love? I loved a girl once. She is like you, fair, sweet…”

The voice trailed away. Then it spoke softly again.

“Wait here. I’ll investigate the enemy’s activity. If anything else can be done—”

He was gone.

* * * *

His voice was still soft when he returned, an hour later. Soft but grim.

“They’ve set up three field guns, about two miles back. Judging by their positions, and the stacks of ammunition beside them, they’re ready to bombard this entire end of the valley. Raze it flat!”

Broooommmm!

The dull thump sounded, followed a few seconds later by a ground-shaking roar. A quarter-mile to the left of them, where the shell landed, a shower of dirt sprayed into the air. With it, unseen, had gone a shredding of the valley’s shadow-life.

A second shell landed fifty feet nearer. A third still nearer, bringing down on them a fine stinging hail. The artillerists were finding the range rapidly.

“They’ll systematically sweep every inch of our end of the valley,” the Invisible Robin Hood said, still softly. “Everything will go—forest, cave, animals, dragons—”

“Dragons!” It was Pierre’s voice, in a deadly rage. “They kill dragon! Fear dragon! But I will kill them! I, Pierre, will lead my dragons—”

He lapsed into rapid French, shaking his fist in the direction of the thumping guns. The others watched in astonishment.

“Pierre!” Crane snapped. “Keep your head, now of all times. We need every man—”

He stopped, gasping. Pierre was stripping off his clothes. The garments dropped. The body exposed was translucent. Direct rays of the sun stabbed through and through, outlining the bones. And rapidly, even the skeleton was fading into the unseen background of air, as the hormone of invisibility bleached the guide beyond the color-spectrum faster than any dye had ever worked.

“Pierre!” Dr. Damon cried. “You took a dose of the blood. You’ll die!”

“Pierre does not die. Pierre will lead his dragons—”

With a wild shout, the wraithlike form stalked toward the forest.

“Mad! Utterly mad!” Dr. Damon whispered. “I suspected it all along, in the previous six months. The thought of the invisible dragons preyed on his mind.”

Crane jumped to catch Pierre, but an invisible hand stayed him.

“Let him go. Time’s short. We have to dodge these shells. We can’t run forward openly, for they’ll be waiting for us. But we can move along the cliff-edges, in comparative safety, ahead of the barrage.”

“Suppose we survive the bombardment, by a miracle?” Crane said hopelessly. “What then?”

“Pierre is leading the dragons!” the Invisible Robin Hood breathed.

Crane started. Had the Invisible Robin Hood gone mad too? But there was little time to speculate. An invisible hand, covered with fine wire mesh, grasped his, pulling him away.

Jondra had Crane’s other hand, and her father brought up the rear.

They were to play a new game—dodging shells.

CHAPTER IX

Blood Barrage

Crane was never quite clear how they escaped the holocaust of bombardment. With the precision of army artillery, the field guns methodically lobbed their shells back and forth across the narrow end of the valley. Starting at the cliff-face, the barrage worked inward.

The tenth shot struck the cave home, scattering logs in all directions. The four were driven forestward, to keep ahead of the destruction. Eventually, they would stumble into the arms of the enemy.

“What plan have you?” Crane yelled above the terrific rumble of sound banging between the cliffs. “Why didn’t you take the last chance—letting me become invisible? What chance is there now?”

But no answer came from the man whose unseen hand pulled them forward.

Crane noticed suddenly that they were working their way toward their own wrecked plane. Had the Invisible Robin Hood forgotten that it was useless for flight? Crane tried to jerk away. Why let this madman lead them to certain destruction?

“You fool, stay with me!” came back the fierce retort. “Now’s our chance!”

He was tugging them toward the plane. The barrage had swung toward the other cliff-face, temporarily. They were safe for a few minutes from flying steel splinters and crashing trees.

“Quick!” commanded the Invisible Robin Hood. “Run your gas out on the ground. But not the reserve tank. Start your engine and let it run on the reserve—at high speed.”

Crane complied, shaking his head in angry bewilderment.

The fuel poured out, soaking the plane and all the surrounding ground with its grass and bushes. The motor coughed, but started willingly enough, fed by the reserve tank. Crane set the throttle at half-speed, just at the point where the whole ship trembled and sought to move. A little more and it would trundle forward, to ram into trees with its controls wrecked.

“Now run!” the invisible man yelled. “Run as fast as you can—”

And he insanely led the way directly through the barrage line!

The raking shells began to pound nearer and nearer, like a returning pendulum. Trees crashed behind them, clutching at them with whipping branches. Flying splinters thudded viciously against invisible tree boles.

Crane felt a nudge in the flesh of his left arm, and the warm stickiness of blood, but raced on. He was half carrying Jondra. An invisible arm was pulling Dr. Damon along faster than his age could propel his muscles.

The universe seemed falling about their ears. But they made it.

The thumping barrage swung away on its ordered course. It neared, now, the spot where the plane lay.

Panting, they stopped and watched as a livid sheet of flame sprang from the spilled gasoline. Trails of fire promptly cracked into the air, following the branches of invisible trees. Billows of smoke swirled into the sky.

In seconds, the first tentative flames had become a roaring forest fire, fanned by the propeller blasts of air. The next shell sent the plane into oblivion.

And it scattered firebrands.

“It worked!” The Invisible Robin Hood’s shout was a cry of triumph.

The fire became a blazing inferno. Rapidly treetops touched off from one to the next. A line of flame strung itself across the valley from cliff to cliff. Then, like an enraged bull, it charged forward toward the center of the valley.

Demon fire had joined the battle in the valley of invisibility!

It was a strange sight. The flames seemed to spring out from nowhere, burning on invisible fuel. Branches and trees became visible, under the scorching death, but again vanished in the consuming blaze.

Crane hardly realized he had been screeching like a maniac for some time.

“I get it!” he yelled above the din. “Jondra! Dr. Damon! We’re safe here, where the barrage blew the forest to bits. No fuel for the fire. But the flames will sweep through all the rest of the valley. Harlan and his gang can’t blitzkrieg a fire away. They’re sunk!”

His voice changed just as suddenly. “But wait—suppose they simply turn the field guns and blast clear their end, before the fire comes. Then they’re saved too.” He groaned. “We’re still no better off!”

“Pierre is leading the dragons!” the Invisible Robin Hood said enigmatically. In more practical tones, he added, “The valley is narrow. The fire will drive all animals before it, toward the enemy’s camp. Including the dragons. Have you ever seen what a herd of elephants do on a stampede?”

Jondra shuddered. “The men will be trampled to death!”

Their jubilance over victory was subdued by the thought of what must be happening on the other side of that pitiless, searing, charging wall of flame.

The field guns stopped thumping abruptly. Crane could picture the gunners staring at the oncoming wave of fire in horror. Then screaming and running. No “strategic retreat” this time. Just a blind, panic-stricken flight.

No safety in their plane, with its gasoline but fuel to feed the enveloping flames. No time to take off. They could only stumble hopelessly on, to the very end of the valley. They would turn around then, with their backs to the cliff, eyes horror-struck at their doom. They would tear at each other in the attempt to struggle up the one scalable path out of the valley.

But before this would come the waves of fleeing animals. The animals would dash themselves against the cliffs, making them slippery with blood. The monstrous dragons would thunder up, snorting, bellowing, trampling. Their mighty feet, as they raced up and down seeking escape, would crush all the lesser animals. Including man.

It would be a sight no one would want to see.

The four were silent, waiting. In a short hour, the whole valley had gone up in smoke. Walls of smoke had mercifully screened from their eyes any glimpse of the happenings there. The steady crackle had camouflaged all sounds.

The flames died, then. The valley lay a smoldering ruin.

“Every living thing is wiped out!” Crane grunted. “This is the valley of death!”

“Not quite—listen!”

They heard the crackling of a ponderous body through the dying embers ahead. Through the pall came limping a smoke-silhouetted dragon. Crane gripped a grenade but then relaxed. The beast, staggering and groaning, had no interest in them. It sought a cool spot. Easing its bulk down in the unburned section, it licked its wounds.

“Some of the animals escaped,” the Invisible Robin Hood mused. “Perhaps the fleetest deer, and a few of the armor-plated dragons. Undoubtedly same of the vegetation here and there, in niches. The cycle could start again…”

His voice trailed away thoughtfully.

CHAPTER X

“The Secret Must Remain a Secret!”

They returned to what had been the cave home. Most of it was a gaping ruin, but the back portion was comparatively unscathed. Food supplies remained, and a dozen sealed cans of blood.

Dr. Damon picked them up eagerly. “I thought they would all be destroyed. I’ll take these back. I’ll still announce to the science world the great discovery of invisibility!”

His voice changed to a bark.

“Here—stop that!”

Unseen hands were stamping a rifle butt down on the cans, splitting them open. The invisible fluid vanished into the dirt. Dr. Damon attempted to wrench the rifle away. A hand that could not be seen roughly pushed him away.

Crane clutched at an arm whose position he guessed.

“Listen, Robin Hood! Just—”

A fist thudded against his chest, breaking his hold. He almost reeled back against the wall.

For a moment, loud breathing sounded from the invisible man, as though he were a jungle animal over a kill.

“Back!” he grated. “Stay back, or I’ll—”

Suddenly his voice changed, to its usual softness.

“I’m sorry. But I must do this. The secret of invisibility must remain in this valley!”

Crane’s thoughts clicked. The last bits of the puzzle slipped into place.

“I see!” he murmured. “That’s why you didn’t reveal yourself to us right away. You played a lone game. You smashed the radio, so the outside world could not be told of this.

“You chased the deer because you didn’t want Dr. Damon to get blood samples. You wanted neither the fifth column to get the secret, nor Dr. Damon. Nor anybody—except yourself! But what right have you, Robin Hood, to deny Dr. Damon, a scientist, his discovery?”

The Invisible Robin Hood’s voice came back in deadly earnest.

“No one must have the secret of invisibility—ever! I discovered it by accident, by a physical principle rather than through a hormone. I’ve not misused it. Many others would do good with it, as I have. But once it got into the wrong hands—chaos! The world would be a madhouse. Invisible deeds of crime! Invisible spies! Invisible armies! Think of those things.

“I know you’re an altruist, Dr. Damon. You probably think of good uses for invisibility—as in crushing crime. But you can’t quite know, as I do, what power it gives a person. You can’t quite know that you’re tampering with dynamite that can blast the world!

“I hope you see my viewpoint. That if it’s within my power to prevent anyone else from having my secret, I must do so!”

Jondra spoke up firmly. “It’s cold, ruthless reasoning. But it’s plain logic!”

The two men glared, still angered, but they made no move as the rifle butt resumed cracking open the cans, spilling the last of the blood samples into the ground.

“There!” It was a deep sigh from the unseen man. The sigh of one who has accomplished a vital mission.

An echoing sigh came from Dr. Damon. His shoulders sagged. He turned away without a word, brokenly.

Crane could think of no way of consoling a man who had just seen the discovery of a century trickling into oblivion. Nor could he think of any way of denying that the Invisible Robin Hood had done right.

He turned to Jondra. He had something to say to her, anyway.

* * * *

Dawn stretched its rosy fingers across a seared, blackened valley. The four people—one invisible—picked their way to the other end. The fifth columnists’ plane, in its clearing, had freakishly remained unburned, its fuel untouched. The saboteurs had not thought that miracle would happen, or they would have huddled in the ship.

Instead, they had fled. All that remained of them now was scattered somewhere in the black strewing of scorched bones littering the cliff-face. Crane shuddered, at thought of what terror had reigned here the day before.

“Look!”

Jondra’s hand pointed halfway up the cliff-face, along the steep path that led out of the valley. Pierre’s body hung there, against an outjutting stone—visible once again in death. Skin half black, the flames had just reached Pierre. One arm was stiffly outstretched, as if he had been beckoning. The expression on his face was strangely at peace.

The Invisible Robin Hood spoke solemnly.

“Have you guessed about Pierre? When he drank too much whiskey that time, delivering Dr. Damon’s letter, he babbled into the ears of a fifth column spy, as I mentioned. The spy took all the conversation down, in a report to Commander Z. I saw the verbatim wording.

“In one place, Pierre had said, in drunken French:

“I just dare the blitzkriegers of Europe to attack our shores! I will lead the invisible dragons out of the valley. They will frighten the enemy. They will stamp the enemy flat. Yes I, Pierre, will save my country from the enemy, for I will lead the invisible dragons against them!’”

The invisible man’s voice rose a note. “I salute you, Pierre! In your own way, you were ready to defend your country and continent against invasion, even if you were mad in the thought. And you did lead the dragons…”

* * * *

Crane was not surprised when the Invisible Robin Hood, a while later, made no move to enter the plane.

“I’m staying. Perhaps two or three of the dragons are alive yet. I must hunt them down. And any others of the Unseen Life. Then I must destroy every last vintage of the Unseen Vegetation, with burning gasoline.

“Leave with me, besides food, a rifle, ammunition, the grenades, and a tin of gasoline. Invisibility is a menace. When I leave, this valley will be barren of life. After that”—he paused—“there are many things to do.”

Jondra felt for his arm. “You said before that you loved a girl, and that she’s still alive. You’re wrong in denying yourself—and her—that love, no matter what tasks you set yourself!”

A low, almost harsh chuckle sounded. “Look!”

A switch snapped. With startling abruptness, Crane and Jondra saw a tall, lithe young man before them. He was completely sheathed in what looked like fine chain-mail. The gauntleted hands reached up to unfasten the helmet-like hood. Hugh Crane and Jondra Damon gasped in unison.

The face revealed was hideous beyond belief. Great burn-scars obliterated what had once been strong, handsome features. There was little of nose or hair. The lips and jaws were a network of white lines where surgical thread had sewed mangled flesh together. The mouth still looked like an unhealed wound. Only purple folds of lumpy scar tissue remained.

Jondra and Crane stared at this dreadful, once-handsome caricature of a man with horror-stricken eyes.

“I discovered my method of invisibility in a laboratory,” said the Invisible Robin Hood. “There was an explosion—”

“Oh, you poor fellow!” Jondra cried and burst into tears.

Again there was a click, and the Invisible Robin Hood vanished from their sight.

* * * *

They took off a little later in Crane’s airplane, which had been quickly but efficiently repaired. Three people were in that plane, leaving forever behind them a land which time had truly forgotten—Hugh Crane, Jondra Damon and her scientist father, bitter lines about his mouth in the knowledge that the greatest discovery of all time had come to naught.

Crane looked down. He could see nothing of an invisible man stalking invisible beasts. Somehow, it had all been a horrible dream. Not the least tragic had been that poignant moment when the Invisible Robin Hood had figuratively unmasked himself, a splendid young man whose caricature of a face would curse him through all his days.

Curse him, and deny him the fruits of a happy life. But raw courage and high achievement would be his, and Crane knew in his heart that when ugly menace stalked the highways of crime, the Invisible Robin Hood would somehow be on hand, ever on the alert against men who would use the marvels of science for their own vicious purposes…

Hugh Crane turned to Jondra. Thank heaven, she at least had come out of this all unscathed. And she was entirely visible. In fact, come to think of it, she was a most attractive-looking young lady.

Jondra, with a woman’s intuition, read the message in Crane’s gray eyes.

Her answering smile was the most visible thing Crane had ever seen.

JOURNEY TO THE UNDERGROUND WORLD, by Lin Carter

Copyright © 1979 by Lin Carter. Reprinted by permission of Lin Carter Properties.

PART I: THE LOST LAND

CHAPTER 1

EAST OF SUEZ

It was the glint of steel in the folds of the red burnoose that caught my eye—the bright flash of sunlight on a naked dagger!

It was just half an hour before noon, in the native quarter of Port Said. I can be precise about the time because I recall that even as I glimpsed the glitter of bare steel, the ululating cry of the selâm was echoing from where the mueddin stood on the gallery of the little mosque behind me. And it was a Friday, for that wailing cry, that humble salute to Allah, is chanted forth upon that day and in that hour all across the East, and thus it has been for generations beyond the numbering.…

The midday sun was roasting and the air was dry as dust and reeked of amazing stenches: goat urine and unwashed men and cooking sausages and raw onions and heady musk and sweet sandalwood and the fresh dung of camels. A medley of odors that, to me, will always say—Egypt.

In the square before me surged a gaudy throng. Brown children shrieked and chased each other; mongrels growled over scraps of garbage, a lemonade merchant jangled his tin cups not unmusically; women robed and veiled in black, with only their kohl-rimmed eyes visible, shrilled as they fought down the price of bright cloth with a fat, fez-hatted shopkeeper; French girls in light frocks from the cruise ship moored in the harbor poked through a wooden tray of silver bracelets and turquoise brooches; oblivious to the noise, the stenches, the milling crowd, an elderly gentleman sat crosslegged under a striped awning, sipping tea with the serene dignity of a graven Ramses; two swarthy Armenians haggled over an opal large as a human eye.

I had caught that bright flash of naked steel from the corner of my eye. Turning in the same instant, I peered into the mouth of a narrow alleyway behind the mosque. It was black as the Styx and choked with putrid garbage. But not so black that I could not see the three men who struggled there and even the reek of rotting garbage could not drown the cold and bitter smell of villainy and red murder—

I sprang upon the taller of the red-robed men and knocked him face down on the slimy cobbles—turned to seize the bony dark wrist of the second man with my left hand, twisting it until the hooked dagger dropped to clang upon the paving stones while I drove the balled fist of my right into his lean belly.

He paled to the hue of sour milk, sank to his knees, eyes rolling up to display bloodshot whites, then folded forward and began noisily to lose his breakfast. Stepping to one side I put my booted foot on the dirty wrist of the first assassin, who was worming stealthily toward the fallen knife; his wrist bones crunched under my weight and he squealed like a gutted lamb. Then I reached for the third man they had been about to mug, caught him by an upper arm and rapidly propelled him out of the fetid darkness and into the clamor and bustle of the marketplace.

He blinked at the dazzling impact of the noontime sun and tottered woozily, panting to recover his breath. I looked him over. He was an odd, comical little man, very thin and quite a bit shorter than I, and somewhere in his sixties as far as I could judge. He was dressed in stained, disreputable khaki shorts and a safari shirt, both several sizes too big for his scrawny frame. A huge, old-fashioned sun helmet covered most of his bony, baldish head. His pointed nose supported a pair of antiquated nose-glasses—pince-nez, I think they are called—these teetered insecurely and were often askew.

His eyes were large and watery and blue, under tufted, snowy brows, and looked curiously out of place in his leathery tanned face, which was bony and long-jawed. A stiff little tuft of white goatee jutted from the point of his chin, and a white mustache bristled from his upper lip, creating the illusion of a Vandyke. When he spoke, his voice was highpitched, querulous, with an Oxford accent; and he spoke in a rather verbose, slightly pompous, very pedantic manner.

“Holy Heisenberg!” he wheezed. “You arrived in the very nick of time, young man!”

“Are you okay?” I inquired. “Did they get your wallet?”

“Eh? Wallet…?”

I nudged his bony hip, felt a reassuring flattish bulge. How the two thieves had lured the old fellow into that dark alley I did not bother to inquire: he looked so absent-minded and unworldly and easily bamboozled, there was no reason to inquire. So I took his arm again, propelled him a quarter way around the square and into the cool dimness of the Cafe Umbala. The Nubian waiter, who knew me well, grinned, white teeth flashing in his ebony face, amused, doubtless, at the odd couple we made. The little man in soiled khaki kit came only to my armpit; he was thinner than the legendary rail, and my weight could have made three of him, or nearly. He waggled a stiff white goatee in my direction and attempted a jerky little bow, which made his old-fashioned sun helmet fall over his bald brow, knocking his glasses askew.

“Your unexpected assistance, sir, was timely and most welcome,” he said breathlessly. “Those two ruffians—!”

I drew him to a seat behind a tiny table set against a wall of flaking plaster adorned with posters advertising such varied amusements as a Parisian chanteuse, who really hailed from Constantinople, a Chinese magician who was actually an exBrooklyn cardsharp of pure Gypsy descent, and a brand of liquor fermented from overripe prunes and fit, from my experience, only for removing old paint from cheap furniture.

“Relax—catch your breath, pop,” I counseled. At my elbow the Nubian waiter materialized like a genie from the Arabian Nights: “Dry mahtini, sah?”

“Yep, Tabiz, the usual,” I said. “What’s your poison, old timer?”

The white tuft of goat-beard jutted skyward stiffly and I received a frosty glare. “Potter is the name, my good man—Professor Potter.”

“Okay, Doc, have it your way,” I grinned. “But what’ll you have?”

He sniffed sharply. “As a rule, I do not indulge…still and all, I suppose…under the circumstances…just to restore the tissues…for medicinal purposes only, you understand!…under the advice of my physician…a drop or two of spiritous beverage can do no harm, surely?”

“Surely,” I nodded.

“Straight gin,” he snapped at the waiter. “Gordon’s, if you stock it; Boodle’s will do.”

It turned out to be Old Mr. Boston, but gin (I have found) is gin.

* * * *

We talked over our drinks. For the past two months I had been out “east of Suez” as Sax Rohmer or Talbot Mundy would put it, in the desert country in Sinai, performing some rather delicate shipping flights in an old Sikorsky chopper supplied me by a Greek importer.

Let’s not mince words: I’d been smuggling out antiquities for a fellow named Pappadappoulas who daren’t risk trying to get the stuff out through customs. Nothing much, just broken pottery and a couple of chewed-up Syro-Roman busts; anyway, the Greek either defaulted or got busted and I found myself with about seventy dollars American in my jeans and the proud owner of a beatup Sikorsky, which was probably also hot. As I carelessly filled the Professor in on my recent business venture, he interrupted me with excitement written all over his whiskery visage:

“A helicopter, you say, my boy? Great Galileo!—how utterly fortuitous! Does it…ah…is the vehicle in sky worthy condition?” he inquired breathlessly, a feverish glint in his watery optics.

I shrugged. “A drop of oil here and there and the other place, and a full tank of the best octane, that’s all it needs. We needed the chopper, you understand, ’cause we had to fly low. Mr. Sadat’s customs men use radar now, and the border country fringes some on Israeli-held territory. Antiaircraft batteries, you know…and trigger fingers get mighty itchy in that part of the world…”

Something like prophetic bliss shone in his misty eyes. An adam’s apple the size of a golfball wobbled up and down in his stringy throat, measuring the intensity of his emotion just as the mercury does in a thermometer.

“When you saved me from those scalawags, my boy,” he said huskily, “I thought…” And he rattled off a line or two of Swahili. Well, it was pure Swahili as far as I was concerned; it turned out to be Greek.

Then he cleared his throat apologetically: “Hem! Forgive me, lad…Simonides the Athenian…‘One welcomes the arrival of a friend in need, even if he be a stranger at the time.’”

“You don’t have to—”

He silenced me with a magnificent gesture. “Not at all! The poet echoed my feelings of the moment; but now that I learn you possess a helicopter, I feel, rather (with Ephialtes), ‘Be serene: the Gods will provide you with the thing you need, in the hour appointed—’”

He leaned forward suddenly, as if to transfix me with that white spike of stiff beard.

“Have you ever heard of Zanthodon?” he whispered hoarsely.

* * * *

Of course, I hadn’t; nor has hardly anyone, this side of the half a dozen or so scholars in the world who read “proto-Akkadian.” The Doc, as I soon found out, was never so happy as when he was explaining something to somebody. So he began explaining.

“Proto-Akkadian…name of the Underground World…the “Great Below” of the Sumerians, Na-an-Gub…the Babylonians, who came along much later, you know, called it ‘Irkalla.’…”

“No, I don’t think I—”

“Also seems to have been known to the ancient Egyptians and to the Hebrew prophets,” he continued, blandly riding over my interjection. “The Hebrews called it Tehom, the ‘Great Deep’…there resided the nephilim, the earth-giants of Hebrew myths…it appears that the Egyptians may have called the Underground World Amentet. It was the Sacred Land, the Underworld of the Dead—the Land in the West,” he said, with peculiar emphasis, eyes agleam.

“Listen, Professor, I—”

“Now this is particularly interesting, my boy,” he rode on, paying me no mind. “For the Sumerians located their own version of Zanthodon—Na-an-Gub—in ‘the land Martu,’ which is to say, in the west.”

Tabiz brought us a second round. The Doc knocked his straight back as if it were apple juice instead of pure gin. He licked his lips and continued:

“Even the Moslems know the legend…to them it is Shadukiam, the underworld of the djinns, ruled by Al-Dimiryat…Also in the west: “toward the setting sun” …all of these peoples seem to have thought of Zanthodon as a genuine place; more than one traveler, I hazard, actually tried to find it…none were successful, apparently. As the Pyramid Texts put it, in one of their more memorable verses:” and his voice sank to a spooky whisper as he recited,

“None cometh from thence that he may tell us how they fare,

That he may tell us what they need, that he may set our hearts at rest,

Until we also go to the place whither they art gone,

The place from which there is no returning.…”

I have to confess a tingle crawled its way up my spine: there was a ring to the old boy’s voice that the late Boris Karloff might have envied.

I cleared my throat.

“Underworlds are pretty common in mythology, aren’t they?” I said. “Hell and Hades and Sheol…”

He nodded vigorously. “And Duat and Dilmun, et cetera…yes, quite right! But as I was saying, my boy—”

He went on; I gave up, leaned back, and savored my cocktail. There was no stopping Professor Potter once he got started talking.

“My first clue as to the whereabouts of the entrance to Zanthodon I discovered in the old Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish…something to the effect that in the month of Adar, the Door to Irkalla lay ‘under the Path of Shimmah’…Now Shimmah (which the Egyptians called Khonuy) equates to the sign Pisces; and the month of Adar in the Babylonian calendar is about the same as the Egyptian month Mesore. Which means February!”

“Um,” I said around a mouthful of martini.

“Then I discovered in Smyrna, in a Greek manuscript of Zosimus the Panopolitan, reference to a fragment of the old Egyptian geographer, Claudius Ptolemy (the fragment is considered dubious by some authorities, but there you are! No one quite agrees on these things)—and Zosimus, quoting Ptolemy, placed the Mouth of Hades (Ptolemy meant Amentet) beneath the path of Pisces in the month Anthesterion.”

He fixed me with an eye glittering with triumph, and a bit too much gin:

“And the Greek month of Anthesterion is our February!”

I looked at him thoughtfully: “I thought Pisces was a sign of the zodiac,” I murmured. “What does ‘the Path of Pisces’ mean?”

He clucked his tongue, just like a lady math teacher I suffered under in the fifth grade: “The signs of the so-called zodiac are stellar constellations, my boy!” he said reprovingly.

Then, brushing aside the ashtray and the now-empty glasses, he began to trace lines and curves on the tablecloth with the stub of a broken pencil fished from an inner pocket.

“In February,” he said breathlessly, “the constellation passes over this belt of North Africa—thus and so—upon this latitude—”

“Latitude 25,” I murmured, studying the rude chart he had sketched.

He tapped a bony forefinger on one particular spot.

“Here, I believe.”

I mentally reconstructed the location from maps I had seen.

“The Ahaggar Mountains,” I said. “In Targa country, surrounded by Tuareg lands. One of the least known, least explored, least visited and most completely inhospitable regions of the entire African continent.”

“Precisely.”

“And just what do you expect to find there?”

His voice sank to an eerie whisper:

“A hollow mountain, leading to the center of the world.”

CHAPTER 2

INTO THE AHAGGAR

During the next two weeks I got to know the Professor quite well. His full name—to quote a grubby, thumbprintsmeared visiting card he flashed to overawe customs officials—read:

Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph.D.

He was suspiciously reticent on the question of what that middle initial stood for, but it was on his passport, which I saw by accident.

“‘Penthesileia’?” I read, incredulously.

He fixed me with a frosty, reproving glare.

“You peeked.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to…but—Penthesileia?”

Professor Potter cleared his throat and gave a little sniff. “My late father was a highly esteemed classical scholar,” he informed me coldly. “Penthesileia was the Queen of the Amazons, in an old Roman epic about the Trojan War, by Quintus Smyrnaeus. My father was perhaps overfond of the epic, which is minor and rather florid…”

I chuckled. “Your dad was also a bit overfond of alliteration,” said I with a grin at Professor Percival Penthesileia Potter, Ph.D.

The Prof was a comical old geezer, all right, but there were a lot of good things you could say about him, as I soon found out. For a skinny little bundle of bones I could pick up in one hand, almost, he had enough guts and courage and boldness for fifty wildcats. During all of our adventures together—and some of them were grueling ordeals, even for a man of my youth—I never once heard him gripe or whimper or complain. He was resourceful, staunch, brave to the point of being foolhardy, and a good man to have at your side when the chips were down.

He was also the smartest guy I’ve ever known. In fact, he knew more about more things than just about anybody this side of Isaac Asimov. I never did quite figure out just what he was a professor of.

For some odd reason, he was rather reticent on that point. Digging around for maps and stuff in the Cairo Museum library, I saw him sight-read a scroll written in old Coptic, and then make a critical remark about the ancient scribe’s sloppy use of diacritical marks. Impressive! But his main interest in finding this mountain gate which (presumably) led down into Zanthodon was to search for fossils and minerals. Strolling through another wing of the museum, he rattled off the names (you know, Latin and Greek stuff) of all the dinosaur skeletons we passed.

“What are you, anyway, Doc?” I asked, somewhat baffled. “Here I thought you were a geologist or a mineralogist, and now you’re making noises like a—whaddayacallum—fossil hunter, dinosaur expert—”

“Paleontologist?”

“Right: paleontologist,” I nodded. “So which is it, anyway?”

He cleared his throat with a little apologetic cough. “Well, a bit of them all, I’m afraid. A bit of a dabbler, you know…”

A paleontologist and geologist, who also knows more about ancient Coptic than the old scribes who used to write in it? Well, that was the Prof: a man of parts, as they say.

Later, as I got to know him better, I found out he had equal qualifications in archaeology, ancient languages, and half a dozen other isms and -ologies. Quite a guy!

But I had amused him by being impressed at his scholarly attainments. He chuckled, rather pleased that he had managed to impress me. Which he certainly had—

“‘Un sot toujours un plus sot qui l’admire,’” he murmured half to himself.

“Come again? That’s French, I know, but…?”

“A fool can always find a bigger fool to admire him,” he quipped, sardonically.

“Oh, yeah? Who says?”

“Boileau-Despréaux,” he replied smugly.

I ground my teeth, cudgeling my memory for a scrap of La Rochefoucauld I half remembered from college:

“Says you,” I snorted. “‘Il n’y pas des sots si incommodes que ceux qui ont de l’esprit’!”

He looked surprised: rather as if a pet chimpanzee had begun a critique of Einstein’s math.

“‘There are no fools so troublesome as those who have some wit,’” he translated. “My boy, you delight me! A splendid put-down, and quite apropos. But I wonder if you recall Goethe’s pointed remark…‘Wir sind gewohnt dass die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen’?”

“Only thing I ever read by Goethe was Faust,” I had to admit. His eyes twinkled:

“But it is from Faust, my dear boy! ‘We are used to see that man despises what he never comprehends.’ There, I trust that puts you in your place?”

It certainly did.

With all those “p’s” in his name, I suppose he just naturally had to be a…polymath.

* * * *

The Ahaggar region which was our goal was many hundreds of miles to the west of Port Said; the entire breadth of the African continent stretched between where we were and where we wanted to be.

Well, one thing was sure: I couldn’t fly Babe (my affectionate pet-name for the helicopter I had inherited, sort of, from my former partner in crime) all the way there. There’s rather a noticeable lack of filling stations in the North Sahara.

We decided to ship the Sikorsky to Morocco by a rusty old tub of a tramp steamer. The nice thing about this was that it wouldn’t cost me—or him, rather—one single pistole. This was because the fat, fiercely mustached Turk who owned the steamer owed me a favor or three. And that was because once upon a time we had both been smuggling guns and ammo into one of those little pepper-pot Middle East wars. My side won; his side lost their shirts—and mostly because the ammo he sold them didn’t fit the guns he had also peddled to them.

To this day, that particular government would like very much to get their mitts on a fat guy named Kemal Bey. And the favor I could do him was to keep my yap shut, while the favor he could do me was to carry Babe, the Professor and me down the Mediterranean coast to Morocco. This would not be all that hard to do, since, although Kemal’s rusty old tub was hardly much bigger than one of those tugboats they have back in New York Harbor, the chopper could be dismantled and stripped down with a little time, a mite of effort, and a good variety of wrenches.

Kemal Bey groaned and griped and called upon his gods, but relented in the end, and did as I asked. It would take us some weeks to sail down the coast of North Africa, through the Straits and down the west coast past Casablanca to the little seaport town of Agadir, which was smack-dab on the thirtieth parallel, almost.

From that point on, traveling inland, the only thing to do was fly in the chopper, which meant we had to pack along plenty of high octane. This could be procured on the black market in Cairo easily enough, and could be shipped in Kemal’s cramped hold. Once we came ashore in Morocco, though, we would have to fly with the gas aboard, which was a mite dangerous.

During our days and nights at sea, I did a lot of thinking about the Prof’s scheme. And the more I thought about it, the wackier it seemed. Oh, he was smart enough, but like your typical stereotype of the absent-minded professor, nose buried in books and all, he had about as much practicality as I pack around in the tip of my little finger. Over one of Kenal’s lousy dinners—bad fish and raw onions and undrinkable Turkish booze—I asked him the value he estimated for the fossils and rare minerals he hoped to find in the Ahaggar.

“Value, my boy? Dollars-and-cents, you mean? Practically worthless…but the value to science—”

“I thought so,” I groaned.

He looked prim. “I perceive, my boy, that you consider me a science-for-the-sake-of-science fanatic…not so at all, I assure you. Fossils are worth little on the open market, that is true, unfortunately; but the region into which we are traveling is known to contain rich fossil beds ranging from the Upper Jurassic to the Lower Cretaceous…we can expect to find the remains of brachyosaurus, one of the largest of all giant saurians, and we can hope for gigantosaurus and perhaps even dichraeosaurus…also iguanodonts and even small pterosaurs. When Werner Janensch of the Berlin Museum excavated in and about those regions back in 1909, he discovered a spectacular skeleton of brachyosaurus and discovered over fifty specimens of kentrurosaurus, an African relative of the stegosaur.”

“You’ve got my head swimming,” I confessed. He snorted.

“I assure you, my boy, that a well-preserved and complete skeleton of any of the above reptilia will be an intrinsically valuable find.”

“How old is this underground place you hope to discover?” I asked, more to swerve the conversation away from all those jaw-cracking names than from any other motive.

“I believe that Zanthodon was formed in the middle of the Mesozoic, which means it has existed for something like 150,000,000 years.”

One hundred and fifty million years sounded like a lot of years to me, and I said as much. I also pointed out that he said the Ahaggar region abounded in Jurassic and Cretaceous life forms: and now he was talking about the Mesozoic.

He disintegrated me with a look of vitriolic contempt.

“Mighty Mendel, boy, didn’t they teach you anything at University?” he snapped. “If not, then pray permit me to inform you that the Mesozoic Era began some two hundred million years ago and terminated about seventy million years B.C. It is divided, I will have you understand, into three major subdivisions; and these are known as—taking the earlier period first—the Triassic, which lasted 35,000,000 years, the Jurassic, which was of similar duration, and—lastly—the Cretaceous, which extended for some sixty million years.”

“Oh,” I said in a small voice. And rapidly changed the subject entirely.

And about time, too.

* * * *

So I got myself hired to go volcano-hunting and dinosaur-digging. Well, I’ve had worse jobs, I suppose.

Of course, I could have turned the Professor down flat when he tried to hire me. His wacky scheme sounded dangerous and uncertain from the beginning. But, if you will recall, I had left my last employment with about seventy bucks in my jeans, and by this time, after grubbing around Port Said for a couple of weeks, the exchequer was down to less than fifty. Which wouldn’t last long.

To be blunt, I needed a job. Any job.

This fact the Prof figured out back during our first conversation together, when we had drinks at the Cafe Umbala after I rescued him from the two muggers. I had been ordering my meals there for the past two weeks, and when the check came and I tried to coax Tabiz to put the bill on my tab, it turned out to be a bit too heavy already.

“Never mind, my boy,” said the Prof grandly. “Ah, waiter…can the management of this estimable establishment possibly cash a one hundred dollar bill, perchance?”

The Nubian rolled his eyes widely.

“A hunnahd dollah Ahmericain?” he inquired, reverence throbbing in his hushed tones.

“Precisely,” sniffed the Prof.

And so I got hired. It seems the Prof had finished up his work for the Egypt Exploration Society and still had a fat wad of greenbacks left over from the sumptuous foundation grant he had wheedled out of the fat cats at his old alma mater. One look at the bankroll he flashed under the table to me, and I was a goner. No matter how wacky his theories niight be, or how nutty his ideas were, if he was going to pick up the tab for this expedition into the Back of the Beyond, well, I’m willing to fly him to the gates of hell—and back, if he can pay my bill.

* * * *

We came ashore at Agadar under a slight drizzle which is rare for these latitudes and this time of year. It took four stevedores to wrestle the ‘copter onto the dock, and half the night for the Professor and me to put Babe back together again and get her running smoothly.

By dawn we were fueled up and ready to leave. What with all the petrol tins and food and medical supplies we had packed aboard, it was a wonder the bird could fly at all, but Sikorsky builds ’em tough, and Babe took to the air and wobbled a bit, but stayed aloft.

From Agadar we flew almost directly south, beyond Merijinat and Tagoujalet, taking it by slow and easy stages, landing only to sleep when we had to and eat when we must.

From just beyond Tagoujalet, I turned and flew almost due east…following the directions the Professor had calculated from the old maps.

Even under the most ideal conditions, it would take us a couple of days to get to the Ahaggar region, and then maybe a couple of days more to find the mountain the Prof had christened Mount Zanthodon.

Was it actually the entrance to the Underground World the old geographers and myth-makers had written about?

Only time would tell…

We flew on…into the east; into the rising sun.

And into the Unknown.

CHAPTER 3

THE HOLLOW MOUNTAIN

After leaving Tagoujalet, we had some eight hundred miles of Africa to cross by air. Which included some of the worst terrain in all these parts of the Dark Continent: parched desertlands, where the wells and oases were few and far between; stony tundra, where only the hardiest vegetation could manage to subsist; and the domains of the savage, still-untamed Tuareg tribesmen.

And we were heading into an even more forbidding region, which even the fearless Tuaregs shunned.

In the northernmost part of the El Djouf, we flew to Taoudeni, where we took on our last stores and provisions, and filled the water canisters to the brim. From this point on, we would be flying directly east, into the sun, and toward the mountain country.

The highest peak in the Ahaggars is Mount Tahat. At 9,840 feet, it was one of the tallest mountains in all of Africa; and I certainly hoped the mountain the Professor was searching for was nowhere near that height, for Babe simply couldn’t fly as high as ten thousand feet. He assured me that our mountain was only a fraction of Tahat’s height.

It had better be, I thought to myself grimly!

* * * *

Since there was nothing else to do to while away the time our trip consumed, we talked. And got to know each other pretty well. One thing that had been puzzling me was this hollow mountain stuff—and just why the Professor thought there was some sort of a giant cavern world beneath it. So I asked him.

“All those old myths and legends aside, Doc, what makes you think there’s a hollow mountain in the Ahaggar anyway, with all that space under it?”

“I have a theory,” he said. (The old boy had a theory about nearly everything under the sun, so this didn’t surprise me any.) “So what’s your theory?”

He started talking in that precise yet meandering, formal and pedantic way he had, which I was beginning to get used to.

Sometime during the Jurassic Era, or maybe a while before, Professor Potter theorized that the earth had collided with an immense meteorite of contraterrene matter.

“Come again?”

“Contraterrene matter,” he repeated. Then, with a little tut-tut, “Eternal Einstein, my boy, you must know something about physics?…Contraterrene matter is the mirror-opposite of ordinary matter…where a particle of ordinary, or terrene, matter has a positive charge, a contraterrene particle contains a negative charge, and so on and vice-versa…”

“Okay, I got that.”

“Well, then…it has long been known, or at least theorized, that when the two forms of matter touch, a terrific explosion will result—an explosion of nuclear proportions.”

“And how large was this meteor you’re talking about?”

He looked owlishly solemn. “Perfectly immense; it is difficult, if not actually impossible, to estimate its full original size from the scanty evidence I have managed to accumulate.”

“And when it hit the earth, there would have been a big bang, eh?”

“As you say, my boy, a very big bang…equal to the blast force of literally dozens of hydrogen bombs.”

The mental picture conjured up did not exactly make me feel comfortable. “Okay…what else?”

His watery blue eyes agleam with enthusiasm, he launched into his spiel. The meteorite, he believed, had struck earth somewhere in the Ahaggar region of North Africa…and as far back as we have any records, geographers have reported the crater of an extinct and very ancient volcano in those mountains: Greek merchants and travelers, Roman soldiers and scholars, Victorian explorers and adventurers had all mentioned it, although few of them ever seemed to have actually gotten there, since that was Tuareg country, and the Tuareg tribesmen are not only the best horsemen in North Africa, but have a welldeserved reputation for inhospitality carried to the point of hostility.

“My astronomer friend, Franklyn, at Hayden Institute, worked out the orbit,” he explained excitedly, “and calculated the angle at which the seetee meteorite entered the earth’s atmosphere—”

“Seetee?”

“A less-formal term for contraterrene matter…please, my boy, if you are not able to keep pace with my disquisition, save your questions until I am through explaining—!”

“And you think it went straight down the cone of the dead volcano?” I hazarded. He blinked surprisedly, as he always did when I said something intelligent.

“Precisely, my boy! And if my calculations are correct, it would have been some hundreds of miles below the earth’s crust before the meteor came into contact with normal matter. The explosion would have been of an unprecedented scale of magnitude. Hundreds of thousands of tons of solid rock would have instantly vaporized…forming a huge bubble of impacted molten rock far below the planet’s surface…”

“How huge?” I asked. He shook his head.

“No way of telling, I fear…we shall soon see for ourselves.”

“That’s why you wanted a helicopter!” I said, suddenly putting two and two together and coming up with at least three and nine-tenths.

“Exactly, my boy…I plan to descend into the crater of the volcano-let us christen it Mount Zanthodon, and employ the term hereafter as a verbal shortcut.”

“Well…Babe can do it, I suppose,” I muttered dubiously. “Depending on the width of the crater, that is. What do we do if it narrows on us before we get down to the center of the earth?”

“We get out and look about,” he said primly, hefting the shiny new geological pick he had purchased in the Cairo market. I groaned and tried to pretend I hadn’t heard.

Actually, it wasn’t the center of the earth we were going to at all. That was just the Prof’s gift for dramatic hyperbole. This side of the fantastic novels of Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs, nobody is ever going to get that deep into the planet because of the heat of the magma core, if for no other reason. But even a hundred miles down, which was about as deep as Potter reckoned the Underground World to be, was deep enough.

Deeper than any man has ever gone before.…

* * * *

Well, to make a long story just a wee bit shorter, it was there all right—the mountain, I mean. And only a little more than a thousand or so feet high: I hadn’t needed to worry about it being anywhere like the height of Mount Tahat, after all.

We made camp on the shoulder of the extinct volcano which the Professor had christened Mount Zanthodon. That put us up above the brush and—theoretically—out of the reach of whatever predators might be roaming around this part of the country. I wrestled with putting up the tent while the Professor twiddled with his instruments, taking measurements and pinpointing the latitude and longitude on his charts with his customary precision.

Then we unloaded everything from the chopper except enough gasoline to get us down to the bottom of the crater’s shaft, stashing away our reserve fuel for the return trip to Agadar. Just in case the stories were full of bunk about how the Tuareg tribesmen shunned this area, and to prevent our fuel from being stolen, I hid it by the simple expedient of burying it under the loose, flaky soil which clothed the flanks of the mountain.

With dawn the next day we were to make our first attempt at the descent.

Needless to say, neither of us got much sleep.

We were up early the next morning, for the Professor was hot to get started. My fears about the width of the crater proved groundless, for from lip to lip the crater was more than wide enough to accommodate Babe. Of course, there was no way of knowing in advance how swiftly the shaft might narrow, once we began our descent, and from the top it was impossible to guess.

The Professor puttered about the lip of the crater with something resembling a Geiger. He returned jubilant, reporting that the residual amount of background radiation suggested that his theory was absolutely correct, for the radioactivity was about that which he would expect to find left over from such an underground explosion as he had postulated.

“How dangerous is it?”

“Oh, nothing to worry about at all,” he burbled. “In fact, only a special instrument as sensitive as mine could detect it at all…no hazard to our health whatsoever!”

I guess I had to be satisfied with that.

* * * *

And so we started down. At the lip of the crater the width of the central shaft measured about two hundred feet in diameter and roughly six hundred feet in circumference. The great shaft yawned beneath us, seeming to go down and down forever, dwindling into inky darkness. It was a fantastic sight, I must admit; also, a frightening one. But we had not come all this way to sightsee; so I kicked Babe about, centered her above the shaft, and we began the descent.

The sides of the shaft were almost perpendicular, like the sides of a well; but there were jagged outcroppings and protuberances to watch out for, so I guided Babe down carefully, and very slowly, using the special spotlights we had ordered to be installed back at Cairo to illuminate the crater walls.

The sides of the shaft were thickly coated with lava, very porous and crumbling; in the enclosed space, Babe’s engine made a deafening racket. Bits and chunks of lava, jarred loose by the noise, went bouncing and ricocheting down. But the Professor reassured me that the dangers of creating a landslide were minute.

Well, he’d been right about everything so far; I would trust him to be right about this fact.

Jaws grimly set, I coaxed Babe down yard by yard. When we were about two hundred feet below the mouth of the crater, darkness closed in, thick and impenetrable, and I was very glad we had thought about installing those spots. Because now we really needed them.

If we so much as nudged against the side of the crater, or hit one of those projecting shelves or spurs of lava which jutted crazily out from the walls, seemingly at random, Babe could snap her rotors. We would still descend, of course, in that case, but a lot more quickly than we wanted to, and our landing would be a bad one.

The Professor was peering with fascination at the rock strata as we sank past the four-hundred-foot point. I suppose any geologist would have been fascinated by what he saw—he yelled, over the roar of the engine, stuff about “combustible carbons,” “silurians,” and “primordial soil,” but I was too busy gritting my teeth to bother listening.

Above our heads the circular opening framed a disc of day, which dwindled to the size of a dime. Now we were entered into the regions of Eternal Night, where light of the sun has but seldom penetrated since the planet was formed. It was an eerie experience, even a thrilling one, to have gone where no human foot had ever gone before us.

I would have traded the thrill for my favorite table at the Cafe Umbala and a good stiff martini and a glimpse of Tabiz’s grin.

* * * *

The glow of a flashlight lit the cabin and broke the gloomy pattern of my thoughts. By its glare, the Professor peered intently at his instruments.

“Two thousand five hundred feet, my boy,” he whispered hoarsely. “We are below the very base of Mount Zanthodon at this point…in fact, we are beneath the earth’s crust!”

I felt a momentary qualm of uneasiness go through me. Then I stiffened my spine and set my jaw firmly.

“How’s the radiation count?”

“Still the same amount of background radiation,” he murmured. “I do not anticipate that it shall rise to a level even remotely dangerous…the radioactivity released by the Jurassic explosion would have fallen to harmless levels many millions of years ago…but what of the width of the shaft?”

“Still about the same,” I said tersely, estimating with my eye. “Doesn’t look as if it’s ever gonna narrow!”

Nor did it when we reached the depth of a mile, then five miles, then ten.

And so we continued our descent into the regions of Eternal Night and our journey to the Underground World.

CHAPTER 4

BENEATH THE EARTH’S CRUST

At the depth of twenty-five miles the barometric apparatus we had used to measure our depth became thoroughly useless, as the weight of the air in the shaft accumulated beyond that of sea level. We switched over to the manometer, which was inefficient for some reason.

The air, although dense, was still perfectly breathable and even fresh. I suppose the volcanic shaft above us acted as a colossal chimney, drawing the stale cavern air out and replacing it with fresh air from the surface above. The pervading temperature had grown considerably warmer, but certainly not unendurable. We began shedding our outer garments.

At this depth, the lava walls were gorgeously colored, and the coating had formed into swelling blisters very curious to see. Crystals of opaque quartz and veins and splatters of once-liquid glass blazed and glittered awesomely in the light of our lamps. It was a fairyland of dazzling light and color…no more gorgeous or fantastic a sight could have met the eyes of Aladdin, when he descended into the caverns of the Wonderful Lamp.

The profuse wealth of minerals must have thrilled the Professor to the core. He jumped up and down in the bucket seat, peering nearsightedly at the wealth of mineral specimens that moved past our view, scribbling feverishly in his little black notebook, making excited comments to me in a highsqueaky voice.

We could no longer accurately measure our depth because of the unexpected failure of the manometer; but about an hour later, when we must have reached a depth of more than thirty miles, we became increasingly aware of a most peculiar phenomenon.

The darkness, which had been as impenetrable as a sea of black ink, began to…lighten.

At first, we didn’t notice it, because we were still descending through a zone of sparkling quartz and streaked glass. The gradual fading of the eternal dark we consigned to the ten thousand flickering, wandering reflections of our spotlights.

But when we had passed below that glittering zone, we could no longer fail to notice the ebbing of the midnight dark of the abyss, and its peculiar dawn-like lightening.

“I wonder if the residual radioactivity could possibly be reacting with chemicals in the rock, causing an effect similar to that of phosphorescence,” the Professor mused.

I couldn’t say, myself, but was heartily glad for every bit of light I could get. For the shaft had narrowed considerably in the last half-mile, and steering Babe on a safe descent had become increasingly tricky.

At the depth of about thirty-eight miles, the queer, seemingly sourceless light had strengthened almost to the intensity of late afternoon sunlight. We could clearly make out the veins and contours and variegated hues of the mineral strata as we sank past them, even without the use of artificial light.

At about forty-two miles down, we began to notice something else that was every bit as exciting to the professor. Rock-mold and spongy lichens grew in scabrous patches along the fissures in the rock walls of the crater shaft, and we descended past a level shelf-like outcropping covered with fantastic paleyellow mushrooms a foot high.

“Dear Darwin! Just think of it, my boy,” the Professor marvelled in hushed tones. “There is life even at this depth within the earth…!”

It had grown increasingly warmer until the temperatures within the cabin of the helicopter were swampy and tropical. Sweat poured off us, soaking through our khaki clothing; but the heat was nothing at all like the suffocating warmth I had imagined we would find here beneath the earth’s crust.

And the air still smelled fresh and moist.

* * * *

Although the volcanic shaft narrowed a bit more, somewhere around the depth of sixty or seventy miles beneath the surface, it still afforded sufficient leeway for Babe to continue descending.

I began to wonder if the shaft had any bottom at all, and entertained wild fantasies of flying directly through the earth until we came out the other side! This was sheerest nonsense, of course; but, still and all, it did begin to seem that we could keep on going down into the earth’s core forever.

Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be much worry about our running out of fuel. I had loaded Babe with subsidiary gas tanks everywhere subsidiary gas tanks could be tied, strapped, bolted or stored aboard the chopper. And this sort of straight-down descent didn’t really consume much gas at all.

But after some hours of this, I began to get weary. The nervous tension of inching Babe down, keeping one eye on the walls and the other peeled for unexpected spurs and projections, had begun to wear my strength down.

The Professor volunteered to spell me at the controls while I napped. I taught him exactly what to do and impressed upon him the importance of keeping his mind on what he was doing and ignoring the scenery.

“Leaping Lindbergh, my boy!” he said scoffingly. “I was flying before you were born—”

“Yeah, but not helicopters, I don’t think,” I retorted rather ungrammatically.

I suppose it was pretty dumb of me to turn the controls over to the living stereotype of the “absentminded professor,” but I was bushed and simply had to get a little shut-eye. And I didn’t think anything much could possibly happen: the shaft was still roomy enough to make it easy for a pilot to steer Babe’s rotors away from dangerous projections, and the descent was actually a lot easier and less risky now that the peculiar luminosity had increased almost to the strength of daylight.

So I climbed in the back, curled up among the gas tins, pulled my flight jacket over my shoulders, and dozed off.

* * * *

I awoke with a sudden start when the world turned upside down with a bang and I flew out the cabin door, which had sprung open.

I ended up on my back on a mossy bank, head throbbing to the reverberations of the crash. I looked around wildly, wondering if I was still in my dream.

Whatever it was, this was surely no dream! I have had a few wild ones in my time, but never a dream to match the likes of this baby.…

Above me stretched an oddly luminous sky, with clouds aplenty but no sun in sight.

And the sky was not blue, but a peculiar shade of golden green, like nothing I have ever seen before. I looked up—

And there was a hole in the sky.

It was almost directly overhead. Round and ragged-edged, and blurry, as if the intervening atmosphere were thick with steamy vapors.

Of course, I knew what it was.

The end of the volcanic shaft…

I looked down at my feet. My boots were sunk in wet loam. Farther up the slope, thick blue moss grew, starred with fleshy blossoms startlingly colored. Salmon pink and sulphur yellow they were, and they resembled sea anemones more than any flowers I had ever seen.

I raised my eyes.

Babe lay half sunk in the shoulder of the slope, one of her rotors snapped off near the hub, and the rotorshaft itself still revolving with a flap-flap sound. Her plexiglass cabin was severely dented and cracked by collision with the ground, and one of the two cabin doors was dangling open on broken hinges. That must have been the one I was thrown out of.

I looked around.

The chopper had crashed in the slope of a rounded hill near the edge of a wide river or perhaps a lagoon.

The water was murky, dull green, and bubbly with froth. The fringe of sand about it was dun colored, littered with pebbles and broken shells and bits of wood. The hill rose behind where Babe had come to rest to greet the margin of a forest. It was a most queer looking forest, indeed, made up of tall, feathery trees which looked like an odd cross between bamboo and willow.

Tree ferns? I thought, my mind spinning crazily.

The forest was a veritable jungle, and the trees seemed rooted in glaucous, slimy mud. Some of the trees seemed familiar enough—hemlocks and cypresses and soaring redwoods—not too much different from the varieties known to me. But other trees were like nothing known to me: there was a very common broadleafed tree rather resembling a gingko, its little fan-shaped leaves close-set on thick, squirming boughs like the tentacles of an octopus.

The air was steamy, moist and humid. And rank with the odors of the lagoon, stale mud, stagnant water, rotting vegetation. The ground was thick with moss, but I saw nothing in sight resembling ordinary grass or bushes or flowers.

From the slight elevation on which I stood, I could see that the cavern world, if such indeed it was—and such indeed it was—was of enormous, virtually unlimited extent.

I could see no horizon; the steamy air thickened, blurring far details. A ragged line of blue-green trees marked a jungle beyond the little lagoon, with dim hills beyond that, and then—vision ended.

I had a sudden crazy hunch that this was a land that time had forgotten—a leftover from the prehistoric past! Memories of Burroughs’ Pellucidar, the world at the earth’s core, spun dizzily through my brain.

Then the mud stirred and a clumsy shape came shouldering between the tall trees, and I stared into a grinning, lipless mouth lined with bristling fangs.

And the world went mad.

* * * *

The thing was only, I suppose, about three or four feet long; but, then, so’s a king cobra. It was squat and bowlegged and built low to the ground and it walked with an odd, lurching waddle of a gait because its hind legs were longer than its forelegs. It was a mossy dark green all over its warty, armored hide, except in throat and belly, where the color paled to a muddy yellow. It had two rows of bony plates down its back and along the length of its thick, alligator-like tail.

But its head wasn’t much like an alligator’s, being neckless and snubby in the snout. Under bony brows, its eyes were unwinking pits of bright ferocity, unnervingly scarlet. When it grinned, both jaws proved lined with sharp white fangs longer than my fingers.

There were an awful lot of them, those fangs.…

It gave me a long, unwinking gaze, then waddled around behind the wrecked helicopter. I heard a pounce, a squeal; and it emerged into view chewing on something that dribbled raw crimson down its pulsing throat.

And quick fear welled up within me—

“Professor!” I squawked, grabbing at my hip with shaking fingers, trying to fumble open the snap on the holster strapped to my waist, where a well-oiled .45 reposed.

I ran around to the other side of the chopper, and stopped so suddenly a viewer might have thought I had collided with an invisible wall. For there he stood, sun helmet askew, pince-nez tilted to one side, a bruise on his cheekbone, but otherwise (as far as I could see) all in one piece. He stared after the reptile as it waddled unhurriedly away to finish its meal.

“Eh? What, my boy?”

“Just wanted to make sure that wasn’t a piece of you that pint-sized croc was nibbling,” I breathed, woozy with relief.

In his rapt, entranced state he scarcely heard me.

“Oh, by Linnaeus, Lamarck and Lydekker, my boy, isn’t it purely wonderful,” he murmured dreamily, gazing after the retreating reptile.

“Ugliest damn croc I ever saw,” I said rudely. He blinked vaguely.

“Eh, my boy?…Yes, you’re right…well, it is not exactly a true crocodile, but close enough, close enough…give the poor creature another thirty million years or so, and it will evolve into your true and genuine Crocodylus niloticus…unless, of course, evolution and its forces have been suspended here, as I more than half suspect to be the case…how beautiful!” he sighed, staring after the repulsive creature.

“Beautiful?” I repeated, with a snort. “All depends on taste, I suppose. Give me Ursula Andress in a bikini, and you can keep all the dwarf crocs in the world…”

But he was paying no attention to me, staring after the reptile. “Protosuchus,” he whispered, “as I live and breathe!…and hitherto found only in Triassic strata in Arizona…a descendant of the phytosaurs…utterly remarkable!”

“You mean that was a dinosaur?” I demanded, my voice rising into a squeak at the end.

“Yes, my boy,” he said dreamily, “that was certainly a dinosaur.”

Welcome to Zanthodon, I thought to myself, feebly.

PART II: THE UNDERGROUND WORLD

CHAPTER 5

LAND OF MONSTERS

Now that my fears concerning the Professor’s safety were relieved, we had time to compare notes. It seems that the helicopter had emerged so suddenly into the vast open space, that it had taken Potter quite by surprise.

As I had not instructed him how to land the chopper—there being no particular reason to teach him that—he did the best he could in the few moments available to him.

We checked out Babe, and she was a sorry sight. Although not as much a total loss as she would have been had the gas tanks exploded, she was still a long ways from being airworthy. One rotor blade was snapped off short; another was bent. We would require the services of a blacksmith in setting that part of the damage to right. And where, in all of this incredible cavern-world, could we expect to find a smithy?

The Professor—predictably—was fascinated by his discovery. While I peered and poked and pried at the undercarriage, trying to ascertain the extent of the damage, he stared about him in dazzled wonder.

“Incredible, my boy, simply incredible!” he breathed enthusiastically. “Zanthodon is even more miraculous than I had dreamed…those trees over there are Jurassic conifers, extinct in the upper world for untold ages.”

“Yeah? And what are those feathery bamboo-type things?” I grunted, nodding at the tall growths which fringed the lagoon.

“Cycads, my boy…tree-ferns, likewise extinct. Utterly marvelous: a paleontologist’s dream come true!”

He had expected to find some interesting fossils, so I can readily understand his excitement at finding them alive and well, flourishing here beneath the earth’s crust where the temperature was humid, subtropical, and—above all—stable.

“Did you expect this place to be so big?” I inquired, rising to my feet and dusting off my knees. He shook his head, sun helmet wobbling.

“Not precisely. I estimate the cavern-world as being about five hundred miles by five hundred, almost perfectly circular,” he mused. That didn’t sound like so much to me, and I said so.

He snorted. “That means Zanthodon consists of a quarter of a million square miles, my boy.”

“That much?”

“That much!”

“Well, we’re stuck here for a while, at least,” I said grimly. “Babe can’t fly until we repair her rotors—yow!”

I yelled, ducked, hit the dirt—and the Professor was not far behind me.

“What was that?” I gasped, as the enormous kite-shaped black shadow sailed on over the lagoon. Glancing up, I saw wide, bat-like membranous wings, a long snaky head and tail, and a beaklike muzzle filled with an incredible number of very long teeth.

“Either a pteranodon or perhaps a true pterodactyl,” murmured the Professor abstractedly, peering at the soaring reptile. “How remarkable that here life forms otherwise extinct still flourish…no pteranodon has flown the skies of the upper world for seventy million years and more, yet here they seem to thrive, if yonder specimen is indicative…”

“Yeah,” I grunted, staring after the winged monster as it lazily flapped away over the treetops. “And come to think of it, Doc, how’d ‘you suppose the dinosaurs got down here, anyway? That volcano crater is straight down for miles and miles. Maybe a flying critter like that one that just went by could have gotten here under his own steam, but the protocroc we saw a minute ago certainly couldn’t.”

He frowned, rubbing his brow with a grubby forefinger. “There may well be, probably are, other entrances to Zanthodon besides the one by which we traveled here…side vents, volcano fumaroles…and some of them may perhaps descend into the cavern-world at an angle less steep, thus affording passage to the four-footed saurians.”

Warming to his latest theory, the Professor began a rambling discourse that was more like thinking out loud than anything else. No one quite knows what killed the dinosaurs off, but the difficulty of obtaining sufficient food, climactic changes to which the cold-blooded reptiles could not comfortably adjust, all these probably share the blame. He made it seem very understandable that some of the saurians, drifting down across Europe in search of food or warmer climes, might have crossed the Gibralter land-bridge (for in those ages, the Mediterranean was only a land-locked lake), finding their way to North Africa and, some of them, into Zanthodon.

His explanation sounded pretty reasonable to me, but then, I’m no scientist.

“Just think of it, my boy,” he breathed, eyes agleam with the good old scientific fervor, “living survivors of a lost age, dwelling here beneath the earth’s crust…ah, Holy Huxley and Dear Darwin! When we return again to the upper world, we shall astound the entire scientific community—or we could, that is; especially if we were to bring back a living specimen of a species known to have perished into extinction scores of millions of years ago!…Why, think of it!—Mighty Mendel, but it could make our names forever undying and immortal in the annals of exploration and discovery…!”

I could just imagine trying to cram several hundred pounds of fanged fury into Babe’s cramped little cabin, but I said nothing. No reason to shatter the Professor’s dream.

“If we get back,” I couldn’t resist pointing out. “The way things stand right now, Babe’s in no condition to handle that ascent. I couldn’t even get her off the ground, lacking those rotor-blades.”

He rubbed his hands together briskly, glancing around.

“Then we shall begin work at once,” he puffed. “We’ll make camp on that high ground…and we must find a source of fresh water, as I presume the lagoon is salty…some manner of rude palisade should keep the larger predators at bay while we effect repairs on your machine, Let me see, now…we can make charcoal with some of the dry wood from the jungle, build an oven with loose rocks, rig up some sort of smithy using spare parts from your tool box…the repairs will be crude, certainly, and only temporary, but surely with your strength and my skill, we can render the machine airworthy again within a matter of weeks—perhaps even days.”

“I suppose so,” I said, a bit dubious about the whole thing. “But the main problem is going to be keeping ourselves alive that long.”

And that was going to be a problem!

* * * *

The only weapon I had thought to bring along was my .45, for which I had plenty of ammo. But the automatic was not going to be much good against any of the bigger dinosaurs, and the Professor and I both knew it. What we needed for that was a good, huge elephant gun. If not a mortar!

If I had known we were going to be marooned here, like characters out of King Kong or The Lost World, I could have bought some more sophisticated weaponry on the black market back in Cairo. A beltfull of fragmentation grenades would certainly come in handy, I thought to myself wistfully. The Professor pooh-poohed my fears.

“Cease your trepidations, my boy,” he huffed. “Most of the giant saurians are vegetarians, and no more dangerous than milk cattle…now let us begin looking for a source of fresh water.”

I thought to myself of a prize bull that had gored a careless farmhand to death back home when I had been a kid, but decided not to mention it. The Professor was a hard guy to argue with. He always had fifty-seven reasons why he was right and I was wrong, and I had to agree that he certainly knew more about dinosaurs than I did.

So we started out, searching for a spring. In order not to get ourselves lost, we decided to trace an everwidening circle, using the site of Babe’s wreck as the center of the spiral. Just in case we did run into trouble, I insisted on taking along a light backpack of medical supplies and food. He grumbled that this was an unnecessary precaution, but relented and gave me my head in the matter.

Under the steamy skies of Zanthodon’s perpetual day we started off. The Professor had a theory about the uncanny daylight which bathed the jungle country beneath the earth: he figured that the original explosion which had created the Underground World had reacted chemically with minerals in the vaporized rock to create an effect not dissimilar to chemical photoluminescence. He was probably right about this, for during all the time I was to spend here in Zanthodon the light never changed or faded or dimmed.

Strange, strange!…This world of eternal day where monsters from the prehistoric past roamed and raged amid jungles left over from Time’s forgotten dawn.…

But there were even stranger marvels yet to come.

* * * *

The first inkling we had that we were in serious trouble came swiftly.

A black shadow blotted out the sky and as we threw ourselves prone, there descended on flapping wings like those of a monstrous bat another of those ghastly winged reptiles we had seen earlier.

It was about the size of last year’s Buick, its lean and sinewy body covered with leathery, pebbled hide rather than scales, and it had the same long beaklike snout filled with an amazing number of long, sharp, white teeth.

The thing pounced down upon us like a chicken hawk on a couple of fat pullets, clawed feet reaching for our flesh as it fell. I felt a blast of hot, stinking breath and looked up into mad, hungry scarlet eyes—

Then I hit the dirt, rolled, snapped up, leveling my .45. I pumped two slugs into the pterodactyl as it scrabbled about in the mud, trying to get ahold of the Professor. The stench of gunpowder stung my nostrils and the explosion of the gunshots was deafening. The thing squawked, red blood spurted from one wing, and it fell over on its side, clawing at the ground as I dragged the Professor clear, tugging one leg.

“Th-thank you, my b-boy,” he panted. “That was a narrow shave…henceforward we must keep on the alert for such flying monsters—”

The underbrush rustled as something big and greenishbrown came pushing through. It was bigger than three oxen, with a head the size of an oil-drum. Its cruelly beaked snout bore a short, curved horn thicker than my thigh, and there was nothing but fierce hunger in its little pig-eyes. It looked like the granddaddy of all rhinos, and it came thundering down upon us like a runaway locomotive.

We sprang clear as it crashed into the crippled pterodactyl and sank that nasal horn to the hilt in the batbird’s leathery chest. It began to crunch and munch juicily, ripping off raw steaks, blood squirting all over; and it was one ugly customer, let me tell you! It stood about seven feet high and was about twenty feet long, and it must have weighed in at two or three tons. It had four squat legs, bowed out at the knees, and a huge, swaying paunch, and a thick tail like an alligator. The thing’s feet looked like those of an elephant.

“What the hell is it?” I whispered to the Professor as we took hasty refuge in the bushes.

“I don’t precisely know, my boy,” he panted. “Obviously a ceratopsian, perhaps a genuine triceratops, I don’t know…”

“You don’t know?”

He glared at me with some asperity.

“My boy, there are more than a dozen genera of ceratopsians, and I can’t be expected to recognize one at a glance! They look very different, you know, from their skeletons…but from the bony shield covering the monster’s neck, I should certainly say triceratops…but that is very interesting, very interesting indeed! For triceratops is known mostly from fossils found in North America—in the state of Montana, to be precise, where I believe the first skulls were discovered in 1888.”

“Well, what’s it doing here in Africa?” I wanted to know.

He shrugged helplessly. “My boy, your guess is every bit as good as mine!”

“I think we’d better find a tree to climb,” I suggested. “That triceratops of yours is just about finished with his pterodactyl snack, and may require something more substantial for the main course—like you and me.”

We found a huge, gnarly tree and climbed it. And not a minute too soon…

* * * *

Twenty minutes later we were still sitting there on a tree limb as the monster prowled with ponderous, earth-shaking steps around and around the tree, pausing from time to time to look up at us and grin, showing a vast pair of jaws and a mighty empty looking gullet. The thing’s head was at least seven feet from the base of that bony shield to the beaked snout, and looked fully capable of gobbling up both of us at one gulp.

And it didn’t look like it was getting bored waiting for lunch, either.

I gave the Professor a look.

“Mostly vegetarians, eh?” I said sarcastically.

Looking remarkably unhappy, the Professor made no comment.

CHAPTER 6

BATTLE OF THE GIANTS

Before long it began to rain, which didn’t make the Professor any happier. He seemed to hate getting wet as much as any cat, and fussed and fumed as we sat there, treed by a triceratops, getting soaked to the skin in a warm drizzle. The shower, unfortunately, did not seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the lumbering monstrosity below, or diminish his appetite.

I said something to that effect, and the Professor snapped at me waspishly.

“The giant reptiles have very small brains, and the creature will lose interest before long and wander off, having forgotten what he was after in the first place,” he said brusquely.

Like most of the Professor’s predictions, this one proved to be wrong, too. For, half an hour later, the brute was still lumbering about beneath our perch, and he was beginning to get impatient, too. This impatience took the form of giving the tree we were in a nudge or two with his horned snout. And let me tell you, three tons of armor-plated superrhino can really nudge! He shook the tree as easily as a housemaid shakes out a feather duster, and we had to hang on for dear life.

“Goodness, but I wish he would stop that infernal shaking!” wheezed the Professor, hugging the rough trunk in his skinny arms. “And if only he would go away—I am far too old for these acrobatics!”

Then followed one of the most ludicrous scenes I have ever witnessed. For, whipping off his sun helmet, to which he had tenaciously clung all this while, he began flapping it at the triceratops below like a man trying to drive away an annoying mosquito.

“Shoo, you nasty thing!—Go away!—Leave us alone, now!—We have no time for this nonsense—Shoo!” he shrilled in an exasperated tone of voice. The monster craned its neck skyward, blinking those tiny piggish eyes at the small, scrawny man above.

I began to laugh so hard I nearly fell off my branch, for the expression on the triceratops’ face (or what passed for its face, at least) seemed to me one of blank bafflement. Oh, sure, I know the monster’s leathery visage was incapable of displaying any expression, but that’s what it looked like to me. It was as if the brute was reacting to a novel experience: for, surely, not too many triceratopses in this day and age have ever been angrily “shooed” by a shorttempered professor!

* * * *

Our salvation arrived right on schedule, shortly after the shooing. And it took a quite unexpected form.…

Vegetation crackled, branches snapped and crunched, as a second huge form came lumbering out of the jungle. I took one look and let my jaw drop down to about here: for I had expected another dinosaur, from all the noise, but what emerged into view was a very big elephant wearing a fur coat!

Our visitor was easily twice the size of any elephant I have ever seen, and entirely covered with a long and wavy blanket of coarse red hair. From beneath its long, prehensile trunk sprouted two fantastic ivory tusks, each a good twelve feet long, and these were extravagantly curled.

I exchanged a look with the Professor, and he was as glazed of eye and dangly of jaw as I.

“But this is utterly impossible…” he whispered, half to himself. “A wooly mammoth from the Ice Age!…How could it possibly coexist with one of the great carnosaurs?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why, the mammoths date from the Pleistocene, only one or two million years ago, and the triceratops is a Mesozoic reptile!…the two monsters come from ages nearly one hundred and fifty million years apart.…This is utterly fantastic!”

And what followed was even more fantastic: a duel to the death between hyper-elephant and superrhino.

Upon spying the dinosaur, the enormous mammoth stopped short. Flapping his ears he lifted his long trunk, giving voice to an enraged squeal of ear-ripping intensity, like a steam whistle gone mad. I got a hunch that this was Jumbo’s personal hunting ground, and that the triceratops was intruding where he was not welcome.

As for the dinosaur, he was in a furious temper, anyway, from his frustration at not yet being able to shake down the lunch he had treed. Squaring off, pawing the mud with one enormous forefoot, he lowered his head, aimed that thick, stubby, pointed horn—and charged!

He caught the mammoth right below the knee, goring him deeply. With a scream of pain and fury, the hairy brute went down on all fours with a thump that shook the ground. Then, swinging its huge head from side to side, the mammoth caught the triceratops across one beefy shoulder with the point of his curlicue tusks, ripping open a longjagged gash between two plates of the reptile’s armor.

Honking furiously, the dinosaur backed off, snorting and pawing the mud, gathering his energies for another charge. The mammoth climbed to his feet again, slightly favoring his gored leg.

The two monsters charged at each other, and when they met it was like two armored tanks colliding. The impact was terrific, but neither monster seemed even slightly dazed. And in the next instant they were at it fast and furious, goring with their tusks, trying to knock each other flat with those heavy hammerlike heads. The ground quaked and trees shook to the fury of their battle. It was an awesome spectacle, and the Professor was utterly enthralled.

“Precious Pliny! Think of it, my boy, we are witnessing a combat no human eyes could ever have looked on before in all of the world’s history…such a duel of prehistoric titans as could only occur here in Zanthodon! Two gigantic monsters from the far ends of time, one a survival from the dim and misty Mesozoic dawn, the other a creature from the Ice Ages, separated from each other by a hundred and fifty million years of evolution…incredible!”

I could understand his amazement; back home I have a friend who plays war games with miniature armies, and one of his favorite hobbies is to pit the great generals of history, divided by centuries, against each other: Napoleon against Peter the Great, or Alexander of Macedon against Hannibal, or Julius Caesar against Genghis Khan. My friend Scott would certainly have savored the rare spectacle we witnessed in that unforgettable battle between two titans from Time’s remotest dawn!

* * * *

It wasn’t long before I discovered something unexpected and even curious about the fight to which we were the only witnesses. And that is, it was really quite a one-sided contest.

Rather to my surprise it did seem that the triceratops was getting the worst of it all. I suppose that I was accustomed to thinking of the gigantic prehistoric dinosaurs as colossal monsters, virtually invulnerable—a habit I probably picked up from watching Godzilla movies—but now that I think back on that fantastic battle of maddened giants from the remote past, I have to remember that the mammoth was far bigger and lots heavier than the dinosaur, who was, after all, only about twenty or twenty-five feet long and who must have weighed no more than two or three tons at the most.

Well, the wooly mammoth was about seventeen feet high at the shoulder, and would probably have tipped the scales at two or even three times the triceratops’ tonnage. And his legs were like the trunks of the giant redwoods of California; when, after some trying, he finally got the triceratops under one of his legs, and had a chance to set his foot down upon the hapless reptile, he broke its back with a grisly snap that was sickeningly audible.

It was all over quite soon: streaming blood from a half-a-dozen places in his flanks where the triceratops had gored him, the furious mammoth trampled the crippled dinosaur into bloody slime.

And it suddenly occurred to me that this was our cue to make a hasty exit before the victor returned to the tree for the spoils. With his height, and that long trunk; the mammoth could pluck us from the bough as easily as an apple-picker plucks ripe fruit from the branch. I said as much to the Professor, and he chuckled nastily, as he often did when I displayed my ignorance.

“We have little to fear from the mammoth, my boy-although were we to get underfoot, he could make short work of us…but, at any rate, we need not fear the beast will attempt to eat us…for, unlike the triceratops, the wooly mammoth is a vegetarian like his remote descendant, the elephant.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, what do you say we get out of this tree, anyway? I’d rather like to make tracks out of here while he’s still busy making strawberry jam out of the dino.”

“Not a bad idea, my boy.”

We climbed down out of the tree with a lot more difficulty than we had when going up it, because being chased by a hungry triceratops does tend to improve one’s agility. But we got down, anyway, and without attracting any attention from the infuriated mammoth.

“Which way?” I muttered, looking about. With all the excitement, I had lost track of the direction from which we had come.

“That way, I think,” whispered the Professor, pointing off to a grove of tree-sized ferns.

* * * *

About a half an hour later, we sat down on a rotting log to catch our breath, and had to admit to ourselves that we were thoroughly lost. It is peculiarly difficult to tell your direction in a place that has no sun to tell you east from west; but, still, as I sourly remarked to the Professor, I could have been smart enough to bring a pocket-compass along.

“Please don’t castigate yourself on that omission, my boy,” he panted, fanning himself with the sun helmet. “In the first place, I rather doubt if a compass would work at this depth, and in the second…”

But Professor Potter never got a chance to finish his statement, and I never did find out his second reason why I shouldn’t blame myself for forgetting to bring along the compass.

For just then the long reeds before us parted, and there shouldered into view the ugliest monstrosity I had yet seen in Zanthodon.

It had a small, flat-browed, wicked little head at the end of a thick, short neck, and it waddled out of the underbrush on four fat legs. The weirdest thing about it was that it was completely armored all over—in bands, like an armadillo. And these tough plates of horny armor were pebbled with hideous wartlike encrustations.

They were also packed bristling with short, blunt spikes. From stem to stern: from the forehead (such as it was) down to the tail—and what a tail! It was shaped like the business end of a giant’s club, and boasted two enormous spikes. Since the waddling monstrosity rather looked to weigh a ton or more, I had a feeling that tail could total a Volkswagen with one good swipe.

And it was coming straight at us—

The Professor paled, and uttered a stifled shriek.

As for me, I did a damnfool thing: I whipped out my .45 and put a slug right between its mean little eyes!

CHAPTER 7

CASTAWAYS IN YESTERDAY

Which did about as much good as pumping a shot into an oncoming locomotive. The immense reptile with the spiked, warty hide like an overgrown horned toad kept coming, not even wincing as the slug from my automatic slammed into it. Either the slug flattened upon impact or glanced off like a bullet ricocheting from steel plate…anyway, it didn’t even nick the monster’s horny hide.

“C’mon, Doc!” I yelled, jerking the old man to his feet and propelling him before me. We plunged into the reeds at breakneck speed. With that ton of beef to drag along, it didn’t look to me as if our club-tailed friend was exactly built for speed. And I figured we could outdistance him, with just a little luck.

But we ran out of luck—and land—at just about the same time.

That is, the jungle through which we were plunging suddenly gave way to pure, oozy swamp. I stopped short, ankledeep in yellow mud, and grabbed the Professor by one skinny arm just as he was about to plunge into the muck up to his middle.

“We can’t run through that, Doc,” I panted. “Looks like quicksand to me—quick the other way!”

But even as we turned to take another route and skirt the swampy area, the ground trembled beneath a ponderous tread and that immense, blunt-nosed, flat-browed head came poking through the brush. The dino had been able to move much quicker than I had thought possible.

I unlimbered my automatic again, feeling trapped and helpless. If one slug hadn’t even dented his warty hide, what good was a clipful of bullets? Right then and there, I could have written a five-year mortgage on a large chunk of my soul for one good big elephant gun.

The huge reptile came lumbering down to the shore of the swamp where we stood cornered with our backs to a lake of stinking mud.

Then it reached forward delicately and selected a mawfull of tender reeds which grew along the edge of the marsh. One chomp and it pulled up a half-bushel of reeds in its jaws.

And, with one dull, sleepy eye fixed indifferently upon the two of us, jaws rolling rhythmically like some enormous cow, it began chewing its reed salad.

I let out my breath with a whoosh; beside me, the Professor essayed a shaky laugh.

“Ahem! Ah, my boy, if I had only identified the creature a bit earlier, we could have avoided our precipitous flight,” he wheezed, climbing out of the muck on wobbly knees.

“What’s that mean?” I demanded.

“It means that I have been able to identify the creature,” he smiled. “From its appearance, it is clearly some genera of ankylosaur…I believe it to be a true scolosaurus from the Late Cretaceous…like so many of its kind—”

“—A harmless vegetarian?” I finished, sarcastically. He had the grace to blush just a little.

“Just so,” he said feebly.

We climbed back up to higher ground, circling the placid grass-eater as it mechanically munched its cud, glancing with an idle and disinterested eye as we passed.

* * * *

By now we were quite thoroughly lost. I cannot emphasize enough the peculiar difficulty—in fact, the utter impossibility—of finding your way about in a world that has no sun in its sky. Under the steamy skies of Zanthodon, where a perpetual and unwavering noon reigned, there was no slightest hint as to which way was north, south, east or west.

We might be fifty yards from the helicopter, or fifty miles. (Well, not quite that much: we couldn’t possibly have come so far in so short a time, but you get the idea.) We decided simply to keep going until we found either food or water—if not both—or the chopper. I was getting pretty depressed about then, what with being hungry, tired, thirsty, and splattered with mud halfway up to my armpits. Mud squelched glutinously in my boots with every step I took, and my clothes were still wet clear through from that warm shower we had sat through when the triceratops had us treed. And there are few things this side of actual torture or toothaches more uncomfortable than being forced to walk about for long in soaking wet clothes.

Zanthodon is a world of tropic warmth, but, lacking true sunlight; if you get wet it’s curiously hard to get dry again, due to the steamy humidity. Not at all the place I’d pick for a winter vacation: as far as I have yet been able to discern, there are no seasons here, and only one climate. Some of those hare-brained weather forecasters who litter the nightly news on television would certainly have a cushy job down here: Hot, humid, scattered showers and occasional volcanic eruptions…that would do for a good yearful of forecasts!

The Professor was a man of irrepressible enthusiasms, however; you could not keep him gloomy for long, not in a place like this, when everywhere he happened to look he spotted something or other that was (according to him) of unique scientific interest.

“Fascinating, my boy, utterly fascinating,” he burbled, jouncing along at my side as we trekked through the jungle.

“What is it now?” I sighed.

“The varieties of flora we have thus far encountered,” he said. “Perhaps I should have guessed as much from the variety of fauna we have already met with…you recall I remarked a while earlier that something like one hundred and fifty million years separated triceratops from the wooly mammoths of the Ice age…?”

“Yeah, I remember,” I said laconically.

“Well, do you notice anything different about this part of the jungle?”

I glanced around. We were tramping through a rather sparse growth of jungle at the time. Around us were things that looked like palm trees, but which had crosshatched, spiny trunks resembling the outsides of pineapples; and what looked like evergreen bushes, eye-high skinny Christmas trees; and tall, fronded, droopy-looking trees. Some of these grew about forty feet high, and there was hardly anything in the way of underbrush.

The Professor was right: this part of the jungle did look kind of different…so I said as much.

“Precisely, young man!” he cackled jubilantly. “When we first arrived in Zanthodon, we found ourselves in a jungle landscape quite definitely situated in the Early Cretaceous, what with its typical flora of palmlike cycads and tree ferns, and the ancestors of the modern evergreen and gingko…”

I recalled the landscape in which we had first found ourselves, and nodded, if only to keep the old boy happy. For he was never so much in his element as when lecturing somebody about something. It is, I understand, an occupational disease of scholars and scientists.

“Well,” he continued in a sprightly tone of voice, “we now find ourselves in a landscape decorated with vegetation distinctly Devonian.”

“Yeah?” I grunted. “Listen, Doc, these names don’t actually mean all that much to me, you know?”

He sniffed reprovingly.

“The Cretaceous began about one hundred and thirty million years ago,” he informed me. “But the Devonian is vastly earlier…three hundred million years ago, at least.”

I glanced around me at the peculiar trees.

“And this stuff is Devonian, eh?”

“Quite indubitably…those are aneurophytons over there, a variety of seed fern…and those odd-looking bushes are a variety of horsetail called calamites…”

“What about those funny-looking trees over there?” I asked, nodding at something that looked as if it had grown from a few seeds dropped down from Mars.

“Archaeosigillaria, a true lycopod, commonly known as club-mosses,” he said dreamily. “And these pallid, slenderfronded growths through which we are at the moment strolling are psilophyton, a very primitive form of plant life.”

His gaze became ecstatic. “Think of the marvel of it all…these very earliest forms of vegetable life died out and became extinct long before the first mammalian brain sluggishly stirred toward a spark of sentience…hitherto we have only known them from their fossilized traces or remains—but to actually look upon the living plants themselvesl Noble Newton!”

I did not exactly share his excited fervor, but I could understand it, I suppose.

“It’s like as if we had a Time Machine,” I mused, “and had gotten lost in the prehistoric past…”

“Precisely so,” he sighed. “Castaways of time, marooned in a forgotten yesterday countless millions of years before our own modern age.…”

Just then I took a false step and went to my knees in yellow muck, and rose dripping and foul.

“Very poetic,” I grumbled, “but give me the sidewalks of Cairo or a good filet mignon on Park Avenue.”

“My boy,” he sighed, “you have no soul!”

“I got plenty of soul, Doc!” I protested. “It’s just that I would be enjoying this time trek a lot more if I had brought along a motorcycle. Or a good dry canoe,” I added grimly. For we had come to the shore of another lake of watery mud, and it looked like a long walk around it.

Poetry is all very well, and I have nothing against souls, either, for that matter.

But I hate wet clothes and a bootfull of squishy mud can ruin my whole morning!

CHAPTER 8

THE SEA THAT TIME FORGOT

Since there were no dawns or sunsets here in the Underground World, we were going to have to get used to sleeping in the broad daylight of Zanthodon’s perpetual noon.

After some hours of weaving through the Devonian jungle, and going around ever-larger and muckier areas of swamp, we were both bone-weary and mighty hungry.

I brought down a small, plump critter that looked like a large lizard walking on its hind legs, planting one slug from my .45 right behind the shoulder. It went down, kicking and twitching, its jaws opening and closing spasmodically, long after its eyes had glazed over and gone dead.

The Professor identified it as a harmless coelurosaur, but you could have fooled me. It was, about a yard long and looked very lizardlike to my eye, except that its hind legs were much bigger and more developed than its tiny forelimbs, and it walked erect with a springy, long stride, rather like an ostrich.

As it hopped along, it kept bobbing its head back and forth, for all the world like an ordinary pigeon.

“Harmless?” I asked the Professor in a stage whisper—for a yard long is plenty long enough for something to take a chunk out of you. He shrugged.

“Harmless enough…a coelurosaur is a scavenger, an eater of dead things…no more dangerous than a vulture, and with similar tastes in nutrition.”

I wasn’t about to debate how dangerous vultures can or cannot be, although I remember a grisly tussle I had with a couple of the ugly birds in the Kalihari Desert (they insisted I was dead, and thus fair game; I insisted I was alive…I won).

“Harmless, then?” I repeated, unlimbering my shootin’ iron.

“Harmless.”

“Dinner,” I said succinctly, and pumped a slug into the little dinosaur. It expired, twitching, taking about as long to die as a snake does. With brains as small as most dinos are supposed to have, it must have taken quite a while for the notion that it was deceased to have penetrated that small, hard skull.

I could swear that it was still twitching, even after I had chopped it up and was roasting the more tender bits of it over a fire.

And thus it was we ate our first true meal in Zanthodon, living off the landscape in the approved pioneer manner.

And—incidentally—became the first humans on record to enjoy dinosaur steak. (Tough, and a little gamy; but not all that bad!)

* * * *

Getting to sleep in what could easily pass for broad daylight was another matter entirely. After we had chewed and swallowed as much of filet of coelurosaur as could be expected of us, we drank and washed our hands from a small bubbling spring which gushed from a pile of rocks, and started looking around for a safe place to sleep.

And learned there really are no safe places to sleep here in Zanthodon.

I knew this for a fact the third time I fished a wriggling nine-inch horned proto-lizard out of my bed of grasses.

We gave up the dry land and settled for a perch in a tree. And at that we had to tie ourselves to the trunk and sleep sitting up, straddling a branch between our legs.

I was so sleepy by that time that I just figured that anything smart or agile enough to climb the tree to get at us was welcome to the meal. Hell, a man has got to sleep once in a while…and it had certainly been a long and busy day.

I have no idea how long I slept—and I refuse to bore you by repeating all that stuff about no sun in the sky and so on—but whenever it was that I did wake up, I was stiff and sore in every muscle, and had a kingsize headache and a mouth that tasted as if a particularly nasty little furry animal had decided a few weeks ago to hibernate therein.

By the time I climbed down stiffly from the tree, I discovered muscles in places I had never known I had muscles. Since I am, by comparison, young and fairly limber, you can imagine how Professor Potter felt.

And not having a steaming hot mug of black coffee to wash down our breakfast of cold, greasy coelurosaur leftovers did nothing to improve our dispositions, I assure you. Still and all, the life in the great outdoors is supposed to be hearty and bracing, and also good for you. Maybe it is: it just takes a little getting used to.

We continued our trek through the Devonian jungle. And by this time I was getting pretty damn sick of that Devonian jungle. My idea of jungle comes from watching Tarzan movies, and I feel cheated without lots of jungle vines and exotic, flowering bushes and long grasses and stuff…and apparently, grasses, bushes and flowers just plain weren’t around during the Devonian.

We kept on going until we could go no farther.

We had run into a sea.

* * * *

We came to the edge of a bluff, and there before us stretched a vast, seemingly endless expanse of water.

Oily waves heaved sluggishly under misty skies, and the glimmering slimy tides broke with a slow, pounding rhythm against fanged barriers of lava rock thickly encrusted with sea growths. The sea expanded before us, stretching to the dim horizon, losing itself in the steamy fogs which hung low over the heaving rollers.

“It is like the first sea, on the very morning of Creation itself,” breathed the Professor, clasping his bony hands together in poetic exaltation. And I have to admit it certainly was. His expression became dreamy, as he repeated the old, old words:

“…and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep…and the evening and the morning were the first day.”

“Amen to that,” I said soberly. That vast, rolling expanse was like the first sea at the beginning of time, the mighty mother from whose tremendous, watery womb the first life stirred toward the dry land. It was a somber, an impressive, sight.

And just then the sluggish waves broke into a glitter of flying spray, as something as long as a five-story building is high reared its small, snaky head atop its long, snaky neck out of the water.

Up and up that slender neck rose, until it didn’t seem possible that any neck could grow that long. Under the sliding lucency of the sea’s surface I glimpsed a fat, seal-like body, propelled through the waves by vast, flat flippers.

“Not to continue the Biblical parallels, but d’you suppose, that’s the serpent in Eden?” I said, flippantly.

The Professor huffed and snorted.

Then he peered more closely, eyes almost popping out of his skull with curiosity.

“A genuine plesiosaurus, my boy, or I’m a monkey’s uncle!” he exclaimed. “An aquatic reptile of the Jurassic, thought by some to be yet surviving in the greater oceanic depths…perhaps the true sea serpent of sailing lore…possibly even the Loch Ness Monster itself…gad, if only I could get a closer look at the creature—if I could but measure it!—I could at last resolve the old dispute concerning the inordinate lengths to which the sea monster is believed to have attained.”

The old boy was hopping from one foot to another in an agony of impatient and frustrated frenzy. I had to pity him: but his torment soon dissolved into another of those moods of dreamy rapture he was constantly falling into as he regarded yet another variety of prehistoric monster.

“…To think of it, my boy!…the original sea serpent of the Dawn Age, vanished from the earth before the first man stood erect…until now we have only been able to study the plesiosaurus from its fossilized remains—but to be the first living man to actually look upon the living monster itself—gak!”

Gak, indeed: for just then ten of the ugliest men I have ever seen came around the bluff and stopped short at the sight of us.

They were hairy and half-naked and had matted manes and beards, and hefted huge clubs and things.

And they were very definitely…men.

“Oh, my goodness,” whispered the Professor faintly in a faint voice.

“You can say that again,” I muttered, grabbing my gun and wishing I had packed along a good carbine and plenty of ammo, instead of one little .45.

They were nearly naked, and were about the hairiest men I had ever seen or heard of, with barrel chests and long apelike arms and thick, matted hair and dirty beards on their ugly faces. They walked with a gait somewhere between a shamble and a shuffle, huge, dirty splayed feet wide-spread, and they had poorly tanned animal hides tied about them with thongs made of gut. Grunting and snorting to each other, they looked us over suspiciously, with an expression of surly truculence.

“Neanderthals, or I’m a monkey’s uncle,” breathed the Professor, a look of angelic rapture on his face.

“Eternal Euclid, that I should live to see it…!”

“Neanderthals? You mean cavemen?” I muttered out of the corner of my mouth, not daring to take my eyes off the pug-uglies. He nodded vaguely.

“I should have guessed at the possibility of primitive man having found his way down here, when I saw the mammoth,” he said. “Both early man and mammoth must have fled here from the advancing glaciers when the Ice Age came down across Europe…probably via the same Gibralter landbridge the dinosaurs used, many millions of years earlier…”

All this was interesting enough, I suppose, but hardly relevant to the problem at hand. I didn’t bother asking the Doc if Neanderthal men were dangerous, because I had a pretty fair notion they were. And I believe I failed to mention they were carrying wooden clubs, stone axes, and a couple of long, clumsylooking spears tipped with sharply pointed bits of stone.

One perfectly enormous caveman stepped to the fore to look us over. He was a good head taller than I am, and must have tipped the scales at three hundred pounds, with those gorilla-like shoulders and huge, hairy paunch. He wore a crude necklace of seashells threaded on a string of gut around his fat throat: from this, and the way the others deferred to him, I reckoned him to be the chief.

“How,” I said, lifting my right hand slowly, palm open and forward, as they do in the movies.

He grunted and spat, looking me over sourly. I took the opportunity to take a good look at him.

He must have been the ugliest man I’ve ever seen, with a thick underslung jaw and a heavy brow-ridge, hardly any forehead to speak of, and a nose that had been squashed flat a few times. His skin was so dirty and matted with hair that it was almost impossible to tell what color it was. His hair, amusingly, was reddish, nearly the same shade as the mammoth’s coat. His eyes caught my attention: one of them was blank white, obviously blinded either from a cataract or an injury. The other eye was small and mean, buried in a pit of gristle under that bony shelf of a brow. His beard was short and scrubby, and he was crawling with lice: I know this for a fact, for while he was giving me the once-over, he plucked one of the vermin from his armpit, and cracked it between his teeth.

“Tasty, I’ll bet,” I remarked in an easy, conversational manner. “I can just imagine what your table manners are like!”

“Be careful, my boy, you might make him angry,” muttered the Professor nervously.

I grinned. The Neanderthal man evidently felt he was being talked about, or laughed at—or, possibly, both. Grunting, he spat between my feet, a murderous gleam in his one good eye.

In the next instant he came at me in a rush, growling like a lion at the charge.

I went for the automatic at my waist, but didn’t have time to use it. For the caveman slammed the flat of his stone axe up alongside my head, and, for me, the day was over.

PART III: MEN OF THE STONE AGE

CHAPTER 9

CAPTIVES OF THE CAVEMEN

The next two or three days I will skip over, partly because my memory of them is rather blurred, but mostly because there really wasn’t much that happened to us that will bear repeating.

The Neanderthal men seem to have been on a slave-hunting expedition, and were on their way back home with a dozen other captives when they encountered the two of us. One-Eye, as I came to call the chief of the expedition, didn’t mind adding a couple more captives to his collection, although I understand he thought the Professor a bit too scrawny to be worth carrying along. One of his cronies, an ugly customer I came to think of as Fatso from his triple chin and enormous belly, must have persuaded him otherwise, for when I came out of my little nap, there the two of us were, tied together.

I was being carried over the shoulder of one brawny youth who was quite glad to put me down once it was understood I was awake and could walk. These men bore little resemblance to the Neanderthals; in fact, if you shaved them and put some clothes on them, they would not look out of place on Broadway or Main Street, being tall, bronzed, athletic young fellows with straw-yellow hair and blue eyes.

“Obviously, descendants of Cro-Magnon man,” the Professor explained when I got a chance to ask him about our fellow-captives. “The two major genera of Homo sapiens were contemporaneous to some extent; their respective eras overlapped a trifle.”

The differences between the two were certainly distinct. The blond Cro-Magnons stood tall and straight, and walked with a lithe, limber step that was very unlike the bowlegged shamble of the apelike Neanderthal men. Also, they kept themselves cleaner and wore well-tanned hides and furs. They even sported something like boots: well, high-laced buskins, anyway. And whereas the Apemen wore seashells threaded on a bit of gut, the Cro-Magnons wore polished, colored pebbles and the fangs of beasts on thin leather thongs. More than a few of them had ornaments of hammered copper or bronze, which fascinated the Professor.

“Obviously, time has not stood still for the higher orders, even here in Zanthodon,” he mused thoughtfully. “They were men of Stone Age back in Europe before the glaciers came down from the north…but here, they have already entered the Bronze Age…this is fascinating, my boy! What a book I shall be able to write, once we have returned to civilization!”

I didn’t bother pointing out to him that our return to civilization was probably going to be postponed for a while, due to slavery.

The Apemen—I’m going to call them that from now on, because “Neanderthal” is a bit of a jaw-breaker—led us along through the jungles at a rapid trot. They used scouts which fanned out to all sides of the slave column, which I thought was a rather sophisticated strategy for such primitives. And they seemed to know just where they were going, although how they managed to find their way home in this land of eternal and unaltering daylight puzzled me. They seemed to know where they were going, however, and from the speed at which they forced us to jog along, and the occasional, apprehensive backward glances they cast over their hulking, hairy shoulders, I got the distinct impression that they were in a hell of a hurry—as if someone were following them.

I noticed that we were following the curve of the coastline, never penetrating too deeply into the jungle to lose track of the sea, which remained at our left hand. The reason for this I did not learn until much later.

My fellow-captives were tethered to a long rope of tough, braided grasses that extended the length of the slave column, and whose ends were tied to the waists of One-Eye in front and Fatso behind. We all wore slave collars of leather and these were lashed by thongs to spaces along the length of the rope, one captive to either side. We moved along, then, in a column of twos at a rapid trot.

I have never worn anything more galling and irksome than that slave collar, and I never hope to.

The pace was grueling, and we were only given rest stops three times a “day” (I am going to start dividing time in this narrative between “days” and “sleeps,” since it was always day down here, and “night” is hardly an apt term); during those stops, which were of brief duration, water was passed back along the line in a hollow coconut shell pierced at one end: We had a chance at such times to lie down, rest a bit, catch our breath.

The Professor and I—he was directly behind me in the column—used these opportunities to talk, while the other captives eavesdropped curiously. (I later came to understand that it was bewildering to them to hear men conversing in a language they had never before heard, since all of the human denizens of Zanthodon speak the same universal tongue.) You may be wondering why I had not as yet fought my way free. The answer is simple: after One-Eye had nearly brained me with that stone axe of his, he and his boys went through our clothing and possessions, taking anything they fancied. One-Eye now sported my wristwatch on one hairy arm, Fatso had taken the revolver, which he wore stuck through the hides wrapped about his middle, below his enormous paunch, and another one of the Apemen had taken my hunting-knife. As for my backpack, it had vanished among the others.

Without weapons of any kind, I couldn’t have put up much of a fight against a dozen savage Neanderthal men, so I concluded to hold onto my temper and bide my time. In this decision, the Professor heartily concurred.

“Rest easy, my boy; a diversion is bound to occur sooner or later, just as the mammoth appeared in time to divert the triceratops from making us his luncheon! And, besides, I am gathering valuable anthropological data…”

I am, of course, much too gentlemanly to have yielded to the impulse; thus, I held my tongue and didn’t tell the Professor what he could do with his data.

* * * *

Looking back over this part of the manuscript, I notice with some amusement that I have not yet mentioned the captive who was directly in front of me in the line of slaves.

Her name was Darya, and she was about seventeen and absolutely the most beautiful girl I have ever laid eyes upon.

Nearly naked, save for a skimpy apron-like garment of soft, elegantly-tanned furs, which extended over one shoulder but left one perfect breast bare; her slim, lithe, beautifully tanned body was as supple and graceful as a dancer’s. Like all of her people, she was blond and blue-eyed: in Darya’s case, the description is too sparse. She had a long, flowing mane of soft hair the color of ripe corn, and wide, darklashed eyes the hue of rainwashed April skies, and a full, luscious mouth the tint of wild strawberries.

She was fastidious in her cleanliness and never failed to set aside a portion of her share of water to cleanse her person.

Darya was a revelation to me: imagine a girl who has never used cosmetics, never chewed gum, never gone to the hairdresser for a permanent…a young woman totally ignorant of deodorants, perfume, eyebrow-plucking, and the latest fashions!

For all of her primitive innocence, though, this Cro-Magnon Eve was every inch a lady—and all woman.

She exposed her naked breast indifferently to the gaze of men, because her society has never found a reason to hide natural beauty away behind clothing, never having gotten around to inventing puritanical shame and prudery. When we paused during a rest stop to relieve nature, she performed her bodily functions with the rest of us, without the slightest mortification or selfconsciousness.

She endured without a murmur of complaint our exhausting trek, and, although she suffered along with the rest of us from the lack of water, of sufficient rest, and of food, I never once saw her weep. Except when one of the older Cro-Magnon captives gave out and could run no more, and was callously brained by One-Eye, his corpse untied from the slave rope and carelessly tossed into the bushes. As I saw the gleam of tears in her great blue eyes, I wondered to myself if the victim had been a friend or relative.

After a couple of days of traveling across fairly level country, still within close range of the shoreline, we began to ascend a rise of low hills, and were no longer beaten until we ran at the same pace as our brutish captors. Darya seized this opportunity to attempt a conversation with me. She had spoken to me on more than one occasion, but as I could not understand a word of her speech, or she a word of mine, expressions and gestures were the most we could exchange.

I have heard it said that curiosity is the vice of women. Well, if so, I presume her curiosity must have gotten the better of her, because Darya, no longer able to endure my inability to answer or even understand her questions, promptly took the obvious course of action, and began to teach me hers.

I have always enjoyed a natural-born knack for picking up foreign tongues, which has amply served me during my travels, so it did not prove too difficult to pick up Cro-Magnon. What made it so remarkably easy was the simple fact that Darya’s language was an extremely simple one, a stark matter of the verbal necessities—all nouns and verbs, with just enough adjectives to lend it tang. A language uncluttered with all the complicated tenses more sophisticated languages seem to have.

As we walked along, the cave-girl gave me lessons in the one universal tongue spoken the length and breadth of Zanthodon. She did this with a direct simplicity that I found refreshing—pointing to a bush, she enunciated the word for “bush,” for example, and made me repeat it back to her until I got the pronunciation to please her. In a single day we got through the items visible in the landscape immediately around us, and progressed to the parts of the body. On the next day we moved on to verbs, and I memorized the words for “jump” and “walk” and “run” and “stand” and “sit” and “lie down” and “sleep,” “eat,” “drink,” and so on.

Each morning when we awoke, she made me repeat back to her the words she had taught me the day before, correcting me when it was necessary. But it was seldom necessary. As a matter of fact, learning her primitive tongue came so swiftly and easily that I was impressed myself—I had always been good at picking up a smattering of things like Arabic or German or Swahili, but never this good.

It was almost…almost like remembering a language you once knew but had since forgotten, if that makes any sense.

Well, it made quite a lot of sense to the Professor, who, being tied to the chain gang right behind me, was near enough to overhear our language lessons. In fact, he became absolutely livid with excitement.

“…Did you hear that, my boy?” he burbled, awe-struck. “The word for ‘father’ is vator…amazing!”

“What’s so amazing about it?”

“Because the ancient Sanskrit word for ‘father’ is very, very close to it in sound: pitar.…I have been noticing how very many of the words your little lady has been teaching you are remarkably similar to the words in our own language of the Upper World…and I have always had a theory about the common source of all languages.…”

“Well, why not?” I grinned, shaking my head. “You seem to have a theory about nearly everything.”

Darya listened uncomprehendingly to this exchange, her head tilted a little to one side and a quizzical expression on her sweet face.

Paying me no attention, the Professor rambled on excitedly.

“You must know, my boy, that English, French, Italian, German, Spanish and many other modern languages stem from the decay of the ancient Latin tongue…well, Latin, Greek, Hindi and other of the languages of antiquity derive from a common source, Sanskrit.…Sanskrit itself descends from Proto- Sanskrit, which came from the almost-forgotten Aryan tongue, and that language can be dated back nearly twenty thousand years, to the last of the great Ice Ages.

“…Suppose that the original of Aryan, let us call it ‘proto-Aryan’ was the language spoken before history began by our own direct ancestors, the Cro-Magnon men of 50,000 B.C. Which is about when I imagine this young lady’s ancestors began drifting into Zanthodon, having fled from the endless winter of the glacial period…if my theory proves correct, we are learning earth’s first and oldest tongue, my boy—what a sensational chapter for my book!”

“What does he say?” inquired Darya, impressed by the monologue. I shook my head.

“No matter,” I grinned. “Old men talk a lot!”

She giggled at the Professor’s glare of frosty reproof.

Just then, our captors came down the line with sticks and clubs; urging us to greater speed. So we wisely decided to save our breath for running.

* * * *

When our language lessons had gotten to the point where we could make each other understand what we were saying, Darya wasted no time in asking me about myself. In particular, she was fascinated by the clothing I was wearing—or what was left of it by this time, for my khaki shirt was ripped to rags and my whipcord breeches equally the worse for wear. I awkwardly tried to explain the secret of weaving cloth to the savage girl, but with minimal success.

She was also curious about my people—my “tribe” as she thought of it. I think she was fascinated by the differences between myself and all the other men she had ever known or seen.

The Neaderthal men, you understand, are brown-haired or red-headed, and the Cro-Magnons are almost always blonds. But I happen to have curly black hair. Another difference was my eyes, for they are of a shade of pale gray rare even in the Upper World (I was beginning to think of it that way, in caps, by this point).

I tried to explain to Darya that my “tribe” consisted of very many millions of men and women who control an entire continent, and live in enormous cities connected by airlines and railways and bus routes…well, you can see the problems I had. Darya could count to a hundred, but the concept of “a million” was beyond her; and the Stone Age tongue lacked words for “continent” and “city.”

I think she thought me a colossal fibber as I tried to describe New York City and airplanes and subway trains. Her eyes were frosty and her manner became noticeably cool; after a time, she tossed her head, turned her back and ignored me for about an hour.

“Just like a woman,” the Professor observed, with a chuckle, at my obvious embarrassment and distress.

CHAPTER 10

WE STRIKE FOR FREEDOM

With time my familiarity with the Stone Age language of Zanthodon became such that I was able to talk to my fellow captives, and through these brief exchanges of conversation I learned much that I had not known before.

The beautiful blond girl, Darya, for example, came from a country called Thandar. At least, I assume it to be a country: it might be a city or village for all I know, since the Stone Age language does not seem to differentiate between such political divisions.

She was the only daughter of the chief of that country, whose name was Tharn. The Apemen had captured her while she had been on a hunting expedition with some of her people.

Among these was a handsome, sturdily built young Cro-Magnon hunter named Jorn whom I instantly conceived a liking for. He had been the fellow who had helped me along while I was still unconscious from the blow on the head which One-Eye had given me with his stone axe. He had a fearless glint in the eye and I rather liked the firm set of his jaw. And I could not help noticing his courtesy and solicitude toward Darya, how he helped her over rough country and tried to shelter her from the mistreatment dealt out at random by the Apemen. I got to know Jorn pretty well, because he was tethered at my left, while Darya was tied to the rope directly ahead of me in line, and to her left was a fellow called Fumio.

While I took an instant liking to Jorn, I must admit my dislike and distrust of this Fumio were equally swift and instinctive. He was a magnificent specimen of primitive manhood, it’s true—taller than I by half a head, and with the most impressively muscular arms and breadth of shoulder I had yet seen. He was also remarkably handsome, in a slick, oily sort of way—all in all, Fumio was a bit too “pretty” for my taste. And he had a sly glint in his eye that made me instantly distrust him. In all honesty, I have to admit my dislike for Fumio may have been shaped by bias, for Jorn asquainted me with the fact that back in Thandar, Fumio was a great chieftain, a rival of Darya’s father for the chiefship of the whole country, and also a suitor for Darya’s hand.

That certainly didn’t make me like him any better!

Thandar lay somewhere behind us, down along the shores of the prehistoric sea which the Professor and I had been admiring when the Neanderthal men came upon us. This sea was known to the people of Zanthodon as the Sogar-Jad, or “Great Sea.” There was another sea somewhere ahead of us and farther inland called the Lugar-Jad, or “Lesser Sea,” which I heard mentioned when I was sufficiently familiar enough with the language to be able to understand conversations between the savages.

As for the Apemen, their country was called Kor, and it lay across the sea on a large island called Ganadol. It was toward this country of Kor that we were presently heading with all such speed as the Apemen could force out of us. I presumed their urgent desire to return to Kor stemmed from the fear that Darya’s father, Tharn, and his warriors, might be on their tracks at this very moment, striving to recapture his daughter.

I had no way of guessing how the Apemen planned to cross the Sogar-Jad to their island kingdom; from their primitive weapons and accouterments, they certainly didn’t seem sophisticated enough to have invented anything like boats.

* * * *

During one of our brief rest stops, I fell into conversation with Jorn, the young hunter whom I liked. I asked him why the Apemen—they were called “Drugars” by the Cro-Magnons: the name meant something like “the Ugly Ones”—had come so far down the coast of the Great Sea, merely to capture a few slaves.

He gave me a solemn look. “In your country, Eric Carstairs, are not the women considered sacred?” he inquired.

“We treat them with considerable respect,” I admitted. He shrugged his strong, tanned shoulders.

“Well, in Thandar we regard them as the precious vessels of the future,” he said firmly. “For it is from their wombs that the warriors and chieftains and hunters of the next generation will spring into being.

Without women, a tribe will soon perish.”

“I can understand that way of thinking,” I nodded.

“The Drugars have no women of their own, or very few,” he continued. “And those that are born are very ugly—”

“Uglier even than the males?” I asked with a grin. “That is difficult to believe, Jorn!”

He flashed white teeth in a somber smile. “Nevertheless, Eric Carstairs, it is so. Even the male Drugars loathe and shun them. Therefore, they steal the women from other tribes, whenever they can find them.

Always, the most beautiful women, for they hope thereby to breed stronger sons and less repulsive females…”

Something within me tightened at the thought of the slim, tender body of Darya crushed in the hairy embrace of a shaggy Ape-man like One-Eye. And my revulsion must have been visible in my features, for Jorn smiled, and laid his hand on my shoulder.

“Now you understand why there has always been war between the men of Thandar and the Drugars,” he said quietly. “For they are stronger and more numerous than we, and for generations we have seen our wives and daughters and sisters carried off into the most horrible form of slavery by the Ugly Ones.”

“Why, then, did they capture only one woman?” I inquired.

His face was somber. “The Drugars were not on a woman-hunting expedition this time, and seized the maiden Darya only by chance. Once they realized who she was, they knew that they had captured a valuable prize, and they are making tracks to return to the safety of their island country before Darya’s father, Tharn of Thandar, catches up to them.”

“I see…”

“Yes, Eric Carstairs: she is the gomad, and they mean to demand of her father many young and beautiful women in ransom for her safe return.”

I already understood that the High Chief of the Cro-Magnon tribe was called the Omad, or king. Darya, then, was the gomad, or princess of her people, and would doubtless inherit the rule after her sire. If she had been a boy, she would have been the jamad or prince. This struck me as rather sophisticated for what were, after all, only a Stone Age people, so I asked Jorn about that.

“Is the chiefship of your tribe, then, a matter of inheritance rather than a prize to be won in personal combat by the strongest challenger?”

He shrugged. “Not exactly…if an Omad has only a daughter to succeed him, the strongest and most brave of the warriors contest for her hand, and the gomad must wed the victor.…”

That certainly gave me something to think about.

“Since Tharn is still the Omad of your tribe, how, then, can you call Fumio the leading suitor for her hand?” I demanded, unable to understand the implied contradictions.

Jorn smiled. “It is a little complicated, Eric Carstairs…what I meant to say was that Fumio has already declared his willingness to do battle against any challenger for the hand of Darya. And thus far, none of the warriors or chieftains of the tribe have dared accept his challenge, for he is the mightiest of us all.”

I had to admit that Fumio was a tall and very powerfully built man, for all his pretty looks and sly, cunning ways. He was, in fact, the most muscular of all the men of Zanthodon I had yet encountered, except for the Apemen themselves.

“And how does Darya feel about this?” I dared to ask. Jorn spread his hands in resignation.

“Our women are not permitted to select their own mates,” he told me. “Since her mate will father the children who will grow into future chieftains of the tribe, it is her duty toward the future of Thandar to accept the greatest and most powerful champion.”

“But does she like Fumio?”

“That you shall have to inquire of Darya herself,” he replied.

* * * *

By the middle of the next day we reached a point along the coast from which, I was given to understand, we were to embark for the island of Ganadol.

Concealed beneath the reeds I was surprised to discover a row of crude canoes—mere hollowed-out logs they were, but doubtless seaworthy for all their crudeness.

The Apemen made haste to drive their captives into these rude seacraft, but this required untying us from the long rope, since otherwise all of the captives would have had to ride in the same canoe, and there was not one that was capacious enough to accommodate so many.

And this looked to me like the best chance to escape that had yet come our way. I said as much to the Professor and to Jorn and Darya in a low voice. The Professor blinked at me dubiously from behind his owlish spectacles.

“And how do you plan to fight off a dozen Neanderthals, my boy?” he inquired testily.

“I don’t,” I replied. “The important thing is to get Darya away from the Apemen. We will stage a slaverevolt, and half of the Cro-Magnons will run in one direction while you and I, Darya and Jorn will go in the other. In the confusion, it may well prove that the Drugars will pursue the wrong bunch. Listen, it’s worth a try, anyway! Once we get across the sea to Kor, there will be no chance of making an escape with half an ocean between us and safety. Now pass the word along.”

While the Drugars were engaged in loading aboard their weapons and provisions, the word of my plan went down the line of tethered captives in a whisper. I saw the glint of approval in the eyes of the stalwart blond savages; it was obvious that they would risk all for the chance of getting their princess to freedom.

Grunting coarse oaths in their guttural voices, the Apemen waddled down the line of their captives, untethering us one by one from the main rope to which our slave collars were attached. When they were finished and we stood, for the moment, free, I seized my brief opportunity—

Roaring a wild rebel yell, I slammed my balled fist into the hairy paunch of the Drugar who was nearest me. He gasped, gagged, clutched at his belly, and fell forward into the mud.

That blow was the signal the Cro-Magnons had been waiting for. Hurling themselves upon the ponderous and slow thinking Neanderthals, they broke free, sprinting to freedom. The larger group of men ran up along the shore, vanishing in a tall stand of tree-ferns. I caught the Professor and Darya by the arm, propelling them forward in the other direction.

As my companions pelted along ahead of me, I dropped back, glancing over my shoulder. Most of the Apemen hovered indecisively, flapping their long arms and uttering bestial growls of rage, working themselves up into a fury. One or two of them were already heading in our direction, with Fatso waddling along in the fore. My eye dropped to the girdle of skins which circled his fat stomach.

Therein gleamed the blued-steel barrel of my .45!

As my companions entered the shelter of the trees, I permitted my pace to slow, falling back so as to allow Fatso to catch up to me. I affected a limp, dragging my left foot as though I had injured it when I broke free.

Raising his heavy club over his head and uttering thunderous growls of vindictive rage, the Apeman descended upon me—

Only to fall flat on his face when I whirled and kicked his clumsy feet out from under him!

I leaped upon him, setting my knee in the small of his back and pressing his face into the earth with one hand while, with my other, I clutched for the automatic pistol. Alas, it was pinned beneath his writhing bulk and I could not prise it free without permitting the Apeman to get to his feet again. As he probably outweighed me by ninety pounds, at least, and had worked himself into a murderous fury by this time, I did not care to face him, much preferring to kneel astride the Neanderthal.

* * * *

The first of the other Apemen to catch up to me was the one I called One-Eye, the leader of the slaveraiders.

He was in a roaring fury, spittle foaming at the corners of his loose lips, bedabbling his matted beard.

Forgotten was the stone axe at his waist: arms spread wide, he came thundering down upon me like a charging grizzly, murderous fury blazing in his one good eye.

I sprang from Fatso’s back and faced him with balled fists. There was no chance to turn and flee, no weapon wherewith to defend myself, and the huge brute outweighed me by over a hundred pounds—

So I stepped forward and slammed one fist deep into the pit of his stomach!

Unprepared for the blow, One-Eye staggered, air whooshing from collapsing lungs. He stopped dead, as if he had run into an invisible wall.

Then he spread his arms again, attempting to seize me in a bear hug. If ever those heavily muscled, apelike arms closed about me, I knew that One-Eye could break my back.

I slammed a hard right to his jaw which rocked him on his heels, then followed with a triphammer left that made him stagger. He seemed utterly bewildered at what was happening to him, and I suddenly realized that the fine art of fisticuffs must be completely unknown to these primitive savages.

Another of the Apemen, one called Hurok, had reached the scene by now, and he was armed with a stone-bladed spear. He remained at a respectful distance, not wishing to interrupt his chief’s battle: but I noticed a gleam of something like admiration flash in his small eyes as he watched me pound the larger, heavier man to a pulp.

Finally I caught One-Eye with a terrific uppercut that toppled him, just like a woodcutter’s axe fells a forest giant. He went down for the count, and stayed down. I drew an unsteady breath, flexing my bruised and aching hands.

Then Hurok stepped forward, leveling his spear at my breast, the jagged flint blade just touching the smooth skin over my heart. He had me, and there was no fighting: I lifted my empty hands in token of surrender.

By this time, Fatso had climbed heavily to his feet and was glaring at me with a maniacal light in his little pig-eyes. Foam beslavered his whiskery, dripping jaws, like those of a mad dog. Balling his huge fists, he shambled forward and struck me a terrific blow in the face. I half-managed to roll with the slap and it did me little harm besides jarring every tooth in my head. But I did not resist as he drew back for another open-handed slap.

Every moment I held the Apemen here, gave the Professor and Jorn and Darya more of a margin of time to conceal themselves in the woods. I figured that while I was a goner, at least I could sell my life to buy freedom for my friends.

As Fatso drew back to strike me again, much to my surprise Hurok interposed the shaft of his spear, forcing the other to drop his hand. Growling savagely, Fatso turned to face the other Neanderthal, who said, simply:

“Black hair is unarmed and has surrendered; do not strike him again.”

At this astounding statement, Fatso stopped short, blinking incredulously. Gradually, the import of Hurok’s brief statement percolated through his thick skull. His fury ebbed, replaced by slack-jawed amazement.

And as for myself, I was amazed as well. I had not thought to find even the barest rudiments of gentlemanliness among these Stone Age primitives. But such nobler sentiments were to be found, at least, within the breast of Hurok.

Fatso was a cowardly bully, and did not enjoy a fight even under the best of circumstances, so he subsided, growling, eyeing me with surly menace.

Hurok gestured with his spear.

“Assist One-Eye to the boats and revive him with water,” he instructed the other. Then he prodded me in the back, and drove me to where the dugouts were beached.

Thus it was that I again became captive to the Apemen. But this time I was alone.…

CHAPTER 11

THE JAWS OF DOOM

From the upper branches of a great Jurassic conifer, Jorn the Hunter grimly watched as the Apemen forced me into one of the dugout canoes, and pushed forth into the waters of the Sogar-Jad.

One by one the clumsy primitives cast off from the shore. Paddling with long sticks, they fought the tide, emerging into the wider seas beyond. Soon the row of hollow logs, with their bestial rowers and their lone, hapless captive, blurred and faded in the steamy fogs which floated over the face of the waters.

Jorn uttered a stern oath. The young Cro-Magnon, it seems, had conceived of an instant liking for me as had I for him. It was, he thought, fatalistically, cruelly unfair for me to have been captured again, when by my plan and daring, I had freed them all: but life in the savage jungles of Zanthodon is cruel and unfair; in this primitive realm beneath the earth’s crust, survival does not always go to the best, but often to the luckiest.

Clambering lithely down out of his tree, the young Hunter stood motionless for a moment, savoring the air with sensitive nostrils and straining his keen ears for the slightest sign that might betoken the whereabouts of his erstwhile comrades.

Detecting nothing, he struck out for the higher ground, sensibly striving to put as much distance between the Apemen and himself as could be done. He could not be certain that all of the Drugars had taken to the dugouts; and, even if they had, it might well be a ruse. It was not beyond the dull wits of the Apemen to circle back to the shore at another point, scheming to take their former captives by surprise.

Jorn had not fled with the Professor, Darya and myself, but had taken another route, running for his life.

He had briefly glimpsed another of his countrymen ducking between the boles of the trees at the jungle’s edge, and thought him to be Fumio, but he could not be sure.

Finding a jungle aisle, Jorn picked up his pace, breaking into a long, loping stride that he could hold for hours, if necessary, without flagging.

But it was not his intention to attempt to return to his homeland of Thandar alone and empty-handed.

Not while Darya his princess was lost, accompanied only by the old man.

He intended to search every square foot of the jungle until he found them, whether alive or dead.

* * * *

Darya and the Professor did not go very far into the jungle before they became hopelessly lost. They paused to rest beside a pool of calm, clear water whose source was a rocky spring. Fanning his perspiring brow with his sun helmet, the Professor sagged limply onto a fallen log while Darya began searching along the margins of the pool.

“Whatever are you looking for, my dear?” the Professor inquired, after a time. The jungle girl showed him a handful of flat, smooth stones she had selected out of the mud.

“Indeed? And of what use to us are those pebbles?” he asked.

I have already described the one-piece, abbreviated fur garment that was Darya’s only attire, with its brief short skirt covering her upper thighs. Well, she reached down and pulled the fur aside, revealing a long leather thong bound snugly about her upper leg—and revealing quite a lot of naked, curvaceous leg at the same time.

The Professor flushed, and hastily averted his gaze, trying to remind himself that the innocent jungle maid had never learned the puritanical trait of shame at the exposing of her bare body. To her way of thinking, her body was young and healthy and in no wise ugly or deformed: why, then, be ashamed of it or strive to conceal it behind thick garments?

Ignoring the Professor’s flush of outraged modesty, the girl untied the thong, revealing a crude sling.

“Like this,” said Darya, fitting one of the smooth stones into the thickest place in the thong. Then, whirling the makeshift sling about her head, she loosed the stone with a practiced flip of her hand.

The flat stone whizzed through the air, striking the trunk of a nearby tree with much the impact of a bullet. Indeed, the flat edge of the stone remained imbedded in the hard wood until Darya pried it loose, showing it to the Professor.

He pursed his lips in a silent whistle of approval.

“David and Goliath, eh, my dear? Remarkable!” he wheezed.

The savage girl, of course, did not understand his Biblical allusion; but she sensed the approval and admiration in his voice, and smiled.

Then she sobered, looking wistfully back along the way they had come. Her perfect breasts rose and fell in a deep, disconsolate sigh. It did not take a mind-reader to ascertain the direction of her thoughts.

“You are thinking of Eric, are you not, my dear?” murmured the old man sympathetically. “Indeed, I am, too…I fear that we shall both miss the dear boy…ah, if only he had not turned back to delay the pursuit, he might be standing here with us now…and I, for one, would feel a lot more secure, I can assure you! Your skill with the sling is remarkable; but it will hardly serve to halt a charging dinosaur—”

“The men of my people have slain a goroth with such, ere now!” the girl informed him with flashing eyes, lifting her small, stubborn chin challengingly.

A goroth is an aurochs, and an aurochs is a prehistoric bull. The feat which Darya described was a remarkable one.

The Professor nodded. “I am quite impressed, my girl…but nonetheless, let us hope the larger saurians do not stray into these portions of the jungle—eh? What are you doing now—?”

His voice rose to a treble, for without a sign or word the jungle maid had reached up and slipped the strap of her brief fur garment off one rounded shoulder; the garment dropped about her waist and she shrugged out of it with a lithe twist of her flawless hips. Beneath the furs she wore nothing at all.

“Really, my dear young woman, what do you think you are doing?” the Professor gasped, blushing scarlet to the tips of his ears and hastily averting his eyes from the tempting expanse of bare girl-flesh so artlessly exposed to his gaze.

“‘Darya shall bathe now,” said the girl, gesturing at the pool.

“Really! You might have asked me to turn my back!”

“Why?” the jungle girl asked, frankly curious, glancing down at herself as if to see what had alarmed the old man. The women of her tribe were accustomed to wear brief fur or hide garments for the sake of comfort, rather than modesty; and, for the life of her, the girl could see nothing wrong with the nudity of her flawless young body.

The Professor uttered a strangled croak, and hurriedly turned his back upon the scene. Shrugging with a little humorous frown, as if to say that she would never understand the ways of these strangers who wore so much clothing, the girl turned and slipped into the pool. Dunking herself to the shoulders she bent down, scooped up a double handful of the wet sand from the pool bottom, and began to scrub herself clean of the dust and stain of the long overland trek, while the Professor, his back stiff and the tips of his ears glowing scarlet, resolutely kept his back turned on this idyllic and innocent scene.

* * * *

But other eyes were riveted upon the scene, and they belonged to a tall man whose muscular body was stretched along a low branch which extended partway across the clearing.

The man was Fumio. He had fled with the others, but, doubling back, had striven to catch up with Eric Carstairs, the Professor, and the woman he desired. To find me separated from the other two was to Fumio an unexpected stroke of good fortune. And to find the naked girl bathing, while he was able to look on from a place of concealment, was to his thought a delightful opportunity.

Cold eyes glowing with lust, he gloated upon the sleek, wet body of the naked girl as she innocently exposed her bare breasts and thighs to his lascivious gaze. For very long had the chieftain Fumio lusted for Darya the gomad and yearned to take her for his mate. Only her father, the High Chief of the tribe, resisted his overtures: Tharn of Thandar was in the lusty prime of his manly strength, and required no mate for his daughter in order to secure the peaceful succession of the office into which his stalwart and iron strength had elevated him years before.

While he lived, Tharn could rebuff Fumio’s suit, as Darya had begged him to do. The High Chief was sensible of the strength and war-skill of the tall chieftain. But he doted upon his daughter and her wish was his law; so long as Darya did not wish to mate with Fumio, Tharn did not intend to force her to do so. Time enough to settle those matters when he was grown old and long past his prime.…

A man as strong and handsome as Fumio becomes accustomed to having his own way. To be denied the object of his desires only fed the flames of his lust, until that object grew into an overwhelming obsession with Fumio. Many and lovely were the young women of Thandar: but for Fumio, there was only one woman, and she remained cool to his advances and well beyond his reach.

But now she was well within his reach; now they were alone and in a hostile wilderness, with the rest of their fellow captives scattered afar. There was no one near to see or tell if Fumio should dare take the Chief’s daughter against her will, no one but one old man whom Fumio could break in half with his bare hands.

An unholy fire kindled in his cold gaze as Fumio, trembling with desire, caressed the nude, glistening body of the young girl with his gaze, lustfully drinking in her naked beauty.

At last he could withstand the temptation no longer. Soundless as a great cat, the savage warrior dropped from the tree branch to the ground. One powerful hand whipped out, catching the old Professor across the back of his head with a cruel, cowardly blow that toppled the older man forward into unconsciousness.

Then, wetting his lips with the tip of his tongue, Fumio sprang upon the girl as, humming a careless tune, she splashed cold water over her long, glistening bare legs. Seizing her with one strong arm about her slim waist, he dragged the shocked girl out of the water and flung her down upon her back in the long grasses.

Then he fell upon her, crushing her flat, crushing her soft mouth beneath his own in a long, ravenous kiss—

* * * *

It had puzzled me, when the Apemen forced me into one of their dugout canoes and cast off hurriedly, why they made no attempt to recapture their escaping prisoners, who surely could not have gone far. The apprehensive glances they cast down the shore, however, told me all: they feared that the pursuit which had for so long followed in their tracks was now close at hand.

It also puzzled me that One-Eye made no attempt at reprisal for the whipping I had given him. I believe now that the brutish wits of the Apemen were befuddled by the pummeling I had dealt him, and he had yet to figure out just what had felled him. Anyway, he was more afraid of the force of warriors he suspected to be at his heels, than he was interested in knocking me about. So into the canoes we went.

By the time we had reached the midpoint of our voyage and the shores of the island of Ganadol could dimly be glimpsed through the thick mists which cloaked the primeval sea, I understood the answer to the first puzzle.

I had been baffled by the reasoning of the Apemen…why they had been content with my capture alone, rather than pursuing the other fleeing captives. Eventually, as I saw them double back farther down along the shore, I understood their plan. The Neanderthal men might be slow and sluggish of thought, but their little brains were wily and cunning. They assumed—rightfully, as it turned out—that, once assured of their freedom, the Cro-Magnons would seek the edge of the sea of Sogar-Jad and follow it down the coast to their own kingdom of Thandar.

By beaching their dugout canoes below the point to which the escaping captives could have come, the Apemen planned to wait in ambush, hoping to recapture their captives.

It was not a bad scheme at all.

But something intervened.

Our first glimpse of “something” was a sudden turmoil is the slimy waters of the Sogar-Jad; the waves broke, seething, as a snake-like head as big as a rain barrel broke above the surface. The Apemen gobbled, pointing, eyes wide with naked fear.

“Yith! Yith!” they yelled in a fearful wail.

The flat-browed head rose on the end of a long and seemingly endless neck which upreared far above us, swaying snakily against the steamy skies of Zanthodon.

I couldn’t blame them for squalling. For the yith of the Sogar-Jad was a monstrous plesiosaur!1

As I sat there in the dugout canoe, frozen with astonishment and awe, the enormous aquatic reptile overturned two of the dugout canoes with his vast flippers. The Neanderthal men fell, squalling fearfully, into the sea. Then the beast turned to survey our craft, squinting down with hungry eyes. White foam sheeted before its breast as the plesiosaurus headed straight for us.

Our canoe wobbled unsteadily, as Fatso sprang to his feet, mad with fear.

I tensed: with my hands bound behind me, I was bound for a watery grave, without the slightest hope of survival. A vision flashed before my inward eye as the yith bore down upon us: the fine-boned, flawless face of a beautiful young girl with long, sleek hair like ripe corn and huge, luminous eyes of April blue—

Behind me, Hurok grasped my wrists. The blade of a flint knife sawed through my bonds. “Save yourself if you can, panjan,” he grunted.

My hands free, I sprang lithely to my feet.

Swifter than thought, I reached out, plucked my automatic from the waist of Fatso’s hide garment, clenched the barrel between my teeth, and jumped feet first into the waters of the sea!

I went down like a stone, then rose to the surface with a kick of my booted feet—

Whipping the water from my eyes, I stared up—

Into the jaws of Doom!

1 Eric Carstairs appends a note to the effect that the cavemen of Zanthodon have their own names for the fearsom predators who share the Underground World with them. They call the Triceratops the grymp, for example, and the wooly mammoth is known as the thantor. At the end of this book I have added a brief appendix, listing and defining all of the words in proto-Aryan which Carstairs includes in the manuscript.

1 Eric Carstairs appends a note to the effect that the cavemen of Zanthodon have their own names for the fearsom predators who share the Underground World with them. They call the Triceratops the grymp, for example, and the wooly mammoth is known as the thantor. At the end of this book I have added a brief appendix, listing and defining all of the words in proto-Aryan which Carstairs includes in the manuscript.

CHAPTER 12

I FIND A FRIEND

Treading water furiously, I reached up and snatched the automatic from between my teeth. I had been so briefly immersed beneath the waves, that it seemed unlikely to me that the gunpowder could have become too wet for the gun to fire; but I was about to find out—

Pointing swiftly, I fired in the very face of the monster reptile.

It was a lucky shot, and caught the plesiosaur full in one glaring eye. That eye vanished in a splatter of snaky gore; braking with a backwards flip of his flippers, the sea monster gave voice to a piercing screech of fury and pain, and, turning, dived beneath the waves again to assuage his hurt in the cool depths.

His plunge had overturned the canoe from which I had just dived into the sea. A floundering form broke the waves, arms waving wildly. I recognized him—it was Hurok, the one Neanderthal more friendly and chivalrous than his fellows, the warrior who had cut my hands free. He sank with a gurgle and I knew at once that he was unable to swim.

I shall never quite be able to explain my next action, even to myself; but it all happened so swiftly that rational thought played little part in the decision, which I reached by sheerest instinct.

I waited until he rose floundering and roaring to the surface again. Then I swam over to him and knocked him senseless with a good hard right to the jaw!

Well, there was nothing else to do: in his mindless terror, a drowning man will get a stranglehold on a would-be rescuer and drag him down to death with him.

Then I turned the unconscious Apeman over until he was floating on his back. Catching his heavy jaw in the crook of my arm, I struck out for shore as best I could. I have always been a good swimmer, but that was the most grueling ordeal any swimmer could ever have endured. Not only was I encumbered by my breeches and boots—but the Apeman I was towing along must have tipped the scales at three hundred pounds, dead weight. Also, I could scarcely breathe, with my automatic still clenched between my teeth.

How I ever made it to the shore is something I have not quite decided, myself. Suffice it to say that, after an interminable battle with the slimy waves of that steamy sea, I found myself lying face down in wet, sticky sand, with the undertow of the sea pulling at my legs as if trying stubbornly to suck me back into the clutch of the waves again.

Not far off, Hurok lay like a dead thing.

I lurched to my knees, dragged myself and the Apeman farther on up the beach, before collapsing again.

Then, utterly exhausted, I slept.

* * * *

When I awoke, I rolled over onto my back and squinted up into the sun, trying to estimate exactly how much time had elapsed while I had been unconscious. Then I remembered, ruefully, that here in Zanthodon there was no sun, and it was forever impossible to measure time. I could have slept an hour or a year, for all that I could ascertain from the heavens.

My clothes were dry, however, and so was my hair; so it would seem I had slumbered for at least two or three hours. I sat up, stiffly, and looked around me.

Hurok squatted on his hams, hairy arms propped on hairy knees, regarding me with a fathomless expression on his homely visage.

I grabbed for my gun, then drew back my fingers sheepishly. For the Neanderthal man had not moved nor flinched.

Neither did he say a word.

I looked beyond him, sniffing the air. A tantalizing aroma of cooked meat drifted on the sea wind.

A hole had been scraped in the sand of the beach. Therein a pile of driftwood had been touched afire, and the carcasses of two plucked seafowl had been spitted on sticks and were toasting over the snapping flames. I had not known there were actual birds in Zanthodon until that moment, but the pile of feathers was unmistakable.

“Why did you not attack me and slay me while I slept, Hurok?” I asked curiously. “For I have been given to understand that there is perpetual war between your kind and my own.”

“Hurok does not know,” he said in his slow, deep voice, and within his murky little eyes a gleam of thoughtfulness flickered. Then, after a moment, he attempted a question of his own.

“Why did you save Hurok from the death-of-water?”

I shook my head with a helpless grin. “I’m not entirely sure! I guess, because you cut my hands free just before I jumped, and gave me a chance to fight for survival…why did you do that, anyway?”

He shrugged, a ponderous heaving of furry shoulders, but said nothing. His long gaze was steady upon me, and there was some unreadable emotion in his dull gaze.

“How did you slay the yith?” he asked after a time. “It was like thunder from the sky. Are you sujat, Black Hair? Hurok thought you merely a panjan, but no panjan commands the thunder…”

I understood the meaning of panjan, which was what the Apeman called the Cro-Magnons: the word meant something like “Smooth-skin.” The plural was panjani. But sujat was a word new to me, and I was eager to add it to my growing vocabulary.

Hurok shrugged helplessly when I asked him to define the word, and searched for a way to describe what the term meant.

“The great beasts are sometimes sujat,” he said in his slow, dull way. “And storm and flood and fire.

Sometimes when Hurok sleeps he enters the sujat country…”

I gathered that the word was used for all inexplicable and mysterious phenomena, especially the convulsions of nature, but also dreams, if that is what he meant by his nocturnal journeys.

In other words, the supernatural! He had asked me if I were a ghost, a devil; or, perhaps, a god.

I sat up and began removing my boots to pour the sea water out of them. I set them near the fire to dry out.

“In the first place, old fellow, I doubt if I killed the plesiosaurus. I knocked out an eye, merely wounding him. But anyway, I am certainly no god.”

“How did Black Hair do it, then?” he demanded, reasonably. I showed him the automatic.

“With this: it is a weapon of my people.” He looked it over gingerly, daring only to touch it with one horny forefinger.

“Your people must be mighty in war, if they go armed with weapons that smite down the great beasts with the force of thunderbolts,” he grunted.

I shrugged.

He gestured. “Let Black Hair share Hurok’s kill. Later, Hurok and Black Hair will speak on what to do next.”

* * * *

Barbecued archeopteryx tasted pretty good, I must admit: oh, sure, the outside was burnt black and the inside was dripping and raw, but hunger is the best sauce, and I had worked up a ravenous appetite, what with battling Neanderthal men and plesiosaurs.

While we silently munched our bird-steaks, I did a bit of thinking.

I was not entirely sure that I could trust the Apeman. My lucky shot at the monster reptile had impressed him mightily, and my inexplicable kindness in saving him from drowning had stirred to life within his savage breast some murky emotion akin to gratefulness, true. But how long these feelings would hold in check his natural instinct to kill or take captive a panjan was another question entirely, and one whose answer was mightily important to me. I resolved to trust Hurok only as far as I had to, and not to turn my back on him.

His feelings in regard to myself were unfathomable. He stolidly chewed down his kill, glancing at me from time to time with a somber, frowning gaze, as if trying to make up his mind about something.

And I had other things to worry about.

For instance—where were we?

The Apeman had rowed their dugouts about halfway between Kor and the mainland, before turning about to double back along the coast. In the confusion, I had not really paid any attention to which direction I was swimming.

Now…were we on the coast of the mainland of Zanthodon, with the Professor and Jorn the Hunter and the girl Darya perhaps only a mile or two away?

Or had I dragged us up on the shores of the island of Ganadol, and were we within earshot of the Apemen of Kor?

The answer to that question was terribly important. Summoning up my nerve, I asked Hurok his opinion.

He squinted in every direction, then slowly shook his head.

“Hurok sees nothing that he has seen before,” he grunted. “But there are parts of the island he does not know, and parts of the mainland he has never seen.”

“What, then, should we do?” I asked. “Which way should we travel?”

He shook his head again, helplessly.

“Hurok and Black Hair shall go forward until they meet either panjan or Drugar,” he suggested simply.

“Then they will know where they are.”

There was, after all, nothing else to do.

* * * *

And so began a very unlikely friendship! Hurok was no better than the average of his kind, but from some rare gene he had inherited traits toward fairness and a certain rough justice that gave us at least a common ground whereon to meet.

He had cut my wrists free on sheerest impulse, unwilling to see a brave warrior drown without being able at least to fight the waves or cling to the overturned canoe. And I had carried him to shore, because it was not in me to watch a man who had done me even a simple kindness drown while I stood idly by.

Neither of us really understood the other—a half million years of evolution loomed between his kind and my own, and that is a formidable barrier—but survival is something we both understood. And survival is easier with teamwork.

Alone in the jungle, he or I might have fallen prey to the first hungry monster or enemy tribe we encountered. Standing together, sharing the toils and the dangers of the wilderness, we doubled our chances of coming out of this experience with a whole skin.

And that was something both of us could understand.

But neither trusted the other overmuch; both remained wary, and a trifle suspicious.

“Let us take the remnants of the zomak with us, Black Hair,” suggested Hurok with a grunt, zomak being his word for the archaeopteryx. I agreed, so we packed the leftovers from our lunch by the simple expedient of rolling the scraps of archaeopteryx-steak in the broad, flat leaves of a primitive tree. These Hurok thrust within his one-piece hide garment while I looked over my own clothing with a sour eye.

My boots were still sodden and the sea water and various earlier immersions in the mud of the swamps had cracked the leather.

My khaki shirt was a collection of rags, so I ripped it off and flung it aside. My breeches were in slightly better condition and I thought it likely that something could be salvaged of them. Borrowing Hurok’s flint knife, I cut the legs away, turning them into a pair of shorts. Not bad, I thought, looking them over; and certain to be more comfortable in this steamy climate!

My boots were hopeless, though. Various immersions in swamp mud had cracked and blistered the leather, and a long soak in sea water had finished them off: using the knife again, I cut away the sodden leather, trimming them down to merely the soles and a few long thongs; from this I manufactured a pair of strong sandals.

Then we plunged into the brush and began our trek.

Neither of us quite trusted yet in the other’s friendship or trustworthiness. That would come, I supposed, with time. In the meanwhile, we kept our distance from each other, warily, keeping an eye peeled for treachery.

At least while we were awake. The time would come, as it soon did, when we would be too weary to do aught but sleep, and then we must trust each other.

In the timeless noonday of Zanthodon, the urge to rest comes upon you unpredictably. One moment you are plodding doggedly along; the next, you can hardly keep your eyes open. When this happened to Hurok and me, after some hours of striking down the coast (or was it up the coast?), we simply climbed the tallest of the nearer trees, tied ourselves to the trunk, straddled a branch with spread legs, and caught such sleep as we could in a position so confoundedly uncomfortable.

There was no use in worrying about whether Hurok was going to stab me in my sleep, I decided. I was so bone-weary I could keep my eyes open no longer, and if he was going to stab, he was going to stab.

He must have felt the same way, for we both fell to sleep and only awoke, some hours later, to find ourselves staring into the fanged and dripping jaws of a gigantic cat—

PART IV: APEMEN OF KOR

CHAPTER 13

JUNGLE MURDER

As Fumio crushed the struggling girl under his weight and pressed hot, panting kisses on her mouth and naked breasts, the girl, recovering from the momentary paralysis of surprise, fought back like a lithe and supple tigress.

It was not for such as Darya of Thandar to yield helplessly to every twist and turn of Fate. The women of her tribe were not soft and pampered weaklings; neither were their lives devoted to the latest fashions and the pursuit of pleasure. Life in the Stone Age was a continuous and never-ending struggle for survival. In a land where gigantic monsters from Time’s Dawn roamed and ruled, men were at a distinct disadvantage: only the hardiest, the bravest and the most fearless could endure the cruel privations of life in the savage jungles of Zanthodon.

And Darya was such a woman! Lacking tall sons to follow him in the hunt and the field of war, Tharn, her father, had reared the girl like a stripling warrior. He had taught her to fight, to run, to search for game, and he had instructed her in the use of every weapon known in the primitive arsenal of her culture.

The only weapon she had to hand at this moment was her own naked body. True, the height and weight and strength of the villainous Fumio dwarfed her slight form and supple strength; but it was all she had and she used it to fullest advantage. One slim knee rose to strike Fumio a sickening blow directly in the crotch—he gagged, paling and clutching at himself. And, as he did so, the girl writhed free from under his heavy body and had all but wriggled free when he clasped her about one ankle in an iron grip and brought her down upon the grass again.

Lurching to his feet and spitting vile curses, he hurled himself at the naked girl. Another woman might have yielded at that moment to the inevitable, but Darya was fashioned from stronger stuff, and determined within her brave young heart never to yield, but to fight on to the end. Lashing out with one small foot, she caught the would-be rapist full in the face!

Fumio screamed as bright pain lanced through his brain, briefly blinding him. The girl had kicked him in the face, breaking the bridge of his slim, aristocratic nose, and the agony of it unmanned Fumio.

Clapping both hands to his smashed nose, which leaked bright scarlet gore down his face and beard and breast, he raved hysterical threats of what he would do to her when he caught her.

Darya sprang across the clearing, and turned to flaunt her nude young body at the furious man.

“No longer will Fumio be the handsomest of the chieftains of Thandar, and desired by all of the women!” she taunted, laughing. “Now will he be as ugly as a Drugar, and only the oldest or the leastfavored of the women will allow him to touch their bodies!”

Fumio was proud of his handsome face and profile, and was not accustomed to being denied by women.

That the girl should inflict injury upon so mighty a warrior was humiliation enough to such as he…but to be laughed at, scorned and taunted by a mere slip of a girl goaded him into a frenzy.

Without pausing to think, the warrior snatched up the slim javelin he had hastily fashioned upon first entering the jungle, and levelled it at Darya’s panting breasts. Red murder filled his seething brain, and all he desired now was to slay the slim nude girl who taunted and tantalized him.

Darya paled and bit her lip, realizing her peril. There was none to observe the scene of murder, and Fumio could return to Thandar without a single suspicion. All would simply assume that she had fallen prey to one of the monstrous predators who roamed the wilderness.

The makeshift javelin was naught but a slender length of pointed sapling, lacking stone blade or barb.

But, flung with all the massive strength of Fumio’s heavy thews, it would suffice to transfix her breast.

And she had nowhere to flee, for her leap to freedom had brought her up short with her back against a dense thicket of prehistoric bamboo through which no aperture wide enough even for her supple form to slip through could the girl discern.

A gloating leer crawled across Fumio’s once-handsome visage, now transformed into a hideous bloody mask, as he grasped the girl’s predicament. He could strike her down in an instant, before she could possibly find refuge. And her only weapon, the thong and smooth sling-stones, lay in a neat pile by the margin of the pool wherein she had been bathing when he had surprised her.

It pleased the cruel and feline heart of Fumio to read the stark desperation visible in the girl’s wide eyes and pale, halfparted lips, and in the rapid rise and fall of her perfect breasts. A pity to destroy such beauty, he thought to himself, before he had enjoyed it…but, after all, once she was slain her body would remain soft and supple for some time, and there was no reason why he could not force his manhood upon her warm and unresisting corpse—

* * * *

But another eye had watched the events in the clearing for the past three seconds, and red murder flared up within the heart of that unseen watcher.

Even as Fumio, savoring the flicker of fear in the girl’s widening eyes, drew back his arm to cast the javelin that would pierce the naked breasts of Darya—a lithe, bronzed, half-naked body launched itself upon him from the bushes like a charging tiger.

“—Jorn!” cried Darya, dizzy with excitement and relief. For she recognized the stalwart and gallant young Hunter in an instant.

And it was indeed Jorn the Hunter. His trek through the jungle had carried him within earshot of the pool in the glade, and the sharp cry Darya had voiced when Fumio had attempted to force himself upon her had come to his alert and sensitive hearing.

He had never particularly liked Fumio, for the other man’s preening ways and supercilious manner were offensive to Jorn’s simple and manly dignity. But to find the chieftain attempting to rape the daughter of his own High Chief was an offense which could only be erased with blood. Thus had he flung himself upon Fumio half an instant before the taller man could hurl his javelin at the helpless girl.

The impact of his leap bowled Fumio over and knocked him sprawling. Whereupon Jorn flung himself upon the partially stunned chieftain and, settling his strong hands about the throat of the larger man, began calmly to throttle the breath out of him.

The code of justice and punishment to which the Stone Age peoples of Thandar adhered had about it a certain Biblical simplicity and directness that would have appealed, it may well be, to such as Solomon.

That code may be summed up in the brief phrase: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. And to Jorn’s way of thinking, the difference between attempted rape or attempted murder and the actual thing was, at best, minimal.

It did not take long for Fumio to recover himself, for when Jorn had tackled him and knocked him flat he had driven the breath from Fumio’s lungs. Now, sucking air into his starved and laboring breast, the stronger man reached up and hurled the lightly built youth sprawling.

Leaping to his feet, he looked about for his javelin, fully intending to use it upon the young hunter before he used it on the girl who had driven him mad with desire and fury.

But Darya had sprung upon it and snatched it up while her rescuer and her adversary battled, and now Fumio was brought up short, for the point of his own weapon was leveled against his own naked breast.

He took a deep breath, licking his lips, eyes glancing wildly about to either side, looking for a means of self-defense. Alas, there was none.…

Jorn came lithely to his feet, and hurried to stand beside his princess, unlimbering a stone dagger he had snatched from one of the Drugars in the confusion of their sudden break for freedom. He had forgotten that he possessed the flint blade until this moment, or he would have driven it to its hilt in the breast of Fumio.

Fumio looked them over, not in the least liking what he saw. The stern and level gaze and grim-set jaw of Jorn the Hunter quite unnerved him, as did the cold flame of vengeance which burned in the narrowed eyes of the girl he had sought to violate.

Fumio was not a coward, or, at least, he had never thought of himself as one before, but his courage wilted cravenly as he read a sentence of death in the contemptuous eyes of the two young people who held him at bay. From whatever lair deep within his heart it resides in all of us, fear came crawling up within him to suck the strength and courage from his manhood.

He licked lips suddenly gone dry.

“Surely,” he faltered, “you would not murder a helpless and unarmed man…?”

And the instant those words escaped him, he realized how vapid and foolish they were, and loathed himself for uttering them.

Jorn smiled faintly.

“There speaks a man who, one moment before, would have murdered a helpless and unarmed woman,” he said. The soul of Fumio writhed at the scathing contempt in Jorn’s level tones.

Darya sighed, lowering her javelin.

“But Fumio speaks the truth, Jorn,” she said dispiritedly. “I cannot kill even vermin such as Fumio in cold blood.”

“I can, my princess!” retorted the youth without a moment’s hesitation. “Lend me the weapon, and we need never be bothered by this animal again—”

For a moment Darya felt strongly tempted to yield to Jorn’s suggestion, which was, after all, a just and sensible one. Only a fool or an idealist lets a deadly enemy live, to strike again; but it was not in the savage maiden to permit even such as Fumio to be murdered in cold blood. She shook her head, blond mane tousling over bare, tanned shoulders.

“I cannot do it, Jorn,” she said with a sigh. Then, turning to rake Fumio with a scalding glance of utter scorn, she addressed him as follows:

“Take your life, then, yelping dog…but go from us and be very certain that, should either of us ever see your ugly face again, there and then shall we mete out to you the punishment which here we suspend. —Run!”

Fumio needed no further encouragement, but took to his heels, hating himself for it. The scornful laughter of the two young people rang mockingly in his ears as he entered the shadowy aisles of the jungle, and deep in his heart Fumio promised to wreak a dreadful vengeance against those who had humiliated and laughed at him.…

* * * *

Some hours later, as he crouched cold and wet and miserable under a broad-leaved bush within sight of the shore, enduring the lashing of a tropical rainstorm, Fumio had cause to discover that his troubles were very far from being over.

Upon reentering the jungle, he had quickly gotten thoroughly lost, for all his skills as a hunter and tracker. This was doubtless because of the fact that Thandar was a country of rocky hills and level, grassy plains, while the coasts of the Sogar-Jad were a region of dense jungles and swamps. Fumio was not accustomed to pursuing game through such overgrown terrain, and had lost his way entirely.

He had not yet bothered to attempt to devise any sort of a weapon, for it had seemed to the chieftain preeminently important to put as much distance between himself and Darya and Jorn the Hunter as he could possibly accomplish, before they changed their minds, and decided to kill him after all. And by the time he found himself beside the misty shores of the prehistoric ocean, it was too late to begin searching for something from which to manufacture a weapon, for he found himself caught and drenched to the skin by a swiftly risen tropical storm.

Now, lost, hungry, unarmed and miserable, he crouched on his hunkers in the mud, enduring the lash of wind and rain, wishing himself dead.

The first hint Fumio had that he was no longer alone came when a splay-toed foot caught him in the small of his back and kicked him face down in the mud. He sprang to his feet and whirled to stare with amazement and sudden fear into the ugly, grinning face of One-Eye. One-Eye, whom he had thought drowned when the giant reptile overturned the dugouts of the Drugar! For Fumio had lingered just within the edges of the jungle and observed the events which had followed the revolt and flight of the captives.

Evidently, One-Eye had managed to cling to one of the overturned log canoes, gaining the safety of the mainland’s shore again. For there he stood grinning, hefting in one huge, hairy hand a stone axe, looking Fumio up and down.

“Ho, Pretty-Face!” boomed the Apeman humorously. “Who kick your nose in, eh? Shes of your tribe no longer hot to mate with you, when they see your pretty-face now, ho ho!”

Fumio ground his teeth in helpless rage and despair, but made no reply to the rhetorical question. One- Eye kicked him again, this time in the side.

“Me take you back to Kor,” he growled. “One slave better than no slave at all…go push boat down into water, or One-Eye smash you with axe and make your face even uglier.”

Helpless to resist the blows Fortune had dealt him, Fumio listlessly yielded and let One-Eye drive him out into the rain. He grunted and strained, overturning the boat so that the seawater could empty out.

Then, obeying the gruff commands of his captor, he poled the rude craft out into the storm-lashed waves and began to row dispiritedly.

To be a slave to the Apemen of Kor was perhaps the most miserable of fates which such as Fumio could conceive; but at least it was better than starving in the jungle, or being eaten alive by the great beasts.

Dwindling in the distance, the lone dugout canoe vanished in the mists, and soon the rocky coasts of the isle of Ganadol loomed up before them.

CHAPTER 14

A BOLT FROM THE BLUE

It had been the sudden yielding of the branch whereon I slept that had awakened me. For the bough of the great tree wherein Hurok and I had taken refuge for the night had bent suddenly, as if beneath a massive weight.

And I awoke to find myself staring into the horrible visage of a monster such as no man of my age has ever looked upon.

It was a huge, tawny cat, with the heavy shoulders and massive barrel and long, lashing tail of a Bengal tiger. But its coppery fur bore not the black markings of that beast. Its green eyes blazed with soulless ferocity and its wrinkled muzzle writhed, lips folding back to expose a crimson maw and powerful jaws armed with terrible fangs.

The canines of the great cat were fully eleven inches long, and hooked in a terrible curve.

I knew at once what it was, for I had seen its likeness in many pictures: the saber-toothed tiger of the Oligocene, the most dread, ferocious predator that ever roamed the forests of prehistoric Europe before the Ice Age came down upon the world.

Seventeen feet long it was, from wrinkled snout to the tip of its lashing tail. And that is one hell of a lot of tiger, believe you me!

Sweat burst out in cold globules on my clammy forehead, and my heart rose to choke my throat.

Behind me, Hurok muttered in a hopeless tone:

“…Vandar! We are lost, Black Hair.”

The great cat seemed puzzled to find two human morsels tied to a tree branch. It sniffed at us, and as yet the lashing from side to side of its sinewy tail was casual, a matter of balance. Where the saber-tooth had sprung from I had no notion, perhaps from the boughs of a neighboring tree. And whether or not it was hunting, or had already made its kill and was going home to sleep off the after-effects of gorging thereon I had no way of guessing.

But I could certainly hope.…

I dared not move, nor make a grab for my gun. And I tried to hold the great cat with my fixed and steady gaze, while slowly inching my fingers toward the butt of the .45.

It uttered a growling purr, half in warning, half in curiosity.

“Only the thunder-weapon can save us, Black Hair,” muttered Hurok from behind me.

I dared not speak in reply. But my fingertips crept gradually across the stained and dirtied fabric of my makeshift khaki shorts, coming nearer and nearer to the butt of the automatic.

The entire scene, I feel certain, occupied only a few seconds of time. But I have learned the truth of what some philosophers have guessed, that time is truly subjective: for I lived an endless, aching eternity during those fleeting instants before the cat struck. And I hope I never live their like again—

Suddenly, shifting its ponderous weight upon the branch, the cat lashed out at me with one huge paw, unsheathing its terrible, hooked claws—

In the same split second I whipped out my pistol and fired full in the snarling face of the saber-tooth—

And missed!

For the claws of the vandar brushed the barrel of my automatic, knocking it from my grasp, and the slug meant for smack between those blazing emerald eyes wasted itself on empty air.

And the pistol fell, bouncing from branch to branch, vanishing as it plunged through green leaves.

Then the saber-tooth sprang—

* * * *

Tharn of Thandar paused suddenly as an unfamiliar noise slammed through the silence of the jungle. His outspread arms froze his scouts, huntsmen and warriors in their tracks.

“The sound came from ahead, there, from that tree,” said the warrior to his right.

Without speaking, the High Chief made a curt gesture and four warriors glided through the bushes, vanishing behind a screen of dense vegetation.

The Thandarian stood, a silent and majestic figure, his fierce blue eyes sharp and wary as those of the eagle. For many days, now, he had led the war party up along the meandering shores of the Sogar-Jad, searching for his lost daughter. The spoor of her captors had easily been spotted by his huntsmen, who had tracked the slave-raiders this far without once losing the trail.

And in the breast of Tharn the High Chief burned an unquenchable passion: to find his daughter, the gomad Darya, alive and unharmed; to slay to the last shambling brute-man the Drugar who had captured her; and to return once more with Darya to their homeland far down the seacoast.

As yet, and despite all speed they had been able to attain, Tharn and his war party had not been able to catch up with the fleeing Drugars. It was as if the heels of the Apemen bore wings. And, as yet, Tharn had no way of knowing whether his daughter still lived, or had succumbed to the cruel treatment of her brutish captors or, perchance, to the attack of some monstrous predator.

Until he saw her corpse, Tharn would believe her alive and in need of his assistance. But within his mighty heart, the Cro-Magnon monarch earnestly dreaded that moment of final discovery. For life in the savage wilderness of Zanthodon is precarious and only the most powerful of warriors may for long endure its myriad perils. And Darya was a young girl, no seasoned, hardy warrior!

That strange sound that had shattered the jungle stillness an instant before was unknown to the Omad of Thandar; never before had he heard its like. Not even the thunders that growled amidst the heavens were so startlingly loud, and Tharn frowned thoughtfully, wondering as to the source of that uncanny noise.

An instant later, the leaves parted and one of his scouts called him in low, urgent tones. He strode through the thick bushes, glancing up to see an amazing sight.

Tied to either side of a massive treetrunk, a man of the panjan and a hairy, hulking Drugar faced the assault of a mighty vandar, as the universal tongue of the Underground World names the great sabertooth of the late Oligocene and early Pleistocene Eras. The huge cat was about to launch itself against the helpless man—

Tharn of Thandar reached out and snatched the great longbow from the hands of the nearest of his scouts. Swifter than thought itself he nocked the long shaft of an arrow with a practiced twist of his wrist, drew the bowstring taut until the feather of the shaft touched his right earlobe.

And loosed the shaft with a fluid motion—

* * * *

Just as I gasped over the loss of the automatic, the sabertooth hunched its massive shoulders, tensing its hind legs, and launched itself directly at me, like a tawny juggernaut.

It all happened too swiftly for my mind to even register the danger, much less for my heart to quail in fear.

But swifter even than the leaping saber-tooth—like a bolt from the blue!—a long arrow flew to bury itself to the feather in the skull of the giant tiger.

The arrow pierced the great cat’s brain, emerging with a spurt of gore from just under the left eye.

Its leap going awry, the springing cat flew past me to graze the tree bark of the trunk with one heavy shoulder. Then it fell, limp as a mackerel, bouncing from branch to branch until it crashed to earth far below.

The arrow must have killed it instantly; it was dead in mid-leap, surely.

And I released in a whoosh the lungful of air I had not even been aware of holding, and felt my limbs go limp and strengthless from sheer reaction. A narrower shave than that is hard to imagine, and the cat was to haunt my dreams for quite some time to come.

We looked down, Hurok and I, as warrior after warrior emerged from the bushes to examine the dead cat, and to stare curiously up at us. They were tall, handsome men, with strong, well-built bodies and lightly tanned skins, clad only in brief loincloths of hide or fur. Clear and blue were their alert, fearless eyes and yellow-gold their unshorn manes of hair.

I knew them at once for Cro-Magnons.

Which did not, of course, mean they were friendly Cro-Magnons.

In this savage, prehistoric world, where to survive at all requires a constant struggle against wind and weather, beast and predator, and other men, the hand of every creature is lifted in war against all else that lives.

A stranger is probably an enemy, for he is certainly not a friend.

And a dead enemy is the only safe enemy.

Such thoughts must have passed through the mind of one of the warriors beneath us, for with cold, grim features and steady hands he lifted his bow to drive an arrow through our hearts. And I sucked in my breath again, and held it, waiting for that terrible lance of pain to extinguish my consciousness.

But the tall, majestic man at his side turned and struck aside the how so that the arrow whizzed off to lose itself among the leaves. Then this particular man strode forward to examine us with stern but thoughtful eyes. He made an abrupt, unmistakable gesture, disdaining words.

He as good as said, “Come down.”

So we came down. There was nothing else to do. With my pistol lost, we were so far outnumbered as to make any sort of resistance not only futile but suicidal.

The warriors closed about us, and led us forward to where the older man stood, arms folded upon his mighty breast.

He looked us over, eyes bright with frank and honest curiosity.

“A true man in company with a Drugar!” he exclaimed, in a deep bass voice, marveling. “Never have I seen or heard the like! Tell me, stranger, are you the Drugar’s prisoner or is he yours?”

“Neither, to be precise,” I said with as much boldness as I could muster. “We are friends.”

“‘Friends’?” he repeated, with a grimace of surprise. “And since when do the Ugly Ones and the Smoothskins make friends, the one with the other?”

I shrugged. “Never, so far as I know, until I, Eric Carstairs, won the friendship of Hurok of Kor,” I said bluntly. It seemed to me that I had nothing to lose, and that a bit of honest boasting and belligerence might not be out of place. “‘Eric Carstairs,’” he repeated again, pronouncing my name with a trifle difficulty. “And what sort of a name is that?”

“It is my name,” I said firmly, “and not at all unusual in my homeland.”

“And what is your homeland?”

“The United States of America,” I declared.

His brows wrinkled at the name.

“The Un-ited States-es…your land must be far away, for never have I heard of it!” he remarked.

“It is very far away, indeed,” I admitted.

And, in all truth, I did not lie. For my homeland lay on the other side of the planet, and a hundred miles (at least) straight up.

He looked me over again with frank curiosity, and I took the opportunity to check him out, as well. He was a magnificent figure of a man, with a physique like a wrestler, tall and well-formed, and straight as a sword blade. A man past his first youth, obviously, but in the full and glorious prime of his life.

His features were regular, even handsome in a strong, commanding way, with eagle-sharp blue eyes, a lofty brow and a strong, good jaw framed in thick yellow hair and a thick curly, beard, like a Viking chief. Heavy blond mustaches swept back to either side of his mouth, and his head was crowned with a peculiar headdress whose chief ornaments were two curved ivory fangs from the jaws of just such a giant saber-tooth as lay dead at our feet.

His magnificent torso was bare, save for ornaments, and splendidly developed. Here and there the scars of ancient wounds marred the clear, tanned flesh. A triple necklace of the fangs of beasts encircled his strong throat. Bands of worked bronze clasped him at biceps and muscular wrist. All he wore for clothing was a brief loincloth of dappled fur, but his feet were clad in high-laced buskins of tanned leather. At his waist he bore a bronze dagger sheathed in reptile skin. His mien was imperious, commanding. At once I knew him for a king.

I have met a couple of kings in my time. Once you have met one, you can recognize another at a glance.

They have a look to them, something about the eyes and something in the set of the shoulders that is unmistakable.

They have the look of eagles.

And this man was the most impressive and majestic figure I have ever encountered.

He was examining me with as much interest as I was examining him. I could tell from the way his fine brow crinkled that he had never before seen a man with black, curly hair and clear gray eyes. I believe I have already mentioned that the Neanderthals all had either red or brown hair, and that the Cro-Magnons were uniformly blond and blue-eyed. If any other peoples shared the jungle world of Zanthodon with these two races, I had yet to encounter them and had no idea as to their coloration; I believed myself to be unique in this Underground World.

His keen eyes upon my curly black hair, this primeval monarch addressed me with yet another question.

“Are you from the country of Zar, perchance, or from the land of the Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water?”

I shook my head.

“I have never heard of Zar,” I said firmly, “and have no idea where it is. And I do not even know what you mean by ‘the Men-Who-Ride-Upon-Water.’”

Baffled, he shrugged slightly, giving up the mystery. Then, squaring his magnificent shoulders, he said:

“I am Tharn, Omad of Thandar, a country farther down the coast,” he declared in a ringing voice.

And at those glad words my heart leaped with thankfulness.

“If you are truly Tharn of Thandar,” I said, a trifle unsteadily, “then I have good news for you. For your daughter, Darya the gomad, is alive and safe and somewhere in these very jungles!”

I have never seen such an expression of heart-breaking relief and joy flare in the eyes of any man as I saw then and there in the eyes of Darya’s mighty sire.

CHAPTER 15

THRONE OF SKULLS

One-Eye guided the dugout canoe around the rocky coasts of the island of Ganadol, finally indicating with a blow the point at which he desired his captive to beach their craft.

It was the mouth of a narrow lagoon which gave forth on a bleak and unpromising prospect of sandy, rock-strewn waste, ringed about with crumbling cliffs of sandstone whose sheer walls were cleft by numerous openings, the mouths of caves.

Obediently, Fumio rowed the canoe to the beach, then climbed ashore and dragged the canoe farther up the tawny sands with the help of One-Eye’s great strength.

Two Drugar, stationed atop great flat-topped boulders above the beach, obviously as sentinels, watched silently, leaning upon long stone-bladed spears.

“Ho, One-Eye!” one of them grunted. “You depart with more than a hand of warriors, and return alone, with but one panjan for captive! Has strength deserted your arms and courage deserted your bowels?”

The other guard guffawed at this coarse jest. One-Eye’s face darkened furiously. He growled and spat, measuring the other with a furious eye.

“But come within my reach, Gomak,” he snarled, “and you shall learn if strength has deserted the arms of One-Eye!”

The sentinel uttered a sneering laugh, but Fumio noticed that he stayed where he was and did not accept One-Eye’s invitation.

Turning to the second sentinel, One-Eye demanded of him the whereabouts of one Uruk.

The sentinel shrugged. “The Omad speaks with Xask the Wise at this time,” he grunted. “It is not good to disturb chiefs at their councils,” he warned.

One-Eye grinned and strutted.

“Borag may warn, but One-Eye knows not the taste of fear,” he declared, boastfully. “And One-Eye returns to Kor with word that will please the ear of Uruk the High Chief, aye, and the ears of Xask as well!”

The guard shrugged, gesturing. Seizing hold of Fumio’s long hair, One-Eye strode up the beach and entered the largest of the caves.

As darkness closed about the Thandarian, courage deserted his heart—what little was left therein at this point, at any rate.

* * * *

Within the cave-mouth you ventured down a long stonewalled, narrow way which opened out suddenly into an immense open space, as round as a rotunda, with a domed roof which lifted far above.

Therefrom, suspended like monstrous stony icicles, hung long stalactites. The domed cavern was lit by the smoky flaring of many tar-soaked torches.

Against the farther wall, which was pierced by two natural openings, both hung with hide-curtains, a jutting shelf of rock formed a natural dais. And upon this stone step stood the throne of Uruk, High Chief of the Drugars and King of Kor.

It was a throne of skulls!

Grinning death-heads, their polished ivory rondures agleam in the smoky torchlight, had been fastened together with molten lead to form a monstrous chair. They were the skulls, Fumio observed with a sinking heart, of true men such as himself: of men, women and even children, were the skulls, which boded ill for his future existence in this grim kingdom.

Atop this ghastly throne there squatted the most hideous figure Fumio had ever dreamed to exist.

Uruk was seven and a half feet tall, a veritable giant. And his corpulence was such that he weighed twice as much even as the tall and formidable Thandarian himself. His obese paunch was hairy and repulsive; his sloping shoulders and long, dangling, gorilla-like arms were thickly furred. About his thick wrists were clasped gold bangles and ivory bracelets from distant Zar, ornaments of bronze and copper thieved from Thandar, and amulets of paste and carven stone.

These did little to relieve the pall of his hideousness.

His face was a thing from the blackest pit of nightmares into which any dreaming soul has ever floundred, shrieking. The tip of an aurochs’ horn had long ago ripped his face in half, drawing up one corner of his blubbery lips into a grimace of a frozen smile. Long tusks and broken fangs hung over his sagging lips, and his face was covered with a grisly network of scar tissue.

His eyes were cold, malignant, and soulless as are the eyes of serpents. One glance into the icy, glaring hell of those eyes and you knew, as Fumio shudderingly knew, that no recognizable human emotion lived within the hairy breast of Uruk: naught but cold greed, slimy lust, bestial fury, and the hunger to inflict pain and suffering upon everything that lived.

“Well, and has One-Eye returned alone?” demanded Uruk in a piglike, grunting voice. “With a hand of warriors he departed from Kor, loudly boasting of the many and delectable shes he would return with.

Instead, but one quaking panjan do I see, and good for little that Uruk can guess.…”

Perspiring freely—for it is never wise to anger or distress the ogre who ruled Kor—One-Eye launched forth upon a speech of remarkable eloquence for one such as he.

The leader of the slave raid knew all too well that his expedition had been a dismal failure, and that those close to Uruk who were his jealous foes and rivals would not waste time to twist the facts to his disadvantage. So he had sought out his Omad first, hoping to present them in such a light as to earn him the least disfavor as was possible under the circumstances.

As he spoke on, alternatively whining and blustering, Fumio felt his attention drawn to the second figure upon the stone dais, as the dust of iron is drawn to a powerful magnet.

The second man was certainly no Neanderthal, and no Cro-Magnon, either, and like unto no other man that Fumio had ever seen or heard of. Instead of the bowed shoulders of the Apemen, his were slim and narrow; instead of the stalwart musculature of the Cro-Magnons, his body was lean and trim.

And unlike both he was either completely bald or for some reason his head had been shaved. His features, too, were beardless. His skin was olive in hue, and his eyes jet black—shrewd, clever, calculating, and utterly opaque. No thought that writhed through the dark recesses of his brain could you discern, even slightly, in his eyes.

His slim form was clothed oddly, in a short tunic of woven cloth, and a girdle of metal plates linked together cinched in his thin waist. Soft purple-dyed buskins clothed his higharched feet. Bracelets of a shining, silvery-reddish metal clanked on his bony wrists, and therefrom flashed and shone strange, polished gems unknown to Fumio, which blazed like the eyes of serpents in the dark.

This was Xask, the grand vizier of Kor, and counselor and confidant to Uruk.

His clever, shrewd eyes met those of Fumio. Even in the battered, blood-stained ruin of what had been Fumio’s oncehandsome visage, Xask saw and recognized a kindred soul, a spirit cold, greedy, clever and calculating as it was cruel, unscrupulous and hungry for power.

And Xask smiled, a slow, thin-lipped smile.

And, somehow, Fumio felt less fearful than he had a moment before.…

* * * *

Later that same day, two Drugar guards came and untied Fumio from the center-stake of his cell and led him blinking into the light of flaring torches.

He sweated, steeling himself for…he knew not what. A slow and grisly end, no doubt! For the warriors of Thandar whispered that the Drugars were cannibals; Fumio did not know whether or not this was true, but he would not have been Fumio if he had not feared the worst.

Instead of the cook-pot, they led him into a clean and spacious apartment in the complex of caves which served the ogre-king of Kor as a palace. The luxury and splendor of the room and its appointments were dazzling to Fumio, who had never envisioned such before.

Urns and vases of brilliantly colored ceramics gleamed in the soft, silken light of dangling oil lamps.

Rugs of sleek fur lay underfoot; hangings of richly-colored textiles adorned the walls, where smooth plaster overlay the rough stone. Upon these walls, skilled hands with colored pigments had drawn a frieze of painted monsters and naked damsels in an idyllic garden scene. A delicious fragrance wafted from an incense burner of wrought-silver. Fumio stared about him in astonishment.

A hanging stirred over a concealed doorway, and Xask entered the room and stood smiling faintly, his clever eyes reading with ease the awe and dazzlement wherewith Fumio regarded the furnishings.

“Sit…be at ease,” he bade the Cro-Magnon, gesturing gracefully. As Fumio sank bewilderedly onto a low couch strewn with gorgeous pillows, Xask poured purple wine into a goblet carved from rockcrystal and proffered it.

Fumio gulped down the beverage, bliss written upon his visage. Accustomed to the sour beer of Thandar, fine grape wine with honey burning at its heart delighted his palate.

The two men began to talk, with Xask skillfully drawing out the other. They had much in common, and got along well together, although neither really trusted the other as a matter of course. Xask explained, in answer to Fumio’s query, that, of course, he was not of the Drugar race, but had fled into exile, driven forth by relentless foes and rivals, from his own native homeland, the Scarlet City of Zar which lay far to the inland of the continent, near the shore of the island sea of Lugar-Jad.

Fumio had heard vaguely of the Lugar-Jad, but he did not recall ever hearing of Zar. Well, he thought to himself, no great matter…

Using the strong, unmixed wine to oil Fumio’s tongue, Xask drew him out, inquiring into the circumstances which had led to his present captivity here in Kor.

At the mention of the two oddly dressed strangers, Eric Carstairs and Professor Potter, Xask stiffened alertly. He drew from Fumio with a sequence of carefully phrased questions a lengthy and detailed description of how the two strangers had been dressed, of their strange ornaments and accouterments, and of their fantastic tale of having come from some place they called “the Upper World.” He listened attentively, as Fumio told how, when first captured by OneEye’s slave-raiders, they had spoken in a language unknown to men, and how the girl Darya had had to teach them the common tongue before they could understand one word of human speech.

His eyes grew shrewd and thoughtful, as Fumio, babbling by now as the strong wine loosened the constraints of caution told how Carstairs had driven into flight even the mighty Yith of the seas with one thunderbolt from his mystery-weapon.

When Fumio’s store of information was exhausted, Xask went to the door and summoned one of his Cro-Magnon slaves, a woman called Yalla.

“The slave Fumio will join my retinue,” he informed her. “See that he is given a place to sleep; he is somewhat the worse for wine at the moment, so you will need the strong back of Corun to see him safely bedded down. Where is One-Eye, do you know?”

“Yes, master, he cavorts among the slave women by express permission of Uruk,” answered the slave woman. Xask nodded, masking a smile. It was apparent to him that One-Eye had succeeded in lying his way out of trouble. Later that evening, Xask found the opportunity to visit the quarters of the slave women himself, and found One-Eye dead drunk and snoring loudly, between two naked girls. From the hairy wrist of the Apeman the vizier purloined the wristwatch which One-Eye had taken from Eric Carstairs.

Alone later in his study, Xask examined the instrument. He was able to make little of it, not even to discern its purpose or use; but the craftsmanship of the watch, the delicacy of its parts, all these impressed him mightily.

Xask was from a culture immeasurably more sophisticated than the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons. His people had enjoyed hot and cold running water and indoor plumbing and advanced iron manufacturing a thousand years before civilization arose in Europe. Their jewelry and artworks, at their height, were of an extraordinary degree of sophistication.

Xask knew good workmanship when he saw it; even the master artisans of Zar could produce nothing as delicate and precise as the wristwatch which One-Eye had ripped from the arm of Eric Carstairs.

Xask did not know whether there was an Upper World or not.

But he did know that he very much wanted to make the acquaintance of Eric Carstairs and Professor Potter.

From them, his clever mind could extract much knowledge. And knowledge, as the wily Xask knew very well, was power.

And Xask…loved…power!

* * * *

It took the clever vizier little more than a day and a night to persuade Uruk to launch an attack in force upon the mainland.

The ostensible purpose of the assault was to recapture Darya, princess of Thandar. Uruk required little urging to decide to send his men to war. As Xask pointed out, with Darya in their power, they could successfully demand of Tharn of Thandar one hundred beautiful young virgins from the Stone Age tribe.

And Uruk was weary of his women, and hungered for fresh, lithe young limbs and sweet young breasts to handle with his cruel paws.

But the real purpose of the invasion was to capture, if possible, both of the strangers from the Upper World.

Fumio had stammeringly described the small hand-weapon wherewith Eric Carstairs had driven the monster plesiosaurus beneath the waves. It had a voice like thunder, he maintained. And One-Eye, recovering from a monstrous hangover the next morn, had confirmed everything Fumio had told Xask about the thunder-weapon.

Even if the device was only half as powerful as the two savages claimed, it would suffice to serve the purposes of Xask.

His enemies at the court of Zar had soured the Queen’s heart against him, driving him forth into the wilderness to perish. Therefrom slave raiders from Kor had dragged him into a life of captivity from which his cleverness and wit had lifted him to a high position as Uruk’s crony and vizier.

But for a cultured man of civilized ways, even a high position among hulking savages is a mean and squalid life. And Xask desired revenge upon his enemies, and longed to return to Zar in might and power. And the thunder-weapon of the strangers could well be the tool he needed to lift him to his former height.

In his imagination, Xask pictured a hundred Drugar warriors, armed with copies of the thunder-weapon, hurling its lightnings against the towering walls of Zar.

And Xask smiled.

And the next morning fifty dugouts loaded with Drugar warriors, including Xask and Fumio, One-Eye and Uruk himself, launched forth upon the mist-clad waters of the Sogar-Jad, bound for the continent.

The Underground World had never known so mighty a war as Xask had conceived of in his cool and wily brain. Nor had Uruk been overly difficult to persuade into the venture.

Xask had drawn a tempting picture for his Omad…a delectable vision of an invincible army of Drugar, shod with thunder, their arms filled with lightning-bolts, slaughtering in their thousands the warriors of Thandar, carrying off the loot, the plunder, the cattle, and the women…the young and tender and frightened and very desirable women…even the little girls.

Uruk had slobbered, grinning lustfully.

And Fumio was pleased, as well. For his price was small, merely the gomad Darya, and as far as Xask or Uruk cared, what was one young girl among so many thousands?

CHAPTER 16

WINGS OF TERROR

And now let me return to the adventures of Jorn the Hunter. No sooner had Fumio fled into the jungle, than the young warrior and Darya of Thandar turned to see if the would-be rapist’s cowardly blow had slain Professor Potter, or whether the old man was merely unconscious.

Fortunately, the skinny savant had only been stunned by Fumio’s blow. With cold water drawn from the little pool wherein she had bathed, the jungle girl found it not difficult to resuscitate the man from the Upper World. True, he was a bit dizzy and wobbly in the knees, but these ills were minor and would soon pass.

He did, however, have a lump the size of a hen’s egg on the back of his bald pate and it throbbed painfully, giving him the very grandfather of all headaches.

“The cold water will reduce the swelling,” Darya assured him. “You will soon be feeling better.”

“I certainly hope so, young woman!” complained the Professor grumpily. “For I am much too old for such adventures…who did you say it was who knocked me down?”

The girl explained what had happened, describing Fumio so that the Professor could easily recall him.

The old man nodded his head, wincing as he did so.

“Yes, yes, I remember the fellow well…superb physique, but rather too handsome, I should say…

and I did not care for his manner, either: he was either blustering or whining all the time, as I recall.…

Well, young fellow, it seems as if you came to our rescue in the veritable nick of time!” This last remark, of course, was made to Jorn.

The Hunter nodded grimly. “I am glad that I came in time to assist Darya,” he said simply.

“Is there any sign of Eric?” the Professor inquired, feeling a little better by now. “And what of those savages? Are they pursuing us?”

Jorn explained what he had seen from his treetop perch, and how the Drugars had forced me into the dugout canoes, launching forth upon the Sogar-Jad for their homeland, Kor. The Professor was downcast.

“The poor boy! Well, what shall we do now—is there any hope of effecting his rescue, do you suppose?”

Jorn shook his head. “We have no canoes, and no other way of crossing the waters of the sea to the island of Ganadol,” he said somberly. “And even if it were possible for us to do so, I do not believe the three of us could do anything to help Eric Carstairs. Rather than being able to rescue him from his captivity, we should all probably be captured ourselves.”

The Professor could not refute the simple logic of that statement, although he yearned to rescue his friend. “Well, then,” he sighed, massaging his aching head, “at least we can escort this young lady back to the land of her people. It is what Eric would have wished us to do.…”

* * * *

Jorn was forced to admit, some hours later, that he was quite thoroughly lost. He confessed this to his companions shamefacedly.

But Darya was quick to sympathize with the young Hunter.

“In this dense jungle where one tree looks very much like another,” smiled the girl comfortingly, “it is terribly easy to become confused about one’s direction. Perhaps we should rest here, find something to eat, and seize this opportunity to sleep—for we are all quite weary after our exertions.”

Her companions agreed that her suggestion was a sensible one. While Jorn began to build a fire, using, the Professor noticed, flints to set the wood ablaze, Darya decided to go hunting with the light javelin they had taken from the villainous Fumio.

“If my princess will wait until I am finished with this task, I shall be pleased to try my skill while both of you rest,” the Hunter offered.

Darya shook her head determinedly.

“I feel restless, despite my weariness,” she said. “Continue building your fire, Jorn, while I endeavor to make my kill. I shall not be gone long.”

With that, the girl strode into the dim aisles of the jungle and was soon lost to view.

“Heh! I wonder, Jorn, if we should have permitted the young woman to go off by herself,” murmured the Professor a trifle nervously. “The beasts of the jungle are immense and ferocious and Fumio’s spear seems to me a frail implement.”

Jorn smiled.

“Like most of the women of Thandar,” he said quietly, “the princess is an accomplished huntress and knows well how to avoid the larger and more dangerous predators; have no fear.”

“Eh? Well, perhaps so…still and all, I shall breathe a lot easier once the child has returned to camp, safe and unharmed!”

“That will not be long,” said Jorn confidently. “The jungle teems with game, and I’ll wager even at this moment Darya has made her kill.”

* * * *

Nor was Jorn’s confidence in Darya’s skills as a huntress misplaced. For it had been child’s play for the Stone Age girl to bring down an uld, a small mammal that may have been a remote ancestor of the horse, and even as Jorn made his prediction to the Professor, she was engaged in gutting her kill and trussing it with woven grass ropes; slinging the carcass over her shoulder, the girl crossed the clearing, intending to return to her companions.

Now the jungles of Zanthodon, as the cave girl knew all too well, are the hunting grounds of many fierce and mighty predators. There was the heavy-footed thantor, or wooly mammoth, and the spike-horned grymp, as the Cro-Magnons call the triceratops, and many another fearsome beast as well, the vandar and the goroth, the yith of the seas, and many more.

But none are more to be feared than the dreaded thakdol. On its motionless wings, the tireless reptile can soar aloft, riding the updrafts for hour upon hour, while searching the landscape beneath it for game.

While the thakdol can fight and slay, it is a lazy brute and vastly prefers to feed on someone else’s kill.

Like the vultures of the Upper World, whose habits are so similar, the pterodactyl is essentially a scavenger, a carrion-eater, although it will kill when it has to.

On this particular day, a monstrous thakdol whose ribbed, membraneous, batlike wings measured thirtyfive feet from claw-hooked tip to claw-hooked tip, was floating above the jungle on silent wings. It was hungry, the aerial reptile, for in two days it had found but sparse rations. And now there wafted to its keen senses the fragrant aroma of fresh-shed blood…

Craning its scaly neck, the thakdol peered down through the tatters of flying mist, to spy a small clearing and a CroMagnon girl striding for the forest’s edge with the carcass of an uld across her shoulders.

Uttering the almost inaudible hissing cry that was its hunting call, the huge pterodactyl folded its batlike wings and plummeted earthward, falling like a thunderbolt.

And Darya was not even aware there was a thakdol in the sky until suddenly she was buffeted by drumming wings and a scaled and heavy body slammed into her, driving her to her knees.

Ghastly claws ripped and tore, striving to dislodge the carcass of the uld from her back. But Darya had lashed the body of her kill across her shoulders with tough ropes of woven grass, and they held firm even against those terrible claws.

Losing patience, the thakdol sank its razory claws deep within the carcass of Darya’s kill—spread its monstrous wings—and rose on drumming vanes into the air—

Carrying Darya with it!

The jungle girl screamed in terror as those beating wings lifted her off the earth and into the air. She had not dreamed it possible that a thakdol—even one so huge as this thakdol—was strong enough to carry off a fully grown human being, although betimes its grisly kin have been known to fly away into the sky, gripping babies or small children in its terrible claws.

And in truth the thakdol labored mightily to reach the upper air, fearing to remain on the ground where it could become the prey of beasts greater than itself. Only in the skies of Zanthodon was it safe, for therein no other predator could venture. But the young woman dangling from its claws was a more weighty burden than the small brain of the flying reptile had realized, and it swayed drunkenly in its flight, just barely skimming above the tops of the trees.

Once safely aloft, the pterodactyl made for the distant cliffs where it had built its nest. And it bore the Stone Age girl with it on its voyage through the misty skies.…

* * * *

At the sound of Darya’s scream of terror, Jorn sprang to his feet, snatched up a cudgel from his heap of firewood, and hurled himself into the jungle with the frightened Professor at his heels.

The swift-footed savage veritably flew through the jungle aisles, heading unerringly in the direction from which the girl’s scream had emanated.

Only moments after Darya had cried out, Jorn and the Professor burst into the clearing, and stared about them, wideeyed with amazement. For she was nowhere to be seen!

There, to be sure, was the trampled turf and blood-splattered grasses where her javelin had brought down the small uld.

There, too, her light javelin lay fallen on the turf. Jorn snatched the light weapon from the ground, examining it.

But where was—Darya?

“She cannot have vanished into thin air—such things simply do not happen,” panted the Professor, staring wildly about.

“I agree,” said Jorn briefly. “But where, then, is she? Had she been chased away by one of the great beasts, a grymp or a goroth, say, the grasses and the soil would be trampled, displaying the marks of their tread. But no such marks are to be seen…”

They looked about them. It was, of course, even as Jorn the Hunter had said: the grasses which clothed the floor of the clearing lay smooth and undisturbed, save for the small area where the ground had been torn by the soft hooves of the little uld, as it had scrabbled in its death agony, pinned to the earth by Darya’s spear.

No other marks were to be seen.

Jorn bared his strong white teeth, eyes glaring. From his deep chest there sounded a menacing growl.

The caveman wore but the thin veneer of civilization; beneath that layer of social custom, he was pure savage, a primitive man, filled with superstition and primal night fears.

Suddenly the Professor seized the Hunter’s upper arm, gripping it tightly.

“Shh!” he whispered fiercely, gesturing for silence. “Did you hear it? What was that?”

Jorn had heard it too, that far, faint, despairing cry…so thin and weak that it was as if it had come a great distance.

His nostrils flared and the skin crawled upon his forearms. For it had come from…above.

Suddenly, Jorn threw back his head, staring into the sky, searching in all directions the misty heavens.

And then he gasped, pointing.

The Professor cried out in astonishment as he saw the same terrible sight that had frozen Jorn in his tracks: the tiny figure of a blond girl in abbreviated fur garments, being carried through the skies by an enormous pterodactyl!

Jorn muttered under his breath, signing himself superstitiously. For the reality of Darya’s plight was, in its way, even more horrible than that which he had feared.

Which, after all, is worse: to be spirited away by ghosts, or to be carried off in the claws of a flying monster?

Only for a moment did Jorn linger. Then he turned and left the clearing, trotting rapidly in the direction in which the thakdol had flown.

It was not possible for the loyal heart of Jorn of Thandar to desert his princess in her peril. He would track the dragon of the skies to its lair, and then rescue the girl, if she lived. If she no longer lived, then he would do his utmost to avenge her.

Racing through the jungles, he vanished from the sight of the Professor within a few moments.

And then it slowly dawned upon the old savant that now he was completely alone and helpless, in the midst of the most deadly and dangerous jungle upon the earth.

“Eternal Euclid! What am I doing, lingering here?” muttered the Professor to himself with a wild look in his watery eyes. Clapping one hand atop his head, to hold secure the battered old sun helmet he had so carefully clung to through all of his perilous peregrinations, the scrawny savant trotted off in the direction taken by Jorn the Hunter.

“Just a moment, young fellow!” he called quaveringly after the running figure. “Wait for me…bless my soul, I believe I shall accompany you and lend moral support to your noble attempt at rescue…!”

And, summoning all such speed as his bony legs and wobbly knees could muster, the old scientist followed the retreating figure of Jorn, joining him amid the plains which stretched wide beyond the jungle’s edge.

PART V: THARN OF THANDAR

CHAPTER 17

THE MEANING OF FRIENDSHIP

The Cro-Magnons were swiftly organized into four-man hunting parties and the search for Darya commenced at once. Tharn dispatched his chieftains with a masterly air of command, retaining only a small cadre of scouts and hunters to remain behind.

As his warriors entered the jungles to launch their search for the daughter of the Omad, the primitive monarch turned his attention once more to me, scrutinizing me carefully. I could tell that he was still puzzled by my black hair and gray eyes, as had been all of the inhabitants of Zanthodon which I had heretofore encountered. But he seemed more interested in the khaki fabric wherefrom I had fashioned my crude shorts, and in the tough materials of my high-laced sandals, which I had manufactured, you will remember, from the remnants of my sodden boots.

“You puzzle me, Eric Carstairs,” Darya’s father admitted frankly. “Never before have I seen a man with your coloring of hair and eyes, nor a man accoutered with such strange garments, which seem made from materials heretofore unknown to me. You have come a vast distance, I perceive, from your remote homeland, where doubtless you are a great chief.”

I confessed that my homeland was indeed far off, but modestly disclaimed the rank he would have assigned me.

“Tell me, then, how you encountered the gomad my daughter, and of that which passed between the two of you,” he demanded.

I nodded; there was not, after all, very much to tell, for the time Darya and I had spent together had been very short. I simply related how the Professor and I had been taken prisoner by the same slave raiders that had earlier captured Jorn, Darya, Fumio and the others. I told the savage monarch that we had been assigned to a position close to each other in the slave column, and that we had talked and become good friends—all but Fumio. And I told him how we had managed to escape just before the Neanderthal men had gotten us into their dugouts, and that my last glimpse of the girl had been when she had fled with Professor Potter into the depths of the wood while I remained behind to engage the foremost of our pursuers.

Evidently, my words had contained the ring of truth, because Tharn relaxed his posture of stern vigilance, and clapped me upon the shoulder.

“It would appear that you have dealt well and honorably with the gomad of Thandar,” he said with a slight smile. “And for that you have won the friendship of Tharn, Omad of Thandar! But tell me, Eric Carstairs, how is it that you come to be in the company of this Drugar? For, surely, even in your own homeland, no matter how remote, the Drugars and the panjani are eternally at war one with another…?”

I shook my head; it was useless to try to explain that in my country there were remarkably few Neanderthals to be found.

“Are you his captive,” he inquired,” or was he yours?”

Hurok watched me stolidly, waiting for my reply. Perhaps our brief acquaintanceship had been of too little duration for him yet entirely to trust me. But, since the Cro-Magnons had appeared on the scene, the hulking Neanderthal had said nothing, his eyes dull and listless, as if he expected momentarily to be put to death.

And I suddenly remembered that war was constant and unending between these two branches of primitive man, and that death or slavery is undoubtedly the fate that would have been dealt out to any other in his place.

“Neither, O Tharn,” I said firmly. “We are comrades in misfortune. More than that, we are—friends.”

“Friends?” ejaculated the jungle monarch incredulously.

I nodded. “Yes, friends.”

He shrugged, helplessly. “Eric Carstairs, the ways of your people must be greatly different from the ways of my own nation…for never before in all of my years have I even heard of a Drugar befriended by a panjan, or a panjan who had won the friendship of a Drugar! It is true what this man says, Drugar?” he demanded of Hurok.

The Apeman stolidly met his inquiring gaze.

“Black Hair speaks the truth,” he grunted.

Tharn shook his head baffledly, and shot me a glance that was almost humorous.

“Someday, perhaps, you will explain to me how this marvel came to pass, Eric Carstairs,” he said “And, no doubt, in time I will come to understand it, if not to believe it entirely…but if you are to remain under my protection, you must part company with the Drugar here and now, for I will not share my camp with the creature.”

“Hurok will go,” said the other, dully. “He will rejoin his people in Kor. There is no need for the lord of the panjani to drive forth Black Hair from his camp, merely because he is Hurok’s friend.”

Well, I could hardly stand there and be outdone in nobility of soul or greatness of heart by a Neanderthal savage, so I stepped forward, confronting Darya’s father.

“Together, Hurok and I survived the waves of the Sogar-Jad when the dugouts were overturned by the flippers of the great yith,” I said. “Together we faced the perils of the jungle, and the jaws of the mighty vandar. I will not stand idly by and abide here in safety, while Hurok my friend goes forth alone into the dangers that await all who venture within the jungle. If Hurok must depart from among the men of Thandar, then Eric Carstairs will go forth with him.”

Tharn stood there, strong arms folded majestically upon his mighty breast, head bent a little in deep thought. He made no slightest indication that he had heard or understood my words, but I knew I had given him something to think about.

Then he lifted his head and looked me fully in the face, and turned to examine the huge and hairy form of Hurok at my side.

“We shall speak on this matter some later time,” decided the Cro-Magnon; and, with that, turned to stride away to direct the construction of the camp.

* * * *

If Professor Potter had only been there, he would doubtless have been fascinated at the way in which the Neolithic warriors built their encampment.

They paced off an area forty feet on a side, driving stakes into the turf of the clearing at each corner.

Then while half of their number began raising tents of tanned hide on center poles, the remainer erected a rude palisade about the perimeter of the camp, using sticks and logs and branches lashed together with rawhide thongs.

The barrier was crude but looked stout and effective.

While thus employed, Tharn’s men ignored Hurok and me. They not only paid us no attention, but did not so much as glance in our direction. I had an uneasy feeling that the two of us were in Coventry, as far as the Cro-Magnons were concerned. It partly amused me and partly saddened me to learn that these handsome, stalwart warriors were innately racist, despising the Neanderthal men because they were different from the men of Thandar, and despising me because I had openly claimed Hurok as my friend.

I could have hoped that prejudice would prove to be a vice acquired by decadent, civilized men; instead, I am very much afraid that it is a universal human weakness. This disheartened me.

Hurok was not insensitive to what was going on. He came over to where I sat brooding a short while later, and laid his great hand upon my shoulder.

“It is not good that Black Hair should be enemies of the panjani because of Hurok,” said the huge fellow quietly, and with a simple dignity that made me blush for the failings of my own kind. “Let Hurok go forth alone. Always will friendship exist between Black Hair and Hurok, and doubtless they will meet again, for the world is small…”

I shook my head determinedly.

“That I will not do,” I swore. “If needs must, we will leave the warriors of Thandar here and search for the girl Darya on our own, since we seem unwelcome among her people. But I will not permit you to face the jungle and its dangers alone!”

Something glittered briefly in the Apeman’s sunken little eye; he brushed it away with the back of his hairy hand, nodded, and strode away. And I felt a bewildering rush of emotions within my breast.

For that which my companion had brushed from his eyes had been…a tear.

* * * *

After some hours, the hunters returned. They had found signs of Darya’s presence in the jungle, they reported to her mighty sire, but not the girl herself. And a tall, leathery old scout with grizzled locks and beard described a small clearing where the soil had been disturbed as if by a struggle, and displayed upon his open palm a hide thong and collection of smooth, white stones.

“It is Darya’s sling,” breathed Tharn of Thandar. “And stones such as she would have collected to rearm herself with! Beyond these things, Komad, found you aught else?”

The old scout shook his head, reluctantly.

“How far distant is this place where you found the sling and the stones?”

The chief scout, Komad, indicated that the clearing and the pool lay half a mile or more in the direction of the cliffs which lifted in the distance.

“Let us break camp here, and go thither,” suggested Komad. “If my Chief agrees, we would be wise to use the clearing of the pool as the center of our search, which can widen therefrom in circles until some further token of the gomad Darya is found.”

Tharn nodded briefly, and the men at once began to dismantle the encampment, preparing to depart.

During the orderly confusion, the old scout came over to where I stood on the sidelines.

“The Drugar you call your friend bade me say unto you that he appreciates all that you would sacrifice in order to be true to his friendship,” he said to me in low tones.

I had a premonition, and my heart leaped within me, knowing what was to come. I laid my hand on the fellow’s lean, sinewy arm.

“Where is Hurok?” I cried.

“He has gone forth alone into the jungle,” said Komad the scout, “and he begs you not to follow him. ‘Let Black Hair stay with his own kind, and Hurok will rejoin his,’ were his words. And he bade me give you this—”

The old scout put something heavy, cold and metallic into my hand. I looked down, blinking through sudden tears.

It was the automatic which the saber-tooth had struck from my hand!

And it was thus that Hurok, hulking, illiterate savage from the Stone Age, taught to Eric Carstairs the true meaning of the word “friendship.”

CHAPTER 18

THE PEAKS OF PERIL

It was hopeless for Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter to expect to keep up with the pterodactyl. Even heavily burdened as the winged reptile was by Darya’s weight, it could traverse the misty skies of Zanthodon far more swiftly than could the two men go the same distance on foot.

However, they persevered: for Jorn would not abandon hope of rescuing his princess until he became absolutely certain that she was dead. And, as for Professor Potter, mourning what he believed to be my own demise, he was equally determined to affect the rescue of the Stone Age girl, if only as a tribute to my memory.

“It is no more than the dear boy would have expected of me,” puffed the Professor, valiantly striving to keep up with the younger man.

They had left the edge of the jungle, finding before them an immense and level plain which stretched to the foothills of the cliffs which rose, dim and purple, in the distance.

In the misty air of Zanthodon’s eternal day, the two could perceive little of the plain which lay about them, save that it seemed a broad and level tract of thick grasses.

Jorn searched the plain with keen eyes, but nowhere could he discern the slightest token of human habitation. And neither did he discover any signs of dangerous predators, although a herd of wooly mammoths could be seen browsing on the long grass in the middle distance.

These the Hunter ignored, knowing well that the thantors are grass-eaters and not of carnivorous habits.

He knew, as well, that they are relatively harmless unless men disturb or attack them, and he had at present no intention of doing either.

“Do you happen to know this part of the country at all, young man?” inquired the Professor, panting slightly from his exertions. The Cro-Magnon man nodded slightly.

“Only by reputation,” he admitted. “During the time when Jorn was in the captivity of the Drugars, he overheard them discussing their route. They had intended to set forth in the dugout canoes for the island of Ganadol at a point where the edges of the jungle approached very closely to the shores of the Sogar Jad. And they hoped that Tharn of Thandar and his warriors were not so close upon their heels that they would have to venture any farther up along the coast, for—as they said—that would bring them too near to the Peaks of Peril for comfort.”

The Professor shuddered suddenly, as if a chill breeze had blown upon his naked skin. The Peaks of Peril…in truth the name had an ominous and frightening ring to it!

“Why did the Neanderthal men call those cliffs by such a name?” he inquired timidly.

His companion shrugged his bronzed and brawny shoulders.

“That Jorn does not know,” admitted the Hunter.

But the Professor had a feeling that before long they would find out for themselves.

Without another word, Jorn again broke into a rapid, jogging stride, trotting across the plains in the direction of the purple peaks.

There was nothing else for Professor Potter to do but follow him.

* * * *

When Darya awoke from her swoon, it was a time before the Cro-Magnon girl quite remembered where she was, or realized her present danger.

At some point during her dizzy, swooping flight across the misty skies of Zanthodon, consciousness had left the girl and she hung unconscious from the hooked claws of the thakdol, which were still sunk deeply in the carcass of the uld.

Thus she had not been awake when the flying reptile reached its noisome lair and deposited therein its double burden.

She recovered her consciousness in conditions so weird and frightful that, for a long, breathless moment, the Neolithic princess believed herself either blind or dead. For all about her stretched inky blackness, a gloom so intense as almost to be palpable to the touch. And to such as Darya of Zanthodon, reared in a cavern-world of perpetual day, the darkness was a thing of utter terror—

She screamed…then fell into a shocked silence as the echoes of her frightened cry boomed and resounded about her. From this the girl quickly discerned that she had not, after all, been deprived of her eyesight, but was trapped in an enclosed space of some sort. And, looking up, she discerned a faint trace of day far above her head.

Above her present place of confinement, daylight gleamed at the end of a tall natural chimney of naked rock, and the brave heart of the Cro-Magnon girl fainted within her at the knowledge of her predicament…for never could she hope to climb that chimney to reach the exit she could see far above her.

Or could she? For, if the huge pterodactyl had been able to descend through the shaft to leave her and the dead uld in this place, why could she not climb up it again? She was, after all, slender and slim, and her agile body was less than the bulk of the winged reptile.

Something crunched underfoot. The girl glanced down to see, dimly as her eyes adjusted to the unnatural gloom, that she was in a gigantic nest of woven reeds, littered with filth and noisome with the fetid droppings of the winged reptile.

Reaching out her arms, the girl explored the confines of her prison. Her fingers met rough stone walls, slimy stone floor, and the jagged curve of the ceiling.

It puzzled Darya that the thakdol had merely deposited her within its nest, mysteriously refraining from devouring both the unconscious girl and the carcass of the uld whose bloodscent had attracted the huge scavenger in the first place.

Then as the nest crackled under the gliding, waddling weight of some unseen creature, and a pang of terror lanced through Darya’s heart, she understood the reason for the thakdol’s forebearance—and the true horror of her deadly trap!

Stirring to wakefulness, small scaly forms wriggled and flopped toward where Darya crouched, hooked claws extended and sharp beaks clacking hungrily.

The pterodactyl had left her here to be devoured—by its hideous young!

* * * *

Hurok of the Stone Age strode through the dense undergrowth of the primeval jungle, his every sense alert and wary for the presence of danger. Well did he know, that hulking veteran of a thousand hunts, that the aisles of the jungle were the dominion of the savage vandar, the ponderous, slow-moving grymp, and of the dreaded omodon, or cave bear. But, rather to his surprise, naught moved or stirred within the jungle—or, if it did, his keen nostrils and sensitive ears could discern no token of its presence.

The Neanderthal man dismissed the evidence of his senses, although he knew that betimes the predators of the jungle slept, and that within the eternal day of Zanthodon, sleep is a matter of individual need and individual choice.

Still, he did not trust the peculiar absence of danger. It might well be that all of the monsters of the jungle had selected this particular hour of all hours to fall asleep, but such a coincidence he considered to be most unlikely.

No: there is only one creature that is the enemy of all of the beasts, and which many of them have learned to fear.

And the name of that enemy is Man.

And if men were in this portion of the jungle, in such numbers that even the giant reptiles remained prudently in hiding, Hurok grimly knew that they could only be the savages of Kor. And that meant deadly danger?

Danger not to Hurok, of course, for he was one of the warriors of Kor himself, and had naught to fear from his fellow Apemen. But the horizons of Hurok’s heart had but recently widened to include others besides his own countrymen. And if a large force of warriors had landed upon the mainland from Kor, they were a potential danger to his friend Black Hair, as he named Eric Carstairs, and to his friends, the panjani warriors of Thandar.

Walking now with some care, the mighty Apemen traversed the jungle, gliding through the thick underbrush as silently as ever an Algonquin brave trod the savage wilderness of early America. No more silently than the moccasinclad feet of the Indian stepped the huge, splayed feet of the Neanderthal.

And, ere long, he paused, freezing immobile in the shadow of a great tree. For the breeze had brought to his nostrils a familiar aroma, that of the hairy and unwashed bodies of his kind.

Cautiously parting the branches before him, Hurok peered therethrough.

Lumbering along down the aisles between the tall boles of the trees there advanced into view a great force of Korians Hurok could not count higher than the ten digits upon his huge hands, but he knew at a glance that there were many tens-of-tens. Among them he saw and recognized Uruk the High Chief and Xask his cunning vizier, and One-Eye. A grunt of surprise escaped the thick lips of Hurok when he observed the panjan Fumio to be among the host of the war party, and that he went freely and was not bound.

For a long moment, Hurok debated within his savage and primitive heart: he had only to step forward and join his fellow Korians, to be restored to his place among his people and for his adventures with the stranger Black Hair to become only an episode in his experience, quickly over and soon forgotten…or he could turn about and strive to warn the panjani of their peril, thus forever making himself an outlaw and an exile, shut out from the companionship of his tribe and the communion of his kind.…

And there passed through the dim mentality of Hurok the Neanderthal a vision of that which was yet to come, and which only he could prevent from happening. In his rudimentary imagination, the Apeman pictured a howling horde of his fellows, falling upon the unsuspecting panjani as they toiled at the building of their camp. From concealment the Korians would charge whooping, swinging their stone axes and heavy clubs, jabbing with their flint-bladed spears. And the blood of the hated panjani would flow in rivers. And the blood of Black Hair-would be among them.…

Without a word or a change of expression, Hurok whirled and plunged into the underbrush, heavy feet pounding the earth as he hurtled back the way he had come with all the speed his lumbering form could muster.

To warn the enemies of his race that his people were upon them—to commit a crime against his own kind so horrendous as to be unthinkable—and to prove to Eric Carstairs that even a hulking, apelike Neanderthal can understand kindness, mercy, justice, and the meaning of friendship.

CHAPTER 19

THE STAMPEDE

With a swiftness born of utter desperation, Darya whirled and tore from her shoulders the bloody carcass of the uld she had slain back in the clearing. She raised the body above her head and hurled it in the very jaws of the infant pterodactyls as the slavering nestlings writhed and scrabbled toward her.

As the little monsters fell upon the bloody carcass, Darya seized the momentary respite her act had given her. Crouching, she sprang into the darkness; reaching up, she seized and clung to the sharp stone lip of the chimney that was her only avenue to freedom and light and the open air.

For a long, breathless moment she clung by her fingertips, her toes dangling within reach of the fanged jaws.

Then, like an acrobat, the lithe and supple girl drew her knees up, hooked one elbow within the chimney, and inched her way into the shaft, inch by slow and painful inch.

It was wider than it had seemed from below, as the Cro-Magnon girl discovered, to her immense relief.

She had reasoned that it must be so, since by no other route could the adult thakdol have made its entry into the subterranean nesting place. But not until she had proven this to herself, did the girl dare hope.

The rock chimney was rough and slimy with a moist exudation from the surface of the porous rock.

Wedging her knees and elbows firmly into notches, the girl climbed the shaft with agonizing slowness, ignoring the pain as the sharp outcroppings scored scarlet furrows across the tender flesh of her arms and legs.

From time to time she paused to rest and to catch her breath, for the ascent was one so difficult and hazardous as to have given pause to a veteran spelunker.

And at any moment the monstrous mother might return to share the feast with her grisly brood below.

After an interminable time, filthy from head to foot, smeared with her own blood and running with perspiration, the girl succeeded in reaching the mouth of the stone chimney.

She dragged herself out up and over the lip, and sprawled at full length upon the flat rock, bone-weary with exhaustion and trembling with the relief of the tension under which she had for so long toiled.

The brilliant day of Zanthodon was warm and comforting upon her weary limbs, and the freshness of the air as the winds of this height blew past her perch refreshed the weary jungle girl. How delicious, after the stench and the terrible gloom of the thakdol’s nest, to see the light of open day and to inhale the fresh, salt breeze from the inland seal.

And then she looked about, and her heart sank within her breast beneath a weight of leaden despair.

For she lay atop a flat mesa-like shelf of rock which towered many hundreds of feet above the grassy plain.

And there was no way down.

* * * *

It did not take the long legs of Jorn the Hunter very long to cross the plains to where the herd of wooly mammoths browsed. His swift and easy stride was a pace which the Cro-Magnon savage could have maintained for hours, if necessary.

But the legs of his companion were far less young, and even in his long-ago youth the elderly savant had been no athlete. And so at the midpoint of their trek, the Hunter was forced to pause while his companion caught his breath and tilled the tremor in his aching limbs.

In his secret heart, the Professor was not at all sorry that his strength had given out at his point in their journey across the plains. For he delighted in the unique opportunity to observe a herd of mammoths in their natural habitat, and at such close range.

“Fascinating!” breathed Professor Potter to himself, his vague blue eyes gleaming with interest through his spectacles, which, as usual, tilted askew on the bridge of his nose. He stared at the enormous beasts, taking in the thick, shaggy, wavy hair, faintly reddish, which clothed the sides and shoulders of the browsing monsters, and the way the daylight gleamed on the polished ivory of their fantastic, curling tusks.

He studied the appearance of the young mammoths, their fat sides virtually bald save for a red-gold fuzz, and how their mothers tended them as they waddled about, squeaking and playing.

“What a chapter this will make for my book!” the Professor wheezed. Jorn the Hunter looked discomforted.

“I think we should be gone from here,” he grunted shortly. “For the thantors can be dangerous, you know, even though they are not meat-eaters…if they feel their young to be in danger, they can become formidable adversaries.”

“Like any other herbivores, of course,” nodded the Professor. “Another moment,” he added in a pleading tone. “I really wouldn’t have missed this sight for the world—!”

On the edge of the herd there stood a great bull with his back to the females and the young, for all the world as if standing guard. As his tiny eyes spied the two men crouched resting in the long grasses, the sentinel flapped his enormous ears and lifted his trunk, giving voice to a warning cry.

As if by prearranged signal, the females crowded around, sheltering their young, while the other bulls echoed the sentinel’s challenging cry and came shuffling through the long grasses to spy out the danger the first thantor had discovered.

“Let’s get out of here—now!” urged Jorn, tugging at the Professor’s arm.

The skinny savant blinked nervously and wet his lips. He yearned to linger, to observe the protective system utilized by the Ice Age monsters, but the danger of alarming the mammoths into a charge was obvious.

“I suppose you are right, young man,” he said reluctantly.

“This way,” said Jorn. And springing to his feet, he began running at right angles to his former path, leading the Professor away from the grazing herd, hoping thus to relieve their fears.

But it didn’t quite work.

The trouble was that the bulls were sufficiently aroused by now to charge after anything that moved, and when they saw the two humans in flight away from them, they burst into a stumbling, heavy-footed pursuit.

Jorn knew the lumbering monsters could not run as fast as he, but the old man was not as fleet of foot as was Jorn, and would slow them both down. But Jorn could not desert the Professor, leaving him to be gored and trampled by the mammoths. His mind racing even as his feet flew across the plain, he strove to envision a way out of their dilemma. Long before he and the Professor could reach the shelter of the cliffs, where deep and narrow ravines would afford them shelter from the bulky thantors, the enraged bulls would be upon them. And no man that has ever lived could hope to slay a wooly mammoth with his bare hands.…

“We cannot hope to outdistance the brutes,” wheezed the professor, at his heels. “What shall we do?”

“I do not know,” answered Jorn stolidly. “Save your breath for running!”

* * * *

Marooned helplessly atop the flat, mesa-like peak, Darya of Thandar came to realize the danger she was in as she looked about her, despairingly.

All about her rose pinnacles and ledges of rock, and therein she espied many thakdol nests, some dilapidated and evidently abandoned, but others containing odd-looking; leathery eggs or squalling, slithering young.

The Peaks of Peril must be, she realized with growing horror, the breeding grounds of the dreaded flying lizards. Some of their huge nests were built atop slender spears of stone; others had been wedged into the nooks and crannies which pocked the face of the crumbling cliffs. And a few were built upon the narrow ledges that wound down the sides of the peaks.

The fresh breeze raised to her nostrils the unholy stench of the thakdol’s droppings, and the fetid reek of rotting meat. Here and there about the peaks flapped or soared the flying reptiles, and the girl knew that at any moment one might spy her clinging to the broad shelf of the mesa, and descend to rend and rip her tender flesh with horrible, hooked claws.

It was imperative that Darya leave her precarious perch; but where could she go? Not down into that black chimney again, to descend once more into the loathsome darkness of the thakdol’s nest, for death awaited her at the bottom of that dark hole as surely as it did aloft.

Seized by a sudden notion, the girl crept to the edge of the flat rock and peered down. As she had surmised, narrow stone ledges zigzagged down the steep sheer cliff. It was similar ledges along the face of the nearer of the peaks that had given her the idea.

For such as the Stone Age girl, to think was to act.

Without a moment’s hesitation, she flung herself prone and wrapped her lithe arms about a projecting boss, slid her legs over the edge of the mesa. Her probing feet found the upper slope of the ledge.

Testing her weight, she decided that the ledge could bear her without collapsing, and thus began her descent down the side of the cliff.

To the pampered children of civilization such as you or I, that descent would have been an endless giddy nightmare of creeping along, inching your way down a steep shelf of rock that, at times, narrowed to mere inches. Nor did Darya find the experience exhilarating or particularly enjoyable: but the daring girl did not falter or give way to her fears. Her small, stubborn chin firmly set and resolve glinting in her blue eyes, she set her back against the cliff and inched her way along the ledge which led down the cliff by slow and tortuous stages.

The savage girl knew all too well that the slightest miscalculation, the briefest moment of imbalance, a single false step, could plunge her to a swift and horrible death against the sharp rocks far below.

But she went on, and in time the edge widened into a large shelf which extended several yards from the cliff wall.

Here she paused to still the trembling of her limbs and to catch her breath in safety.

As she relaxed, staring out across the broad plain, she espied of a sudden two tiny figures fleeing from the stampeding herd of mammoths.

The bright yellow hair and bronzed, lithe figure of the taller of the tiny figures seemed to her familiar.

As did the scrawny legs and wobbling sun helmet of the second.

It was her countryman, Jorn the Hunter, and Professor Potter, the friend of Eric Carstairs!

Catching her breath, she saw and realized their deadly peril, for the rampaging bulls of the herd were almost upon the two.

Even as she watched they halted suddenly, the two fleeing figures, and fell prone in the grass for some inexplicable reason.

And then her view of the two was blotted out by a mystery…a blaze of flame sprang out of nowhere, and a plume of thick black smoke obscured her view.

CHAPTER 20

THE DWELLER IN THE CAVE

Puffing along at the heels of his Cro-Magnon friend, Professor Percival P. Potter, Ph. D., groaned and grumbled to himself. His predicament was perilous, he knew, and this infuriated him. That a scientist of his keen perception, vast learning, and brilliant intellect should be so utterly helpless before the brute strength and tiny intellect of the enraged herd of mammoths that thundered along behind them, coming closer and closer with every ominous moment, exasperated the short-tempered savant.

“What is the use of all those degrees,” he panted angrily to himself, “if one cannot outthink a herd of prehistoric pachyderms?”

It was hard to do any serious, constructive thinking while running for one’s life, he noticed. So he forced his mind to analyze the present situation as coolly as he might study an academic problem, while comfortably seated behind his cluttered desk.

The solution to our dilemma is obvious, he thought to himself. At the moment, the mammoths are angry. We must replace that anger with a stronger emotion, such as—fear! But what in the world—or beneath it—would so huge and monstrous a beast be afraid of?

The Professor recalled the battle that he and Eric Carstairs had watched from the branches of the tree, when one such mammoth as those which now lumbered on their very heels had attacked and trampled into gory ruin a fullgrown dinosaur. So huge and mighty were the great mammoths, that they feared not even the terrible dragons of the Jurassic.…

Was there not something that all of the beasts feared in common? A tantalizing wisp of thought tugged at the Professor’s attention. There was something.…

“—Eureka!” he shrilled, causing Jorn to glance back over his shoulder.

“Save your breath for running,” advised the Cro-Magnon shortly. But the Professor shook his head, eyes gleaming triumphantly.

“Have you still those bits of flint wherewith you built our campfire just before the young woman was carried off by the pterodactyl?” the old man wheezed urgently.

“In the pouch at my waist,” grunted Jorn the Hunter.

“These grasses which clothe the meadow are dry as tinder,” panted the Professor. “One spark should set them alight. And the wind from the sea is blowing directly in our faces!”

“You mean—”

“Exactly! The one thing all beasts fear, is the thing which will drive the mammoths away in panicky flight; for fear is an emotion more powerful and compelling than mere anger.”

“And all beasts fear…fire!” said Jorn with a gin of approval. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

They halted in their flight, crouching together in the thick grasses as Jorn fumbled in the little pouch of tanned skins which hung at his waist. Again and again, he struck the small flints together, while the Professor groaned and cursed and the herd of lumbering pachyderms came thundering down upon them.

Suddenly the grasses caught, and a sheet of flame leaped roaring up between the two men and the advancing monsters. Flame and thick dense black smoke soared high, like a magical barrier erected by the potent gesture of an enchanter.

The odor of burning grasses came to the sensitive nostrils of the mammoth in the vanguard of the stampede. It was the same huge bull who had stood sentry over the grazing females and their young.

And as the dreaded smell of burning grass and the terrible, licking flames shot up, the bull squealed piercingly in fear, and halted, turning, flapping his huge ears in alarm.

He headed off to the left, toward the edges of the jungle which stood below the plain.

And one by one the stampeding bulls scented fire and smoke and turned to follow him.

Within mere moments, the entire herd of wooly mammoths was racing away from where Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter crouched amid the grasses—straight for the wall of foliage that marked the edge of the jungle.

* * * *

A sudden sound from behind her caught Darya off guard. Surprised, the savage girl turned to peer behind her.

She had not noticed—or if she had, had paid no particular attention to the fact—but behind her the black mouth of a cave yawned in the sheer face of the cliff.

And within that cave something large and heavy dragged itself over rough stone!

The eyes of the Cro-Magnon princess could not pierce the dense gloom of the cave’s inner recesses so as to ascertain the nature of that which had made the sound; but she heard the scraping of claws against naked stone and a ponderous shifting of some enormous, breathing weight within the cave.

What had aroused the unknown denizen of the cave? Had it been her shrill, involuntary cry as she saw and recognized Jorn and the Professor fleeing from the mammoths on the plains below her airy perch?

There came a sound from just within the entrance of the cave, a sound like slow, dragging footsteps—

The girl sniffed the air questioningly. Her nostrils did not detect the oily, musky reek of thakdol droppings. Instead, she sensed an odor rank and powerful, like wet fur.

It was an odor that she knew from of old, in her distant homeland…and an odor that she and all of her kind feared.

The girl retreated to the edge of the stone shelf, looking around her desperately for something she might employ as a weapon, for the ledge she had been following terminated only a few feet beyond the shelf whereon she now stood, and in that direction escape was impossible. Although, if the beast within the black cave were the thing she feared, no weapon she might find would serve to fend it off.

And then a vast, shaggy, manlike form came crawling out of the cave, sniffing rumbling threateningly.

It rose ponderously on short, thick legs until it towered nine feet into the air. Pricking its furry ears and glaring around with hungry eyes, it uttered a menacing growl, huge hairy arms lifting to seize and crush.

The claws which armed those paws were keen and terrible, and so were the great white fangs now bared by the wrinkling black muzzle.

And Darya quailed in fear…to her, the dweller in the cave was the dreaded omodon, the most feared of all the mighty beasts of Thandar.

But had the Professor been on the scene, he would perchance have identified the monstrous, hulking form as that of Ursus spelaeus, the mammoth cave bear of the Stone Age, which died out in Europe by 10,000 B.C., but survived here in Zanthodon the Underground World.

Mightiest and most dreadful of the enemies of Cro-Magnon man, the great cave bear weighed one thousand pounds at maturity, and it could have mauled a dozen grizzlies, snapping their spines or crushing their skulls with a mere slap of its huge paws, heavy as sledgehammers.

Grunting hungrily, the shaggy monster came shuffling out upon the ledge…advancing toward the helpless girl, thick arms outstretched to mangle and crush.

And Darya had nowhere to escape to, for the only way off that ledge was straight down, where fang-like rocks thrust skyward to impale her slender body!

* * * *

Tharn of Thandar stood amid the clearing where Fumio had attacked his daughter, Darya, only hours before. It was galling to the savage monarch to be this close to his child, and to remain ignorant of her whereabouts. Darya might only be a hundred yards away, cowering in terror before the slinking advance of some dreaded saber-tooth or monstrous reptile…or she might be miles away by now, carried off by slavers.

Or she might be dead.

With eagle eyes the caveman king searched the trampled turf at his feet, striving to read the events which had earlier transpired upon this very spot. Darya’s footprints could be clearly seen in the mud at the edge of the pool, and the grasses were torn and disturbed as though by three pair of feet. But little more than this could the Cro-Magnon read.

The bushes parted and there-through glided the lean, grizzled chief scout, Komad. In his hand, Komad bore a crude javelin which had been fashioned from a long stick.

“What news?” demanded the High Chief. Komad shrugged. “Little enough, my Omad,” he said. “I have found another clearing between this place and the sea. There the grasses were disturbed as though by the pawing of a small beast, and there is blood upon the grasses. It is as fresh as the blood upon this spear, and I reckon it to be the blood of an uld.”

Tharn examined the javelin and handed it to me.

“Have you ever seen it before?” he asked.

I shook my head, reluctantly. It was, of course, the javelin which Fumio had made, after I had engineered our escape from the Drugars. But as yet I had not learned of Fumio’s assault on Darya, or how Jorn had taken away his spear, wherewith she had slain the uld before being carried off.

“The weapon is hastily made from a dry, fallen branch,” observed Tharn. “Certainly not of Thandarian worksmanship, nor of the Drugars, either.”

“When we escaped from the Drugars,” I pointed out, “we were all unarmed. Upon entering the jungle, any one of your people might have paused in his or her flight long enough to trim such a stick, making a crude weapon such as this.”

“That is true,” nodded Tharn.

Then, turning to the old scout, he was about to command him to return to his search-party, when the underbrush parted and a huge form shouldered through.

“Hurok!” I cried with relief. For it was indeed the Korian, my Neanderthal comrade who had fled alone into the jungle rather than impose his undesired presence upon the Cro-Magnons.

“What do you want here, Drugar?” demanded Tharn sternly, with one hand upon his flint knife.

“Hurok has returned where he is not wanted,” said the Neanderthal man in his deep, slow voice, “to warn the friends of Black Hair that Uruk, Omad of Kor, and a mighty host of warriors have entered this part of the jungle and are advancing upon this very spot.”

The Cro-Magnons flinched and gasped, for the news burst upon them like an unsuspected thunderbolt.

Tharn grunted angrily, eyes glaring like those of a lion at bay. “Just when we were on the track of my daughter,” he growled, “we must face the Drugars in war! Well, so be it—Komad, summon my warriors.”

The scout nodded, and lifting to his lips the hollow horn of an aurochs he sounded a deep, groaning call.

At once warriors and huntsmen began returning to the glade of the pool, assembling to hear the commands of their Omad.

“We cannot bear the brunt of attack here,” decided Tharn swiftly, “for they could hide behind every bole while we remain exposed to their missiles. Komad, where is a more advantageous place for such a battle as advances upon us?”

The old scout thought a moment, then pointed. “In that direction, the jungle ends, opening upon a level plain, with cliffs and mountains beyond,” he answered.

“Then let us depart for the plain at once,” commanded Tharn.

PART VI: WAR IN THE STONE AGE

CHAPTER 21

THE PASS THROUGH THE PEAKS

As the panic-stricken herd receded toward the jungle, Torn and Professor Potter surveyed their handiwork with a certain degree of complacency and self-congratulation. And the Neolithic chieftain turned to view the old man with a new light of respect.

“It was clever of you to think of fire,” said the youth admiringly. “When all that Jorn could think of was to run away…you must be a very wise man.”

The Professor preened himself a trifle, basking in the admiring gaze of the young savage.

“Ahem!” he coughed. “Kind of you, my boy, but actually no more than I deserve…for in my own country, I will have you know, I am a highly-respected scholar and authority upon many recondite subjects. A trained, scientific mind, you know, should be able to cope with the small problems of the Stone Age…”

Like most of the words which the Professor used, Jorn could make nothing of scholar, authority, and so on. But he gathered the general drift of the Professor’s modest little speech, and smiled slightly.

“I suggest that we continue our journey, now that I am rested,” murmured the Professor, peering off toward the cliffs, which now were quite near.

Torn nodded, turning to survey the Peaks of Peril. And all at once the Stone Age boy froze as cold fear clawed at his vitals.

“What is it that disturbs you, young man?” inquired the Professor, noting his companion’s sudden anxiety. “Has the wind changed, perchance, driving the wall of fire back upon us?”

“No,” growled Jorn the Hunter, pointing. “Look—!”

The Professor craned his head, peering in the direction of Jorn’s extended arm. And suddenly he gasped, and went pale.

For there, crouching at the edge of a shelf of stone, they both could clearly observe the form of Darya of Thandar!

She was dirtied and dishevelled by her experiences in the thakdol’s nest, and the blood of the uld’s carcass had stained her back and shoulders, but at a glance both men could see that she still lived and did not seem to have sustained any injury of a serious nature.

And then there loomed up above her the immense and shaggy shape of that which had caught her terrified, fascinated attention—

“Omodon!” groaned Jorn in stifled tones.

“Cave bear, for the Love of Linnaeus!” cried the Professor, almost in the same moment.

They watched, frozen with horror, as the lumbering monster advanced upon the cowering girl, huge arms lifted to maul and crush and slay.…

* * * *

It did not take the horde of Apemen from Kor very long to find the clearing from which Tharn and his warriors had retreated, nor were the signs of their passage unreadable to the alert senses of the Neanderthal men. If their eyes were rather weak and dim of vision, as I had by now good cause to believe, their sense of smell was remarkably keenkeener by far than the sensitivity of the nostrils of civilized men, for they were closer to the primal beasts than are we.

It was One-Eye who detected the direction in which the Cro-Magnons had fled.

Crouched on all fours, the Neanderthal man sniffed the footprints in the turf. A bestial growl escaped his snarling lips as he scented a detested odor.

“Panjani!” he grunted to his Chief. “Tens-of-tens…they went that way,” he added, pointing. Uruk surveyed the end of the clearing, his suspicious little eyes reading the passage of many men in broken twigs and disturbed fallen leaves.

“Come!” he grunted, gesturing with his axe. And without another word, the Apeman turned and lumbered in the direction in which Tharn of Thandar had marched his warriors. At his heels shambled two score of the mightiest warriors of Kor, armed to the very teeth.

Xask and Fumio, however, took up the rear. The sly vizier preferred to put as much distance between himself and any armed conflict as could with prudence be effected, and Fumio, although no coward, wisely clung by the side of his only friend among the Drugars.

“It would appear that the fears of One-Eye were correct, and that the father of the girl from Thandar has indeed pursued her captors, and in force!” observed the slender man in the silken tunic. “Now, by Minos, we shall see a battle!—but from a careful distance, eh, Fumio?”

“As you say, lord,” muttered the other. Inwardly, a pang of despair lanced through his heart; for if Tharn of Thandar were indeed as near as the Apemen believed, then he stood in a position of peril more deadly than if he had rashly placed himself in the very forefront of the Korian charge:

Once Darya’s father had learned of his attempted rape of the Princess of Thandar, he would be hounded into exile and outlawry for the remainder of his life, with no possible hope of mercy or a royal pardon.

If, indeed, the Cro-Magnon monarch permitted him to escape with his life!

“Let us, then, follow our brutish heroes,” smiled the slim, dark man, “and observe their battle against the rival host.”

The two conspirators entered the jungle and followed the loping, grunting Neanderthals to the edge.

* * * *

Reaching the broad and level plains before the first of the Apemen of Kor, Tharn and his host of warriors took up their position upon the sandy crest of a rounded knoll some distance from the edge of the trees.

It was not high, this shallow hill, to afford the Cro-Magnons any particular advantage, but still and all their savage adversaries would have to come at them up the slope, which would force the bowlegged primitives to slow the speed of their charge, however slightly.

Here Tharn disposed his warriors swiftly in a double ring about the hill-crest, and the formation he selected inescapably reminded me of the famous “British square.” Which gave me something of an idea.

“If a stranger may offer a suggestion,” I said, turning to Tharn. He grunted his assent, not taking his eyes from the edges of the trees.

“If you will arm the first rank of your warriors with bows, and have them kneel,” I suggested, “while the second rank arm themselves with spears, and stand, one rank can discharge their weapons and rearm, while the second rank fire as the first are rearming. In this manner, you can maintain a continuous rate of fire upon the Drugars, and bring them to a standstill. It is worth a try, at least.”

Something gleamed in Tharn’s eyes and was gone.

“Your plan is not without virtue,” said Tharn, frowning thoughtfully. “Is it thus that the warriors of your people defend themselves against their foemen?”

“That is so,” I nodded. While my people are American, their ancestors were British, so it was not exactly an untruth.

In low, clear tones the Omad of Thandar passed his instructions to his warriors. It is to the credit of the men of Thandar that they instantly grasped the tactical advantage of the trick I had suggested. And I remembered reading, somewhere, that the human brain of modern man is in every respect identical with that of our Cro-Magnon ancestors tens of thousands of years before.

Ignorant and superstitious savages these Stone Age men might be, but their intellects were as swift and keen as my own.

“They are here,” said one of the bowmen, pointing.

We looked; hulking, hairy figures lurked within the shadows of the trees. Daylight gleamed on the polished stone of axe-blade and spear-point.

“Well, then, let them come,” said Tharn in a level voice, “and we shall see what we shall see.”

He turned toward his warriors.

“Warriors of Thandar,” he said in clear and ringing tones, “we have come into this region to rescue the gomad, my daughter, from her brutish and cowardly captors. Those who attack from ambush and steal our women are before you! They are no less mortal than are you, and their flesh may be pierced with sharpened stone as easily as can your own. But they are not true men, and are hence your inferiors, closer to the bestial than are you: prove, therefore, once and for all time, which is the superior—the Apemen of Kor, or the true men of Thandar!”

Even as the Omad ceased speaking, a chorus of grunting, cries reached our ears, and hulking figures burst from the underbrush, waddling on thick, hairy, bowed legs toward our lines.

And the battle began!

* * * *

Jorn and the Professor stared skyward at Darya, who suddenly vanished from their view. The enormous form of the mighty omodon also turned from view, leaving the two watchers in ignorance of the fate of the Cro-Magnon girl.

“Do you see a way up the cliff?” inquired Professor Potter, anxiously.

Jorn the Hunter searched the cliff face with keen eyes, and shook his head reluctantly.

“The ledge which Darya seems to have been following ends shortly past the shelf on which she was attacked by the omodon,” he said in grimly solemn tones.

“What, then, shall we do?” inquired the Professor, reluctant to give up, although it seemed a hopeless quest.

“There!”

The sharp eyes of the Hunter had spied a crevice in the clifflike wall of stone. It was a ravine, narrow as a man, which seemed to penetrate the mountain to some depth.

“Is it a pass through the mountains to the other side, do you think, or an entrance into the mountain itself?” inquired the Professor. “Do you think the mountain is hollow?”

Jorn shook his head, blond mane tousling.

“One cave does not a hollow mountain make,” he said. “Still and all, we shall not know the truth of it until we trace the ravine to its end. Come—”

And the Cro-Magnon youth turned on his heel and vanished into the dark and narrow crevice, leaving the Professor to follow as best he could.

CHAPTER 22

THE THUNDER-WEAPON

As the mighty cave bear came down upon her, Darya hurled a handful of pebbles to her right. They clattered noisily against the stone shelf of the ledge.

Its small eyes half-blinded by the sudden emergence from the darkness of the cave into the eternal day of Zanthodon, the huge beast swung clumsily in the direction from which that clattering sound had come—massive paws reaching.

In that split-second, as the beast turned its side to her, Darya acted!

Since there was nowhere to go but back the way she had come or into the black mouth of the cave bear’s lair, she chose the second route.

In a moment the darkness of the cave swallowed her. The ragged stone roof was low, forcing the lithe girl to bend almost double as she penetrated the interior of the cave. The stench of the bear’s droppings was overpowering, but Darya gulped air and forced herself to go on. This cave might well prove to be a dead end, but the girl would never know until she discovered the fact for herself.

Beyond the lair of the omodon, she found a very small passage which only one as slim and limber as herself could possibly negotiate. But once through it, the cavern opened to such a height that she could walk erect, although the darkness was utter and absolute.

Extending her arms so that she could feel for any obstruction before her, the Cro-Magnon girl explored the length of the cave. At its end, she found a side-tunnel which sloped sharply downward. Since she had nothing at all to lose by being venturesome, she began to trace the steeply sloping path.

* * * *

It had been many hours since the girl had drunk or eaten or enjoyed a normal and restful slumber, and she was trembling with exertion and fatigue, and ferociously hungry. But the women of the Stone Age learn quite early on to endure such privations as they must, and Darya bravely closed her mind to the ache in her weary muscles, the thirst which dried her throat, and the hunger which gnawed at her belly.

From the moment she had slain the uld everything had gone wrong, she thought to herself as she went down the steep incline in utter gloom. If only she had remained in the clearing with Jorn and the old man!

If only someone brave and strong and resourceful were here with her, to share the danger and to comfort her in the darkness…if only the handsome stranger, Eric Carstairs, were here.…

Resolutely, the Cro-Magnon princess wrenched her thoughts from such matters, and applied herself to the problems at hand.

Caverns such as this were not entirely unknown to her experience. In her distant homeland, caves were found in the sides of the hills and mountains, and the Stone Age princess knew that at times they were the homes of fearsome creatures, like the xunth, the giant serpents which infest the interior of the earth, or the vathrib, the dreadful albino spiders of the abyss.

Darya had no reason to suspect that such terrible creatures dwelt here in the mountains beyond the jungle country. On the other hand, she had no cause to think that they did not. Whichever the truth of the matter be, there was nothing else for her to do but to continue that terrible journey through the utter darkness of the mountain’s interior.

To go back, to retrace her steps until she reentered the lair of the omodon, was sure and certain death.

But to continue on forward offered her, at very least, a chance of survival.

So she went forward…into the unknown.

* * * *

The howling mob of Neanderthal warriors burst from the edges of the jungle and charged, swinging the stone axes and jabbing their crude spears, upon the massed ranks of the Cro-Magnons.

Twangg! went the Cro-Magnon bows, and the hulking Apemen went down squalling, plucking feebly at the vibrant, feathered shafts which protruded from their breasts.

Again they charged, yowling, and this time the spearmen who stood above and behind the kneeling archers bent their powerful shoulders and arms, loosening upon the shambling horde their long, flintbladed javelins.

And again the Apemen fell, coughing blood, some pinned to the turf by the force with which the spears had been thrown.

As the survivors fled back into the jungle, Uruk, from a safe place behind the bole of a mighty tree, growled menacingly. He had not before faced the warriors of Thandar in open battle, preferring the less dangerous tactics of ambush and sudden raid. And now he had an inkling of why Xask had heretofore persuaded him to avoid an open conflict, which had hitherto agreed with his own inclinations.

“Circle around them, Uruk, and strike from several sides at the same times,” suggested his vizier from a similar place of safety and concealment. “Remember, they have only a limited number of spears and arrows. Once expended, their supplies of weaponry cannot easily be replaced. At that time, it will be man against man, axe against axe, strength against brute strength. And in any such contest, the warriors of Kor are bound to triumph, for they are stronger and heavier than are the men of Thandar!”

This made good sense to the dull-witted Uruk, so the High Chief passed his grunting commands along and soon the battle began again upon that level plain under the eternal day.

“We cannot maintain this rate of expenditure,” said Tharn to his chieftains. “The Drugars vastly outnumber us, and we have no way to replenish our arrows, once the supply we brought hither from Thandar has been exhausted.”

“What do you suggest, my Omad?” asked Goran, one of the chieftains. “Should we break ranks and attack the Drugars in hand-to-hand combat?”

“That were suicidal,” pointed out another of the chieftains, one Dumah. “For they are weightier than we, and mightier of limb. Still and all, it may be the only way to victory…”

Thus far in the battle, the warriors of Thandar had lost only a few lives, while inflicting heavy losses upon the Apemen of Kor. And Tharn was reluctant to waste his strength against the shambling horde.

“We shall see what happens,” he growled. “After the next charge…and here they come!”

* * * *

Hurok and I had fought beside the warriors of Thandar, and each of us had inflicted losses upon the enemy. I have no way of knowing what thoughts passed through the mind of my massive friend as he battled against his former compatriots, but I can imagine the emotions that stirred in his breast.

As for myself, I did not bother to waste the few bullets which remained to me, but employed a longbow I had taken from one of the slain Cro-Magnons. The weapon was cruder than those I had heretofore used in idle sport, but the skills I had learned in former days stood me well in the battle against the Neanderthals. More than one shaft loosed from my bow sank to the feather in the hairy breasts of a subhuman primitive.

When the next charge struck, it became instantly obvious to us all that Uruk was gambling his entire strength upon the chance of overwhelming our force. For he himself led the charge: too wary to expose himself to our bows, he had waited until our arrows were all but exhausted, before charging roaring in the vanguard, hoping to reap the victory.

And in truth we were almost out of arrows, and as for the spearsmen, their supply of javelins were very nearly depleted. And thus the defense disintegrated into a melee, as it became a hand-to-hand battle, with every man for himself.

And now the primitive Neanderthals had us at the disadvantage, for when it came to hand-to-hand battle, they were larger and stronger and very much heavier than we.

Amid the melee, I noticed a sudden trembling of the earth beneath our feet. I was swinging a stone axe in the very teeth of one of the Apemen, at the time. Splitting his ugly face in half and wrenching the stone blade of the axe free, I turned as the earth shook—

To see a fearsome sight!

I seized Tharn by the shoulder, as we fought side by side.

“Break and run for the trees!” I yelled in his ear. He stared uncomprehendingly, then followed the direction of my gaze and blanched.

Bellowing his command, he broke and ran for shelter, as did most of the well-disciplined Cro-Magnon warriors.

The Neanderthals, their blood-lust roused by now, paid little attention, continuing to fight as long as a Thandarian stood before them to be slain. But when the line of defenders melted away in all directions, they turned bewilderedly.

“They flee!” howled Uruk, triumphantly. “We have won!”

As it happened, he stood directly in my path, the High Chief of the Apemen of Kor. And as I ran for shelter, he spied me and his little eyes gleamed. Leaping into my path, he attempted to brain me with one swing of his apelike arms.

I was, at the moment, unarmed, my spear having broken off short in the burly chest of the last Neanderthal I had slain and my arrows expended. But the automatic which Hurok had restored to me was still thrust within the waistband of my tattered shorts, and my hand went instinctively to the butt of the pistol as the immense form of Uruk loomed up before me, glee and blood-lust burning in his little eyes.

Then his gaze fell to the object in my fist, and his expression faltered. He recognized it from One-Eye’s description as the terrible, thunder-weapon. Sudden fear distorted big ugly visage, and he sought to hurl himself upon me before I could employ its magic against him.

I put a bullet through his brain.

The explosion seemed oddly loud-deafening! Arrested by the sudden noise, the Apemen paused, faltering. They wrinkled up their nostrils at the sharp, bitter, unfamiliar stench of gunpowder.

Uruk fell at my very feet as if struck down by some invisible force. Puzzled, his warriors looked him over, but their dim little eyes were not keen enough to discern the small, black-rimmed bullet-hole between his eyes. It must have seemed to the ghost-ridden and superstitious minds of the primitives that their mighty Chief had been felled by the force of magic!

Howling, they sprang away from me, clearing my path, and I seized the opportunity to sprint for the shelter of the trees, while the hulking savages milled in confusion, their dull wits striving to ascertain what had felled their leader.

Now One-Eye leaped forward, snatched the fang necklace of the High Chief from about the thick, hairy throat of the carcass and clasped it about his own neck. The others blinked at him, dully.

“The panjani flee!” he yowled, spreading wide his heavy, ape-like arms, brandishing his stone axe. “Fall upon them now, brave men of Kor, and slay them all!”

But still the earth shook and there sounded from the midst of the plain a drumming as of distant thunder coming near and nearer. One-Eye growled and cast a suspicious glance out into the flat land.

And at what he saw there, his face turned pale as milk beneath its coating of dirt and pelt of russet fur—!

CHAPTER 23

THUNDERING DOOM!

Blinking with dazed relief in the sudden brilliance of day, Darya emerged from a cleft in the rock at the further side of the Peaks of Peril, gazing about her tremulously.

The cavern had indeed bisected the bulk of the mountain, and now the jungle girl stepped forth into the clean air and warm daylight, thankful to have escaped from the monsters of the mountain peaks.

She was weary and hungry and dirty and dishevelled, but she was also unharmed. Before her stretched a narrow strip of beach washed by the salty waves of the Sogar-Jad. A small stream of fresh water wound its way down the slope to mingle with the sea, and it was fringed on either side with dense bushes.

Glimpsing the gurgling little brook, the Cro-Magnon girl was suddenly mindful of her sorry condition.

Dried blood from the carcass of the uld she had slain covered her back and shoulders, and her hands and arms and legs were filthy from crawling through black, noisome caves.

She paused and looked about her at the sloping ground, the narrow stretch of sandy beach, and the misty waters of the Sogar-Jad, which could be glimpsed shining through the interstices of the tall, fronded calamites which rose beside the prehistoric sea. Nowhere in view did the girl discern the slightest sign of animal or of human life, nor did aught her keen senses could detect suggest to her the presence of danger.

With a small sigh of relief, the weary girl unfastened her abbreviated garments of soiled, bedraggled fur, and cast them aside. For a moment she stood slim and naked at the edge of the little stream. Then she stepped daintily into the gurgling waters, waded out to the middle, and began to wash her beautiful young body.

The cold, pure water stung the many small cuts and abrasions on her arms, legs and knees, got from climbing through the stony caverns in the heart of the mountain. She splashed the chill water on her perfect breasts and scrubbed the dust and filth from her smooth thighs, sleek rounded calves and supple flanks, using handfulls of sand from the river-bottom in lieu of soap to scrub the stain of travel from her glowing flesh.

The icy wetness of her bath revived the flagging spirits of the Cro-Magnon princess and refreshed her weary and aching limbs. Floating on her back, she relaxed blissfully, enjoying her respite from exertion and danger.

That it might be only a momentary respite did not escape her thoughts; alas, it was to be even more brief than she could have guessed.…

* * * *

As she relaxed, letting the cold waters of the gurgling stream lave! and refresh her naked limbs, the young Cro-Magnon girl permitted her mind to drift back over the adventures and perils where-through she had so recently passed.

She wondered what had become of Jorn the Hunter and of the querulous, waspish old man from the Upper World…and her thoughts dwelt for a time on his tall, strong comrade with the crisp black hair and clear and steady gray eyes…did Eric Carstairs yet live, or had he succumbed to one or another of the numberless monsters of Zanthodon?

She rather hoped that somehow he had survived the many hazards of the wilderness…although it did not seem likely to her that she should ever set eyes upon him again.

Busied with her memories, letting the gushing river water drain the weariness and aching fatigue from her lithe young body, the girl dreamed lazily there, unmindful of the sharp, gloating eyes that lingered on her naked legs, sleek thighs and perfect young breasts.

From the concealment of the bushes which fringed the edges of the stream, a tall and curiously clad form crouched, staring at Darya through the leaves as she innocently bared her nude beauty amid the clear water.

The first sign she had that she was not alone came as swarthy hands clutched her bare shoulder and she turned to stare up into a cruel, grinning, bearded face.

And she screamed—

* * * *

As One-Eye turned to seek the source of that peculiar drumming thunder which caused the earth to shake, fear suddenly smote him to the heart and the power of speech deserted his frozen tongue.

The stone axe he had clenched in his hairy hand now dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers as the Apeman flinched in unholy terror from that which he saw bearing down upon him upon the plain.

A long, moving mass of dark, lumbering forms, veiled in rising dust, with the scarlet of crackling flames behind them, goading them on!

Like moving mountains they were, like walking hills of dark russet fur, their sail-like ears flapping, trunks lifted to give voice to shrill squeals of sheer panic, and the daylight gleamed dimly on their fantastic, curling tusks.

His tongue frozen with shock, all One-Eye could do to warn his fellows was to extend one trembling arm and point with numb and shaking fingers.

But from their secure niche behind the trees, Xask and Fumio saw his gesture. They had lurked here in safety, permitting the Drugars to charge the warriors of Thandar…and now they were doubly glad they had not ventured forth from the security of the jungle’s edge.

By this time, all of the Cro-Magnon warriors had reached the safety of the woods, and there were none left upon the shallow little sandy knoll but the dead and some two score or more of the victorious Drugars of Kor who had survived this Stone Age version of Custer’s Last Stand. Demoralized by the inexplicable death of their High Chief, confused by the sudden flight of their enemies, the hulking Neanderthal men milled about, and only a few saw what the speechless OneEye was pointing at.

They turned to stare…and froze with utter horror!

The enormous herd of giant wooly mammoths which Jorn and the Professor had panicked into a stampede had traversed the plain, and were coming down like thunder upon the Apemen who stood, transfixed by fear, directly in the path of the maddened brutes.

It is to be doubted if the lumbering pachyderms even noticed the Neanderthal men who occupied the place wherethrough they desired to pass. If the small eyes of the mammoths did take notice, they cared little: for the fire was at their heels, its bitter, acrid smoke stinging their eyes and nostrils, and the fear of fire whelmed all other considerations from their maddened brains.

One-Eye uttered a shrill screech of terror, threw up his arms and vanished in a whirling cloud of dust as the first of the stampeding mammoths came thundering into the mob of confused, squalling Apemen.

Immense, padded feet drumming like thunder, shaking the earth, the stampede passed through and over the crowd of warriors, trampling them into the gore-drenched dust.

Only the barrier of the trees turned the stampede aside. For the great boles were set too thickly together for even the lumbering juggernauts to crush them down.

Within minutes, the herd had passed, leaving gory ruin behind where had stood the victorious Drugars of Kor. The mammoths dwindled in the distance, slowing their frenzied pace as the smoke left their nostrils. Slowing to a shuffle, the huge bulls ambled out into the plains again, guarding the females and the young.

A sudden drizzle soaked through the trees-one of those frequent, brief cloudbursts which arise so swiftly in the humid air and cloudy skies of Zanthodon.

The warm rain sluiced the earth, saturating the trampled grasses. The coals of the racing grassfire died to hissing embers.

The fire was over; and so was the invasion from Kor.

Lurking in the trees, Xask and Fumio exchanged a long glance.

“Let us begone from this place,” suggested the former vizier of Kor.

“A good idea,” agreed Fumio. “But where shall we go?”

“Anywhere else but here,” whispered Xask with an eloquent glance at the middle distance, where the warriors of Thandar were emerging from the underbrush to search for survivors and for unbroken weapons wherewith to arm themselves.

* * * *

A while later, having retrieved those of the arrows and spears which had remained unbroken when the trampling feet of the herd had driven them deep into the soft, spongy soil of the knoll, the warriors of Thandar entered the jungle again and sought a suitable place to make their camp and consider what next they should do.

When the last of the Cro-Magnons had vanished into the jungle, loose dirt heaved, and a filthy shape lurched into view, gasping for air but thankful to be alive.

It was none other than One-Eye! Somehow, miraculously, the Drugar chieftain had evaded the crushing feet of the trampling pachyderms by wedging his hairy body into a small gully. Later, when the hated Cro-Magnons had come to retrieve those of their weapons which had survived unbroken, the fearful Apeman had feigned death. Among so many broken, crushed corpses, the Thandarians may perchance be forgiven for overlooking one which yet lived.

Peering fearfully about, One-Eye scampered into the jungle, and clambered up a broad-limbed tree to rest and recover his courage. That he was the last of his kind on the mainland he knew all too well, for surely all of his fellows had been crushed to death under the feet of the stampeding mammoths.

From his perch atop a broad and level branch, he watched with red murder flaming in his one eye as the hated panjani strode down the jungle paths, disappearing amid the trees.

Among them he spied Eric Carstairs and Hurok the traitor.

And in his cruel and evil heart, the Neanderthal man swore to be avenged upon his enemies.

CHAPTER 24

SCARLET SAILS

Suddenly, Jorn the Hunter froze, straining every nerve and listening intently.

“Hark!” wheezed Professor Potter at his side. “What was that?”

“I do not know,” Jorn muttered shortly. “It sounded like a woman screaming in mortal fear—”

The two had traced the narrow and winding gorge through the Peaks of Peril, until they had almost reached the farther side of the cliffs. They had been maneuvering their way through the stone walls of the little pass, when suddenly there had come to their ears the faint cry from the distance.

“Could it be the young woman?” murmured the Professor fearfully.

The glint of fear came and went in the steady blue eyes of the Cro-Magnon warrior at his side.

“I do not know,” he grunted. “But it was a woman’s voice, and what woman could possibly exist in this desolate region, swarming with monstrous thakdols, if not the gomad Darya?”

Straining his ears to catch the slightest sound, the stalwart youth stood motionless for another long moment. Then, turning to his companion, he said:

“Come!”

And with that curt word, the Stone Age youth broke into a rapid, space-eating stride, racing in the general direction from which there had come to his ears—that sharp, frightened cry of a woman’s fear.

They had evidently penetrated farther down the narrow pass between the Peaks of Peril than even Jorn the Hunter had guessed, for it was only a few minutes later that the close-set walls gave way and the warrior and the old scientist found themselves in the open country again.

Before them stretched a prospect of sandy slope leading down to the shore of the Sogar-Jad. A stand of tall calamites blocked most of their view of the inland sea, and the only other thing to meet their eyes was a small gurgling brook which meandered between shores lined with thick shrubbery, emptying into the sea.

Searching about with eagle eyes, Jorn suddenly became aware of that which rode the mist-veiled waves of the prehistoric ocean.

And his keen eyes widened incredulously, as he stared upon a sight so fantastic as to beggar comparison—

* * * *

For the better part of two hours, Kâiradine Redbeard, called Barbarossa, and seventh in direct succession from the famous Khair ud-Din of Algiers, had watched as his longboats fetched to their ship supplies of fresh game, fruit and water.

The tall, long-legged reis or captain of the pirate galley at length decided to stretch his legs upon the shore himself, and set out with the last boatload of his corsairs. Beaching the boat upon the sandy strand, he strode inland, glad to feel the firm land beneath his feet once more, after two months at sea.

Anchored off the shoals, his galley, the Red Witch, swayed to the rhythm of the waves. He surveyed his pirate galley, approvingly, the red sails booming and snapping in the breeze, the green banner of Islam fluttering from the stern. For many weeks had the Barbary pirate been at sea; soon, now, he would head his prow farther up along the coast, returning in triumph to his home port.

By now the last kegs of fresh water and barrels of ripe fruit had been borne into the longboat, and it was nearly time to depart; for the Moslem pirate did not care to linger for too long a time in the vicinity of the Peaks of Peril, mindful of the dreaded thakdols that made their nests amid that wilderness of cleft and soaring rock.

He was a commanding figure as he stood there, looking about him. His curled beard was tinted red with dyes, and stank of heavy perfumes; his lean, muscular body was swathed in the long robes of the desert princes who had been his remote forebears. His swarthy, hook-nosed face was villainous, but not unhandsome in a fierce, hawklike, imperious way. From the curled toes of his red-leather boots to his linen headdress, he was every inch a swaggering figure stepped forth from the golden pages of romance.

A rustling in the bushes came to his alert senses. Laying the long fingers of one swarthy, beringed hand upon the hilt of his scimitar, he glanced through the leaves…and at what he saw, his eyes widened delightedly.

“By the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan—a girl!” he swore softly. And his eyes glided over the slim naked body, the sleek thighs and firm, luscious breasts of the blond-haired girl who splashed carelessly in the waters of the little stream.

Passion flared within the breast of the Barbary pirate as he stood there, concealed by the bushes, watching as Darya of Thandar bathed.

Passion, and…desire!

And, with such swaggering, lawless rogues as Kâiradine of El-Cazar, to desire was to—possess.

Darya was unconscious of the presence of another as she splashed nakedly in the little stream until suddenly the bushes parted to reveal the tall, curiously-garbed figure of a grinning man.

He plunged into the stream and bore down upon her, and the Cro-Magnon girl had time to scream only once before strong fingers closed about her mouth and sinewy arms crushed her in a powerful embrace.…

* * * *

Having been alarmed by that terrified shriek, Jorn the Hunter and Professor Potter had traversed the remainder of the pass at a rapid pace, and now stood transfixed with astonishment at the unexpected sight which met their eyes.

The Stone Age savage uttered a stifled gasp at the enormous thing before him; a moment later, his keen gaze narrowed and a growl of primeval menace sounded from his deep breast.

As for the elderly savant, he was too amazed to utter a sound.

Before them lay a prospect of sea and shore, with tall trees beyond, and a small river. But it was none of these commonplace and natural features of the landscape which caught and seized their fascinated attention.

There, riding at anchor off-shore, rose a red-sailed galley such as neither of the two men had ever seen before in all their lives. At the sight of this amazing ship, the Stone Age boy blinked as if stunned.

And the Professor gaped incredulously. For, if he had never seen such a craft in the flesh, so to speak, he had seen its likeness depicted many times before, in books and paintings.

“By my soul,” he stammered feebly, “a pirate ship-a galley! (See the oarbanks?)—and Islamic, from the green banner at the stern…Artful Archimedes: the Barbaray pirates!”

And there came crowding into the Professor’s dazed and wondering brain the history of those daring and villainous sea rovers, who had roamed and ruled the coastal waters of North Africa from Algiers to Tunis, led by the dreaded redbeard, Barbarossa, until driven from their island strongholds by the French conquest of Algeria in 1830.

But—Barbary pirates here in Zanthodon?

“Well, and after all, why not?” murmured the Professor vaguely. “They could, after all, have fled inland to avoid the French fleets; finding their way overland to the Ahaggar Mountains, and to the hollow crater of the extinct volcano…as obviously they or their ancestors had, nearly a century and a half ago.”

“See! It is the gomad Darya,” cried torn, pointing suddenly. The Professor peered, his heart sinking: tall, swarthy sailors were lifting aboard from a longboat the naked and struggling body of a young white woman with long bright hair the color of sun-ripened corn and wide blue eyes like the skies of April. It could be none other than Darya—

Without a word, Jorn burst into a run. Across the slope he hurtled, and down the shore, to fling his strong bronzed body into the tossing waves of the Sogar-Jad.

As the half-naked, brawny body of the Cro-Magnon warrior clove the waves of the Sogar-Jad, heading directly toward the sides of the great pirate galley, the sailors along the rail caught sight of their unexpected visitor and called the attention of their captain, who had just come aboard with his naked, and furiously struggling, captive.

“O reis Kâiradine! Behold!” they shouted, pointing.

The hawklike gaze of the Barbaray pirate narrowed; he could not help admiring the reckless courage of the savage boy to strive single-handedly to rescue his jungle sweetheart. But his numbers were already depleted by battle with the Apemen of Kor and other savage peoples he had encounterd during his voyage.

He raised his jewelled hand carelessly, and at the signal his pirates quickly unlimbered their horn bows, nocking barbed and deadly arrows and drawing the feathered shafts tight.

Oblivious to his danger, the young warrior of Thandar swam to the side of the pirate craft, and had just reached it when the misty waves of the sea were ripped and torn by a deadly rain of hissing arrows.

The waves burst into seething froth as Jorn kicked and struggled. Then his body sank beneath the waters of the prehistoric sea, and vanished from sight.

“Cast off, my corsairs!” cried Kâiradine Redbeard. And as the anchor rose dripping from the Sogar-Jad and strong hands tugged the sails into position, and the sharp keel of the galley swung about for El-Cazar, the Barbary pirate seized up his helpless captive and bore within his cabin the naked form of Darya of Thandar.

The cabin door thudded shut behind them, muffling her sudden scream of terror.

And on the shores of the Sogar-Jad, an old man in dilapidated and travel-stained garments fell forward weakly to his knees and buried his face in shaking hands.

Darya carried off by pirates, and Jorn slain! And, he, himself, alone and friendless in a savage world of prehistoric monsters and primitive fighting men!

It was too much even for the brave and gallant spirit of Professor Percival P. Potter. And the old scientist fell forward in a dead faint, there at the feet of the Peaks of Peril, by the shores of the prehistoric sea.

THE END

But the Adventures of Eric Carstairs in the Underground World continue in “ZANTHODON,” the second volume in this series, available soon in The Zanthodon Megapack.

APPENDIX: A STONE AGE GLOSSARY

DRUGAR: Literally, “Ugly One.” The Cro-Magnons’ name for the Neanderthals.

DRUNTH: The stegosaurus.

GOMAD: The title of the daughter of a High Chief, or Omad. Has much the same meaning as “princess.”

GOROTH: The mighty bull aurochs of the Ice Ages, resembling the bison.

GRYMP: Triceratops, one of the more terrible of the Jurassic dinosaurs.

JAD: The word for “sea”; also, “water.”

JAMAD: The son of an Omad, or High Chief; literally, “prince.”

LUGAR: A word meaning “smaller” or “lesser,” as in Lugar-Jad, the Lesser Sea.

OMAD: The High Chief or ruler of a country; literally, “king.”

OMODON: The giant cave bear of Ice Age Europe, larger and fiercer than the grizzly.

PANJAN: Literally “Smoothskin.” The Neanderthals’ name for the Cro-Magnons. The plural is panjani.

SOGAR: A superlative: “great” or “greater,” as in Sogar-Jad, the Greater Sea.

SUJAT: Anything which the peoples of Zanthodon regard with superstitious awe is considered sujat. The word has much the same meaning as both “sacred” and “supernatural.”

THAKDOL: A pterodactyl, the great flying lizard of the Jurassic Age.

THANTOR: The wooly mammoth of Ice Age Europe.

ULD: A small, plump, harmless mammal. Eric Carstairs is of the opinion that the uld may be eohippus, the remote ancestor of the horses of today. The people of Thandar and, perhaps, of Kor, may hunt or even breed the uld for meat.

VANDAR: The great saber-tooth tiger of the Stone Age, one of the most feared and cunning of all the predators of the jungles of Zanthodon.

VATOR: The word for “father” in the universal language of Zanthodon. The word for “mother” is not given in the tex, but may be mator.

VATHRIB: A species of gigantic albino spider which inhabits the subterranean depths.

XUNTH: Enormous serpents, dwelling in caverns in the mountains.

YITH: The dragon-snake of the primordial seas of Zanthodon, which Professor Potter has identified with the extinct plesiosaurus.

ZOMAK: A primitive species of feathered bird-reptile, which Eric Carstairs considers to be the archaeopteryx.

THE MOON POOL, by A. Merritt [Part 1]

Originally published in 1919.

FOREWORD

The publication of the following narrative of Dr. Walter T. Goodwin has been authorized by the Executive Council of the International Association of Science.

First:

To end officially what is beginning to be called the Throckmartin Mystery and to kill the innuendo and scandalous suspicions which have threatened to stain the reputations of Dr. David Throckmartin, his youthful wife, and equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton ever since a tardy despatch from Melbourne, Australia, reported the disappearance of the first from a ship sailing to that port, and the subsequent reports of the disappearance of his wife and associate from the camp of their expedition in the Caroline Islands.

Second:

Because the Executive Council have concluded that Dr. Goodwin’s experiences in his wholly heroic effort to save the three, and the lessons and warnings within those experiences, are too important to humanity as a whole to be hidden away in scientific papers understandable only to the technically educated; or to be presented through the newspaper press in the abridged and fragmentary form which the space limitations of that vehicle make necessary.

For these reasons the Executive Council commissioned Mr. A. Merritt to transcribe into form to be readily understood by the layman the stenographic notes of Dr. Goodwin’s own report to the Council, supplemented by further oral reminiscences and comments by Dr. Goodwin; this transcription, edited and censored by the Executive Council of the Association, forms the contents of this book.

Himself a member of the Council, Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, Ph.D., F.R.G.S. etc., is without cavil the foremost of American botanists, an observer of international reputation and the author of several epochal treaties upon his chosen branch of science. His story, amazing in the best sense of that word as it may be, is fully supported by proofs brought forward by him and accepted by the organization of which I have the honor to be president. What matter has been elided from this popular presentation—because of the excessively menacing potentialities it contains, which unrestricted dissemination might develop—will be dealt with in purely scientific pamphlets of carefully guarded circulation.

The International Association of Science

Per J. B. K., President

CHAPTER I

The Thing on the Moon Path

For two months I had been on the d’Entrecasteaux Islands gathering data for the concluding chapters of my book upon the flora of the volcanic islands of the South Pacific. The day before I had reached Port Moresby and had seen my specimens safely stored on board the Southern Queen. As I sat on the upper deck I thought, with homesick mind, of the long leagues between me and Melbourne, and the longer ones between Melbourne and New York.

It was one of Papua’s yellow mornings when she shows herself in her sombrest, most baleful mood. The sky was smouldering ochre. Over the island brooded a spirit sullen, alien, implacable, filled with the threat of latent, malefic forces waiting to be unleashed. It seemed an emanation out of the untamed, sinister heart of Papua herself—sinister even when she smiles. And now and then, on the wind, came a breath from virgin jungles, laden with unfamiliar odours, mysterious and menacing.

It is on such mornings that Papua whispers to you of her immemorial ancientness and of her power. And, as every white man must, I fought against her spell. While I struggled I saw a tall figure striding down the pier; a Kapa-Kapa boy followed swinging a new valise. There was something familiar about the tall man. As he reached the gangplank he looked up straight into my eyes, stared for a moment, then waved his hand.

And now I knew him. It was Dr. David Throckmartin—“Throck” he was to me always, one of my oldest friends and, as well, a mind of the first water whose power and achievements were for me a constant inspiration as they were, I know, for scores other.

Coincidentally with my recognition came a shock of surprise, definitely—unpleasant. It was Throckmartin—but about him was something disturbingly unlike the man I had known long so well and to whom and to whose little party I had bidden farewell less than a month before I myself had sailed for these seas. He had married only a few weeks before, Edith, the daughter of Professor William Frazier, younger by at least a decade than he but at one with him in his ideals and as much in love, if it were possible, as Throckmartin. By virtue of her father’s training a wonderful assistant, by virtue of her own sweet, sound heart a—I use the word in its olden sense—lover. With his equally youthful associate Dr. Charles Stanton and a Swedish woman, Thora Halversen, who had been Edith Throckmartin’s nurse from babyhood, they had set forth for the Nan-Matal, that extraordinary group of island ruins clustered along the eastern shore of Ponape in the Carolines.

I knew that he had planned to spend at least a year among these ruins, not only of Ponape but of Lele—twin centres of a colossal riddle of humanity, a weird flower of civilization that blossomed ages before the seeds of Egypt were sown; of whose arts we know little enough and of whose science nothing. He had carried with him unusually complete equipment for the work he had expected to do and which, he hoped, would be his monument.

What then had brought Throckmartin to Port Moresby, and what was that change I had sensed in him?

Hurrying down to the lower deck I found him with the purser. As I spoke he turned, thrust out to me an eager hand—and then I saw what was that difference that had so moved me. He knew, of course by my silence and involuntary shrinking the shock my closer look had given me. His eyes filled; he turned brusquely from the purser, hesitated—then hurried off to his stateroom.

“’E looks rather queer—eh?” said the purser. “Know ’im well, sir? Seems to ’ave given you quite a start.”

I made some reply and went slowly up to my chair. There I sat, composed my mind and tried to define what it was that had shaken me so. Now it came to me. The old Throckmartin was on the eve of his venture just turned forty, lithe, erect, muscular; his controlling expression one of enthusiasm, of intellectual keenness, of—what shall I say—expectant search. His always questioning brain had stamped its vigor upon his face.

But the Throckmartin I had seen below was one who had borne some scaring shock of mingled rapture and horror; some soul cataclysm that in its climax had remoulded, deep from within, his face, setting on it seal of wedded ecstasy and despair; as though indeed these two had come to him hand in hand, taken possession of him and departing left behind, ineradicably, their linked shadows!

Yes—it was that which appalled. For how could rapture and horror, Heaven and Hell mix, clasp hands—kiss?

Yet these were what in closest embrace lay on Throckmartin’s face!

Deep in thought, subconsciously with relief, I watched the shore line sink behind; welcomed the touch of the wind of the free seas. I had hoped, and within the hope was an inexplicable shrinking that I would meet Throckmartin at lunch. He did not come down, and I was sensible of deliverance within my disappointment. All that afternoon I lounged about uneasily but still he kept to his cabin—and within me was no strength to summon him. Nor did he appear at dinner.

Dusk and night fell swiftly. I was warm and went back to my deck-chair. The Southern Queen was rolling to a disquieting swell and I had the place to myself.

Over the heavens was a canopy of cloud, glowing faintly and testifying to the moon riding behind it. There was much phosphorescence. Fitfully before the ship and at her sides arose those stranger little swirls of mist that swirl up from the Southern Ocean like breath of sea monsters, whirl for an instant and disappear.

Suddenly the deck door opened and through it came Throckmartin. He paused uncertainly, looked up at the sky with a curiously eager, intent gaze, hesitated, then closed the door behind him.

“Throck,” I called. “Come! It’s Goodwin.”

He made his way to me.

“Throck,” I said, wasting no time in preliminaries. “What’s wrong? Can I help you?”

I felt his body grow tense.

“I’m going to Melbourne, Goodwin,” he answered. “I need a few things—need them urgently. And more men—white men—”

He stopped abruptly; rose from his chair, gazed intently toward the north. I followed his gaze. Far, far away the moon had broken through the clouds. Almost on the horizon, you could see the faint luminescence of it upon the smooth sea. The distant patch of light quivered and shook. The clouds thickened again and it was gone. The ship raced on southward, swiftly.

Throckmartin dropped into his chair. He lighted a cigarette with a hand that trembled; then turned to me with abrupt resolution.

“Goodwin,” he said. “I do need help. If ever man needed it, I do. Goodwin—can you imagine yourself in another world, alien, unfamiliar, a world of terror, whose unknown joy is its greatest terror of all; you all alone there, a stranger! As such a man would need help, so I need—”

He paused abruptly and arose; the cigarette dropped from his fingers. The moon had again broken through the clouds, and this time much nearer. Not a mile away was the patch of light that it threw upon the waves. Back of it, to the rim of the sea was a lane of moonlight; a gigantic gleaming serpent racing over the edge of the world straight and surely toward the ship.

Throckmartin stiffened to it as a pointer does to a hidden covey. To me from him pulsed a thrill of horror—but horror tinged with an unfamiliar, an infernal joy. It came to me and passed away—leaving me trembling with its shock of bitter sweet.

He bent forward, all his soul in his eyes. The moon path swept closer, closer still. It was now less than half a mile away. From it the ship fled—almost as though pursued. Down upon it, swift and straight, a radiant torrent cleaving the waves, raced the moon stream.

“Good God!” breathed Throckmartin, and if ever the words were a prayer and an invocation they were.

And then, for the first time—I saw—it!

The moon path stretched to the horizon and was bordered by darkness. It was as though the clouds above had been parted to form a lane-drawn aside like curtains or as the waters of the Red Sea were held back to let the hosts of Israel through. On each side of the stream was the black shadow cast by the folds of the high canopies And straight as a road between the opaque walls gleamed, shimmered, and danced the shining, racing, rapids of the moonlight.

Far, it seemed immeasurably far, along this stream of silver fire I sensed, rather than saw, something coming. It drew first into sight as a deeper glow within the light. On and on it swept toward us—an opalescent mistiness that sped with the suggestion of some winged creature in arrowed flight. Dimly there crept into my mind memory of the Dyak legend of the winged messenger of Buddha—the Akla bird whose feathers are woven of the moon rays, whose heart is a living opal, whose wings in flight echo the crystal clear music of the white stars—but whose beak is of frozen flame and shreds the souls of unbelievers.

Closer it drew and now there came to me sweet, insistent tinklings—like pizzicati on violins of glass; crystal clear; diamonds melting into sounds!

Now the Thing was close to the end of the white path; close up to the barrier of darkness still between the ship and the sparkling head of the moon stream. Now it beat up against that barrier as a bird against the bars of its cage. It whirled with shimmering plumes, with swirls of lacy light, with spirals of living vapour. It held within it odd, unfamiliar gleams as of shifting mother-of-pearl. Coruscations and glittering atoms drifted through it as though it drew them from the rays that bathed it.

Nearer and nearer it came, borne on the sparkling waves, and ever thinner shrank the protecting wall of shadow between it and us. Within the mistiness was a core, a nucleus of intenser light—veined, opaline, effulgent, intensely alive. And above it, tangled in the plumes and spirals that throbbed and whirled were seven glowing lights.

Through all the incessant but strangely ordered movement of the—thing—these lights held firm and steady. They were seven—like seven little moons. One was of a pearly pink, one of a delicate nacreous blue, one of lambent saffron, one of the emerald you see in the shallow waters of tropic isles; a deathly white; a ghostly amethyst; and one of the silver that is seen only when the flying fish leap beneath the moon.

The tinkling music was louder still. It pierced the ears with a shower of tiny lances; it made the heart beat jubilantly—and checked it dolorously. It closed the throat with a throb of rapture and gripped it tight with the hand of infinite sorrow!

Came to me now a murmuring cry, stilling the crystal notes. It was articulate—but as though from something utterly foreign to this world. The ear took the cry and translated with conscious labour into the sounds of earth. And even as it compassed, the brain shrank from it irresistibly, and simultaneously it seemed reached toward it with irresistible eagerness.

Throckmartin strode toward the front of the deck, straight toward the vision, now but a few yards away from the stern. His face had lost all human semblance. Utter agony and utter ecstasy—there they were side by side, not resisting each other; unholy inhuman companions blending into a look that none of God’s creatures should wear—and deep, deep as his soul! A devil and a God dwelling harmoniously side by side! So must Satan, newly fallen, still divine, seeing heaven and contemplating hell, have appeared.

And then—swiftly the moon path faded! The clouds swept over the sky as though a hand had drawn them together. Up from the south came a roaring squall. As the moon vanished what I had seen vanished with it—blotted out as an image on a magic lantern; the tinkling ceased abruptly—leaving a silence like that which follows an abrupt thunder clap. There was nothing about us but silence and blackness!

Through me passed a trembling as one who has stood on the very verge of the gulf wherein the men of the Louisades says lurks the fisher of the souls of men, and has been plucked back by sheerest chance.

Throckmartin passed an arm around me.

“It is as I thought,” he said. In his voice was a new note; the calm certainty that has swept aside a waiting terror of the unknown. “Now I know! Come with me to my cabin, old friend. For now that you too have seen I can tell you”—he hesitated—“what it was you saw,” he ended.

As we passed through the door we met the ship’s first officer. Throckmartin composed his face into at least a semblance of normality.

“Going to have much of a storm?” he asked.

“Yes,” said the mate. “Probably all the way to Melbourne.”

Throckmartin straightened as though with a new thought. He gripped the officer’s sleeve eagerly.

“You mean at least cloudy weather—for”—he hesitated—“for the next three nights, say?”

“And for three more,” replied the mate.

“Thank God!” cried Throckmartin, and I think I never heard such relief and hope as was in his voice.

The sailor stood amazed. “Thank God?” he repeated. “Thank—what d’ye mean?”

But Throckmartin was moving onward to his cabin. I started to follow. The first officer stopped me.

“Your friend,” he said, “is he ill?”

“The sea!” I answered hurriedly. “He’s not used to it. I am going to look after him.”

Doubt and disbelief were plain in the seaman’s eyes but I hurried on. For I knew now that Throckmartin was ill indeed—but with a sickness the ship’s doctor nor any other could heal.

CHAPTER II

“Dead! All Dead!”

He was sitting, face in hands, on the side of his berth as I entered. He had taken off his coat.

“Throck,” I cried. “What was it? What are you flying from, man? Where is your wife—and Stanton?”

“Dead!” he replied monotonously. “Dead! All dead!” Then as I recoiled from him—“All dead. Edith, Stanton, Thora—dead—or worse. And Edith in the Moon Pool—with them—drawn by what you saw on the moon path—that has put its brand upon me—and follows me!”

He ripped open his shirt.

“Look at this,” he said. Around his chest, above his heart, the skin was white as pearl. This whiteness was sharply defined against the healthy tint of the body. It circled him with an even cincture about two inches wide.

“Burn it!” he said, and offered me his cigarette. I drew back. He gestured—peremptorily. I pressed the glowing end of the cigarette into the ribbon of white flesh. He did not flinch nor was there odour of burning nor, as I drew the little cylinder away, any mark upon the whiteness.

“Feel it!” he commanded again. I placed my fingers upon the band. It was cold—like frozen marble.

He drew his shirt around him.

“Two things you have seen,” he said. “It—and its mark. Seeing, you must believe my story. Goodwin, I tell you again that my wife is dead—or worse—I do not know; the prey of—what you saw; so, too, is Stanton; so Thora. How—”

Tears rolled down the seared face.

“Why did God let it conquer us? Why did He let it take my Edith?” he cried in utter bitterness. “Are there things stronger than God, do you think, Walter?”

I hesitated.

“Are there? Are there?” His wild eyes searched me.

“I do not know just how you define God,” I managed at last through my astonishment to make answer. “If you mean the will to know, working through science—”

He waved me aside impatiently.

“Science,” he said. “What is our science against—that? Or against the science of whatever devils that made it—or made the way for it to enter this world of ours?”

With an effort he regained control.

“Goodwin,” he said, “do you know at all of the ruins on the Carolines; the cyclopean, megalithic cities and harbours of Ponape and Lele, of Kusaie, of Ruk and Hogolu, and a score of other islets there? Particularly, do you know of the Nan-Matal and the Metalanim?”

“Of the Metalanim I have heard and seen photographs,” I said. “They call it, don’t they, the Lost Venice of the Pacific?”

“Look at this map,” said Throckmartin. “That,” he went on, “is Christian’s chart of Metalanim harbour and the Nan-Matal. Do you see the rectangles marked Nan-Tauach?”

“Yes,” I said.

“There,” he said, “under those walls is the Moon Pool and the seven gleaming lights that raise the Dweller in the Pool, and the altar and shrine of the Dweller. And there in the Moon Pool with it lie Edith and Stanton and Thora.”

“The Dweller in the Moon Pool?” I repeated half-incredulously.

“The Thing you saw,” said Throckmartin solemnly.

A solid sheet of rain swept the ports, and the Southern Queen began to roll on the rising swells. Throckmartin drew another deep breath of relief, and drawing aside a curtain peered out into the night. Its blackness seemed to reassure him. At any rate, when he sat again he was entirely calm.

“There are no more wonderful ruins in the world,” he began almost casually. “They take in some fifty islets and cover with their intersecting canals and lagoons about twelve square miles. Who built them? None knows. When were they built? Ages before the memory of present man, that is sure. Ten thousand, twenty thousand, a hundred thousand years ago—the last more likely.

“All these islets, Walter, are squared, and their shores are frowning seawalls of gigantic basalt blocks hewn and put in place by the hands of ancient man. Each inner water-front is faced with a terrace of those basalt blocks which stand out six feet above the shallow canals that meander between them. On the islets behind these walls are time-shattered fortresses, palaces, terraces, pyramids; immense courtyards strewn with ruins—and all so old that they seem to wither the eyes of those who look on them.

“There has been a great subsidence. You can stand out of Metalanim harbour for three miles and look down upon the tops of similar monolithic structures and walls twenty feet below you in the water.

“And all about, strung on their canals, are the bulwarked islets with their enigmatic walls peering through the dense growths of mangroves—dead, deserted for incalculable ages; shunned by those who live near.

“You as a botanist are familiar with the evidence that a vast shadowy continent existed in the Pacific—a continent that was not rent asunder by volcanic forces as was that legendary one of Atlantis in the Eastern Ocean.1 My work in Java, in Papua, and in the Ladrones had set my mind upon this Pacific lost land. Just as the Azores are believed to be the last high peaks of Atlantis, so hints came to me steadily that Ponape and Lele and their basalt bulwarked islets were the last points of the slowly sunken western land clinging still to the sunlight, and had been the last refuge and sacred places of the rulers of that race which had lost their immemorial home under the rising waters of the Pacific.

“I believed that under these ruins I might find the evidence that I sought.

“My—my wife and I had talked before we were married of making this our great work. After the honeymoon we prepared for the expedition. Stanton was as enthusiastic as ourselves. We sailed, as you know, last May for fulfilment of my dreams.

“At Ponape we selected, not without difficulty, workmen to help us—diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I could get together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. They people their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, with malignant spirits—ani they call them. And they are afraid—bitterly afraid of the isles of ruins and what they think the ruins hide. I do not wonder—now!

“When they were told where they were to go, and how long we expected to stay, they murmured. Those who, at last, were tempted made what I thought then merely a superstitious proviso that they were to be allowed to go away on the three nights of the full moon. Would to God we had heeded them and gone too!”

“We passed into Metalanim harbour. Off to our left—a mile away arose a massive quadrangle. Its walls were all of forty feet high and hundreds of feet on each side. As we drew by, our natives grew very silent; watched it furtively, fearfully. I knew it for the ruins that are called Nan-Tauach, the ‘place of frowning walls.’ And at the silence of my men I recalled what Christian had written of this place; of how he had come upon its ‘ancient platforms and tetragonal enclosures of stonework; its wonder of tortuous alleyways and labyrinth of shallow canals; grim masses of stonework peering out from behind verdant screens; cyclopean barricades,’ and of how, when he had turned ‘into its ghostly shadows, straight-way the merriment of guides was hushed and conversation died down to whispers.’”

He was silent for a little time.

“Of course I wanted to pitch our camp there,” he went on again quietly, “but I soon gave up that idea. The natives were panic-stricken—threatened to turn back. ‘No,’ they said, ‘too great ani there. We go to any other place—but not there.’

“We finally picked for our base the islet called Uschen-Tau. It was close to the isle of desire, but far enough away from it to satisfy our men. There was an excellent camping-place and a spring of fresh water. We pitched our tents, and in a couple of days the work was in full swing.”

1 For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens, Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft Erdkunde Berlin, xxvii (1901); J. S. Kubary, Ethnographische Beitrage zur Kentniss des Karolinen Archipel (Leiden, 1889-1892); De Abrade Historia del Conflicto de las Carolinas, etc. (Madrid, 1886).—W. T. G.

1 For more detailed observations on these points refer to G. Volkens, Uber die Karolinen Insel Yap, in Verhandlungen Gesellschaft Erdkunde Berlin, xxvii (1901); J. S. Kubary, Ethnographische Beitrage zur Kentniss des Karolinen Archipel (Leiden, 1889-1892); De Abrade Historia del Conflicto de las Carolinas, etc. (Madrid, 1886).—W. T. G.

CHAPTER III

The Moon Rock

“I do not intend to tell you now,” Throckmartin continued, “the results of the next two weeks, nor of what we found. Later—if I am allowed, I will lay all that before you. It is sufficient to say that at the end of those two weeks I had found confirmation for many of my theories.

“The place, for all its decay and desolation, had not infected us with any touch of morbidity—that is not Edith, Stanton, or myself. But Thora was very unhappy. She was a Swede, as you know, and in her blood ran the beliefs and superstitions of the Northland—some of them so strangely akin to those of this far southern land; beliefs of spirits of mountain and forest and water werewolves and beings malign. From the first she showed a curious sensitivity to what, I suppose, may be called the ‘influences’ of the place. She said it ‘smelled’ of ghosts and warlocks.

“I laughed at her then—

“Two weeks slipped by, and at their end the spokesman for our natives came to us. The next night was the full of the moon, he said. He reminded me of my promise. They would go back to their village in the morning; they would return after the third night, when the moon had begun to wane. They left us sundry charms for our ‘protection,’ and solemnly cautioned us to keep as far away as possible from Nan-Tauach during their absence. Half-exasperated, half-amused I watched them go.

“No work could be done without them, of course, so we decided to spend the days of their absence junketing about the southern islets of the group. We marked down several spots for subsequent exploration, and on the morning of the third day set forth along the east face of the breakwater for our camp on Uschen-Tau, planning to have everything in readiness for the return of our men the next day.

“We landed just before dusk, tired and ready for our cots. It was only a little after ten o’clock that Edith awakened me.

“‘Listen!’ she said. ‘Lean over with your ear close to the ground!’

“I did so, and seemed to hear, far, far below, as though coming up from great distances, a faint chanting. It gathered strength, died down, ended; began, gathered volume, faded away into silence.

“‘It’s the waves rolling on rocks somewhere,’ I said. ‘We’re probably over some ledge of rock that carries the sound.’

“‘It’s the first time I’ve heard it,’ replied my wife doubtfully. We listened again. Then through the dim rhythms, deep beneath us, another sound came. It drifted across the lagoon that lay between us and Nan-Tauach in little tinkling waves. It was music—of a sort; I won’t describe the strange effect it had upon me. You’ve felt it—”

“You mean on the deck?” I asked. Throckmartin nodded.

“I went to the flap of the tent,” he continued, “and peered out. As I did so Stanton lifted his flap and walked out into the moonlight, looking over to the other islet and listening. I called to him.

“‘That’s the queerest sound!’ he said. He listened again. ‘Crystalline! Like little notes of translucent glass. Like the bells of crystal on the sistrums of Isis at Dendarah Temple,’ he added half-dreamily. We gazed intently at the island. Suddenly, on the sea-wall, moving slowly, rhythmically, we saw a little group of lights. Stanton laughed.

“‘The beggars!’ he exclaimed. ‘That’s why they wanted to get away, is it? Don’t you see, Dave, it’s some sort of a festival—rites of some kind that they hold during the full moon! That’s why they were so eager to have us keep away, too.’

“The explanation seemed good. I felt a curious sense of relief, although I had not been sensible of any oppression.

“‘Let’s slip over,’ suggested Stanton—but I would not.

“‘They’re a difficult lot as it is,’ I said. ‘If we break into one of their religious ceremonies they’ll probably never forgive us. Let’s keep out of any family party where we haven’t been invited.’

“‘That’s so,’ agreed Stanton.

“The strange tinkling rose and fell, rose and fell—

“‘There’s something—something very unsettling about it,’ said Edith at last soberly. ‘I wonder what they make those sounds with. They frighten me half to death, and, at the same time, they make me feel as though some enormous rapture were just around the corner.’

“‘It’s devilish uncanny!’ broke in Stanton.

“And as he spoke the flap of Thora’s tent was raised and out into the moonlight strode the old Swede. She was the great Norse type—tall, deep-breasted, moulded on the old Viking lines. Her sixty years had slipped from her. She looked like some ancient priestess of Odin.

“She stood there, her eyes wide, brilliant, staring. She thrust her head forward toward Nan-Tauach, regarding the moving lights; she listened. Suddenly she raised her arms and made a curious gesture to the moon. It was—an archaic—movement; she seemed to drag it from remote antiquity—yet in it was a strange suggestion of power, Twice she repeated this gesture and—the tinklings died away! She turned to us.

“‘Go!’ she said, and her voice seemed to come from far distances. ‘Go from here—and quickly! Go while you may. It has called—’ She pointed to the islet. ‘It knows you are here. It waits!’ she wailed. ‘It beckons—the—the—”

“She fell at Edith’s feet, and over the lagoon came again the tinklings, now with a quicker note of jubilance—almost of triumph.

“We watched beside her throughout the night. The sounds from Nan-Tauach continued until about an hour before moon-set. In the morning Thora awoke, none the worse, apparently. She had had bad dreams, she said. She could not remember what they were—except that they had warned her of danger. She was oddly sullen, and throughout the morning her gaze returned again and again half-fascinatedly, half-wonderingly to the neighbouring isle.

“That afternoon the natives returned. And that night on Nan-Tauach the silence was unbroken nor were there lights nor sign of life.

“You will understand, Goodwin, how the occurrences I have related would excite the scientific curiosity. We rejected immediately, of course, any explanation admitting the supernatural.

“Our—symptoms let me call them—could all very easily be accounted for. It is unquestionable that the vibrations created by certain musical instruments have definite and sometimes extraordinary effect upon the nervous system. We accepted this as the explanation of the reactions we had experienced, hearing the unfamiliar sounds. Thora’s nervousness, her superstitious apprehensions, had wrought her up to a condition of semi-somnambulistic hysteria. Science could readily explain her part in the night’s scene.

“We came to the conclusion that there must be a passage-way between Ponape and Nan-Tauach known to the natives—and used by them during their rites. We decided that on the next departure of our labourers we would set forth immediately to Nan-Tauach. We would investigate during the day, and at evening my wife and Thora would go back to camp, leaving Stanton and me to spend the night on the island, observing from some safe hiding-place what might occur.

“The moon waned; appeared crescent in the west; waxed slowly toward the full. Before the men left us they literally prayed us to accompany them. Their importunities only made us more eager to see what it was that, we were now convinced, they wanted to conceal from us. At least that was true of Stanton and myself. It was not true of Edith. She was thoughtful, abstracted—reluctant.

“When the men were out of sight around the turn of the harbour, we took our boat and made straight for Nan-Tauach. Soon its mighty sea-wall towered above us. We passed through the water-gate with its gigantic hewn prisms of basalt and landed beside a half-submerged pier. In front of us stretched a series of giant steps leading into a vast court strewn with fragments of fallen pillars. In the centre of the court, beyond the shattered pillars, rose another terrace of basalt blocks, concealing, I knew, still another enclosure.

“And now, Walter, for the better understanding of what follows—and—and—” he hesitated. “Should you decide later to return with me or, if I am taken, to—to—follow us—listen carefully to my description of this place: Nan-Tauach is literally three rectangles. The first rectangle is the sea-wall, built up of monoliths—hewn and squared, twenty feet wide at the top. To get to the gateway in the sea-wall you pass along the canal marked on the map between Nan-Tauach and the islet named Tau. The entrance to the canal is bidden by dense thickets of mangroves; once through these the way is clear. The steps lead up from the landing of the sea-gate through the entrance to the courtyard.

“This courtyard is surrounded by another basalt wall, rectangular, following with mathematical exactness the march of the outer barricades. The sea-wall is from thirty to forty feet high—originally it must have been much higher, but there has been subsidence in parts. The wall of the first enclosure is fifteen feet across the top and its height varies from twenty to fifty feet—here, too, the gradual sinking of the land has caused portions of it to fall.

“Within this courtyard is the second enclosure. Its terrace, of the same basalt as the outer walls, is about twenty feet high. Entrance is gained to it by many breaches which time has made in its stonework. This is the inner court, the heart of Nan-Tauach! There lies the great central vault with which is associated the one name of living being that has come to us out of the mists of the past. The natives say it was the treasure-house of Chau-te-leur, a mighty king who reigned long ‘before their fathers.’ As Chan is the ancient Ponapean word both for sun and king, the name means, without doubt, ‘place of the sun king.’ It is a memory of a dynastic name of the race that ruled the Pacific continent, now vanished—just as the rulers of ancient Crete took the name of Minos and the rulers of Egypt the name of Pharaoh.

“And opposite this place of the sun king is the moon rock that hides the Moon Pool.

“It was Stanton who discovered the moon rock. We had been inspecting the inner courtyard; Edith and Thora were getting together our lunch. I came out of the vault of Chau-te-leur to find Stanton before a part of the terrace studying it wonderingly.

“‘What do you make of this?’ he asked me as I came up. He pointed to the wall. I followed his finger and saw a slab of stone about fifteen feet high and ten wide. At first all I noticed was the exquisite nicety with which its edges joined the blocks about it. Then I realized that its colour was subtly different—tinged with grey and of a smooth, peculiar—deadness.

“‘Looks more like calcite than basalt,’ I said. I touched it and withdrew my hand quickly for at the contact every nerve in my arm tingled as though a shock of frozen electricity had passed through it. It was not cold as we know cold. It was a chill force—the phrase I have used—frozen electricity—describes it better than anything else. Stanton looked at me oddly.

“‘So you felt it too,’ he said. ‘I was wondering whether I was developing hallucinations like Thora. Notice, by the way, that the blocks beside it are quite warm beneath the sun.’

“We examined the slab eagerly. Its edges were cut as though by an engraver of jewels. They fitted against the neighbouring blocks in almost a hair-line. Its base was slightly curved, and fitted as closely as top and sides upon the huge stones on which it rested. And then we noted that these stones had been hollowed to follow the line of the grey stone’s foot. There was a semicircular depression running from one side of the slab to the other. It was as though the grey rock stood in the centre of a shallow cup—revealing half, covering half. Something about this hollow attracted me. I reached down and felt it. Goodwin, although the balance of the stones that formed it, like all the stones of the courtyard, were rough and age-worn—this was as smooth, as even surfaced as though it had just left the hands of the polisher.

“‘It’s a door!’ exclaimed Stanton. ‘It swings around in that little cup. That’s what makes the hollow so smooth.’

“‘Maybe you’re right,’ I replied. ‘But how the devil can we open it?’

“We went over the slab again—pressing upon its edges, thrusting against its sides. During one of those efforts I happened to look up—and cried out. A foot above and on each side of the corner of the grey rock’s lintel was a slight convexity, visible only from the angle at which my gaze struck it.

“We carried with us a small scaling-ladder and up this I went. The bosses were apparently nothing more than chiseled curvatures in the stone. I laid my hand on the one I was examining, and drew it back sharply. In my palm, at the base of my thumb, I had felt the same shock that I had in touching the slab below. I put my hand back. The impression came from a spot not more than an inch wide. I went carefully over the entire convexity, and six times more the chill ran through my arm. There were seven circles an inch wide in the curved place, each of which communicated the precise sensation I have described. The convexity on the opposite side of the slab gave exactly the same results. But no amount of touching or of pressing these spots singly or in any combination gave the slightest promise of motion to the slab itself.

“‘And yet—they’re what open it,’ said Stanton positively.

“‘Why do you say that?’ I asked.

“‘I—don’t know,’ he answered hesitatingly. ‘But something tells me so. Throck,’ he went on half earnestly, half laughingly, ‘the purely scientific part of me is fighting the purely human part of me. The scientific part is urging me to find some way to get that slab either down or open. The human part is just as strongly urging me to do nothing of the sort and get away while I can!’

“He laughed again—shamefacedly.

“‘Which shall it be?’ he asked—and I thought that in his tone the human side of him was ascendant.

“‘It will probably stay as it is—unless we blow it to bits,’ I said.

“‘I thought of that,’ he answered, ‘and I wouldn’t dare,’ he added soberly enough. And even as I had spoken there came to me the same feeling that he had expressed. It was as though something passed out of the grey rock that struck my heart as a hand strikes an impious lip. We turned away—uneasily, and faced Thora coming through a breach on the terrace.

“‘Miss Edith wants you quick,’ she began—and stopped. Her eyes went past me to the grey rock. Her body grew rigid; she took a few stiff steps forward and then ran straight to it. She cast herself upon its breast, hands and face pressed against it; we heard her scream as though her very soul were being drawn from her—and watched her fall at its foot. As we picked her up I saw steal from her face the look I had observed when first we heard the crystal music of Nan-Tauach—that unhuman mingling of opposites!”

CHAPTER IV

The First Vanishings

“We carried Thora back, down to where Edith was waiting. We told her what had happened and what we had found. She listened gravely, and as we finished Thora sighed and opened her eyes.

“‘I would like to see the stone,’ she said. ‘Charles, you stay here with Thora.’ We passed through the outer court silently—and stood before the rock. She touched it, drew back her hand as I had; thrust it forward again resolutely and held it there. She seemed to be listening. Then she turned to me.

“‘David,’ said my wife, and the wistfulness in her voice hurt me—‘David, would you be very, very disappointed if we went from here—without trying to find out any more about it—would you?’

“Walter, I never wanted anything so much in my life as I wanted to learn what that rock concealed. Nevertheless, I tried to master my desire, and I answered—‘Edith, not a bit if you want us to do it.’

“She read my struggle in my eyes. She turned back toward the grey rock. I saw a shiver pass through her. I felt a tinge of remorse and pity!

“‘Edith,’ I exclaimed, ‘we’ll go!’

“She looked at me again. ‘Science is a jealous mistress,’ she quoted. ‘No, after all it may be just fancy. At any rate, you can’t run away. No! But, Dave, I’m going to stay too!’

“And there was no changing her decision. As we neared the others she laid a hand on my arm.

“‘Dave,’ she said, ‘if there should be something—well—inexplicable tonight—something that seems—too dangerous—will you promise to go back to our own islet tomorrow, if we can—and wait until the natives return?’

“I promised eagerly—the desire to stay and see what came with the night was like a fire within me.

“We picked a place about five hundred feet away from the steps leading into the outer court.

“The spot we had selected was well hidden. We could not be seen, and yet we had a clear view of the stairs and the gateway. We settled down just before dusk to wait for whatever might come. I was nearest the giant steps; next me Edith; then Thora, and last Stanton.

“Night fell. After a time the eastern sky began to lighten, and we knew that the moon was rising; grew lighter still, and the orb peeped over the sea; swam into full sight. I glanced at Edith and then at Thora. My wife was intently listening. Thora sat, as she had since we had placed ourselves, elbows on knees, her hands covering her face.

“And then from the moonlight flooding us there dripped down on me a great drowsiness. Sleep seemed to seep from the rays and fall upon my eyes, closing them—closing them inexorably. Edith’s hand in mine relaxed. Stanton’s head fell upon his breast and his body swayed drunkenly. I tried to rise—to fight against the profound desire for slumber that pressed on me.

“And as I fought, Thora raised her head as though listening; and turned toward the gateway. There was infinite despair in her face—and expectancy. I tried again to rise—and a surge of sleep rushed over me. Dimly, as I sank within it, I heard a crystalline chiming; raised my lids once more with a supreme effort.

“Thora, bathed in light, was standing at the top of the stairs.

“Sleep took me for its very own—swept me into the heart of oblivion!

“Dawn was breaking when I wakened. Recollection rushed back; I thrust a panic-stricken hand out toward Edith; touched her and my heart gave a great leap of thankfulness. She stirred, sat up, rubbing dazed eyes. Stanton lay on his side, back toward us, head in arms.

“Edith looked at me laughingly. ‘Heavens! What sleep!’ she said. Memory came to her.

“‘What happened?’ she whispered. ‘What made us sleep like that?’

“Stanton awoke.

“‘What’s the matter!’ he exclaimed. ‘You look as though you’ve been seeing ghosts.’

“Edith caught my hands.

“‘Where’s Thora?’ she cried. Before I could answer she had run out into the open, calling.

“‘Thora was taken,’ was all I could say to Stanton, ‘together we went to my wife, now standing beside the great stone steps, looking up fearfully at the gateway into the terraces. There I told them what I had seen before sleep had drowned me. And together then we ran up the stairs, through the court and to the grey rock.

“The slab was closed as it had been the day before, nor was there trace of its having opened. No trace? Even as I thought this Edith dropped to her knees before it and reached toward something lying at its foot. It was a little piece of gay silk. I knew it for part of the kerchief Thora wore about her hair. She lifted the fragment. It had been cut from the kerchief as though by a razor-edge; a few threads ran from it—down toward the base of the slab; ran on to the base of the grey rock and—under it!

“The grey rock was a door! And it had opened and Thora had passed through it!

“I think that for the next few minutes we all were a little insane. We beat upon that portal with our hands, with stones and sticks. At last reason came back to us.

“Goodwin, during the next two hours we tried every way in our power to force entrance through the slab. The rock resisted our drills. We tried explosions at the base with charges covered by rock. They made not the slightest impression on the surface, expending their force, of course, upon the slighter resistance of their coverings.

“Afternoon found us hopeless. Night was coming on and we would have to decide our course of action. I wanted to go to Ponape for help. But Edith objected that this would take hours and after we had reached there it would be impossible to persuade our men to return with us that night, if at all. What then was left? Clearly only one of two choices: to go back to our camp, wait for our men, and on their return try to persuade them to go with us to Nan-Tauach. But this would mean the abandonment of Thora for at least two days. We could not do it; it would have been too cowardly.

“The other choice was to wait where we were for night to come; to wait for the rock to open as it had the night before, and to make a sortie through it for Thora before it could close again.

“Our path lay clear before us. We had to spend that night on Nan-Tauach!

“We had, of course, discussed the sleep phenomena very fully. If our theory that lights, sounds, and Thora’s disappearance were linked with secret religious rites of the natives, the logical inference was that the slumber had been produced by them, perhaps by vapours—you know as well as I, what extraordinary knowledge these Pacific peoples have of such things. Or the sleep might have been simply a coincidence and produced by emanations either gaseous or from plants, natural causes which had happened to coincide in their effects with the other manifestations. We made some rough and ready but effective respirators.

“As dusk fell we looked over our weapons. Edith was an excellent shot with both rifle and pistol. We had decided that my wife was to remain in the hiding-place. Stanton would take up a station on the far side of the stairway and I would place myself opposite him on the side near Edith. The place I picked out was less than two hundred feet from her, and I could reassure myself now and then as to her safety as it looked down upon the hollow wherein she crouched. From our respective stations Stanton and I could command the gateway entrance. His position gave him also a glimpse of the outer courtyard.

“A faint glow in the sky heralded the moon. Stanton and I took our places. The moon dawn increased rapidly; the disk swam up, and in a moment it was shining in full radiance upon ruins and sea.

“As it rose there came a curious little sighing sound from the inner terrace. Stanton straightened up and stared intently through the gateway, rifle ready.

“‘Stanton, what do you see?’ I called cautiously. He waved a silencing hand. I turned my head to look at Edith. A shock ran through me. She lay upon her side. Her face, grotesque with its nose and mouth covered by the respirator, was turned full toward the moon. She was again in deepest sleep!

“As I turned again to call to Stanton, my eyes swept the head of the steps and stopped, fascinated. For the moonlight had thickened. It seemed to be—curdled—there; and through it ran little gleams and veins of shimmering white fire. A languor passed through me. It was not the ineffable drowsiness of the preceding night. It was a sapping of all will to move. I tried to cry out to Stanton. I had not even the will to move my lips. Goodwin—I could not even move my eyes!

“Stanton was in the range of my fixed vision. I watched him leap up the steps and move toward the gateway. The curdled radiance seemed to await him. He stepped into it—and was lost to my sight.

“For a dozen heart beats there was silence. Then a rain of tinklings that set the pulses racing with joy and at once checked them with tiny fingers of ice—and ringing through them Stanton’s voice from the courtyard—a great cry—a scream—filled with ecstasy insupportable and horror unimaginable! And once more there was silence. I strove to burst the bonds that held me. I could not. Even my eyelids were fixed. Within them my eyes, dry and aching, burned.

“Then Goodwin—I first saw the—inexplicable! The crystalline music swelled. Where I sat I could take in the gateway and its basalt portals, rough and broken, rising to the top of the wall forty feet above, shattered, ruined portals—unclimbable. From this gateway an intenser light began to flow. It grew, it gushed, and out of it walked Stanton.

“Stanton! But—God! What a vision!”

A deep tremor shook him. I waited—waited.

CHAPTER V

Into the Moon Pool

“Goodwin,” Throckmartin went on at last, “I can describe him only as a thing of living light. He radiated light; was filled with light; overflowed with it. A shining cloud whirled through and around him in radiant swirls, shimmering tentacles, luminescent, coruscating spirals.

“His face shone with a rapture too great to be borne by living man, and was shadowed with insuperable misery. It was as though it had been remoulded by the hand of God and the hand of Satan, working together and in harmony. You have seen that seal upon my own. But you have never seen it in the degree that Stanton bore it. The eyes were wide open and fixed, as though upon some inward vision of hell and heaven!

“The light that filled and surrounded him had a nucleus, a core—something shiftingly human shaped—that dissolved and changed, gathered itself, whirled through and beyond him and back again. And as its shining nucleus passed through him Stanton’s whole body pulsed radiance. As the luminescence moved, there moved above it, still and serene always, seven tiny globes of seven colors, like seven little moons.

“Then swiftly Stanton was lifted—levitated—up the unscalable wall and to its top. The glow faded from the moonlight, the tinkling music grew fainter. I tried again to move. The tears were running down now from my rigid lids and they brought relief to my tortured eyes.

“I have said my gaze was fixed. It was. But from the side, peripherally, it took in a part of the far wall of the outer enclosure. Ages seemed to pass and a radiance stole along it. Soon drifted into sight the figure that was Stanton. Far away he was—on the gigantic wall. But still I could see the shining spirals whirling jubilantly around and through him; felt rather than saw his tranced face beneath the seven moons. A swirl of crystal notes, and he had passed. And all the time, as though from some opened well of light, the courtyard gleamed and sent out silver fires that dimmed the moonrays, yet seemed strangely to be a part of them.

“At last the moon neared the horizon. There came a louder burst of sound; the second, and last, cry of Stanton, like an echo of his first! Again the soft sighing from the inner terrace. Then—utter silence!

“The light faded; the moon was setting and with a rush life and power to move returned to me. I made a leap for the steps, rushed up them, through the gateway and straight to the grey rock. It was closed—as I knew it would be. But did I dream it or did I hear, echoing through it as though from vast distances a triumphant shouting?

“I ran back to Edith. At my touch she wakened; looked at me wanderingly; raised herself on a hand.

“‘Dave!’ she said, ‘I slept—after all.’ She saw the despair on my face and leaped to her feet. ‘Dave!’ she cried. ‘What is it? Where’s Charles?’

“I lighted a fire before I spoke. Then I told her. And for the balance of that night we sat before the flames, arms around each other—like two frightened children.”

Abruptly Throckmartin held his hands out to me appealingly.

“Walter, old friend!” he cried. “Don’t look at me as though I were mad. It’s truth, absolute truth. Wait—” I comforted him as well as I could. After a little time he took up his story.

“Never,” he said, “did man welcome the sun as we did that morning. A soon as it had risen we went back to the courtyard. The walls whereon I had seen Stanton were black and silent. The terraces were as they had been. The grey slab was in its place. In the shallow hollow at its base was—nothing. Nothing—nothing was there anywhere on the islet of Stanton—not a trace.

“What were we to do? Precisely the same arguments that had kept us there the night before held good now—and doubly good. We could not abandon these two; could not go as long as there was the faintest hope of finding them—and yet for love of each other how could we remain? I loved my wife,—how much I never knew until that day; and she loved me as deeply.

“‘It takes only one each night,’ she pleaded. ‘Beloved, let it take me.’

“I wept, Walter. We both wept.

“‘We will meet it together,’ she said. And it was thus at last that we arranged it.”

“That took great courage indeed, Throckmartin,” I interrupted. He looked at me eagerly.

“You do believe then?” he exclaimed.

“I believe,” I said. He pressed my hand with a grip that nearly crushed it.

“Now,” he told me. “I do not fear. If I—fail, you will follow with help?”

I promised.

“We talked it over carefully,” he went on, “bringing to bear all our power of analysis and habit of calm, scientific thought. We considered minutely the time element in the phenomena. Although the deep chanting began at the very moment of moonrise, fully five minutes had passed between its full lifting and the strange sighing sound from the inner terrace. I went back in memory over the happenings of the night before. At least ten minutes had intervened between the first heralding sigh and the intensification of the moonlight in the courtyard. And this glow grew for at least ten minutes more before the first burst of the crystal notes. Indeed, more than half an hour must have elapsed, I calculated, between the moment the moon showed above the horizon and the first delicate onslaught of the tinklings.

“‘Edith!’ I cried. ‘I think I have it! The grey rock opens five minutes after upon the moonrise. But whoever or whatever it is that comes through it must wait until the moon has risen higher, or else it must come from a distance. The thing to do is not to wait for it, but to surprise it before it passes out the door. We will go into the inner court early. You will take your rifle and pistol and hide yourself where you can command the opening—if the slab does open. The instant it opens I will enter. It’s our best chance, Edith. I think it’s our only one.’

“My wife demurred strongly. She wanted to go with me. But I convinced her that it was better for her to stand guard without, prepared to help me if I were forced again into the open by what lay behind the rock.

“At the half-hour before moonrise we went into the inner court. I took my place at the side of the grey rock. Edith crouched behind a broken pillar twenty feet away; slipped her rifle-barrel over it so that it would cover the opening.

“The minutes crept by. The darkness lessened and through the breaches of the terrace I watched the far sky softly lighten. With the first pale flush the silence of the place intensified. It deepened; became unbearably—expectant. The moon rose, showed the quarter, the half, then swam up into full sight like a great bubble.

“Its rays fell upon the wall before me and suddenly upon the convexities I have described seven little circles of light sprang out. They gleamed, glimmered, grew brighter—shone. The gigantic slab before me glowed with them, silver wavelets of phosphorescence pulsed over its surface and then—it turned as though on a pivot, sighing softly as it moved!

“With a word to Edith I flung myself through the opening. A tunnel stretched before me. It glowed with the same faint silvery radiance. Down it I raced. The passage turned abruptly, passed parallel to the walls of the outer courtyard and then once more led downward.

“The passage ended. Before me was a high vaulted arch. It seemed to open into space; a space filled with lambent, coruscating, many-coloured mist whose brightness grew even as I watched. I passed through the arch and stopped in sheer awe!

“In front of me was a pool. It was circular, perhaps twenty feet wide. Around it ran a low, softly curved lip of glimmering silvery stone. Its water was palest blue. The pool with its silvery rim was like a great blue eye staring upward.

“Upon it streamed seven shafts of radiance. They poured down upon the blue eye like cylindrical torrents; they were like shining pillars of light rising from a sapphire floor.

“One was the tender pink of the pearl; one of the aurora’s green; a third a deathly white; the fourth the blue in mother-of-pearl; a shimmering column of pale amber; a beam of amethyst; a shaft of molten silver. Such are the colours of the seven lights that stream upon the Moon Pool. I drew closer, awestricken. The shafts did not illumine the depths. They played upon the surface and seemed there to diffuse, to melt into it. The Pool drank them?

“Through the water tiny gleams of phosphorescence began to dart, sparkles and coruscations of pale incandescence. And far, far below I sensed a movement, a shifting glow as of a radiant body slowly rising.

“I looked upward, following the radiant pillars to their source. Far above were seven shining globes, and it was from these that the rays poured. Even as I watched their brightness grew. They were like seven moons set high in some caverned heaven. Slowly their splendour increased, and with it the splendour of the seven beams streaming from them.

“I tore my gaze away and stared at the Pool. It had grown milky, opalescent. The rays gushing into it seemed to be filling it; it was alive with sparklings, scintillations, glimmerings. And the luminescence I had seen rising from its depths was larger, nearer!

“A swirl of mist floated up from its surface. It drifted within the embrace of the rosy beam and hung there for a moment. The beam seemed to embrace it, sending through it little shining corpuscles, tiny rosy spiralings. The mist absorbed the rays, was strengthened by them, gained substance. Another swirl sprang into the amber shaft, clung and fed there, moved swiftly toward the first and mingled with it. And now other swirls arose, here and there, too fast to be counted; hung poised in the embrace of the light streams; flashed and pulsed into each other.

“Thicker and thicker still they arose until over the surface of the Pool was a pulsating pillar of opalescent mist steadily growing stronger; drawing within it life from the seven beams falling upon it; drawing to it from below the darting, incandescent atoms of the Pool. Into its centre was passing the luminescence rising from the far depths. And the pillar glowed, throbbed—began to send out questing swirls and tendrils—

“There forming before me was That which had walked with Stanton, which had taken Thora—the thing I had come to find!

“My brain sprang into action. My hand threw up the pistol and I fired shot after shot into the shining core.

“As I fired, it swayed and shook; gathered again. I slipped a second clip into the automatic and another idea coming to me took careful aim at one of the globes in the roof. From thence I knew came the force that shaped this Dweller in the Pool—from the pouring rays came its strength. If I could destroy them I could check its forming. I fired again and again. If I hit the globes I did no damage. The little motes in their beams danced with the motes in the mist, troubled. That was all.

“But up from the Pool like little bells, like tiny bursting bubbles of glass, swarmed the tinkling sounds—their pitch higher, all their sweetness lost, angry.

“And out from the Inexplicable swept a shining spiral.

“It caught me above the heart; wrapped itself around me. There rushed through me a mingled ecstasy and horror. Every atom of me quivered with delight and shrank with despair. There was nothing loathsome in it. But it was as though the icy soul of evil and the fiery soul of good had stepped together within me. The pistol dropped from my hand.

“So I stood while the Pool gleamed and sparkled; the streams of light grew more intense and the radiant Thing that held me gleamed and strengthened. Its shining core had shape—but a shape that my eyes and brain could not define. It was as though a being of another sphere should assume what it might of human semblance, but was not able to conceal that what human eyes saw was but a part of it. It was neither man nor woman; it was unearthly and androgynous. Even as I found its human semblance it changed. And still the mingled rapture and terror held me. Only in a little corner of my brain dwelt something untouched; something that held itself apart and watched. Was it the soul? I have never believed—and yet—

“Over the head of the misty body there sprang suddenly out seven little lights. Each was the colour of the beam beneath which it rested. I knew now that the Dweller was—complete!

“I heard a scream. It was Edith’s voice. It came to me that she had heard the shots and followed me. I felt every faculty concentrate into a mighty effort. I wrenched myself free from the gripping tentacle and it swept back. I turned to catch Edith, and as I did so slipped—fell.

“The radiant shape above the Pool leaped swiftly—and straight into it raced Edith, arms outstretched to shield me from it! God!

“She threw herself squarely within its splendour,” he whispered. “It wrapped its shining self around her. The crystal tinklings burst forth jubilantly. The light filled her, ran through and around her as it had with Stanton; and dropped down upon her face—the look!

“But her rush had taken her to the very verge of the Moon Pool. She tottered; she fell—with the radiance still holding her, still swirling and winding around and through her—into the Moon Pool! She sank, and with her went—the Dweller!

“I dragged myself to the brink. Far down was a shining, many-coloured nebulous cloud descending; out of it peered Edith’s face, disappearing; her eyes stared up at me—and she vanished!

“‘Edith!’ I cried again. ‘Edith, come back to me!’

“And then a darkness fell upon me. I remember running back through the shimmering corridors and out into the courtyard. Reason had left me. When it returned I was far out at sea in our boat wholly estranged from civilization. A day later I was picked up by the schooner in which I came to Port Moresby.

“I have formed a plan; you must hear it, Goodwin—” He fell upon his berth. I bent over him. Exhaustion and the relief of telling his story had been too much for him. He slept like the dead.

All that night I watched over him. When dawn broke I went to my room to get a little sleep myself. But my slumber was haunted.

The next day the storm was unabated. Throckmartin came to me at lunch. He had regained much of his old alertness.

“Come to my cabin,” he said. There, he stripped his shirt from him. “Something is happening,” he said. “The mark is smaller.” It was as he said.

“I’m escaping,” he whispered jubilantly, “Just let me get to Melbourne safely, and then we’ll see who’ll win! For, Walter, I’m not at all sure that Edith is dead—as we know death—nor that the others are. There is something outside experience there—some great mystery.”

And all that day he talked to me of his plans.

“There’s a natural explanation, of course,” he said. “My theory is that the moon rock is of some composition sensitive to the action of moon rays; somewhat as the metal selenium is to sun rays. The little circles over the top are, without doubt, its operating agency. When the light strikes them they release the mechanism that opens the slab, just as you can open doors with sun or electric light by an ingenious arrangement of selenium-cells. Apparently it takes the strength of the full moon both to do this and to summon the Dweller in the Pool. We will first try a concentration of the rays of the waning moon upon these circles to see whether that will open the rock. If it does we will be able to investigate the Pool without interruption from—from—what emanates.

“Look, here on the chart are their locations. I have made this in duplicate for you in the event—of something happening—to me. And if I lose—you’ll come after us, Goodwin, with help—won’t you?”

And again I promised.

A little later he complained of increasing sleepiness.

“But it’s just weariness,” he said. “Not at all like that other drowsiness. It’s an hour till moonrise still,” he yawned at last. “Wake me up a good fifteen minutes before.”

He lay upon the berth. I sat thinking. I came to myself with a guilty start. I had completely lost myself in my deep preoccupation. What time was it? I looked at my watch and jumped to the port-hole. It was full moonlight; the orb had been up for fully half an hour. I strode over to Throckmartin and shook him by the shoulder.

“Up, quick, man!” I cried. He rose sleepily. His shirt fell open at the neck and I looked, in amazement, at the white band around his chest. Even under the electric light it shone softly, as though little flecks of light were in it.

Throckmartin seemed only half-awake. He looked down at his breast, saw the glowing cincture, and smiled.

“Yes,” he said drowsily, “it’s coming—to take me back to Edith! Well, I’m glad.”

“Throckmartin!” I cried. “Wake up! Fight!”

“Fight!” he said. “No use; come after us!”

He went to the port and sleepily drew aside the curtain. The moon traced a broad path of light straight to the ship. Under its rays the band around his chest gleamed brighter and brighter; shot forth little rays; seemed to writhe.

The lights went out in the cabin; evidently also throughout the ship, for I heard shoutings above.

Throckmartin still stood at the open port. Over his shoulder I saw a gleaming pillar racing along the moon path toward us. Through the window cascaded a blinding radiance. It gathered Throckmartin to it, clothed him in a robe of living opalescence. Light pulsed through and from him. The cabin filled with murmurings—

A wave of weakness swept over me, buried me in blackness. When consciousness came back, the lights were again burning brightly.

But of Throckmartin there was no trace!

CHAPTER VI

“The Shining Devil Took Them!”

My colleagues of the Association, and you others who may read this my narrative, for what I did and did not when full realization returned I must offer here, briefly as I can, an explanation; a defense—if you will.

My first act was to spring to the open port. The coma had lasted hours, for the moon was now low in the west! I ran to the door to sound the alarm. It resisted under my frantic hands; would not open. Something fell tinkling to the floor. It was the key and I remembered then that Throckmartin had turned it before we began our vigil. With memory a hope died that I had not known was in me, the hope that he had escaped from the cabin, found refuge elsewhere on the ship.

And as I stooped, fumbling with shaking fingers for the key, a thought came to me that drove again the blood from my heart, held me rigid. I could sound no alarm on the Southern Queen for Throckmartin!

Conviction of my appalling helplessness was complete. The ensemble of the vessel from captain to cabin boy was, to put it conservatively, average. None, I knew, save Throckmartin and myself had seen the first apparition of the Dweller. Had they witnessed the second? I did not know, nor could I risk speaking, not knowing. And not seeing, how could they believe? They would have thought me insane—or worse; even, it might be, his murderer.

I snapped off the electrics; waited and listened; opened the door with infinite caution and slipped, unseen, into my own stateroom. The hours until the dawn were eternities of waking nightmare. Reason, resuming sway at last, steadied me. Even had I spoken and been believed where in these wastes after all the hours could we search for Throckmartin? Certainly the captain would not turn back to Port Moresby. And even if he did, of what use for me to set forth for the Nan-Matal without the equipment which Throckmartin himself had decided was necessary if one hoped to cope with the mystery that lurked there?

There was but one thing to do—follow his instructions; get the paraphernalia in Melbourne or Sydney if it were possible; if not sail to America as swiftly as might be, secure it there and as swiftly return to Ponape. And this I determined to do.

Calmness came back to me after I had made this decision. And when I went up on deck I knew that I had been right. They had not seen the Dweller. They were still discussing the darkening of the ship, talking of dynamos burned out, wires short circuited, a half dozen explanations of the extinguishment. Not until noon was Throckmartin’s absence discovered. I told the captain that I had left him early in the evening; that, indeed, I knew him but slightly, after all. It occurred to none to doubt me, or to question me minutely. Why should it have? His strangeness had been noted, commented upon; all who had met him had thought him half mad. I did little to discourage the impression. And so it came naturally that on the log it was entered that he had fallen or leaped from the vessel some time during the night.

A report to this effect was made when we entered Melbourne. I slipped quietly ashore and in the press of the war news Throckmartin’s supposed fate won only a few lines in the newspapers; my own presence on the ship and in the city passed unnoticed.

I was fortunate in securing at Melbourne everything I needed except a set of Becquerel ray condensers—but these were the very keystone of my equipment. Pursuing my search to Sydney I was doubly fortunate in finding a firm who were expecting these very articles in a consignment due them from the States within a fortnight. I settled down in strictest seclusion to await their arrival.

And now it will occur to you to ask why I did not cable, during this period of waiting, to the Association; demand aid from it. Or why I did not call upon members of the University staffs of either Melbourne or Sydney for assistance. At the least, why I did not gather, as Throckmartin had hoped to do, a little force of strong men to go with me to the Nan-Matal.

To the first two questions I answer frankly—I did not dare. And this reluctance, this inhibition, every man jealous of his scientific reputation will understand. The story of Throckmartin, the happenings I had myself witnessed, were incredible, abnormal, outside the facts of all known science. I shrank from the inevitable disbelief, perhaps ridicule—nay, perhaps even the graver suspicion that had caused me to seal my lips while on the ship. Why I myself could only half believe! How then could I hope to convince others?

And as for the third question—I could not take men into the range of such a peril without first warning them of what they might encounter; and if I did warn them—

It was checkmate! If it also was cowardice—well, I have atoned for it. But I do not hold it so; my conscience is clear.

That fortnight and the greater part of another passed before the ship I awaited steamed into port. By that time, between my straining anxiety to be after Throckmartin, the despairing thought that every moment of delay might be vital to him and his, and my intensely eager desire to know whether that shining, glorious horror on the moon path did exist or had been hallucination, I was worn almost to the edge of madness.

At last the condensers were in my hands. It was more than a week later, however, before I could secure passage back to Port Moresby and it was another week still before I started north on the Suwarna, a swift little sloop with a fifty-horsepower auxiliary, heading straight for Ponape and the Nan-Matal.

We sighted the Brunhilda some five hundred miles south of the Carolines. The wind had fallen soon after Papua had dropped astern. The Suwarna’s ability to make her twelve knots an hour without it had made me very fully forgive her for not being as fragrant as the Javan flower for which she was named. Da Costa, her captain, was a garrulous Portuguese; his mate was a Canton man with all the marks of long and able service on some pirate junk; his engineer was a half-breed China-Malay who had picked up his knowledge of power plants, Heaven alone knew where, and, I had reason to believe, had transferred all his religious impulses to the American built deity of mechanism he so faithfully served. The crew was made up of six huge, chattering Tonga boys.

The Suwarna had cut through Finschafen Huon Gulf to the protection of the Bismarcks. She had threaded the maze of the archipelago tranquilly, and we were then rolling over the thousand-mile stretch of open ocean with New Hanover far behind us and our boat’s bow pointed straight toward Nukuor of the Monte Verdes. After we had rounded Nukuor we should, barring accident, reach Ponape in not more than sixty hours.

It was late afternoon, and on the demure little breeze that marched behind us came far-flung sighs of spice-trees and nutmeg flowers. The slow prodigious swells of the Pacific lifted us in gentle, giant hands and sent us as gently down the long, blue wave slopes to the next broad, upward slope. There was a spell of peace over the ocean, stilling even the Portuguese captain who stood dreamily at the wheel, slowly swaying to the rhythmic lift and fall of the sloop.

There came a whining hail from the Tonga boy lookout draped lazily over the bow.

“Sail he b’long port side!”

Da Costa straightened and gazed while I raised my glass. The vessel was a scant mile away, and must have been visible long before the sleepy watcher had seen her. She was a sloop about the size of the Suwarna, without power. All sails set, even to a spinnaker she carried, she was making the best of the little breeze. I tried to read her name, but the vessel jibed sharply as though the hands of the man at the wheel had suddenly dropped the helm—and then with equal abruptness swung back to her course. The stern came in sight, and on it I read Brunhilda.

I shifted my glasses to the man at wheel. He was crouching down over the spokes in a helpless, huddled sort of way, and even as I looked the vessel veered again, abruptly as before. I saw the helmsman straighten up and bring the wheel about with a vicious jerk.

He stood so for a moment, looking straight ahead, entirely oblivious of us, and then seemed again to sink down within himself. It came to me that his was the action of a man striving vainly against a weariness unutterable. I swept the deck with my glasses. There was no other sign of life. I turned to find the Portuguese staring intently and with puzzled air at the sloop, now separated from us by a scant half mile.

“Something veree wrong I think there, sair,” he said in his curious English. “The man on deck I know. He is captain and owner of the Br-rwun’ild. His name Olaf Huldricksson, what you say—Norwegian. He is eithair veree sick or veree tired—but I do not undweerstand where is the crew and the starb’d boat is gone—”

He shouted an order to the engineer and as he did so the faint breeze failed and the sails of the Brunhilda flapped down inert. We were now nearly abreast and a scant hundred yards away. The engine of the Suwarna died and the Tonga boys leaped to one of the boats.

“You Olaf Huldricksson!” shouted Da Costa. “What’s a matter wit’ you?”

The man at the wheel turned toward us. He was a giant; his shoulders enormous, thick chested, strength in every line of him, he towered like a viking of old at the rudder bar of his shark ship.

I raised the glass again; his face sprang into the lens and never have I seen a visage lined and marked as though by ages of unsleeping misery as was that of Olaf Huldricksson!

The Tonga boys had the boat alongside and were waiting at the oars. The little captain was dropping into it.

“Wait!” I cried. I ran into my cabin, grasped my emergency medical kit and climbed down the rope ladder. The Tonga boys bent to the oars. We reached the side and Da Costa and I each seized a lanyard dangling from the stays and swung ourselves on board. Da Costa approached Huldricksson softly.

“What’s the matter, Olaf?” he began—and then was silent, looking down at the wheel. The hands of Huldricksson were lashed fast to the spokes by thongs of thin, strong cord; they were swollen and black and the thongs had bitten into the sinewy wrists till they were hidden in the outraged flesh, cutting so deeply that blood fell, slow drop by drop, at his feet! We sprang toward him, reaching out hands to his fetters to loose them. Even as we touched them, Huldricksson aimed a vicious kick at me and then another at Da Costa which sent the Portuguese tumbling into the scuppers.

“Let be!” croaked Huldricksson; his voice was thick and lifeless as though forced from a dead throat; his lips were cracked and dry and his parched tongue was black. “Let be! Go! Let be!”

The Portuguese had picked himself up, whimpering with rage and knife in hand, but as Huldricksson’s voice reached him he stopped. Amazement crept into his eyes and as he thrust the blade back into his belt they softened with pity.

“Something veree wrong wit’ Olaf,” he murmured to me. “I think he crazee!” And then Olaf Huldricksson began to curse us. He did not speak—he howled from that hideously dry mouth his imprecations. And all the time his red eyes roamed the seas and his hands, clenched and rigid on the wheel, dropped blood.

“I go below,” said Da Costa nervously. “His wife, his daughter—” he darted down the companionway and was gone.

Huldricksson, silent once more, had slumped down over the wheel.

Da Costa’s head appeared at the top of the companion steps.

“There is nobody, nobody,” he paused—then—“nobody—nowhere!” His hands flew out in a gesture of hopeless incomprehension. “I do not understan’.”

Then Olaf Huldricksson opened his dry lips and as he spoke a chill ran through me, checking my heart.

“The sparkling devil took them!” croaked Olaf Huldricksson, “the sparkling devil took them! Took my Helma and my little Freda! The sparkling devil came down from the moon and took them!”

He swayed; tears dripped down his cheeks. Da Costa moved toward him again and again Huldricksson watched him, alertly, wickedly, from his bloodshot eyes.

I took a hypodermic from my case and filled it with morphine. I drew Da Costa to me.

“Get to the side of him,” I whispered, “talk to him.” He moved over toward the wheel.

“Where is your Helma and Freda, Olaf?” he said.

Huldricksson turned his head toward him. “The shining devil took them,” he croaked. “The moon devil that spark—”

A yell broke from him. I had thrust the needle into his arm just above one swollen wrist and had quickly shot the drug through. He struggled to release himself and then began to rock drunkenly. The morphine, taking him in his weakness, worked quickly. Soon over his face a peace dropped. The pupils of the staring eyes contracted. Once, twice, he swayed and then, his bleeding, prisoned hands held high and still gripping the wheel, he crumpled to the deck.

With utmost difficulty we loosed the thongs, but at last it was done. We rigged a little swing and the Tonga boys slung the great inert body over the side into the dory. Soon we had Huldricksson in my bunk. Da Costa sent half his crew over to the sloop in charge of the Cantonese. They took in all sail, stripping Huldricksson’s boat to the masts and then with the Brunhilda nosing quietly along after us at the end of a long hawser, one of the Tonga boys at her wheel, we resumed the way so enigmatically interrupted.

I cleansed and bandaged the Norseman’s lacerated wrists and sponged the blackened, parched mouth with warm water and a mild antiseptic.

Suddenly I was aware of Da Costa’s presence and turned. His unease was manifest and held, it seemed to me, a queer, furtive anxiety.

“What you think of Olaf, sair?” he asked. I shrugged my shoulders. “You think he killed his woman and his babee?” He went on. “You think he crazee and killed all?”

“Nonsense, Da Costa,” I answered. “You saw the boat was gone. Most probably his crew mutinied and to torture him tied him up the way you saw. They did the same thing with Hilton of the Coral Lady; you’ll remember.”

“No,” he said. “No. The crew did not. Nobody there on board when Olaf was tied.”

“What!” I cried, startled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” he said slowly, “that Olaf tie himself!”

“Wait!” he went on at my incredulous gesture of dissent. “Wait, I show you.” He had been standing with hands behind his back and now I saw that he held in them the cut thongs that had bound Huldricksson. They were blood-stained and each ended in a broad leather tip skilfully spliced into the cord. “Look,” he said, pointing to these leather ends. I looked and saw in them deep indentations of teeth. I snatched one of the thongs and opened the mouth of the unconscious man on the bunk. Carefully I placed the leather within it and gently forced the jaws shut on it. It was true. Those marks were where Olaf Huldricksson’s jaws had gripped.

“Wait!” Da Costa repeated, “I show you.” He took other cords and rested his hands on the supports of a chair back. Rapidly he twisted one of the thongs around his left hand, drew a loose knot, shifted the cord up toward his elbow. This left wrist and hand still free and with them he twisted the other cord around the right wrist; drew a similar knot. His hands were now in the exact position that Huldricksson’s had been on the Brunhilda but with cords and knots hanging loose. Then Da Costa reached down his head, took a leather end in his teeth and with a jerk drew the thong that noosed his left hand tight; similarly he drew tight the second.

He strained at his fetters. There before my eyes he had pinioned himself so that without aid he could not release himself. And he was exactly as Huldricksson had been!

“You will have to cut me loose, sair,” he said. “I cannot move them. It is an old trick on these seas. Sometimes it is necessary that a man stand at the wheel many hours without help, and he does this so that if he sleep the wheel wake him, yes, sair.”

I looked from him to the man on the bed.

“But why, sair,” said Da Costa slowly, “did Olaf have to tie his hands?”

I looked at him, uneasily.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Do you?”

He fidgeted, avoided my eyes, and then rapidly, almost surreptitiously crossed himself.

“No,” he replied. “I know nothing. Some things I have heard—but they tell many tales on these seas.”

He started for the door. Before he reached it he turned. “But this I do know,” he half whispered, “I am damned glad there is no full moon tonight.” And passed out, leaving me staring after him in amazement. What did the Portuguese know?

I bent over the sleeper. On his face was no trace of that unholy mingling of opposites the Dweller stamped upon its victims.

And yet—what was it the Norseman had said?

“The sparkling devil took them!” Nay, he had been even more explicit—“The sparkling devil that came down from the moon!”

Could it be that the Dweller had swept upon the Brunhilda, drawing down the moon path Olaf Huldricksson’s wife and babe even as it had drawn Throckmartin?

As I sat thinking the cabin grew suddenly dark and from above came a shouting and patter of feet. Down upon us swept one of the abrupt, violent squalls that are met with in those latitudes. I lashed Huldricksson fast in the berth and ran up on deck.

The long, peaceful swells had changed into angry, choppy waves from the tops of which the spindrift streamed in long stinging lashes.

A half-hour passed; the squall died as quickly as it had arisen. The sea quieted. Over in the west, from beneath the tattered, flying edge of the storm, dropped the red globe of the setting sun; dropped slowly until it touched the sea rim.

I watched it—and rubbed my eyes and stared again. For over its flaming portal something huge and black moved, like a gigantic beckoning finger!

Da Costa had seen it, too, and he turned the Suwarna straight toward the descending orb and its strange shadow. As we approached we saw it was a little mass of wreckage and that the beckoning finger was a wing of canvas, sticking up and swaying with the motion of the waves. On the highest point of the wreckage sat a tall figure calmly smoking a cigarette.

We brought the Suwarna to, dropped a boat, and with myself as coxswain pulled toward a wrecked hydroairplane. Its occupant took a long puff at his cigarette, waved a cheerful hand, shouted a greeting. And just as he did so a great wave raised itself up behind him, took the wreckage, tossed it high in a swelter of foam, and passed on. When we had steadied our boat, where wreck and man had been was—nothing.

There came a tug at the side—, two muscular brown hands gripped it close to my left, and a sleek, black, wet head showed its top between them. Two bright, blue eyes that held deep within them a laughing deviltry looked into mine, and a long, lithe body drew itself gently over the thwart and seated its dripping self at my feet.

“Much obliged,” said this man from the sea. “I knew somebody was sure to come along when the O’Keefe banshee didn’t show up.”

“The what?” I asked in amazement.

“The O’Keefe banshee—I’m Larry O’Keefe. It’s a far way from Ireland, but not too far for the O’Keefe banshee to travel if the O’Keefe was going to click in.”

I looked again at my astonishing rescue. He seemed perfectly serious.

“Have you a cigarette? Mine went out,” he said with a grin, as he reached a moist hand out for the little cylinder, took it, lighted it.

I saw a lean, intelligent face whose fighting jaw was softened by the wistfulness of the clean-cut lips and the honesty that lay side by side with the deviltry in the laughing blue eyes; nose of a thoroughbred with the suspicion of a tilt; long, well-knit, slender figure that I knew must have all the strength of fine steel; the uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps of Britain’s navy.

He laughed, stretched out a firm hand, and gripped mine.

“Thank you really ever so much, old man,” he said.

I liked Larry O’Keefe from the beginning—but I did not dream as the Tonga boys pulled us back to the Suwarna bow that liking was to be forged into man’s strong love for man by fires which souls such as his and mine—and yours who read this—could never dream.

Larry! Larry O’Keefe, where are you now with your leprechauns and banshee, your heart of a child, your laughing blue eyes, and your fearless soul? Shall I ever see you again, Larry O’Keefe, dear to me as some best beloved younger brother? Larry!

CHAPTER VII

Larry O’Keefe

Pressing back the questions I longed to ask, I introduced myself. Oddly enough, I found that he knew me, or rather my work. He had bought, it appeared, my volume upon the peculiar vegetation whose habitat is disintegrating lava rock and volcanic ash, that I had entitled, somewhat loosely, I could now perceive, Flora of the Craters. For he explained naively that he had picked it up, thinking it an entirely different sort of a book, a novel in fact—something like Meredith’s Diana of the Crossways, which he liked greatly.

He had hardly finished this explanation when we touched the side of the Suwarna, and I was forced to curb my curiosity until we reached the deck.

“That thing you saw me sitting on,” he said, after he had thanked the bowing little skipper for his rescue, “was all that was left of one of his Majesty’s best little hydroairplanes after that cyclone threw it off as excess baggage. And by the way, about where are we?”

Da Costa gave him our approximate position from the noon reckoning.

O’Keefe whistled. “A good three hundred miles from where I left the H.M.S. Dolphin about four hours ago,” he said. “That squall I rode in on was some whizzer!

“The Dolphin,” he went on, calmly divesting himself of his soaked uniform, “was on her way to Melbourne. I’d been yearning for a joy ride and went up for an alleged scouting trip. Then that blow shot out of nowhere, picked me up, and insisted that I go with it.

“About an hour ago I thought I saw a chance to zoom up and out of it, I turned, and blick went my right wing, and down I dropped.”

“I don’t know how we can notify your ship, Lieutenant O’Keefe,” I said. “We have no wireless.”

“Doctair Goodwin,” said Da Costa, “we could change our course, sair—perhaps—”

“Thanks—but not a bit of it,” broke in O’Keefe. “Lord alone knows where the Dolphin is now. Fancy she’ll be nosing around looking for me. Anyway, she’s just as apt to run into you as you into her. Maybe we’ll strike something with a wireless, and I’ll trouble you to put me aboard.” He hesitated. “Where are you bound, by the way?” he asked.

“For Ponape,” I answered.

“No wireless there,” mused O’Keefe. “Beastly hole. Stopped a week ago for fruit. Natives seemed scared to death at us—or something. What are you going there for?”

Da Costa darted a furtive glance at me. It troubled me.

O’Keefe noted my hesitation.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he said. “Maybe I oughn’t to have asked that?”

“It’s no secret, Lieutenant,” I replied. “I’m about to undertake some exploration work—a little digging among the ruins on the Nan-Matal.”

I looked at the Portuguese sharply as I named the place. A pallor crept beneath his skin and again he made swiftly the sign of the cross, glancing as he did so fearfully to the north. I made up my mind then to question him when opportunity came. He turned from his quick scrutiny of the sea and addressed O’Keefe.

“There’s nothing on board to fit you, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, just give me a sheet to throw around me, Captain,” said O’Keefe and followed him. Darkness had fallen, and as the two disappeared into Da Costa’s cabin I softly opened the door of my own and listened. Huldricksson was breathing deeply and regularly.

I drew my electric-flash, and shielding its rays from my face, looked at him. His sleep was changing from the heavy stupor of the drug into one that was at least on the borderland of the normal. The tongue had lost its arid blackness and the mouth secretions had resumed action. Satisfied as to his condition I returned to deck.

O’Keefe was there, looking like a spectre in the cotton sheet he had wrapped about him. A deck table had been cleated down and one of the Tonga boys was setting it for our dinner. Soon the very creditable larder of the Suwarna dressed the board, and O’Keefe, Da Costa, and I attacked it. The night had grown close and oppressive. Behind us the forward light of the Brunhilda glided and the binnacle lamp threw up a faint glow in which her black helmsman’s face stood out mistily. O’Keefe had looked curiously a number of times at our tow, but had asked no questions.

“You’re not the only passenger we picked up today,” I told him. “We found the captain of that sloop, lashed to his wheel, nearly dead with exhaustion, and his boat deserted by everyone except himself.”

“What was the matter?” asked O’Keefe in astonishment.

“We don’t know,” I answered. “He fought us, and I had to drug him before we could get him loose from his lashings. He’s sleeping down in my berth now. His wife and little girl ought to have been on board, the captain here says, but—they weren’t.”

“Wife and child gone!” exclaimed O’Keefe.

“From the condition of his mouth he must have been alone at the wheel and without water at least two days and nights before we found him,” I replied. “And as for looking for anyone on these waters after such a time—it’s hopeless.”

“That’s true,” said O’Keefe. “But his wife and baby! Poor, poor devil!”

He was silent for a time, and then, at my solicitation, began to tell us more of himself. He had been little more than twenty when he had won his wings and entered the war. He had been seriously wounded at Ypres during the third year of the struggle, and when he recovered the war was over. Shortly after that his mother had died. Lonely and restless, he had re-entered the Air Service, and had remained in it ever since.

“And though the war’s long over, I get homesick for the lark’s land with the German planes playing tunes on their machine guns and their Archies tickling the soles of my feet,” he sighed. “If you’re in love, love to the limit; and if you hate, why hate like the devil and if it’s a fight you’re in, get where it’s hottest and fight like hell—if you don’t life’s not worth the living,” sighed he.

I watched him as he talked, feeling my liking for him steadily increasing. If I could but have a man like this beside me on the path of unknown peril upon which I had set my feet I thought, wistfully. We sat and smoked a bit, sipping the strong coffee the Portuguese made so well.

Da Costa at last relieved the Cantonese at the wheel. O’Keefe and I drew chairs up to the rail. The brighter stars shone out dimly through a hazy sky; gleams of phosphorescence tipped the crests of the waves and sparkled with an almost angry brilliance as the bow of the Suwarna tossed them aside. O’Keefe pulled contentedly at a cigarette. The glowing spark lighted the keen, boyish face and the blue eyes, now black and brooding under the spell of the tropic night.

“Are you American or Irish, O’Keefe?” I asked suddenly.

“Why?” he laughed.

“Because,” I answered, “from your name and your service I would suppose you Irish—but your command of pure Americanese makes me doubtful.”

He grinned amiably.

“I’ll tell you how that is,” he said. “My mother was an American—a Grace, of Virginia. My father was the O’Keefe, of Coleraine. And these two loved each other so well that the heart they gave me is half Irish and half American. My father died when I was sixteen. I used to go to the States with my mother every other year for a month or two. But after my father died we used to go to Ireland every other year. And there you are—I’m as much American as I am Irish.

“When I’m in love, or excited, or dreaming, or mad I have the brogue. But for the everyday purpose of life I like the United States talk, and I know Broadway as well as I do Binevenagh Lane, and the Sound as well as St. Patrick’s Channel; educated a bit at Eton, a bit at Harvard; always too much money to have to make any; in love lots of times, and never a heartache after that wasn’t a pleasant one, and never a real purpose in life until I took the king’s shilling and earned my wings; something over thirty—and that’s me—Larry O’Keefe.”

“But it was the Irish O’Keefe who sat out there waiting for the banshee,” I laughed.

“It was that,” he said somberly, and I heard the brogue creep over his voice like velvet and his eyes grew brooding again. “There’s never an O’Keefe for these thousand years that has passed without his warning. An’ twice have I heard the banshee calling—once it was when my younger brother died an’ once when my father lay waiting to be carried out on the ebb tide.”

He mused a moment, then went on: “An’ once I saw an Annir Choille, a girl of the green people, flit like a shade of green fire through Carntogher woods, an’ once at Dunchraig I slept where the ashes of the Dun of Cormac MacConcobar are mixed with those of Cormac an’ Eilidh the Fair, all burned in the nine flames that sprang from the harping of Cravetheen, an’ I heard the echo of his dead harpings—”

He paused again and then, softly, with that curiously sweet, high voice that only the Irish seem to have, he sang:

Woman of the white breasts, Eilidh;

Woman of the gold-brown hair, and lips of the red, red rowan,

Where is the swan that is whiter, with breast more soft,

Or the wave on the sea that moves as thou movest, Eilidh.

CHAPTER VIII

Olaf’s Story

There was a little silence. I looked upon him with wonder. Clearly he was in deepest earnest. I know the psychology of the Gael is a curious one and that deep in all their hearts their ancient traditions and beliefs have strong and living roots. And I was both amused and touched.

Here was this soldier, who had faced war and its ugly realities open-eyed and fearless, picking, indeed, the most dangerous branch of service for his own, a modern if ever there was one, appreciative of most unmystical Broadway, and yet soberly and earnestly attesting to his belief in banshee, in shadowy people of the woods, and phantom harpers! I wondered what he would think if he could see the Dweller and then, with a pang, that perhaps his superstitions might make him an easy prey.

He shook his head half impatiently and ran a hand over his eyes; turned to me and grinned:

“Don’t think I’m cracked, Professor,” he said. “I’m not. But it takes me that way now and then. It’s the Irish in me. And, believe it or not, I’m telling you the truth.”

I looked eastward where the moon, now nearly a week past the full, was mounting.

“You can’t make me see what you’ve seen, Lieutenant,” I laughed. “But you can make me hear. I’ve always wondered what kind of a noise a disembodied spirit could make without any vocal cords or breath or any other earthly sound-producing mechanism. How does the banshee sound?”

O’Keefe looked at me seriously.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll show you.” From deep down in his throat came first a low, weird sobbing that mounted steadily into a keening whose mournfulness made my skin creep. And then his hand shot out and gripped my shoulder, and I stiffened like stone in my chair—for from behind us, like an echo, and then taking up the cry, swelled a wail that seemed to hold within it a sublimation of the sorrows of centuries! It gathered itself into one heartbroken, sobbing note and died away! O’Keefe’s grip loosened, and he rose swiftly to his feet.

“It’s all right, Professor,” he said. “It’s for me. It found me—all this way from Ireland.”

Again the silence was rent by the cry. But now I had located it. It came from my room, and it could mean only one thing—Huldricksson had wakened.

“Forget your banshee!” I gasped, and made a jump for the cabin.

Out of the corner of my eye I noted a look of half-sheepish relief flit over O’Keefe’s face, and then he was beside me. Da Costa shouted an order from the wheel, the Cantonese ran up and took it from his hands and the little Portuguese pattered down toward us. My hand on the door, ready to throw it open, I stopped. What if the Dweller were within—what if we had been wrong and it was not dependent for its power upon that full flood of moon ray which Throckmartin had thought essential to draw it from the blue pool!

From within, the sobbing wail began once more to rise. O’Keefe pushed me aside, threw open the door and crouched low within it. I saw an automatic flash dully in his hand; saw it cover the cabin from side to side, following the swift sweep of his eyes around it. Then he straightened and his face, turned toward the berth, was filled with wondering pity.

Through the window streamed a shaft of the moonlight. It fell upon Huldricksson’s staring eyes; in them great tears slowly gathered and rolled down his cheeks; from his opened mouth came the woe-laden wailing. I ran to the port and drew the curtains. Da Costa snapped the lights.

The Norseman’s dolorous crying stopped as abruptly as though cut. His gaze rolled toward us. And at one bound he broke through the leashes I had buckled round him and faced us, his eyes glaring, his yellow hair almost erect with the force of the rage visibly surging through him. Da Costa shrunk behind me. O’Keefe, coolly watchful, took a quick step that brought him in front of me.

“Where do you take me?” said Huldricksson, and his voice was like the growl of a beast. “Where is my boat?”

I touched O’Keefe gently and stood before the giant.

“Listen, Olaf Huldricksson,” I said. “We take you to where the sparkling devil took your Helma and your Freda. We follow the sparkling devil that came down from the moon. Do you hear me?” I spoke slowly, distinctly, striving to pierce the mists that I knew swirled around the strained brain. And the words did pierce.

He thrust out a shaking hand.

“You say you follow?” he asked falteringly. “You know where to follow? Where it took my Helma and my little Freda?”

“Just that, Olaf Huldricksson,” I answered. “Just that! I pledge you my life that I know.”

Da Costa stepped forward. “He speaks true, Olaf. You go faster on the Suwarna than on the Br-rw-un’ilda, Olaf, yes.”

The giant Norseman, still gripping my hand, looked at him. “I know you, Da Costa,” he muttered. “You are all right. Ja! You are a fair man. Where is the Brunhilda?”

“She follow be’ind on a big rope, Olaf,” soothed the Portuguese. “Soon you see her. But now lie down an’ tell us, if you can, why you tie yourself to your wheel an’ what it is that happen, Olaf.”

“If you’ll tell us how the sparkling devil came it will help us all when we get to where it is, Huldricksson,” I said.

On O’Keefe’s face there was an expression of well-nigh ludicrous doubt and amazement. He glanced from one to the other. The giant shifted his own tense look from me to the Irishman. A gleam of approval lighted in his eyes. He loosed me, and gripped O’Keefe’s arm. “Staerk!” he said. “Ja—strong, and with a strong heart. A man—ja! He comes too—we shall need him—ja!”

“I tell,” he muttered, and seated himself on the side of the bunk. “It was four nights ago. My Freda”—his voice shook—“Mine Yndling! She loved the moonlight. I was at the wheel and my Freda and my Helma they were behind me. The moon was behind us and the Brunhilda was like a swanboat sailing down with the moonlight sending her, ja.

“I heard my Freda say: ‘I see a nisse coming down the track of the moon.’ And I hear her mother laugh, low, like a mother does when her Yndling dreams. I was happy—that night—with my Helma and my Freda, and the Brunhilda sailing like a swan-boat, ja. I heard the child say, ‘The nisse comes fast!’ And then I heard a scream from my Helma, a great scream—like a mare when her foal is torn from her. I spun around fast, ja! I dropped the wheel and spun fast! I saw—” He covered his eyes with his hands.

The Portuguese had crept close to me, and I heard him panting like a frightened dog.

“I saw a white fire spring over the rail,” whispered Olaf Huldricksson. “It whirled round and round, and it shone like—like stars in a whirlwind mist. There was a noise in my ears. It sounded like bells—little bells, ja! Like the music you make when you run your finger round goblets. It made me sick and dizzy—the hell noise.

“My Helma was—indeholde—what you say—in the middle of the white fire. She turned her face to me and she turned it on the child, and my Helma’s face burned into my heart. Because it was full of fear, and it was full of happiness—of glaede. I tell you that the fear in my Helma’s face made me ice here”—he beat his breast with clenched hand—“but the happiness in it burned on me like fire. And I could not move—I could not move.

“I said in here”—he touched his head—“I said, ‘It is Loki come out of Helvede. But he cannot take my Helma, for Christ lives and Loki has no power to hurt my Helma or my Freda! Christ lives! Christ lives!’ I said. But the sparkling devil did not let my Helma go. It drew her to the rail; half over it. I saw her eyes upon the child and a little she broke away and reached to it. And my Freda jumped into her arms. And the fire wrapped them both and they were gone! A little I saw them whirling on the moon track behind the Brunhilda—and they were gone!

“The sparkling devil took them! Loki was loosed, and he had power. I turned the Brunhilda, and I followed where my Helma and mine Yndling had gone. My boys crept up and asked me to turn again. But I would not. They dropped a boat and left me. I steered straight on the path. I lashed my hands to the wheel that sleep might not loose them. I steered on and on and on—

“Where was the God I prayed when my wife and child were taken?” cried Olaf Huldricksson—and it was as though I heard Throckmartin asking that same bitter question. “I have left Him as He left me, ja! I pray now to Thor and to Odin, who can fetter Loki.” He sank back, covering again his eyes.

“Olaf,” I said, “what you have called the sparkling devil has taken ones dear to me. I, too, was following it when we found you. You shall go with me to its home, and there we will try to take from it your wife and your child and my friends as well. But now that you may be strong for what is before us, you must sleep again.”

Olaf Huldricksson looked upon me and in his eyes was that something which souls must see in the eyes of Him the old Egyptians called the Searcher of Hearts in the Judgment Hall of Osiris.

“You speak truth!” he said at last slowly. “I will do what you say!”

He stretched out an arm at my bidding. I gave him a second injection. He lay back and soon he was sleeping. I turned toward Da Costa. His face was livid and sweating, and he was trembling pitiably. O’Keefe stirred.

“You did that mighty well, Dr. Goodwin,” he said. “So well that I almost believed you myself.”

“What did you think of his story, Mr. O’Keefe?” I asked.

His answer was almost painfully brief and colloquial.

“Nuts!” he said. I was a little shocked, I admit. “I think he’s crazy, Dr. Goodwin,” he corrected himself, quickly. “What else could I think?”

I turned to the little Portuguese without answering.

“There’s no need for any anxiety tonight, Captain,” I said. “Take my word for it. You need some rest yourself. Shall I give you a sleeping draft?”

“I do wish you would, Dr. Goodwin, sair,” he answered gratefully. “Tomorrow, when I feel bettair—I would have a talk with you.”

I nodded. He did know something then! I mixed him an opiate of considerable strength. He took it and went to his own cabin.

I locked the door behind him and then, sitting beside the sleeping Norseman, I told O’Keefe my story from end to end. He asked few questions as I spoke. But after I had finished he cross-examined me rather minutely upon my recollections of the radiant phases upon each appearance, checking these with Throckmartin’s observations of the same phenomena in the Chamber of the Moon Pool.

“And now what do you think of it all?” I asked.

He sat silent for a while, looking at Huldricksson.

“Not what you seem to think, Dr. Goodwin,” he answered at last, gravely. “Let me sleep over it. One thing of course is certain—you and your friend Throckmartin and this man here saw—something. But—” he was silent again and then continued with a kindness that I found vaguely irritating—“but I’ve noticed that when a scientist gets superstitious it—er—takes very hard!

“Here’s a few things I can tell you now though,” he went on while I struggled to speak—“I pray in my heart that we’ll meet neither the Dolphin nor anything with wireless on board going up. Because, Dr. Goodwin, I’d dearly love to take a crack at your Dweller.

“And another thing,” said O’Keefe. “After this—cut out the trimmings, Doc, and call me plain Larry, for whether I think you’re crazy or whether I don’t, you’re there with the nerve, Professor, and I’m for you.

“Good night!” said Larry and took himself out to the deck hammock he had insisted upon having slung for him, refusing the captain’s importunities to use his own cabin.

And it was with extremely mixed emotions as to his compliment that I watched him go. Superstitious. I, whose pride was my scientific devotion to fact and fact alone! Superstitious—and this from a man who believed in banshees and ghostly harpers and Irish wood nymphs and no doubt in leprechauns and all their tribe!

Half laughing, half irritated, and wholly happy in even the part promise of Larry O’Keefe’s comradeship on my venture, I arranged a couple of pillows, stretched myself out on two chairs and took up my vigil beside Olaf Huldricksson.

CHAPTER IX

A Lost Page of Earth

When I awakened the sun was streaming through the cabin porthole. Outside a fresh voice lilted. I lay on my two chairs and listened. The song was one with the wholesome sunshine and the breeze blowing stiffly and whipping the curtains. It was Larry O’Keefe at his matins:

The little red lark is shaking his wings,

Straight from the breast of his love he springs

Larry’s voice soared.

His wings and his feathers are sunrise red,

He hails the sun and his golden head,

Good morning, Doc, you are long abed.

This last was a most irreverent interpolation, I well knew. I opened my door. O’Keefe stood outside laughing. The Suwarna, her engines silent, was making fine headway under all sail, the Brunhilda skipping in her wake cheerfully with half her canvas up.

The sea was crisping and dimpling under the wind. Blue and white was the world as far as the eye could reach. Schools of little silvery green flying fish broke through the water rushing on each side of us; flashed for an instant and were gone. Behind us gulls hovered and dipped. The shadow of mystery had retreated far over the rim of this wide awake and beautiful world and if, subconsciously, I knew that somewhere it was brooding and waiting, for a little while at least I was consciously free of its oppression.

“How’s the patient?” asked O’Keefe.

He was answered by Huldricksson himself, who must have risen just as I left the cabin. The Norseman had slipped on a pair of pajamas and, giant torso naked under the sun, he strode out upon us. We all of us looked at him a trifle anxiously. But Olaf’s madness had left him. In his eyes was much sorrow, but the berserk rage was gone.

He spoke straight to me: “You said last night we follow?”

I nodded.

“It is where?” he asked again.

“We go first to Ponape and from there to Metalanim Harbour—to the Nan-Matal. You know the place?”

Huldricksson bowed—a white gleam as of ice showing in his blue eyes.

“It is there?” he asked.

“It is there that we must first search,” I answered.

“Good!” said Olaf Huldricksson. “It is good!”

He looked at Da Costa inquiringly and the little Portuguese, following his thought, answered his unspoken question.

“We should be at Ponape tomorrow morning early, Olaf.”

“Good!” repeated the Norseman. He looked away, his eyes tear-filled.

A restraint fell upon us; the embarrassment all men experience when they feel a great sympathy and a great pity, to neither of which they quite know how to give expression. By silent consent we discussed at breakfast only the most casual topics.

When the meal was over Huldricksson expressed a desire to go aboard the Brunhilda.

The Suwarna hove to and Da Costa and he dropped into the small boat. When they reached the Brunhilda’s deck I saw Olaf take the wheel and the two fall into earnest talk. I beckoned to O’Keefe and we stretched ourselves out on the bow hatch under cover of the foresail. He lighted a cigarette, took a couple of leisurely puffs, and looked at me expectantly.

“Well?” I asked.

“Well,” said O’Keefe, “suppose you tell me what you think—and then I’ll proceed to point out your scientific errors.” His eyes twinkled mischievously.

“Larry,” I replied, somewhat severely, “you may not know that I have a scientific reputation which, putting aside all modesty, I may say is an enviable one. You used a word last night to which I must interpose serious objection. You more than hinted that I hid—superstitions. Let me inform you, Larry O’Keefe, that I am solely a seeker, observer, analyst, and synthesist of facts. I am not”—and I tried to make my tone as pointed as my words—“I am not a believer in phantoms or spooks, leprechauns, banshees, or ghostly harpers.”

O’Keefe leaned back and shouted with laughter.

“Forgive me, Goodwin,” he gasped. “But if you could have seen yourself solemnly disclaiming the banshee”—another twinkle showed in his eyes—“and then with all this sunshine and this wide-open world”—he shrugged his shoulders—“it’s hard to visualize anything such as you and Huldricksson have described.”

“I know how hard it is, Larry,” I answered. “And don’t think I have any idea that the phenomenon is supernatural in the sense spiritualists and table turners have given that word. I do think it is supernormal; energized by a force unknown to modern science—but that doesn’t mean I think it outside the radius of science.”

“Tell me your theory, Goodwin,” he said. I hesitated—for not yet had I been able to put into form to satisfy myself any explanation of the Dweller.

“I think,” I hazarded finally, “it is possible that some members of that race peopling the ancient continent which we know existed here in the Pacific, have survived. We know that many of these islands are honeycombed with caverns and vast subterranean spaces, literally underground lands running in some cases far out beneath the ocean floor. It is possible that for some reason survivors of this race sought refuge in the abysmal spaces, one of whose entrances is on the islet where Throckmartin’s party met its end.

“As for their persistence in these caverns—we know they possessed a high science. They may have gone far in the mastery of certain universal forms of energy—especially that we call light. They may have developed a civilization and a science far more advanced than ours. What I call the Dweller may be one of the results of this science. Larry—it may well be that this lost race is planning to emerge again upon earth’s surface!”

“And is sending out your Dweller as a messenger, a scientific dove from their Ark?” I chose to overlook the banter in his question.

“Did you ever hear of the Chamats?” I asked him. He shook his head.

“In Papua,” I explained, “there is a wide-spread and immeasurably old tradition that ‘imprisoned under the hills’ is a race of giants who once ruled this region ‘when it stretched from sun to sun before the moon god drew the waters over it’—I quote from the legend. Not only in Papua but throughout Malaysia you find this story. And, so the tradition runs, these people—the Chamats—will one day break through the hills and rule the world; ‘make over the world’ is the literal translation of the constant phrase in the tale. It was Herbert Spencer who pointed out that there is a basis of fact in every myth and legend of man. It is possible that these survivors I am discussing form Spencer’s fact basis for the Malaysian legend.2

“This much is sure—the moon door, which is clearly operated by the action of moon rays upon some unknown element or combination and the crystals through which the moon rays pour down upon the pool their prismatic columns, are humanly made mechanisms. So long as they are humanly made, and so long as it is this flood of moonlight from which the Dweller draws its power of materialization, the Dweller itself, if not the product of the human mind, is at least dependent upon the product of the human mind for its appearance.”

“Wait a minute, Goodwin,” interrupted O’Keefe. “Do you mean to say you think that this thing is made of—well—of moonshine?”

“Moonlight,” I replied, “is, of course, reflected sunlight. But the rays which pass back to earth after their impact on the moon’s surface are profoundly changed. The spectroscope shows that they lose practically all the slower vibrations we call red and infra-red, while the extremely rapid vibrations we call the violet and ultra-violet are accelerated and altered. Many scientists hold that there is an unknown element in the moon—perhaps that which makes the gigantic luminous trails that radiate in all directions from the lunar crater Tycho—whose energies are absorbed by and carried on the moon rays.

“At any rate, whether by the loss of the vibrations of the red or by the addition of this mysterious force, the light of the moon becomes something entirely different from mere modified sunlight—just as the addition or subtraction of one other chemical in a compound of several makes the product a substance with entirely different energies and potentialities.

“Now these rays, Larry, are given perhaps still another mysterious activity by the globes through which Throckmartin said they passed in the Chamber of the Moon Pool. The result is the necessary factor in the formation of the Dweller. There would be nothing scientifically improbable in such a process. Kubalski, the great Russian physicist, produced crystalline forms exhibiting every faculty that we call vital by subjecting certain combinations of chemicals to the action of highly concentrated rays of various colours. Something in light and nothing else produced their pseudo-vitality. We do not begin to know how to harness the potentialities of that magnetic vibration of the ether we call light.”

“Listen, Doc,” said Larry earnestly, “I’ll take everything you say about this lost continent, the people who used to live on it, and their caverns, for granted. But by the sword of Brian Boru, you’ll never get me to fall for the idea that a bunch of moonshine can handle a big woman such as you say Throckmartin’s Thora was, nor a two-fisted man such as you say Throckmartin was, nor Huldricksson’s wife—and I’ll bet she was one of those strapping big northern women too—you’ll never get me to believe that any bunch of concentrated moonshine could handle them and take them waltzing off along a moonbeam back to wherever it goes. No, Doc, not on your life, even Tennessee moonshine couldn’t do that—nix!”

“All right, O’Keefe,” I answered, now very much irritated indeed. “What’s your theory?” And I could not resist adding: “Fairies?”

“Professor,” he grinned, “if that Thing’s a fairy it’s Irish and when it sees me it’ll be so glad there’ll be nothing to it. ‘I was lost, strayed, or stolen, Larry avick,’ it’ll say, ‘an’ I was so homesick for the old sod I was desp’rit,’ it’ll say, an’ ‘take me back quick before I do any more har-rm!’ it’ll tell me—an’ that’s the truth.

“Now don’t get me wrong. I believe you all saw something all right. But what I think you saw was some kind of gas. All this region is volcanic and islands and things are constantly poking up from the sea. It’s probably gas; a volcanic emanation; something new to us and that drives you crazy—lots of kinds of gas do that. It hit the Throckmartin party on that island and they probably were all more or less delirious all the time; thought they saw things; talked it over and—collective hallucination—just like the Angels of Mons and other miracles of the war. Somebody sees something that looks like something else. He points it out to the man next him. ‘Do you see it?’ asks he. ‘Sure I see it,’ says the other. And there you are—collective hallucination.

“When your friends got it bad they most likely jumped overboard one by one. Huldricksson sails into a place where it is and it hits his wife. She grabs the child and jumps over. Maybe the moon rays make it luminous! I’ve seen gas on the front under the moon that looked like a thousand whirling dervish devils. Yes, and you could see the devil’s faces in it. And if it got into your lungs nothing could ever make you think you hadn’t seen real devils.”

For a time I was silent.

“Larry,” I said at last, “whether you are right or I am right, I must go to the Nan-Matal. Will you go with me, Larry?”

“Goodwin,” he replied, “I surely will. I’m as interested as you are. If we don’t run across the Dolphin I’ll stick. I’ll leave word at Ponape, to tell them where I am should they come along. If they report me dead for a while there’s nobody to care. So that’s all right. Only old man, be reasonable. You’ve thought over this so long, you’re going bug, honestly you are.”

And again, the gladness that I might have Larry O’Keefe with me, was so great that I forgot to be angry.

2 William Beebe, the famous American naturalist and ornithologist, recently fighting in France with America’s air force, called attention to this remarkable belief in an article printed not long ago in the Atlantic Monthly. Still more significant was it that he noted a persistent rumour that the breaking out of the buried race was close.—W.J. B., Pres. I. A. of S.

2 William Beebe, the famous American naturalist and ornithologist, recently fighting in France with America’s air force, called attention to this remarkable belief in an article printed not long ago in the Atlantic Monthly. Still more significant was it that he noted a persistent rumour that the breaking out of the buried race was close.—W.J. B., Pres. I. A. of S.

CHAPTER X

The Moon Pool

Da Costa, who had come aboard unnoticed by either of us, now tapped me on the arm.

“Doctair Goodwin,” he said, “can I see you in my cabin, sair?”

At last, then, he was going to speak. I followed him.

“Doctair,” he said, when we had entered, “this is a veree strange thing that has happened to Olaf. Veree strange. An’ the natives of Ponape, they have been very much excite’ lately.

“Of what they fear I know nothing, nothing!” Again that quick, furtive crossing of himself. “But this I have to tell you. There came to me from Ranaloa last month a man, a Russian, a doctair, like you. His name it was Marakinoff. I take him to Ponape an’ the natives there they will not take him to the Nan-Matal where he wish to go—no! So I take him. We leave in a boat, wit’ much instrument carefully tied up. I leave him there wit’ the boat an’ the food. He tell me to tell no one an’ pay me not to. But you are a friend an’ Olaf he depend much upon you an’ so I tell you, sair.”

“You know nothing more than this, Da Costa?” I asked. “Nothing of another expedition?”

“No,” he shook his head vehemently. “Nothing more.”

“Hear the name Throckmartin while you were there?” I persisted.

“No,” his eyes were steady as he answered but the pallor had crept again into his face.

I was not so sure. But if he knew more than he had told me why was he afraid to speak? My anxiety deepened and later I sought relief from it by repeating the conversation to O’Keefe.

“A Russian, eh,” he said. “Well, they can be damned nice, or damned—otherwise. Considering what you did for me, I hope I can look him over before the Dolphin shows up.”

Next morning we raised Ponape, without further incident, and before noon the Suwarna and the Brunhilda had dropped anchor in the harbour. Upon the excitement and manifest dread of the natives, when we sought among them for carriers and workmen to accompany us, I will not dwell. It is enough to say that no payment we offered could induce a single one of them to go to the Nan-Matal. Nor would they say why.

Finally it was agreed that the Brunhilda should be left in charge of a half-breed Chinaman, whom both Da Costa and Huldricksson knew and trusted. We piled her long-boat up with my instruments and food and camping equipment. The Suwarna took us around to Metalanim Harbour, and there, with the tops of ancient sea walls deep in the blue water beneath us, and the ruins looming up out of the mangroves, a scant mile from us, left us.

Then with Huldricksson manipulating our small sail, and Larry at the rudder, we rounded the titanic wall that swept down into the depths, and turned at last into the canal that Throckmartin, on his map, had marked as that which, running between frowning Nan-Tauach and its satellite islet, Tau, led straight to the gate of the place of ancient mysteries.

And as we entered that channel we were enveloped by a silence; a silence so intense, so—weighted that it seemed to have substance; an alien silence that clung and stifled and still stood aloof from us—the living. It was a stillness, such as might follow the long tramping of millions into the grave; it was—paradoxical as it may be—filled with the withdrawal of life.

Standing down in the chambered depths of the Great Pyramid I had known something of such silence—but never such intensity as this. Larry felt it and I saw him look at me askance. If Olaf, sitting in the bow, felt it, too, he gave no sign; his blue eyes, with again the glint of ice within them, watched the channel before us.

As we passed, there arose upon our left sheer walls of black basalt blocks, cyclopean, towering fifty feet or more, broken here and there by the sinking of their deep foundations.

In front of us the mangroves widened out and filled the canal. On our right the lesser walls of Tau, sombre blocks smoothed and squared and set with a cold, mathematical nicety that filled me with vague awe, slipped by. Through breaks I caught glimpses of dark ruins and of great fallen stones that seemed to crouch and menace us, as we passed. Somewhere there, hidden, were the seven globes that poured the moon fire down upon the Moon Pool.

Now we were among the mangroves and, sail down, the three of us pushed and pulled the boat through their tangled roots and branches. The noise of our passing split the silence like a profanation, and from the ancient bastions came murmurs—forbidding, strangely sinister. And now we were through, floating on a little open space of shadow-filled water. Before us lifted the gateway of Nan-Tauach, gigantic, broken, incredibly old; shattered portals through which had passed men and women of earth’s dawn; old with a weight of years that pressed leadenly upon the eyes that looked upon it, and yet was in some curious indefinable way—menacingly defiant.

Beyond the gate, back from the portals, stretched a flight of enormous basalt slabs, a giant’s stairway indeed; and from each side of it marched the high walls that were the Dweller’s pathway. None of us spoke as we grounded the boat and dragged it upon a half-submerged pier. And when we did speak it was in whispers.

“What next?” asked Larry.

“I think we ought to take a look around,” I replied in the same low tones. “We’ll climb the wall here and take a flash about. The whole place ought to be plain as day from that height.”

Huldricksson, his blue eyes alert, nodded. With the greatest difficulty we clambered up the broken blocks.

To the east and south of us, set like children’s blocks in the midst of the sapphire sea, lay dozens of islets, none of them covering more than two square miles of surface; each of them a perfect square or oblong within its protecting walls.

On none was there sign of life, save for a few great birds that hovered here and there, and gulls dipping in the blue waves beyond.

We turned our gaze down upon the island on which we stood. It was, I estimated, about three-quarters of a mile square. The sea wall enclosed it. It was really an enormous basalt-sided open cube, and within it two other open cubes. The enclosure between the first and second wall was stone paved, with here and there a broken pillar and long stone benches. The hibiscus, the aloe tree, and a number of small shrubs had found place, but seemed only to intensify its stark loneliness.

“Wonder where the Russian can be?” asked Larry.

I shook my head. There was no sign of life here. Had Marakinoff gone—or had the Dweller taken him, too? Whatever had happened, there was no trace of him below us or on any of the islets within our range of vision. We scrambled down the side of the gateway. Olaf looked at me wistfully.

“We start the search now, Olaf,” I said. “And first, O’Keefe, let us see whether the grey stone is really here. After that we will set up camp, and while I unpack, you and Olaf search the island. It won’t take long.”

Larry gave a look at his service automatic and grinned. “Lead on, Macduff,” he said. We made our way up the steps, through the outer enclosures and into the central square, I confess to a fire of scientific curiosity and eagerness tinged with a dread that O’Keefe’s analysis might be true. Would we find the moving slab and, if so, would it be as Throckmartin had described? If so, then even Larry would have to admit that here was something that theories of gases and luminous emanations would not explain; and the first test of the whole amazing story would be passed. But if not—And there before us, the faintest tinge of grey setting it apart from its neighbouring blocks of basalt, was the moon door!

There was no mistaking it. This was, in very deed, the portal through which Throckmartin had seen pass that gloriously dreadful apparition he called the Dweller. At its base was the curious, seemingly polished cup-like depression within which, my lost friend had told me, the opening door swung.

What was that portal—more enigmatic than was ever sphinx? And what lay beyond it? What did that smooth stone, whose wan deadness whispered of ages-old corridors of time opening out into alien, unimaginable vistas, hide? It had cost the world of science Throckmartin’s great brain—as it had cost Throckmartin those he loved. It had drawn me to it in search of Throckmartin—and its shadow had fallen upon the soul of Olaf the Norseman; and upon what thousands upon thousands more I wondered, since the brains that had conceived it had vanished with their secret knowledge?

What lay beyond it?

I stretched out a shaking hand and touched the surface of the slab. A faint thrill passed through my hand and arm, oddly unfamiliar and as oddly unpleasant; as of electric contact holding the very essence of cold. O’Keefe, watching, imitated my action. As his fingers rested on the stone his face filled with astonishment.

“It’s the door?” he asked. I nodded. There was a low whistle from him and he pointed up toward the top of the grey stone. I followed the gesture and saw, above the moon door and on each side of it, two gently curving bosses of rock, perhaps a foot in diameter.

“The moon door’s keys,” I said.

“It begins to look so,” answered Larry. “If we can find them,” he added.

“There’s nothing we can do till moonrise,” I replied. “And we’ve none too much time to prepare as it is. Come!”

A little later we were beside our boat. We lightered it, set up the tent, and as it was now but a short hour to sundown I bade them leave me and make their search. They went off together, and I busied myself with opening some of the paraphernalia I had brought with me.

First of all I took out the two Becquerel ray-condensers that I had bought in Sydney. Their lenses would collect and intensify to the fullest extent any light directed upon them. I had found them most useful in making spectroscopic analysis of luminous vapours, and I knew that at Yerkes Observatory splendid results had been obtained from them in collecting the diffused radiance of the nebulae for the same purpose.

If my theory of the grey slab’s mechanism were correct, it was practically certain that with the satellite only a few nights past the full we could concentrate enough light on the bosses to open the rock. And as the ray streams through the seven globes described by Throckmartin would be too weak to energize the Pool, we could enter the chamber free from any fear of encountering its tenant, make our preliminary observations and go forth before the moon had dropped so far that the concentration in the condensers would fall below that necessary to keep the portal from closing.

I took out also a small spectroscope, and a few other instruments for the analysis of certain light manifestations and the testing of metal and liquid. Finally, I put aside my emergency medical kit.

I had hardly finished examining and adjusting these before O’Keefe and Huldricksson returned. They reported signs of a camp at least ten days old beside the northern wall of the outer court, but beyond that no evidence of others beyond ourselves on Nan-Tauach.

We prepared supper, ate and talked a little, but for the most part were silent. Even Larry’s high spirits were not in evidence; half a dozen times I saw him take out his automatic and look it over. He was more thoughtful than I had ever seen him. Once he went into the tent, rummaged about a bit and brought out another revolver which, he said, he had got from Da Costa, and a half-dozen clips of cartridges. He passed the gun over to Olaf.

At last a glow in the southeast heralded the rising moon. I picked up my instruments and the medical kit; Larry and Olaf shouldered each a short ladder that was part of my equipment, and, with our electric flashes pointing the way, walked up the great stairs, through the enclosures, and straight to the grey stone.

By this time the moon had risen and its clipped light shone full upon the slab. I saw faint gleams pass over it as of fleeting phosphorescence—but so faint were they that I could not be sure of the truth of my observation.

We set the ladders in place. Olaf I assigned to stand before the door and watch for the first signs of its opening—if open it should. The Becquerels were set within three-inch tripods, whose feet I had equipped with vacuum rings to enable them to hold fast to the rock.

I scaled one ladder and fastened a condenser over the boss; descended; sent Larry up to watch it, and, ascending the second ladder, rapidly fixed the other in its place. Then, with O’Keefe watchful on his perch, I on mine, and Olaf’s eyes fixed upon the moon door, we began our vigil. Suddenly there was an exclamation from Larry.

“Seven little lights are beginning to glow on this stone!” he cried.

But I had already seen those beneath my lens begin to gleam out with a silvery lustre. Swiftly the rays within the condenser began to thicken and increase, and as they did so the seven small circles waxed like stars growing out of the dusk, and with a queer—curdled is the best word I can find to define it—radiance entirely strange to me.

Beneath me I heard a faint, sighing murmur and then the voice of Huldricksson:

“It opens—the stone turns—”

I began to climb down the ladder. Again came Olaf’s voice:

“The stone—it is open—” And then a shriek, a wail of blended anguish and pity, of rage and despair—and the sound of swift footsteps racing through the wall beneath me!

I dropped to the ground. The moon door was wide open, and through it I caught a glimpse of a corridor filled with a faint, pearly vaporous light like earliest misty dawn. But of Olaf I could see—nothing! And even as I stood, gaping, from behind me came the sharp crack of a rifle; the glass of the condenser at Larry’s side flew into fragments; he dropped swiftly to the ground, the automatic in his hand flashed once, twice, into the darkness.

And the moon door began to pivot slowly, slowly back into its place!

I rushed toward the turning stone with the wild idea of holding it open. As I thrust my hands against it there came at my back a snarl and an oath and Larry staggered under the impact of a body that had flung itself straight at his throat. He reeled at the lip of the shallow cup at the base of the slab, slipped upon its polished curve, fell and rolled with that which had attacked him, kicking and writhing, straight through the narrowing portal into the passage!

Forgetting all else, I sprang to his aid. As I leaped I felt the closing edge of the moon door graze my side. Then, as Larry raised a fist, brought it down upon the temple of the man who had grappled with him and rose from the twitching body unsteadily to his feet, I heard shuddering past me a mournful whisper; spun about as though some giant’s hand had whirled me—

The end of the corridor no longer opened out into the moonlit square of ruined Nan-Tauach. It was barred by a solid mass of glimmering stone. The moon door had closed!

O’Keefe took a stumbling step toward the barrier behind us. There was no mark of juncture with the shining walls; the slab fitted into the sides as closely as a mosaic.

“It’s shut all right,” said Larry. “But if there’s a way in, there’s a way out. Anyway, Doc, we’re right in the pew we’ve been heading for—so why worry?” He grinned at me cheerfully. The man on the floor groaned, and he dropped to his knees beside him.

“Marakinoff!” he cried.

At my exclamation he moved aside, turning the face so I could see it. It was clearly Russian, and just as clearly its possessor was one of unusual force and intellect.

The strong, massive brow with orbital ridge unusually developed, the dominant, high-bridged nose, the straight lips with their more than suggestion of latent cruelty, and the strong lines of the jaw beneath a black, pointed beard all gave evidence that here was a personality beyond the ordinary.

“Couldn’t be anybody else,” said Larry, breaking in on my thoughts. “He must have been watching us over there from Chau-ta-leur’s vault all the time.”

Swiftly he ran practised hands over his body; then stood erect, holding out to me two wicked-looking magazine pistols and a knife. “He got one of my bullets through his right forearm, too,” he said. “Just a flesh wound, but it made him drop his rifle. Some arsenal, our little Russian scientist, what?”

I opened my medical kit. The wound was a slight one, and Larry stood looking on as I bandaged it.

“Got another one of those condensers?” he asked, suddenly. “And do you suppose Olaf will know enough to use it?”

“Larry,” I answered, “Olaf’s not outside! He’s in here somewhere!”

His jaw dropped.

“The hell you say!” he whispered.

“Didn’t you hear him shriek when the stone opened?” I asked.

“I heard him yell, yes,” he said. “But I didn’t know what was the matter. And then this wildcat jumped me—” He paused and his eyes widened. “Which way did he go?” he asked swiftly. I pointed down the faintly glowing passage.

“There’s only one way,” I said.

“Watch that bird close,” hissed O’Keefe, pointing to Marakinoff—and pistol in hand stretched his long legs and raced away. I looked down at the Russian. His eyes were open, and he reached out a hand to me. I lifted him to his feet.

“I have heard,” he said. “We follow, quick. If you will take my arm, please, I am shaken yet, yes—” I gripped his shoulder without a word, and the two of us set off down the corridor after O’Keefe. Marakinoff was gasping, and his weight pressed upon me heavily, but he moved with all the will and strength that were in him.

As we ran I took hasty note of the tunnel. Its sides were smooth and polished, and the light seemed to come not from their surfaces, but from far within them—giving to the walls an illusive aspect of distance and depth; rendering them in a peculiarly weird way—spacious. The passage turned, twisted, ran down, turned again. It came to me that the light that illumined the tunnel was given out by tiny points deep within the stone, sprang from the points ripplingly and spread upon their polished faces.

There was a cry from Larry far ahead.

“Olaf!”

I gripped Marakinoff’s arm closer and we sped on. Now we were coming fast to the end of the passage. Before us was a high arch, and through it I glimpsed a dim, shifting luminosity as of mist filled with rainbows. We reached the portal and I looked into a chamber that might have been transported from that enchanted palace of the Jinn King that rises beyond the magic mountains of Kaf.

Before me stood O’Keefe and a dozen feet in front of him, Huldricksson, with something clasped tightly in his arms. The Norseman’s feet were at the verge of a shining, silvery lip of stone within whose oval lay a blue pool. And down upon this pool staring upward like a gigantic eye, fell seven pillars of phantom light—one of them amethyst, one of rose, another of white, a fourth of blue, and three of emerald, of silver, and of amber. They fell each upon the azure surface, and I knew that these were the seven streams of radiance, within which the Dweller took shape—now but pale ghosts of their brilliancy when the full energy of the moon stream raced through them.

Huldricksson bent and placed on the shining silver lip of the Pool that which he held—and I saw that it was the body of a child! He set it there so gently, bent over the side and thrust a hand down into the water. And as he did so he moaned and lurched against the little body that lay before him. Instantly the form moved—and slipped over the verge into the blue. Huldricksson threw his body over the stone, hands clutching, arms thrust deep down—and from his lips issued a long-drawn, heart-shrivelling wail of pain and of anguish that held in it nothing human!

Close on its wake came a cry from Marakinoff.

“Catch him!” shouted the Russian. “Drag him back! Quick!”

He leaped forward, but before he could half clear the distance, O’Keefe had leaped too, had caught the Norseman by the shoulders and toppled him backward, where he lay whimpering and sobbing. And as I rushed behind Marakinoff I saw Larry lean over the lip of the Pool and cover his eyes with a shaking hand; saw the Russian peer into it with real pity in his cold eyes.

Then I stared down myself into the Moon Pool, and there, sinking, was a little maid whose dead face and fixed, terror-filled eyes looked straight into mine; and ever sinking slowly, slowly—vanished! And I knew that this was Olaf’s Freda, his beloved yndling!

But where was the mother, and where had Olaf found his babe?

The Russian was first to speak.

“You have nitroglycerin there, yes?” he asked, pointing toward my medical kit that I had gripped unconsciously and carried with me during the mad rush down the passage. I nodded and drew it out.

“Hypodermic,” he ordered next, curtly; took the syringe, filled it accurately with its one one-hundredth of a grain dosage, and leaned over Huldricksson. He rolled up the sailor’s sleeves half-way to the shoulder. The arms were white with somewhat of that weird semitranslucence that I had seen on Throckmartin’s breast where a tendril of the Dweller had touched him; and his hands were of the same whiteness—like a baroque pearl. Above the line of white, Marakinoff thrust the needle.

“He will need all his heart can do,” he said to me.

Then he reached down into a belt about his waist and drew from it a small, flat flask of what seemed to be lead. He opened it and let a few drops of its contents fall on each arm of the Norwegian. The liquid sparkled and instantly began to spread over the skin much as oil or gasoline dropped on water does—only far more rapidly. And as it spread it drew a sparkling film over the marbled flesh and little wisps of vapour rose from it. The Norseman’s mighty chest heaved with agony. His hands clenched. The Russian gave a grunt of satisfaction at this, dropped a little more of the liquid, and then, watching closely, grunted again and leaned back. Huldricksson’s laboured breathing ceased, his head dropped upon Larry’s knee, and from his arms and hands the whiteness swiftly withdrew.

Marakinoff arose and contemplated us—almost benevolently.

“He will all right be in five minutes,” he said. “I know. I do it to pay for that shot of mine, and also because we will need him. Yes.” He turned to Larry. “You have a poonch like a mule kick, my young friend,” he said. “Some time you pay me for that, too, eh?” He smiled; and the quality of the grimace was not exactly reassuring. Larry looked him over quizzically.

“You’re Marakinoff, of course,” he said. The Russian nodded, betraying no surprise at the recognition.

“And you?” he asked.

“Lieutenant O’Keefe of the Royal Flying Corps,” replied Larry, saluting. “And this gentleman is Dr. Walter T. Goodwin.”

Marakinoff’s face brightened.

“The American botanist?” he queried. I nodded.

“Ah,” cried Marakinoff eagerly, “but this is fortunate. Long I have desired to meet you. Your work, for an American, is most excellent; surprising. But you are wrong in your theory of the development of the Angiospermae from Cycadeoidea dacotensis. Da—all wrong—”

I was interrupting him with considerable heat, for my conclusions from the fossil Cycadeoidea I knew to be my greatest triumph, when Larry broke in upon me rudely.

“Say,” he spluttered, “am I crazy or are you? What in damnation kind of a place and time is this to start an argument like that?

“Angiospermae, is it?” exclaimed Larry. “Hell!”

Marakinoff again regarded him with that irritating air of benevolence.

“You have not the scientific mind, young friend,” he said. “The poonch, yes! But so has the mule. You must learn that only the fact is important—not you, not me, not this”—he pointed to Huldricksson—“or its sorrows. Only the fact, whatever it is, is real, yes. But”—he turned to me—“another time—”

Huldricksson interrupted him. The big seaman had risen stiffly to his feet and stood with Larry’s arm supporting him. He stretched out his hands to me.

“I saw her,” he whispered. “I saw meine Freda when the stone swung. She lay there—just at my feet. I picked her up and I saw that meine Freda was dead. But I hoped—and I thought maybe meine Helma was somewhere here, too, So I ran with meine yndling—here—” His voice broke. “I thought maybe she was not dead,” he went on. “And I saw that”—he pointed to the Moon Pool—“and I thought I would bathe her face and she might live again. And when I dipped my hands within—the life left them, and cold, deadly cold, ran up through them into my heart. And meine Freda—she fell—” he covered his eyes, and dropping his head on O’Keefe’s shoulder, stood, racked by sobs that seemed to tear at his very soul.

CHAPTER XI

The Flame-Tipped Shadows

Marakinoff nodded his head solemnly as Olaf finished.

“Da!” he said. “That which comes from here took them both—the woman and the child. Da! They came clasped within it and the stone shut upon them. But why it left the child behind I do not understand.”

“How do you know that?” I cried in amazement.

“Because I saw it,” answered Marakinoff simply. “Not only did I see it, but hardly had I time to make escape through the entrance before it passed whirling and murmuring and its bell sounds all joyous. Da! It was what you call the squeak close, that.”

“Wait a moment,” I said—stilling Larry with a gesture. “Do I understand you to say that you were within this place?”

Marakinoff actually beamed upon me.

“Da, Dr. Goodwin,” he said, “I went in when that which comes from it went out!”

I gaped at him, stricken dumb; into Larry’s bellicose attitude crept a suggestion of grudging respect; Olaf, trembling, watched silently.

“Dr. Goodwin and my impetuous young friend, you,” went on Marakinoff after a moment’s silence and I wondered vaguely why he did not include Huldricksson in his address—“it is time that we have an understanding. I have a proposal to make to you also. It is this; we are what you call a bad boat, and all of us are in it. Da! We need all hands, is it not so? Let us put together our knowledge and our brains and resources—and even a poonch of a mule is a resource,” he looked wickedly at O’Keefe, “and pull our boat into quiet waters again. After that—”

“All very well, Marakinoff,” interjected Larry, “but I don’t feel very safe in any boat with somebody capable of shooting me through the back.”

Marakinoff waved a deprecatory hand.

“It was natural that,” he said, “logical, da! Here is a very great secret, perhaps many secrets to my country invaluable—” He paused, shaken by some overpowering emotion; the veins in his forehead grew congested, the cold eyes blazed and the guttural voice harshened.

“I do not apologize and I do not explain,” rasped Marakinoff. “But I will tell you, da! Here is my country sweating blood in an experiment to liberate the world. And here are the other nations ringing us like wolves and waiting to spring at our throats at the least sign of weakness. And here are you, Lieutenant O’Keefe of the English wolves, and you Dr. Goodwin of the Yankee pack—and here in this place may be that will enable my country to win its war for the worker. What are the lives of you two and this sailor to that? Less than the flies I crush with my hand, less than midges in the sunbeam!”

He suddenly gripped himself.

“But that is not now the important thing,” he resumed, almost coldly. “Not that nor my shooting. Let us squarely the situation face. My proposal is so: that we join interests, and what you call see it through together; find our way through this place and those secrets learn of which I have spoken, if we can. And when that is done we will go our ways, to his own land each, to make use of them for our lands as each of us may. On my part, I offer my knowledge—and it is very valuable, Dr. Goodwin—and my training. You and Lieutenant O’Keefe do the same, and this man Olaf, what he can of his strength, for I do not think his usefulness lies in his brains, no.”

“In effect, Goodwin,” broke in Larry as I hesitated, “the professor’s proposition is this: he wants to know what’s going on here but he begins to realize it’s no one man’s job and besides we have the drop on him. We’re three to his one, and we have all his hardware and cutlery. But also we can do better with him than without him—just as he can do better with us than without us. It’s an even break—for a while. But once he gets that information he’s looking for, then look out. You and Olaf and I are the wolves and the flies and the midges again—and the strafing will be about due. Nevertheless, with three to one against him, if he can get away with it he deserves to. I’m for taking him up, if you are.”

There was almost a twinkle in Marakinoff’s eyes.

“It is not just as I would have put it, perhaps,” he said, “but in its skeleton he has right. Nor will I turn my hand against you while we are still in danger here. I pledge you my honor on this.”

Larry laughed.

“All right, Professor,” he grinned. “I believe you mean every word you say. Nevertheless, I’ll just keep the guns.”

Marakinoff bowed, imperturbably.

“And now,” he said, “I will tell you what I know. I found the secret of the door mechanism even as you did, Dr. Goodwin. But by carelessness, my condensers were broken. I was forced to wait while I sent for others—and the waiting might be for months. I took certain precautions, and on the first night of this full moon I hid myself within the vault of Chau-ta-leur.”

An involuntary thrill of admiration for the man went through me at the manifest heroism of this leap in the dark. I could see it reflected in Larry’s face.

“I hid in the vault,” continued Marakinoff, “and I saw that which comes from here come out. I waited—long hours. At last, when the moon was low, it returned—ecstatically—with a man, a native, in embrace enfolded. It passed through the door, and soon then the moon became low and the door closed.

“The next night more confidence was mine, yes. And after that which comes had gone, I looked through its open door. I said, ‘It will not return for three hours. While it is away, why shall I not into its home go through the door it has left open?’ So I went—even to here. I looked at the pillars of light and I tested the liquid of the Pool on which they fell. That liquid, Dr. Goodwin, is not water, and it is not any fluid known on earth.” He handed me a small vial, its neck held in a long thong.

“Take this,” he said, “and see.”

Wonderingly, I took the bottle; dipped it down into the Pool. The liquid was extraordinarily light; seemed, in fact, to give the vial buoyancy. I held it to the light. It was striated, streaked, as though little living, pulsing veins ran through it. And its blueness, even in the vial, held an intensity of luminousness.

“Radioactive,” said Marakinoff. “Some liquid that is intensely radioactive; but what it is I know not at all. Upon the living skin it acts like radium raised to the nth power and with an element most mysterious added. The solution with which I treated him,” he pointed to Huldricksson, “I had prepared before I came here, from certain information I had. It is largely salts of radium and its base is Loeb’s formula for the neutralization of radium and X-ray burns. Taking this man at once, before the degeneration had become really active, I could negative it. But after two hours I could have done nothing.”

He paused a moment.

“Next I studied the nature of these luminous walls. I concluded that whoever had made them, knew the secret of the Almighty’s manufacture of light from the ether itself! Colossal! Da! But the substance of these blocks confines an atomic—how would you say—atomic manipulation, a conscious arrangement of electrons, light-emitting and perhaps indefinitely so. These blocks are lamps in which oil and wick are electrons drawing light waves from ether itself! A Prometheus, indeed, this discoverer! I looked at my watch and that little guardian warned me that it was time to go. I went. That which comes forth returned—this time empty-handed.

“And the next night I did the same thing. Engrossed in research, I let the moments go by to the danger point, and scarcely was I replaced within the vault when the shining thing raced over the walls, and in its grip the woman and child.

“Then you came—and that is all. And now—what is it you know?”

Very briefly I went over my story. His eyes gleamed now and then, but he did not interrupt me.

“A great secret! A colossal secret!” he muttered, when I had ended. “We cannot leave it hidden.”

“The first thing to do is to try the door,” said Larry, matter of fact.

“There is no use, my young friend,” assured Marakinoff mildly.

“Nevertheless we’ll try,” said Larry. We retraced our way through the winding tunnel to the end, but soon even O’Keefe saw that any idea of moving the slab from within was hopeless. We returned to the Chamber of the Pool. The pillars of light were fainter, and we knew that the moon was sinking. On the world outside before long dawn would be breaking. I began to feel thirst—and the blue semblance of water within the silvery rim seemed to glint mockingly as my eyes rested on it.

“Da!” it was Marakinoff, reading my thoughts uncannily. “Da! We will be thirsty. And it will be very bad for him of us who loses control and drinks of that, my friend. Da!”

Larry threw back his shoulders as though shaking a burden from them.

“This place would give an angel of joy the willies,” he said. “I suggest that we look around and find something that will take us somewhere. You can bet the people that built it had more ways of getting in than that once-a-month family entrance. Doc, you and Olaf take the left wall; the professor and I will take the right.”

He loosened one of his automatics with a suggestive movement.

“After you, Professor,” he bowed, politely, to the Russian. We parted and set forth.

The chamber widened out from the portal in what seemed to be the arc of an immense circle. The shining walls held a perceptible curve, and from this curvature I estimated that the roof was fully three hundred feet above us.

The floor was of smooth, mosaic-fitted blocks of a faintly yellow tinge. They were not light-emitting like the blocks that formed the walls. The radiance from these latter, I noted, had the peculiar quality of thickening a few yards from its source, and it was this that produced the effect of misty, veiled distances. As we walked, the seven columns of rays streaming down from the crystalline globes high above us waned steadily; the glow within the chamber lost its prismatic shimmer and became an even grey tone somewhat like moonlight in a thin cloud.

Now before us, out from the wall, jutted a low terrace. It was all of a pearly rose-coloured stone, slender, graceful pillars of the same hue. The face of the terrace was about ten feet high, and all over it ran a bas-relief of what looked like short-trailing vines, surmounted by five stalks, on the tip of each of which was a flower.

We passed along the terrace. It turned in an abrupt curve. I heard a hail, and there, fifty feet away, at the curving end of a wall identical with that where we stood, were Larry and Marakinoff. Obviously the left side of the chamber was a duplicate of that we had explored. We joined. In front of us the columned barriers ran back a hundred feet, forming an alcove. The end of this alcove was another wall of the same rose stone, but upon it the design of vines was much heavier.

We took a step forward—there was a gasp of awe from the Norseman, a guttural exclamation from Marakinoff. For on, or rather within, the wall before us, a great oval began to glow, waxed almost to a flame and then shone steadily out as though from behind it a light was streaming through the stone itself!

And within the roseate oval two flame-tipped shadows appeared, stood for a moment, and then seemed to float out upon its surface. The shadows wavered; the tips of flame that nimbused them with flickering points of vermilion pulsed outward, drew back, darted forth again, and once more withdrew themselves—and as they did so the shadows thickened—and suddenly there before us stood two figures!

One was a girl—a girl whose great eyes were golden as the fabled lilies of Kwan-Yung that were born of the kiss of the sun upon the amber goddess the demons of Lao-Tz’e carved for him; whose softly curved lips were red as the royal coral, and whose golden-brown hair reached to her knees!

And the second was a gigantic frog—a woman frog, head helmeted with carapace of shell around which a fillet of brilliant yellow jewels shone; enormous round eyes of blue circled with a broad iris of green; monstrous body of banded orange and white girdled with strand upon strand of the flashing yellow gems; six feet high if an inch, and with one webbed paw of its short, powerfully muscled forelegs resting upon the white shoulder of the golden-eyed girl!

Moments must have passed as we stood in stark amazement, gazing at that incredible apparition. The two figures, although as real as any of those who stood beside me, unphantomlike as it is possible to be, had a distinct suggestion of—projection.

They were there before us—golden-eyed girl and grotesque frog-woman—complete in every line and curve; and still it was as though their bodies passed back through distances; as though, to try to express the wellnigh inexpressible, the two shapes we were looking upon were the end of an infinite number stretching in fine linked chain far away, of which the eyes saw only the nearest, while in the brain some faculty higher than sight recognized and registered the unseen others.

The gigantic eyes of the frog-woman took us all in—unwinkingly. Little glints of phosphorescence shone out within the metallic green of the outer iris ring. She stood upright, her great legs bowed; the monstrous slit of a mouth slightly open, revealing a row of white teeth sharp and pointed as lancets; the paw resting on the girl’s shoulder, half covering its silken surface, and from its five webbed digits long yellow claws of polished horn glistened against the delicate texture of the flesh.

But if the frog-woman regarded us all, not so did the maiden of the rosy wall. Her eyes were fastened upon Larry, drinking him in with extraordinary intentness. She was tall, far over the average of women, almost as tall, indeed, as O’Keefe himself; not more than twenty years old, if that, I thought. Abruptly she leaned forward, the golden eyes softened and grew tender; the red lips moved as though she were speaking.

Larry took a quick step, and his face was that of one who after countless births comes at last upon the twin soul lost to him for ages. The frog-woman turned her eyes upon the girl; her huge lips moved, and I knew that she was talking! The girl held out a warning hand to O’Keefe, and then raised it, resting each finger upon one of the five flowers of the carved vine close beside her. Once, twice, three times, she pressed upon the flower centres, and I noted that her hand was curiously long and slender, the digits like those wonderful tapering ones the painters we call the primitive gave to their Virgins.

Three times she pressed the flowers, and then looked intently at Larry once more. A slow, sweet smile curved the crimson lips. She stretched both hands out toward him again eagerly; a burning blush rose swiftly over white breasts and flowerlike face.

Like the clicking out of a cinematograph, the pulsing oval faded and golden-eyed girl and frog-woman were gone!

And thus it was that Lakla, the handmaiden of the Silent Ones, and Larry O’Keefe first looked into each other’s hearts!

Larry stood rapt, gazing at the stone.

“Eilidh,” I heard him whisper; “Eilidh of the lips like the red, red rowan and the golden-brown hair!”

“Clearly of the Ranadae,” said Marakinoff, “a development of the fossil Labyrinthodonts: you saw her teeth, da?”

“Ranadae, yes,” I answered. “But from the Stegocephalia; of the order Ecaudata—”

Never such a complete indignation as was in O’Keefe’s voice as he interrupted.

“What do you mean—fossils and Stego whatever it is?” he asked. “She was a girl, a wonder girl—a real girl, and Irish, or I’m not an O’Keefe!”

“We were talking about the frog-woman, Larry,” I said, conciliatingly.

His eyes were wild as he regarded us.

“Say,” he said, “if you two had been in the Garden of Eden when Eve took the apple, you wouldn’t have had time to give her a look for counting the scales on the snake!”

He strode swiftly over to the wall. We followed. Larry paused, stretched his hand up to the flowers on which the tapering fingers of the golden-eyed girl had rested.

“It was here she put up her hand,” he murmured. He pressed caressingly the carved calyxes, once, twice, a third time even as she had—and silently and softly the wall began to split; on each side a great stone pivoted slowly, and before us a portal stood, opening into a narrow corridor glowing with the same rosy lustre that had gleamed around the flame-tipped shadows!

“Have your gun ready, Olaf!” said Larry. “We follow Golden Eyes,” he said to me.

“Follow?” I echoed stupidly.

“Follow!” he said. “She came to show us the way! Follow? I’d follow her through a thousand hells!”

And with Olaf at one end, O’Keefe at the other, both of them with automatics in hand, and Marakinoff and I between them, we stepped over the threshold.

At our right, a few feet away, the passage ended abruptly in a square of polished stone, from which came faint rose radiance. The roof of the place was less than two feet over O’Keefe’s head.

A yard at left of us lifted a four-foot high, gently curved barricade, stretching from wall to wall—and beyond it was blackness; an utter and appalling blackness that seemed to gather itself from infinite depths. The rose-glow in which we stood was cut off by the blackness as though it had substance; it shimmered out to meet it, and was checked as though by a blow; indeed, so strong was the suggestion of sinister, straining force within the rayless opacity that I shrank back, and Marakinoff with me. Not so O’Keefe. Olaf beside him, he strode to the wall and peered over. He beckoned us.

“Flash your pocket-light down there,” he said to me, pointing into the thick darkness below us. The little electric circle quivered down as though afraid, and came to rest upon a surface that resembled nothing so much as clear, black ice. I ran the light across—here and there. The floor of the corridor was of a substance so smooth, so polished, that no man could have walked upon it; it sloped downward at a slowly increasing angle.

“We’d have to have non-skid chains and brakes on our feet to tackle that,” mused Larry. Abstractedly be ran his hands over the edge on which he was leaning. Suddenly they hesitated and then gripped tightly.

“That’s a queer one!” he exclaimed. His right palm was resting upon a rounded protuberance, on the side of which were three small circular indentations.

“A queer one—” he repeated—and pressed his fingers upon the circles.

There was a sharp click; the slabs that had opened to let us through swung swiftly together; a curiously rapid vibration thrilled through us, a wind arose and passed over our heads—a wind that grew and grew until it became a whistling shriek, then a roar and then a mighty humming, to which every atom in our bodies pulsed in rhythm painful almost to disintegration!

The rosy wall dwindled in a flash to a point of light and disappeared!

Wrapped in the clinging, impenetrable blackness we were racing, dropping, hurling at a frightful speed—where?

And ever that awful humming of the rushing wind and the lightning cleaving of the tangible dark—so, it came to me oddly, must the newly released soul race through the sheer blackness of outer space up to that Throne of Justice, where God sits high above all suns!

I felt Marakinoff creep close to me; gripped my nerve and flashed my pocket-light; saw Larry standing, peering, peering ahead, and Huldricksson, one strong arm around his shoulders, bracing him. And then the speed began to slacken.

Millions of miles, it seemed, below the sound of the unearthly hurricane I heard Larry’s voice, thin and ghostlike, beneath its clamour.

“Got it!” shrilled the voice. “Got it! Don’t worry!”

The wind died down to the roar, passed back into the whistling shriek and diminished to a steady whisper. In the comparative quiet O’Keefe’s tones now came in normal volume.

“Some little shoot-the-chutes, what?” he shouted. “Say—if they had this at Coney Island or the Crystal Palace! Press all the way in these holes and she goes top-high. Diminish pressure—diminish speed. The curve of this—dashboard—here sends the wind shooting up over our heads—like a windshield. What’s behind you?”

I flashed the light back. The mechanism on which we were ended in another wall exactly similar to that over which O’Keefe crouched.

“Well, we can’t fall out, anyway,” he laughed. “Wish to hell I knew where the brakes were! Look out!”

We dropped dizzily down an abrupt, seemingly endless slope; fell—fell as into an abyss—then shot abruptly out of the blackness into a throbbing green radiance. O’Keefe’s fingers must have pressed down upon the controls, for we leaped forward almost with the speed of light. I caught a glimpse of luminous immensities on the verge of which we flew; of depths inconceivable, and flitting through the incredible spaces—gigantic shadows as of the wings of Israfel, which are so wide, say the Arabs, the world can cower under them like a nestling—and then—again the living blackness!

“What was that?” This from Larry, with the nearest approach to awe that he had yet shown.

“Trolldom!” croaked the voice of Olaf.

“Chert!” This from Marakinoff. “What a space!”

“Have you considered, Dr. Goodwin,” he went on after a pause, “a curious thing? We know, or, at least, is it not that nine out of ten astronomers believe, that the moon was hurled out of this same region we now call the Pacific when the earth was yet like molasses; almost molten, I should say. And is it not curious that that which comes from the Moon Chamber needs the moon-rays to bring it forth; is it not? And is it not significant again that the stone depends upon the moon for operating? Da! And last—such a space in mother earth as we just glimpsed, how else could it have been torn but by some gigantic birth—like that of the moon? Da? I do not put forward these as statements of fact—no! But as suggestions—”

I started; there was so much that this might explain—an unknown element that responded to the moon-rays in opening the moon door; the blue Pool with its weird radioactivity, and the force within it that reacted to the same light stream—

It was not inconceivable that a film had drawn over the world wound, a film of earth-flesh which drew itself over that colossal abyss after our planet had borne its satellite—that world womb did not close when her shining child sprang forth—it was possible; and all that we know of earth depth is four miles of her eight thousand.

What is there at the heart of earth? What of that radiant unknown element upon the moon mount Tycho? What of that element unknown to us as part of earth which is seen only in the corona of the sun at eclipse that we call coronium? Yet the earth is child of the sun as the moon is earth’s daughter. And what of that other unknown element we find glowing green in the far-flung nebulae—green as that we had just passed through—and that we call nebulium? Yet the sun is child of the nebulae as the earth is child of the sun and the moon is child of the earth.

And what miracles are there in coronium and nebulium which, as the child of nebula and sun, we inherit? Yes—and in Tycho’s enigma which came from earth heart?

We were flashing down to earth heart! And what miracles were hidden there?

CHAPTER XII

The End of the Journey

“Say Doc!” It was Larry’s voice flung back at me. “I was thinking about that frog. I think it was her pet. Damn me if I see any difference between a frog and a snake, and one of the nicest women I ever knew had two pet pythons that followed her around like kittens. Not such a devilish lot of choice between a frog and a snake—except on the side of the frog? What? Anyway, any pet that girl wants is hers, I don’t care if it’s a leaping twelve-toed lobster or a whale-bodied scorpion. Get me?”

By which I knew that our remarks upon the frog woman were still bothering O’Keefe.

“He thinks of foolish nothings like the foolish sailor!” grunted Marakinoff, acid contempt in his words. “What are their women to—this?” He swept out a hand and as though at a signal the car poised itself for an instant, then dipped, literally dipped down into sheer space; skimmed forward in what was clearly curved flight, rose as upon a sweeping upgrade and then began swiftly to slacken its fearful speed.

Far ahead a point of light showed; grew steadily; we were within it—and softly all movement ceased. How acute had been the strain of our journey I did not realize until I tried to stand—and sank back, leg-muscles too shaky to bear my weight. The car rested in a slit in the centre of a smooth walled chamber perhaps twenty feet square. The wall facing us was pierced by a low doorway through which we could see a flight of steps leading downward.

The light streamed through a small opening, the base of which was twice a tall man’s height from the floor. A curving flight of broad, low steps led up to it. And now it came to my steadying brain that there was something puzzling, peculiar, strangely unfamiliar about this light. It was silvery, shaded faintly with a delicate blue and flushed lightly with a nacreous rose; but a rose that differed from that of the terraces of the Pool Chamber as the rose within the opal differs from that within the pearl. In it were tiny, gleaming points like the motes in a sunbeam, but sparkling white like the dust of diamonds, and with a quality of vibrant vitality; they were as though they were alive. The light cast no shadows!

A little breeze came through the oval and played about us. It was laden with what seemed the mingled breath of spice flowers and pines. It was curiously vivifying, and in it the diamonded atoms of light shook and danced.

I stepped out of the car, the Russian following, and began to ascend the curved steps toward the opening, at the top of which O’Keefe and Olaf already stood. As they looked out I saw both their faces change—Olaf’s with awe, O’Keefe’s with incredulous amaze. I hurried to their side.

At first all that I could see was space—a space filled with the same coruscating effulgence that pulsed about me. I glanced upward, obeying that instinctive impulse of earth folk that bids them seek within the sky for sources of light. There was no sky—at least no sky such as we know—all was a sparkling nebulosity rising into infinite distances as the azure above the day-world seems to fill all the heavens—through it ran pulsing waves and flashing javelin rays that were like shining shadows of the aurora; echoes, octaves lower, of those brilliant arpeggios and chords that play about the poles. My eyes fell beneath its splendour; I stared outward.

Miles away, gigantic luminous cliffs sprang sheer from the limits of a lake whose waters were of milky opalescence. It was from these cliffs that the spangled radiance came, shimmering out from all their lustrous surfaces. To left and to right, as far as the eye could see, they stretched—and they vanished in the auroral nebulosity on high!

“Look at that!” exclaimed Larry. I followed his pointing finger. On the face of the shining wall, stretched between two colossal columns, hung an incredible veil; prismatic, gleaming with all the colours of the spectrum. It was like a web of rainbows woven by the fingers of the daughters of the Jinn. In front of it and a little at each side was a semi-circular pier, or, better, a plaza of what appeared to be glistening, pale-yellow ivory. At each end of its half-circle clustered a few low-walled, rose-stone structures, each of them surmounted by a number of high, slender pinnacles.

We looked at each other, I think, a bit helplessly—and back again through the opening. We were standing, as I have said, at its base. The wall in which it was set was at least ten feet thick, and so, of course, all that we could see of that which was without were the distances that revealed themselves above the outer ledge of the oval.

“Let’s take a look at what’s under us,” said Larry.

He crept out upon the ledge and peered down, the rest of us following. A hundred yards beneath us stretched gardens that must have been like those of many-columned Iram, which the ancient Addite King had built for his pleasure ages before the deluge, and which Allah, so the Arab legend tells, took and hid from man, within the Sahara, beyond all hope of finding—jealous because they were more beautiful than his in paradise. Within them flowers and groves of laced, fernlike trees, pillared pavilions nestled.

The trunks of the trees were of emerald, of vermilion, and of azure-blue, and the blossoms, whose fragrance was borne to us, shone like jewels. The graceful pillars were tinted delicately. I noted that the pavilions were double—in a way, two-storied—and that they were oddly splotched with circles, with squares, and with oblongs of—opacity; noted too that over many this opacity stretched like a roof; yet it did not seem material; rather was it—impenetrable shadow!

Down through this city of gardens ran a broad shining green thoroughfare, glistening like glass and spanned at regular intervals with graceful, arched bridges. The road flashed to a wide square, where rose, from a base of that same silvery stone that formed the lip of the Moon Pool, a titanic structure of seven terraces; and along it flitted objects that bore a curious resemblance to the shell of the Nautilus. Within them were—human figures! And upon tree-bordered promenades on each side walked others!

Far to the right we caught the glint of another emerald-paved road.

And between the two the gardens grew sweetly down to the hither side of that opalescent water across which were the radiant cliffs and the curtain of mystery.

Thus it was that we first saw the city of the Dweller; blessed and accursed as no place on earth, or under or above earth has ever been—or, that force willing which some call God, ever again shall be!

“Chert!” whispered Marakinoff. “Incredible!”

“Trolldom!” gasped Olaf Huldricksson. “It is Trolldom!”

“Listen, Olaf!” said Larry. “Cut out that Trolldom stuff! There’s no Trolldom, or fairies, outside Ireland. Get that! And this isn’t Ireland. And, buck up, Professor!” This to Marakinoff. “What you see down there are people—just plain people. And wherever there’s people is where I live. Get me?

“There’s no way in but in—and no way out but out,” said O’Keefe. “And there’s the stairway. Eggs are eggs no matter how they’re cooked—and people are just people, fellow travellers, no matter what dish they are in,” he concluded. “Come on!”

With the three of us close behind him, he marched toward the entrance.

CHAPTER XIII

Yolara, Priestess of the Shining One

“You’d better have this handy, Doc.” O’Keefe paused at the head of the stairway and handed me one of the automatics he had taken from Marakinoff.

“Shall I not have one also?” rather anxiously asked the latter.

“When you need it you’ll get it,” answered O’Keefe. “I’ll tell you frankly, though, Professor, that you’ll have to show me before I trust you with a gun. You shoot too straight—from cover.”

The flash of anger in the Russian’s eyes turned to a cold consideration.

“You say always just what is in your mind, Lieutenant O’Keefe,” he mused. “Da—that I shall remember!” Later I was to recall this odd observation—and Marakinoff was to remember indeed.

In single file, O’Keefe at the head and Olaf bringing up the rear, we passed through the portal. Before us dropped a circular shaft, into which the light from the chamber of the oval streamed liquidly; set in its sides the steps spiralled, and down them we went, cautiously. The stairway ended in a circular well; silent—with no trace of exit! The rounded stones joined each other evenly—hermetically. Carved on one of the slabs was one of the five flowered vines. I pressed my fingers upon the calyxes, even as Larry had within the Moon Chamber.

A crack—horizontal, four feet wide—appeared on the wall; widened, and as the sinking slab that made it dropped to the level of our eyes, we looked through a hundred-feet-long rift in the living rock! The stone fell steadily—and we saw that it was a Cyclopean wedge set within the slit of the passageway. It reached the level of our feet and stopped. At the far end of this tunnel, whose floor was the polished rock that had, a moment before, fitted hermetically into its roof, was a low, narrow triangular opening through which light streamed.

“Nowhere to go but out!” grinned Larry. “And I’ll bet Golden Eyes is waiting for us with a taxi!” He stepped forward. We followed, slipping, sliding along the glassy surface; and I, for one, had a lively apprehension of what our fate would be should that enormous mass rise before we had emerged! We reached the end; crept out of the narrow triangle that was its exit.

We stood upon a wide ledge carpeted with a thick yellow moss. I looked behind—and clutched O’Keefe’s arm. The door through which we had come had vanished! There was only a precipice of pale rock, on whose surfaces great patches of the amber moss hung; around whose base our ledge ran, and whose summits, if summits it had, were hidden, like the luminous cliffs, in the radiance above us.

“Nowhere to go but ahead—and Golden Eyes hasn’t kept her date!” laughed O’Keefe—but somewhat grimly.

We walked a few yards along the ledge and, rounding a corner, faced the end of one of the slender bridges. From this vantage point the oddly shaped vehicles were plain, and we could see they were, indeed, like the shell of the Nautilus and elfinly beautiful. Their drivers sat high upon the forward whorl. Their bodies were piled high with cushions, upon which lay women half-swathed in gay silken webs. From the pavilioned gardens smaller channels of glistening green ran into the broad way, much as automobile runways do on earth; and in and out of them flashed the fairy shells.

There came a shout from one. Its occupants had glimpsed us. They pointed; others stopped and stared; one shell turned and sped up a runway—and quickly over the other side of the bridge came a score of men. They were dwarfed—none of them more than five feet high, prodigiously broad of shoulder, clearly enormously powerful.

“Trolde!” muttered Olaf, stepping beside O’Keefe, pistol swinging free in his hand.

But at the middle of the bridge the leader stopped, waved back his men, and came toward us alone, palms outstretched in the immemorial, universal gesture of truce. He paused, scanning us with manifest wonder; we returned the scrutiny with interest. The dwarf’s face was as white as Olaf’s—far whiter than those of the other three of us; the features clean-cut and noble, almost classical; the wide set eyes of a curious greenish grey and the black hair curling over his head like that on some old Greek statue.

Dwarfed though he was, there was no suggestion of deformity about him. The gigantic shoulders were covered with a loose green tunic that looked like fine linen. It was caught in at the waist by a broad girdle studded with what seemed to be amazonites. In it was thrust a long curved poniard resembling the Malaysian kris. His legs were swathed in the same green cloth as the upper garment. His feet were sandalled.

My gaze returned to his face, and in it I found something subtly disturbing; an expression of half-malicious gaiety that underlay the wholly prepossessing features like a vague threat; a mocking deviltry that hinted at entire callousness to suffering or sorrow; something of the spirit that was vaguely alien and disquieting.

He spoke—and, to my surprise, enough of the words were familiar to enable me clearly to catch the meaning of the whole. They were Polynesian, the Polynesian of the Samoans which is its most ancient form, but in some indefinable way—archaic. Later I was to know that the tongue bore the same relation to the Polynesian of today as does not that of Chaucer, but of the Venerable Bede, to modern English. Nor was this to be so astonishing, when with the knowledge came the certainty that it was from it the language we call Polynesian sprang.

“From whence do you come, strangers—and how found you your way here?” said the green dwarf.

I waved my hand toward the cliff behind us. His eyes narrowed incredulously; he glanced at its drop, upon which even a mountain goat could not have made its way, and laughed.

“We came through the rock,” I answered his thought. “And we come in peace,” I added.

“And may peace walk with you,” he said half-derisively—“if the Shining One wills it!”

He considered us again.

“Show me, strangers, where you came through the rock,” he commanded. We led the way to where we had emerged from the well of the stairway.

“It was here,” I said, tapping the cliff.

“But I see no opening,” he said suavely.

“It closed behind us,” I answered; and then, for the first time, realized how incredible the explanation sounded. The derisive gleam passed through his eyes again. But he drew his poniard and gravely sounded the rock.

“You give a strange turn to our speech,” he said. “It sounds strangely, indeed—as strange as your answers.” He looked at us quizzically. “I wonder where you learned it! Well, all that you can explain to the Afyo Maie.” His head bowed and his arms swept out in a wide salaam. “Be pleased to come with me!” he ended abruptly.

“In peace?” I asked.

“In peace,” he replied—then slowly—“with me at least.”

“Oh, come on, Doc!” cried Larry. “As long as we’re here let’s see the sights. Allons mon vieux!” he called gaily to the green dwarf. The latter, understanding the spirit, if not the words, looked at O’Keefe with a twinkle of approval; turned then to the great Norseman and scanned him with admiration; reached out and squeezed one of the immense biceps.

“Lugur will welcome you, at least,” he murmured as though to himself. He stood aside and waved a hand courteously, inviting us to pass. We crossed. At the base of the span one of the elfin shells was waiting.

Beyond, scores had gathered, their occupants evidently discussing us in much excitement. The green dwarf waved us to the piles of cushions and then threw himself beside us. The vehicle started off smoothly, the now silent throng making way, and swept down the green roadway at a terrific pace and wholly without vibration, toward the seven-terraced tower.

As we flew along I tried to discover the source of the power, but I could not—then. There was no sign of mechanism, but that the shell responded to some form of energy was certain—the driver grasping a small lever which seemed to control not only our speed, but our direction.

We turned abruptly and swept up a runway through one of the gardens, and stopped softly before a pillared pavilion. I saw now that these were much larger than I had thought. The structure to which we had been carried covered, I estimated, fully an acre. Oblong, with its slender, vari-coloured columns spaced regularly, its walls were like the sliding screens of the Japanese—shoji.

The green dwarf hurried us up a flight of broad steps flanked by great carved serpents, winged and scaled. He stamped twice upon mosaicked stones between two of the pillars, and a screen rolled aside, revealing an immense hall scattered about with low divans on which lolled a dozen or more of the dwarfish men, dressed identically as he.

They sauntered up to us leisurely; the surprised interest in their faces tempered by the same inhumanly gay malice that seemed to be characteristic of all these people we had as yet seen.

“The Afyo Maie awaits them, Rador,” said one.

The green dwarf nodded, beckoned us, and led the way through the great hall and into a smaller chamber whose far side was covered with the opacity I had noted from the aerie of the cliff. I examined the—blackness—with lively interest.

It had neither substance nor texture; it was not matter—and yet it suggested solidity; an entire cessation, a complete absorption of light; an ebon veil at once immaterial and palpable. I stretched, involuntarily, my hand out toward it, and felt it quickly drawn back.

“Do you seek your end so soon?” whispered Rador. “But I forget—you do not know,” he added. “On your life touch not the blackness, ever. It—”

He stopped, for abruptly in the density a portal appeared; swinging out of the shadow like a picture thrown by a lantern upon a screen. Through it was revealed a chamber filled with a soft rosy glow. Rising from cushioned couches, a woman and a man regarded us, half leaning over a long, low table of what seemed polished jet, laden with flowers and unfamiliar fruits.

About the room—that part of it, at least, that I could see—were a few oddly shaped chairs of the same substance. On high, silvery tripods three immense globes stood, and it was from them that the rose glow emanated. At the side of the woman was a smaller globe whose roseate gleam was tempered by quivering waves of blue.

“Enter Rador with the strangers!” a clear, sweet voice called.

Rador bowed deeply and stood aside, motioning us to pass. We entered, the green dwarf behind us, and out of the corner of my eye I saw the doorway fade as abruptly as it had appeared and again the dense shadow fill its place.

“Come closer, strangers. Be not afraid!” commanded the bell-toned voice.

We approached.

The woman, sober scientist that I am, made the breath catch in my throat. Never had I seen a woman so beautiful as was Yolara of the Dweller’s city—and none of so perilous a beauty. Her hair was of the colour of the young tassels of the corn and coiled in a regal crown above her broad, white brows; her wide eyes were of grey that could change to a cornflower blue and in anger deepen to purple; grey or blue, they had little laughing devils within them, but when the storm of anger darkened them—they were not laughing, no! The silken webs that half covered, half revealed her did not hide the ivory whiteness of her flesh nor the sweet curve of shoulders and breasts. But for all her amazing beauty, she was—sinister! There was cruelty about the curving mouth, and in the music of her voice—not conscious cruelty, but the more terrifying, careless cruelty of nature itself.

The girl of the rose wall had been beautiful, yes! But her beauty was human, understandable. You could imagine her with a babe in her arms—but you could not so imagine this woman. About her loveliness hovered something unearthly. A sweet feminine echo of the Dweller was Yolara, the Dweller’s priestess—and as gloriously, terrifyingly evil!

CHAPTER XIV

The Justice of Lora

As I looked at her the man arose and made his way round the table toward us. For the first time my eyes took in Lugur. A few inches taller than the green dwarf, he was far broader, more filled with the suggestion of appalling strength.

The tremendous shoulders were four feet wide if an inch, tapering down to mighty thewed thighs. The muscles of his chest stood out beneath his tunic of red. Around his forehead shone a chaplet of bright-blue stones, sparkling among the thick curls of his silver-ash hair.

Upon his face pride and ambition were written large—and power still larger. All the mockery, the malice, the hint of callous indifference that I had noted in the other dwarfish men were there, too—but intensified, touched with the satanic.

The woman spoke again.

“Who are you strangers, and how came you here?” She turned to Rador. “Or is it that they do not understand our tongue?”

“One understands and speaks it—but very badly, O Yolara,” answered the green dwarf.

“Speak, then, that one of you,” she commanded.

But it was Marakinoff who found his voice first, and I marvelled at the fluency, so much greater than mine, with which he spoke.

“We came for different purposes. I to seek knowledge of a kind; he”—pointing to me “of another. This man”—he looked at Olaf—“to find a wife and child.”

The grey-blue eyes had been regarding O’Keefe steadily and with plainly increasing interest.

“And why did you come?” she asked him. “Nay—I would have him speak for himself, if he can,” she stilled Marakinoff peremptorily.

When Larry spoke it was haltingly, in the tongue that was strange to him, searching for the proper words.

“I came to help these men—and because something I could not then understand called me, O lady, whose eyes are like forest pools at dawn,” he answered; and even in the unfamiliar words there was a touch of the Irish brogue, and little merry lights danced in the eyes Larry had so apostrophized.

“I could find fault with your speech, but none with its burden,” she said. “What forest pools are I know not, and the dawn has not shone upon the people of Lora these many sais of laya.3 But I sense what you mean!”

The eyes deepened to blue as she regarded him. She smiled.

“Are there many like you in the world from which you come?” she asked softly. “Well, we soon shall—”

Lugur interrupted her almost rudely and glowering.

“Best we should know how they came hence,” he growled.

She darted a quick look at him, and again the little devils danced in her wondrous eyes.

“Yes, that is true,” she said. “How came you here?”

Again it was Marakinoff who answered—slowly, considering every word.

“In the world above,” he said, “there are ruins of cities not built by any of those who now dwell there. To us these places called, and we sought for knowledge of the wise ones who made them. We found a passageway. The way led us downward to a door in yonder cliff, and through it we came here.”

“Then have you found what you sought?” spoke she. “For we are of those who built the cities. But this gateway in the rock—where is it?”

“After we passed, it closed upon us; nor could we after find trace of it,” answered Marakinoff.

The incredulity that had shown upon the face of the green dwarf fell upon theirs; on Lugur’s it was clouded with furious anger.

He turned to Rador.

“I could find no opening, lord,” said the green dwarf quickly.

And there was so fierce a fire in the eyes of Lugur as he swung back upon us that O’Keefe’s hand slipped stealthily down toward his pistol.

“Best it is to speak truth to Yolara, priestess of the Shining One, and to Lugur, the Voice,” he cried menacingly.

“It is the truth,” I interposed. “We came down the passage. At its end was a carved vine, a vine of five flowers”—the fire died from the red dwarf’s eyes, and I could have sworn to a swift pallor. “I rested a hand upon these flowers, and a door opened. But when we had gone through it and turned, behind us was nothing but unbroken cliff. The door had vanished.”

I had taken my cue from Marakinoff. If he had eliminated the episode of car and Moon Pool, he had good reason, I had no doubt; and I would be as cautious. And deep within me something cautioned me to say nothing of my quest; to stifle all thought of Throckmartin—something that warned, peremptorily, finally, as though it were a message from Throckmartin himself!

“A vine with five flowers!” exclaimed the red dwarf. “Was it like this, say?”

He thrust forward a long arm. Upon the thumb of the hand was an immense ring, set with a dull-blue stone. Graven on the face of the jewel was the symbol of the rosy walls of the Moon Chamber that had opened to us their two portals. But cut over the vine were seven circles, one about each of the flowers and two larger ones covering, intersecting them.

“This is the same,” I said; “but these were not there”—I indicated the circles.

The woman drew a deep breath and looked deep into Lugur’s eyes.

“The sign of the Silent Ones!” he half whispered.

It was the woman who first recovered herself.

“The strangers are weary, Lugur,” she said. “When they are rested they shall show where the rocks opened.”

I sensed a subtle change in their attitude toward us; a new intentness; a doubt plainly tinged with apprehension. What was it they feared? Why had the symbol of the vine wrought the change? And who or what were the Silent Ones?

Yolara’s eyes turned to Olaf, hardened, and grew cold grey. Subconsciously I had noticed that from the first the Norseman had been absorbed in his regard of the pair; had, indeed, never taken his gaze from them; had noticed, too, the priestess dart swift glances toward him.

He returned her scrutiny fearlessly, a touch of contempt in the clear eyes—like a child watching a snake which he did not dread, but whose danger be well knew.

Under that look Yolara stirred impatiently, sensing, I know, its meaning.

“Why do you look at me so?” she cried.

An expression of bewilderment passed over Olaf’s face.

“I do not understand,” he said in English.

I caught a quickly repressed gleam in O’Keefe’s eyes. He knew, as I knew, that Olaf must have understood. But did Marakinoff?

Apparently he did not. But why was Olaf feigning ignorance?

“This man is a sailor from what we call the North,” thus Larry haltingly. “He is crazed, I think. He tells a strange tale of a something of cold fire that took his wife and babe. We found him wandering where we were. And because he is strong we brought him with us. That is all, O lady, whose voice is sweeter than the honey of the wild bees!”

“A shape of cold fire?” she repeated.

“A shape of cold fire that whirled beneath the moon, with the sound of little bells,” answered Larry, watching her intently.

She looked at Lugur and laughed.

“Then he, too, is fortunate,” she said. “For he has come to the place of his something of cold fire—and tell him that he shall join his wife and child, in time; that I promise him.”

Upon the Norseman’s face there was no hint of comprehension, and at that moment I formed an entirely new opinion of Olaf’s intelligence; for certainly it must have been a prodigious effort of the will, indeed, that enabled him, understanding, to control himself.

“What does she say?” he asked.

Larry repeated.

“Good!” said Olaf. “Good!”

He looked at Yolara with well-assumed gratitude. Lugur, who had been scanning his bulk, drew close. He felt the giant muscles which Huldricksson accommodatingly flexed for him.

“But he shall meet Valdor and Tahola before he sees those kin of his,” he laughed mockingly. “And if he bests them—for reward—his wife and babe!”

A shudder, quickly repressed, shook the seaman’s frame. The woman bent her supremely beautiful head.

“These two,” she said, pointing to the Russian and to me, “seem to be men of learning. They may be useful. As for this man,”—she smiled at Larry—“I would have him explain to me some things.” She hesitated. “What ‘hon-ey of ’e wild bees-s’ is.” Larry had spoken the words in English, and she was trying to repeat them. “As for this man, the sailor, do as you please with him, Lugur; always remembering that I have given my word that he shall join that wife and babe of his!” She laughed sweetly, sinisterly. “And now—take them, Rador—give them food and drink and let them rest till we shall call them again.”

She stretched out a hand toward O’Keefe. The Irishman bowed low over it, raised it softly to his lips. There was a vicious hiss from Lugur; but Yolara regarded Larry with eyes now all tender blue.

“You please me,” she whispered.

And the face of Lugur grew darker.

We turned to go. The rosy, azure-shot globe at her side suddenly dulled. From it came a faint bell sound as of chimes far away. She bent over it. It vibrated, and then its surface ran with little waves of dull colour; from it came a whispering so low that I could not distinguish the words—if words they were.

She spoke to the red dwarf.

“They have brought the three who blasphemed the Shining One,” she said slowly. “Now it is in my mind to show these strangers the justice of Lora. What say you, Lugur?”

The red dwarf nodded, his eyes sparkling with a malicious anticipation.

The woman spoke again to the globe. “Bring them here!”

And again it ran swiftly with its film of colours, darkened, and shone rosy once more. From without there came a rustle of many feet upon the rugs. Yolara pressed a slender hand upon the base of the pedestal of the globe beside her. Abruptly the light faded from all, and on the same instant the four walls of blackness vanished, revealing on two sides the lovely, unfamiliar garden through the guarding rows of pillars; at our backs soft draperies hid what lay beyond; before us, flanked by flowered screens, was the corridor through which we had entered, crowded now by the green dwarfs of the great hall.

The dwarfs advanced. Each, I now noted, had the same clustering black hair of Rador. They separated, and from them stepped three figures—a youth of not more than twenty, short, but with the great shoulders of all the males we had seen of this race; a girl of seventeen, I judged, white-faced, a head taller than the boy, her long, black hair dishevelled; and behind these two a stunted, gnarled shape whose head was sunk deep between the enormous shoulders, whose white beard fell like that of some ancient gnome down to his waist, and whose eyes were a white flame of hate. The girl cast herself weeping at the feet of the priestess; the youth regarded her curiously.

“You are Songar of the Lower Waters?” murmured Yolara almost caressingly. “And this is your daughter and her lover?”

The gnome nodded, the flame in his eyes leaping higher.

“It has come to me that you three have dared blaspheme the Shining One, its priestess, and its Voice,” went on Yolara smoothly. “Also that you have called out to the three Silent Ones. Is it true?”

“Your spies have spoken—and have you not already judged us?” The voice of the old dwarf was bitter.

A flicker shot through the eyes of Yolara, again cold grey. The girl reached a trembling hand out to the hem of the priestess’s veils.

“Tell us why you did these things, Songar,” she said. “Why you did them, knowing full well what your—reward—would be.”

The dwarf stiffened; he raised his withered arms, and his eyes blazed.

“Because evil are your thoughts and evil are your deeds,” he cried. “Yours and your lover’s, there”—he levelled a finger at Lugur. “Because of the Shining One you have made evil, too, and the greater wickedness you contemplate—you and he with the Shining One. But I tell you that your measure of iniquity is full; the tale of your sin near ended! Yea—the Silent Ones have been patient, but soon they will speak.” He pointed at us. “A sign are they—a warning—harlot!” He spat the word.

In Yolara’s eyes, grown black, the devils leaped unrestrained.

“Is it even so, Songar?” her voice caressed. “Now ask the Silent Ones to help you! They sit afar—but surely they will hear you.” The sweet voice was mocking. “As for these two, they shall pray to the Shining One for forgiveness—and surely the Shining One will take them to its bosom! As for you—you have lived long enough, Songar! Pray to the Silent Ones, Songar, and pass out into the nothingness—you!”

She dipped down into her bosom and drew forth something that resembled a small cone of tarnished silver. She levelled it, a covering clicked from its base, and out of it darted a slender ray of intense green light.

It struck the old dwarf squarely over the heart, and spread swift as light itself, covering him with a gleaming, pale film. She clenched her hand upon the cone, and the ray disappeared. She thrust the cone back into her breast and leaned forward expectantly; so Lugur and so the other dwarfs. From the girl came a low wail of anguish; the boy dropped upon his knees, covering his face.

For the moment the white beard stood rigid; then the robe that had covered him seemed to melt away, revealing all the knotted, monstrous body. And in that body a vibration began, increasing to incredible rapidity. It wavered before us like a reflection in a still pond stirred by a sudden wind. It grew and grew—to a rhythm whose rapidity was intolerable to watch and that still chained the eyes.

The figure grew indistinct, misty. Tiny sparks in infinite numbers leaped from it—like, I thought, the radiant shower of particles hurled out by radium when seen under the microscope. Mistier still it grew—there trembled before us for a moment a faintly luminous shadow which held, here and there, tiny sparkling atoms like those that pulsed in the light about us! The glowing shadow vanished, the sparkling atoms were still for a moment—and shot away, joining those dancing others.

Where the gnomelike form had been but a few seconds before—there was nothing!

O’Keefe drew a long breath, and I was sensible of a prickling along my scalp.

Yolara leaned toward us.

“You have seen,” she said. Her eyes lingered tigerishly upon Olaf’s pallid face. “Heed!” she whispered. She turned to the men in green, who were laughing softly among themselves.

“Take these two, and go!” she commanded.

“The justice of Lora,” said the red dwarf. “The justice of Lora and the Shining One under Thanaroa!”

Upon the utterance of the last word I saw Marakinoff start violently. The hand at his side made a swift, surreptitious gesture, so fleeting that I hardly caught it. The red dwarf stared at the Russian, and there was amazement upon his face.

Swiftly as Marakinoff, he returned it.

“Yolara,” the red dwarf spoke, “it would please me to take this man of wisdom to my own place for a time. The giant I would have, too.”

The woman awoke from her brooding; nodded.

“As you will, Lugur,” she said.

And as, shaken to the core, we passed out into the garden into the full throbbing of the light, I wondered if all the tiny sparkling diamond points that shook about us had once been men like Songar of the Lower Waters—and felt my very soul grow sick!

3 Later I was to find that the Maurian reckoning rested upon the extraordinary increased luminosity of the cliffs at the time of the full moon on Earth—this action to my mind being linked either with the effect of the light streaming globes upon the Moon Pool, whose source was in the shining cliffs, or else upon some mysterious affinity of their radiant element with the flood of moonlight on Earth— the latter, most probably, because even when the moon must have been clouded above, it made to difference in the phenomenon. Thirteeno f these shinigns forth constituted a laya, one of them a lat. Ten was a sais. A sais of laya was literally ten thousand years. What we would call an hour was called by them a va. The whole time system was, of course, a mingling of time as it had been known to their remote, surface-dwelling ancestors, and the peculiar determining factors in the vast cavern.

Unquestionably there is a subtle difference between time as we know it and time in this subterranean land—its progress there being slower. This, however, is only in accord with the well-known doctrine of relativity, which predicates both space and time as necessary inventions of the human mind to orient itself to the conditions under which it finds itself. I tried often to measure this difference, but could never do so to my entire satisfaction. The closest I can come to it is to say that an hour of our time is the equivalent of an hour and five-eighths in Muria. For further information upon this matter of relativity the reader may consult any of the numerous books upon the subject. —W.T.G.

3 Later I was to find that the Maurian reckoning rested upon the extraordinary increased luminosity of the cliffs at the time of the full moon on Earth—this action to my mind being linked either with the effect of the light streaming globes upon the Moon Pool, whose source was in the shining cliffs, or else upon some mysterious affinity of their radiant element with the flood of moonlight on Earth— the latter, most probably, because even when the moon must have been clouded above, it made to difference in the phenomenon. Thirteeno f these shinigns forth constituted a laya, one of them a lat. Ten was a sais. A sais of laya was literally ten thousand years. What we would call an hour was called by them a va. The whole time system was, of course, a mingling of time as it had been known to their remote, surface-dwelling ancestors, and the peculiar determining factors in the vast cavern.

CHAPTER XV

The Angry, Whispering Globe

Our way led along a winding path between banked masses of softly radiant blooms, groups of feathery ferns whose plumes were starred with fragrant white and blue flowerets, slender creepers swinging from the branches of the strangely trunked trees, bearing along their threads orchid-like blossoms both delicately frail and gorgeously flamboyant.

The path we trod was an exquisite mosaic—pastel greens and pinks upon a soft grey base, garlands of nimbused forms like the flaming rose of the Rosicrucians held in the mouths of the flying serpents. A smaller pavilion arose before us, single-storied, front wide open.

Upon its threshold Rador paused, bowed deeply, and motioned us within. The chamber we entered was large, closed on two sides by screens of grey; at the back gay, concealing curtains. The low table of blue stone, dressed with fine white cloths, stretched at one side flanked by the cushioned divans.

At the left was a high tripod bearing one of the rosy globes we had seen in the house of Yolara; at the head of the table a smaller globe similar to the whispering one. Rador pressed upon its base, and two other screens slid into place across the entrance, shutting in the room.

He clapped his hands; the curtains parted, and two girls came through them. Tall and willow lithe, their bluish-black hair falling in ringlets just below their white shoulders, their clear eyes of forget-me-not blue, and skins of extraordinary fineness and purity—they were singularly attractive. Each was clad in an extremely scanty bodice of silken blue, girdled above a kirtle that came barely to their very pretty knees.

“Food and drink,” ordered Rador.

They dropped back through the curtains.

“Do you like them?” he asked us.

“Some chickens!” said Larry. “They delight the heart,” he translated for Rador.

The green dwarf’s next remark made me gasp.

“They are yours,” he said.

Before I could question him further upon this extraordinary statement the pair re-entered, bearing a great platter on which were small loaves, strange fruits, and three immense flagons of rock crystal—two filled with a slightly sparkling yellow liquid and the third with a purplish drink. I became acutely sensible that it had been hours since I had either eaten or drunk. The yellow flagons were set before Larry and me, the purple at Rador’s hand.

The girls, at his signal, again withdrew. I raised my glass to my lips and took a deep draft. The taste was unfamiliar but delightful.

Almost at once my fatigue disappeared. I realized a clarity of mind, an interesting exhilaration and sense of irresponsibility, of freedom from care, that were oddly enjoyable. Larry became immediately his old gay self.

The green dwarf regarded us whimsically, sipping from his great flagon of rock crystal.

“Much do I desire to know of that world you came from,” he said at last—“through the rocks,” he added, slyly.

“And much do we desire to know of this world of yours, O Rador,” I answered.

Should I ask him of the Dweller; seek from him a clue to Throckmartin? Again, clearly as a spoken command, came the warning to forbear, to wait. And once more I obeyed.

“Let us learn, then, from each other.” The dwarf was laughing. “And first—are all above like you—drawn out”—he made an expressive gesture—“and are there many of you?”

“There are—” I hesitated, and at last spoke the Polynesian that means tens upon tens multiplied indefinitely—“there are as many as the drops of water in the lake we saw from the ledge where you found us,” I continued; “many as the leaves on the trees without. And they are all like us—varyingly.”

He considered skeptically, I could see, my remark upon our numbers.

“In Muria,” he said at last, “the men are like me or like Lugur. Our women are as you see them—like Yolara or those two who served you.” He hesitated. “And there is a third; but only one.”

Larry leaned forward eagerly.

“Brown-haired with glints of ruddy bronze, golden-eyed, and lovely as a dream, with long, slender, beautiful hands?” he cried.

“Where saw you her?” interrupted the dwarf, starting to his feet.

“Saw her?” Larry recovered himself. “Nay, Rador, perhaps, I only dreamed that there was such a woman.”

“See to it, then, that you tell not your dream to Yolara,” said the dwarf grimly. “For her I meant and her you have pictured is Lakla, the hand-maiden to the Silent Ones, and neither Yolara nor Lugur, nay, nor the Shining One, love her overmuch, stranger.”

“Does she dwell here?” Larry’s face was alight.

The dwarf hesitated, glanced about him anxiously.

“Nay,” he answered, “ask me no more of her.” He was silent for a space. “And what do you who are as leaves or drops of water do in that world of yours?” he said, plainly bent on turning the subject.

“Keep off the golden-eyed girl, Larry,” I interjected. “Wait till we find out why she’s tabu.”

“Love and battle, strive and accomplish and die; or fail and die,” answered Larry—to Rador—giving me a quick nod of acquiescence to my warning in English.

“In that at least your world and mine differ little,” said the dwarf.

“How great is this world of yours, Rador?” I spoke.

He considered me gravely.

“How great indeed I do not know,” he said frankly at last. “The land where we dwell with the Shining One stretches along the white waters for—” He used a phrase of which I could make nothing. “Beyond this city of the Shining One and on the hither shores of the white waters dwell the mayia ladala—the common ones.” He took a deep draft from his flagon. “There are, first, the fair-haired ones, the children of the ancient rulers,” he continued. “There are, second, we the soldiers; and last, the mayia ladala, who dig and till and weave and toil and give our rulers and us their daughters, and dance with the Shining One!” he added.

“Who rules?” I asked.

“The fair-haired, under the Council of Nine, who are under Yolara, the Priestess and Lugur, the Voice,” he answered, “who are in turn beneath the Shining One!” There was a ring of bitter satire in the last.

“And those three who were judged?”—this from Larry.

“They were of the mayia ladala,” he replied, “like those two I gave you. But they grow restless. They do not like to dance with the Shining One—the blasphemers!” He raised his voice in a sudden great shout of mocking laughter.

In his words I caught a fleeting picture of the race—an ancient, luxurious, close-bred oligarchy clustered about some mysterious deity; a soldier class that supported them; and underneath all the toiling, oppressed hordes.

“And is that all?” asked Larry.

“No,” he answered. “There is the Sea of Crimson where—”

Without warning the globe beside us sent out a vicious note, Rador turned toward it, his face paling. Its surface crawled with whisperings—angry, peremptory!

“I hear!” he croaked, gripping the table. “I obey!”

He turned to us a face devoid for once of its malice.

“Ask me no more questions, strangers,” he said. “And now, if you are done, I will show you where you may sleep and bathe.”

He arose abruptly. We followed him through the hangings, passed through a corridor and into another smaller chamber, roofless, the sides walled with screens of dark grey. Two cushioned couches were there and a curtained door leading into an open, outer enclosure in which a fountain played within a wide pool.

“Your bath,” said Rador. He dropped the curtain and came back into the room. He touched a carved flower at one side. There was a tiny sighing from overhead and instantly across the top spread a veil of blackness, impenetrable to light but certainly not to air, for through it pulsed little breaths of the garden fragrances. The room filled with a cool twilight, refreshing, sleep-inducing. The green dwarf pointed to the couches.

“Sleep!” he said. “Sleep and fear nothing. My men are on guard outside.” He came closer to us, the old mocking gaiety sparkling in his eyes.

“But I spoke too quickly,” he whispered. “Whether it is because the Afyo Maie fears their tongues—or—” he laughed at Larry. “The maids are not yours!” Still laughing he vanished through the curtains of the room of the fountain before I could ask him the meaning of his curious gift, its withdrawal, and his most enigmatic closing remarks.

“Back in the great old days of Ireland,” thus Larry breaking into my thoughts raptly, the brogue thick, “there was Cairill mac Cairill—Cairill Swiftspear. An’ Cairill wronged Keevan of Emhain Abhlach, of the blood of Angus of the great people when he was sleeping in the likeness of a pale reed. Then Keevan put this penance on Cairill—that for a year Cairill should wear his body in Emhain Abhlach, which is the Land of Faery and for that year Keevan should wear the body of Cairill. And it was done.

“In that year Cairill met Emar of the Birds that are one white, one red, and one black—and they loved, and from that love sprang Ailill their son. And when Ailill was born he took a reed flute and first he played slumber on Cairill, and then he played old age so that Cairill grew white and withered; then Ailill played again and Cairill became a shadow—then a shadow of a shadow—then a breath; and the breath went out upon the wind!” He shivered. “Like the old gnome,” he whispered, “that they called Songar of the Lower Waters!”

He shook his head as though he cast a dream from him. Then, all alert—

“But that was in Iceland ages agone. And there’s nothing like that here, Doc!” He laughed. “It doesn’t scare me one little bit, old boy. The pretty devil lady’s got the wrong slant. When you’ve had a pal standing beside you one moment—full of life, and joy, and power, and potentialities, telling what he’s going to do to make the world hum when he gets through the slaughter, just running over with zip and pep of life, Doc—and the next instant, right in the middle of a laugh—a piece of damned shell takes off half his head and with it joy and power and all the rest of it”—his face twitched—“well, old man, in the face of that mystery a disappearing act such as the devil lady treated us to doesn’t make much of a dent. Not on me. But by the brogans of Brian Boru—if we could have had some of that stuff to turn on during the war—oh, boy!”

He was silent, evidently contemplating the idea with vast pleasure. And as for me, at that moment my last doubt of Larry O’Keefe vanished, I saw that he did believe, really believed, in his banshees, his leprechauns and all the old dreams of the Gael—but only within the limits of Ireland.

In one drawer of his mind was packed all his superstition, his mysticism, and what of weakness it might carry. But face him with any peril or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mind that was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean of all cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom as ever brushed a brain.

“Some stuff!” Deepest admiration was in his voice. “If we’d only had it when the war was on—imagine half a dozen of us scooting over the enemy batteries and the gunners underneath all at once beginning to shake themselves to pieces! Wow!” His tone was rapturous.

“It’s easy enough to explain, Larry,” I said. “The effect, that is—for what the green ray is made of I don’t know, of course. But what it does, clearly, is stimulate atomic vibration to such a pitch that the cohesion between the particles of matter is broken and the body flies to bits—just as a fly-wheel does when its speed gets so great that the particles of which it is made can’t hold together.”

“Shake themselves to pieces is right, then!” he exclaimed.

“Absolutely right,” I nodded. “Everything in Nature vibrates. And all matter—whether man or beast or stone or metal or vegetable—is made up of vibrating molecules, which are made up of vibrating atoms which are made up of truly infinitely small particles of electricity called electrons, and electrons, the base of all matter, are themselves perhaps only a vibration of the mysterious ether.

“If a magnifying glass of sufficient size and strength could be placed over us we could see ourselves as sieves—our space lattice, as it is called. And all that is necessary to break down the lattice, to shake us into nothingness, is some agent that will set our atoms vibrating at such a rate that at last they escape the unseen cords and fly off.

“The green ray of Yolara is such an agent. It set up in the dwarf that incredibly rapid rhythm that you saw and—shook him not to atoms—but to electrons!”

“They had a gun on the West Front—a seventy-five,” said O’Keefe, “that broke the eardrums of everybody who fired it, no matter what protection they used. It looked like all the other seventy-fives—but there was something about its sound that did it. They had to recast it.”

“It’s practically the same thing,” I replied. “By some freak its vibratory qualities had that effect. The deep whistle of the sunken Lusitania would, for instance, make the Singer Building shake to its foundations; while the Olympic did not affect the Singer at all but made the Woolworth shiver all through. In each case they stimulated the atomic vibration of the particular building—”

I paused, aware all at once of an intense drowsiness. O’Keefe, yawning, reached down to unfasten his puttees.

“Lord, I’m sleepy!” he exclaimed. “Can’t understand it—what you say—most—interesting—Lord!” he yawned again; straightened. “What made Reddy take such a shine to the Russian?” he asked.

“Thanaroa,” I answered, fighting to keep my eyes open.

“What?”

“When Lugur spoke that name I saw Marakinoff signal him. Thanaroa is, I suspect, the original form of the name of Tangaroa, the greatest god of the Polynesians. There’s a secret cult to him in the islands. Marakinoff may belong to it—he knows it anyway. Lugur recognized the signal and despite his surprise answered it.”

“So he gave him the high sign, eh?” mused Larry. “How could they both know it?”

“The cult is a very ancient one. Undoubtedly it had its origin in the dim beginnings before these people migrated here,” I replied. “It’s a link—one—of the few links between up there and the lost past—”

“Trouble then,” mumbled Larry. “Hell brewing! I smell it—Say, Doc, is this sleepiness natural? Wonder where my—gas mask—is—” he added, half incoherently.

But I myself was struggling desperately against the drugged slumber pressing down upon me.

“Lakla!” I heard O’Keefe murmur. “Lakla of the golden eyes—no Eilidh—the Fair!” He made an immense effort, half raised himself, grinned faintly.

“Thought this was paradise when I first saw it, Doc,” he sighed. “But I know now, if it is, No-Man’s Land was the greatest place on earth for a honeymoon. They—they’ve got us, Doc—” He sank back. “Good luck, old boy, wherever you’re going.” His hand waved feebly. “Glad—knew—you. Hope—see—you—’gain—”

His voice trailed into silence. Fighting, fighting with every fibre of brain and nerve against the sleep, I felt myself being steadily overcome. Yet before oblivion rushed down upon me I seemed to see upon the grey-screened wall nearest the Irishman an oval of rosy light begin to glow; watched, as my falling lids inexorably fell, a flame-tipped shadow waver on it; thicken; condense—and there looking down upon Larry, her eyes great golden stars in which intensest curiosity and shy tenderness struggled, sweet mouth half smiling, was the girl of the Moon Pool’s Chamber, the girl whom the green dwarf had named—Lakla: the vision Larry had invoked before that sleep which I could no longer deny had claimed him—

Closer she came—closer—-the eyes were over us.

Then oblivion indeed!

CHAPTER XVI

Yolara of Muria vs. the O’Keefe

I awakened with all the familiar, homely sensation of a shade having been pulled up in a darkened room. I thrilled with a wonderful sense of deep rest and restored resiliency. The ebon shadow had vanished from above and down into the room was pouring the silvery light. From the fountain pool came a mighty splashing and shouts of laughter. I jumped and drew the curtain. O’Keefe and Rador were swimming a wild race; the dwarf like an otter, out-distancing and playing around the Irishman at will.

Had that overpowering sleep—and now I confess that my struggle against it had been largely inspired by fear that it was the abnormal slumber which Throckmartin had described as having heralded the approach of the Dweller before it had carried away Thora and Stanton—had that sleep been after all nothing but natural reaction of tired nerves and brains?

And that last vision of the golden-eyed girl bending over Larry? Had that also been a delusion of an overstressed mind? Well, it might have been, I could not tell. At any rate, I decided, I would speak about it to O’Keefe once we were alone again—and then giving myself up to the urge of buoyant well-being I shouted like a boy, stripped and joined the two in the pool. The water was warm and I felt the unwonted tingling of life in every vein increase; something from it seemed to pulse through the skin, carrying a clean vigorous vitality that toned every fibre. Tiring at last, we swam to the edge and drew ourselves out. The green dwarf quickly clothed himself and Larry rather carefully donned his uniform.

“The Afyo Maie has summoned us, Doc,” he said. “We’re to—well—I suppose you’d call it breakfast with her. After that, Rador tells me, we’re to have a session with the Council of Nine. I suppose Yolara is as curious as any lady of—the upper world, as you might put it—and just naturally can’t wait,” he added.

He gave himself a last shake, patted the automatic hidden under his left arm, whistled cheerfully.

“After you, my dear Alphonse,” he said to Rador, with a low bow. The dwarf laughed, bent in an absurd imitation of Larry’s mocking courtesy and started ahead of us to the house of the priestess. When he had gone a little way on the orchid-walled path I whispered to O’Keefe:

“Larry, when you were falling off to sleep—did you think you saw anything?”

“See anything!” he grinned. “Doc, sleep hit me like a Hun shell. I thought they were pulling the gas on us. I—I had some intention of bidding you tender farewells,” he continued, half sheepishly. “I think I did start ’em, didn’t I?”

I nodded.

“But wait a minute—” he hesitated. “I had a queer sort of dream—”

“What was it?” I asked eagerly,

“Well,” he answered slowly, “I suppose it was because I’d been thinking of—Golden Eyes. Anyway, I thought she came through the wall and leaned over me—yes, and put one of those long white hands of hers on my head—I couldn’t raise my lids—but in some queer way I could see her. Then it got real dreamish. Why do you ask?”

Rador turned back toward us,

“Later,” I answered, “Not now. When we’re alone.”

But through me went a little glow of reassurance. Whatever the maze through which we were moving; whatever of menacing evil lurking there—the Golden Girl was clearly watching over us; watching with whatever unknown powers she could muster.

We passed the pillared entrance; went through a long bowered corridor and stopped before a door that seemed to be sliced from a monolith of pale jade—high, narrow, set in a wall of opal.

Rador stamped twice and the same supernally sweet, silver bell tones of—yesterday, I must call it, although in that place of eternal day the term is meaningless—bade us enter. The door slipped aside. The chamber was small, the opal walls screening it on three sides, the black opacity covering it, the fourth side opening out into a delicious little walled garden—a mass of the fragrant, luminous blooms and delicately colored fruit. Facing it was a small table of reddish wood and from the omnipresent cushions heaped around it arose to greet us—Yolara.

Larry drew in his breath with an involuntary gasp of admiration and bowed low. My own admiration was as frank—and the priestess was well pleased with our homage.

She was swathed in the filmy, half-revelant webs, now of palest blue. The corn-silk hair was caught within a wide-meshed golden net in which sparkled tiny brilliants, like blended sapphires and diamonds. Her own azure eyes sparkled as brightly as they, and I noted again in their clear depths the half-eager approval as they rested upon O’Keefe’s lithe, well-knit figure and his keen, clean-cut face. The high-arched, slender feet rested upon soft sandals whose gauzy withes laced the exquisitely formed leg to just below the dimpled knee.

“Some giddy wonder!” exclaimed Larry, looking at me and placing a hand over his heart. “Put her on a New York roof and she’d empty Broadway. Take the cue from me, Doc.”

He turned to Yolara, whose face was somewhat puzzled.

“I said, O lady whose shining hair is a web for hearts, that in our world your beauty would dazzle the sight of men as would a little woman sun!” he said, in the florid imagery to which the tongue lends itself so well.

A flush stole up through the translucent skin. The blue eyes softened and she waved us toward the cushions. Black-haired maids stole in, placing before us the fruits, the little loaves and a steaming drink somewhat the colour and odor of chocolate. I was conscious of outrageous hunger.

“What are you named, strangers?” she asked.

“This man is named Goodwin,” said O’Keefe. “As for me, call me Larry.”

“Nothing like getting acquainted quick,” he said to me—but kept his eyes upon Yolara as though he were voicing another honeyed phrase. And so she took it, for: “You must teach me your tongue,” she murmured.

“Then shall I have two words where now I have one to tell you of your loveliness,” he answered.

“And also that’ll take time,” he spoke to me. “Essential occupation out of which we can’t be drafted to make these fun-loving folk any Roman holiday. Get me!”

“Larree,” mused Yolara. “I like the sound. It is sweet—” and indeed it was as she spoke it.

“And what is your land named, Larree?” she continued. “And Goodwin’s?” She caught the sound perfectly.

“My land, O lady of loveliness, is two—Ireland and America; his but one—America.”

She repeated the two names—slowly, over and over. We seized the opportunity to attack the food; halting half guiltily as she spoke again.

“Oh, but you are hungry!” she cried. “Eat then.” She leaned her chin upon her hands and regarded us, whole fountains of questions brimming up in her eyes.

“How is it, Larree, that you have two countries and Goodwin but one?” she asked, at last unable to keep silent longer.

“I was born in Ireland; he in America. But I have dwelt long in his land and my heart loves each,” he said.

She nodded, understandingly.

“Are all the men of Ireland like you, Larree? As all the men here are like Lugur or Rador? I like to look at you,” she went on, with naive frankness. “I am tired of men like Lugur and Rador. But they are strong,” she added, swiftly. “Lugur can hold up ten in his two arms and raise six with but one hand.”

We could not understand her numerals and she raised white fingers to illustrate.

“That is little, O lady, to the men of Ireland,” replied O’Keefe. “Lo, I have seen one of my race hold up ten times ten of our—what call you that swift thing in which Rador brought us here?”

“Corial,” said she.

“Hold up ten times twenty of our corials with but two fingers—and these corials of ours—”

“Coria,” said she.

“And these coria of ours are each greater in weight than ten of yours. Yes, and I have seen another with but one blow of his hand raise hell!

“And so I have,” he murmured to me. “And both at Forty-second and Fifth Avenue, N. Y.—U. S. A.”

Yolara considered all this with manifest doubt.

“Hell?” she inquired at last. “I know not the word.”

“Well,” answered O’Keefe. “Say Muria then. In many ways they are, I gather, O heart’s delight, one and the same.”

Now the doubt in the blue eyes was strong indeed. She shook her head.

“None of our men can do that!” she answered, at length. “Nor do I think you could, Larree.”

“Oh, no,” said Larry easily. “I never tried to be that strong. I fly,” he added, casually.

The priestess rose to her feet, gazing at him with startled eyes.

“Fly!” she repeated incredulously. “Like a Zitia? A bird?”

Larry nodded—and then seeing the dawning command in her eyes, went on hastily.

“Not with my own wings, Yolara. In a—a corial that moves through—what’s the word for air, Doc—well, through this—” He made a wide gesture up toward the nebulous haze above us. He took a pencil and on a white cloth made a hasty sketch of an airplane. “In a—a corial like this—” She regarded the sketch gravely, thrust a hand down into her girdle and brought forth a keen-bladed poniard; cut Larry’s markings out and placed the fragment carefully aside.

“That I can understand,” she said.

“Remarkably intelligent young woman,” muttered O’Keefe. “Hope I’m not giving anything away—but she had me.”

“But what are your women like, Larree? Are they like me? And how many have loved you?” she whispered.

“In all Ireland and America there is none like you, Yolara,” he answered. “And take that any way you please,” he muttered in English. She took it, it was evident, as it most pleased her.

“Do you have goddesses?” she asked.

“Every woman in Ireland and America, is a goddess”; thus Larry.

“Now that I do not believe.” There was both anger and mockery in her eyes. “I know women, Larree—and if that were so there would be no peace for men.”

“There isn’t!” replied he. The anger died out and she laughed, sweetly, understandingly.

“And which goddess do you worship, Larree?”

“You!” said Larry O’Keefe boldly.

“Larry! Larry!” I whispered. “Be careful. It’s high explosive.”

But the priestess was laughing—little trills of sweet bell notes; and pleasure was in each note.

“You are indeed bold, Larree,” she said, “to offer me your worship. Yet am I pleased by your boldness. Still—Lugur is strong; and you are not of those who—what did you say—have tried. And your wings are not here—Larree!”

Again her laughter rang out. The Irishman flushed; it was touché for Yolara!

“Fear not for me with Lugur,” he said, grimly. “Rather fear for him!”

The laughter died; she looked at him searchingly; a little enigmatic smile about her mouth—so sweet and so cruel.

“Well—we shall see,” she murmured. “You say you battle in your world. With what?”

“Oh, with this and with that,” answered Larry, airily. “We manage—”

“Have you the Keth—I mean that with which I sent Songar into the nothingness?” she asked swiftly.

“See what she’s driving at?” O’Keefe spoke to me, swiftly. “Well I do! But here’s where the O’Keefe lands.

“I said,” he turned to her, “O voice of silver fire, that your spirit is high even as your beauty—and searches out men’s souls as does your loveliness their hearts. And now listen, Yolara, for what I speak is truth”—into his eyes came the far-away gaze; into his voice the Irish softness—“Lo, in my land of Ireland, this many of your life’s length agone—see”—he raised his ten fingers, clenched and unclenched them times twenty—“the mighty men of my race, the Taitha-da-Dainn, could send men out into the nothingness even as do you with the Keth. And this they did by their harpings, and by words spoken—words of power, O Yolara, that have their power still—and by pipings and by slaying sounds.

“There was Cravetheen who played swift flames from his harp, flying flames that ate those they were sent against. And there was Dalua, of Hy Brasil, whose pipes played away from man and beast and all living things their shadows—and at last played them to shadows too, so that wherever Dalua went his shadows that had been men and beast followed like a storm of little rustling leaves; yea, and Bel the Harper, who could make women’s hearts run like wax and men’s hearts flame to ashes and whose harpings could shatter strong cliffs and bow great trees to the sod—”

His eyes were bright, dream-filled; she shrank a little from him, faint pallor under the perfect skin.

“I say to you, Yolara, that these things were and are—in Ireland.” His voice rang strong. “And I have seen men as many as those that are in your great chamber this many times over”—he clenched his hands once more, perhaps a dozen times—“blasted into nothingness before your Keth could even have touched them. Yea—and rocks as mighty as those through which we came lifted up and shattered before the lids could fall over your blue eyes. And this is truth, Yolara—all truth! Stay—have you that little cone of the Keth with which you destroyed Songar?”

She nodded, gazing at him, fascinated, fear and puzzlement contending.

“Then use it.” He took a vase of crystal from the table, placed it on the threshold that led into the garden. “Use it on this—and I will show you.”

“I will use it upon one of the ladala—” she began eagerly.

The exaltation dropped from him; there was a touch of horror in the eyes he turned to her; her own dropped before it.

“It shall be as you say,” she said hurriedly. She drew the shining cone from her breast; levelled it at the vase. The green ray leaped forth, spread over the crystal, but before its action could even be begun, a flash of light shot from O’Keefe’s hand, his automatic spat and the trembling vase flew into fragments. As quickly as he had drawn it, he thrust the pistol back into place and stood there empty handed, looking at her sternly. From the anteroom came shouting, a rush of feet.

Yolara’s face was white, her eyes strained—but her voice was unshaken as she called to the clamouring guards:

“It is nothing—go to your places!”

But when the sound of their return had ceased she stared tensely at the Irishman—then looked again at the shattered vase.

“It is true!” she cried, “but see, the Keth is—alive!”

I followed her pointing finger. Each broken bit of the crystal was vibrating, shaking its particles out into space. Broken it the bullet of Larry’s had—but not released it from the grip of the disintegrating force. The priestess’s face was triumphant.

“But what matters it, O shining urn of beauty—what matters it to the vase that is broken what happens to its fragments?” asked Larry, gravely—and pointedly.

The triumph died from her face and for a space she was silent; brooding.

“Next,” whispered O’Keefe to me. “Lots of surprises in the little box; keep your eye on the opening and see what comes out.”

We had not long to wait. There was a sparkle of anger about Yolara, something too of injured pride. She clapped her hands; whispered to the maid who answered her summons, and then sat back regarding us, maliciously.

“You have answered me as to your strength—but you have not proved it; but the Keth you have answered. Now answer this!” she said.

She pointed out into the garden. I saw a flowering branch bend and snap as though a hand had broken it—but no hand was there! Saw then another and another bend and break, a little tree sway and fall—and closer and closer to us came the trail of snapping boughs while down into the garden poured the silvery light revealing—nothing! Now a great ewer beside a pillar rose swiftly in air and hurled itself crashing at my feet. Cushions close to us swirled about as though in the vortex of a whirlwind.

And unseen hands held my arms in a mighty clutch fast to my sides, another gripped my throat and I felt a needle-sharp poniard point pierce my shirt, touch the skin just over my heart!

“Larry!” I cried, despairingly. I twisted my head; saw that he too was caught in this grip of the invisible. But his face was calm, even amused.

“Keep cool, Doc!” he said. “Remember—she wants to learn the language!”

Now from Yolara burst chime upon chime of mocking laughter. She gave a command—the hands loosened, the poniard withdrew from my heart; suddenly as I had been caught I was free—and unpleasantly weak and shaky.

“Have you that in Ireland, Larree!” cried the priestess—and once more trembled with laughter.

“A good play, Yolara.” His voice was as calm as his face. “But they did that in Ireland even before Dalua piped away his first man’s shadow. And in Goodwin’s land they make ships—coria that go on water—so you can pass by them and see only sea and sky; and those water coria are each of them many times greater than this whole palace of yours.”

But the priestess laughed on.

“It did get me a little,” whispered Larry. “That wasn’t quite up to my mark. But God! If we could find that trick out and take it back with us!”

“Not so, Larree!” Yolara gasped, through her laughter. “Not so! Goodwin’s cry betrayed you!”

Her good humour had entirely returned; she was like a mischievous child pleased over some successful trick; and like a child she cried—“I’ll show you!”—signalled again; whispered to the maid who, quickly returning, laid before her a long metal case. Yolara took from her girdle something that looked like a small pencil, pressed it and shot a thin stream of light for all the world like an electric flash, upon its hasp. The lid flew open. Out of it she drew three flat, oval crystals, faint rose in hue. She handed one to O’Keefe and one to me.

“Look!” she commanded, placing the third before her own eyes. I peered through the stone and instantly there leaped into sight, out of thin air—six grinning dwarfs! Each was covered from top of head to soles of feet in a web so tenuous that through it their bodies were plain. The gauzy stuff seemed to vibrate—its strands to run together like quick-silver. I snatched the crystal from my eyes and—the chamber was empty! Put it back—and there were the grinning six!

Yolara gave another sign and they disappeared, even from the crystals.

“It is what they wear, Larree,” explained Yolara, graciously. “It is something that came to us from—the Ancient Ones. But we have so few”—she sighed.

“Such treasures must be two-edged swords, Yolara,” commented O’Keefe. “For how know you that one within them creeps not to you with hand eager to strike?”

“There is no danger,” she said indifferently. “I am the keeper of them.”

She mused for a space, then abruptly:

“And now no more. You two are to appear before the Council at a certain time—but fear nothing. You, Goodwin, go with Rador about our city and increase your wisdom. But you, Larree, await me here in my garden—” she smiled at him, provocatively—maliciously, too. “For shall not one who has resisted a world of goddesses be given all chance to worship when at last he finds his own?”

She laughed—whole-heartedly and was gone. And at that moment I liked Yolara better than ever I had before and—alas—better than ever I was to in the future.

I noted Rador standing outside the open jade door and started to go, but O’Keefe caught me by the arm.

“Wait a minute,” he urged. “About Golden Eyes—you were going to tell me something—it’s been on my mind all through that little sparring match.”

I told him of the vision that had passed through my closing lids. He listened gravely and then laughed.

“Hell of a lot of privacy in this place!” he grinned. “Ladies who can walk through walls and others with regular invisible cloaks to let ’em flit wherever they please. Oh, well, don’t let it get on your nerves, Doc. Remember—everything’s natural! That robe stuff is just camouflage of course. But Lord, if we could only get a piece of it!”

“The material simply admits all light-vibrations, or perhaps curves them, just as the opacities cut them off,” I answered. “A man under the X-ray is partly invisible; this makes him wholly so. He doesn’t register, as the people of the motion-picture profession say.”

“Camouflage,” repeated Larry. “And as for the Shining One—Say!” he snorted. “I’d like to set the O’Keefe banshee up against it. I’ll bet that old resourceful Irish body would give it the first three bites and a strangle hold and wallop it before it knew it had ’em. Oh! Wow! Boy Howdy!”

I heard him still chuckling gleefully over this vision as I passed along the opal wall with the green dwarf.

A shell was awaiting us. I paused before entering it to examine the polished surface of runway and great road. It was obsidian—volcanic glass of pale emerald, unflawed, translucent, with no sign of block or juncture. I examined the shell.

“What makes it go?” I asked Rador. At a word from him the driver touched a concealed spring and an aperture appeared beneath the control-lever, of which I have spoken in a preceding chapter. Within was a small cube of black crystal, through whose sides I saw, dimly, a rapidly revolving, glowing ball, not more than two inches in diameter. Beneath the cube was a curiously shaped, slender cylinder winding down into the lower body of the Nautilus whorl.

“Watch!” said Rador. He motioned me into the vehicle and took a place beside me. The driver touched the lever; a stream of coruscations flew from the ball down into the cylinder. The shell started smoothly, and as the tiny torrent of shining particles increased it gathered speed.

“The corial does not touch the road,” explained Rador. “It is lifted so far”—he held his forefinger and thumb less than a sixteenth of an inch apart—“above it.”

And perhaps here is the best place to explain the activation of the shells or coria. The force utilized was atomic energy. Passing from the whirling ball the ions darted through the cylinder to two bands of a peculiar metal affixed to the base of the vehicles somewhat like skids of a sled. Impinging upon these they produced a partial negation of gravity, lifting the shell slightly, and at the same time creating a powerful repulsive force or thrust that could be directed backward, forward, or sidewise at the will of the driver. The creation of this energy and the mechanism of its utilization were, briefly, as follows:

[Dr. Goodwin’s lucid and exceedingly comprehensive description of this extraordinary mechanism has been deleted by the Executive Council of the International Association of Science as too dangerously suggestive to scientists of the Central European Powers with which we were so recently at war. It is allowable, however, to state that his observations are in the possession of experts in this country, who are, unfortunately, hampered in their research not only by the scarcity of the radioactive elements that we know, but also by the lack of the element or elements unknown to us that entered into the formation of the fiery ball within the cube of black crystal. Nevertheless, as the principle is so clear, it is believed that these difficulties will ultimately be overcome.—J. B. K., President, I. A. of S.]

The wide, glistening road was gay with the coria. They darted in and out of the gardens; within them the fair-haired, extraordinarily beautiful women on their cushions were like princesses of Elfland, caught in gorgeous fairy webs, resting within the hearts of flowers. In some shells were flaxen-haired dwarfish men of Lugur’s type; sometimes black-polled brother officers of Rador; often raven-tressed girls, plainly hand-maidens of the women; and now and then beauties of the lower folk went by with one of the blond dwarfs.

We swept around the turn that made of the jewel-like roadway an enormous horseshoe and, speedily, upon our right the cliffs through which we had come in our journey from the Moon Pool began to march forward beneath their mantles of moss. They formed a gigantic abutment, a titanic salient. It had been from the very front of this salient’s invading angle that we had emerged; on each side of it the precipices, faintly glowing, drew back and vanished into distance.

The slender, graceful bridges under which we skimmed ended at openings in the upflung, far walls of verdure. Each had its little garrison of soldiers. Through some of the openings a rivulet of the green obsidian river passed. These were roadways to the farther country, to the land of the ladala, Rador told me; adding that none of the lesser folk could cross into the pavilioned city unless summoned or with pass.

We turned the bend of the road and flew down that farther emerald ribbon we had seen from the great oval. Before us rose the shining cliffs and the lake. A half-mile, perhaps, from these the last of the bridges flung itself. It was more massive and about it hovered a spirit of ancientness lacking in the other spans; also its garrison was larger and at its base the tangent way was guarded by two massive structures, somewhat like blockhouses, between which it ran. Something about it aroused in me an intense curiosity.

“Where does that road lead, Rador?” I asked.

“To the one place above all of which I may not tell you, Goodwin,” he answered. And again I wondered.

We skimmed slowly out upon the great pier. Far to the left was the prismatic, rainbow curtain between the Cyclopean pillars. On the white waters graceful shells—lacustrian replicas of the Elf chariots—swam, but none was near that distant web of wonder.

“Rador—what is that?” I asked.

“It is the Veil of the Shining One!” he answered slowly.

Was the Shining One that which we named the Dweller?

“What is the Shining One?” I cried, eagerly. Again he was silent. Nor did he speak until we had turned on our homeward way.

And lively as my interest, my scientific curiosity, were—I was conscious suddenly of acute depression. Beautiful, wondrously beautiful this place was—and yet in its wonder dwelt a keen edge of menace, of unease—of inexplicable, inhuman woe; as though in a secret garden of God a soul should sense upon it the gaze of some lurking spirit of evil which some way, somehow, had crept into the sanctuary and only bided its time to spring.

CHAPTER XVII

The Leprechaun

The shell carried us straight back to the house of Yolara. Larry was awaiting me. We stood again before the tenebrous wall where first we had faced the priestess and the Voice. And as we stood, again the portal appeared with all its disconcerting, magical abruptness.

But now the scene was changed. Around the jet table were grouped a number of figures—Lugur, Yolara beside him; seven others—all of them fair-haired and all men save one who sat at the left of the priestess—an old, old woman, how old I could not tell, her face bearing traces of beauty that must once have been as great as Yolara’s own, but now ravaged, in some way awesome; through its ruins the fearful, malicious gaiety shining out like a spirit of joy held within a corpse!

Began then our examination, for such it was. And as it progressed I was more and more struck by the change in the O’Keefe. All flippancy was gone, rarely did his sense of humour reveal itself in any of his answers. He was like a cautious swordsman, fencing, guarding, studying his opponent; or rather, like a chess-player who keeps sensing some far-reaching purpose in the game: alert, contained, watchful. Always he stressed the power of our surface races, their multitudes, their solidarity.

Their questions were myriad. What were our occupations? Our system of government? How great were the waters? The land? Intensely interested were they in the World War, querying minutely into its causes, its effects. In our weapons their interest was avid. And they were exceedingly minute in their examination of us as to the ruins which had excited our curiosity; their position and surroundings—and if others than ourselves might be expected to find and pass through their entrance!

At this I shot a glance at Lugur. He did not seem unduly interested. I wondered if the Russian had told him as yet of the girl of the rosy wall of the Moon Pool Chamber and the real reasons for our search. Then I answered as briefly as possible—omitting all reference to these things. The red dwarf watched me with unmistakable amusement—and I knew Marakinoff had told him. But clearly Lugur had kept his information even from Yolara; and as clearly she had spoken to none of that episode when O’Keefe’s automatic had shattered the Keth-smitten vase. Again I felt that sense of deep bewilderment—of helpless search for clue to all the tangle.

For two hours we were questioned and then the priestess called Rador and let us go.

Larry was sombre as we returned. He walked about the room uneasily.

“Hell’s brewing here all right,” he said at last, stopping before me. “I can’t make out just the particular brand—that’s all that bothers me. We’re going to have a stiff fight, that’s sure. What I want to do quick is to find the Golden Girl, Doc. Haven’t seen her on the wall lately, have you?” he queried, hopefully fantastic.

“Laugh if you want to,” he went on. “But she’s our best bet. It’s going to be a race between her and the O’Keefe banshee—but I put my money on her. I had a queer experience while I was in that garden, after you’d left.” His voice grew solemn. “Did you ever see a leprechaun, Doc?” I shook my head again, as solemnly. “He’s a little man in green,” said Larry. “Oh, about as high as your knee. I saw one once—in Carntogher Woods. And as I sat there, half asleep, in Yolara’s garden, the living spit of him stepped out from one of those bushes, twirling a little shillalah.

“‘It’s a tight box ye’re gettin’ in, Larry avick,’ said he, ‘but don’t ye be downhearted, lad.’

“‘I’m carrying on,’ said I, ‘but you’re a long way from Ireland,’ I said, or thought I did.

“‘Ye’ve a lot o’ friends there,’ he answered. ‘An’ where the heart rests the feet are swift to follow. Not that I’m sayin’ I’d like to live here, Larry,’ said he.

“‘I know where my heart is now,’ I told him. ‘It rests on a girl with golden eyes and the hair and swan-white breast of Eilidh the Fair—but me feet don’t seem to get me to her,’ I said.”

The brogue thickened.

“An’ the little man in green nodded his head an’ whirled his shillalah.

“‘It’s what I came to tell ye,’ says he. ‘Don’t ye fall for the Bhean-Nimhera, the serpent woman wit’ the blue eyes; she’s a daughter of Ivor, lad—an’ don’t ye do nothin’ to make the brown-haired coleen ashamed o’ ye, Larry O’Keefe. I knew yer great, great grandfather an’ his before him, aroon,’ says he, ‘an’ wan o’ the O’Keefe failin’s is to think their hearts big enough to hold all the wimmen o’ the world. A heart’s built to hold only wan permanently, Larry,’ he says, ‘an’ I’m warnin’ ye a nice girl don’t like to move into a place all cluttered up wid another’s washin’ an’ mendin’ an’ cookin’ an’ other things pertainin’ to general wife work. Not that I think the blue-eyed wan is keen for mendin’ an’ cookin’!’ says he.

“‘You don’t have to be comin’ all this way to tell me that,’ I answer.

“‘Well, I’m just a tellin’ you,’ he says. ‘Ye’ve got some rough knocks comin’, Larry. In fact, ye’re in for a devil of a time. But, remember that ye’re the O’Keefe,’ says he. ‘An’ while the bhoys are all wid ye, avick, ye’ve got to be on the job yourself.’

“‘I hope,’ I tell him, ‘that the O’Keefe banshee can find her way here in time—that is, if it’s necessary, which I hope it won’t be.’

“‘Don’t ye worry about that,’ says he. ‘Not that she’s keen on leavin’ the ould sod, Larry. The good ould soul’s in quite a state o’ mind about ye, aroon. I don’t mind tellin’ ye, lad, that she’s mobilizing all the clan an’ if she has to come for ye, avick, they’ll be wid her an’ they’ll sweep this joint clean before ye go. What they’ll do to it’ll make the Big Wind look like a summer breeze on Lough Lene! An’ that’s about all, Larry. We thought a voice from the Green Isle would cheer ye. Don’t fergit that ye’re the O’Keefe an’ I say it again—all the bhoys are wid ye. But we want t’ kape bein’ proud o’ ye, lad!’

“An’ I looked again and there was only a bush waving.”

There wasn’t a smile in my heart—or if there was it was a very tender one.

“I’m going to bed,” he said abruptly. “Keep an eye on the wall, Doc!”

Between the seven sleeps that followed, Larry and I saw but little of each other. Yolara sought him more and more. Thrice we were called before the Council; once we were at a great feast, whose splendours and surprises I can never forget. Largely I was in the company of Rador. Together we two passed the green barriers into the dwelling-place of the ladala.

They seemed provided with everything needful for life. But everywhere was an oppressiveness, a gathering together of hate, that was spiritual rather than material—as tangible as the latter and far, far more menacing!

“They do not like to dance with the Shining One,” was Rador’s constant and only reply to my efforts to find the cause.

Once I had concrete evidence of the mood. Glancing behind me, I saw a white, vengeful face peer from behind a tree-trunk, a hand lift, a shining dart speed from it straight toward Rador’s back. Instinctively I thrust him aside. He turned upon me angrily. I pointed to where the little missile lay, still quivering, on the ground. He gripped my hand.

“That, some day I will repay!” he said. I looked again at the thing. At its end was a tiny cone covered with a glistening, gelatinous substance.

Rador pulled from a tree beside us a fruit somewhat like an apple.

“Look!” he said. He dropped it upon the dart—and at once, before my eyes, in less than ten seconds, the fruit had rotted away!

“That’s what would have happened to Rador but for you, friend!” he said.

Come now between this and the prelude to the latter half of the drama whose history this narrative is—only scattering and necessarily fragmentary observations.

First—the nature of the ebon opacities, blocking out the spaces between the pavilion-pillars or covering their tops like roofs, These were magnetic fields, light absorbers, negativing the vibrations of radiance; literally screens of electric force which formed as impervious a barrier to light as would have screens of steel.

They instantaneously made night appear in a place where no night was. But they interposed no obstacle to air or to sound. They were extremely simple in their inception—no more miraculous than is glass, which, inversely, admits the vibrations of light, but shuts out those coarser ones we call air—and, partly, those others which produce upon our auditory nerves the effects we call sound.

Briefly their mechanism was this:

[For the same reason that Dr. Goodwin’s exposition of the mechanism of the atomic engines was deleted, his description of the light-destroying screens has been deleted by the Executive Council.—J. B. F., President, I. A. of S.]

There were two favoured classes of the ladala—the soldiers and the dream-makers. The dream-makers were the most astonishing social phenomena, I think, of all. Denied by their circumscribed environment the wider experiences of us of the outer world, the Murians had perfected an amazing system of escape through the imagination.

They were, too, intensely musical. Their favourite instruments were double flutes; immensely complex pipe-organs; harps, great and small. They had another remarkable instrument made up of a double octave of small drums which gave forth percussions remarkably disturbing to the emotional centres.

It was this love of music that gave rise to one of the few truly humorous incidents of our caverned life. Larry came to me—it was just after our fourth sleep, I remember.

“Come on to a concert,” he said.

We skimmed off to one of the bridge garrisons. Rador called the two-score guards to attention; and then, to my utter stupefaction, the whole company, O’Keefe leading them, roared out the anthem, “God Save the King.” They sang—in a closer approach to the English than might have been expected scores of miles below England’s level. “Send him victorious! Happy and glorious!” they bellowed.

He quivered with suppressed mirth at my paralysis of surprise.

“Taught ’em that for Marakinoff’s benefit!” he gasped. “Wait till that Red hears it. He’ll blow up.

“Just wait until you hear Yolara lisp a pretty little thing I taught her,” said Larry as we set back for what we now called home. There was an impish twinkle in his eyes.

And I did hear. For it was not many minutes later that the priestess condescended to command me to come to her with O’Keefe.

“Show Goodwin how much you have learned of our speech, O lady of the lips of honeyed flame!” murmured Larry.

She hesitated; smiled at him, and then from that perfect mouth, out of the exquisite throat, in the voice that was like the chiming of little silver bells, she trilled a melody familiar to me indeed:

“She’s only a bird in a gilded cage,

A bee-yu-tiful sight to see—”

And so on to the bitter end.

“She thinks it’s a love-song,” said Larry when we had left. “It’s only part of a repertoire I’m teaching her. Honestly, Doc, it’s the only way I can keep my mind clear when I’m with her,” he went on earnestly. “She’s a devil-ess from hell—but a wonder. Whenever I find myself going I get her to sing that, or Take Back Your Gold! or some other ancient lay, and I’m back again—pronto—with the right perspective! Pop goes all the mystery! ‘Hell!’ I say, ‘she’s only a woman!’”

THE MOON POOL [Part 2]

CHAPTER XVIII

The Amphitheatre of Jet

For hours the black-haired folk had been streaming across the bridges, flowing along the promenade by scores and by hundreds, drifting down toward the gigantic seven-terraced temple whose interior I had never as yet seen, and from whose towering exterior, indeed, I had always been kept far enough away—unobtrusively, but none the less decisively—to prevent any real observation. The structure, I had estimated, nevertheless, could not reach less than a thousand feet above its silvery base, and the diameter of its circular foundation was about the same.

I wondered what was bringing the ladala into Lora, and where they were vanishing. All of them were flower-crowned with the luminous, lovely blooms—old and young, slender, mocking-eyed girls, dwarfed youths, mothers with their babes, gnomed oldsters—on they poured, silent for the most part and sullen—a sullenness that held acid bitterness even as their subtle, half-sinister, half-gay malice seemed tempered into little keen-edged flames, oddly, menacingly defiant.

There were many of the green-clad soldiers along the way, and the garrison of the only bridge span I could see had certainly been doubled.

Wondering still, I turned from my point of observation and made my way back to our pavilion, hoping that Larry, who had been with Yolara for the past two hours, had returned. Hardly had I reached it before Rador came hurrying up, in his manner a curious exultance mingled with what in anyone else I would have called a decided nervousness.

“Come!” he commanded before I could speak. “The Council has made decision—and Larree is awaiting you.”

“What has been decided?” I panted as we sped along the mosaic path that led to the house of Yolara. “And why is Larry awaiting me?”

And at his answer I felt my heart pause in its beat and through me race a wave of mingled panic and eagerness.

“The Shining One dances!” had answered the green dwarf. “And you are to worship!”

What was this dancing of the Shining One, of which so often he had spoken?

Whatever my forebodings, Larry evidently had none.

“Great stuff!” he cried, when we had met in the great antechamber now empty of the dwarfs. “Hope it will be worth seeing—have to be something damned good, though, to catch me, after what I’ve seen of shows at the front,” he added.

And remembering, with a little shock of apprehension, that he had no knowledge of the Dweller beyond my poor description of it—for there are no words actually to describe what that miracle of interwoven glory and horror was—I wondered what Larry O’Keefe would say and do when he did behold it!

Rador began to show impatience.

“Come!” he urged. “There is much to be done—and the time grows short!”

He led us to a tiny fountain room in whose miniature pool the white waters were concentrated, pearl-like and opalescent in their circling rim.

“Bathe!” he commanded; and set the example by stripping himself and plunging within. Only a minute or two did the green dwarf allow us, and he checked us as we were about to don our clothing.

Then, to my intense embarrassment, without warning, two of the black-haired girls entered, bearing robes of a peculiar dull-blue hue. At our manifest discomfort Rador’s laughter roared out. He took the garments from the pair, motioned them to leave us, and, still laughing, threw one around me. Its texture was soft, but decidedly metallic—like some blue metal spun to the fineness of a spider’s thread. The garment buckled tightly at the throat, was girdled at the waist, and, below this cincture, fell to the floor, its folds being held together by a half-dozen looped cords; from the shoulders a hood resembling a monk’s cowl.

Rador cast this over my head; it completely covered my face, but was of so transparent a texture that I could see, though somewhat mistily, through it. Finally he handed us both a pair of long gloves of the same material and high stockings, the feet of which were gloved—five-toed.

And again his laughter rang out at our manifest surprise.

“The priestess of the Shining One does not altogether trust the Shining One’s Voice,” he said at last. “And these are to guard against any sudden—errors. And fear not, Goodwin,” he went on kindly. “Not for the Shining One itself would Yolara see harm come to Larree here—nor, because of him, to you. But I would not stake much on the great white one. And for him I am sorry, for him I do like well.”

“Is he to be with us?” asked Larry eagerly.

“He is to be where we go,” replied the dwarf soberly.

Grimly Larry reached down and drew from his uniform his automatic. He popped a fresh clip into the pocket fold of his girdle. The pistol he slung high up beneath his arm-pit.

The green dwarf looked at the weapon curiously. O’Keefe tapped it.

“This,” said Larry, “slays quicker than the Keth—I take it so no harm shall come to the blue-eyed one whose name is Olaf. If I should raise it—be you not in its way, Rador!” he added significantly.

The dwarf nodded again, his eyes sparkling. He thrust a hand out to both of us.

“A change comes,” he said. “What it is I know not, nor how it will fall. But this remember—Rador is more friend to you than you yet can know. And now let us go!” he ended abruptly.

He led us, not through the entrance, but into a sloping passage ending in a blind wall; touched a symbol graven there, and it opened, precisely as had the rosy barrier of the Moon Pool Chamber. And, just as there, but far smaller, was a passage end, a low curved wall facing a shaft not black as had been that abode of living darkness, but faintly luminescent. Rador leaned over the wall. The mechanism clicked and started; the door swung shut; the sides of the car slipped into place, and we swept swiftly down the passage; overhead the wind whistled. In a few moments the moving platform began to slow down. It stopped in a closed chamber no larger than itself.

Rador drew his poniard and struck twice upon the wall with its hilt. Immediately a panel moved away, revealing a space filled with faint, misty blue radiance. And at each side of the open portal stood four of the dwarfish men, grey-headed, old, clad in flowing garments of white, each pointing toward us a short silver rod.

Rador drew from his girdle a ring and held it out to the first dwarf. He examined it, handed it to the one beside him, and not until each had inspected the ring did they lower their curious weapons; containers of that terrific energy they called the Keth, I thought; and later was to know that I had been right.

We stepped out; the doors closed behind us. The place was weird enough. Its pave was a greenish-blue stone resembling lapis lazuli. On each side were high pedestals holding carved figures of the same material. There were perhaps a score of these, but in the mistiness I could not make out their outlines. A droning, rushing roar beat upon our ears; filled the whole cavern.

“I smell the sea,” said Larry suddenly.

The roaring became deep-toned, clamorous, and close in front of us a rift opened. Twenty feet in width, it cut the cavern floor and vanished into the blue mist on each side. The cleft was spanned by one solid slab of rock not more than two yards wide. It had neither railing nor other protection.

The four leading priests marched out upon it one by one, and we followed. In the middle of the span they knelt. Ten feet beneath us was a torrent of blue sea-water racing with prodigious speed between polished walls. It gave the impression of vast depth. It roared as it sped by, and far to the right was a low arch through which it disappeared. It was so swift that its surface shone like polished blue steel, and from it came the blessed, our worldly, familiar ocean breath that strengthened my soul amazingly and made me realize how earth-sick I was.

Whence came the stream, I marvelled, forgetting for the moment, as we passed on again, all else. Were we closer to the surface of earth than I had thought, or was this some mighty flood falling through an opening in sea floor, Heaven alone knew how many miles above us, losing itself in deeper abysses beyond these? How near and how far this was from the truth I was to learn—and never did truth come to man in more dreadful guise!

The roaring fell away, the blue haze lessened. In front of us stretched a wide flight of steps, huge as those which had led us into the courtyard of Nan-Tauach through the ruined sea-gate. We scaled it; it narrowed; from above light poured through a still narrower opening. Side by side Larry and I passed out of it.

We had emerged upon an enormous platform of what seemed to be glistening ivory. It stretched before us for a hundred yards or more and then shelved gently into the white waters. Opposite—not a mile away—was that prodigious web of woven rainbows Rador had called the Veil of the Shining One. There it shone in all its unearthly grandeur, on each side of the Cyclopean pillars, as though a mountain should stretch up arms raising between them a fairy banner of auroral glories. Beneath it was the curved, scimitar sweep of the pier with its clustered, gleaming temples.

Before that brief, fascinated glance was done, there dropped upon my soul a sensation as of brooding weight intolerable; a spiritual oppression as though some vastness was falling, pressing, stifling me, I turned—and Larry caught me as I reeled.

“Steady! Steady, old man!” he whispered.

At first all that my staggering consciousness could realize was an immensity, an immeasurable uprearing that brought with it the same throat-gripping vertigo as comes from gazing downward from some great height—then a blur of white faces—intolerable shinings of hundreds upon thousands of eyes. Huge, incredibly huge, a colossal amphitheatre of jet, a stupendous semi-circle, held within its mighty arc the ivory platform on which I stood.

It reared itself almost perpendicularly hundreds of feet up into the sparkling heavens, and thrust down on each side its ebon bulwarks—like monstrous paws. Now, the giddiness from its sheer greatness passing, I saw that it was indeed an amphitheatre sloping slightly backward tier after tier, and that the white blur of faces against its blackness, the gleaming of countless eyes were those of myriads of the people who sat silent, flower-garlanded, their gaze focused upon the rainbow curtain and sweeping over me like a torrent—tangible, appalling!

Five hundred feet beyond, the smooth, high retaining wall of the amphitheatre raised itself—above it the first terrace of the seats, and above this, dividing the tiers for another half a thousand feet upward, set within them like a panel, was a dead-black surface in which shone faintly with a bluish radiance a gigantic disk; above it and around it a cluster of innumerable smaller ones.

On each side of me, bordering the platform, were scores of small pillared alcoves, a low wall stretching across their fronts; delicate, fretted grills shielding them, save where in each lattice an opening stared—it came to me that they were like those stalls in ancient Gothic cathedrals wherein for centuries had kneeled paladins and people of my own race on earth’s fair face. And within these alcoves were gathered, score upon score, the elfin beauties, the dwarfish men of the fair-haired folk. At my right, a few feet from the opening through which we had come, a passageway led back between the fretted stalls. Half-way between us and the massive base of the amphitheatre a dais rose. Up the platform to it a wide ramp ascended; and on ramp and dais and along the centre of the gleaming platform down to where it kissed the white waters, a broad ribbon of the radiant flowers lay like a fairy carpet.

On one side of this dais, meshed in a silken web that hid no line or curve of her sweet body, white flesh gleaming through its folds, stood Yolara; and opposite her, crowned with a circlet of flashing blue stones, his mighty body stark bare, was Lugur!

O’Keefe drew a long breath; Rador touched my arm and, still dazed, I let myself be drawn into the aisle and through a corridor that ran behind the alcoves. At the back of one of these the green dwarf paused, opened a door, and motioned us within.

Entering, I found that we were exactly opposite where the ramp ran up to the dais—and that Yolara was not more than fifty feet away. She glanced at O’Keefe and smiled. Her eyes were ablaze with little dancing points of light; her body seemed to palpitate, the rounded delicate muscles beneath the translucent skin to run with joyful little eager waves!

Larry whistled softly.

“There’s Marakinoff!” he said.

I looked where he pointed. Opposite us sat the Russian, clothed as we were, leaning forward, his eyes eager behind his glasses; but if he saw us he gave no sign.

“And there’s Olaf!” said O’Keefe.

Beneath the carved stall in which sat the Russian was an aperture and within it was Huldricksson. Unprotected by pillars or by grills, opening clear upon the platform, near him stretched the trail of flowers up to the great dais which Lugur and Yolara the priestess guarded. He sat alone, and my heart went out to him.

O’Keefe’s face softened.

“Bring him here,” he said to Rador.

The green dwarf was looking at the Norseman, too, a shade of pity upon his mocking face. He shook his head.

“Wait!” he said. “You can do nothing now—and it may be there will be no need to do anything,” he added; but I could feel that there was little of conviction in his words.

CHAPTER XIX

The Madness of Olaf

Yolara threw her white arms high. From the mountainous tiers came a mighty sigh; a rippling ran through them. And upon the moment, before Yolara’s arms fell, there issued, apparently from the air around us, a peal of sound that might have been the shouting of some playful god hurling great suns through the net of stars. It was like the deepest notes of all the organs in the world combined in one; summoning, majestic, cosmic!

It held within it the thunder of the spheres rolling through the infinite, the birth-song of suns made manifest in the womb of space; echoes of creation’s supernal chord! It shook the body like a pulse from the heart of the universe—pulsed—and died away.

On its death came a blaring as of all the trumpets of conquering hosts since the first Pharaoh led his swarms—triumphal, compelling! Alexander’s clamouring hosts, brazen-throated wolf-horns of Caesar’s legions, blare of trumpets of Genghis Khan and his golden horde, clangor of the locust levies of Tamerlane, bugles of Napoleon’s armies—war-shout of all earth’s conquerors! And it died!

Fast upon it, a throbbing, muffled tumult of harp sounds, mellownesses of myriads of wood horns, the subdued sweet shrilling of multitudes of flutes, Pandean pipings—inviting, carrying with them the calling of waterfalls in the hidden places, rushing brooks and murmuring forest winds—calling, calling, languorous, lulling, dripping into the brain like the very honeyed essence of sound.

And after them a silence in which the memory of the music seemed to beat, to beat ever more faintly, through every quivering nerve.

From me all fear, all apprehension, had fled. In their place was nothing but joyous anticipation, a supernal freedom from even the shadow of the shadow of care or sorrow; not now did anything matter—Olaf or his haunted, hate-filled eyes; Throckmartin or his fate—nothing of pain, nothing of agony, nothing of striving nor endeavour nor despair in that wide outer world that had turned suddenly to a troubled dream.

Once more the first great note pealed out! Once more it died and from the clustered spheres a kaleidoscopic blaze shot as though drawn from the majestic sound itself. The many-coloured rays darted across the white waters and sought the face of the irised Veil. As they touched, it sparkled, flamed, wavered, and shook with fountains of prismatic colour.

The light increased—and in its intensity the silver air darkened. Faded into shadow that white mosaic of flower-crowned faces set in the amphitheatre of jet, and vast shadows dropped upon the high-flung tiers and shrouded them. But on the skirts of the rays the fretted stalls in which we sat with the fair-haired ones blazed out, iridescent, like jewels.

I was sensible of an acceleration of every pulse; a wild stimulation of every nerve. I felt myself being lifted above the world—close to the threshold of the high gods—soon their essence and their power would stream out into me! I glanced at Larry. His eyes were—wild—with life!

I looked at Olaf—and in his face was none of this—only hate, and hate, and hate.

The peacock waves streamed out over the waters, cleaving the seeming darkness, a rainbow path of glory. And the Veil flashed as though all the rainbows that had ever shone were burning within it. Again the mighty sound pealed.

Into the centre of the Veil the light drew itself, grew into an intolerable brightness—and with a storm of tinklings, a tempest of crystalline notes, a tumult of tiny chimings, through it sped—the Shining One!

Straight down that radiant path, its high-flung plumes of feathery flame shimmering, its coruscating spirals whirling, its seven globes of seven colours shining above its glowing core, it raced toward us. The hurricane of bells of diamond glass were jubilant, joyous. I felt O’Keefe grip my arm; Yolara threw her white arms out in a welcoming gesture; I heard from the tier a sigh of rapture—and in it a poignant, wailing under-tone of agony!

Over the waters, down the light stream, to the end of the ivory pier, flew the Shining One. Through its crystal pizzicati drifted inarticulate murmurings—deadly sweet, stilling the heart and setting it leaping madly.

For a moment it paused, poised itself, and then came whirling down the flower path to its priestess, slowly, ever more slowly. It hovered for a moment between the woman and the dwarf, as though contemplating them; turned to her with its storm of tinklings softened, its murmurings infinitely caressing. Bent toward it, Yolara seemed to gather within herself pulsing waves of power; she was terrifying; gloriously, maddeningly evil; and as gloriously, maddeningly heavenly! Aphrodite and the Virgin! Tanith of the Carthaginians and St. Bride of the Isles! A queen of hell and a princess of heaven—in one!

Only for a moment did that which we had called the Dweller and which these named the Shining One, pause. It swept up the ramp to the dais, rested there, slowly turning, plumes and spirals lacing and unlacing, throbbing, pulsing. Now its nucleus grew plainer, stronger—human in a fashion, and all inhuman; neither man nor woman; neither god nor devil; subtly partaking of all. Nor could I doubt that whatever it was, within that shining nucleus was something sentient; something that had will and energy, and in some awful, supernormal fashion—intelligence!

Another trumpeting—a sound of stones opening—a long, low wail of utter anguish—something moved shadowy in the river of light, and slowly at first, then ever more rapidly, shapes swam through it. There were half a score of them—girls and youths, women and men. The Shining One poised itself, regarded them. They drew closer, and in the eyes of each and in their faces was the bud of that awful intermingling of emotions, of joy and sorrow, ecstasy and terror, that I had seen in full blossom on Throckmartin’s.

The Thing began again its murmurings—now infinitely caressing, coaxing—like the song of a siren from some witched star! And the bell-sounds rang out—compellingly, calling—calling—calling—

I saw Olaf lean far out of his place; saw, half-consciously, at Lugur’s signal, three of the dwarfs creep in and take places, unnoticed, behind him.

Now the first of the figures rushed upon the dais—and paused. It was the girl who had been brought before Yolara when the gnome named Songar was driven into the nothingness! With all the quickness of light a spiral of the Shining One stretched out and encircled her.

At its touch there was an infinitely dreadful shrinking and, it seemed, a simultaneous hurling of herself into its radiance. As it wrapped its swirls around her, permeated her—the crystal chorus burst forth—tumultuously; through and through her the radiance pulsed. Began then that infinitely dreadful, but infinitely glorious, rhythm they called the dance of the Shining One. And as the girl swirled within its sparkling mists another and another flew into its embrace, until, at last, the dais was an incredible vision; a mad star’s Witches’ Sabbath; an altar of white faces and bodies gleaming through living flame; transfused with rapture insupportable and horror that was hellish—and ever, radiant plumes and spirals expanding, the core of the Shining One waxed—growing greater—as it consumed, as it drew into and through itself the life-force of these lost ones!

So they spun, interlaced—and there began to pulse from them life, vitality, as though the very essence of nature was filling us. Dimly I recognized that what I was beholding was vampirism inconceivable! The banked tiers chanted. The mighty sounds pealed forth!

It was a Saturnalia of demigods!

Then, whirling, bell-notes storming, the Shining One withdrew slowly from the dais down the ramp, still embracing, still interwoven with those who had thrown themselves into its spirals. They drifted with it as though half-carried in dreadful dance; white faces sealed—forever—into that semblance of those who held within linked God and devil—I covered my eyes!

I heard a gasp from O’Keefe; opened my eyes and sought his; saw the wildness vanish from them as he strained forward. Olaf had leaned far out, and as he did so the dwarfs beside him caught him, and whether by design or through his own swift, involuntary movement, thrust him half into the Dweller’s path. The Dweller paused in its gyrations—seemed to watch him. The Norseman’s face was crimson, his eyes blazing. He threw himself back and, with one defiant shout, gripped one of the dwarfs about the middle and sent him hurtling through the air, straight at the radiant Thing! A whirling mass of legs and arms, the dwarf flew—then in midflight stopped as though some gigantic invisible hand had caught him, and—was dashed down upon the platform not a yard from the Shining One!

Like a broken spider he moved—feebly—once, twice. From the Dweller shot a shimmering tentacle—touched him—recoiled. Its crystal tinklings changed into an angry chiming. From all about—jewelled stalls and jet peak—came a sigh of incredulous horror.

Lugur leaped forward. On the instant Larry was over the low barrier between the pillars, rushing to the Norseman’s side. And even as they ran there was another wild shout from Olaf, and he hurled himself out, straight at the throat of the Dweller!

But before he could touch the Shining One, now motionless—and never was the thing more horrible than then, with the purely human suggestion of surprise plain in its poise—Larry had struck him aside.

I tried to follow—and was held by Rador. He was trembling—but not with fear. In his face was incredulous hope, inexplicable eagerness.

“Wait!” he said. “Wait!”

The Shining One stretched out a slow spiral, and as it did so I saw the bravest thing man has ever witnessed. Instantly O’Keefe thrust himself between it and Olaf, pistol out. The tentacle touched him, and the dull blue of his robe flashed out into blinding, intense azure light. From the automatic in his gloved hand came three quick bursts of flame straight into the Thing. The Dweller drew back; the bell-sounds swelled.

Lugur paused, his hand darted up, and in it was one of the silver Keth cones. But before he could flash it upon the Norseman, Larry had unlooped his robe, thrown its fold over Olaf, and, holding him with one hand away from the Shining One, thrust with the other his pistol into the dwarf’s stomach. His lips moved, but I could not hear what he said. But Lugur understood, for his hand dropped.

Now Yolara was there—all this had taken barely more than five seconds. She thrust herself between the three men and the Dweller. She spoke to it—and the wild buzzing died down; the gay crystal tinklings burst forth again. The Thing murmured to her—began to whirl—faster, faster—passed down the ivory pier, out upon the waters, bearing with it, meshed in its light, the sacrifices—swept on ever more swiftly, triumphantly and turning, turning, with its ghastly crew, vanished through the Veil!

Abruptly the polychromatic path snapped out. The silver light poured in upon us. From all the amphitheatre arose a clamour, a shouting. Marakinoff, his eyes staring, was leaning out, listening. Unrestrained now by Rador, I vaulted the wall and rushed forward. But not before I had heard the green dwarf murmur:

“There is something stronger than the Shining One! Two things—yea—a strong heart—and hate!”

Olaf, panting, eyes glazed, trembling, shrank beneath my hand.

“The devil that took my Helma!” I heard him whisper. “The Shining Devil!”

“Both these men,” Lugur was raging, “they shall dance with the Shining one. And this one, too.” He pointed at me malignantly.

“This man is mine,” said the priestess, and her voice was menacing. She rested her hand on Larry’s shoulder. “He shall not dance. No—nor his friend. I have told you I dare not for this one!” She pointed to Olaf.

“Neither this man, nor this,” said Larry, “shall be harmed. This is my word, Yolara!”

“Even so,” she answered quietly, “my lord!”

I saw Marakinoff stare at O’Keefe with a new and curiously speculative interest. Lugur’s eyes grew hellish; he raised his arms as though to strike her. Larry’s pistol prodded him rudely enough.

“No rough stuff now, kid!” said O’Keefe in English. The red dwarf quivered, turned—caught a robe from a priest standing by, and threw it over himself. The ladala, shouting, gesticulating, fighting with the soldiers, were jostling down from the tiers of jet.

“Come!” commanded Yolara—her eyes rested upon Larry. “Your heart is great, indeed—my lord!” she murmured; and her voice was very sweet. “Come!”

“This man comes with us, Yolara,” said O’Keefe pointing to Olaf.

“Bring him,” she said. “Bring him—only tell him to look no more upon me as before!” she added fiercely.

Beside her the three of us passed along the stalls, where sat the fair-haired, now silent, at gaze, as though in the grip of some great doubt. Silently Olaf strode beside me. Rador had disappeared. Down the stairway, through the hall of turquoise mist, over the rushing sea-stream we went and stood beside the wall through which we had entered. The white-robed ones had gone.

Yolara pressed; the portal opened. We stepped upon the car; she took the lever; we raced through the faintly luminous corridor to the house of the priestess.

And one thing now I knew sick at heart and soul the truth had come to me—no more need to search for Throckmartin. Behind that Veil, in the lair of the Dweller, dead-alive like those we had just seen swim in its shining train was he, and Edith, Stanton and Thora and Olaf Huldricksson’s wife!

The car came to rest; the portal opened; Yolara leaped out lightly, beckoned and flitted up the corridor. She paused before an ebon screen. At a touch it vanished, revealing an entrance to a small blue chamber, glowing as though cut from the heart of some gigantic sapphire; bare, save that in its centre, upon a low pedestal, stood a great globe fashioned from milky rock-crystal; upon its surface were faint tracings as of seas and continents, but, if so, either of some other world or of this world in immemorial past, for in no way did they resemble the mapped coastlines of our earth.

Poised upon the globe, rising from it out into space, locked in each other’s arms, lips to lips, were two figures, a woman and a man, so exquisite, so lifelike, that for the moment I failed to realize that they, too, were carved of the crystal. And before this shrine—for nothing else could it be, I knew—three slender cones raised themselves: one of purest white flame, one of opalescent water, and the third of—moonlight! There was no mistaking them, the height of a tall man each stood—but how water, flame and light were held so evenly, so steadily in their spire-shapes, I could not tell.

Yolara bowed lowly—once, twice, thrice. She turned to O’Keefe, nor by slightest look or gesture betrayed she knew others were there than he. The blue eyes wide, searching, unfathomable, she drew close; put white hands on his shoulders, looked down into his very soul.

“My lord,” she murmured. “Now listen well for I, Yolara, give you three things—myself, and the Shining One, and the power that is the Shining One’s—yea, and still a fourth thing that is all three—power over all upon that world from whence you came! These, my lord, ye shall have. I swear it”—she turned toward the altar—uplifted her arms—“by Siya and by Siyana, and by the flame, by the water, and by the light!”®4

Her eyes grew purple dark.

“Let none dare to take you from me! Nor ye go from me unbidden!” she whispered fiercely.

Then swiftly, still ignoring us, she threw her arms about O’Keefe, pressed her white body to his breast, lips raised, eyes closed, seeking his. O’Keefe’s arms tightened around her, his head dropped lips seeking, finding hers—passionately! From Olaf came a deep indrawn breath that was almost a groan. But not in my heart could I find blame for the Irishman!

The priestess opened eyes now all misty blue, thrust him back, stood regarding him. O’Keefe, dead-white, raised a trembling hand to his face.

“And thus have I sealed my oath, O my lord!” she whispered. For the first time she seemed to recognize our presence, stared at us a moment, then through us, and turned to O’Keefe.

“Go, now!” she said. “Soon Rador shall come for you. Then—well, after that let happen what will!”

She smiled once more at him—so sweetly; turned toward the figures upon the great globe; sank upon her knees before them. Quietly we crept away; still silent, made our way to the little pavilion. But as we passed we heard a tumult from the green roadway; shouts of men, now and then a woman’s scream. Through a rift in the garden I glimpsed a jostling crowd on one of the bridges: green dwarfs struggling with the ladala—and all about droned a humming as of a giant hive disturbed!

Larry threw himself down upon one of the divans, covered his face with his hands, dropped them to catch in Olaf’s eyes troubled reproach, looked at me.

“I couldn’t help it,” he said, half defiantly—half-miserably. “God, what a woman! I couldn’t help it!”

“Larry,” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell her you didn’t love her—then?”

He gazed at me—the old twinkle back in his eye.

“Spoken like a scientist, Doc!” he exclaimed. “I suppose if a burning angel struck you out of nowhere and threw itself about you, you would most dignifiedly tell it you didn’t want to be burned. For God’s sake, don’t talk nonsense, Goodwin!” he ended, almost peevishly.

“Evil! Evil!” The Norseman’s voice was deep, nearly a chant. “All here is of evil: Trolldom and Helvede it is, Ja! And that she djaevelsk of beauty—what is she but harlot of that shining devil they worship. I, Olaf Huldricksson, know what she meant when she held out to you power over all the world, Ja!—as if the world had not devils enough in it now!”

“What?” The cry came from both O’Keefe and myself at once.

Olaf made a gesture of caution, relapsed into sullen silence. There were footsteps on the path, and into sight came Rador—but a Rador changed. Gone was every vestige of his mockery; curiously solemn, he saluted O’Keefe and Olaf with that salute which, before this, I had seen given only to Yolara and to Lugur. There came a swift quickening of the tumult—died away. He shrugged mighty shoulders.

“The ladala are awake!” he said. “So much for what two brave men can do!” He paused thoughtfully. “Bones and dust jostle not each other for place against the grave wall!” he added oddly. “But if bones and dust have revealed to them that they still—live—”

He stopped abruptly, eyes seeking the globe that bore and sent forth speech.5

“The Afyo Maie has sent me to watch over you till she summons you,” he announced clearly. “There is to be a—feast. You, Larree, you Goodwin, are to come. I remain here with—Olaf.”

“No harm to him!” broke in O’Keefe sharply. Rador touched his heart, his eyes.

“By the Ancient Ones, and by my love for you, and by what you twain did before the Shining One—I swear it!” he whispered.

Rador clapped palms; a soldier came round the path, in his grip a long flat box of polished wood. The green dwarf took it, dismissed him, threw open the lid.

“Here is your apparel for the feast, Larree,” he said, pointing to the contents.

O’Keefe stared, reached down and drew out a white, shimmering, softly metallic, long-sleeved tunic, a broad, silvery girdle, leg swathings of the same argent material, and sandals that seemed to be cut out from silver. He made a quick gesture of angry dissent.

“Nay, Larree!” muttered the dwarf. “Wear them—I counsel it—I pray it—ask me not why,” he went on swiftly, looking again at the globe.

O’Keefe, as I, was impressed by his earnestness. The dwarf made a curiously expressive pleading gesture. O’Keefe abruptly took the garments; passed into the room of the fountain.

“The Shining One dances not again?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “No”—he hesitate—“it is the usual feast that follows the sacrament! Lugur—and Double Tongue, who came with you, will be there,” he added slowly.

“Lugur—” I gasped in astonishment. “After what happened—he will be there?”

“Perhaps because of what happened, Goodwin, my friend,” he answered—his eyes again full of malice; “and there will be others—friends of Yolara—friends of Lugur—and perhaps another”—his voice was almost inaudible—“one whom they have not called—” He halted, half-fearfully, glancing at the globe; put finger to lips and spread himself out upon one of the couches.

“Strike up the band”—came O’Keefe’s voice—“here comes the hero!”

He strode into the room. I am bound to say that the admiration in Rador’s eyes was reflected in my own, and even, if involuntarily, in Olaf’s.

“A son of Siyana!” whispered Rador.

He knelt, took from his girdle-pouch a silk-wrapped something, unwound it—and, still kneeling, drew out a slender poniard of gleaming white metal, hilted with the blue stones; he thrust it into O’Keefe’s girdle; then gave him again the rare salute.

“Come,” he ordered and took us to the head of the pathway.

“Now,” he said grimly, “let the Silent Ones show their power—if they still have it!”

And with this strange benediction, he turned back.

“For God’s sake, Larry,” I urged as we approached the house of the priestess, “you’ll be careful!”

He nodded—but I saw with a little deadly pang of apprehension in my heart a puzzled, lurking doubt within his eyes.

As we ascended the serpent steps Marakinoff appeared. He gave a signal to our guards—and I wondered what influence the Russian had attained, for promptly, without question, they drew aside. At me he smiled amiably.

“Have you found your friends yet?” he went on—and now I sensed something deeply sinister in him. “No! It is too bad! Well, don’t give up hope.” He turned to O’Keefe.

“Lieutenant, I would like to speak to you—alone!”

“I’ve no secrets from Goodwin,” answered O’Keefe.

“So?” queried Marakinoff, suavely. He bent, whispered to Larry.

The Irishman started, eyed him with a certain shocked incredulity, then turned to me.

“Just a minute, Doc!” he said, and I caught the suspicion of a wink. They drew aside, out of ear-shot. The Russian talked rapidly. Larry was all attention. Marakinoff’s earnestness became intense; O’Keefe interrupted—appeared to question. Marakinoff glanced at me and as his gaze shifted from O’Keefe, I saw a flame of rage and horror blaze up in the latter’s eyes. At last the Irishman appeared to consider gravely; nodded as though he had arrived at some decision, and Marakinoff thrust his hand to him.

And only I could have noticed Larry’s shrinking, his microscopic hesitation before he took it, and his involuntary movement, as though to shake off something unclean, when the clasp had ended.

Marakinoff, without another look at me, turned and went quickly within. The guards took their places. I looked at Larry inquiringly.

“Don’t ask a thing now, Doc!” he said tensely. “Wait till we get home. But we’ve got to get damned busy and quick—I’ll tell you that now—”

4 I have no space here even to outline the eschatology of this people, nor to catalogue their pantheon. Siya and Siyana typified worldly love. Their ritual was, however, singularly free from those degrading elements usually found in love-cults. Priests and priestesses of all cults dwelt in the immense seven-terraced structure, of which the jet amphitheatre was the water side. The symbol, icon, representation, of Siya and Siyana—the globe and the up-striving figures—typified earthly love, feet bound to earth, but eyes among the stars. Hell or heaven I never heard formulated, nor their equivalents; unless that existence in the Shining One’s domain could serve for either. Over all this was Thanaroa, remote; unheeding, but still maker and ruler of all—an absentee First Cause personified! Thanaroa seemed to be the one article of belief in the creed of the soldiers—Rador, with his reverence for the Ancient Ones, was an exception. Whatever there was, indeed, of high, truly religious impulse among the Murians, this far, High God had. I found this exceedingly interesting, because it had long been my theory—to put the matter in the shape of a geometrical formula—that the real attractiveness of gods to man increases uniformly according to the square of their distance—W. T. G.

5 I find that I have neglected to explain the working of these interesting mechanisms that were telephonic, dictaphonic, telegraphic in one. I must assume that my readers are familiar with the receiving apparatus of wireless telegraphy, which must be “tuned” by the operator until its own vibratory quality is in exact harmony with the vibrations—the extremely rapid impacts—of those short electric wavelengths we call Hertzian, and which carry the wireless messages. I must assume also that they are familiar with the elementary fact of physics that the vibrations of light and sound are interchangeable. The hearing-talking globes utilize both these principles, and with consummate simplicity. The light with which they shone was produced by an atomic “motor” within their base, similar to that which activated the merely illuminating globes. The composition of the phonic spheres gave their surfaces an acute sensitivity and resonance. In conjunction with its energizing power, the metal set up what is called a “field of force,” which linked it with every particle of its kind no matter how distant. When vibrations of speech impinged upon the resonant surface its rhythmic light-vibrations were broken, just as a telephone transmitter breaks an electric current. Simultaneously these light-vibrations were changed into sound—on the surfaces of all spheres tuned to that particular instrument. The “crawling” colours which showed themselves at these times were literally the voice of the speaker in its spectrum equivalent. While usually the sounds produced required considerable familiarity with the apparatus to be understood quickly, they could, on occasion, be made startlingly loud and clear—as I was soon to realize—W. T. G.

4 I have no space here even to outline the eschatology of this people, nor to catalogue their pantheon. Siya and Siyana typified worldly love. Their ritual was, however, singularly free from those degrading elements usually found in love-cults. Priests and priestesses of all cults dwelt in the immense seven-terraced structure, of which the jet amphitheatre was the water side. The symbol, icon, representation, of Siya and Siyana—the globe and the up-striving figures—typified earthly love, feet bound to earth, but eyes among the stars. Hell or heaven I never heard formulated, nor their equivalents; unless that existence in the Shining One’s domain could serve for either. Over all this was Thanaroa, remote; unheeding, but still maker and ruler of all—an absentee First Cause personified! Thanaroa seemed to be the one article of belief in the creed of the soldiers—Rador, with his reverence for the Ancient Ones, was an exception. Whatever there was, indeed, of high, truly religious impulse among the Murians, this far, High God had. I found this exceedingly interesting, because it had long been my theory—to put the matter in the shape of a geometrical formula—that the real attractiveness of gods to man increases uniformly according to the square of their distance—W. T. G.

5 I find that I have neglected to explain the working of these interesting mechanisms that were telephonic, dictaphonic, telegraphic in one. I must assume that my readers are familiar with the receiving apparatus of wireless telegraphy, which must be “tuned” by the operator until its own vibratory quality is in exact harmony with the vibrations—the extremely rapid impacts—of those short electric wavelengths we call Hertzian, and which carry the wireless messages. I must assume also that they are familiar with the elementary fact of physics that the vibrations of light and sound are interchangeable. The hearing-talking globes utilize both these principles, and with consummate simplicity. The light with which they shone was produced by an atomic “motor” within their base, similar to that which activated the merely illuminating globes. The composition of the phonic spheres gave their surfaces an acute sensitivity and resonance. In conjunction with its energizing power, the metal set up what is called a “field of force,” which linked it with every particle of its kind no matter how distant. When vibrations of speech impinged upon the resonant surface its rhythmic light-vibrations were broken, just as a telephone transmitter breaks an electric current. Simultaneously these light-vibrations were changed into sound—on the surfaces of all spheres tuned to that particular instrument. The “crawling” colours which showed themselves at these times were literally the voice of the speaker in its spectrum equivalent. While usually the sounds produced required considerable familiarity with the apparatus to be understood quickly, they could, on occasion, be made startlingly loud and clear—as I was soon to realize—W. T. G.

CHAPTER XX

The Tempting of Larry

We paused before thick curtains, through which came the faint murmur of many voices. They parted; out came two—ushers, I suppose, they were—in cuirasses and kilts that reminded me somewhat of chain-mail—the first armour of any kind here that I had seen. They held open the folds.

The chamber, on whose threshold we stood, was far larger than either anteroom or hall of audience. Not less than three hundred feet long and half that in depth, from end to end of it ran two huge semi-circular tables, paralleling each other, divided by a wide aisle, and heaped with flowers, with fruits, with viands unknown to me, and glittering with crystal flagons, beakers, goblets of as many hues as the blooms. On the gay-cushioned couches that flanked the tables, lounging luxuriously, were scores of the fair-haired ruling class and there rose a little buzz of admiration, oddly mixed with a half-startled amaze, as their gaze fell upon O’Keefe in all his silvery magnificence. Everywhere the light-giving globes sent their roseate radiance.

The cuirassed dwarfs led us through the aisle. Within the arc of the inner half—circle was another glittering board, an oval. But of those seated there, facing us—I had eyes for only one—Yolara! She swayed up to greet O’Keefe—and she was like one of those white lily maids, whose beauty Hoang-Ku, the sage, says made the Gobi first a paradise, and whose lusts later the burned-out desert that it is. She held out hands to Larry, and on her face was passion—unashamed, unhiding.

She was Circe—but Circe conquered. Webs of filmiest white clung to the rose-leaf body. Twisted through the corn-silk hair a threaded circlet of pale sapphires shone; but they were pale beside Yolara’s eyes. O’Keefe bent, kissed her hands, something more than mere admiration flaming from him. She saw—and, smiling, drew him down beside her.

It came to me that of all, only these two, Yolara and O’Keefe, were in white—and I wondered; then with a tightening of nerves ceased to wonder as there entered—Lugur! He was all in scarlet, and as he strode forward a silence fell a tense, strained silence.

His gaze turned upon Yolara, rested upon O’Keefe, and instantly his face grew—dreadful—there is no other word than that for it. Marakinoff leaned forward from the centre of the table, near whose end I sat, touched and whispered to him swiftly. With appalling effort the red dwarf controlled himself; he saluted the priestess ironically, I thought; took his place at the further end of the oval. And now I noted that the figures between were the seven of that Council of which the Shining One’s priestess and Voice were the heads. The tension relaxed, but did not pass—as though a storm-cloud should turn away, but still lurk, threatening.

My gaze ran back. This end of the room was draped with the exquisitely coloured, graceful curtains looped with gorgeous garlands. Between curtains and table, where sat Larry and the nine, a circular platform, perhaps ten yards in diameter, raised itself a few feet above the floor, its gleaming surface half-covered with the luminous petals, fragrant, delicate.

On each side below it, were low carven stools. The curtains parted and softly entered girls bearing their flutes, their harps, the curiously emotion-exciting, octaved drums. They sank into their places. They touched their instruments; a faint, languorous measure throbbed through the rosy air.

The stage was set! What was to be the play?

Now about the tables passed other dusky-haired maids, fair bosoms bare, their scanty kirtles looped high, pouring out the wines for the feasters.

My eyes sought O’Keefe. Whatever it had been that Marakinoff had said, clearly it now filled his mind—even to the exclusion of the wondrous woman beside him. His eyes were stern, cold—and now and then, as he turned them toward the Russian, filled with a curious speculation. Yolara watched him, frowned, gave a low order to the Hebe behind her.

The girl disappeared, entered again with a ewer that seemed cut of amber. The priestess poured from it into Larry’s glass a clear liquid that shook with tiny sparkles of light. She raised the glass to her lips, handed it to him. Half-smiling, half-abstractedly, he took it, touched his own lips where hers had kissed; drained it. A nod from Yolara and the maid refilled his goblet.

At once there was a swift transformation in the Irishman. His abstraction vanished; the sternness fled; his eyes sparkled. He leaned caressingly toward Yolara; whispered. Her blue eyes flashed triumphantly; her chiming laughter rang. She raised her own glass—but within it was not that clear drink that filled Larry’s! And again he drained his own; and, lifting it, full once more, caught the baleful eyes of Lugur, and held it toward him mockingly. Yolara swayed close—alluring, tempting. He arose, face all reckless gaiety; rollicking deviltry.

“A toast!” he cried in English, “to the Shining One—and may the hell where it belongs soon claim it!”

He had used their own word for their god—all else had been in his own tongue, and so, fortunately, they did not understand. But the contempt in his action they did recognize—and a dead, a fearful silence fell upon them all. Lugur’s eyes blazed, little sparks of crimson in their green. The priestess reached up, caught at O’Keefe. He seized the soft hand; caressed it; his gaze grew far away, sombre.

“The Shining One.” He spoke low. “An’ now again I see the faces of those who dance with it. It is the Fires of Mora—come, God alone knows how—from Erin—to this place. The Fires of Mora!” He contemplated the hushed folk before him; and then from his lips came that weirdest, most haunting of the lyric legends of Erin—the Curse of Mora:

“The fretted fires of Mora blew o’er him in the night;

He thrills no more to loving, nor weeps for past delight.

For when those flames have bitten, both grief and joy take flight—”

Again Yolara tried to draw him down beside her; and once more he gripped her hand. His eyes grew fixed—he crooned:

“And through the sleeping silence his feet must track the tune,

When the world is barred and speckled with silver of the moon—”

He stood, swaying, for a moment, and then, laughing, let the priestess have her way; drained again the glass.

And now my heart was cold, indeed—for what hope was there left with Larry mad, wild drunk!

The silence was unbroken—elfin women and dwarfs glancing furtively at each other. But now Yolara arose, face set, eyes flashing grey.

“Hear you, the Council, and you, Lugur—and all who are here!” she cried. “Now I, the priestess of the Shining One, take, as is my right, my mate. And this is he!” She pointed down upon Larry. He glanced up at her.

“Can’t quite make out what you say, Yolara,” he muttered thickly. “But say anything—you like—I love your voice!”

I turned sick with dread. Yolara’s hand stole softly upon the Irishman’s curls caressingly.

“You know the law, Yolara.” Lugur’s voice was flat, deadly, “You may not mate with other than your own kind. And this man is a stranger—a barbarian—food for the Shining One!” Literally, he spat the phrase.

“No, not of our kind—Lugur—higher!” Yolara answered serenely. “Lo, a son of Siya and of Siyana!”

“A lie!” roared the red dwarf. “A lie!”

“The Shining One revealed it to me!” said Yolara sweetly. “And if ye believe not, Lugur—go ask of the Shining One if it be not truth!”

There was bitter, nameless menace in those last words—and whatever their hidden message to Lugur, it was potent. He stood, choking, face hell-shadowed—Marakinoff leaned out again, whispered. The red dwarf bowed, now wholly ironically; resumed his place and his silence. And again I wondered, icy-hearted, what was the power the Russian had so to sway Lugur.

“What says the Council?” Yolara demanded, turning to them.

Only for a moment they consulted among themselves. Then the woman, whose face was a ravaged shrine of beauty, spoke.

“The will of the priestess is the will of the Council!” she answered.

Defiance died from Yolara’s face; she looked down at Larry tenderly. He sat swaying, crooning.

“Bid the priests come,” she commanded, then turned to the silent room. “By the rites of Siya and Siyana, Yolara takes their son for her mate!” And again her hand stole down possessingly, serpent soft, to the drunken head of the O’Keefe.

The curtains parted widely. Through them filed, two by two, twelve hooded figures clad in flowing robes of the green one sees in forest vistas of opening buds of dawning spring. Of each pair one bore clasped to breast a globe of that milky crystal in the sapphire shrine-room; the other a harp, small, shaped somewhat like the ancient clarsach of the Druids.

Two by two they stepped upon the raised platform, placed gently upon it each their globe; and two by two crouched behind them. They formed now a star of six points about the petalled dais, and, simultaneously, they drew from their faces the covering cowls.

I half-rose—youths and maidens these of the fair-haired; and youths and maids more beautiful than any of those I had yet seen—for upon their faces was little of that disturbing mockery to which I have been forced so often, because of the deep impression it made upon me, to refer. The ashen-gold of the maiden priestesses’ hair was wound about their brows in shining coronals. The pale locks of the youths were clustered within circlets of translucent, glimmering gems like moonstones. And then, crystal globe alternately before and harp alternately held by youth and maid, they began to sing.

What was that song, I do not know—nor ever shall. Archaic, ancient beyond thought, it seemed—not with the ancientness of things that for uncounted ages have been but wind-driven dust. Rather was it the ancientness of the golden youth of the world, love lilts of earth younglings, with light of new-born suns drenching them, chorals of young stars mating in space; murmurings of April gods and goddesses. A languor stole through me. The rosy lights upon the tripods began to die away, and as they faded the milky globes gleamed forth brighter, ever brighter. Yolara rose, stretched a hand to Larry, led him through the sextuple groups, and stood face to face with him in the centre of their circle.

The rose-light died; all that immense chamber was black, save for the circle of the glowing spheres. Within this their milky radiance grew brighter—brighter. The song whispered away. A throbbing arpeggio dripped from the harps, and as the notes pulsed out, up from the globes, as though striving to follow, pulsed with them tips of moon-fire cones, such as I had seen before Yolara’s altar. Weirdly, caressingly, compellingly the harp notes throbbed in repeated, re-repeated theme, holding within itself the same archaic golden quality I had noted in the singing. And over the moon flame pinnacles rose higher!

Yolara lifted her arms; within her hands were clasped O’Keefe’s. She raised them above their two heads and slowly, slowly drew him with her into a circling, graceful step, tendrillings delicate as the slow spirallings of twilight mist upon some still stream.

As they swayed the rippling arpeggios grew louder, and suddenly the slender pinnacles of moon fire bent, dipped, flowed to the floor, crept in a shining ring around those two—and began to rise, a gleaming, glimmering, enchanted barrier—rising, ever rising—hiding them!

With one swift movement Yolara unbound her circlet of pale sapphires, shook loose the waves of her silken hair. It fell, a rippling, wondrous cascade, veiling both her and O’Keefe to their girdles—and now the shining coils of moon fire had crept to their knees—was circling higher—higher.

And ever despair grew deeper in my soul!

What was that! I started to my feet, and all around me in the darkness I heard startled motion. From without came a blaring of trumpets, the sound of running men, loud murmurings. The tumult drew closer. I heard cries of “Lakla! Lakla!” Now it was at the very threshold and within it, oddly, as though—punctuating—the clamour, a deep-toned, almost abysmal, booming sound—thunderously bass and reverberant.

Abruptly the harpings ceased; the moon fires shuddered, fell, and began to sweep back into the crystal globes; Yolara’s swaying form grew rigid, every atom of it listening. She threw aside the veiling cloud of hair, and in the gleam of the last retreating spirals her face glared out like some old Greek mask of tragedy.

The sweet lips that even at their sweetest could never lose their delicate cruelty, had no sweetness now. They were drawn into a square—inhuman as that of the Medusa; in her eyes were the fires of the pit, and her hair seemed to writhe like the serpent locks of that Gorgon whose mouth she had borrowed; all her beauty was transformed into a nameless thing—hideous, inhuman, blasting! If this was the true soul of Yolara springing to her face, then, I thought, God help us in very deed!

I wrested my gaze away to O’Keefe. All drunkenness gone, himself again, he was staring down at her, and in his eyes were loathing and horror unutterable. So they stood—and the light fled.

Only for a moment did the darkness hold. With lightning swiftness the blackness that was the chamber’s other wall vanished. Through a portal open between grey screens, the silver sparkling radiance poured.

And through the portal marched, two by two, incredible, nightmare figures—frog-men, giants, taller by nearly a yard than even tall O’Keefe! Their enormous saucer eyes were irised by wide bands of green-flecked red, in which the phosphorescence flickered. Their long muzzles, lips half-open in monstrous grin, held rows of glistening, slender, lancet sharp fangs. Over the glaring eyes arose a horny helmet, a carapace of black and orange scales, studded with foot-long lance-headed horns.

They lined themselves like soldiers on each side of the wide table aisle, and now I could see that their horny armour covered shoulders and backs, ran across the chest in a knobbed cuirass, and at wrists and heels jutted out into curved, murderous spurs. The webbed hands and feet ended in yellow, spade-shaped claws.

They carried spears, ten feet, at least, in length, the heads of which were pointed cones, glistening with that same covering, from whose touch of swift decay I had so narrowly saved Rador.

They were grotesque, yes—more grotesque than anything I had ever seen or dreamed, and they were—terrible!

And then, quietly, through their ranks came—a girl! Behind her, enormous pouch at his throat swelling in and out menacingly, in one paw a treelike, spike-studded mace, a frog-man, huger than any of the others, guarding. But of him I caught but a fleeting, involuntary impression—all my gaze was for her.

For it was she who had pointed out to us the way from the peril of the Dweller’s lair on Nan-Tauach. And as I looked at her, I marvelled that ever could I have thought the priestess more beautiful. Into the eyes of O’Keefe rushed joy and an utter abasement of shame.

And from all about came murmurs—edged with anger, half-incredulous, tinged with fear:

“Lakla!”

“Lakla!”

“The handmaiden!”

She halted close beside me. From firm little chin to dainty buskined feet she was swathed in the soft robes of dull, almost coppery hue. The left arm was hidden, the right free and gloved. Wound tight about it was one of the vines of the sculptured wall and of Lugur’s circled signet-ring. Thick, a vivid green, its five tendrils ran between her fingers, stretching out five flowered heads that gleamed like blossoms cut from gigantic, glowing rubies.

So she stood contemplating Yolara. Then drawn perhaps by my gaze, she dropped her eyes upon me; golden, translucent, with tiny flecks of amber in their aureate irises, the soul that looked through them was as far removed from that flaming out of the priestess as zenith is above nadir.

I noted the low, broad brow, the proud little nose, the tender mouth, and the soft—sunlight—glow that seemed to transfuse the delicate skin. And suddenly in the eyes dawned a smile—sweet, friendly, a touch of roguishness, profoundly reassuring in its all humanness. I felt my heart expand as though freed from fetters, a recrudescence of confidence in the essential reality of things—as though in nightmare the struggling consciousness should glimpse some familiar face and know the terrors with which it strove were but dreams. And involuntarily I smiled back at her.

She raised her head and looked again at Yolara, contempt and a certain curiosity in her gaze; at O’Keefe—and through the softened eyes drifted swiftly a shadow of sorrow, and on its fleeting wings deepest interest, and hovering over that a naive approval as reassuringly human as had been her smile.

She spoke, and her voice, deep-timbred, liquid gold as was Yolara’s all silver, was subtly the synthesis of all the golden glowing beauty of her.

“The Silent Ones have sent me, O Yolara,” she said. “And this is their command to you—that you deliver to me to bring before them three of the four strangers who have found their way here. For him there who plots with Lugur”—she pointed at Marakinoff, and I saw Yolara start—“they have no need. Into his heart the Silent Ones have looked; and Lugur and you may keep him, Yolara!”

There was honeyed venom in the last words.

Yolara was herself now; only the edge of shrillness on her voice revealed her wrath as she answered.

“And whence have the Silent Ones gained power to command, choya?”

This last, I knew, was a very vulgar word; I had heard Rador use it in a moment of anger to one of the serving maids, and it meant, approximately, “kitchen girl,” “scullion.” Beneath the insult and the acid disdain, the blood rushed up under Lakla’s ambered ivory skin.

“Yolara”—her voice was low—“of no use is it to question me. I am but the messenger of the Silent Ones. And one thing only am I bidden to ask you—do you deliver to me the three strangers?”

Lugur was on his feet; eagerness, sardonic delight, sinister anticipation thrilling from him—and my same glance showed Marakinoff, crouched, biting his finger-nails, glaring at the Golden Girl.

“No!” Yolara spat the word. “No! Now by Thanaroa and by the Shining One, no!” Her eyes blazed, her nostrils were wide, in her fair throat a little pulse beat angrily. “You, Lakla—take you my message to the Silent Ones. Say to them that I keep this man”—she pointed to Larry—“because he is mine. Say to them that I keep the yellow-haired one and him”—she pointed to me—“because it pleases me.

“Tell them that upon their mouths I place my foot, so!”—she stamped upon the dais viciously—“and that in their faces I spit!”—and her action was hideously snakelike. “And say last to them, you handmaiden, that if you they dare send to Yolara again, she will feed you to the Shining One! Now—go!”

The handmaiden’s face was white.

“Not unforeseen by the three was this, Yolara,” she replied. “And did you speak as you have spoken then was I bidden to say this to you.” Her voice deepened. “Three tal have you to take counsel, Yolara. And at the end of that time these things must you have determined—either to do or not to do: first, send the strangers to the Silent Ones; second, give up, you and Lugur and all of you, that dream you have of conquest of the world without; and, third, forswear the Shining One! And if you do not one and all these things, then are you done, your cup of life broken, your wine of life spilled. Yea, Yolara, for you and the Shining One, Lugur and the Nine and all those here and their kind shall pass! This say the Silent Ones, ‘Surely shall all of ye pass and be as though never had ye been!’”

Now a gasp of rage and fear arose from all those around me—but the priestess threw back her head and laughed loud and long. Into the silver sweet chiming of her laughter clashed that of Lugur—and after a little the nobles took it up, till the whole chamber echoed with their mirth. O’Keefe, lips tightening, moved toward the Handmaiden, and almost imperceptibly, but peremptorily, she waved him back.

“Those are great words—great words indeed, choya,” shrilled Yolara at last; and again Lakla winced beneath the word. “Lo, for laya upon laya, the Shining One has been freed from the Three; and for laya upon laya they have sat helpless, rotting. Now I ask you again—whence comes their power to lay their will upon me, and whence comes their strength to wrestle with the Shining One and the beloved of the Shining One?”

And again she laughed—and again Lugur and all the fairhaired joined in her laughter.

Into the eyes of Lakla I saw creep a doubt, a wavering; as though deep within her the foundations of her own belief were none too firm.

She hesitated, turning upon O’Keefe gaze in which rested more than suggestion of appeal! And Yolara saw, too, for she flushed with triumph, stretched a finger toward the handmaiden.

“Look!” she cried. “Look! Why, even she does not believe!” Her voice grew silk of silver—merciless, cruel. “Now am I minded to send another answer to the Silent Ones. Yea! But not by you, Lakla; by these”—she pointed to the frog-men, and, swift as light, her hand darted into her bosom, bringing forth the little shining cone of death.

But before she could level it the Golden Girl had released that hidden left arm and thrown over her face a fold of the metallic swathings. Swifter than Yolara, she raised the arm that held the vine—and now I knew this was no inert blossoming thing.

It was alive!

It writhed down her arm, and its five rubescent flower heads thrust out toward the priestess—vibrating, quivering, held in leash only by the light touch of the handmaiden at its very end.

From the swelling throat pouch of the monster behind her came a succession of the reverberant boomings. The frogmen wheeled, raised their lances, levelled them at the throng. Around the reaching ruby flowers a faint red mist swiftly grew.

The silver cone dropped from Yolara’s rigid fingers; her eyes grew stark with horror; all her unearthly loveliness fled from her; she stood pale-lipped. The Handmaiden dropped the protecting veil—and now it was she who laughed.

“It would seem, then, Yolara, that there is a thing of the Silent Ones ye fear!” she said. “Well—the kiss of the Yekta I promise you in return for the embrace of your Shining One.”

She looked at Larry, long, searchingly, and suddenly again with all that effect of sunlight bursting into dark places, her smile shone upon him. She nodded, half gaily; looked down upon me, the little merry light dancing in her eyes; waved her hand to me.

She spoke to the giant frog-man. He wheeled behind her as she turned, facing the priestess, club upraised, fangs glistening. His troop moved not a jot, spears held high. Lakla began to pass slowly—almost, I thought, tauntingly—and as she reached the portal Larry leaped from the dais.

“Alanna!” he cried. “You’ll not be leavin’ me just when I’ve found you!”

In his excitement he spoke in his own tongue, the velvet brogue appealing. Lakla turned, contemplated O’Keefe, hesitant, unquestionably longingly, irresistibly like a child making up her mind whether she dared or dared not take a delectable something offered her.

“I go with you,” said O’Keefe, this time in her own speech. “Come on, Doc!” He reached out a hand to me.

But now Yolara spoke. Life and beauty had flowed back into her face, and in the purple eyes all her hosts of devils were gathered.

“Do you forget what I promised you before Siya and Siyana? And do you think that you can leave me—me—as though I were a choya—like her.” She pointed to Lakla. “Do you—”

“Now, listen, Yolara,” Larry interrupted almost plaintively. “No promise has passed from me to you—and why would you hold me?” He passed unconsciously into English. “Be a good sport, Yolara,” he urged, “You have got a very devil of a temper, you know, and so have I; and we’d be really awfully uncomfortable together. And why don’t you get rid of that devilish pet of yours, and be good!”

She looked at him, puzzled, Marakinoff leaned over, translated to Lugur. The red dwarf smiled maliciously, drew near the priestess; whispered to her what was without doubt as near as he could come in the Murian to Larry’s own very colloquial phrases.

Yolara’s lips writhed.

“Hear me, Lakla!” she cried. “Now would I not let you take this man from me were I to dwell ten thousand laya in the agony of the Yekta’s kiss. This I swear to you—by Thanaroa, by my heart, and by my strength—and may my strength wither, my heart rot in my breast, and Thanaroa forget me if I do!”

“Listen, Yolara”—began O’Keefe again.

“Be silent, you!” It was almost a shriek. And her hand again sought in her breast for the cone of rhythmic death.

Lugur touched her arm, whispered again, The glint of guile shone in her eyes; she laughed softly, relaxed.

“The Silent Ones, Lakla, bade you say that they—allowed—me three tal to decide,” she said suavely. “Go now in peace, Lakla, and say that Yolara has heard, and that for the three tal they—allow—her she will take council.” The handmaiden hesitated.

“The Silent Ones have said it,” she answered at last. “Stay you here, strangers”—-the long lashes drooped as her eyes met O’Keefe’s and a hint of blush was in her cheeks—“stay you here, strangers, till then. But, Yolara, see you on that heart and strength you have sworn by that they come to no harm—else that which you have invoked shall come upon you swiftly indeed—and that I promise you,” she added.

Their eyes met, clashed, burned into each other—black flame from Abaddon and golden flame from Paradise.

“Remember!” said Lakla, and passed through the portal. The gigantic frog-man boomed a thunderous note of command, his grotesque guards turned and slowly followed their mistress; and last of all passed out the monster with the mace.

CHAPTER XXI

Larry’s Defiance

A clamour arose from all the chambers; stilled in an instant by a motion of Yolara’s hand. She stood silent, regarding O’Keefe with something other now than blind wrath; something half regretful, half beseeching. But the Irishman’s control was gone.

“Yolara,”—his voice shook with rage, and he threw caution to the wind—“now hear me. I go where I will and when I will. Here shall we stay until the time she named is come. And then we follow her, whether you will or not. And if any should have thought to stop us—tell them of that flame that shattered the vase,” he added grimly.

The wistfulness died out of her eyes, leaving them cold. But no answer made she to him.

“What Lakla has said, the Council must consider, and at once.” The priestess was facing the nobles. “Now, friends of mine, and friends of Lugur, must all feud, all rancour, between us end.” She glanced swiftly at Lugur. “The ladala are stirring, and the Silent Ones threaten. Yet fear not—for are we not strong under the Shining One? And now—leave us.”

Her hand dropped to the table, and she gave, evidently, a signal, for in marched a dozen or more of the green dwarfs.

“Take these two to their place,” she commanded, pointing to us.

The green dwarfs clustered about us. Without another look at the priestess O’Keefe marched beside me, between them, from the chamber. And it was not until we had reached the pillared entrance that Larry spoke.

“I hate to talk like that to a woman, Doc,” he said, “and a pretty woman, at that. But first she played me with a marked deck, and then not only pinched all the chips, but drew a gun on me. What the hell! she nearly had me—married—to her. I don’t know what the stuff was she gave me; but, take it from me, if I had the recipe for that brew I could sell it for a thousand dollars a jolt at Forty-second and Broadway.

“One jigger of it, and you forget there is a trouble in the world; three of them, and you forget there is a world. No excuse for it, Doc; and I don’t care what you say or what Lakla may say—it wasn’t my fault, and I don’t hold it up against myself for a damn.”

“I must admit that I’m a bit uneasy about her threats,” I said, ignoring all this. He stopped abruptly.

“What’re you afraid of?”

“Mostly,” I answered dryly, “I have no desire to dance with the Shining One!”

“Listen to me, Goodwin,” He took up his walk impatiently. “I’ve all the love and admiration for you in the world; but this place has got your nerve. Hereafter one Larry O’Keefe, of Ireland and the little old U. S. A., leads this party. Nix on the tremolo stop, nix on the superstition! I’m the works. Get me?”

“Yes, I get you!” I exclaimed testily enough. “But to use your own phrase, kindly can the repeated references to superstition.”

“Why should I?” He was almost wrathful. “You scientific people build up whole philosophies on the basis of things you never saw, and you scoff at people who believe in other things that you think they never saw and that don’t come under what you label scientific. You talk about paradoxes—why, your scientist, who thinks he is the most skeptical, the most materialistic aggregation of atoms ever gathered at the exact mathematical centre of Missouri, has more blind faith than a dervish, and more credulity, more superstition, than a cross-eyed smoke beating it past a country graveyard in the dark of the moon!”

“Larry!” I cried, dazed.

“Olaf’s no better,” he said. “But I can make allowances for him. He’s a sailor. No, sir. What this expedition needs is a man without superstition. And remember this. The leprechaun promised that I’d have full warning before anything happened. And if we do have to go out, we’ll see that banshee bunch clean up before we do, and pass in a blaze of glory. And don’t forget it. Hereafter—I’m—in—charge!”

By this time we were before our pavilion; and neither of us in a very amiable mood I’m afraid. Rador was awaiting us with a score of his men.

“Let none pass in here without authority—and let none pass out unless I accompany them,” he ordered bruskly. “Summon one of the swiftest of the coria and have it wait in readiness,” he added, as though by afterthought.

But when we had entered and the screens were drawn together his manner changed; all eagerness he questioned us. Briefly we told him of the happenings at the feast, of Lakla’s dramatic interruption, and of what had followed.

“Three tal,” he said musingly; “three tal the Silent Ones have allowed—and Yolara agreed.” He sank back, silent and thoughtful.6

“Ja!” It was Olaf. “Ja! I told you the Shining Devil’s mistress was all evil. Ja! Now I begin again that tale I started when he came”—he glanced toward the preoccupied Rador. “And tell him not what I say should he ask. For I trust none here in Trolldom, save the Jomfrau—the White Virgin!

“After the oldster was adsprede”—Olaf once more used that expressive Norwegian word for the dissolving of Songar—“I knew that it was a time for cunning. I said to myself, ‘If they think I have no ears to hear, they will speak; and it may be I will find a way to save my Helma and Dr. Goodwin’s friends, too.’ Ja, and they did speak.

“The red Trolde asked the Russian how came it he was a worshipper of Thanaroa.” I could not resist a swift glance of triumph toward O’Keefe. “And the Russian,” rumbled Olaf, “said that all his people worshipped Thanaroa and had fought against the other nations that denied him.

“And then we had come to Lugur’s palace. They put me in rooms, and there came to me men who rubbed and oiled me and loosened my muscles. The next day I wrestled with a great dwarf they called Valdor. He was a mighty man, and long we struggled, and at last I broke his back. And Lugur was pleased, so that I sat with him at feast and with the Russian, too. And again, not knowing that I understood them, they talked.

“The Russian had gone fast and far. They talked of Lugur as emperor of all Europe, and Marakinoff under him. They spoke of the green light that shook life from the oldster; and Lugur said that the secret of it had been the Ancient Ones’ and that the Council had not too much of it. But the Russian said that among his race were many wise men who could make more once they had studied it.

“And the next day I wrestled with a great dwarf named Tahola, mightier far than Valdor. Him I threw after a long, long time, and his back also I broke. Again Lugur was pleased. And again we sat at table, he and the Russian and I. This time they spoke of something these Trolde have which opens up a Svaelc—abysses into which all in its range drops up into the sky!”

“What!” I exclaimed.

“I know about them,” said Larry. “Wait!”

“Lugur had drunk much,” went on Olaf. “He was boastful. The Russian pressed him to show this thing. After a while the red one went out and came back with a little golden box. He and the Russian went into the garden. I followed them. There was a lille Hoj—a mound—of stones in that garden on which grew flowers and trees.

“Lugur pressed upon the box, and a spark no bigger than a sand grain leaped out and fell beside the stones. Lugur pressed again, and a blue light shot from the box and lighted on the spark. The spark that had been no bigger than a grain of sand grew and grew as the blue struck it. And then there was a sighing, a wind blew—and the stones and the flowers and the trees were not. They were forsvinde—vanished!

“Then Lugur, who had been laughing, grew quickly sober; for he thrust the Russian back—far back. And soon down into the garden came tumbling the stones and the trees, but broken and shattered, and falling as though from a great height. And Lugur said that of this something they had much, for its making was a secret handed down by their own forefathers and not by the Ancient Ones.

“They feared to use it, he said, for a spark thrice as large as that he had used would have sent all that garden falling upward and might have opened a way to the outside before—he said just this—‘before we are ready to go out into it!’

“The Russian questioned much, but Lugur sent for more drink and grew merrier and threatened him, and the Russian was silent through fear. Thereafter I listened when I could, and little more I learned, but that little enough. Ja! Lugur is hot for conquest; so Yolara and so the Council. They tire of it here and the Silent Ones make their minds not too easy, no, even though they jeer at them! And this they plan—to rule our world with their Shining Devil.”

The Norseman was silent for a moment; then voice deep, trembling—

“Trolldom is awake; Helvede crouches at Earth Gate whining to be loosed into a world already devil ridden! And we are but three!”

I felt the blood drive out of my heart. But Larry’s was the fighting face of the O’Keefes of a thousand years. Rador glanced at him, arose, stepped through the curtains; returned swiftly with the Irishman’s uniform.

“Put it on,” he said, bruskly; again fell back into his silence and whatever O’Keefe had been about to say was submerged in his wild and joyful whoop. He ripped from him glittering tunic and leg swathings.

“Richard is himself again!” he shouted; and each garment as he donned it, fanned his old devil-may-care confidence to a higher flame. The last scrap of it on, he drew himself up before us.

“Bow down, ye divils!” he cried. “Bang your heads on the floor and do homage to Larry the First, Emperor of Great Britain, Autocrat of all Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales, and adjacent waters and islands! Kneel, ye scuts, kneel.”

“Larry,” I cried, “are you going crazy?”

“Not a bit of it,” he said. “I’m that and more if Comrade Marakinoff is on the level. Whoop! Bring forth the royal jewels an’ put a whole new bunch of golden strings in Tara’s harp an’ down with the Sassenach forever! Whoop!”

He did a wild jig.

“Lord how good the old togs feel,” he grinned. “The touch of ’em has gone to my head. But it’s straight stuff I’m telling you about my empire.”

He sobered.

“Not that it’s not serious enough at that. A lot that Olaf’s told us I’ve surmised from hints dropped by Yolara. But I got the full key to it from the Red himself when he stopped me just before—before”—he reddened—“well, just before I acquired that brand-new brand of souse.

“Maybe he had a hint—maybe he just surmised that I knew a lot more than I did. And he thought Yolara and I were going to be loving little turtle doves. Also he figured that Yolara had a lot more influence with the Unholy Fireworks than Lugur. Also that being a woman she could be more easily handled. All this being so, what was the logical thing for himself to do? Sure, you get me, Steve! Throw down Lugur and make an alliance with me! So he calmly offered to ditch the red dwarf if I would deliver Yolara. My reward from Russia was to be said emperorship! Can you beat it? Good Lord!”

He went off into a perfect storm of laughter. But not to me in the light of what Russia has done and has proved herself capable, did this thing seem at all absurd; rather in it I sensed the dawn of catastrophe colossal.

“And yet,” he was quiet enough now, “I’m a bit scared. They’ve got the Keth ray and those gravity-destroying bombs—”

“Gravity-destroying bombs!” I gasped.

“Sure,” he said. “The little fairy that sent the trees and stones kiting up from Lugur’s garden. Marakinoff licked his lips over them. They cut off gravity, just about as the shadow screens cut off light—and consequently whatever’s in their range goes shooting just naturally up to the moon—

“They get my goat, why deny it?” went on Larry. “With them and the Keth and gentle invisible soldiers walking around assassinating at will—well, the worst Bolsheviki are only puling babes, eh, Doc?

“I don’t mind the Shining One,” said O’Keefe, “one splash of a downtown New York high-pressure fire hose would do for it! But the others—are the goods! Believe me!”

But for once O’Keefe’s confidence found no echo within me. Not lightly, as he, did I hold that dread mystery, the Dweller—and a vision passed before me, a vision of an Apocalypse undreamed by the Evangelist.

A vision of the Shining One swirling into our world, a monstrous, glorious flaming pillar of incarnate, eternal Evil—of peoples passing through its radiant embrace into that hideous, unearthly life-in-death which I had seen enfold the sacrifices—of armies trembling into dancing atoms of diamond dust beneath the green ray’s rhythmic death—of cities rushing out into space upon the wings of that other demoniac force which Olaf had watched at work—of a haunted world through which the assassins of the Dweller’s court stole invisible, carrying with them every passion of hell—of the rallying to the Thing of every sinister soul and of the weak and the unbalanced, mystics and carnivores of humanity alike; for well I knew that, once loosed, not any nation could hold this devil-god for long and that swiftly its blight would spread!

And then a world that was all colossal reek of cruelty and terror; a welter of lusts, of hatreds and of torment; a chaos of horror in which the Dweller waxing ever stronger, the ghastly hordes of those it had consumed growing ever greater, wreaked its inhuman will!

At the last a ruined planet, a cosmic plague, spinning through the shuddering heavens; its verdant plains, its murmuring forests, its meadows and its mountains manned only by a countless crew of soulless, mindless dead-alive, their shells illumined with the Dweller’s infernal glory—and flaming over this vampirized earth like a flare from some hell far, infinitely far, beyond the reach of man’s farthest flung imagining—the Dweller!

Rador jumped to his feet; walked to the whispering globe. He bent over its base; did something with its mechanism; beckoned to us. The globe swam rapidly, faster than ever I had seen it before. A low humming arose, changed into a murmur, and then from it I heard Lugur’s voice clearly.

“It is to be war then?”

There was a chorus of assent—from the Council, I thought.

“I will take the tall one named—Larree.” It was the priestess’s voice. “After the three tal, you may have him, Lugur, to do with as you will.”

“No!” it was Lugur’s voice again, but with a rasp of anger. “All must die.”

“He shall die,” again Yolara. “But I would that first he see Lakla pass—and that she know what is to happen to him.”

“No!” I started—for this was Marakinoff. “Now is no time, Yolara, for one’s own desires. This is my counsel. At the end of the three tal Lakla will come for our answer. Your men will be in ambush and they will slay her and her escort quickly with the Keth. But not till that is done must the three be slain—and then quickly. With Lakla dead we shall go forth to the Silent Ones—and I promise you that I will find the way to destroy them!”

“It is well!” It was Lugur.

“It is well, Yolara.” It was a woman’s voice, and I knew it for that old one of ravaged beauty. “Cast from your mind whatever is in it for this stranger—either of love or hatred. In this the Council is with Lugur and the man of wisdom.”

There was a silence. Then came the priestess’s voice, sullen but—beaten.

“It is well!”

“Let the three be taken now by Rador to the temple and given to the High Priest Sator”—thus Lugur—“until what we have planned comes to pass.”

Rador gripped the base of the globe; abruptly it ceased its spinning. He turned to us as though to speak and even as he did so its bell note sounded peremptorily and on it the colour films began to creep at their accustomed pace.

“I hear,” the green dwarf whispered. “They shall be taken there at once.” The globe grew silent. He stepped toward us.

“You have heard,” he turned to us.

“Not on your life, Rador,” said Larry. “Nothing doing!” And then in the Murian’s own tongue. “We follow Lakla, Rador. And you lead the way.” He thrust the pistol close to the green dwarf’s side.

Rador did not move.

“Of what use, Larree?” he said, quietly. “Me you can slay—but in the end you will be taken. Life is not held so dear in Muria that my men out there or those others who can come quickly will let you by—even though you slay many. And in the end they will overpower you.”

There was a trace of irresolution in O’Keefe’s face.

“And,” added Rador, “if I let you go I dance with the Shining One—or worse!”

O’Keefe’s pistol hand dropped.

“You’re a good sport, Rador, and far be it from me to get you in bad,” he said. “Take us to the temple—when we get there—well, your responsibility ends, doesn’t it?”

The green dwarf nodded; on his face a curious expression—was it relief? Or was it emotion higher than this?

He turned curtly.

“Follow,” he said. We passed out of that gay little pavilion that had come to be home to us even in this alien place. The guards stood at attention.

“You, Sattoya, stand by the globe,” he ordered one of them. “Should the Afyo Maie ask, say that I am on my way with the strangers even as she has commanded.”

We passed through the lines to the corial standing like a great shell at the end of the runway leading into the green road.

“Wait you here,” he said curtly to the driver. The green dwarf ascended to his seat, sought the lever and we swept on—on and out upon the glistening obsidian.

Then Rador faced us and laughed.

“Larree,” he cried, “I love you for that spirit of yours! And did you think that Rador would carry to the temple prison a man who would take the chances of torment upon his own shoulders to save him? Or you, Goodwin, who saved him from the rotting death? For what did I take the corial or lift the veil of silence that I might hear what threatened you—”

He swept the corial to the left, away from the temple approach.

“I am done with Lugur and with Yolara and the Shining One!” cried Rador. “My hand is for you three and for Lakla and those to whom she is handmaiden!”

The shell leaped forward; seemed to fly.

6 A tal in Muria is the equivalent of thirty hours of earth surface time.—W. T. G.

6 A tal in Muria is the equivalent of thirty hours of earth surface time.—W. T. G.

CHAPTER XXII

The Casting of the Shadow

Now we were racing down toward that last span whose ancientness had set it apart from all the other soaring arches. The shell’s speed slackened; we approached warily.

“We pass there?” asked O’Keefe.

The green dwarf nodded, pointing to the right where the bridge ended in a broad platform held high upon two gigantic piers, between which ran a spur from the glistening road. Platform and bridge were swarming with men-at-arms; they crowded the parapets, looking down upon us curiously but with no evidence of hostility. Rador drew a deep breath of relief.

“We don’t have to break our way through, then?” There was disappointment in the Irishman’s voice.

“No use, Larree!” Smiling, Rador stopped the corial just beneath the arch and beside one of the piers. “Now, listen well. They have had no warning, hence does Yolara still think us on the way to the temple. This is the gateway of the Portal—and the gateway is closed by the Shadow. Once I commanded here and I know its laws. This must I do—by craft persuade Serku, the keeper of the gateway, to lift the Shadow; or raise it myself. And that will be hard and it may well be that in the struggle life will be stripped of us all. Yet is it better to die fighting than to dance with the Shining One!”

He swept the shell around the pier. Opened a wide plaza paved with the volcanic glass, but black as that down which we had sped from the chamber of the Moon Pool. It shone like a mirrored lakelet of jet; on each side of it arose what at first glance seemed towering bulwarks of the same ebon obsidian; at second, revealed themselves as structures hewn and set in place by men; polished faces pierced by dozens of high, narrow windows.

Down each facade a stairway fell, broken by small landings on which a door opened; they dropped to a broad ledge of greyish stone edging the lip of this midnight pool and upon it also fell two wide flights from either side of the bridge platform. Along all four stairways the guards were ranged; and here and there against the ledge stood the shells—in a curiously comforting resemblance to parked motors in our own world.

The sombre walls bulked high; curved and ended in two obelisked pillars from which, like a tremendous curtain, stretched a barrier of that tenebrous gloom which, though weightless as shadow itself, I now knew to be as impenetrable as the veil between life and death. In this murk, unlike all others I had seen, I sensed movement, a quivering, a tremor constant and rhythmic; not to be seen, yet caught by some subtle sense; as though through it beat a swift pulse of—black light.

The green dwarf turned the corial slowly to the edge at the right; crept cautiously on toward where, not more than a hundred feet from the barrier, a low, wide entrance opened in the fort. Guarding its threshold stood two guards, armed with broadswords, double-handed, terminating in a wide lunette mouthed with murderous fangs. These they raised in salute and through the portal strode a dwarf huge as Rador, dressed as he and carrying only the poniard that was the badge of office of Muria’s captainry.

The green dwarf swept the shell expertly against the ledge; leaped out.

“Greeting, Serku!” he answered. “I was but looking for the coria of Lakla.”

“Lakla!” exclaimed Serku. “Why, the handmaiden passed with her Akka nigh a va ago!”

“Passed!” The astonishment of the green dwarf was so real that half was I myself deceived. “You let her pass?”

“Certainly I let her pass—” But under the green dwarf’s stern gaze the truculence of the guardian faded. “Why should I not?” he asked, apprehensively.

“Because Yolara commanded otherwise,” answered Rador, coldly.

“There came no command to me.” Little beads of sweat stood out on Serku’s forehead.

“Serku,” interrupted the green dwarf swiftly, “truly is my heart wrung for you. This is a matter of Yolara and of Lugur and the Council; yes, even of the Shining One! And the message was sent—and the fate, mayhap, of all Muria rested upon your obedience and the return of Lakla with these strangers to the Council. Now truly is my heart wrung, for there are few I would less like to see dance with the Shining One than you, Serku,” he ended, softly.

Livid now was the gateway’s guardian, his great frame shaking.

“Come with me and speak to Yolara,” he pleaded. “There came no message—tell her—”

“Wait, Serku!” There was a thrill as of inspiration in Rador’s voice. “This corial is of the swiftest—Lakla’s are of the slowest. With Lakla scarce a va ahead we can reach her before she enters the Portal. Lift you the Shadow—we will bring her back, and this will I do for you, Serku.”

Doubt tempered Serku’s panic.

“Why not go alone, Rador, leaving the strangers here with me?” he asked—and I thought not unreasonably.

“Nay, then.” The green dwarf was brusk. “Lakla will not return unless I carry to her these men as evidence of our good faith. Come—we will speak to Yolara and she shall judge you—” He started away—but Serku caught his arm.

“No, Rador, no!” he whispered, again panic-stricken. “Go you—as you will. But bring her back! Speed, Rador!” He sprang toward the entrance. “I lift the Shadow—”

Into the green dwarf’s poise crept a curious, almost a listening, alertness. He leaped to Serku’s side.

“I go with you,” I heard. “Some little I can tell you—” They were gone.

“Fine work!” muttered Larry. “Nominated for a citizen of Ireland when we get out of this, one Rador of—”

The Shadow trembled—shuddered into nothingness; the obelisked outposts that had held it framed a ribbon of roadway, high banked with verdure, vanishing in green distances.

And then from the portal sped a shriek, a death cry! It cut through the silence of the ebon pit like a whimpering arrow. Before it had died, down the stairways came pouring the guards. Those at the threshold raised their swords and peered within. Abruptly Rador was between them. One dropped his hilt and gripped him—the green dwarf’s poniard flashed and was buried in his throat. Down upon Rador’s head swept the second blade. A flame leaped from O’Keefe’s hand and the sword seemed to fling itself from its wielder’s grasp—another flash and the soldier crumpled. Rador threw himself into the shell, darted to the high seat—and straight between the pillars of the Shadow we flew!

There came a crackling, a darkness of vast wings flinging down upon us. The corial’s flight was checked as by a giant’s hand. The shell swerved sickeningly; there was an oddly metallic splintering; it quivered; shot ahead. Dizzily I picked myself up and looked behind.

The Shadow had fallen—but too late, a bare instant too late. And shrinking as we fled from it, still it seemed to strain like some fettered Afrit from Eblis, throbbing with wrath, seeking with every malign power it possessed to break its bonds and pursue. Not until long after were we to know that it had been the dying hand of Serku, groping out of oblivion, that had cast it after us as a fowler upon an escaping bird.

“Snappy work, Rador!” It was Larry speaking. “But they cut the end off your bus all right!”

A full quarter of the hindward whorl was gone, sliced off cleanly. Rador noted it with anxious eyes.

“That is bad,” he said, “but not too bad perhaps. All depends upon how closely Lugur and his men can follow us.”

He raised a hand to O’Keefe in salute.

“But to you, Larree, I owe my life—not even the Keth could have been as swift to save me as that death flame of yours—friend!”

The Irishman waved an airy hand.

“Serku”—the green dwarf drew from his girdle the bloodstained poniard—“Serku I was forced to slay. Even as he raised the Shadow the globe gave the alarm. Lugur follows with twice ten times ten of his best—” He hesitated. “Though we have escaped the Shadow it has taken toll of our swiftness. May we reach the Portal before it closes upon Lakla—but if we do not—” He paused again. “Well—I know a way—but it is not one I am gay to follow—no!”

He snapped open the aperture that held the ball flaming within the dark crystal; peered at it anxiously. I crept to the torn end of the corial. The edges were crumbling, disintegrated. They powdered in my fingers like dust. Mystified still, I crept back where Larry, sheer happiness pouring from him, was whistling softly and polishing up his automatic. His gaze fell upon Olaf’s grim, sad face and softened.

“Buck up, Olaf!” he said. “We’ve got a good fighting chance. Once we link up with Lakla and her crowd I’m betting that we get your wife—never doubt it! The baby—” he hesitated awkwardly. The Norseman’s eyes filled; he stretched a hand to the O’Keefe.

“The Yndling—she is of the de Dode,” he half whispered, “of the blessed dead. For her I have no fear and for her vengeance will be given me. Ja! But my Helma—she is of the dead-alive—like those we saw whirling like leaves in the light of the Shining Devil—and I would that she too were of de Dode—and at rest. I do not know how to fight the Shining Devil—no!”

His bitter despair welled up in his voice.

“Olaf,” Larry’s voice was gentle. “We’ll come out on top—I know it. Remember one thing. All this stuff that seems so strange and—and, well, sort of supernatural, is just a lot of tricks we’re not hep to as yet. Why, Olaf, suppose you took a Fijian when the war was on and set him suddenly down in London with autos rushing past, sirens blowing, Archies popping, a dozen enemy planes dropping bombs, and the searchlights shooting all over the sky—wouldn’t he think he was among thirty-third degree devils in some exclusive circle of hell? Sure he would! And yet everything he saw would be natural—just as natural as all this is, once we get the answer to it. Not that we’re Fijians, of course, but the principle is the same.”

The Norseman considered this; nodded gravely.

“Ja!” he answered at last. “And at least we can fight. That is why I have turned to Thor of the battles, Ja! And one have I hope in for mine Helma—the white maiden. Since I have turned to the old gods it has been made clear to me that I shall slay Lugur and that the Heks, the evil witch Yolara, shall also die. But I would talk with the white maiden.”

“All right,” said Larry, “but just don’t be afraid of what you don’t understand. There’s another thing”—he hesitated, nervously—“there’s another thing that may startle you a bit when we meet up with Lakla—her—er—frogs!”

“Like the frog-woman we saw on the wall?” asked Olaf.

“Yes,” went on Larry, rapidly. “It’s this way—I figure that the frogs grow rather large where she lives, and they’re a bit different too. Well, Lakla’s got a lot of ’em trained. Carry spears and clubs and all that junk—just like trained seals or monkeys or so on in the circus. Probably a custom of the place. Nothing queer about that, Olaf. Why people have all kinds of pets—armadillos and snakes and rabbits, kangaroos and elephants and tigers.”

Remembering how the frog-woman had stuck in Larry’s mind from the outset, I wondered whether all this was not more to convince himself than Olaf.

“Why, I remember a nice girl in Paris who had four pet pythons—” he went on.

But I listened no more, for now I was sure of my surmise. The road had begun to thrust itself through high-flung, sharply pinnacled masses and rounded outcroppings of rock on which clung patches of the amber moss.

The trees had utterly vanished, and studding the moss-carpeted plains were only clumps of a willowy shrub from which hung, like grapes, clusters of white waxen blooms. The light too had changed; gone were the dancing, sparkling atoms and the silver had faded to a soft, almost ashen greyness. Ahead of us marched a rampart of coppery cliffs rising, like all these mountainous walls we had seen, into the immensities of haze. Something long drifting in my subconsciousness turned to startled realization. The speed of the shell was slackening! The aperture containing the ionizing mechanism was still open; I glanced within, The whirling ball of fire was not dimmed, but its coruscations, instead of pouring down through the cylinder, swirled and eddied and shot back as though trying to re-enter their source. Rador nodded grimly.

“The Shadow takes its toll,” he said.

We topped a rise—Larry gripped my arm.

“Look!” he cried, and pointed. Far, far behind us, so far that the road was but a glistening thread, a score of shining points came speeding.

“Lugur and his men,” said Rador.

“Can’t you step on her?” asked Larry.

“Step on her?” repeated the green dwarf, puzzled.

“Give her more speed; push her,” explained O’Keefe.

Rador looked about him. The coppery ramparts were close, not more than three or four miles distant; in front of us the plain lifted in a long rolling swell, and up this the corial essayed to go—with a terrifying lessening of speed. Faintly behind us came shootings, and we knew that Lugur drew close. Nor anywhere was there sign of Lakla nor her frogmen.

Now we were half-way to the crest; the shell barely crawled and from beneath it came a faint hissing; it quivered, and I knew that its base was no longer held above the glassy surface but rested on it.

“One last chance!” exclaimed Rador. He pressed upon the control lever and wrenched it from its socket. Instantly the sparkling ball expanded, whirling with prodigious rapidity and sending a cascade of coruscations into the cylinder. The shell rose; leaped through the air; the dark crystal split into fragments; the fiery ball dulled; died—but upon the impetus of that last thrust we reached the crest. Poised there for a moment, I caught a glimpse of the road dropping down the side of an enormous moss-covered, bowl-shaped valley whose sharply curved sides ended abruptly at the base of the towering barrier.

Then down the steep, powerless to guide or to check the shell, we plunged in a meteor rush straight for the annihilating adamantine breasts of the cliffs!

Now the quick thinking of Larry’s air training came to our aid. As the rampart reared close he threw himself upon Rador; hurled him and himself against the side of the flying whorl. Under the shock the finely balanced machine swerved from its course. It struck the soft, low bank of the road, shot high in air, bounded on through the thick carpeting, whirled like a dervish and fell upon its side. Shot from it, we rolled for yards, but the moss saved broken bones or serious bruise.

“Quick!” cried the green dwarf. He seized an arm, dragged me to my feet, began running to the cliff base not a hundred feet away. Beside us raced O’Keefe and Olaf. At our left was the black road. It stopped abruptly—was cut off by a slab of polished crimson stone a hundred feet high, and as wide, set within the coppery face of the barrier. On each side of it stood pillars, cut from the living rock and immense, almost, as those which held the rainbow veil of the Dweller. Across its face weaved unnameable carvings—but I had no time for more than a glance. The green dwarf gripped my arm again.

“Quick!” he cried again. “The handmaiden has passed!”

At the right of the Portal ran a low wall of shattered rock. Over this we raced like rabbits. Hidden behind it was a narrow path. Crouching, Rador in the lead, we sped along it; three hundred, four hundred yards we raced—and the path ended in a cul de sac! To our ears was borne a louder shouting.

The first of the pursuing shells had swept over the lip of the great bowl, poised for a moment as we had and then began a cautious descent. Within it, scanning the slopes, I saw Lugur.

“A little closer and I’ll get him!” whispered Larry viciously. He raised his pistol.

His hand was caught in a mighty grip; Rador, eyes blazing, stood beside him.

“No!” rasped the green dwarf. He heaved a shoulder against one of the boulders that formed the pocket. It rocked aside, revealing a slit.

“In!” ordered he, straining against the weight of the stone. O’Keefe slipped through. Olaf at his back, I following. With a lightning leap the dwarf was beside me, the huge rock missing him by a hair breadth as it swung into place!

We were in Cimmerian darkness. I felt for my pocket-flash and recalled with distress that I had left it behind with my medicine kit when we fled from the gardens. But Rador seemed to need no light.

“Grip hands!” he ordered. We crept, single file, holding to each other like children, through the black. At last the green dwarf paused.

“Await me here,” he whispered. “Do not move. And for your lives—be silent!”

And he was gone.

CHAPTER XXIII

Dragon Worm and Moss Death

For a small eternity—to me at least—we waited. Then as silent as ever the green dwarf returned. “It is well,” he said, some of the strain gone from his voice. “Grip hands again, and follow.”

“Wait a bit, Rador,” this was Larry. “Does Lugur know this side entrance? If he does, why not let Olaf and me go back to the opening and pick them off as they come in? We could hold the lot—and in the meantime you and Goodwin could go after Lakla for help.”

“Lugur knows the secret of the Portal—if he dare use it,” answered the captain, with a curious indirection. “And now that they have challenged the Silent Ones I think he will dare. Also, he will find our tracks—and it may be that he knows this hidden way.”

“Well, for God’s sake!” O’Keefe’s appalled bewilderment was almost ludicrous. “If he knows all that, and you knew all that, why didn’t you let me click him when I had the chance?”

“Larree,” the green dwarf was oddly humble. “It seemed good to me, too—at first. And then I heard a command, heard it clearly, to stop you—that Lugur die not now, lest a greater vengeance fail!”

“Command? From whom?” The Irishman’s voice distilled out of the blackness the very essence of bewilderment.

“I thought,” Rador was whispering—“I thought it came from the Silent Ones!”

“Superstition!” groaned O’Keefe in utter exasperation. “Always superstition! What can you do against it!

“Never mind, Rador.” His sense of humour came to his aid. “It’s too late now, anyway. Where do we go from here, old dear?” he laughed.

“We tread the path of one I am not fain to meet,” answered Rador. “But if meet we must, point the death tubes at the pale shield he bears upon his throat and send the flame into the flower of cold fire that is its centre—nor look into his eyes!”

Again Larry gasped, and I with him.

“It’s getting too deep for me, Doc,” he muttered dejectedly. “Can you make head or tail of it?”

“No,” I answered, shortly enough, “but Rador fears something and that’s his description of it.”

“Sure,” he replied, “only it’s a code I don’t understand.” I could feel his grin. “All right for the flower of cold fire, Rador, and I won’t look into his eyes,” he went on cheerfully. “But hadn’t we better be moving?”

“Come!” said the soldier; again hand in hand we went blindly on.

O’Keefe was muttering to himself.

“Flower of cold fire! Don’t look into his eyes! Some joint! Damned superstition.” Then he chuckled and carolled, softly:

“Oh, mama, pin a cold rose on me;

Two young frog-men are in love with me;

Shut my eyes so I can’t see.”

“Sh!” Rador was warning; he began whispering. “For half a va we go along a way of death. From its peril we pass into another against whose dangers I can guard you. But in part this is in view of the roadway and it may be that Lugur will see us. If so, we must fight as best we can. If we pass these two roads safely, then is the way to the Crimson Sea clear, nor need we fear Lugur nor any. And there is another thing—that Lugur does not know—when he opens the Portal the Silent Ones will hear and Lakla and the Akka will be swift to greet its opener.”

“Rador,” I asked, “how know you all this?”

“The handmaiden is my own sister’s child,” he answered quietly.

O’Keefe drew a long breath.

“Uncle,” he remarked casually in English, “meet the man who’s going to be your nephew!”

And thereafter he never addressed the green dwarf except by the avuncular title, which Rador, humorously enough, apparently conceived to be one of respectful endearment.

For me a light broke. Plain now was the reason for his foreknowledge of Lakla’s appearance at the feast where Larry had so narrowly escaped Yolara’s spells; plain the determining factor that had cast his lot with ours, and my confidence, despite his discourse of mysterious perils, experienced a remarkable quickening.

Speculation as to the marked differences in pigmentation and appearance of niece and uncle was dissipated by my consciousness that we were now moving in a dim half-light. We were in a fairly wide tunnel. Not far ahead the gleam filtered, pale yellow like sunlight sifting through the leaves of autumn poplars. And as we drove closer to its source I saw that it did indeed pass through a leafy screen hanging over the passage end. This Rador drew aside cautiously, beckoned us and we stepped through.

It appeared to be a tunnel cut through soft green mould. Its base was a flat strip of pathway a yard wide from which the walls curved out in perfect cylindrical form, smoothed and evened with utmost nicety. Thirty feet wide they were at their widest, then drew toward each other with no break in their symmetry; they did not close. Above was, roughly, a ten-foot rift, ragged edged, through which poured light like that in the heart of pale amber, a buttercup light shot through with curiously evanescent bronze shadows.

“Quick!” commanded Rador, uneasily, and set off at a sharp pace.

Now, my eyes accustomed to the strange light, I saw that the tunnel’s walls were of moss. In them I could trace fringe leaf and curly leaf, pressings of enormous bladder caps (Physcomitrium), immense splashes of what seemed to be the scarlet-crested Cladonia, traceries of huge moss veils, crushings of teeth (peristome) gigantic; spore cases brown and white, saffron and ivory, hot vermilions and cerulean blues, pressed into an astounding mosaic by some titanic force.

“Hurry!” It was Rador calling. I had lagged behind.

He quickened the pace to a half-run; we were climbing; panting. The amber light grew stronger; the rift above us wider. The tunnel curved; on the left a narrow cleft appeared. The green dwarf leaped toward it, thrust us within, pushed us ahead of him up a steep rocky fissure—well-nigh, indeed, a chimney. Up and up this we scrambled until my lungs were bursting and I thought I could climb no more. The crevice ended; we crawled out and sank, even Rador, upon a little leaf-carpeted clearing circled by lacy tree ferns.

Gasping, legs aching, we lay prone, relaxed, drawing back strength and breath. Rador was first to rise. Thrice he bent low as in homage, then—

“Give thanks to the Silent Ones—for their power has been over us!” he exclaimed.

Dimly I wondered what he meant. Something about the fern leaf at which I had been staring aroused me. I leaped to my feet and ran to its base. This was no fern, no! It was fern moss! The largest of its species I had ever found in tropic jungles had not been more than two inches high, and this was—twenty feet! The scientific fire I had experienced in the tunnel returned uncontrollable. I parted the fronds, gazed out—

My outlook commanded a vista of miles—and that vista! A Fata Morgana of plantdom! A land of flowered sorcery!

Forests of tree-high mosses spangled over with blooms of every conceivable shape and colour; cataracts and clusters, avalanches and nets of blossoms in pastels, in dulled metallics, in gorgeous flamboyant hues; some of them phosphorescent and shining like living jewels; some sparkling as though with dust of opals, of sapphires, of rubies and topazes and emeralds; thickets of convolvuli like the trumpets of the seven archangels of Mara, king of illusion, which are shaped from the bows of splendours arching his highest heaven!

And moss veils like banners of a marching host of Titans; pennons and bannerets of the sunset; gonfalons of the Jinn; webs of faery; oriflammes of elfland!

Springing up through that polychromatic flood myriads of pedicles—slender and straight as spears, or soaring in spirals, or curving with undulations gracile as the white serpents of Tanit in ancient Carthaginian groves—and all surmounted by a fantasy of spore cases in shapes of minaret and turret, domes and spires and cones, caps of Phrygia and bishops’ mitres, shapes grotesque and unnameable—shapes delicate and lovely!

They hung high poised, nodding and swaying—like goblins hovering over Titania’s court; cacophony of Cathay accenting the Flower Maiden music of “Parsifal”; bizarrerie of the angled, fantastic beings that people the Javan pantheon watching a bacchanal of houris in Mohammed’s paradise!

Down upon it all poured the amber light; dimmed in the distances by huge, drifting darkenings lurid as the flying mantles of the hurricane.

And through the light, like showers of jewels, myriads of birds, darting, dipping, soaring, and still other myriads of gigantic, shimmering butterflies.

A sound came to us, reaching out like the first faint susurrus of the incoming tide; sighing, sighing, growing stronger—now its mournful whispering quivered all about us, shook us—then passing like a Presence, died away in far distances.

“The Portal!” said Rador. “Lugur has entered!”

He, too, parted the fronds and peered back along our path. Peering with him we saw the barrier through which we had come stretching verdure-covered walls for miles three or more away. Like a mole burrow in a garden stretched the trail of the tunnel; here and there we could look down within the rift at its top; far off in it I thought I saw the glint of spears.

“They come!” whispered Rador. “Quick! We must not meet them here!”

And then—

“Holy St. Brigid!” gasped Larry.

From the rift in the tunnel’s continuation, nigh a mile beyond the cleft through which we had fled, lifted a crown of horns—of tentacles—erect, alert, of mottled gold and crimson; lifted higher—and from a monstrous scarlet head beneath them blazed two enormous, obloid eyes, their depths wells of purplish phosphorescence; higher still—noseless, earless, chinless; a livid, worm mouth from which a slender scarlet tongue leaped like playing flames! Slowly it rose—its mighty neck cuirassed with gold and scarlet scales from whose polished surfaces the amber light glinted like flakes of fire; and under this neck shimmered something like a palely luminous silvery shield, guarding it. The head of horror mounted—and in the shield’s centre, full ten feet across, glowing, flickering, shining out—coldly, was a rose of white flame, a “flower of cold fire” even as Rador had said.

Now swiftly the Thing upreared, standing like a scaled tower a hundred feet above the rift, its eyes scanning that movement I had seen along the course of its lair. There was a hissing; the crown of horns fell, whipped and writhed like the tentacles of an octopus; the towering length dropped back.

“Quick!” gasped Rador and through the fern moss, along the path and down the other side of the steep we raced.

Behind us for an instant there was a rushing as of a torrent; a far-away, faint, agonized screaming—silence!

“No fear now from those who followed,” whispered the green dwarf, pausing.

“Sainted St. Patrick!” O’Keefe gazed ruminatively at his automatic. “An’ he expected me to kill that with this. Well, as Fergus O’Connor said when they sent him out to slaughter a wild bull with a potato knife: ‘Ye’ll niver rayilize how I appreciate the confidence ye show in me!’

“What was it, Doc?” he asked.

“The dragon worm!” Rador said.

“It was Helvede Orm—the hell worm!” groaned Olaf.

“There you go again—” blazed Larry; but the green dwarf was hurrying down the path and swiftly we followed, Larry muttering, Olaf mumbling, behind me.

The green dwarf was signalling us for caution. He pointed through a break in a grove of fifty-foot cedar mosses—we were skirting the glassy road! Scanning it we found no trace of Lugur and wondered whether he too had seen the worm and had fled. Quickly we passed on; drew away from the coria path. The mosses began to thin; less and less they grew, giving way to low clumps that barely offered us shelter. Unexpectedly another screen of fern moss stretched before us. Slowly Rador made his way through it and stood hesitating.

The scene in front of us was oddly weird and depressing; in some indefinable way—dreadful. Why, I could not tell, but the impression was plain; I shrank from it. Then, self-analyzing, I wondered whether it could be the uncanny resemblance the heaps of curious mossy fungi scattered about had to beast and bird—yes, and to man—that was the cause of it. Our path ran between a few of them. To the left they were thick. They were viridescent, almost metallic hued—verd-antique. Curiously indeed were they like distorted images of dog and deerlike forms, of birds—of dwarfs and here and there the simulacra of the giant frogs! Spore cases, yellowish green, as large as mitres and much resembling them in shape protruded from the heaps. My repulsion grew into a distinct nausea.

Rador turned to us a face whiter far than that with which he had looked upon the dragon worm.

“Now for your lives,” he whispered, “tread softly here as I do—and speak not at all!”

He stepped forward on tiptoe, slowly with utmost caution. We crept after him; passed the heaps beside the path—and as I passed my skin crept and I shrank and saw the others shrink too with that unnameable loathing; nor did the green dwarf pause until he had reached the brow of a small hillock a hundred yards beyond. And he was trembling.

“Now what are we up against?” grumbled O’Keefe.

The green dwarf stretched a hand; stiffened; gazed over to the left of us beyond a lower hillock upon whose broad crest lay a file of the moss shapes. They fringed it, their mitres having a grotesque appearance of watching what lay below. The glistening road lay there—and from it came a shout. A dozen of the coria clustered, filled with Lugur’s men and in one of them Lugur himself, laughing wickedly!

There was a rush of soldiers and up the low hillock raced a score of them toward us.

“Run!” shouted Rador.

“Not much!” grunted Larry—and took swift aim at Lugur. The automatic spat: Olaf’s echoed. Both bullets went wild, for Lugur, still laughing, threw himself into the protection of the body of his shell. But following the shots, from the file of moss heaps on the crest, came a series of muffled explosions. Under the pistol’s concussions the mitred caps had burst and instantly all about the running soldiers grew a cloud of tiny, glistening white spores—like a little cloud of puff-ball dust many times magnified. Through this cloud I glimpsed their faces, stricken with agony.

Some turned to fly, but before they could take a second step stood rigid.

The spore cloud drifted and eddied about them; rained down on their heads and half bare breasts, covered their garments—and swiftly they began to change! Their features grew indistinct—merged! The glistening white spores that covered them turned to a pale yellow, grew greenish, spread and swelled, darkened. The eyes of one of the soldiers glinted for a moment—and then were covered by the swift growth!

Where but a few moments before had been men were only grotesque heaps, swiftly melting, swiftly rounding into the semblance of the mounds that lay behind us—and already beginning to take on their gleam of ancient viridescence!

The Irishman was gripping my arm fiercely; the pain brought me back to my senses.

“Olaf’s right,” he gasped. “This is hell! I’m sick.” And he was, frankly and without restraint. Lugur and his others awakened from their nightmare; piled into the coria, wheeled, raced away.

“On!” said Rador thickly. “Two perils have we passed—the Silent Ones watch over us!”

Soon we were again among the familiar and so unfamiliar moss giants. I knew what I had seen and this time Larry could not call me—superstitious. In the jungles of Borneo I had examined that other swiftly developing fungus which wreaks the vengeance of some of the hill tribes upon those who steal their women; gripping with its microscopic hooks into the flesh; sending quick, tiny rootlets through the skin down into the capillaries, sucking life and thriving and never to be torn away until the living thing it clings to has been sapped dry. Here was but another of the species in which the development’s rate was incredibly accelerated. Some of this I tried to explain to O’Keefe as we sped along, reassuring him.

“But they turned to moss before our eyes!” he said.

Again I explained, patiently. But he seemed to derive no comfort at all from my assurances that the phenomena were entirely natural and, aside from their more terrifying aspect, of peculiar interest to the botanist.

“I know,” was all he would say. “But suppose one of those things had burst while we were going through—God!”

I was wondering how I could with comparative safety study the fungus when Rador stopped; in front of us was again the road ribbon.

“Now is all danger passed,” he said. “The way lies open and Lugur has fled—”

There was a flash from the road. It passed me like a little lariat of light. It struck Larry squarely between the eyes, spread over his face and drew itself within!

“Down!” cried Rador, and hurled me to the ground. My head struck sharply; I felt myself grow faint; Olaf fell beside me; I saw the green dwarf draw down the O’Keefe; he collapsed limply, face still, eyes staring. A shout—and from the roadway poured a host of Lugur’s men; I could hear Lugur bellowing.

There came a rush of little feet; soft, fragrant draperies brushed my face; dimly I watched Lakla bend over the Irishman.

She straightened—her arms swept out and the writhing vine, with its tendrilled heads of ruby bloom, five flames of misty incandescence, leaped into the faces of the soldiers now close upon us. It darted at their throats, striking, coiling, and striking again; coiling and uncoiling with incredible rapidity and flying from leverage points of throats, of faces, of breasts like a spring endowed with consciousness, volition and hatred—and those it struck stood rigid as stone with faces masks of inhuman fear and anguish; and those still unstricken fled.

Another rush of feet—and down upon Lugur’s forces poured the frog-men, their booming giant leading, thrusting with their lances, tearing and rending with talons and fangs and spurs.

Against that onslaught the dwarfs could not stand. They raced for the shells; I heard Lugur shouting, menacingly—and then Lakla’s voice, pealing like a golden bugle of wrath.

“Go, Lugur!” she cried. “Go—that you and Yolara and your Shining One may die together! Death for you, Lugur—death for you all! Remember Lugur—death!”

There was a great noise within my head—no matter, Lakla was here—Lakla here—but too late—Lugur had outplayed us; moss death nor dragon worm had frightened him away—he had crept back to trap us—Lakla had come too late—Larry was dead—Larry! But I had heard no banshee wailing—and Larry had said he could not die without that warning—no, Larry was not dead. So ran the turbulent current of my mind.

A horny arm lifted me; two enormous, oddly gentle saucer eyes were staring into mine; my head rolled; I caught a glimpse of the Golden Girl kneeling beside the O’Keefe.

The noise in my head grew thunderous—was carrying me away on its thunder—swept me into soft, blind darkness.

CHAPTER XXIV

The Crimson Sea

I was in the heart of a rose pearl, swinging, swinging; no, I was in a rosy dawn cloud, pendulous in space. Consciousness flooded me, in reality I was in the arms of one of the man frogs, carrying me as though I were a babe, and we were passing through some place suffused with glow enough like heart of pearl or dawn cloud to justify my awakening vagaries.

Just ahead walked Lakla in earnest talk with Rador, and content enough was I for a time to watch her. She had thrown off the metallic robes; her thick braids of golden brown hair with their flame glints of bronze were twined in a high coronal meshed in silken net of green; little clustering curls escaped from it, clinging to the nape of the proud white neck, shyly kissing it. From her shoulders fell a loose, sleeveless garment of shimmering green belted with a high golden girdle; skirt folds dropping barely below the knees.

She had cast aside her buskins, too, and the slender, high-arched feet were sandalled. Between the buckled edges of her kirtle I caught gleams of translucent ivory as exquisitely moulded, as delectably rounded, as those revealed so naively beneath the hem.

Something was knocking at the doors of my consciousness—some tragic thing. What was it? Larry! Where was Larry? I remembered; raised my head abruptly; saw at my side another frog-man carrying O’Keefe, and behind him, Olaf, step instinct with grief, following like some faithful, wistful dog who has lost a loved master. Upon my movement the monster bearing me halted, looked down inquiringly, uttered a deep, booming note that held the quality of interrogation.

Lakla turned; the clear, golden eyes were sorrowful, the sweet mouth drooping; but her loveliness, her gentleness, that undefinable synthesis of all her tender self that seemed always to circle her with an atmosphere of lucid normality, lulled my panic.

“Drink this,” she commanded, holding a small vial to my lips.

Its contents were aromatic, unfamiliar but astonishingly effective, for as soon as they passed my lips I felt a surge of strength; consciousness was restored.

“Larry!” I cried. “Is he dead?”

Lakla shook her head; her eyes were troubled.

“No,” she said; “but he is like one dead—and yet unlike—”

“Put me down,” I demanded of my bearer.

He tightened his hold; round eyes upon the Golden Girl. She spoke—in sonorous, reverberating monosyllables—and I was set upon my feet; I leaped to the side of the Irishman. He lay limp, with a disquieting, abnormal sequacity, as though every muscle were utterly flaccid; the antithesis of the rigor mortis, thank God, but terrifyingly toward the other end of its arc; a syncope I had never known. The flesh was stone cold; the pulse barely perceptible, long intervalled; the respiration undiscoverable; the pupils of the eyes were enormously dilated; it was as though life had been drawn from every nerve.

“A light flashed from the road. It struck his face and seemed to sink in,” I said.

“I saw,” answered Rador; “but what it was I know not; and I thought I knew all the weapons of our rulers.” He glanced at me curiously. “Some talk there has been that the stranger who came with you, Double Tongue, was making new death tools for Lugur,” he ended.

Marakinoff! The Russian at work already in this storehouse of devastating energies, fashioning the weapons for his plots! The Apocalyptic vision swept back upon me—

“He is not dead.” Lakla’s voice was poignant. “He is not dead; and the Three have wondrous healing. They can restore him if they will—and they will, they will!” For a moment she was silent. “Now their gods help Lugur and Yolara,” she whispered; “for come what may, whether the Silent Ones be strong or weak, if he dies, surely shall I fall upon them and I will slay those two—yea, though I, too perish!”

“Yolara and Lugur shall both die.” Olaf’s eyes were burning. “But Lugur is mine to slay.”

That pity I had seen before in Lakla’s eyes when she looked upon the Norseman banished the white wrath from them. She turned, half hurriedly, as though to escape his gaze.

“Walk with us,” she said to me, “unless you are still weak.”

I shook my head, gave a last look at O’Keefe; there was nothing I could do; I stepped beside her. She thrust a white arm into mine protectingly, the wonderfully moulded hand with its long, tapering fingers catching about my wrist; my heart glowed toward her.

“Your medicine is potent, handmaiden,” I answered. “And the touch of your hand would give me strength enough, even had I not drunk it,” I added in Larry’s best manner.

Her eyes danced, trouble flying.

“Now, that was well spoken for such a man of wisdom as Rador tells me you are,” she laughed; and a little pang shot through me. Could not a lover of science present a compliment without it always seeming to be as unusual as plucking a damask rose from a cabinet of fossils?

Mustering my philosophy, I smiled back at her. Again I noted that broad, classic brow, with the little tendrils of shining bronze caressing it, the tilted, delicate, nut-brown brows that gave a curious touch of innocent diablerie to the lovely face—flowerlike, pure, high-bred, a touch of roguishness, subtly alluring, sparkling over the maiden Madonnaness that lay ever like a delicate, luminous suggestion beneath it; the long, black, curling lashes—the tender, rounded, bare left breast—

“I have always liked you,” she murmured naively, “since first I saw you in that place where the Shining One goes forth into your world. And I am glad you like my medicine as well as that you carry in the black box that you left behind,” she added swiftly.

“How know you of that, Lakla?” I gasped.

“Oft and oft I came to him there, and to you, while you lay sleeping. How call you him?” She paused.

“Larry!” I said.

“Larry!” she repeated it excellently. “And you?”

“Goodwin,” said Rador.

I bowed quite as though I were being introduced to some charming young lady met in that old life now seemingly aeons removed.

“Yes—Goodwin,” she said. “Oft and oft I came. Sometimes I thought you saw me. And he—did he not dream of me sometime—?” she asked wistfully.

“He did.” I said, “and watched for you.” Then amazement grew vocal. “But how came you?” I asked.

“By a strange road,” she whispered, “to see that all was well with him—and to look into his heart; for I feared Yolara and her beauty. But I saw that she was not in his heart.” A blush burned over her, turning even the little bare breast rosy. “It is a strange road,” she went on hurriedly. “Many times have I followed it and watched the Shining One bear back its prey to the blue pool; seen the woman he seeks”—she made a quick gesture toward Olaf—“and a babe cast from her arms in the last pang of her mother love; seen another woman throw herself into the Shining One’s embrace to save a man she loved; and I could not help!” Her voice grew deep, thrilled. “The friend, it comes to me, who drew you here, Goodwin!”

She was silent, walking as one who sees visions and listens to voices unheard by others, Rador made a warning gesture; I crowded back my questions, glanced about me. We were passing over a smooth strand, hard packed as some beach of long-thrust-back ocean. It was like crushed garnets, each grain stained deep red, faintly sparkling. On each side were distances, the floor stretching away into them bare of vegetation—stretching on and on into infinitudes of rosy mist, even as did the space above.

Flanking and behind us marched the giant batrachians, fivescore of them at least, black scale and crimson scale lustrous and gleaming in the rosaceous radiance; saucer eyes shining circles of phosphorescence green, purple, red; spurs clicking as they crouched along with a gait at once grotesque and formidable.

Ahead the mist deepened into a ruddier glow; through it a long, dark line began to appear—the mouth I thought of the caverned space through which we were going; it was just before us; over us—we stood bathed in a flood of rubescence!

A sea stretched before us—a crimson sea, gleaming like that lost lacquer of royal coral and the Flame Dragon’s blood which Fu S’cze set upon the bower he built for his stolen sun maiden—that going toward it she might think it the sun itself rising over the summer seas. Unmoved by wave or ripple, it was placid as some deep woodland pool when night rushes up over the world.

It seemed molten—or as though some hand great enough to rock earth had distilled here from conflagrations of autumn sunsets their flaming essences.

A fish broke through, large as a shark, blunt-headed, flashing bronze, ridged and mailed as though with serrate plates of armour. It leaped high, shaking from it a sparkling spray of rubies; dropped and shot up a geyser of fiery gems.

Across my line of vision, moving stately over the sea, floated a half globe, luminous, diaphanous, its iridescence melting into turquoise, thence to amethyst, to orange, to scarlet shot with rose, to vermilion, a translucent green, thence back into the iridescence; behind it four others, and the least of them ten feet in diameter, and the largest no less than thirty. They drifted past like bubbles blown from froth of rainbows by pipes in mouths of Titans’ young. Then from the base of one arose a tangle of shimmering strands, long, slender whiplashes that played about and sank slowly again beneath the crimson surface.

I gasped—for the fish had been a ganoid—that ancient, armoured form that was perhaps the most intelligent of all life on our planet during the Devonian era, but which for age upon age had vanished, save for its fossils held in the embrace of the stone that once was their soft bottom beds; and the half-globes were Medusae, jelly-fish—but of a size, luminosity, and colour unheard of.

Now Lakla cupped her mouth with pink palms and sent a clarion note ringing out. The ledge on which we stood continued a few hundred feet before us, falling abruptly, though from no great height to the Crimson Sea; at right and left it extended in a long semicircle. Turning to the right whence she had sent her call, I saw rising a mile or more away, veiled lightly by the haze, a rainbow, a gigantic prismatic arch, flattened, I thought, by some quality of the strange atmosphere. It sprang from the ruddy strand, leaped the crimson tide, and dropped three miles away upon a precipitous, jagged upthrust of rock frowning black from the lacquered depths.

And surmounting a higher ledge beyond this upthrust a huge dome of dull gold, Cyclopean, striking eyes and mind with something unhumanly alien, baffling; sending the mind groping, as though across the deserts of space, from some far-flung star, should fall upon us linked sounds, coherent certainly, meaningful surely, vaguely familiar—yet never to be translated into any symbol or thought of our own particular planet.

The sea of crimson lacquer, with its floating moons of luminous colour—this bow of prismed stone leaping to the weird isle crowned by the anomalous, aureate excrescence—the half human batrachians-the elfland through which we had passed, with all its hidden wonders and terrors—I felt the foundations of my cherished knowledge shaking. Was this all a dream? Was this body of mine lying somewhere, fighting a fevered death, and all these but images floating through the breaking chambers of my brain? My knees shook; involuntarily I groaned.

Lakla turned, looked at me anxiously, slipped a soft arm behind me, held me till the vertigo passed.

“Patience,” she said. “The bearers come. Soon you shall rest.”

I looked; down toward us from the bow’s end were leaping swiftly another score of the frog-men. Some bore litters, high, handled, not unlike palanquins—

“Asgard!” Olaf stood beside me, eyes burning, pointing to the arch. “Bifrost Bridge, sharp as sword edge, over which souls go to Valhalla. And she—she is a Valkyr—a sword maiden, Ja!”

I gripped the Norseman’s hand. It was hot, and a pang of remorse shot through me. If this place had so shaken me, how must it have shaken Olaf? It was with relief that I watched him, at Lakla’s gentle command, drop into one of the litters and lie back, eyes closed, as two of the monsters raised its yoke to their scaled shoulders. Nor was it without further relief that I myself lay back on the soft velvety cushions of another.

The cavalcade began to move. Lakla had ordered O’Keefe placed beside her, and she sat, knees crossed Orient fashion, leaning over the pale head on her lap, the white, tapering fingers straying fondly through his hair.

Presently I saw her reach up, slowly unwind the coronal of her tresses, shake them loose, and let them fall like a veil over her and him.

Her head bent low; I heard a soft sobbing—I turned away my gaze, lorn enough in my own heart, God knew!

CHAPTER XXV

The Three Silent Ones

The arch was closer—and in my awe I forgot for the moment Larry and aught else. For this was no rainbow, no thing born of light and mist, no Bifrost Bridge of myth—no! It was a flying arch of stone, stained with flares of Tyrian purples, of royal scarlets, of blues dark as the Gulf Stream’s ribbon, sapphires soft as midday May skies, splashes of chromes and greens—a palette of giantry, a bridge of wizardry; a hundred, nay, a thousand, times greater than that of Utah which the Navaho call Nonnegozche and worship, as well they may, as a god, and which is itself a rainbow in eternal rock.

It sprang from the ledge and winged its prodigious length in one low arc over the sea’s crimson breast, as though in some ancient paroxysm of earth it had been hurled molten, crystallizing into that stupendous span and still flaming with the fires that had moulded it.

Closer we came and closer, while I watched spellbound; now we were at its head, and the litter-bearers swept upon it. All of five hundred feet wide it was, surface smooth as a city road, sides low walled, curving inward as though in the jetting-out of its making the edges of the plastic rock had curled.

On and on we sped; the high thrusting precipices upon which the bridge’s far end rested, frowned close; the enigmatic, dully shining dome loomed ever greater. Now we had reached that end; were passing over a smooth plaza whose level floor was enclosed, save for a rift in front of us, by the fanged tops of the black cliffs.

From this rift stretched another span, half a mile long, perhaps, widening at its centre into a broad platform, continuing straight to two massive gates set within the face of the second cliff wall like panels, and of the same dull gold as the dome rising high beyond. And this smaller arch leaped a pit, an abyss, of which the outer precipices were the rim holding back from the pit the red flood.

We were rapidly approaching; now upon the platform; my bearers were striding closely along the side; I leaned far out—a giddiness seized me! I gazed down into depth upon vertiginous depth; an abyss indeed—an abyss dropping to world’s base like that in which the Babylonians believed writhed Talaat, the serpent mother of Chaos; a pit that struck down into earth’s heart itself.

Now, what was that—distance upon unfathomable distance below? A stupendous glowing like the green fire of life itself. What was it like? I had it! It was like the corona of the sun in eclipse—that burgeoning that makes of our luminary when moon veils it an incredible blossoming of splendours in the black heavens.

And strangely, strangely, it was like the Dweller’s beauty when with its dazzling spirallings and writhings it raced amid its storm of crystal bell sounds!

The abyss was behind us; we had paused at the golden portals; they swung inward. A wide corridor filled with soft light was before us, and on its threshold stood—bizarre, yellow gems gleaming, huge muzzle wide in what was evidently meant for a smile of welcome—the woman frog of the Moon Pool wall.

Lakla raised her head; swept back the silken tent of her hair and gazed at me with eyes misty from weeping. The frog-woman crept to her side; gazed down upon Larry; spoke—spoke—to the Golden Girl in a swift stream of the sonorous, reverberant monosyllables; and Lakla answered her in kind. The webbed digits swept over O’Keefe’s face, felt at his heart; she shook her head and moved ahead of us up the passage.

Still borne in the litters we went on, winding, ascending until at last they were set down in a great hall carpeted with soft fragrant rushes and into which from high narrow slits streamed the crimson light from without.

I jumped over to Larry, there had been no change in his condition; still the terrifying limpness, the slow, infrequent pulsation. Rador and Olaf—and the fever now seemed to be gone from him—came and stood beside me, silent.

“I go to the Three,” said Lakla. “Wait you here.” She passed through a curtaining; then as swiftly as she had gone she returned through the hangings, tresses braided, a swathing of golden gauze about her.

“Rador,” she said, “bear you Larry—for into your heart the Silent Ones would look. And fear nothing,” she added at the green dwarf’s disconcerted, almost fearful start.

Rador bowed, was thrust aside by Olaf.

“No,” said the Norseman; “I will carry him.”

He lifted Larry like a child against his broad breast. The dwarf glanced quickly at Lakla; she nodded.

“Come!” she commanded, and held aside the folds.

Of that journey I have few memories. I only know that we went through corridor upon corridor; successions of vast halls and chambers, some carpeted with the rushes, others with rugs into which the feet sank as into deep, soft meadows; spaces illumined by the rubrous light, and spaces in which softer lights held sway.

We paused before a slab of the same crimson stone as that the green dwarf had called the portal, and upon its polished surface weaved the same unnameable symbols. The Golden Girl pressed upon its side; it slipped softly back; a torrent of opalescence gushed out of the opening—and as one in a dream I entered.

We were, I knew, just under the dome; but for the moment, caught in the flood of radiance, I could see nothing. It was like being held within a fire opal—so brilliant, so flashing, was it. I closed my eyes, opened them; the lambency cascaded from the vast curves of the globular walls; in front of me was a long, narrow opening in them, through which, far away, I could see the end of the wizards’ bridge and the ledged mouth of the cavern through which we had come; against the light from within beat the crimson light from without—and was checked as though by a barrier.

I felt Lakla’s touch; turned.

A hundred paces away was a dais, its rim raised a yard above the floor. From the edge of this rim streamed upward a steady, coruscating mist of the opalescence, veined even as was that of the Dweller’s shining core and shot with milky shadows like curdled moonlight; up it stretched like a wall.

Over it, from it, down upon me, gazed three faces—two clearly male, one a woman’s. At the first I thought them statues, and then the eyes of them gave the lie to me; for the eyes were alive, terribly, and if I could admit the word—supernaturally—alive.

They were thrice the size of the human eye and triangular, the apex of the angle upward; black as jet, pupilless, filled with tiny, leaping red flames.

Over them were foreheads, not as ours—high and broad and visored; their sides drawn forward into a vertical ridge, a prominence, an upright wedge, somewhat like the visored heads of a few of the great lizards—and the heads, long, narrowing at the back, were fully twice the size of mankind’s!

Upon the brows were caps—and with a fearful certainty I knew that they were not caps—long, thick strands of gleaming yellow, feathered scales thin as sequins! Sharp, curving noses like the beaks of the giant condors; mouths thin, austere; long, powerful, pointed chins; the—flesh—of the faces white as the whitest marble; and wreathing up to them, covering all their bodies, the shimmering, curdled, misty fires of opalescence!

Olaf stood rigid; my own heart leaped wildly. What—what were these beings?

I forced myself to look again—and from their gaze streamed a current of reassurance, of good will—nay, of intense spiritual strength. I saw that they were not fierce, not ruthless, not inhuman, despite their strangeness; no, they were kindly; in some unmistakable way, benign and sorrowful—so sorrowful! I straightened, gazed back at them fearlessly. Olaf drew a deep breath, gazed steadily too, the hardness, the despair wiped from his face.

Now Lakla drew closer to the dais; the three pairs of eyes searched hers, the woman’s with an ineffable tenderness; some message seemed to pass between the Three and the Golden Girl. She bowed low, turned to the Norseman.

“Place Larry there,” she said softly—“there at the feet of the Silent Ones.”

She pointed into the radiant mist; Olaf started, hesitated, stared from Lakla to the Three, searched for a moment their eyes—and something like a smile drifted through them. He stepped forward, lifted O’Keefe, set him squarely within the covering light. It wavered, rolled upward, swirled about the body, steadied again—and within it there was no sign of Larry!

Again the mist wavered, shook, and seemed to climb higher, hiding the chins, the beaked noses, the brows of that incredible Trinity—but before it ceased to climb, I thought the yellow feathered heads bent; sensed a movement as though they lifted something.

The mist fell; the eyes gleamed out again, inscrutable.

And groping out of the radiance, pausing at the verge of the dais, leaping down from it, came Larry, laughing, filled with life, blinking as one who draws from darkness into sunshine. He saw Lakla, sprang to her, gripped her in his arms.

“Lakla!” he cried. “Mavourneen!” She slipped from his embrace, blushing, glancing at the Three shyly, half-fearfully. And again I saw the tenderness creep into the inky, flame-shot orbs of the woman being; and a tenderness in the others too—as though they regarded some well-beloved child.

“You lay in the arms of Death, Larry,” she said. “And the Silent Ones drew you from him. Do homage to the Silent Ones, Larry, for they are good and they are mighty!”

She turned his head with one of the long, white hands—and he looked into the faces of the Three; looked long, was shaken even as had been Olaf and myself; was swept by that same wave of power and of—of—what can I call it?—holiness that streamed from them.

Then for the first time I saw real awe mount into his face. Another moment he stared—and dropped upon one knee and bowed his head before them as would a worshipper before the shrine of his saint. And—I am not ashamed to tell it—I joined him; and with us knelt Lakla and Olaf and Rador.

The mist of fiery opal swirled up about the Three; hid them.

And with a long, deep, joyous sigh Lakla took Larry’s hand, drew him to his feet, and silently we followed them out of that hall of wonder.

But why, in going, did the thought come to me that from where the Three sat throned they ever watched the cavern mouth that was the door into their abode; and looked down ever into the unfathomable depth in which glowed and pulsed that mystic flower, colossal, awesome, of green flame that had seemed to me fire of life itself?

CHAPTER XXVI

The Wooing of Lakla

I had slept soundly and dreamlessly; I wakened quietly in the great chamber into which Rador had ushered O’Keefe and myself after that culminating experience of crowded, nerve-racking hours—the facing of the Three.

Now, lying gazing upward at the high-vaulted ceiling, I heard Larry’s voice:

“They look like birds.” Evidently he was thinking of the Three; a silence—then: “Yes, they look like birds—and they look, and it’s meaning no disrespect to them I am at all, they look like lizards”—and another silence—“they look like some sort of gods, and, by the good sword-arm of Brian Boru, they look human, too! And it’s none of them they are either, so what—what the—what the sainted St. Bridget are they?” Another short silence, and then in a tone of awed and absolute conviction: “That’s it, sure! That’s what they are—it all hangs in—they couldn’t be anything else—”

He gave a whoop; a pillow shot over and caught me across the head.

“Wake up!” shouted Larry. “Wake up, ye seething caldron of fossilized superstitions! Wake up, ye bogy-haunted man of scientific unwisdom!”

Under pillow and insults I bounced to my feet, filled for a moment with quite real wrath; he lay back, roaring with laughter, and my anger was swept away.

“Doc,” he said, very seriously, after this, “I know who the Three are!”

“Yes?” I queried, with studied sarcasm.

“Yes?” he mimicked. “Yes! Ye—ye” He paused under the menace of my look, grinned. “Yes, I know,” he continued. “They’re of the Tuatha De, the old ones, the great people of Ireland, that’s who they are!”

I knew, of course, of the Tuatha De Danann, the tribes of the god Danu, the half-legendary, half-historical clan who found their home in Erin some four thousand years before the Christian era, and who have left so deep an impress upon the Celtic mind and its myths.

“Yes,” said Larry again, “the Tuatha De—the Ancient Ones who had spells that could compel Mananan, who is the spirit of all the seas, an’ Keithor, who is the god of all green living things, an’ even Hesus, the unseen god, whose pulse is the pulse of all the firmament; yes, an’ Orchil too, who sits within the earth an’ weaves with the shuttle of mystery and her three looms of birth an’ life an’ death—even Orchil would weave as they commanded!”

He was silent—then:

“They are of them—the mighty ones—why else would I have bent my knee to them as I would have to the spirit of my dead mother? Why else would Lakla, whose gold-brown hair is the hair of Eilidh the Fair, whose mouth is the sweet mouth of Deirdre, an’ whose soul walked with mine ages agone among the fragrant green myrtle of Erin, serve them?” he whispered, eyes full of dream.

“Have you any idea how they got here?” I asked, not unreasonably.

“I haven’t thought about that,” he replied somewhat testily. “But at once, me excellent man o’ wisdom, a number occur to me. One of them is that this little party of three might have stopped here on their way to Ireland, an’ for good reasons of their own decided to stay a while; an’ another is that they might have come here afterward, havin’ got wind of what those rats out there were contemplatin’, and have stayed on the job till the time was ripe to save Ireland from ’em; the rest of the world, too, of course,” he added magnanimously, “but Ireland in particular. And do any of those reasons appeal to ye?”

I shook my head.

“Well, what do you think?” he asked wearily.

“I think,” I said cautiously, “that we face an evolution of highly intelligent beings from ancestral sources radically removed from those through which mankind ascended. These half-human, highly developed batrachians they call the Akka prove that evolution in these caverned spaces has certainly pursued one different path than on earth. The Englishman, Wells, wrote an imaginative and very entertaining book concerning an invasion of earth by Martians, and he made his Martians enormously specialized cuttlefish. There was nothing inherently improbable in Wells’ choice. Man is the ruling animal of earth today solely by reason of a series of accidents; under another series spiders or ants, or even elephants, could have become the dominant race.

“I think,” I said, even more cautiously, “that the race to which the Three belong never appeared on earth’s surface; that their development took place here, unhindered through aeons. And if this be true, the structure of their brains, and therefore all their reactions, must be different from ours. Hence their knowledge and command of energies unfamiliar to us—and hence also the question whether they may not have an entirely different sense of values, of justice—and that is rather terrifying,” I concluded.

Larry shook his head.

“That last sort of knocks your argument, Doc,” he said. “They had sense of justice enough to help me out—and certainly they know love—for I saw the way they looked at Lakla; and sorrow—for there was no mistaking that in their faces.

“No,” he went on. “I hold to my own idea. They’re of the Old People. The little leprechaun knew his way here, an’ I’ll bet it was they who sent the word. An’ if the O’Keefe banshee comes here—which save the mark!—I’ll bet she’ll drop in on the Silent Ones for a social visit before she an’ her clan get busy. Well, it’ll make her feel more at home, the good old body. No, Doc, no,” he concluded, “I’m right; it all fits in too well to be wrong.”

I made a last despairing attempt.

“Is there anything anywhere in Ireland that would indicate that the Tuatha De ever looked like the Three?” I asked—and again I had spoken most unfortunately.

“Is there?” he shouted. “Is there? By the kilt of Cormack MacCormack, I’m glad ye reminded me. It was worryin’ me a little meself. There was Daghda, who could put on the head of a great boar an’ the body of a giant fish and cleave the waves an’ tear to pieces the birlins of any who came against Erin; an’ there was Rinn—”

How many more of the metamorphoses of the Old People I might have heard, I do not know, for the curtains parted and in walked Rador.

“You have rested well,” he smiled, “I can see. The handmaiden bade me call you. You are to eat with her in her garden.”

Down long corridors we trod and out upon a gardened terrace as beautiful as any of those of Yolara’s city; bowered, blossoming, fragrant, set high upon the cliffs beside the domed castle. A table, as of milky jade, was spread at one corner, but the Golden Girl was not there. A little path ran on and up, hemmed in by the mass of verdure. I looked at it longingly; Rador saw the glance, interpreted it, and led me up the stepped sharp slope into a rock embrasure.

Here I was above the foliage, and everywhere the view was clear. Below me stretched the incredible bridge, with the frog people hurrying back and forth upon it. A pinnacle at my side hid the abyss. My eyes followed the cavern ledge. Above it the rock rose bare, but at the ends of the semicircular strand a luxuriant vegetation began, stretching from the crimson shores back into far distances. Of browns and reds and yellows, like an autumn forest, was the foliage, with here and there patches of dark-green, as of conifers. Five miles or more, on each side, the forests swept, and then were lost to sight in the haze.

I turned and faced an immensity of crimson waters, unbroken, a true sea, if ever there was one. A breeze blew—the first real wind I had encountered in the hidden places; under it the surface, that had been as molten lacquer, rippled and dimpled. Little waves broke with a spray of rose-pearls and rubies. The giant Medusae drifted—stately, luminous kaleidoscopic elfin moons.

Far down, peeping around a jutting tower of the cliff, I saw dipping with the motion of the waves a floating garden. The flowers, too, were luminous—indeed sparkling—gleaming brilliants of scarlet and vermilions lighter than the flood on which they lay, mauves and odd shades of reddish-blue. They gleamed and shone like a little lake of jewels.

Rador broke in upon my musings.

“Lakla comes! Let us go down.”

It was a shy Lakla who came slowly around the end of the path and, blushing furiously, held her hands out to Larry. And the Irishman took them, placed them over his heart, kissed them with a tenderness that had been lacking in the half-mocking, half-fierce caresses he had given the priestess. She blushed deeper, holding out the tapering fingers—then pressed them to her own heart.

“I like the touch of your lips, Larry,” she whispered. “They warm me here”—she pressed her heart again—“and they send little sparkles of light through me.” Her brows tilted perplexedly, accenting the nuance of diablerie, delicate and fascinating, that they cast upon the flower face.

“Do you?” whispered the O’Keefe fervently. “Do you, Lakla?” He bent toward her. She caught the amused glance of Rador; drew herself aside half-haughtily.

“Rador,” she said, “is it not time that you and the strong one, Olaf, were setting forth?”

“Truly it is, handmaiden,” he answered respectfully enough—yet with a current of laughter under his words. “But as you know the strong one, Olaf, wished to see his friends here before we were gone—and he comes even now,” he added, glancing down the pathway, along which came striding the Norseman.

As he faced us I saw that a transformation had been wrought in him. Gone was the pitiful seeking, and gone too the just as pitiful hope. The set face softened as he looked at the Golden Girl and bowed low to her. He thrust a hand to O’Keefe and to me.

“There is to be battle,” he said. “I go with Rador to call the armies of these frog people. As for me—Lakla has spoken. There is no hope for—for mine Helma in life, but there is hope that we destroy the Shining Devil and give meine Helma peace. And with that I am well content, ja! Well content!” He gripped our hands again. “We will fight!” he muttered. “Ja! And I will have vengeance!” The sternness returned; and with a salute Rador and he were gone.

Two great tears rolled from the golden eyes of Lakla.

“Not even the Silent Ones can heal those the Shining One has taken,” she said. “He asked me—and it was better that I tell him. It is part of the Three’s—punishment—but of that you will soon learn,” she went on hurriedly. “Ask me no questions now of the Silent Ones. I thought it better for Olaf to go with Rador, to busy himself, to give his mind other than sorrow upon which to feed.”

Up the path came five of the frog-women, bearing platters and ewers. Their bracelets and anklets of jewels were tinkling; their middles covered with short kirtles of woven cloth studded with the sparkling ornaments.

And here let me say that if I have given the impression that the Akka are simply magnified frogs, I regret it. Frog-like they are, and hence my phrase for them—but as unlike the frog, as we know it, as man is unlike the chimpanzee. Springing, I hazard, from the stegocephalia, the ancestor of the frogs, these batrachians followed a different line of evolution and acquired the upright position just as man did his from the four-footed folk.

The great staring eyes, the shape of the muzzle were frog-like, but the highly developed brain had set upon the head and shape of it vital differences. The forehead, for instance, was not low, flat, and retreating—its frontal arch was well defined. The head was, in a sense, shapely, and with the females the great horny carapace that stood over it like a fantastic helmet was much modified, as were the spurs that were so formidable in the male; colouration was different also. The torso was upright; the legs a little bent, giving them their crouching gait—but I wander from my subject.7

They set their burdens down. Larry looked at them with interest.

“You surely have those things well trained, Lakla,” he said.

“Things!” The handmaiden arose, eyes flashing with indignation. “You call my Akka things!”

“Well,” said Larry, a bit taken aback, “what do you call them?”

“My Akka are a people,” she retorted. “As much a people as your race or mine. They are good and loyal, and they have speech and arts, and they slay not, save for food or to protect themselves. And I think them beautiful, Larry, beautiful!” She stamped her foot. “And you call them—things!”

Beautiful! These? Yet, after all, they were, in their grotesque fashion. And to Lakla, surrounded by them, from babyhood, they were not strange, at all. Why shouldn’t she think them beautiful? The same thought must have struck O’Keefe, for he flushed guiltily.

“I think them beautiful, too, Lakla,” he said remorsefully. “It’s my not knowing your tongue too well that traps me. Truly, I think them beautiful—I’d tell them so, if I knew their talk.”

Lakla dimpled, laughed—spoke to the attendants in that strange speech that was unquestionably a language; they bridled, looked at O’Keefe with fantastic coquetry, cracked and boomed softly among themselves.

“They say they like you better than the men of Muria,” laughed Lakla.

“Did I ever think I’d be swapping compliments with lady frogs!” he murmured to me. “Buck up, Larry—keep your eyes on the captive Irish princess!” he muttered to himself.

“Rador goes to meet one of the ladala who is slipping through with news,” said the Golden Girl as we addressed ourselves to the food. “Then, with Nak, he and Olaf go to muster the Akka—for there will be battle, and we must prepare. Nak,” she added, “is he who went before me when you were dancing with Yolara, Larry.” She stole a swift, mischievous glance at him. “He is headman of all the Akka.”

“Just what forces can we muster against them when they come, darlin’?” said Larry.

“Darlin’?”—the Golden Girl had caught the caress of the word—“what’s that?”

“It’s a little word that means Lakla,” he answered. “It does—that is, when I say it; when you say it, then it means Larry.”

“I like that word,” mused Lakla.

“You can even say Larry darlin’!” suggested O’Keefe.

“Larry darlin’!” said Lakla. “When they come we shall have first of all my Akka—”

“Can they fight, mavourneen?” interrupted Larry.

“Can they fight! My Akka!” Again her eyes flashed. “They will fight to the last of them—with the spears that give the swift rotting, covered, as they are, with the jelly of those Saddu there—” She pointed through a rift in the foliage across which, on the surface of the sea, was floating one of the moon globes—and now I know why Rador had warned Larry against a plunge there. “With spears and clubs and with teeth and nails and spurs—they are a strong and brave people, Larry—darlin’, and though they hurl the Keth at them, it is slow to work upon them, and they slay even while they are passing into the nothingness!”

“And have we none of the Keth?” he asked.

“No”—she shook her head—“none of their weapons have we here, although it was—it was the Ancient Ones who shaped them.”

“But the Three are of the Ancient Ones?” I cried. “Surely they can tell—”

“No,” she said slowly. “No—there is something you must know—and soon; and then the Silent Ones say you will understand. You, especially, Goodwin, who worship wisdom.”

“Then,” said Larry, “we have the Akka; and we have the four men of us, and among us three guns and about a hundred cartridges—an’—an’ the power of the Three—but what about the Shining One, Fireworks—”

“I do not know.” Again the indecision that had been in her eyes when Yolara had launched her defiance crept back. “The Shining One is strong—and he has his—slaves!”

“Well, we’d better get busy good and quick!” the O’Keefe’s voice rang. But Lakla, for some reason of her own, would pursue the matter no further. The trouble fled from her eyes—they danced.

“Larry darlin’?” she murmured. “I like the touch of your lips—”

“You do?” he whispered, all thought flying of anything but the beautiful, provocative face so close to his. “Then, acushla, you’re goin’ to get acquainted with ’em! Turn your head, Doc!” he said.

And I turned it. There was quite a long silence, broken by an interested, soft outburst of gentle boomings from the serving frog-maids. I stole a glance behind me. Lakla’s head lay on the Irishman’s shoulder, the golden eyes misty sunpools of love and adoration; and the O’Keefe, a new look of power and strength upon his clear-cut features, was gazing down into them with that look which rises only from the heart touched for the first time with that true, all-powerful love, which is the pulse of the universe itself, the real music of the spheres of which Plato dreamed, the love that is stronger than death itself, immortal as the high gods and the true soul of all that mystery we call life.

Then Lakla raised her hands, pressed down Larry’s head, kissed him between the eyes, drew herself with a trembling little laugh from his embrace.

“The future Mrs. Larry O’Keefe, Goodwin,” said Larry to me a little unsteadily.

I took their hands—and Lakla kissed me!

She turned to the booming—smiling—frog-maids; gave them some command, for they filed away down the path. Suddenly I felt, well, a little superfluous.

“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I think I’ll go up the path there again and look about.”

But they were so engrossed with each other that they did not even hear me—so I walked away, up to the embrasure where Rador had taken me. The movement of the batrachians over the bridge had ceased. Dimly at the far end I could see the cluster of the garrison. My thoughts flew back to Lakla and to Larry.

What was to be the end?

If we won, if we were able to pass from this place, could she live in our world? A product of these caverns with their atmosphere and light that seemed in some subtle way to be both food and drink—how would she react to the unfamiliar foods and air and light of outer earth? Further, here so far as I was able to discover, there were no malignant bacilli—what immunity could Lakla have then to those microscopic evils without, which only long ages of sickness and death have bought for us a modicum of protection? I began to be oppressed. Surely they had been long enough by themselves. I went down the path.

I heard Larry.

“It’s a green land, mavourneen. And the sea rocks and dimples around it—blue as the heavens, green as the isle itself, and foam horses toss their white manes, and the great clean winds blow over it, and the sun shines down on it like your eyes, acushla—”

“And are you a king of Ireland, Larry darlin’?” Thus Lakla—

But enough!

At last we turned to go—and around the corner of the path I caught another glimpse of what I have called the lake of jewels. I pointed to it.

“Those are lovely flowers, Lakla,” I said. “I have never seen anything like them in the place from whence we come.”

She followed my pointing finger—laughed.

“Come,” she said, “let me show you them.”

She ran down an intersecting way, we following; came out of it upon a little ledge close to the brink, three feet or more I suppose about it. The Golden Girl’s voice rang out in a high-pitched, tremulous, throbbing call.

The lake of jewels stirred as though a breeze had passed over it; stirred, shook, and then began to move swiftly, a shimmering torrent of shining flowers down upon us! She called again, the movement became more rapid; the gem blooms streamed closer—closer, wavering, shifting, winding—at our very feet. Above them hovered a little radiant mist. The Golden Girl leaned over; called softly, and up from the sparkling mass shot a green vine whose heads were five flowers of flaming ruby—shot up, flew into her hand and coiled about the white arm, its quintette of lambent blossoms—regarding us!

It was the thing Lakla had called the Yekta; that with which she had threatened the priestess; the thing that carried the dreadful death—and the Golden Girl was handling it like a rose!

Larry swore—I looked at the thing more closely. It was a hydroid, a development of that strange animal-vegetable that, sometimes almost microscopic, waves in the sea depths like a cluster of flowers paralyzing its prey with the mysterious force that dwells in its blossom heads!8

“Put it down, Lakla,” the distress in O’Keefe’s voice was deep. Lakla laughed mischievously, caught the real fear for her in his eyes; opened her hand, gave another faint call—and back it flew to its fellows.

“Why, it wouldn’t hurt me, Larry!” she expostulated. “They know me!”

“Put it down!” he repeated hoarsely.

She sighed, gave another sweet, prolonged call. The lake of gems—rubies and amethysts, mauves and scarlet-tinged blues—wavered and shook even as it had before—and swept swiftly back to that place whence she had drawn them!

Then, with Larry and Lakla walking ahead, white arm about his brown neck; the O’Keefe still expostulating, the handmaiden laughing merrily, we passed through her bower to the domed castle.

Glancing through a cleft I caught sight again of the far end of the bridge; noted among the clustered figures of its garrison of the frog-men a movement, a flashing of green fire like marshlights on spear tips; wondered idly what it was, and then, other thoughts crowding in, followed along, head bent, behind the pair who had found in what was Olaf’s hell, their true paradise.

THE MOON POOL [Part 3]

7 The Akka are viviparous. The female produces progeny at five-year intervals, never more than two at a time. They are monogamous, like certain of our own Ranidae. Pending my monograph upon what little I had time to learn of their interesting habits and customs, the curious will find instruction and entertainment in Brandes and Schvenichen’s Brutpfleige der Schwanzlosen Bat rachier, p. 395; and Lilian V. Sampson’s Unusual Modes of Breeding among Anura, Amer. Nat. xxxiv., 1900.—W. T. G.

8 The Yekta of the Crimson Sea, are as extraordinary developments of hydroid forms as the giant Medusae, of which, of course, they are not too remote cousins. The closest resemblances to them in outer water forms are among the Gymnoblastic Hydroids, notably Clavetella prolifera, a most interesting ambulatory form of six tentacles. Almost every bather in Southern waters, Northern too, knows the pain that contact with certain “jelly fish” produces. The Yekta’s development was prodigious and, to us, monstrous. It secretes in its five heads an almost incredibly swiftly acting poison which I suspect, for I had no chance to verify the theory, destroys the entire nervous system to the accompaniment of truly infernal agony; carrying at the same time the illusion that the torment stretches through infinities of time. Both ether and nitrous oxide gas produce in the majority this sensation of time extension, without of course the pain symptom. What Lakla called the Yekta kiss is I imagine about as close to the orthodox idea of Hell as can be conceived. The secret of her control over them I had no opportunity of learning in the rush of events that followed. Knowledge of the appalling effects of their touch came, she told me, from those few “who had been kissed so lightly” that they recovered. Certainly nothing, not even the Shining One, was dreaded by the Murians as these were—W. T. G.

7 The Akka are viviparous. The female produces progeny at five-year intervals, never more than two at a time. They are monogamous, like certain of our own Ranidae. Pending my monograph upon what little I had time to learn of their interesting habits and customs, the curious will find instruction and entertainment in Brandes and Schvenichen’s Brutpfleige der Schwanzlosen Bat rachier, p. 395; and Lilian V. Sampson’s Unusual Modes of Breeding among Anura, Amer. Nat. xxxiv., 1900.—W. T. G.

8 The Yekta of the Crimson Sea, are as extraordinary developments of hydroid forms as the giant Medusae, of which, of course, they are not too remote cousins. The closest resemblances to them in outer water forms are among the Gymnoblastic Hydroids, notably Clavetella prolifera, a most interesting ambulatory form of six tentacles. Almost every bather in Southern waters, Northern too, knows the pain that contact with certain “jelly fish” produces. The Yekta’s development was prodigious and, to us, monstrous. It secretes in its five heads an almost incredibly swiftly acting poison which I suspect, for I had no chance to verify the theory, destroys the entire nervous system to the accompaniment of truly infernal agony; carrying at the same time the illusion that the torment stretches through infinities of time. Both ether and nitrous oxide gas produce in the majority this sensation of time extension, without of course the pain symptom. What Lakla called the Yekta kiss is I imagine about as close to the orthodox idea of Hell as can be conceived. The secret of her control over them I had no opportunity of learning in the rush of events that followed. Knowledge of the appalling effects of their touch came, she told me, from those few “who had been kissed so lightly” that they recovered. Certainly nothing, not even the Shining One, was dreaded by the Murians as these were—W. T. G.

CHAPTER XXVII

The Coming of Yolara

“Never was there such a girl!” Thus Larry, dreamily, leaning head in hand on one of the wide divans of the chamber where Lakla had left us, pleading service to the Silent Ones.

“An’, by the faith and the honour of the O’Keefes, an’ by my dead mother’s soul may God do with me as I do by her!” he whispered fervently.

He relapsed into open-eyed dreaming.

I walked about the room, examining it—the first opportunity I had gained to inspect carefully any of the rooms in the abode of the Three. It was octagonal, carpeted with the thick rugs that seemed almost as though woven of soft mineral wool, faintly shimmering, palest blue. I paced its diagonal; it was fifty yards; the ceiling was arched, and either of pale rose metal or metallic covering; it collected the light from the high, slitted windows, and shed it, diffused, through the room.

Around the octagon ran a low gallery not two feet from the floor, balustraded with slender pillars, close set; broken at opposite curtained entrances over which hung thick, dull-gold curtainings giving the same suggestion of metallic or mineral substance as the rugs. Set within each of the eight sides, above the balcony, were colossal slabs of lapis lazuli, inset with graceful but unplaceable designs in scarlet and sapphire blue.

There was the great divan on which mused Larry; two smaller ones, half a dozen low seats and chairs carved apparently of ivory and of dull soft gold.

Most curious were tripods, strong, pikelike legs of golden metal four feet high, holding small circles of the lapis with intaglios of one curious symbol somewhat resembling the ideographs of the Chinese.

There was no dust—nowhere in these caverned spaces had I found this constant companion of ours in the world overhead. My eyes caught a sparkle from a corner. Pursuing it I found upon one of the low seats a flat, clear crystal oval, remarkably like a lens. I took it and stepped up on the balcony. Standing on tiptoe I found I commanded from the bottom of a window slit a view of the bridge approach. Scanning it I could see no trace of the garrison there, nor of the green spear flashes. I placed the crystal to my eyes—and with a disconcerting abruptness the cavern mouth leaped before me, apparently not a hundred feet away; decidedly the crystal was a very excellent lens—but where were the guards?

I peered closely. Nothing! But now against the aperture I saw a score or more of tiny, dancing sparks. An optical illusion, I thought, and turned the crystal in another direction. There were no sparklings there. I turned it back again—and there they were. And what were they like? Realization came to me—they were like the little, dancing, radiant atoms that had played for a time about the emptiness where had stood Sorgar of the Lower Waters before he had been shaken into the nothingness! And that green light I had noticed—the Keth!

A cry on my lips, I turned to Larry—and the cry died as the heavy curtainings at the entrance on my right undulated, parted as though a body had slipped through, shook and parted again and again—with the dreadful passing of unseen things!

“Larry!” I cried. “Here! Quick!”

He leaped to his feet, gazed about wildly—and disappeared! Yes—vanished from my sight like the snuffed flame of a candle or as though something moving with the speed of light itself had snatched him away!

Then from the divan came the sounds of struggle, the hissing of straining breaths, the noise of Larry cursing. I leaped over the balustrade, drawing my own pistol—was caught in a pair of mighty arms, my elbows crushed to my sides, drawn down until my face pressed close to a broad, hairy breast—and through that obstacle—formless, shadowless, transparent as air itself—I could still see the battle on the divan!

Now there were two sharp reports; the struggle abruptly ceased. From a point not a foot over the great couch, as though oozing from the air itself, blood began to drop, faster and ever faster, pouring out of nothingness.

And out of that same air, now a dozen feet away, leaped the face of Larry—bodyless, poised six feet above the floor, blazing with rage—floating weirdly, uncannily to a hideous degree, in vacancy.

His hands flashed out—armless; they wavered, appearing, disappearing—swiftly tearing something from him. Then there, feet hidden, stiff on legs that vanished at the ankles, striking out into vision with all the dizzy abruptness with which he had been stricken from sight was the O’Keefe, a smoking pistol in hand.

And ever that red stream trickled out of vacancy and spread over the couch, dripping to the floor.

I made a mighty movement to escape; was held more firmly—and then close to the face of Larry, flashing out with that terrifying instantaneousness even as had his, was the head of Yolara, as devilishly mocking as I had ever seen it, the cruelty shining through it like delicate white flames from hell—and beautiful!

“Stir not! Strike not—until I command!” She flung the words beyond her, addressed to the invisible ones who had accompanied her; whose presences I sensed filling the chamber. The floating, beautiful head, crowned high with corn-silk hair, darted toward the Irishman. He took a swift step backward. The eyes of the priestess deepened toward purple; sparkled with malice.

“So,” she said. “So, Larree—you thought you could go from me so easily!” She laughed softly. “In my hidden hand I hold the Keth cone,” she murmured. “Before you can raise the death tube I can smite you—and will. And consider, Larree, if the handmaiden, the choya comes, I can vanish—so”—the mocking head disappeared, burst forth again—“and slay her with the Keth—or bid my people seize her and bear her to the Shining One!”

Tiny beads of sweat stood out on O’Keefe’s forehead, and I knew he was thinking not of himself, but of Lakla.

“What do you want with me, Yolara?” he asked hoarsely.

“Nay,” came the mocking voice. “Not Yolara to you, Larree—call me by those sweet names you taught me—Honey of the Wild Bee-e-s, Net of Hearts—” Again her laughter tinkled.

“What do you want with me?” his voice was strained, the lips rigid.

“Ah, you are afraid, Larree.” There was diabolic jubilation in the words. “What should I want but that you return with me? Why else did I creep through the lair of the dragon worm and pass the path of perils but to ask you that? And the choya guards you not well.” Again she laughed. “We came to the cavern’s end and, there were her Akka. And the Akka can see us—as shadows. But it was my desire to surprise you with my coming, Larree,” the voice was silken. “And I feared that they would hasten to be first to bring you that message to delight in your joy. And so, Larree, I loosed the Keth upon them—and gave them peace and rest within the nothingness. And the portal below was open—almost in welcome!”

Once more the malignant, silver pealing of her laughter.

“What do you want with me?” There was wrath in his eyes, and plainly he strove for control.

“Want!” the silver voice hissed, grew calm. “Do not Siya and Siyana grieve that the rite I pledged them is but half done—and do they not desire it finished? And am I not beautiful? More beautiful than your choya?”

The fiendishness died from the eyes; they grew blue, wondrous; the veil of invisibility slipped down from the neck, the shoulders, half revealing the gleaming breasts. And weird, weird beyond all telling was that exquisite head and bust floating there in air—and beautiful, sinisterly beautiful beyond all telling, too. So even might Lilith, the serpent woman, have shown herself tempting Adam!

“And perhaps,” she said, “perhaps I want you because I hate you; perhaps because I love you—or perhaps for Lugur or perhaps for the Shining One.”

“And if I go with you?” He said it quietly.

“Then shall I spare the handmaiden—and—who knows?—take back my armies that even now gather at the portal and let the Silent Ones rot in peace in their abode—from which they had no power to keep me,” she added venomously.

“You will swear that, Yolara; swear to go without harming the handmaiden?” he asked eagerly. The little devils danced in her eyes. I wrenched my face from the smothering contact.

“Don’t trust her, Larry!” I cried—and again the grip choked me.

“Is that devil in front of you or behind you, old man?” he asked quietly, eyes never leaving the priestess. “If he’s in front I’ll take a chance and wing him—and then you scoot and warn Lakla.”

But I could not answer; nor, remembering Yolara’s threat, would I, had I been able.

“Decide quickly!” There was cold threat in her voice.

The curtains toward which O’Keefe had slowly, step by step, drawn close, opened. They framed the handmaiden! The face of Yolara changed to that gorgon mask that had transformed it once before at sight of the Golden Girl. In her blind rage she forgot to cast the occulting veil. Her hand darted like a snake out of the folds; poising itself with the little silver cone aimed at Lakla.

But before it was wholly poised, before the priestess could loose its force, the handmaiden was upon her. Swift as the lithe white wolf hound she leaped, and one slender hand gripped Yolara’s throat, the other the wrist that lifted the quivering death; white limbs wrapped about the hidden ones, I saw the golden head bend, the hand that held the Keth swept up with a vicious jerk; saw Lakla’s teeth sink into the wrist—the blood spurt forth and heard the priestess shriek. The cone fell, bounded toward me; with all my strength I wrenched free the hand that held my pistol, thrust it against the pressing breast and fired.

The clasp upon me relaxed; a red rain stained me; at my feet a little pillar of blood jetted; a hand thrust itself from nothingness, clawed—and was still.

Now Yolara was down, Lakla meshed in her writhings and fighting like some wild mother whose babes are serpent menaced. Over the two of them, astride, stood the O’Keefe, a pike from one of the high tripods in his hand—thrusting, parrying, beating on every side as with a broadsword against poniard-clutching hands that thrust themselves out of vacancy striving to strike him; stepping here and there, always covering, protecting Lakla with his own body even as a caveman of old who does battle with his mate for their lives.

The sword-club struck—and on the floor lay the half body of a dwarf, writhing with vanishments and reappearings of legs and arms. Beside him was the shattered tripod from which Larry had wrenched his weapon. I flung myself upon it, dashed it down to break loose one of the remaining supports, struck in midfall one of the unseen even as his dagger darted toward me! The seat splintered, leaving in my clutch a golden bar. I jumped to Larry’s side, guarding his back, whirling it like a staff; felt it crunch once—twice—through unseen bone and muscle.

At the door was a booming. Into the chamber rushed a dozen of the frog-men. While some guarded the entrances, others leaped straight to us, and forming a circle about us began to strike with talons and spurs at unseen things that screamed and sought to escape. Now here and there about the blue rugs great stains of blood appeared; heads of dwarfs, torn arms and gashed bodies, half occulted, half revealed. And at last the priestess lay silent, vanquished, white body gleaming with that uncanny—fragmentariness—from her torn robes. Then O’Keefe reached down, drew Lakla from her. Shakily, Yolara rose to her feet. The handmaiden, face still blazing with wrath, stepped before her; with difficulty she steadied her voice.

“Yolara,” she said, “you have defied the Silent Ones, you have desecrated their abode, you came to slay these men who are the guests of the Silent Ones and me, who am their handmaiden—why did you do these things?”

“I came for him!” gasped the priestess; she pointed to O’Keefe.

“Why?” asked Lakla.

“Because he is pledged to me,” replied Yolara, all the devils that were hers in her face. “Because he wooed me! Because he is mine!”

“That is a lie!” The handmaiden’s voice shook with rage. “It is a lie! But here and now he shall choose, Yolara. And if you he choose, you and he shall go forth from here unmolested—for Yolara, it is his happiness that I most desire, and if you are that happiness—you shall go together. And now, Larry, choose!”

Swiftly she stepped beside the priestess; swiftly wrenched the last shreds of the hiding robes from her.

There they stood—Yolara with but the filmiest net of gauze about her wonderful body; gleaming flesh shining through it; serpent woman—-and wonderful, too, beyond the dreams even of Phidias—and hell-fire glowing from the purple eyes.

And Lakla, like a girl of the Vikings, like one of those warrior maids who stood and fought for dun and babes at the side of those old heroes of Larry’s own green isle; translucent ivory lambent through the rents of her torn draperies, and in the wide, golden eyes flaming wrath, indeed—not the diabolic flames of the priestess but the righteous wrath of some soul that looking out of paradise sees vile wrong in the doing.

“Lakla,” the O’Keefe’s voice was subdued, hurt, “there is no choice. I love you and only you—and have from the moment I saw you. It’s not easy—this. God, Goodwin, I feel like an utter cad,” he flashed at me. “There is no choice, Lakla,” he ended, eyes steady upon hers.

The priestess’s face grew deadlier still.

“What will you do with me?” she asked.

“Keep you,” I said, “as hostage.”

O’Keefe was silent; the Golden Girl shook her head.

“Well would I like to,” her face grew dreaming; “but the Silent Ones say—no; they bid me let you go, Yolara—”

“The Silent Ones,” the priestess laughed. “You, Lakla! You fear, perhaps, to let me tarry here too close!”

Storm gathered again in the handmaiden’s eyes; she forced it back.

“No,” she answered, “the Silent Ones so command—and for their own purposes. Yet do I think, Yolara, that you will have little time to feed your wickedness—tell that to Lugur—and to your Shining One!” she added slowly.

Mockery and disbelief rode high in the priestess’s pose. “Am I to return alone—like this?” she asked.

“Nay, Yolara, nay; you shall be accompanied,” said Lakla; “and by those who will guard—and watch—you well. They are here even now.”

The hangings parted, and into the chamber came Olaf and Rador.

The priestess met the fierce hatred and contempt in the eyes of the Norseman—and for the first time lost her bravado.

“Let not him go with me,” she gasped—her eyes searched the floor frantically.

“He goes with you,” said Lakla, and threw about Yolara a swathing that covered the exquisite, alluring body. “And you shall pass through the Portal, not skulk along the path of the worm!”

She bent to Rador, whispered to him; he nodded; she had told him, I supposed, the secret of its opening.

“Come,” he said, and with the ice-eyed giant behind her, Yolara, head bent, passed out of those hangings through which, but a little before, unseen, triumph in her grasp, she had slipped.

Then Lakla came to the unhappy O’Keefe, rested her hands on his shoulders, looked deep into his eyes.

“Did you woo her, even as she said?” she asked.

The Irishman flushed miserably.

“I did not,” he said. “I was pleasant to her, of course, because I thought it would bring me quicker to you, darlin’.”

She looked at him doubtfully; then—

“I think you must have been very—pleasant!” was all she said—and leaning, kissed him forgivingly straight on the lips. An extremely direct maiden was Lakla, with a truly sovereign contempt for anything she might consider non-essentials; and at this moment I decided she was wiser even than I had thought her.

He stumbled, feet vanishing; reached down and picked up something that in the grasping turned his hand to air.

“One of the invisible cloaks,” he said to me. “There must be quite a lot of them about—I guess Yolara brought her full staff of murderers. They’re a bit shopworn, probably—but we’re considerably better off with ’em in our hands than in hers. And they may come in handy—who knows?”

There was a choking rattle at my feet; half the head of a dwarf raised out of vacancy; beat twice upon the floor in death throes; fell back. Lakla shivered; gave a command. The frog-men moved about; peering here and there; lifting unseen folds revealing in stark rigidity torn form after form of the priestess’s men.

Lakla had been right—her Akka were thorough fighters!

She called, and to her came the frog-woman who was her attendant. To her the handmaiden spoke, pointing to the batrachians who stood, paws and forearms melted beneath the robes they had gathered. She took them and passed out—more grotesque than ever, shattering into streaks of vacancies, reappearing with flickers of shining scale and yellow gems as the tattered pennants of invisibility fluttered about her.

The frog-men reached down, swung each a dead dwarf in his arms, and filed, booming triumphantly away.

And then I remembered the cone of the Keth which had slipped from Yolara’s hand; knew it had been that for which her wild eyes searched. But look as closely as we might, search in every nook and corner as we did, we could not find it. Had the dying hand of one of her men clutched it and had it been borne away with them? With the thought Larry and I raced after the scaled warriors, searched every body they carried. It was not there. Perhaps the priestess had found it, retrieved it swiftly without our seeing.

Whatever was true—the cone was gone. And what a weapon that one little holder of the shaking death would have been for us!

CHAPTER XXVIII

In the Lair of the Dweller

It is with marked hesitation that I begin this chapter, because in it I must deal with an experience so contrary to every known law of physics as to seem impossible. Until this time, barring, of course, the mystery of the Dweller, I had encountered nothing that was not susceptible of naturalistic explanation; nothing, in a word, outside the domain of science itself; nothing that I would have felt hesitancy in reciting to my colleagues of the International Association of Science. Amazing, unfamiliar—advanced—as many of the phenomena were, still they lay well within the limits of what we have mapped as the possible; in regions, it is true, still virgin to the mind of man, but toward which that mind is steadily advancing.

But this—well, I confess that I have a theory that is naturalistic; but so abstruse, so difficult to make clear within the short confines of the space I have to give it, so dependent upon conceptions that even the highest-trained scientific brains find difficult to grasp, that I despair.

I can only say that the thing occurred; that it took place in precisely the manner I am about to narrate, and that I experienced it.

Yet, in justice to myself, I must open up some paths of preliminary approach toward the heart of the perplexity. And the first path is the realization that our world whatever it is, is certainly not the world as we see it! Regarding this I shall refer to a discourse upon “Gravitation and the Principle of Relativity,” by the distinguished English physicist, Dr. A. S. Eddington, which I had the pleasure of hearing him deliver before the Royal Institution.9

I realize, of course, that it is not true logic to argue—“The world is not as we think it is—therefore everything we think impossible is possible in it.” Even if it be different, it is governed by law. The truly impossible is that which is outside law, and as nothing can be outside law, the impossible cannot exist.

The crux of the matter then becomes our determination whether what we think is impossible may or may not be possible under laws still beyond our knowledge.

I hope that you will pardon me for this somewhat academic digression, but I felt it was necessary, and it has, at least, put me more at ease. And now to resume.

We had watched, Larry and I, the frog-men throw the bodies of Yolara’s assassins into the crimson waters. As vultures swoop down upon the dying, there came sailing swiftly to where the dead men floated, dozens of the luminous globes. Their slender, varicoloured tentacles whipped out; the giant iridescent bubbles climbed over the cadavers. And as they touched them there was the swift dissolution, the melting away into putrescence of flesh and bone that I had witnessed when the dart touched fruit that time I had saved Rador—and upon this the Medusae gorged; pulsing lambently; their wondrous colours shifting, changing, glowing stronger; elfin moons now indeed, but satellites whose glimmering beauty was fed by death; alembics of enchantment whose glorious hues were sucked from horror.

Sick, I turned away—O’Keefe as pale as I; passed back into the corridor that had opened on the ledge from which we had watched; met Lakla hurrying toward us. Before she could speak there throbbed faintly about us a vast sighing. It grew into a murmur, a whispering, shook us—then passing like a presence, died away in far distance.

“The Portal has opened,” said the handmaiden. A fainter sighing, like an echo of the other, mourned about us. “Yolara is gone,” she said, “the Portal is closed. Now must we hasten—for the Three have commanded that you, Goodwin, and Larry and I tread that strange road of which I have spoken, and which Olaf may not take lest his heart break—and we must return ere he and Rador cross the bridge.”

Her hand sought Larry’s.

“Come!” said Lakla, and we walked on; down and down through hall after hall, flight upon flight of stairways. Deep, deep indeed, we must be beneath the domed castle—Lakla paused before a curved, smooth breast of the crimson stone rounding gently into the passage. She pressed its side; it revolved; we entered; it closed behind us.

The room, the—hollow—in which we stood was faceted like a diamond; and like a cut brilliant its sides glistened—though dully. Its shape was a deep oval, and our path dropped down to a circular polished base, roughly two yards in diameter. Glancing behind me I saw that in the closing of the entrance there had been left no trace of it save the steps that led from where that entrance had been—and as I looked these steps turned, leaving us isolated upon the circle, only the faceted walls about us—and in each of the gleaming faces the three of us reflected—dimly. It was as though we were within a diamond egg whose graven angles had been turned inward.

But the oval was not perfect; at my right a screen cut it—a screen that gleamed with fugitive, fleeting luminescences—stretching from the side of our standing place up to the tip of the chamber; slightly convex and crisscrossed by millions of fine lines like those upon a spectroscopic plate, but with this difference—that within each line I sensed the presence of multitudes of finer lines, dwindling into infinitude, ultramicroscopic, traced by some instrument compared to whose delicacy our finest tool would be as a crowbar to the needle of a micrometer.

A foot or two from it stood something like the standee of a compass, bearing, like it a cradled dial under whose crystal ran concentric rings of prisoned, lambent vapours, faintly blue. From the edge of the dial jutted a little shelf of crystal, a keyboard, in which were cut eight small cups.

Within these cups the handmaiden placed her tapering fingers. She gazed down upon the disk; pressed a digit—and the screen behind us slipped noiselessly into another angle.

“Put your arm around my waist, Larry, darlin’, and stand close,” she murmured. “You, Goodwin, place your arm over my shoulder.”

Wondering, I did as she bade; she pressed other fingers upon the shelf’s indentations—three of the rings of vapour spun into intense light, raced around each other; from the screen behind us grew a radiance that held within itself all spectrums—not only those seen, but those unseen by man’s eyes. It waxed brilliant and ever more brilliant, all suffusing, passing through me as day streams through a window pane!

The enclosing facets burst into a blaze of coruscations, and in each sparkling panel I saw our images, shaken and torn like pennants in a whirlwind. I turned to look—was stopped by the handmaiden’s swift command: “Turn not—on your life!”

The radiance behind me grew; was a rushing tempest of light in which I was but the shadow of a shadow. I heard, but not with my ears—nay with mind itself—a vast roaring; an ordered tumult of sound that came hurling from the outposts of space; approaching—rushing—hurricane out of the heart of the cosmos—closer, closer. It wrapped itself about us with unearthly mighty arms.

And brilliant, ever more brilliant, streamed the radiance through us.

The faceted walls dimmed; in front of me they melted, diaphanously, like a gelatinous wall in a blast of flame; through their vanishing, under the torrent of driving light, the unthinkable, impalpable tornado, I began to move, slowly—then ever more swiftly!

Still the roaring grew; the radiance streamed—ever faster we went. Cutting down through the length, the extension of me, dropped a wall of rock, foreshortened, clenched close; I caught a glimpse of the elfin gardens; they whirled, contracted, into a thin—slice—of colour that was a part of me; another wall of rock shrinking into a thin wedge through which I flew, and that at once took its place within me like a card slipped beside those others!

Flashing around me, and from Lakla and O’Keefe, were nimbuses of flickering scarlet flames. And always the steady hurling forward—appallingly mechanical.

Another barrier of rock—a gleam of white waters incorporating themselves into my—drawing out—even as were the flowered moss lands, the slicing, rocky walls—still another rampart of cliff, dwindling instantly into the vertical plane of those others. Our flight checked; we seemed to hover within, then to sway onward—slowly, cautiously.

A mist danced ahead of me—a mist that grew steadily thinner. We stopped, wavered—the mist cleared.

I looked out into translucent, green distances; shot with swift prismatic gleamings; waves and pulsings of luminosity like midday sun glow through green, tropic waters: dancing, scintillating veils of sparkling atoms that flew, hither and yon, through depths of nebulous splendour!

And Lakla and Larry and I were, I saw, like shadow shapes upon a smooth breast of stone twenty feet or more above the surface of this place—a surface spangled with tiny white blossoms gleaming wanly through creeping veils of phosphorescence like smoke of moon fire. We were shadows—and yet we had substance; we were incorporated with, a part of, the rock—and yet we were living flesh and blood; we stretched—nor will I qualify this—we stretched through mile upon mile of space that weirdly enough gave at one and the same time an absolute certainty of immense horizontal lengths and a vertical concentration that contained nothing of length, nothing of space whatever; we stood there upon the face of the stone—and still we were here within the faceted oval before the screen of radiance!

“Steady!” It was Lakla’s voice—and not beside me there, but at my ear close before the screen. “Steady, Goodwin! And—see!”

The sparkling haze cleared. Enormous reaches stretched before me. Shimmering up through them, and as though growing in some medium thicker than air, was mass upon mass of verdure—fruiting trees and trees laden with pale blossoms, arbours and bowers of pallid blooms, like that sea fruit of oblivion—grapes of Lethe—that cling to the tide-swept walls of the caverns of the Hebrides.

Through them, beyond them, around and about them, drifted and eddied a horde—great as that with which Tamerlane swept down upon Rome, vast as the myriads which Genghis Khan rolled upon the califs—men and women and children—clothed in tatters, half nude and wholly naked; slant-eyed Chinese, sloe-eyed Malays, islanders black and brown and yellow, fierce-faced warriors of the Solomons with grizzled locks fantastically bedizened; Papuans, feline Javans, Dyaks of hill and shore; hook-nosed Phoenicians, Romans, straight-browed Greeks, and Vikings centuries beyond their lives: scores of the black-haired Murians; white faces of our own Westerners—men and women and children—drifting, eddying—each stamped with that mingled horror and rapture, eyes filled with ecstasy and terror entwined, marked by God and devil in embrace—the seal of the Shining One—the dead-alive; the lost ones!

The loot of the Dweller!

Soul-sick, I gazed. They lifted to us visages of dread; they swept down toward us, glaring upward—a bank against which other and still other waves of faces rolled, were checked, paused; until as far as I could see, like billows piled upon an ever-growing barrier, they stretched beneath us—staring—staring!

Now there was a movement—far, far away; a concentrating of the lambency; the dead-alive swayed, oscillated, separated—forming a long lane against whose outskirts they crowded with avid, hungry insistence.

First only a luminous cloud, then a whirling pillar of splendours through the lane came—the Shining One. As it passed, the dead-alive swirled in its wake like leaves behind a whirlwind, eddying, twisting; and as the Dweller raced by them, brushing them with its spirallings and tentacles, they shone forth with unearthly, awesome gleamings—like vessels of alabaster in which wicks flare suddenly. And when it had passed they closed behind it, staring up at us once more.

The Dweller paused beneath us.

Out of the drifting ruck swam the body of Throckmartin! Throckmartin, my friend, to find whom I had gone to the pallid moon door; my friend whose call I had so laggardly followed. On his face was the Dweller’s dreadful stamp; the lips were bloodless; the eyes were wide, lucent, something like pale, phosphorescence gleaming within them—and soulless.

He stared straight up at me, unwinking, unrecognizing. Pressing against his side was a woman, young and gentle, and lovely—lovely even through the mask that lay upon her face. And her wide eyes, like Throckmartin’s, glowed with the lurking, unholy fires. She pressed against him closely; though the hordes kept up the faint churning, these two kept ever together, as though bound by unseen fetters.

And I knew the girl for Edith, his wife, who in vain effort to save him had cast herself into the Dweller’s embrace!

“Throckmartin!” I cried. “Throckmartin! I’m here!”

Did he hear? I know now, of course, he could not.

But then I waited—hope striving to break through the nightmare hands that gripped my heart.

Their wide eyes never left me. There was another movement about them, others pushed past them; they drifted back, swaying, eddying—and still staring were lost in the awful throng.

Vainly I strained my gaze to find them again, to force some sign of recognition, some awakening of the clean life we know. But they were gone. Try as I would I could not see them—nor Stanton and the northern woman named Thora who had been the first of that tragic party to be taken by the Dweller.

“Throckmartin!” I cried again, despairingly. My tears blinded me.

I felt Lakla’s light touch.

“Steady,” she commanded, pitifully. “Steady, Goodwin. You cannot help them—now! Steady and—watch!”

Below us the Shining One had paused—spiralling, swirling, vibrant with all its transcendent, devilish beauty; had paused and was contemplating us. Now I could see clearly that nucleus, that core shot through with flashing veins of radiance, that ever-shifting shape of glory through the shroudings of shimmering, misty plumes, throbbing lacy opalescences, vaporous spirallings of prismatic phantom fires. Steady over it hung the seven little moons of amethyst, of saffron, of emerald and azure and silver, of rose of life and moon white. They poised themselves like a diadem—calm, serene, immobile—and down from them into the Dweller, piercing plumes and swirls and spirals, ran countless tiny strands, radiations, finer than the finest spun thread of spider’s web, gleaming filaments through which seemed to run—power—from the seven globes; like—yes, that was it—miniatures of the seven torrents of moon flame that poured through the septichromatic, high crystals in the Moon Pool’s chamber roof.

Swam out of the coruscating haze the—face!

Both of man and of woman it was—like some ancient, androgynous deity of Etruscan fanes long dust, and yet neither woman nor man; human and unhuman, seraphic and sinister, benign and malefic—and still no more of these four than is flame, which is beautiful whether it warms or devours, or wind whether it feathers the trees or shatters them, or the wave which is wondrous whether it caresses or kills.

Subtly, undefinably it was of our world and of one not ours. Its lineaments flowed from another sphere, took fleeting familiar form—and as swiftly withdrew whence they had come; something amorphous, unearthly—as of unknown unheeding, unseen gods rushing through the depths of star-hung space; and still of our own earth, with the very soul of earth peering out from it, caught within it—and in some—unholy—way debased.

It had eyes—eyes that were now only shadows darkening within its luminosity like veils falling, and falling, opening windows into the unknowable; deepening into softly glowing blue pools, blue as the Moon Pool itself; then flashing out, and this only when the—face—bore its most human resemblance, into twin stars large almost as the crown of little moons; and with that same baffling suggestion of peep-holes into a world untrodden, alien, perilous to man!

“Steady!” came Lakla’s voice, her body leaned against mine.

I gripped myself, my brain steadied, I looked again. And I saw that of body, at least body as we know it, the Shining One had none—nothing but the throbbing, pulsing core streaked with lightning veins of rainbows; and around this, never still, sheathing it, the swirling, glorious veilings of its hell and heaven born radiance.

So the Dweller stood—and gazed.

Then up toward us swept a reaching, questing spiral!

Under my hand Lakla’s shoulder quivered; dead-alive and their master vanished—I danced, flickered, within the rock; felt a swift sense of shrinking, of withdrawal; slice upon slice the carded walls of stone, of silvery waters, of elfin gardens slipped from me as cards are withdrawn from a pack, one by one—slipped, wheeled, flattened, and lengthened out as I passed through them and they passed from me.

Gasping, shaken, weak, I stood within the faceted oval chamber; arm still about the handmaiden’s white shoulder; Larry’s hand still clutching her girdle.

The roaring, impalpable gale from the cosmos was retreating to the outposts of space—was still; the intense, streaming, flooding radiance lessened—died.

“Now have you beheld,” said Lakla, “and well you trod the road. And now shall you hear, even as the Silent Ones have commanded, what the Shining One is—and how it came to be.”

The steps flashed back; the doorway into the chamber opened.

Larry as silent as I—we followed her through it.

9 Reprinted in full in Nature, in which those sufficiently interested may peruse it.—W. T. G.

9 Reprinted in full in Nature, in which those sufficiently interested may peruse it.—W. T. G.

CHAPTER XXIX

The Shaping of the Shining One

We reached what I knew to be Lakla’s own boudoir, if I may so call it. Smaller than any of the other chambers of the domed castle in which we had been, its intimacy was revealed not only by its faint fragrance but by its high mirrors of polished silver and various oddly wrought articles of the feminine toilet that lay here and there; things I afterward knew to be the work of the artisans of the Akka—and no mean metal workers were they. One of the window slits dropped almost to the floor, and at its base was a wide, comfortably cushioned seat commanding a view of the bridge and of the cavern ledge. To this the handmaiden beckoned us; sank upon it, drew Larry down beside her and motioned me to sit close to him.

“Now this,” she said, “is what the Silent Ones have commanded me to tell you two: To you Larry, that knowing you may weigh all things in your mind and answer as your spirit bids you a question that the Three will ask—and what that is I know not,” she murmured, “and I, they say, must answer, too—and it—frightens me!”

The great golden eyes widened; darkened with dread; she sighed, shook her head impatiently.

“Not like us, and never like us,” she spoke low, wonderingly, “the Silent Ones say were they. Nor were those from which they sprang like those from which we have come. Ancient, ancient beyond thought are the Taithu, the race of the Silent Ones. Far, far below this place where now we sit, close to earth heart itself were they born; and there they dwelt for time upon time, laya upon laya upon laya—with others, not like them, some of which have vanished time upon time agone, others that still dwell—below—in their—cradle.

“It is hard”—she hesitated—“hard to tell this—that slips through my mind—because I know so little that even as the Three told it to me it passed from me for lack of place to stand upon,” she went on, quaintly. “Something there was of time when earth and sun were but cold mists in the—the heavens—something of these mists drawing together, whirling, whirling, faster and faster—drawing as they whirled more and more of the mists—growing larger, growing warm—forming at last into the globes they are, with others spinning around the sun—something of regions within this globe where vast fire was prisoned and bursting forth tore and rent the young orb—of one such bursting forth that sent what you call moon flying out to company us and left behind those spaces whence we now dwell—and of—of life particles that here and there below grew into the race of the Silent Ones, and those others—but not the Akka which, like you, they say came from above—and all this I do not understand—do you, Goodwin?” she appealed to me.

I nodded—for what she had related so fragmentarily was in reality an excellent approach to the Chamberlain-Moulton theory of a coalescing nebula contracting into the sun and its planets.

Astonishing was the recognition of this theory. Even more so was the reference to the life particles, the idea of Arrhenius, the great Swede, of life starting on earth through the dropping of minute, life spores, propelled through space by the driving power of light and, encountering favourable environment here, developing through the vast ages into man and every other living thing we know.10

Nor was it incredible that in the ancient nebula that was the matrix of our solar system similar, or rather dissimilar, particles in all but the subtle essence we call life, might have become entangled and, resisting every cataclysm as they had resisted the absolute zero of outer space, found in these caverned spaces their proper environment to develop into the race of the Silent Ones and—only they could tell what else!

“They say,” the handmaiden’s voice was surer, “they say that in their—cradle—near earth’s heart they grew; grew untroubled by the turmoil and disorder which flayed the surface of this globe. And they say it was a place of light and that strength came to them from earth heart—strength greater than you and those from which you sprang ever derived from sun.

“At last, ancient, ancient beyond all thought, they say again, was this time—they began to know, to—to—realize—themselves. And wisdom came ever more swiftly. Up from their cradle, because they did not wish to dwell longer with those—others—they came and found this place.

“When all the face of earth was covered with waters in which lived only tiny, hungry things that knew naught save hunger and its satisfaction, they had attained wisdom that enabled them to make paths such as we have just travelled and to look out upon those waters! And laya upon laya thereafter, time upon time, they went upon the paths and watched the flood recede; saw great bare flats of steaming ooze appear on which crawled and splashed larger things which had grown from the tiny hungry ones; watched the flats rise higher and higher and green life begin to clothe them; saw mountains uplift and vanish.

“Ever the green life waxed and the things which crept and crawled grew greater and took ever different forms; until at last came a time when the steaming mists lightened and the things which had begun as little more than tiny hungry mouths were huge and monstrous, so huge that the tallest of my Akka would not have reached the knee of the smallest of them.

“But in none of these, in none, was there—realization—of themselves, say the Three; naught but hunger driving, always driving them to still its crying.

“So for time upon time the race of the Silent Ones took the paths no more, placing aside the half-thought that they had of making their way to earth face even as they had made their way from beside earth heart. They turned wholly to the seeking of wisdom—and after other time on time they attained that which killed even the faintest shadow of the half-thought. For they crept far within the mysteries of life and death, they mastered the illusion of space, they lifted the veils of creation and of its twin destruction, and they stripped the covering from the flaming jewel of truth—but when they had crept within those mysteries they bid me tell you, Goodwin, they found ever other mysteries veiling the way; and after they had uncovered the jewel of truth they found it to be a gem of infinite facets and therefore not wholly to be read before eternity’s unthinkable end!

“And for this they were glad—because now throughout eternity might they and theirs pursue knowledge over ways illimitable.

“They conquered light—light that sprang at their bidding from the nothingness that gives birth to all things and in which lie all things that are, have been and shall be; light that streamed through their bodies cleansing them of all dross; light that was food and drink; light that carried their vision afar or bore to them images out of space opening many windows through which they gazed down upon life on thousands upon thousands of the rushing worlds; light that was the flame of life itself and in which they bathed, ever renewing their own. They set radiant lamps within the stones, and of black light they wove the sheltering shadows and the shadows that slay.

“Arose from this people those Three—the Silent Ones. They led them all in wisdom so that in the Three grew—pride. And the Three built them this place in which we sit and set the Portal in its place and withdrew from their kind to go alone into the mysteries and to map alone the facets of Truth Jewel.

“Then there came the ancestors of the—Akka; not as they are now, and glowing but faintly within them the spark of—self-realization. And the Taithu seeing this spark did not slay them. But they took the ancient, long untrodden paths and looked forth once more upon earth face. Now on the land were vast forests and a chaos of green life. On the shores things scaled and fanged, fought and devoured each other, and in the green life moved bodies great and small that slew and ran from those that would slay.

“They searched for the passage through which the Akka had come and closed it. Then the Three took them and brought them here; and taught them and blew upon the spark until it burned ever stronger and in time they became much as they are now—my Akka.

“The Three took counsel after this and said—‘We have strengthened life in these until it has become articulate; shall we not create life?’” Again she hesitated, her eyes rapt, dreaming. “The Three are speaking,” she murmured. “They have my tongue—”

And certainly, with an ease and rapidity as though she were but a voice through which minds far more facile, more powerful poured their thoughts, she spoke.

“Yea,” the golden voice was vibrant. “We said that what we would create should be of the spirit of life itself, speaking to us with the tongues of the far-flung stars, of the winds, of the waters, and of all upon and within these. Upon that universal matrix of matter, that mother of all things that you name the ether, we laboured. Think not that her wondrous fertility is limited by what ye see on earth or what has been on earth from its beginning. Infinite, infinite are the forms the mother bears and countless are the energies that are part of her.

“By our wisdom we had fashioned many windows out of our abode and through them we stared into the faces of myriads of worlds, and upon them all were the children of ether even as the worlds themselves were her children.

“Watching we learned, and learning we formed that ye term the Dweller, which those without name—the Shining One. Within the Universal Mother we shaped it, to be a voice to tell us her secrets, a lamp to go before us lighting the mysteries. Out of the ether we fashioned it, giving it the soul of light that still ye know not nor perhaps ever may know, and with the essence of life that ye saw blossoming deep in the abyss and that is the pulse of earth heart we filled it. And we wrought with pain and with love, with yearning and with scorching pride and from our travail came the Shining One—our child!

“There is an energy beyond and above ether, a purposeful, sentient force that laps like an ocean the furthest-flung star, that transfuses all that ether bears, that sees and speaks and feels in us and in you, that is incorporate in beast and bird and reptile, in tree and grass and all living things, that sleeps in rock and stone, that finds sparkling tongue in jewel and star and in all dwellers within the firmament. And this ye call consciousness!

“We crowned the Shining One with the seven orbs of light which are the channels between it and the sentience we sought to make articulate, the portals through which flow its currents and so flowing, become choate, vocal, self-realizant within our child.

“But as we shaped, there passed some of the essence of our pride; in giving will we had given power, perforce, to exercise that will for good or for evil, to speak or to be silent, to tell us what we wished of that which poured into it through the seven orbs or to withhold that knowledge itself; and in forging it from the immortal energies we had endowed it with their indifference; open to all consciousness it held within it the pole of utter joy and the pole of utter woe with all the arc that lies between; all the ecstasies of the countless worlds and suns and all their sorrows; all that ye symbolize as gods and all ye symbolize as devils—not negativing each other, for there is no such thing as negation, but holding them together, balancing them, encompassing them, pole upon pole!”

So this was the explanation of the entwined emotions of joy and terror that had changed so appallingly Throckmartin’s face and the faces of all the Dweller’s slaves!

The handmaiden’s eyes grew bright, alert, again; the brooding passed from her face; the golden voice that had been so deep found its own familiar pitch.

“I listened while the Three spoke to you,” she said. “Now the shaping of the Shining One had been a long, long travail and time had flown over the outer world laya upon laya. For a space the Shining One was content to dwell here; to be fed with the foods of light: to open the eyes of the Three to mystery upon mystery and to read for them facet after facet of the gem of truth. Yet as the tides of consciousness flowed through it they left behind shadowings and echoes of their burdens; and the Shining One grew stronger, always stronger of itself within itself. Its will strengthened and now not always was it the will of the Three; and the pride that was woven in the making of it waxed, while the love for them that its creators had set within it waned.

“Not ignorant were the Taithu of the work of the Three. First there were a few, then more and more who coveted the Shining One and who would have had the Three share with them the knowledge it drew in for them. But the Silent Ones in their pride, would not.

“There came a time when its will was now all its own, and it rebelled, turning its gaze to the wider spaces beyond the Portal, offering itself to the many there who would serve it; tiring of the Three, their control and their abode.

“Now the Shining One has its limitations, even as we. Over water it can pass, through air and through fire; but pass it cannot, through rock or metal. So it sent a message—how I know not—to the Taithu who desired it, whispering to them the secret of the Portal. And when the time was ripe they opened the Portal and the Shining One passed through it to them; nor would it return to the Three though they commanded, and when they would have forced it they found that it had hived and hidden a knowledge that they could not overcome.

“Yet by their arts the Three could have shattered the seven shining orbs; but they would not because—they loved, it!

“Those to whom it had gone built for it that place I have shown you, and they bowed to it and drew wisdom from it. And ever they turned more and more from the ways in which the Taithu had walked—for it seemed that which came to the Shining One through the seven orbs had less and less of good and more and more of the power you call evil. Knowledge it gave and understanding, yes; but not that which, clear and serene, lights the paths of right wisdom; rather were they flares pointing the dark roads that lead to—to the ultimate evil!

“Not all of the race of the Three followed the counsel of the Shining One. There were many, many, who would have none of it nor of its power. So were the Taithu split; and to this place where there had been none, came hatred, fear and suspicion. Those who pursued the ancient ways went to the Three and pleaded with them to destroy their work—and they would not, for still they loved it.

“Stronger grew the Dweller and less and less did it lay before its worshippers—for now so they had become—the fruits of its knowledge; and it grew—restless—turning its gaze upon earth face even as it had turned it from the Three. It whispered to the Taithu to take again the paths and look out upon the world. Lo! above them was a great fertile land on which dwelt an unfamiliar race, skilled in arts, seeking and finding wisdom—mankind! Mighty builders were they; vast were their cities and huge their temples of stone.

“They called their lands Muria and they worshipped a god Thanaroa whom they imagined to be the maker of all things, dwelling far away. They worshipped as closer gods, not indifferent but to be prayed to and to be propitiated, the moon and the sun. Two kings they had, each with his council and his court. One was high priest to the moon and the other high priest to the sun.

“The mass of this people were black-haired, but the sun king and his nobles were ruddy with hair like mine; and the moon king and his followers were like Yolara—or Lugur. And this, the Three say, Goodwin, came about because for time upon time the law had been that whenever a ruddy-haired or ashen-tressed child was born of the black-haired it became dedicated at once to either sun god or moon god, later wedding and bearing children only to their own kind. Until at last from the black-haired came no more of the light-locked ones, but the ruddy ones, being stronger, still arose from them.”

10 Professor Svante August Arrhenius, in his Worlds in the Making—the conception that life is universally diffused, constantly emitted from all habitable worlds in the form of spores which traverse space for years and ages, the majority being ultimately destroyed by the heat of some blazing star, but some few finding a resting-place on globes which have reached the habitable stage. —W.T.G.

10 Professor Svante August Arrhenius, in his Worlds in the Making—the conception that life is universally diffused, constantly emitted from all habitable worlds in the form of spores which traverse space for years and ages, the majority being ultimately destroyed by the heat of some blazing star, but some few finding a resting-place on globes which have reached the habitable stage. —W.T.G.

CHAPTER XXX

The Building of the Moon Pool

She paused, running her long fingers through her own bronze-flecked ringlets. Selective breeding this, with a vengeance, I thought; an ancient experiment in heredity which of course would in time result in the stamping out of the tendency to depart from type that lies in all organisms; resulting, obviously, at last, in three fixed forms of black-haired, ruddy-haired, and silver-haired—but this, with a shock of realization it came to me, was also an accurate description of the dark-polled ladala, their fair-haired rulers and of the golden-brown tressed Lakla!

How—questions began to stream through my mind; silenced by the handmaiden’s voice.

“Above, far, far above the abode of the Shining One,” she said, “was their greatest temple, holding the shrines both of sun and moon. All about it were other temples hidden behind mighty walls, each enclosing its own space and squared and ruled and standing within a shallow lake; the sacred city, the city of the gods of this land—”

“It is the Nan-Matal that she is describing,” I thought.

“Out upon all this looked the Taithu who were now but the servants of the Shining One as it had been the messenger of the Three,” she went on. “When they returned the Shining One spoke to them, promising them dominion over all that they had seen, yea, under it dominion of all earth itself and later perhaps of other earths!

“In the Shining One had grown craft, cunning; knowledge to gain that which it desired. Therefore it told its Taithu—and mayhap told them truth—that not yet was it time for them to go forth; that slowly must they pass into that outer world, for they had sprung from heart of earth and even it lacked power to swirl unaided into and through the above. Then it counselled them, instructing them what to do. They hollowed the chamber wherein first I saw you, cutting their way to it that path down which from it you sped.

“It revealed to them that the force that is within moon flame is kin to the force that is within it, for the chamber of its birth was the chamber too of moon birth and into it went the subtle essence and powers that flow in that earth child: and it taught them how to make that which fills what you call the Moon Pool whose opening is close behind its Veil hanging upon the gleaming cliffs.

“When this was done it taught them how to make and how to place the seven lights through which moon flame streams into Moon Pool—the seven lights that are kin to its own seven orbs even as its fires are kin to moon fires—and which would open for it a path that it could tread. And all this the Taithu did, working so secretly that neither those of their race whose faces were set against the Shining One nor the busy men above know aught of it.

“When it was done they moved up the path, clustering within the Moon Pool Chamber. Moon flame streamed through the seven globes, poured down upon the pool; they saw mists arise, embrace, and become one with the moon flame—and then up through Moon Pool, shaping itself within the mists of light, whirling, radiant—the Shining One!

“Almost free, almost loosed upon the world it coveted!

“Again it counselled them, and they pierced the passage whose portal you found first; set the fires within its stones, and revealing themselves to the moon king and his priests spake to them even as the Shining One had instructed.

“Now was the moon king filled with fear when he looked upon the Taithu, shrouded with protecting mists of light in Moon Pool Chamber, and heard their words. Yet, being crafty, he thought of the power that would be his if he heeded and how quickly the strength of the sun king would dwindle. So he and his made a pact with the Shining One’s messengers.

“When next the moon was round and poured its flames down upon Moon Pool, the Taithu gathered there again, watched the child of the Three take shape within the pillars, speed away—and out! They heard a mighty shouting, a tumult of terror, of awe and of worship; a silence; a vast sighing—and they waited, wrapped in their mists of light, for they feared to follow nor were they near the paths that would have enabled them to look without.

“Another tumult—and back came the Shining One, murmuring with joy, pulsing, triumphant, and clasped within its vapours a man and woman, ruddy-haired, golden-eyed, in whose faces rapture and horror lay side by side—gloriously, hideously. And still holding them it danced above the Moon Pool and—sank!

“Now must I be brief. Lat after lat the Shining One went forth, returning with its sacrifices. And stronger after each it grew—and gayer and more cruel. Ever when it passed with its prey toward the pool, the Taithu who watched felt a swift, strong intoxication, a drunkenness of spirit, streaming from it to them. And the Shining One forgot what it had promised them of dominion—and in this new evil delight they too forgot.

“The outer land was torn with hatred and open strife. The moon king and his kind, through the guidance of the evil Taithu and the favour of the Shining One, had become powerful and the sun king and his were darkened. And the moon priests preached that the child of the Three was the moon god itself come to dwell with them.

“Now vast tides arose and when they withdrew they took with them great portions of this country. And the land itself began to sink. Then said the moon king that the moon had called to ocean to destroy because wroth that another than he was worshipped. The people believed and there was slaughter. When it was over there was no more a sun king nor any of the ruddy-haired folk; slain were they, slain down to the babe at breast.

“But still the tides swept higher; still dwindled the land!

“As it shrank multitudes of the fleeing people were led through Moon Pool Chamber and carried here. They were what now are called the ladala, and they were given place and set to work; and they thrived. Came many of the fair-haired; and they were given dwellings. They sat beside the evil Taithu; they became drunk even as they with the dancing of the Shining One; they learned—not all; only a little part but little enough—of their arts. And ever the Shining One danced more gaily out there within the black amphitheatre; grew ever stronger—and ever the hordes of its slaves behind the Veil increased.

“Nor did the Taithu who clung to the old ways check this—they could not. By the sinking of the land above, their own spaces were imperilled. All of their strength and all of their wisdom it took to keep this land from perishing; nor had they help from those others mad for the poison of the Shining One; and they had no time to deal with them nor the earth race with whom they had foregathered.

“At last came a slow, vast flood. It rolled even to the bases of the walled islets of the city of the gods—and within these now were all that were left of my people on earth face.

“I am of those people,” she paused, looking at me proudly, “one of the daughters of the sun king whose seed is still alive in the ladala!”

As Larry opened his mouth to speak she waved a silencing hand.

“This tide did not recede,” she went on. “And after a time the remnant, the moon king leading them, joined those who had already fled below. The rocks became still, the quakings ceased, and now those Ancient Ones who had been labouring could take breath. And anger grew within them as they looked upon the work of their evil kin. Again they sought the Three—and the Three now knew what they had done and their pride was humbled. They would not slay the Shining One themselves, for still they loved it; but they instructed these others how to undo their work; how also they might destroy the evil Taithu were it necessary.

“Armed with the wisdom of the Three they went forth—but now the Shining One was strong indeed. They could not slay it!

“Nay, it knew and was prepared; they could not even pass beyond its Veil nor seal its abode. Ah, strong, strong, mighty of will, full of craft and cunning had the Shining One become. So they turned upon their kind who had gone astray and made them perish, to the last. The Shining One came not to the aid of its servants—though they called; for within its will was the thought that they were of no further use to it; that it would rest awhile and dance with them—who had so little of the power and wisdom of its Taithu and therefore no reins upon it. And while this was happening black-haired and fair-haired ran and hid and were but shaking vessels of terror.

“The Ancient Ones took counsel. This was their decision; that they would go from the gardens before the Silver Waters—leaving, since they could not kill it, the Shining One with its worshippers. They sealed the mouth of the passage that leads to the Moon Pool Chamber and they changed the face of the cliff so that none might tell where it had been. But the passage itself they left open—having foreknowledge I think, of a thing that was to come to pass in the far future—perhaps it was your journey here, my Larry and Goodwin—verily I think so. And they destroyed all the ways save that which we three trod to the Dweller’s abode.

“For the last time they went to the Three—to pass sentence upon them. This was the doom—that here they should remain, alone, among the Akka, served by them, until that time dawned when they would have will to destroy the evil they had created—and even now—loved; nor might they seek death, nor follow their judges until this had come to pass. This was the doom they put upon the Three for the wickedness that had sprung from their pride, and they strengthened it with their arts that it might not be broken.

“Then they passed—to a far land they had chosen where the Shining One could not go, beyond the Black Precipices of Doul, a green land—”

“Ireland!” interrupted Larry, with conviction, “I knew it.”

“Since then time upon time had passed,” she went on, unheeding. “The people called this place Muria after their sunken land and soon they forgot where had been the passage the Taithu had sealed. The moon king became the Voice of the Dweller and always with the Voice is a woman of the moon king’s kin who is its priestess.

“And many have been the journeys upward of the Shining One, through the Moon Pool—returning with still others in its coils.

“And now again has it grown restless, longing for the wider spaces. It has spoken to Yolara and to Lugur even as it did to the dead Taithu, promising them dominion. And it has grown stronger, drawing to itself power to go far on the moon stream where it will. Thus was it able to seize your friend, Goodwin, and Olaf’s wife and babe—and many more. Yolara and Lugur plan to open way to earth face; to depart with their court and under the Shining One grasp the world!

“And this is the tale the Silent Ones bade me tell you—and it is done.”

Breathlessly I had listened to the stupendous epic of a long-lost world. Now I found speech to voice the question ever with me, the thing that lay as close to my heart as did the welfare of Larry, indeed the whole object of my quest—the fate of Throckmartin and those who had passed with him into the Dweller’s lair; yes, and of Olaf’s wife, too.

“Lakla,” I said, “the friend who drew me here and those he loved who went before him—can we not save them?”

“The Three say no, Goodwin.” There was again in her eyes the pity with which she had looked upon Olaf. “The Shining One—feeds—upon the flame of life itself, setting in its place its own fires and its own will. Its slaves are only shells through which it gleams. Death, say the Three, is the best that can come to them; yet will that be a boon great indeed.”

“But they have souls, mavourneen,” Larry said to her. “And they’re alive still—in a way. Anyhow, their souls have not gone from them.”

I caught a hope from his words—sceptic though I am—holding that the existence of soul has never been proved by dependable laboratory methods—for they recalled to me that when I had seen Throckmartin, Edith had been close beside him.

“It was days after his wife was taken, that the Dweller seized Throckmartin,” I cried. “How, if their wills, their life, were indeed gone, how did they find each other mid all that horde? How did they come together in the Dweller’s lair?”

“I do not know,” she answered, slowly. “You say they loved—and it is true that love is stronger even than death!”

“One thing I don’t understand”—this was Larry again—“is why a girl like you keeps coming out of the black-haired crowd; so frequently and one might say, so regularly, Lakla. Aren’t there ever any red-headed boys—and if they are what becomes of them?”

“That, Larry, I cannot answer,” she said, very frankly. “There was a pact of some kind; how made or by whom I know not. But for long the Murians feared the return of the Taithu and greatly they feared the Three. Even the Shining One feared those who had created it—for a time; and not even now is it eager to face them—that I know. Nor are Yolara and Lugur so sure. It may be that the Three commanded it: but how or why I know not. I only know that it is true—for here am I and from where else would I have come?”

“From Ireland,” said Larry O’Keefe, promptly. “And that’s where you’re going. For ’tis no place for a girl like you to have been brought up—Lakla; what with people like frogs, and a half-god three quarters devil, and red oceans, an’ the only Irish things yourself and the Silent Ones up there, bless their hearts. It’s no place for ye, and by the soul of St. Patrick, it’s out of it soon ye’ll be gettin’!”

Larry! Larry! If it had but been true—and I could see Lakla and you beside me now!

CHAPTER XXXI

Larry and the Frog-Men

Long had been her tale in the telling, and too long, perhaps, have I been in the repeating—but not every day are the mists rolled away to reveal undreamed secrets of earth-youth. And I have set it down here, adding nothing, taking nothing from it; translating liberally, it is true, but constantly striving, while putting it into idea-forms and phraseology to be readily understood by my readers, to keep accurately to the spirit. And this, I must repeat, I have done throughout my narrative, wherever it has been necessary to record conversation with the Murians.

Rising, I found I was painfully stiff—as muscle-bound as though I had actually trudged many miles. Larry, imitating me, gave an involuntary groan.

“Faith, mavourneen,” he said to Lakla, relapsing unconsciously into English, “your roads would never wear out shoe-leather, but they’ve got their kick, just the same!”

She understood our plight, if not his words; gave a soft little cry of mingled pity and self-reproach; forced us back upon the cushions.

“Oh, but I’m sorry!” mourned Lakla, leaning over us. “I had forgotten—for those new to it the way is a weary one, indeed—”

She ran to the doorway, whistled a clear high note down the passage. Through the hangings came two of the frog-men. She spoke to them rapidly. They crouched toward us, what certainly was meant for an amiable grin wrinkling the grotesque muzzles, baring the glistening rows of needle-teeth. And while I watched them with the fascination that they never lost for me, the monsters calmly swung one arm around our knees, lifted us up like babies—and as calmly started to walk away with us!

“Put me down! Put me down, I say!” The O’Keefe’s voice was both outraged and angry; squinting around I saw him struggling violently to get to his feet. The Akka only held him tighter, booming comfortingly, peering down into his flushed face inquiringly.

“But, Larry—darlin’!”—Lakla’s tones were—well, maternally surprised—“you’re stiff and sore, and Kra can carry you quite easily.”

“I won’t be carried!” sputtered the O’Keefe. “Damn it, Goodwin, there are such things as the unities even here, an’ for a lieutenant of the Royal Air Force to be picked up an’ carted around like a—like a bundle of rags—it’s not discipline! Put me down, ye omadhaun, or I’ll poke ye in the snout!” he shouted to his bearer—who only boomed gently, and stared at the handmaiden, plainly for further instructions.

“But, Larry—dear!”—Lakla was plainly distressed—“it will hurt you to walk; and I don’t want you to hurt, Larry—darlin’!”

“Holy shade of St. Patrick!” moaned Larry; again he made a mighty effort to tear himself from the frog-man’s grip; gave up with a groan. “Listen, alanna!” he said plaintively. “When we get to Ireland, you and I, we won’t have anybody to pick us up and carry us about every time we get a bit tired. And it’s getting me in bad habits you are!”

“Oh, yes, we will, Larry!” cried the handmaiden, “because many, oh, many, of my Akka will go with us!”

“Will you tell this—boob!—to put me down!” gritted the now thoroughly aroused O’Keefe. I couldn’t help laughing; he glared at me.

“Bo-oo-ob?” exclaimed Lakla.

“Yes, boo-oo-ob!” said O’Keefe, “an’ I have no desire to explain the word in my present position, light of my soul!”

The handmaiden sighed, plainly dejected. But she spoke again to the Akka, who gently lowered the O’Keefe to the floor.

“I don’t understand,” she said hopelessly, “if you want to walk, why, of course, you shall, Larry.” She turned to me.

“Do you?” she asked.

“I do not,” I said firmly.

“Well, then,” murmured Lakla, “go you, Larry and Goodwin, with Kra and Gulk, and let them minister to you. After, sleep a little—for not soon will Rador and Olaf return. And let me feel your lips before you go, Larry—darlin’!” She covered his eyes caressingly with her soft little palms; pushed him away.

“Now go,” said Lakla, “and rest!”

Unashamed I lay back against the horny chest of Gulk; and with a smile noticed that Larry, even if he had rebelled at being carried, did not disdain the support of Kra’s shining, black-scaled arm which, slipping around his waist, half-lifted him along.

They parted a hanging and dropped us softly down beside a little pool, sparkling with the clear water that had heretofore been brought us in the wide basins. Then they began to undress us. And at this point the O’Keefe gave up.

“Whatever they’re going to do we can’t stop ’em, Doc!” he moaned. “Anyway, I feel as though I’ve been pulled through a knot-hole, and I don’t care—I don’t care—as the song says.”

When we were stripped we were lowered gently into the water. But not long did the Akka let us splash about the shallow basin. They lifted us out, and from jars began deftly to anoint and rub us with aromatic unguents.

I think that in all the medley of grotesque, of tragic, of baffling, strange and perilous experiences in that underground world none was more bizarre than this—valeting. I began to laugh, Larry joined me, and then Kra and Gulk joined in our merriment with deep batrachian cachinnations and gruntings. Then, having finished apparelling us and still chuckling, the two touched our arms and led us out, into a room whose circular sides were ringed with soft divans. Still smiling, I sank at once into sleep.

How long I slumbered I do not know. A low and thunderous booming coming through the deep window slit, reverberated through the room and awakened me. Larry yawned; arose briskly.

“Sounds as though the bass drums of every jazz band in New York were serenading us!” he observed. Simultaneously we sprang to the window; peered through.

We were a little above the level of the bridge, and its full length was plain before us. Thousands upon thousands of the Akka were crowding upon it, and far away other hordes filled like a glittering thicket both sides of the cavern ledge’s crescent strand. On black scale and orange scale the crimson light fell, picking them off in little flickering points.

Upon the platform from which sprang the smaller span over the abyss were Lakla, Olaf, and Rador; the handmaiden clearly acting as interpreter between them and the giant she had called Nak, the Frog King.

“Come on!” shouted Larry.

Out of the open portal we ran; over the World Heart Bridge—and straight into the group.

“Oh!” cried Lakla, “I didn’t want you to wake up so soon, Larry—darlin’!”

“See here, mavourneen!” Indignation thrilled in the Irishman’s voice. “I’m not going to be done up with baby-ribbons and laid away in a cradle for safe-keeping while a fight is on; don’t think it. Why didn’t you call me?”

“You needed rest!” There was indomitable determination in the handmaiden’s tones, the eternal maternal shining defiant from her eyes. “You were tired and you hurt! You shouldn’t have got up!”

“Needed the rest!” groaned Larry. “Look here, Lakla, what do you think I am?”

“You’re all I have,” said that maiden firmly, “and I’m going to take care of you, Larry—darlin’! Don’t you ever think anything else.”

“Well, pulse of my heart, considering my delicate health and general fragility, would it hurt me, do you think, to be told what’s going on?” he asked.

“Not at all, Larry!” answered the handmaiden serenely. “Yolara went through the Portal. She was very, very angry—”

“She was all the devil’s woman that she is!” rumbled Olaf.

“Rador met the messenger,” went on the Golden Girl calmly. “The ladala are ready to rise when Lugur and Yolara lead their hosts against us. They will strike at those left behind. And in the meantime we shall have disposed my Akka to meet Yolara’s men. And on that disposal we must all take counsel, you, Larry, and Rador, Olaf and Goodwin and Nak, the ruler of the Akka.”

“Did the messenger give any idea when Yolara expects to make her little call?” asked Larry.

“Yes,” she answered. “They prepare, and we may expect them in—” She gave the equivalent of about thirty-six hours of our time.

“But, Lakla,” I said, the doubt that I had long been holding finding voice, “should the Shining One come—with its slaves—are the Three strong enough to cope with it?”

There was troubled doubt in her own eyes.

“I do not know,” she said at last, frankly. “You have heard their story. What they promise is that they will help. I do not know—any more than do you, Goodwin!”

I looked up at the dome beneath which I knew the dread Trinity stared forth; even down upon us. And despite the awe, the assurance, I had felt when I stood before them I, too, doubted.

“Well,” said Larry, “you and I, uncle,” he turned to Rador, “and Olaf here had better decide just what part of the battle we’ll lead—”

“Lead!” the handmaiden was appalled. “You lead, Larry? Why you are to stay with Goodwin and with me—up there, there we can watch.”

“Heart’s beloved,” O’Keefe was stern indeed. “A thousand times I’ve looked Death straight in the face, peered into his eyes. Yes, and with ten thousand feet of space under me an’ bursting shells tickling the ribs of the boat I was in. An’ d’ye think I’ll sit now on the grandstand an’ watch while a game like this is being pulled? Ye don’t know your future husband, soul of my delight!”

And so we started toward the golden opening, squads of the frog-men following us soldierly and disappearing about the huge structure. Nor did we stop until we came to the handmaiden’s boudoir. There we seated ourselves.

“Now,” said Larry, “two things I want to know. First—how many can Yolara muster against us; second, how many of these Akka have we to meet them?”

Rador gave our equivalent for eighty thousand men as the force Yolara could muster without stripping her city. Against this force, it appeared, we could count, roughly, upon two hundred thousand of the Akka.

“And they’re some fighters!” exclaimed Larry. “Hell, with odds like that what’re you worrying about? It’s over before it’s begun.”

“But, Larree,” objected Rador to this, “you forget that the nobles will have the Keth—and other things; also that the soldiers have fought against the Akka before and will be shielded very well from their spears and clubs—and that their blades and javelins can bite through the scales of Nak’s warriors. They have many things—”

“Uncle,” interjected O’Keefe, “one thing they have is your nerve. Why, we’re more than two to one. And take it from me—”

Without warning dropped the tragedy!

CHAPTER XXXII

“Your Love; Your Lives; Your Souls!”

Lakla had taken no part in the talk since we had reached her bower. She had seated herself close to the O’Keefe. Glancing at her I had seen steal over her face that brooding, listening look that was hers whenever in that mysterious communion with the Three. It vanished; swiftly she arose; interrupted the Irishman without ceremony.

“Larry darlin’,” said the handmaiden. “The Silent Ones summon us!”

“When do we go?” I asked; Larry’s face grew bright with interest.

“The time is now,” she said—and hesitated. “Larry dear, put your arms about me,” she faltered, “for there is something cold that catches at my heart—and I am afraid.”

At his exclamation she gathered herself together; gave a shaky little laugh.

“It’s because I love you so that fear has power to plague me,” she told him.

Without another word he bent and kissed her; in silence we passed on, his arm still about her girdled waist, golden head and black close together. Soon we stood before the crimson slab that was the door to the sanctuary of the Silent Ones. She poised uncertainly before it; then with a defiant arching of the proud little head that sent all the bronze-flecked curls flying, she pressed. It slipped aside and once more the opalescence gushed out, flooding all about us.

Dazzled as before, I followed through the lambent cascades pouring from the high, carved walls; paused, and my eyes clearing, looked up—straight into the faces of the Three. The angled orbs centred upon the handmaiden; softened as I had seen them do when first we had faced them. She smiled up; seemed to listen.

“Come closer,” she commanded, “close to the feet of the Silent Ones.”

We moved, pausing at the very base of the dais. The sparkling mists thinned; the great heads bent slightly over us; through the veils I caught a glimpse of huge columnar necks, enormous shoulders covered with draperies as of pale-blue fire.

I came back to attention with a start, for Lakla was answering a question only heard by her, and, answering it aloud, I perceived for our benefit; for whatever was the mode of communication between those whose handmaiden she was, and her, it was clearly independent of speech.

“He has been told,” she said, “even as you commanded.”

Did I see a shadow of pain flit across the flickering eyes? Wondering, I glanced at Lakla’s face and there was a dawn of foreboding and bewilderment. For a little she held her listening attitude; then the gaze of the Three left her; focused upon the O’Keefe.

“Thus speak the Silent Ones—through Lakla, their handmaiden,” the golden voice was like low trumpet notes. “At the threshold of doom is that world of yours above. Yea, even the doom, Goodwin, that ye dreamed and the shadow of which, looking into your mind they see, say the Three. For not upon earth and never upon earth can man find means to destroy the Shining One.”

She listened again—and the foreboding deepened to an amazed fear.

“They say, the Silent Ones,” she went on, “that they know not whether even they have power to destroy. Energies we know nothing of entered into its shaping and are part of it; and still other energies it has gathered to itself”—she paused; a shadow of puzzlement crept into her voice “and other energies still, forces that ye do know and symbolize by certain names—hatred and pride and lust and many others which are forces real as that hidden in the Keth; and among them—fear, which weakens all those others—” Again she paused.

“But within it is nothing of that greatest of all, that which can make powerless all the evil others, that which we call—love,” she ended softly.

“I’d like to be the one to put a little more fear in the beast,” whispered Larry to me, grimly in our own English. The three weird heads bent, ever so slightly—and I gasped, and Larry grew a little white as Lakla nodded—

“They say, Larry,” she said, “that there you touch one side of the heart of the matter—for it is through the way of fear the Silent Ones hope to strike at the very life of the Shining One!”

The visage Larry turned to me was eloquent of wonder; and mine reflected it—for what really were this Three to whom our minds were but open pages, so easily read? Not long could we conjecture; Lakla broke the little silence.

“This, they say, is what is to happen. First will come upon us Lugur and Yolara with all their host. Because of fear the Shining One will lurk behind within its lair; for despite all, the Dweller does dread the Three, and only them. With this host the Voice and the priestess will strive to conquer. And if they do, then will they be strong enough, too, to destroy us all. For if they take the abode they banish from the Dweller all fear and sound the end of the Three.

“Then will the Shining One be all free indeed; free to go out into the world, free to do there as it wills!

“But if they do not conquer—and the Shining One comes not to their aid, abandoning them even as it abandoned its own Taithu—then will the Three be loosed from a part of their doom, and they will go through the Portal, seek the Shining One beyond the Veil, and, piercing it through fear’s opening, destroy it.”

“That’s quite clear,” murmured the O’Keefe in my ear. “Weaken the morale—then smash. I’ve seen it happen a dozen times in Europe. While they’ve got their nerve there’s not a thing you can do; get their nerve—and not a thing can they do. And yet in both cases they’re the same men.”

Lakla had been listening again. She turned, thrust out hands to Larry, a wild hope in her eyes—and yet a hope half shamed.

“They say,” she cried, “that they give us choice. Remembering that your world doom hangs in the balance, we have choice—choice to stay and help fight Yolara’s armies—and they say they look not lightly on that help. Or choice to go—and if so be you choose the latter, then will they show another way that leads into your world!”

A flush had crept over the O’Keefe’s face as she was speaking. He took her hands and looked long into the golden eyes; glancing up I saw the Trinity were watching them intently—imperturbably.

“What do you say, mavourneen?” asked Larry gently. The handmaiden hung her head; trembled.

“Your words shall be mine, O one I love,” she whispered. “So going or staying, I am beside you.”

“And you, Goodwin?” he turned to me. I shrugged my shoulders—after all I had no one to care.

“It’s up to you, Larry,” I remarked, deliberately choosing his own phraseology.

The O’Keefe straightened, squared his shoulders, gazed straight into the flame-flickering eyes.

“We stick!” he said briefly.

Shamefacedly I recall now that at the time I thought this colloquialism not only irreverent, but in somewhat bad taste. I am glad to say I was alone in that bit of weakness. The face that Lakla turned to Larry was radiant with love, and although the shamed hope had vanished from the sweet eyes, they were shining with adoring pride. And the marble visages of the Three softened, and the little flames died down.

“Wait,” said Lakla, “there is one other thing they say we must answer before they will hold us to that promise—wait—”

She listened, and then her face grew white—white as those of the Three themselves; the glorious eyes widened, stark terror filling them; the whole lithe body of her shook like a reed in the wind.

“Not that!” she cried out to the Three. “Oh, not that! Not Larry—let me go even as you will—but not him!” She threw up frantic hands to the woman-being of the Trinity. “Let me bear it alone,” she wailed. “Alone—mother! Mother!”

The Three bent their heads toward her, their faces pitiful, and from the eyes of the woman One rolled—tears! Larry leaped to Lakla’s side.

“Mavourneen!” he cried. “Sweetheart, what have they said to you?”

He glared up at the Silent Ones, his hand twitching toward the high-hung pistol holster.

The handmaiden swung to him; threw white arms around his neck; held her head upon his heart until her sobbing ceased.

“This they—say—the Silent Ones,” she gasped and then all the courage of her came back. “O heart of mine!” she whispered to Larry, gazing deep into his eyes, his anxious face cupped between her white palms. “This they say—that should the Shining One come to succour Yolara and Lugur, should it conquer its fear—and—do this—then is there but one way left to destroy it—and to save your world.”

She swayed; he gripped her tightly.

“But one way—you and I must go—together—into its embrace! Yea, we must pass within it—loving each other, loving the world, realizing to the full all that we sacrifice and sacrificing all, our love, our lives, perhaps even that you call soul, O loved one; must give ourselves all to the Shining One—gladly, freely, our love for each other flaming high within us—that this curse shall pass away! For if we do this, pledge the Three, then shall that power of love we carry into it weaken for a time all that evil which the Shining One has become—and in that time the Three can strike and slay!”

The blood rushed from my heart; scientist that I am, essentially, my reason rejected any such solution as this of the activities of the Dweller. Was it not, the thought flashed, a propitiation by the Three out of their own weakness—and as it flashed I looked up to see their eyes, full of sorrow, on mine—and knew they read the thought. Then into the whirling vortex of my mind came steadying reflections—of history changed by the power of hate, of passion, of ambition, and most of all, by love. Was there not actual dynamic energy in these things—was there not a Son of Man who hung upon a cross on Calvary?

“Dear love o’ mine,” said the O’Keefe quietly, “is it in your heart to say yes to this?”

“Larry,” she spoke low, “what is in your heart is in mine; but I did so want to go with you, to live with you—to—to bear you children, Larry—and to see the sun.”

My eyes were wet; dimly through them I saw his gaze on me.

“If the world is at stake,” he whispered, “why of course there’s only one thing to do. God knows I never was afraid when I was fighting up there—and many a better man than me has gone West with shell and bullet for the same idea; but these things aren’t shell and bullet—but I hadn’t Lakla then—and it’s the damned doubt I have behind it all.”

He turned to the Three—and did I in their poise sense a rigidity, an anxiety that sat upon them as alienly as would divinity upon men?

“Tell me this, Silent Ones,” he cried. “If we do this, Lakla and I, is it sure you are that you can slay the—Thing, and save my world? Is it sure you are?”

For the first and the last time, I heard the voice of the Silent Ones. It was the man-being at the right who spoke.

“We are sure,” the tones rolled out like deepest organ notes, shaking, vibrating, assailing the ears as strangely as their appearance struck the eyes. Another moment the O’Keefe stared at them. Once more he squared his shoulders; lifted Lakla’s chin and smiled into her eyes.

“We stick!” he said again, nodding to the Three.

Over the visages of the Trinity fell benignity that was—awesome; the tiny flames in the jet orbs vanished, leaving them wells in which brimmed serenity, hope—an extraordinary joyfulness. The woman sat upright, tender gaze fixed upon the man and girl. Her great shoulders raised as though she had lifted her arms and had drawn to her those others. The three faces pressed together for a fleeting moment; raised again. The woman bent forward—and as she did so, Lakla and Larry, as though drawn by some outer force, were swept upon the dais.

Out from the sparkling mist stretched two hands, enormously long, six-fingered, thumbless, a faint tracery of golden scales upon their white backs, utterly unhuman and still in some strange way beautiful, radiating power and—all womanly!

They stretched forth; they touched the bent heads of Lakla and the O’Keefe; caressed them, drew them together, softly stroked them—lovingly, with more than a touch of benediction. And withdrew!

The sparkling mists rolled up once more, hiding the Silent Ones. As silently as once before we had gone we passed out of the place of light, beyond the crimson stone, back to the handmaiden’s chamber.

Only once on our way did Larry speak.

“Cheer up, darlin’,” he said to her, “it’s a long way yet before the finish. An’ are you thinking that Lugur and Yolara are going to pull this thing off? Are you?”

The handmaiden only looked at him, eyes love and sorrow filled.

“They are!” said Larry. “They are! Like HELL they are!”

CHAPTER XXXIII

The Meeting of Titans

It is not my intention, nor is it possible no matter how interesting to me, to set down ad seriatim the happenings of the next twelve hours. But a few will not be denied recital.

O’Keefe regained cheerfulness.

“After all, Doc,” he said to me, “it’s a beautiful scrap we’re going to have. At the worst the worst is no more than the leprechaun warned about. I would have told the Taitha De about the banshee raid he promised me; but I was a bit taken off my feet at the time. The old girl an’ all the clan’ll be along, said the little green man, an’ I bet the Three will be damned glad of it, take it from me.”

Lakla, shining-eyed and half fearful too:

“I have other tidings that I am afraid will please you little, Larry—darlin’. The Silent Ones say that you must not go into battle yourself. You must stay here with me, and with Goodwin—for if—if—the Shining One does come, then must we be here to meet it. And you might not be, you know, Larry, if you fight,” she said, looking shyly up at him from under the long lashes.

The O’Keefe’s jaw dropped.

“That’s about the hardest yet,” he answered slowly. “Still—I see their point; the lamb corralled for the altar has no right to stray out among the lions,” he added grimly. “Don’t worry, sweet,” he told her. “As long as I’ve sat in the game I’ll stick to the rules.”

Olaf took fierce joy in the coming fray. “The Norns spin close to the end of this web,” he rumbled. “Ja! And the threads of Lugur and the Heks woman are between their fingers for the breaking! Thor will be with me, and I have fashioned me a hammer in glory of Thor.” In his hand was an enormous mace of black metal, fully five feet long, crowned with a massive head.

I pass to the twelve hours’ closing.

At the end of the coria road where the giant fernland met the edge of the cavern’s ruby floor, hundreds of the Akka were stationed in ambush, armed with their spears tipped with the rotting death and their nail-studded, metal-headed clubs. These were to attack when the Murians debauched from the corials. We had little hope of doing more here than effect some attrition of Yolara’s hosts, for at this place the captains of the Shining One could wield the Keth and their other uncanny weapons freely. We had learned, too, that every forge and artisan had been put to work to make an armour Marakinoff had devised to withstand the natural battle equipment of the frog-people—and both Larry and I had a disquieting faith in the Russian’s ingenuity.

At any rate the numbers against us would be lessened.

Next, under the direction of the frog-king, levies commanded by subsidiary chieftains had completed rows of rough walls along the probable route of the Murians through the cavern. These afforded the Akka a fair protection behind which they could hurl their darts and spears—curiously enough they had never developed the bow as a weapon.

At the opening of the cavern a strong barricade stretched almost to the two ends of the crescent strand; almost, I say, because there had not been time to build it entirely across the mouth.

And from edge to edge of the titanic bridge, from where it sprang outward at the shore of the Crimson Sea to a hundred feet away from the golden door of the abode, barrier after barrier was piled.

Behind the wall defending the mouth of the cavern, waited other thousands of the Akka. At each end of the unfinished barricade they were mustered thickly, and at right and left of the crescent where their forest began, more legions were assembled to make way up to the ledge as opportunity offered.

Rank upon rank they manned the bridge barriers; they swarmed over the pinnacles and in the hollows of the island’s ragged outer lip; the domed castle was a hive of them, if I may mix my metaphors—and the rocks and gardens that surrounded the abode glittered with them.

“Now,” said the handmaiden, “there’s nothing else we can do—save wait.”

She led us out through her bower and up the little path that ran to the embrasure.

Through the quiet came a sound, a sighing, a half-mournful whispering that beat about us and fled away.

“They come!” cried Lakla, the light of battle in her eyes. Larry drew her to him, raised her in his arms, kissed her.

“A woman!” acclaimed the O’Keefe. “A real woman—and mine!”

With the cry of the Portal there was movement among the Akka, the glint of moving spears, flash of metal-tipped clubs, rattle of horny spurs, rumblings of battle-cries.

And we waited—waited it seemed interminably, gaze fastened upon the low wall across the cavern mouth. Suddenly I remembered the crystal through which I had peered when the hidden assassins had crept upon us. Mentioning it to Lakla, she gave a little cry of vexation, a command to her attendant; and not long that faithful if unusual lady had returned with a tray of the glasses. Raising mine, I saw the lines furthest away leap into sudden activity. Spurred warrior after warrior leaped upon the barricade and over it. Flashes of intense, green light, mingled with gleams like lightning strokes of concentrated moon rays, sprang from behind the wall—sprang and struck and burned upon the scales of the batrachians.

“They come!” whispered Lakla.

At the far ends of the crescent a terrific milling had begun. Here it was plain the Akka were holding. Faintly, for the distance was great, I could see fresh force upon force rush up and take the places of those who had fallen.

Over each of these ends, and along the whole line of the barricade a mist of dancing, diamonded atoms began to rise; sparking, coruscating points of diamond dust that darted and danced.

What had once been Lakla’s guardians—dancing now in the nothingness!

“God, but it’s hard to stay here like this!” groaned the O’Keefe; Olaf’s teeth were bared, the lips drawn back in such a fighting grin as his ancestors berserk on their raven ships must have borne; Rador was livid with rage; the handmaiden’s nostrils flaring wide, all her wrathful soul in her eyes.

Suddenly, while we looked, the rocky wall which the Akka had built at the cavern mouth—was not! It vanished, as though an unseen, unbelievably gigantic hand had with the lightning’s speed swept it away. And with it vanished, too, long lines of the great amphibians close behind it.

Then down upon the ledge, dropping into the Crimson Sea, sending up geysers of ruby spray, dashing on the bridge, crushing the frog-men, fell a shower of stone, mingled with distorted shapes and fragments whose scales still flashed meteoric as they hurled from above.

“That which makes things fall upward,” hissed Olaf. “That which I saw in the garden of Lugur!”

The fiendish agency of destruction which Marakinoff had revealed to Larry; the force that cut off gravitation and sent all things within its range racing outward into space!

And now over the debris upon the ledge, striking with long sword and daggers, here and there a captain flashing the green ray, moving on in ordered squares, came the soldiers of the Shining One. Nearer and nearer the verge of the ledge they pushed Nak’s warriors. Leaping upon the dwarfs, smiting them with spear and club, with teeth and spur, the Akka fought like devils. Quivering under the ray, they leaped and dragged down and slew.

Now there was but one long line of the frog-men at the very edge of the cliff.

And ever the clouds of dancing, diamonded atoms grew thicker over them all!

That last thin line of the Akka was going; yet they fought to the last, and none toppled over the lip without at least one of the armoured Murians in his arms.

My gaze dropped to the foot of the cliffs. Stretched along their length was a wide ribbon of beauty—a shimmering multitude of gleaming, pulsing, prismatic moons; glowing, glowing ever brighter, ever more wondrous—the gigantic Medusae globes feasting on dwarf and frog-man alike!

Across the waters, faintly, came a triumphant shouting from Lugur’s and Yolara’s men!

Was the ruddy light of the place lessening, growing paler, changing to a faint rose? There was an exclamation from Larry; something like hope relaxed the drawn muscles of his face. He pointed to the aureate dome wherein sat the Three—and then I saw!

Out of it, through the long transverse slit through which the Silent Ones kept their watch on cavern, bridge, and abyss, a torrent of the opalescent light was pouring. It cascaded like a waterfall, and as it flowed it spread whirling out, in columns and eddies, clouds and wisps of misty, curdled coruscations. It hung like a veil over all the islands, filtering everywhere, driving back the crimson light as though possessed of impenetrable substance—and still it cast not the faintest shadowing upon our vision.

“Good God!” breathed Larry. “Look!”

The radiance was marching—marching—down the colossal bridge. It moved swiftly, in some unthinkable way intelligently. It swathed the Akka, and closer, ever closer it swept toward the approach upon which Yolara’s men had now gained foothold.

From their ranks came flash after flash of the green ray—aimed at the abode! But as the light sped and struck the opalescence it was blotted out! The shimmering mists seemed to enfold, to dissipate it.

Lakla drew a deep breath.

“The Silent Ones forgive me for doubting them,” she whispered; and again hope blossomed on her face even as it did on Larry’s.

The frog-men were gaining. Clothed in the armour of that mist, they pressed back from the bridge-head the invaders. There was another prodigious movement at the ends of the crescent, and racing up, pressing against the dwarfs, came other legions of Nak’s warriors. And re-enforcing those out on the prodigious arch, the frog-men stationed in the gardens below us poured back to the castle and out through the open Portal.

“They’re licked!” shouted Larry. “They’re—”

So quickly I could not follow the movement his automatic leaped to his hand—spoke, once and again and again. Rador leaped to the head of the little path, sword in hand; Olaf, shouting and whirling his mace, followed. I strove to get my own gun quickly.

For up that path were running twoscore of Lugur’s men, while from below Lugur’s own voice roared.

“Quick! Slay not the handmaiden or her lover! Carry them down. Quick! But slay the others!”

The handmaiden raced toward Larry, stopped, whistled shrilly—again and again. Larry’s pistol was empty, but as the dwarfs rushed upon him I dropped two of them with mine. It jammed—I could not use it; I sprang to his side. Rador was down, struggling in a heap of Lugur’s men. Olaf, a Viking of old, was whirling his great hammer, and striking, striking through armour, flesh, and bone.

Larry was down, Lakla flew to him. But the Norseman, now streaming blood from a dozen wounds, caught a glimpse of her coming, turned, thrust out a mighty hand, sent her reeling back, and then with his hammer cracked the skulls of those trying to drag the O’Keefe down the path.

A cry from Lakla—the dwarfs had seized her, had lifted her despite her struggles, were carrying her away. One I dropped with the butt of my useless pistol, and then went down myself under the rush of another.

Through the clamour I heard a booming of the Akka, closer, closer; then through it the bellow of Lugur. I made a mighty effort, swung a hand up, and sunk my fingers in the throat of the soldier striving to kill me. Writhing over him, my fingers touched a poniard; I thrust it deep, staggered to my feet.

The O’Keefe, shielding Lakla, was battling with a long sword against a half dozen of the soldiers. I started toward him, was struck, and under the impact hurled to the ground. Dizzily I raised myself—and leaning upon my elbow, stared and moved no more. For the dwarfs lay dead, and Larry, holding Lakla tightly, was staring even as I, and ranged at the head of the path were the Akka, whose booming advance in obedience to the handmaiden’s call I had heard.

And at what we all stared was Olaf, crimson with his wounds, and Lugur, in blood-red armour, locked in each other’s grip, struggling, smiting, tearing, kicking, and swaying about the little space before the embrasure. I crawled over toward the O’Keefe. He raised his pistol, dropped it.

“Can’t hit him without hitting Olaf,” he whispered. Lakla signalled the frog-men; they advanced toward the two—but Olaf saw them, broke the red dwarf’s hold, sent Lugur reeling a dozen feet away.

“No!” shouted the Norseman, the ice of his pale-blue eyes glinting like frozen flames, blood streaming down his face and dripping from his hands. “No! Lugur is mine! None but me slays him! Ho, you Lugur—” and cursed him and Yolara and the Dweller hideously—I cannot set those curses down here.

They spurred Lugur. Mad now as the Norseman, the red dwarf sprang. Olaf struck a blow that would have killed an ordinary man, but Lugur only grunted, swept in, and seized him about the waist; one mighty arm began to creep up toward Huldricksson’s throat.

“’Ware, Olaf!” cried O’Keefe; but Olaf did not answer. He waited until the red dwarf’s hand was close to his shoulder; and then, with an incredibly rapid movement—once before had I seen something like it in a wrestling match between Papuans—he had twisted Lugur around; twisted him so that Olaf’s right arm lay across the tremendous breast, the left behind the neck, and Olaf’s left leg held the Voice’s armoured thighs viselike against his right knee while over that knee lay the small of the red dwarf’s back.

For a second or two the Norseman looked down upon his enemy, motionless in that paralyzing grip. And then—slowly—he began to break him!

Lakla gave a little cry; made a motion toward the two. But Larry drew her head down against his breast, hiding her eyes; then fastened his own upon the pair, white-faced, stern.

Slowly, ever so slowly, proceeded Olaf. Twice Lugur moaned. At the end he screamed—horribly. There was a cracking sound, as of a stout stick snapped.

Huldricksson stooped, silently. He picked up the limp body of the Voice, not yet dead, for the eyes rolled, the lips strove to speak; lifted it, walked to the parapet, swung it twice over his head, and cast it down to the red waters!

CHAPTER XXXIV

The Coming of the Shining One

The Norseman turned toward us. There was now no madness in his eyes; only a great weariness. And there was peace on the once tortured face.

“Helma,” he whispered, “I go a little before! Soon you will come to me—to me and the Yndling who will await you—Helma, meine liebe!”

Blood gushed from his mouth; he swayed, fell. And thus died Olaf Huldricksson.

We looked down upon him; nor did Lakla, nor Larry, nor I try to hide our tears. And as we stood the Akka brought to us that other mighty fighter, Rador; but in him there was life, and we attended to him there as best we could.

Then Lakla spoke.

“We will bear him into the castle where we may give him greater care,” she said. “For, lo! the hosts of Yolara have been beaten back; and on the bridge comes Nak with tidings.”

We looked over the parapet. It was even as she had said. Neither on ledge nor bridge was there trace of living men of Muria—only heaps of slain that lay everywhere—and thick against the cavern mouth still danced the flashing atoms of those the green ray had destroyed.

“Over!” exclaimed Larry incredulously. “We live then—heart of mine!”

“The Silent Ones recall their veils,” she said, pointing to the dome. Back through the slitted opening the radiance was streaming; withdrawing from sea and island; marching back over the bridge with that same ordered, intelligent motion. Behind it the red light pressed, like skirmishers on the heels of a retreating army.

“And yet—” faltered the handmaiden as we passed into her chamber, and doubtful were the eyes she turned upon the O’Keefe.

“I don’t believe,” he said, “there’s a kick left in them—”

What was that sound beating into the chamber faintly, so faintly? My heart gave a great throb and seemed to stop for an eternity. What was it—coming nearer, ever nearer? Now Lakla and O’Keefe heard it, life ebbing from lips and cheeks.

Nearer, nearer—a music as of myriads of tiny crystal bells, tinkling, tinkling—a storm of pizzicati upon violins of glass! Nearer, nearer—not sweetly now, nor luring; no—raging, wrathful, sinister beyond words; sweeping on; nearer—

The Dweller! The Shining One!

We leaped to the narrow window; peered out, aghast. The bell notes swept through and about us, a hurricane. The crescent strand was once more a ferment. Back, back were the Akka being swept, as though by brooms, tottering on the edge of the ledge, falling into the waters. Swiftly they were finished; and where they had fought was an eddying throng clothed in tatters or naked, swaying, drifting, arms tossing—like marionettes of Satan.

The dead-alive! The slaves of the Dweller!

They swayed and tossed, and then, like water racing through an opened dam, they swept upon the bridge-head. On and on they pushed, like the bore of a mighty tide. The frog-men strove against them, clubbing, spearing, tearing them. But even those worst smitten seemed not to fall. On they pushed, driving forward, irresistible—a battering ram of flesh and bone. They clove the masses of the Akka, pressing them to the sides of the bridge and over. Through the open gates they forced them—for there was no room for the frog-men to stand against that implacable tide.

Then those of the Akka who were left turned their backs and ran. We heard the clang of the golden wings of the portal, and none too soon to keep out the first of the Dweller’s dreadful hordes.

Now upon the cavern ledge and over the whole length of the bridge there were none but the dead-alive, men and women, black-polled ladala, sloe-eyed Malays, slant-eyed Chinese, men of every race that sailed the seas—milling, turning, swaying, like leaves caught in a sluggish current.

The bell notes became sharper, more insistent. At the cavern mouth a radiance began to grow—a gleaming from which the atoms of diamond dust seemed to try to flee. As the radiance grew and the crystal notes rang nearer, every head of that hideous multitude turned stiffly, slowly toward the right, looking toward the far bridge end; their eyes fixed and glaring; every face an inhuman mask of rapture and of horror!

A movement shook them. Those in the centre began to stream back, faster and ever faster, leaving motionless deep ranks on each side. Back they flowed until from golden doors to cavern mouth a wide lane stretched, walled on each side by the dead-alive.

The far radiance became brighter; it gathered itself at the end of the dreadful lane; it was shot with sparklings and with pulsings of polychromatic light. The crystal storm was intolerable, piercing the ears with countless tiny lances; brighter still the radiance.

From the cavern swirled the Shining One!

The Dweller paused, seemed to scan the island of the Silent Ones half doubtfully; then slowly, stately, it drifted out upon the bridge. Closer it drew; behind it glided Yolara at the head of a company of her dwarfs, and at her side was the hag of the Council whose face was the withered, shattered echo of her own.

Slower grew the Dweller’s pace as it drew nearer. Did I sense in it a doubt, an uncertainty? The crystal-tongued, unseen choristers that accompanied it subtly seemed to reflect the doubt; their notes were not sure, no longer insistent; rather was there in them an undertone of hesitancy, of warning! Yet on came the Shining One until it stood plain beneath us, searching with those eyes that thrust from and withdrew into unknown spheres, the golden gateway, the cliff face, the castle’s rounded bulk—and more intently than any of these, the dome wherein sat the Three.

Behind it each face of the dead-alive turned toward it, and those beside it throbbed and gleamed with its luminescence.

Yolara crept close, just beyond the reach of its spirals. She murmured—and the Dweller bent toward her, its seven globes steady in their shining mists, as though listening. It drew erect once more, resumed its doubtful scrutiny. Yolara’s face darkened; she turned abruptly, spoke to a captain of her guards. A dwarf raced back between the palisades of dead-alive.

Now the priestess cried out, her voice ringing like a silver clarion.

“Ye are done, ye Three! The Shining One stands at your door, demanding entrance. Your beasts are slain and your power is gone. Who are ye, says the Shining One, to deny it entrance to the place of its birth?”

“Ye do not answer,” she cried again, “yet know we that ye hear! The Shining One offers these terms: Send forth your handmaiden and that lying stranger she stole; send them forth to us—and perhaps ye may live. But if ye send them not forth, then shall ye too die—and soon!”

We waited, silent, even as did Yolara—and again there was no answer from the Three.

The priestess laughed; the blue eyes flashed.

“It is ended!” she cried. “If you will not open, needs must we open for you!”

Over the bridge was marching a long double file of the dwarfs. They bore a smoothed and handled tree-trunk whose head was knobbed with a huge ball of metal. Past the priestess, past the Shining One, they carried it; fifty of them to each side of the ram; and behind them stepped—Marakinoff!

Larry awoke to life.

“Now, thank God,” he rasped, “I can get that devil, anyway!”

He drew his pistol, took careful aim. Even as he pressed the trigger there rang through the abode a tremendous clanging. The ram was battering at the gates. O’Keefe’s bullet went wild. The Russian must have heard the shot; perhaps the missile was closer than we knew. He made a swift leap behind the guards; was lost to sight.

Once more the thunderous clanging rang through the castle.

Lakla drew herself erect; down upon her dropped the listening aloofness. Gravely she bowed her head.

“It is time, O love of mine.” She turned to O’Keefe. “The Silent Ones say that the way of fear is closed, but the way of love is open. They call upon us to redeem our promise!”

For a hundred heart-beats they clung to each other, breast to breast and lip to lip. Below, the clangour was increasing, the great trunk swinging harder and faster upon the metal gates. Now Lakla gently loosed the arms of the O’Keefe, and for another instant those two looked into each other’s souls. The handmaiden smiled tremulously.

“I would it might have been otherwise, Larry darlin’,” she whispered. “But at least—we pass together, dearest of mine!”

She leaped to the window.

“Yolara!” the golden voice rang out sweetly. The clanging ceased. “Draw back your men. We open the Portal and come forth to you and the Shining One—Larry and I.”

The priestess’s silver chimes of laughter rang out, cruel, mocking.

“Come, then, quickly,” she jeered. “For surely both the Shining One and I yearn for you!” Her malice-laden laughter chimed high once more. “Keep us not lonely long!” the priestess mocked.

Larry drew a deep breath, stretched both hands out to me.

“It’s good-by, I guess, Doc.” His voice was strained. “Good-by and good luck, old boy. If you get out, and you will, let the old Dolphin know I’m gone. And carry on, pal—and always remember the O’Keefe loved you like a brother.”

I squeezed his hands desperately. Then out of my balanceshaking woe a strange comfort was born.

“Maybe it’s not good-by, Larry!” I cried. “The banshee has not cried!”

A flash of hope passed over his face; the old reckless grin shone forth.

“It’s so!” he said. “By the Lord, it’s so!”

Then Lakla bent toward me, and for the second time—kissed me.

“Come!” she said to Larry. Hand in hand they moved away, into the corridor that led to the door outside of which waited the Shining One and its priestess.

And unseen by them, wrapped as they were within their love and sacrifice, I crept softly behind. For I had determined that if enter the Dweller’s embrace they must, they should not go alone.

They paused before the Golden Portals; the handmaiden pressed its opening lever; the massive leaves rolled back.

Heads high, proudly, serenely, they passed through and out upon the hither span. I followed.

On each side of us stood the Dweller’s slaves, faces turned rigidly toward their master. A hundred feet away the Shining One pulsed and spiralled in its evilly glorious lambency of sparkling plumes.

Unhesitating, always with that same high serenity, Lakla and the O’Keefe, hands clasped like little children, drew closer to that wondrous shape. I could not see their faces, but I saw awe fall upon those of the watching dwarfs, and into the burning eyes of Yolara crept a doubt. Closer they drew to the Dweller, and closer, I following them step by step. The Shining One’s whirling lessened; its tinklings were faint, almost stilled. It seemed to watch them apprehensively. A silence fell upon us all, a thick silence, brooding, ominous, palpable. Now the pair were face to face with the child of the Three—so near that with one of its misty tentacles it could have enfolded them.

And the Shining One drew back!

Yes, drew back—and back with it stepped Yolara, the doubt in her eyes deepening. Onward paced the handmaiden and the O’Keefe—and step by step, as they advanced, the Dweller withdrew; its bell notes chiming out, puzzled questioning—half fearful!

And back it drew, and back until it had reached the very centre of that platform over the abyss in whose depths pulsed the green fires of earth heart. And there Yolara gripped herself; the hell that seethed within her soul leaped out of her eyes, a cry, a shriek of rage, tore from her lips.

As at a signal, the Shining One flamed high; its spirals and eddying mists swirled madly, the pulsing core of it blazed radiance. A score of coruscating tentacles swept straight upon the pair who stood intrepid, unresisting, awaiting its embrace. And upon me, lurking behind them.

Through me swept a mighty exaltation. It was the end then—and I was to meet it with them.

Something drew us back, back with an incredible swiftness, and yet as gently as a summer breeze sweeps a bit of thistle-down! Drew us back from those darting misty arms even as they were a hair-breadth from us! I heard the Dweller’s bell notes burst out ragingly! I heard Yolara scream.

What was that?

Between the three of us and them was a ring of curdled moon flames, swirling about the Shining One and its priestess, pressing in upon them, enfolding them!

And within it I glimpsed the faces of the Three—implacable, sorrowful, filled with a supernal power!

Sparks and flashes of white flame darted from the ring, penetrating the radiant swathings of the Dweller, striking through its pulsing nucleus, piercing its seven crowning orbs.

Now the Shining One’s radiance began to dim, the seven orbs to dull; the tiny sparkling filaments that ran from them down into the Dweller’s body snapped, vanished! Through the battling nebulosities Yolara’s face swam forth—horror-filled, distorted, inhuman!

The ranks of the dead-alive quivered, moved, writhed, as though each felt the torment of the Thing that had enslaved them. The radiance that the Three wielded grew more intense, thicker, seemed to expand. Within it, suddenly, were scores of flaming triangles—scores of eyes like those of the Silent Ones!

And the Shining One’s seven little moons of amber, of silver, of blue and amethyst and green, of rose and white, split, shattered, were gone! Abruptly the tortured crystal chimings ceased.

Dulled, all its soul-shaking beauty dead, blotched and shadowed squalidly, its gleaming plumes tarnished, its dancing spirals stripped from it, that which had been the Shining One wrapped itself about Yolara—wrapped and drew her into itself; writhed, swayed, and hurled itself over the edge of the bridge—down, down into the green fires of the unfathomable abyss—with its priestess still enfolded in its coils!

From the dwarfs who had watched that terror came screams of panic fear. They turned and ran, racing frantically over the bridge toward the cavern mouth.

The serried ranks of the dead-alive trembled, shook. Then from their faces tied the horror of wedded ecstasy and anguish. Peace, utter peace, followed in its wake.

And as fields of wheat are bent and fall beneath the wind, they fell. No longer dead-alive, now all of the blessed dead, freed from their dreadful slavery!

Abruptly from the sparkling mists the cloud of eyes was gone. Faintly revealed in them were only the heads of the Silent Ones. And they drew before us; were before us! No flames now in their ebon eyes—for the flickering fires were quenched in great tears, streaming down the marble white faces. They bent toward us, over us; their radiance enfolded us. My eyes darkened. I could not see. I felt a tender hand upon my head—and panic and frozen dread and nightmare web that held me fled.

Then they, too, were gone.

Upon Larry’s breast the handmaiden was sobbing—sobbing out her heart—but this time with the joy of one who is swept up from the very threshold of hell into paradise.

CHAPTER XXXV

“Larry—Farewell!”

“My heart, Larry—” It was the handmaiden’s murmur. “My heart feels like a bird that is flying from a nest of sorrow.”

We were pacing down the length of the bridge, guards of the Akka beside us, others following with those companies of ladala that had rushed to aid us; in front of us the bandaged Rador swung gently within a litter; beside him, in another, lay Nak, the frog-king—much less of him than there had been before the battle began, but living.

Hours had passed since the terror I have just related. My first task had been to search for Throckmartin and his wife among the fallen multitudes strewn thick as autumn leaves along the flying arch of stone, over the cavern ledge, and back, back as far as the eye could reach.

At last, Lakla and Larry helping, we found them. They lay close to the bridge-end, not parted—locked tight in each other’s arms, pallid face to face, her hair streaming over his breast! As though when that unearthly life the Dweller had set within them passed away, their own had come back for one fleeting instant—and they had known each other, and clasped before kindly death had taken them.

“Love is stronger than all things.” The handmaiden was weeping softly. “Love never left them. Love was stronger than the Shining One. And when its evil fled, love went with them—wherever souls go.”

Of Stanton and Thora there was no trace; nor, after our discovery of those other two, did I care to look more. They were dead—and they were free.

We buried Throckmartin and Edith beside Olaf in Lakla’s bower. But before the body of my old friend was placed within the grave I gave it a careful and sorrowful examination. The skin was firm and smooth, but cold; not the cold of death, but with a chill that set my touching fingers tingling unpleasantly. The body was bloodless; the course of veins and arteries marked by faintly indented white furrows, as though their walls had long collapsed. Lips, mouth, even the tongue, was paper white. There was no sign of dissolution as we know it; no shadow or stain upon the marble surface. Whatever the force that, streaming from the Dweller or impregnating its lair, had energized the dead-alive, it was barrier against putrescence of any kind; that at least was certain.

But it was not barrier against the poison of the Medusae, for, our sad task done, and looking down upon the waters, I saw the pale forms of the Dweller’s hordes dissolving, vanishing into the shifting glories of the gigantic moons sailing down upon them from every quarter of the Sea of Crimson.

While the frog-men, those late levies from the farthest forests, were clearing bridge and ledge of cavern of the litter of the dead, we listened to a leader of the ladala. They had risen, even as the messenger had promised Rador. Fierce had been the struggle in the gardened city by the silver waters with those Lugur and Yolara had left behind to garrison it. Deadly had been the slaughter of the fair-haired, reaping the harvest of hatred they had been sowing so long. Not without a pang of regret did I think of the beautiful, gaily malicious elfin women destroyed—evil though they may have been.

The ancient city of Lara was a charnel. Of all the rulers not twoscore had escaped, and these into regions of peril which to describe as sanctuary would be mockery. Nor had the ladala fared so well. Of all the men and women, for women as well as men had taken their part in the swift war, not more than a tenth remained alive.

And the dancing motes of light in the silver air were thick, thick—they whispered.

They told us of the Shining One rushing through the Veil, cometlike, its hosts streaming behind it, raging with it, in ranks that seemed interminable!

Of the massacre of the priests and priestesses in the Cyclopean temple; of the flashing forth of the summoning lights by unseen hands—followed by the tearing of the rainbow curtain, by colossal shatterings of the radiant cliffs; the vanishing behind their debris of all trace of entrance to the haunted place wherein the hordes of the Shining One had slaved—the sealing of the lair!

Then, when the tempest of hate had ended in seething Lara, how, thrilled with victory, armed with the weapons of those they had slain, they had lifted the Shadow, passed through the Portal, met and slaughtered the fleeing remnants of Yolara’s men—only to find the tempest stilled here, too.

But of Marakinoff they had seen nothing! Had the Russian escaped, I wondered, or was he lying out there among the dead?

But now the ladala were calling upon Lakla to come with them, to govern them.

“I don’t want to, Larry darlin’,” she told him. “I want to go out with you to Ireland. But for a time—I think the Three would have us remain and set that place in order.”

The O’Keefe was bothered about something else than the government of Muria.

“If they’ve killed off all the priests, who’s to marry us, heart of mine?” he worried. “None of those Siya and Siyana rites, no matter what,” he added hastily.

“Marry!” cried the handmaiden incredulously. “Marry us? Why, Larry dear, we are married!”

The O’Keefe’s astonishment was complete; his jaw dropped; collapse seemed imminent.

“We are?” he gasped. “When?” he stammered fatuously.

“Why, when the Mother drew us together before her; when she put her hands on our heads after we had made the promise! Didn’t you understand that?” asked the handmaiden wonderingly.

He looked at her, into the purity of the clear golden eyes, into the purity of the soul that gazed out of them; all his own great love transfiguring his keen face.

“An’ is that enough for you, mavourneen?” he whispered humbly.

“Enough?” The handmaiden’s puzzlement was complete, profound. “Enough? Larry darlin’, what more could we ask?”

He drew a deep breath, clasped her close.

“Kiss the bride, Doc!” cried the O’Keefe. And for the third and, soul’s sorrow! the last time, Lakla dimpling and blushing, I thrilled to the touch of her soft, sweet lips.

Quickly were our preparations for departure made. Rador, conscious, his immense vitality conquering fast his wounds, was to be borne ahead of us. And when all was done, Lakla, Larry, and I made our way up to the scarlet stone that was the doorway to the chamber of the Three. We knew, of course, that they had gone, following, no doubt, those whose eyes I had seen in the curdled mists, and who, coming to the aid of the Three at last from whatever mysterious place that was their home, had thrown their strength with them against the Shining One. Nor were we wrong. When the great slab rolled away, no torrents of opalescence came rushing out upon us. The vast dome was dim, tenantless; its curved walls that had cascaded Light shone now but faintly; the dais was empty; its wall of moon-flame radiance gone.

A little time we stood, heads bent, reverent, our hearts filled with gratitude and love—yes, and with pity for that strange trinity so alien to us and yet so near; children even as we, though so unlike us, of our same Mother Earth.

And what I wondered had been the secret of that promise they had wrung from their handmaiden and from Larry. And whence, if what the Three had said had been all true—whence had come their power to avert the sacrifice at the very verge of its consummation?

“Love is stronger than all things!” had said Lakla.

Was it that they had needed, must have, the force which dwells within love, within willing sacrifice, to strengthen their own power and to enable them to destroy the evil, glorious Thing so long shielded by their own love? Did the thought of sacrifice, the will toward abnegation, have to be as strong as the eternals, unshaken by faintest thrill of hope, before the Three could make of it their key to unlock the Dweller’s guard and strike through at its life?

Here was a mystery—a mystery indeed! Lakla softly closed the crimson stone. The mystery of the red dwarf’s appearance was explained when we discovered a half-dozen of the water coria moored in a small cove not far from where the Sekta flashed their heads of living bloom. The dwarfs had borne the shallops with them, and from somewhere beyond the cavern ledge had launched them unperceived; stealing up to the farther side of the island and risking all in one bold stroke. Well, Lugur, no matter what he held of wickedness, held also high courage.

The cavern was paved with the dead-alive, the Akka carrying them out by the hundreds, casting them into the waters. Through the lane down which the Dweller had passed we went as quickly as we could, coming at last to the space where the coria waited. And not long after we swung past where the shadow had hung and hovered over the shining depths of the Midnight Pool.

Upon Lakla’s insistence we passed on to the palace of Lugur, not to Yolara’s—I do not know why, but go there then she would not. And within one of its columned rooms, maidens of the black-haired folks, the wistfulness, the fear, all gone from their sparkling eyes, served us.

There came to me a huge desire to see the destruction they had told us of the Dweller’s lair; to observe for myself whether it was not possible to make a way of entrance and to study its mysteries.

I spoke of this, and to my surprise both the handmaiden and the O’Keefe showed an almost embarrassed haste to acquiesce in my hesitant suggestion.

“Sure,” cried Larry, “there’s lots of time before night!”

He caught himself sheepishly; cast a glance at Lakla.

“I keep forgettin’ there’s no night here,” he mumbled.

“What did you say, Larry?” asked she.

“I said I wish we were sitting in our home in Ireland, watching the sun go down,” he whispered to her. Vaguely I wondered why she blushed.

But now I must hasten. We went to the temple, and here at least the ghastly litter of the dead had been cleaned away. We passed through the blue-caverned space, crossed the narrow arch that spanned the rushing sea stream, and, ascending, stood again upon the ivoried pave at the foot of the frowning, towering amphitheatre of jet.

Across the Silver Waters there was sign of neither Web of Rainbows nor colossal pillars nor the templed lips that I had seen curving out beneath the Veil when the Shining One had swirled out to greet its priestess and its voice and to dance with the sacrifices. There was but a broken and rent mass of the radiant cliffs against whose base the lake lapped.

Long I looked—and turned away saddened. Knowing even as I did what the irised curtain had hidden, still it was as though some thing of supernal beauty and wonder had been swept away, never to be replaced; a glamour gone for ever; a work of the high gods destroyed.

“Let’s go back,” said Larry abruptly.

I dropped a little behind them to examine a bit of carving—and, after all, they did not want me. I watched them pacing slowly ahead, his arm around her, black hair close to bronze-gold ringlets. Then I followed. Half were they over the bridge when through the roar of the imprisoned stream I heard my name called softly.

“Goodwin! Dr. Goodwin!”

Amazed, I turned. From behind the pedestal of a carved group slunk—Marakinoff! My premonition had been right. Some way he had escaped, slipped through to here. He held his hands high, came forward cautiously.

“I am finished,” he whispered—“Done! I don’t care what they’ll do to me.” He nodded toward the handmaiden and Larry, now at the end of the bridge and passing on, oblivious of all save each other. He drew closer. His eyes were sunken, burning, mad; his face etched with deep lines, as though a graver’s tool had cut down through it. I took a step backward.

A grin, like the grimace of a fiend, blasted the Russian’s visage. He threw himself upon me, his hands clenching at my throat!

“Larry!” I yelled—and as I spun around under the shock of his onslaught, saw the two turn, stand paralyzed, then race toward me.

“But you’ll carry nothing out of here!” shrieked Marakinoff. “No!”

My foot, darting out behind me, touched vacancy. The roaring of the racing stream deafened me. I felt its mists about me; threw myself forward.

I was falling—falling—with the Russian’s hand strangling me. I struck water, sank; the hands that gripped my throat relaxed for a moment their clutch. I strove to writhe loose; felt that I was being hurled with dreadful speed on—full realization came—on the breast of that racing torrent dropping from some far ocean cleft and rushing—where? A little time, a few breathless instants, I struggled with the devil who clutched me—inflexibly, indomitably.

Then a shrieking as of all the pent winds of the universe in my ears—blackness!

Consciousness returned slowly, agonizedly.

“Larry!” I groaned. “Lakla!”

A brilliant light was glowing through my closed lids. It hurt. I opened my eyes, closed them with swords and needles of dazzling pain shooting through them. Again I opened them cautiously. It was the sun!

I staggered to my feet. Behind me was a shattered wall of basalt monoliths, hewn and squared. Before me was the Pacific, smooth and blue and smiling.

And not far away, cast up on the strand even as I had been, was—Marakinoff!

He lay there, broken and dead indeed. Yet all the waters through which we had passed—not even the waters of death themselves—could wash from his face the grin of triumph. With the last of my strength I dragged the body from the strand and pushed it out into the waves. A little billow ran up, coiled about it, and carried it away, ducking and bending. Another seized it, and another, playing with it. It floated from my sight—that which had been Marakinoff, with all his schemes to turn our fair world into an undreamed-of-hell.

My strength began to come back to me. I found a thicket and slept; slept it must have been for many hours, for when I again awakened the dawn was rosing the east. I will not tell my sufferings. Suffice it to say that I found a spring and some fruit, and just before dusk had recovered enough to writhe up to the top of the wall and discover where I was.

The place was one of the farther islets of the Nan-Matal. To the north I caught the shadows of the ruins of Nan-Tauach, where was the moon door, black against the sky. Where was the moon door—which, someway, somehow, I must reach, and quickly.

At dawn of the next day I got together driftwood and bound it together in shape of a rough raft with fallen creepers. Then, with a makeshift paddle, I set forth for Nan-Tauach. Slowly, painfully, I crept up to it. It was late afternoon before I grounded my shaky craft on the little beach between the ruined sea-gates and, creeping up the giant steps, made my way to the inner enclosure.

And at its opening I stopped, and the tears ran streaming down my cheeks while I wept aloud with sorrow and with disappointment and with weariness.

For the great wall in which had been set the pale slab whose threshold we had crossed to the land of the Shining One lay shattered and broken. The monoliths were heaped about; the wall had fallen, and about them shone a film of water, half covering them.

There was no moon door!

Dazed and weeping, I drew closer, climbed upon their outlying fragments. I looked out only upon the sea. There had been a great subsidence, an earth shock, perhaps, tilting downward all that side—the echo, little doubt, of that cataclysm which had blasted the Dweller’s lair!

The little squared islet called Tau, in which were hidden the seven globes, had entirely disappeared. Upon the waters there was no trace of it.

The moon door was gone; the passage to the Moon Pool was closed to me—its chamber covered by the sea!

There was no road to Larry—nor to Lakla!

And there, for me, the world ended.

THE METAL MONSTER, by A. Merritt [Part 1]

Originally published in 1920.

PROLOGUE

Before the narrative which follows was placed in my hands, I had never seen Dr. Walter T. Goodwin, its author.

When the manuscript revealing his adventures among the pre-historic ruins of the Nan-Matal in the Carolines (The Moon Pool) had been given me by the International Association of Science for editing and revision to meet the requirements of a popular presentation, Dr. Goodwin had left America. He had explained that he was still too shaken, too depressed, to be able to recall experiences that must inevitably carry with them freshened memories of those whom he loved so well and from whom, he felt, he was separated in all probability forever.

I had understood that he had gone to some remote part of Asia to pursue certain botanical studies, and it was therefore with the liveliest surprise and interest that I received a summons from the President of the Association to meet Dr. Goodwin at a designated place and hour.

Through my close study of the Moon Pool papers I had formed a mental image of their writer. I had read, too, those volumes of botanical research which have set him high above all other American scientists in this field, gleaning from their curious mingling of extremely technical observations and minutely accurate but extraordinarily poetic descriptions, hints to amplify my picture of him. It gratified me to find I had drawn a pretty good one.

The man to whom the President of the Association introduced me was sturdy, well-knit, a little under average height. He had a broad but rather low forehead that reminded me somewhat of the late electrical wizard Steinmetz. Under level black brows shone eyes of clear hazel, kindly, shrewd, a little wistful, lightly humorous; the eyes both of a doer and a dreamer.

Not more than forty I judged him to be. A close-trimmed, pointed beard did not hide the firm chin and the clean-cut mouth. His hair was thick and black and oddly sprinkled with white; small streaks and dots of gleaming silver that shone with a curiously metallic luster.

His right arm was closely bound to his breast. His manner as he greeted me was tinged with shyness. He extended his left hand in greeting, and as I clasped the fingers I was struck by their peculiar, pronounced, yet pleasant warmth; a sensation, indeed, curiously electric.

The Association’s President forced him gently back into his chair.

“Dr. Goodwin,” he said, turning to me, “is not entirely recovered as yet from certain consequences of his adventures. He will explain to you later what these are. In the meantime, Mr. Merritt, will you read this?”

I took the sheets he handed me, and as I read them felt the gaze of Dr. Goodwin full upon me, searching, weighing, estimating. When I raised my eyes from the letter I found in his a new expression. The shyness was gone; they were filled with complete friendliness. Evidently I had passed muster.

“You will accept, sir?” It was the president’s gravely courteous tone.

“Accept!” I exclaimed. “Why, of course, I accept. It is not only one of the greatest honors, but to me one of the greatest delights to act as a collaborator with Dr. Goodwin.”

The president smiled.

“In that case, sir, there is no need for me to remain longer,” he said. “Dr. Goodwin has with him his manuscript as far as he has progressed with it. I will leave you two alone for your discussion.”

He bowed to us and, picking up his old-fashioned bell-crowned silk hat and his quaint, heavy cane of ebony, withdrew. Dr. Goodwin turned to me.

“I will start,” he said, after a little pause, “from when I met Richard Drake on the field of blue poppies that are like a great prayer-rug at the gray feet of the nameless mountain.”

The sun sank, the shadows fell, the lights of the city sparkled out, for hours New York roared about me unheeded while I listened to the tale of that utterly weird, stupendous drama of an unknown life, of unknown creatures, unknown forces, and of unconquerable human heroism played among the hidden gorges of unknown Asia.

It was dawn when I left him for my own home. Nor was it for many hours after that I laid his then incomplete manuscript down and sought sleep—and found a troubled sleep.

CHAPTER I

VALLEY OF THE BLUE POPPIES

In this great crucible of life we call the world—in the vaster one we call the universe—the mysteries lie close packed, uncountable as grains of sand on ocean’s shores. They thread gigantic, the star-flung spaces; they creep, atomic, beneath the microscope’s peering eye. They walk beside us, unseen and unheard, calling out to us, asking why we are deaf to their crying, blind to their wonder.

Sometimes the veils drop from a man’s eyes, and he sees—and speaks of his vision. Then those who have not seen pass him by with the lifted brows of disbelief, or they mock him, or if his vision has been great enough they fall upon and destroy him.

For the greater the mystery, the more bitterly is its verity assailed; upon what seem the lesser a man may give testimony and at least gain for himself a hearing.

There is reason for this. Life is a ferment, and upon and about it, shifting and changing, adding to or taking away, beat over legions of forces, seen and unseen, known and unknown. And man, an atom in the ferment, clings desperately to what to him seems stable; nor greets with joy him who hazards that what he grips may be but a broken staff, and, so saying, fails to hold forth a sturdier one.

Earth is a ship, plowing her way through uncharted oceans of space wherein are strange currents, hidden shoals and reefs, and where blow the unknown winds of Cosmos.

If to the voyagers, painfully plotting their course, comes one who cries that their charts must be remade, nor can tell why they must be—that man is not welcome—no!

Therefore it is that men have grown chary of giving testimony upon mysteries. Yet knowing each in his own heart the truth of that vision he has himself beheld, lo, it is that in whose reality he most believes.

The spot where I had encamped was of a singular beauty; so beautiful that it caught the throat and set an ache within the breast—until from it a tranquillity distilled that was like healing mist.

Since early March I had been wandering. It was now mid-July. And for the first time since my pilgrimage had begun I drank—not of forgetfulness, for that could never be—but of anodyne for a sorrow which had held fast upon me since my return from the Carolines a year before.

No need to dwell here upon that—it has been written. Nor shall I recite the reasons for my restlessness—for these are known to those who have read that history of mine. Nor is there cause to set forth at length the steps by which I had arrived at this vale of peace.

Sufficient is to tell that in New York one night, reading over what is perhaps the most sensational of my books—“The Poppies and Primulas of Southern Tibet,” the result of my travels of 1910-1911, I determined to return to that quiet, forbidden land. There, if anywhere, might I find something akin to forgetting.

There was a certain flower which I long had wished to study in its mutations from the singular forms appearing on the southern slopes of the Elburz—Persia’s mountainous chain that extends from Azerbaijan in the west to Khorasan in the east; from thence I would follow its modified types in the Hindu-Kush ranges and its migrations along the southern scarps of the Trans-Himalayas—the unexplored upheaval, higher than the Himalayas themselves, more deeply cut with precipice and gorge, which Sven Hedin had touched and named on his journey to Lhasa.

Having accomplished this, I planned to push across the passes to the Manasarowar Lakes, where, legend has it, the strange, luminous purple lotuses grow.

An ambitious project, undeniably fraught with danger; but it is written that desperate diseases require desperate remedies, and until inspiration or message how to rejoin those whom I had loved so dearly came to me, nothing less, I felt, could dull my heartache.

And, frankly, feeling that no such inspiration or message could come, I did not much care as to the end.

In Teheran I had picked up a most unusual servant; yes, more than this, a companion and counselor and interpreter as well.

He was a Chinese; his name Chiu-Ming. His first thirty years had been spent at the great Lamasery of Palkhor-Choinde at Gyantse, west of Lhasa. Why he had gone from there, how he had come to Teheran, I never asked. It was most fortunate that he had gone, and that I had found him. He recommended himself to me as the best cook within ten thousand miles of Pekin.

For almost three months we had journeyed; Chiu-Ming and I and the two ponies that carried my impedimenta.

We had traversed mountain roads which had echoed to the marching feet of the hosts of Darius, to the hordes of the Satraps. The highways of the Achaemenids—yes, and which before them had trembled to the tramplings of the myriads of the godlike Dravidian conquerors.

We had slipped over ancient Iranian trails; over paths which the warriors of conquering Alexander had traversed; dust of bones of Macedons, of Greeks, of Romans, beat about us; ashes of the flaming ambitions of the Sassanidae whimpered beneath our feet—the feet of an American botanist, a Chinaman, two Tibetan ponies. We had crept through clefts whose walls had sent back the howlings of the Ephthalites, the White Huns who had sapped the strength of these same proud Sassanids until at last both fell before the Turks.

Over the highways and byways of Persia’s glory, Persia’s shame and Persia’s death we four—two men, two beasts—had passed. For a fortnight we had met no human soul, seen no sign of human habitation.

Game had been plentiful—green things Chiu-Ming might lack for his cooking, but meat never. About us was a welter of mighty summits. We were, I knew, somewhere within the blending of the Hindu-Kush with the Trans-Himalayas.

That morning we had come out of a ragged defile into this valley of enchantment, and here, though it had been so early, I had pitched my tent, determining to go no farther till the morrow.

It was a Phocean vale; a gigantic cup filled with tranquillity. A spirit brooded over it, serene, majestic, immutable—like the untroubled calm which rests, the Burmese believe, over every place which has guarded the Buddha, sleeping.

At its eastern end towered the colossal scarp of the unnamed peak through one of whose gorges we had crept. On his head was a cap of silver set with pale emeralds—the snow fields and glaciers that crowned him. Far to the west another gray and ochreous giant reared its bulk, closing the vale. North and south, the horizon was a chaotic sky land of pinnacles, spired and minareted, steepled and turreted and domed, each diademed with its green and argent of eternal ice and snow.

And all the valley was carpeted with the blue poppies in wide, unbroken fields, luminous as the morning skies of mid-June; they rippled mile after mile over the path we had followed, over the still untrodden path which we must take. They nodded, they leaned toward each other, they seemed to whisper—then to lift their heads and look up like crowding swarms of little azure fays, half impudently, wholly trustfully, into the faces of the jeweled giants standing guard over them. And when the little breeze walked upon them it was as though they bent beneath the soft tread and were brushed by the sweeping skirts of unseen, hastening Presences.

Like a vast prayer-rug, sapphire and silken, the poppies stretched to the gray feet of the mountain. Between their southern edge and the clustering summits a row of faded brown, low hills knelt—like brown-robed, withered and weary old men, backs bent, faces hidden between outstretched arms, palms to the earth and brows touching earth within them—in the East’s immemorial attitude of worship.

I half expected them to rise—and as I watched a man appeared on one of the bowed, rocky shoulders, abruptly, with the ever-startling suddenness which in the strange light of these latitudes objects spring into vision. As he stood scanning my camp there arose beside him a laden pony, and at its head a Tibetan peasant. The first figure waved its hand; came striding down the hill.

As he approached I took stock of him. A young giant, three good inches over six feet, a vigorous head with unruly clustering black hair; a clean-cut, clean-shaven American face.

“I’m Dick Drake,” he said, holding out his hand. “Richard Keen Drake, recently with Uncle’s engineers in France.”

“My name is Goodwin.” I took his hand, shook it warmly. “Dr. Walter T. Goodwin.”

“Goodwin the botanist—? Then I know you!” he exclaimed. “Know all about you, that is. My father admired your work greatly. You knew him—Professor Alvin Drake.”

I nodded. So he was Alvin Drake’s son. Alvin, I knew, had died about a year before I had started on this journey. But what was his son doing in this wilderness?

“Wondering where I came from?” he answered my unspoken question. “Short story. War ended. Felt an irresistible desire for something different. Couldn’t think of anything more different from Tibet—always wanted to go there anyway. Went. Decided to strike over toward Turkestan. And here I am.”

I felt at once a strong liking for this young giant. No doubt, subconsciously, I had been feeling the need of companionship with my own kind. I even wondered, as I led the way into my little camp, whether he would care to join fortunes with me in my journeyings.

His father’s work I knew well, and although this stalwart lad was unlike what one would have expected Alvin Drake—a trifle dried, precise, wholly abstracted with his experiments—to beget, still, I reflected, heredity like the Lord sometimes works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.

It was almost with awe that he listened to me instruct Chiu-Ming as to just how I wanted supper prepared, and his gaze dwelt fondly upon the Chinese busy among his pots and pans.

We talked a little, desultorily, as the meal was prepared—fragments of traveler’s news and gossip, as is the habit of journeyers who come upon each other in the silent places. Ever the speculation grew in his face as he made away with Chiu-Ming’s artful concoctions.

Drake sighed, drawing out his pipe.

“A cook, a marvel of a cook. Where did you get him?”

Briefly I told him.

Then a silence fell upon us. Suddenly the sun dipped down behind the flank of the stone giant guarding the valley’s western gate; the whole vale swiftly darkened—a flood of crystal-clear shadows poured within it. It was the prelude to that miracle of unearthly beauty seen nowhere else on this earth—the sunset of Tibet.

We turned expectant eyes to the west. A little, cool breeze raced down from the watching steeps like a messenger, whispered to the nodding poppies, sighed and was gone. The poppies were still. High overhead a homing kite whistled, mellowly.

As if it were a signal there sprang out in the pale azure of the western sky row upon row of cirrus cloudlets, rank upon rank of them, thrusting their heads into the path of the setting sun. They changed from mottled silver into faint rose, deepened to crimson.

“The dragons of the sky drink the blood of the sunset,” said Chiu-Ming.

As though a gigantic globe of crystal had dropped upon the heavens, their blue turned swiftly to a clear and glowing amber—then as abruptly shifted to a luminous violet A soft green light pulsed through the valley.

Under it, like hills ensorcelled, the rocky walls about it seemed to flatten. They glowed and all at once pressed forward like gigantic slices of palest emerald jade, translucent, illumined, as though by a circlet of little suns shining behind them.

The light faded, robes of deepest amethyst dropped around the mountain’s mighty shoulders. And then from every snow and glacier-crowned peak, from minaret and pinnacle and towering turret, leaped forth a confusion of soft peacock flames, a host of irised prismatic gleamings, an ordered chaos of rainbows.

Great and small, interlacing and shifting, they ringed the valley with an incredible glory—as if some god of light itself had touched the eternal rocks and bidden radiant souls stand forth.

Through the darkening sky swept a rosy pencil of living light; that utterly strange, pure beam whose coming never fails to clutch the throat of the beholder with the hand of ecstasy, the ray which the Tibetans name the Ting-Pa. For a moment this rosy finger pointed to the east, then arched itself, divided slowly into six shining, rosy bands; began to creep downward toward the eastern horizon where a nebulous, pulsing splendor arose to meet it.

And as we watched I heard a gasp from Drake. And it was echoed by my own.

For the six beams were swaying, moving with ever swifter motion from side to side in ever-widening sweep, as though the hidden orb from which they sprang were swaying like a pendulum.

Faster and faster the six high-flung beams swayed—and then broke—broke as though a gigantic, unseen hand had reached up and snapped them!

An instant the severed ends ribboned aimlessly, then bent, turned down and darted earthward into the welter of clustered summits at the north and swiftly were gone, while down upon the valley fell night.

“Good God!” whispered Drake. “It was as though something reached up, broke those rays and drew them down—like threads.”

“I saw it.” I struggled with bewilderment. “I saw it. But I never saw anything like it before,” I ended, most inadequately.

“It was purposeful,” he whispered. “It was deliberate. As though something reached up, juggled with the rays, broke them, and drew them down like willow withes.”

“The devils that dwell here!” quavered Chiu-Ming.

“Some magnetic phenomenon.” I was half angry at myself for my own touch of panic. “Light can be deflected by passage through a magnetic field. Of course that’s it. Certainly.”

“I don’t know.” Drake’s tone was doubtful indeed. “It would take a whale of a magnetic field to have done that—it’s inconceivable.” He harked back to his first idea. “It was so—so damned deliberate,” he repeated.

“Devils—” muttered the frightened Chinese.

“What’s that?” Drake gripped my arm and pointed to the north. A deeper blackness had grown there while we had been talking, a pool of darkness against which the mountain summits stood out, blade-sharp edges faintly luminous.

A gigantic lance of misty green fire darted from the blackness and thrust its point into the heart of the zenith; following it, leaped into the sky a host of the sparkling spears of light, and now the blackness was like an ebon hand, brandishing a thousand javelins of tinseled flame.

“The aurora,” I said.

“It ought to be a good one,” mused Drake, gaze intent upon it. “Did you notice the big sun spot?”

I shook my head.

“The biggest I ever saw. Noticed it first at dawn this morning. Some little aurora lighter—that spot. I told you—look at that!” he cried.

The green lances had fallen back. The blackness gathered itself together—then from it began to pulse billows of radiance, spangled with infinite darting swarms of flashing corpuscles like uncounted hosts of dancing fireflies.

Higher the waves rolled—phosphorescent green and iridescent violet, weird copperous yellows and metallic saffrons and a shimmer of glittering ash of rose—then wavered, split and formed into gigantic, sparkling, marching curtains of splendor.

A vast circle of light sprang out upon the folds of the flickering, rushing curtains. Misty at first, its edges sharpened until they rested upon the blazing glory of the northern sky like a pale ring of cold flame. And about it the aurora began to churn, to heap itself, to revolve.

Toward the ring from every side raced the majestic folds, drew themselves together, circled, seethed around it like foam of fire about the lip of a cauldron, and poured through the shining circle as though it were the mouth of that fabled cavern where old Aeolus sits blowing forth and breathing back the winds that sweep the earth.

Yes—into the ring’s mouth the aurora flew, cascading in a columned stream to earth. Then swiftly, a mist swept over all the heavens, veiled that incredible cataract.

“Magnetism?” muttered Drake. “I guess not!”

“It struck about where the Ting-Pa was broken and seemed drawn down like the rays,” I said.

“Purposeful,” Drake said. “And devilish. It hit on all my nerves like a—like a metal claw. Purposeful and deliberate. There was intelligence behind that.”

“Intelligence? Drake—what intelligence could break the rays of the setting sun and suck down the aurora?”

“I don’t know,” he answered.

“Devils,” croaked Chiu-Ming. “The devils that defied Buddha—and have grown strong—”

“Like a metal claw!” breathed Drake.

Far to the west a sound came to us; first a whisper, then a wild rushing, a prolonged wailing, a crackling. A great light flashed through the mist, glowed about us and faded. Again the wailing, the vast rushing, the retreating whisper.

Then silence and darkness dropped embraced upon the valley of the blue poppies.

CHAPTER II

THE SIGIL ON THE ROCKS

Dawn came. Drake had slept well. But I, who had not his youthful resiliency, lay for long, awake and uneasy. I had hardly sunk into troubled slumber before dawn awakened me.

As we breakfasted, I approached directly that matter which my growing liking for him was turning into strong desire.

“Drake,” I asked. “Where are you going?”

“With you,” he laughed. “I’m foot loose and fancy free. And I think you ought to have somebody with you to help watch that cook. He might get away.”

The idea seemed to appall him.

“Fine!” I exclaimed heartily, and thrust out my hand to him. “I’m thinking of striking over the range soon to the Manasarowar Lakes. There’s a curious flora I’d like to study.”

“Anywhere you say suits me,” he answered.

We clasped hands on our partnership and soon we were on our way to the valley’s western gate; our united caravans stringing along behind us. Mile after mile we trudged through the blue poppies, discussing the enigmas of the twilight and of the night.

In the light of day their breath of vague terror was dissipated. There was no place for mystery nor dread under this floor of brilliant sunshine. The smiling sapphire floor rolled ever on before us.

Whispering little playful breezes flew down the slopes to gossip for a moment with the nodding flowers. Flocks of rose finches raced chattering overhead to quarrel with the tiny willow warblers, the chi-u-teb-tok, holding fief of the drooping, graceful bowers bending down to the little laughing stream that for the past hour had chuckled and gurgled like a friendly water baby beside us.

I had proven, almost to my own satisfaction, that what we had beheld had been a creation of the extraordinary atmospheric attributes of these highlands, an atmosphere so unique as to make almost anything of the kind possible. But Drake was not convinced.

“I know,” he said. “Of course I understand all that—superimposed layers of warmer air that might have bent the ray; vortices in the higher levels that might have produced just that effect of the captured aurora. I admit it’s all possible. I’ll even admit it’s all probable, but damn me, Doc, if I believe it! I had too clearly the feeling of a conscious force, a something that knew exactly what it was doing—and had a reason for it.”

It was mid-afternoon.

The spell of the valley upon us, we had gone leisurely. The western mount was close, the mouth of the gorge through which we must pass, now plain before us. It did not seem as though we could reach it before dusk, and Drake and I were reconciled to spending another night in the peaceful vale. Plodding along, deep in thought, I was startled by his exclamation.

He was staring at a point some hundred yards to his right. I followed his gaze.

The towering cliffs were a scant half mile away. At some distant time there had been an enormous fall of rock. This, disintegrating, had formed a gently-curving breast which sloped down to merge with the valley’s floor. Willow and witch alder, stunted birch and poplar had found roothold, clothed it, until only their crowding outposts, thrusting forward in a wavering semicircle, held back seemingly by the blue hordes, showed where it melted into the meadows.

In the center of this breast, beginning half way up its slopes and stretching down into the flowered fields was a colossal imprint.

Gray and brown, it stood out against the green and blue of slope and level; a rectangle all of thirty feet wide, two hundred long, the heel faintly curved and from its hither end, like claws, four slender triangles radiating from it like twenty-four points of a ten-rayed star.

Irresistibly was it like a footprint—but what thing was there whose tread could leave such a print as this?

I ran up the slope—Drake already well in advance. I paused at the base of the triangles where, were this thing indeed a footprint, the spreading claws sprang from the flat of it.

The track was fresh. At its upper edges were clipped bushes and split trees, the white wood of the latter showing where they had been sliced as though by the stroke of a scimitar.

I stepped out upon the mark. It was as level as though planed; bent down and stared in utter disbelief of what my own eyes beheld. For stone and earth had been crushed, compressed, into a smooth, microscopically grained, adamantine complex, and in this matrix poppies still bearing traces of their coloring were imbedded like fossils. A cyclone can and does grip straws and thrust them unbroken through an inch board—but what force was there which could take the delicate petals of a flower and set them like inlay within the surface of a stone?

Into my mind came recollection of the wailings, the crashings in the night, of the weird glow that had flashed about us when the mist arose to hide the chained aurora.

“It was what we heard,” I said. “The sounds—it was then that this was made.”

“The foot of Shin-je!” Chiu-Ming’s voice was tremulous. “The lord of Hell has trodden here!”

I translated for Drake’s benefit.

“Has the lord of Hell but one foot?” asked Dick, politely.

“He bestrides the mountains,” said Chiu-Ming. “On the far side is his other footprint. Shin-je it was who strode the mountains and set here his foot.”

Again I interpreted.

Drake cast a calculating glance up to the cliff top.

“Two thousand feet, about,” he mused. “Well, if Shin-je is built in our proportions that makes it about right. The length of this thing would give him just about a two thousand foot leg. Yes—he could just about straddle that hill.”

“You’re surely not serious?” I asked in consternation.

“What the hell!” he exclaimed, “am I crazy? This is no foot mark. How could it be? Look at the mathematical nicety with which these edges are stamped out—as though by a die—

“That’s what it reminds me of—a die. It’s as if some impossible power had been used to press it down. Like—like a giant seal of metal in a mountain’s hand. A sigil—a seal—”

“But why?” I asked. “What could be the purpose—”

“Better ask where the devil such a force could be gotten together and how it came here,” he said. “Look—except for this one place there isn’t a mark anywhere. All the bushes and the trees, all the poppies and the grass are just as they ought to be.

“How did whoever or whatever it was that made this, get here and get away without leaving any trace but this? Damned if I don’t think Chiu-Ming’s explanation puts less strain upon the credulity than any I could offer.”

I peered about. It was so. Except for the mark, there was no slightest sign of the unusual, the abnormal.

But the mark was enough!

“I’m for pushing up a notch or two and getting into the gorge before dark,” he was voicing my own thought. “I’m willing to face anything human—but I’m not keen to be pressed into a rock like a flower in a maiden’s book of poems.” Just at twilight we drew out of the valley into the pass. We traveled a full mile along it before darkness forced us to make camp. The gorge was narrow. The far walls but a hundred feet away; but we had no quarrel with them for their neighborliness, no! Their solidity, their immutability, breathed confidence back into us.

And after we had found a deep niche capable of holding the entire caravan we filed within, ponies and all, I for one perfectly willing thus to spend the night, let the air at dawn be what it would. We dined within on bread and tea, and then, tired to the bone, sought each his place upon the rocky floor. I slept well, waking only once or twice by Chiu-Ming’s groanings; his dreams evidently were none of the pleasantest. If there was an aurora I neither knew nor cared. My slumber was dreamless.

CHAPTER III

RUTH VENTNOR

The dawn, streaming into the niche, awakened us. A covey of partridges venturing too close yielded three to our guns. We breakfasted well, and a little later were pushing on down the cleft.

Its descent, though gradual, was continuous, and therefore I was not surprised when soon we began to come upon evidences of semi-tropical vegetation. Giant rhododendrons and tree ferns gave way to occasional clumps of stately kopek and clumps of the hardier bamboos. We added a few snow cocks to our larder—although they were out of their habitat, flying down into the gorge from their peaks and table-lands for some choice tidbit.

All that day we marched on, and when at night we made camp, sleep came to us quickly and overmastering. An hour after dawn we were on our way. A brief stop we made for lunch; pressed forward.

It was close to two when we caught the first sight of the ruins.

The soaring, verdure-clad walls of the canyon had long been steadily marching closer. Above, between their rims the wide ribbon of sky was like a fantastically shored river, shimmering, dazzling; every cove and headland edged with an opalescent glimmering as of shining pearly beaches.

And as though we were sinking in that sky stream’s depths its light kept lessening, darkening imperceptibly with luminous shadows of ghostly beryl, drifting veils of pellucid aquamarine, limpid mists of glaucous chrysolite.

Fainter, more crepuscular became the light, yet never losing its crystalline quality. Now the high overhead river was but a brook; became a thread. Abruptly it vanished.

We passed into a tunnel, fern walled, fern roofed, garlanded with tawny orchids, gay with carmine fungus and golden moss. We stepped out into a blaze of sunlight.

Before us lay a wide green bowl held in the hands of the clustered hills; shallow, circular, as though, while plastic still, the thumb of God had run round its rim, shaping it. Around it the peaks crowded, craning their lofty heads to peer within.

It was about a mile in its diameter, this hollow, as my gaze then measured it. It had three openings—one that lay like a crack in the northeast slope; another, the tunnel mouth through which we had come. The third lifted itself out of the bowl, creeping up the precipitous bare scarp of the western barrier straight to the north, clinging to the ochreous rock up and up until it vanished around a far distant shoulder.

It was a wide and bulwarked road, a road that spoke as clearly as though it had tongue of human hands which had cut it there in the mountain’s breast. An ancient road weary beyond belief beneath the tread of uncounted years.

From the hollow the blind soul of loneliness groped out to greet us!

Never had I felt such loneliness as that which lapped the lip of the verdant bowl. It was tangible—as though it had been poured from some reservoir of misery. A pool of despair—

Half the width of the valley away the ruins began. Weirdly were they its visible expression. They huddled in two bent rows to the bottom. They crouched in a wide cluster against the cliffs. From the cluster a curving row of them ran along the southern crest of the hollow.

A flight of shattered, cyclopean steps lifted to a ledge and here a crumbling fortress stood.

Irresistibly did the ruins seem a colossal hag, flung prone, lying listlessly, helplessly, against the barrier’s base. The huddled lower ranks were the legs, the cluster the body, the upper row an outflung arm and above the neck of the stairway the ancient fortress, rounded and with two huge ragged apertures in its northern front was an aged, bleached and withered head staring, watching.

I looked at Drake—the spell of the bowl was heavy upon him, his face drawn. The Chinaman and Tibetan were murmuring, terror written large upon them.

“A hell of a joint!” Drake turned to me, a shadow of a grin lightening the distress on his face. “But I’d rather chance it than go back. What d’you say?”

I nodded, curiosity mastering my oppression. We stepped over the rim, rifles on the alert. Close behind us crowded the two servants and the ponies.

The vale was shallow, as I have said. We trod the fragments of an olden approach to the green tunnel so the descent was not difficult. Here and there beside the path upreared huge broken blocks. On them I thought I could see faint tracings as of carvings—now a suggestion of gaping, arrow-fanged dragon jaws, now the outline of a scaled body, a hint of enormous, batlike wings.

Now we had reached the first of the crumbling piles that stretched down into the valley’s center.

Half fainting, I fell against Drake, clutching to him for support.

A stream of utter hopelessness was racing upon us, swirling and eddying around us, reaching to our hearts with ghostly fingers dripping with despair. From every shattered heap it seemed to pour, rushing down the road upon us like a torrent, engulfing us, submerging, drowning.

Unseen it was—yet tangible as water; it sapped the life from every nerve. Weariness filled me, a desire to drop upon the stones, to be rolled away. To die. I felt Drake’s body quivering even as mine; knew that he was drawing upon every reserve of strength.

“Steady,” he muttered. “Steady—”

The Tibetan shrieked and fled, the ponies scrambling after him. Dimly I remembered that mine carried precious specimens; a surge of anger passed, beating back the anguish. I heard a sob from Chiu-Ming, saw him drop.

Drake stopped, drew him to his feet. We placed him between us, thrust each an arm through his own. Then, like swimmers, heads bent, we pushed on, buffeting that inexplicable invisible flood.

As the path rose, its force lessened, my vitality grew, and the terrible desire to yield and be swept away waned. Now we had reached the foot of the cyclopean stairs, now we were half up them—and now as we struggled out upon the ledge on which the watching fortress stood, the clutching stream shoaled swiftly, the shoal became safe, dry land and the cheated, unseen maelstrom swirled harmlessly beneath us.

We stood erect, gasping for breath, again like swimmers who have fought their utmost and barely, so barely, won.

There was an almost imperceptible movement at the side of the ruined portal.

Out darted a girl. A rifle dropped from her hands. Straight she sped toward me.

And as she ran I recognized her.

Ruth Ventnor!

The flying figure reached me, threw soft arms around my neck, was weeping in relieved gladness on my shoulder.

“Ruth!” I cried. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Walter!” she sobbed. “Walter Goodwin—Oh, thank God! Thank God!”

She drew herself from my arms, catching her breath; laughed shakily.

I took swift stock of her. Save for fear upon her, she was the same Ruth I had known three years before; wide, deep blue eyes that were now all seriousness, now sparkling wells of mischief; petite, rounded and tender; the fairest skin; an impudent little nose; shining clusters of intractable curls; all human, sparkling and sweet.

Drake coughed, insinuatingly. I introduced him.

“I—I watched you struggling through that dreadful pit.” She shuddered. “I could not see who you were, did not know whether friend or enemy—but oh, my heart almost died in pity for you, Walter,” she breathed. “What can it be—there?”

I shook my head.

“Martin could not see you,” she went on. “He was watching the road that leads above. But I ran down—to help.”

“Mart watching?” I asked. “Watching for what?”

“I—” she hesitated oddly. “I think I’d rather tell you before him. It’s so strange—so incredible.”

She led us through the broken portal and into the fortress. It was more gigantic even than I had thought. The floor of the vast chamber we had entered was strewn with fragments fallen from the crackling, stone-vaulted ceiling. Through the breaks light streamed from the level above us.

We picked our way among the debris to a wide crumbling stairway, crept up it, Ruth flitting ahead. We came out opposite one of the eye-like apertures. Black against it, perched high upon a pile of blocks, I recognized the long, lean outline of Ventnor, rifle in hand, gazing intently up the ancient road whose windings were plain through the opening. He had not heard us.

“Martin,” called Ruth softly.

He turned. A shaft of light from a crevice in the gap’s edge struck his face, flashing it out from the semidarkness of the corner in which he crouched. I looked into the quiet gray eyes, upon the keen face.

“Goodwin!” he shouted, tumbling down from his perch, shaking me by the shoulders. “If I had been in the way of praying—you’re the man I’d have prayed for. How did you get here?”

“Just wandering, Mart,” I answered. “But Lord! I’m sure glad to see you.”

“Which way did you come?” he asked, keenly. I threw my hand toward the south.

“Not through that hollow?” he asked incredulously.

“And some hell of a place to get through,” Drake broke in. “It cost us our ponies and all my ammunition.”

“Richard Drake,” I said. “Son of old Alvin—you knew him, Mart.”

“Knew him well,” cried Ventnor, seizing Dick’s hand. “Wanted me to go to Kamchatka to get some confounded sort of stuff for one of his devilish experiments. Is he well?”

“He’s dead,” replied Dick soberly.

“Oh!” said Ventnor. “Oh—I’m sorry. He was a great man.”

Briefly I acquainted him with my wanderings, my encounter with Drake.

“That place out there—” he considered us thoughtfully. “Damned if I know what it is. Thought maybe it’s gas—of a sort. If it hadn’t been for it we’d have been out of this hole two days ago. I’m pretty sure it must be gas. And it must be much less than it was this morning, for then we made an attempt to get through again—and couldn’t.”

I was hardly listening. Ventnor had certainly advanced a theory of our unusual symptoms that had not occurred to me. That hollow might indeed be a pocket into which a gas flowed; just as in the mines the deadly coal damp collects in pits, flows like a stream along the passages. It might be that—some odorless, colorless gas of unknown qualities; and yet—

“Did you try respirators?” asked Dick.

“Surely,” said Ventnor. “First off the go. But they weren’t of any use. The gas, if it is gas, seems to operate as well through the skin as through the nose and mouth. We just couldn’t make it—and that’s all there is to it. But if you made it—could we try it now, do you think?” he asked eagerly.

I felt myself go white.

“Not—not for a little while,” I stammered.

He nodded, understandingly.

“I see,” he said. “Well, we’ll wait a bit, then.”

“But why are you staying here? Why didn’t you make for the road up the mountain? What are you watching for, anyway?” asked Drake.

“Go to it, Ruth,” Ventnor grinned. “Tell ’em. After all—it was your party you know.”

“Mart!” she cried, blushing.

“Well—it wasn’t me they admired,” he laughed.

“Martin!” she cried again, and stamped her foot.

“Shoot,” he said. “I’m busy. I’ve got to watch.”

“Well”—Ruth’s voice was uncertain—“we’d been hunting up in Kashmir. Martin wanted to come over somewhere here. So we crossed the passes. That was about a month ago. The fourth day out we ran across what looked like a road running south.

“We thought we’d take it. It looked sort of old and lost—but it was going the way we wanted to go. It took us first into a country of little hills; then to the very base of the great range itself; finally into the mountains—and then it ran blank.”

“Bing!” interjected Ventnor, looking around for a moment. “Bing—just like that. Slap dash against a prodigious fall of rock. We couldn’t get over it.”

“So we cast about to find another road,” went on Ruth. “All we could strike were—just strikes.”

“No fish on the end of ’em,” said Ventnor. “God! But I’m glad to see you, Walter Goodwin. Believe me, I am. However—go on, Ruth.”

“At the end of the second week,” she said, “we knew we were lost. We were deep in the heart of the range. All around us was a forest of enormous, snow-topped peaks. The gorges, the canyons, the valleys that we tried led us east and west, north and south.

“It was a maze, and in it we seemed to be going ever deeper. There was not the slightest sign of human life. It was as though no human beings except ourselves had ever been there. Game was plentiful. We had no trouble in getting food. And sooner or later, of course, we were bound to find our way out. We didn’t worry.

“It was five nights ago that we camped at the head of a lovely little valley. There was a mound that stood up like a tiny watch-tower, looking down it. The trees grew round like tall sentinels.

“We built our fire in that mound; and after we had eaten, Martin slept. I sat watching the beauty of the skies and of the shadowy vale. I heard no one approach—but something made me leap to my feet, look behind me.

“A man was standing just within the glow of firelight, watching me.”

“A Tibetan?” I asked. She shook her head, trouble in her eyes.

“Not at all.” Ventnor turned his head. “Ruth screamed and awakened me. I caught a glimpse of the fellow before he vanished.

“A short purple mantle hung from his shoulders. His chest was covered with fine chain mail. His legs were swathed and bound by the thongs of his high buskins. He carried a small, round, hide-covered shield and a short two-edged sword. His head was helmeted. He belonged, in fact—oh, at least twenty centuries back.”

He laughed in plain enjoyment of our amazement.

“Go on, Ruth,” he said, and took up his watch.

“But Martin did not see his face,” she went on. “And oh, but I wish I could forget it. It was as white as mine, Walter, and cruel, so cruel; the eyes glowed and they looked upon me like a—like a slave dealer. They shamed me—I wanted to hide myself.

“I cried out and Martin awakened. As he moved, the man stepped out of the light and was gone. I think he had not seen Martin; had believed that I was alone.

“We put out the fire, moved farther into the shadow of the trees. But I could not sleep—I sat hour after hour, my pistol in my hand,” she patted the automatic in her belt, “my rifle close beside me.

“The hours went by—dreadfully. At last I dozed. When I awakened again it was dawn—and—and—” she covered her eyes, then: “Two men were looking down on me. One was he who had stood in the firelight.”

“They were talking,” interrupted Ventnor again, “in archaic Persian.”

“Persian,” I repeated blankly; “archaic Persian?”

“Very much so,” he nodded. “I’ve a fair knowledge of the modern tongue, and a rather unusual command of Arabic. The modern Persian, as you know, comes straight through from the speech of Xerxes, of Cyrus, of Darius whom Alexander of Macedon conquered. It has been changed mainly by taking on a load of Arabic words. Well—there wasn’t a trace of the Arabic in the tongue they were speaking.

“It sounded odd, of course—but I could understand quite easily. They were talking about Ruth. To be explicit, they were discussing her with exceeding frankness—”

“Martin!” she cried wrathfully.

“Well, all right,” he went on, half repentantly. “As a matter of fact, I had seen the pair steal up. My rifle was under my hand. So I lay there quietly, listening.

“You can realize, Walter, that when I caught sight of those two, looking as though they had materialized from Darius’s ghostly hordes, my scientific curiosity was aroused—prodigiously. So in my interest I passed over the matter of their speech; not alone because I thought Ruth asleep but also because I took into consideration that the mode of polite expression changes with the centuries—and these gentlemen clearly belonged at least twenty centuries back—the real truth is I was consumed with curiosity.

“They had got to a point where they were detailing with what pleasure a certain mysterious person whom they seemed to regard with much fear and respect would contemplate her. I was wondering how long my desire to observe—for to the anthropologist they were most fascinating—could hold my hand back from my rifle when Ruth awakened.

“She jumped up like a little fury. Fired a pistol point blank at them. Their amazement was—well—ludicrous. I know it seems incredible, but they seemed to know nothing of firearms—they certainly acted as though they didn’t.

“They simply flew into the timber. I took a pistol shot at one but missed. Ruth hadn’t though; she had winged her man; he left a red trail behind him.

“We didn’t follow the trail. We made for the opposite direction—and as fast as possible.

“Nothing happened that day or night. Next morning, creeping up a slope, we caught sight of a suspicious glitter a mile or two away in the direction we were going. We sought shelter in a small ravine. In a little while, over the hill and half a mile away from us, came about two hundred of these fellows, marching along.

“And they were indeed Darius’s men. Men of that Persia which had been dead for millenniums. There was no mistaking them, with their high, covering shields, their great bows, their javelins and armor.

“They passed; we doubled. We built no fires that night—and we ought to have turned the pony loose, but we didn’t. It carried my instruments, and ammunition, and I felt we were going to need the latter.

“The next morning we caught sight of another band—or the same. We turned again. We stole through a tree-covered plain; we struck an ancient road. It led south, into the peaks again. We followed it. It brought us here.

“It isn’t, as you observe, the most comfortable of places. We struck across the hollow to the crevice—we knew nothing of the entrance you came through. The hollow was not pleasant, either. But it was penetrable, then.

“We crossed. As we were about to enter the cleft there issued out of it a most unusual and disconcerting chorus of sounds—wailings, crashings, splinterings.”

I started, shot a look at Dick; absorbed, he was drinking in Ventnor’s every word.

“So unusual, so—well, disconcerting is the best word I can think of, that we were not encouraged to proceed. Also the peculiar unpleasantness of the hollow was increasing rapidly.

“We made the best time we could back to the fortress. And when next we tried to go through the hollow, to search for another outlet—we couldn’t. You know why,” he ended abruptly.

“But men in ancient armor. Men like those of Darius.” Dick broke the silence that had followed this amazing recital. “It’s incredible!”

“Yes,” agreed Ventnor, “isn’t it. But there they were. Of course, I don’t maintain that they were relics of Darius’s armies. They might have been of Xerxes before him—or of Artaxerxes after him. But there they certainly were, Drake, living, breathing replicas of exceedingly ancient Persians.

“Why, they might have been the wall carvings on the tomb of Khosroes come to life. I mention Darius because he fits in with the most plausible hypothesis. When Alexander the Great smashed his empire he did it rather thoroughly. There wasn’t much sympathy for the vanquished in those days. And it’s entirely conceivable that a city or two in Alexander’s way might have gathered up a fleeting regiment or so for protection and have decided not to wait for him, but to hunt for cover.

“Naturally, they would have gone into the almost inaccessible heart of the high ranges. There is nothing impossible in the theory that they found shelter at last up here. As long as history runs this has been a well-nigh unknown land. Penetrating some mountain-guarded, easily defended valley they might have decided to settle down for a time, have rebuilt a city, raised a government; laying low, in a sentence, waiting for the storm to blow over.

“Why did they stay? Well, they might have found the new life more pleasant than the old. And they might have been locked in their valley by some accident—landslides, rockfalls sealing up the entrance. There are a dozen reasonable possibilities.”

“But those who hunted you weren’t locked in,” objected Drake.

“No,” Ventnor grinned ruefully. “No, they certainly weren’t. Maybe we drifted into their preserves by a way they don’t know. Maybe they’ve found another way out. I’m sure I don’t know. But I do know what I saw.”

“The noises, Martin,” I said, for his description of these had been the description of those we had heard in the blue valley. “Have you heard them since?”

“Yes,” he answered, hesitating oddly.

“And you think those—those soldiers you saw are still hunting for you?”

“Haven’t a doubt of it,” he replied more cheerfully. “They didn’t look like chaps who would give up a hunt easily—at least not a hunt for such novel, interesting, and therefore desirable and delectable game as we must have appeared to them.”

“Martin,” I said decisively, “where’s your pony? We’ll try the hollow again, at once. There’s Ruth—and we’d never be able to hold back such numbers as you’ve described.”

“You feel strong enough to try it?”

CHAPTER IV

METAL WITH A BRAIN

The eagerness, the relief in his voice betrayed the tension, the anxiety which until now he had hidden so well; and hot shame burned me for my shrinking, my dread of again passing through that haunted vale.

“I certainly do.” I was once more master of myself. “Drake—don’t you agree?”

“Sure,” he replied. “Sure. I’ll look after Ruth—er—I mean Miss Ventnor.”

The glint of amusement in Ventnor’s eyes at this faded abruptly; his face grew somber.

“Wait,” he said. “I carried away some—some exhibits from the crevice of the noises, Goodwin.”

“What kind of exhibits?” I asked, eagerly.

“Put ’em where they’d be safe,” he continued. “I’ve an idea they’re far more curious than our armored men—and of far more importance. At any rate, we must take them with us.

“Go with Ruth, you and Drake, and look at them. And bring them back with the pony. Then we’ll make a start. A few minutes more probably won’t make much difference—but hurry.”

He turned back to his watch. Ordering Chiu-Ming to stay with him I followed Ruth and Drake down the ruined stairway. At the bottom she came to me, laid little hands on my shoulders.

“Walter,” she breathed, “I’m frightened. I’m so frightened I’m afraid to tell even Mart. He doesn’t like them, either, these little things you’re going to see. He likes them so little that he’s afraid to let me know how little he does like them.”

“But what are they? What’s to fear about them?” asked Drake.

“See what you think!” She led us slowly, almost reluctantly toward the rear of the fortress. “They lay in a little heap at the mouth of the cleft where we heard the noises. Martin picked them up and dropped them in a sack before we ran through the hollow.

“They’re grotesque and they’re almost cute, and they make me feel as though they were the tiniest tippy-tip of the claw of some incredibly large cat just stealing around the corner, a terrible cat, a cat as big as a mountain,” she ended breathlessly.

We climbed through the crumbling masonry into a central, open court. Here a clear spring bubbled up in a ruined and choked stone basin; close to the ancient well was their pony, contentedly browsing in the thick grass that grew around it. From one of its hampers Ruth took a large cloth bag.

“To carry them,” she said, and trembled.

We passed through what had once been a great door into another chamber larger than that we had just left; and it was in better preservation, the ceiling unbroken, the light dim after the blazing sun of the court. Near its center she halted us.

Before me ran a two-feet-wide ragged crack, splitting the floor and dropping down into black depths. Beyond was an expanse of smooth flagging, almost clear of debris.

Drake gave a low whistle. I followed his pointing finger. In the wall at the end whirled two enormous dragon shapes, cut in low relief. Their gigantic wings, their monstrous coils, covered the nearly unbroken surface, and these chimerae were the shapes upon the upthrust blocks of the haunted roadway.

In Ruth’s gaze I read a nameless fear, a half shuddering fascination.

But she was not looking at the cavern dragons.

Her gaze was fixed upon what at my first glance seemed to be a raised and patterned circle in the dust-covered floor. Not more than a foot in width, it shone wanly with a pale, metallic bluish luster, as though, I thought, it had been recently polished. Compared with the wall’s tremendous winged figures this floor design was trivial, ludicrously insignificant. What could there be about it to stamp that dread upon Ruth’s face?

I leaped the crevice; Dick joined me. Now I could see that the ring was not continuous. Its broken circle was made of sharply edged cubes about an inch in height, separated from each other with mathematical exactness by another inch of space. I counted them—there were nineteen.

Almost touching them with their bases were an equal number of pyramids, of tetrahedrons, as sharply angled and of similar length. They lay on their sides with tips pointing starlike to six spheres clustered like a conventionalized five petaled primrose in the exact center. Five of these spheres—the petals—were, I roughly calculated, about an inch and a half in diameter, the ball they enclosed larger by almost an inch.

So orderly was their arrangement, so much like a geometrical design nicely done by some clever child that I hesitated to disturb it. I bent, and stiffened, the first touch of dread upon me.

For within the ring, close to the clustering globes, was a miniature replica of the giant track in the poppied valley!

It stood out from the dust with the same hint of crushing force, the same die cut sharpness, the same metallic suggestion—and pointing toward the globes were the claw marks of the four spreading star points.

I reached down and picked up one of the pyramids. It seemed to cling to the rock; it was with effort that I wrenched it away. It gave to the touch a slight sensation of warmth—how can I describe it?—a warmth that was living.

I weighed it in my hand. It was oddly heavy, twice the weight, I should say, of platinum. I drew out a glass and examined it. Decidedly the pyramid was metallic, but of finest, almost silken texture—and I could not place it among any of the known metals. It certainly was none I had ever seen; yet it was as certainly metal. It was striated—slender filaments radiating from tiny, dully lustrous points within the polished surface.

And suddenly I had the weird feeling that each of these points was an eye, peering up at me, scrutinizing me. There came a startled cry from Dick.

“Look at the ring!”

The ring was in motion!

Faster the cubes moved; faster the circle revolved; the pyramids raised themselves, stood bolt upright on their square bases; the six rolling spheres touched them, joined the spinning, and with sleight-of-hand suddenness the ring drew together; its units coalesced, cubes and pyramids and globes threading with a curious suggestion of ferment.

With the same startling abruptness there stood erect, where but a moment before they had seethed, a little figure, grotesque; a weirdly humorous, a vaguely terrifying foot-high shape, squared and angled and pointed and animate—as though a child should build from nursery blocks a fantastic shape which abruptly is filled with throbbing life.

A troll from the kindergarten! A kobold of the toys!

Only for a second it stood, then began swiftly to change, melting with quicksilver quickness from one outline into another as square and triangle and spheres changed places. Their shiftings were like the transformations one sees within a kaleidoscope. And in each vanishing form was the suggestion of unfamiliar harmonies, of a subtle, a transcendental geometric art as though each swift shaping were a symbol, a word—

Euclid’s problems given volition!

Geometry endowed with consciousness!

It ceased. Then the cubes drew one upon the other until they formed a pedestal nine inches high; up this pillar rolled the larger globe, balanced itself upon the top; the five spheres followed it, clustered like a ring just below it. The other cubes raced up, clicked two by two on the outer arc of each of the five balls; at the ends of these twin blocks a pyramid took its place, tipping each with a point.

The Lilliputian fantasy was now a pedestal of cubes surmounted by a ring of globes from which sprang a star of five arms.

The spheres began to revolve. Faster and faster they spun around the base of the crowning globe; the arms became a disc upon which tiny brilliant sparks appeared, clustered, vanished only to reappear in greater number.

The troll swept toward me. It glided. The finger of panic touched me. I sprang aside, and swift as light it followed, seemed to poise itself to leap.

“Drop it!” It was Ruth’s cry.

But, before I could let fall the pyramid I had forgotten was in my hand, the little figure touched me and a paralyzing shock ran through me. My fingers clenched, locked. I stood, muscle and nerve bound, unable to move.

The little figure paused. Its whirling disc shifted from the horizontal plane on which it spun. It was as though it cocked its head to look up at me—and again I had the sense of innumerable eyes peering at me. It did not seem menacing—its attitude was inquisitive, waiting; almost as though it had asked for something and wondered why I did not let it have it. The shock still held me rigid, although a tingle in every nerve told me of returning force.

The disc tilted back to place, bent toward me again. I heard a shout; heard a bullet strike the pigmy that now clearly menaced; heard the bullet ricochet without the slightest effect upon it. Dick leaped beside me, raised a foot and kicked at the thing. There was a flash of light and upon the instant he crashed down as though struck by a giant hand, lay sprawling and inert upon the floor.

There was a scream from Ruth; there was softly sibilant rustling all about her. I saw her leap the crevice, drop on her knees beside Drake.

There was movement on the flagging where she stood. A score or more of faintly shining, bluish shapes were marching there—pyramids and cubes and spheres like those forming the shape that stood before me. There was a curious sharp tang of ozone in the air, a perceptible tightening as of electrical tension.

They swept to the edge of the fissure, swam together, and there, hanging half over the gap was a bridge, half spanning it, a weird and fairy arch made up of alternate cube and angle. The shape at my feet disintegrated; resolved itself into units that raced over to the beckoning span.

At the hither side of the crack they clicked into place, even as had the others. Before me now was a bridge complete except for the one arc near the middle where an angled gap marred it.

I felt the little object I held pulse within my hand, striving to escape. I dropped it. The tiny shape swept to the bridge, ascended it—dropped into the gap.

The arch was complete—hanging in one flying span over the depths!

Upon it, over it, as though they had but awaited this completion, rolled the six globes. And as they dropped to the farther side the end of the bridge nearest me raised itself in air, curved itself like a scorpion’s tail, drew itself into a closer circled arc, and dropped upon the floor beyond.

Again the sibilant rustling—and cubes and pyramids and spheres were gone.

Nerves tingling slowly back to life, mazed in absolute bewilderment, my gaze sought Drake. He was sitting up, feebly, his head supported by Ruth’s hands.

“Goodwin!” he whispered. “What—what were they?”

“Metal,” I said—it was the only word to which my whirling mind could cling—“metal—”

“Metal!” he echoed. “These things metal? Metal—alive and thinking!”

Suddenly he was silent, his face a page on which, visibly, dread gathered slowly and ever deeper.

And as I looked at Ruth, white-faced, and at him, I knew that my own was as pallid, as terror-stricken as theirs.

“They were such little things,” muttered Drake. “Such little things—bits of metal—little globes and pyramids and cubes—just little things.”

“Babes! Only babes!” It was Ruth—“babes!”

“Bits of metal”—Dick’s gaze sought mine, held it—“and they looked for each other, they worked with each other—thinkingly, consciously—they were deliberate, purposeful—little things—and with the force of a score of dynamos—living, thinking—”

“Don’t!” Ruth laid white hands over his eyes. “Don’t—don’t you be frightened!”

“Frightened?” he echoed. “I’M not afraid—yes, I am afraid—”

He arose, stiffly—and stumbled toward me.

Afraid? Drake afraid. Well—so was I. Bitterly, terribly afraid.

For what we had beheld in the dusk of that dragoned, ruined chamber was outside all experience, beyond all knowledge or dream of science. Not their shapes—that was nothing. Not even that, being metal, they had moved.

But that being metal, they had moved consciously, thoughtfully, deliberately.

They were metal things with—minds!

That—that was the incredible, the terrifying thing. That—and their power.

Thor compressed within Hop-o’-my-thumb—and thinking. The lightnings incarnate in metal minacules—and thinking.

The inert, the immobile, given volition, movement, cognoscence—thinking.

Metal with a brain!

CHAPTER V

THE SMITING THING

Silently we looked at each other, and silently we passed out of the courtyard. The dread was heavy upon me. The twilight was stealing upon the close-clustered peaks. Another hour, and their amethyst-and-purple mantles would drop upon them; snowfields and glaciers sparkle out in irised beauty; nightfall.

As I gazed upon them I wondered to what secret place within their brooding immensities the little metal mysteries had fled. And to what myriads, it might be, of their kind? And these hidden hordes—of what shapes were they? Of what powers? Small like these, or—or—

Quick on the screen of my mind flashed two pictures, side by side—the little four-rayed print in the great dust of the crumbling ruin and its colossal twin on the breast of the poppied valley.

I turned aside, crept through the shattered portal and looked over the haunted hollow.

Unbelieving, I rubbed my eyes; then leaped to the very brim of the bowl.

A lark had risen from the roof of one of the shattered heaps and had flown caroling up into the shadowy sky.

A flock of the little willow warblers flung themselves across the valley, scolding and gossiping; a hare sat upright in the middle of the ancient roadway.

The valley itself lay serenely under the ambering light, smiling, peaceful—emptied of horror!

I dropped over the side, walked cautiously down the road up which but an hour or so before we had struggled so desperately; paced farther and farther with an increasing confidence and a growing wonder.

Gone was that soul of loneliness; vanished the whirlpool of despair that had striven to drag us down to death.

The bowl was nothing but a quiet, smiling lovely little hollow in the hills. I looked back. Even the ruins had lost their sinister shape; were time-worn, crumbling piles—nothing more.

I saw Ruth and Drake run out upon the ledge and beckon me; made my way back to them, running.

“It’s all right,” I shouted. “The place is all right.”

I stumbled up the side; joined them.

“It’s empty,” I cried. “Get Martin and Chiu-Ming quick! While the way’s open—”

A rifle-shot rang out above us; another and another. From the portal scampered Chiu-Ming, his robe tucked up about his knees.

“They come!” he gasped. “They come!”

There was a flashing of spears high up the winding mountain path. Down it was pouring an avalanche of men. I caught the glint of helmets and corselets. Those in the van were mounted, galloping two abreast upon sure-footed mountain ponies. Their short swords, lifted high, flickered.

After the horsemen swarmed foot soldiers, a forest of shining points and dully gleaming pikes above them. Clearly to us came their battlecries.

Again Ventnor’s rifle cracked. One of the foremost riders went down; another stumbled over him, fell. The rush was checked for an instant, milling upon the road.

“Dick,” I cried, “rush Ruth over to the tunnel mouth. We’ll follow. We can hold them there. I’ll get Martin. Chiu-Ming, after the pony, quick.”

I pushed the two over the rim of the hollow. Side by side the Chinaman and I ran back through the gateway. I pointed to the animal and rushed back into the fortress.

“Quick, Mart!” I shouted up the shattered stairway. “We can get through the hollow. Ruth and Drake are on their way to the break we came through. Hurry!”

“All right. Just a minute,” he called.

I heard him empty his magazine with almost machine-gun quickness. There was a short pause, and down the broken steps he leaped, gray eyes blazing.

“The pony?” He ran beside me toward the portal. “All my ammunition is on him.”

“Chiu-Ming’s taking care of that,” I gasped.

We darted out of the gateway. A good five hundred yards away were Ruth and Drake, running straight to the green tunnel’s mouth. Between them and us was Chiu-Ming urging on the pony.

As we sped after him I looked back. The horsemen had recovered, were now a scant half-mile from where the road swept past the fortress. I saw that with their swords the horsemen bore great bows. A little cloud of arrows sparkled from them; fell far short.

“Don’t look back,” grunted Ventnor. “Stretch yourself, Walter. There’s a surprise coming. Hope to God I judged the time right.”

We turned off the ruined way; raced over the sward.

“If it looks as though—we can’t make it,” he panted, “you beat it after the rest. I’ll try to hold ’em until you get into the tunnel. Never do for ’em to get Ruth.”

“Right.” My own breathing was growing labored, “we’ll hold them. Drake can take care of Ruth.”

“Good boy,” he said. “I wouldn’t have asked you. It probably means death.”

“Very well,” I gasped, irritated. “But why borrow trouble?”

He reached out, touched me.

“You’re right, Walter,” he grinned. “It does—seem—like carrying coals—to Newcastle.”

There was a thunderous booming behind us; a shattering crash. A cloud of smoke and dust hung over the northern end of the ruined fortress.

It lifted swiftly, and I saw that the whole side of the structure had fallen, littering the road with its fragments. Scattered prone among these were men and horses; others staggered, screaming. On the farther side of this stony dike our pursuers were held like rushing waters behind a sudden fallen tree.

“Timed to a second!” cried Ventnor. “Hold ’em for a while. Fuses and dynamite. Blew out the whole side, right on ’em, by the Lord!”

On we fled. Chiu-Ming was now well in advance; Ruth and Dick less than half a mile from the opening of the green tunnel. I saw Drake stop, raise his rifle, empty it before him, and, holding Ruth by the hand, race back toward us.

Even as he turned, the vine-screened entrance through which we had come, through which we had thought lay safety, streamed other armored men. We were outflanked.

“To the fissure!” shouted Ventnor. Drake heard, for he changed his course to the crevice at whose mouth Ruth had said the—Little Things—had lain.

After him streaked Chiu-Ming, urging on the pony. Shouting out of the tunnel, down over the lip of the bowl, leaped the soldiers. We dropped upon our knees, sent shot after shot into them. They fell back, hesitated. We sprang up, sped on.

All too short was the check, but once more we held them—and again.

Now Ruth and Dick were a scant fifty yards from the crevice. I saw him stop, push her from him toward it. She shook her head.

Now Chiu-Ming was with them. Ruth sprang to the pony, lifted from its back a rifle. Then into the mass of their pursuers Drake and she poured a fusillade. They huddled, wavered, broke for cover.

“A chance!” gasped Ventnor.

Behind us was a wolflike yelping. The first pack had re-formed; had crossed the barricade the dynamite had made; was rushing upon us.

I ran as I had never known I could. Over us whined the bullets from the covering guns. Close were we now to the mouth of the fissure. If we could but reach it. Close, close were our pursuers, too—the arrows closer.

“No use!” said Ventnor. “We can’t make it. Meet ’em from the front. Drop—and shoot.”

We threw ourselves down, facing them. There came a triumphant shouting. And in that strange sharpening of the senses that always goes hand in hand with deadly peril, that is indeed nature’s summoning of every reserve to meet that peril, my eyes took them in with photographic nicety—the linked mail, lacquered blue and scarlet, of the horsemen; brown, padded armor of the footmen; their bows and javelins and short bronze swords, their pikes and shields; and under their round helmets their cruel, bearded faces—white as our own where the black beards did not cover them; their fierce and mocking eyes.

The springs of ancient Persia’s long dead power, these. Men of Xerxes’s ruthless, world-conquering hordes; the lustful, ravening wolves of Darius whom Alexander scattered—in this world of ours twenty centuries beyond their time!

Swiftly, accurately, even as I scanned them, we had been drilling into them. They advanced deliberately, heedless of their fallen. Their arrows had ceased to fly. I wondered why, for now we were well within their range. Had they orders to take us alive—at whatever cost to themselves?

“I’ve got only about ten cartridges left, Martin,” I told him.

“We’ve saved Ruth anyway,” he said. “Drake ought to be able to hold that hole in the wall. He’s got lots of ammunition on the pony. But they’ve got us.”

Another wild shouting; down swept the pack.

We leaped to our feet, sent our last bullets into them; stood ready, rifles clubbed to meet the rush. I heard Ruth scream—

What was the matter with the armored men? Why had they halted? What was it at which they were glaring over our heads? And why had the rifle fire of Ruth and Drake ceased so abruptly?

Simultaneously we turned.

Within the black background of the fissure stood a shape, an apparition, a woman—beautiful, awesome, incredible!

She was tall, standing there swathed from chin to feet in clinging veils of pale amber, she seemed taller even than tall Drake. Yet it was not her height that sent through me the thrill of awe, of half incredulous terror which, relaxing my grip, let my smoking rifle drop to earth; nor was it that about her proud head a cloud of shining tresses swirled and pennoned like a misty banner of woven copper flames—no, nor that through her veils her body gleamed faint radiance.

It was her eyes—her great, wide eyes whose clear depths were like pools of living star fires. They shone from her white face—not phosphorescent, not merely lucent and light reflecting, but as though they themselves were sources of the cold white flames of far stars—and as calm as those stars themselves.

And in that face, although as yet I could distinguish nothing but the eyes, I sensed something unearthly.

“God!” whispered Ventnor. “What is she?”

The woman stepped from the crevice. Not fifty feet from her were Ruth and Drake and Chiu-Ming, their rigid attitudes revealing the same shock of awe that had momentarily paralyzed me.

She looked at them, beckoned them. I saw the two walk toward her, Chiu-Ming hang back. The great eyes fell upon Ventnor and myself. She raised a hand, motioned us to approach.

I turned. There stood the host that had poured down the mountain road, horsemen, spearsmen, pikemen—a full thousand of them. At my right were the scattered company that had come from the tunnel entrance, threescore or more.

There seemed a spell upon them. They stood in silence, like automatons, only their fiercely staring eyes showing that they were alive.

“Quick,” breathed Ventnor.

We ran toward her who had checked death even while its jaws were closing upon us.

Before we had gone half-way, as though our flight had broken whatever bonds had bound them, a clamor arose from the host; a wild shouting, a clanging of swords on shields. I shot a glance behind. They were in motion, advancing slowly, hesitatingly as yet—but I knew that soon that hesitation would pass; that they would sweep down upon us, engulf us.

“To the crevice,” I shouted to Drake. He paid no heed to me, nor did Ruth—their gaze fastened upon the swathed woman.

Ventnor’s hand shot out, gripped my shoulder, halted me. She had thrown up her head. The cloudy metallic hair billowed as though wind had blown it.

From the lifted throat came a low, a vibrant cry; harmonious, weirdly disquieting, golden and sweet—and laden with the eery, minor wailings of the blue valley’s night, the dragoned chamber.

Before the cry had ceased there poured with incredible swiftness out of the crevice score upon score of the metal things. The fissures vomited them!

Globes and cubes and pyramids—not small like those of the ruins, but shapes all of four feet high, dully lustrous, and deep within that luster the myriads of tiny points of light like unwinking, staring eyes.

They swirled, eddied and formed a barricade between us and the armored men.

Down upon them poured a shower of arrows from the soldiers. I heard the shouts of their captains; they rushed. They had courage—those men—yes!

Again came the woman’s cry—golden, peremptory.

Sphere and block and pyramid ran together, seemed to seethe. I had again that sense of a quicksilver melting. Up from them thrust a thick rectangular column. Eight feet in width and twenty feet high, it shaped itself. Out from its left side, from right side, sprang arms—fearful arms that grew and grew as globe and cube and angle raced up the column’s side and clicked into place each upon, each after, the other. With magical quickness the arms lengthened.

Before us stood a monstrous shape; a geometric prodigy. A shining angled pillar that, though rigid, immobile, seemed to crouch, be instinct with living force striving to be unleashed.

Two great globes surmounted it—like the heads of some two-faced Janus of an alien world.

At the left and right the knobbed arms, now fully fifty feet in length, writhed, twisted, straightened; flexing themselves in grotesque imitation of a boxer. And at the end of each of the six arms the spheres were clustered thick, studded with the pyramids—again in gigantic, awful, parody of the spiked gloves of those ancient gladiators who fought for imperial Nero.

For an instant it stood here, preening, testing itself like an athlete—a chimera, amorphous yet weirdly symmetric—under the darkening sky, in the green of the hollow, the armored hosts frozen before it—

And then—it struck!

Out flashed two of the arms, with a glancing motion, with appalling force. They sliced into the close-packed forward ranks of the armored men; cut out of them two great gaps.

Sickened, I saw fragments of man and horse fly. Another arm javelined from its place like a flying snake, clicked at the end of another, became a hundred-foot chain which swirled like a flail through the huddling mass. Down upon a knot of the soldiers with a straight-forward blow drove a third arm, driving through them like a giant punch.

All that host which had driven us from the ruins threw down sword, spear, and pike; fled shrieking. The horsemen spurred their mounts, riding heedless over the footmen who fled with them.

The Smiting Thing seemed to watch them go with—amusement!

Before they could cover a hundred yards it had disintegrated. I heard the little wailing sounds—then behind the fleeing men, close behind them, rose the angled pillar; into place sprang the flexing arms, and again it took its toll of them.

They scattered, running singly, by twos, in little groups, for the sides of the valley. They were like rats scampering in panic over the bottom of a great green bowl. And like a monstrous cat the shape played with them—yes, played.

It melted once more—took new form. Where had been pillar and flailing arms was now a tripod thirty feet high, its legs alternate globe and cube and upon its apex a wide and spinning ring of sparkling spheres. Out from the middle of this ring stretched a tentacle—writhing, undulating like a serpent of steel, four score yards at least in length.

At its end cube, globe and pyramid had mingled to form a huge trident. With the three long prongs of this trident the thing struck, swiftly, with fearful precision—joyously—tining those who fled, forking them, tossing them from its points high in air.

It was, I think, that last touch of sheer horror, the playfulness of the Smiting Thing, that sent my dry tongue to the roof of my terror-parched mouth, and held open with monstrous fascination eyes that struggled to close.

Ever the armored men fled from it, and ever was it swifter than they, teetering at their heels on its tripod legs.

From half its length the darting snake streamed red rain.

I heard a sigh from Ruth; wrested my gaze from the hollow; turned. She lay fainting in Drake’s arms.

Beside the two the swathed woman stood, looking out upon that slaughter, calm and still, shrouded with an unearthly tranquillity—viewing it, it came to me, with eyes impersonal, cold, indifferent as the untroubled stars which look down upon hurricane and earthquake in this world of ours.

There was a rushing of many feet at our left; a wail from Chiu-Ming. Were they maddened by fear, driven by despair, determined to slay before they themselves were slain? I do not know. But those who still lived of the men from the tunnel mouth were charging us.

They clustered close, their shields held before them. They had no bows, these men. They moved swiftly down upon us in silence—swords and pikes gleaming.

The Smiting Thing rocked toward us, the metal tentacle straining out like a rigid, racing serpent, flying to cut between its weird mistress and those who menaced her.

I heard Chiu-Ming scream; saw him throw up his hands, cover his eyes—run straight upon the pikes!

“Chiu-Ming!” I shouted. “Chiu-Ming! This way!”

I ran toward him. Before I had gone five paces Ventnor flashed by me, revolver spitting. I saw a spear thrown. It struck the Chinaman squarely in the breast. He tottered—fell upon his knees.

Even as he dropped, the giant flail swept down upon the soldiers. It swept through them like a scythe through ripe grain. It threw them, broken and torn, far toward the valley’s sloping sides. It left only fragments that bore no semblance to men.

Ventnor was at Chiu-Ming’s head; I dropped beside him. There was a crimson froth upon his lips.

“I thought that Shin-Je was about to slay us,” he whispered. “Fear blinded me.”

His head dropped; his body quivered, lay still.

We arose, looked about us dazedly. At the side of the crevice stood the woman, her gaze resting upon Drake, his arms about Ruth, her head hidden on his breast.

The valley was empty—save for the huddled heaps that dotted it.

High up on the mountain path a score of figures crept, all that were left of those who but a little before had streamed down to take us captive or to slay. High up in the darkening heavens the lammergeiers, the winged scavengers of the Himalayas, were gathering.

The woman lifted her hand, beckoned us once more. Slowly we walked toward her, stood before her. The great clear eyes searched us—but no more intently than our own wondering eyes did her.

CHAPTER VI

NORHALA OF THE LIGHTNINGS

We looked upon a vision of loveliness such, I think, as none has beheld since Trojan Helen was a maid. At first all I could note were the eyes, clear as rain-washed April skies, crystal clear as some secret spring sacred to crescented Diana. Their wide gray irises were flecked with golden amber and sapphire—flecks that shone like clusters of little aureate and azure stars.

Then with a strange thrill of wonder I saw that these tiny constellations were not in the irises alone; that they clustered even within the pupils—deep within them, like far-flung stars in the depths of velvety, midnight heavens.

Whence had come those cold fires that had flared from them, I wondered—more menacing, far more menacing, in their cold tranquillity than the hot flames of wrath? These eyes were not perilous—no. Calm they were and still—yet in them a shadow of interest flickered; a ghost of friendliness smiled.

Above them were level, delicately penciled brows of bronze. The lips were coral crimson and—asleep. Sweet were those lips as ever master painter, dreaming his dream of the very soul of woman’s sweetness, saw in vision and limned upon his canvas—and asleep, nor wistful for awakening.

A proud, straight nose; a broad low brow, and over it the masses of the tendriling tresses—tawny, lustrous topaz, cloudy, metallic. Like spun silk of ruddy copper; and misty as the wisps of cloud that Soul’tze, Goddess of Sleep, sets in the skies of dawn to catch the wandering dreams of lovers.

Down from the wondrous face melted the rounded column of her throat to merge into exquisite curves of shoulders and breasts, half revealed beneath the swathing veils.

But upon that face, within her eyes, kissing her red lips and clothing her breasts, was something unearthly.

Something that came straight out of the still mysteries of the star-filled spaces; out of the ordered, the untroubled, the illimitable void.

A passionless spirit that watched over the human passion in the scarlet mouth, in every slumbering, sculptured line of her—guarding her against its awakening.

Twilight calm dropping down from the sun sleep to still the restless mountain tarn. Ishtar dreamlessly asleep within Nirvana.

Something not of this world we know—and yet of it as the winds of the Cosmos are to the summer breeze, the ocean to the wave, the lightnings to the glowworm.

“She isn’t—human,” I heard Ventnor whispering at my ear. “Look at her eyes; look at the skin of her—”

Her skin was white as milk of pearls; gossamer fine, silken and creamy; translucent as though a soft brilliancy dwelt within it. Beside it Ruth’s fair skin was like some sun-and-wind-roughened country lass’s to Titania’s.

She studied us as though she were seeing for the first time beings of her own kind. She spoke—and her voice was elfin distant, chimingly sweet like hidden little golden bells; filled with that tranquil, far off spirit that was part of her—as though indeed a tiny golden chime should ring out from the silences, speak for them, find tongues for them. The words were hesitating, halting as though the lips that uttered them found speech strange—as strange as the clear eyes found our images.

And the words were Persian—purest, most ancient Persian.

“I am Norhala,” the golden voice chimed forth, whispered down into silence. “I am Norhala.”

She shook her head impatiently. A hand stole forth from beneath her veils, slender, long-fingered with nails like rosy pearls; above the wrist was coiled a golden dragon with wicked little crimson eyes. The slender white hand touched Ruth’s head, turned it until the strange, flecked orbs looked directly into the misty ones of blue.

Long they gazed—and deep. Then she who had named herself Norhala thrust out a finger, touched the tear that hung upon Ruth’s curled lashes, regarded it wonderingly.

Something of recognition, of memory, seemed to awaken within her.

“You are—troubled?” she asked with that halting effort.

Ruth shook her head.

“They—do not trouble you?”

She pointed to the huddled heaps strewing the hollow. And then I saw whence the light which had streamed from her great eyes came. For the little azure and golden stars paled, trembled, then flashed out like galaxies of tiny, clustered silver suns.

From that weird radiance Ruth shrank, affrighted.

“No—no,” she gasped. “I weep for—him.”

She pointed where Chiu-Ming lay, a brown blotch at the edge of the shattered men.

“For—him?” There was puzzlement in the faint voice. “For—that? But why?”

She looked at Chiu-Ming—and I knew that to her the sight of the crumpled form carried no recognition of the human, nothing of kin to her. There was a faint wonder in her eyes, no longer light-filled, when at last she turned back to us. Long she considered us.

“Now,” she broke the silence, “now something stirs within me that it seems has long been sleeping. It bids me take you with me. Come!”

Abruptly she turned from us, glided to the crevice. We looked at each other, seeking council, decision.

“Chiu-Ming,” Drake spoke. “We can’t leave him like that. At least let’s cover him from the vultures.”

“Come.” The woman had reached the mouth of the fissure.

“I’m afraid! Oh, Martin—I’m afraid.” Ruth reached little trembling hands to her tall brother.

“Come!” Norhala called again. There was an echo of harshness, a clanging, peremptory and inexorable, in the chiming.

Ventnor shrugged his shoulders.

“Come, then,” he said.

With one last look at the Chinese, the lammergeiers already circling about him, we walked to the crevice. Norhala waited, silent, brooding until we passed her; then glided behind us.

Before we had gone ten paces I saw that the place was no fissure. It was a tunnel, a passage hewn by human hands, its walls covered with the writhing dragon lines, its roof the mountain.

The swathed woman swept by us. Swiftly we followed her. Far, far ahead was a wan gleaming. It quivered, a faintly shimmering, ghostly curtain, a full mile away.

Now it was close; we passed through it and were out of the tunnel. Before us stretched a narrow gorge, a sword slash in the body of the towering giant under whose feet the tunnel crept. High above was the ribbon of the sky.

The sides were dark, but it came to me that here were no trees, no verdure of any kind. Its floor was strewn with boulders, fantastically shaped, almost indistinguishable in the fast closing dark.

Twin monoliths bulwarked the passage end; the gigantic stones were leaning, crumbling. Fissures radiated from the opening, like deep wrinkles in the rock, showing where earth warping, range pressure, had long been working to close this hewn way.

“Stop,” Norhala’s abrupt, golden note halted us; and again through the clear eyes I saw the white starshine flash.

“It may be well—” She spoke as though to herself. “It may be well to close this way. It is not needed—”

Her voice rang out again, vibrant, strangely disquieting, harmonious. Murmurous chanting it was at first, rhythmic and low; ripples and flutings, tones and progressions utterly unknown to me; unfamiliar, abrupt, and alien themes that kept returning, droppings of crystal-clear jewels of sound, golden tollings—and all ordered, mathematical, geometric, even as had been the gestures of the shapes; Lilliputians of the ruins, Brobdignagian of the haunted hollow.

What was it? I had it—it was those gestures transformed into sound!

There was a movement down by the tunnel mouth. It grew more rapid, seemed to vibrate with her song. Within the darkness there were little flashes; glimmerings of light began to come and go—like little awakenings of eyes of soft, jeweled flames, like giant gorgeous fireflies; flashes of cloudy amber, gleam of rose, sparkles of diamonds and of opals, of emeralds and of rubies—blinking, gleaming.

A shimmering mist drew down around them—a swift and swirling mist. It thickened, was shot with slender shuttled threads like cobweb, coruscating strands of light.

The shining threads grew thicker, pulsed, were spangled with tiny vivid sparklings. They ran together, condensed—and all this in an instant, in a tenth of the time it takes me to write it.

From fiery mist and gemmed flashes came bolt upon bolt of lightning. The cliff face leaped out, a cataract of green flame. The fissures widened, the monoliths trembled, fell.

In the wake of that dazzling brilliancy came utter blackness. I opened my blinded eyes; slowly the flecks of green fire cleared. A faint lambency still clung to the cliff. By it I saw that the tunnel’s mouth had vanished, had been sealed—where it had gaped were only tons of shattered rock.

Came a rushing past us as of great bodies; something grazed my hand, something whose touch was like that of warm metal—but metal throbbing with life. They rushed by—and whispered down into silence.

“Come!” Norhala flitted ahead of us, a faintly luminous shape in the darkness. Swiftly we followed. I found Ruth beside me; felt her hand grip my wrist.

“Walter,” she whispered, “Walter—she isn’t human!”

“Nonsense,” I muttered. “Nonsense, Ruth. What do you think she is—a goddess, a spirit of the Himalayas? She’s as human as you or I.”

“No.” Even in the darkness I could sense the stubborn shake of her curly head. “Not all human. Or how could she have commanded those things? Or have summoned the lightnings that blasted the tunnel’s mouth? And her skin and hair—they’re too wonderful, Walter.

“Why, she makes me look—look coarse. And the light that hovers about her—why, it is by that light we are making our way. And when she touched me—I—I glowed—all through.

“Human, yes—but there is something else in her—something stronger than humanness, something that—makes it sleep!” she added astonishingly.

The ground was level as a dancing floor. We followed the enigmatic glow—emanation, it seemed to me—from Norhala which was as a light for us to follow within the darkness. The high ribbon of sky had vanished—seemed to be overcast, for I could see no stars.

Within the darkness I began again to sense faint movement; soft stirring all about us. I had the feeling that on each side and behind us moved an invisible host.

“There’s something moving all about us—going with us,” Ruth echoed my thought.

“It’s the wind,” I said, and paused—for there was no wind.

From the blackness before us came a succession of curious, muffled clickings, like a smothered mitrailleuse. The luminescence that clothed Norhala brightened, deepening the darkness.

“Cross!”

She pointed into the void ahead; then, as we started forward, thrust out a hand to Ruth, held her back. Drake and Ventnor drew close to them, questioningly, anxious. But I stepped forward, out of the dim gleaming.

Before me were two cubes; one I judged in that uncertain light to be six feet high, the other half its bulk. From them a shaft of pale-blue phosphorescence pierced the murk. They stood, the smaller pressed against the side of the larger, for all the world like a pair of immense nursery blocks, placed like steps by some giant child.

As my eyes swept over them, I saw that the shining shaft was an unbroken span of cubes; not multi-arched like the Lilliputian bridge of the dragon chamber, but flat and running out over an abyss that gaped at my very feet. All of a hundred feet they stretched; a slender, lustrous girder crossing unguessed depths of gloom. From far, far below came the faint whisper of rushing waters.

I faltered. For these were the blocks that had formed the body of the monster of the hollow, its flailing arms. The thing that had played so murderously with the armored men.

And now had shaped itself into this anchored, quiescent bridge.

“Do not fear.” It was the woman speaking, softly, as one would reassure a child. “Ascend. Cross. They obey me.”

I stepped firmly upon the first block, climbed to the second. The span stretched, sharp edged, smooth, only a slender, shimmering line revealing where each great cube held fast to the other.

I walked at first slowly, then with ever-increasing confidence, for up from the surface streamed a guiding, a holding force, that was like a host of little invisible hands, steadying me, keeping firm my feet. I looked down; the myriads of enigmatic eyes were staring, staring up at me from deep within. They fascinated me; I felt my pace slowing; a vertigo seized me. Resolutely I dragged my gaze up and ahead; marched on.

From the depths came more clearly the sound of the waters. Now there were but a few feet more of the bridge before me. I reached its end, dropped my feet over, felt them touch a smaller cube, and descended.

Over the span came Ventnor. He was leading his laden pony. He had bandaged its eyes so that it could not look upon the narrow way it was treading. And close behind, a band resting reassuringly upon its flank, strode Drake, swinging along carelessly. The little beast ambled along serenely, sure-footed as all its mountain kind, and docile to darkness and guidance.

Then, an arm about Ruth, floated Norhala. Now she was beside us; dropped her arm from Ruth; glided past us. On for a hundred yards or more we went, and then she drew us a little toward the unseen canyon wall.

She stood before us, shielding us. One golden call she sent.

I looked back into the darkness. Something like an enormous, dimly shimmering rod was raising itself. Higher it rose and higher. Now it stood, upright, a slender towering pillar, a gigantic slim figure whose tip pointed a full hundred feet in the air.

Then slowly it inclined itself toward us; drew closer, closer to the ground; touched and lay there for an instant inert. Abruptly it vanished.

But well I knew what I had seen. The span over which we had passed had raised itself even as had the baby bridge of the fortress; had lifted itself across the chasm and dropping itself upon the hither verge had disintegrated into its units; was following us.

A bridge of metal that could build itself—and break itself. A thinking, conscious metal bridge! A metal bridge with volition—with mind—that was following us.

There sighed from behind a soft, sustained wailing; rapidly it neared us. A wanly glimmering shape drew by; halted. It was like a rigid serpent cut from a gigantic square bar of cold blue steel.

Its head was a pyramid, a tetrahedron; its length vanished in the further darkness. The head raised itself, the blocks that formed its neck separating into open wedges like a Brobdignagian replica of those jointed, fantastic, little painted reptiles the Japanese toy-makers cut from wood.

It seemed to regard us—mockingly. The pointed head dropped—past us streamed the body. Upon it other pyramids clustered—like the spikes that guarded the back of the nightmare Brontosaurus. Its end came swiftly into sight—its tail another pyramid twin to its head.

It flirted by—gaily; vanished.

I had thought the span must disintegrate to follow—and it did not need to! It could move as a composite as well as in units. Move intelligently, consciously—as the Smiting Thing had moved.

“Come!” Norhala’s command checked my thoughts; we fell in behind her. Looking up I caught the friendly sparkle of a star; knew the cleft was widening.

The star points grew thicker. We stepped out into a valley small as that hollow from which we had fled; ringed like it with heaven-touching summits. I could see clearly. The place was suffused with a soft radiance as though into it the far, bright stars were pouring all their rays, filling it as a cup with their pale flames.

It was luminous as the Alaskan valleys when on white arctic nights they are lighted, the Athabascans believe, by the gleaming spears of hunting gods. The walls of the valley seemed to be drawn back into infinite distances.

The shimmering mists that had nimbused Norhala had vanished—or merging into the wan gleaming had become one with it.

I stared straight at her, striving to clarify in my own clouded thought what it was that I had sensed as inhuman—never of our world or its peoples. Yet this conviction came not because of the light that had hovered about her, nor of her summonings of the lightnings; nor even of her control of those—things—which had smitten the armored men and spanned for us the abyss.

All of that I was certain lay in the domain of the explicable, could be resolved into normality once the basic facts were gained.

Suddenly, I knew. Side by side with what we term the human there dwelt within this woman an actual consciousness foreign to earth, passionless, at least as we know passion, ordered, mathematical—an emanation of the eternal law which guides the circling stars.

This it was that had moved in the gestures which had evoked the lightnings. This it was that had spoken in the song which were those gestures transformed into sound. This it was that something greater than my consciousness knew and accepted.

Something which shared, no—that reigned, serene and untroubled, upon the throne of her mind; something utterly uncomprehending, utterly unconscious of, cosmically blind to all human emotion; that spread itself like a veil over her own consciousness; that plated her thought—that was a strange word—why had it come to me—something that had set its mark upon her like—like—the gigantic claw print on the poppied field, the little print of the dragoned hall.

I caught at my mind, whirling I thought then in the grip of fantasy; strove by taking minute note of her to bring myself back to normal.

Her veils had slipped from her, baring her neck, her arms, the right shoulder. Under the smooth throat a buckle of dull gold held the sheer, diaphanous folds of the pale amber silk which swathed the high and rounded breasts, hiding no goddess curve of them.

A wide and golden girdle clasped the waist, covered the rounded hips and thighs. The long, narrow, and high-arched feet were shod with golden sandals, laced just below the rounded knees with flat turquoise studded bands.

And shining through the amber folds, as glowing above them, the miracle of her body.

The dream of master sculptor given life. A goddess of earth’s youth reborn in Himalayan wilds.

She raised her eyes; broke the long silence.

“Now being with you,” she said dreamily, “there waken within me old thoughts, old wisdom, old questioning—all that I had forgotten and thought forgotten forever—”

The golden voice died—she who had spoken was gone from us, like the fading out of a phantom; like the breaking of a film.

A flicker shot over the skies, another and another. A brilliant ray of intense green like that of a distant searchlight swept to the zenith, hung for a moment and withdrew. Up came pouring the lances and the streamers of the aurora; faster and faster, banners and slender shining spears of green and iridescent blues and smoky, glistening reds.

The valley sprang into full view.

I felt Ventnor’s grip upon my wrist. I followed his pointing finger. Into the valley from the right ran a black spur of rock, half a mile from us, fifty feet high.

Upon its crest stood—Norhala!

Her arms were lifted to the sparkling sky; her braids were loosened—and as the fires of the aurora rose and fell, raced and were still, the silken cloud of her tresses swirled and eddied with them. Little clouds of coruscations danced gaily like fireflies about and through it.

And all her bared body was outlined in living light, glowed and throbbed with light—light filled her like a vessel, she bathed in it. She thrust arms through the streaming, flaming locks; held them out from her, prisoned. She swayed slowly, rhythmically; like a faint, golden chiming came the echo of her song.

Abruptly around her, half circling her on the black spur, gleamed myriads of gem fires. Flares and flames of pale emerald, steady glowing of flame rubies, glints and lambencies of deepest sapphire, of wan sapphire, flickering opalescences, irised glitterings. A moment they gleamed. Then from them came bolt upon bolt of lightning—lightning that darted upon the lovely shape swaying there; lightnings that fell upon her, broke and dashed, cascading, from her radiant body.

The lightnings bathed her—she bathed in them.

The skies were covered by a swift mist. The aurora was veiled.

The valley filled with a palely shimmering radiance which dropped like veils upon it, hiding all within it. Hiding within fold upon luminous fold—Norhala!

CHAPTER VII

THE SHAPES IN THE MIST

Mutely we faced each other, white and wan in the ghostly light.

The valley was very still; as silent as though sound had been withdrawn from it. The shimmering radiance suffusing it had thickened perceptibly; hovered over the valley floor faintly sparkling mists; hid it.

Like a shroud was that silence. Beneath it my mind struggled, its unease, its forebodings growing ever stronger. Silently we repacked the saddlebags; girthed the pony; silently we waited for Norhala’s return.

Idly I had noted that the place on which we stood must be raised above the level of the vale. Up toward us the gathering mists had been steadily rising; still was their wavering crest a half score feet below us.

Abruptly out of their dim nebulosity a faintly phosphorescent square broke. It lifted, slowly; then swept, a dully lustrous six-foot cube, up the slope and came to rest almost at our feet. It dwelt there; contemplated us from its myriads of deep-set, sparkling striations.

In its wake swam, one by one, six others—their tops raising from the vapors like the first, watchfully; like shimmering backs of sea monsters; like turrets of fantastic angled submarines from phosphorescent seas. One by one they skimmed swiftly over the ledge; and one by one they nestled, edge to edge and alternately, against the cube which had gone before.

In a crescent, they stretched before us. Back from them, a pace, ten paces, twenty, we retreated.

They lay immobile—staring at us.

Cleaving the mists, silk of copper hair streaming wide, unearthly eyes lambent, floated up behind them—Norhala. For an instant she was hidden behind their bulk; suddenly was upon them; drifted over them like some spirit of light; stood before us.

Her veils were again about her; golden girdle, sandals of gold and turquoise in their places. Pearl white her body gleamed; no mark of lightning marred it.

She walked toward us, turned and faced the watching cubes. She uttered no sound, but as at a signal the central cube slid forward, halted before her. She rested a hand upon its edge.

“Ride with me,” she said to Ruth.

“Norhala.” Ventnor took a step forward. “Norhala, we must go with her. And this”—he pointed to the pony—“must go with us.”

“I meant—you—to come,” the faraway voice chimed, “but I had not thought of—that.”

A moment she considered; then turned to the six waiting cubes. Again as at a command four of the things moved, swirled in toward each other with a weird precision, with a monstrous martial mimicry; joined; stood before us, a platform twelve feet square, six high.

“Mount,” sighed Norhala.

Ventnor looked helplessly at the sheer front facing him.

“Mount.” There was half-wondering impatience in her command. “See!”

She caught Ruth by the waist and with the same bewildering swiftness with which she had vanished from us when the aurora beckoned she stood, holding the girl, upon the top of the single cube. It was as though the two had been lifted, had been levitated with an incredible rapidity.

“Mount,” she murmured again, looking down upon us.

Slowly Ventnor began to bandage the pony’s eyes. I placed my hand upon the edge of the quadruple; sprang. A myriad unseen hands caught me, raised me, set me instantaneously on the upward surface.

“Lift the pony to me,” I called to Ventnor.

“Lift it?” he echoed, incredulously.

Drake’s grin cut like a sunray through the nightmare dread that shrouded my mind.

“Catch,” he called; placed one hand beneath the beast’s belly, the other under its throat; his shoulders heaved—and up shot the pony, laden as it was, landed softly upon four wide-stretched legs beside me. The faces of the two gaped up, ludicrous in their amazement.

“Follow,” cried Norhala.

Ventnor leaped wildly for the top, Drake beside him; in the flash of a humming-bird’s wing they were gripping me, swearing feebly. The unseen hold angled; struck upward; clutched from ankle to thigh; held us fast—men and beast.

Away swept the block that bore Ruth and Norhala; I saw Ruth crouching, head bent, her arms around the knees of the woman. They slipped into the mists; vanished.

And after them, like a log in a racing current, we, too, dipped beneath the faintly luminous vapors.

The cubes moved with an entire absence of vibration; so smoothly and skimmingly, indeed, that had it not been for the sudden wind that had risen when first we had stirred, and that now beat steadily upon our faces, and the cloudy walls streaming by, I would have thought ourselves at rest.

I saw the blurred form of Ventnor drift toward the forward edge. He walked as though wading. I essayed to follow him; my feet I could not lift; I could advance only by gliding them as though skating.

Also the force, whatever it was, that held me seemed to pass me on from unseen clutch to clutch; it was as though up to my hips I moved through a closely woven yet fluid mass of cobwebs. I had the fantastic idea that if I so willed I could slip over the edge of the blocks, crawl about their sides without falling—like a fly on the vertical faces of a huge sugar loaf.

I drew beside Ventnor. He was staring ahead, striving, I knew, to pierce the mists for some glimpse of Ruth.

He turned to me, his face drawn with anxiety, his eyes feverish.

“Can you see them, Walter?” His voice shook. “God—why did I ever let her go like that? Why did I let her go alone?”

“They’ll be close ahead, Martin.” I spoke out of a conviction I could not explain. “Whatever it is we’re bound for, wherever it is the woman’s taking us, she means to keep us together—for a time at least. I’m sure of it.”

“She said—follow.” It was Drake beside us. “How the hell can we do anything else? We haven’t any control over this bird we’re on. But she has. What she meant, Ventnor, is that it would follow her.”

“That’s true”—new hope softened the haggard face—“that’s true—but is it? We’re reckoning with creatures that man’s imagination never conceived—nor could conceive. And with this—woman—human in shape, yes, but human in thought—never. How then can we tell—”

He turned once more, all his consciousness concentrated in his searching eyes.

Drake’s rifle slipped from his hand.

He stooped to pick it up; then tugged with both hands. The rifle lay immovable.

I bent and strove to aid him. For all the pair of us could do, the rifle might have been a part of the gleaming surface on which it rested. The tiny, deepset star points winked up—

“They’re—laughing at us!” grunted Drake.

“Nonsense,” I answered, and tried to check the involuntary shuddering that shook me, as I saw it shake him. “Nonsense. These blocks are great magnets—that’s what holds the rifle; what holds us, too.”

“I don’t mean the rifle,” he said; “I mean those points of lights—the eyes—”

There came from Ventnor a cry of almost anguished relief. We straightened. Our head shot above the mists like those of swimmers from water. Unnoticed, we had been climbing out of them.

And a hundred yards ahead of us, cleaving them, veiled in them almost to the shoulders, was Norhala, red-gold tresses steaming; and close beside her were the brown curls of Ruth. At her brother’s cry she turned and her arm flashed out of the veils with reassuring gesture.

A mile away was an opening in the valley’s mountainous wall; toward it we were speeding. It was no ragged crevice, no nature split fissure; it gave the impression of a gigantic doorway.

“Look,” whispered Drake.

Between us and the vast gateway, gleaming triangles began to break through the vapors, like the cutting fins of sharks, glints of round bodies like gigantic porpoises—the vapors seethed with them. Quickly the fins and rolling curves were all about us. They centered upon the portal, streamed through—a horde of the metal things, leading us, guarding us, playing about us.

And weird, unutterably weird was that spectacle—the vast and silent vale with its still, smooth vapors like a coverlet of cloud; the regal head of Norhala sweeping over them; the dull glint and gleam of the metal paradoxes flowing, in ordered motion, all about us; the titanic gateway, glowing before us.

We were at its threshold; over it.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DRUMS OF THUNDER

Upon that threshold the mists foamed like breaking billows, then ceased abruptly to be. Keeping exactly the distance I had noted when our gaze had risen above the fog, glided the block that bore Ruth and Norhala. In the strange light of the place into which we had emerged—and whether that place was canyon, corridor, or tunnel I could not then determine—it stood out sharply.

One arm of Norhala held Ruth—and in her attitude I sensed a shielding intent, guardianship—the first really human impulse this shape of mystery and beauty had revealed.

In front of them swept score upon score of her familiars—no longer dully lustrous, but shining as though cut from blue and polished steel. They—marched—in ordered rows, globes and cubes and pyramids; moving sedately now as units.

I looked behind me; out of the spume boiling at the portal, were pouring forth other scores of the Metal Things, darting through like divers through a wave. And as they drew into our wake and swam into the light, their dim lustre vanished like a film; their surfaces grew almost radiant.

Whence came the light that set them gleaming? Our pace had slackened—I looked about me. The walls of the cleft or tunnel were perpendicular, smooth and shining with a cold, metallic, greenish glow.

Between the walls, like rhythmic flashing of fire-flies, pulsed soft and fugitive glimmerings that carried a sense of the infinitely minute—of electrons, it came to me, rather than atoms. Their irradiance was greenish, like the walls; but I was certain that these corpuscles did not come from them.

They blinked and faded like motes within a shifting sunbeam; or, to use a more scientific comparison, like colloids within the illuminated field of the ultramicroscope; and like these latter it was as though the eyes took in not the minute particles themselves but their movement only.

Save for these gleamings the light of the place, although crepuscular, was crystalline clear. High above us—five hundred, a thousand feet—the walls merged into a haze of clouded beryl.

Rock certainly the cliffs were—but rock cut and planed, smoothed and polished and plated!

Yes, that was it—plated. Plated with some metallic substance that was itself a reservoir of luminosity and from which, it came to me, pulsed the force that lighted the winking ions. But who could have done such a thing? For what purpose? How?

And the meticulousness, the perfection of these smoothed cliffs struck over my nerves as no rasp could, stirring a vague resentment, an irritated desire for human inharmonies, human disorder.

Absorbed in my examination I had forgotten those who must share with me my doubts and dangers. I felt a grip on my arm.

“If we get close enough and I can get my feet loose from this damned thing I’ll jump,” Drake said.

“What?” I gasped, blankly, startled out of my preoccupation. “Jump where?”

I followed his pointing finger. We were rapidly closing upon the other cube; it was now a scant twenty paces ahead; it seemed to be stopping. Ventnor was leaning forward, quivering with eagerness.

“Ruth!” he called. “Ruth—are you all right?”

Slowly she turned to us—my heart gave a great leap, then seemed to stop. For her sweet face was touched with that same unearthly tranquillity which was Norhala’s; in her brown eyes was a shadow of that passionless spirit brooding in Norhala’s own; her voice as she answered held within it more than echo of Norhala’s faint, far-off golden chiming.

“Yes,” she sighed; “yes, Martin—have no fear for me—”

And turned from us, gazing forward once more with the woman and as silent as she.

I glanced covertly at Ventnor, at Drake—had I imagined, or had they too seen? Then I knew they had seen, for Ventnor’s face was white to the lips, and Drake’s jaw was set, his teeth clenched, his eyes blazing with anger.

“What’s she doing to Ruth—you saw her face,” he gritted, half inarticulately.

“Ruth!” There was anguish in Ventnor’s cry.

She did not turn again. It was as though she had not heard him.

The cubes were now not five yards apart. Drake gathered himself; strained to loosen his feet from the shining surface, making ready to leap when they should draw close enough. His great chest swelled with his effort, the muscles of his neck knotted, sweat steamed down his face.

“No use,” he gasped, “no use, Goodwin. It’s like trying to lift yourself by your boot-straps—like a fly stuck in molasses.”

“Ruth,” cried Ventnor once more.

As though it had been a signal the block darted forward, resuming the distance it had formerly maintained between us.

The vanguard of the Metal Things began to race. With an incredible speed they fled into, were lost in an instant within, the luminous distances.

The cube that bore the woman and girl accelerated; flew faster and faster onward. And as swiftly our own followed it. The lustrous walls flowed by, dizzily.

We had swept over toward the right wall of the cleft and were gliding over a broad ledge. This ledge was, I judged, all of a hundred feet in width. From it the floor of the place was dropping rapidly.

The opposite precipices were slowly drawing closer. After us flowed the flanking host.

Steadily our ledge arose and the floor of the canyon dropped. Now we were twenty feet above it, now thirty. And the character of the cliffs was changing. Veins of quartz shone under the metallic plating like cut crystal, like cloudy opals; here was a splash of vermilion, there a patch of amber; bands of pallid ochre stained it.

My gaze was caught by a line of inky blackness in the exact center of the falling floor. So black was it that at first glance I took it for a vein of jetty lignite.

It widened. It was a crack, a fissure. Now it was a yard in width, now three, and blackness seemed to well up from within it, blackness that was the very essence of the depths. Steadily the ebon rift expanded; spread suddenly wide open in two sharp-edged, flying wedges—

Earth had dropped away. At our side a gulf had opened, an abyss, striking down depth upon depth; profound; immeasurable.

We were human atoms, riding upon a steed of sorcery and racing along a split rampart of infinite space.

I looked behind—scores of the cubes were darting from the metal host trailing us; in a long column of twos they flashed by, raced ahead. Far in front of us a gloom began to grow; deepened until we were rushing into blackest night.

Through the murk stabbed a long lance of pale blue phosphorescence. It unrolled like a ribbon of wan flame, flicked like a serpent’s tongue—held steady. I felt the Thing beneath us leap forward; its velocity grew prodigious; the wind beat upon us with hurricane force.

I shielded my eyes with my hands and peered through the chinks of my fingers. Ranged directly in our path was a barricade of the cubes and upon them we were racing like a flying battering-ram. Involuntarily I closed my eyes against the annihilating impact that seemed inevitable.

The Thing on which we rode lifted.

We were soaring at a long angle straight to the top of the barrier; were upon it, and still with that awful speed unchecked were hurtling through the blackness over the shaft of phosphorescence, the ribbon of pale light that I had watched pierce it and knew now was but another span of the cubes that but a little before had fled past us. Beneath the span, on each side of it, I sensed illimitable void.

We were over; rushing along in darkness. There began a mighty tumult, a vast crashing and roaring. The clangor waxed, beat about us with tremendous strokes of sound.

Far away was a dim glowing, as of rising sun through heavy mists of dawn. The mists faded—miles away gleamed what at first glimpse seemed indeed to be the rising sun; a gigantic orb, whose lower limb just touched, was sharply, horizontally cut by the blackness, as though at its base that blackness was frozen.

The sun? Reason returned to me; told me this globe could not be that.

What was it then? Ra-Harmachis, of the Egyptians, stripped of his wings, exiled and growing old in the corridors of the Dead? Or that mocking luminary, the cold phantom of the God of light and warmth which the old Norsemen believed was set in their frozen hell to torment the damned?

I thrust aside the fantasies, impatiently. But sun or no sun, light streamed from this orb, light in multicolored, lanced rays, banishing the blackness through which we had been flying.

Closer we came and closer; lighter it grew about us, and by the growing light I saw that still beside us ran the abyss. And even louder, more thunderous, became the clamor.

At the foot of the radiant disk I glimpsed a luminous pool. Into it, out of the depths, protruded a tremendous rectangular tongue, gleaming like gray steel.

On the tongue an inky shape appeared; it lifted itself from the abyss, rushed upon the disk and took form.

Like a gigantic spider it was, squat and horned. For an instant it was silhouetted against the smiling sphere, poised itself—and vanished through it.

Now, not far ahead, silhouetted as had been the spider shape, blackened into sight a cube and on it Ruth and Norhala. It seemed to hover, to wait.

“It’s a door,” Drake’s shout beat thinly in my ears against the hurricane of sound.

What I thought had been an orb was indeed a gateway, a portal; and it was gigantic.

The light streamed through it, the flaming colors, the lightning glare, the drifting shadows were all beyond it. The suggestion of sphere had been an illusion, born of the darkness in which we were moving and in its own luminescence.

And I saw that the steel tongue was a ramp, a slide, dropping down into the gulf.

Norhala raised her hands high above her head. Up from the darkness flew an incredible shape—like a monstrous, armored flat-backed crab; angled spikes protruded from it; its huge body was spangled with darting, greenish flames.

It swept beneath us and by. On its back were multitudinous breasts from which issued blinding flashes—sapphire blue, emerald green, sun yellow. It hung poised as had that other nightmare shape, standing out jet black and colossal, rearing upon columnar legs, whose outlines were those of alternate enormous angled arrow-points and lunettes. Swiftly its form shifted; an instant it hovered, half disintegrate.

Now I saw spinning spheres and darting cubes and pyramids click into new positions. The front and side legs lengthened, the back legs shortened, fitting themselves plainly to what must be a varying angle of descent beyond.

And it was no chimera, no kraken of the abyss. It was a car made of the Metal Things. I caught again the flashes and thought that they were jewels or heaps of shining ores carried by the conscious machine.

It vanished. In its place hung poised the cube that bore the enigmatic woman and Ruth. Then they were gone and we stood where but an instant before they had been.

We were high above an ocean of living light—a sea of incandescent splendors that stretched mile upon uncounted mile away and whose incredible waves streamed thousands of feet in air, flew in gigantic banners, in tremendous streamers, in coruscating clouds of varicolored flame—as though torn by the talons of a mighty wind.

My dazzled sight cleared, glare and blaze and searing incandescence took form, became ordered. Within the sea of light I glimpsed shapes cyclopean, unnameable.

They moved slowly, with an awesome deliberateness. They shone darkly within the flame-woven depths. From them came the volleys of the lightnings.

Score upon score of them there were—huge and enigmatic. Their flaming levins threaded the shimmering veils, patterned them, as though they were the flying robes of the very spirit of fire.

And the tumult was as ten thousand Thors, smiting with hammers against the enemies of Odin. As a forge upon whose shouting anvils was being shaped a new world.

A new world? A metal world!

The thought spun through my mazed brain, was gone—and not until long after did I remember it. For suddenly all that clamor died; the lightnings ceased; all the flitting radiances paled and the sea of flaming splendors grew thin as moving mists. The storming shapes dulled with them, seemed to darken into the murk.

Through the fast-waning light and far, far away—miles it seemed on high and many, many miles in length—a broad band of fluorescent amethyst shone. From it dropped curtains, shimmering, nebulous as the marching folds of the aurora; they poured, cascaded, from the amethystine band.

Huge and purple-black against their opalescence bulked what at first I thought a mountain, so like was it to one of those fantastic buttes of our desert Southwest when their castellated tops are silhouetted against the setting sun; knew instantly that this was but subconscious striving to translate into terms of reality the incredible.

It was a City!

A city full five thousand feet high and crowned with countless spires and turrets, titanic arches, stupendous domes! It was as though the man-made cliffs of lower New York were raised scores of times their height, stretched a score of times their length. And weirdly enough it did suggest those same towering masses of masonry when one sees them blacken against the twilight skies.

The pit darkened as though night were filtering down into it; the vast, purple-shadowed walls of the city sparkled out with countless lights. From the crowning arches and turrets leaped broad filaments of flame, flashing, electric.

Was it my straining eyes, the play of the light and shadow—or were those high-flung excrescences shifting, changing shape? An icy hand stretched out of the unknown, stilled my heart. For they were shifting—arches and domes, turrets and spires; were melting, reappearing in ferment; like the lightning-threaded, rolling edges of the thundercloud.

I wrenched my gaze away; saw that our platform had come to rest upon a broad and silvery ledge close to the curving frame of the portal and not a yard from where upon her block stood Norhala, her arm clasped about the rigid form of Ruth. I heard a sigh from Ventnor, an exclamation from Drake.

Before one of us could cry out to Ruth, the cube glided to the edge of the shelf, dipped out of sight.

That upon which we rode trembled and sped after it.

There came a sickening sense of falling; we lurched against each other; for the first time the pony whinnied, fearfully. Then with awful speed we were flying down a wide, a glistening, a steeply angled ramp into the Pit, straight toward the half-hidden, soaring escarpments flashing afar.

Far ahead raced the Thing on which stood woman and maid. Their hair streamed behind them, mingled, silken web of brown and shining veil of red-gold; little clouds of sparkling corpuscles threaded them, like flitting swarms of fire-flies; their bodies were nimbused with tiny, flickering tongues of lavender flame.

About us, above us, began again to rumble the countless drums of the thunder.

CHAPTER IX

THE PORTAL OF FLAME

It was as though we were on a meteor hurtling through space. The split air shrieked and shrilled, a keening barrier against the avalanche of the thunder. The blast bent us far back on thighs held rigid by the magnetic grip.

The pony spread its legs, dropped its head; through the hurricane roaring its screaming pierced thinly, that agonizing, terrible lamentation which is of the horse and the horse alone when the limit of its endurance is reached.

Ventnor crouched lower and lower, eyes shielded behind arms folded over his brows, straining for a glimpse of Ruth; Drake crouched beside him, bracing him, supporting him against the tempest.

Our line of flight became less abrupt, but the speed increased, the wind-pressure became almost insupportable. I twisted, dropped upon my right arm, thrust my head against my shoulder, stared backward. When first I had looked upon the place I had sensed its immensity; now I began to realize how vast it must really be—for already the gateway through which we had come glimmered far away on high, shrunk to a hoop of incandescent brass and dwindling fast.

Nor was it a cavern; I saw the stars, traced with deep relief the familiar Northern constellations. Pit it might be, but whatever terror, whatever ordeals were before us, we would not have to face them buried deep within earth. There was a curious comfort to me in the thought.

Suddenly stars and sky were blotted out.

We had plunged beneath the surface of the radiant sea.

Lying in the position in which I was, I was sensible of a diminution of the cyclonic force; the blast streamed up and over the front of the cube. To me drifted only the wailings of our flight and the whimpering terror of the pony.

I turned my head cautiously. Upon the very edge of the flying blocks squatted Drake and Ventnor, grotesquely frog-like. I crawled toward them—crawled, literally, like a caterpillar; for wherever my body touched the surface of the cubes the attracting force held it, allowed a creeping movement only, surface sliding upon surface—and weirdly enough like a human measuring-worm I looped myself over to them.

As my bare palms clung to the Things I realized with finality that whatever their activation, their life, they were metal.

There was no mistaking now the testimony of touch. Metal they were, with a hint upon contact of highly polished platinum, or at the least of a metal as finely grained as it.

Also they had temperature, a curiously pleasant warmth—the surfaces were, I judged, around ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit. I looked deep down into the little sparkling points that were, I knew, organs of sight; they were like the points of contact of innumerable intersecting crystal planes. They held strangest paradoxical suggestion of being close to the surface and still infinite distances away.

And they were like—what was it they were like?—it came to me with a distinct shock.

They were like the galaxies of little aureate and sapphire stars in the clear gray heavens of Norhala’s eyes.

I crept beside Drake, struck him with my head.

“Can’t move,” I shouted. “Can’t lift my hands. Stuck fast—like a fly—just as you said.”

“Drag ’em over your knees,” he cried, bending to me. “It slides ’em out of the attraction.”

Acting as he had suggested I found to my astonishment I could slip my hands free; I caught his belt, tried to lift myself by it.

“No use, Doc.” The old grin lightened for a moment his tense young face. “You’ll have to keep praying till the power’s turned off. Nothing here you can slide your knees on.”

I nodded, waddling close to his side; then sank back on my haunches to relieve the strain upon my aching leg-muscles.

“Can you see them ahead, Walter—Ruth and the woman?” Ventnor turned his anxious eyes toward me.

I peered into the glimmering murk; shook my head. I could see nothing. It was indeed, as though the clustered cubes sped within a bubble of the now wanly glistening vapors; or rather as though in our passage—as a projectile does in air—we piled before us a thick wave of the mists which streaming along each side, closing in behind, obscured all that lay around.

Yet I had, persistently, the feeling that beyond these shroudings was vast and ordered movement; marchings and counter-marchings of hosts greater even than those Golden Hordes of Genghis which ages agone had washed about the outer bases of the very peaks that hid this place. Came, too, flitting shadowings of huge shapes, unnameable, moving swiftly beside our way; gleamings that thrust themselves through the veils like wheeling javelins of flame.

And always, always, everywhere that constant movement, rhythmic, terrifying—like myriads of feet of creatures of an unseen, stranger world marking time just outside the threshold of our own. Preparing, drilling there in some wide vestibule of space between the known and the unknown, alert and menacing—poised for the signal which would send them pouring over it.

Once again I seemed to stand upon the brink of an abyss of incredible revelation, striving helplessly, struggling for realization—and so struggling became aware that our speed was swiftly slackening, the roaring blast dying down, the veils before us thinning.

They cleared away. I saw Drake and Ventnor straighten up; raised myself to my own aching knees.

We were at one end of a vortex, a funneling within the radiant vapors; a funnel whose further end a mile ahead broadened out into a huge circle, its mistily outlined edges impinging upon the towering scarp of the—city. It was as though before us lay, upon its side, a cone of crystalline clear air against whose curved sides some radiant medium heavier than air, lighter than water, pressed.

The top arc of its prostrate base reached a thousand feet or more up the precipitous wall; above it all was hidden in sparkling nebulosities that were like still clouds of greenly glimmering fire-flies. Back from the curving sides of this cone, above it and below it, the pressing luminosities stretched into, it seemed, infinite distances.

Through them, suddenly, thousands of bright beams began to dart, to dance, weaving and interweaving, shooting hither and yon—like myriads of great searchlights in a phosphorescent sea fog, like countless lances of the aurora thrusting through its own iridescent veils! And in the play of these beams was something appallingly ordered, appallingly rhythmic.

It was—how can I describe it?—purposeful; purposeful as the geometric shiftings of the Little Things of the ruins, of the summoning song of Norhala, of the Protean changes of the Smiting Shape and the Following Thing; and like all of these it was as laden with that baffling certainty of hidden meanings, of messages that the brain recognized as such yet knew it never could read.

The rays seemed to spring upward from the earth. Now they were like countless lances of light borne by marching armies of Titans; now they crossed and angled and flew as though they were clouds of javelins hurled by battling swarms of the Genii of Light. And now they stood upright while through them, thrusting them aside, bending them, passed vast, vague shapes like mountains forming and dissolving; like darkening monsters of some world of light pushing through thick forests of slender, high-reaching trees of cold flame; shifting shadows of monstrous chimerae slipping through jungles of bamboo with trunks of diamond fire; phantasmal leviathans swimming through brakes of giant reeds of radiance rising from the sparking ooze of a sea of star shine.

Whence came the force, the mechanism that produced this cone of clarity, this not searchlight, but unlight in the midst of light? Not from behind, that was certain—for turning I saw that behind us the mist was as thick. I turned again—it came to me, why I knew not, yet with an absolute certainty, that the energy, the force emanated from the distant wall itself.

The funnel, the cone, did not expand from where we were standing, now motionless.

It began at the wall and focused upon us.

Within the great circle the surface of the wall was smooth, utterly blank; upon it was no trace of those flitting lights we had seen before we had plunged down toward the radiant sea. It shone with a pale blue phosphorescence. It was featureless, smooth, a blind cliff of polished, blue metal—and that was all.

“Ruth!” groaned Ventnor. “Where is she?”

Aghast at my mental withdrawal from him, angry at myself for my callousness, awkwardly I tried to crawl over to him, to touch him, comfort him as well as I might.

And then, as though his cry had been a signal, the great cone began to move. Slowly the circled base slipped down the shimmering facades; down, steadily down; I realized that we had paused at the edge of some steep declivity, for the bottom of the cone was now at a decided angle while the upper edge of the circle had dropped a full two hundred feet below the place where it had rested—and still it fell.

There came a gasp of relief from Ventnor, a sigh from Drake while, from my own heart, a weight rolled. Not ten yards ahead of us and still deep within the luminosity had appeared the regal head of Norhala, the lovely head of Ruth. The two rose out of the glow like swimmers floating from the depths. Now they were clear before us, and now we could see the surface of the cube on which they rode.

But neither turned to us; each stared straightly, motionless along the axis of the sinking cone, the woman’s left arm holding Ruth close to her side.

Drake’s hand caught my shoulder in a grip that hurt—nor did he need to point toward that which had wrung the exclamation from him. The funnel had broken from its slow falling; it had made one swift, startling drop and had come to rest. Its recumbent side was now flattened into a triangular plane, widening from the narrow tip in which we stood to all of five hundred feet where its base rested against the blue wall, and falling at a full thirty-degree pitch.

The misty-edged circle had become an oval, a flattened ellipse another five hundred feet high and three times that in length. And in its exact center, shining forth as though it opened into a place of pale azure incandescence was another rectangular Cyclopean portal.

On each side of it, in the apparently solid face of the gleaming, metallic cliffs, a slit was opening.

They began as thin lines a hundred yards in height through which the intense light seemed to hiss; quickly they opened—widening like monstrous cat pupils until at last, their widening ceasing, they glared forth, the blue incandescence gushing from them like molten steel from an opened sluice.

Deep within them I sensed a movement. Scores of towering shapes swam within and glided out of them, each reflecting the vivid light as though they themselves were incandescent. Around their crests spun wide and flaming coronets.

They rushed forth, wheeling, whirling, driven like leaves in a whirlwind. Out they swirled from the cat’s eyes of the glimmering wall, these dervish obelisks crowded with spinning fires. They vanished in the mists. Instantly with their going, the eyes contracted; were but slits; were gone. And before us within the oval was only the waiting portal.

The leading block leaped forward. As abruptly, those that bore us followed. Again under that strain of projectile flight we clutched each other; the pony screamed in terror. The metal cliff rushed to meet us like a thunder cloud of steel; the portal raced upon us—a square mouth of cold blue flame.

And into it we swept; were devoured by it.

Light in blinding, intolerable flood beat about us, blackening the sight with agony. We pressed, the three of us, against the side of the pony, burying our faces in its shaggy coat, striving to hide our eyes from the radiance which, strain closely as we might, seemed to pierce through the body of the little beast, through our own heads, searing the sight.

CHAPTER X

“WITCH! GIVE BACK MY SISTER”

How long we were within that glare I do not know; it seemed unending hours; it was of course only minutes—seconds, perhaps. Then I was sensible of a permeating shadow, a darkness gentle and healing.

I raised my head and opened my eyes. We were moving tranquilly, with a curious suggestion of homing leisureliness, through a soft, blue shimmering darkness. It was as though we were drifting within some high borderland of light; a region in which that rapid vibration we call the violet was mingled with a still more rapid vibration whose quick pulsing was felt by the brain but ever fled ere that brain could register it in terms of color. And there seemed to be a film over my sight; dazzlement from the unearthly blaze, I thought, shaking my head impatiently.

My eyes focused upon an object a little more than a foot away; my neck grew rigid, my scalp prickled while I stared, unbelieving. And that at which I stared was—a skeleton hand. Every bone a grayish black, sharply silhouetted, clean as some master surgeon’s specimen, it was extended as though clutching at—clutching at—what was that toward which it was reaching?

Again the icy prickling over scalp and skin—for its talons stretched out to grasp a steed that Death himself might have ridden, a rack whose bare skull hung drooping upon bent vertebrae.

I raised my hands to my face to shut out the ghostly sight—and swiftly the clutching bony hand moved toward me—was before my eyes—touched me.

The cry that sheer horror wrested from me was strangled by realization. And so acute was my relief, so reassuring was it to have in the midst of these mysteries some sane, understandable thing occur that I laughed aloud.

For the skeleton hand was my own. The mournful ghastly mount of death was—our pony. And when I looked again I knew what I would see—and see them I did—two tall skeletons, skulls resting on their bony arms, leaning against the frame of the beast.

While ahead of us, floating poised upon the surface of the glistening cube, were two women skeletons—Ruth and Norhala!

Weird enough was the sight. Dureresque, grimly awful as materialization of a scene of the Dance Macabre—and yet—vastly comforting.

For here was something which was well within the range of human knowledge. It was the light about us that did it; a vibration that even as I conjectured, was within the only partly explored region of the ultraviolet and the comparatively unexplored region above it.

Yet there were differences, for there was none of that misty halo around the bones, the flesh which the X-rays cannot render wholly invisible. The skeletons stood out clean cut, with no trace of fleshly vestments.

I crept over, spoke to the two.

“Don’t look up yet,” I said. “Don’t open your eyes. We’re going through a queer light. It has an X-ray quality. You’re going to see me as a skeleton—”

“What?” shouted Drake. Disobeying my warning he straightened, glared at me. And disquieting as the spectacle had been before, fully understanding it as I did, I could not restrain my shudder at the utter weirdness of that skull which was his head thrusting itself toward me.

The skeleton that was Ventnor turned to me; was arrested by the sight of the flitting pair ahead. I saw the fleshless jaws clamp, then opened to speak.

Abruptly, upon the skeletons in front the flesh dropped back. Girl and woman stood there once again robed in beauty.

So swift was that transition from the grisly unreal to the normal that even to my unsuperstitious mind it smacked of necromancy. The next instant the three of us stood looking at each other, clothed once more in the flesh, and the pony no longer the steed of death, but our shaggy, patient little companion.

The light had changed; the high violet had gone from it, and it was shot with yellow gleamings like fugitive sunbeams. We were passing through a wide corridor that seemed to be unending. The yellow light grew stronger.

“That light wasn’t exactly the Roentgen variety,” Drake interrupted my absorption in our surroundings. “And I hope to God it’s as different as it seemed. If it’s not we may be up against a lot of trouble.”

“More trouble than we’re in?” I asked, a trifle satirically.

“X-ray burns,” he answered, “and no way to treat them in this place—if we live to want treatment,” he ended grimly.

“I don’t think we were subjected to their action long enough—” I began, and was silent.

The corridor had opened without warning into a place for whose immensity I have no images that are adequate. It was a chamber that was vaster than ten score of the Great Halls of Karnac in one; great as that fabled hall in dread Amenti where Osiris sits throned between the Searcher of Hearts and the Eater of Souls, judging the jostling hosts of the newly dead.

Temple it was in its immensity, and its solemn vastness—but unlike any temple ever raised by human toil. In no ruin of earth’s youth giants’ work now crumbling under the weight of time had I ever sensed a shadow of the strangeness with which this was instinct. No—nor in the shattered fanes that once had held the gods of old Egypt, nor in the pillared shrines of Ancient Greece, nor Imperial Rome, nor mosque, basilica nor cathedral.

All these had been dedicated to gods which, whether created by humanity as science believes, or creators of humanity as their worshippers believed, still held in them that essence we term human.

The spirit, the force, that filled this place had in it nothing, nothing of the human.

No place? Yes, there was one—Stonehenge. Within that monolithic circle I had felt a something akin to this, as inhuman; a brooding spirit stony, stark, unyielding—as though not men but a people of stone had raised the great Menhirs.

This was a sanctuary built by a people of metal!

It was filled with a soft yellow glow like pale sunshine. Up from its floor arose hundreds of tremendous, square pillars down whose polished sides the crocus light seemed to flow.

Far, far as the gaze could reach, the columns marched, oppressively ordered, appallingly mathematical. From their massiveness distilled a sense of power, mysterious, mechanical yet—living; something priestly, hierophantic—as though they were guardians of a shrine.

Now I saw whence came the light suffusing this place. High up among the pillars floated scores of orbs that shone like pale gilt frozen suns. Great and small, through all the upper levels these strange luminaries gleamed, fixed and motionless, hanging unsupported in space. Out from their shining spherical surfaces darted rays of the same pale gold, rigid, unshifting, with the same suggestion of frozen stillness.

“They look like big Christmas-tree stars,” muttered Drake.

“They’re lights,” I answered. “Of course they are. They’re not matter—not metal, I mean—”

“There’s something about them like St. Elmo’s fire, witch lights—condensations of atmospheric electricity,” Ventnor’s voice was calm; now that it was plain we were nearing the heart of this mystery in which we were enmeshed he had clearly taken fresh grip, was again his observant, scientific self.

We watched, once more silent; and indeed we had spoken little since we had begun that ride whose end we sensed close. In the unfolding of enigmatic happening after happening the mind had deserted speech and crouched listening at every door of sight and hearing to gather some clue to causes, some thread of understanding.

Slowly now we were gliding through the forest of pillars; so effortless, so smooth our flight that we seemed to be standing still, the tremendous columns flitting past us, turning and wheeling around us, dizzyingly. My head swam with the mirage motion, I closed my eyes.

“Look,” Drake was shaking me. “Look. What do you make of that?”

Half a mile ahead the pillars stopped at the edge of a shimmering, quivering curtain of green luminescence. High, high up past the pale gilt suns its smooth folds ran, into the golden amber mist that canopied the columns.

In its sparkling was more than a hint of the dancing corpuscles of the aurora; it was, indeed, as though woven of the auroral rays. And all about it played shifting, tremulous shadows formed by the merging of the golden light with the curtain’s emerald gleaming.

Up to its base swept the cube that bore Ruth and Norhala—and stopped. From it leaped the woman, and drew Ruth down beside her, then turned and gestured toward us.

That upon which we rode drew close. I felt it quiver beneath me; felt on the instant, the magnetic grip drop from me, angle downward and leave me free. Shakily I arose from aching knees, and saw Ventnor flash down and run, rifle in hand, toward his sister.

Drake bent for his gun. I moved unsteadily toward the side of the clustered cubes. There came a curious pushing motion driving me to the edge. Sliding over upon me came Drake and the pony—

The cube tilted, gently, playfully—and with the slightest of jars the three of us stood beside it on the floor, we two men gaping at it in renewed wonder, and the little beast stretching its legs, lifting its feet and whinnying with relief.

Then abruptly the four blocks that had been our steed broke from each other; that which had been the woman’s glided to them.

The four clicked into place behind it and darted from sight.

“Ruth!” Ventnor’s voice was vibrant with his fear. “Ruth! What is wrong with you? What has she done to you?”

We ran to his side. He stood clutching her hands, searching her eyes. They were wide, unseeing, dream filled. Upon her face the calm and stillness, which were mirrored reflections of Norhala’s unearthly tranquillity, had deepened.

“Brother.” The sweet voice seemed far away, drifting out of untroubled space, an echo of Norhala’s golden chimings—“Brother, there is nothing wrong with me. Indeed—all is—well with me—brother.”

He dropped the listless palms, faced the woman, tall figure tense, drawn with mingled rage and anguish.

“What have you done to her?” he whispered in Norhala’s own tongue.

Her serene gaze took him in, undisturbed by his anger save for the faintest shadow of wonder, of perplexity.

“Done?” she repeated, slowly. “I have stilled all that was troubled within her—have lifted her above sorrow. I have given her the peace—as I will give it to you if—”

“You’ll give me nothing,” he interrupted fiercely; then, his passion breaking through all restraint—“Yes, you damned witch—you’ll give me back my sister!”

In his rage he had spoken English; she could not, of course, have understood the words, but their anger and hatred she did understand. Her serenity quivered, broke. The strange stars within her eyes began to glitter forth as they had when she had summoned the Smiting Thing. Unheeding, Ventnor thrust out a hand, caught her roughly by one bare, lovely shoulder.

“Give her back to me, I say!” he cried. “Give her back to me!”

The woman’s eyes grew—awful. Out of the distended pupils the strange stars blazed; upon her face was something of the goddess outraged. I felt the shadow of Death’s wings.

“No! No—Norhala! No, Martin!” the veils of inhuman calm shrouding Ruth were torn; swiftly the girl we knew looked out from them. She threw herself between the two, arms outstretched.

“Ventnor!” Drake caught his arms, held them tight; “that’s not the way to save her!”

Ventnor stood between us, quivering, half sobbing. Never until then had I realized how great, how absorbing was that love of his for Ruth. And the woman saw it, too, even though dimly; envisioned it humanly. For, under the shock of human passion, that which I thought then as utterly unknown to her as her cold serenity was to us, the sleeping soul—I use the popular word for those emotional complexes that are peculiar to mankind—stirred, awakened.

Wrath fled from her knitted brows; her eyes dropping to the girl, lost their dreadfulness; softened. She turned them upon Ventnor, they brooded upon him; within their depths a half-troubled interest, a questioning.

A smile dawned upon the exquisite face, humanizing it, transfiguring it, touching with tenderness the sweet and sleeping mouth—as a hovering dream the lips of the slumbering maid.

And on the face of Ruth, as upon a mirror, I watched that same slow, understanding tenderness reflected!

“Come,” said Norhala, and led the way through the sparkling curtains. As she passed, an arm around Ruth’s neck, I saw the marks of Ventnor’s fingers upon her white shoulder, staining its purity, marring it like a blasphemy.

For an instant I hung behind, watching their figures grow misty within the shining shadows; then followed hastily. Entering the mists I was conscious of a pleasant tingling, an acceleration of the pulse, an increase of that sense of well-being which, I grew suddenly aware, had since the beginning of our strange journey minimized the nervous attrition of constant contact with the abnormal.

Striving to classify, to reduce to order, my sensations I drew close to the others, overtaking them in a dozen paces. A dozen paces more and we stepped out of the curtainings.

CHAPTER XI

THE METAL EMPEROR

We stood at the edge of a well whose walls were of that same green vaporous iridescence through which we had just come, but finer grained, compact; as though here the corpuscles of which they were woven were far closer spun. Thousands of feet above us the mighty cylinder uprose, and in the lessened circle that was its mouth I glimpsed the bright stars; and knew by this it opened into the free air.

All of half a mile in diameter was this shaft, and ringed regularly along its height by wide amethystine bands—like rings of a hollow piston. They were, in color, replicas of that I had glimpsed before our descent into this place and against whose gleaming cataracts the outlines of the incredible city had lowered. And they were in motion, spinning smoothly, and swiftly.

Only one swift glance I gave them, my eyes held by a most extraordinary—edifice—altar—machine—I could not find the word for it—then.

Its base was a scant hundred yards from where we had paused and concentric with the sides of the pit. It stood upon a thick circular pedestal of what appeared to be cloudy rock crystal supported by hundreds of thick rods of the same material.

Up from it lifted the structure, a thing of glistening cones and spinning golden disks; fantastic yet disquietingly symmetrical; bizarre as an angled headdress worn by a mountainous Javanese god—yet coldly, painfully mathematical. In every direction the cones pointed, seemingly interwoven of strands of metal and of light.

What was their color? It came to me—that of the mysterious element which stains the sun’s corona, that diadem seen only when our day star is in eclipse; the unknown element which science has named coronium, which never yet has been found on earth and that may be electricity in its one material form; electricity that is ponderable; force whose vibrations are keyed down to mass; power transmuted into substance.

Thousands upon thousands the cones bristled, pyramiding to the base of one tremendous spire that tapered up almost to the top of the shaft itself.

In their grouping the mind caught infinite calculations carried into infinity; an apotheosis of geometry compassing the rhythms of unknown spatial dimensions; concentration of the equations of the star hordes.

The mathematics of the Cosmos.

From the left of the crystalline base swept an enormous sphere. It was twice the height of a tall man, and it was a paler blue than any of these Things I had seen, almost, indeed, an azure; different, too, in other subtle, indefinable ways.

Behind it glided a pair of the pyramidal shapes, their pointed tips higher by a yard or more than the top of the sphere. They paused—regarding us. Out from the opposite arc of the crystal pedestal moved six other globes, somewhat smaller than the first and of a deep purplish luster.

They separated, lining up on each side of the leader now standing a little in advance of the twin tetrahedrons, rigid and motionless as watching guards.

There they stood—that enigmatic row, intent, studying us beneath their god or altar or machine of cones and disks within their cylinder walled with light.

And at that moment there crystallized within my consciousness the sublimation of all the strangenesses of all that had gone before, a panic loneliness as though I had wandered into an alien world—a world as unfamiliar to humanity, as unfamiliar with it as our own would seem to a thinking, mobile crystal adrift among men.

Norhala raised her white arms in salutation; from her throat came a lilting theme of her weirdly ordered, golden chanting. Was it speech, I wondered; and if so—prayer or entreaty or command?

The great sphere quivered and undulated. Swifter than the eye could follow it dilated; opened!

Where the azure globe had been, flashed out a disk of flaming splendors, the very secret soul of flowered flame! And simultaneously the pyramids leaped up and out behind it—two gigantic, four-rayed stars blazing with cold blue fires.

The green auroral curtainings flared out, ran with streaming radiance—as though some Spirit of Jewels had broken bonds of enchantment and burst forth jubilant, flooding the shaft with its freed glories. Norhala’s song ceased; an arm dropped down upon the shoulders of Ruth.

Then woman and girl began to float toward the radiant disk.

As one, the three of us sprang after them. I felt a shock that was like a quick, abrupt tap upon every nerve and muscle, stiffening them into helpless rigidity.

Paralyzing that sharp, unseen contact had been, but nothing of pain followed it. Instead it created an extraordinary acuteness of sight and hearing, an abnormal keying up of the observational faculties, as though the energy so mysteriously drawn from our motor centers had been thrown back into the sensory.

I could take in every minute detail of the flashing miracle of gemmed fires and its flaming ministers. Halfway between them and us Norhala and Ruth drifted; I could catch no hint of voluntary motion on their part and knew that they were not walking, but were being borne onward by some manifestation of that same force which held us motionless.

I forgot them in my contemplation of the Disk.

It was oval, twenty feet in height, I judged, and twelve in its greatest width. A broad band, translucent as sun golden chrysolite, ran about its periphery.

Set within this zodiac and spaced at mathematically regular intervals were nine ovoids of intensely living light. They shone like nine gigantic cabochon cut sapphires; they ranged from palest, watery blue up through azure and purple and down to a ghostly mauve shot with sullen undertones of crimson.

In each of them was throned a flame that seemed the very fiery essence of vitality.

The—body—was convex, swelling outward like the boss of a shield; shimmering rosy-gray and crystalline. From the vital ovoids ran a pattern of sparkling threads, irised and brilliant as floss of molten jewels; converging with interfacings of spirals, of volutes and of triangles into the nucleus.

And that nucleus, what was it?

Even now I can but guess—brain in part as we understand brain, certainly; but far, far more than that in its energies, its powers.

It was like an immense rose. An incredible rose of a thousand close clustering petals. It blossomed with a myriad shifting hues. And instant by instant the flood of varicolored flame that poured into its petalings down from the sapphire ovoids waxed and waned in crescendoes and diminuendoes of relucent harmonies—ecstatic, awesome.

The heart of the rose was a star of incandescent ruby.

From the flaming crimson center to aureate, flashing penumbra it was instinct with and poured forth power—power vast and conscious.

Not with that same completeness could I realize the ministering star shapes, half hidden as they were by the Disk. Their radiance was less, nor had they its miracle of pulsing gem fires. Blue they were, blue of a peculiar vibrancy, and blue were the glistening threads that ran down from blue-black circular convexities set within each of the points visible to me.

Unlike in shape, their flame of vitality dimmer than the ovoids of the Disk’s golden zone, still I knew that they were even as those—organs, organs of unknown senses, unknown potentialities. Their nuclei I could not observe.

The floating figures had drawn close to that disk and had paused.

And on the moment of their pausing I felt a surge of strength, a snapping of the spell that had bound us, an instantaneous withdrawal of the inhibiting force. Ventnor broke into a run, holding his rifle at the alert. We raced after him; were close to the shining shapes. And, gasping, we stopped short not a dozen paces away.

For Norhala had soared up toward the flaming rose of the Disk as though lifted by gentle, unseen hands. Close to it for an instant she swung. I saw the exquisite body gleam through her thin robes as though bathed in soft flames of rosy pearl.

Higher she floated, and toward the right of the zodiac. From the edges of three of the ovoids swirled a little cloud of tentacles, gossamer filaments of opal. They whipped out a full yard from the Disk’s surface, touching her, caressing her.

For a moment she hung there, her face hidden from us; then was dropped softly to her feet and stood, arms stretched wide, her copper hair streaming cloudily about her regal head.

And up past her floated Ruth, levitated as had been she—and her face, ecstatic as though she were gazing into Paradise, yet drenched with the tranquillity of the infinite. Her wide eyes stared up toward that rose of splendors through which the pulsing colors now raced more swiftly. She hung poised before it while around her head a faint aureole began to form.

Again the gossamer threads thrust forth, searched her. They ran over her rough clothing—perplexedly. They coiled about her neck, stole through her hair, brushed shut her eyes, circled her brow, her breasts, girdled her.

Weirdly was it like some intelligence observing, studying, some creature of another species—puzzled by its similarity and unsimilarity with the one other creature of its kind it knew, and striving to reconcile those differences. And like such a questioning brain calling upon others for counsel, it swung Ruth upward to the watching star at the right.

A rifle shot rang out.

Another—the reports breaking the silence like a profanation. Unseen by either of us, Ventnor had slipped to one side where he could cover the core of ruby flame that must have seemed to him the heart of the Disk’s rose of fire. He knelt a few yards away, white lipped, eyes cold gray ice, sighting carefully for a third shot.

“Don’t! Martin—don’t fire!” I shouted, leaping toward him.

“Stop! Ventnor—” Drake’s panic cry mingled with my own.

But before we could reach him, Norhala flew to him, like a darting swallow. Down the face of the Disk glided the upright body of Ruth, struck softly, stood swaying.

And out of the blue-black convexity within a star point of one of the opened pyramids a lance of intense green flame darted, a lightning bolt as real as any hurled by tempest, upon Ventnor.

The shattered air closed behind the streaming spark with the sound of breaking glass.

It struck—Norhala.

It struck her. It seemed to splash upon her, to run down her like water. One curling tongue writhed over her bare shoulder and leaped to the barrel of the rifle in Ventnor’s hands. It flashed up it and licked him. The gun was torn from his grip, hurled high in air, exploding as it went. He leaped convulsively from his knees and dropped.

I heard a wailing, low, bitter and heartbroken. Past us ran Ruth, all dream, all unearthliness gone from a face now a tragic mask of human woe and terror. She threw herself down beside her brother, felt of his heart; then raised herself upon her knees and thrust out supplicating hands to the shapes.

“Don’t hurt him any more! He didn’t mean it!” she cried out to them piteously—like a child. She reached up, caught one of Norhala’s hands. “Norhala—don’t let them kill him. Don’t let them hurt him any more. Please!” she sobbed.

Beside me I heard Drake cursing.

“If they touch her I’ll kill the woman! I will, by God I will!” He strode to Norhala’s side.

“If you want to live, call off these devils of yours.” His voice was strangled.

She looked at him, wonder deepening on the tranquil brow, in the clear, untroubled gaze. Of course she could not understand his words—but it was not that which made my own sick apprehension grow.

It was that she did not understand what called them forth. Did not even understand what reason lay behind Ruth’s sorrow, Ruth’s prayer.

And more and more wondering grew in her eyes as she looked from the threatening Drake to the supplicating Ruth, and from them to the still body of Ventnor.

“Tell her what I say, Goodwin. I mean it.”

I shook my head. That was not the way, I knew. I looked toward the Disk, still flanked with its sextette of spheres, still guarded by the flaming blue stars. They were motionless, calm, watching. I sensed no hostility, no anger; it was as though they were waiting for us to—to—waiting for us to do what?

It came to me—they were indifferent. That was it—as indifferent as we could be to the struggle of an ephemera; and as mildly curious.

“Norhala,” I turned to the woman, “she would not have him suffer; she would not have him die. She loves him.”

“Love?” she repeated, and all of her wonderment seemed crystallized in the word. “Love?” she asked.

“She loves him,” I said; and then, why I did not know, but I added, pointing to Drake: “and he loves her.”

There was a tiny, astonished sob from Ruth. Again Norhala brooded over her. Then with a little despairing shake of her head, she paced over and faced the great Disk.

Tensely we waited. Communication there was between them, interchange of—thought; how carried out I would not hazard even to myself.

But of a surety these two—the goddess woman, the wholly unhuman shape of metal, of jeweled fires and conscious force—understood each other.

For she turned, stood aside—and the body of Ventnor quivered, arose from the floor, stood upright and with closed eyes, head dropping upon one shoulder, glided toward the Disk like a dead man carried by those messengers never seen by man who, the Arabs believe, bear the death drugged souls before Allah for their awakening.

Ruth moaned and hid her eyes; Drake reached down, gathered her up in his arms, held her close.

Ventnor’s body stood before the Disk, then swam up along its face. The tendrils waved out, felt of it, thrust themselves down through the wide collar of the shirt. The floating form passed higher, over the edge of the Disk; lay high beside the right star point of the rayed shape to which Ruth had been passing when Ventnor’s shot brought the tragedy upon us. I saw other tentacles whip forth, examine, caress.

Then down the body swung, was borne through air, laid gently at our feet.

“He is not—dead,” it was Norhala beside me; she lifted Ruth’s face from Drake’s breast. “He will not die. It may be he will walk again. They can not help,” there was a shadow of apology in her tones. “They did not know. They thought it was the”—she hesitated as though at loss for words—“the—the Fire Play.”

“The Fire Play?” I gasped.

“Yes,” she nodded. “You shall see it. And now I will take him to my house. You are safe—now, nor need you trouble. For he has given you to me.”

“Who has given us to you—Norhala?” I asked, as calmly as I could.

“He”—she nodded to the Disk, then spoke the phrase that was both ancient Assyria’s and ancient Persia’s title for their all-conquering rulers, and that meant—“the King of Kings. The Great King, Master of Life and Death.”

She took Ruth from Drake’s arms, pointing to Ventnor.

“Bear him,” she commanded, and led the way back through the walls of light.

As we lifted the body, I slipped my hand through the shirt, felt at the heart. Faint was the pulsation and slow, but regular.

Close to the encircling vapors I cast one look behind me. The shapes stood immobile, flashing disks, gigantic radiant stars and the six great spheres beneath their geometric super-Euclidean god or shrine or machine of interwoven threads of luminous force and metal—still motionless, still watching.

We emerged into the place of pillars. There stood the hooded pony and its patience, its uncomplaining acceptance of its place as servant to man brought a lump into my throat, salved, I suppose, my human vanity, abased as it had been by the colossal indifference of those things to which we were but playthings.

Again Norhala sent forth her call. Out of the maze glided her quintette of familiars; again the four clicked into one. Upon its top we lifted, Drake ascending first, the pony; then the body of Ventnor.

I saw Norhala lead Ruth to the remaining cube; saw the girl break away from her, leap beside me, and kneeling at her brother’s head, cradle it against her soft breast. Then as I found in the medicine case the hypodermic needle and the strychnine for which I had been searching, I began my examination of Ventnor.

The cubes quivered—swept away through the forest of columns.

We crouched, the three of us, blind to anything that lay about us, heedless of whatever road of wonders we were on, striving to strengthen in Ventnor the spark of life so near extinction.

CHAPTER XII

“I WILL GIVE YOU PEACE”

In our concentration upon Ventnor none of us had given thought to the passing of time, nor where we were going. We stripped him to the waist, and while Ruth massaged head and neck, Drake’s strong fingers kneaded chest and abdomen. I had used to the utmost my somewhat limited medical knowledge.

We had found no mark nor burn upon him, not even upon his hands over which had run the licking flame. The slightly purplish, cyanotic tinge of his skin had given way to a clear pallor; the skin was itself disquietingly cold, the blood-pressure only slightly subnormal. The pulse was more rapid, stronger; the breathing faint but regular, and with no laboring. The pupils of his eyes were contracted almost to the point of invisibility.

I could get no nervous reactions whatever. I am familiar with the effects of electric shock and know what to do in such cases, but Ventnor’s symptoms, while similar in part, presented other features unknown to me and most puzzling. There was a passive automatism, a perplexing muscular rigidity which caused arms and legs, hands and head to remain, doll-like, in any position placed.

Several times during my labors I had been aware of Norhala gazing down upon us; but she made no effort to help, nor did she speak.

Now, my strained attention relaxing, I began to receive and note impressions from without. There was a different feeling in the air, a diminution of the magnetic tension; I smelled the blessed breath of trees and water.

The light about us was clear and pearly, about the intensity of the moon at full. Looking back along the way we had been traveling, I saw a half mile away vertical, knife-sharp edges of two facing cliffs, the gap between them a mile or more wide.

Through them we must have passed, for beyond them were the radiant mists of the pit of the city, and through this precipitous gateway filtered the enveloping luminosity. On each side of us uprose gradually converging and perpendicular scarps along whose base huddled a sparse foliage.

There came a low whistle of astonishment from Drake; I turned. We were slowly gliding toward something that looked like nothing so much as a huge and shimmering bubble of mingled sapphire and turquoise, swimming up from and two-thirds above and the balance still hidden within earth. It seemed to draw to itself the light, sending it back with gleamings of the gray-blue of the star sapphire, with pellucid azures and lazulis like clouded jades, with glistening peacock iridescences and tender, milky greens of tropic shallows.

Little turrets globular and topaz, yellow and pierced with tiny hexagonal openings clustered about it like baby bubbles just nestling down to rest.

Great trees shadowed it, unfamiliar trees among whose glossy leaves blossomed in wreaths flowers pink and white as apple-blossoms. From their graceful branches strange fruits, golden and scarlet and pear-shaped, hung pendulous.

It was an elfin palace; a goblin dwelling; such a bower as some mirthful, beauty-loving Jinn King of Jewels might have built from enchanted hoards for some well-beloved daughter of earth.

All of fifty feet in height was the blue globe, and up to a wide and ovaled entrance ran a broad and shining roadway. Along this the cubes swept and stopped.

“My house,” murmured Norhala.

The attraction that had held us to the surface of the blocks relaxed, angled through changed and assisting lines of force; the hosts of minute eyes sparkling quizzically, interestedly, at us, we gently slid Ventnor’s body; lifted down the pony.

“Enter,” sighed Norhala, and waved a welcoming hand.

“Tell her to wait a minute,” ordered Drake.

He slipped the bandage from off the pony’s head, threw off the saddlebags, and led it to the side of the roadway where thick, lush grass was growing, spangled with flowerets. There he hobbled it and rejoined us. Together we picked up Ventnor and passed slowly through the portal.

We stood in a shadowed chamber. The light that filled it was translucent, and oddly enough with little of the bluish quality I had expected. Crystalline it was; the shadows crystalline, too, rigid—like the facets of great crystals. And as my eyes accustomed themselves I saw that what I had thought shadows actually were none.

They were slices of semitransparent stone like pale moonstones, springing from the curving walls and the high dome, and bisecting and intersecting the chamber. They were pierced with oval doorways over which fell glimmering metallic curtains—silk of silver and gold.

I glimpsed a pile of this silken stuff near by, and as we laid our burden upon it Ruth caught my arm with a little frightened cry.

Through a curtained oval sidled a figure.

Black and tall, its long and gnarled arms swung apelike; its shoulders were distorted, one so much longer than the other that the hand upon that side hung far below the knee.

It walked with a curious, crablike motion. Upon its face were stamped countless wrinkles and its blackness seemed less that of pigmentation than the weathering of unbelievable years, the very stain of ancientness. And about neither face nor figure was there anything to show whether it was man or woman.

From the twisted shoulders a short and sleeveless red tunic fell. Incredibly old the creature was—and by its corded muscles, its sinewy tendons, as incredibly powerful. It raised within me a half sick revulsion, loathing. But the eyes were not ancient, no. Irisless, lashless, black and brilliant, they blazed out of the face’s carven web of wrinkles, intent upon Norhala and filled with a flame of worship.

It threw itself at her feet, prostrate, the inordinately long arms outstretched.

“Mistress!” it whined in a high and curiously unpleasant falsetto. “Great lady! Goddess!”

She stretched out a sandaled foot, touched one of the black taloned hands, and at the contact I saw a shiver of ecstasy run through the lank body. “Yuruk—” she began, and paused, regarding us.

“The goddess speaks! Yuruk hears! The goddess speaks!” It was a chant of adoration.

“Yuruk. Rise. Look upon the strangers.”

The creature—and now I knew what it was—writhed, twisted, and hideously apelike crouched upon its haunches, hands knuckling the floor.

By the amazement in the unwinking eyes it was plain that not till now had the eunuch taken cognizance of us. The amazement fled, was replaced with a black fire of malignancy, of hatred—jealousy.

“Augh!” he snarled; leaped to his feet; thrust an arm toward Ruth. She gave a little cry, cowered against Drake.

“None of that!” He struck down the clutching arm.

“Yuruk!” There was a hint of anger in the bell-toned voice. “Yuruk, these belong to me. No harm must come to them. Yuruk—beware!”

“The goddess commands. Yuruk obeys.” If fear quavered in the words, beneath was more than a trace of a sullenness, too, sinister enough.

“That’s a nice little playmate for her new playthings,” muttered Drake. “If that bird gets the least bit gay—I shoot him pronto.” He gave Ruth a reassuring hug. “Cheer up, Ruth. Don’t mind that thing. He’s something we can handle.”

Norhala waved a white hand; Yuruk sidled over to one of the curtained ovals and through it, reappearing almost instantly with a huge platter upon which were fruits, and a curdly white liquid in bowls of thick porcelain.

“Eat,” she said, as the gnarled black arms placed the platter at our feet.

“Hungry?” asked Drake. Ruth shook her head violently.

“I’m going out for the saddlebags,” said Drake. “We’ll use our own stuff—while it lasts. I’m taking no chances on what the Yuruk lad brings—with all due respect to Norhala’s good intentions.”

He started for the doorway; the eunuch blocked his way.

“We have with us food of our own, Norhala,” I explained. “He goes to get it.”

She nodded indifferently; clapped her hands. Yuruk shrank back, and out strode Drake.

“I am weary,” sighed Norhala. “The way was long. I will refresh myself—”

She stretched out a foot toward Yuruk. He knelt, unlaced the turquoise bands, drew off the sandals. Her hands sought her breast, dwelt for an instant there.

Down slipped her silken veils, clingingly, slowly, as though reluctant to unclasp her; whispering they fell from the high and tender breasts, the delicate rounded hips, and clustered about her feet in soft petalings as of some flower of pale amber foam. Out of the calyx of that flower arose the gleaming miracle of her body crowned with glowing glory of her cloudy hair.

Naked she was, yet clothed with an unearthly purity, the purity of the far-flung, serene stars, of the eternal snows upon some calm, high-flung peak, the tranquil, silver dawns of spring; protected by some spell of divinity which chilled and slew the flame of desire. A maiden Ishtar, a virginal Isis; a woman—yet with no more of woman’s lure than if she had been some exquisite and breathing statue of mingled ivory and milk of pearls.

So she stood, indifferent to us who gazed upon her, withdrawn, musing, as though she had forgotten us. And that serene indifference, with its entire absence of what we term sex consciousness, revealed to me once more how great was the abyss between us and her.

Slowly she raised her arms, wound the floating tresses into a coronal. I saw Drake enter with the saddlebags; saw them drop from hands relaxing under the shock of this amazing tableau; saw his eyes widen and fill with wonder and half-awed admiration.

Now Norhala stepped out of her fallen robes and moved toward the further wall, Yuruk following. He stooped, raised an ewer of silver and began gently to pour over her shoulders its contents. Again and again he bent and filled the vessel, dipping it into a shallow basin from which came the bubbling and chuckling of a little spring. And again I marveled at the marble smoothness and fineness of her skin on which the caressing water left tiny silvery globules, gemming it. The eunuch slithered to one side, drew from a quaint chest clothes of white floss; patted her dry with them; threw over her shoulders a silken robe of blue.

Back she floated to us; hovered over Ruth, crouching with her brother’s head upon her knees.

She made a motion as though to draw the girl to her; hesitated as Ruth’s face set in a passion of denial. A shadow of kindness drifted through the wide, mysterious eyes; a shadow of pity joined it as she looked curiously down on Ventnor.

“Bathe,” she murmured, and pointed to the pool. “And rest. No harm shall come to any of you here. And you—” A hand rested for a moment lightly on the girl’s curly head. “When you desire it—I will again give you—peace!”

She parted the curtains, and the eunuch still following, was hidden beyond them.

CHAPTER XIII

“VOICE FROM THE VOID”

Helplessly we looked at each other. Then called forth perhaps by what she saw in Drake’s eyes, perhaps by another thought, Ruth’s cheeks crimsoned, her head drooped; the web of her hair hid the warm rose of her face, the frozen pallor of Ventnor’s.

Abruptly, she sprang to her feet. “Walter! Dick! Something’s happening to Martin!”

Before she had ceased we were beside her; bending over Ventnor. His mouth was opening, slowly, slowly—with an effort agonizing to watch. Then his voice came through lips that scarcely moved; faint, faint as though it floated from infinite distances, a ghost of a voice whispering with phantom breath out of a dead throat.

“Hard—hard! So hard!” the whispering complained. “Don’t know how long I can keep connection—with voice.

“Was fool to shoot. Sorry—might have gotten you in worse trouble—but crazy with fear for Ruth—thought, too, might be worth chance. Sorry—not my usual line—”

The thin thread of sound ceased. I felt my eyes fill with tears; it was like Ventnor to flay himself like this for what he thought stupidity, like him to make this effort to admit his supposed fault and crave forgiveness—as like him as that mad attack upon the flaming Disk in its own temple, surrounded by its ministers, had been so bafflingly unlike his usual cool, collected self.

“Martin,” I called, bending closer, “it’s nothing, old friend. No one blames you. Try to rouse yourself.”

“Dear,” it was Ruth, passionately tender, “it’s me. Can you hear me?”

“Only speck of consciousness and motionless in the void,” the whisper began again. “Terribly alive, terribly alone. Seem outside space yet—still in body. Can’t see, hear, feel—short-circuited from every sense—but in some strange way realize you—Ruth, Walter, Drake.

“See without seeing—here floating in darkness that is also light—black light—indescribable. In touch, too, with these—”

Again the voice trailed into silence; returned, word and phrase pouring forth disconnected, with a curious and turbulent rhythm, like rushing wave crests linked by half-seen threads of the spindrift, vocal fragments of thought swiftly assembled by some subtle faculty of the mind as they fell into a coherent, incredible message.

“Group consciousness—gigantic—operating within our sphere—operating also in spheres of vibration, energy, force—above, below one to which humanity reacts—perception, command forces known to us—but in greater degree—cognizant, manipulate unknown energies—senses known to us—unknown—can’t realize them fully—impossible cover, only impinge on contact points akin to our senses, forces—even these profoundly modified by additional ones—metallic, crystalline, magnetic, electric—inorganic with every power of organic—consciousness basically same as ours—profoundly changed by differences in mechanism through which it finds expression—difference our bodies—theirs.

“Conscious, mobile—inexorable, invulnerable. Getting clearer—see more clearly—see—” the voice shrilled out in a shuddering, thin lash of despair—“No! No—oh, God—no!”

Then clearly and solemnly:

“And God said: let us make men in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over all the earth, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.”

A silence; we bent closer, listening; the still, small voice took up the thread once more—but clearly further on. Something we had missed between that text from Genesis and what we were now hearing; something that even as he had warned us, he had not been able to articulate. The whisper broke through clearly in the middle of a sentence.

“Nor is Jehovah the God of myriads of millions who through those same centuries, and centuries upon centuries before them, found earth a garden and grave—and all these countless gods and goddesses only phantom barriers raised by man to stand between him and the eternal forces man’s instinct has always warned him are ever in readiness to destroy. That do destroy him as soon as his vigilance relaxes, his resistance weakens—the eternal, ruthless law that will annihilate humanity the instant it runs counter to that law and turns its will and strength against itself—”

A little pause; then came these singular sentences:

“Weaklings praying for miracles to make easy the path their own wills should clear. Beggars who whine for alms from dreams. Shirkers each struggling to place upon his god the burden whose carrying and whose carrying alone can give him strength to walk free and unafraid, himself godlike among the stars.”

And now distinctly, unfalteringly, the voice went on:

“Dominion over all the earth? Yes—as long as man is fit to rule; no longer. Science has warned us. Where was the mammal when the giant reptiles reigned? Slinking hidden and afraid in the dark and secret places. Yet man sprang from these skulking beasts.

“For how long a time in the history of earth has man been master of it? For a breath—for a cloud’s passing. And will remain master only until something grown stronger wrests mastery from him—even as he wrested it from his ravening kind—as they took it from the reptiles—as did the reptiles from the giant saurians—which snatched it from the nightmare rulers of the Triassic—and so down to whatever held sway in the murk of earth dawn.

“Life! Life! Life! Life everywhere struggling for completion!

“Life crowding other life aside, battling for its moment of supremacy, gaining it, holding it for one rise and fall of the wings of time beating through eternity—and then—hurled down, trampled under the feet of another straining life whose hour has struck.

“Life crowding outside every barred threshold in a million circling worlds, yes, in a million rushing universes; pressing against the doors, bursting them down, overwhelming, forcing out those dwellers who had thought themselves so secure.

“And these—these—” the voice suddenly dropped, became thickly, vibrantly resonant, “over the Threshold, within the House of Man—nor does he even dream that his doors are down. These—Things of metal whose brains are thinking crystals—Things that suck their strength from the sun and whose blood is the lightning.

“The sun! The sun!” he cried. “There lies their weakness!”

The voice rose in pitch, grew strident.

“Go back to the city! Go back to the city! Walter—Drake. They are not invulnerable. No! The sun—strike them through the sun! Go into the city—not invulnerable—the Keeper of the Cones—strike at the Cones when—the Keeper of the Cones—ah-h-h-ah—”

We shrank back appalled, for from the parted, scarcely moving lips in the unchanging face a gust of laughter, mad, mocking, terrifying, racked its way.

“Vulnerable—under the law—even as we! The Cones!

“Go!” he gasped. A tremor shook him; slowly the mouth closed.

“Martin! Brother,” wept Ruth. I thrust my hand into his breast; felt the heart beating, with a curious suggestion of stubborn, unshakable strength, as though every vital force had concentrated there as in a beleaguered citadel.

But Ventnor himself, the consciousness that was Ventnor was gone; had withdrawn into that subjective void in which he had said he floated—a lonely sentient atom, his one line of communication with us cut; severed from us as completely as though he were, as he had described it, outside space.

And Drake and I looked at each other’s eyes, neither daring to be first to break the silence of which the muffled sobbing of the girl seemed to be the sorrowful soul.

CHAPTER XIV

“FREE! BUT A MONSTER!”

The peculiar ability of the human mind to slip so readily into the refuge of the commonplace after, or even during, some well-nigh intolerable crisis, has been to me long one of the most interesting phenomena of our psychology.

It is instinctively a protective habit, of course, acquired through precisely the same causes that had given to animals their protective coloration—the stripes, say, of the zebra and tiger that blend so cunningly with the barred and speckled shadowings of bush and jungle, the twig and leaflike shapes and hues of certain insects; in fact, all that natural camouflage which was the basis of the art of concealment so astonishingly developed in the late war.

Like the animals of the wild, the mind of man moves through a jungle—the jungle of life, passing along paths beaten out by the thought of his countless forefathers in their progress from birth to death.

And these paths are bordered and screened, figuratively and literally, with bush and trees of his own selection, setting out and cultivation—shelters of the familiar, the habitual, the customary.

On these ancestral paths, within these barriers of usage, man moves hidden and secure as the animals in their haunts—or so he thinks.

Outside them lie the wildernesses and the gardens of the unknown, and man’s little trails are but rabbit-runs in an illimitable forest.

But they are home to him!

Therefore it is that he scurries from some open place of revelation, some storm of emotion, some strength-testing struggle, back into the shelter of the obvious; finding it an intellectual environment that demands no slightest expenditure of mental energy or initiative, strength to sally forth again into the unfamiliar.

I crave pardon for this digression. I set it down because now I remember how, when Drake at last broke the silence that had closed in upon the passing of that still, small voice the essence of these thoughts occurred to me.

He strode over to the weeping girl, and in his voice was a roughness that angered me until I realized his purpose.

“Get up, Ruth,” he ordered. “He came back once and he’ll come back again. Now let him be and help us get a meal together. I’m hungry.”

She looked up at him, incredulously, indignation rising.

“Eat!” she exclaimed. “You can be hungry?”

“You bet I can—and I am,” he answered cheerfully. “Come on; we’ve got to make the best of it.”

“Ruth,” I broke in gently, “we’ll all have to think about ourselves a little if we’re to be of any use to him. You must eat—and then rest.”

“No use crying in the milk even if it’s spilt,” observed Drake, even more cheerfully brutal. “I learned that at the front where we got so we’d yelp for food even when the lads who’d been bringing it were all mixed up in it.”

She lifted Ventnor’s head from her lap, rested it on the silks; arose, eyes wrathful, her little hands closed in fists as though to strike him.

“Oh—you brute!” she whispered. “And I thought—I thought—Oh, I hate you!”

“That’s better,” said Dick. “Go ahead and hit me if you want. The madder you get the better you’ll feel.”

For a moment I thought she was going to take him at his word; then her anger fled.

“Thanks—Dick,” she said quietly.

And while I sat studying Ventnor, they put together a meal from the stores, brewed tea over the spirit-lamp with water from the bubbling spring. In these commonplaces I knew that she at least was finding relief from that strain of the abnormal under which we had labored so long. To my surprise I found that I was hungry, and with deep relief I watched Ruth partake of food and drink even though lightly.

About her seemed to hover something of the ethereal, elusive, and disquieting. Was it the strangely pellucid light that gave the effect, I wondered; and knew it was not, for as I scanned her covertly, there fell upon her face that shadow of inhuman tranquillity, of unearthly withdrawal which, I guessed, had more than anything else maddened Ventnor into his attack upon the Disk.

I watched her fight against it, drive it back. White lipped, she raised her head and met my gaze. And in her eyes I read both terror and—shame.

It came to me that painful as it might be for her the time for questioning had come.

“Ruth,” I said, “I know it’s not necessary to remind you that we’re in a tight place. Every fact and every scrap of knowledge that we can lay hold of is of the utmost importance in enabling us to determine our course.

“I’m going to repeat your brother’s question—what did Norhala do to you? And what happened when you were floating before the Disk?”

The blaze of interest in Drake’s eyes at these questions changed to amazement at her stricken recoil from them.

“There was nothing,” she whispered—then defiantly—“nothing. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Ruth!” I spoke sharply now, in my own perplexity. “You do know. You must tell us—for his sake.” I pointed toward Ventnor.

She drew a long breath.

“You’re right—of course,” she said unsteadily. “Only I—I thought maybe I could fight it out myself. But you’ll have to know it—there’s a taint upon me.”

I caught in Drake’s swift glance the echo of my own thrill of apprehension for her sanity.

“Yes,” she said, now quietly. “Some new and alien thing within my heart, my brain, my soul. It came to me from Norhala when we rode the flying block, and—he—sealed upon me when I was in—his”—again she crimsoned, “embrace.”

And as we gazed at her, incredulously:

“A thing that urges me to forget you two—and Martin—and all the world I’ve known. That tries to pull me from you—from all—to drift untroubled in some vast calm filled with an ordered ecstasy of peace. And whose calling I want, God help me, oh, so desperately to heed!

“It whispered to me first,” she said, “from Norhala—when she put her arm around me. It whispered and then seemed to float from her and cover me like—like a veil, and from head to foot. It was a quietness and peace that held within it a happiness at one and the same time utterly tranquil and utterly free.

“I seemed to be at the doorway to unknown ecstasies—and the life I had known only a dream—and you, all of you—even Martin, dreams within a dream. You weren’t—real—and you did not—matter.”

“Hypnotism,” muttered Drake, as she paused.

“No.” She shook her head. “No—more than that. The wonder of it grew—and grew. I thrilled with it. I remember nothing of that ride, saw nothing—except that once through the peace enfolding me pierced warning that Martin was in peril, and I broke through to see him clutching Norhala and to see floating up in her eyes death for him.

“And I saved him—and again forgot. Then, when I saw that beautiful, flaming Shape—I felt no terror, no fear—only a tremendous—joyous—anticipation, as though—as though—” She faltered, hung her head, then leaving that sentence unfinished, whispered: “and when—it—lifted me it was as though I had come at last out of some endless black ocean of despair into the full sun of paradise.”

“Ruth!” cried Drake, and at the pain in his cry she winced.

“Wait,” she said, and held up a little, tremulous hand. “You asked—and now you must listen.”

She was silent; and when once more she spoke her voice was low, curiously rhythmic; her eyes rapt:

“I was free—free from every human fetter of fear or sorrow or love or hate; free even of hope—for what was there to hope for when everything desirable was mine? And I was elemental; one with the eternal things yet fully conscious that I was—I.

“It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon the breast of some still and hidden woodland pool; as though I were a little wind dancing among the mountain tops; a mist whirling down a quiet glen; a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes.

“And there was music—strange and wondrous music and terrible, but not terrible to me—who was part of it. Vast chords and singing themes that rang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were like the very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords. And all—all—passionless, yet—rapturous.

“Out of the Thing that held me, out from its fires pulsed vitality—a flood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed. And it was as though this energy were—reassembling me, fitting me even closer to the elemental things, changing me fully into them.

“I felt the little tendrils touching, caressing—then came the shots. Awakening was—dreadful, a struggling back from drowning. I saw Martin—blasted. I drove the—the spell away from me, tore it away.

“And, O Walter—Dick—it hurt—it hurt—and for a breath before I ran to him it was like—like coming from a world in which there was no disorder, no sorrow, no doubts, a rhythmic, harmonious world of light and music, into—into a world that was like a black and dirty kitchen.

“And it’s there,” her voice rose, hysterically. “It’s still within me—whispering, whispering; urging me away from you, from Martin, from every human thing; bidding me give myself up, surrender my humanity.

“Its seal,” she sobbed. “No—his seal! An alien consciousness sealed within me, that tries to make the human me a slave—that waits to overcome my will—and if I surrender gives me freedom, an incredible freedom—but makes me, being still human, a—monster.”

She hid her face in her hands, quivering.

“If I could sleep,” she wailed. “But I’m afraid to sleep. I think I shall never sleep again. For sleeping how do I know what I may be when I wake?”

I caught Drake’s eye; he nodded. I slipped my hand down into the medicine-case, brought forth a certain potent and tasteless combination of drugs which I carry upon explorations.

I dropped a little into her cup, then held it to her lips. Like a child, unthinking, she obeyed and drank.

“But I’ll not surrender.” Her eyes were tragic. “Never think it! I can win—don’t you know I can?”

“Win?” Drake dropped down beside her, drew her toward him. “Bravest girl I’ve known—of course you’ll win. And remember this—nine-tenths of what you’re thinking now is purely over-wrought nerves and weariness. You’ll win—and we’ll win, never doubt it.”

“I don’t,” she said. “I know it—oh, it will be hard—but I will—I will—”

CHAPTER XV

THE HOUSE OF NORHALA

Her eyes closed, her body relaxed; the potion had done its work quickly. We laid her beside Ventnor on the pile of silken stuffs, covered them both with a fold, then looked at each other long and silently—and I wondered whether my face was as grim and drawn as his.

“It appears,” he said at last, curtly, “that it’s up to you and me for powwow quick. I hope you’re not sleepy.”

“I am not,” I answered as curtly; the edge of nerves in his manner of questioning doing nothing to soothe my own, “and even if I were I would hardly expect to put all the burden of the present problem upon you by going to sleep.”

“For God’s sake don’t be a prima donna,” he flared up. “I meant no offense.”

“I’m sorry, Dick,” I said. “We’re both a little jumpy, I guess.” He nodded; gripped my hand.

“It wouldn’t be so bad,” he muttered, “if all four of us were all right. But Ventnor’s down and out, and God alone knows for how long. And Ruth—has all the trouble we have and some special ones of her own. I’ve an idea”—he hesitated—“an idea that there was no exaggeration in that story she told—an idea that if anything she underplayed it.”

“I, too,” I replied somberly. “And to me it is the most hideous phase of this whole situation—and for reasons not all connected with Ruth,” I added.

“Hideous!” he repeated. “Unthinkable—yet all this is unthinkable. And still—it is! And Ventnor—coming back—that way. Like a lost soul finding voice.

“Was it raving, Goodwin? Or could he have been—how was it he put it—in touch with these Things and their purpose? Was that message—truth?”

“Ask yourself that question,” I said. “Man—you know it was truth. Had not inklings of it come to you even before he spoke? They had to me. His message was but an interpretation, a synthesis of facts I, for one, lacked the courage to admit.”

“I, too,” he nodded. “But he went further than that. What did he mean by the Keeper of the Cones—and that the Things—were vulnerable under the same law that orders us? And why did he command us to go back to the city? How could he know—how could he?”

“There’s nothing inexplicable in that, at any rate,” I answered. “Abnormal sensitivity of perception due to the cutting off of all sensual impressions. There’s nothing uncommon in that. You have its most familiar form in the sensitivity of the blind. You’ve watched the same thing at work in certain forms of hypnotic experimentation, haven’t you?

“Through the operation of entirely understandable causes the mind gains the power to react to vibrations that normally pass unperceived; is able to project itself through this keying up of perception into a wider area of consciousness than the normal. Just as in certain diseases of the ear the sufferer, though deaf to sounds within the average range of hearing, is fully aware of sound vibrations far above and far below those the healthy ear registers.”

“I know,” he said. “I don’t need to be convinced. But we accept these things in theory—and when we get up against them for ourselves we doubt.

“How many people are there in Christendom, do you think, who believe that the Saviour ascended from the dead, but who if they saw it today would insist upon medical inspection, doctor’s certificates, a clinic, and even after that render a Scotch verdict? I’m not speaking irreverently—I’m just stating a fact.”

Suddenly he moved away from me, strode over to the curtained oval through which Norhala had gone.

“Dick,” I cried, following him hastily, “where are you going? What are you going to do?”

“I’m going after Norhala,” he answered. “I’m going to have a showdown with her or know the reason why.”

“Drake,” I cried again, aghast, “don’t make the mistake Ventnor did. That’s not the way to win through. Don’t—I beg you, don’t.”

“You’re wrong,” he answered stubbornly. “I’m going to get her. She’s got to talk.”

He thrust out a hand to the curtains. Before he could touch them, they were parted. Out from between them slithered the black eunuch. He stood motionless, regarding us; in the ink-black eyes a red flame of hatred. I pushed myself between him and Drake.

“Where is your mistress, Yuruk?” I asked.

“The goddess has gone,” he replied sullenly.

“Gone?” I said suspiciously, for certainly Norhala had not passed us. “Where?”

“Who shall question the goddess?” he asked. “She comes and she goes as she pleases.”

I translated this for Drake.

“He’s got to show me,” he said. “Don’t think I’m going to spill any beans, Goodwin. But I want to talk to her. I think I’m right, honestly I do.”

After all, I reflected, there was much in his determination to recommend it. It was the obvious thing to do—unless we admitted that Norhala was superhuman; and that I would not admit. In command of forces we did not yet know, en rapport with these People of Metal, sealed with that alien consciousness Ruth had described—all these, yes. But still a woman—of that I was certain. And surely Drake could be trusted not to repeat Ventnor’s error.

“Yuruk,” I said, “we think you lie. We would speak to your mistress. Take us to her.”

“I have told you that the goddess is not here,” he said. “If you do not believe it is nothing to me. I cannot take you to her for I do not know where she is. Is it your wish that I take you through her house?”

“It is,” I said.

“The goddess has commanded me to serve you in all things.” He bowed, sardonically. “Follow.”

Our search was short. We stepped out into what for want of better words I can describe only as a central hall. It was circular, and strewn with thick piled small rugs whose hues had been softened by the alchemy of time into exquisite, shadowy echoes of color.

The walls of this hall were of the same moonstone substance that had enclosed the chamber upon whose inner threshold we were. They whirled straight up to the dome in a crystalline, cylindrical cone. Four doorways like that in which we stood pierced them. Through each of their curtainings in turn we peered.

All were precisely similar in shape and proportions, radiating in a lunetted, curved base triangle from the middle chamber; the curvature of the enclosing globe forming back wall and roof; the translucent slicings the sides; the circle of floor of the inner hall the truncating lunette.

The first of these chambers was utterly bare. The one opposite held a half-dozen suits of the lacquered armor, as many wicked looking, short and double-edged swords and long javelins. The third I judged to be the lair of Yuruk; within it was a copper brazier, a stand of spears and a gigantic bow, a quiver full of arrows leaning beside it. The fourth room was littered with coffers great and small, of wood and of bronze, and all tightly closed.

The fifth room was beyond question Norhala’s bedchamber. Upon its floor the ancient rugs were thick. A low couch of carven ivory inset with gold rested a few feet from the doorway. A dozen or more of the chests were scattered about and flowing over with silken stuffs.

Upon the back of four golden lions stood a high mirror of polished silver. And close to it, in curiously incongruous domestic array stood a stiffly marshaled row of sandals. Upon one of the chests were heaped combs and fillets of shell and gold and ivory studded with jewels blue and yellow and crimson.

To all of these we gave but a passing glance. We sought for Norhala. And of her we found no shadow. She had gone even as the black eunuch had said; flitting unseen past Ruth, perhaps, absorbed in her watch over her brother; perhaps through some hidden opening in this room of hers.

Yuruk let drop the curtains, sidled back to the first room, we after him. The two there had not moved. We drew the saddlebags close, propped ourselves against them.

The black eunuch squatted a dozen feet away, facing us, chin upon his knees, taking us in with unblinking eyes blank of any emotion. Then he began to move slowly his tremendously long arms in easy, soothing motion, the hands running along the floor upon their talons in arcs and circles. It was curious how these hands seemed to be endowed with a volition of their own, independent of the arms upon which they swung.

And now I could see only the hands, shuttling so smoothly, so rhythmically back and forth—weaving so sleepily, so sleepily back and forth—black hands that dripped sleep—hypnotic.

Hypnotic! I sprang from the lethargy closing upon me. In one quick side glance I saw Drake’s head nodding—nodding in time to the movement of the black hands. I jumped to my feet, shaking with an intensity of rage unfamiliar to me; thrust my pistol into the wrinkled face.

“Damn you!” I cried. “Stop that. Stop it and turn your back.”

The corded muscles of the arms contracted, the claws of the slithering paws drew in as though he were about to clutch me; the ebon pools of eyes were covered with a frozen film of hate.

He could not have known what was this tube with which I menaced him, but its threat he certainly sensed and was afraid to meet. He squattered about, wrapped his arms around his knees, crouched with back toward us.

“What’s the matter?” asked Drake drowsily.

“He tried to hypnotize us,” I answered shortly. “And pretty nearly did.”

“So that’s what it was.” He was now wide awake. “I watched those hands of his and got sleepier and sleepier—I guess we’d better tie Mr. Yuruk up.” He jumped to his feet.

“No,” I said, restraining him. “No. He’s safe enough as long as we’re on the alert. I don’t want to use any force on him yet. Wait until we know we can get something worth while by doing it.”

“All right,” he nodded, grimly. “But when the time comes I’m telling you straight, Doc, I’m going the limit. There’s something about that human spider that makes me itch to squash him—slowly.”

“I’ll have no compunction—when it’s worth while,” I answered as grimly.

We sank down again against the saddlebags; Drake brought out a black pipe, looked at it sorrowfully; at me appealingly.

“All mine was on that pony that bolted,” I answered his wistfulness.

“All mine was on my beast, too,” he sighed. “And I lost my pouch in that spurt from the ruins.”

He sighed again, clamped white teeth down upon the stem.

“Of course,” he said at last, “if Ventnor was right in that—that disembodied analysis of his, it’s rather—well, terrifying, isn’t it?”

“It’s all of that,” I replied, “and considerably more.”

“Metal, he said,” Drake mused. “Things of metal with brains of thinking crystal and their blood the lightnings. You accept that?”

“So far as my own observation has gone—yes,” I said. “Metallic yet mobile. Inorganic but with all the quantities we have hitherto thought only those of the organic and with others added. Crystalline, of course, in structure and highly complex. Activated by magnetic-electric forces consciously exerted and as much a part of their life as brain energy and nerve currents are of our human life. Animate, moving, sentient combinations of metal and electric energy.”

He said:

“The opening of the Disk from the globe and of the two blasting stars from the pyramids show the flexibility of the outer—plate would you call it? I couldn’t help thinking of the armadillo after I had time to think at all.”

“It may be”—I struggled against the conviction now strong upon me—“it may be that within that metallic shell is an organic body, something soft—animal, as there is within the horny carapace of the turtle, the nacreous valves of the oyster, the shells of the crustaceans—it may be that even their inner surface is organic—”

“No,” he interrupted, “if there is a body—as we know a body—it must be between the outer surface and the inner, for the latter is crystal, jewel hard, impenetrable.

“Goodwin—Ventnor’s bullets hit fair. I saw them strike. They did not ricochet—they dropped dead. Like flies dashed up against a rock—and the Thing was no more conscious of their striking than a rock would have been of those flies.”

“Drake,” I said, “my own conviction is that these creatures are absolutely metallic, entirely inorganic—incredible, unknown forms. Let us go on that basis.”

“I think so, too,” he nodded; “but I wanted you to say it first. And yet—is it so incredible, Goodwin? What is the definition of vital intelligence—sentience?

“Haeckel’s is the accepted one. Anything which can receive a stimulus, that can react to a stimulus and retains memory of a stimulus must be called an intelligent, conscious entity. The gap between what we have long called the organic and the inorganic is steadily decreasing. Do you know of the remarkable experiments of Lillie upon various metals?”

“Vaguely,” I said.

“Lillie,” he went on, “proved that under the electric current and other exciting mediums metals exhibited practically every reaction of the human nerve and muscle. It grew weary, rested, and after resting was perceptibly stronger than before; it got what was practically indigestion, and it exhibited a peculiar but unmistakable memory. Also, he found, it could acquire disease and die.

“Lillie concluded that there existed a real metallic consciousness. It was Le Bon who first proved also that metal is more sensitive than man, and that its immobility is only apparent. (Le Bon in Evolution of Matter, Chapter Eleven.)

“Take the block of magnetic iron that stands so gray and apparently lifeless, subject it to a magnetic current lifeless, what happens? The iron block is composed of molecules which under ordinary conditions are disposed in all possible directions indifferently. But when the current passes through there is tremendous movement in that apparently inert mass. All of the tiny particles of which it is composed turn and shift until their north poles all point more or less approximately in the direction of the magnetic force.

“When that happens the block itself becomes a magnet, filled with and surrounded by a field of magnetic energy; instinct with it. Outwardly it has not moved; actually there has been prodigious motion.”

“But it is not conscious motion,” I objected.

“Ah, but how do you know?” he asked. “If Jacques Loeb1 is right, that action of the iron molecules is every bit as conscious a movement as the least and the greatest of our own. There is absolutely no difference between them.

“Your and my and its every movement is nothing but an involuntary and inevitable reaction to a certain stimulus. If he’s right, then I’m a buttercup—but that’s neither here nor there. Loeb—all he did was to restate destiny, one of humanity’s oldest ideas, in the terms of tropisms, infusoria and light. Omar Khayyam chemically reincarnated in the Rockefeller Institute. Nevertheless those who accept his theories have to admit that there is essentially no difference between their impulses and the rush of filings toward a magnet.

“Equally nevertheless, Goodwin, the iron does meet Haeckel’s three tests—it can receive a stimulus, it does react to that stimulus and it retains memory of it; for even after the current has ceased it remains changed in tensile strength, conductivity and other qualities that were modified by the passage of that current; and as time passes this memory fades. Precisely as some human experience increases wariness, caution, which keying up of qualities remains with us after the experience has passed, and fades away in the ratio of our sensitivity plus retentiveness divided by the time elapsing from the original experience—exactly as it is in the iron.”

1 Professor Jacques Loeb, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, “The Mechanistic Conception of Life.”

1 Professor Jacques Loeb, of the Rockefeller Institute, New York, “The Mechanistic Conception of Life.”

CHAPTER XVI

CONSCIOUS METAL!

“Granted,” I acquiesced. “We now come to their means of locomotion. In its simplest terms all locomotion is progress through space against the force of gravitation. Man’s walk is a series of rhythmic stumbles against this force that constantly strives to drag him down to earth’s face and keep him pressed there. Gravitation is an etheric—magnetic vibration akin to the force which holds, to use your simile again, Drake, the filing against the magnet. A walk is a constant breaking of the current.

“Take a motion picture of a man walking and run it through the lantern rapidly and he seems to be flying. We have none of the awkward fallings and recoveries that are the tempo of walking as we see it.

“I take it that the movement of these Things is a conscious breaking of the gravitational current just as much as is our own movement, but by a rhythm so swift that it appears to be continuous.

“Doubtless if we could so control our sight as to admit the vibrations of light slowly enough we would see this apparently smooth motion as a series of leaps—just as we do when the motion-picture operator slows down his machine sufficiently to show us walking in a series of stumbles.

“Very well—so far, then, we have nothing in this phenomenon which the human mind cannot conceive as possible; therefore intellectually we still remain masters of the phenomena; for it is only that which human thought cannot encompass which it need fear.”

“Metallic,” he said, “and crystalline. And yet—why not? What are we but bags of skin filled with certain substances in solution and stretched over a supporting and mobile mechanism largely made up of lime? Out of that primeval jelly which Gregory2 calls Protobion came after untold millions of years us with our skins, our nails, and our hair; came, too, the serpents with their scales, the birds with their feathers; the horny hide of the rhinoceros and the fairy wings of the butterfly; the shell of the crab, the gossamer loveliness of the moth and the shimmering wonder of the mother-of-pearl.

“Is there any greater gap between any of these and the metallic? I think not.”

“Not materially,” I answered. “No. But there remains—consciousness!”

“That,” he said, “I cannot understand. Ventnor spoke of—how did he put it?—a group consciousness, operating in our sphere and in spheres above and below ours, with senses known and unknown. I got—glimpses—Goodwin, but I cannot understand.”

“We have agreed for reasons that seem sufficient to us to call these Things metallic, Dick,” I replied. “But that does not necessarily mean that they are composed of any metal that we know. Nevertheless, being metal, they must be of crystalline structure.

“As Gregory has pointed out, crystals and what we call living matter had an equal start in the first essentials of life. We cannot conceive life without giving it the attribute of some sort of consciousness. Hunger cannot be anything but conscious, and there is no other stimulus to eat but hunger.

“The crystals eat. The extraction of power from food is conscious because it is purposeful, and there can be no purpose without consciousness; similarly the power to work from such derived energy is also purposeful and therefore conscious. The crystals do both. And the crystals can transmit all these abilities to their children, just as we do. For although there would seem to be no reason why they should not continue to grow to gigantic size under favorable conditions—yet they do not. They reach a size beyond which they do not develop.

“Instead, they bud—give birth, in fact—to smaller ones, which increase until they reach the size of the preceding generation. And like the children of man and animals, these younger generations grow on precisely as their progenitors!

“Very well, then—we arrive at the conception of a metallically crystalline being, which by some explosion of the force of evolution has burst from the to us familiar and apparently inert stage into these Things that hold us. And is there any greater difference between the forms with which we are familiar and them than there is between us and the crawling amphibian which is our remote ancestor? Or between that and the amoeba—the little swimming stomach from which it evolved? Or the amoeba and the inert jelly of the Protobion?

“As for what Ventnor calls a group consciousness I would assume that he means a communal intelligence such as that shown by the bees and the ants—that in the case of the former Maeterlinck calls the ‘Spirit of the Hive.’ It is shown in their groupings—just as the geometric arrangement of those groupings shows also clearly their crystalline intelligence.

“I submit that in their rapid coordination either for attack or movement or work without apparent communication having passed between the units, there is nothing more remarkable than the swarming of a hive of bees where also without apparent communication just so many waxmakers, nurses, honey-gatherers, chemists, bread-makers, and all the varied specialists of the hive go with the old queen, leaving behind sufficient number of each class for the needs of the young queen.

“All this apportionment is effected without any means of communication that we recognize. Still it is most obviously intelligent selection. For if it were haphazard all the honeymakers might leave and the hive starve, or all the chemists might go and the food for the young bees not be properly prepared—and so on and so on.”

“But metal,” he muttered, “and conscious. It’s all very well—but where did that consciousness come from? And what is it? And where did they come from? And most of all, why haven’t they overrun the world before this?

“Such development as theirs, such an evolution, presupposes aeons of time—long as it took us to drag up from the lizards. What have they been doing—why haven’t they been ready to strike—if Ventnor’s right—at humanity until now?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, helplessly. “But evolution is not the slow, plodding process that Darwin thought. There seem to be explosions—nature will create a new form almost in a night. Then comes the long ages of development and adjustment, and suddenly another new race appears.

“It might be so of these—some extraordinary conditions that shaped them. Or they might have developed through the ages in spaces within the earth—there’s that incredible abyss we saw that is evidently one of their highways. Or they might have dropped here upon some fragment of a broken world, found in this valley the right conditions and developed in amazing rapidity.3 They’re all possible theories—take your pick.”

“Something’s held them back—and they’re rushing to a climax,” he whispered. “Ventnor’s right about that—I feel it. And what can we do?”

“Go back to their city,” I said. “Go back as he ordered. I believe he knows what he’s talking about. And I believe he’ll be able to help us. It wasn’t just a request he made, nor even an appeal—it was a command.”

“But what can we do—just two men—against these Things?” he groaned.

“Maybe we’ll find out—when we’re back in the city,” I answered.

“Well,” his old reckless cheerfulness came back to him, “in every crisis of this old globe it’s been up to one man to turn the trick. We’re two. And at the worst we can only go down fighting a little before the rest of us. So, after all, whatever the hell, what the hell.”

For a time we were silent.

“Well,” he said at last, “we have to go to the city in the morning.” He laughed. “Sounds as though we were living in the suburbs, somehow, doesn’t it?”

“It can’t be many hours before dawn,” I said. “Turn in for a while, I’ll wake you when I think you’ve slept enough.”

“It doesn’t seem fair,” he protested, but sleepily.

“I’m not sleepy,” I told him; nor was I.

But whether I was or not, I wanted to question Yuruk, uninterrupted and undisturbed.

Drake stretched himself out. When his breathing showed him fast asleep indeed, I slipped over to the black eunuch and crouched, right hand close to the butt of my automatic, facing him.

2 J. W. Gregory, F.R.S.D.Sc., Professor of Geology, University of Glasgow.

3 Professor Svante Arrhenius’s theory of propagation of life by means of minute spores carried through space. See his “Worlds in the Making.”—W.T.G.

2 J. W. Gregory, F.R.S.D.Sc., Professor of Geology, University of Glasgow.

3 Professor Svante Arrhenius’s theory of propagation of life by means of minute spores carried through space. See his “Worlds in the Making.”—W.T.G.

CHAPTER XVII

YURUK

“Yuruk,” I whispered, “you love us as the wheat field loves the hail; we are as welcome to you as the death cord to the condemned. Lo, a door opened into a land of unpleasant dreams you thought sealed, and we came through. Answer my questions truthfully and it may be that we shall return through that door.”

Interest welled up in the depths of the black eyes.

“There is a way from here,” he muttered. “Nor does it pass through—Them. I can show it to you.”

I had not been blind to the flash of malice, of cunning, that had shot across the wrinkled face.

“Where does that way lead?” I asked. “There were those who sought us; men clad in armor with javelins and arrows. Does your way lead to them, Yuruk?”

For a time he hesitated, the lashless lids half closed.

“Yes,” he said sullenly. “The way leads to them; to their place. But will it not be safer for you there—among your kind?”

“I don’t know that it will,” I answered promptly. “Those who are unlike us smote those who are like us and drove them back when they would have taken and slain us. Why is it not better to remain with them than to go to our kind who would destroy us?”

“They would not,” he said “If you gave them—her.” He thrust a long thumb backward toward sleeping Ruth. “Cherkis would forgive much for her. And why should you not? She is only a woman.”

He spat—in a way that made me want to kill him.

“Besides,” he ended, “have you no arts to amuse him?”

“Cherkis?” I asked.

“Cherkis,” he whined. “Is Yuruk a fool not to know that in the world without, new things have arisen since long ago we fled from Iskander into the secret valley? What have you to beguile Cherkis beyond this woman flesh? Much, I think. Go then to him—unafraid.”

Cherkis? There was a familiar sound to that. Cherkis? Of course—it was the name of Xerxes, the Persian Conqueror, corrupted by time into this—Cherkis. And Iskander? Equally, of course—Alexander. Ventnor had been right.

“Yuruk,” I demanded directly, “is she whom you call goddess—Norhala—of the people of Cherkis?”

“Long ago,” he answered; “long, long ago there was trouble in their city, even in the great dwelling place of Cherkis. I fled with her who was the mother of the goddess. There were twenty of us; and we fled here—by the way which I will show you—”

He leered cunningly; I gave no sign of interest.

“She who was the mother of the goddess found favor in the sight of the ruler here,” he went on. “But after a time she grew old and ugly and withered. So he slew her—like a little mound of dust she danced and blew away after he had slain her; and also he slew others who had grown displeasing to him. He blasted me—as he was blasted—” He pointed to Ventnor.

“Then it was that, recovering, I found my crooked shoulder. The goddess was born here. She is kin to Him Who Rules! How else could she shed the lightnings? Was not the father of Iskander the god Zeus Ammon, who came to Iskander’s mother in the form of a great snake? Well? At any rate the goddess was born—shedder of the lightnings even from her birth. And she is as you see her.

“Cleave to your kind! Cleave to your kind!” Suddenly he shrilled. “Better is it to be whipped by your brother than to be eaten by the tiger. Cleave to your kind. Look—I will show you the way to them.”

He sprang to his feet, clasped my wrist in one of his long hands, led me through the curtained oval into the cylindrical hall, parted the curtainings of Norhala’s bedroom and pushed me within. Over the floor he slid, still holding fast to me, and pressed against the farther wall.

An ovoid slice of the gemlike material slid aside, revealing a doorway. I glimpsed a path, a trail, leading into a forest pallid green beneath the wan light. This way thrust itself like a black tongue into the boskage and vanished in the depths.

“Follow it.” He pointed. “Take those who came with you and follow it.”

The wrinkles upon his face writhed with his eagerness.

“You will go?” panted Yuruk. “You will take them and go by that path?”

“Not yet,” I answered absently. “Not yet.”

And was brought abruptly to full alertness, vigilance, by the flame of rage that filled the eyes thrust so close.

“Lead back,” I directed curtly. He slid the door into place, turned sullenly. I followed, wondering what were the sources of the bitter hatred he so plainly bore for us; the reasons for his eagerness to be rid of us despite the commands of this woman who to him at least was goddess.

And by that curious human habit of seeking for the complex when the simple answer lies close, failed to recognize that it was jealousy of us that was the root of his behavior; that he wished to be, as it would seem he had been for years, the only human thing near Norhala; failed to realize this, and with Ruth and Drake was terribly to pay for this failure.

I looked down upon the pair, sleeping soundly; upon Ventnor lost still in trance.

“Sit,” I ordered the eunuch. “And turn your back to me.”

I dropped down beside Drake, my mind wrestling with the mystery, but every sense alert for movement from the black. Glibly enough I had passed over Dick’s questioning as to the consciousness of the Metal People; now I faced it knowing it to be the very crux of these incredible phenomena; admitting, too, that despite all my special pleading, about that point swirled in my own mind the thickest mists of uncertainty. That their sense of order was immensely beyond a man’s was plain.

As plain was it that their knowledge of magnetic force and its manipulation were far beyond the sphere of humanity. That they had realization of beauty this palace of Norhala’s proved—and no human imagination could have conceived it nor human hands have made its thought of beauty real. What were their senses through which their consciousness fed?

Nine in number had been the sapphire ovals set within the golden zone of the Disk. Clearly it came to me that these were sense organs!

But—nine senses!

And the great stars—how many had they? And the cubes—did they open as did globe and pyramid?

Consciousness itself—after all what is it? A secretion of the brain? The cumulative expression, wholly chemical, of the multitudes of cells that form us? The inexplicable governor of the city of the body of which these myriads of cells are the citizens—and created by them out of themselves to rule?

Is it what many call the soul? Or is it a finer form of matter, a self-realizing force, which uses the body as its vehicle just as other forces use for their vestments other machines? After all, I thought, what is this conscious self of ours, the ego, but a spark of realization running continuously along the path of time within the mechanism we call the brain; making contact along that path as the electric spark at the end of a wire?

Is there a sea of this conscious force which laps the shores of the farthest-flung stars; that finds expression in everything—man and rock, metal and flower, jewel and cloud? Limited in its expression only by the limitations of that which animates, and in essence the same in all. If so, then this problem of the life of the Metal People ceased to be a problem; was answered!

So thinking I became aware of increasing light; strode past Yuruk to the door and peeped out. Dawn was paling the sky. I stooped over Drake, shook him. On the instant he was awake, alert.

“I only need a little sleep, Dick,” I said. “When the sun is well up, call me.”

“Why, it’s dawn,” he whispered. “Goodwin, you ought not to have let me sleep so long. I feel like a damned pig.”

“Never mind,” I said. “But watch the eunuch closely.”

I rolled myself up in his warm blanket; sank almost instantly into dreamless slumber.

CHAPTER XVIII

INTO THE PIT

High was the sun when I awakened; or so, I supposed, opening my eyes upon a flood of daylight. As I lay, lazily, recollection rushed upon me.

It was no sky into which I was gazing; it was the dome of Norhala’s elfin home. And Drake had not aroused me. Why? And how long had I slept?

I jumped to my feet, stared about. Ruth nor Drake nor the black eunuch was there!

“Ruth!” I shouted. “Drake!”

There was no answer. I ran to the doorway. Peering up into the white vault of the heavens I set the time of day as close to seven; I had slept then three hours, more or less. Yet short as that time of slumber had been, I felt marvelously refreshed, reenergized; the effect, I was certain, of the extraordinarily tonic qualities of the atmosphere of this place. But where were the others? Where Yuruk?

I heard Ruth’s laughter. Some hundred yards to the left, half hidden by a screen of flowering shrubs, I saw a small meadow. Within it a half-dozen little white goats nuzzled around her and Dick. She was milking one of them.

Reassured, I drew back into the chamber, knelt over Ventnor. His condition was unchanged. My gaze fell upon the pool that had been Norhala’s bath. Longingly I looked at it; then satisfying myself that the milking process was not finished, slipped off my clothes and splashed about.

I had just time to get back in my clothes when through the doorway came the pair, each carrying a porcelain pannikin full of milk.

There was no shadow of fear or horror on her face. It was the old Ruth who stood before me; nor was there effort in the smile she gave me. She had been washed clean in the waters of sleep.

“Don’t worry, Walter,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking. But I’m—me again.”

“Where is Yuruk?” I turned to Drake bruskly to smother the sob of sheer happiness I felt rising in my throat; and at his wink and warning grimace abruptly forebore to press the question.

“You men pick out the things and I’ll get breakfast ready,” said Ruth.

Drake picked up the teakettle and motioned me before him.

“About Yuruk,” he whispered when he had gotten outside. “I gave him a little object lesson. Persuaded him to go down the line a bit, showed him my pistol, and then picked off one of Norhala’s goats with it. Hated to do it, but I knew it would be good for his soul.

“He gave one screech and fell on his face and groveled. Thought it was a lightning bolt, I figure; decided I had been stealing Norhala’s stuff. ‘Yuruk,’ I told him, ‘that’s what you’ll get, and worse, if you lay a finger on that girl inside there.’”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“He beat it back there.” He grinned, pointing toward the forest through which ran the path the eunuch had shown me. “Probably hiding back of a tree.”

As we filled the container at the outer spring, I told him of the revelations and the offer Yuruk had made to me.

“Whew-w!” he whistled. “In the nutcracker, eh? Trouble behind us and trouble in front of us.”

“When do we start?” he asked, as we turned back.

“Right after we’ve eaten,” I answered. “There’s no use putting it off. How do you feel about it?”

“Frankly, like the chief guest at a lynching party,” he said. “Curious but none too cheerful.”

Nor was I. I was filled with a fever of scientific curiosity. But I was not cheerful—no!

We ministered to Ventnor as well as we could; forcing open his set jaws, thrusting a thin rubber tube down past his windpipe into his gullet and dropping through it a few ounces of the goat milk. Our own breakfasting was silent enough.

We could not take Ruth with us upon our journey; that was certain; she must stay here with her brother. She would be safer in Norhala’s home than where we were going, of course, and yet to leave her was most distressing. After all, I wondered, was there any need of both of us taking the journey; would not one do just as well?

Drake could stay—

“No use of putting all our eggs in one basket,” I broached the subject. “I’ll go down by myself while you stay and help Ruth. You can always follow if I don’t turn up in a reasonable time.”

His indignation at this proposal was matched only by her own.

“You’ll go with him, Dick Drake,” she cried, “or I’ll never look at or speak to you again!”

“Good Lord! Did you think for a minute I wouldn’t?” Pain and wrath struggled on his face. “We go together or neither of us goes. Ruth will be all right here, Goodwin. The only thing she has any cause to fear is Yuruk—and he’s had his lesson.

“Besides, she’ll have the rifles and her pistols, and she knows how to use them. What d’ye mean by making such a proposition as that?” His indignation burst all bounds.

Lamely I tried to justify myself.

“I’ll be all right,” said Ruth. “I’m not afraid of Yuruk. And none of these Things will hurt me—not after—not after—” Her eyes fell, her lips quivered, then she faced us steadily. “Don’t ask me how I know that,” she said quietly. “Believe me, I do know it. I am closer to—them than you two are. And if I choose I can call upon that alien strength their master gave me. It is for you two that I fear.”

“No fear for us,” Drake burst out hastily. “We’re Norhala’s little playthings. We’re tabu. Take it from me, Ruth, I’d bet my head there isn’t one of these Things, great or small, and no matter how many, that doesn’t by this time know all about us.

“We’ll probably be received with demonstrations of interest by the populace as welcome guests. Probably we’ll find a sign—‘Welcome to our City’—hung up over the front gate.”

She smiled, a trifle tremulously.

“We’ll come back,” he said. Suddenly he leaned forward, put his hands on her shoulders. “Do you think there is anything that could keep me from coming back?” he whispered.

She trembled, wide eyes searching deep into his.

“Well,” I broke in, a bit uncomfortably, “we’d better be starting. I think as Drake does, that we’re tabu. Barring accident there’s no danger. And if I guess right about these Things, accident is impossible.”

“As inconceivable as the multiplication table going wrong,” he laughed, straightening.

And so we made ready. Our rifles would be worse than useless, we knew; our pistols we decided to carry as Drake put it, “for comfort.” Canteens filled with water; a couple of emergency rations, a few instruments, including a small spectroscope, a selection from the medical kit—all these packed in a little haversack which he threw over his broad shoulders.

I pocketed my compact but exceedingly powerful field-glasses. To my poignant and everlasting regret my camera had been upon the bolting pony, and Ventnor had long been out of films for his.

We were ready for our journey.

Our path led straight away, a smooth and dark-gray road whose surface resembled cement packed under enormous pressure. It was all of fifty feet wide and now, in daylight, glistened faintly as though overlaid with some vitreous coating. It narrowed abruptly into a wedged way that stopped at the threshold of Norhala’s door.

Diminishing through the distance, it stretched straight as an arrow onward and vanished between perpendicular cliffs which formed the frowning gateway through which the night before we had passed upon the coursing cubes from the pit of the city. Here, as then, a mistiness checked the gaze.

Ruth with us, we made a brief inspection of the surroundings of Norhala’s house. It was set as though in the narrowest portion of an hour-glass. The precipitous walls marched inward from the gateway forming the lower half of the figure; at the back they swung apart at a wider angle.

This upper part of the hour-glass was filled with a park-like forest. It was closed, perhaps twenty miles away, by a barrier of cliffs.

How, I wondered, did the path which Yuruk had pointed out to me pierce them? Was it by pass or tunnel; and why was it the armored men had not found and followed it?

The waist between these two mountain wedges was a valley not more than a mile wide. Norhala’s house stood in its center; and it was like a garden, dotted with flowering and fragrant lilies and here and there a tiny green meadow. The great globe of blue that was Norhala’s dwelling seemed less to rest upon the ground than to emerge from it; as though its basic curvatures were hidden in the earth.

What was its substance I could not tell. It was as though built of the lacquer of the gems whose colors it held. And beautiful, wondrously, incredibly beautiful it was—an immense bubble of froth of molten sapphires and turquoises.

We had not time to study its beauties. A few last instructions to Ruth, and we set forth down the gray road. Hardly had we taken a few steps when there came a faint cry from her.

“Dick! Dick—come here!”

He sprang to her, caught her hands in his. For a moment, half frightened it seemed, she considered him.

“Dick,” I heard her whisper. “Dick—come back safe to me!”

I saw his arms close about her, hers tighten around his neck; black hair touched the silken brown curls, their lips met, clung. I turned away.

In a little time he joined me; head down, silent, he strode along beside me, utterly dejected.

A hundred more yards and we turned. Ruth was still standing on the threshold of the house of mystery, watching us. She waved her hands, flitted in, was hidden from us. And Drake still silent, we pushed on.

The walls of the gateway were close. The sparse vegetation along the base of the cliffs had ceased; the roadway itself had merged into the smooth, bare floor of the canyon. From vertical edge to vertical edge of the rocky portal stretched a curtain of shimmering mist. As we drew nearer we saw that this was motionless, and less like vapor of water than vapor of light; it streamed in oddly fixed lines like atoms of crystals in a still solution. Drake thrust an arm within it, waved it; the mist did not move. It seemed instead to interpenetrate the arm—as though bone and flesh were spectral, without power to dislodge the shining particles from position.

We passed within it—side by side.

Instantly I knew that whatever these veils were, they were not moisture. The air we breathed was dry, electric. I was sensible of a decided stimulation, a pleasant tingling along every nerve, a gaiety almost light-headed. We could see each other quite plainly, the rocky floor on which we trod as well. Within this vapor of light there was no ghost of sound; it was utterly empty of it. I saw Drake turn to me, his mouth open in a laugh, his lips move in speech—and although he bent close to my ear, I heard nothing. He frowned, puzzled, and walked on.

Abruptly we stepped into an opening, a pocket of clear air. Our ears were filled with a high, shrill humming as unpleasantly vibrant as the shriek of a sand blast. Six feet to our right was the edge of the ledge on which we stood; beyond it was a sheer drop into space. A shaft piercing down into the void and walled with the mists.

But it was not that shaft that made us clutch each other. No! It was that through it uprose a colossal column of the cubes. It stood a hundred feet from us. Its top was another hundred feet above the level of our ledge and its length vanished in the depths.

And its head was a gigantic spinning wheel, yards in thickness, tapering at its point of contact with the cliff wall into a diameter half that of the side closest the column, gleaming with flashes of green flame and grinding with tremendous speed at the face of the rock.

Over it, attached to the cliff, was a great vizored hood of some pale yellow metal, and it was this shelter that cutting off the vaporous light like an enormous umbrella made the pocket of clarity in which we stood, the shaft up which sprang the pillar.

All along the length of that column as far as we could see the myriad tiny eyes of the Metal People shone out upon us, not twinkling mischievously, but—grotesque as this may seem, I cannot help it—wide with surprise.

Only an instant longer did the great wheel spin. I saw the screaming rock melting beneath it, dropping like lava. Then, as though it had received some message, abruptly its motion now ceased.

It tilted; looked down upon us!

I noted that its grinding surface was studded thickly with the smaller pyramids and that the tips of these were each capped with what seemed to be faceted gems gleaming with the same pale yellow radiance as the Shrine of the Cones.

The column was bending; the wheel approaching.

Drake seized me by the arm, drew me swiftly back into the mists. We were shrouded in their silences. Step by step we went on, peering for the edge of the shelf, feeling in fancy that prodigious wheeled face stealing upon us; afraid to look behind lest in looking we might step too close to the unseen verge.

Yard after yard we slowly covered. Suddenly the vapors thinned; we passed out of them—

A chaos of sound beat about us. The clanging of a million anvils; the clamor of a million forges; the crashing of a hundred years of thunder; the roarings of a thousand hurricanes. The prodigious bellowings of the Pit beating against us now as they had when we had flown down the long ramp into the depths of the Sea of Light.

Instinct with unthinkable power was that clamor; the very voice of Force. Stunned, nay blinded, by it, we covered ears and eyes.

As before, the clangor died, leaving in its wake a bewildered silence. Then that silence began to throb with a vast humming, and through that humming rang a murmur as that of a river of diamonds.

We opened our eyes, felt awe grip our throats as though a hand had clutched them.

Difficult, difficult almost beyond thought is it for me now to essay to draw in words the scene before us then. For although I can set down what it was we saw, I nor any man can transmute into phrases its essence, its spirit, the intangible wonder that was its synthesis—the appallingly beautiful, soul-shaking strangeness of it, its grandeur, its fantasy, and its alien terror.

The Domain of the Metal Monster—it was filled like a chalice with Its will; was the visible expression of that will.

We stood at the very rim of a wide ledge. We looked down into an immense pit, shaped into a perfect oval, thirty miles in length I judged, and half that as wide, and rimmed with colossal precipices. We were at the upper end of this deep valley and on the tip of its axis; I mean that it stretched longitudinally before us along the line of greatest length. Five hundred feet below was the pit’s floor. Gone were the clouds of light that had obscured it the night before; the air crystal clear; every detail standing out with stereoscopic sharpness.

First the eyes rested upon a broad band of fluorescent amethyst, ringing the entire rocky wall. It girdled the cliffs at a height of ten thousand feet, and from this flaming zone, as though it clutched them, fell the curtains of sparkling mist, the enigmatic, sound-slaying vapors.

But now I saw that all of these veils were not motionless like those through which we had just passed. To the northwest they were pulsing like the aurora, and like the aurora they were shot through with swift iridescences, spectrums, polychromatic gleamings. And always these were ordered, geometric—like immense and flitting prismatic crystals flying swiftly to the very edges of the veils, then darting as swiftly back.

From zone and veils the gaze leaped to the incredible City towering not two miles away from us.

Blue black, shining, sharply cut as though from polished steel, it reared full five thousand feet on high!

How great it was I could not tell, for the height of its precipitous walls barred the vision. The frowning facade turned toward us was, I estimated, five miles in length. Its colossal scarp struck the eyes like a blow; its shadow, falling upon us, checked the heart. It was overpowering—dreadful as that midnight city of Dis that Dante saw rising up from another pit.

It was a metal city, mountainous.

Featureless, smooth, the immense wall of it heaved heavenward. It should have been blind, that vast oblong face—but it was not blind. From it radiated alertness, vigilance. It seemed to gaze toward us as though every foot were manned with sentinels; guardians invisible to the eyes whose concentration of watchfulness was caught by some subtle hidden sense higher than sight.

It was a metal city, mountainous and—aware.

About its base were huge openings. Through and around these portals swirled hordes of the Metal People; in units and in combinations coming and going, streaming in and out, forming as they came and went patterns about the openings like the fretted spume of great breakers surging into, retreating from, ocean-bitten gaps in some iron-bound coast.

From the immensity of the City the eyes dropped back to the Pit in which it lay. Its floor was plaquelike, a great plane smooth as though turned by potter’s wheel, broken by no mound nor hillock, slope nor terrace; level, horizontal, flawlessly flat. On it was no green living thing—no tree nor bush, meadow nor covert.

It was alive with movement. A ferment that was as purposeful as it was mechanical, a ferment symmetrical, geometrical, supremely ordered—

The surging of the Metal Hordes.

There they moved beneath us, these enigmatic beings, in a countless host. They marched and countermarched in battalions, in regiments, in armies. Far to the south I glimpsed a company of colossal shapes like mobile, castellated and pyramidal mounts. They were circling, weaving about each other with incredible rapidity—like scores of great pyramids crowned with gigantic turrets and dancing. From these turrets came vivid flashes, lightning bright—on their wake the rolling echoes of faraway thunder.

Out of the north sped a squadron of obelisks from whose tops flamed and flared the immense spinning wheels, appearing at this distance like fiery whirling disks.

Up from their setting the Metal People lifted themselves in a thousand incredible shapes, shapes squared and globed and spiked and shifting swiftly into other thousands as incredible. I saw a mass of them draw themselves up into the likeness of a tent skyscraper high; hang so for an instant, then writhe into a monstrous chimera of a dozen towering legs that strode away like a gigantic headless and bodiless tarantula in steps two hundred feet long. I watched mile-long lines of them shape and reshape into circles, into interlaced lozenges and pentagons—then lift in great columns and shoot through the air in unimaginable barrage.

Through all this incessant movement I sensed plainly purpose, knew that it was definite activity toward a definite end, caught the clear suggestion of drill, of maneuver.

And when the shiftings of the Metal Hordes permitted we saw that all the flat floor of the valley was stripped and checkered, stippled and tessellated with every color, patterned with enormous lozenges and squares, rhomboids and parallelograms, pentagons and hexagons and diamonds, lunettes, circles and spirals; harlequined yet harmonious; instinct with a grotesque suggestion of a super-Futurism.

But always this patterning was ordered, always coherent. As though it were a page on which was spelled some untranslatable other world message.

Fourth Dimensional revelations by some Euclidean deity! Commandments traced by some mathematical God!

Looping across the vale, emerging from the sparkling folds of the southernmost curtainings and vanishing into the gleaming veils of the easternmost, ran a broad ribbon of pale-green jade; not straightly but with manifold convolutions and flourishes. It was like a sentence in Arabic.

It was margined with sapphire blue. All along its twisting course two broad bands of jet margined the cerulean shore. It was spanned by scores of flashing crystal arches. Nor were these bridges—even from that distance I knew they were no bridges. From them came the crystalline murmurings.

Jade? This stream jade? If so then it must be in truth molten, for I caught its swift and polished rushing! It was no jade. It was in truth a river; a river running like a writing across a patterned plane.

I looked upward—up to the circling peaks. They were a stupendous coronet thrusting miles deep into the dazzling sky. I raised my glasses, swept them. In color they were an immense and variegated flower with countless multiform petals of stone; in outline they were a ring of fortresses built by fantastic unknown Gods.

Up they thrust—domed and arched, spired and horned, pyramided, fanged and needled. Here were palisades of burning orange with barbicans of incandescent bronze; there aiguilles of azure rising from bastions of cinnabar red; turrets of royal purple, obelisks of indigo; titanic forts whose walls were splashed with vermilion, with citron yellows and with rust of rubies; watch towers of flaming scarlet.

Scattered among them were the flashing emeralds of the glaciers and the immense pallid baroques of the snow fields.

Like a diadem the summits ringed the Pit. Below them ran the ring of flashing amethyst with its aural mists. Between them lay the vast and patterned flat covered with still symbol and inexplicable movement. Under their summits brooded the blue black, metallic mass of the Seeing City.

Within circling walls, over plain and from the City hovered a cosmic spirit not to be understood by man. Like an emanation of stars and space, it was yet gem fine and gem hard, crystalline and metallic, lapidescent and—

Conscious!

Down from the ledge where we stood fell a steep ramp, similar to that by which, in the darkness, we had descended. It dropped at an angle of at least forty-five degrees; its surface was smooth and polished.

Through the mists at our back stole a shining block. It paused, seemed to perk itself; spun so that in turn each of its six faces took us in.

I felt myself lifted upon it by multitudes of little invisible hands; saw Drake whirling up beside me. I moved toward him—through the force that held us. A block swept away from the ledge, swayed for a moment. Under us, as though we were floating in air, the Pit lay stretched. There was a rapid readjustment, a shifting of our two selves upon another surface. I looked down upon a tremendous, slender pillar of the cubes, dropping below, five hundred feet to the valley’s floor a column of which the block that held us was the top.

Gone was the whirling wheel that had crowned it, but I knew this for the Grinding Thing from which we had fled; the questing block had been its scout. As though curious to know more of us, the Shape had sought us out through the mists, its messenger had caught us, delivered us to it.

The pillar leaned over—bent like that shining pillar that had bridged for us, at Norhala’s commands, the abyss. The floor of the valley arose to meet us. Further and further leaned the pillar. Again there was a rapid shifting of us to another surface of the crowning cube. Fast now swept up toward us the valley floor. A dizziness clouded my sight. There was a little shock, a rolling over the Thing that had held us—

We stood upon the floor of the Pit.

And breaking from the immense and prostrate shaft on whose top we had ridden downward came score upon score of the cubes. They broke from it, disintegrating it; circled about us, curiously, interestedly, twinkling at us from their deep sparkling points of eyes.

Helplessly we gazed at those who circled around us. Then suddenly I felt myself lifted once more, was tossed to the surface of the nearest block. Upon it I spun while the tiny eyes searched me. Then like a human ball it tossed me to another. I caught a glimpse of Drake’s tall figure drifting through the air.

The play became more rapid, breathtaking. It was play; I recognized that. But it was perilous play for us. I felt myself as fragile as a doll of glass in the hands of careless children.

I was tossed to a waiting cube. On the ground, not ten feet from me, was Drake, swaying dizzily. Suddenly the cube that held me tightened its grip; tightened it so that it drew me irresistibly flat down upon its surface. Before I dropped, Drake’s body leaped toward me as though drawn by a lasso. He fell at my side.

Then pursued by scores of the Things and like some mischievous boy bearing off the spoils, the block that held us raced away, straight for an open portal. A blaze of incandescent blue flame blinded me; again as the dazzlement faded I saw Drake beside me—a skeleton form. Swiftly flesh melted back upon him, clothed him.

The cube stopped, abruptly; the hosts of little unseen hands raised us, slid us gently over its edge, set us upright beside it. And it sped away.

All about us stretched another of those vast halls in which on high burned the pale-gilt suns. Between its colossal columns streamed thousands of the Metal Folk; no longer hurriedly, but quietly, deliberately, sedately.

We were within the City—even as Ventnor had commanded.

THE METAL MONSTER [Part 2]

CHAPTER XIX

THE CITY THAT WAS ALIVE

Close beside us was one of the cyclopean columns. We crept to it; crouched at its base opposite the drift of the Metal People; strove, huddled there, to regain our shaken poise. Like bagatelles we felt in that tremendous place, the weird luminaries gleaming above like garlands of frozen suns, the enigmatic hosts of animate cubes and spheres and pyramids trooping past.

They ranged in size from shapes yard-high to giants of thirty feet or more. They paid no heed to us, did not stop; streaming on, engrossed in whatever mysterious business was summoning them. And after a time their numbers lessened; thinned down to widely separate groups, to stragglers; then ceased. The hall was empty of them.

As far as the eye could reach the columned spaces stretched. I was conscious once more of that unusual flow of energy through every vein and nerve.

“Follow the crowd!” said Drake. “Do you feel just full of pep and ginger, by the way?”

“I am aware of the most extraordinary vigor,” I answered.

“Some weird joint,” he mused, looking about him. “Wonder if they have any windows? This whole place looked solid to me—what I could see of it. Wonder if we’ll get up against it for air? These Things don’t need it, that’s sure. Wonder—”

He broke off staring fascinatedly at the pillar behind us.

“Look here, Goodwin!” There was a tremor in his voice. “What do you make of this?”

I followed his pointing finger; looked at him inquiringly.

“The eyes!” he said impatiently. “Don’t you see them? The eyes in the column!”

And now I saw them. The pillar was a pale metallic blue, in color a trifle darker than the Metal Folk. All within it were the myriads of tiny crystalline points that we had grown to know were the receptors of some strange sense of sight. But they did not sparkle as did those others; they were dull, lifeless. I touched the surface. It was smooth, cool—with none of that subtle, warm vitality that pulsed through all the Things with which I had come in contact. I shook my head, realizing as I did so what a shock the incredible possibility he had suggested had given me.

“No,” I said. “There is a resemblance, yes. But there is no force about this—stuff; no life. Besides, such a thing is utterly incredible.”

“They might be—dormant,” he suggested stubbornly. “Can you see any mark of their joining—if they are the cubes?”

Together we scanned the pillar minutely. The faces seemed unbroken, continuous; there was no trace of those thin and shining lines that marked the juncture of the cubes when they had clicked together to form the bridge of the abyss or that had gleamed, crosslike, upon the back of the combined four upon which we had followed Norhala.

“It’s a sheer impossibility. It’s madness to think such a thing, Drake!” I exclaimed, and wondered at my own vehemence of denial.

“Maybe,” he shook his head doubtfully. “Maybe—but—well—let’s be on our way.”

We strode on, following the direction the Metal Folk had gone. Clearly Drake was still doubtful; at each pillar he hesitated, scanning it closely with troubled eyes.

But I, having determinedly dismissed the idea, was more interested in the fantastic lights that flooded this columned hall with their buttercup radiance. They were still and unwinking; not disks, I could see now, but globes. Great and small, they floated motionless, their rays extending rigidly and as still as the orb that shed them.

Yet rigid as they were there was nothing about either rays or orbs that suggested either hardness or the metallic. They were vaporous, soft as St. Elmo’s fire, the witch lights that cling at times to the spars of ships, weird gleaming visitors from the invisible ocean of atmospheric electricity.

When they disappeared, as they did frequently, it was instantaneously, completely, with a disconcerting sleight-of-hand finality. I noted, though, that when they did vanish, immediately close to where they had been other orbs swam forth with that same astonishing abruptness; sometimes only one, larger it might be than that which had gone; sometimes a cluster of smaller globes, their frozen, crocused rays impinging.

What could they be, I wondered—how fixed, and what the source of their light? Products of electro-magnetic currents and born of the interpenetration of such streams flowing above us? Such a theory might account for their disappearance, and reappearance, shiftings of the flows that changed the light producing points of contact. Wireless lights? If so here was an idea that human science might elaborate if ever we returned to—

“Now which way?” Drake broke in upon my musing. The hall had ended. We stood before a blank wall vanishing into the soft mists hiding the roof of the chamber.

“I thought we had been going along the way They went,” I said in amazement.

“So did I,” he answered. “We must have circled. They never went through that unless—unless—” He hesitated.

“Unless what?” I asked sharply.

“Unless it opened and let them through,” he said. “Have you forgotten those great ovals—like cat’s eyes that opened in the outer walls?” he added quietly.

I had forgotten. I looked again at the wall. Certainly it was smooth, lineless. In one unbroken, shining surface it rose, a facade of polished metal. Within it the deep set points of light were duller even than they had been in the pillars; almost indeed indistinguishable.

“Go on to the left,” I said none too patiently. “And get that absurd notion out of your head.”

“All right.” He flushed. “But you don’t think I’m afraid, do you?”

“If what you’re thinking were true, you’d have a right to be,” I replied tartly. “And I want to tell you I’D be afraid. Damned afraid.”

For perhaps two hundred paces we skirted the base of the wall. We came abruptly to an opening, an oblong passageway fully fifty foot wide by twice as high. At its entrance the mellow, saffron light was cut off as though by an invisible screen. The tunnel itself was filled with a dim grayish blue luster. For an instant we contemplated it.

“I wouldn’t care to be caught in there by any rush,” I hesitated.

“There’s not much good in thinking of that now,” said Drake, grimly. “A few chances more or less in a joint of this kind is nothing between friends, Goodwin; take it from me. Come on.”

We entered. Walls, floor and roof were composed of the same substance as the great pillars, the wall of the outer chamber; filled like them with dimmed replicas of the twinkling eye points.

“Odd that all the places in here are square,” muttered Drake. “They don’t seem to have used any spherical or pyramidal ideas in their building—if it is a building.”

It was true. All was mathematically straight up and down and across. It was strange—still we had seen little as yet.

There was a warmth about this passageway we trod; a difference in the air of it. The warmth grew, a dry and baking heat; but stimulative rather than oppressive. I touched the walls; the warmth did not come from them. And there was no wind. Yet as we went on the heat increased.

The passageway turned at a right angle, continuing in a corridor half its former dimensions. Far away shone a high bar of pale yellow radiance, rising like a pillar of light from floor to roof. Toward it, perforce, we trudged. Its brilliancy grew greater.

A few paces away from it we stopped. The yellow luminescence streamed through a slit not more than a foot wide in the wall. We were in a cul-de-sac for the opening was not wide enough for either Drake or me to push through. Through it with the light gushed the curious heat enveloping us.

Drake walked to the opening, peered through. I joined him.

At first all that I could see was a space filled with the saffron lambency. Then I saw that this was splashed with tiny flashes of the jewel fires; little lances and javelin thrusts of burning emeralds and rubies; darting gem hard flames rose scarlet and pale sapphire; quick flares of violet.

Into my sight through the irised, crocus mist swam the radiant body of Norhala!

She stood naked, clad only in the veils of her hair that glowed now like spun silk of molten copper, her strange eyes wide and smiling, the galaxies of tiny stars sparkling through their gray depths.

And all about her swirled a countless host of the Little Things!

From them came the gem fires piercing the aureate mists. They played and frolicked about her in scores of swiftly forming, swiftly changing, goblin shapes. They circled her feet in shining, elfin rings; then opening into flaming disks and stars, shot up and spun about the white miracle of her body in great girdles of multi-colored living fires. Mingled with disk and star were tiny crosses gleaming with sullen, deep crimsons and smoky orange.

A flash of blue incandescence and a slender pillared shape leaped from the floor; became a coronet, a whirling, flashing halo toward which streamed up the flaming tendrilings of her tresses. Other halos circled her arms and breasts; they spun like bracelets about the outstretched arms.

Then like a swiftly rushing wave a host of the Little Things thrust themselves up, covered her, hid her in a coruscating cloud.

I saw an exquisite arm thrust itself from their clinging, wave gaily; saw her glorious head emerge from the incredible, the seething draperies of living jewels. I heard her laughter, sweet and golden and far away.

Goddess of the Inexplicable! Madonna of the Metal Babes!

The Nursery of the Metal People!

Norhala was gone, blotted out from our sight! Gone too were the bar of light and the chamber into which we had been peering. We stared at a smooth, blank wall. With that same ensorcelled swiftness the wall had closed even as we had stared through it; closed so quickly that we had not seen its motion.

I gripped Drake; shrank with him into the farthest corner—for on the other side of us the wall was opening. First it was only a crack; then rapidly it widened. There stretched another passageway, luminous and long; far down it we glimpsed movement. Closer that movement came, grew plainer. Out of the mistily luminous distances, three abreast and filling the corridor from side to side, raced upon us a company of the great spheres!

Back we cowered from their approach—back and back; arms outstretched, pressing against the barrier, flattening ourselves against the shock of the destroying impact menacing.

“It’s all up,” muttered Drake. “No place to run. They’re bound to smash us. Stick close, Doc. Get back to Ruth. Maybe I can stop them!”

Before I could check him, he had leaped straight in the path of the rushing globes, now a scant twoscore yards away.

The globes stopped—halted a few feet from him. They seemed to contemplate us, astonished. They turned upon themselves, as though consulting. Slowly they advanced. We were pushed forward and lifted gently. Then as we hung suspended, held by that force which always I can liken only to myriads of tiny invisible hands, the shining arcs of their backs undulated beneath us.

Their files swung around the corner and marched down the passage by which we had come from the immense hall. And when the last rank had passed from under us we were dropped softly to our feet; stood swaying in their wake.

A curious frenzy of helpless indignation shook me, a rage of humiliation obscuring all gratitude I should have felt for our escape. Drake’s eyes blazed wrath.

“The insolent devils!” He raised clenched fists. “The insolent, domineering devils!”

We stared after them.

Was the passage growing narrower—closing? Even as I gazed I saw it shrink; saw its walls slide silently toward each other. I pushed Drake into the newly opened way and sprang after him.

Behind us was an unbroken wall covering all that space in which but a moment before we had stood!

Is it to be wondered that a panic seized us; that we began to run crazily down the alley that still lay open before us, casting over our shoulders quick, fearful glances to see whether that inexorable, dreadful closing was continuing, threatening to crush us between these walls like flies in a vise of steel?

But they did not close. Unbroken, silent, the way stretched before us and behind us. At last, gasping, avoiding each other’s gaze, we paused.

And at that very moment of pause a deeper tremor shook me, a trembling of the very foundations of life, the shuddering of one who faces the inconceivable knowing at last that the inconceivable—is.

For, abruptly, walls and floor and roof broke forth into countless twinklings!

As though a film had been withdrawn from them, as though they had awakened from slumber, myriads of little points of light shone forth upon us from the pale-blue surfaces—lights that considered us, measured us—mocked us.

The little points of living light that were the eyes of the Metal People!

This was no corridor cut through inert matter by mechanic art; its opening had been caused by no hidden mechanisms! It was a living Thing—walled and floored and roofed by the living bodies—of the Metal People themselves.

Its opening, as had been the closing of that other passage, was the conscious, coordinate and voluntary action of the Things that formed these mighty walls.

An action that obeyed, was directed by, the incredibly gigantic, communistic will which, like the spirit of the hive, the soul of the formicary, animated every unit of them.

A greater realization swept us. If this were true, then those pillars in the vast hall, its towering walls—all this City was one living Thing!

Built of the animate bodies of countless millions! Tons upon countless tons of them shaping a gigantic pile of which every atom was sentient, mobile—intelligent!

A Metal Monster!

Now I knew why it was that its frowning facade had seemed to watch us Argus-eyed as the Things had tossed us toward it. It had watched us!

That flood of watchfulness pulsing about us had been actual concentration of regard of untold billions of tiny eyes of the living block which formed the City’s cliff.

A City that Saw! A City that was Alive!

No secret mechanism then—back darted my mind to that first terror—had closed the wall, shutting from our sight Norhala at play with the Little Things. None had opened the way for, had closed the way behind, the coursing spheres. It had been done by the conscious action of the conscious Things of whose living bodies was built this whole tremendous thinking pile!

I think that for a moment we both went a little mad as that staggering truth came to us. I know we started to run once more, side by side, gripping like frightened children each other’s hands. Then Drake stopped.

“By all the hell of this place,” he said, solemnly, “I’ll run no more. After all—we’re men. If they kill us, they kill us. But by the God who made me I’ll run from them no more. I’ll die standing.”

His courage steadied me. Defiantly we marched on. Up from below us, down from the roof, out from the walls of our way the hosts of eyes gleamed and twinkled upon us.

“Who could have believed it?” he muttered, half to himself. “A living city of them! A living nest of them; a prodigious living nest of metal!”

“A nest?” I caught the word. What did it suggest? That was it—the nest of the army ants, the city of the army ants, that Beebe had studied in the South American jungles and once described to me. After all, was this more wonderful, more unbelievable than that—the city of ants which was formed by their living bodies precisely as this was of the bodies of the Cubes?

How had Beebe4 phrased it—“the home, the nest, the hearth, the nursery, the bridal suite, the kitchen, the bed and board of the army ants.” Built of and occupied by those blind and dead and savage little insects which by the guidance of smell alone carried on the most intricate operations, the most complex activities. Nothing here was stranger than that, I reflected—if once one could rid the mind of the paralyzing influence of the shapes of the Metal Things. Whence came the stimuli that moved them, the stimuli to which they reacted?

Well then—whence and how came the orders to which the ants responded; that bade them open this corridor in their nest, close that, form this chamber, fill that one? Was one more mysterious than the other?

Breaking into my current of thoughts came consciousness that I was moving with increased speed; that my body was fast growing lighter.

Simultaneously with this recognition I felt myself lifted from the floor of the corridor and levitated with considerable rapidity forward; looking down I saw that floor several feet below me. Drake’s arm wound itself around my shoulder.

“Closing up behind us,” he muttered. “They’re putting us—out.”

It was, indeed, as though the passageway had wearied of our deliberate progress. Had decided to—give us a lift. Rearward it was shutting. I noted with interest how accurately this motion kept pace with our own speed, and how fluidly the walls seemed to run together.

Our movement became accelerated. It was as though we floated buoyantly, weightless, upon some swift stream. The sensation was curiously pleasant, languorous—what was that word Ruth had used?—elemental—and free. The supporting force seemed to flow equally from walls and floor; to reach down to us from the roof. It was slumberously even, and effortless. I saw that in advance of us the living corridor was opening even as behind us it was closing.

All around us the little eye points twinkled and—laughed.

There was no danger here—there could be none. Deeper and deeper dropped my mind into the depths of that alien tranquillity. Faster and faster we floated—onward.

Abruptly, ahead of us shone a blaze of daylight. We passed into it. The force holding us withdrew its grip; I felt solidity beneath my feet; stood and leaned back against a smooth wall.

The corridor had ended and—had shut us out from itself.

“Bounced!” exclaimed Drake.

And incongruous, flippant, colloquial as was that word, I know none that would better describe my own feelings.

We were bounced out upon a turret jutting from the barrier. And before us lay spread the most amazing, the most extraordinary fantastic scene upon which, I think, the vision of man has rested since the advent of time.

4 William Beebe, Atlantic Monthly, October, 1919.

4 William Beebe, Atlantic Monthly, October, 1919.

CHAPTER XX

VAMPIRES OF THE SUN

It was a crater; a half mile on high and all of two thousand feet across ran the circular lip of its vast rim. Above it was a circle of white and glaring sky in whose center flamed the sun.

And instantly, before my vision could grasp a tithe of that panorama, I knew that this place was the very heart of the City; its vital ganglion; its soul.

Around the crater lip were poised thousands of concave disks, vernal green, enormous. They were like a border of gigantic, upthrust shields; and within each, emblazoned like a shield’s device, was a blinding flower of flame—the reflected, dilated face of the sun. Below this diadem hung, pendent, clusters of other disks, swarmed like the globular hiving of the constellation Hercules’ captured stars. And each of these prisoned the image of our sun.

A hundred feet below us was the crater floor.

Up from it thrust a mountainous forest of the pallidly radiant cones; bristling; prodigious. Tier upon tier, thicket upon thicket, phalanx upon phalanx they climbed. Up and up, pyramidically, they flung their spiked hosts.

They drew together two thousand feet above us, clustering close about the foot of a single huge spire which thrust itself skyward above them. The crest of this spire was truncated. From its shorn tip radiated scores of long and slender spokes holding in place a thousand feet wide wheel of wan green disks whose concave surfaces, unlike those smooth ones girding the crater, were curiously faceted.

This amazing structure rested upon a myriad-footed base of crystal, even as had that other cornute fantasy beside which we had met the great Disk. But it was in size to that as—as Leviathan to a minnow. From it streamed the same baffling suggestion of invincible force transmuted into matter; energy coalesced into the tangible; power made concentrate in the vestments of substance.

Half-way between crater lip and floor began the hordes of the Metal People.

In colossal animate cheveau-de-frise of hundred-foot girders they thrust themselves out from the curving walls—walls, I knew, as alive as they!

From these Brobdignagian beams they swung in ropes and clusters—spheres and cubes studded as thickly with the pyramids as ever Titan’s mace with spikes. Group after bizarre group they dropped; pendulous. Coppices of slender columns of thistled globes sprang up to meet the festooned joists.

Between the girders they draped themselves in long, stellated garlands; grouped themselves in innumerable, kaleidoscopic patterns.

They clicked into place around the golden turret in which we crouched.

In fantastic arrases they swayed in front of us—now hiding by, now revealing through their quicksilver interweavings the mounts of the Cones.

And steadily those flowing in below added to their multitudes; gliding up cable and pillar; building out still further the living girders, stringing themselves upon living festoon and living garland, weaving in among them, changing their shapes, rewriting their symbols.

They swung and threaded swiftly, in shifting arabesque, in Gothic traceries, in lace-like fantasies; utterly bizarre, unutterably beautiful—crystalline, geometric always.

Abruptly their movement ceased—so abruptly that the stoppage of all the ordered turmoil had the quality of appalling silence.

An unimaginable tapestry bedight with incredible broidery, the Metal People draped the vast cup.

Pillared it as though it were a temple.

Garnished it with their bodies as though it were a shrine.

Across the floor toward the Cones glided a palely lustrous sphere. In shape only a globe like all its kind, yet it was invested with power; it radiated power as a star does light; was clothed in unseen garments of supernal force. In its wake drifted two great pyramids; after them ten spheres but little smaller than the Shape which led.

“The Metal Emperor!” breathed Drake.

On they swept until they reached the base of the Cones. They paused at the edge of the crystal tabling. They turned.

There was a flashing as of a meteor bursting. The globe had opened into that splendor of jewel fires before which had floated Norhala and Ruth.

I saw again the luminous ovals of sapphire, studding its golden zone, the mystic rose of pulsing, petal flame, the still core of incandescent ruby that was the heart of that rose.

Strangely I felt my own heart veer toward this—Thing; bowing before its beauty and its strength; almost worshiping!

A shock of revulsion went through me. I shot a quick, half frightened glance at Drake. He was crouching dangerously close to the lip of the ledge, hands clasped and knuckles white with the intensity of his grip, eyes rapt, staring—upon the verge of worship even as I had been.

“Drake!” I thrust my elbow into his side brutally. “None of that! Remember you’re human! Guard yourself, man—guard yourself!”

“What?” he muttered; then, abruptly: “How did you know?”

“I felt it myself,” I answered: “For God’s sake, Dick—hold fast to yourself! Remember Ruth!”

He shook his head violently—as though to be rid of some clinging, cloying thing.

“I’ll not forget again,” he said.

He huddled down once more close to the edge of the shelf; peering over. No one of the Metal People had moved; the silence, the stillness, was unbroken.

Now the flanking pyramids shot forth into twin stars, blazing with violet luminescences. And one by one after them the ten lesser spheres expanded into flaming orbs; beautiful they were, but far less glorious than that Disk of whom they were the counselors?—ministers?—what?

Still there was no movement among all the arrased, girdered, pillared hosts.

There came a little wailing; far away it was and far. Nearer it drew. Was that a tremor that passed through the crowded crater? A quick pulse of—eagerness?

“Hungry!” whispered Drake. “They’re hungry!”

Closer was the wailing; again that faint tremor quivered over the place. And now I caught it—a quick and avid pulsing.

“Hungry,” whispered Drake again. “Like a lot of lions with the keeper coming along with meat.”

The wailing was below us. I felt, not a quiver this time, but an unmistakable shock pass through the Horde. It throbbed—and passed.

Into the field of our vision, up to the flaming Disk rushed an immense cube.

Thrice the height of a tall man—as I think I have noted before—when it unfolded its radiance was that shape of mingled beauty and power I call the Metal Emperor.

Yet this Thing eclipsed it. Black, uncompromising, in some indefinable way brutal, its square bulk blotted out the Disk’s effulgence; shrouded it. And a shadow seemed to fall upon the crater. The violet fires of the flanking stars pulsed out—watchfully, threateningly.

For only an instant the darkening block loomed against the Disk; blackened it.

There came another meteor burst of light. Where the cube had been was now a tremendous, fiery cross—a cross inverted.

Its upper arm arose to twice the length either of its horizontals or the square that was its foot. In its opening it must have turned, for its—face—was toward us and away from the Cones, its body hid the Disk, and almost all the surfaces of the two watchful Stars.

Eighty feet at least in height, this cruciform shape stood. It flamed and flickered with angry, smoky crimsons and scarlets; with sullen orange glowings and glitterings of sulphurous yellows. Within its fires were none of those leaping, multicolored glories that were the Metal Emperor’s; no trace of the pulsing, mystic rose; no shadow of jubilant sapphire; no purple royal; no tender, merciful greens nor gracious opalescences. Nothing even of the blasting violet of the Stars.

All angry, smoky reds and ochres the cross blazed forth—and in its lurid glowings was something sinister, something real, something cruel, something—nearer to earth, closer to man.

“The Keeper of the Cones and the Metal Emperor!” muttered Drake. “I begin to get it—yes—I begin to get—Ventnor!”

Once more the pulse, the avid throbbing shook the crater. And as swiftly in its wake rushed back the stillness, the silence.

The Keeper turned—I saw its palely lustrous blue metallic back. I drew out my little field-glasses, focussed them.

The Cross slipped sidewise past the Disk, its courtiers, its stellated guardians. As it went by they swung about with it; ever facing it.

And now at last was clear a thing that had puzzled greatly—the mechanism of that opening process by which sphere became oval disk, pyramid a four-pointed star and—as I had glimpsed in the play of the Little Things about Norhala, could see now so plainly in the Keeper—the blocks took this inverted cruciform shape.

The Metal People were hollow!

Hollow metal—boxes!

In their enclosing sides dwelt all their vitality—their powers—themselves!

And those sides were—everything that they were!

Folded, the oval disk became the sphere; the four points of the star, the square from which those points radiated; shutting became the pyramid; the six faces of the cubes were when opened the inverted cross.

Nor were these flexible, mobile walls massive. They were indeed, considering the apparent mass of the Metal Folk, most astonishingly fragile. Those of the Keeper, despite its eighty feet of height, could not have been more than a yard in thickness. At the edges I thought I could see groovings; noted the same appearances at the outlines of the Stars. Seen sidewise, the body of the Metal Emperor showed as a convexity; its surface smooth, with a suggestion of transparency.

The Keeper was bending; its oblong upper plane dropping forward as though upon a hinge. Lower and lower this flange bent—in a grotesque, terrifying obeisance; a horrible mockery of reverence.

Was this mountain of Cones then actually a shrine—an idol of the Metal People—their God?

The oblong that was the upper half of the cruciform Shape extended now at right angles to the horizontal arms. It hovered, a rectangle forty feet long, as many feet over the floor at the base of the crystal pedestal. It bent again, this time from the hinge that held the outstretched arms to the base. And now it was a huge truncated cross, a T-shaped figure, hovering only twenty feet above the pave.

Down from the Keeper writhed and flicked a tangle of tentacles; serpentine, whiplike. Silvery white, they were dyed with the scarlet and orange flaming of the surface now hidden from my eyes; reflected those sullen and angry gleamings. Vermiceous, coiling, they seemed to drop from every inch of the overhanging planes.

Something there was beneath them—something like an immense and luminous tablet. The tentacles were moving over it—pressing here, thrusting there, turning, pushing, manipulating—

A shuddering passed through the crowding cones. I saw the tremor shake their bristling hosts, oscillate the great spire, set the faceted disks quivering.

The trembling grew; a vibration in every separate cone that became even more rapid. There was a faint, curiously oppressive humming—like the distant echo of a tempest in chaos.

Faster, ever faster grew the vibration. Now the sharp outlines of the cones were dissolving.

And now they were—gone.

The mount of the cones had become a mighty pyramid of pale green radiance—one tremendous, pallid flame, of which the spire was the tongue. Out from the disked wheel at its shorn tip gushed a flood of light—light that gathered itself from the leaping radiance below it.

The tentacles of the Keeper moved more swiftly over the enigmatic tablet; writhing cloudily; confusedly rapid. The faceted disks wavered; turned upward; the wheel began to whirl—faster—faster—

Up from that flaming circle, out into the sky leaped a thick, pale green column of intensest light.

With prodigious speed, as compact as water, concentrate, it struck—straight out toward the face of the sun.

It thrust up with the speed of light—the speed of light? A thought came to me; incredible I believed it even as I reacted to it. My pulse is uniformly seventy to the minute. I sought my wrist, found the artery, made allowance for its possible acceleration, began to count.

“What’s the matter?” asked Drake.

“Take my glasses,” I muttered, trying to keep up, while speaking, my tally. “Matches in my pocket. Smoke the lenses. I want to look at sun.”

With a look of stupefied amazement which, at another time I would have found laughable, he obeyed.

“Hold them to my eyes,” I ordered.

Three minutes had gone by.

There it was—that for which I sought. Clear through the darkened lenses I could see the sun spot, high up on the northern-most limb of the sun. An unimaginable cyclone of incandescent gases; an unthinkably huge dynamo pouring its floods of electro-magnetism upon all the circling planets; that solar crater which we now know was, when at its maximum, all of one hundred and fifty thousand miles across; the great sun spot of the summer of 1919—the most enormous ever recorded by astronomical science.

Five minutes had gone by.

Common sense whispered to me. There was no use keeping my eyes fixed to the glasses. Even if that thought were true—even if that pillar of radiance were a messenger, an earth-hurled bolt flying to the sun through atmosphere and outer space with the speed of light, even if it were this stupendous creation of these Things, still between eight and nine minutes must elapse before it could reach the orb; and as many minutes must go by before the image of whatever its impact might produce upon the sun could pass back over the bridge of light spanning the ninety millions of miles between it and us.

And after all did not that hypothesis belong to the utterly impossible? Even were it so—what was it that the Metal Monster expected to follow? This radiant shaft, colossal as it was to us, was infinitesimal compared to the target at which it was aimed.

What possible effect could that spear have upon the solar forces?

And yet—and yet—a gnat’s bite can drive an elephant mad. And Nature’s balance is delicate; and what great happenings may follow the slightest disturbance of her infinitely sensitive, her complex, equilibrium? It might be—it might be—

Eight minutes had passed.

“Take the glasses,” I bade Drake. “Look up at the sun spot—the big one.”

“I see it.” He had obeyed me. “What of it?”

Nine minutes.

The shaft, if I were right, had by now touched the sun. What was to follow?

“I don’t get you at all,” said Drake, and lowered the glasses.

Ten minutes.

“What’s happening? Look at the Cones! Look at the Emperor!” gasped Drake.

I peered down, then almost forgot to count.

The pyramidal flame that had been the mount of Cones was shrunken. The pillar of radiance had not lessened—but the mechanism that was its source had retreated whole yards within the field of its crystal base.

And the Metal Emperor! Dulled and faint were his fires, dimmed his splendors; and fainter still were the violet luminescences of the watching Stars, the shimmering livery of his court.

The Keeper of the Cones! Were not its outstretched planes hovering lower and lower over the gleaming tablet; its tentacles moving aimlessly, feebly—wearily?

I had a sense of force being withdrawn from all about me. It was as though all the City were being drained of life—as though vitality were being sucked from it to feed this pyramid of radiance; drained from it to forge the thrusting spear piercing sunward.

The Metal People seemed to hang limply, inert; the living girders seemed to sag; the living columns to bend; to droop and to sway.

Twelve minutes.

With a nerve-racking crash one of the laden beams fell; dragging down with it others; bending, shattering in its fall a thicket of the horned columns. Behind us the sparkling eyes of the wall were dimmed, vacant—dying. Something of that hellish loneliness, that demoniac desire for immolation that had assailed us in the haunted hollow of the ruins began to creep over me.

The crowded crater was fainting. The life was going out of the City—its magnetic life, draining into the shaft of green fire.

Duller grew the Metal Emperor’s glories.

Fourteen minutes.

“Goodwin,” cried Drake, “the life’s going out of these Things! Going out with that ray they’re shooting.”

Fifteen minutes.

I watched the tentacles of the Keeper grope over the tablet. Abruptly the flaming pyramid darkened—went out.

The radiant pillar hurtled upward like a thunder-bolt; vanished in space.

Before us stood the mount of cones, shrunken to a sixth of its former size.

Sixteen minutes.

All about the crater-lip the ringed shields tilted; thrust themselves on high, as though behind each was an eager lifting arm. Below them the hived clusters of disks changed from globules into wide coronets.

Seventeen minutes.

I dropped my wrist; seized the glasses from Drake; raised them to the sun. For a moment I saw nothing—then a tiny spot of white incandescence shone forth at the lower edge of the great spot. It grew into a point of radiance, dazzling even through the shadowed lenses.

I rubbed my eyes; looked again. It was still there, larger—blazing with an ever increasing and intolerable intensity.

I handed the glasses to Drake, silently.

“I see it!” he muttered. “I see it! And that did it—that! Goodwin!” There was panic in his cry. “Goodwin! The spot! it’s widening! It’s widening!”

I snatched the glasses from him. I caught again the dazzling flashing. But whether Drake had seen the spot widen, change—to this day I do not know.

To me it seemed unchanged—and yet—perhaps it was not. It may be that under that finger of force, that spear of light, that wound in the side of our sun had opened further—

That the sun had winced!

I do not to this day know. But whether it had or not—still shone the intolerably brilliant light. And miracle enough that was for me.

Twenty minutes—subconsciously I had gone on counting—twenty minutes—

About the cratered girdle of the upthrust shields a glimmering mistiness was gathering; a translucent mist, beryl pale and beryl clear. In a heart-beat it had thickened into a vast and vaporous ring through whose swarms of corpuscles the sun’s reflected image upon each disk shone clear—as though seen through clouds of transparent atoms of aquamarine.

Again the filaments of the Keeper moved—feebly. As one of the hosts of circling shields shifted downward. Brilliant, ever more brilliant, waxed the fast-thickening mists.

Abruptly, and again as one, the disks began to revolve. From every concave surface, from the surfaces of the huge circlets below them, flashed out a stream of green fire—green as the fire of green life itself. Corpuscular, spun of uncounted rushing, dazzling ions the great rays struck across, impinged upon the thousand-foot wheel that crowned the cones; set it whirling.

Over it I saw form a limpid cloud of the brilliant vapors. Whence came these sparkling nebulosities, these mists of light? It was as though the clustered, spinning disks reached into the shadowless air, sucked from it some unseen, rhythmic energy and transformed it into this visible, coruscating flood.

For now it was a flood. Down from the immense wheel came pouring cataracts of green fires. They cascaded over the cones; deluged them; engulfed them.

Beneath that radiant inundation the cones grew. Perceptibly their volume increased—as though they gorged themselves upon the light. No—it was as though the corpuscles flew to them, coalesced and built themselves into the structure.

Out and further out upon the base of crystal they crept. And higher and higher soared their tips, thrusting, ever thrusting upward toward the whirling wheel that fed them.

Now from the Keeper’s planes writhed the Keeper’s tangle of tentacles, uncoiling eagerly, avidly, through the twenty feet of space between their source and the enigmatic mechanism they manipulated. The crater’s disks tilted downward. Into the vast hollow shot their jets of green radiance, drenching the Metal Hordes, splashing from the polished walls wherever the Metal Hordes had left those living walls exposed.

All about us was a trembling, an accelerating pulse of life. Colossal, rhythmic, ever quicker, ever more powerfully that pulse throbbed—a prodigious vibration monstrously alive.

“Feeding!” whispered Drake. “Feeding! Feeding on the sun!”

Faster danced the radiant beams. The crater was a cauldron of green fires through which the conical rays angled and interwove, crossed and mingled. And where they mingled, where they crossed, flamed out suddenly immense rayless orbs; palpitant for an instant, then dissolving in spiralling, feathery spray of pallid emerald incandescences.

Stronger and stronger beat the pulse of returning life.

A jetting stream struck squarely upon the Metal Emperor. Out blazed his splendors—jubilant. His golden zodiac, no longer tarnished and dull, ran with sun flames; the wondrous rose was a racing, lambent miracle.

Up snapped the Keeper; towered behind him, all flickering scarlets and leaping yellows—no longer wrathful or sullen.

The place dripped radiance; was filling like a chrisom with radiance.

Us, too, the sparkling mists bathed.

I was conscious of a curiously wild exhilaration; a quickening of the pulse; an abnormally rapid breathing. I stooped to touch Drake; sparks leaped from my outstretched fingers, great green sparks that crackled as they impacted upon him. He gave them no heed; but stared with fascinated eyes upon the crater.

Now from every side broke a tempest of gem fires. From every girder and column, from every arras, pendent and looping, burst diamond glitterings, ruby luminescences, lanced flames of molten emerald and sapphires, flashings of amethyst and opal, meteoric iridescences, dazzling spectrums.

The hollow was a cave of some Aladdin of the Titans ablaze with enchanted hoards. It was a place of gems ensorcelled, gems in which imprisoned hosts of the Jinns of Light beat sparkling against their crystal walls to escape.

I thrust the fantasies from me. Fantastic enough was this reality—globe and pyramid and cube of the Metal People opening wide, bathing in, drinking from the radiant maelstrom that faster and ever faster swirled about them.

“Feeding!” It was Drake’s awed voice. “Feeding on the sun!”

The circling shields were raising themselves, lifting themselves higher above the crater-lip. Into the crowded cylinder came now only the rays from the high circlets, the streams from the huge wheel above the still growing cones.

Up and up the shields rose, but by what mechanism raised I could not see. Their motion ceased; in all their thousands they turned. Over the City’s top and out into the oval valley they poured their torrents of light; flooding it, deluging it even as they had this pit that was the City’s heart. Feeding, I knew, those other Metal Hordes without.

And as though in answer, sweeping down upon us through the circles of open sky, a clamor poured.

“If we’d but known!” Drake’s voice came to me, thin and unreal through the tumult. “It’s what Ventnor meant! If we had got down there when they were so weak—if we could have handled the Keeper—we could have smashed that plate that works the Cones! We could have killed them!”

“There are other Cones,” I cried back to him.

“No,” he shook his head. “This is the master machine. It’s what Ventnor meant when he said to strike through the sun. And we’ve lost the chance—”

Louder grew the hurricane without; and now within began its mate. Through the mists flashed linked tempests of lightnings. Bolt upon javelin bolt, and ever more thickly; lightnings green as the mists themselves; lightning bolts of destroying violets, searing scarlets; tearing chains of withering yellows, globes of exploding multicolored electric incandescences.

The crater was threaded with the lightnings of the Metal People; was broidered with them; was a Pit woven with vast and changing patterns of electric flame.

What was it that Drake had said? That if but we could have known we could have destroyed these—Things—Destroyed—Them? Things that could thrust their will and power up through ninety million miles of space and suck from the sun the honey of power! Drain it and hive it within these great mountains of the cones!

Destroy Things that could feed their own life into a machine to draw back from the sun a greater life—Things that could forge of their strength a spear which, piercing the side of the sun, sent gushing back upon them a tenfold, nay, a thousandfold strength!

Destroy this City that was one vast and living dynamo feeding upon the magnetic life of earth and sun!

The clamor had grown stupendous, destroying—like armored Gods roaring at sword play in a hundred Valhallas; like the war drums of battling universe; like the smitings of warring suns.

And all the City was throbbing, beating with a gigantic pulse of life—was fed and drunken with life. I felt that pulsing become my own; I echoed to it; throbbed in unison. I saw Drake outlined in flame; that around me a radiant nimbus was growing.

I thought I saw Norhala floating, clothed in shouting, flailing fires. I strove to call out to her. By me slipped the body of Drake; lay flaming at my feet upon the narrow ledge.

There was a roaring within my head—louder, far louder, than that which beat against my ears. Something was drawing me forth; drawing me out of my body into unimaginable depths of blackness. Something was hurling me out into those cold depths of space that alone could darken the fires that encircled me—the fires of which I was becoming a part.

I felt myself leap outward—outward and outward—into—oblivion.

CHAPTER XXI

PHANTASMAGORIA METALLIOUE

Wearily I opened my eyes. Stiffly, painfully, I stirred. High above me was the tremendous circle of sky, ringed with the hosts of feeding shields. But the shields were now wanly gleaming and the sky was the sky of night.

Night? How long had I lain here? And where was Drake? I struggled to rise.

“Steady, old man,” his voice came from beside me. “Steady—and quiet. How are you feeling?”

“Badly battered,” I groaned. “What happened?”

“We weren’t used to the show,” he said. “We got all fed up at the orgy. Too much magnetism—we had a sudden and violent attack of electrical indigestion. Sh-h—look ahead of you.”

Gingerly I turned. I had been lying, I now saw, head toward and prone at the base of one of the crater’s walls. As my gaze swept away I noted with a curious relief that the tiny eye-points were no longer sparkling with their enigmatic life, that they were dulled and dim once more.

Before me, glimmering pallidly, bristled the mount of the Cones. Around its crystal base glittered immense egg-shaped diamond incandescences. They were both rayless and strangely—lightless; they threw no shadows nor did their lambency lessen the dimness. Beside each of these curious luminosities stood one of the sullen-fired, cruciform shapes—the Things that now I knew for the opened cubes.

They were smaller than the Keeper, indeed less than half his height. They were ranged in an almost unbroken crescent around the visible arc of the immense pedestal—and now I saw that the lights were a few feet closer to that pedestal than they. Egg-shaped as I have said, the wider end was undermost, resting in a broad cup upheld by a slender pedicle silvery-gray and metallic.

“They’re building out the base,” whispered Drake. “The Cones got so big they have to give them more room.”

“Magnetism,” I whispered in return. “Electricity—they drew down from the sun spot. And it was more than that—I saw the Cones grow under it. It fed them as it fed the Hordes—but the Cones grew. It was as though the shields and the Cones turned pure energy into substance.”

“And if we hadn’t been pretty thoroughly magnetized to start with it would have done for us,” he said.

We watched the operation going on in front of us. The cross shapes had bent, hinging above the transverse arms. They bowed in absolute unison as at some signal. Down from the horizontal plane of each whipped the long and writhing tentacles.

At the foot of every one I could now perceive a heap of some faintly glistening material. The tendrils coiled among this, then drew up something that looked like a thick rod of crystal. The bent planes straightened; simultaneously they thrust the crystalline bars toward the incandescences.

There came a curious, brittle hissing. The ends of the rods began to dissolve into dazzling, diamond rain, atomically minute, that passing through the egg-shaped lights poured upon the periphery of the pedestal. Rapidly the bars melted. Heat there must be in these lights, terrific heat—yet the Keeper’s workers seemed impervious to it.

As the ends of the bars radiated into the annealing mist I saw the tentacles creep closer and ever closer to the rayless flame through which the mist flew. And at the last, as the ultimate atoms drove through, the holding tendrils were thrust almost within it; touched it, certainly.

A score of times they repeated this process while we watched. Unaware of us they seemed, or—if aware, then indifferent. More rapid became their movements, the glassy ingots streaming through the floating braziers with hardly a pause in their passing. Abruptly, as though switched, the incandescences lessened into candle-points; instantly, as at a signal, the crescent of crosses closed into a crescent of cubes.

Motionless they stood, huge blocks blackened against the dim glowing of the cones—sentient monoliths; a Druid curve; an arc of a metal Stonehenge. And as at dusk and dawn the great menhirs of Stonehenge fill with a mysterious, granitic life, seem to be praying priests of stone, so about these gathered hierophantic illusion.

They quivered; the slender pedicles cupping, the waned lights swayed; the lights lifted and soared, upright, to their backs.

Two by two with measured pace, solemnly the cubes glided off into the encircling darkness. As they swept away there streamed behind them other scores not until then visible to us, joining pair by pair from hidden arcs.

Into the secret shadows they flowed, two by two, each bearing over it the slim shaft holding the serene flame.

Grotesquely were they like a column of monks marching with dimmed flambeau of their worship. Angled metal monks of some god of metal, carrying tapers of electric fire, withdrawing slowly from a Holy of Holies whose metallically divine Occupant knew nothing of man—nor cared to know.

Grotesque—yes. But would that I had the power to crystallize in words the underlying, alien terror every movement of the Metal Monster when disintegrate, its every manifestation when combined, evoked; the incredulous, amazed lurking always close behind the threshold of the mind; the never lifting, thin-shuddering shadow.

Smaller, dimmer waned the lights—they were gone.

We crouched, motionless. Nothing stirred; there was no sound. Without speaking we arose; crept together over the smooth floor toward the cones.

As we crossed I saw that the pave, like the walls, was built of the bodies of the Metal People; and, like the walls, they were dormant, filmed eyes oblivious to our passing. Closer we crept—were only a scant score of rods from that colossal mechanism. I noted that the crystal foundation was set low; was not more than four feet above the floor. The sturdy, dwarfed pilasters supporting it thrust up in crowded copses, merging through distance into apparent solidity.

Now, too, I realized, as I had not when looking down from above, how stupendous the structure rising from the crystal foundation was.

I began to wonder how so thin a support could bear the mount bristling above it—then remembered what it was that at first had flown from them, shrinking them, and at last had fed and swelled them.

Light! Weightless magnetic ions; swarms of electric ions; the misty breath of the infinite energy breathing upon, condensing upon, them. Could it be that the Cones for all their apparent mass had little, if any, weight? Like ringed Saturn, thousands of times Earth’s bulk, flaunting itself in the Heavens—yet if transported to our world so light that rings and all it would float like a bubble upon our oceans. The Cones towered above me—close, so close.

The Cones were weightless. How I knew I cannot say—but now, almost touching them, I did know. Nebulous, yet solid, were they; compact, yet tenuous, dense and unsubstantial.

Again the thought came to me—they were force made visible; energy made concentrate into matter.

We skirted, seeking for the tablet over which the Keeper had hovered; the mechanism which, under his tentacles, had shifted the circling shields, thrust the spear of green fire into the side of the wounded sun. Hesitantly I touched the crystal base; the edge was warm, but whether this warmth came from the dazzling rain which we had just watched build it outward or whether it was a property inherent with the substance itself I do not know.

Certainly there was no mark upon it to show where the molten mists had fallen. It was diamond hard and smooth. The nearest cones were but a scant nine feet from its rim.

Suddenly we saw the tablet; stood beside it. The shape of a great T, glimmering with a faint and limpid violet phosphorescence, it might have been, in shape and size, the palely shining shadow of the Keeper. It was a foot above the floor, and had apparently no connection with the cones.

It was made of thousands of close-packed tiny octagonal rods the tops of some of which were cupped, of others pointed; none was more than half an inch in width. There was about it a suggestion of wedded crystal and metal—as about its burden was the suggestion of mated energy and matter.

The rods were movable; they formed a keyboard unimaginably complex; a keyboard whose infinite combinations were like a Fourth Dimensional chess game. I saw that only the swarms of tentacles that were the Keeper’s hands and these only could be masters of its incredible intricacies. No Disk—not even the Emperor, no Star shape could play on it, draw out its chords of power.

But why? Why had it been so made that sullen flaming Cross alone could release its hidden meanings, made articulate its interwoven octaves? And how were its messages conveyed? Up to its bases pressed the dormant cubes—that under it they lay as well I did not doubt.

There was no visible copula of the tablet with cones; no antennae between it and the circled shields. Could it be that the impulses released by the Keeper’s coilings passed through the Metal People of the pave on the upthrust Metal People of the crater rim who held the shields?

That was unthinkable—unthinkable because if so this mechanism was superfluous.

The swift response to the communal will that we had observed showed that the Metal Monster needed nothing of this kind for transmission of the thought of any of its units.

There was some gap here—a gap that the grouped consciousness could not bridge without other means. Clearly that was true—else why the tablet, why the Keeper’s travail?

Was each of these tiny rods a mechanism akin, in a fashion, to the sending keys of the wireless; were they transmitters of subtle energy in which was enfolded command? Spellers-out of a super-Morse carrying to each responsive cell of the Metal Monster the bidding of those higher units which were to It as the brain cells are to us? That, advanced as the knowledge it implied might be, was closer to the heart of the possible.

I bent, determined, despite the well-nigh unconquerable shrinking I felt, to touch the tablet’s rods.

A flickering shadow fell upon me; a flock of pulsating ochreous and scarlet shadows—

The Keeper glowed above us!

In a life that has had its share of dangers, its need for quick decisions, I recognize that few indeed of my reactions to peril have been more than purely instinctive; no more consciously courageous nor intellectually dissociate from the activating stimulus than the shrinking of the burned hand from the brand, the will-to-live dictated rush of the cornered animal upon the thing menacing it.

One such higher functioning was when I followed Larry O’Keefe and Lakla, the Handmaiden, out to what we believed soul-destroying death in a place almost as strange as this5; another was now. Deliberately, detachedly, I studied the angrily flaming Shape.

Compared to it we were as a pair of Hop-o’-my-Thumbs to the Giant; had it been man-shaped we would have come less than a third way up to its knees. I focussed my attention upon the twenty-foot-wide square that was the Keeper’s foot. Its surface was jewel smooth, hyaline—yet beneath it was a suggestion of granulation, of close-packed, innumerable, microscopic crystals.

Within these grains whose existence was more sensed than seen glowed dull red light, smoky and sullen. At each end of the square, close to the bottom, was a diamond-shaped lozenge, cabochon, perhaps a yard in width. These were dim yellow, translucent, with no suggestion of the underlying crystallization. Sense organs I set them down to be—similar to the great ovals within the Emperor’s golden zone.

My gaze traveled up to the transverse arms. They stretched sixty feet from tip to tip. At each tip were two more of the diamond figures, not dull but burning angrily with orange-and-scarlet luster. In the center of the beam was something that might have been a smoldering rubrous reflection of the Emperor’s pulsing multicolored rose had each of the petals of the latter been clipped and squared.

It deepened toward its heart into a singular pattern of vermilion latticings. Into the entire figure ran numerous tiny rivulets of angry crimson and orange light, angling in interwoven patterns with never a curve nor arching.

Set at intervals between them were what looked like octagonal rosettes filled with slender silvery flutings, wan striations—like—it came to me—immense chrysanthemum buds, half opened, and carved in gray jade.

Above towered the gigantic vertical beam. Toward its top I glimpsed a huge square of flaring crimsons and bright topaz; two other diamonds stared down upon us from just beneath it—like eyes. And over all its height the striated octagons clustered.

I felt myself lifted, floated upward. Drake’s hand shot out, clung to me as together we drifted up the living wall. Opposite the latticed heart of the square-petaled rose our flight was checked. There for an instant we hung. Then the octagonal symbols stirred, unfolded like buds—

They were the nests of the Keeper’s tentacles, and out from them the whiplike tendrils uncoiled, shot out and writhed toward us.

My skin flinched from their touch; my body, held in the unseen grip, was motionless. Yet when they touched their contact was not unpleasant. They were like flexible strands of glass; their smooth tips questioned us, passing through our hair, searching our faces, writhing over our clothing.

There was a pulse in the great clipped rose, a rhythmic throbbing of vermilion fire that ran into it from the angled veins, beat through the latticed nucleus and throbbed back whence it had come. The huge, high square of scarlet and yellow was liquid flame; the diamond organs beneath it seemed to smoke, to send out swirls of orange red vapor.

Holding us so the Keeper studied us.

The rhythm of the square rose, became the rhythm of my own mind. But here was none of the vast, serene and elemental calm that Ruth had described as emanating from the Metal Emperor. Powerful it was, without doubt, but in it were undertones of rage, of impatience, overtones of revolt, something incomplete and struggling. Within the disharmonies I seemed to sense a fettered force striving for freedom; energy battling against itself.

Greater grew the swarms of the tentacles winding about us like slender strands of glass, covering our faces, making breathing more and more difficult. There was a coil of them around my throat and tightening—tightening.

I heard Drake gasping, laboring for breath. I could not turn my head toward him, could not speak. Was this then to be our end?

The strangling clutch relaxed, the mass of the tentacles lessened. I was conscious of a surge of anger through the cruciform Thing that held us.

Its sullen fires blazed. I was aware of another light beating past us—beating down the Keeper’s. The hosts of tendrils drew back from me. I felt myself picked from the unseen grasp, whirled in the air and drawn away.

Drake beside me, I hung now before the Shining Disk—the Metal Emperor!

He it was who had plucked us from the Keeper—and even as I swung I saw the Keeper’s multitudinous, serpentine arms surge out toward us angrily and then sullenly, slowly, draw back into their nests.

And out of the Disk, clothing me, permeating me, came an immense tranquillity, a muting of all human thought, all human endeavor, an unthinkable, cosmic calm into which all that was human of me seemed to be sinking, drowning as in a fathomless abyss. I struggled against it, desperately, striving in study of the Disk to erect a barrier of preoccupation against the power pouring from it.

A dozen feet away from us the sapphire ovals centered upon us their regard. They were limpid, pellucid as gems whose giant replicas they seemed to be. The surface of the Disk ringed about by the aureate zodiac in which the nine ovals shone was a maze of geometric symbols traced in the lines of living gem fires; infinitely complex those patterns and infinitely beautiful; an infinite number of symmetric forms in which I seemed to trace all the ordered crystalline wonders of the snowflakes, the groupings of all crystalline patternings, the soul of ordered beauty that are the marvels of the Radiolaria, Nature’s own miraculous book of the soul of mathematical beauty.

The flashing, petaled heart was woven of living rainbows of cold flame.

Silently we floated there while the Disk—looked—at us.

And as though I had been not an actor but an observer, the weird picture of it all came to me—two men swinging like motes in mid air, on one side the flickering scarlet and orange Cruciform shape, on the other side the radiant Disk, behind the two manikins the pallid mount of the bristling cones; and high above the wan circle of the shields.

There was a ringing about us—an elfin chiming, sweet and crystalline. It came from the cones—and strangely was it their vocal synthesis, their voice. Into the vast circle of sky pierced a lance of green fire; swift in its wake uprose others.

We slid gently down, stood swaying at the Disk’s base. The Keeper bent; angled. Again the planes above the supporting square hovered over the tablet. The tendrils swept down, pushed here and there, playing upon the rods some unknown symphony of power.

Thicker pulsed the lances of the aurora; changed to vast billowing curtains. The faceted wheel at the top of the central spire of the cones swung upward; a light began to stream from the cones themselves—no pillar now, but a vast circle that shot whirling into the heavens like a noose.

And like a noose it caught the aurora, snared it!

Into it the coruscating mists of mysterious flame swirled; lost their colors, became a torrent of light flying down through the ring as though through a funnel top.

Down poured the radiant corpuscles, bathing the cones. They did not glow as they had beneath the flood from the shields, and if they grew it was too slowly for me to see; the shields were motionless. Now here, now there, I saw the other rings whirl up—smaller mouths of lesser cones hidden within the body of the Metal Monster, I knew, sucking down this magnetic flux, these countless ions gushing forth from the sun.

Then as when first we had seen the phenomenon in the valley of the blue poppies, the ring vanished, hidden by a fog of coruscations—as though the force streaming through the rings became diffused after it had been caught.

Crouching, forgetful of our juxtaposition to these two unhuman, anomalous Things, we watched the play of the tentacles upon the upthrust rods.

But if we forgot, we were not forgotten!

The Emperor slipped nearer; seemed to contemplate us—quizzically, amused; as a man would look down upon some curious and interesting insect, a puppy, a kitten. I sensed this amusement in the Disk’s regard even as I had sensed its soul of awful tranquillity; as we had sensed the playful malice in the eye stars of the living corridor, the curiosity in the column that had dropped us into the valley.

I felt a push—a push that was filled with a colossal, glittering playfulness.

Under it I went spinning away for yards—Drake twirling close behind me. The force, whatever it was, swept out from the Emperor, but in it was no slightest hint of anger or of malice, no slightest shadow of the sinister.

Rather it was as though one would blow away a feather; urge gently some little lesser thing away.

The Disk watched our whirlings—with a sparkling, jeweled laughter in its pulsing radiance.

Again came the push—farther yet we spun. Suddenly before us, across the pave, shone out a twinkling trail—the wakened eyes of the cubes that formed it, marking out a pathway for us to follow.

Immediately upon their gleaming forth I saw the Emperor turn—his immense, oval, metallic back now black against the radiance of the cones.

Up from the narrow gleaming path—a path opened I knew by some command—lifted the hosts of tiny unseen hands; the sentient currents of magnetic force that were the fingers and arms of the Metal Hordes. They held us, thrust us along, passed us forward. Faster and faster we moved, speeding on the wake of the long-vanished metal monks.

I turned my head—the cones were already far away. Over the tablet of limpid violet phosphorescence still hovered the planes of the Keeper; and still was the oval of the Emperor black against the radiance.

But the twinkling, sparkling path between us and them was gone—was fading out close behind us as we swept onward.

Faster and faster grew our pace. The cylindrical wall loomed close. A high oblong portal showed within it. Into this we were carried. Before us stretched a corridor precisely similar to that which, closing upon us, had forced us completely out into the hall.

Unlike that passage, its floor lifted steeply—a smooth and shining slide up which no man could climb. A shaft, indeed, which thrust upward straight as an arrow at an angle of at least thirty degrees and whose end or turning we could not see. Up and up it cleared its way through the City—through the Metal Monster—closed only by the inability of the eye to pierce the faint luminosity that thickened by distance became impenetrable.

For an instant we hovered upon its threshold. But the impulse, the command, that had carried us thus far was not to stop here. Into it and up it we were thrust, our feet barely touching the glimmering surface; lifted by the force that emanated from its floor, carried on by the force that pressed out from the sides.

Up and up we went—scores of feet—hundreds—

5 See “The Moon Pool” and “The Conquest of the Moon Pool.”

5 See “The Moon Pool” and “The Conquest of the Moon Pool.”

CHAPTER XXII

THE ENSORCELLED CHAMBER

“Goodwin!” Drake broke the silence; desperately he was striving to keep his fear out of his voice. “Goodwin—this isn’t the way to get out. We’re going up—farther away all the time from the—the gates!”

“What can we do?” My anxiety was no less than his, but my realization of our helplessness was complete.

“If we only knew how to talk to these Things,” he said. “If we could only have let the Disk know we wanted to get out—damn it, Goodwin, it would have helped us.”

Grotesque as the idea sounded, I felt that he spoke the truth. The Emperor meant no harm to us; in fact in speeding us away I was not at all sure that he had not deliberately wished us well—there was that about the Keeper—

Still up we sped along the shaft. I knew we must now be above the level of the valley.

“We’ve got to get back to Ruth! Goodwin—night! And what may have happened to her?”

“Drake, boy”—I dropped into his own colloquialism—“we’re up against it. We can’t help it. And remember—she’s there in Norhala’s home. I don’t believe, I honestly don’t believe, Dick, that there’s any danger as long as she remains there. And Ventnor ties her fast.”

“That’s true,” he said, more hopefully. “That’s true—and probably Norhala is with her by now.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said cheerfully. An idea came to me—I half believed it myself. “And another thing. There’s not an action here that’s purposeless. We’re being driven on by the command of that Thing we call the Metal Emperor. It means us no harm. Maybe—maybe this is the way out.”

“Maybe so,” he shook his head doubtfully. “But I’m not sure. Maybe that long push was just to get us away from there. And it strikes me that the impulse has begun to weaken. We’re not going anywhere near as fast as we were.”

I had not realized it, but our speed was slackening. I looked back—hundreds of feet behind us fell the slide. An unpleasant chill went through me—should the magnetic grip upon us relax, withdraw, nothing could stop us from falling back along that incline to be broken like eggs at its end; that our breaths would be snuffed out by the terrific descent long before we reached that end was scant comfort.

“There are other passages opening up along this shaft,” Drake said. “I’m not for trusting the Emperor too far—he has other things on his metallic mind, you know. The next one we get to, let’s try to slip into—if we can.”

I had noticed; there had been openings along the ascending shaft; corridors running apparently transversely to its angled way.

Slower and slower became our pace. A hundred yards above I glimpsed one of the apertures. Could we reach it? Slower and slower we arose. Now the gap was but a yard off—but we were motionless—were tottering!

Drake’s arms wrapped round me. With a tremendous effort he hurled me into the portal. I dropped at its edge, writhed swiftly around, saw him slipping, slipping down—thrust my hands out to him.

He caught them. There came a wrench that tortured my arm sockets as though racked. But he held!

Slowly—I writhed back into the passage, dragging up his almost dead weight. His head appeared, his shoulders; there was a convulsion of the long body and he lay before me.

For a minute or two we lay, flat upon our backs resting. I sat up. The passage was broad, silent; apparently as endless as that from which we had just escaped.

Along it, above us, under us, the crystalline eyes were dim. It showed no sign of movement—yet had it done so there was nothing we could do save drop down the annihilating slant. Drake arose.

“I’m hungry,” he said, “and I’m thirsty. I move that we eat and drink and approximately be merry.”

He slung aside the haversack. From it we took food; from the canteens we drank. We did not talk. Each knew what the other was thinking; infrequently, and thank the eternal law that some call God for that, come crises in which speech seems not only petty but when against it the mind rebels as a nauseous thing.

This was such a time. At last I drew myself to my feet.

“Let’s be going,” I said.

The corridor stretched straight before us; along it we paced. How far we walked I do not know; mile upon mile, it seemed. It broadened abruptly into a vast hall.

And this hall was filled with the Metal Hordes—was a gigantic workshop of them. In every shape, in every form, they seethed and toiled about it. Upon its floor were heaps of shining ores, mounds of flashing gems, piles of ingots, metallic and crystalline. High and low throughout flamed the egg-shaped incandescences; floating furnaces both great and small.

Before one of these forges, close to us, stood a Metal Thing. Its body was a twelve-foot column of smaller cubes. Upon the top was a hollow square formed of even lesser blocks—blocks hardly larger than the Little Things themselves. In the center of the open rectangle was another shaft, its top a two-foot square plate formed of a single cube.

From the sides of the hollow square sprang long arms of spheres, each tipped by a tetrahedron. They moved freely, slipping about upon their curved points of contact and like a dozen little thinking hammers, the pyramid points at their ends beat down upon as many thimble shaped objects which they thrust alternately into the unwinking brazier then laid upon the central block to shape.

A goblin workman the Thing seemed, standing there, so intent upon and so busy with its forgings.

There were scores of these animate machines; they paid no slightest heed to us as we slipped by them, clinging as closely to the wall of the immense workshop as we could.

We passed a company of other Shapes which stood two by two and close together, their tops wide spinning wheels through which the tendrils of an opened globe fed translucent, colorless ingots—the substance it seemed to me of which Norhala’s shadowy walls were made, the crystal of which the bars that built out the base of the Cones were formed.

The ingots passed between the whirling faces; emerged from them as slender, long cylinders; were seized as they slipped down by a crouching block, whose place as it glided away was instantly taken by another. In many bewildering forms, intent upon unknown activities directed toward unguessable ends, the composite, animate mechanisms labored. And all the place was filled with a goblin bustle, trollish racketings, ringing of gnomish anvils, clanging of kobold forges—a clamorous cavern filled with metal Nibelungens.

We came to the opening of another passage, a doorway piercing the walls of the workshop. Its incline, though steep, was not dangerous.

Into it we stepped; climbed onward it seemed interminably. Far ahead of us at last appeared the outline of its further entrance, silhouetted against and filled with a brighter luminosity. We drew near; stopped cautiously at its threshold, peering out.

Well it was that we had hesitated. Before us was open space—an abyss in the body of the Metal Monster.

The corridor opened into it like a window. Thrusting out our heads, we saw an unbroken wall both above and below. Half a mile away was its opposite side. Over this pit was a misty sky and not more than a thousand feet above and black against the heavens was the lip of it—the cornices of this chasm within the City.

Far, far beneath us we watched the Hordes throw themselves across the abyss in webs of curving arches and girder-straight bridges; gigantic we knew these spans must be yet dwarfed to slender footways by distance. Over them moved hurrying companies; from them came flashings, glitterings—prismatic, sun golden; plutonic scarlets, molten blues; javelins of colored light piercing upward from unfolded cubes and globes and pyramids crossing them or from busy bearers of the shining fruits of the mysterious workshops.

And as they passed the bridges swung up, coiled and thrust themselves from sight through openings that closed behind them. Ever, as they passed, close on their going whipped out other spans so that always across that abyss a sentient, shifting web was hung.

We drew back, stared into each other’s white face. Panic swept through me, in quick, alternate pulse of ice and fire. For crushingly, no longer to be denied, came certainty that we were lost within the mazes of this incredible City—lost in the body of the Metal Monster which that City was. There was a sick despair in my heart as we turned and slowly made our way back along the sloping corridor.

A hundred yards, perhaps, we had gone in silence before we stopped, gazing stupidly at an opening in the wall beside us. The portal had not been there when we had passed—of that I was certain.

“It’s opened since we went by,” whispered Drake.

We peered through it. The passage was narrow; its pave led downward. For a moment we hesitated, the same foreboding in both our minds. And yet—among the perils that crowded in upon us what choice had we? There could be no more danger there than here.

Both ways were—alive, both obedient to impulses over which we had no more control and no more way of predetermining than mice in some complex, man-made trap. Furthermore, this shaft also ran downward, and although its pitch was less and it did not therefore drop as quickly toward that level we sought and wherein lay the openings of escape into the outer valley, it fell at right angles to the corridor through which we had come.

We knew that to retrace our steps now would but take us back to the forges and thence to the hall of the Cones and the certain peril waiting for us there.

We stepped into this opened way. For a little distance it ran straightly, then turned and sloped gently upward; and a little distance more we climbed. Then suddenly, not a hundred yards from us, gushed out a flood of soft radiance, opalescent, filled with pearly glimmerings and rosy shadows of light.

It was as though a door had opened into some world of luminescence. From it the lambent torrent poured; billowed down upon us. In its wake came music—if music the mighty harmonies, the sonorous chords, the crystalline themes and the linked chaplet of notes that were like spiralings of tiny golden star bells could be named.

Toward source of light and sound we moved, nor could we have halted nor withdrawn had we willed; the radiance drew us to it as the sun the water drop, and irresistibly the sweet, unearthly music called. Closer we came—it was a narrow alcove from which sound and light poured—into it we crept—and went no further.

We peered into a vast and columnless vault, a limitless temple of light. High up in it, strewn manifold, danced and shone soft orbs like tender suns. No pale gilt luminaries of frozen rays were these. Effulgent, jubilant, they flamed—orbs red as wine of rubies that Djinns of Al Shiraz press from his enchanted vineyards of jewels; twin orbs rosy white as breasts of pampered Babylonian maids; orbs of pulsing opalescences and orbs of the murmuring green of bursting buds of spring, crocused orbs and orbs of royal coral; suns that throbbed with singing rays of wedded rose and pearl and of sapphires and topazes amorous; orbs born of cool virginal dawns and of imperial sunsets and orbs that were the tuliped fruit of mating rainbows of fire.

They danced, these countless aureoles; they swung and threaded in radiant choral patterns, in linked harmonies of light. And as they danced their gay rays caressed and bathed myriads of the Metal Folk open beneath them. Under the rays the jewel fires of disk and star and cross leaped and pulsed and danced to the same bright rhythm.

We sought the source of the music—a tremendous thing of shimmering crystal pipes like some colossal organ. Out of the radiance around it great flames gathered, shook into sight with streamings and pennonings, in bannerets and bandrols, leaped upon the crystal pipes, and merged within them.

And as the pipes drank them the flames changed into sound!

Throbbing bass viols of roaring vernal winds, diapasons of waterfall and torrents—these had been flames of emerald; flaming trumpetings of desire that had been great streamers of scarlet—rose flames that had dissolved into echoes of fulfillment; diamond burgeonings that melted into silver symphonies like mist entangled Pleiades transmuted into melodies; chameleon harmonies to which the strange suns danced.

And now I saw—realizing with a clutch of indescribable awe, with a sense of inexplicable profanation the secret of this ensorcelled chamber.

Within every pulsing rose of irised fire that was the heart of a disk, from every rubrous, clipped rose of a cross, and from every rayed purple petaling of a star there nestled a tiny disk, a tiny cross, a tiny star, luminous and symboled even as those that cradled them.

The Metal Babes building like crystals from hearts of radiance beneath the play of jocund orbs!

Incredible blossomings of crystal and of metal whose lullabies and cradle songs were singing symphonies of flame.

It was the birth chamber of the City!

The womb of the Metal Monster!

Abruptly the walls of the niche sparkled out, the glittering eye points regarding us with a most disquieting suggestion of sentinels who, slumbering, had been caught unaware, and now awakening challenged us. Swiftly the niche closed—so swiftly that barely had we time to spring over its threshold into the corridor.

The corridor was awake—alive!

The power darted out; gripped us. Up it swept us and on. Far away a square of light appeared, grew quickly larger. Framed in it was the amethystine burning of the great ring that girdled the encircling cliffs.

I turned my head—behind us the corridor was closing!

Now the opening was so close that through it I could see the vast panorama of the valley. The wall behind us touched us; pushed us on. We thrust ourselves against it, despairingly. As well might flies have tried to press back a moving mountain.

Resistingly, inexorably we were pressed forward. Now we cowered within a yard-deep niche; now we trembled upon a foot-wide ledge.

Shuddering, gasping, we glared down the sheer drop of the City’s wall. The smooth and glimmering scarp fell thousands of feet straight to the valley floor. And there were no merciful mists to hide what awaited us there; no mists anywhere. In that brief, agonized glance every detail of the Pit was disclosed with an abnormal clarity.

We tottered on the brink. The ledge melted.

Down, down we plunged, locked in each other’s arms, hurtling to the shattering death so far below!

CHAPTER XXIII

THE TREACHERY OF YURUK

Was it true that Time is within ourselves—that like Space, its twin, it is only a self-created illusion of the human mind? There are hours that flash by on hummingbird wings; there are seconds that shuffle on shod in leaden shoes.

Was it true that when death faces us the consciousness finds power through its will to live to conquer the illusion—to prolong Time? That, recoiling from oblivion, we can recreate in a fractional moment whole years gone past, years yet to come—striving to lengthen our existence, stretching out our apperception beyond the phantom boundaries, overdrawing upon a Barmecide deposit of minutes, staking fresh claims upon a mirage?

How else explain the seeming slowness with which we were falling—the seeming leisureness with which the wall drifted up past us?

And was this punishment—a sentence meted out for profaning with our eyes a forbidden place; a penalty for touching with our gaze the ark of the Metal Tribes—their holy of holies—the budding place of the Metal Babes?

The valley was swinging—swinging in slow broad curves; was oscillating dizzily.

Slowly the colossal wall slipped upward.

Realization swept me; left me amazed; only half believing. This was no illusion. After that first swift plunge our fall had been checked. We were swinging—not the valley.

Deliberately, in wide arcs like pendulums, we were swinging across the City’s scarp; three feet out from it, and as we swung, slowly sinking.

And now I saw the countless eyes of the watching wall again were twinkling, regarding us with impish mockery.

It was the grip of the living wall that held us; that rocked us from side to side as though giving greater breadths of it chance to behold us; that was dropping us gently, carefully, to the valley floor now a scant two thousand feet below.

A storm of rage, of intensest resentment swept me; as once before any gratitude I should have felt for escape was submerged in the utter humiliation with which it was charged.

I shook my fists at the twinkling wall, strove to kick and smite it like an angry child, cursed it—not childishly. Dared it to hurl me down to death.

I felt Drake’s hand touch mine.

“Steady,” he said. “Steady, old boy. It’s no use. Steady. Look down.”

Hot with shame for my outburst, weak from its violence, I obeyed. The valley floor was not more than a thousand feet away. Thronging about where we must at last touch, clustered and seething, was a multitude of the Metal Things. They seemed to be looking up at us, watching, waiting for us.

“Reception committee,” grinned Drake.

I glanced away; over the valley. It was luminously clear; yet the sky was overcast, no stars showing. The light was no stronger than that of the moon at full, but it held a quality unfamiliar to me. It cast no shadows; though soft, it was piercing, revealing all it bathed with the distinctness of bright sunshine. The illumination came, I thought, from the encircling veils falling from the band of amethyst.

And, as I peered, out of the veils and far away sped a violet spark. With meteor speed it flew toward us. Close to the base of the vast facade it landed with a flashing of blue incandescence. I knew it for one of the Flying Things, the Mark Makers—one of the incredible messengers.

Close upon its fall came increase in the turmoil of the crowding throng awaiting us. Came, too, an abrupt change in our own motion. The long arcs lessened. We were dropped more swiftly.

Far away in the direction from which the Flying Thing had flown I sensed another movement; something coming that carried with it subtle suggestion of unlikeness to all the other incessant, linked movement over the pit. Closer it drew.

“Norhala!” gasped Drake.

Robed in her silken amber swathings, red-copper hair streaming, woven with elfin sparklings, she was racing toward the City like some lovely witch, riding upon the back of a steed of huge cubes.

Nearer she raced. More direct became our fall. Now we were dropping as though at the end of an unreeling plummet cord; the floor of the valley was no more than two hundred feet below.

“Norhala!” we shouted; and again and again—again “Norhala!”

Before our cries could have reached her the cubes swerved; came to a halt beneath us. Through the hundred feet of space between I caught the brilliancy of the weird constellations in Norhala’s great eyes—saw with a vague but no less dire foreboding that on her face dwelt a terrifying, a blasting wrath.

As softly as though by the hand of a giant of cloud we were lifted out from the wall, and were set with no perceptible shock beside her on the back of the cubes.

“Norhala—” I stopped. For this was no Norhala whom we had known. Gone was all calm, vanished every trace of unearthly tranquillity. It was a Norhala awakened at last—all human.

Yet in the still rage that filled her I sensed a force, an intensity, more than human. Over the blazing eyes the brows were knit in a rigid, golden bar; the delicate nostrils were pinched; the sweet red mouth was white and merciless. It was as though in its long sleep her human self had gathered more than human strength, and that now, awakened and unleashed, the violence of its rage touched the vibrant zenith of that sphere of which her quiet had been the nadir.

She was like an urn filled and flaming with the fires of the Gods of wrath.

What was it that had awakened her—what in awakening had changed the inpouring human consciousness into this flood of fury? Foreboding gripped me.

“Norhala!” My voice was shaking. “Those we left—”

“They are gone!” The golden voice was octaves deeper, vibrant, throbbing with that muffled, menacing note that must have pulsed from the golden tambours that summoned to battle Timur’s fierce hordes. “They were—taken.”

“Taken!” I gasped. “Taken by what—these?” I swept my hands out toward the Metal Things milling around us.

“No! These are mine. These are they who obey me.” The golden voice now shrilled with her passion. “Taken by—men!”

Drake had read my face although he could not understand our words.

“Ruth—”

“Taken,” I said. “Both Ruth and Ventnor. Taken by the armored men—the men of Cherkis!”

“Cherkis!” She had caught the word. “Yes—Cherkis! And now he and all his men—and all his women—and every living thing he rules shall pay. And fear not—you two. For I, Norhala, will bring back my own.

“Woe, woe to you, Cherkis, and to all of yours! For I, Norhala, am awake, and I, Norhala, remember. Woe to you, Cherkis, woe—for now all ends for you!

“Not by the gods of my mother who turned their strength against her do I promise this. I, Norhala, have no need for them—I, Norhala, who have strength greater than they. And would I could crush those gods as I shall crush you, Cherkis—and every living thing of yours! Yea—and every unliving thing as well!”

Not halting now was Norhala’s speech; it poured from the ruthless lips—flamingly.

“We go,” she cried. “And something of vengeance I have saved for you—as is your right.”

She tossed her arms high; stamped upon the back of the Metal Thing that held us.

It quivered and sped away. Swiftly dwindled the City’s bulk; fast faded its glimmering watchful face.

Not toward the veils of light but out over the plain we flew. Above us, crouching against the blast of our going, streamed like a silken banner Norhala’s hair, gemmed with the witch lights.

We were far out now, the City far away. The cube slowed. Norhala threw high her head. From the arched, exquisite throat pealed a trumpet call—golden, summoning, imperious. Thrice it rang forth—and all the surrounding valley seemed to halt and listen.

Followed upon its ending, a chanting as goldenly sonorous. Wild, peremptory, triumphant. It was like a mustering shouting to adventurous stars, buglings to buccaneering winds, cadenced beckonings to restless ranks of viking waves, signaling to all the corsairs and picaroons of the elemental.

A cosmic call to slay!

The gigantic block upon which we rode quivered; I myself felt a thousand needle-pointed roving arrows prick me, urging me on to some jubilant, reckless orgy of destruction.

Obeying that summoning there swirled to us cube and globe and pyramid by the score—by the hundreds. They swept into our wake and followed—lifting up behind us, an ever-rising sea.

Higher and higher arose the metal wave—mounting, ever mounting as other score upon score leaped upon it, rushed up it and swelled its crest. And soon so great it was that it shadowed us, hung over us.

The cubes we rode angled in their course; raced now with ever-increasing speed toward the spangled curtains.

And still Norhala’s golden chant lured; higher and even higher reached the following wave. Now we were rising upon a steep slope; now the amethystine, gleaming ring was almost overheard.

Norhala’s song ceased. One breathless, soundless moment and we had pierced the veils. A globule of sapphire shone afar, the elfin bubble of her home. We neared it.

Heart leaping, I saw three ponies, high and empty saddles turquoise studded, lift their heads from their roadway browsing. For a moment they stood, stiff with terror; then whimpering raced away.

We were at Norhala’s door; were lifted down; stood close to its threshold. Slaves to a single thought, Drake and I sprang to enter.

“Wait!” Norhala’s white hands caught us. “There is peril there—without me! Me you must—follow!”

Upon the exquisite face was no unshadowing of wrath, no diminishing of rage, no weakening of dreadful determination. The star-flecked eyes were not upon us; they looked over and beyond—coldly, calculatingly.

“Not enough,” I heard her whisper. “Not enough—for that which I will do.”

We turned, following her gaze. A hundred feet on high, stretching nearly across the gorge, an incredible curtain was flung. Over its folds was movement—arms of spinning globes that thrust forth like paws and down upon which leaped pyramid upon pyramid stiffening as they clung like bristling spikes of hair; great bars of clicking cubes that threw themselves from the shuttering—shook and withdrew. The curtain was a ferment—shifting, mercurial; it throbbed with desire, palpitated with eagerness.

“Not enough!” murmured Norhala.

Her lips parted; from them came another trumpeting—tyrannic, arrogant and clangorous. Under it the curtaining writhed—out from it spurted thin cascades of cubes. They swarmed up into tall pillars that shook and swayed and gyrated.

With blinding flash upon flash the sapphire incandescences struck forth at their feet. A score of flaming columned shapes leaped up and curved in meteor flight over the tumultuous curtain. Streaming with violet fires they shot back to the valley of the City.

“Hai!” shouted Norhala as they flew. “Hai!”

Up darted her arms; the starry galaxies of her eyes danced madly, shot forth visible rays. The mighty curtain of the Metal Things pulsed and throbbed; its units interweaving—block and globe and pyramid of which it was woven, each seeming to strain at leash.

“Come!” cried Norhala—and led the way through the portal.

Close behind her we pressed. I stumbled, nearly fell, over a brown-faced, leather-cuirassed body that lay half over, legs barring the threshold.

Contemptuously Norhala stepped over it. We were within that chamber of the pool. About it lay a fair dozen of the armored men. Ruth’s defense, I thought with a grim delight, had been most excellent—those who had taken her and Ventnor had not done so without paying full toll.

A violet flashing drew my eyes away. Close to the pool wherein we had first seen the white miracle of Norhala’s body, two immense, purple fired stars blazed. Between them, like a suppliant cast from black iron, was Yuruk.

Poised upon their nether tips the stars guarded him. Head touching his knees, eyes hidden within his folded arms, the black eunuch crouched.

“Yuruk!”

There was an unearthly mercilessness in Norhala’s voice.

The eunuch raised his head; slowly, fearfully.

“Goddess!” he whispered. “Goddess! Mercy!”

“I saved him,” she turned to us, “for you to slay. He it was who brought those who took the maid who was mine and the helpless one she loved. Slay him.”

Drake understood—his hand twitched down to his pistol, drew it. He leveled the gun at the black eunuch. Yuruk saw it—shrieked and cowered. Norhala laughed—sweetly, ruthlessly.

“He dies before the stroke falls,” she said. “He dies doubly therefore—and that is well.”

Drake slowly lowered the automatic; turned to me.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t—do it—”

“Masters!” Upon his knees the eunuch writhed toward us. “Masters—I meant no wrong. What I did was for love of the Goddess. Years upon years I have served her. And her mother before her.

“I thought if the maid and the blasted one were gone, that you would follow. Then I would be alone with the Goddess once more. Cherkis will not slay them—and Cherkis will welcome you and give the maid and the blasted one back to you for the arts that you can teach him.

“Mercy, Masters, I meant no harm—bid the Goddess be merciful!”

The ebon pools of eyes were clarified of their ancient shadows by his terror; age was wiped from them by fear, even as it was wiped from his face. The wrinkles were gone. Appallingly youthful, the face of Yuruk prayed to us.

“Why do you wait?” she asked us. “Time presses, and even now we should be on the way. When so many are so soon to die, why tarry over one? Slay him!”

“Norhala,” I answered, “we cannot slay him so. When we kill, we kill in fair fight—hand to hand. The maid we both love has gone, taken with her brother. It will not bring her back if we kill him through whom she was taken. We would punish him—yes, but slay him we cannot. And we would be after the maid and her brother quickly.”

A moment she looked at us, perplexity shading the high and steady anger.

“As you will,” she said at last; then added, half sarcastically, “Perhaps it is because I who am now awake have slept so long that I cannot understand you. But Yuruk has disobeyed me. That of mine which I committed to his care he has given to the enemies of me and those who were mine. It matters nothing to me what you would do. Matters to me only what I will to do.”

She pointed to the dead.

“Yuruk”—the golden voice was cold—“gather up these carrion and pile them together.”

The eunuch arose, stole out fearfully from between the two stars. He slithered to body after body, dragging them one after the other to the center of the chamber, lifting them and forming of them a heap. One there was who was not dead. His eyes opened as the eunuch seized him, the blackened mouth opened.

“Water!” he begged. “Give me drink. I burn!”

I felt a thrill of pity; lifted my canteen and walked toward him.

“You of the beard,” the merciless chime rang out, “he shall have no water. But drink he shall have, and soon—drink of fire!”

The soldier’s fevered eyes rolled toward her, saw and read aright the ruthlessness in the beautiful face.

“Sorceress!” he groaned. “Cursed spawn of Ahriman!” He spat at her.

The black talons of Yuruk stretched around his throat

“Son of unclean dogs!” he whined. “You dare blaspheme the Goddess!”

He snapped the soldier’s neck as though it had been a rotten twig.

At the callous cruelty I stood for an instant petrified; I heard Drake swear wildly, saw his pistol flash up.

Norhala struck down his arm.

“Your chance has passed,” she said, “and not for that shall you slay him.”

And now Yuruk had cast that body upon the others; the pile was complete.

“Mount!” commanded Norhala, and pointed. He cast himself at her feet, writhing, moaning, imploring. She looked at one of the great Shapes; something of command passed from her, something it understood plainly.

The star slipped forward—there was an almost imperceptible movement of its side points. The twitching form of the black seemed to leap up from the floor, to throw itself like a bag upon the mound of the dead.

Norhala threw up her hands. Out of the violet ovals beneath the upper tips of the Things spurted streams of blue flame. They fell upon Yuruk and splashed over him upon the heap of the slain. In the mound was a dreadful movement, a contortion; the bodies stiffened, seemed to try to rise, to push away—dead nerves and muscles responding to the blasting energy passing through them.

Out from the stars rained bolt upon bolt. In the chamber was the sound of thunder, crackling like broken glass. The bodies flamed, crumbled. There was a little smoke—nauseous, feebly protesting, beaten out by the consuming fires almost before it could rise.

Where had been the heap of slain capped by the black eunuch there was but a little whirling cloud of sad gray dust. Caught by a passing draft, it eddied, slipped over the floor, vanished through the doorway. Motionless stood the blasting stars, contemplating us. Motionless stood Norhala, her wrath no whit abated by the ghastly sacrifice. And paralyzed by what we had beheld, motionless stood we.

“Listen,” she said. “You two who love the maid. What you have seen is nothing to that which you shall see—a wisp of mist to the storm cloud.”

“Norhala”—I found speech—“can you tell us when it was that the maid was captured?”

Perhaps there was still time to overtake the abductors before Ruth was thrust into the worse peril waiting where she was being carried. Crossed this thought another—puzzling, baffling. The cliffs Yuruk had pointed out to me as those through which the hidden way passed were, I had estimated then, at least twenty miles away. And how long was the pass, the tunnel, through them? And then how far this place of the armored men? It had been past dawn when Drake had frightened the black eunuch with his pistol. It was not yet dawn now. How could Yuruk have made his way to the Persians so swiftly—how could they so swiftly have returned?

Amazingly she answered the spoken question and the unspoken.

“They came long before dusk,” she said. “By the night before Yuruk had won to Ruszark, the city of Cherkis; and long before dawn they were on their way hither. This the black dog I slew told me.”

“But Yuruk was with us here at dawn yesterday,” I gasped.

“A night has passed since then,” she said, “and another night is almost gone.”

Stunned, I considered this. If this were true—and not for an instant did I doubt her—then not for a few hours had we lain there at the foot of the living wall in the Hall of the Cones—but for the balance of that day and that night, and another day and part of still another night.

“What does she say?” Drake stared anxiously into my whitened face. I told him.

“Yes.” Norhala spoke again. “The dusk before the last dusk that has passed I returned to my house. The maid was there and sorrowing. She told me you had gone into the valley, prayed me to help you and to bring you back. I comforted her, and something of—the peace—I gave her; but not all, for she fought against it. A little we played together, and I left her sleeping. I sought you and found you also sleeping. I knew no harm would come to you, and I went my ways—and forgot you. Then I came here again—and found Yuruk and these the maid had slain.”

The great eyes flashed.

“Now do I honor the maid for the battle that she did,” she said, “though how she slew so many strong men I do not know. My heart goes out to her. And therefore when I bring her back she shall no more be plaything to Norhala, but sister. And with you it shall be as she wills. And woe to those who have taken her!”

She paused, listening. From without came a rising storm of thin wailings, insistent and eager.

“But I have an older vengeance than this to take,” the golden voice tolled somberly. “Long have I forgotten—and shame I feel that I had forgot. So long have I forgotten all hatreds, all lusts, all cruelty—among—these—” She thrust a hand forth toward the hidden valley. “Forgot—dwelling in the great harmonies. Save for you and what has befallen I would never have stirred from them, I think. But now awakened, I take that vengeance. After it is done”—she paused—“after it is over I shall go back again. For this awakening has in it nothing of the ordered joy I love—it is a fierce and slaying fire. I shall go back—”

The shadow of her far dreaming flitted over, softened the angry brilliancy of her eyes.

“Listen, you two!” The shadow of dream fled. “Those that I am about to slay are evil—evil are they all, men and women. Long have they been so—yea, for cycles of suns. And their children grow like them—or if they be gentle and with love for peace they are slain or die of heartbreak. All this my mother told me long ago. So no more children shall be born from them either to suffer or to grow evil.”

Again she paused, nor did we interrupt her musing.

“My father ruled Ruszark,” she said at last. “Rustum he was named, of the seed of Rustum the Hero even as was my mother. They were gentle and good, and it was their ancestors who built Ruszark when, fleeing from the might of Iskander, they were sealed in the hidden valley by the falling mountain.

“Then there sprang from one of the families of the nobles—Cherkis. Evil, evil was he, and as he grew he lusted for rule. On a night of terror he fell upon those who loved my father and slew; and barely had my father time to fly from the city with my mother, still but a bride, and a handful of those loyal to him.

“They found by chance the way to this place, hiding in the cleft which is its portal. They came, and they were taken by—Those who are now my people. Then my mother, who was very beautiful, was lifted before him who rules here and she found favor in his sight and he had built for her this house, which now is mine.

“And in time I was born—but not in this house. Nay—in a secret place of light where, too, are born my people.”

She was silent. I shot a glance at Drake. The secret place of light—was it not that vast vault of mystery, of dancing orbs and flames transmuted into music into which we had peered and for which sacrilege, I had thought, had been thrust from the City? And did in this lie the explanation of her strangeness? Had she there sucked in with her mother’s milk the enigmatic life of the Metal Hordes, been transformed into half human changeling, become true kin to them? What else could explain—

“My mother showed me Ruszark,” her voice, taking up once more her tale, checked my thoughts. “Once when I was little she and my father bore me through the forest and through the hidden way. I looked upon Ruszark—a great city it is and populous, and a caldron of cruelty and of evil.

“Not like me were my father and mother. They longed for their kind and sought ever for means to regain their place among them. There came a time when my father, driven by his longing, ventured forth to Ruszark, seeking friends to help him regain that place—for these who obey me obeyed not him as they obey me; nor would he have marched them—as I shall—upon Ruszark if they had obeyed him.

“Cherkis caught him. And Cherkis waited, knowing well that my mother would follow. For Cherkis knew not where to seek her, nor where they had lain hid, for between his city and here the mountains are great, unscalable, and the way through them is cunningly hidden; by chance alone did my mother’s mother and those who fled with her discover it: And though they tortured him, my father would not tell. And after a while forthwith those who still remained of hers stole out with my mother to find him. They left me here with Yuruk. And Cherkis caught my mother.”

The proud breasts heaved, the eyes shot forth visible flames.

“My father was flayed alive and crucified,” she said. “His skin they nailed to the City’s gates. And when Cherkis had had his will with my mother he threw her to his soldiers for their sport.

“All of those who went with them he tortured and slew—and he and his laughed at their torment. But one there was who escaped and told me—me who was little more than a budding maid. He called on me to bring vengeance—and he died. A year passed—and I am not like my mother and my father—and I forgot—dwelling here in the great tranquillities, barred from and having no thought for men and their way.

“Aie, aie!” she cried; “woe to me that I could forget! But now I shall take my vengeance—I, Norhala, will stamp them flat—Cherkis and his city of Ruszark and everything it holds! I, Norhala, and my servants shall stamp them into the rock of their valley so that none shall know that they have been! And would that I could meet their gods with all their powers that I might break them, too, and stamp them into the rock under the feet of my servants!”

She threw out white arms.

Why had Yuruk lied to me? I wondered as I watched her. The Disk had not slain her mother. Of course! He had lied to play upon our terrors; had lied to frighten us away.

The wailings were rising in a sustained crescendo. One of the slaying stars slipped over the chamber floor, folded its points and glided out the door.

“Come!” commanded Norhala, and led the way. The second star closed, followed us. We stepped over the threshold.

For one astounded, breathless moment we paused. In front of us reared a monster—a colossal, headless Sphinx. Like forelegs and paws, a ridge of pointed cubes, and globes thrust against each side of the canyon walls. Between them for two hundred feet on high stretched the breast.

And this was a shifting, weaving mass of the Metal Things; they formed into gigantic cuirasses, giant bucklers, corselets of living mail. From them as they moved—nay, from all the monster—came the wailings. Like a headless Sphinx it crouched—and as we stood it surged forward as though it sprang a step to greet us.

“Hai!” shouted Norhala, battle buglings ringing through the golden voice. “Hai! my companies!”

Out from the summit of the breast shot a tremendous trunk of cubes and spinning globes. And like a trunk it nuzzled us, caught us up, swept us to the crest. An instant I tottered dizzily; was held; stood beside Norhala upon a little, level twinkling eyed platform; upon her other side swayed Drake.

Now through the monster I felt a throbbing, an eager and impatient pulse. I turned my head. Still like some huge and grotesque beast the back of the clustered Things ran for half a mile at least behind, tapering to a dragon tail that coiled and twisted another full mile toward the Pit. And from this back uprose and fell immense spiked and fan-shaped ruffs, thickets of spikes, whipping knouts of bristling tentacles, fanged crests. They thrust and waved, whipped and fell constantly; and constantly the great tail lashed and snapped, fantastic, long and living.

“Hai!” shouted Norhala once more. From her lifted throat came again the golden chanting—but now a relentless, ruthless song of slaughter.

Up reared the monstrous bulk. Into it ran the dragon tail. Into it poured the fanged and bristling back.

Up, up we were thrust—three hundred feet, four hundred, five hundred. Over the blue globe of Norhala’s house bent a gigantic leg. Spiderlike out from each side of the monster thrust half a score of others.

Overhead the dawn began to break. Through it with ever increasing speed we moved, straight to the line of the cliffs behind which lay the city of the armored men—and Ruth and Ventnor.

CHAPTER XXIV

RUSZARK

Smoothly moved the colossal shape; on it we rode as easily as though cradled. It did not glide—it strode.

The columned legs raised themselves, bending from a thousand joints. The pedestals of the feet, huge and massive as foundations for sixteen-inch guns, fell with machinelike precision, stamping gigantically.

Under their tread the trees of the forest snapped, were crushed like reeds beneath the pads of a mastodon. From far below came the sound of their crashing. The thick forest checked the progress of the Shape less than tall grass would that of a man.

Behind us our trail was marked by deep, black pits in the forest’s green, clean cut and great as the Mark upon the poppied valley. They were the footprints of the Thing that carried us.

The wind streamed and whistled. A flock of the willow warblers arose, sworled about us with manifold beating of little frightened wings. Norhala’s face softened, her eyes smiled.

“Go—foolish little ones,” she cried, and waved her arms. They flew away, scolding.

A lammergeier swooped down on wide funereal wings; it peered at us; darted away toward the cliffs.

“There will be no carrion there for you, black eater of the dead, when I am through,” I heard Norhala whisper, eyes again somber.

Steadily grew the dawn light; from Norhala’s lips came again the chanting. And now that paean, the reckless pulse of the monster we rode, began to creep through my own veins. Into Drake’s too, I knew, for his head was held high and his eyes were clear and bright as hers who sang.

The jubilant pulse streamed through the hands that held us, throbbed through us. The pulse of the Thing—sang!

Closer and closer grew the cliffs. Down and crashing down fell the trees, the noise of their fall accompanying the battle chant of the Valkyr beside me like wild harp chords of storm-lashed surf. Up to the precipices the forest rolled, unbroken. Now the cliffs loomed overhead. The dawn had passed. It was full day.

Cutting up through the towering granite scarps was a rift. In it the black shadows clustered thickly. Straight toward that cleft we sped. As we drew near, the crest of the Shape began swiftly to lower. Down we sank and down—a hundred feet, two hundred; now we were two score yards above the tree tops.

Out shot a neck, a tremendous serpent body. Crested it was with pyramids; crested with them, too, was its immense head. Thickly the head bristled with them, poised motionless upon spinning globes as huge as they. For hundreds of feet that incredible neck stretched ahead of us and for twice as far behind a monstrous, lizard-shaped body writhed.

We rode now upon a serpent, a glittering blue metal dragon, spiked and knobbed and scaled. It was the weird steed of Norhala flattening, thrusting out to pierce the rift.

And still as when it had reared on high beat through it the wild, triumphant, questing pulse. Still rang out Norhala’s chanting.

The trees parted and fell upon each side of us as though we were some monster of the sea and they the waves we cleft.

The rift enclosed us. Lower we dropped; were not more than fifty feet above its floor. The Thing upon which we rode was a torrent roaring through it.

A deeper blackness enclosed us—a tunneling.

Through that we flowed. Out of it we darted into a widening filled with wan light drifting down through a pinnacle fanged mouth miles on high. Again the cleft shrunk. A thousand feet ahead was a crack, a narrowing of the cleft so small that hardly could a man pass through it.

Abruptly the metal dragon halted.

Norhala’s chanting changed; became again the arrogant clarioning. And close below us the huge neck split. It came to me then that it was as though Norhala were the overspirit of this chimera—as though it caught and understood and obeyed each quick thought of hers.

As though, indeed, she was a part of it—as it was in reality a part of that infinitely greater Thing, crouching there in its lair of the Pit—the Metal Monster that had lent this living part of itself to her for a steed, a champion. Little time had I to consider such matters.

Up thrust the Shape before us. Into it raced and spun Things angled, Things curved and Things squared. It gathered itself into a Titanic pillar out of which, instantly, thrust scores of arms.

Over them great globes raced; after these flew other scores of huge pyramids, none less than ten feet in height, the mass of them twenty and thirty. The manifold arms grew rigid. Quiet for a moment, a Titanic metal Briareous, it stood.

Then at the tips of the arms the globes began to spin—faster, faster. Upon them I saw the hosts of the pyramids open—as one into a host of stars. The cleft leaped out in a flood of violet light.

Now for another instant the stars which had been motionless, poised upon the whirling spheres, joined in their mad spinning. Cyclopean pin wheels they turned; again as one they ceased. More brilliant now was their light, dazzling; as though in their whirling they had gathered greater force.

Under me I felt the split Thing quiver with eagerness.

From the stars came a hurricane of lightning! A cataract of electric flame poured into the crack, splashed and guttered down the granite walls. We were blinded by it; were deafened with thunders.

The face of the precipice smoked and split; was whirled away in clouds of dust.

The crack widened—widened as a gulley in a sand bank does when a swift stream rushes through it. Lightnings these were—and more than lightnings; lightnings keyed up to an invincible annihilating weapon that could rend and split and crumble to atoms the living granite.

Steadily the cleft expanded. As its walls melted away the Blasting Thing advanced, spurting into it the flaming torrents. Behind it we crept. The dust of the shattered rocks swirled up toward us like angry ghosts—before they reached us they were blown away as though by strong winds streaming from beneath us.

On we went, blinded, deafened. Interminably, it seemed, poured forth the hurricane of blue fire; interminably the thunder bellowed.

There came a louder clamor—volcanic, chaotic, dulling the thunders. The sides of the cleft quivered, bent outward. They split; crashed down. Bright daylight poured in upon us, a flood of light toward which the billows of dust rushed as though seeking escape; out it poured like the smoke of ten thousand cannon.

And the Blasting Thing shook—as though with laughter!

The stars closed. Back into the Shape ran globe and pyramid. It slid toward us—joined the body from which it had broken away. Through all the mass ran a wave of jubilation, a pulse of mirth—a colossal, metallic—silent—roar of laughter.

We glided forward—out of the cleft. I felt a shifting movement.

Up and up we were thrust. Dazed I looked behind me. In the face of a sky climbing wall of rock, smoked a wide chasm. Out of it the billowing clouds of dust still streamed, pursuing, threatening us. The whole granite barrier seemed to quiver with agony. Higher we rose and higher.

“Look,” whispered Drake, and whirled me around.

Less than five miles away was Ruszark, the City of Cherkis. And it was like some ancient city come into life out of long dead centuries. A page restored from once conquering Persia’s crumbled book. A city of the Chosroes transported by Jinns into our own time.

Built around and upon a low mount, it stood within a valley but little larger than the Pit. The plain was level, as though once it had been the floor of some primeval lake; the hill of the City was its only elevation.

Beyond, I caught the glinting of a narrow stream, meandering. The valley was ringed with precipitous cliffs falling sheer to its floor.

Slowly we advanced.

The city was almost square, guarded by double walls of hewn stone. The first raised itself a hundred feet on high, turreted and parapeted and pierced with gates. Perhaps a quarter of a mile behind it the second fortification thrust up.

The city itself I estimated covered about ten square miles. It ran upward in broad terraces. It was very fair, decked with blossoming gardens and green groves. Among the clustering granite houses, red and yellow roofed, thrust skyward tall spires and towers. Upon the mount’s top was a broad, flat plaza on which were great buildings, marble white and golden roofed; temples I thought, or palaces, or both.

Running to the city out of the grain fields and steads that surrounded it, were scores of little figures, rat-like. Here and there among them I glimpsed horsemen, arms and armor glittering. All were racing to the gates and the shelter of the battlements.

Nearer we drew. From the walls came now a faint sound of gongs, of drums, of shrill, flutelike pipings. Upon them I could see hosts gathering; hosts of swarming little figures whose bodies glistened, from above whom came gleamings—the light striking upon their helms, their spear and javelin tips.

“Ruszark!” breathed Norhala, eyes wide, red lips cruelly smiling. “Lo—I am before your gates. Lo—I am here—and was there ever joy like this!”

The constellations in her eyes blazed. Beautiful, beautiful was Norhala—as Isis punishing Typhon for the murder of Osiris; as avenging Diana; shining from her something of the spirit of all wrathful Goddesses.

The flaming hair whirled and snapped. From all her sweet body came white-hot furious force, a withering perfume of destruction. She pressed against me, and I trembled at the contact.

Lawless, wild imaginings ran through me. Life, human life, dwindled. The City seemed but a thing of toys.

On—let us crush it! On—on!

Again the monster shook beneath us. Faster we moved. Louder grew the clangor of the drums, the gongs, the pipes. Nearer came the walls; and ever more crowded with the swarming human ants that manned them.

We were close upon the heels of the last fleeing stragglers. The Thing slackened in its stride; waited patiently until they were close to the gates. Before they could reach them I heard the brazen clanging of their valves. Those shut out beat frenziedly upon them; dragged themselves close to the base of the battlements, cowered there or crept along them seeking some hole in which to hide.

With a slow lowering of its height the Thing advanced. Now its form was that of a spindle a full mile in length on whose bulging center we three stood.

A hundred feet from the outer wall we halted. We looked down upon it not more than fifty feet above its broad top. Hundreds of the soldiers were crouching behind the parapets, companies of archers with great bows poised, arrows at their cheeks, scores of leather jerkined men with stands of javelins at their right hands, spearsmen and men with long, thonged slings.

Set at intervals were squat, powerful engines of wood and metal beside which were heaps of huge, rounded boulders. Catapults I knew them to be and around each swarmed a knot of soldiers, fixing the great stones in place, drawing back the thick ropes that, loosened, would hurl forth the projectiles. From each side came other men, dragging more of these balisters; assembling a battery against the prodigious, gleaming monster that menaced their city.

Between outer wall and inner battlements galloped squadrons of mounted men. Upon this inner wall the soldiers clustered as thickly as on the outer, preparing as actively for its defense.

The city seethed. Up from it arose a humming, a buzzing, as of some immense angry hive.

Involuntarily I visualized the spectacle we must present to those who looked upon us—this huge incredible Shape of metal alive with quicksilver shifting. This—as it must have seemed to them—hellish mechanism of war captained by a sorceress and two familiars in form of men. There came to me dreadful visions of such a monster looking down upon the peace-reared battlements of New York—the panic rush of thousands away from it.

There was a blaring of trumpets. Up on the parapet leaped a man clad all in gleaming red armor. From head to feet the close linked scales covered him. Within a hood shaped somewhat like the tight-fitting head coverings of the Crusaders a pallid, cruel face looked out upon us; in the fierce black eyes was no trace of fear.

Evil as Norhala had said these people of Ruszark were, wicked and cruel—they were no cowards, no!

The red armored man threw up a hand.

“Who are you?” he shouted. “Who are you three, you three who come driving down upon Ruszark through the rocks? We have no quarrel with you?”

“I seek a man and a maid,” cried Norhala. “A maid and a sick man your thieves took from me. Bring him forth!”

“Seek elsewhere for them then,” he answered. “They are not here. Turn now and seek elsewhere. Go quickly, lest I loose our might upon you and you go never.”

Mockingly rang her laughter—and under its lash the black eyes grew fiercer, the cruelty on the white face darkened.

“Little man whose words are so big! Fly who thunders! What are you called, little man?”

Her raillery bit deep—but its menace passed unheeded in the rage it called forth.

“I am Kulun,” shouted the man in scarlet armor. “Kulun, the son of Cherkis the Mighty, and captain of his hosts. Kulun—who will cast your skin under my mares in stall for them to trample and thrust your red flayed body upon a pole in the grain fields to frighten away the crows! Does that answer you?”

Her laughter ceased; her eyes dwelt upon him—filled with an infernal joy.

“The son of Cherkis!” I heard her murmur. “He has a son—”

There was a sneer on the cruel face; clearly he thought her awed. Quick was his disillusionment.

“Listen, Kulun,” she cried. “I am Norhala—daughter of another Norhala and of Rustum, whom Cherkis tortured and slew. Now go, you lying spawn of unclean toads—go and tell your father that I, Norhala, am at his gates. And bring back with you the maid and the man. Go, I say!”

CHAPTER XXV

CHERKIS

There was stark amazement on Kulun’s face; and fear now enough. He dropped from the parapet among his men. There came one loud trumpet blast.

Out from the battlements poured a storm of arrows, a cloud of javelins. The squat catapults leaped forward. From them came a hail of boulders. Before that onrushing tempest of death I flinched.

I heard Norhala’s golden laughter and before they could reach us arrow and javelin and boulder were checked as though myriads of hands reached out from the Thing under us and caught them. Down they dropped.

Forth from the great spindle shot a gigantic arm, hammer tipped with cubes. It struck the wall close to where the scarlet armored Kulun had vanished.

Under its blow the stones crumbled. With the fragments fell the soldiers; were buried beneath them.

A hundred feet in width a breach gaped in the battlements. Out shot the arm again; hooked its hammer tip over the parapet, tore away a stretch of the breastwork as though it had been cardboard. Beside the breach an expanse of the broad flat top lay open like a wide platform.

The arm withdrew, and out from the whole length of the spindle thrust other arms, hammer tipped, held high aloft, menacing.

From all the length of the wall arose panic outcry. Abruptly the storm of arrows ended; the catapults were still. Again the trumpets sounded; the crying ceased. Down fell a silence, terrified, stifling.

Kulun stepped forth again, both hands held high. Gone was his arrogance.

“A parley,” he shouted. “A parley, Norhala. If we give you the maid and man, will you go?”

“Go get them,” she answered. “And take with you this my command to Cherkis—that he return with the two!”

For an instant Kulun hesitated. Up thrust the dreadful arms, poised themselves to strike.

“It shall be so,” he shouted. “I carry your command.”

He leaped back, his red mail flashed toward a turret that held, I supposed, a stairway. He was lost to sight. In silence we waited.

On the further side of the city I glimpsed movement. Little troops of mounted men, pony drawn wains, knots of running figures were fleeing from the city through the opposite gates.

Norhala saw them too. With that incomprehensible, instant obedience to her unspoken thought a mass of the Metal Things separated from us; whirled up into a dozen of those obelisked forms I had seen march from the cat eyes of the City of the Pit.

In but a breath, it seemed, their columns were far off, herding back the fugitives.

They did not touch them, did not offer to harm—only, grotesquely, like dogs heading off and corraling frightened sheep, they circled and darted. Rushing back came those they herded.

From the watching terraces and walls arose shrill cries of terror, a wailing. Far away the obelisks met, pirouetted, melted into one thick column. Towering, motionless as we, it stood, guarding the further gates.

There was a stir upon the wall, a flashing of spears, of drawn blades. Two litters closed with curtainings, surrounded by triple rows of swordsmen fully armored, carrying small shields and led by Kulun were being borne to the torn battlement.

Their bearers stopped well within the platform and gently lowered their burdens. The leader of those around the second litter drew aside its covering, spoke.

Out stepped Ruth and after her—Ventnor!

“Martin!” I could not keep back the cry; heard mingled with it Drake’s own cry to Ruth. Ventnor raised his hand in greeting; I thought he smiled.

The cubes on which we stood shot forward; stopped within fifty feet of them. Instantly the guard of swordsmen raised their blades, held them over the pair as though waiting the signal to strike.

And now I saw that Ruth was not clad as she had been when we had left her. She stood in scanty kirtle that came scarcely to her knees, her shoulders were bare, her curly brown hair unbound and tangled. Her face was set with wrath hardly less than that which beat from Norhala. On Ventnor’s forehead was a blood red scar, a line that ran from temple to temple like a brand.

The curtains of the first litter quivered; behind them someone spoke. That in which Ruth and Ventnor had ridden was drawn swiftly away. The knot of swordsmen drew back.

Into their places sprang and knelt a dozen archers. They ringed in the two, bows drawn taut, arrows in place and pointing straight to their hearts.

Out of the litter rolled a giant of a man. Seven feet he must have been in height; over the huge shoulders, the barreled chest and the bloated abdomen hung a purple cloak glittering with gems; through the thick and grizzled hair passed a flashing circlet of jewels.

The scarlet armored Kulun beside him, swordsmen guarding them, he walked to the verge of the torn gap in the wall. He peered down it, glancing imperturbably at the upraised, hammer-banded arms still threatening; examined again the breach. Then still with Kulun he strode over to the very edge of the broken battlement and stood, head thrust a little forward, studying us in silence.

“Cherkis!” whispered Norhala—the whisper was a hymn to Nemesis. I felt her body quiver from head to foot.

A wave of hatred, a hot desire to kill, passed through me as I scanned the face staring at us. It was a great gross mask of evil, of cold cruelty and callous lusts. Unwinking, icily malignant, black slits of eyes glared at us between pouches that held them half closed. Heavy jowls hung pendulous, dragging down the corners of the thick lipped, brutal mouth into a deep graven, unchanging sneer.

As he gazed at Norhala a flicker of lust shot like a licking tongue through his eyes.

Yet from him pulsed power; sinister, instinct with evil, concentrate with cruelty—but power indomitable. Such was Cherkis, descendant perhaps of that Xerxes the Conqueror who three millenniums gone ruled most of the known world.

It was Norhala who broke the silence.

“Tcherak! Greeting—Cherkis!” There was merciless mirth in the buglings of her voice. “Lo, I did but knock so gently at your gates and you hastened to welcome me. Greetings—gross swine, spittle of the toads, fat slug beneath my sandals.”

He passed the insults by, unmoved—although I heard a murmuring go up from those near and Kulun’s hard eyes blazed.

“We will bargain, Norhala,” he answered calmly; the voice was deep, filled with sinister strength.

“Bargain?” she laughed. “What have you with which to bargain, Cherkis? Does the rat bargain with the tigress? And you, toad, have nothing.”

He shook his head.

“I have these,” he waved a hand toward Ruth and her brother. “Me you may slay—and mayhap many of mine. But before you can move my archers will feather their hearts.”

She considered him, no longer mocking.

“Two of mine you slew long since, Cherkis,” she said, slowly. “Therefore it is I am here.”

“I know,” he nodded heavily. “Yet now that is neither here nor there, Norhala. It was long since, and I have learned much during the years. I would have killed you too, Norhala, could I have found you. But now I would not do as then—quite differently would I do, Norhala; for I have learned much. I am sorry that those that you loved died as they did. I am in truth sorry!”

There was a curious lurking sardonicism in the words, an undertone of mockery. Was what he really meant that in those years he had learned to inflict greater agonies, more exquisite tortures? If so, Norhala apparently did not sense that interpretation. Indeed, she seemed to be interested, her wrath abating.

“No,” the hoarse voice rumbled dispassionately. “None of that is important—now. You would have this man and girl. I hold them. They die if you stir a hand’s breadth toward me. If they die, I prevail against you—for I have cheated you of what you desire. I win, Norhala, even though you slay me. That is all that is now important.”

There was doubt upon Norhala’s face and I caught a quick gleam of contemptuous triumph glint through the depths of the evil eyes.

“Empty will be your victory over me, Norhala,” he said; then waited.

“What is your bargain?” she spoke hesitatingly; with a sinking of my heart I heard the doubt tremble in her throat.

“If you will go without further knocking upon my gates”—there was a satiric grimness in the phrase—“go when you have been given them, and pledge yourself never to return—you shall have them. If you will not, then they die.”

“But what security, what hostages, do you ask?” Her eyes were troubled. “I cannot swear by your gods, Cherkis, for they are not my gods—in truth I, Norhala, have no gods. Why should I not say yes and take the two, then fall upon you and destroy—as you would do in my place, old wolf?”

“Norhala,” he answered, “I ask nothing but your word. Do I not know those who bore you and the line from which they sprung? Was not always the word they gave kept till death—unbroken, inviolable? No need for vows to gods between you and me. Your word is holier than they—O glorious daughter of kings, princess royal!”

The great voice was harshly caressing; not obsequious, but as though he gave her as an equal her rightful honor. Her face softened; she considered him from eyes far less hostile.

A wholesome respect for this gross tyrant’s mentality came to me; it did not temper, it heightened, the hatred I felt for him. But now I recognized the subtlety of his attack; realized that unerringly he had taken the only means by which he could have gained a hearing; have temporized. Could he win her with his guile?

“Is it not true?” There was a leonine purring in the question.

“It is true!” she answered proudly. “Though why you should dwell upon this, Cherkis, whose word is steadfast as the running stream and whose promises are as lasting as its bubbles—why you should dwell on this I do not know.”

“I have changed greatly, Princess, in the years since my great wickedness; I have learned much. He who speaks to you now is not he you were taught—and taught justly then—to hate.”

“You may speak truth! Certainly you are not as I have pictured you.” It was as though she were more than half convinced. “In this at least you do speak truth—that if I promise I will go and molest you no more.”

“Why go at all, Princess?” Quietly he asked the amazing question—then drew himself to his full height, threw wide his arms.

“Princess?” the great voice rumbled forth. “Nay—Queen! Why leave us again—Norhala the Queen? Are we not of your people? Am I not of your kin? Join your power with ours. What that war engine you ride may be, how built, I know not. But this I do know—that with our strengths joined we two can go forth from where I have dwelt so long, go forth into the forgotten world, eat its cities and rule.

“You shall teach our people to make these engines, Norhala, and we will make many of them. Queen Norhala—you shall wed my son Kulun, he who stands beside me. And while I live you shall rule with me, rule equally. And when I die you and Kulun shall rule.

“Thus shall our two royal lines be made one, the old feud wiped out, the long score be settled. Queen—wherever it is you dwell it comes to me that you have few men. Queen—you need men, many men and strong to follow you, men to gather the harvests of your power, men to bring to you the fruit of your smallest wish—young men and vigorous to amuse you.

“Let the past be forgotten—I too have wrongs to forget, O Queen. Come to us, Great One, with your power and your beauty. Teach us. Lead us. Return, and throned above your people rule the world!”

He ceased. Over the battlements, over the city, dropped a vast expectant silence—as though the city knew its fate was hanging upon the balance.

“No! No!” It was Ruth crying. “Do not trust him, Norhala! It’s a trap! He shamed me—he tortured—”

Cherkis half turned; before he swung about I saw a hell shadow darken his face. Ventnor’s hand thrust out, covered Ruth’s mouth, choking her crying.

“Your son”—Norhala spoke swiftly; and back flashed the cruel face of Cherkis, devouring her with his eyes. “Your son—and Queenship here—and Empire of the World.” Her voice was rapt, thrilled. “All this you offer? Me—Norhala?”

“This and more!” The huge bulk of his body quivered with eagerness. “If it be your wish, O Queen, I, Cherkis, will step down from the throne for you and sit beneath your right hand, eager to do your bidding.”

A moment she studied him.

“Norhala,” I whispered, “do not do this thing. He thinks to gain your secrets.”

“Let my bridegroom stand forth that I may look upon him,” called Norhala.

Visibly Cherkis relaxed, as though a strain had been withdrawn. Between him and his crimson-clad son flashed a glance; it was as though a triumphant devil sped from them into each other’s eyes.

I saw Ruth shrink into Ventnor’s arms. Up from the wall rose a jubilant shouting, was caught by the inner battlements, passed on to the crowded terraces.

“Take Kulun,” it was Drake, pistol drawn and whispering across to me. “I’ll handle Cherkis. And shoot straight.”

CHAPTER XXVI

THE VENGEANCE OF NORHALA

Norhala’s hand that had gone from my wrist dropped down again; the other fell upon Drake’s.

Kulun loosed his hood, let it fall about his shoulders.

He stepped forward, held out his arms to Norhala.

“A strong man!” she cried approvingly. “Hail—my bridegroom! But stay—stand back a moment. Stand beside that man for whom I came to Ruszark. I would see you together!”

Kulun’s face darkened. But Cherkis smiled with evil understanding, shrugged his shoulders and whispered to him. Sullenly Kulun stepped back. The ring of the archers lowered their bows; they leaped to their feet and stood aside to let him pass.

Quick as a serpent’s tongue a pyramid tipped tentacle flicked out beneath us. It darted through the broken circle of the bowmen.

It licked up Ruth and Ventnor and—Kulun!

Swiftly as it had swept forth it returned, coiled and dropped those two I loved at Norhala’s feet.

It flashed back on high with the scarlet length of Cherkis’s son sprawled along its angled end.

The great body of Cherkis seemed to wither.

Up from all the wall went a tempestuous sigh of horror.

Out rang the merciless chimes of Norhala’s laughter.

“Tchai!” she cried. “Tchai! Fat fool there. Tchai—you Cherkis! Toad whose wits have sickened with your years!

“Did you think to catch me, Norhala, in your filthy web? Princess! Queen! Empress of Earth! Ho—old fox I have outplayed and beaten, what now have you to trade with Norhala?”

Mouth sagging open, eyes glaring, the tyrant slowly raised his arms—a suppliant.

“You would have back the bridegroom you gave me?” she laughed. “Take him, then.”

Down swept the metal arm that held Kulun. The arm dropped Cherkis’s son at Cherkis’s feet; and as though Kulun had been a grape—it crushed him!

Before those who had seen could stir from their stupor the tentacle hovered over Cherkis, glaring down at the horror that had been his son.

It did not strike him—it drew him up to it as a magnet draws a pin.

And as the pin swings from the magnet when held suspended by the head, so swung the great body of Cherkis from the under side of the pyramid that held him. Hanging so he was carried toward us, came to a stop not ten feet from us—

Weird, weird beyond all telling was that scene—and would I had the power to make you who read see it as we did.

The animate, living Shape of metal on which we stood, with its forest of hammer-handed arms raised menacingly along its mile of spindled length; the great walls glistening with the armored hosts; the terraces of that fair and ancient city, their gardens and green groves and clustering red and yellow-roofed houses and temples and palaces; the swinging gross body of Cherkis in the clutch of the unseen grip of the tentacle, his grizzled hair touching the side of the pyramid that held him, his arms half outstretched, the gemmed cloak flapping like the wings of a jeweled bat, his white, malignant face in which the evil eyes were burning slits flaming hell’s own blackest hatred; and beyond the city, from which pulsed almost visibly a vast and hopeless horror, the watching column—and over all this the palely radiant white sky under whose light the encircling cliffs were tremendous stony palettes splashed with a hundred pigments.

Norhala’s laughter had ceased. Somberly she looked upon Cherkis, into the devil fires of his eyes.

“Cherkis!” she half whispered. “Now comes the end for you—and for all that is yours! But until the end’s end you shall see.”

The hanging body was thrust forward; was thrust up; was brought down upon its feet on the upper plane of the prostrate pyramid tipping the metal arm that held him. For an instant he struggled to escape; I think he meant to hurl himself down upon Norhala, to kill her before he himself was slain.

If so, after one frenzied effort he realized the futility, for with a certain dignity he drew himself upright, turned his eyes toward the city.

Over that city a dreadful silence hung. It was as though it cowered, hid its face, was afraid to breathe.

“The end!” murmured Norhala.

There was a quick trembling through the Metal Thing. Down swung its forest of sledges. Beneath the blow down fell the smitten walls, shattered, crumbling, and with it glittering like shining flies in a dust storm fell the armored men.

Through that mile-wide breach and up to the inner barrier I glimpsed confusion chaotic. And again I say it—they were no cowards, those men of Cherkis. From the inner battlements flew clouds of arrows, of huge stones—as uselessly as before.

Then out from the opened gates poured regiments of horsemen, brandishing javelins and great maces, and shouting fiercely as they drove down upon each end of the Metal Shape. Under cover of their attack I saw cloaked riders spurring their ponies across the plain to shelter of the cliff walls, to the chance of hiding places within them. Women and men of the rich, the powerful, flying for safety; after them ran and scattered through the fields of grain a multitude on foot.

The ends of the spindle drew back before the horsemen’s charge, broadening as they went—like the heads of monstrous cobras withdrawing into their hoods. Abruptly, with a lightning velocity, these broadenings expanded into immense lunettes, two tremendous curving and crablike claws. Their tips flung themselves past the racing troops; then like gigantic pincers began to contract.

Of no avail now was it for the horsemen to halt dragging their mounts on their haunches, or to turn to fly. The ends of the lunettes had met, the pincer tips had closed. The mounted men were trapped within half-mile-wide circles. And in upon man and horse their living walls marched. Within those enclosures of the doomed began a frantic milling—I shut my eyes—

There was a dreadful screaming of horses, a shrieking of men. Then silence.

Shuddering, I looked. Where the mounted men had been was—nothing.

Nothing? There were two great circular spaces whose floors were glistening, wetly red. Fragments of man or horse—there was none. They had been crushed into—what was it Norhala had promised—had been stamped into the rock beneath the feet of her—servants.

Sick, I looked away and stared at a Thing that writhed and undulated over the plain; a prodigious serpentine Shape of cubes and spheres linked and studded thick with the spikes of the pyramid. Through the fields, over the plain its coils flashed.

Playfully it sped and twisted among the fugitives, crushing them, tossing them aside broken, gliding over them. Some there were who hurled themselves upon it in impotent despair, some who knelt before it, praying. On rolled the metal convolutions, inexorable.

Within my vision’s range there were no more fugitives. Around a corner of the broken battlements raced the serpent Shape. Where it had writhed was now no waving grain, no trees, no green thing. There was only smooth rock upon which here and there red smears glistened wetly.

Afar there was a crying, in its wake a rumbling. It was the column, it came to me, at work upon the further battlements. As though the sound had been a signal the spindle trembled; up we were thrust another hundred feet or more. Back dropped the host of brandished arms, threaded themselves into the parent bulk.

Right and left of us the spindle split into scores of fissures. Between these fissures the Metal Things that made up each now dissociate and shapeless mass geysered; block and sphere and tetrahedron spike spun and swirled. There was an instant of formlessness.

Then right and left of us stood scores of giant, grotesque warriors. Their crests were fully fifty feet below our living platform. They stood upon six immense, columnar stilts. These sextuple legs supported a hundred feet above their bases a huge and globular body formed of clusters of the spheres. Out from each of these bodies that were at one and the same time trunks and heads, sprang half a score of colossal arms shaped like flails; like spike-studded girders, Titanic battle maces, Cyclopean sledges.

From legs and trunks and arms the tiny eyes of the Metal Hordes flashed, exulting.

There came from them, from the Thing we rode as well, a chorus of thin and eager wailings and pulsed through all that battle-line, a jubilant throbbing.

Then with a rhythmic, jocund stride they leaped upon the city.

Under the mallets of the smiting arms the inner battlements fell as under the hammers of a thousand metal Thors. Over their fragments and the armored men who fell with them strode the Things, grinding stone and man together as we passed.

All of the terraced city except the side hidden by the mount lay open to my gaze. In that brief moment of pause I saw crazed crowds battling in narrow streets, trampling over mounds of the fallen, surging over barricades of bodies, clawing and tearing at each other in their flight.

There was a wide, stepped street of gleaming white stone that climbed like an immense stairway straight up the slope to that broad plaza at the top where clustered the great temples and palaces—the Acropolis of the city. Into it the streets of the terraces flowed, each pouring out upon it a living torrent, tumultuous with tuliped, sparkling little waves, the gay coverings and the arms and armor of Ruszark’s desperate thousands seeking safety at the shrines of their gods.

Here great carven arches arose; there slender, exquisite towers capped with red gold—there was a street of colossal statues, another over which dozens of graceful, fretted bridges threw their spans from feathery billows of flowering trees; there were gardens gay with blossoms in which fountains sparkled, green groves; thousands upon thousands of bright multicolored pennants, banners, fluttered.

A fair, a lovely city was Cherkis’s stronghold of Ruszark.

Its beauty filled the eyes; out from it streamed the fragrance of its gardens—the voice of its agony was that of the souls in Dis.

The row of destroying shapes lengthened, each huge warrior of metal drawing far apart from its mates. They flexed their manifold arms, shadow boxed—grotesquely, dreadfully.

Down struck the flails, the sledges. Beneath the blows the buildings burst like eggshells, their fragments burying the throngs fighting for escape in the thoroughfares that threaded them. Over their ruins we moved.

Down and ever down crashed the awful sledges. And ever under them the city crumbled.

There was a spider Shape that crawled up the wide stairway hammering into the stone those who tried to flee before it.

Stride by stride the Destroying Things ate up the city.

I felt neither wrath nor pity. Through me beat a jubilant roaring pulse—as though I were a shouting corpuscle of the rushing hurricane, as though I were one of the hosts of smiting spirits of the bellowing typhoon.

Through this stole another thought—vague, unfamiliar, yet seemingly of truth’s own essence. Why, I wondered, had I never recognized this before? Why had I never known that these green forms called trees were but ugly, unsymmetrical excrescences? That these high projections of towers, these buildings were deformities?

That these four-pronged, moving little shapes that screamed and ran were—hideous?

They must be wiped out! All this misshapen, jumbled, inharmonious ugliness must be wiped out! It must be ground down to smooth unbroken planes, harmonious curvings, shapeliness—harmonies of arc and line and angle!

Something deep within me fought to speak—fought to tell me that this thought was not human thought, not my thought—that it was the reflected thought of the Metal Things!

It told me—and fiercely it struggled to make me realize what it was that it told. Its insistence was borne upon little despairing, rhythmic beatings—throbbings that were like the muffled sobbings of the drums of grief. Louder, closer came the throbbing; clearer with it my perception of the inhumanness of my thought.

The drum beat tapped at my humanity, became a dolorous knocking at my heart.

It was the sobbing of Cherkis!

The gross face was shrunken, the cheeks sagging in folds of woe; cruelty and wickedness were wiped from it; the evil in the eyes had been washed out by tears. Eyes streaming, bull throat and barrel chest racked by his sobbing, he watched the passing of his people and his city.

And relentlessly, coldly, Norhala watched him—as though loath to lose the faintest shadow of his agony.

Now I saw we were close to the top of the mount. Packed between us and the immense white structures that crowned it were thousands of the people. They fell on their knees before us, prayed to us. They tore at each other, striving to hide themselves from us in the mass that was themselves. They beat against the barred doors of the sanctuaries; they climbed the pillars; they swarmed over the golden roofs.

There was a moment of chaos—a chaos of which we were the heart. Then temple and palace cracked, burst; were shattered; fell. I caught glimpses of gleaming sculptures, glitterings of gold and of silver, flashing of gems, shimmering of gorgeous draperies—under them a weltering of men and women.

We closed down upon them—over them!

The dreadful sobbing ceased. I saw the head of Cherkis swing heavily upon a shoulder; the eyes closed.

The Destroying Things touched. Their flailing arms coiled back, withdrew into their bodies. They joined, forming for an instant a tremendous hollow pillar far down in whose center we stood. They parted; shifted in shape? rolled down the mount over the ruins like a widening wave—crushing into the stone all over which they passed.

Afar away I saw the gleaming serpent still at play—still writhing along, still obliterating the few score scattered fugitives that some way, somehow, had slipped by the Destroying Things.

We halted. For one long moment Norhala looked upon the drooping body of him upon whom she had let fall this mighty vengeance.

Then the metal arm that held Cherkis whirled. Thrown from it, the cloaked form flew like a great blue bat. It fell upon the flattened mound that had once been the proud crown of his city. A blue blot upon desolation the broken body of Cherkis lay.

A black speck appeared high in the sky; grew fast—the lammergeier.

“I have left carrion for you—after all!” cried Norhala.

With an ebon swirling of wings the vulture dropped beside the blue heap—thrust in it its beak.

CHAPTER XXVII

“THE DRUMS OF DESTINY”

Slowly we descended that mount of desolation; lingeringly, as though the brooding eyes of Norhala were not yet sated with destruction. Of human life, of green life, of life of any kind there was none.

Man and tree, woman and flower, babe and bud, palace, temple and home—Norhala had stamped flat. She had crushed them within the rock—even as she had promised.

The tremendous tragedy had absorbed my every faculty; I had had no time to think of my companions; I had forgotten them. Now in the painful surges of awakening realization, of full human understanding of that inhuman annihilation, I turned to them for strength. Faintly I wondered again at Ruth’s scantiness of garb, her more than half nudity; dwelt curiously upon the red brand across Ventnor’s forehead.

In his eyes and in Drake’s I saw reflected the horror I knew was in my own. But in the eyes of Ruth was none of this—sternly, coldly triumphant, indifferent to its piteousness as Norhala herself, she scanned the waste that less than an hour since had been a place of living beauty.

I felt a shock of repulsion. After all, those who had been destroyed so ruthlessly could not all have been wholly evil. Yet mother and blossoming maid, youth and oldster, all the pageant of humanity within the great walls were now but lines within the stone. According to their different lights, it came to me, there had been in Ruszark no greater number of the wicked than one could find in any great city of our own civilization.

From Norhala, of course, I looked for no perception of any of this. But from Ruth—

My reaction grew; the pity long withheld racing through me linked with a burning anger, a hatred for this woman who had been the directing soul of that catastrophe.

My gaze fell again upon the red brand. I saw that it was a deep indentation as though a thong had been twisted around Ventnor’s head biting the bone. There was dried blood on the edges, a double ring of swollen white flesh rimming the cincture. It was the mark of—torture!

“Martin,” I cried. “That ring? What did they do to you?”

“They waked me with that,” he answered quietly. “I suppose I ought to be grateful—although their intentions were not exactly—therapeutic—”

“They tortured him,” Ruth’s voice was tense, bitter; she spoke in Persian—for Norhala’s benefit I thought then, not guessing a deeper reason. “They tortured him. They gave him agony until he—returned. And they promised him other agonies that would make him pray long for death.

“And me—me”—she raised little clenched hands—“me they stripped like a slave. They led me through the city and the people mocked me. They took me before that swine Norhala has punished—and stripped me before him—like a slave. Before my eyes they tortured my brother. Norhala—they were evil, all evil! Norhala—you did well to slay them!”

She caught the woman’s hands, pressed close to her. Norhala gazed at her from great gray eyes in which the wrath was dying, into which the old tranquillity, the old serenity was flowing. And when she spoke the golden voice held more than returning echoes of the far-away, faint chimings.

“It is done,” she said. “And it was well done—sister. Now you and I shall dwell together in peace—sister. Or if there be those in the world from which you came that you would have slain, then you and I shall go forth with our companies and stamp them out—even as I did these.”

My heart stopped beating—for from the depths of Ruth’s eyes shining shadows were rising, wraiths answering Norhala’s calling; and, as they rose, steadily they drew life from the clear radiance summoning—drew closer to the semblance of that tranquil spirit which her vengeance had banished but that had now returned to its twin thrones of Norhala’s eyes.

And at last it was twin sister of Norhala who looked upon her from the face of Ruth!

The white arms of the woman encircled her; the glorious head bent over her; flaming tresses mingled with tender brown curls.

“Sister!” she whispered. “Little sister! These men you shall have as long as it pleases you—to do with as you will. Or if it is your wish they shall go back to their world and I will guard them to its gates.

“But you and I, little sister, will dwell together—in the vastnesses—in the peace. Shall it not be so?”

With no faltering, with no glance toward us three—lover, brother, old friend—Ruth crept closer to her, rested her head upon the virginal, royal breasts.

“It shall be so!” she murmured. “Sister—it shall be so. Norhala—I am tired. Norhala—I have seen enough of men.”

An ecstasy of tenderness, a flame of unearthly rapture, trembled over the woman’s wondrous face. Hungrily, defiantly, she pressed the girl to her; the stars in the lucid heavens of her eyes were soft and gentle and caressing.

“Ruth!” cried Drake—and sprang toward them. She paid no heed; and even as he leaped he was caught, whirled back against us.

“Wait,” said Ventnor, and caught him by the arm as wrathfully, blindedly, he strove against the force that held him. “Wait. No use—now.”

There was a curious understanding in his voice—a curious sympathy, too, in the patient, untroubled gaze that dwelt upon his sister and this weirdly exquisite woman who held her.

“Wait!” exclaimed Drake. “Wait—hell! The damned witch is stealing her away from us!”

Again he threw himself forward; recoiled as though swept back by an invisible arm; fell against us and was clasped and held by Ventnor. And as he struggled the Thing we rode halted. Like metal waves back into it rushed the enigmatic billows that had washed over the fragments of the city.

We were lifted; between us and the woman and girl a cleft appeared; it widened into a rift. It was as though Norhala had decreed it as a symbol of this her second victory—or had set it between us as a barrier.

Wider grew the rift. Save for the bridge of our voices it separated us from Ruth as though she stood upon another world.

Higher we rose; the three of us now upon the flat top of a tower upon whose counterpart fifty feet away and facing the homeward path, Ruth and Norhala stood with white arms interlaced.

The serpent shape flashed toward us; it vanished beneath, merging into the waiting Thing.

Then slowly the Thing began to move; quietly it glided to the chasm it had blasted in the cliff wall. The shadow of those walls fell upon us. As one we looked back; as one we searched out the patch of blue with the black blot at its breast.

We found it; then the precipices hid it. Silently we streamed through the chasm, through the canyon and the tunnel—speaking no word, Drake’s eyes fixed with bitter hatred upon Norhala, Ventnor brooding upon her always with that enigmatic sympathy. We passed between the walls of the further cleft; stood for an instant at the brink of the green forest.

There came to us as though from immeasurable distances, a faint, sustained thrumming—like the beating of countless muffled drums. The Thing that carried us trembled—the sound died away. The Thing quieted; it began its steady, effortless striding through the crowding trees—but now with none of that speed with which it had come, spurred forward by Norhala’s awakened hate.

Ventnor stirred; broke the silence. And now I saw how wasted was his body, how sharpened his face; almost ethereal; purged not only by suffering but by, it came to me, some strange knowledge.

“No use, Drake,” he said dreamily. “All this is now on the knees of the gods. And whether those gods are humanity’s or whether they are—Gods of Metal—I do not know.

“But this I do know—only one way or another can the balance fall; and if it be one way, then you and we shall have Ruth back. And if it falls the other way—then there will be little need for us to care. For man will be done!”

“Martin! What do you mean?”

“It is the crisis,” he answered. “We can do nothing, Goodwin—nothing. Whatever is to be steps forth now from the womb of Destiny.”

Again there came that distant rolling—louder, now. Again the Thing trembled.

“The drums,” whispered Ventnor. “The drums of destiny. What is it they are heralding? A new birth of Earth and the passing of man? A new child to whom shall be given dominion—nay, to whom has been given dominion? Or is it—taps—for Them?”

The drumming died as I listened—fearfully. About us was only the swishing, the sighing of the falling trees beneath the tread of the Thing. Motionless stood Norhala; and as motionless Ruth.

“Martin,” I cried once more, a dreadful doubt upon me. “Martin—what do you mean?”

“Whence did—They—come?” His voice was clear and calm, the eyes beneath the red brand clear and quiet, too. “Whence did They come—these Things that carry us? That strode like destroying angels over Cherkis’s city? Are they spawn of Earth—as we are? Or are they foster children—changelings from another star?

“These creatures that when many still are one—that when one still are many. Whence did They come? What are They?”

He looked down upon the cubes that held us; their hosts of tiny eyes shone up at him, enigmatically—as though they heard and understood.

“I do not forget,” he said. “At least not all do I forget of what I saw during that time when I seemed an atom outside space—as I told you, or think I told you, speaking with unthinkable effort through lips that seemed eternities away from me, the atom, who strove to open them.

“There were three—visions, revelations—I know not what to call them. And though each seemed equally real, of two of them, only one, I think, can be true; and of the third—that may some time be true but surely is not yet.”

Through the air came a louder drum roll—in it something ominous, something sinister. It swelled to a crescendo; abruptly ceased. And now I saw Norhala raise her head; listen.

“I saw a world, a vast world, Goodwin, marching stately through space. It was no globe—it was a world of many facets, of smooth and polished planes; a huge blue jewel world, dimly luminous; a crystal world cut out from Aether. A geometric thought of the Great Cause, of God, if you will, made material. It was airless, waterless, sunless.

“I seemed to draw closer to it. And then I saw that over every facet patterns were traced; gigantic symmetrical designs; mathematical hieroglyphs. In them I read unthinkable calculations, formulas of interwoven universes, arithmetical progressions of armies of stars, pandects of the motions of the suns. In the patterns was an appalling harmony—as though all the laws from those which guide the atom to those which direct the cosmos were there resolved into completeness—totalled.

“The faceted world was like a cosmic abacist, tallying as it marched the errors of the infinite.

“The patterned symbols constantly changed form. I drew nearer—the symbols were alive. They were, in untold numbers—These!”

He pointed to the Thing that bore us.

“I was swept back; looked again upon it from afar. And a fantastic notion came to me—fantasy it was, of course, yet built I know around a nucleus of strange truth. It was”—his tone was half whimsical, half apologetic—“it was that this jeweled world was ridden by some mathematical god, driving it through space, noting occasionally with amused tolerance the very bad arithmetic of another Deity the reverse of mathematical—a more or less haphazard Deity, the god, in fact, of us and the things we call living.

“It had no mission; it wasn’t at all out to do any reforming; it wasn’t in the least concerned in rectifying any of the inaccuracies of the Other. Only now and then it took note of the deplorable differences between the worlds it saw and its own impeccably ordered and tidy temple with its equally tidy servitors.

“Just an itinerant demiurge of supergeometry riding along through space on its perfectly summed-up world; master of all celestial mechanics; its people independent of all that complex chemistry and labor for equilibrium by which we live; needing neither air nor water, heeding neither heat nor cold; fed with the magnetism of interstellar space and stopping now and then to banquet off the energy of some great sun.”

A thrill of amazement passed through me; fantasy all this might be but—how, if so, had he gotten that last thought? He had not seen, as we had, the orgy in the Hall of the Cones, the prodigious feeding of the Metal Monster upon our sun.

“That passed,” he went on, unnoticing. “I saw vast caverns filled with the Things; working, growing, multiplying. In caverns of our Earth—the fruit of some unguessed womb? I do not know.

“But in those caverns, under countless orbs of many colored lights”—again the thrill of amaze shook me—“they grew. It came to me that they were reaching out toward sunlight and the open. They burst into it—into yellow, glowing sunlight. Ours? I do not know. And that picture passed.”

His voice deepened.

“There came a third vision. I saw our Earth—I knew, Goodwin, indisputably, unmistakably that it was our earth. But its rolling hills were leveled, its mountains were ground and shaped into cold and polished symbols—geometric, fashioned.

“The seas were fettered, gleaming like immense jewels in patterned settings of crystal shores. The very Polar ice was chiseled. On the ordered plains were traced the hieroglyphs of the faceted world. And on all Earth, Goodwin, there was no green life, no city, no trace of man. On this Earth that had been ours were only—These.

“Visioning!” he said. “Don’t think that I accept them in their entirety. Part truth, part illusion—the groping mind dazzled with light of unfamiliar truths and making pictures from half light and half shadow to help it understand.

“But still—some truth in them. How much I do not know. But this I do know—that last vision was of a cataclysm whose beginnings we face now—this very instant.”

The picture flashed behind my own eyes—of the walled city, its thronging people, its groves and gardens, its science and its art; of the Destroying Shapes trampling it flat—and then the dreadful, desolate mount.

And suddenly I saw that mount as Earth—the city as Earth’s cities—its gardens and groves as Earth’s fields and forests—and the vanished people of Cherkis seemed to expand into all humanity.

“But Martin,” I stammered, fighting against choking, intolerable terror, “there was something else. Something of the Keeper of the Cones and of our striking through the sun to destroy the Things—something of them being governed by the same laws that govern us and that if they broke them they must fall. A hope—a promise, that they would not conquer.”

“I remember,” he replied, “but not clearly. There was something—a shadow upon them, a menace. It was a shadow that seemed to be born of our own world—some threatening spirit of earth hovering over them.

“I cannot remember; it eludes me. Yet it is because I remember but a little of it that I say those drums may not be—taps—for us.”

As though his words had been a cue, the sounds again burst forth—no longer muffled nor faint. They roared; they seemed to pelt through air and drop upon us; they beat about our ears with thunderous tattoo like covered caverns drummed upon by Titans with trunks of great trees.

The drumming did not die; it grew louder, more vehement; defiant and deafening. Within the Thing under us a mighty pulse began to throb, accelerating rapidly to the rhythm of that clamorous roll.

I saw Norhala draw herself up, sharply; stand listening and alert. Under me, the throbbing turned to an uneasy churning, a ferment.

“Drums?” muttered Drake. “They’re no drums. It’s drum fire. It’s like a dozen Marnes, a dozen Verduns. But where could batteries like those come from?”

“Drums,” whispered Ventnor. “They are drums. The drums of Destiny!”

Louder the roaring grew. Now it was a tremendous rhythmic cannonading. The Thing halted. The tower that upheld Ruth and Norhala swayed, bent over the gap between us, touched the top on which we rode.

Gently the two were plucked up; swiftly they were set beside us.

Came a shrill, keen wailing—louder than ever I had heard before. There was an earthquake trembling; a maelstrom swirling in which we spun; a swift sinking.

The Thing split in two. Up before us rose a stupendous, stepped pyramid; little smaller it was than that which Cheops built to throw its shadows across holy Nile. Into it streamed, over it clicked, score upon score of cubes, building it higher and higher. It lurched forward—away from us.

From Norhala came a single cry—resonant, blaring like a wrathful, golden trumpet.

The speeding shape halted, hesitated; it seemed about to return. Crashed down upon us an abrupt crescendo of the distant drumming; peremptory, commanding. The shape darted forward; raced away crushing to straw the trees beneath it in a full quarter-mile-wide swath.

Great gray eyes wide, filled with incredulous wonder, stunned disbelief, Norhala for an instant faltered. Then out of her white throat, through her red lips pelted a tempest of staccato buglings.

Under them what was left of the Thing leaped, tore on. Norhala’s flaming hair crackled and streamed; about her body of milk and pearl—about Ruth’s creamy skin—a radiant nimbus began to glow.

In the distance I saw a sapphire spark; knew it for Norhala’s home. Not far from it now was the rushing pyramid—and it came to me that within that shape was strangely neither globe nor pyramid. Nor except for the trembling cubes that made the platform on which we stood, did the shrunken Thing carrying us hold any unit of the Metal Monster except its spheres and tetrahedrons—at least within its visible bulk.

The sapphire spark had grown to a glimmering azure marble. Steadily we gained upon the pyramid. Never for an instant ceased that scourging hail of notes from Norhala—never for an instant lessened the drumming clamor that seemed to try to smother them.

The sapphire marble became a sapphire ball, a great globe. I saw the Thing we sought to join lift itself into a prodigious pillar; the pillar’s base thrust forth stilts; upon them the Thing stepped over the blue dome of Norhala’s house.

The blue bubble was close; now it curved below us. Gently we were lifted down; were set before its portal. I looked up at the bulk that had carried us.

I had been right—built it was only of globe and pyramid; an inconceivably grotesque shape, it hung over us.

Throughout the towering Shape was awful movement; its units writhed within it. Then it was lost to sight in the mists through which the Thing we had pursued had gone.

In Norhala’s face as she watched it go was a dismay, a poignant uncertainty, that held in it something indescribably pitiful.

“I am afraid!” I heard her whisper.

She tightened her grasp upon dreaming Ruth; motioned us to go within. We passed, silently; behind us she came, followed by three of the great globes, by a pair of her tetrahedrons.

Beside a pile of the silken stuffs she halted. The girl’s eyes dwelt upon hers trustingly.

“I am afraid!” whispered Norhala again. “Afraid—for you!”

Tenderly she looked down upon her, the galaxies of stars in her eyes soft and tremulous.

“I am afraid, little sister,” she whispered for the third time. “Not yet can you go as I do—among the fires.” She hesitated. “Rest here until I return. I shall leave these to guard you and obey you.”

She motioned to the five shapes. They ranged themselves about Ruth. Norhala kissed her upon both brown eyes.

“Sleep till I return,” she murmured.

She swept from the chamber—with never a glance for us three. I heard a little wailing chorus without, fast dying into silence.

Spheres and pyramids twinkled at us, guarding the silken pile whereon Ruth lay asleep—like some enchanted princess.

Beat down upon the blue globe like hollow metal worlds, beaten and shrieking.

The drums of Destiny!

The drums of Doom!

Beating taps for the world of men?

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FRENZY OF RUTH

For many minutes we stood silent, in the shadowy chamber, listening, each absorbed in his own thoughts. The thunderous drumming was continuous; sometimes it faded into a background for clattering storms as of thousands of machine guns, thousands of riveters at work at once upon a thousand metal frameworks; sometimes it was nearly submerged beneath splitting crashes as of meeting meteors of hollow steel.

But always the drumming persisted, rhythmic, thunderous. Through it all Ruth slept, undisturbed, cheek pillowed in one rounded arm, the two great pyramids erect behind her, watchful; a globe at her feet, a globe at her head, the third sphere poised between her and us, and, like the pyramids—watchful.

What was happening out there—over the edge of the canyon, beyond the portal of the cliffs, behind the veils, in the Pit of the Metal Monster? What was the message of the roaring drums? What the rede of their clamorous runes?

Ventnor stepped by the sentinel globe, bent over the tranced girl. Sphere nor pointed pair stirred; only they watched him—like a palpable thing one felt their watchfulness. He listened to her heart, caught up a wrist, took note of her pulse of life. He drew a deep breath, stood upright, nodded reassuringly.

Abruptly Drake turned, walked out through the open portal, his strain and a very deep anxiety written plainly in deep lines that ran from nostrils to firm young mouth.

“Just went out to look for the pony,” he muttered when he returned. “It’s safe. I was afraid it had been stepped on. It’s getting dusk. There’s a big light down the canyon—over in the valley.”

Ventnor drew back past the globe; rejoined us.

The blue bower trembled under a gust of sound. Ruth stirred; her brows knitted; her hands clenched. The sphere that stood before her spun on its axis, swept up to the globe at her head, glided from it to the globe at her feet—as though whispering. Ruth moaned—her body bent upright, swayed rigidly. Her eyes opened; they stared through us as though upon some dreadful vision; and strangely was it as though she were seeing with another’s eyes, were reflecting another’s sufferings.

The globes at her feet and at her head swirled out, clustering against the third sphere—three weird shapes in silent consultation. On Ventnor’s face I saw pity—and a vast relief. With shocked amaze I realized that Ruth’s agony—for in agony she clearly was—was calling forth in him elation. He spoke—and I knew why.

“Norhala!” he whispered. “She is seeing with Norhala’s eyes—feeling what Norhala feels. It’s not going well with—That—out there. If we dared leave Ruth—could only, see—”

Ruth leaped to her feet; cried out—a golden bugling that might have been Norhala’s own wrathful trumpet notes. Instantly the two pyramids flamed open, became two gleaming stars that bathed her in violet radiance. Beneath their upper tips I saw the blasting ovals glitter—menacingly.

The girl glared at us—more brilliant grew the glittering ovals as though their lightnings trembled on their lips.

“Ruth!” called Ventnor softly.

A shadow softened the intolerable, hard brilliancy of the brown eyes. In them something struggled to arise, fighting its way to the surface like some drowning human thing.

It sank back—upon her face dropped a cloud of heartbreak, appalling woe; the despair of a soul that, having withdrawn all faith in its own kind to rest all faith, as it thought, on angels—sees that faith betrayed.

There stared upon us a stripped spirit, naked and hopeless and terrible.

Despairing, raging, she screamed once more. The central globe swam to her; it raised her upon its back; glided to the doorway. Upon it she stood poised like some youthful, anguished Victory—a Victory who faced and knew she faced destroying defeat; poised upon that enigmatic orb on bare slender feet, one sweet breast bare, hands upraised, virginally archaic, nothing about her of the Ruth we knew.

“Ruth!” cried Drake; despair as great as that upon her face was in his voice. He sprang before the globe that held her; barred its way.

For an instant the Thing paused—and in that instant the human soul of the girl rushed back.

“No!” she cried. “No!”

A weird call issued from the white lips—stumbling, uncertain, as though she who sent it forth herself wondered whence it sprang. Abruptly the angry stars closed. The three globes spun—doubting, puzzled! Again she called—now a tremulous, halting cadence. She was lifted; dropped gently to her feet.

For an instant the globes and pyramids whirled and danced before her—then sped away through the portal.

Ruth swayed, sobbing. Then as though drawn, she ran to the doorway, fled through it. As one we sprang after her. Rods ahead her white body flashed, speeding toward the Pit. Like fleet-footed Atalanta she fled—and far, far behind us was the blue bower, the misty barrier of the veils close, when Drake with a last desperate burst reached her side, gripped her. Down the two fell, rolling upon the smooth roadway. Silently she fought, biting, tearing at Drake, struggling to escape.

“Quick!” gasped Ventnor, stretching out to me an arm. “Cut off the sleeve. Quick!”

Unquestioningly, I drew my knife, ripped the garment at the shoulder. He snatched the sleeve, knelt at Ruth’s head; rapidly he crumpled an end, thrust it roughly into her mouth; tied it fast, gagging her.

“Hold her!” he ordered Drake; and with a sob of relief sprang up. The girl’s eyes blazed at him, filled with hate.

“Cut that other sleeve,” he said; and when I had done so, he knelt again, pinned Ruth down with a knee at her throat, turned her over and knotted her hands behind her. She ceased struggling; gently now he drew up the curly head; swung her upon her back.

“Hold her feet.” He nodded to Drake, who caught the slender bare ankles in his hands.

She lay there, helpless, being unable to use her hands or feet.

“Too little Ruth, and too much Norhala,” said Ventnor, looking up at me. “If she’d only thought to cry out! She could have brought a regiment of those Things down to blast us. And would—if she had thought. You don’t think that is Ruth, do you?”

He pointed to the pallid face glaring at him, the eyes from which cold fires flamed.

“No, you don’t!” He caught Drake by the shoulder, sent him spinning a dozen feet away. “Damn it, Drake—don’t you understand!”

For suddenly Ruth’s eyes softened; she had turned them on Dick pitifully, appealingly—and he had loosed her ankles, had leaned forward as though to draw away the band that covered her lips.

“Your gun,” whispered Ventnor to me; before I had moved he had snatched the automatic from my holster; had covered Drake with it.

“Drake,” he said, “stand where you are. If you take another step toward this girl I’ll shoot you—by God, I will!”

Drake halted, shocked amazement in his face; I myself felt resentful, wondering at his outburst.

“But it’s hurting her,” he muttered, Ruth’s eyes, soft and pleading, still dwelt upon him.

“Hurting her!” exclaimed Ventnor. “Man—she’s my sister! I know what I’m doing. Can’t you see? Can’t you see how little of Ruth is in that body there—how little of the girl you love? How or why I don’t know—but that it is so I do know. Drake—have you forgotten how Norhala beguiled Cherkis? I want my sister back. I’m helping her to get back. Now let be. I know what I’m doing. Look at her!”

We looked. In the face that glared up at Ventnor was nothing of Ruth—even as he had said. There was the same cold, awesome wrath that had rested upon Norhala’s as she watched Cherkis weep over the eating up of his city. Swiftly came a change—like the sudden smoothing out of the rushing waves of a hill-locked, wind-lashed lake.

The face was again Ruth’s face—and Ruth’s alone; the eyes were Ruth’s eyes—supplicating, adjuring.

“Ruth!” Ventnor cried. “While you can hear—am I not right?”

She nodded vigorously, sternly; she was lost, hidden once more.

“You see.” He turned to us grimly.

A shattering shaft of light flashed upon the veils; almost pierced them. An avalanche of sound passed high above us. Yet now I noted that where we stood the clamor was lessened, muffled. Of course, it came to me, it was the veils.

I wondered why—for whatever the quality of the radiant mists, their purpose certainly had to do with concentration of the magnetic flux. The deadening of the noise must be accidental, could have nothing to do with their actual use; for sound is an air vibration solely. No—it must be a secondary effect. The Metal Monster was as heedless of clamor as it was of heat or cold—

“We’ve got to see,” Ventnor broke the chain of thought. “We’ve got to get through and see what’s happening. Win or lose—we’ve got to know.”

“Cut off your sleeve, as I did,” he motioned to Drake. “Tie her ankles. We’ll carry her.”

Quickly it was done. Ruth’s light body swinging between brother and lover, we moved forward into the mists; we crept cautiously through their dead silences.

Passed out and fell back into them from a searing chaos of light, chaotic tumult.

From the slackened grip of Ventnor and Drake the body of Ruth dropped while we three stood blinded, deafened, fighting for recovery. Ruth twisted, rolled toward the brink; Ventnor threw himself upon her, held her fast.

Dragging her, crawling on our knees, we crept forward; we stopped when the thinning of the mists permitted us to see through them yet still interposed a curtaining which, though tenuous, dimmed the intolerable brilliancy that filled the Pit, muffled its din to a degree we could bear.

I peered through them—and nerve and muscle were locked in the grip of a paralyzing awe. I felt then as one would feel set close to warring regiments of stars, made witness to the death-throes of a universe, or swept through space and held above the whirling coils of Andromeda’s nebula to watch its birth agonies of nascent suns.

These are no figures of speech, no hyperboles—speck as our whole planet would be in Andromeda’s vast loom, pinprick as was the Pit to the cyclone craters of our own sun, within the cliff-cupped walls of the valley was a tangible, struggling living force akin to that which dwells within the nebula and the star; a cosmic spirit transcending all dimensions and thrusting its confines out into the infinite; a sentient emanation of the infinite itself.

Nor was its voice less unearthly. It used the shell of the earth valley for its trumpetings, its clangors—but as one hears in the murmurings of the fluted conch the great voice of ocean, its whispering and its roarings, so here in the clamorous shell of the Pit echoed the tremendous voices of that illimitable sea which laps the shores of the countless suns.

I looked upon a mighty whirlpool miles and miles wide. It whirled with surges whose racing crests were smiting incandescences; it was threaded with a spindrift of lightnings; it was trodden by dervish mists of molten flame thrust through with forests of lances of living light. It cast a cadent spray high to the heavens.

Over it the heavens glittered as though they were a shield held by fearful gods. Through the maelstrom staggered a mountainous bulk; a gleaming leviathan of pale blue metal caught in the swirling tide of some incredible volcano; a huge ark of metal breasting a deluge of flame.

And the drumming we heard as of hollow beaten metal worlds, the shouting tempests of cannonading stars, was the breaking of these incandescent crests, the falling of the lightning spindrift, the rhythmic impact of the lanced rays upon the glimmering mountain that reeled and trembled as they struck it.

The reeling mountain, the struggling leviathan, was—the City!

It was the mass of the Metal Monster itself, guarded by, stormed by, its own legions that though separate from it were still as much of it as were the cells that formed the skin of its walls, its carapace.

It was the Metal Monster tearing, rending, fighting for, battling against—itself.

Mile high as when I had first beheld it was the inexplicable body that held the great heart of the cones into which had been drawn the magnetic cataracts from our sun; that held too the smaller hearts of the lesser cones, the workshops, the birth chamber and manifold other mysteries unguessed and unseen. By a full fourth had its base been shrunken.

Ranged in double line along the side turned toward us were hundreds of dread forms—Shapes that in their intensity bore down upon, oppressed with a nightmare weight, the consciousness.

Rectangular, upon their outlines no spike of pyramid, no curve of globe showing, uncompromisingly ponderous, they upthrust. Upon the tops of the first rank were enormous masses, sledge shaped—like those metal fists that had battered down the walls of Cherkis’s city but to them as the human hand is to the paw of the dinosaur.

Conceive this—conceive these Shapes as animate and flexible; beating down with the prodigious mallets, smashing from side to side as though the tremendous pillars that held them were thousand jointed upright pistons; that as closely as I can present it in images of things we know is the picture of the Hammering Things.

Behind them stood a second row, high as they and as angular. From them extended scores of girdered arms. These were thickly studded with the flaming cruciform shapes, the opened cubes gleaming with their angry flares of reds and smoky yellows. From the tentacles of many swung immense shields like those which ringed the hall of the great cones.

And as the sledges beat, ever over their bent heads poured from the crosses a flood of crimson lightnings. Out of the concave depths of the shields whipped lashes of blinding flame. With ropes of fire they knouted the Things the sledges struck, the sullen crimson levins blasted.

Now I could see the Shapes that attacked. Grotesque; spined and tusked, spiked and antlered, wenned and breasted; as chimerically angled, cusped and cornute as though they were the superangled, supercornute gods of the cusped and angled gods of the Javanese, they strove against the sledge-headed and smiting, the multiarmed and blasting square towers.

High as them, as huge as they, incomparably fantastic, in dozens of shifting forms they battled.

More than a mile from the stumbling City stood ranged like sharpshooters a host of solid, bristling-legged towers. Upon their tops spun gigantic wheels. Out of the centers of these wheels shot the radiant lances, hosts of spears of intensest violet light. The radiance they volleyed was not continuous; it was broken, so that the javelin rays shot out in rhythmic flights, each flying fast upon the shafts of the others.

It was their impact that sent forth the thunderous drumming. They struck and splintered against the walls, dropping from them in great gouts of molten flame. It was as though before they broke they pierced the wall, the Monster’s side, bled fire.

With the crashing of broadsides of massed batteries the sledges smashed down upon the bristling attackers. Under the awful impact globes and pyramids were shattered into hundreds of fragments, rocket bursts of blue and azure and violet flame, flames rainbowed and irised.

The hammer ends split, flew apart, were scattered, were falling showers of sulphurous yellow and scarlet meteors. But ever other cubes swarmed out and repaired the broken smiting tips. And always where a tusked and cornute shape had been battered down, disintegrated, another arose as huge and as formidable pouring forth upon the squared tower its lightnings, tearing at it with colossal spiked and hooked claws, beating it with incredible spiked and globular fists that were like the clenched hands of some metal Atlas.

As the striving Shapes swayed and wrestled, gave way or thrust forward, staggered or fell, the bulk of the Monster stumbled and swayed, advanced and retreated—an unearthly motion wedded to an amorphous immensity that flooded the watching consciousness with a deathly nausea.

Unceasingly the hail of radiant lances poured from the spinning wheels, falling upon Towered Shapes and City’s wall alike. There arose a prodigious wailing, an unearthly thin screaming. About the bases of the defenders flashed blinding bursts of incandescence—like those which had heralded the flight of the Flying Thing dropping before Norhala’s house.

Unlike them they held no dazzling sapphire brilliancies; they were ochreous, suffused with raging vermilion. Nevertheless they were factors of that same inexplicable action—for from thousands of gushing lights leaped thousands of gigantic square pillars; unimaginable projectiles hurled from the flaming mouths of earth-hidden, titanic mortars.

They soared high, swerved and swooped upon the lance-throwers. Beneath their onslaught those chimerae tottered, I saw living projectiles and living target fuse where they met—melt and weld in jets of lightnings.

But not all. There were those that tore great gaps in the horned giants—wounds that instantly were healed with globes and pyramids seething out from the Cyclopean trunk. Ever the incredible projectiles flashed and flew as though from some inexhaustible store; ever uprose that prodigious barrage against the smiting rays.

Now to check them soared from the ranks of the besiegers clouds of countless horned dragons, immense cylinders of clustered cubes studded with the clinging tetrahedrons. They struck the cubed projectiles head on; aimed themselves to meet them.

Bristling dragon and hurtling pillar stuck and fused or burst with intolerable blazing. They fell—cube and sphere and pyramid—some half opened, some fully, in a rain of disks, of stars, huge flaming crosses; a storm of unimaginable pyrotechnics.

Now I became conscious that within the City—within the body of the Metal Monster—there raged a strife colossal as this without. From it came a vast volcanic roaring. Up from its top shot tortured flames, cascades and fountains of frenzied Things that looped and struggled, writhed over its edge, hurled themselves back; battling chimerae which against the glittering heavens traced luminous symbols of agony.

Shrilled a stronger wailing. Up from behind the ray hurling Towers shot hosts of globes. Thousands of palely azure, metal moons they soared; warrior moons charging in meteor rush and streaming with fluttering battle pennons of violet flame. High they flew; they curved over the mile high back of the Monster; they dropped upon it.

Arose to meet them immense columns of the cubes; battered against the spheres; swept them over and down into the depths. Hundreds fell, broken—but thousands held their place. I saw them twine about the pillars—writhing columns of interlaced cubes and globes straining like monstrous serpents while all along their coils the open disks and crosses smote with the scimitars of their lightnings.

In the wall of the City appeared a shining crack; from top to bottom it ran; it widened into a rift from which a flood of radiance gushed. Out of this rift poured a thousand-foot-high torrent of horned globes.

Only for an instant they flowed. The rift closed upon them, catching those still emerging in a colossal vise. It crunched them. Plain through the turmoil came a dreadful—bursting roar.

Down from the closing jaws of the vise dripped a stream of fragments that flashed and flickered—and died. And now in the wall was no trace of the breach.

A hurricane of radiant lances swept it. Under them a mile wide section of the living scarp split away; dropped like an avalanche. Its fall revealed great spaces, huge vaults and chambers filled with warring lightnings—out from them came roaring, bellowing thunders. Swiftly from each side of the gap a metal curtaining of the cubes joined. Again the wall was whole.

I turned my stunned gaze from the City—swept over the valley. Everywhere, in towers, in writhing coils, in whipping flails, in waves that smote and crashed, in countless forms and combinations the Metal Hordes battled. Here were pillars against which metal billows rushed and were broken; there were metal comets that crashed high above the mad turmoil.

From streaming silent veil to veil—north and south, east and west the Monster slew itself beneath its racing, flaming banners, the tempests of its lightnings.

The tortured hulk of the City lurched; it swept toward us. Before it blotted out from our eyes the Pit I saw that the crystal spans upon the river of jade were gone; that the wondrous jeweled ribbons of its banks were broken.

Closer came the reeling City.

I fumbled for my lenses, focussed them upon it. Now I saw that where the radiant lances struck they—killed the blocks blackened under them, became lustreless; the sparkling of the tiny eyes—went out; the metal carapaces crumbled.

Closer to the City—came the Monster; shuddering I lowered the glasses that it might not seem so near.

Down dropped the bristling Shapes that wrestled with the squared Towers. They rose again in a single monstrous wave that rushed to overwhelm them. Before they could strike the City swept closer; had hidden them from me.

Again I raised the glasses. They brought the metal scarp not fifty feet away—within it the hosts of tiny eyes glittered, no longer mocking nor malicious, but insane.

Nearer drew the Monster—nearer.

A thousand feet away it checked its movement, seemed to draw itself together. Then like the roar of a falling world that whole side facing us slid down to the valley’s floor.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE PASSING OF NORHALA

Hundreds of feet through must have been the fallen mass—within it who knows what chambers filled with mysteries? Yes, thousands of feet thick it must have been, for the debris of it splintered and lashed to the very edge of the ledge on which we crouched; heaped it with the dimming fragments of the bodies that had formed it.

We looked into a thousand vaults, a thousand spaces. There came another avalanche roaring—before us opened the crater of the cones.

Through the torn gap I saw them, clustering undisturbed about the base of that one slender, coroneted and star pointing spire, rising serene and unshaken from a hell of lightnings. But the shields that had rimmed the crater were gone.

Ventnor snatched the glasses from my hand, leveled and held them long to his eyes.

He thrust them back to me. “Look!”

Through the lenses the great hall leaped into full view apparently only a few yards away. It was a cauldron of chameleon flame. It seethed with the Hordes battling over the remaining walls and floor. But around the crystal base of the cones was an open zone into which none broke.

In that wide ring, girdling the shimmering fantasy like a circled sanctuary, were but three forms. One was the wondrous Disk of jeweled fires I have called the Metal Emperor; the second was the sullen fired cruciform of the Keeper.

The third was Norhala!

She stood at the side of that weird master of hers—or was it after all the servant? Between them and the Keeper’s planes gleamed the gigantic T-shaped tablet of countless rods which controlled the activities of the cones; that had controlled the shifting of the vanished shields; that manipulated too, perhaps, the energies of whatever similar but smaller cornute ganglia were scattered throughout the City and one of which we had beheld when the Emperor’s guards had blasted Ventnor.

Close was Norhala in the lenses—so close that almost, it seemed, I could reach out and touch her. The flaming hair streamed and billowed above her glorious head like a banner of molten floss of coppery gold; her face was a mask of wrath and despair; her great eyes blazed upon the Keeper; her exquisite body was bare, stripped of every shred of silken covering.

From streaming tresses to white feet an oval of pulsing, golden light nimbused her. Maiden Isis, virgin Astarte she stood there, held in the grip of the Disk—like a goddess betrayed and hopeless yet thirsting for vengeance.

For all their stillness, their immobility, it came to me that Emperor and Keeper were at grapple, locked in death grip; the realization was as definite as though, like Ruth, I thought with Norhala’s mind, saw with her eyes.

Clearly too it came to me that in this contest between the two was epitomized all the vast conflict that raged around them; that in it was fast ripening that fruit of destiny of which Ventnor had spoken, and that here in the Hall of the Cones would be settled—and soon—the fate not only of Disk and Cross, but it might be of humanity.

But with what unknown powers was that duel being fought? They cast no lightnings, they battled with no visible weapons. Only the great planes of the inverted cruciform Shape smoked and smoldered with their sullen flares of ochres and of scarlets; while over all the face of the Disk its cold and irised fires raced and shone, beating with a rhythm incredibly rapid; its core of incandescent ruby blazed, its sapphire ovals were cabochoned pools of living, lucent radiance.

There was a splitting roar that arose above all the clamor, deafening us even in the shelter of the silent veils. On each side of the crater whole masses of the City dropped away. Fleetingly I was aware of scores of smaller pits in which uprose lesser replicas of the Coned Mount, lesser reservoirs of the Monster’s force.

Neither the Emperor nor the Keeper moved, both seemingly indifferent to the catastrophe fast developing around them.

Now I strained forward to the very thinnest edge of the curtainings. For between the Disk and Cross began to form fine black mist. It was transparent. It seemed spun of minute translucent ebon corpuscles. It hung like a black shroud suspended by unseen hands. It shook and wavered now toward the Disk, now toward the Cross.

I sensed a keying up of force within the two; knew that each was striving to cast like a net that hanging mist upon the other.

Abruptly the Emperor flashed forth, blindingly. As though caught upon a blast, the black shroud flew toward the Keeper—enveloped it. And as the mist covered and clung I saw the sulphurous and crimson flares dim. They were snuffed out.

The Keeper fell!

Upon Norhala’s face flamed a wild triumph, banishing despair. The outstretched planes of the Cross swept up as though in torment. For an instant its fires flared and licked through the clinging blackness; it writhed half upright, threw itself forward, crashed down prostrate upon the enigmatic tablet which only its tentacles could manipulate.

From Norhala’s face the triumph fled. On its heels rushed stark, incredulous horror.

The Mount of Cones shuddered. From it came a single mighty throb of force—like a prodigious heart-beat. Under that pulse of power the Emperor staggered, spun—and spinning, swept Norhala from her feet, swung her close to its flashing rose.

A second throb pulsed from the cones, and mightier.

A spasm shook the Disk—a paroxysm.

Its fires faded; they flared out again, bathing the floating, unearthly figure of Norhala with their iridescences.

I saw her body writhe—as though it shared the agony of the Shape that held her. Her head twisted; the great eyes, pools of uncomprehending, unbelieving horror, stared into mine.

With a spasmodic, infinitely dreadful movement the Disk closed—

And closed upon her!

Norhala was gone—was shut within it. Crushed to the pent fires of its crystal heart.

I heard a sobbing, agonized choking—knew it was I who sobbed. Against me I felt Ruth’s body strike, bend in convulsive arc, drop inert.

The slender steeple of the cones drooped sending its faceted coronet shattering to the floor. The Mount melted. Beneath the flooding radiance sprawled Keeper and the great inert Globe that was the Goddess woman’s sepulcher.

The crater filled with the pallid luminescence. Faster and ever faster it poured down into the Pit. And from all the lesser craters of the smaller cones swept silent cataracts of the same pale radiance.

The City began to crumble—the Monster to fall.

Like pent-up waters rushing through a broken dam the gleaming deluge swept over the valley; gushing in steady torrents from the breaking mass. Over the valley fell a vast silence. The lightnings ceased. The Metal Hordes stood rigid, the shining flood lapping at their bases, rising swiftly ever higher.

Now from the sinking City swarmed multitudes of its weird luminaries.

Out they trooped, swirling from every rent and gap—orbs scarlet and sapphire, ruby orbs, orbs tuliped and irised—the jocund suns of the birth chamber and side by side with them hosts of the frozen, pale gilt, stiff rayed suns.

Thousands upon thousands they marched forth and poised themselves solemnly over all the Pit that now was a fast rising lake of yellow froth of sun flame.

They swept forth in squadrons, in companies, in regiments, those mysterious orbs. They floated over all the valley; they separated and swung motionless above it as though they were mysterious multiple souls of fire brooding over the dying shell that had held them.

Beneath, thrusting up from the lambent lake like grotesque towers of some drowned fantastic metropolis, the great Shapes stood, black against its glowing.

What had been the City—that which had been the bulk of the Monster—was now only a vast and shapeless hill from which streamed the silent torrents of that released, unknown force which, concentrate and bound, had been the cones.

As though it was the Monster’s shining life-blood it poured, raising ever higher in its swift flooding the level radiant lake.

Lower and lower sank the immense bulk; squattered and spread, ever lowering—about its helpless, patient crouching something ineffably piteous, something indescribably, cosmically tragic.

Abruptly the watching orbs shook under a hail of sparkling atoms streaming down from the glittering sky; raining upon the lambent lake. So thick they fell that now the brooding luminaries were dim aureoles within them.

From the Pit came a blinding, insupportable brilliancy. From every rigid tower gleamed out jeweled fires; their clinging units opened into blazing star and disk and cross. The City was a hill of living gems over which flowed torrents of pale molten gold.

The Pit blazed.

There followed an appalling tensity; a prodigious gathering of force; a panic stirring concentration of energy. Thicker fell the clouds of sparkling atoms—higher rose the yellow flood.

Ventnor cried out. I could not hear him, but I read his purpose—and so did Drake. Up on his broad shoulders he swung Ruth as though she had been a child. Back through the throbbing veils we ran; passed out of them.

“Back!” shouted Ventnor. “Back as far as you can!”

On we raced; we reached the gateway of the cliffs; we dashed on and on—up the shining roadway toward the blue globe now a scant mile before us; ran sobbing, panting—ran, we knew, for our lives.

Out of the Pit came a sound—I cannot describe it!

An unutterably desolate, dreadful wail of despair, it shuddered past us like the groaning of a broken-hearted star—anguished and awesome.

It died. There rushed upon us a sea of that incredible loneliness, that longing for extinction that had assailed us in the haunted hollow where first we had seen Norhala. But its billows were resistless, invincible. Beneath them we fell; were torn by desire for swift death.

Dimly, through fainting eyes, I saw a dazzling brilliancy fill the sky; heard with dying ears a chaotic, blasting roar. A wave of air thicker than water caught us up, hurled us hundreds of yards forward. It dropped us; in its wake rushed another wave, withering, scorching.

It raced over us. Scorching though it was, within its heat was energizing, revivifying force; something that slew the deadly despair and fed the fading fires of life.

I staggered to my feet; looked back. The veils were gone. The precipice walled gateway they had curtained was filled with a Plutonic glare as though it opened into the incandescent heart of a volcano.

Ventnor clutched my shoulder, spun me around. He pointed to the sapphire house, started to run to it. Far ahead I saw Drake, the body of the girl clasped to his breast. The heat became blasting, insupportable; my lungs burned.

Over the sky above the canyon streaked a serpentine chain of lightnings. A sudden cyclonic gust swept the cleft, whirling us like leaves toward the Pit.

I threw myself upon my face, clutching at the smooth rock. A volley of thunder burst—but not the thunder of the Metal Monster or its Hordes; no, the bellowing of the levins of our own earth.

And the wind was cold; it bathed the burning skin; laved the fevered lungs.

Again the sky was split by the lightnings. And roaring down from it in solid sheets came the rain.

From the Pit arose a hissing as though within it raged Babylonian Tiamat, Mother of Chaos, serpent dweller in the void; Midgard-snake of the ancient Norse holding in her coils the world.

Buffeted by wind, beaten down by rain, clinging to each other like drowning men, Ventnor and I pushed on to the elfin globe. The light was dying fast. By it we saw Drake pass within the portal with his burden. The light became embers; it went out; blackness clasped us. Guided by the lightnings, we beat our way to the door; passed through it.

In the electric glare we saw Drake bending over Ruth. In it I saw a slide draw over the open portal through which shrieked the wind, streamed the rain.

As though its crystal panel was moved by unseen, gentle hands, the portal closed; the tempest shut out.

We dropped beside Ruth upon a pile of silken stuffs—awed, marveling, trembling with pity and—thanksgiving.

For we knew—each of us knew with an absolute definiteness as we crouched there among the racing, dancing black and silver shadows with which the lightnings filled the blue globe—that the Metal Monster was dead.

Slain by itself!

CHAPTER XXX

BURNED OUT

Ruth sighed and stirred. By the glare of the lightnings, now almost continuous, we saw that her rigidity, and in fact all the puzzling cataleptic symptoms, had disappeared. Her limbs relaxed, her skin faintly flushed, she lay in deepest but natural slumber undisturbed by the incessant cannonading of the thunder under which the walls of the blue globe shuddered. Ventnor passed through the curtains of the central hall; he returned with one of Norhala’s cloaks; covered the girl with it.

An overwhelming sleepiness took possession of me, a weariness ineffable. Nerve and brain and muscle suddenly relaxed, went slack and numb. Without a struggle I surrendered to an overpowering stupor and cradled deep in its heart ceased consciously to be.

When my eyes unclosed the chamber of the moonstone walls was filled with a silvery, crepuscular light. I heard the murmuring and laughing of running water, the play, I lazily realized, of the fountained pool.

I lay for whole minutes unthinking, luxuriating in the sense of tension gone and of security; lay steeped in the aftermath of complete rest. Memory flooded me.

Quietly I sat up; Ruth still slept, breathing peacefully beneath the cloak, one white arm stretched over the shoulder of Drake—as though in her sleep she had drawn close to him.

At her feet lay Ventnor, as deep in slumber as they. I arose and tip-toed over to the closed door.

Searching, I found its key; a cupped indentation upon which I pressed.

The crystalline panel slipped back; it was moved, I suppose, by some mechanism of counterbalances responding to the weight of the hand. It must have been some vibration of the thunder which had loosed that mechanism and had closed the panel upon the heels of our entrance—so I thought—then seeing again in memory that uncanny, deliberate shutting was not at all convinced that it had been the thunder.

I looked out. How many hours the sun had been up there was no means of knowing.

The sky was low and slaty gray; a fine rain was falling. I stepped out.

The garden of Norhala was a wreckage of uprooted and splintered trees and torn masses of what had been blossoming verdure.

The gateway of the precipices beyond which lay the Pit was hidden in the webs of the rain. Long I gazed down the canyon—and longingly; striving to picture what the Pit now held; eager to read the riddles of the night.

There came from the valley no sound, no movement, no light.

I reentered the blue globe and paused on the threshold—staring into the wide and wondering eyes of Ruth bolt upright in her silken bed with Norhala’s cloak clutched to her chin like a suddenly awakened and startled child. As she glimpsed me she stretched out her hand. Drake, wide awake on the instant, leaped to his feet, his hand jumping to his pistol.

“Dick!” called Ruth, her voice tremulous, sweet.

He swung about, looked deep into the clear and fearless brown eyes in which—with leaping heart I realized it—was throned only that spirit which was Ruth’s and Ruth’s alone; Ruth’s clear unshadowed eyes glad and shy and soft with love.

“Dick!” she whispered, and held soft arms out to him. The cloak fell from her. He swung her up. Their lips met.

Upon them, embraced, the wakening eyes of Ventnor dwelt; they filled with relief and joy, nor was there lacking in them a certain amusement.

She drew from Drake’s arms, pushed him from her, stood for a moment shakily, with covered eyes.

“Ruth,” called Ventnor softly.

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh, Martin—I forgot—” She ran to him, held him tight, face hidden in his breast. His hand rested on the clustering brown curls, tenderly.

“Martin.” She raised her face to him. “Martin, it’s gone! I’m—me again! All me! What happened? Where’s Norhala?”

I started. Did she not know? Of course, lying bound as she had in the vanished veils, she could have seen nothing of the stupendous tragedy enacted beyond them—but had not Ventnor said that possessed by the inexplicable obsession evoked by the weird woman Ruth had seen with her eyes, thought with her mind?

And had there not been evidence that in her body had been echoed the torments of Norhala’s? Had she forgotten? I started to speak—was checked by Ventnor’s swift, warning glance.

“She’s—over in the Pit,” he answered her quietly. “But do you remember nothing, little sister?”

“There’s something in my mind that’s been rubbed out,” she replied. “I remember the City of Cherkis—and your torture, Martin—and my torture—”

Her face whitened; Ventnor’s brow contracted anxiously. I knew for what he watched—but Ruth’s shamed face was all human; on it was no shadow nor trace of that alien soul which so few hours since had threatened us.

“Yes,” she nodded, “I remember that. And I remember how Norhala repaid them. I remember that I was glad, fiercely glad, and then I was tired—so tired. And then—I come to the rubbed-out place,” she ended perplexedly.

Deliberately, almost banally had I not realized his purpose, he changed the subject. He held her from him at arm’s length.

“Ruth!” he exclaimed, half mockingly, half reprovingly. “Don’t you think your morning negligee is just a little scanty even for this Godforsaken corner of the earth?”

Lips parted in sheer astonishment, she looked at him. Then her eyes dropped to her bare feet, her dimpled knees. She clasped her arms across her breasts; rosy red turned all her fair skin.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Oh!” And hid from Drake and me behind the tall figure of her brother.

I walked over to the pile of silken stuffs, took the cloak and tossed it to her. Ventnor pointed to the saddlebags.

“You’ve another outfit there, Ruth,” he said. “We’ll take a turn through the place. Call us when you’re ready. We’ll get something to eat and go see what’s happening—out there.”

She nodded. We passed through the curtains and out of the hall into the chamber that had been Norhala’s. There we halted, Drake eyeing Martin with a certain embarrassment. The older man thrust out his hand to him.

“I knew it, Drake,” he said. “Ruth told me all about it when Cherkis had us. And I’m very glad. It’s time she was having a home of her own and not running around the lost places with me. I’ll miss her—miss her damnably, of course. But I’m glad, boy—glad!”

There was a little silence while each looked deep into each other’s hearts. Then Ventnor dropped Dick’s hand.

“And that’s all of that,” he said. “The problem before us is—how are we going to get back home?”

“The—thing—is dead.” I spoke from an absolute conviction that surprised me, based as it was upon no really tangible, known evidence.

“I think so,” he said. “No—I know so. Yet even if we can pass over its body, how can we climb out of its lair? That slide down which we rode with Norhala is unclimbable. The walls are unscalable. And there is that chasm—she—spanned for us. How can we cross that? The tunnel to the ruins was sealed. There remains of possible roads the way through the forest to what was the City of Cherkis. Frankly I am loathe to take it.

“I am not at all sure that all the armored men were slain—that some few may not have escaped and be lurking there. It would be short shrift for us if we fell into their hands now.”

“And I’m not sure of that,” objected Drake. “I think their pep and push must be pretty thoroughly knocked out—if any do remain. I think if they saw us coming they’d beat it so fast that they’d smoke with the friction.”

“There’s something to that,” Ventnor smiled. “Still I’m not keen on taking the chance. At any rate, the first thing to do is to see what happened down there in the Pit. Maybe we’ll have some other idea after that.”

“I know what happened there,” announced Drake, surprisingly. “It was a short circuit!”

We gaped at him, mystified.

“Burned out!” said Drake. “Every damned one of them—burned out. What were they, after all? A lot of living dynamos. Dynamotors—rather. And all of a sudden they had too much juice turned on. Bang went their insulations—whatever they were.

“Bang went they. Burned out—short circuited. I don’t pretend to know why or how. Nonsense! I do know. The cones were some kind of immensely concentrated force—electric, magnetic; either or both or more. I myself believe that they were probably solid—in a way of speaking—coronium.

“If about twenty of the greatest scientists the world has ever known are right, coronium is—well, call it curdled energy. The electric potentiality of Niagara in a pin point of dust of yellow fire. All right—they or it lost control. Every pin point swelled out into a Niagara. And as it did so, it expanded from a controlled dust dot to an uncontrolled cataract—in other words, its energy was unleashed and undammed.

“Very well—what followed? What had to follow? Every living battery of block and globe and spike was supercharged and went—blooey. The valley must have been some sweet little volcano while that short circuiting was going on. All right—let’s go down and see what it did to your unclimbable slide and unscalable walls, Ventnor. I’m not sure we won’t be able to get out that way.”

“Come on; everything’s ready,” Ruth was calling; her summoning blocked any objection we might have raised to Drake’s argument.

It was no dryad, no distressed pagan clad maid we saw as we passed back into the room of the pool. In knickerbockers and short skirt, prim and self-possessed, rebellious curls held severely in place by close-fitting cap and slender feet stoutly shod, Ruth hovered over the steaming kettle swung above the spirit lamp.

And she was very silent as we hastily broke fast. Nor when we had finished did she go to Drake. She clung close to her brother and beside him as we set forth down the roadway, through the rain, toward the ledge between the cliffs where the veils had shimmered.

Hotter and hotter it grew as we advanced; the air steamed like a Turkish bath. The mists clustered so thickly that at last we groped forward step by step, holding to each other.

“No use,” gasped Ventnor. “We couldn’t see. We’ll have to turn back.”

“Burned out!” said Dick. “Didn’t I tell you? The whole valley was a volcano. And with that deluge falling in it—why wouldn’t there be a fog? It’s why there is a fog. We’ll have to wait until it clears.”

We trudged back to the blue globe.

All that day the rain fell. Throughout the few remaining hours of daylight we wandered over the house of Norhala, examining its most interesting contents, or sat theorizing, discussing all phases of the phenomena we had witnessed.

We told Ruth what had occurred after she had thrown in her lot with Norhala; and of the enigmatic struggle between the glorious Disk and the sullenly flaming Thing I have called the Keeper.

We told her of the entombment of Norhala.

When she heard that she wept.

“She was sweet,” she sobbed; “she was lovely. And she was beautiful. Dearly she loved me. I know she loved me. Oh, I know that we and ours and that which was hers could not share the world together. But it comes to me that Earth would have been far less poisonous with those that were Norhala’s than it is with us and ours!”

Weeping, she passed through the curtainings, going we knew to Norhala’s chamber.

It was a strange thing indeed that she had said, I thought, watching her go. That the garden of the world would be far less poisonous blossoming with those Things of wedded crystal and metal and magnetic fires than fertile as now with us of flesh and blood and bone. To me came appreciations of their harmonies, and mingled with those perceptions were others of humanity—disharmonious, incoordinate, ever struggling, ever striving to destroy itself—

There was a plaintive whinnying at the open door. A long and hairy face, a pair of patient, inquiring eyes looked in. It was a pony. For a moment it regarded us—and then trotted trustfully through; ambled up to us; poked its head against my side.

It had been ridden by one of the Persians whom Ruth had killed, for under it, slipped from the girths, a saddle dangled. And its owner must have been kind to it—we knew that from its lack of fear for us. Driven by the tempest of the night before, it had been led back by instinct to the protection of man.

“Some luck!” breathed Drake.

He busied himself with the pony, stripping away the hanging saddle, grooming it.

CHAPTER XXXI

SLAG!

That night we slept well. Awakening, we found that the storm had grown violent again; the wind roaring and the rain falling in such volume that it was impossible to make our way to the Pit. Twice, as a matter of fact, we tried; but the smooth roadway was a torrent, and, drenched even through our oils to the skin, we at last abandoned the attempt. Ruth and Drake drifted away together among the other chambers of the globe; they were absorbed in themselves, and we did not thrust ourselves upon them. All the day the torrents fell.

We sat down that night to what was well-nigh the last of Ventnor’s stores. Seemingly Ruth had forgotten Norhala; at least, she spoke no more of her.

“Martin,” she said, “can’t we start back tomorrow? I want to get away. I want to get back to our own world.”

“As soon as the storm ceases, Ruth,” he answered, “we start. Little sister—I too want you to get back quickly.”

The next morning the storm had gone. We awakened soon after dawn into clear and brilliant light. We had a silent and hurried breakfast. The saddlebags were packed and strapped upon the pony. Within them were what we could carry of souvenirs from Norhala’s home—a suit of lacquered armor, a pair of cloaks and sandals, the jeweled combs. Ruth and Drake at the side of the pony, Ventnor and I leading, we set forth toward the Pit.

“We’ll probably have to come back, Walter,” he said. “I don’t believe the place is passable.”

I pointed—we were then just over the threshold of the elfin globe. Where the veils had stretched between the perpendicular pillars of the cliffs was now a wide and ragged-edged opening.

The roadway which had run so smoothly through the scarps was blocked by a thousand foot barrier. Over it, beyond it, I could see through the crystalline clarity of the air the opposing walls.

“We can climb it,” Ventnor said. We passed on and reached the base of the barrier. An avalanche had dropped there; the barricade was the debris of the torn cliffs, their dust, their pebbles, their boulders. We toiled up; we reached the crest; we looked down upon the valley.

When first we had seen it we had gazed upon a sea of radiance pierced with lanced forests, swept with gigantic gonfalons of flame; we had seen it emptied of its fiery mists—a vast slate covered with the chirography of a mathematical god; we had seen it filled with the symboling of the Metal Hordes and dominated by the colossal integrate hieroglyph of the living City; we had seen it as a radiant lake over which brooded weird suns; a lake of yellow flame froth upon which a sparkling hail fell, within which reared islanded towers and a drowning mount running with cataracts of sun fires; here we had watched a goddess woman, a being half of earth, half of the unknown immured within a living tomb—a dying tomb—of flaming mysteries; had seen a cross-shaped metal Satan, a sullen flaming crystal Judas betray—itself.

Where we had peered into the unfathomable, had glimpsed the infinite, had heard and had seen the inexplicable, now was—

Slag!

The amethystine ring from which had been streamed the circling veils was cracked and blackened; like a seam of coal it had stretched around the Pit—a crown of mourning. The veils were gone. The floor of the valley was fissured and blackened; its patterns, its writings burned away. As far as we could see stretched a sea of slag—coal black, vitrified and dead.

Here and there black hillocks sprawled; huge pillars arose, bent and twisted as though they had been jettings of lava cooled into rigidity before they could sink back or break. These shapes clustered most thickly around an immense calcified mound. They were what were left of the battling Hordes, and the mound was what had been the Metal Monster.

Somewhere there were the ashes of Norhala, sealed by fire in the urn of the Metal Emperor!

From side to side of the Pit, in broken beaches and waves and hummocks, in blackened, distorted tusks and warped towerings, reaching with hideous pathos in thousands of forms toward the charred mound, was only slag.

From rifts and hollows still filled with water little wreaths of steam drifted. In those futile wraiths of vapor was all that remained of the might of the Metal Monster.

Catastrophe I had expected, tragedy I knew we would find—but I had looked for nothing so filled with the abomination of desolation, so frightful as was this.

“Burned out!” muttered Drake. “Short-circuited and burned out! Like a dynamo—like an electric light!”

“Destiny!” said Ventnor. “Destiny! Not yet was the hour struck for man to relinquish his sovereignty over the world. Destiny!”

We began to pick our way down the heaped debris and out upon the plain. For all that day and part of another we searched for an opening out of the Pit.

Everywhere was the incredible calcification. The surfaces that had been the smooth metallic carapaces with the tiny eyes deep within them, crumbled beneath the lightest blow. Not long would it be until under wind and rain they dissolved into dust and mud.

And it grew increasingly obvious that Drake’s theory of the destruction was correct. The Monster had been one prodigious magnet—or, rather, a prodigious dynamo. By magnetism, by electricity, it had lived and had been activated.

Whatever the force of which the cones were built and that I have likened to energy-made material, it was certainly akin to electromagnetic energies.

When, in the cataclysm, that force was diffused there had been created a magnetic field of incredible intensity; had been concentrated an electric charge of inconceivable magnitude.

Discharging, it had blasted the Monster—short-circuited it, and burned it out.

But what was it that had led up to the cataclysm? What was it that had turned the Metal Monster upon itself? What disharmony had crept into that supernal order to set in motion the machinery of disintegration?

We could only conjecture. The cruciform Shape I have named the Keeper was the agent of destruction—of that there could be no doubt. In the enigmatic organism which while many still was one and which, retaining its integrity as a whole could dissociate manifold parts yet still as a whole maintain an unseen contact and direction over them through miles of space, the Keeper had its place, its work, its duties.

So too had that wondrous Disk whose visible and concentrate power, whose manifest leadership, had made us name it emperor.

And had not Norhala called the Disk—Ruler?

What were the responsibilities of these twain to the mass of the organism of which they were such important units? What were the laws they administered, the laws they must obey?

Something certainly of that mysterious law which Maeterlinck has called the spirit of the Hive—and something infinitely greater, like that which governs the swarming sun bees of Hercules’ clustered orbs.

Had there evolved within the Keeper of the Cones—guardian and engineer as it seemed to have been—ambition?

Had there risen within it a determination to wrest power from the Disk, to take its place as Ruler?

How else explain that conflict I had sensed when the Emperor had plucked Drake and me from the Keeper’s grip that night following the orgy of the feeding?

How else explain that duel in the shattered Hall of the Cones whose end had been the signal for the final cataclysm?

How else explain the alinement of the cubes behind the Keeper against the globes and pyramids remaining loyal to the will of the Disk?

We discussed this, Ventnor and I.

“This world,” he mused, “is a place of struggle. Air and sea and land and all things that dwell within and on them must battle for life. Earth not Mars is the planet of war. I have a theory”—he hesitated—“that the magnetic currents which are the nerve force of this globe of ours were what fed the Metal Things.

“Within those currents is the spirit of earth. And always they have been supercharged with strife, with hatreds, warfare. Were these drawn in by the Things as they fed? Did it happen that the Keeper became—tuned—to them? That it absorbed and responded to them, growing even more sensitive to these forces—until it reflected humanity?”

“Who knows, Goodwin—who can tell?”

Enigma, unless the explanations I have hazarded be accepted, must remain that monstrous suicide. Enigma, save for inconclusive theories, must remain the question of the Monster’s origin.

If answers there were, they were lost forever in the slag we trod.

It was afternoon of the second day that we found a rift in the blasted wall of the valley. We decided to try it. We had not dared to take the road by which Norhala had led us into the City.

The giant slide was broken and climbable. But even if we could have passed safely through the tunnel of the abyss there still was left the chasm over which we could have thrown no bridge. And if we could have bridged it still at that road’s end was the cliff whose shaft Norhala had sealed with her lightnings.

So we entered the rift.

Of our wanderings thereafter I need not write. From the rift we emerged into a maze of the valleys, and after a month in that wilderness, living upon what game we could shoot, we found a road that led us into Gyantse.

In another six weeks we were home in America.

My story is finished.

There in the Trans-Himalayan wilderness is the blue globe that was the weird home of the lightning witch—and looking back I feel now she could not have been all woman.

There is the vast pit with its coronet of fantastic peaks; its symboled, calcined floor and the crumbling body of the inexplicable, the incredible Thing which, alive, was the shadow of extinction, annihilation, hovering to hurl itself upon humanity. That shadow is gone; that pall withdrawn.

But to me—to each of us four who saw those phenomena—their lesson remains, ineradicable; giving a new strength and purpose to us, teaching us a new humility.

For in that vast crucible of life of which we are so small a part, what other Shapes may even now be rising to submerge us?

In that vast reservoir of force that is the mystery-filled infinite through which we roll, what other shadows may be speeding upon us?

Who knows?

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 1]

Originally published in 1864.

CHAPTER 1

MY UNCLE MAKES A GREAT DISCOVERY

Looking back to all that has occurred to me since that eventful day, I am scarcely able to believe in the reality of my adventures. They were truly so wonderful that even now I am bewildered when I think of them.

My uncle was a German, having married my mother’s sister, an Englishwoman. Being very much attached to his fatherless nephew, he invited me to study under him in his home in the fatherland. This home was in a large town, and my uncle a professor of philosophy, chemistry, geology, mineralogy, and many other ologies.

One day, after passing some hours in the laboratory—my uncle being absent at the time—I suddenly felt the necessity of renovating the tissues—i.e., I was hungry, and was about to rouse up our old French cook, when my uncle, Professor Von Hardwigg, suddenly opened the street door, and came rushing upstairs.

Now Professor Hardwigg, my worthy uncle, is by no means a bad sort of man; he is, however, choleric and original. To bear with him means to obey; and scarcely had his heavy feet resounded within our joint domicile than he shouted for me to attend upon him.

“Harry—Harry—Harry—”

I hastened to obey, but before I could reach his room, jumping three steps at a time, he was stamping his right foot upon the landing.

“Harry!” he cried, in a frantic tone, “are you coming up?”

Now to tell the truth, at that moment I was far more interested in the question as to what was to constitute our dinner than in any problem of science; to me soup was more interesting than soda, an omelette more tempting than arithmetic, and an artichoke of ten times more value than any amount of asbestos.

But my uncle was not a man to be kept waiting; so adjourning therefore all minor questions, I presented myself before him.

He was a very learned man. Now most persons in this category supply themselves with information, as peddlers do with goods, for the benefit of others, and lay up stores in order to diffuse them abroad for the benefit of society in general. Not so my excellent uncle, Professor Hardwigg; he studied, he consumed the midnight oil, he pored over heavy tomes, and digested huge quartos and folios in order to keep the knowledge acquired to himself.

There was a reason, and it may be regarded as a good one, why my uncle objected to display his learning more than was absolutely necessary: he stammered; and when intent upon explaining the phenomena of the heavens, was apt to find himself at fault, and allude in such a vague way to sun, moon, and stars that few were able to comprehend his meaning. To tell the honest truth, when the right word would not come, it was generally replaced by a very powerful adjective.

In connection with the sciences there are many almost unpronounceable names—names very much resembling those of Welsh villages; and my uncle being very fond of using them, his habit of stammering was not thereby improved. In fact, there were periods in his discourse when he would finally give up and swallow his discomfiture—in a glass of water.

As I said, my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, was a very learned man; and I now add a most kind relative. I was bound to him by the double ties of affection and interest. I took deep interest in all his doings, and hoped some day to be almost as learned myself. It was a rare thing for me to be absent from his lectures. Like him, I preferred mineralogy to all the other sciences. My anxiety was to gain real knowledge of the earth. Geology and mineralogy were to us the sole objects of life, and in connection with these studies many a fair specimen of stone, chalk, or metal did we break with our hammers.

Steel rods, loadstones, glass pipes, and bottles of various acids were oftener before us than our meals. My uncle Hardwigg was once known to classify six hundred different geological specimens by their weight, hardness, fusibility, sound, taste, and smell.

He corresponded with all the great, learned, and scientific men of the age. I was, therefore, in constant communication with, at all events the letters of, Sir Humphry Davy, Captain Franklin, and other great men.

But before I state the subject on which my uncle wished to confer with me, I must say a word about his personal appearance. Alas! my readers will see a very different portrait of him at a future time, after he has gone through the fearful adventures yet to be related.

My uncle was fifty years old; tall, thin, and wiry. Large spectacles hid, to a certain extent, his vast, round, and goggle eyes, while his nose was irreverently compared to a thin file. So much indeed did it resemble that useful article, that a compass was said in his presence to have made considerable N (Nasal) deviation.

The truth being told, however, the only article really attracted to my uncle’s nose was tobacco.

Another peculiarity of his was, that he always stepped a yard at a time, clenched his fists as if he were going to hit you, and was, when in one of his peculiar humors, very far from a pleasant companion.

It is further necessary to observe that he lived in a very nice house, in that very nice street, the Konigstrasse at Hamburg. Though lying in the centre of a town, it was perfectly rural in its aspect—half wood, half bricks, with old-fashioned gables—one of the few old houses spared by the great fire of 1842.

When I say a nice house, I mean a handsome house—old, tottering, and not exactly comfortable to English notions: a house a little off the perpendicular and inclined to fall into the neighboring canal; exactly the house for a wandering artist to depict; all the more that you could scarcely see it for ivy and a magnificent old tree which grew over the door.

My uncle was rich; his house was his own property, while he had a considerable private income. To my notion the best part of his possessions was his god-daughter, Gretchen. And the old cook, the young lady, the Professor and I were the sole inhabitants.

I loved mineralogy, I loved geology. To me there was nothing like pebbles—and if my uncle had been in a little less of a fury, we should have been the happiest of families. To prove the excellent Hardwigg’s impatience, I solemnly declare that when the flowers in the drawing-room pots began to grow, he rose every morning at four o’clock to make them grow quicker by pulling the leaves!

Having described my uncle, I will now give an account of our interview.

He received me in his study; a perfect museum, containing every natural curiosity that can well be imagined—minerals, however, predominating. Every one was familiar to me, having been catalogued by my own hand. My uncle, apparently oblivious of the fact that he had summoned me to his presence, was absorbed in a book. He was particularly fond of early editions, tall copies, and unique works.

“Wonderful!” he cried, tapping his forehead. “Wonderful—wonderful!”

It was one of those yellow-leaved volumes now rarely found on stalls, and to me it appeared to possess but little value. My uncle, however, was in raptures.

He admired its binding, the clearness of its characters, the ease with which it opened in his hand, and repeated aloud, half a dozen times, that it was very, very old.

To my fancy he was making a great fuss about nothing, but it was not my province to say so. On the contrary, I professed considerable interest in the subject, and asked him what it was about.

“It is the Heims-Kringla of Snorre Tarleson,” he said, “the celebrated Icelandic author of the twelfth century—it is a true and correct account of the Norwegian princes who reigned in Iceland.”

My next question related to the language in which it was written. I hoped at all events it was translated into German. My uncle was indignant at the very thought, and declared he wouldn’t give a penny for a translation. His delight was to have found the original work in the Icelandic tongue, which he declared to be one of the most magnificent and yet simple idioms in the world—while at the same time its grammatical combinations were the most varied known to students.

“About as easy as German?” was my insidious remark.

My uncle shrugged his shoulders.

“The letters at all events,” I said, “are rather difficult of comprehension.”

“It is a Runic manuscript, the language of the original population of Iceland, invented by Odin himself,” cried my uncle, angry at my ignorance.

I was about to venture upon some misplaced joke on the subject, when a small scrap of parchment fell out of the leaves. Like a hungry man snatching at a morsel of bread the Professor seized it. It was about five inches by three and was scrawled over in the most extraordinary fashion.

The lines shown here are an exact facsimile of what was written on the venerable piece of parchment—and have wonderful importance, as they induced my uncle to undertake the most wonderful series of adventures which ever fell to the lot of human beings.

My uncle looked keenly at the document for some moments and then declared that it was Runic. The letters were similar to those in the book, but then what did they mean? This was exactly what I wanted to know.

Now as I had a strong conviction that the Runic alphabet and dialect were simply an invention to mystify poor human nature, I was delighted to find that my uncle knew as much about the matter as I did—which was nothing. At all events the tremulous motion of his fingers made me think so.

“And yet,” he muttered to himself, “it is old Icelandic, I am sure of it.”

And my uncle ought to have known, for he was a perfect polyglot dictionary in himself. He did not pretend, like a certain learned pundit, to speak the two thousand languages and four thousand idioms made use of in different parts of the globe, but he did know all the more important ones.

It is a matter of great doubt to me now, to what violent measures my uncle’s impetuosity might have led him, had not the clock struck two, and our old French cook called out to let us know that dinner was on the table.

“Bother the dinner!” cried my uncle.

But as I was hungry, I sallied forth to the dining room, where I took up my usual quarters. Out of politeness I waited three minutes, but no sign of my uncle, the Professor. I was surprised. He was not usually so blind to the pleasure of a good dinner. It was the acme of German luxury—parsley soup, a ham omelette with sorrel trimmings, an oyster of veal stewed with prunes, delicious fruit, and sparkling Moselle. For the sake of poring over this musty old piece of parchment, my uncle forbore to share our meal. To satisfy my conscience, I ate for both.

The old cook and housekeeper was nearly out of her mind. After taking so much trouble, to find her master not appear at dinner was to her a sad disappointment—which, as she occasionally watched the havoc I was making on the viands, became also alarm. If my uncle were to come to table after all?

Suddenly, just as I had consumed the last apple and drunk the last glass of wine, a terrible voice was heard at no great distance. It was my uncle roaring for me to come to him. I made very nearly one leap of it—so loud, so fierce was his tone.

CHAPTER 2

THE MYSTERIOUS PARCHMENT

“I declare,” cried my uncle, striking the table fiercely with his fist, “I declare to you it is Runic—and contains some wonderful secret, which I must get at, at any price.”

I was about to reply when he stopped me.

“Sit down,” he said, quite fiercely, “and write to my dictation.”

I obeyed.

“I will substitute,” he said, “a letter of our alphabet for that of the Runic: we will then see what that will produce. Now, begin and make no mistakes.”

The dictation commenced with the following incomprehensible result:

mm.rnlls esruel seecJde
sgtssmf unteief niedrke
kt,samn atrateS Saodrrn
emtnaeI nuaect rrilSa

Atvaar .nscrc ieaabs
ccdrmi eeutul frantu
dt,iac oseibo KediiY

Scarcely giving me time to finish, my uncle snatched the document from my hands and examined it with the most rapt and deep attention.

“I should like to know what it means,” he said, after a long period.

I certainly could not tell him, nor did he expect me to—his conversation being uniformly answered by himself.

“I declare it puts me in mind of a cryptograph,” he cried, “unless, indeed, the letters have been written without any real meaning; and yet why take so much trouble? Who knows but I may be on the verge of some great discovery?”

My candid opinion was that it was all rubbish! But this opinion I kept carefully to myself, as my uncle’s choler was not pleasant to bear. All this time he was comparing the book with the parchment.

“The manuscript volume and the smaller document are written in different hands,” he said, “the cryptograph is of much later date than the book; there is an undoubted proof of the correctness of my surmise. [An irrefragable proof I took it to be.] The first letter is a double M, which was only added to the Icelandic language in the twelfth century—this makes the parchment two hundred years posterior to the volume.”

The circumstances appeared very probable and very logical, but it was all surmise to me.

“To me it appears probable that this sentence was written by some owner of the book. Now who was the owner, is the next important question. Perhaps by great good luck it may be written somewhere in the volume.”

With these words Professor Hardwigg took off his spectacles, and, taking a powerful magnifying glass, examined the book carefully.

On the fly leaf was what appeared to be a blot of ink, but on examination proved to be a line of writing almost effaced by time. This was what he sought; and, after some considerable time, he made out these letters:

“Arne Saknussemm!” he cried in a joyous and triumphant tone, “that is not only an Icelandic name, but of a learned professor of the sixteenth century, a celebrated alchemist.”

I bowed as a sign of respect.

“These alchemists,” he continued, “Avicenna, Bacon, Lully, Paracelsus, were the true, the only learned men of the day. They made surprising discoveries. May not this Saknussemm, nephew mine, have hidden on this bit of parchment some astounding invention? I believe the cryptograph to have a profound meaning—which I must make out.”

My uncle walked about the room in a state of excitement almost impossible to describe.

“It may be so, sir,” I timidly observed, “but why conceal it from posterity, if it be a useful, a worthy discovery?”

“Why—how should I know? Did not Galileo make a secret of his discoveries in connection with Saturn? But we shall see. Until I discover the meaning of this sentence I will neither eat nor sleep.”

“My dear uncle—” I began.

“Nor you neither,” he added.

It was lucky I had taken double allowance that day.

“In the first place,” he continued, “there must be a clue to the meaning. If we could find that, the rest would be easy enough.”

I began seriously to reflect. The prospect of going without food and sleep was not a promising one, so I determined to do my best to solve the mystery. My uncle, meanwhile, went on with his soliloquy.

“The way to discover it is easy enough. In this document there are one hundred and thirty-two letters, giving seventy-nine consonants to fifty-three vowels. This is about the proportion found in most southern languages, the idioms of the north being much more rich in consonants. We may confidently predict, therefore, that we have to deal with a southern dialect.”

Nothing could be more logical.

“Now,” said Professor Hardwigg, “to trace the particular language.”

“As Shakespeare says, ‘that is the question,’” was my rather satirical reply.

“This man Saknussemm,” he continued, “was a very learned man: now as he did not write in the language of his birthplace, he probably, like most learned men of the sixteenth century, wrote in Latin. If, however, I prove wrong in this guess, we must try Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, and even Hebrew. My own opinion, though, is decidedly in favor of Latin.”

This proposition startled me. Latin was my favorite study, and it seemed sacrilege to believe this gibberish to belong to the country of Virgil.

“Barbarous Latin, in all probability,” continued my uncle, “but still Latin.”

“Very probably,” I replied, not to contradict him.

“Let us see into the matter,” continued my uncle; “here you see we have a series of one hundred and thirty-two letters, apparently thrown pell-mell upon paper, without method or organization. There are words which are composed wholly of consonants, such as mm.rnlls, others which are nearly all vowels, the fifth, for instance, which is unteief, and one of the last oseibo. This appears an extraordinary combination. Probably we shall find that the phrase is arranged according to some mathematical plan. No doubt a certain sentence has been written out and then jumbled up—some plan to which some figure is the clue. Now, Harry, to show your English wit—what is that figure?”

I could give him no hint. My thoughts were indeed far away. While he was speaking I had caught sight of the portrait of my cousin Gretchen, and was wondering when she would return.

We were affianced, and loved one another very sincerely. But my uncle, who never thought even of such sublunary matters, knew nothing of this. Without noticing my abstraction, the Professor began reading the puzzling cryptograph all sorts of ways, according to some theory of his own. Presently, rousing my wandering attention, he dictated one precious attempt to me.

I mildly handed it over to him. It read as follows:

mmessunkaSenrA.icefdoK.segnittamurtn
ecertserrette,rotaivsadua,ednecsedsadne
lacartniiilrJsiratracSarbmutabiledmek
meretarcsilucoYsleffenSnI.

I could scarcely keep from laughing, while my uncle, on the contrary, got in a towering passion, struck the table with his fist, darted out of the room, out of the house, and then taking to his heels was presently lost to sight.

CHAPTER 3

AN ASTOUNDING DISCOVERY

“What is the matter?” cried the cook, entering the room; “when will master have his dinner?”

“Never.”

“And, his supper?”

“I don’t know. He says he will eat no more, neither shall I. My uncle has determined to fast and make me fast until he makes out this abominable inscription,” I replied.

“You will be starved to death,” she said.

I was very much of the same opinion, but not liking to say so, sent her away, and began some of my usual work of classification. But try as I might, nothing could keep me from thinking alternately of the stupid manuscript and of the pretty Gretchen.

Several times I thought of going out, but my uncle would have been angry at my absence. At the end of an hour, my allotted task was done. How to pass the time? I began by lighting my pipe. Like all other students, I delighted in tobacco; and, seating myself in the great armchair, I began to think.

Where was my uncle? I could easily imagine him tearing along some solitary road, gesticulating, talking to himself, cutting the air with his cane, and still thinking of the absurd bit of hieroglyphics. Would he hit upon some clue? Would he come home in better humor? While these thoughts were passing through my brain, I mechanically took up the execrable puzzle and tried every imaginable way of grouping the letters. I put them together by twos, by threes, fours, and fives—in vain. Nothing intelligible came out, except that the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth made ice in English; the eighty-fourth, eighty-fifth, and eighty-sixth, the word sir; then at last I seemed to find the Latin words rota, mutabile, ira, nec, atra.

“Ha! there seems to be some truth in my uncle’s notion,” thought I.

Then again I seemed to find the word luco, which means sacred wood. Then in the third line I appeared to make out labiled, a perfect Hebrew word, and at the last the syllables mere, are, mer, which were French.

It was enough to drive one mad. Four different idioms in this absurd phrase. What connection could there be between ice, sir, anger, cruel, sacred wood, changing, mother, are, and sea? The first and the last might, in a sentence connected with Iceland, mean sea of ice. But what of the rest of this monstrous cryptograph?

I was, in fact, fighting against an insurmountable difficulty; my brain was almost on fire; my eyes were strained with staring at the parchment; the whole absurd collection of letters appeared to dance before my vision in a number of black little groups. My mind was possessed with temporary hallucination—I was stifling. I wanted air. Mechanically I fanned myself with the document, of which now I saw the back and then the front.

Imagine my surprise when glancing at the back of the wearisome puzzle, the ink having gone through, I clearly made out Latin words, and among others craterem and terrestre.

I had discovered the secret!

It came upon me like a flash of lightning. I had got the clue. All you had to do to understand the document was to read it backwards. All the ingenious ideas of the Professor were realized; he had dictated it rightly to me; by a mere accident I had discovered what he so much desired.

My delight, my emotion may be imagined, my eyes were dazzled and I trembled so that at first I could make nothing of it. One look, however, would tell me all I wished to know.

“Let me read,” I said to myself, after drawing a long breath.

I spread it before me on the table, I passed my finger over each letter, I spelled it through; in my excitement I read it out.

What horror and stupefaction took possession of my soul. I was like a man who had received a knock-down blow. Was it possible that I really read the terrible secret, and it had really been accomplished! A man had dared to do—what?

No living being should ever know.

“Never!” cried I, jumping up. “Never shall my uncle be made aware of the dread secret. He would be quite capable of undertaking the terrible journey. Nothing would check him, nothing stop him. Worse, he would compel me to accompany him, and we should be lost forever. But no; such folly and madness cannot be allowed.”

I was almost beside myself with rage and fury.

“My worthy uncle is already nearly mad,” I cried aloud. “This would finish him. By some accident he may make the discovery; in which case, we are both lost. Perish the fearful secret—let the flames forever bury it in oblivion.”

I snatched up book and parchment, and was about to cast them into the fire, when the door opened and my uncle entered.

I had scarcely time to put down the wretched documents before my uncle was by my side. He was profoundly absorbed. His thoughts were evidently bent on the terrible parchment. Some new combination had probably struck him while taking his walk.

He seated himself in his armchair, and with a pen began to make an algebraical calculation. I watched him with anxious eyes. My flesh crawled as it became probable that he would discover the secret.

His combinations I knew now were useless, I having discovered the one only clue. For three mortal hours he continued without speaking a word, without raising his head, scratching, rewriting, calculating over and over again. I knew that in time he must hit upon the right phrase. The letters of every alphabet have only a certain number of combinations. But then years might elapse before he would arrive at the correct solution.

Still time went on; night came, the sounds in the streets ceased—and still my uncle went on, not even answering our worthy cook when she called us to supper.

I did not dare to leave him, so waved her away, and at last fell asleep on the sofa.

When I awoke my uncle was still at work. His red eyes, his pallid countenance, his matted hair, his feverish hands, his hectically flushed cheeks, showed how terrible had been his struggle with the impossible, and what fearful fatigue he had undergone during that long sleepless night. It made me quite ill to look at him. Though he was rather severe with me, I loved him, and my heart ached at his sufferings. He was so overcome by one idea that he could not even get in a passion! All his energies were focused on one point. And I knew that by speaking one little word all this suffering would cease. I could not speak it.

My heart was, nevertheless, inclining towards him. Why, then, did I remain silent? In the interest of my uncle himself.

“Nothing shall make me speak,” I muttered. “He will want to follow in the footsteps of the other! I know him well. His imagination is a perfect volcano, and to make discoveries in the interests of geology he would sacrifice his life. I will therefore be silent and strictly keep the secret I have discovered. To reveal it would be suicidal. He would not only rush, himself, to destruction, but drag me with him.”

I crossed my arms, looked another way and smoked—resolved never to speak.

When our cook wanted to go out to market, or on any other errand, she found the front door locked and the key taken away. Was this done purposely or not? Surely Professor Hardwigg did not intend the old woman and myself to become martyrs to his obstinate will. Were we to be starved to death? A frightful recollection came to my mind. Once we had fed on bits and scraps for a week while he sorted some curiosities. It gave me the cramp even to think of it!

I wanted my breakfast, and I saw no way of getting it. Still my resolution held good. I would starve rather than yield. But the cook began to take me seriously to task. What was to be done? She could not go out; and I dared not.

My uncle continued counting and writing; his imagination seemed to have translated him to the skies. He neither thought of eating nor drinking. In this way twelve o’clock came round. I was hungry, and there was nothing in the house. The cook had eaten the last bit of bread. This could not go on. It did, however, until two, when my sensations were terrible. After all, I began to think the document very absurd. Perhaps it might only be a gigantic hoax. Besides, some means would surely be found to keep my uncle back from attempting any such absurd expedition. On the other hand, if he did attempt anything so quixotic, I should not be compelled to accompany him. Another line of reasoning partially decided me. Very likely he would make the discovery himself when I should have suffered starvation for nothing. Under the influence of hunger this reasoning appeared admirable. I determined to tell all.

The question now arose as to how it was to be done. I was still dwelling on the thought, when he rose and put on his hat.

What! go out and lock us in? Never!

“Uncle,” I began.

He did not appear even to hear me.

“Professor Hardwigg,” I cried.

“What,” he retorted, “did you speak?”

“How about the key?”

“What key—the key of the door?”

“No—of these horrible hieroglyphics?”

He looked at me from under his spectacles, and started at the odd expression of my face. Rushing forward, he clutched me by the arm and keenly examined my countenance. His very look was an interrogation.

I simply nodded.

With an incredulous shrug of the shoulders, he turned upon his heel. Undoubtedly he thought I had gone mad.

“I have made a very important discovery.”

His eyes flashed with excitement. His hand was lifted in a menacing attitude. For a moment neither of us spoke. It is hard to say which was most excited.

“You don’t mean to say that you have any idea of the meaning of the scrawl?”

“I do,” was my desperate reply. “Look at the sentence as dictated by you.”

“Well, but it means nothing,” was the angry answer.

“Nothing if you read from left to right, but mark, if from right to left—”

“Backwards!” cried my uncle, in wild amazement. “Oh most cunning Saknussemm; and I to be such a blockhead!”

He snatched up the document, gazed at it with haggard eye, and read it out as I had done.

It read as follows:

In Sneffels Yoculis craterem kem delibat umbra Scartaris Julii intra calendas descende, audas viator, et terrestre centrum attinges. Kod feci. Arne Saknussemm

Which dog Latin being translated, reads as follows:

Descend into the crater of Yocul of Sneffels, which the shade of Scartaris caresses, before the kalends of July, audacious traveler, and you will reach the centre of the earth. I did it. ARNE SAKNUSSEMM

My uncle leaped three feet from the ground with joy. He looked radiant and handsome. He rushed about the room wild with delight and satisfaction. He knocked over tables and chairs. He threw his books about until at last, utterly exhausted, he fell into his armchair.

“What’s o’clock?” he asked.

“About three.”

“My dinner does not seem to have done me much good,” he observed. “Let me have something to eat. We can then start at once. Get my portmanteau ready.”

“What for?”

“And your own,” he continued. “We start at once.”

My horror may be conceived. I resolved however to show no fear. Scientific reasons were the only ones likely to influence my uncle. Now, there were many against this terrible journey. The very idea of going down to the centre of the earth was simply absurd. I determined therefore to argue the point after dinner.

My uncle’s rage was now directed against the cook for having no dinner ready. My explanation however satisfied him, and having gotten the key, she soon contrived to get sufficient to satisfy our voracious appetites.

During the repast my uncle was rather gay than otherwise. He made some of those peculiar jokes which belong exclusively to the learned. As soon, however, as dessert was over, he called me to his study. We each took a chair on opposite sides of the table.

“Henry,” he said, in a soft and winning voice; “I have always believed you ingenious, and you have rendered me a service never to be forgotten. Without you, this great, this wondrous discovery would never have been made. It is my duty, therefore, to insist on your sharing the glory.”

“He is in a good humor,” thought I; “I’ll soon let him know my opinion of glory.”

“In the first place,” he continued, “you must keep the whole affair a profound secret. There is no more envious race of men than scientific discoverers. Many would start on the same journey. At all events, we will be the first in the field.”

“I doubt your having many competitors,” was my reply.

“A man of real scientific acquirements would be delighted at the chance. We should find a perfect stream of pilgrims on the traces of Arne Saknussemm, if this document were once made public.”

“But, my dear sir, is not this paper very likely to be a hoax?” I urged.

“The book in which we find it is sufficient proof of its authenticity,” he replied.

“I thoroughly allow that the celebrated Professor wrote the lines, but only, I believe, as a kind of mystification,” was my answer.

Scarcely were the words out of my mouth, when I was sorry I had uttered them. My uncle looked at me with a dark and gloomy scowl, and I began to be alarmed for the results of our conversation. His mood soon changed, however, and a smile took the place of a frown.

“We shall see,” he remarked, with decisive emphasis.

“But see, what is all this about Yocul, and Sneffels, and this Scartaris? I have never heard anything about them.”

“The very point to which I am coming. I lately received from my friend Augustus Peterman, of Leipzig, a map. Take down the third atlas from the second shelf, series Z, plate 4.”

I rose, went to the shelf, and presently returned with the volume indicated.

“This,” said my uncle, “is one of the best maps of Iceland. I believe it will settle all your doubts, difficulties and objections.”

With a grim hope to the contrary, I stooped over the map.

CHAPTER 4

WE START ON THE JOURNEY

“You see, the whole island is composed of volcanoes,” said the Professor, “and remark carefully that they all bear the name of Yocul. The word is Icelandic, and means a glacier. In most of the lofty mountains of that region the volcanic eruptions come forth from icebound caverns. Hence the name applied to every volcano on this extraordinary island.”

“But what does this word Sneffels mean?”

To this question I expected no rational answer. I was mistaken.

“Follow my finger to the western coast of Iceland, there you see Reykjavik, its capital. Follow the direction of one of its innumerable fjords or arms of the sea, and what do you see below the sixty-fifth degree of latitude?”

“A peninsula—very like a thighbone in shape.”

“And in the centre of it—?”

“A mountain.”

“Well, that’s Sneffels.”

I had nothing to say.

“That is Sneffels—a mountain about five thousand feet in height, one of the most remarkable in the whole island, and certainly doomed to be the most celebrated in the world, for through its crater we shall reach the centre of the earth.”

“Impossible!” cried I, startled and shocked at the thought.

“Why impossible?” said Professor Hardwigg in his severest tones.

“Because its crater is choked with lava, by burning rocks—by infinite dangers.”

“But if it be extinct?”

“That would make a difference.”

“Of course it would. There are about three hundred volcanoes on the whole surface of the globe—but the greater number are extinct. Of these Sneffels is one. No eruption has occurred since 1219—in fact it has ceased to be a volcano at all.”

After this what more could I say? Yes,—I thought of another objection.

“But what is all this about Scartaris and the kalends of July—?”

My uncle reflected deeply. Presently he gave forth the result of his reflections in a sententious tone. “What appears obscure to you, to me is light. This very phrase shows how particular Saknussemm is in his directions. The Sneffels mountain has many craters. He is careful therefore to point the exact one which is the highway into the Interior of the Earth. He lets us know, for this purpose, that about the end of the month of June, the shadow of Mount Scartaris falls upon the one crater. There can be no doubt about the matter.”

My uncle had an answer for everything.

“I accept all your explanations” I said, “and Saknussemm is right. He found out the entrance to the bowels of the earth, he has indicated correctly, but that he or anyone else ever followed up the discovery is madness to suppose.”

“Why so, young man?”

“All scientific teaching, theoretical and practical, shows it to be impossible.”

“I care nothing for theories,” retorted my uncle.

“But is it not well-known that heat increases one degree for every seventy feet you descend into the earth? Which gives a fine idea of the central heat. All the matters which compose the globe are in a state of incandescence; even gold, platinum, and the hardest rocks are in a state of fusion. What would become of us?”

“Don’t be alarmed at the heat, my boy.”

“How so?”

“Neither you nor anybody else know anything about the real state of the earth’s interior. All modern experiments tend to explode the older theories. Were any such heat to exist, the upper crust of the earth would be shattered to atoms, and the world would be at an end.”

A long, learned and not uninteresting discussion followed, which ended in this wise:

“I do not believe in the dangers and difficulties which you, Henry, seem to multiply; and the only way to learn, is like Arne Saknussemm, to go and see.”

“Well,” cried I, overcome at last, “let us go and see. Though how we can do that in the dark is another mystery.”

“Fear nothing. We shall overcome these, and many other difficulties. Besides, as we approach the centre, I expect to find it luminous—”

“Nothing is impossible.”

“And now that we have come to a thorough understanding, not a word to any living soul. Our success depends on secrecy and dispatch.”

Thus ended our memorable conference, which roused a perfect fever in me. Leaving my uncle, I went forth like one possessed. Reaching the banks of the Elbe, I began to think. Was all I had heard really and truly possible? Was my uncle in his sober senses, and could the interior of the earth be reached? Was I the victim of a madman, or was he a discoverer of rare courage and grandeur of conception?

To a certain extent I was anxious to be off. I was afraid my enthusiasm would cool. I determined to pack up at once. At the end of an hour, however, on my way home, I found that my feelings had very much changed.

“I’m all abroad,” I cried; “’tis a nightmare—I must have dreamed it.”

At this moment I came face to face with Gretchen, whom I warmly embraced.

“So you have come to meet me,” she said; “how good of you. But what is the matter?”

Well, it was no use mincing the matter, I told her all. She listened with awe, and for some minutes she could not speak.

“Well?” I at last said, rather anxiously.

“What a magnificent journey. If I were only a man! A journey worthy of the nephew of Professor Hardwigg. I should look upon it as an honor to accompany him.”

“My dear Gretchen, I thought you would be the first to cry out against this mad enterprise.”

“No; on the contrary, I glory in it. It is magnificent, splendid—an idea worthy of my father. Henry Lawson, I envy you.”

This was, as it were, conclusive. The final blow of all.

When we entered the house we found my uncle surrounded by workmen and porters, who were packing up. He was pulling and hauling at a bell.

“Where have you been wasting your time? Your portmanteau is not packed—my papers are not in order—the precious tailor has not brought my clothes, nor my gaiters—the key of my carpet bag is gone!”

I looked at him stupefied. And still he tugged away at the bell.

“We are really off, then?” I said.

“Yes—of course, and yet you go out for a stroll, unfortunate boy!”

“And when do we go?”

“The day after tomorrow, at daybreak.”

I heard no more; but darted off to my little bedchamber and locked myself in. There was no doubt about it now. My uncle had been hard at work all the afternoon. The garden was full of ropes, rope ladders, torches, gourds, iron clamps, crowbars, alpenstocks, and pickaxes—enough to load ten men.

I passed a terrible night. I was called early the next day to learn that the resolution of my uncle was unchanged and irrevocable. I also found my cousin and affianced wife as warm on the subject as was her father.

Next day, at five o’clock in the morning, the post chaise was at the door. Gretchen and the old cook received the keys of the house; and, scarcely pausing to wish anyone good-by, we started on our adventurous journey into the centre of the earth.

CHAPTER 5

FIRST LESSONS IN CLIMBING

At Altona, a suburb of Hamburg, is the Chief Station of the Kiel railway, which was to take us to the shores of the Belt. In twenty minutes from the moment of our departure we were in Holstein, and our carriage entered the station. Our heavy luggage was taken out, weighed, labeled, and placed in a huge van. We then took our tickets, and exactly at seven o’clock were seated opposite each other in a firstclass railway carriage.

My uncle said nothing. He was too busy examining his papers, among which of course was the famous parchment, and some letters of introduction from the Danish consul which were to pave the way to an introduction to the Governor of Iceland. My only amusement was looking out of the window. But as we passed through a flat though fertile country, this occupation was slightly monotonous. In three hours we reached Kiel, and our baggage was at once transferred to the steamer.

We had now a day before us, a delay of about ten hours. Which fact put my uncle in a towering passion. We had nothing to do but to walk about the pretty town and bay. At length, however, we went on board, and at half past ten were steaming down the Great Belt. It was a dark night, with a strong breeze and a rough sea, nothing being visible but the occasional fires on shore, with here and there a lighthouse. At seven in the morning we left Korsor, a little town on the western side of Seeland.

Here we took another railway, which in three hours brought us to the capital, Copenhagen, where, scarcely taking time for refreshment, my uncle hurried out to present one of his letters of introduction. It was to the director of the Museum of Antiquities, who, having been informed that we were tourists bound for Iceland, did all he could to assist us. One wretched hope sustained me now. Perhaps no vessel was bound for such distant parts.

Alas! a little Danish schooner, the Valkyrie, was to sail on the second of June for Reykjavik. The captain, M. Bjarne, was on board, and was rather surprised at the energy and cordiality with which his future passenger shook him by the hand. To him a voyage to Iceland was merely a matter of course. My uncle, on the other hand, considered the event of sublime importance. The honest sailor took advantage of the Professor’s enthusiasm to double the fare.

“On Tuesday morning at seven o’clock be on board,” said M. Bjarne, handing us our receipts.

“Excellent! Capital! Glorious!” remarked my uncle as we sat down to a late breakfast; “refresh yourself, my boy, and we will take a run through the town.”

Our meal concluded, we went to the Kongens-Nye-Torw; to the king’s magnificent palace; to the beautiful bridge over the canal near the Museum; to the immense cenotaph of Thorwaldsen with its hideous naval groups; to the castle of Rosenberg; and to all the other lions of the place-none of which my uncle even saw, so absorbed was he in his anticipated triumphs.

But one thing struck his fancy, and that was a certain singular steeple situated on the Island of Amak, which is the southeast quarter of the city of Copenhagen. My uncle at once ordered me to turn my steps that way, and accordingly we went on board the steam ferry boat which does duty on the canal, and very soon reached the noted dockyard quay.

In the first instance we crossed some narrow streets, where we met numerous groups of galley slaves, with particolored trousers, grey and yellow, working under the orders and the sticks of severe taskmasters, and finally reached the Vor-Frelser’s-Kirk.

This church exhibited nothing remarkable in itself; in fact, the worthy Professor had only been attracted to it by one circumstance, which was, that its rather elevated steeple started from a circular platform, after which there was an exterior staircase, which wound round to the very summit.

“Let us ascend,” said my uncle.

“But I never could climb church towers,” I cried, “I am subject to dizziness in my head.”

“The very reason why you should go up. I want to cure you of a bad habit.”

“But, my good sir—”

“I tell you to come. What is the use of wasting so much valuable time?”

It was impossible to dispute the dictatorial commands of my uncle. I yielded with a groan. On payment of a fee, a verger gave us the key. He, for one, was not partial to the ascent. My uncle at once showed me the way, running up the steps like a schoolboy. I followed as well as I could, though no sooner was I outside the tower, than my head began to swim. There was nothing of the eagle about me. The earth was enough for me, and no ambitious desire to soar ever entered my mind. Still things did not go badly until I had ascended 150 steps, and was near the platform, when I began to feel the rush of cold air. I could scarcely stand, when clutching the railings, I looked upwards. The railing was frail enough, but nothing to those which skirted the terrible winding staircase, that appeared, from where I stood, to ascend to the skies.

“Now then, Henry.”

“I can’t do it!” I cried, in accents of despair.

“Are you, after all, a coward, sir?” said my uncle in a pitiless tone. “Go up, I say!”

To this there was no reply possible. And yet the keen air acted violently on my nervous system; sky, earth, all seemed to swim round, while the steeple rocked like a ship. My legs gave way like those of a drunken man. I crawled upon my hands and knees; I hauled myself up slowly, crawling like a snake. Presently I closed my eyes, and allowed myself to be dragged upwards.

“Look around you,” said my uncle in a stern voice, “heaven knows what profound abysses you may have to look down. This is excellent practice.”

Slowly, and shivering all the while with cold, I opened my eyes. What then did I see? My first glance was upwards at the cold fleecy clouds, which as by some optical delusion appeared to stand still, while the steeple, the weathercock, and our two selves were carried swiftly along. Far away on one side could be seen the grassy plain, while on the other lay the sea bathed in translucent light. The Sund, or Sound as we call it, could be discovered beyond the point of Elsinore, crowded with white sails, which, at that distance looked like the wings of seagulls; while to the east could be made out the far-off coast of Sweden. The whole appeared a magic panorama.

But faint and bewildered as I was, there was no remedy for it. Rise and stand up I must. Despite my protestations my first lesson lasted quite an hour. When, nearly two hours later, I reached the bosom of mother earth, I was like a rheumatic old man bent double with pain.

“Enough for one day,” said my uncle, rubbing his hands, “we will begin again tomorrow.”

There was no remedy. My lessons lasted five days, and at the end of that period, I ascended blithely enough, and found myself able to look down into the depths below without even winking, and with some degree of pleasure.

CHAPTER 6

OUR VOYAGE TO ICELAND

The hour of departure came at last. The night before, the worthy Mr. Thompson brought us the most cordial letters of introduction for Baron Trampe, Governor of Iceland, for M. Pictursson, coadjutor to the bishop, and for M. Finsen, mayor of the town of Reykjavik. In return, my uncle nearly crushed his hands, so warmly did he shake them.

On the second of the month, at two in the morning, our precious cargo of luggage was taken on board the good ship Valkyrie. We followed, and were very politely introduced by the captain to a small cabin with two standing bed places, neither very well ventilated nor very comfortable. But in the cause of science men are expected to suffer.

“Well, and have we a fair wind?” cried my uncle, in his most mellifluous accents.

“An excellent wind!” replied Captain Bjarne; “we shall leave the Sound, going free with all sails set.”

A few minutes afterwards, the schooner started before the wind, under all the canvas she could carry, and entered the channel. An hour later, the capital of Denmark seemed to sink into the waves, and we were at no great distance from the coast of Elsinore. My uncle was delighted; for myself, moody and dissatisfied, I appeared almost to expect a glimpse of the ghost of Hamlet.

“Sublime madman,” thought I, “you doubtless would approve our proceedings. You might perhaps even follow us to the centre of the earth, there to resolve your eternal doubts.”

But no ghost or anything else appeared upon the ancient walls. The fact is, the castle is much later than the time of the heroic prince of Denmark. It is now the residence of the keeper of the Strait of the Sound, and through that Sound more than fifteen thousand vessels of all nations pass every year.

The castle of Kronborg soon disappeared in the murky atmosphere, as well as the tower of Helsinborg, which raises its head on the Swedish Bank. And here the schooner began to feel in earnest the breezes of the Kattegat. The Valkyrie was swift enough, but with all sailing boats there is the same uncertainty. Her cargo was coal, furniture, pottery, woolen clothing, and a load of corn. As usual, the crew was small, five Danes doing the whole of the work.

“How long will the voyage last?” asked my uncle.

“Well, I should think about ten days,” replied the skipper, “unless, indeed, we meet with some northeast gales among the Faroe Islands.”

“At all events, there will be no very considerable delay,” cried the impatient Professor.

“No, Mr. Hardwigg,” said the captain, “no fear of that. At all events, we shall get there some day.”

Towards evening the schooner doubled Cape Skagen, the northernmost part of Denmark, crossed the Skagerrak during the night—skirted the extreme point of Norway through the gut of Cape Lindesnes, and then reached the Northern Seas. Two days later we were not far from the coast of Scotland, somewhere near what Danish sailors call Peterhead, and then the Valkyrie stretched out direct for the Faroe Islands, between Orkney and Shetland. Our vessel now felt the full force of the ocean waves, and the wind shifting, we with great difficulty made the Faroe Isles. On the eighth day, the captain made out Myganness, the westernmost of the isles, and from that moment headed direct for Portland, a cape on the southern shores of the singular island for which we were bound.

The voyage offered no incident worthy of record. I bore it very well, but my uncle to his great annoyance, and even shame, was remarkably seasick! This mal de mer troubled him the more that it prevented him from questioning Captain Bjarne as to the subject of Sneffels, as to the means of communication, and the facilities of transport. All these explanations he had to adjourn to the period of his arrival. His time, meanwhile, was spent lying in bed groaning, and dwelling anxiously on the hoped—for termination of the voyage. I didn’t pity him.

On the eleventh day we sighted Cape Portland, over which towered Mount Myrdals Yokul, which, the weather being clear, we made out very readily. The cape itself is nothing but a huge mount of granite standing naked and alone to meet the Atlantic waves. The Valkyrie kept off the coast, steering to the westward. On all sides were to be seen whole “schools” of whales and sharks. After some hours we came in sight of a solitary rock in the ocean, forming a mighty vault, through which the foaming waves poured with intense fury. The islets of Westman appeared to leap from the ocean, being so low in the water as scarcely to be seen until you were right upon them. From that moment the schooner was steered to the westward in order to round Cape Reykjanes, the western point of Iceland.

My uncle, to his great disgust, was unable even to crawl on deck, so heavy a sea was on, and thus lost the first view of the Land of Promise. Forty-eight hours later, after a storm which drove us far to sea under bare poles, we came once more in sight of land, and were boarded by a pilot, who, after three hours of dangerous navigation, brought the schooner safely to an anchor in the bay of Faxa before Reykjavik.

My uncle came out of his cabin pale, haggard, thin, but full of enthusiasm, his eyes dilated with pleasure and satisfaction. Nearly the whole population of the town was on foot to see us land. The fact was, that scarcely any one of them but expected some goods by the periodical vessel.

Professor Hardwigg was in haste to leave his prison, or rather as he called it, his hospital; but before he attempted to do so, he caught hold of my hand, led me to the quarterdeck of the schooner, took my arm with his left hand, and pointed inland with his right, over the northern part of the bay, to where rose a high two-peaked mountain—a double cone covered with eternal snow.

“Behold he whispered in an awe-stricken voice, behold—Mount Sneffels!”

Then without further remark, he put his finger to his lips, frowned darkly, and descended into the small boat which awaited us. I followed, and in a few minutes we stood upon the soil of mysterious Iceland!

Scarcely were we fairly on shore when there appeared before us a man of excellent appearance, wearing the costume of a military officer. He was, however, but a civil servant, a magistrate, the governor of the island—Baron Trampe. The Professor knew whom he had to deal with. He therefore handed him the letters from Copenhagen, and a brief conversation in Danish followed, to which I of course was a stranger, and for a very good reason, for I did not know the language in which they conversed. I afterwards heard, however, that Baron Trampe placed himself entirely at the beck and call of Professor Hardwigg.

My uncle was most graciously received by M. Finsen, the mayor, who as far as costume went, was quite as military as the governor, but also from character and occupation quite as pacific. As for his coadjutor, M. Pictursson, he was absent on an episcopal visit to the northern portion of the diocese. We were therefore compelled to defer the pleasure of being presented to him. His absence was, however, more than compensated by the presence of M. Fridriksson, professor of natural science in the college of Reykjavik, a man of invaluable ability. This modest scholar spoke no languages save Icelandic and Latin. When, therefore, he addressed himself to me in the language of Horace, we at once came to understand one another. He was, in fact, the only person that I did thoroughly understand during the whole period of my residence in this benighted island.

Out of three rooms of which his house was composed, two were placed at our service, and in a few hours we were installed with all our baggage, the amount of which rather astonished the simple inhabitants of Reykjavik.

“Now, Harry,” said my uncle, rubbing his hands, “an goes well, the worse difficulty is now over.”

“How the worse difficulty over?” I cried in fresh amazement.

“Doubtless. Here we are in Iceland. Nothing more remains but to descend into the bowels of the earth.”

“Well, sir, to a certain extent you are right. We have only to go down—but, as far as I am concerned, that is not the question. I want to know how we are to get up again.”

“That is the least part of the business, and does not in any way trouble me. In the meantime, there is not an hour to lose. I am about to visit the public library. Very likely I may find there some manuscripts from the hand of Saknussemm. I shall be glad to consult them.”

“In the meanwhile,” I replied, “I will take a walk through the town. Will you not likewise do so?”

“I feel no interest in the subject,” said my uncle. “What for me is curious in this island, is not what is above the surface, but what is below.”

I bowed by way of reply, put on my hat and furred cloak, and went out.

It was not an easy matter to lose oneself in the two streets of Reykjavik; I had therefore no need to ask my way. The town lies on a flat and marshy plain, between two hills. A vast field of lava skirts it on one side, falling away in terraces towards the sea. On the other hand is the large bay of Faxa, bordered on the north by the enormous glacier of Sneffels, and in which bay the Valkyrie was then the only vessel at anchor. Generally there were one or two English or French gunboats, to watch and protect the fisheries in the offing. They were now, however, absent on duty.

The longest of the streets of Reykjavik runs parallel to the shore. In this street the merchants and traders live in wooden huts made with beams of wood, painted red—mere log huts, such as you find in the wilds of America. The other street, situated more to the west, runs toward a little lake between the residences of the bishop and the other personages not engaged in commerce.

I had soon seen all I wanted of these weary and dismal thoroughfares. Here and there was a strip of discolored turf, like an old worn-out bit of woolen carpet; and now and then a bit of kitchen garden, in which grew potatoes, cabbage, and lettuce, almost diminutive enough to suggest the idea of Lilliput.

In the centre of the new commercial street, I found the public cemetery, enclosed by an earthen wall. Though not very large, it appeared not likely to be filled for centuries. From hence I went to the house of the Governor—a mere hut in comparison with the Mansion House of Hamburg—but a palace alongside the other Icelandic houses. Between the little lake and the town was the church, built in simple Protestant style, and composed of calcined stones, thrown up by volcanic action. I have not the slightest doubt that in high winds its red tiles were blown out, to the great annoyance of the pastor and congregation. Upon an eminence close at hand was the national school, in which were taught Hebrew, English, French, and Danish.

In three hours my tour was complete. The general impression upon my mind was sadness. No trees, no vegetation, so to speak—on all sides volcanic peaks—the huts of turf and earth—more like roofs than houses. Thanks to the heat of these residences, grass grows on the roof, which grass is carefully cut for hay. I saw but few inhabitants during my excursion, but I met a crowd on the beach, drying, salting and loading codfish, the principal article of exportation. The men appeared robust but heavy; fair-haired like Germans, but of pensive mien—exiles of a higher scale in the ladder of humanity than the Eskimos, but, I thought, much more unhappy, since with superior perceptions they are compelled to live within the limits of the Polar Circle.

Sometimes they gave vent to a convulsive laugh, but by no chance did they smile. Their costume consists of a coarse capote of black wool, known in Scandinavian countries as the “vadmel,” a broad-brimmed hat, trousers of red serge, and a piece of leather tied with strings for a shoe—a coarse kind of moccasin. The women, though sad-looking and mournful, had rather agreeable features, without much expression. They wear a bodice and petticoat of somber vadmel. When unmarried they wear a little brown knitted cap over a crown of plaited hair; but when married, they cover their heads with a colored handkerchief, over which they tie a white scarf.

CHAPTER 7

CONVERSATION AND DISCOVERY

When I returned, dinner was ready. This meal was devoured by my worthy relative with avidity and voracity. His shipboard diet had turned his interior into a perfect gulf. The repast, which was more Danish than Icelandic, was in itself nothing, but the excessive hospitality of our host made us enjoy it doubly.

The conversation turned upon scientific matters, and M. Fridriksson asked my uncle what he thought of the public library.

“Library, sir?” cried my uncle; “it appears to me a collection of useless odd volumes, and a beggarly amount of empty shelves.”

“What!” cried M. Fridriksson; “why, we have eight thousand volumes of most rare and valuable works—some in the Scandinavian language, besides all the new publications from Copenhagen.”

“Eight thousand volumes, my dear sir—why, where are they?” cried my uncle.

“Scattered over the country, Professor Hardwigg. We are very studious, my dear sir, though we do live in Iceland. Every farmer, every laborer, every fisherman can both read and write—and we think that books instead of being locked up in cupboards, far from the sight of students, should be distributed as widely as possible. The books of our library are therefore passed from hand to hand without returning to the library shelves perhaps for years.”

“Then when foreigners visit you, there is nothing for them to see?”

“Well, sir, foreigners have their own libraries, and our first consideration is, that our humbler classes should be highly educated. Fortunately, the love of study is innate in the Icelandic people. In 1816 we founded a Literary Society and Mechanics’ Institute; many foreign scholars of eminence are honorary members; we publish books destined to educate our people, and these books have rendered valuable services to our country. Allow me to have the honor, Professor Hardwigg, to enroll you as an honorary member?”

My uncle, who already belonged to nearly every literary and scientific institution in Europe, immediately yielded to the amiable wishes of good M. Fridriksson.

“And now,” he said, after many expressions of gratitude and good will, “if you will tell me what books you expected to find, perhaps I may be of some assistance to you.”

I watched my uncle keenly. For a minute or two he hesitated, as if unwilling to speak; to speak openly was, perhaps, to unveil his projects. Nevertheless, after some reflection, he made up his mind.

“Well, M. Fridriksson,” he said in an easy, unconcerned kind of way, “I was desirous of ascertaining, if among other valuable works, you had any of the learned Arne Saknussemm.”

“Arne Saknussemm!” cried the Professor of Reykjavik; “you speak of one of the most distinguished scholars of the sixteenth century, of the great naturalist, the great alchemist, the great traveler.”

“Exactly so.”

“One of the most distinguished men connected with Icelandic science and literature.”

“As you say, sir—”

“A man illustrious above all.”

“Yes, sir, all this is true, but his works?”

“We have none of them.”

“Not in Iceland?”

“There are none in Iceland or elsewhere,” answered the other, sadly.

“Why so?”

“Because Arne Saknussemm was persecuted for heresy, and in 1573 his works were publicly burnt at Copenhagen, by the hands of the common hangman.”

“Very good! capital!” murmured my uncle, to the great astonishment of the worthy Icelander.

“You said, sir—”

“Yes, yes, all is clear, I see the link in the chain; everything is explained, and I now understand why Arne Saknussemm, put out of court, forced to hide his magnificent discoveries, was compelled to conceal beneath the veil of an incomprehensible cryptograph, the secret—”

“What secret?”

“A secret—which,” stammered my uncle.

“Have you discovered some wonderful manuscript?” cried M. Fridriksson.

“No! no, I was carried away by my enthusiasm. A mere supposition.”

“Very good, sir. But, really, to turn to another subject, I hope you will not leave our island without examining into its mineralogical riches.”

“Well, the fact is, I am rather late. So many learned men have been here before me.”

“Yes, yes, but there is still much to be done,” cried M. Fridriksson.

“You think so,” said my uncle, his eyes twinkling with hidden satisfaction.

“Yes, you have no idea how many unknown mountains, glaciers, volcanoes there are which remain to be studied. Without moving from where we sit, I can show you one. Yonder on the edge of the horizon, you see Sneffels.”

“Oh yes, Sneffels,” said my uncle.

“One of the most curious volcanoes in existence, the crater of which has been rarely visited.”

“Extinct?”

“Extinct, any time these five hundred years,” was the ready reply.

“Well,” said my uncle, who dug his nails into his flesh, and pressed his knees tightly together to prevent himself leaping up with joy. “I have a great mind to begin my studies with an examination of the geological mysteries of this Mount Seffel—Feisel—what do you call it?”

“Sneffels, my dear sir.”

This portion of the conversation took place in Latin, and I therefore understood all that had been said. I could scarcely keep my countenance when I found my uncle so cunningly concealing his delight and satisfaction. I must confess that his artful grimaces, put on to conceal his happiness, made him look like a new Mephistopheles.

“Yes, yes,” he continued, “your proposition delights me. I will endeavor to climb to the summit of Sneffels, and, if possible, will descend into its crater.”

“I very much regret,” continued M. Fridriksson, “that my occupation will entirely preclude the possibility of my accompanying you. It would have been both pleasurable and profitable if I could have spared the time.”

“No, no, a thousand times no,” cried my uncle. “I do not wish to disturb the serenity of any man. I thank you, however, with all my heart. The presence of one so learned as yourself, would no doubt have been most useful, but the duties of your office and profession before everything.”

In the innocence of his simple heart, our host did not perceive the irony of these remarks.

“I entirely approve your project,” continued the Icelander after some further remarks. “It is a good idea to begin by examining this volcano. You will make a harvest of curious observations. In the first place, how do you propose to get to Sneffels?”

“By sea. I shall cross the bay. Of course that is the most rapid route.”

“Of course. But still it cannot be done.”

“Why?”

“We have not an available boat in all Reykjavik,” replied the other.

“What is to be done?”

“You must go by land along the coast. It is longer, but much more interesting.”

“Then I must have a guide.”

“Of course; and I have your very man.”

“Somebody on whom I can depend.”

“Yes, an inhabitant of the peninsula on which Sneffels is situated. He is a very shrewd and worthy man, with whom you will be pleased. He speaks Danish like a Dane.”

“When can I see him—today?”

“No, tomorrow; he will not be here before.”

“Tomorrow be it,” replied my uncle, with a deep sigh.

The conversation ended by compliments on both sides. During the dinner my uncle had learned much as to the history of Arne Saknussemm, the reasons for his mysterious and hieroglyphical document. He also became aware that his host would not accompany him on his adventurous expedition, and that next day we should have a guide.

CHAPTER 8

THE EIDER-DOWN HUNTER—OFF AT LAST

That evening I took a brief walk on the shore near Reykjavik, after which I returned to an early sleep on my bed of coarse planks, where I slept the sleep of the just. When I awoke I heard my uncle speaking loudly in the next room. I rose hastily and joined him. He was talking in Danish with a man of tall stature, and of perfectly Herculean build. This man appeared to be possessed of very great strength. His eyes, which started rather prominently from a very large head, the face belonging to which was simple and naive, appeared very quick and intelligent. Very long hair, which even in England would have been accounted exceedingly red, fell over his athletic shoulders. This native of Iceland was active and supple in appearance, though he scarcely moved his arms, being in fact one of those men who despise the habit of gesticulation common to southern people.

Everything in this man’s manner revealed a calm and phlegmatic temperament. There was nothing indolent about him, but his appearance spoke of tranquillity. He was one of those who never seemed to expect anything from anybody, who liked to work when he thought proper, and whose philosophy nothing could astonish or trouble.

I began to comprehend his character, simply from the way in which he listened to the wild and impassioned verbiage of my worthy uncle. While the excellent Professor spoke sentence after sentence, he stood with folded arms, utterly still, motionless to all my uncle’s gesticulations. When he wanted to say No he moved his head from left to right; when he acquiesced he nodded, so slightly that you could scarcely see the undulation of his head. This economy of motion was carried to the length of avarice.

Judging from his appearance I should have been a long time before I had suspected him to be what he was, a mighty hunter. Certainly his manner was not likely to frighten the game. How, then, did he contrive to get at his prey?

My surprise was slightly modified when I knew that this tranquil and solemn personage was only a hunter of the eider duck, the down of which is, after all, the greatest source of the Icelanders’ wealth.

In the early days of summer, the female of the eider, a pretty sort of duck, builds its nest amid the rocks of the fjords—the name given to all narrow gulfs in Scandinavian countries—with which every part of the island is indented. No sooner has the eider duck made her nest than she lines the inside of it with the softest down from her breast. Then comes the hunter or trader, taking away the nest, the poor bereaved female begins her task over again, and this continues as long as any eider down is to be found.

When she can find no more the male bird sets to work to see what he can do. As, however, his down is not so soft, and has therefore no commercial value, the hunter does not take the trouble to rob him of his nest lining. The nest is accordingly finished, the eggs are laid, the little ones are born, and next year the harvest of eider down is again collected.

Now, as the eider duck never selects steep rocks or aspects to build its nest, but rather sloping and low cliffs near to the sea, the Icelandic hunter can carry on his trade operations without much difficulty. He is like a farmer who has neither to plow, to sow, nor to harrow, only to collect his harvest.

This grave, sententious, silent person, as phlegmatic as an Englishman on the French stage, was named Hans Bjelke. He had called upon us in consequence of the recommendation of M. Fridriksson. He was, in fact, our future guide. It struck me that had I sought the world over, I could not have found a greater contradiction to my impulsive uncle.

They, however, readily understood one another. Neither of them had any thought about money; one was ready to take all that was offered him, the other ready to offer anything that was asked. It may readily be conceived, then, that an understanding was soon come to between them.

Now, the understanding was, that he was to take us to the village of Stapi, situated on the southern slope of the peninsula of Sneffels, at the very foot of the volcano. Hans, the guide, told us the distance was about twenty-two miles, a journey which my uncle supposed would take about two days.

But when my uncle came to understand that they were Danish miles, of eight thousand yards each, he was obliged to be more moderate in his ideas, and, considering the horrible roads we had to follow, to allow eight or ten days for the journey.

Four horses were prepared for us, two to carry the baggage, and two to bear the important weight of myself and uncle. Hans declared that nothing ever would make him climb on the back of any animal. He knew every inch of that part of the coast, and promised to take us the very shortest way.

His engagement with my uncle was by no means to cease with our arrival at Stapi; he was further to remain in his service during the whole time required for the completion of his scientific investigations, at the fixed salary of three rix-dollars a week, being exactly fourteen shillings and twopence, minus one farthing, English currency. One stipulation, however, was made by the guide—the money was to be paid to him every Saturday night, failing which, his engagement was at an end.

The day of our departure was fixed. My uncle wished to hand the eider-down hunter an advance, but he refused in one emphatic word—

“Efter.”

Which being translated from Icelandic into plain English means—“After.”

The treaty concluded, our worthy guide retired without another word.

“A splendid fellow,” said my uncle; “only he little suspects the marvelous part he is about to play in the history of the world.”

“You mean, then,” I cried in amazement, “that he should accompany us?”

“To the interior of the earth, yes,” replied my uncle. “Why not?”

There were yet forty-eight hours to elapse before we made our final start. To my great regret, our whole time was taken up in making preparations for our journey. All our industry and ability were devoted to packing every object in the most advantageous manner—the instruments on one side, the arms on the other, the tools here and the provisions there. There were, in fact, four distinct groups.

The instruments were of course of the best manufacture:

1. A centigrade thermometer of Eigel, counting up to 150 degrees, which to me did not appear half enough—or too much. Too hot by half, if the degree of heat was to ascend so high—in which case we should certainly be cooked—not enough, if we wanted to ascertain the exact temperature of springs or metal in a state of fusion.

2. A manometer worked by compressed air, an instrument used to ascertain the upper atmospheric pressure on the level of the ocean. Perhaps a common barometer would not have done as well, the atmospheric pressure being likely to increase in proportion as we descended below the surface of the earth.

3. A first-class chronometer made by Boissonnas, of Geneva, set at the meridian of Hamburg, from which Germans calculate, as the English do from Greenwich, and the French from Paris.

4. Two compasses, one for horizontal guidance, the other to ascertain the dip.

5. A night glass.

6. Two Ruhmkorff coils, which, by means of a current of electricity, would ensure us a very excellent, easily carried, and certain means of obtaining light.

7. A voltaic battery on the newest principle.1

Our arms consisted of two rifles, with two revolving six-shooters. Why these arms were provided it was impossible for me to say. I had every reason to believe that we had neither wild beasts nor savage natives to fear. My uncle, on the other hand, was quite as devoted to his arsenal as to his collection of instruments, and above all was very careful with his provision of fulminating or gun cotton, warranted to keep in any climate, and of which the expansive force was known to be greater than that of ordinary gunpowder.

Our tools consisted of two pickaxes, two crowbars, a silken ladder, three iron-shod Alpine poles, a hatchet, a hammer, a dozen wedges, some pointed pieces of iron, and a quantity of strong rope. You may conceive that the whole made a tolerable parcel, especially when I mention that the ladder itself was three hundred feet long!

Then there came the important question of provisions. The hamper was not very large but tolerably satisfactory, for I knew that in concentrated essence of meat and biscuit there was enough to last six months. The only liquid provided by my uncle was Schiedam. Of water, not a drop. We had, however, an ample supply of gourds, and my uncle counted on finding water, and enough to fill them, as soon as we commenced our downward journey. My remarks as to the temperature, the quality, and even as to the possibility of none being found, remained wholly without effect.

To make up the exact list of our traveling gear—for the guidance of future travelers—add, that we carried a medicine and surgical chest with all apparatus necessary for wounds, fractures and blows; lint, scissors, lancets—in fact, a perfect collection of horrible looking instruments; a number of vials containing ammonia, alcohol, ether, Goulard water, aromatic vinegar, in fact, every possible and impossible drug—finally, all the materials for working the Ruhmkorff coil!

My uncle had also been careful to lay in a goodly supply of tobacco, several flasks of very fine gunpowder, boxes of tinder, besides a large belt crammed full of notes and gold. Good boots rendered watertight were to be found to the number of six in the tool box.

“My boy, with such clothing, with such boots, and such general equipment,” said my uncle, in a state of rapturous delight, “we may hope to travel far.”

It took a whole day to put all these matters in order. In the evening we dined with Baron Trampe, in company with the Mayor of Reykjavik, and Doctor Hyaltalin, the great medical man of Iceland. M. Fridriksson was not present, and I was afterwards sorry to hear that he and the governor did not agree on some matters connected with the administration of the island. Unfortunately, the consequence was, that I did not understand a word that was said at dinner—a kind of semiofficial reception. One thing I can say, my uncle never left off speaking.

The next day our labor came to an end. Our worthy host delighted my uncle, Professor Hardwigg, by giving him a good map of Iceland, a most important and precious document for a mineralogist.

Our last evening was spent in a long conversation with M. Fridriksson, whom I liked very much—the more that I never expected to see him or anyone else again. After this agreeable way of spending an hour or so, I tried to sleep. In vain; with the exception of a few dozes, my night was miserable.

At five o’clock in the morning I was awakened from the only real half hour’s sleep of the night by the loud neighing of horses under my window. I hastily dressed myself and went down into the street. Hans was engaged in putting the finishing stroke to our baggage, which he did in a silent, quiet way that won my admiration, and yet he did it admirably well. My uncle wasted a great deal of breath in giving him directions, but worthy Hans took not the slightest notice of his words.

At six o’clock all our preparations were completed, and M. Fridriksson shook hands heartily with us. My uncle thanked him warmly, in the Icelandic language, for his kind hospitality, speaking truly from the heart.

As for myself I put together a few of my best Latin phrases and paid him the highest compliments I could. This fraternal and friendly duty performed, we sallied forth and mounted our horses.

As soon as we were quite ready, M. Fridriksson advanced, and by way of farewell, called after me in the words of Virgil—words which appeared to have been made for us, travelers starting for an uncertain destination:

“Et quacunque viam dederit fortuna sequamur.”

(“And whichsoever way thou goest, may fortune follow!”)

1 Thermometer (thermos, and metron, measure); an instrument for measuring the temperature of the air.—Manometer (manos,and metron, measure); an instrument to show the density or rarity of gases.—Chronometer (chronos, time, and metros, measure) a time measurer, or superior watch—Ruhmkorff’s coil, an instrument for producing currents of induced electricity of great intensity. It consists of a coil of copper wire, insulated by being covered with silk, surrounded by another coil of fine wire, also insulated, in which a momentary current is induced when a current is passed through the inner coil from a voltaic battery. When the apparatus is in action, the gas becomes luminous, and produces a white and continued light. The battery and wire are carried in a leather bag, which the traveler fastens by a strap to his shoulders. The lantern is in front, and enables the benighted wanderer to see in the most profound obscurity. He may venture without fear of explosion into the midst of the most inflammable gases, and the lantern will burn beneath the deepest waters. H. D. Ruhmkorff, an able and learned chemist, discovered the induction coil. In 1864 he won the quinquennial French prize of £2,000 for this ingenious application of electricity—A voltaic battery, so called from Volta, its designer, is an apparatus consisting of a series of metal plates arranged in pairs and subjected to the action of saline solutions for producing currents of electricity.

1 Thermometer (thermos, and metron, measure); an instrument for measuring the temperature of the air.—Manometer (manos,and metron, measure); an instrument to show the density or rarity of gases.—Chronometer (chronos, time, and metros, measure) a time measurer, or superior watch—Ruhmkorff’s coil, an instrument for producing currents of induced electricity of great intensity. It consists of a coil of copper wire, insulated by being covered with silk, surrounded by another coil of fine wire, also insulated, in which a momentary current is induced when a current is passed through the inner coil from a voltaic battery. When the apparatus is in action, the gas becomes luminous, and produces a white and continued light. The battery and wire are carried in a leather bag, which the traveler fastens by a strap to his shoulders. The lantern is in front, and enables the benighted wanderer to see in the most profound obscurity. He may venture without fear of explosion into the midst of the most inflammable gases, and the lantern will burn beneath the deepest waters. H. D. Ruhmkorff, an able and learned chemist, discovered the induction coil. In 1864 he won the quinquennial French prize of £2,000 for this ingenious application of electricity—A voltaic battery, so called from Volta, its designer, is an apparatus consisting of a series of metal plates arranged in pairs and subjected to the action of saline solutions for producing currents of electricity.

CHAPTER 9

OUR START—WE MEET WITH ADVENTURES BY THE WAY

The weather was overcast but settled, when we commenced our adventurous and perilous journey. We had neither to fear fatiguing heat nor drenching rain. It was, in fact, real tourist weather.

As there was nothing I liked better than horse exercise, the pleasure of riding through an unknown country caused the early part of our enterprise to be particularly agreeable to me.

I began to enjoy the exhilarating delight of traveling, a life of desire, gratification and liberty. The truth is, that my spirits rose so rapidly, that I began to be indifferent to what had once appeared to be a terrible journey.

“After all,” I said to myself, “what do I risk? Simply to take a journey through a curious country, to climb a remarkable mountain, and if the worst comes to the worst, to descend into the crater of an extinct volcano.”

There could be no doubt that this was all this terrible Saknussemm had done. As to the existence of a gallery, or of subterraneous passages leading into the interior of the earth, the idea was simply absurd, the hallucination of a distempered imagination. All, then, that may be required of me I will do cheerfully, and will create no difficulty.

It was just before we left Reykjavik that I came to this decision.

Hans, our extraordinary guide, went first, walking with a steady, rapid, unvarying step. Our two horses with the luggage followed of their own accord, without requiring whip or spur. My uncle and I came behind, cutting a very tolerable figure upon our small but vigorous animals.

Iceland is one of the largest islands in Europe. It contains thirty thousand square miles of surface, and has about seventy thousand inhabitants. Geographers have divided it into four parts, and we had to cross the southwest quarter which in the vernacular is called Sudvestr Fjordungr.

Hans, on taking his departure from Reykjavik, had followed the line of the sea. We took our way through poor and sparse meadows, which made a desperate effort every year to show a little green. They very rarely succeed in a good show of yellow.

The rugged summits of the rocky hills were dimly visible on the edge of the horizon, through the misty fogs; every now and then some heavy flakes of snow showed conspicuous in the morning light, while certain lofty and pointed rocks were first lost in the grey low clouds, their summits clearly visible above, like jagged reefs rising from a troublous sea.

Every now and then a spur of rock came down through the arid ground, leaving us scarcely room to pass. Our horses, however, appeared not only well acquainted with the country, but by a kind of instinct, knew which was the best road. My uncle had not even the satisfaction of urging forward his steed by whip, spur, or voice. It was utterly useless to show any signs of impatience. I could not help smiling to see him look so big on his little horse; his long legs now and then touching the ground made him look like a six-footed centaur.

“Good beast, good beast,” he would cry. “I assure you, that I begin to think no animal is more intelligent than an Icelandic horse. Snow, tempest, impracticable roads, rocks, icebergs—nothing stops him. He is brave; he is sober; he is safe; he never makes a false step; never glides or slips from his path. I dare to say that if any river, any fjord has to be crossed—and I have no doubt there will be many—you will see him enter the water without hesitation like an amphibious animal, and reach the opposite side in safety. We must not, however, attempt to hurry him; we must allow him to have his own way, and I will undertake to say that between us we shall do our ten leagues a day.”

“We may do so,” was my reply, “but what about our worthy guide?”

“I have not the slightest anxiety about him: that sort of people go ahead without knowing even what they are about. Look at Hans. He moves so little that it is impossible for him to become fatigued. Besides, if he were to complain of weariness, he could have the loan of my horse. I should have a violent attack of the cramp if I were not to have some sort of exercise. My arms are right—but my legs are getting a little stiff.”

All this while we were advancing at a rapid pace. The country we had reached was already nearly a desert. Here and there could be seen an isolated farm, some solitary bur, or Icelandic house, built of wood, earth, fragments of lava—looking like beggars on the highway of life. These wretched and miserable huts excited in us such pity that we felt half disposed to leave alms at every door. In this country there are no roads, paths are nearly unknown, and vegetation, poor as it was, slowly as it reached perfection, soon obliterated all traces of the few travelers who passed from place to place.

Nevertheless, this division of the province, situated only a few miles from the capital, is considered one of the best cultivated and most thickly peopled in all Iceland. What, then, must be the state of the less known and more distant parts of the island? After traveling fully half a Danish mile, we had met neither a farmer at the door of his hut, nor even a wandering shepherd with his wild and savage flock.

A few stray cows and sheep were only seen occasionally. What, then, must we expect when we come to the upheaved regions—to the districts broken and roughened from volcanic eruptions and subterraneous commotions?

We were to learn this all in good time. I saw, however, on consulting the map, that we avoided a good deal of this rough country, by following the winding and desolate shores of the sea. In reality, the great volcanic movement of the island, and all its attendant phenomena, are concentrated in the interior of the island; there, horizontal layers or strata of rocks, piled one upon the other, eruptions of basaltic origin, and streams of lava, have given this country a kind of supernatural reputation.

Little did I expect, however, the spectacle which awaited us when we reached the peninsula of Sneffels, where agglomerations of nature’s ruins form a kind of terrible chaos.

Some two hours or more after we had left the city of Reykjavik, we reached the little town called Aoalkirkja, or the principal church. It consists simply of a few houses—not what in England or Germany we should call a hamlet.

Hans stopped here one half hour. He shared our frugal breakfast, answered Yes, and No to my uncle’s questions as to the nature of the road, and at last when asked where we were to pass the night was aslaconic as usual.

“Gardar!” was his one-worded reply.

I took occasion to consult the map, to see where Gardar was to be found. After looking keenly I found a small town of that name on the borders of the Hvalfjord, about four miles from Reykjavik. I pointed this out to my uncle, who made a very energetic grimace.

“Only four miles out of twenty-two? Why it is only a little walk.”

He was about to make some energetic observation to the guide, but Hans, without taking the slightest notice of him, went in front of the horses, and walked ahead with the same imperturbable phlegm he had always exhibited.

Three hours later, still traveling over those apparently interminable and sandy prairies, we were compelled to go round the Kollafjord, an easier and shorter cut than crossing the gulfs. Shortly after we entered a place of communal jurisdiction called Ejulberg, and the clock of which would then have struck twelve, if any Icelandic church had been rich enough to possess so valuable and useful an article. These sacred edifices are, however, very much like these people, who do without watches—and never miss them.

Here the horses were allowed to take some rest and refreshment, then following a narrow strip of shore between high rocks and the sea, they took us without further halt to the Aoalkirkja of Brantar, and after another mile to Saurboer Annexia, a chapel of ease, situated on the southern bank of the Hvalfjord.

It was four o’clock in the evening and we had traveled four Danish miles, about equal to twenty English.

The fjord was in this place about half a mile in width. The sweeping and broken waves came rolling in upon the pointed rocks; the gulf was surrounded by rocky walls—a mighty cliff, three thousand feet in height, remarkable for its brown strata, separated here and there by beds of tufa of a reddish hue. Now, whatever may have been the intelligence of our horses, I had not the slightest reliance upon them, as a means of crossing a stormy arm of the sea. To ride over salt water upon the back of a little horse seemed to me absurd.

“If they are really intelligent,” I said to myself, “they will certainly not make the attempt. In any case, I shall trust rather to my own intelligence than theirs.”

But my uncle was in no humor to wait. He dug his heels into the sides of his steed, and made for the shore. His horse went to the very edge of the water, sniffed at the approaching wave and retreated.

My uncle, who was, sooth to say, quite as obstinate as the beast he bestrode, insisted on his making the desired advance. This attempt was followed by a new refusal on the part of the horse which quietly shook his head. This demonstration of rebellion was followed by a volley of words and a stout application of whipcord; also followed by kicks on the part of the horse, which threw its head and heels upwards and tried to throw his rider. At length the sturdy little pony, spreading out his legs, in a stiff and ludicrous attitude, got from under the Professor’s legs, and left him standing, with both feet on a separate stone, like the Colossus of Rhodes.

“Wretched animal!” cried my uncle, suddenly transformed into a foot passenger—and as angry and ashamed as a dismounted cavalry officer on the field of battle.

“Farja,” said the guide, tapping him familiarly on the shoulder.

“What, a ferry boat!”

“Der,” answered Hans, pointing to where lay the boat in question—“there.”

“Well,” I cried, quite delighted with the information; “so it is.”

“Why did you not say so before,” cried my uncle; “why not start at once?”

“Tidvatten,” said the guide.

“What does he say?” I asked, considerably puzzled by the delay and the dialogue.

“He says tide,” replied my uncle, translating the Danish word for my information.

“Of course I understand—we must wait till the tide serves.”

“For bida?” asked my uncle.

“Ja,” replied Hans.

My uncle frowned, stamped his feet and then followed the horses to where the boat lay.

I thoroughly understood and appreciated the necessity for waiting, before crossing the fjord, for that moment when the sea at its highest point is in a state of slack water. As neither the ebb nor flow can then be felt, the ferry boat was in no danger of being carried out to sea, or dashed upon the rocky coast.

The favorable moment did not come until six o’clock in the evening. Then my uncle, myself, and guide, two boatmen and the four horses got into a very awkward flat-bottom boat. Accustomed as I had been to the steam ferry boats of the Elbe, I found the long oars of the boatmen but sorry means of locomotion. We were more than an hour in crossing the fjord; but at length the passage was concluded without accident.

Half an hour later we reached Gardar.

CHAPTER 10

TRAVELING IN ICELAND

It ought, one would have thought, to have been night, even in the sixty-fifth parallel of latitude; but still the nocturnal illumination did not surprise me. For in Iceland, during the months of June and July, the sun never sets.

The temperature, however, was very much lower than I expected. I was cold, but even that did not affect me so much as ravenous hunger. Welcome indeed, therefore, was the hut which hospitably opened its doors to us.

It was merely the house of a peasant, but in the matter of hospitality, it was worthy of being the palace of a king. As we alighted at the door the master of the house came forward, held out his hand, and without any further ceremony, signaled to us to follow him.

We followed him, for to accompany him was impossible. A long, narrow, gloomy passage led into the interior of this habitation, made from beams roughly squared by the ax. This passage gave ingress to every room. The chambers were four in number—the kitchen, the workshop, where the weaving was carried on, the general sleeping chamber of the family, and the best room, to which strangers were especially invited. My uncle, whose lofty stature had not been taken into consideration when the house was built, contrived to knock his head against the beams of the roof.

We were introduced into our chamber, a kind of large room with a hard earthen floor, and lighted by a window, the panes of which were made of a sort of parchment from the intestines of sheep—very far from transparent.

The bedding was composed of dry hay thrown into two long red wooden boxes, ornamented with sentences painted in Icelandic. I really had no idea that we should be made so comfortable. There was one objection to the house, and that was, the very powerful odor of dried fish, of macerated meat, and of sour milk, which three fragrances combined did not at all suit my olfactory nerves.

As soon as we had freed ourselves from our heavy traveling costume, the voice of our host was heard calling to us to come into the kitchen, the only room in which the Icelanders ever make any fire, no matter how cold it may be.

My uncle, nothing loath, hastened to obey this hospitable and friendly invitation. I followed.

The kitchen chimney was made on an antique model. A large stone standing in the middle of the room was the fireplace; above, in the roof, was a hole for the smoke to pass through. This apartment was kitchen, parlor and dining room all in one.

On our entrance, our worthy host, as if he had not seen us before, advanced ceremoniously, uttered a word which means “be happy,” and then kissed both of us on the cheek.

His wife followed, pronounced the same word, with the same ceremonial, then the husband and wife, placing their right hands upon their hearts, bowed profoundly.

This excellent Icelandic woman was the mother of nineteen children, who, little and big, rolled, crawled, and walked about in the midst of volumes of smoke arising from the angular fireplace in the middle of the room. Every now and then I could see a fresh white head, and a slightly melancholy expression of countenance, peering at me through the vapor.

Both my uncle and myself, however, were very friendly with the whole party, and before we were aware of it, there were three or four of these little ones on our shoulders, as many on our boxes, and the rest hanging about our legs. Those who could speak kept crying out saellvertu in every possible and impossible key. Those who did not speak only made all the more noise.

This concert was interrupted by the announcement of supper. At this moment our worthy guide, the eider-duck hunter, came in after seeing to the feeding and stabling of the horses—which consisted in letting them loose to browse on the stunted green of the Icelandic prairies. There was little for them to eat, but moss and some very dry and innutritious grass; next day they were ready before the door, some time before we were.

“Welcome,” said Hans.

Then tranquilly, with the air of an automaton, without any more expression in one kiss than another, he embraced the host and hostess and their nineteen children.

This ceremony concluded to the satisfaction of all parties, we all sat down to table, that is twenty-four of us, somewhat crowded. Those who were best off had only two juveniles on their knees.

As soon, however, as the inevitable soup was placed on the table, the natural taciturnity, common even to Icelandic babies, prevailed over all else. Our host filled our plates with a portion of lichen soup of Iceland moss, of by no means disagreeable flavor, an enormous lump of fish floating in sour butter. After that there came some skyr, a kind of curds and whey, served with biscuits and juniper-berry juice. To drink, we had blanda, skimmed milk with water. I was hungry, so hungry, that by way of dessert I finished up with a basin of thick oaten porridge.

As soon as the meal was over, the children disappeared, whilst the grown people sat around the fireplace, on which was placed turf, heather, cow dung and dried fish-bones. As soon as everybody was sufficiently warm, a general dispersion took place, all retiring to their respective couches. Our hostess offered to pull off our stockings and trousers, according to the custom of the country, but as we graciously declined to be so honored, she left us to our bed of dry fodder.

Next day, at five in the morning, we took our leave of these hospitable peasants. My uncle had great difficulty in making them accept a sufficient and proper remuneration.

Hans then gave the signal to start.

We had scarcely got a hundred yards from Gardar, when the character of the country changed. The soil began to be marshy and boggy, and less favorable to progress. To the right, the range of mountains was prolonged indefinitely like a great system of natural fortifications, of which we skirted the glacis. We met with numerous streams and rivulets which it was necessary to ford, and that without wetting our baggage. As we advanced, the deserted appearance increased, and yet now and then we could see human shadows flitting in the distance. When a sudden turn of the track brought us within easy reach of one of these specters, I felt a sudden impulse of disgust at the sight of a swollen head, with shining skin, utterly without hair, and whose repulsive and revolting wounds could be seen through his rags. The unhappy wretches never came forward to beg; on the contrary, they ran away; not so quick, however, but that Hans was able to salute them with the universal saellvertu.

“Spetelsk,” said he.

“A leper,” explained my uncle.

The very sound of such a word caused a feeling of repulsion. The horrible affliction known as leprosy, which has almost vanished before the effects of modern science, is common in Iceland. It is not contagious but hereditary, so that marriage is strictly prohibited to these unfortunate creatures.

These poor lepers did not tend to enliven our journey, the scene of which was inexpressibly sad and lonely. The very last tufts of grassy vegetation appeared to die at our feet. Not a tree was to be seen, except a few stunted willows about as big as blackberry bushes. Now and then we watched a falcon soaring in the grey and misty air, taking his flight towards warmer and sunnier regions. I could not help feeling a sense of melancholy come over me. I sighed for my own Native Land, and wished to be back with Gretchen.

We were compelled to cross several little fjords, and at last came to a real gulf. The tide was at its height, and we were able to go over at once, and reach the hamlet of Alftanes, about a mile farther.

That evening, after fording the Alfa and the Heta, two rivers rich in trout and pike, we were compelled to pass the night in a deserted house, worthy of being haunted by all the fays of Scandinavian mythology. The King of Cold had taken up his residence there, and made us feel his presence all night.

The following day was remarkable by its lack of any particular incidents. Always the same damp and swampy soil; the same dreary uniformity; the same sad and monotonous aspect of scenery. In the evening, having accomplished the half of our projected journey, we slept at the Annexia of Krosolbt.

For a whole mile we had under our feet nothing but lava. This disposition of the soil is called hraun: the crumbled lava on the surface was in some instances like ship cables stretched out horizontally, in others coiled up in heaps; an immense field of lava came from the neighboring mountains, all extinct volcanoes, but whose remains showed what once they had been. Here and there could be made out the steam from hot water springs.

There was no time, however, for us to take more than a cursory view of these phenomena. We had to go forward with what speed we might. Soon the soft and swampy soil again appeared under the feet of our horses, while at every hundred yards we came upon one or more small lakes. Our journey was now in a westerly direction; we had, in fact, swept round the great bay of Faxa, and the twin white summits of Sneffels rose to the clouds at a distance of less than five miles.

The horses now advanced rapidly. The accidents and difficulties of the soil no longer checked them. I confess that fatigue began to tell severely upon me; but my uncle was as firm and as hard as he had been on the first day. I could not help admiring both the excellent Professor and the worthy guide; for they appeared to regard this rugged expedition as a mere walk!

On Saturday, the 20th June, at six o’clock in the evening, we reached Budir, a small town picturesquely situated on the shore of the ocean; and here the guide asked for his money. My uncle settled with him immediately. It was now the family of Hans himself, that is to say, his uncles, his cousins—german, who offered us hospitality. We were exceedingly well received, and without taking too much advantage of the goodness of these worthy people, I should have liked very much to have rested with them after the fatigues of the journey. But my uncle, who did not require rest, had no idea of anything of the kind; and despite the fact that next day was Sunday, I was compelled once more to mount my steed.

The soil was again affected by the neighborhood of the mountains, whose granite peered out of the ground like tops of an old oak. We were skirting the enormous base of the mighty volcano. My uncle never took his eyes from off it; he could not keep from gesticulating, and looking at it with a kind of sullen defiance as much as to say “That is the giant I have made up my mind to conquer.”

After four hours of steady traveling, the horses stopped of themselves before the door of the presbytery of Stapi.

CHAPTER 11

WE REACH MOUNT SNEFFELS—THE “REYKIR”

Stapi is a town consisting of thirty huts, built on a large plain of lava, exposed to the rays of the sun, reflected from the volcano. It stretches its humble tenements along the end of a little fjord, surrounded by a basaltic wall of the most singular character.

Basalt is a brown rock of igneous origin. It assumes regular forms, which astonish by their singular appearance. Here we found Nature proceeding geometrically, and working quite after a human fashion, as if she had employed the plummet line, the compass and the rule. If elsewhere she produces grand artistic effects by piling up huge masses without order or connection—if elsewhere we see truncated cones, imperfect pyramids, with an odd succession of lines; here, as if wishing to give a lesson in regularity, and preceding the architects of the early ages, she has erected a severe order of architecture, which neither the splendors of Babylon nor the marvels of Greece ever surpassed.

I had often heard of the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland, and of Fingal’s Cave in one of the Hebrides, but the grand spectacle of a real basaltic formation had never yet come before my eyes.

This at Stapi gave us an idea of one in all its wonderful beauty and grace.

The wall of the fjord, like nearly the whole of the peninsula, consisted of a series of vertical columns, in height about thirty feet. These upright pillars of stone, of the finest proportions, supported an archivault of horizontal columns which formed a kind of half-vaulted roof above the sea. At certain intervals, and below this natural basin, the eye was pleased and surprised by the sight of oval openings through which the outward waves came thundering in volleys of foam. Some banks of basalt, torn from their fastenings by the fury of the waves, lay scattered on the ground like the ruins of an ancient temple—ruins eternally young, over which the storms of ages swept without producing any perceptible effect!

This was the last stage of our journey. Hans had brought us along with fidelity and intelligence, and I began to feel somewhat more comfortable when I reflected that he was to accompany us still farther on our way.

When we halted before the house of the Rector, a small and incommodious cabin, neither handsome nor more comfortable than those of his neighbors, I saw a man in the act of shoeing a horse, a hammer in his hand, and a leathern apron tied round his waist.

“Be happy,” said the eider-down hunter, using his national salutation in his own language.

“God dag—good day!” replied the former, in excellent Danish.

“Kyrkoherde,” cried Hans, turning round and introducing him to my uncle.

“The Rector,” repeated the worthy Professor; “it appears, my dear Harry, that this worthy man is the Rector, and is not above doing his own work.”

During the speaking of these words the guide intimated to the Kyrkoherde what was the true state of the case. The good man, ceasing from his occupation, gave a kind of halloo, upon which a tall woman, almost a giantess, came out of the hut. She was at least six feet high, which in that region is something considerable.

My first impression was one of horror. I thought she had come to give us the Icelandic kiss. I had, however, nothing to fear, for she did not even show much inclination to receive us into her house.

The room devoted to strangers appeared to me to be by far the worst in the presbytery; it was narrow, dirty and offensive. There was, however, no choice about the matter. The Rector had no notion of practicing the usual cordial and antique hospitality. Far from it. Before the day was over, I found we had to deal with a blacksmith, a fisherman, a hunter, a carpenter, anything but a clergyman. It must be said in his favor that we had caught him on a weekday; probably he appeared to greater advantage on the Sunday.

These poor priests receive from the Danish Government a most ridiculously inadequate salary, and collect one quarter of the tithe of their parish—not more than sixty marks current, or about £3 10s. sterling. Hence the necessity of working to live. In truth, we soon found that our host did not count civility among the cardinal virtues.

My uncle soon became aware of the kind of man he had to deal with. Instead of a worthy and learned scholar, he found a dull ill-mannered peasant. He therefore resolved to start on his great expedition as soon as possible. He did not care about fatigue, and resolved to spend a few days in the mountains.

The preparations for our departure were made the very next day after our arrival at Stapi; Hans now hired three Icelanders to take the place of the horses—which could no longer carry our luggage. When, however, these worthy islanders had reached the bottom of the crater, they were to go back and leave us to ourselves. This point was settled before they would agree to start.

On this occasion, my uncle partly confided in Hans, the eider-duck hunter, and gave him to understand that it was his intention to continue his exploration of the volcano to the last possible limits.

Hans listened calmly, and then nodded his head. To go there, or elsewhere, to bury himself in the bowels of the earth, or to travel over its summits, was all the same to him! As for me, amused and occupied by the incidents of travel, I had begun to forget the inevitable future; but now I was once more destined to realize the actual state of affairs. What was to be done? Run away? But if I really had intended to leave Professor Hardwigg to his fate, it should have been at Hamburg and not at the foot of Sneffels.

One idea, above all others, began to trouble me: a very terrible idea, and one calculated to shake the nerves of a man even less sensitive than myself.

“Let us consider the matter,” I said to myself; “we are going to ascend the Sneffels mountain. Well and good. We are about to pay a visit to the very bottom of the crater. Good, still. Others have done it and did not perish from that course.

“That, however, is not the whole matter to be considered. If a road does really present itself by which to descend into the dark and subterraneous bowels of Mother Earth, if this thrice unhappy Saknussemm has really told the truth, we shall be most certainly lost in the midst of the labyrinth of subterraneous galleries of the volcano. Now, we have no evidence to prove that Sneffels is really extinct. What proof have we that an eruption is not shortly about to take place? Because the monster has slept soundly since 1219, does it follow that he is never to wake?

“If he does wake what is to become of us?”

These were questions worth thinking about, and upon them I reflected long and deeply. I could not lie down in search of sleep without dreaming of eruptions. The more I thought, the more I objected to be reduced to the state of dross and ashes.

I could stand it no longer; so I determined at last to submit the whole case to my uncle, in the most adroit manner possible, and under the form of some totally irreconcilable hypothesis.

I sought him. I laid before him my fears, and then drew back in order to let him get his passion over at his ease.

“I have been thinking about the matter,” he said, in the quietest tone in the world.

What did he mean? Was he at last about to listen to the voice of reason? Did he think of suspending his projects? It was almost too much happiness to be true.

I however made no remark. In fact, I was only too anxious not to interrupt him, and allowed him to reflect at his leisure. After some moments he spoke out.

“I have been thinking about the matter,” he resumed. “Ever since we have been at Stapi, my mind has been almost solely occupied with the grave question which has been submitted to me by yourself—for nothing would be unwiser and more inconsistent than to act with imprudence.”

“I heartily agree with you, my dear uncle,” was my somewhat hopeful rejoinder.

“It is now six hundred years since Sneffels has spoken, but though now reduced to a state of utter silence, he may speak again. New volcanic eruptions are always preceded by perfectly well-known phenomena. I have closely examined the inhabitants of this region; I have carefully studied the soil, and I beg to tell you emphatically, my dear Harry, there will be no eruption at present.”

As I listened to his positive affirmations, I was stupefied and could say nothing.

“I see you doubt my word,” said my uncle; “follow me.”

I obeyed mechanically.

Leaving the presbytery, the Professor took a road through an opening in the basaltic rock, which led far away from the sea. We were soon in open country, if we could give such a name to a place all covered with volcanic deposits. The whole land seemed crushed under the weight of enormous stones—of trap, of basalt, of granite, of lava, and of all other volcanic substances.

I could see many spouts of steam rising in the air. These white vapors, called in the Icelandic language “reykir,” come from hot water fountains, and indicate by their violence the volcanic activity of the soil. Now the sight of these appeared to justify my apprehension. I was, therefore, all the more surprised and mortified when my uncle thus addressed me.

“You see all this smoke, Harry, my boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, as long as you see them thus, you have nothing to fear from the volcano.”

“How can that be?”

“Be careful to remember this,” continued the Professor. “At the approach of an eruption these spouts of vapor redouble their activity—to disappear altogether during the period of volcanic eruption; for the elastic fluids, no longer having the necessary tension, seek refuge in the interior of the crater, instead of escaping through the fissures of the earth. If, then, the steam remains in its normal or habitual state, if their energy does not increase, and if you add to this, the remark that the wind is not replaced by heavy atmospheric pressure and dead calm, you may be quite sure that there is no fear of any immediate eruption.”

“But—”

“Enough, my boy. When science has sent forth her fiat—it is only to hear and obey.”

I came back to the house quite downcast and disappointed. My uncle had completely defeated me with his scientific arguments. Nevertheless, I had still one hope, and that was, when once we were at the bottom of the crater, that it would be impossible in default of a gallery or tunnel, to descend any deeper; and this, despite all the learned Saknussemms in the world.

I passed the whole of the following night with a nightmare on my chest! and, after unheard-of miseries and tortures, found myself in the very depths of the earth, from which I was suddenly launched into planetary space, under the form of an eruptive rock!

Next day, June 23d, Hans calmly awaited us outside the presbytery with his three companions loaded with provisions, tools, and instruments. Two iron-shod poles, two guns, and two large game bags, were reserved for my uncle and myself. Hans, who was a man who never forgot even the minutest precautions, had added to our baggage a large skin full of water, as an addition to our gourds. This assured us water for eight days.

It was nine o’clock in the morning when we were quite ready. The rector and his huge wife or servant, I never knew which, stood at the door to see us off. They appeared to be about to inflict on us the usual final kiss of the Icelanders. To our supreme astonishment their adieu took the shape of a formidable bill, in which they even counted the use of the pastoral house, really and truly the most abominable and dirty place I ever was in. The worthy couple cheated and robbed us like a Swiss innkeeper, and made us feel, by the sum we had to pay, the splendors of their hospitality.

My uncle, however, paid without bargaining. A man who had made up his mind to undertake a voyage into the Interior of the Earth, is not the man to haggle over a few miserable rix-dollars.

This important matter settled, Hans gave the signal for departure, and some few moments later we had left Stapi.

CHAPTER 12

THE ASCENT OF MOUNT SNEFFELS

The huge volcano which was the first stage of our daring experiment is above five thousand feet high. Sneffels is the termination of a long range of volcanic mountains, of a different character to the system of the island itself. One of its peculiarities is its two huge pointed summits. From whence we started it was impossible to make out the real outlines of the peak against the grey field of sky. All we could distinguish was a vast dome of white, which fell downwards from the head of the giant.

The commencement of the great undertaking filled me with awe. Now that we had actually started, I began to believe in the reality of the undertaking!

Our party formed quite a procession. We walked in single file, preceded by Hans, the imperturbable eider-duck hunter. He calmly led us by narrow paths where two persons could by no possibility walk abreast. Conversation was wholly impossible. We had all the more opportunity to reflect and admire the awful grandeur of the scene around.

Beyond the extraordinary basaltic wall of the fjord of Stapi we found ourselves making our way through fibrous turf, over which grew a scanty vegetation of grass, the residuum of the ancient vegetation of the swampy peninsula. The vast mass of this combustible, the field of which as yet is utterly unexplored, would suffice to warm Iceland for a whole century. This mighty turf pit, measured from the bottom of certain ravines, is often not less than seventy feet deep, and presents to the eye the view of successive layers of black burned-up rocky detritus, separated by thin streaks of porous sandstone.

The grandeur of the spectacle was undoubted, as well as its arid and deserted air.

As a true nephew of the great Professor Hardwigg, and despite my preoccupation and doleful fears of what was to come, I observed with great interest the vast collection of mineralogical curiosities spread out before me in this vast museum of natural history. Looking back to my recent studies, I went over in thought the whole geological history of Iceland.

This extraordinary and curious island must have made its appearance from out of the great world of waters at a comparatively recent date. Like the coral islands of the Pacific, it may, for aught we know, be still rising by slow and imperceptible degrees.

If this really be the case, its origin can be attributed to only one cause—that of the continued action of subterranean fires.

This was a happy thought.

If so, if this were true, away with the theories of Sir Humphry Davy; away with the authority of the parchment of Arne Saknussemm; the wonderful pretensions to discovery on the part of my uncle—and to our journey!

All must end in smoke.

Charmed with the idea, I began more carefully to look about me. A serious study of the soil was necessary to negative or confirm my hypothesis. I took in every item of what I saw, and I began to comprehend the succession of phenomena which had preceded its formation.

Iceland, being absolutely without sedimentary soil, is composed exclusively of volcanic tufa; that is to say, of an agglomeration of stones and of rocks of a porous texture. Long before the existence of volcanoes, it was composed of a solid body of massive trap rock lifted bodily and slowly out of the sea, by the action of the centrifugal force at work in the earth.

The internal fires, however, had not as yet burst their bounds and flooded the exterior cake of Mother Earth with hot and raging lava.

My readers must excuse this brief and somewhat pedantic geological lecture. But it is necessary to the complete understanding of what follows.

At a later period in the world’s history, a huge and mighty fissure must, reasoning by analogy, have been dug diagonally from the southwest to the northeast of the island, through which by degrees flowed the volcanic crust. The great and wondrous phenomenon then went on without violence—the outpouring was enormous, and the seething fused matter, ejected from the bowels of the earth, spread slowly and peacefully in the form of vast level plains, or what are called mamelons or mounds.

It was at this epoch that the rocks called feldspars, syenites, and porphyries appeared.

But as a natural consequence of this overflow, the depth of the island increased. It can readily be believed what an enormous quantity of elastic fluids were piled up within its centre, when at last it afforded no other openings, after the process of cooling the crust had taken place.

At length a time came when despite the enormous thickness and weight of the upper crust, the mechanical forces of the combustible gases below became so great, that they actually upheaved the weighty back and made for themselves huge and gigantic shafts. Hence the volcanoes which suddenly arose through the upper crust, and next the craters, which burst forth at the summit of these new creations.

It will be seen that the first phenomena in connection with the formation of the island were simply eruptive; to these, however, shortly succeeded the volcanic phenomena.

Through the newly formed openings, escaped the marvelous mass of basaltic stones with which the plain we were now crossing was covered. We were trampling our way over heavy rocks of dark grey color, which, while cooling, had been moulded into six-sided prisms. In the “back distance” we could see a number of flattened cones, which formerly were so many fire-vomiting mouths.

After the basaltic eruption was appeased and set at rest, the volcano, the force of which increased with that of the extinct craters, gave free passage to the fiery overflow of lava, and to the mass of cinders and pumice stone, now scattered over the sides of the mountain, like disheveled hair on the shoulders of a Bacchante.

Here, in a nutshell, I had the whole history of the phenomena from which Iceland arose. All take their rise in the fierce action of interior fires, and to believe that the central mass did not remain in a state of liquid fire, white hot, was simply and purely madness.

This being satisfactorily proved (Q.E.D.), what insensate folly to pretend to penetrate into the interior of the mighty earth!

This mental lecture delivered to myself while proceeding on a journey, did me good. I was quite reassured as to the fate of our enterprise; and therefore went, like a brave soldier mounting a bristling battery, to the assault of old Sneffels.

As we advanced, the road became every moment more difficult. The soil was broken and dangerous. The rocks broke and gave way under our feet, and we had to be scrupulously careful in order to avoid dangerous and constant falls.

Hans advanced as calmly as if he had been walking over Salisbury Plain; sometimes he would disappear behind huge blocks of stone, and we momentarily lost sight of him. There was a little period of anxiety and then there was a shrill whistle, just to tell us where to look for him.

Occasionally he would take it into his head to stop to pick up lumps of rock, and silently pile them up into small heaps, in order that we might not lose our way on our return.

He had no idea of the journey we were about to undertake.

At all events, the precaution was a good one; though how utterly useless and unnecessary—but I must not anticipate.

Three hours of terrible fatigue, walking incessantly, had only brought us to the foot of the great mountain. This will give some notion of what we had still to undergo.

Suddenly, however, Hans cried a halt—that is, he made signs to that effect—and a summary kind of breakfast was laid out on the lava before us. My uncle, who now was simply Professor Hardwigg, was so eager to advance, that he bolted his food like a greedy clown. This halt for refreshment was also a halt for repose. The Professor was therefore compelled to wait the good pleasure of his imperturbable guide, who did not give the signal for departure for a good hour.

The three Icelanders, who were as taciturn as their comrade, did not say a word; but went on eating and drinking very quietly and soberly.

From this, our first real stage, we began to ascend the slopes of the Sneffels volcano. Its magnificent snowy nightcap, as we began to call it, by an optical delusion very common in mountains, appeared to me to be close at hand; and yet how many long weary hours must elapse before we reached its summit. What unheard-of fatigue must we endure!

The stones on the mountain side, held together by no cement of soil, bound together by no roots or creeping herbs, gave way continually under our feet, and went rushing below into the plains, like a series of small avalanches.

In certain places the sides of this stupendous mountain were at an angle so steep that it was impossible to climb upwards, and we were compelled to get round these obstacles as best we might.

Those who understand Alpine climbing will comprehend our difficulties. Often we were obliged to help each other along by means of our climbing poles.

I must say this for my uncle, that he stuck as close to me as possible. He never lost sight of me, and on many occasions his arm supplied me with firm and solid support. He was strong, wiry, and apparently insensible to fatigue. Another great advantage with him was that he had the innate sentiment of equilibrium—for he never slipped or failed in his steps. The Icelanders, though heavily loaded, climbed with the agility of mountaineers.

Looking up, every now and then, at the height of the great volcano of Sneffels, it appeared to me wholly impossible to reach to the summit on that side; at all events, if the angle of inclination did not speedily change.

Fortunately, after an hour of unheard-of fatigues, and of gymnastic exercises that would have been trying to an acrobat, we came to a vast field of ice, which wholly surrounded the bottom of the cone of the volcano. The natives called it the tablecloth, probably from some such reason as the dwellers in the Cape of Good Hope call their mountain Table Mountain, and their roads Table Bay.

Here, to our mutual surprise, we found an actual flight of stone steps, which wonderfully assisted our ascent. This singular flight of stairs was, like everything else, volcanic. It had been formed by one of those torrents of stones cast up by the eruptions, and of which the Icelandic name is stina. If this singular torrent had not been checked in its descent by the peculiar shape of the flanks of the mountain, it would have swept into the sea, and would have formed new islands.

Such as it was, it served us admirably. The abrupt character of the slopes momentarily increased, but these remarkable stone steps, a little less difficult than those of the Egyptian pyramids, were the one simple natural means by which we were enabled to proceed.

About seven in the evening of that day, after having clambered up two thousand of these rough steps, we found ourselves overlooking a kind of spur or projection of the mountain—a sort of buttress upon which the conelike crater, properly so called, leaned for support.

The ocean lay beneath us at a depth of more than three thousand two hundred feet—a grand and mighty spectacle. We had reached the region of eternal snows.

The cold was keen, searching and intense. The wind blew with extraordinary violence. I was utterly exhausted.

My worthy uncle, the Professor, saw clearly that my legs refused further service, and that, in fact, I was utterly exhausted. Despite his hot and feverish impatience, he decided, with a sigh, upon a halt. He called the eider-duck hunter to his side. That worthy, however, shook his head.

“Ofvanfor,” was his sole spoken reply.

“It appears,” says my uncle with a woebegone look, “that we must go higher.”

He then turned to Hans, and asked him to give some reason for this decisive response.

“Mistour,” replied the guide.

“Ja, mistour—yes, the mistour,” cried one of the Icelandic guides in a terrified tone.

It was the first time he had spoken.

“What does this mysterious word signify?” I anxiously inquired.

“Look,” said my uncle.

I looked down upon the plain below, and I saw a vast, a prodigious volume of pulverized pumice stone, of sand, of dust, rising to the heavens in the form of a mighty waterspout. It resembled the fearful phenomenon of a similar character known to the travelers in the desert of the great Sahara.

The wind was driving it directly towards that side of Sneffels on which we were perched. This opaque veil standing up between us and the sun projected a deep shadow on the flanks of the mountain. If this sand spout broke over us, we must all be infallibly destroyed, crushed in its fearful embraces. This extraordinary phenomenon, very common when the wind shakes the glaciers, and sweeps over the arid plains, is in the Icelandic tongue called “mistour.”

“Hastigt, hastigt!” cried our guide.

Now I certainly knew nothing of Danish, but I thoroughly understood that his gestures were meant to quicken us.

The guide turned rapidly in a direction which would take us to the back of the crater, all the while ascending slightly.

We followed rapidly, despite our excessive fatigue.

A quarter of an hour later Hans paused to enable us to look back. The mighty whirlwind of sand was spreading up the slope of the mountain to the very spot where we had proposed to halt. Huge stones were caught up, cast into the air, and thrown about as during an eruption. We were happily a little out of the direction of the wind, and therefore out of reach of danger. But for the precaution and knowledge of our guide, our dislocated bodies, our crushed and broken limbs, would have been cast to the wind, like dust from some unknown meteor.

Hans, however, did not think it prudent to pass the night on the bare side of the cone. We therefore continued our journey in a zigzag direction. The fifteen hundred feet which remained to be accomplished took us at least five hours. The turnings and windings, the no-thoroughfares, the marches and marches, turned that insignificant distance into at least three leagues. I never felt such misery, fatigue and exhaustion in my life. I was ready to faint from hunger and cold. The rarefied air at the same time painfully acted upon my lungs.

At last, when I thought myself at my last gasp, about eleven at night, it being in that region quite dark, we reached the summit of Mount Sneffels! It was in an awful mood of mind, that despite my fatigue, before I descended into the crater which was to shelter us for the night, I paused to behold the sun rise at midnight on the very day of its lowest declension, and enjoyed the spectacle of its ghastly pale rays cast upon the isle which lay sleeping at our feet!

I no longer wondered at people traveling all the way from England to Norway to behold this magical and wondrous spectacle.

CHAPTER 13

THE SHADOW OF SCARTARIS

Our supper was eaten with ease and rapidity, after which everybody did the best he could for himself within the hollow of the crater. The bed was hard, the shelter unsatisfactory, the situation painful—lying in the open air, five thousand feet above the level of the sea!

Nevertheless, it has seldom happened to me to sleep so well as I did on that particular night. I did not even dream. So much for the effects of what my uncle called “wholesome fatigue.”

Next day, when we awoke under the rays of a bright and glorious sun, we were nearly frozen by the keen air. I left my granite couch and made one of the party to enjoy a view of the magnificent spectacle which developed itself, panorama-like, at our feet.

I stood upon the lofty summit of Mount Sneffels’ southern peak. Thence I was able to obtain a view of the greater part of the island. The optical delusion, common to all lofty heights, raised the shores of the island, while the central portions appeared depressed. It was by no means too great a flight of fancy to believe that a giant picture was stretched out before me. I could see the deep valleys that crossed each other in every direction. I could see precipices looking like sides of wells, lakes that seemed to be changed into ponds, ponds that looked like puddles, and rivers that were transformed into petty brooks. To my right were glaciers upon glaciers, and multiplied peaks, topped with light clouds of smoke.

The undulation of these infinite numbers of mountains, whose snowy summits make them look as if covered by foam, recalled to my remembrance the surface of a storm-beaten ocean. If I looked towards the west, the ocean lay before me in all its majestic grandeur, a continuation as it were, of these fleecy hilltops.

Where the earth ended and the sea began it was impossible for the eye to distinguish.

I soon felt that strange and mysterious sensation which is awakened in the mind when looking down from lofty hilltops, and now I was able to do so without any feeling of nervousness, having fortunately hardened myself to that kind of sublime contemplation.

I wholly forgot who I was, and where I was. I became intoxicated with a sense of lofty sublimity, without thought of the abysses into which my daring was soon about to plunge me. I was presently, however, brought back to the realities of life by the arrival of the Professor and Hans, who joined me upon the lofty summit of the peak.

My uncle, turning in a westerly direction, pointed out to me a light cloud of vapor, a kind of haze, with a faint outline of land rising out of the waters.

“Greenland!” said he.

“Greenland?” cried I in reply.

“Yes,” continued my uncle, who always when explaining anything spoke as if he were in a professor’s chair; “we are not more than thirty-five leagues distant from that wonderful land. When the great annual breakup of the ice takes place, white bears come over to Iceland, carried by the floating masses of ice from the north. This, however, is a matter of little consequence. We are now on the summit of the great, the transcendent Sneffels, and here are its two peaks, north and south. Hans will tell you the name by which the people of Iceland call that on which we stand.”

My uncle turned to the imperturbable guide, who nodded, and spoke as usual—one word.

“Scartaris.”

My uncle looked at me with a proud and triumphant glance.

“A crater,” he said, “you hear?”

I did hear, but I was totally unable to make reply.

The crater of Mount Sneffels represented an inverted cone, the gaping orifice apparently half a mile across; the depth indefinite feet. Conceive what this hole must have been like when full of flame and thunder and lightning. The bottom of the funnel-shaped hollow was about five hundred feet in circumference, by which it will be seen that the slope from the summit to the bottom was very gradual, and we were therefore clearly able to get there without much fatigue or difficulty. Involuntarily, I compared this crater to an enormous loaded cannon; and the comparison completely terrified me.

“To descend into the interior of a cannon,” I thought to myself, “when perhaps it is loaded, and will go off at the least shock, is the act of a madman.”

But there was no longer any opportunity for me to hesitate. Hans, with a perfectly calm and indifferent air, took his usual post at the head of the adventurous little band. I followed without uttering a syllable.

I felt like the lamb led to the slaughter.

In order to render the descent less difficult, Hans took his way down the interior of the cone in rather a zigzag fashion, making, as the sailors say, long tracks to the eastward, followed by equally long ones to the west. It was necessary to walk through the midst of eruptive rocks, some of which, shaken in their balance, went rolling down with thundering clamor to the bottom of the abyss. These continual falls awoke echoes of singular power and effect.

Many portions of the cone consisted of inferior glaciers. Hans, whenever he met with one of these obstacles, advanced with a great show of precaution, sounding the soil with his long iron pole in order to discover fissures and layers of deep soft snow. In many doubtful or dangerous places, it became necessary for us to be tied together by a long rope in order that should any one of us be unfortunate enough to slip, he would be supported by his companions. This connecting link was doubtless a prudent precaution, but not by any means unattended with danger.

Nevertheless, and despite all the manifold difficulties of the descent, along slopes with which our guide was wholly unacquainted, we made considerable progress without accident. One of our great parcels of rope slipped from one of the Iceland porters, and rushed by a short cut to the bottom of the abyss.

By midday we were at the end of our journey. I looked upwards, and saw only the upper orifice of the cone, which served as a circular frame to a very small portion of the sky—a portion which seemed to me singularly beautiful. Should I ever again gaze on that lovely sunlit sky!

The only exception to this extraordinary landscape, was the Peak of Scartaris, which seemed lost in the great void of the heavens.

The bottom of the crater was composed of three separate shafts, through which, during periods of eruption, when Sneffels was in action, the great central furnace sent forth its burning lava and poisonous vapors. Each of these chimneys or shafts gaped open-mouthed in our path. I kept as far away from them as possible, not even venturing to take the faintest peep downwards.

As for the Professor, after a rapid examination of their disposition and characteristics, he became breathless and panting. He ran from one to the other like a delighted schoolboy, gesticulating wildly, and uttering incomprehensible and disjointed phrases in all sorts of languages.

Hans, the guide, and his humbler companions seated themselves on some piles of lava and looked silently on. They clearly took my uncle for a lunatic; and—waited the result.

Suddenly the Professor uttered a wild, unearthly cry. At first I imagined he had lost his footing, and was falling headlong into one of the yawning gulfs. Nothing of the kind. I saw him, his arms spread out to their widest extent, his legs stretched apart, standing upright before an enormous pedestal, high enough and black enough to bear a gigantic statue of Pluto. His attitude and mien were that of a man utterly stupefied. But his stupefaction was speedily changed to the wildest joy.

“Harry! Harry! come here!” he cried; “make haste—wonderful—wonderful!”

Unable to understand what he meant, I turned to obey his commands. Neither Hans nor the other Icelanders moved a step.

“Look!” said the Professor, in something of the manner of the French general, pointing out the pyramids to his army.

And fully partaking his stupefaction, if not his joy, I read on the eastern side of the huge block of stone, the same characters, half eaten away by the corrosive action of time, the name, to me a thousand times accursed—

“Arne Saknussemm!” cried my uncle, “now, unbeliever, do you begin to have faith?”

It was totally impossible for me to answer a single word. I went back to my pile of lava, in a state of silent awe. The evidence was unanswerable, overwhelming!

In a few moments, however, my thoughts were far away, back in my German home, with Gretchen and the old cook. What would I have given for one of my cousin’s smiles, for one of the ancient domestic’s omelettes, and for my own feather bed!

How long I remained in this state I know not. All I can say is, that when at last I raised my head from between my hands, there remained at the bottom of the crater only myself, my uncle and Hans. The Icelandic porters had been dismissed and were now descending the exterior slopes of Mount Sneffels, on their way to Stapi. How heartily did I wish myself with them!

Hans slept tranquilly at the foot of a rock in a kind of rill of lava, where he had made himself a rough and ready bed. MY uncle was walking about the bottom of the crater like a wild beast in a cage. I had no desire, neither had I the strength, to move from my recumbent position. Taking example by the guide, I gave way to a kind of painful somnolency, during which I seemed both to hear and feel continued heavings and shudderings in the mountain.

In this way we passed our first night in the interior of a crater.

Next morning, a grey, cloudy, heavy sky hung like a funereal pall over the summit of the volcanic cone. I did not notice it so much from the obscurity that reigned around us, as from the rage with which my uncle was devoured.

I fully understood the reason, and again a glimpse of hope made my heart leap with joy. I will briefly explain the cause.

Of the three openings which yawned beneath our steps, only one could have been followed by the adventurous Saknussemm. According to the words of the learned Icelander, it was only to be known by that one particular mentioned in the cryptograph, that the shadow of Scartaris fell upon it, just touching its mouth in the last days of the month of June.

We were, in fact, to consider the pointed peak as the stylus of an immense sun-dial, the shadow of which pointed on one given day, like the inexorable finger of fate, to the yawning chasm which led into the interior of the earth.

Now, as often happens in these regions, should the sun fail to burst through the clouds, no shadow. Consequently, no chance of discovering the right aperture. We had already reached the 25th June. If the kindly heavens would only remain densely clouded for six more days, we should have to put off our voyage of discovery for another year, when certainly there would be one person fewer in the party. I already had sufficient of the mad and monstrous enterprise.

It would be utterly impossible to depict the impotent rage of Professor Hardwigg. The day passed away, and not the faintest outline of a shadow could be seen at the bottom of the crater. Hans the guide never moved from his place. He must have been curious to know what we were about, if indeed he could believe we were about anything. As for my uncle, he never addressed a word to me. He was nursing his wrath to keep it warm! His eyes fixed on the black and foggy atmosphere, his complexion hideous with suppressed passion. Never had his eyes appeared so fierce, his nose so aquiline, his mouth so hard and firm.

On the 26th no change for the better. A mixture of rain and snow fell during the whole day. Hans very quietly built himself a hut of lava into which he retired like Diogenes into his tub. I took a malicious delight in watching the thousand little cascades that flowed down the side of the cone, carrying with them at times a stream of stones into the “vasty deep” below.

My uncle was almost frantic: to be sure, it was enough to make even a patient man angry. He had reached to a certain extent the goal of his desires, and yet he was likely to be wrecked in port.

But if the heavens and the elements are capable of causing us much pain and sorrow, there are two sides to a medal. And there was reserved for Professor Hardwigg a brilliant and sudden surprise which was to compensate him for all his sufferings.

Next day the sky was still overcast, but on Sunday, the 28th, the last day but two of the month, with a sudden change of wind and a new moon there came a change of weather. The sun poured its beaming rays to the very bottom of the crater.

Each hillock, every rock, every stone, every asperity of the soil had its share of the luminous effulgence, and its shadow fell heavily on the soil. Among others, to his insane delight, the shadow of Scartaris was marked and clear, and moved slowly with the radiant start of day.

My uncle moved with it in a state of mental ecstasy.

At twelve o’clock exactly, when the sun had attained its highest altitude for the day, the shadow fell upon the edge of the central pit!

“Here it is,” gasped the Professor in an agony of joy, “here it is—we have found it. Forward, my friends, into the Interior of the Earth.”

I looked curiously at Hans to see what reply he would make to this terrific announcement.

“Forut,” said the guide tranquilly.

“Forward it is,” answered my uncle, who was now in the seventh heaven of delight.

When we were quite ready, our watches indicated thirteen minutes past one!

CHAPTER 14

THE REAL JOURNEY COMMENCES

Our real journey had now commenced. Hitherto our courage and determination had overcome all difficulties. We were fatigued at times; and that was all. Now we were about to encounter unknown and fearful dangers.

I had not as yet ventured to take a glimpse down the horrible abyss into which in a few minutes more I was about to plunge. The fatal moment had, however, at last arrived. I had still the option of refusing or accepting a share in this foolish and audacious enterprise. But I was ashamed to show more fear than the eider-duck hunter. Hans seemed to accept the difficulties of the journey so tranquilly, with such calm indifference, with such perfect recklessness of all danger, that I actually blushed to appear less of a man than he!

Had I been alone with my uncle, I should certainly have sat down and argued the point fully; but in the presence of the guide I held my tongue. I gave one moment to the thought of my charming cousin, and then I advanced to the mouth of the central shaft.

It measured about a hundred feet in diameter, which made about three hundred in circumference. I leaned over a rock which stood on its edge, and looked down. My hair stood on end, my teeth chattered, my limbs trembled. I seemed utterly to lose my centre of gravity, while my head was in a sort of whirl, like that of a drunken man. There is nothing more powerful than this attraction towards an abyss. I was about to fall headlong into the gaping well, when I was drawn back by a firm and powerful hand. It was that of Hans. I had not taken lessons enough at the Frelser’s-Kirk of Copenhagen in the art of looking down from lofty eminences without blinking!

However, few as the minutes were during which I gazed down this tremendous and even wondrous shaft, I had a sufficient glimpse of it to give me some idea of its physical conformation. Its sides, which were almost as perpendicular as those of a well, presented numerous projections which doubtless would assist our descent.

It was a sort of wild and savage staircase, without bannister or fence. A rope fastened above, near the surface, would certainly support our weight and enable us to reach the bottom, but how, when we had arrived at its utmost depth, were we to loosen it above? This was, I thought, a question of some importance.

My uncle, however, was one of those men who are nearly always prepared with expedients. He hit upon a very simple method of obviating this difficulty. He unrolled a cord about as thick as my thumb, and at least four hundred feet in length. He allowed about half of it to go down the pit and catch in a hitch over a great block of lava which stood on the edge of the precipice. This done, he threw the second half after the first.

Each of us could now descend by catching the two cords in one hand. When about two hundred feet below, all the explorer had to do was to let go one end and pull away at the other, when the cord would come falling at his feet. In order to go down farther, all that was necessary was to continue the same operation.

This was a very excellent proposition, and no doubt, a correct one. Going down appeared to me easy enough; it was the coming up again that now occupied my thoughts.

“Now,” said my uncle, as soon as he had completed this important preparation, “let us see about the baggage. It must be divided into three separate parcels, and each of us must carry one on his back. I allude to the more important and fragile articles.”

My worthy and ingenious uncle did not appear to consider that we came under the denomination.

“Hans,” he continued, “you will take charge of the tools and some of the provisions; you, Harry, must take possession of another third of the provisions and of the arms. I will load myself with the rest of the eatables, and with the more delicate instruments.”

“But,” I exclaimed, “our clothes, this mass of cord and ladders—who will undertake to carry them down?”

“They will go down of themselves.”

“And how so?” I asked.

“You shall see.”

My uncle was not fond of half measures, nor did he like anything in the way of hesitation. Giving his orders to Hans he had the whole of the nonfragile articles made up into one bundle; and the packet, firmly and solidly fastened, was simply pitched over the edge of the gulf.

I heard the moaning of the suddenly displaced air, and the noise of falling stones. My uncle leaning over the abyss followed the descent of his luggage with a perfectly self-satisfied air, and did not rise until it had completely disappeared from sight.

“Now then,” he cried, “it is our turn.”

I put it in good faith to any man of common sense—was it possible to hear this energetic cry without a shudder?

The Professor fastened his case of instruments on his back. Hans took charge of the tools, I of the arms. The descent then commenced in the following order: Hans went first, my uncle followed, and I went last. Our progress was made in profound silence—a silence only troubled by the fall of pieces of rock, which breaking from the jagged sides, fell with a roar into the depths below.

I allowed myself to slide, so to speak, holding frantically on the double cord with one hand and with the other keeping myself off the rocks by the assistance of my iron-shod pole. One idea was all the time impressed upon my brain. I feared that the upper support would fail me. The cord appeared to me far too fragile to bear the weight of three such persons as we were, with our luggage. I made as little use of it as possible, trusting to my own agility and doing miracles in the way of feats of dexterity and strength upon the projecting shelves and spurs of lava which my feet seemed to clutch as strongly as my hands.

The guide went first, I have said, and when one of the slippery and frail supports broke from under his feet he had recourse to his usual monosyllabic way of speaking.

“Gif akt—”

“Attention—look out,” repeated my uncle.

In about half an hour we reached a kind of small terrace formed by a fragment of rock projecting some distance from the sides of the shaft.

Hans now began to haul upon the cord on one side only, the other going as quietly upward as the other came down. It fell at last, bringing with it a shower of small stones, lava and dust, a disagreeable kind of rain or hail.

While we were seated on this extraordinary bench I ventured once more to look downwards. With a sigh I discovered that the bottom was still wholly invisible. Were we, then, going direct to the interior of the earth?

The performance with the cord recommenced, and a quarter of an hour later we had reached to the depth of another two hundred feet.

I have very strong doubts if the most determined geologist would, during that descent, have studied the nature of the different layers of earth around him. I did not trouble my head much about the matter; whether we were among the combustible carbon, Silurians, or primitive soil, I neither knew nor cared to know.

Not so the inveterate Professor. He must have taken notes all the way down, for, at one of our halts, he began a brief lecture.

“The farther we advance,” said he, “the greater is my confidence in the result. The disposition of these volcanic strata absolutely confirms the theories of Sir Humphry Davy. We are still within the region of the primordial soil, the soil in which took place the chemical operation of metals becoming inflamed by coming in contact with the air and water. I at once regret the old and now forever exploded theory of a central fire. At all events, we shall soon know the truth.”

Such was the everlasting conclusion to which he came. I, however, was very far from being in humor to discuss the matter. I had something else to think of. My silence was taken for consent; and still we continued to go down.

At the expiration of three hours, we were, to all appearance, as far off as ever from the bottom of the well. When I looked upwards, however, I could see that the upper orifice was every minute decreasing in size. The sides of the shaft were getting closer and closer together, we were approaching the regions of eternal night!

And still we continued to descend!

At length, I noticed that when pieces of stone were detached from the sides of this stupendous precipice, they were swallowed up with less noise than before. The final sound was sooner heard. We were approaching the bottom of the abyss!

As I had been very careful to keep account of all the changes of cord which took place, I was able to tell exactly what was the depth we had reached, as well as the time it had taken.

We had shifted the rope twenty-eight times, each operation taking a quarter of an hour, which in all made seven hours. To this had to be added twenty-eight pauses; in all ten hours and a half. We started at one, it was now, therefore, about eleven o’clock at night.

It does not require great knowledge of arithmetic to know that twenty-eight times two hundred feet makes five thousand six hundred feet in all (more than an English mile).

While I was making this mental calculation a voice broke the silence. It was the voice of Hans.

“Halt!” he cried.

I checked myself very suddenly, just at the moment when I was about to kick my uncle on the head.

“We have reached the end of our journey,” said the worthy Professor in a satisfied tone.

“What, the interior of the earth?” said I, slipping down to his side.

“No, you stupid fellow! but we have reached the bottom of the well.”

“And I suppose there is no farther progress to be made?” I hopefully exclaimed.

“Oh, yes, I can dimly see a sort of tunnel, which turns off obliquely to the right. At all events, we must see about that tomorrow. Let us sup now, and seek slumber as best we may.”

I thought it time, but made no observations on that point. I was fairly launched on a desperate course, and all I had to do was to go forward hopefully and trustingly.

It was not even now quite dark, the light filtering down in a most extraordinary manner.

We opened the provision bag, ate a frugal supper, and each did his best to find a bed amid the pile of stones, dirt, and lava which had accumulated for ages at the bottom of the shaft.

I happened to grope out the pile of ropes, ladders, and clothes which we had thrown down; and upon them I stretched myself. After such a day’s labor, my rough bed seemed as soft as down!

For a while I lay in a sort of pleasant trance.

Presently, after lying quietly for some minutes, I opened my eyes and looked upwards. As I did so I made out a brilliant little dot, at the extremity of this long, gigantic telescope.

It was a star without scintillating rays. According to my calculation, it must be Beta in the constellation of the Little Bear.

After this little bit of astronomical recreation, I dropped into a sound sleep.

CHAPTER 15

WE CONTINUE OUR DESCENT

At eight o’clock the next morning, a faint kind of dawn of day awoke us. The thousand and one prisms of the lava collected the light as it passed and brought it to us like a shower of sparks.

We were able with ease to see objects around us.

“Well, Harry, my boy,” cried the delighted Professor, rubbing his hands together, “what say you now? Did you ever pass a more tranquil night in our house in the Konigstrasse? No deafening sounds of cart wheels, no cries of hawkers, no bad language from boatmen or watermen!”

“Well, Uncle, we are quite at the bottom of this well—but to me there is something terrible in this calm.”

“Why,” said the Professor hotly, “one would say you were already beginning to be afraid. How will you get on presently? Do you know, that as yet, we have not penetrated one inch into the bowels of the earth.”

“What can you mean, sir?” was my bewildered and astonished reply.

“I mean to say that we have only just reached the soil of the island itself. This long vertical tube, which ends at the bottom of the crater of Sneffels, ceases here just about on a level with the sea.”

“Are you sure, sir?”

“Quite sure. Consult the barometer.”

It was quite true that the mercury, after rising gradually in the instrument, as long as our descent was taking place, had stopped precisely at twenty-nine degrees.

“You perceive,” said the Professor, “we have as yet only to endure the pressure of air. I am curious to replace the barometer by the manometer.”

The barometer, in fact, was about to become useless—as soon as the weight of the air was greater than what was calculated as above the level of the ocean.

“But,” said I, “is it not very much to be feared that this ever-increasing pressure may not in the end turn out very painful and inconvenient?”

“No,” said he. “We shall descend very slowly, and our lungs will be gradually accustomed to breathe compressed air. It is well known that aeronauts have gone so high as to be nearly without air at all—why, then, should we not accustom ourselves to breathe when we have, say, a little too much of it? For myself, I am certain I shall prefer it. Let us not lose a moment. Where is the packet which preceded us in our descent?”

I smilingly pointed it out to my uncle. Hans had not seen it, and believed it caught somewhere above us: “Huppe” as he phrased it.

“Now,” said my uncle, “let us breakfast, and break fast like people who have a long day’s work before them.”

Biscuit and dried meat, washed down by some mouthfuls of water flavored with Schiedam, was the material of our luxurious meal.

As soon as it was finished, my uncle took from his pocket a notebook destined to be filled by memoranda of our travels. He had already placed his instruments in order, and this is what he wrote:

Monday, June 29th

Chronometer, 8h. 17m. morning.

Barometer, 29.6 inches.

Thermometer, 6 degrees [43 degrees Fahr.]

Direction, E.S.E.

This last observation referred to the obscure gallery, and was indicated to us by the compass.

“Now, Harry,” cried the Professor, in an enthusiastic tone of voice, “we are truly about to take our first step into the Interior of the Earth; never before visited by man since the first creation of the world. You may consider, therefore, that at this precise moment our travels really commence.”

As my uncle made this remark, he took in one hand the Ruhmkorff coil apparatus, which hung round his neck, and with the other he put the electric current into communication with the worm of the lantern. And a bright light at once illumined that dark and gloomy tunnel!

The effect was magical!

Hans, who carried the second apparatus, had it also put into operation. This ingenious application of electricity to practical purposes enabled us to move along by the light of an artificial day, amid even the flow of the most inflammable and combustible gases.

“Forward!” cried my uncle. Each took up his burden. Hans went first, my uncle followed, and I going third, we entered the somber gallery!

Just as we were about to engulf ourselves in this dismal passage, I lifted up my head, and through the tubelike shaft saw that Iceland sky I was never to see again!

Was it the last I should ever see of any sky?

The stream of lava flowing from the bowels of the earth in 1219 had forced itself a passage through the tunnel. It lined the whole of the inside with its thick and brilliant coating. The electric light added very greatly to the brilliancy of the effect.

The great difficulty of our journey now began. How were we to prevent ourselves from slipping down the steeply inclined plane? Happily some cracks, abrasures of the soil, and other irregularities, served the place of steps; and we descended slowly; allowing our heavy luggage to slip on before, at the end of a long cord.

But that which served as steps under our feet became in other places stalactites. The lava, very porous in certain places, took the form of little round blisters. Crystals of opaque quartz, adorned with limpid drops of natural glass suspended to the roof like lusters, seemed to take fire as we passed beneath them. One would have fancied that the genii of romance were illuminating their underground palaces to receive the sons of men.

“Magnificent, glorious!” I cried in a moment of involuntary enthusiasm, “What a spectacle, Uncle! Do you not admire these variegated shades of lava, which run through a whole series of colors, from reddish brown to pale yellow—by the most insensible degrees? And these crystals, they appear like luminous globes.”

“You are beginning to see the charms of travel, Master Harry,” cried my uncle. “Wait a bit, until we advance farther. What we have as yet discovered is nothing—onwards, my boy, onwards!”

It would have been a far more correct and appropriate expression, had he said, “let us slide,” for we were going down an inclined plane with perfect ease. The compass indicated that we were moving in a southeasterly direction. The flow of lava had never turned to the right or the left. It had the inflexibility of a straight line.

Nevertheless, to my surprise, we found no perceptible increase in heat. This proved the theories of Humphry Davy to be founded on truth, and more than once I found myself examining the thermometer in silent astonishment.

Two hours after our departure it only marked fifty-four degrees Fahrenheit. I had every reason to believe from this that our descent was far more horizontal than vertical. As for discovering the exact depth to which we had attained, nothing could be easier. The Professor as he advanced measured the angles of deviation and inclination; but he kept the result of his observations to himself.

About eight o’clock in the evening, my uncle gave the signal for halting. Hans seated himself on the ground. The lamps were hung to fissures in the lava rock. We were now in a large cavern where air was not wanting. On the contrary, it abounded. What could be the cause of this—to what atmospheric agitation could be ascribed this draught? But this was a question which I did not care to discuss just then. Fatigue and hunger made me incapable of reasoning. An unceasing march of seven hours had not been kept up without great exhaustion. I was really and truly worn out; and delighted enough I was to hear the word Halt.

Hans laid out some provisions on a lump of lava, and we each supped with keen relish. One thing, however, caused us great uneasiness—our water reserve was already half exhausted. My uncle had full confidence in finding subterranean resources, but hitherto we had completely failed in so doing. I could not help calling my uncle’s attention to the circumstance.

“And you are surprised at this total absence of springs?” he said.

“Doubtless—I am very uneasy on the point. We have certainly not enough water to last us five days.”

“Be quite easy on that matter,” continued my uncle. “I answer for it we shall find plenty of water—in fact, far more than we shall want.”

“But when?”

“When we once get through this crust of lava. How can you expect springs to force their way through these solid stone walls?”

“But what is there to prove that this concrete mass of lava does not extend to the centre of the earth? I don’t think we have as yet done much in a vertical way.”

“What puts that into your head, my boy?” asked my uncle mildly.

“Well, it appears to me that if we had descended very far below the level of the sea—we should find it rather hotter than we have.”

“According to your system,” said my uncle; “but what does the thermometer say?”

“Scarcely fifteen degrees by Reaumur, which is only an increase of nine since our departure.”

“Well, and what conclusion does that bring you to?” inquired the Professor.

“The deduction I draw from this is very simple. According to the most exact observations, the augmentation of the temperature of the interior of the earth is one degree for every hundred feet. But certain local causes may considerably modify this figure. Thus at Yakoust in Siberia, it has been remarked that the heat increases a degree every thirty-six feet. The difference evidently depends on the conductibility of certain rocks. In the neighborhood of an extinct volcano, it has been remarked that the elevation of temperature was only one degree in every five-and-twenty feet. Let us, then, go upon this calculation—which is the most favorable—and calculate.”

“Calculate away, my boy.”

“Nothing easier,” said I, pulling out my notebook and pencil. “Nine times one hundred and twenty-five feet make a depth of eleven hundred and twenty-five feet.”

“Archimedes could not have spoken more geometrically.”

“Well?”

“Well, according to my observations, we are at least ten thousand feet below the level of the sea.”

“Can it be possible?”

“Either my calculation is correct, or there is no truth in figures.”

The calculations of the Professor were perfectly correct. We were already six thousand feet deeper down in the bowels of the earth than anyone had ever been before. The lowest known depth to which man had hitherto penetrated was in the mines of Kitzbuhel, in the Tirol, and those of Wurttemberg.

The temperature, which should have been eighty-one, was in this place only fifteen. This was a matter for serious consideration.

CHAPTER 16

THE EASTERN TUNNEL

The next day was Tuesday, the 30th of June—and at six o’clock in the morning we resumed our journey.

We still continued to follow the gallery of lava, a perfect natural pathway, as easy of descent as some of those inclined planes which, in very old German houses, serve the purpose of staircases. This went on until seventeen minutes past twelve, the precise instant at which we rejoined Hans, who, having been somewhat in advance, had suddenly stopped.

“At last,” cried my uncle, “we have reached the end of the shaft.”

I looked wonderingly about me. We were in the centre of four cross paths—somber and narrow tunnels. The question now arose as to which it was wise to take; and this of itself was no small difficulty.

My uncle, who did not wish to appear to have any hesitation about the matter before myself or the guide, at once made up his mind. He pointed quietly to the eastern tunnel; and, without delay, we entered within its gloomy recesses.

Besides, had he entertained any feeling of hesitation it might have been prolonged indefinitely, for there was no indication by which to determine on a choice. It was absolutely necessary to trust to chance and good fortune!

The descent of this obscure and narrow gallery was very gradual and winding. Sometimes we gazed through a succession of arches, its course very like the aisles of a Gothic cathedral. The great artistic sculptors and builders of the Middle Ages might have here completed their studies with advantage. Many most beautiful and suggestive ideas of architectural beauty would have been discovered by them. After passing through this phase of the cavernous way, we suddenly came, about a mile farther on, upon a square system of arch, adopted by the early Romans, projecting from the solid rock, and keeping up the weight of the roof.

Suddenly we would come upon a series of low subterranean tunnels which looked like beaver holes, or the work of foxes—through whose narrow and winding ways we had literally to crawl!

The heat still remained at quite a supportable degree. With an involuntary shudder, I reflected on what the heat must have been when the volcano of Sneffels was pouring its smoke, flames, and streams of boiling lava—all of which must have come up by the road we were now following. I could imagine the torrents of hot seething stone darting on, bubbling up with accompaniments of smoke, steam, and sulphurous stench!

“Only to think of the consequences,” I mused, “if the old volcano were once more to set to work.”

I did not communicate these rather unpleasant reflections to my uncle. He not only would not have understood them, but would have been intensely disgusted. His only idea was to go ahead. He walked, he slid, he clambered over piles of fragments, he rolled down heaps of broken lava, with an earnestness and conviction it was impossible not to admire.

At six o’clock in the evening, after a very wearisome journey, but one not so fatiguing as before, we had made six miles towards the southward, but had not gone more than a mile downwards.

My uncle, as usual, gave the signal to halt. We ate our meal in thoughtful silence, and then retired to sleep.

Our arrangements for the night were very primitive and simple. A traveling rug, in which each rolled himself, was all our bedding. We had no necessity to fear cold or any unpleasant visit. Travelers who bury themselves in the wilds and depths of the African desert, who seek profit and pleasure in the forests of the New World, are compelled to take it in turn to watch during the hours of sleep; but in this region of the earth absolute solitude and complete security reigned supreme.

We had nothing to fear either from savages or from wild beasts.

After a night’s sweet repose, we awoke fresh and ready for action. There being nothing to detain us, we started on our journey. We continued to burrow through the lava tunnel as before. It was impossible to make out through what soil we were making way. The tunnel, moreover, instead of going down into the bowels of the earth, became absolutely horizontal.

I even thought, after some examination, that we were actually tending upwards. About ten o’clock in the day this state of things became so clear that, finding the change very fatiguing, I was obliged to slacken my pace and finally come to a halt.

“Well,” said the Professor quickly, “what is the matter?”

“The fact is, I am dreadfully tired,” was my earnest reply.

“What,” cried my uncle, “tired after a three hours’ walk, and by so easy a road?”

“Easy enough, I dare say, but very fatiguing.”

“But how can that be, when all we have to do is to go downwards.”

“I beg your pardon, sir. For some time I have noticed that we are going upwards.”

“Upwards,” cried my uncle, shrugging his shoulders, “how can that be?”

“There can be no doubt about it. For the last half hour the slopes have been upward—and if we go on in this way much longer we shall find ourselves back in Iceland.”

My uncle shook his head with the air of a man who does not want to be convinced. I tried to continue the conversation. He would not answer me, but once more gave the signal for departure. His silence I thought was only caused by concentrated ill-temper.

However this might be, I once more took up my load, and boldly and resolutely followed Hans, who was now in advance of my uncle. I did not like to be beaten or even distanced. I was naturally anxious not to lose sight of my companions. The very idea of being left behind, lost in that terrible labyrinth, made me shiver as with the ague.

Besides, if the ascending path was more arduous and painful to clamber, I had one source of secret consolation and delight. It was to all appearance taking us back to the surface of the earth. That of itself was hopeful. Every step I took confirmed me in my belief, and I began already to build castles in the air in relation to my marriage with my pretty little cousin.

About twelve o’clock there was a great and sudden change in the aspect of the rocky sides of the gallery. I first noticed it from the diminution of the rays of light which cast back the reflection of the lamp. From being coated with shining and resplendent lava, it became living rock. The sides were sloping walls, which sometimes became quite vertical.

We were now in what the geological professors call a state of transition, in the period of Silurian stones, so called because this specimen of early formation is very common in England in the counties formerly inhabited by the Celtic nation known as Silures.

“I can see clearly now,” I cried; “the sediment from the waters which once covered the whole earth formed during the second period of its existence these schists and these calcareous rocks. We are turning our backs on the granite rocks, and are like people from Hamburg who would go to Lubeck by way of Hanover.”

I might just as well have kept my observations to myself. My geological enthusiasm got the better, however, of my cooler judgment, and Professor Hardwigg heard my observations.

“What is the matter now?” he said, in a tone of great gravity.

“Well,” cried I, “do you not see these different layers of calcareous rocks and the first indication of slate strata?”

“Well; what then?”

“We have arrived at that period of the world’s existence when the first plants and the first animals made their appearance.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, look; examine and judge for yourself.”

I induced the Professor with some difficulty to cast the light of his lamp on the sides of the long winding gallery. I expected some exclamation to burst from his lips. I was very much mistaken. The worthy Professor never spoke a word.

It was impossible to say whether he understood me or not. Perhaps it was possible that in his pride—my uncle and a learned professor—he did not like to own that he was wrong in having chosen the eastern tunnel, or was he determined at any price to go to the end of it? It was quite evident we had left the region of lava, and that the road by which we were going could not take us back to the great crater of Mount Sneffels.

As we went along I could not help ruminating on the whole question, and asked myself if I did not lay too great a stress on these sudden and peculiar modifications of the earth’s crust.

After all, I was very likely to be mistaken—and it was within the range of probability and possibility that we were not making our way through the strata of rocks which I believed I recognized piled on the lower layer of granitic formation.

“At all events, if I am right,” I thought to myself, “I must certainly find some remains of primitive plants, and it will be absolutely necessary to give way to such indubitable evidence. Let us have a good search.”

I accordingly lost no opportunity of searching, and had not gone more than about a hundred yards, when the evidence I sought for cropped up in the most incontestable manner before my eyes. It was quite natural that I should expect to find these signs, for during the Silurian period the seas contained no fewer than fifteen hundred different animal and vegetable species. My feet, so long accustomed to the hard and arid lava soil, suddenly found themselves treading on a kind of soft dust, the remains of plants and shells.

Upon the walls themselves I could clearly make out the outline, as plain as a sun picture, of the fucus and the lycopods. The worthy and excellent Professor Hardwigg could not of course make any mistake about the matter; but I believe he deliberately closed his eyes, and continued on his way with a firm and unalterable step.

I began to think that he was carrying his obstinacy a great deal too far. I could no longer act with prudence or composure. I stooped on a sudden and picked up an almost perfect shell, which had undoubtedly belonged to some animal very much resembling some of the present day. Having secured the prize, I followed in the wake of my uncle.

“Do you see this?” I said.

“Well, said the Professor, with the most imperturbable tranquillity, “it is the shell of a crustaceous animal of the extinct order of the trilobites; nothing more, I assure you.”

“But,” cried I, much troubled at his coolness, “do you draw no conclusion from it?”

“Well, if I may ask, what conclusion do you draw from it yourself?”

“Well, I thought—”

“I know, my boy, what you would say, and you are right, perfectly and incontestably right. We have finally abandoned the crust of lava and the road by which the lava ascended. It is quite possible that I may have been mistaken, but I shall be unable to discover my error until I get to the end of this gallery.”

“You are quite right as far as that is concerned,” I replied, “and I should highly approve of your decision, if we had not to fear the greatest of all dangers.”

“And what is that?”

“Want of water.”

“Well, my dear Henry, it can’t be helped. We must put ourselves on rations.”

And on he went.

CHAPTER 17

DEEPER AND DEEPER—THE COAL MINE

In truth, we were compelled to put ourselves upon rations. Our supply would certainly last not more than three days. I found this out about supper time. The worst part of the matter was that, in what is called the transition rocks, it was hardly to be expected we should meet with water!

I had read of the horrors of thirst, and I knew that where we were, a brief trial of its sufferings would put an end to our adventures—and our lives! But it was utterly useless to discuss the matter with my uncle. He would have answered by some axiom from Plato.

During the whole of next day we proceeded on our journey through this interminable gallery, arch after arch, tunnel after tunnel. We journeyed without exchanging a word. We had become as mute and reticent as Hans, our guide.

The road had no longer an upward tendency; at all events, if it had, it was not to be made out very clearly. Sometimes there could be no doubt that we were going downwards. But this inclination was scarcely to be distinguished, and was by no means reassuring to the Professor, because the character of the strata was in no wise modified, and the transition character of the rocks became more and more marked.

It was a glorious sight to see how the electric light brought out the sparkles in the walls of the calcareous rocks, and the old red sandstone. One might have fancied oneself in one of those deep cuttings in Devonshire, which have given their name to this kind of soil. Some magnificent specimens of marble projected from the sides of the gallery: some of an agate grey with white veins of variegated character, others of a yellow spotted color, with red veins; farther off might be seen samples of color in which cherry-tinted seams were to be found in all their brightest shades.

The greater number of these marbles were stamped with the marks of primitive animals. Since the previous evening, nature and creation had made considerable progress. Instead of the rudimentary trilobites, I perceived the remains of a more perfect order. Among others, the fish in which the eye of a geologist has been able to discover the first form of the reptile.

The Devonian seas were inhabited by a vast number of animals of this species, which were deposited in tens of thousands in the rocks of new formation.

It was quite evident to me that we were ascending the scale of animal life of which man forms the summit. My excellent uncle, the Professor, appeared not to take notice of these warnings. He was determined at any risk to proceed.

He must have been in expectation of one of two things; either that a vertical well was about to open under his feet, and thus allow him to continue his descent, or that some insurmountable obstacle would compel us to stop and go back by the road we had so long traveled. But evening came again, and, to my horror, neither hope was doomed to be realized!

On Friday, after a night when I began to feel the gnawing agony of thirst, and when in consequence appetite decreased, our little band rose and once more followed the turnings and windings, the ascents and descents, of this interminable gallery. All were silent and gloomy. I could see that even my uncle had ventured too far.

After about ten hours of further progress—a progress dull and monotonous to the last degree—I remarked that the reverberation, and reflection of our lamps upon the sides of the tunnel, had singularly diminished. The marble, the schist, the calcareous rocks, the red sandstone, had disappeared, leaving in their places a dark and gloomy wall, somber and without brightness. When we reached a remarkably narrow part of the tunnel, I leaned my left hand against the rock.

When I took my hand away, and happened to glance at it, it was quite black. We had reached the coal strata of the Central Earth.

“A coal mine!” I cried.

“A coal mine without miners,” responded my uncle, a little severely.

“How can we tell?”

“I can tell,” replied my uncle, in a sharp and doctorial tone. “I am perfectly certain that this gallery through successive layers of coal was not cut by the hand of man. But whether it is the work of nature or not is of little concern to us. The hour for our evening meal has come—let us sup.”

Hans, the guide, occupied himself in preparing food. I had come to that point when I could no longer eat. All I cared about were the few drops of water which fell to my share. What I suffered it is useless to record. The guide’s gourd, not quite half full, was all that was left for us three!

Having finished their repast, my two companions laid themselves down upon their rugs, and found in sleep a remedy for their fatigue and sufferings. As for me, I could not sleep, I lay counting the hours until morning.

The next morning, Saturday, at six o’clock, we started again. Twenty minutes later we suddenly came upon a vast excavation. From its mighty extent I saw at once that the hand of man could have had nothing to do with this coal mine; the vault above would have fallen in; as it was, it was only held together by some miracle of nature.

This mighty natural cavern was about a hundred feet wide, by about a hundred and fifty high. The earth had evidently been cast apart by some violent subterranean commotion. The mass, giving way to some prodigious upheaving of nature, had split in two, leaving the vast gap into which we inhabitants of the earth had penetrated for the first time.

The whole singular history of the coal period was written on those dark and gloomy walls. A geologist would have been able easily to follow the different phases of its formation. The seams of coal were separated by strata of sandstone, a compact clay, which appeared to be crushed down by the weight from above.

At that period of the world which preceded the secondary epoch, the earth was covered by a coating of enormous and rich vegetation, due to the double action of tropical heat and perpetual humidity. A vast atmospheric cloud of vapor surrounded the earth on all sides, preventing the rays of the sun from ever reaching it.

Hence the conclusion that these intense heats did not arise from this new source of caloric.

Perhaps even the star of day was not quite ready for its brilliant work—to illumine a universe. Climates did not as yet exist, and a level heat pervaded the whole surface of the globe—the same heat existing at the North Pole as at the equator.

Whence did it come? From the interior of the earth?

In spite of all the learned theories of Professor Hardwigg, a fierce and vehement fire certainly burned within the entrails of the great spheroid. Its action was felt even to the very topmost crust of the earth; the plants then in existence, being deprived of the vivifying rays of the sun, had neither buds, nor flowers, nor odor, but their roots drew a strong and vigorous life from the burning earth of early days.

There were but few of what may be called trees—only herbaceous plants, immense turfs, briers, mosses, rare families, which, however, in those days were counted by tens and tens of thousands.

It is entirely to this exuberant vegetation that coal owes its origin. The crust of the vast globe still yielded under the influence of the seething, boiling mass, which was forever at work beneath. Hence arose numerous fissures, and continual falling in of the upper earth. The dense mass of plants being beneath the waters, soon formed themselves into vast agglomerations.

Then came about the action of natural chemistry; in the depths of the ocean the vegetable mass at first became turf, then, thanks to the influence of gases and subterranean fermentation, they underwent the complete process of mineralization.

In this manner, in early days, were formed those vast and prodigious layers of coal, which an ever—increasing consumption must utterly use up in about three centuries more, if people do not find some more economic light than gas, and some cheaper motive power than steam.

All these reflections, the memories of my school studies, came to my mind while I gazed upon these mighty accumulations of coal, whose riches, however, are scarcely likely to be ever utilized. The working of these mines could only be carried out at an expense that would never yield a profit.

The matter, however, is scarcely worthy consideration, when coal is scattered over the whole surface of the globe, within a few yards of the upper crust. As I looked at these untouched strata, therefore, I knew they would remain as long as the world lasts.

While we still continued our journey, I alone forgot the length of the road, by giving myself up wholly to these geological considerations. The temperature continued to be very much the same as while we were traveling amid the lava and the schists. On the other hand my sense of smell was much affected by a very powerful odor. I immediately knew that the gallery was filled to overflowing with that dangerous gas the miners call fire damp, the explosion of which has caused such fearful and terrible accidents, making a hundred widows and hundreds of orphans in a single hour.

Happily, we were able to illumine our progress by means of the Ruhmkorff apparatus. If we had been so rash and imprudent as to explore this gallery, torch in hand, a terrible explosion would have put an end to our travels, simply because no travelers would be left.

Our excursion through this wondrous coal mine in the very bowels of the earth lasted until evening. My uncle was scarcely able to conceal his impatience and dissatisfaction at the road continuing still to advance in a horizontal direction.

The darkness, dense and opaque a few yards in advance and in the rear, rendered it impossible to make out what was the length of the gallery. For myself, I began to believe that it was simply interminable, and would go on in the same manner for months.

Suddenly, at six o’clock, we stood in front of a wall. To the right, to the left above, below, nowhere was there any passage. We had reached a spot where the rocks said in unmistakable accents—No Thoroughfare.

I stood stupefied. The guide simply folded his arms. My uncle was silent.

“Well, well, so much the better,” cried my uncle, at last, “I now know what we are about. We are decidedly not upon the road followed by Saknussemm. All we have to do is to go back. Let us take one night’s good rest, and before three days are over, I promise you we shall have regained the point where the galleries divided.”

“Yes, we may, if our strength lasts as long,” I cried, in a lamentable voice.

“And why not?”

“Tomorrow, among us three, there will not be a drop of water. It is just gone.”

“And your courage with it,” said my uncle, speaking in a severe tone.

What could I say? I turned round on my side, and from sheer exhaustion fell into a heavy sleep disturbed by dreams of water! And I awoke unrefreshed.

I would have bartered a diamond mine for a glass of pure spring water!

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 2]

CHAPTER 18

THE WRONG ROAD!

Next day, our departure took place at a very early hour. There was no time for the least delay. According to my account, we had five days’ hard work to get back to the place where the galleries divided.

I can never tell all the sufferings we endured upon our return. My uncle bore them like a man who has been in the wrong—that is, with concentrated and suppressed anger; Hans, with all the resignation of his pacific character; and I—I confess that I did nothing but complain, and despair. I had no heart for this bad fortune.

But there was one consolation. Defeat at the outset would probably upset the whole journey!

As I had expected from the first, our supply of water gave completely out on our first day’s march. Our provision of liquids was reduced to our supply of Schiedam; but this horrible—nay, I will say it—this infernal liquor burnt the throat, and I could not even bear the sight of it. I found the temperature to be stifling. I was paralyzed with fatigue. More than once I was about to fall insensible to the ground. The whole party then halted, and the worthy Icelander and my excellent uncle did their best to console and comfort me. I could, however, plainly see that my uncle was contending painfully against the extreme fatigues of our journey, and the awful torture generated by the absence of water.

At length a time came when I ceased to recollect anything—when all was one awfull hideous, fantastic dream!

At last, on Tuesday, the seventh of the month of July, after crawling on our hands and knees for many hours, more dead than alive, we reached the point of junction between the galleries. I lay like a log, an inert mass of human flesh on the arid lava soil. It was then ten in the morning.

Hans and my uncle, leaning against the wall, tried to nibble away at some pieces of biscuit, while deep groans and sighs escaped from my scorched and swollen lips. Then I fell off into a kind of deep lethargy.

Presently I felt my uncle approach, and lift me up tenderly in his arms.

“Poor boy,” I heard him say in a tone of deep commiseration.

I was profoundly touched by these words, being by no means accustomed to signs of womanly weakness in the Professor. I caught his trembling hands in mine and gave them a gentle pressure. He allowed me to do so without resistance, looking at me kindly all the time. His eyes were wet with tears.

I then saw him take the gourd which he wore at his side. To my surprise, or rather to my stupefaction, he placed it to my lips.

“Drink, my boy,” he said.

Was it possible my ears had not deceived me? Was my uncle mad? I looked at him, with, I am sure, quite an idiotic expression. I could not believe him. I too much feared the counteraction of disappointment.

“Drink,” he said again.

Had I heard aright? Before, however, I could ask myself the question a second time, a mouthful of water cooled my parched lips and throat—one mouthful, but I do believe it brought me back to life.

I thanked my uncle by clasping my hands. My heart was too full to speak.

“Yes,” said he, “one mouthful of water, the very last—do you hear, my boy—the very last! I have taken care of it at the bottom of my bottle as the apple of my eye. Twenty times, a hundred times, I have resisted the fearful desire to drink it. But—no—no, Harry, I saved it for you.”

“My dear uncle,” I exclaimed, and the big tears rolled down my hot and feverish cheeks.

“Yes, my poor boy, I knew that when you reached this place, this crossroad in the earth, you would fall down half dead, and I saved my last drop of water in order to restore you.”

“Thanks,” I cried; “thanks from my heart.”

As little as my thirst was really quenched, I had nevertheless partially recovered my strength. The contracted muscles of my throat relaxed—and the inflammation of my lips in some measure subsided. At all events, I was able to speak.

“Well,” I said, “there can be no doubt now as to what we have to do. Water has utterly failed us; our journey is therefore at an end. Let us return.”

While I spoke thus, my uncle evidently avoided my face: he held down his head; his eyes were turned in every possible direction but the right one.

“Yes,” I continued, getting excited by my own words, “we must go back to Sneffels. May heaven give us strength to enable us once more to revisit the light of day. Would that we now stood on the summit of the crater.”

“Go back,” said my uncle, speaking to himself, “and must it be so?”

“Go back—yes, and without losing a single moment,” I vehemently cried.

For some moments there was silence under that dark and gloomy vault.

“So, my dear Harry,” said the Professor in a very singular tone of voice, “those few drops of water have not sufficed to restore your energy and courage.”

“Courage!” I cried.

“I see that you are quite as downcast as before—and still give way to discouragement and despair.”

What, then, was the man made of, and what other projects were entering his fertile and audacious brain!

“You are not discouraged, sir?”

“What! Give up just as we are on the verge of success?” he cried. “Never, never shall it be said that Professor Hardwigg retreated.”

“Then we must make up our minds to perish,” I cried with a helpless sigh.

“No, Harry, my boy, certainly not. Go, leave me, I am very far from desiring your death. Take Hans with you. I will go on alone.”

“You ask us to leave you?”

“Leave me, I say. I have undertaken this dangerous and perilous adventure. I will carry it to the end—or I will never return to the surface of Mother Earth. Go, Harry—once more I say to you—go!”

My uncle as he spoke was terribly excited. His voice, which before had been tender, almost womanly, became harsh and menacing. He appeared to be struggling with desperate energy against the impossible. I did not wish to abandon him at the bottom of that abyss, while, on the other hand, the instinct of preservation told me to fly.

Meanwhile, our guide was looking on with profound calmness and indifference. He appeared to be an unconcerned party, and yet he perfectly well knew what was going on between us. Our gestures sufficiently indicated the different roads each wished to follow—and which each tried to influence the other to undertake. But Hans appeared not to take the slightest interest in what was really a question of life and death for us all, but waited quite ready to obey the signal which should say go aloft, or to resume his desperate journey into the interior of the earth.

How then I wished with all my heart and soul that I could make him understand my words. My representations, my sighs and groans, the earnest accents in which I should have spoken would have convinced that cold, hard nature. Those fearful dangers and perils of which the stolid guide had no idea, I would have pointed them out to him—I would have, as it were, made him see and feel. Between us, we might have convinced the obstinate Professor. If the worst had come to the worst, we could have compelled him to return to the summit of Sneffels.

I quietly approached Hans. I caught his hand in mine. He never moved a muscle. I indicated to him the road to the top of the crater. He remained motionless. My panting form, my haggard countenance, must have indicated the extent of my sufferings. The Icelander gently shook his head and pointed to my uncle.

“Master,” he said.

The word is Icelandic as well as English.

“The master!” I cried, beside myself with fury—“madman! no—I tell you he is not the master of our lives; we must fly! we must drag him with us! do you hear me? Do you understand me, I say?”

I have already explained that I held Hans by the arm. I tried to make him rise from his seat. I struggled with him and tried to force him away. My uncle now interposed.

“My good Henry, be calm,” he said. “You will obtain nothing from my devoted follower; therefore, listen to what I have to say.”

I folded my arms, as well as I could, and looked my uncle full in the face.

“This wretched want of water,” he said, “is the sole obstacle to the success of my project. In the entire gallery, made of lava, schist, and coal, it is true we found not one liquid molecule. It is quite possible that we may be more fortunate in the western tunnel.”

My sole reply was to shake my head with an air of deep incredulity.

“Listen to me to the end,” said the Professor in his well-known lecturing voice. “While you lay yonder without life or motion, I undertook a reconnoitering journey into the conformation of this other gallery. I have discovered that it goes directly downwards into the bowels of the earth, and in a few hours will take us to the old granitic formation. In this we shall undoubtedly find innumerable springs. The nature of the rock makes this a mathematical certainty, and instinct agrees with logic to say that it is so. Now, this is the serious proposition which I have to make to you. When Christopher Columbus asked of his men three days to discover the land of promise, his men ill, terrified, and hopeless, yet gave him three days—and the New World was discovered. Now I, the Christopher Columbus of this subterranean region, only ask of you one more day. If, when that time is expired, I have not found the water of which we are in search, I swear to you, I will give up my mighty enterprise and return to the earth’s surface.”

Despite my irritation and despair, I knew how much it cost my uncle to make this proposition, and to hold such conciliatory language. Under the circumstances, what could I do but yield?

“Well,” I cried, “let it be as you wish, and may heaven reward your superhuman energy. But as, unless we discover water, our hours are numbered, let us lose no time, but go ahead.”

CHAPTER 19

THE WESTERN GALLERY—A NEW ROUTE

Our descent was now resumed by means of the second gallery. Hans took up his post in front as usual. We had not gone more than a hundred yards when the Professor carefully examined the walls.

“This is the primitive formation—we are on the right road—onwards is our hope!”

When the whole earth got cool in the first hours of the world’s morning, the diminution of the volume of the earth produced a state of dislocation in its upper crust, followed by ruptures, crevasses and fissures. The passage was a fissure of this kind, through which, ages ago, had flowed the eruptive granite. The thousand windings and turnings formed an inextricable labyrinth through the ancient soil.

As we descended, successions of layers composing the primitive soil appeared with the utmost fidelity of detail. Geological science considers this primitive soil as the base of the mineral crust, and it has recognized that it is composed of three different strata or layers, all resting on the immovable rock known as granite.

No mineralogists had even found themselves placed in such a marvelous position to study nature in all her real and naked beauty. The sounding rod, a mere machine, could not bring to the surface of the earth the objects of value for the study of its internal structure, which we were about to see with our own eyes, to touch with our own hands.

Remember that I am writing this after the journey.

Across the streak of the rocks, colored by beautiful green tints, wound metallic threads of copper, of manganese, with traces of platinum and gold. I could not help gazing at these riches buried in the entrails of Mother Earth, and of which no man would have the enjoyment to the end of time! These treasures—mighty and inexhaustible, were buried in the morning of the earth’s history, at such awful depths, that no crowbar or pickax will ever drag them from their tomb!

The light of our Ruhmkorff’s coil, increased tenfold by the myriad of prismatic masses of rock, sent its jets of fire in every direction, and I could fancy myself traveling through a huge hollow diamond, the rays of which produced myriads of extraordinary effects.

Towards six o’clock, this festival of light began sensibly and visibly to decrease, and soon almost ceased. The sides of the gallery assumed a crystallized tint, with a somber hue; white mica began to commingle more freely with feldspar and quartz, to form what may be called the true rock—the stone which is hard above all, that supports, without being crushed, the four stories of the earth’s soil.

We were walled by an immense prison of granite!

It was now eight o’clock, and still there was no sign of water. The sufferings I endured were horrible. My uncle now kept at the head of our little column. Nothing could induce him to stop. I, meanwhile, had but one real thought. My ear was keenly on the watch to catch the sound of a spring. But no pleasant sound of falling water fell upon my listening ear.

But at last the time came when my limbs refused to carry me longer. I contended heroically against the terrible tortures I endured, because I did not wish to compel my uncle to halt. To him I knew this would be the last fatal stroke.

Suddenly I felt a deadly faintness come over me. My eyes could no longer see; my knees shook. I gave one despairing cry—and fell!

“Help, help, I am dying!”

My uncle turned and slowly retraced his steps. He looked at me with folded arms, and then allowed one sentence to escape, in hollow accents, from his lips:

“All is over.”

The last thing I saw was a face fearfully distorted with pain and sorrow; and then my eyes closed.

When I again opened them, I saw my companions lying near me, motionless, wrapped in their huge traveling rugs. Were they asleep or dead? For myself, sleep was wholly out of the question. My fainting fit over, I was wakeful as the lark. I suffered too much for sleep to visit my eyelids—the more, that I thought myself sick unto death—dying. The last words spoken by my uncle seemed to be buzzing in my ears—all is over! And it was probable that he was right. In the state of prostration to which I was reduced, it was madness to think of ever again seeing the light of day.

Above were miles upon miles of the earth’s crust. As I thought of it, I could fancy the whole weight resting on my shoulders. I was crushed, annihilated! and exhausted myself in vain attempts to turn in my granite bed.

Hours upon hours passed away. A profound and terrible silence reigned around us—a silence of the tomb. Nothing could make itself heard through these gigantic walls of granite. The very thought was stupendous.

Presently, despite my apathy, despite the kind of deadly calm into which I was cast, something aroused me. It was a slight but peculiar noise. While I was watching intently, I observed that the tunnel was becoming dark. Then gazing through the dim light that remained, I thought I saw the Icelander taking his departure, lamp in hand.

Why had he acted thus? Did Hans the guide mean to abandon us? My uncle lay fast asleep—or dead. I tried to cry out, and arouse him. My voice, feebly issuing from my parched and fevered lips, found no echo in that fearful place. My throat was dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. The obscurity had by this time become intense, and at last even the faint sound of the guide’s footsteps was lost in the blank distance. My soul seemed filled with anguish, and death appeared welcome, only let it come quickly.

“Hans is leaving us,” I cried. “Hans—Hans, if you are a man, come back.”

These words were spoken to myself. They could not be heard aloud. Nevertheless, after the first few moments of terror were over, I was ashamed of my suspicions against a man who hitherto had behaved so admirably. Nothing in his conduct or character justified suspicion. Moreover, a moment’s reflection reassured me. His departure could not be a flight. Instead of ascending the gallery, he was going deeper down into the gulf. Had he had any bad design, his way would have been upwards.

This reasoning calmed me a little and I began to hope!

The good, and peaceful, and imperturbable Hans would certainly not have arisen from his sleep without some serious and grave motive. Was he bent on a voyage of discovery? During the deep, still silence of the night had he at last heard that sweet murmur about which we were all so anxious?

CHAPTER 20

WATER, WHERE IS IT? A BITTER DISAPPOINTMENT

During a long, long, weary hour, there crossed my wildly delirious brain all sorts of reasons as to what could have aroused our quiet and faithful guide. The most absurd and ridiculous ideas passed through my head, each more impossible than the other. I believe I was either half or wholly mad.

Suddenly, however, there arose, as it were from the depths of the earth, a voice of comfort. It was the sound of footsteps! Hans was returning.

Presently the uncertain light began to shine upon the walls of the passage, and then it came in view far down the sloping tunnel. At length Hans himself appeared.

He approached my uncle, placed his hand upon his shoulder, and gently awakened him. My uncle, as soon as he saw who it was, instantly arose.

“Well!” exclaimed the Professor.

“Vatten,” said the hunter.

I did not know a single word of the Danish language, and yet by a sort of mysterious instinct I understood what the guide had said.

“Water, water!” I cried, in a wild and frantic tone, clapping my hands, and gesticulating like a madman.

“Water!” murmured my uncle, in a voice of deep emotion and gratitude. “Hvar?” (“Where?”)

“Nedat.” (“Below.”)

“Where? below!” I understood every word. I had caught the hunter by the hands, and I shook them heartily, while he looked on with perfect calmness.

The preparations for our departure did not take long, and we were soon making a rapid descent into the tunnel.

An hour later we had advanced a thousand yards, and descended two thousand feet.

At this moment I heard an accustomed and well-known sound running along the floors of the granite rock—a kind of dull and sullen roar, like that of a distant waterfall.

During the first half hour of our advance, not finding the discovered spring, my feelings of intense suffering appeared to return. Once more I began to lose all hope. My uncle, however, observing how downhearted I was again becoming, took up the conversation.

“Hans was right,” he exclaimed enthusiastically; “that is the dull roaring of a torrent.”

“A torrent,” I cried, delighted at even hearing the welcome words.

“There’s not the slightest doubt about it,” he replied, “a subterranean river is flowing beside us.”

I made no reply, but hastened on, once more animated by hope. I began not even to feel the deep fatigue which hitherto had overpowered me. The very sound of this glorious murmuring water already refreshed me. We could hear it increasing in volume every moment. The torrent, which for a long time could be heard flowing over our heads, now ran distinctly along the left wall, roaring, rushing, spluttering, and still falling.

Several times I passed my hand across the rock hoping to find some trace of humidity—of the slightest percolation. Alas! in vain.

Again a half hour passed in the same weary toil. Again we advanced.

It now became evident that the hunter, during his absence, had not been able to carry his researches any farther. Guided by an instinct peculiar to the dwellers in mountain regions and water finders, he “smelt” the living spring through the rock. Still he had not seen the precious liquid. He had neither quenched his own thirst, nor brought us one drop in his gourd.

Moreover, we soon made the disastrous discovery that, if our progress continued, we should soon be moving away from the torrent, the sound of which gradually diminished. We turned back. Hans halted at the precise spot where the sound of the torrent appeared nearest.

I could bear the suspense and suffering no longer, and seated myself against the wall, behind which I could hear the water seething and effervescing not two feet away. But a solid wall of granite still separated us from it!

Hans looked keenly at me, and, strange enough, for once I thought I saw a smile on his imperturbable face.

He rose from a stone on which he had been seated, and took up the lamp. I could not help rising and following. He moved slowly along the firm and solid granite wall. I watched him with mingled curiosity and eagerness. Presently he halted and placed his ear against the dry stone, moving slowly along and listening with the most extreme care and attention. I understood at once that he was searching for the exact spot where the torrent’s roar was most plainly heard. This point he soon found in the lateral wall on the left side, about three feet above the level of the tunnel floor.

I was in a state of intense excitement. I scarcely dared believe what the eider-duck hunter was about to do. It was, however, impossible in a moment more not to both understand and applaud, and even to smother him in my embraces, when I saw him raise the heavy crowbar and commence an attack upon the rock itself.

“Saved!” I cried.

“Yes,” cried my uncle, even more excited and delighted than myself; “Hans is quite right. Oh, the worthy, excellent man! We should never have thought of such an idea.”

And nobody else, I think, would have done so. Such a process, simple as it seemed, would most certainly not have entered our heads. Nothing could be more dangerous than to begin to work with pickaxes in that particular part of the globe. Supposing while he was at work a break-up were to take place, and supposing the torrent once having gained an inch were to take an ell, and come pouring bodily through the broken rock!

Not one of these dangers was chimerical. They were only too real. But at that moment no fear of falling in of the roof, or even of inundation was capable of stopping us. Our thirst was so intense that to quench it we would have dug below the bed of old Ocean itself.

Hans went quietly to work—a work which neither my uncle nor I would have undertaken at any price. Our impatience was so great that if we had once begun with pickax and crowbar, the rock would soon have split into a hundred fragments. The guide, on the contrary, calm, ready, moderate, wore away the hard rock by little steady blows of his instrument, making no attempt at a larger hole than about six inches. As I stood, I heard, or I thought I heard, the roar of the torrent momentarily increasing in loudness, and at times I almost felt the pleasant sensation of water upon my parched lips.

At the end of what appeared an age, Hans had made a hole which enabled his crowbar to enter two feet into the solid rock. He had been at work exactly an hour. It appeared a dozen. I was getting wild with impatience. My uncle began to think of using more violent measures. I had the greatest difficulty in checking him. He had indeed just got hold of his crowbar when a loud and welcome hiss was heard. Then a stream, or rather jet, of water burst through the wall and came out with such force as to hit the opposite side!

Hans, the guide, who was half upset by the shock, was scarcely able to keep down a cry of pain and grief. I understood his meaning when, plunging my hands into the sparkling jet, I myself gave a wild and frantic cry. The water was scalding hot!

“Boiling,” I cried, in bitter disappointment.

“Well, never mind,” said my uncle, “it will soon get cool.”

The tunnel began to be filled by clouds of vapor, while a small stream ran away into the interior of the earth. In a short time we had some sufficiently cool to drink. We swallowed it in huge mouthfuls.

Oh! what exalted delight—what rich and incomparable luxury! What was this water, whence did it come? To us what was that? The simple fact was—it was water; and, though still with a tingle of warmth about it, it brought back to the heart, that life which, but for it, must surely have faded away. I drank greedily, almost without tasting it.

When, however, I had almost quenched my ravenous thirst, I made a discovery.

“Why, it is chalybeate water!”

“A most excellent stomachic,” replied my uncle, “and highly mineralized. Here is a journey worth twenty to Spa.”

“It’s very good,” I replied.

“I should think so. Water found six miles under ground. There is a peculiarly inky flavor about it, which is by no means disagreeable. Hans may congratulate himself on having made a rare discovery. What do you say, nephew, according to the usual custom of travelers, to name the stream after him?”

“Good,” said I. And the name of “Hansbach” (“Hans Brook”) was at once agreed upon.

Hans was not a bit more proud after hearing our determination than he was before. After having taken a very small modicum of the welcome refreshment, he had seated himself in a corner with his usual imperturbable gravity.

“Now,” said I, “it is not worth while letting this water run to waste.”

“What is the use,” replied my uncle, “the source from which this river rises is inexhaustible.”

“Never mind,” I continued, “let us fill our goatskin and gourds, and then try to stop the opening up.”

My advice, after some hesitation, was followed or attempted to be followed. Hans picked up all the broken pieces of granite he had knocked out, and using some tow he happened to have about him, tried to shut up the fissure he had made in the wall. All he did was to scald his hands. The pressure was too great, and all our attempts were utter failures.

“It is evident,” I remarked, “that the upper surface of these springs is situated at a very great height above—as we may fairly infer from the great pressure of the jet.”

“That is by no means doubtful,” replied my uncle, “if this column of water is about thirty-two thousand feet high, the atmospheric pressure must be something enormous. But a new idea has just struck me.”

“And what is that?”

“Why be at so much trouble to close this aperture?”

“Because—”

I hesitated and stammered, having no real reason.

“When our water bottles are empty, we are not at all sure that we shall be able to fill them,” observed my uncle.

“I think that is very probable.”

“Well, then, let this water run. It will, of course, naturally follow in our track, and will serve to guide and refresh us.”

“I think the idea a good one,” I cried in reply, “and with this rivulet as a companion, there is no further reason why we should not succeed in our marvelous project.”

“Ah, my boy,” said the Professor, laughing, “after all, you are coming round.”

“More than that, I am now confident of ultimate success.”

“One moment, nephew mine. Let us begin by taking some hours of repose.”

I had utterly forgotten that it was night. The chronometer, however, informed me of the fact. Soon we were sufficiently restored and refreshed, and had all fallen into a profound sleep.

CHAPTER 21

UNDER THE OCEAN

By the next day we had nearly forgotten our past sufferings. The first sensation I experienced was surprise at not being thirsty, and I actually asked myself the reason. The running stream, which flowed in rippling wavelets at my feet, was the satisfactory reply.

We breakfasted with a good appetite, and then drank our fill of the excellent water. I felt myself quite a new man, ready to go anywhere my uncle chose to lead. I began to think. Why should not a man as seriously convinced as my uncle, succeed, with so excellent a guide as worthy Hans, and so devoted a nephew as myself? These were the brilliant ideas which now invaded my brain. Had the proposition now been made to go back to the summit of Mount Sneffels, I should have declined the offer in a most indignant manner.

But fortunately there was no question of going up. We were about to descend farther into the interior of the earth.

“Let us be moving,” I cried, awakening the echoes of the old world.

We resumed our march on Thursday at eight o’clock in the morning. The great granite tunnel, as it went round by sinuous and winding ways, presented every now and then sharp turns, and in fact all the appearance of a labyrinth. Its direction, however, was in general towards the southwest. My uncle made several pauses in order to consult his compass.

The gallery now began to trend downwards in a horizontal direction, with about two inches of fall in every furlong. The murmuring stream flowed quietly at our feet. I could not but compare it to some familiar spirit, guiding us through the earth, and I dabbled my fingers in its tepid water, which sang like a naiad as we progressed. My good humor began to assume a mythological character.

As for my uncle he began to complain of the horizontal character of the road. His route, he found, began to be indefinitely prolonged, instead of “sliding down the celestial ray,” according to his expression.

But we had no choice; and as long as our road led towards the centre—however little progress we made, there was no reason to complain.

Moreover, from time to time the slopes were much greater, the naiad sang more loudly, and we began to dip downwards in earnest.

As yet, however, I felt no painful sensation. I had not got over the excitement of the discovery of water.

That day and the next we did a considerable amount of horizontal, and relatively very little vertical, traveling.

On Friday evening, the tenth of July, according to our estimation, we ought to have been thirty leagues to the southeast of Reykjavik, and about two leagues and a half deep. We now received a rather startling surprise.

Under our feet there opened a horrible well. My uncle was so delighted that he actually clapped his hands—as he saw how steep and sharp was the descent.

“Ah, ah!” he cried, in rapturous delight; “this will take us a long way. Look at the projections of the rock. Hah!” he exclaimed, “it’s a fearful staircase!”

Hans, however, who in all our troubles had never given up the ropes, took care so to dispose of them as to prevent any accidents. Our descent then began. I dare not call it a perilous descent, for I was already too familiar with that sort of work to look upon it as anything but a very ordinary affair.

This well was a kind of narrow opening in the massive granite of the kind known as a fissure. The contraction of the terrestrial scaffolding, when it suddenly cooled, had been evidently the cause. If it had ever served in former times as a kind of funnel through which passed the eruptive masses vomited by Sneffels, I was at a loss to explain how it had left no mark. We were, in fact, descending a spiral, something like those winding staircases in use in modern houses.

We were compelled every quarter of an hour or thereabouts to sit down in order to rest our legs. Our calves ached. We then seated ourselves on some projecting rock with our legs hanging over, and gossiped while we ate a mouthful—drinking still from the pleasantly warm running stream which had not deserted us.

It is scarcely necessary to say that in this curiously shaped fissure the Hansbach had become a cascade to the detriment of its size. It was still, however, sufficient, and more, for our wants. Besides we knew that, as soon as the declivity ceased to be so abrupt, the stream must resume its peaceful course. At this moment it reminded me of my uncle, his impatience and rage, while when it flowed more peacefully, I pictured to myself the placidity of the Icelandic guide.

During the whole of two days, the sixth and seventh of July, we followed the extraordinary spiral staircase of the fissure, penetrating two leagues farther into the crust of the earth, which put us five leagues below the level of the sea. On the eighth, however, at twelve o’clock in the day, the fissure suddenly assumed a much more gentle slope still trending in a southeast direction.

The road now became comparatively easy, and at the same time dreadfully monotonous. It would have been difficult for matters to have turned out otherwise. Our peculiar journey had no chance of being diversified by landscape and scenery. At all events, such was my idea.

At length, on Wednesday the fifteenth, we were actually seven leagues (twenty-one miles) below the surface of the earth, and fifty leagues distant from the mountain of Sneffels. Though, if the truth be told, we were very tired, our health had resisted all suffering, and was in a most satisfactory state. Our traveler’s box of medicaments had not even been opened.

My uncle was careful to note every hour the indications of the compass, of the manometer, and of the thermometer, all which he afterwards published in his elaborate philosophical and scientific account of our remarkable voyage. He was therefore able to give an exact relation of the situation. When, therefore, he informed me that we were fifty leagues in a horizontal direction distant from our starting point, I could not suppress a loud exclamation.

“What is the matter now?” cried my uncle.

“Nothing very important, only an idea has entered my head,” was my reply.

“Well, out with it, My boy.”

“It is my opinion that if your calculations are correct we are no longer under Iceland.”

“Do you think so?”

“We can very easily find out,” I replied, pulling out a map and compasses.

“You see,” I said, after careful measurement, “that I am not mistaken. We are far beyond Cape Portland; and those fifty leagues to the southeast will take us into the open sea.”

“Under the open sea,” cried my uncle, rubbing his hands with a delighted air.

“Yes,” I cried, “no doubt old Ocean flows over our heads!”

“Well, my dear boy, what can be more natural! Do you not know that in the neighborhood of Newcastle there are coal mines which have been worked far out under the sea?”

Now my worthy uncle, the Professor, no doubt regarded this discovery as a very simple fact, but to me the idea was by no means a pleasant one. And yet when one came to think the matter over seriously, what mattered it whether the plains and mountains of Iceland were suspended over our devoted heads, or the mighty billows of the Atlantic Ocean? The whole question rested on the solidity of the granite roof above us. However, I soon got used to the ideal for the passage now level, now running down, and still always to the southeast, kept going deeper and deeper into the profound abysses of Mother Earth.

Three days later, on the eighteenth day of July, on a Saturday, we reached a kind of vast grotto. My uncle here paid Hans his usual rix-dollars, and it was decided that the next day should be a day of rest.

CHAPTER 22

SUNDAY BELOW GROUND

I Awoke on Sunday morning without any sense of hurry and bustle attendant on an immediate departure. Though the day to be devoted to repose and reflection was spent under such strange circumstances, and in so wonderful a place, the idea was a pleasant one. Besides, we all began to get used to this kind of existence. I had almost ceased to think of the sun, of the moon, of the stars, of the trees, houses, and towns; in fact, about any terrestrial necessities. In our peculiar position we were far above such reflections.

The grotto was a vast and magnificent hall. Along its granitic soil the stream flowed placidly and pleasantly. So great a distance was it now from its fiery source that its water was scarcely lukewarm, and could be drunk without delay or difficulty.

After a frugal breakfast, the Professor made up his mind to devote some hours to putting his notes and calculations in order.

“In the first place,” he said, “I have a good many to verify and prove, in order that we may know our exact position. I wish to be able on our return to the upper regions to make a map of our journey, a kind of vertical section of the globe, which will be, as it were, the profile of the expedition.”

“That would indeed be a curious work, Uncle; but can you make your observations with anything like certainty and precision?”

“I can. I have never on any occasion failed to note with great care the angles and slopes. I am certain as to having made no mistake. Take the compass and examine how she points.”

I looked at the instrument with care.

“East one quarter southeast.”

“Very good,” resumed the Professor, noting the observation, and going through some rapid calculations. “I make out that we have journeyed two hundred and fifty miles from the point of our departure.”

“Then the mighty waves of the Atlantic are rolling over our heads?”

“Certainly.”

“And at this very moment it is possible that fierce tempests are raging above, and that men and ships are battling against the angry blasts just over our heads?”

“It is quite within the range of possibility,” rejoined my uncle, smiling.

“And that whales are playing in shoals, thrashing the bottom of the sea, the roof of our adamantine prison?”

“Be quite at rest on that point; there is no danger of their breaking through. But to return to our calculations. We are to the southeast, two hundred and fifty miles from the base of Sneffels, and, according to my preceding notes, I think we have gone sixteen leagues in a downward direction.”

“Sixteen leagues—fifty miles!” I cried.

“I am sure of it.”

“But that is the extreme limit allowed by science for the thickness of the earth’s crust,” I replied, referring to my geological studies.

“I do not contravene that assertion,” was his quiet answer.

“And at this stage of our journey, according to all known laws on the increase of heat, there should be here a temperature of fifteen hundred degrees of Reaumur.”

“There should be—you say, my boy.”

“In which case this granite would not exist, but be in a state of fusion.”

“But you perceive, my boy, that it is not so, and that facts, as usual, are very stubborn things, overruling all theories.”

“I am forced to yield to the evidence of my senses, but I am nevertheless very much surprised.”

“What heat does the thermometer really indicate?” continued the philosopher.

“Twenty-seven six-tenths.”

“So that science is wrong by fourteen hundred and seventy-four degrees and four-tenths. According to which, it is demonstrated that the proportional increase in temperature is an exploded error. Humphry Davy here shines forth in all his glory. He is right, and I have acted wisely to believe him. Have you any answer to make to this statement?”

Had I chosen to have spoken, I might have said a great deal. I in no way admitted the theory of Humphry Davy—I still held out for the theory of proportional increase of heat, though I did not feel it.

I was far more willing to allow that this chimney of an extinct volcano was covered by lava of a kind refractory to heat—in fact a bad conductor—which did not allow the great increase of temperature to percolate through its sides. The hot water jet supported my view of the matter.

But without entering on a long and useless discussion, or seeking for new arguments to controvert my uncle, I contented myself with taking up facts as they were.

“Well, sir, I take for granted that all your calculations are correct, but allow me to draw from them a rigorous and definite conclusion.”

“Go on, my boy—have your say,” cried my uncle goodhumoredly.

“At the place where we now are, under the latitude of Iceland, the terrestrial depth is about fifteen hundred and eighty-three leagues.”

“Fifteen hundred eighty-three and a quarter.”

“Well, suppose we say sixteen hundred in round numbers. Now, out of a voyage of sixteen hundred leagues we have completed sixteen.”

“As you say, what then?”

“At the expense of a diagonal journey of no less than eighty-five leagues.”

“Exactly.”

“We have been twenty days about it.”

“Exactly twenty days.”

“Now sixteen is the hundredth part of our contemplated expedition. If we go on in this way we shall be two thousand days, that is about five years and a half, going down.”

The Professor folded his arms, listened, but did not speak.

“Without counting that if a vertical descent of sixteen leagues costs us a horizontal of eighty-five, we shall have to go about eight thousand leagues to the southeast, and we must therefore come out somewhere in the circumference long before we can hope to reach the centre.”

“Bother your calculations,” cried my uncle in one of his old rages. “On what basis do they rest? How do you know that this passage does not take us direct to the end we require? Moreover, I have in my favor, fortunately, a precedent. What I have undertaken to do, another has done, and he having succeeded, why should I not be equally successful?”

“I hope, indeed, you will, but still, I suppose I may be allowed to—”

“You are allowed to hold your tongue,” cried Professor Hardwigg, “when you talk so unreasonably as this.”

I saw at once that the old doctorial Professor was still alive in my uncle—and fearful to rouse his angry passions, I dropped the unpleasant subject.

“Now, then,” he explained, “consult the manometer. What does that indicate?”

“A considerable amount of pressure.”

“Very good. You see, then, that by descending slowly, and by gradually accustoming ourselves to the density of this lower atmosphere, we shall not suffer.”

“Well, I suppose not, except it may be a certain amount of pain in the ears,” was my rather grim reply.

“That, my dear boy, is nothing, and you will easily get rid of that source of discomfort by bringing the exterior air in communication with the air contained in your lungs.”

“Perfectly,” said I, for I had quite made up my mind in no wise to contradict my uncle. “I should fancy almost that I should experience a certain amount of satisfaction in making a plunge into this dense atmosphere. Have you taken note of how wonderfully sound is propagated?”

“Of course I have. There can be no doubt that a journey into the interior of the earth would be an excellent cure for deafness.”

“But then, Uncle,” I ventured mildly to observe, “this density will continue to increase.”

“Yes—according to a law which, however, is scarcely defined. It is true that the intensity of weight will diminish just in proportion to the depth to which we go. You know very well that it is on the surface of the earth that its action is most powerfully felt, while on the contrary, in the very centre of the earth bodies cease to have any weight at all.”

“I know that is the case, but as we progress will not the atmosphere finally assume the density of water?”

“I know it; when placed under the pressure of seven hundred and ten atmospheres,” cried my uncle with imperturbable gravity.

“And when we are still lower down?” I asked with natural anxiety.

“Well, lower down, the density will become even greater.”

“Then how shall we be able to make our way through this atmospheric fog?”

“Well, my worthy nephew, we must ballast ourselves by filling our pockets with stones,” said Professor Hardwigg.

“Faith, Uncle, you have an answer for everything,” was my only reply.

I began to feel that it was unwise of me to go any farther into the wide field of hypotheses for I should certainly have revived some difficulty, or rather impossibility, that would have enraged the Professor.

It was evident, nevertheless, that the air under a pressure which might be multiplied by thousands of atmospheres, would end by becoming perfectly solid, and that then admitting our bodies resisted the pressure, we should have to stop, in spite of all the reasonings in the world. Facts overcome all arguments.

But I thought it best not to urge this argument. My uncle would simply have quoted the example of Saknussemm. Supposing the learned Icelander’s journey ever really to have taken place—there was one simple answer to be made:

In the sixteenth century neither the barometer nor the manometer had been invented—how, then, could Saknussemm have been able to discover when he did reach the centre of the earth?

This unanswerable and learned objection I, however, kept to myself and, bracing up my courage, awaited the course of events—little aware of how adventurous yet were to be the incidents of our remarkable journey.

The rest of this day of leisure and repose was spent in calculation and conversation. I made it a point to agree with the Professor in everything; but I envied the perfect indifference of Hans, who, without taking any such trouble about the cause and effect, went blindly onwards wherever destiny chose to lead him.

CHAPTER 23

ALONE

It must in all truth be confessed, things as yet had gone on well, and I should have acted in bad taste to have complained. If the true medium of our difficulties did not increase, it was within the range of possibility that we might ultimately reach the end of our journey. Then what glory would be ours! I began in the newly aroused ardor of my soul to speak enthusiastically to the Professor. Well, was I serious? The whole state in which we existed was a mystery—and it was impossible to know whether or not I was in earnest.

For several days after our memorable halt, the slopes became more rapid—some were even of a most frightful character—almost vertical, so that we were forever going down into the solid interior mass. During some days, we actually descended a league and a half, even two leagues towards the centre of the earth. The descents were sufficiently perilous, and while we were engaged in them we learned fully to appreciate the marvelous coolness of our guide, Hans. Without him we should have been wholly lost. The grave and impassible Icelander devoted himself to us with the most incomprehensible sang-froid and ease; and, thanks to him, many a dangerous pass was got over, where, but for him, we should inevitably have stuck fast.

His silence increased every day. I think that we began to be influenced by this peculiar trait in his character. It is certain that the inanimate objects by which you are surrounded have a direct action on the brain. It must be that a man who shuts himself up between four walls must lose the faculty of associating ideas and words. How many persons condemned to the horrors of solitary confinement have gone mad—simply because the thinking faculties have lain dormant!

During the two weeks that followed our last interesting conversation, there occurred nothing worthy of being especially recorded.

I have, while writing these memoirs, taxed my memory in vain for one incident of travel during this particular period.

But the next event to be related is terrible indeed. Its very memory, even now, makes my soul shudder, and my blood run cold.

It was on the seventh of August. Our constant and successive descents had taken us quite thirty leagues into the interior of the earth, that is to say that there were above us thirty leagues, nearly a hundred miles, of rocks, and oceans, and continents, and towns, to say nothing of living inhabitants. We were in a southeasterly direction, about two hundred leagues from Iceland.

On that memorable day the tunnel had begun to assume an almost horizontal course.

I was on this occasion walking on in front. My uncle had charge of one of the Ruhmkorff coils, I had possession of the other. By means of its light I was busy examining the different layers of granite. I was completely absorbed in my work.

Suddenly halting and turning round, I found that I was alone!

“Well,” thought I to myself, “I have certainly been walking too fast—or else Hans and my uncle have stopped to rest. The best thing I can do is to go back and find them. Luckily, there is very little ascent to tire me.”

I accordingly retraced my steps and, while doing so, walked for at least a quarter of an hour. Rather uneasy, I paused and looked eagerly around. Not a living soul. I called aloud. No reply. My voice was lost amid the myriad cavernous echoes it aroused!

I began for the first time to feel seriously uneasy. A cold shiver shook my whole body, and perspiration, chill and terrible, burst upon my skin.

“I must be calm,” I said, speaking aloud, as boys whistle to drive away fear. “There can be no doubt that I shall find my companions. There cannot be two roads. It is certain that I was considerably ahead; all I have to do is to go back.”

Having come to this determination I ascended the tunnel for at least half an hour, unable to decide if I had ever seen certain landmarks before. Every now and then I paused to discover if any loud appeal was made to me, well knowing that in that dense and intensified atmosphere I should hear it a long way off. But no. The most extraordinary silence reigned in this immense gallery. Only the echoes of my own footsteps could be heard.

At last I stopped. I could scarcely realize the fact of my isolation. I was quite willing to think that I had made a mistake, but not that I was lost. If I had made a mistake, I might find my way; if lost—I shuddered to think of it.

“Come, come,” said I to myself, “since there is only one road, and they must come by it, we shall at last meet. All I have to do is still to go upwards. Perhaps, however, not seeing me, and forgetting I was ahead, they may have gone back in search of me. Still, even in this case, if I make haste, I shall get up to them. There can be no doubt about the matter.”

But as I spoke these last words aloud, it would have been quite clear to any listener—had there been one—that I was by no means convinced of the fact. Moreover in order to associate together these simple ideas and to reunite them under the form of reasoning, required some time. I could not all at once bring my brain to think.

Then another dread doubt fell upon my soul. After all, was I ahead? Of course I was. Hans was no doubt following behind preceded by my uncle. I perfectly recollected his having stopped for a moment to strap his baggage on his shoulder. I now remembered this trifling detail. It was, I believe, just at that very moment that I had determined to continue my route.

“Again,” thought I, reasoning as calmly as was possible, “there is another sure means of not losing my way, a thread to guide me through the labyrinthine subterraneous retreat—one which I had forgotten—my faithful river.”

This course of reasoning roused my drooping spirits, and I resolved to resume my journey without further delay. No time was to be lost.

It was at this moment that I had reason to bless the thoughtfulness of my uncle, when he refused to allow the eider hunter to close the orifices of the hot spring—that small fissure in the great mass of granite. This beneficent spring after having saved us from thirst during so many days would now enable me to regain the right road.

Having come to this mental decision, I made up my mind, before I started upwards, that ablution would certainly do me a great deal of good.

I stopped to plunge my hands and forehead in the pleasant water of the Hansbach stream, blessing its presence as a certain consolation.

Conceive my horror and stupefaction!—I was treading a hard, dusty, shingly road of granite. The stream on which I reckoned had wholly disappeared!

CHAPTER 24

LOST!

No words in any human language can depict my utter despair. I was literally buried alive; with no other expectation before me but to die in all the slow horrible torture of hunger and thirst.

Mechanically I crawled about, feeling the dry and arid rock. Never to my fancy had I ever felt anything so dry.

But, I frantically asked myself, how had I lost the course of the flowing stream? There could be no doubt it had ceased to flow in the gallery in which I now was. Now I began to understand the cause of the strange silence which prevailed when last I tried if any appeal from my companions might perchance reach my ear.

It so happened that when I first took an imprudent step in the wrong direction, I did not perceive the absence of the all-important stream.

It was now quite evident that when we halted, another tunnel must have received the waters of the little torrent, and that I had unconsciously entered a different gallery. To what unknown depths had my companions gone? Where was I?

How to get back! Clue or landmark there was absolutely none! My feet left no signs on the granite and shingle. My brain throbbed with agony as I tried to discover the solution of this terrible problem. My situation, after all sophistry and reflection, had finally to be summed up in three awful words—

Lost! Lost!! LOST!!!

Lost at a depth which, to my finite understanding, appeared to be immeasurable.

These thirty leagues of the crust of the earth weighed upon my shoulders like the globe on the shoulders of Atlas. I felt myself crushed by the awful weight. It was indeed a position to drive the sanest man to madness!

I tried to bring my thoughts back to the things of the world so long forgotten. It was with the greatest difficulty that I succeeded in doing so. Hamburg, the house on the Konigstrasse, my dear cousin Gretchen—all that world which had before vanished like a shadow floated before my now vivid imagination.

There they were before me, but how unreal. Under the influence of a terrible hallucination I saw all the incidents of our journey pass before me like the scenes of a panorama. The ship and its inmates, Iceland, M. Fridriksson, and the great summit of Mount Sneffels! I said to myself that, if in my position I retained the most faint and shadowy outline of a hope, it would be a sure sign of approaching delirium. It were better to give way wholly to despair!

In fact, did I but reason with calmness and philosophy, what human power was there in existence able to take me back to the surface of the earth, and ready, too, to split asunder, to rend in twain those huge and mighty vaults which stand above my head? Who could enable me to find my road—and regain my companions?

Insensate folly and madness to entertain even a shadow of hope!

“Oh, Uncle!” was my despairing cry.

This was the only word of reproach which came to my lips; for I thoroughly understood how deeply and sorrowfully the worthy Professor would regret my loss, and how in his turn he would patiently seek for me.

When I at last began to resign myself to the fact that no further aid was to be expected from man, and knowing that I was utterly powerless to do anything for my own salvation, I kneeled with earnest fervor and asked assistance from Heaven. The remembrance of my innocent childhood, the memory of my mother, known only in my infancy, came welling forth from my heart. I had recourse to prayer. And little as I had a right to be remembered by Him whom I had forgotten in the hour of prosperity, and whom I so tardily invoked, I prayed earnestly and sincerely.

This renewal of my youthful faith brought about a much greater amount of calm, and I was enabled to concentrate all my strength and intelligence on the terrible realities of my unprecedented situation.

I had about me that which I had at first wholly forgotten—three days’ provisions. Moreover, my water bottle was quite full. Nevertheless, the one thing which it was impossible to do was to remain alone. Try to find my companions I must, at any price. But which course should I take? Should I go upwards, or again descend? Doubtless it was right to retrace my steps in an upward direction.

By doing this with care and coolness, I must reach the point where I had turned away from the rippling stream. I must find the fatal bifurcation or fork. Once at this spot, once the river at my feet, I could, at all events, regain the awful crater of Mount Sneffels. Why had I not thought of this before? This, at last, was a reasonable hope of safety. The most important thing, then, to be done was to discover the bed of the Hansbach.

After a slight meal and a draught of water, I rose like a giant refreshed. Leaning heavily on my pole, I began the ascent of the gallery. The slope was very rapid and rather difficult. But I advanced hopefully and carefully, like a man who at last is making his way out of a forest, and knows there is only one road to follow.

During one whole hour nothing happened to check my progress. As I advanced, I tried to recollect the shape of the tunnel—to recall to my memory certain projections of rocks—to persuade myself that I had followed certain winding routes before. But no one particular sign could I bring to mind, and I was soon forced to allow that this gallery would never take me back to the point at which I had separated myself from my companions. It was absolutely without issue—a mere blind alley in the earth.

The moment at length came when, facing the solid rock, I knew my fate, and fell inanimate on the arid floor!

To describe the horrible state of despair and fear into which I then fell would now be vain and impossible. My last hope, the courage which had sustained me, drooped before the sight of this pitiless granite rock!

Lost in a vast labyrinth, the sinuosities of which spread in every direction, without guide, clue or compass, I knew it was a vain and useless task to attempt flight. All that remained to me was to lie down and die. To lie down and die the most cruel and horrible of deaths!

In my state of mind, the idea came into my head that one day perhaps, when my fossil bones were found, their discovery so far below the level of the earth might give rise to solemn and interesting scientific discussions.

I tried to cry aloud, but hoarse, hollow, and inarticulate sounds alone could make themselves heard through my parched lips. I literally panted for breath.

In the midst of all these horrible sources of anguish and despair, a new horror took possession of my soul. My lamp, by falling down, had got out of order. I had no means of repairing it. Its light was already becoming paler and paler, and soon would expire.

With a strange sense of resignation and despair, I watched the luminous current in the coil getting less and less. A procession of shadows moved flashing along the granite wall. I scarcely dared to lower my eyelids, fearing to lose the last spark of this fugitive light. Every instant it seemed to me that it was about to vanish and to leave me forever—in utter darkness!

At last, one final trembling flame remained in the lamp; I followed it with all my power of vision; I gasped for breath; I concentrated upon it all the power of my soul, as upon the last scintillation of light I was ever destined to see: and then I was to be lost forever in Cimmerian and tenebrous shades.

A wild and plaintive cry escaped my lips. On earth during the most profound and comparatively complete darkness, light never allows a complete destruction and extinction of its power. Light is so diffuse, so subtle, that it permeates everywhere, and whatever little may remain, the retina of the eye will succeed in finding it. In this place nothing—the absolute obscurity made me blind in every sense.

My head was now wholly lost. I raised my arms, trying the effects of the feeling in getting against the cold stone wall. It was painful in the extreme. Madness must have taken possession of me. I knew not what I did. I began to run, to fly, rushing at haphazard in this inextricable labyrinth, always going downwards, running wildly underneath the terrestrial crust, like an inhabitant of the subterranean furnaces, screaming, roaring, howling, until bruised by the pointed rocks, falling and picking myself up all covered with blood, seeking madly to drink the blood which dripped from my torn features, mad because this blood only trickled over my face, and watching always for this horrid wall which ever presented to me the fearful obstacle against which I could not dash my head.

Where was I going? It was impossible to say. I was perfectly ignorant of the matter.

Several hours passed in this way. After a long time, having utterly exhausted my strength, I fell a heavy inert mass along the side of the tunnel, and lost consciousness.

CHAPTER 25

THE WHISPERING GALLERY

When at last I came back to a sense of life and being, my face was wet, but wet, as I soon knew, with tears. How long this state of insensibility lasted, it is quite impossible for me now to say. I had no means left to me of taking any account of time. Never since the creation of the world had such a solitude as mine existed. I was completely abandoned.

After my fall I lost much blood. I felt myself flooded with the life-giving liquid. My first sensation was perhaps a natural one. Why was I not dead? Because I was alive, there was something left to do. I tried to make up my mind to think no longer. As far as I was able, I drove away all ideas, and utterly overcome by pain and grief, I crouched against the granite wall.

I just commenced to feel the fainting coming on again, and the sensation that this was the last struggle before complete annihilation—when, on a sudden, a violent uproar reached my ears. It had some resemblance to the prolonged rumbling voice of thunder, and I clearly distinguished sonorous voices, lost one after the other, in the distant depths of the gulf.

Whence came this noise? Naturally, it was to be supposed from new phenomena which were taking place in the bosom of the solid mass of Mother Earth! The explosion of some gaseous vapors, or the fall of some solid, of the granitic or other rock.

Again I listened with deep attention. I was extremely anxious to hear if this strange and inexplicable sound was likely to be renewed! A whole quarter of an hour elapsed in painful expectation. Deep and solemn silence reigned in the tunnel. So still that I could hear the beatings of my own heart! I waited, waited with a strange kind of hopefulness.

Suddenly my ear, which leaned accidentally against the wall, appeared to catch, as it were, the faintest echo of a sound. I thought that I heard vague, incoherent and distant voices. I quivered all over with excitement and hope!

“It must be hallucination,” I cried. “It cannot be! it is not true!”

But no! By listening more attentively, I really did convince myself that what I heard was truly the sound of human voices. To make any meaning out of the sound, however, was beyond my power. I was too weak even to hear distinctly. Still it was a positive fact that someone was speaking. Of that I was quite certain.

There was a moment of fear. A dread fell upon my soul that it might be my own words brought back to me by a distant echo. Perhaps without knowing it, I might have been crying aloud. I resolutely closed my lips, and once more placed my ear to the huge granite wall.

Yes, for certain. It was in truth the sound of human voices.

I now by the exercise of great determination dragged myself along the sides of the cavern, until I reached a point where I could hear more distinctly. But though I could detect the sound, I could only make out uncertain, strange, and incomprehensible words. They reached my ear as if they had been spoken in a low tone—murmured, as it were, afar off.

At last, I made out the word forlorad repeated several times in a tone betokening great mental anguish and sorrow.

What could this word mean, and who was speaking it? It must be either my uncle or the guide Hans! If, therefore, I could hear them, they must surely be able to hear me.

“Help,” I cried at the top of my voice; “help, I am dying!”

I then listened with scarcely a breath; I panted for the slightest sound in the darkness—a cry, a sigh, a question! But silence reigned supreme. No answer came! In this way some minutes passed. A whole flood of ideas flashed through my mind. I began to fear that my voice, weakened by sickness and suffering, could not reach my companions who were in search of me.

“It must be they,” I cried; “who else could by any possibility be buried a hundred miles below the level of the earth?” The mere supposition was preposterous.

I began, therefore, to listen again with the most breathless attention. As I moved my ears along the side of the place I was in, I found a mathematical point as it were, where the voices appeared to attain their maximum of intensity. The word forlorad again distinctly reached my ear. Then came again that rolling noise like thunder which had awakened me out of torpor.

“I begin to understand,” I said to myself after some little time devoted to reflection; “it is not through the solid mass that the sound reaches my ears. The walls of my cavernous retreat are of solid granite, and the most fearful explosion would not make uproar enough to penetrate them. The sound must come along the gallery itself. The place I was in must possess some peculiar acoustic properties of its own.”

Again I listened; and this time—yes, this time—I heard my name distinctly pronounced: cast as it were into space.

It was my uncle, the Professor, who was speaking. He was in conversation with the guide, and the word which had so often reached my ears, forlorad, was a Danish expression.

Then I understood it all. In order to make myself heard, I too must speak as it were along the side of the gallery, which would carry the sound of my voice just as the wire carries the electric fluid from point to point.

But there was no time to lose. If my companions were only to remove a few feet from where they stood, the acoustic effect would be over, my Whispering Gallery would be destroyed. I again therefore crawled towards the wall, and said as clearly and distinctly as I could:

“Uncle Hardwigg.”

I then awaited a reply.

Sound does not possess the property of traveling with such extreme rapidity. Besides the density of the air at that depth from light and motion was very far from adding to the rapidity of circulation. Several seconds elapsed, which to my excited imagination, appeared ages; and these words reached my eager ears, and moved my wildly beating heart:

“Harry, my boy, is that you?”

A short delay between question and answer.

“Yes—yes.”

.….…..

“Where are you?”

.….…..

“Lost!”

.….…..

“And your lamp?”

.….…..

“Out.”

.….…..

“But the guiding stream?”

.….…..

“Is lost!”

.….…..

“Keep your courage, Harry. We will do our best.”

.….…..

“One moment, my uncle,” I cried; “I have no longer strength to answer your questions. But—for heaven’s sake—do you—continue—to speak—to me!” Absolute silence, I felt, would be annihilation.

“Keep up your courage,” said my uncle. “As you are so weak, do not speak. We have been searching for you in all directions, both by going upwards and downwards in the gallery. My dear boy, I had begun to give over all hope—and you can never know what bitter tears of sorrow and regret I have shed. At last, supposing you to be still on the road beside the Hansbach, we again descended, firing off guns as signals. Now, however, that we have found you, and that our voices reach each other, it may be a long time before we actually meet. We are conversing by means of some extraordinary acoustic arrangement of the labyrinth. But do not despair, my dear boy. It is something gained even to hear each other.”

While he was speaking, my brain was at work reflecting. A certain undefined hope, vague and shapeless as yet, made my heart beat wildly. In the first place, it was absolutely necessary for me to know one thing. I once more, therefore, leaned my head against the wall, which I almost touched with my lips, and again spoke.

“Uncle.”

.….…..

“My boy?” was his answer after a few moments.

.….…..

“It is of the utmost consequence that we should know how far we are asunder.”

.….…..

“That is not difficult.”

.….…..

“You have your chronometer at hand?” I asked.

.….…..

“Certainly.”

.….…..

“Well, take it into your hand. Pronounce my name, noting exactly the second at which you speak. I will reply as soon as I hear your words—and you will then note exactly the moment at which my reply reaches you.”

.….…..

“Very good; and the mean time between my question and your answer will be the time occupied by my voice in reaching you.”

.….…..

“That is exactly what I mean, Uncle,” was my eager reply.

.….…..

“Are you ready?”

.….…..

“Yes.”

.….…..

“Well, make ready, I am about to pronounce your name,” said the Professor.

I applied my ear close to the sides of the cavernous gallery, and as soon as the word “Harry” reached my ear, I turned round and, placing my lips to the wall, repeated the sound.

.….…..

“Forty seconds,” said my uncle. “There has elapsed forty seconds between the two words. The sound, therefore, takes twenty seconds to ascend. Now, allowing a thousand and twenty feet for every second—we have twenty thousand four hundred feet—a league and a half and one-eighth.”

These words fell on my soul like a kind of death knell.

“A league and a half,” I muttered in a low and despairing voice.

.….…..

“It shall be got over, my boy,” cried my uncle in a cheery tone; “depend on us.”

.….…..

“But do you know whether to ascend or descend?” I asked faintly enough.

.….…..

“We have to descend, and I will tell you why. You have reached a vast open space, a kind of bare crossroad, from which galleries diverge in every direction. That in which you are now lying must necessarily bring you to this point, for it appears that all these mighty fissures, these fractures of the globe’s interior, radiate from the vast cavern which we at this moment occupy. Rouse yourself, then, have courage and continue your route. Walk if you can, if not drag yourself along—slide, if nothing else is possible. The slope must be rather rapid—and you will find strong arms to receive you at the end of your journey. Make a start, like a good fellow.”

These words served to rouse some kind of courage in my sinking frame.

“Farewell for the present, good uncle, I am about to take my departure. As soon as I start, our voices will cease to commingle. Farewell, then, until we meet again.”

.….…..

“Adieu, Harry—until we say Welcome.” Such were the last words which reached my anxious ears before I commenced my weary and almost hopeless journey.

This wonderful and surprising conversation which took place through the vast mass of the earth’s labyrinth, these words exchanged, the speakers being about five miles apart—ended with hopeful and pleasant expressions. I breathed one more prayer to Heaven, I sent up words of thanksgiving—believing in my inmost heart that He had led me to the only place where the voices of my friends could reach my ears.

This apparently astounding acoustic mystery is easily explainable by simple natural laws; it arose from the conductibility of the rock. There are many instances of this singular propagation of sound which are not perceptible in its less mediate positions. In the interior gallery of St. Paul’s, and amid the curious caverns in Sicily, these phenomena are observable. The most marvelous of them all is known as the Ear of Dionysius.

These memories of the past, of my early reading and studies, came fresh to my thoughts. Moreover, I began to reason that if my uncle and I could communicate at so great a distance, no serious obstacle could exist between us. All I had to do was to follow the direction whence the sound had reached me; and logically putting it, I must reach him if my strength did not fail.

I accordingly rose to my feet. I soon found, however, that I could not walk; that I must drag myself along. The slope as I expected was very rapid; but I allowed myself to slip down.

Soon the rapidity of the descent began to assume frightful proportions; and menaced a fearful fall. I clutched at the sides; I grasped at projections of rocks; I threw myself backwards. All in vain. My weakness was so great I could do nothing to save myself.

Suddenly earth failed me.

I was first launched into a dark and gloomy void. I then struck against the projecting asperities of a vertical gallery, a perfect well. My head bounded against a pointed rock, and I lost all knowledge of existence. As far as I was concerned, death had claimed me for his own.

CHAPTER 26

A RAPID RECOVERY

When I returned to the consciousness of existence, I found myself surrounded by a kind of semiobscurity, lying on some thick and soft coverlets. My uncle was watching—his eyes fixed intently on my countenance, a grave expression on his face, a tear in his eye. At the first sigh which struggled from my bosom, he took hold of my hand. When he saw my eyes open and fix themselves upon his, he uttered a loud cry of joy. “He lives! he lives!”

“Yes, my good uncle,” I whispered.

“My dear boy,” continued the grim Professor, clasping me to his heart, “you are saved!”

I was deeply and unaffectedly touched by the tone in which these words were uttered, and even more by the kindly care which accompanied them. The Professor, however, was one of those men who must be severely tried in order to induce any display of affection or gentle emotion. At this moment our friend Hans, the guide, joined us. He saw my hand in that of my uncle, and I venture to say that, taciturn as he was, his eyes beamed with lively satisfaction.

“God dag,” he said.

“Good day, Hans, good day,” I replied, in as hearty a tone as I could assume, “and now, Uncle, that we are together, tell me where we are. I have lost all idea of our position, as of everything else.”

“Tomorrow, Harry, tomorrow,” he replied. “Today you are far too weak. Your head is surrounded with bandages and poultices that must not be touched. Sleep, my boy, sleep, and tomorrow you will know all that you require.”

“But,” I cried, “let me know what o’clock it is—what day it is?”

“It is now eleven o’clock at night, and this is once more Sunday. It is now the ninth of the month of August. And I distinctly prohibit you from asking any more questions until the tenth of the same.”

I was, if the truth were told, very weak indeed, and my eyes soon closed involuntarily. I did require a good night’s rest, and I went off reflecting at the last moment that my perilous adventure in the interior of the earth, in total darkness, had lasted four days!

On the morning of the next day, at my awakening, I began to look around me. My sleeping place, made of all our traveling bedding, was in a charming grotto, adorned with magnificent stalagmites, glittering in all the colors of the rainbow, the floor of soft and silvery sand.

A dim obscurity prevailed. No torch, no lamp was lighted, and yet certain unexplained beams of light penetrated from without, and made their way through the opening of the beautiful grotto.

I, moreover, heard a vague and indefinite murmur, like the ebb and flow of waves upon a strand, and sometimes I verily believed I could hear the sighing of the wind.

I began to believe that, instead of being awake, I must be dreaming. Surely my brain had not been affected by my fall, and all that occurred during the last twenty-four hours was not the frenzied visions of madness? And yet after some reflection, a trial of my faculties, I came to the conclusion that I could not be mistaken. Eyes and ears could not surely both deceive me.

“It is a ray of the blessed daylight,” I said to myself, “which has penetrated through some mighty fissure in the rocks. But what is the meaning of this murmur of waves, this unmistakable moaning of the salt-sea billows? I can hear, too, plainly enough, the whistling of the wind. But can I be altogether mistaken? If my uncle, during my illness, has but carried me back to the surface of the earth! Has he, on my account, given up his wondrous expedition, or in some strange manner has it come to an end?”

I was puzzling my brain over these and other questions, when the Professor joined me.

“Good day, Harry,” he cried in a joyous tone. “I fancy you are quite well.”

“I am very much better,” I replied, actually sitting up in my bed.

“I knew that would be the end of it, as you slept both soundly and tranquilly. Hans and I have each taken turn to watch, and every hour we have seen visible signs of amelioration.”

“You must be right, Uncle,” was my reply, “for I feel as if I could do justice to any meal you could put before me.”

“You shall eat, my boy, you shall eat. The fever has left you. Our excellent friend Hans has rubbed your wounds and bruises with I know not what ointment, of which the Icelanders alone possess the secret. And they have healed your bruises in the most marvelous manner. Ah, he’s a wise fellow is Master Hans.”

While he was speaking, my uncle was placing before me several articles of food, which, despite his earnest injunctions, I readily devoured. As soon as the first rage of hunger was appeased, I overwhelmed him with questions, to which he now no longer hesitated to give answers.

I then learned, for the first time, that my providential fall had brought me to the bottom of an almost perpendicular gallery. As I came down, amidst a perfect shower of stones, the least of which falling on me would have crushed me to death, they came to the conclusion that I had carried with me an entire dislocated rock. Riding as it were on this terrible chariot, I was cast headlong into my uncle’s arms. And into them I fell, insensible and covered with blood.

“It is indeed a miracle,” was the Professor’s final remark, “that you were not killed a thousand times over. But let us take care never to separate; for surely we should risk never meeting again.”

“Let us take care never again to separate.”

These words fell with a sort of chill upon my heart. The journey, then, was not over. I looked at my uncle with surprise and astonishment. My uncle, after an instant’s examination of my countenance, said: “What is the matter, Harry?”

“I want to ask you a very serious question. You say that I am all right in health?”

“Certainly you are.”

“And all my limbs are sound and capable of new exertion?” I asked.

“Most undoubtedly.”

“But what about my head?” was my next anxious question.

“Well, your head, except that you have one or two contusions, is exactly where it ought to be—on your shoulders,” said my uncle, laughing.

“Well, my own opinion is that my head is not exactly right. In fact, I believe myself slightly delirious.”

“What makes you think so?”

“I will explain why I fancy I have lost my senses,” I cried. “Have we not returned to the surface of Mother Earth?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then truly I must be mad, for do I not see the light of day? do I not hear the whistling of the wind? and can I not distinguish the wash of a great sea?”

“And that is all that makes you uneasy?” said my uncle, with a smile.

“Can you explain?”

“I will not make any attempt to explain; for the whole matter is utterly inexplicable. But you shall see and judge for yourself. You will then find that geological science is as yet in its infancy—and that we are doomed to enlighten the world.”

“Let us advance, then,” I cried eagerly, no longer able to restrain my curiosity.

“Wait a moment, my dear Harry,” he responded; “you must take precautions after your illness before going into the open air.”

“The open air?”

“Yes, my boy. I have to warn you that the wind is rather violent—and I have no wish for you to expose yourself without necessary precautions.”

“But I beg to assure you that I am perfectly recovered from my illness.”

“Have just a little patience, my boy. A relapse would be inconvenient to all parties. We have no time to lose—as our approaching sea voyage may be of long duration.”

“Sea voyage?” I cried, more bewildered than ever.

“Yes. You must take another day’s rest, and we shall be ready to go on board by tomorrow,” replied my uncle, with a peculiar smile.

“Go on board!” The words utterly astonished me.

Go on board—what and how? Had we come upon a river, a lake, had we discovered some inland sea? Was a vessel lying at anchor in some part of the interior of the earth?

My curiosity was worked up to the very highest pitch. My uncle made vain attempts to restrain me. When at last, however, he discovered that my feverish impatience would do more harm than good—and that the satisfaction of my wishes could alone restore me to a calm state of mind—he gave way.

I dressed myself rapidly—and then taking the precaution to please my uncle, of wrapping myself in one of the coverlets, I rushed out of the grotto.

CHAPTER 27

THE CENTRAL SEA

At first I saw absolutely nothing. My eyes, wholly unused to the effulgence of light, could not bear the sudden brightness; and I was compelled to close them. When I was able to reopen them, I stood still, far more stupefied than astonished. Not all the wildest effects of imagination could have conjured up such a scene! “The sea—the sea,” I cried.

“Yes,” replied my uncle, in a tone of pardonable pride; “the Central Sea. No future navigator will deny the fact of my having discovered it; and hence of acquiring a right of giving it a name.”

It was quite true. A vast, limitless expanse of water, the end of a lake if not of an ocean, spread before us, until it was lost in the distance. The shore, which was very much indented, consisted of a beautiful soft golden sand, mixed with small shells, the long-deserted home of some of the creatures of a past age. The waves broke incessantly—and with a peculiarly sonorous murmur, to be found in underground localities. A slight frothy flake arose as the wind blew along the pellucid waters; and many a dash of spray was blown into my face. The mighty superstructure of rock which rose above to an inconceivable height left only a narrow opening—but where we stood, there was a large margin of strand. On all sides were capes and promontories and enormous cliffs, partially worn by the eternal breaking of the waves, through countless ages! And as I gazed from side to side, the mighty rocks faded away like a fleecy film of cloud.

It was in reality an ocean, with all the usual characteristics of an inland sea, only horribly wild—so rigid, cold and savage.

One thing startled and puzzled me greatly. How was it that I was able to look upon that vast sheet of water instead of being plunged in utter darkness? The vast landscape before me was lit up like day. But there was wanting the dazzling brilliancy, the splendid irradiation of the sun; the pale cold illumination of the moon; the brightness of the stars. The illuminating power in this subterranean region, from its trembling and Rickering character, its clear dry whiteness, the very slight elevation of its temperature, its great superiority to that of the moon, was evidently electric; something in the nature of the aurora borealis, only that its phenomena were constant, and able to light up the whole of the ocean cavern.

The tremendous vault above our heads, the sky, so to speak, appeared to be composed of a conglomeration of nebulous vapors, in constant motion. I should originally have supposed that, under such an atmospheric pressure as must exist in that place, the evaporation of water could not really take place, and yet from the action of some physical law, which escaped my memory, there were heavy and dense clouds rolling along that mighty vault, partially concealing the roof. Electric currents produced astonishing play of light and shade in the distance, especially around the heavier clouds. Deep shadows were cast beneath, and then suddenly, between two clouds, there would come a ray of unusual beauty, and remarkable intensity. And yet it was not like the sun, for it gave no heat.

The effect was sad and excruciatingly melancholy. Instead of a noble firmament of blue, studded with stars, there was above me a heavy roof of granite, which seemed to crush me.

Gazing around, I began to think of the theory of the English captain who compared the earth to a vast hollow sphere in the interior of which the air is retained in a luminous state by means of atmospheric pressure, while two stars, Pluto and Proserpine, circled there in their mysterious orbits. After all, suppose the old fellow was right!

In truth, we were imprisoned—bound as it were, in a vast excavation. Its width it was impossible to make out; the shore, on either hand, widening rapidly until lost to sight; while its length was equally uncertain. A haze on the distant horizon bounded our view. As to its height, we could see that it must be many miles to the roof. Looking upward, it was impossible to discover where the stupendous roof began. The lowest of the clouds must have been floating at an elevation of two thousand yards, a height greater than that of terrestrial vapors, which circumstance was doubtless owing to the extreme density of the air.

I use the word “cavern” in order to give an idea of the place. I cannot describe its awful grandeur; human language fails to convey an idea of its savage sublimity. Whether this singular vacuum had or had not been caused by the sudden cooling of the earth when in a state of fusion, I could not say. I had read of most wonderful and gigantic caverns—but, none in any way like this.

The great grotto of Guachara, in Colombia, visited by the learned Humboldt; the vast and partially explored Mammoth Cave in Kentucky—what were these holes in the earth to that in which I stood in speechless admiration! with its vapory clouds, its electric light, and the mighty ocean slumbering in its bosom! Imagination, not description, can alone give an idea of the splendor and vastness of the cave.

I gazed at these marvels in profound silence. Words were utterly wanting to indicate the sensations of wonder I experienced. I seemed, as I stood upon that mysterious shore, as if I were some wandering inhabitant of a distant planet, present for the first time at the spectacle of some terrestrial phenomena belonging to another existence. To give body and existence to such new sensations would have required the coinage of new words—and here my feeble brain found itself wholly at fault. I looked on, I thought, I reflected, I admired, in a state of stupefaction not altogether unmingled with fear!

The unexpected spectacle restored some color to my pallid cheeks. I seemed to be actually getting better under the influence of this novelty. Moreover, the vivacity of the dense atmosphere reanimated my body by inflating my lungs with unaccustomed oxygen.

It will be readily conceived that after an imprisonment of forty-seven days, in a dark and miserable tunnel it was with infinite delight that I breathed this saline air. It was like the genial, reviving influence of the salt sea waves.

My uncle had already got over the first surprise. With the Latin poet Horace his idea was that—

Not to admire is all the art I know,

To make man happy and to keep him so.

“Well,” he said, after giving me time thoroughly to appreciate the marvels of this underground sea, “do you feel strong enough to walk up and down?”

“Certainly,” was my ready answer, “nothing would give me greater pleasure.”

“Well then, my boy,” he said, “lean on my arm, and we will stroll along the beach.”

I accepted his offer eagerly, and we began to walk along the shores of this extraordinary lake. To our left were abrupt rocks, piled one upon the other—a stupendous titanic pile; down their sides leaped innumerable cascades, which at last, becoming limpid and murmuring streams, were lost in the waters of the lake. Light vapors, which rose here and there, and floated in fleecy clouds from rock to rock, indicated hot springs, which also poured their superfluity into the vast reservoir at our feet.

Among them I recognized our old and faithful stream, the Hansbach, which, lost in that wild basin, seemed as if it had been flowing since the creation of the world.

“We shall miss our excellent friend,” I remarked, with a deep sigh.

“Bah!” said my uncle testily, “what matters it? That or another, it is all the same.”

I thought the remark ungrateful, and felt almost inclined to say so; but I forbore.

At this moment my attention was attracted by an unexpected spectacle. After we had gone about five hundred yards, we suddenly turned a steep promontory, and found ourselves close to a lofty forest! It consisted of straight trunks with tufted tops, in shape like parasols. The air seemed to have no effect upon these trees—which in spite of a tolerable breeze remained as still and motionless as if they had been petrified.

I hastened forward. I could find no name for these singular formations. Did they not belong to the two thousand and more known trees—or were we to make the discovery of a new growth? By no means. When we at last reached the forest, and stood beneath the trees, my surprise gave way to admiration.

In truth, I was simply in the presence of a very ordinary product of the earth, of singular and gigantic proportions. My uncle unhesitatingly called them by their real names.

“It is only,” he said, in his coolest manner, “a forest of mushrooms.”

On close examination I found that he was not mistaken. Judge of the development attained by this product of damp hot soils. I had heard that the Lycoperdon giganteum reaches nine feet in circumference, but here were white mushrooms, nearly forty feet high, and with tops of equal dimensions. They grew in countless thousands—the light could not make its way through their massive substance, and beneath them reigned a gloomy and mystic darkness.

Still I wished to go forward. The cold in the shades of this singular forest was intense. For nearly an hour we wandered about in this visible darkness. At length I left the spot, and once more returned to the shores of the lake, to light and comparative warmth.

But the amazing vegetation of subterraneous land was not confined to gigantic mushrooms. New wonders awaited us at every step. We had not gone many hundred yards, when we came upon a mighty group of other trees with discolored leaves—the common humble trees of Mother Earth, of an exorbitant and phenomenal size: lycopods a hundred feet high; flowering ferns as tall as pines; gigantic grasses!

“Astonishing, magnificent, splendid!” cried my uncle; “here we have before us the whole flora of the second period of the world, that of transition. Behold the humble plants of our gardens, which in the first ages of the world were mighty trees. Look around you, my dear Harry. No botanist ever before gazed on such a sight!”

My uncle’s enthusiasm, always a little more than was required, was now excusable.

“You are right, Uncle,” I remarked. “Providence appears to have designed the preservation in this vast and mysterious hothouse of antediluvian plants, to prove the sagacity of learned men in figuring them so marvelously on paper.”

“Well said, my boy—very well said; it is indeed a mighty hothouse. But you would also be within the bounds of reason and common sense, if you added that it is also a vast menagerie.”

I looked rather anxiously around. If the animals were as exaggerated as the plants, the matter would certainly be serious.

“A menagerie?”

“Doubtless. Look at the dust we are treading under foot—behold the bones with which the whole soil of the seashore is covered—”

“Bones,” I replied, “yes, certainly, the bones of antediluvian animals.”

I stooped down as I spoke, and picked up one or two singular remains, relics of a bygone age. It was easy to give a name to these gigantic bones, in some instances as big as trunks of trees.

“Here is, clearly, the lower jawbone of a mastodon,” I cried, almost as warmly and enthusiastically as my uncle; “here are the molars of the Dinotherium; here is a leg bone which belonged to the Megatherium. You are right, Uncle, it is indeed a menagerie; for the mighty animals to which these bones once belonged, have lived and died on the shores of this subterranean sea, under the shadow of these plants. Look, yonder are whole skeletons—and yet—”

“And yet, nephew?” said my uncle, noticing that I suddenly came to a full stop.

“I do not understand the presence of such beasts in granite caverns, however vast and prodigious,” was my reply.

“Why not?” said my uncle, with very much of his old professional impatience.

“Because it is well known that animal life only existed on earth during the secondary period, when the sedimentary soil was formed by the alluviums, and thus replaced the hot and burning rocks of the primitive age.”

“I have listened to you earnestly and with patience, Harry, and I have a simple and clear answer to your objections: and that is, that this itself is a sedimentary soil.”

“How can that be at such enormous depth from the surface of the earth?”

“The fact can be explained both simply and geologically. At a certain period, the earth consisted only of an elastic crust, liable to alternative upward and downward movements in virtue of the law of attraction. It is very probable that many a landslip took place in those days, and that large portions of sedimentary soil were cast into huge and mighty chasms.”

“Quite possible,” I dryly remarked. “But, Uncle, if these antediluvian animals formerly lived in these subterranean regions, what more likely than that one of these monsters may at this moment be concealed behind one of yonder mighty rocks.”

As I spoke, I looked keenly around, examining with care every point of the horizon; but nothing alive appeared to exist on these deserted shores.

I now felt rather fatigued, and told my uncle so. The walk and excitement were too much for me in my weak state. I therefore seated myself at the end of a promontory, at the foot of which the waves broke in incessant rolls. I looked round a bay formed by projections of vast granitic rocks. At the extreme end was a little port protected by huge pyramids of stones. A brig and three or four schooners might have lain there with perfect ease. So natural did it seem, that every minute my imagination induced me to expect a vessel coming out under all sail and making for the open sea under the influence of a warm southerly breeze.

But the fantastic illusion never lasted more than a minute. We were the only living creatures in this subterranean world!

During certain periods there was an utter cessation of wind, when a silence deeper, more terrible than the silence of the desert fell upon these solitary and arid rocks—and seemed to hang like a leaden weight upon the waters of this singular ocean. I sought, amid the awful stillness, to penetrate through the distant fog, to tear down the veil which concealed the mysterious distance. What unspoken words were murmured by my trembling lips—what questions did I wish to ask and did not! Where did this sea end—to what did it lead? Should we ever be able to examine its distant shores?

But my uncle had no doubts about the matter. He was convinced that our enterprise would in the end be successful. For my part, I was in a state of painful indecision—I desired to embark on the journey and to succeed, and still I feared the result.

After we had passed an hour or more in silent contemplation of the wondrous spectacle, we rose and went down towards the bank on our way to the grotto, which I was not sorry to gain. After a slight repast, I sought refuge in slumber, and at length, after many and tedious struggles, sleep came over my weary eyes.

CHAPTER 28

LAUNCHING THE RAFT

On the morning of the next day, to my great surprise, I awoke completely restored. I thought a bath would be delightful after my long illness and sufferings. So, soon after rising, I went and plunged into the waters of this new Mediterranean. The bath was cool, fresh and invigorating.

I came back to breakfast with an excellent appetite. Hans, our worthy guide, thoroughly understood how to cook such eatables as we were able to provide; he had both fire and water at discretion, so that he was enabled slightly to vary the weary monotony of our ordinary repast.

Our morning meal was like a capital English breakfast, with coffee by way of a windup. And never had this delicious beverage been so welcome and refreshing.

My uncle had sufficient regard for my state of health not to interrupt me in the enjoyment of the meal, but he was evidently delighted when I had finished.

“Now then,” said he, “come with me. It is the height of the tide, and I am anxious to study its curious phenomena.”

“What!” I cried, rising in astonishment, “did you say the tide, Uncle?”

“Certainly I did.”

“You do not mean to say,” I replied, in a tone of respectful doubt, “that the influence of the sun and moon is felt here below.”

“And pray why not? Are not all bodies influenced by the law of universal attraction? Why should this vast underground sea be exempt from the general law, the rule of the universe? Besides, there is nothing like that which is proved and demonstrated. Despite the great atmospheric pressure down here, you will notice that this inland sea rises and falls with as much regularity as the Atlantic itself.”

As my uncle spoke, we reached the sandy shore, and saw and heard the waves breaking monotonously on the beach. They were evidently rising.

“This is truly the flood,” I cried, looking at the water at my feet.

“Yes, my excellent nephew,” replied my uncle, rubbing his hands with the gusto of a philosopher, “and you see by these several streaks of foam that the tide rises at least ten or twelve feet.”

“It is indeed marvelous.”

“By no means,” he responded; “on the contrary, it is quite natural.”

“It may appear so in your eyes, my dear uncle,” was my reply, “but all the phenomena of the place appear to me to partake of the marvelous. It is almost impossible to believe that which I see. Who in his wildest dreams could have imagined that, beneath the crust of our earth, there could exist a real ocean, with ebbing and flowing tides, with its changes of winds, and even its storms! I for one should have laughed the suggestion to scorn.”

“But, Harry, my boy, why not?” inquired my uncle, with a pitying smile; “is there any physical reason in opposition to it?”

“Well, if we give up the great theory of the central heat of the earth, I certainly can offer no reasons why anything should be looked upon as impossible.”

“Then you will own,” he added, “that the system of Sir Humphry Davy is wholly justified by what we have seen?”

“I allow that it is—and that point once granted, I certainly can see no reason for doubting the existence of seas and other wonders, even countries, in the interior of the globe.”

“That is so—but of course these varied countries are uninhabited?”

“Well, I grant that it is more likely than not: still, I do not see why this sea should not have given shelter to some species of unknown fish.”

“Hitherto we have not discovered any, and the probabilities are rather against our ever doing so,” observed the Professor.

I was losing my skepticism in the presence of these wonders.

“Well, I am determined to solve the question. It is my intention to try my luck with my fishing line and hook.”

“Certainly; make the experiment,” said my uncle, pleased with my enthusiasm. “While we are about it, it will certainly be only proper to discover all the secrets of this extraordinary region.”

“But, after all, where are we now?” I asked; “all this time I have quite forgotten to ask you a question, which, doubtless, your philosophical instruments have long since answered.”

“Well,” replied the Professor, “examining the situation from only one point of view, we are now distant three hundred and fifty leagues from Iceland.”

“So much?” was my exclamation.

“I have gone over the matter several times, and am sure not to have made a mistake of five hundred yards,” replied my uncle positively.

“And as to the direction—are we still going to the southeast?”

“Yes, with a western declination2 of nineteen degrees, forty-two minutes, just as it is above. As for the inclination,3 I have discovered a very curious fact.”

“What may that be, Uncle? Your information interests me.”

“Why, that the needle instead of dipping towards the pole as it does on earth, in the northern hemisphere, has an upward tendency.”

“This proves,” I cried, “that the great point of magnetic attraction lies somewhere between the surface of the earth and the spot we have succeeded in reaching.”

“Exactly, my observant nephew,” exclaimed my uncle, elated and delighted, “and it is quite probable that if we succeed in getting toward the polar regions—somewhere near the seventy-third degree of latitude, where Sir James Ross discovered the magnetic pole, we shall behold the needle point directly upward. We have therefore discovered by analogy, that this great centre of attraction is not situated at a very great depth.”

“Well,” said I, rather surprised, “this discovery will astonish experimental philosophers. It was never suspected.”

“Science, great, mighty and in the end unerring,” replied my uncle dogmatically, “science has fallen into many errors—errors which have been fortunate and useful rather than otherwise, for they have been the steppingstones to truth.”

After some further discussion, I turned to another matter.

“Have you any idea of the depth we have reached?”

“We are now,” continued the Professor, “exactly thirty-five leagues—above a hundred miles—down into the interior of the earth.”

“So,” said I, after measuring the distance on the map, “we are now beneath the Scottish Highlands, and have over our heads the lofty Grampian Hills.”

“You are quite right,” said the Professor, laughing; “it sounds very alarming, the weight being heavy—but the vault which supports this vast mass of earth and rock is solid and safe; the mighty Architect of the Universe has constructed it of solid materials. Man, even in his highest flights of vivid and poetic imagination, never thought of such things! What are the finest arches of our bridges, what the vaulted roofs of our cathedrals, to that mighty dome above us, and beneath which floats an ocean with its storms and calms and tides!”

“I admire it all as much as you can, Uncle, and have no fear that our granite sky will fall upon our heads. But now that we have discussed matters of science and discovery, what are your future intentions? Are you not thinking of getting back to the surface of our beautiful earth?”

This was said more as a feeler than with any hope of success.

“Go back, nephew,” cried my uncle in a tone of alarm, “you are not surely thinking of anything so absurd or cowardly. No, my intention is to advance and continue our journey. We have as yet been singularly fortunate, and henceforth I hope we shall be more so.”

“But,” said I, “how are we to cross yonder liquid plain?”

“It is not my intention to leap into it head foremost, or even to swim across it, like Leander over the Hellespont. But as oceans are, after all, only great lakes, inasmuch as they are surrounded by land, so does it stand to reason, that this central sea is circumscribed by granite surroundings.”

“Doubtless,” was my natural reply.

“Well, then, do you not think that when once we reach the other end, we shall find some means of continuing our journey?”

“Probably, but what extent do you allow to this internal ocean?”

“Well, I should fancy it to extend about forty or fifty leagues—more or less.”

“But even supposing this approximation to be a correct one—what then?” I asked.

“My dear boy, we have no time for further discussion. We shall embark tomorrow.”

I looked around with surprise and incredulity. I could see nothing in the shape of boat or vessel.

“What!” I cried, “we are about to launch out upon an unknown sea; and where, if I may ask, is the vessel to carry us?”

“Well, my dear boy, it will not be exactly what you would call a vessel. For the present we must be content with a good and solid raft.”

“A raft,” I cried, incredulously, “but down here a raft is as impossible of construction as a vessel—and I am at a loss to imagine—”

“My good Harry—if you were to listen instead of talking so much, you would hear,” said my uncle, waxing a little impatient.

“I should hear?”

“Yes—certain knocks with the hammer, which Hans is now employing to make the raft. He has been at work for many hours.”

“Making a raft?”

“Yes.”

“But where has he found trees suitable for such a construction?”

“He found the trees all ready to his hand. Come, and you shall see our excellent guide at work.”

More and more amazed at what I heard and saw, I followed my uncle like one in a dream.

After a walk of about a quarter of an hour, I saw Hans at work on the other side of the promontory which formed our natural port. A few minutes more and I was beside him. To my great surprise, on the sandy shore lay a half-finished raft. It was made from beams of a very peculiar wood, and a great number of limbs, joints, boughs, and pieces lay about, sufficient to have constructed a fleet of ships and boats.

I turned to my uncle, silent with astonishment and awe.

“Where did all this wood come from?” I cried; “what wood is it?”

“Well, there is pinewood, fir, and the palms of the northern regions, mineralized by the action of the sea,” he replied, sententiously.

“Can it be possible?”

“Yes,” said the learned Professor, “what you see is called fossil wood.”

“But then,” cried I, after reflecting for a moment, “like the lignites, it must be as hard and as heavy as iron, and therefore will certainly not float.”

“Sometimes that is the case. Many of these woods have become true anthracites, but others again, like those you see before you, have only undergone one phase of fossil transformation. But there is no proof like demonstration,” added my uncle, picking one or two of these precious waifs and casting them into the sea.

The piece of wood, after having disappeared for a moment, came to the surface, and floated about with the oscillation produced by wind and tide.

“Are you convinced?” said my uncle, with a self-satisfied smile.

“I am convinced,” I cried, “that what I see is incredible.”

The fact was that my journey into the interior of the earth was rapidly changing all preconceived notions, and day by day preparing me for the marvelous.

I should not have been surprised to have seen a fleet of native canoes afloat upon that silent sea.

The very next evening, thanks to the industry and ability of Hans, the raft was finished. It was about ten feet long and five feet wide. The beams bound together with stout ropes, were solid and firm, and once launched by our united efforts, the improvised vessel floated tranquilly upon the waters of what the Professor had well named the Central Sea.

2 The declination is the variation of the needle from the true meridian of a place.

3 Inclination is the dip of the magnetic needle with a tendency to incline towards the earth.

2 The declination is the variation of the needle from the true meridian of a place.

3 Inclination is the dip of the magnetic needle with a tendency to incline towards the earth.

CHAPTER 29

ON THE WATERS—A RAFT VOYAGE

On the thirteenth of August we were up betimes. There was no time to be lost. We now had to inaugurate a new kind of locomotion, which would have the advantage of being rapid and not fatiguing.

A mast, made of two pieces of wood fastened together, to give additional strength, a yard made from another one, the sail a linen sheet from our bed. We were fortunately in no want of cordage, and the whole on trial appeared solid and seaworthy.

At six o’clock in the morning, when the eager and enthusiastic Professor gave the signal to embark, the victuals, the luggage, all our instruments, our weapons, and a goodly supply of sweet water, which we had collected from springs in the rocks, were placed on the raft.

Hans had, with considerable ingenuity, contrived a rudder, which enabled him to guide the floating apparatus with ease. He took the tiller, as a matter of course. The worthy man was as good a sailor as he was a guide and duck hunter. I then let go the painter which held us to the shore, the sail was brought to the wind, and we made a rapid offing.

Our sea voyage had at length commenced; and once more we were making for distant and unknown regions.

Just as we were about to leave the little port where the raft had been constructed, my uncle, who was very strong as to geographic nomenclature, wanted to give it a name, and among others, suggested mine.

“Well,” said I, “before you decide I have another to propose.”

“Well; out with it.”

“I should like to call it Gretchen. Port Gretchen will sound very well on our future map.”

“Well then, Port Gretchen let it be,” said the Professor.

And thus it was that the memory of my dear girl was attached to our adventurous and memorable expedition.

When we left the shore the wind was blowing from the northward and eastward. We went directly before the wind at a much greater speed than might have been expected from a raft. The dense layers of atmosphere at that depth had great propelling power and acted upon the sail with considerable force.

At the end of an hour, my uncle, who had been taking careful observations, was enabled to judge of the rapidity with which we moved. It was far beyond anything seen in the upper world.

“If,” he said, “we continue to advance at our present rate, we shall have traveled at least thirty leagues in twenty-four hours. With a mere raft this is an almost incredible velocity.”

I certainly was surprised, and without making any reply went forward upon the raft. Already the northern shore was fading away on the edge of the horizon. The two shores appeared to separate more and more, leaving a wide and open space for our departure. Before me I could see nothing but the vast and apparently limitless sea—upon which we floated—the only living objects in sight.

Huge and dark clouds cast their grey shadows below—shadows which seemed to crush that colorless and sullen water by their weight. Anything more suggestive of gloom and of regions of nether darkness I never beheld. Silvery rays of electric light, reflected here and there upon some small spots of water, brought up luminous sparkles in the long wake of our cumbrous bark. Presently we were wholly out of sight of land; not a vestige could be seen, nor any indication of where we were going. So still and motionless did we seem without any distant point to fix our eyes on that but for the phosphoric light at the wake of the raft I should have fancied that we were still and motionless.

But I knew that we were advancing at a very rapid rate.

About twelve o’clock in the day, vast collections of seaweed were discovered surrounding us on all sides. I was aware of the extraordinary vegetative power of these plants, which have been known to creep along the bottom of the great ocean, and stop the advance of large ships. But never were seaweeds ever seen, so gigantic and wonderful as those of the Central Sea. I could well imagine how, seen at a distance, tossing and heaving on the summit of the billows, the long lines of algae have been taken for living things, and thus have been fertile sources of the belief in sea serpents.

Our raft swept past great specimens of fucus or seawrack, from three to four thousand feet in length, immense, incredibly long, looking like snakes that stretched out far beyond our horizon. It afforded me great amusement to gaze on their variegated ribbon-like endless lengths. Hour after hour passed without our coming to the termination of these floating weeds. If my astonishment increased, my patience was well-nigh exhausted.

What natural force could possibly have produced such abnormal and extraordinary plants? What must have been the aspect of the globe, during the first centuries of its formation, when under the combined action of heat and humidity, the vegetable kingdom occupied its vast surface to the exclusion of everything else?

These were considerations of never-ending interest for the geologist and the philosopher.

All this while we were advancing on our journey; and at length night came; but as I had remarked the evening before, the luminous state of the atmosphere was in nothing diminished. Whatever was the cause, it was a phenomenon upon the duration of which we could calculate with certainty.

As soon as our supper had been disposed of, and some little speculative conversation indulged in, I stretched myself at the foot of the mast, and presently went to sleep.

Hans remained motionless at the tiller, allowing the raft to rise and fall on the waves. The wind being aft, and the sail square, all he had to do was to keep his oar in the centre.

Ever since we had taken our departure from the newly named Port Gretchen, my worthy uncle had directed me to keep a regular log of our day’s navigation, with instructions to put down even the most minute particulars, every interesting and curious phenomenon, the direction of the wind, our rate of sailing, the distance we went; in a word, every incident of our extraordinary voyage.

From our log, therefore, I tell the story of our voyage on the Central Sea.

Friday, August 14th. A steady breeze from the northwest. Raft progressing with extreme rapidity, and going perfectly straight. Coast still dimly visible about thirty leagues to leeward. Nothing to be seen beyond the horizon in front. The extraordinary intensity of the light neither increases nor diminishes. It is singularly stationary. The weather remarkably fine; that is to say, the clouds have ascended very high, and are light and fleecy, and surrounded by an atmosphere resembling silver in fusion.

Thermometer, +32 degrees centigrade.

About twelve o’clock in the day our guide Hans having prepared and baited a hook, cast his line into the subterranean waters. The bait he used was a small piece of meat, by means of which he concealed his hook. Anxious as I was, I was for a long time doomed to disappointment. Were these waters supplied with fish or not? That was the important question. No—was my decided answer. Then there came a sudden and rather hard tug. Hans coolly drew it in, and with it a fish, which struggled violently to escape.

“A fish!” cried my uncle.

“It is a sturgeon!” I cried, “certainly a small sturgeon.”

The Professor examined the fish carefully, noting every characteristic; and he did not coincide in my opinion. The fish had a flat head, round body, and the lower extremities covered with bony scales; its mouth was wholly without teeth, the pectoral fins, which were highly developed, sprouted direct from the body, which properly speaking had no tail. The animal certainly belonged to the order in which naturalists class the sturgeon, but it differed from that fish in many essential particulars.

My uncle, after all, was not mistaken. After a long and patient examination, he said:

“This fish, my dear boy, belongs to a family which has been extinct for ages, and of which no trace has ever been found on earth, except fossil remains in the Devonian strata.”

“You do not mean to say,” I cried, “that we have captured a live specimen of a fish belonging to the primitive stock that existed before the deluge?”

“We have,” said the Professor, who all this time was continuing his observations, “and you may see by careful examination that these fossil fish have no identity with existing species. To hold in one’s hand, therefore, a living specimen of the order, is enough to make a naturalist happy for life.”

“But,” cried I, “to what family does it belong?”

“To the order of Ganoides—an order of fish having angular scales, covered with bright enamel—forming one of the family of the Cephalaspides, of the genus—”

“Well, sir,” I remarked, as I noticed my uncle hesitated to conclude.

“To the genus Pterychtis—yes, I am certain of it. Still, though I am confident of the correctness of my surmise, this fish offers to our notice a remarkable peculiarity, never known to exist in any other fish but those which are the natives of subterranean waters, wells, lakes, in caverns, and suchlike hidden pools.”

“And what may that be?”

“It is blind.”

“Blind!” I cried, much surprised.

“Not only blind,” continued the Professor, “but absolutely without organs of sight.”

I now examined our discovery for myself. It was singular, to be sure, but it was really a fact. This, however, might be a solitary instance, I suggested. The hook was baited again and once more thrown into the water. This subterranean ocean must have been tolerably well supplied with fish, for in two hours we took a large number of Pterychtis, as well as other fish belonging to another supposed extinct family—the Dipterides (a genus of fish, furnished with two fins only, whence the name), though my uncle could not class it exactly. All, without exception, however, were blind. This unexpected capture enabled us to renew our stock of provisions in a very satisfactory way.

We were now convinced that this subterranean sea contained only fish known to us as fossil specimens—and fish and reptiles alike were all the more perfect the farther back they dated their origin.

We began to hope that we should find some of those saurians which science has succeeded in reconstructing from bits of bone or cartilage.

I took up the telescope and carefully examined the horizon—looked over the whole sea; it was utterly and entirely deserted. Doubtless we were still too near the coast.

After an examination of the ocean, I looked upward, towards the strange and mysterious sky. Why should not one of the birds reconstructed by the immortal Cuvier flap his stupendous wings aloft in the dull strata of subterranean air? It would, of course, find quite sufficient food from the fish in the sea. I gazed for some time upon the void above. It was as silent and as deserted as the shores we had but lately left.

Nevertheless, though I could neither see nor discover anything, my imagination carried me away into wild hypotheses. I was in a kind of waking dream. I thought I saw on the surface of the water those enormous antediluvian turtles as big as floating islands. Upon those dull and somber shores passed a spectral row of the mammifers of early days, the great Liptotherium found in the cavernous hollow of the Brazilian hills, the Mesicotherium, a native of the glacial regions of Siberia.

Farther on, the pachydermatous Lophrodon, that gigantic tapir, which concealed itself behind rocks, ready to do battle for its prey with the Anoplotherium, a singular animal partaking of the nature of the rhinoceros, the horse, the hippopotamus and the camel.

There was the giant Mastodon, twisting and turning his horrid trunk, with which he crushed the rocks of the shore to powder, while the Megatherium—his back raised like a cat in a passion, his enormous claws stretched out, dug into the earth for food, at the same time that he awoke the sonorous echoes of the whole place with his terrible roar.

Higher up still, the first monkey ever seen on the face of the globe clambered, gamboling and playing up the granite hills. Still farther away, ran the Pterodactyl, with the winged hand, gliding or rather sailing through the dense and compressed air like a huge bat.

Above all, near the leaden granitic sky, were immense birds, more powerful than the cassowary and the ostrich, which spread their mighty wings and fluttered against the huge stone vault of the inland sea.

I thought, such was the effect of my imagination, that I saw this whole tribe of antediluvian creatures. I carried myself back to far ages, long before man existed—when, in fact, the earth was in too imperfect a state for him to live upon it.

My dream was of countless ages before the existence of man. The mammifers first disappeared, then the mighty birds, then the reptiles of the secondary period, presently the fish, the crustacea, the mollusks, and finally the vertebrata. The zoophytes of the period of transition in their turn sank into annihilation.

The whole panorama of the world’s life before the historic period, seemed to be born over again, and mine was the only human heart that beat in this unpeopled world! There were no more seasons; there were no more climates; the natural heat of the world increased unceasingly, and neutralized that of the great radiant Sun.

Vegetation was exaggerated in an extraordinary manner. I passed like a shadow in the midst of brushwood as lofty as the giant trees of California, and trod underfoot the moist and humid soil, reeking with a rank and varied vegetation.

I leaned against the huge column-like trunks of giant trees, to which those of Canada were as ferns. Whole ages passed, hundreds upon hundreds of years were concentrated into a single day.

Next, unrolled before me like a panorama, came the great and wondrous series of terrestrial transformations. Plants disappeared; the granitic rocks lost all trace of solidity; the liquid state was suddenly substituted for that which had before existed. This was caused by intense heat acting on the organic matter of the earth. The waters flowed over the whole surface of the globe; they boiled; they were volatilized, or turned into vapor; a kind of steam cloud wrapped the whole earth, the globe itself becoming at last nothing but one huge sphere of gas, indescribable in color, between white heat and red, as big and as brilliant as the sun.

In the very centre of this prodigious mass, fourteen hundred thousand times as large as our globe, I was whirled round in space, and brought into close conjunction with the planets. My body was subtilized, or rather became volatile, and commingled in a state of atomic vapor, with the prodigious clouds, which rushed forward like a mighty comet into infinite space!

What an extraordinary dream! Where would it finally take me? My feverish hand began to write down the marvelous details—details more like the imaginings of a lunatic than anything sober and real. I had during this period of hallucination forgotten everything—the Professor, the guide, and the raft on which we were floating. My mind was in a state of semioblivion.

“What is the matter, Harry?” said my uncle suddenly.

My eyes, which were wide opened like those of a somnambulist, were fixed upon him, but I did not see him, nor could I clearly make out anything around me.

“Take care, my boy,” again cried my uncle, “you will fall into the sea.”

As he uttered these words, I felt myself seized on the other side by the firm hand of our devoted guide. Had it not been for the presence of mind of Hans, I must infallibly have fallen into the waves and been drowned.

“Have you gone mad?” cried my uncle, shaking me on the other side.

“What—what is the matter?” I said at last, coming to myself.

“Are you ill, Henry?” continued the Professor in an anxious tone.

“No—no; but I have had an extraordinary dream. It, however, has passed away. All now seems well,” I added, looking around me with strangely puzzled eyes.

“All right,” said my uncle; “a beautiful breeze, a splendid sea. We are going along at a rapid rate, and if I am not out in my calculations we shall soon see land. I shall not be sorry to exchange the narrow limits of our raft for the mysterious strand of the subterranean ocean.”

As my uncle uttered these words, I rose and carefully scanned the horizon. But the line of water was still confounded with the lowering clouds that hung aloft, and in the distance appeared to touch the edge of the water.

CHAPTER 30

TERRIFIC SAURIAN COMBAT

Saturday, August 15th. The sea still retains its uniform monotony. The same leaden hue, the same eternal glare from above. No indication of land being in sight. The horizon appears to retreat before us, more and more as we advance.

My head, still dull and heavy from the effects of my extraordinary dream, which I cannot as yet banish from my mind.

The Professor, who has not dreamed, is, however, in one of his morose and unaccountable humors. Spends his time in scanning the horizon, at every point of the compass. His telescope is raised every moment to his eyes, and when he finds nothing to give any clue to our whereabouts, he assumes a Napoleonic attitude and walks anxiously.

I remarked that my uncle, the Professor, had a strong tendency to resume his old impatient character, and I could not but make a note of this disagreeable circumstance in my journal. I saw clearly that it had required all the influence of my danger and suffering, to extract from him one scintillation of humane feeling. Now that I was quite recovered, his original nature had conquered and obtained the upper hand.

And, after all, what had he to be angry and annoyed about, now more than at any other time? Was not the journey being accomplished under the most favorable circumstances? Was not the raft progressing with the most marvelous rapidity?

What, then, could be the matter? After one or two preliminary hems, I determined to inquire.

“You seem uneasy, Uncle,” said I, when for about the hundredth time he put down his telescope and walked up and down, muttering to himself.

“No, I am not uneasy,” he replied in a dry harsh tone, “by no means.”

“Perhaps I should have said impatient,” I replied, softening the force of my remark.

“Enough to make me so, I think.”

“And yet we are advancing at a rate seldom attained by a raft,” I remarked.

“What matters that?” cried my uncle. “I am not vexed at the rate we go at, but I am annoyed to find the sea so much vaster than I expected.”

I then recollected that the Professor, before our departure, had estimated the length of this subterranean ocean as at most about thirty leagues. Now we had traveled at least over thrice that distance without discovering any trace of the distant shore. I began to understand my uncle’s anger.

“We are not going down,” suddenly exclaimed the Professor. “We are not progressing with our great discoveries. All this is utter loss of time. After all, I did not come from home to undertake a party of pleasure. This voyage on a raft over a pond annoys and wearies me.”

He called this adventurous journey a party of pleasure, and this great inland sea a pond!

“But,” argued I, “if we have followed the route indicated by the great Saknussemm, we cannot be going far wrong.”

“‘That is the question,’ as the great, the immortal Shakespeare, has it. Are we following the route indicated by that wondrous sage? Did Saknussemm ever fall in with this great sheet of water? If he did, did he cross it? I begin to fear that the rivulet we adopted for a guide has led us wrong.”

“In any case, we can never regret having come thus far. It is worth the whole journey to have enjoyed this magnificent spectacle—it is something to have seen.”

“I care nothing about seeing, nor about magnificent spectacles. I came down into the interior of the earth with an object, and that object I mean to attain. Don’t talk to me about admiring scenery, or any other sentimental trash.”

After this I thought it well to hold my tongue, and allow the Professor to bite his lips until the blood came, without further remark.

At six o’clock in the evening, our matter-of-fact guide, Hans, asked for his week’s salary, and receiving his three rix-dollars, put them carefully in his pocket. He was perfectly contented and satisfied.

Sunday, August 16th. Nothing new to record. The same weather as before. The wind has a slight tendency to freshen up, with signs of an approaching gale. When I awoke, my first observation was in regard to the intensity of the light. I keep on fearing, day after day, that the extraordinary electric phenomenon should become first obscured, and then go wholly out, leaving us in total darkness. Nothing, however, of the kind occurs. The shadow of the raft, its mast and sails, is clearly distinguished on the surface of the water.

This wondrous sea is, after all, infinite in its extent. It must be quite as wide as the Mediterranean—or perhaps even as the great Atlantic Ocean. Why, after all, should it not be so?

My uncle has on more than one occasion, tried deep-sea soundings. He tied the cross of one of our heaviest crowbars to the extremity of a cord, which he allowed to run out to the extent of two hundred fathoms. We had the greatest difficulty in hoisting in our novel kind of lead.

When the crowbar was finally dragged on board, Hans called my attention to some singular marks upon its surface. The piece of iron looked as if it had been crushed between two very hard substances.

I looked at our worthy guide with an inquiring glance.

“Tander,” said he.

Of course I was at a loss to understand. I turned round towards my uncle, absorbed in gloomy reflections. I had little wish to disturb him from his reverie. I accordingly turned once more towards our worthy Icelander.

Hans very quietly and significantly opened his mouth once or twice, as if in the act of biting, and in this way made me understand his meaning.

“Teeth!” cried I, with stupefaction, as I examined the bar of iron with more attention.

Yes. There can be no doubt about the matter. The indentations on the bar of iron are the marks of teeth! What jaws must the owner of such molars be possessed of! Have we then, come upon a monster of unknown species, which still exists within the vast waste of waters—a monster more voracious than a shark, more terrible and bulky than the whale? I am unable to withdraw my eyes from the bar of iron, actually half crushed!

Is, then, my dream about to come true—a dread and terrible reality?

All day my thoughts were bent upon these speculations, and my imagination scarcely regained a degree of calmness and power of reflection until after a sleep of many hours.

This day, as on other Sundays, we observed as a day of rest and pious meditation.

Monday, August 17th. I have been trying to realize from memory the particular instincts of those antediluvian animals of the secondary period, which succeeding to the mollusca, to the crustacea, and to the fish, preceded the appearance of the race of mammifers. The generation of reptiles then reigned supreme upon the earth. These hideous monsters ruled everything in the seas of the secondary period, which formed the strata of which the Jura mountains are composed. Nature had endowed them with perfect organization. What a gigantic structure was theirs; what vast and prodigious strength they possessed!

The existing saurians, which include all such reptiles as lizards, crocodiles, and alligators, even the largest and most formidable of their class, are but feeble imitations of their mighty sires, the animals of ages long ago. If there were giants in the days of old, there were also gigantic animals.

I shuddered as I evolved from my mind the idea and recollection of these awful monsters. No eye of man had seen them in the flesh. They took their walks abroad upon the face of the earth thousands of ages before man came into existence, and their fossil bones, discovered in the limestone, have allowed us to reconstruct them anatomically, and thus to get some faint idea of their colossal formation.

I recollect once seeing in the great Museum of Hamburg the skeleton of one of these wonderful saurians. It measured no less than thirty feet from the nose to the tail. Am I, then, an inhabitant of the earth of the present day, destined to find myself face to face with a representative of this antediluvian family? I can scarcely believe it possible; I can hardly believe it true. And yet these marks of powerful teeth upon the bar of iron! Can there be a doubt from their shape that the bite is the bite of a crocodile?

My eyes stare wildly and with terror upon the subterranean sea. Every moment I expect one of these monsters to rise from its vast cavernous depths.

I fancy that the worthy Professor in some measure shares my notions, if not my fears, for, after an attentive examination of the crowbar, he cast his eyes rapidly over the mighty and mysterious ocean.

“What could possess him to leave the land,” I thought, “as if the depth of this water was of any importance to us. No doubt he has disturbed some terrible monster in his watery home, and perhaps we may pay dearly for our temerity.”

Anxious to be prepared for the worst, I examined our weapons, and saw that they were in a fit state for use. My uncle looked on at me and nodded his head approvingly. He, too, has noticed what we have to fear.

Already the uplifting of the waters on the surface indicates that something is in motion below. The danger approaches. It comes nearer and nearer. It behooves us to be on the watch.

Tuesday, August 18th. Evening came at last, the hour when the desire for sleep caused our eyelids to be heavy. Night there is not, properly speaking, in this place, any more than there is in summer in the arctic regions. Hans, however, is immovable at the rudder. When he snatches a moment of rest I really cannot say. I take advantage of his vigilance to take some little repose.

But two hours after I was awakened from a heavy sleep by an awful shock. The raft appeared to have struck upon a sunken rock. It was lifted right out of the water by some wondrous and mysterious power, and then started off twenty fathoms distant.

“Eh, what is it?” cried my uncle starting up. “Are we shipwrecked, or what?”

Hans raised his hand and pointed to where, about two hundred yards off, a large black mass was moving up and down.

I looked with awe. My worst fears were realized.

“It is a colossal monster!” I cried, clasping my hands.

“Yes,” cried the agitated Professor, “and there yonder is a huge sea lizard of terrible size and shape.”

“And farther on behold a prodigious crocodile. Look at his hideous jaws, and that row of monstrous teeth. Ha! he has gone.”

“A whale! a whale!” shouted the Professor, “I can see her enormous fins. See, see, how she blows air and water!”

Two liquid columns rose to a vast height above the level of the sea, into which they fell with a terrific crash, waking up the echoes of that awful place. We stood still—surprised, stupefied, terror-stricken at the sight of this group of fearful marine monsters, more hideous in the reality than in my dream. They were of supernatural dimensions; the very smallest of the whole party could with ease have crushed our raft and ourselves with a single bite.

Hans, seizing the rudder which had flown out of his hand, puts it hard aweather in order to escape from such dangerous vicinity; but no sooner does he do so, than he finds he is flying from Scylla to Charybdis. To leeward is a turtle about forty feet wide, and a serpent quite as long, with an enormous and hideous head peering from out the waters.

Look which way we will, it is impossible for us to fly. The fearful reptiles advanced upon us; they turned and twisted about the raft with awful rapidity. They formed around our devoted vessel a series of concentric circles. I took up my rifle in desperation. But what effect can a rifle ball produce upon the armor scales with which the bodies of these horrid monsters are covered?

We remain still and dumb from utter horror. They advance upon us, nearer and nearer. Our fate appears certain, fearful and terrible. On one side the mighty crocodile, on the other the great sea serpent. The rest of the fearful crowd of marine prodigies have plunged beneath the briny waves and disappeared!

I am about to fire at any risk and try the effect of a shot. Hans, the guide, however, interfered by a sign to check me. The two hideous and ravenous monsters passed within fifty fathoms of the raft, and then made a rush at one another—their fury and rage preventing them from seeing us.

The combat commenced. We distinctly made out every action of the two hideous monsters.

But to my excited imagination the other animals appeared about to take part in the fierce and deadly struggle—the monster, the whale, the lizard, and the turtle. I distinctly saw them every moment. I pointed them out to the Icelander. But he only shook his head.

“Tva,” he said.

“What—two only does he say. Surely he is mistaken,” I cried in a tone of wonder.

“He is quite right,” replied my uncle coolly and philosophically, examining the terrible duel with his telescope and speaking as if he were in a lecture room.

“How can that be?”

“Yes, it is so. The first of these hideous monsters has the snout of a porpoise, the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile; and it is this that has deceived us. It is the most fearful of all antediluvian reptiles, the world—renowned Ichthyosaurus or great fish lizard.”

“And the other?”

“The other is a monstrous serpent, concealed under the hard vaulted shell of the turtle, the terrible enemy of its fearful rival, the Plesiosaurus, or sea crocodile.”

Hans was quite right. The two monsters only, disturbed the surface of the sea!

At last have mortal eyes gazed upon two reptiles of the great primitive ocean! I see the flaming red eyes of the Ichthyosaurus, each as big, or bigger than a man’s head. Nature in its infinite wisdom had gifted this wondrous marine animal with an optical apparatus of extreme power, capable of resisting the pressure of the heavy layers of water which rolled over him in the depths of the ocean where he usually fed. It has by some authors truly been called the whale of the saurian race, for it is as big and quick in its motions as our king of the seas. This one measures not less than a hundred feet in length, and I can form some idea of his girth when I see him lift his prodigious tail out of the waters. His jaw is of awful size and strength, and according to the best-informed naturalists, it does not contain less than a hundred and eighty-two teeth.

The other was the mighty Plesiosaurus, a serpent with a cylindrical trunk, with a short stumpy tail, with fins like a bank of oars in a Roman galley.

Its whole body covered by a carapace or shell, and its neck, as flexible as that of a swan, rose more than thirty feet above the waves, a tower of animated flesh!

These animals attacked one another with inconceivable fury. Such a combat was never seen before by mortal eyes, and to us who did see it, it appeared more like the phantasmagoric creation of a dream than anything else. They raised mountains of water, which dashed in spray over the raft, already tossed to and fro by the waves. Twenty times we seemed on the point of being upset and hurled headlong into the waves. Hideous hisses appeared to shake the gloomy granite roof of that mighty cavern—hisses which carried terror to our hearts. The awful combatants held each other in a tight embrace. I could not make out one from the other. Still the combat could not last forever; and woe unto us, whichsoever became the victor.

One hour, two hours, three hours passed away, without any decisive result. The struggle continued with the same deadly tenacity, but without apparent result. The deadly opponents now approached, now drew away from the raft. Once or twice we fancied they were about to leave us altogether, but instead of that, they came nearer and nearer.

We crouched on the raft ready to fire at them at a moment’s notice, poor as the prospect of hurting or terrifying them was. Still we were determined not to perish without a struggle.

Suddenly the Ichthyosaurus and the Plesiosaurus disappeared beneath the waves, leaving behind them a maelstrom in the midst of the sea. We were nearly drawn down by the indraft of the water!

Several minutes elapsed before anything was again seen. Was this wonderful combat to end in the depths of the ocean? Was the last act of this terrible drama to take place without spectators?

It was impossible for us to say.

Suddenly, at no great distance from us, an enormous mass rises out of the waters—the head of the great Plesiosaurus. The terrible monster is now wounded unto death. I can see nothing now of his enormous body. All that could be distinguished was his serpent-like neck, which he twisted and curled in all the agonies of death. Now he struck the waters with it as if it had been a gigantic whip, and then again wriggled like a worm cut in two. The water was spurted up to a great distance in all directions. A great portion of it swept over our raft and nearly blinded us. But soon the end of the beast approached nearer and nearer; his movements slackened visibly; his contortions almost ceased; and at last the body of the mighty snake lay an inert, dead mass on the surface of the now calm and placid waters.

As for the Ichthyosaurus, has he gone down to his mighty cavern under the sea to rest, or will he reappear to destroy us?

This question remained unanswered. And we had breathing time.

CHAPTER 31

THE SEA MONSTER

Wednesday, August 19th. Fortunately the wind, which for the present blows with some violence, has allowed us to escape from the scene of the unparalleled and extraordinary struggle. Hans with his usual imperturbable calm remained at the helm. My uncle, who for a short time had been withdrawn from his absorbing reveries by the novel incidents of this sea fight, fell back again apparently into a brown study. His eyes were fixed impatiently on the widespread ocean.

Our voyage now became monotonous and uniform. Dull as it has become, I have no desire to have it broken by any repetition of the perils and adventures of yesterday.

Thursday, August 20th. The wind is now N. N. E., and blows very irregularly. It has changed to fitful gusts. The temperature is exceedingly high. We are now progressing at the average rate of about ten miles and a half per hour.

About twelve o’clock a distant sound as of thunder fell upon our ears. I make a note of the fact without even venturing a suggestion as to its cause. It was one continued roar as of a sea falling over mighty rocks.

“Far off in the distance,” said the Professor dogmatically, “there is some rock or some island against which the sea lashed to fury by the wind, is breaking violently.”

Hans, without saying a word, clambered to the top of the mast, but could make out nothing. The ocean was level in every direction as far as the eye could reach.

Three hours passed away without any sign to indicate what might be before us. The sound began to assume that of a mighty cataract.

I expressed my opinion on this point strongly to my uncle. He merely shook his head. I, however, am strongly impressed by a conviction that I am not wrong. Are we advancing towards some mighty waterfall which shall cast us into the abyss? Probably this mode of descending into the abyssmay be agreeable to the Professor, because it would be something like the vertical descent he is so eager to make. I entertain a very different opinion.

Whatever be the truth, it is certain that not many leagues distant there must be some very extraordinary phenomenon, for as we advance the roar becomes something mighty and stupendous. Is it in the water, or in the air?

I cast hasty glances aloft at the suspended vapors, and I seek to penetrate their mighty depths. But the vault above is tranquil. The clouds, which are now elevated to the very summit, appear utterly still and motionless, and completely lost in the irradiation of electric light. It is necessary, therefore, to seek for the cause of this phenomenon elsewhere.

I examine the horizon, now perfectly calm, pure, and free from all haze. Its aspect still remains unchanged. But if this awful noise proceeds from a cataract—if, so to speak in plain English, this vast interior ocean is precipitated into a lower basin—if these tremendous roars are produced by the noise of falling waters, the current would increase in activity, and its increasing swiftness would give me some idea of the extent of the peril with which we are menaced. I consult the current. It simply does not exist: there is no such thing. An empty bottle cast into the water lies to leeward without motion.

About four o’clock Hans rises, clambers up the mast, and reaches the truck itself. From this elevated position his looks are cast around. They take in a vast circumference of the ocean. At last, his eyes remain fixed. His face expresses no astonishment, but his eyes slightly dilate.

“He has seen something at last,” cried my uncle.

“I think so,” I replied.

Hans came down, stood beside us, and pointed with his right hand to the south.

“Der nere,” he said.

“There,” replied my uncle.

And seizing his telescope, he looked at it with great attention for about a minute, which to me appeared an age. I knew not what to think or expect.

“Yes, yes,” he cried in a tone of considerable surprise, “there it is.”

“What?” I asked.

“A tremendous spurt of water rising out of the waves.”

“Some other marine monster,” I cried, already alarmed.

“Perhaps.”

“Then let us steer more to the westward, for we know what we have to expect from antediluvian animals,” was my eager reply.

“Go ahead,” said my uncle.

I turned towards Hans. Hans was at the tiller steering with his usual imperturbable calm.

Nevertheless, if from the distance which separated us from this creature, a distance which must be estimated at not less than a dozen leagues, one could see the column of water spurting from the blow-hole of the great animal, his dimensions must be something preternatural. To fly is, therefore, the course to be suggested by ordinary prudence. But we have not come into that part of the world to be prudent. Such is my uncle’s determination.

We, accordingly, continued to advance. The nearer we come, the loftier is the spouting water. What monster can fill himself with such huge volumes of water, and then unceasingly spout them out in such lofty jets?

At eight o’clock in the evening, reckoning as above ground, where there is day and night, we are not more than two leagues from the mighty beast. Its long, black, enormous, mountainous body, lies on the top of the water like an island. But then sailors have been said to have gone ashore on sleeping whales, mistaking them for land. Is it illusion, or is it fear? Its length cannot be less than a thousand fathoms. What, then, is this cetaceous monster of which no Cuvier ever thought?

It is quite motionless and presents the appearance of sleep. The sea seems unable to lift him upwards; it is rather the waves which break on his huge and gigantic frame. The waterspout, rising to a height of five hundred feet, breaks in spray with a dull, sullen roar.

We advance, like senseless lunatics, towards this mighty mass.

I honestly confess that I was abjectly afraid. I declared that I would go no farther. I threatened in my terror to cut the sheet of the sail. I attacked the Professor with considerable acrimony, calling him foolhardy, mad, I know not what. He made no answer.

Suddenly the imperturbable Hans once more pointed his finger to the menacing object:

“Holme!”

“An island!” cried my uncle.

“An island?” I replied, shrugging my shoulders at this poor attempt at deception.

“Of course it is,” cried my uncle, bursting into a loud and joyous laugh.

“But the waterspout?”

“Geyser,” said Hans.

“Yes, of course—a geyser,” replied my uncle, still laughing, “a geyser like those common in Iceland. Jets like this are the great wonders of the country.”

At first I would not allow that I had been so grossly deceived. What could be more ridiculous than to have taken an island for a marine monster? But kick as one may, one must yield to evidence, and I was finally convinced of my error. It was nothing, after all, but a natural phenomenon.

As we approached nearer and nearer, the dimensions of the liquid sheaf of waters became truly grand and stupendous. The island had, at a distance, presented the appearance of an enormous whale, whose head rose high above the waters. The geyser, a word the Icelanders pronounce geysir, and which signifies fury, rose majestically from its summit. Dull detonations are heard every now and then, and the enormous jet, taken as it were with sudden fury, shakes its plume of vapor, and bounds into the first layer of the clouds. It is alone. Neither spurts of vapor nor hot springs surround it, and the whole volcanic power of that region is concentrated in one sublime column. The rays of electric light mix with this dazzling sheaf, every drop as it falls assuming the prismatic colors of the rainbow.

“Let us go on shore,” said the Professor, after some minutes of silence.

It is necessary, however, to take great precaution, in order to avoid the weight of falling waters, which would cause the raft to founder in an instant. Hans, however, steers admirably, and brings us to the other extremity of the island.

I was the first to leap on the rock. My uncle followed, while the eider-duck hunter remained still, like a man above any childish sources of astonishment. We were now walking on granite mixed with siliceous sandstone; the soil shivered under our feet like the sides of boilers in which over-heated steam is forcibly confined. It is burning. We soon came in sight of the little central basin from which rose the geyser. I plunged a thermometer into the water which ran bubbling from the centre, and it marked a heat of a hundred and sixty-three degrees!

This water, therefore, came from some place where the heat was intense. This was singularly in contradiction with the theories of Professor Hardwigg. I could not help telling him my opinion on the subject.

“Well,” said he sharply, “and what does this prove against my doctrine?”

“Nothing,” replied I dryly, seeing that I was running my head against a foregone conclusion.

Nevertheless, I am compelled to confess that until now we have been most remarkably fortunate, and that this voyage is being accomplished in most favorable conditions of temperature; but it appears evident, in fact, certain, that we shall sooner or later arrive at one of those regions where the central heat will reach its utmost limits, and will go far beyond all the possible gradations of thermometers.

Visions of the Hades of the ancients, believed to be in the centre of the earth, floated through my imagination.

We shall, however, see what we shall see. That is the Professor’s favorite phrase now. Having christened the volcanic island by the name of his nephew, the leader of the expedition turned away and gave the signal for embarkation.

I stood still, however, for some minutes, gazing upon the magnificent geyser. I soon was able to perceive that the upward tendency of the water was irregular; now it diminished in intensity, and then, suddenly, it regained new vigor, which I attributed to the variation of the pressure of the accumulated vapors in its reservoir.

At last we took our departure, going carefully round the projecting, and rather dangerous, rocks of the southern side. Hans had taken advantage of this brief halt to repair the raft.

Before we took our final departure from the island, however, I made some observations to calculate the distance we had gone over, and I put them down in my journal. Since we left Port Gretchen, we had traveled two hundred and seventy leagues—more than eight hundred miles—on this great inland sea; we were, therefore, six hundred and twenty leagues from Iceland, and exactly under England.

CHAPTER 32

THE BATTLE OF THE ELEMENTS

Friday, August 21st. This morning the magnificent geyser had wholly disappeared. The wind had freshened up, and we were fast leaving the neighborhood of Henry’s Island. Even the roaring sound of the mighty column was lost to the ear.

The weather, if, under the circumstances, we may use such an expression, is about to change very suddenly. The atmosphere is being gradually loaded with vapors, which carry with them the electricity formed by the constant evaporation of the saline waters; the clouds are slowly but sensibly falling towards the sea, and are assuming a dark-olive texture; the electric rays can scarcely pierce through the opaque curtain which has fallen like a drop scene before this wondrous theater, on the stage of which another and terrible drama is soon to be enacted. This time it is no fight of animals; it is the fearful battle of the elements.

I feel that I am very peculiarly influenced, as all creatures are on land when a deluge is about to take place.

The cumuli, a perfectly oval kind of cloud, piled upon the south, presented a most awful and sinister appearance, with the pitiless aspect often seen before a storm. The air is extremely heavy; the sea is comparatively calm.

In the distance, the clouds have assumed the appearance of enormous balls of cotton, or rather pods, piled one above the other in picturesque confusion. By degrees, they appear to swell out, break, and gain in number what they lose in grandeur; their heaviness is so great that they are unable to lift themselves from the horizon; but under the influence of the upper currents of air, they are gradually broken up, become much darker, and then present the appearance of one single layer of a formidable character; now and then a lighter cloud, still lit up from above, rebounds upon this grey carpet, and is lost in the opaque mass.

There can be no doubt that the entire atmosphere is saturated with electric fluid; I am myself wholly impregnated; my hairs literally stand on end as if under the influence of a galvanic battery. If one of my companions ventured to touch me, I think he would receive rather a violent and unpleasant shock.

About ten o’clock in the morning, the symptoms of the storm became more thorough and decisive; the wind appeared to soften down as if to take breath for a renewed attack; the vast funereal pall above us looked like a huge bag—like the cave of AEolus, in which the storm was collecting its forces for the attack.

I tried all I could not to believe in the menacing signs of the sky, and yet I could not avoid saying, as it were involuntarily:

“I believe we are going to have bad weather.”

The Professor made me no answer. He was in a horrible, in a detestable humor—to see the ocean stretching interminably before his eyes. On hearing my words he simply shrugged his shoulders.

“We shall have a tremendous storm,” I said again, pointing to the horizon. “These clouds are falling lower and lower upon the sea, as if to crush it.”

A great silence prevailed. The wind wholly ceased. Nature assumed a dead calm, and ceased to breathe. Upon the mast, where I noticed a sort of slight ignis fatuus, the sail hangs in loose heavy folds. The raft is motionless in the midst of a dark heavy sea—without undulation, without motion. It is as still as glass. But as we are making no progress, what is the use of keeping up the sail, which may be the cause of our perdition if the tempest should suddenly strike us without warning.

“Let us lower the sail,” I said, “it is only an act of common prudence.”

“No—no,” cried my uncle, in an exasperated tone, “a hundred times, no. Let the wind strike us and do its worst, let the storm sweep us away where it will—only let me see the glimmer of some coast—of some rocky cliffs, even if they dash our raft into a thousand pieces. No! keep up the sail—no matter what happens.”

These words were scarcely uttered when the southern horizon underwent a sudden and violent change. The long accumulated vapors were resolved into water, and the air required to fill up the void produced became a wild and raging tempest.

It came from the most distant corners of the mighty cavern. It raged from every point of the compass. It roared; it yelled; it shrieked with glee as of demons let loose. The darkness increased and became indeed darkness visible.

The raft rose and fell with the storm, and bounded over the waves. My uncle was cast headlong upon the deck. I with great difficulty dragged myself towards him. He was holding on with might and main to the end of a cable, and appeared to gaze with pleasure and delight at the spectacle of the unchained elements.

Hans never moved a muscle. His long hair driven hither and thither by the tempest and scattered wildly over his motionless face, gave him a most extraordinary appearance—for every single hair was illuminated by little sparkling sprigs.

His countenance presents the extraordinary appearance of an antediluvian man, a true contemporary of the Megatherium.

Still the mast holds good against the storm. The sail spreads out and fills like a soap bubble about to burst. The raft rushes on at a pace impossible to estimate, but still less swiftly than the body of water displaced beneath it, the rapidity of which may be seen by the lines which fly right and left in the wake.

“The sail, the sail!” I cried, making a trumpet of my hands, and then endeavoring to lower it.

“Let it alone!” said my uncle, more exasperated than ever.

“Nej,” said Hans, gently shaking his head.

Nevertheless, the rain formed a roaring cataract before this horizon of which we were in search, and to which we were rushing like madmen.

But before this wilderness of waters reached us, the mighty veil of cloud was torn in twain; the sea began to foam wildly; and the electricity, produced by some vast and extraordinary chemical action in the upper layer of cloud, is brought into play. To the fearful claps of thunder are added dazzling flashes of lightning, such as I had never seen. The flashes crossed one another, hurled from every side; while the thunder came pealing like an echo. The mass of vapor becomes incandescent; the hailstones which strike the metal of our boots and our weapons are actually luminous; the waves as they rise appear to be fire-eating monsters, beneath which seethes an intense fire, their crests surmounted by combs of flame.

My eyes are dazzled, blinded by the intensity of light, my ears are deafened by the awful roar of the elements. I am compelled to hold onto the mast, which bends like a reed beneath the violence of the storm, to which none ever before seen by mariners bore any resemblance.

* * * *

Here my traveling notes become very incomplete, loose and vague. I have only been able to make out one or two fugitive observations, jotted down in a mere mechanical way. But even their brevity, even their obscurity, show the emotions which overcame me.

* * * *

Sunday, August 23rd. Where have we got to? In what region are we wandering? We are still carried forward with inconceivable rapidity.

The night has been fearful, something not to be described. The storm shows no signs of cessation. We exist in the midst of an uproar which has no name. The detonations as of artillery are incessant. Our ears literally bleed. We are unable to exchange a word, or hear each other speak.

The lightning never ceases to flash for a single instant. I can see the zigzags after a rapid dart strike the arched roof of this mightiest of mighty vaults. If it were to give way and fall upon us! Other lightnings plunge their forked streaks in every direction, and take the form of globes of fire, which explode like bombshells over a beleaguered city. The general crash and roar do not apparently increase; it has already gone far beyond what human ear can appreciate. If all the powder magazines in the world were to explode together, it would be impossible for us to hear worse noise.

There is a constant emission of light from the storm clouds; the electric matter is incessantly released; evidently the gaseous principles of the air are out of order; innumerable columns of water rush up like waterspouts, and fall back upon the surface of the ocean in foam.

Whither are we going? My uncle still lies at full length upon the raft, without speaking—without taking any note of time.

The heat increases. I look at the thermometer, to my surprise it indicates—The exact figure is here rubbed out in my manuscript.

Monday, August 24th. This terrible storm will never end. Why should not this state of the atmosphere, so dense and murky, once modified, again remain definitive?

We are utterly broken and harassed by fatigue. Hans remains just as usual. The raft runs to the southeast invariably. We have now already run two hundred leagues from the newly discovered island.

About twelve o’clock the storm became worse than ever. We are obliged now to fasten every bit of cargo tightly on the deck of the raft, or everything would be swept away. We make ourselves fast, too, each man lashing the other. The waves drive over us, so that several times we are actually under water.

We had been under the painful necessity of abstaining from speech for three days and three nights. We opened our mouths, we moved our lips, but no sound came. Even when we placed our mouths to each other’s ears it was the same.

The wind carried the voice away.

My uncle once contrived to get his head close to mine after several almost vain endeavors. He appeared to my nearly exhausted senses to articulate some word. I had a notion, more from intuition than anything else, that he said to me, “We are lost.”

I took out my notebook, from which under the most desperate circumstances I never parted, and wrote a few words as legibly as I could:

“Take in sail.”

With a deep sigh he nodded his head and acquiesced.

His head had scarcely time to fall back in the position from which he had momentarily raised it than a disk or ball of fire appeared on the very edge of the raft—our devoted, our doomed craft. The mast and sail are carried away bodily, and I see them swept away to a prodigious height like a kite.

We were frozen, actually shivered with terror. The ball of fire, half white, half azure-colored, about the size of a ten-inch bombshell, moved along, turning with prodigious rapidity to leeward of the storm. It ran about here, there, and everywhere, it clambered up one of the bulwarks of the raft, it leaped upon the sack of provisions, and then finally descended lightly, fell like a football and landed on our powder barrel.

Horrible situation. An explosion of course was now inevitable.

By heaven’s mercy, it was not so.

The dazzling disk moved on one side, it approached Hans, who looked at it with singular fixity; then it approached my uncle, who cast himself on his knees to avoid it; it came towards me, as I stood pale and shuddering in the dazzling light and heat; it pirouetted round my feet, which I endeavored to withdraw.

An odor of nitrous gas filled the whole air; it penetrated to the throat, to the lungs. I felt ready to choke.

Why is it that I cannot withdraw my feet? Are they riveted to the flooring of the raft?

No.

The fall of the electric globe has turned all the iron on board into loadstones—the instruments, the tools, the arms are clanging together with awful and horrible noise; the nails of my heavy boots adhere closely to the plate of iron incrustated in the wood. I cannot withdraw my foot.

It is the old story again of the mountain of adamant.

At last, by a violent and almost superhuman effort, I tear it away just as the ball which is still executing its gyratory motions is about to run round it and drag me with it—if—

Oh, what intense stupendous light! The globe of fire bursts—we are enveloped in cascades of living fire, which flood the space around with luminous matter.

Then all went out and darkness once more fell upon the deep! I had just time to see my uncle once more cast apparently senseless on the flooring of the raft, Hans at the helm, “spitting fire” under the influence of the electricity which seemed to have gone through him.

Whither are we going, I ask? and echo answers, Whither?

* * * *

Tuesday, August 25th. I have just come out of a long fainting fit. The awful and hideous storm still continues; the lightning has increased in vividness, and pours out its fiery wrath like a brood of serpents let loose in the atmosphere.

Are we still upon the sea? Yes, and being carried along with incredible velocity.

We have passed under England, under the Channel, under France, probably under the whole extent of Europe.

* * * *

Another awful clamor in the distance. This time it is certain that the sea is breaking upon the rocks at no great distance. Then—

* * * *

* * * *

CHAPTER 33

OUR ROUTE REVERSED

Here ends what I call “My Journal” of our voyage on board the raft, which journal was happily saved from the wreck. I proceed with my narrative as I did before I commenced my daily notes.

What happened when the terrible shock took place, when the raft was cast upon the rocky shore, it would be impossible for me now to say. I felt myself precipitated violently into the boiling waves, and if I escaped from a certain and cruel death, it was wholly owing to the determination of the faithful Hans, who, clutching me by the arm, saved me from the yawning abyss.

The courageous Icelander then carried me in his powerful arms, far out of the reach of the waves, and laid me down upon a burning expanse of sand, where I found myself some time afterwards in the company of my uncle, the Professor.

Then he quietly returned towards the fatal rocks, against which the furious waves were beating, in order to save any stray waifs from the wreck. This man was always practical and thoughtful. I could not utter a word; I was quite overcome with emotion; my whole body was broken and bruised with fatigue; it took hours before I was anything like myself.

Meanwhile, there fell a fearful deluge of rain, drenching us to the skin. Its very violence, however, proclaimed the approaching end of the storm. Some overhanging rocks afforded us a slight protection from the torrents.

Under this shelter, Hans prepared some food, which, however, I was unable to touch; and, exhausted by the three weary days and nights of watching, we fell into a deep and painful sleep. My dreams were fearful, but at last exhausted nature asserted her supremacy, and I slumbered.

Next day when I awoke the change was magical. The weather was magnificent. Air and sea, as if by mutual consent, had regained their serenity. Every trace of the storm, even the faintest, had disappeared. I was saluted on my awakening by the first joyous tones I had heard from the Professor for many a day. His gaiety, indeed, was something terrible.

“Well, my lad,” he cried, rubbing his hands together, “have you slept soundly?”

Might it not have been supposed that we were in the old house on the Konigstrasse; that I had just come down quietly to my breakfast; and that my marriage with Gretchen was to take place that very day? My uncle’s coolness was exasperating.

Alas, considering how the tempest had driven us in an easterly direction, we had passed under the whole of Germany, under the city of Hamburg where I had been so happy, under the very street which contained all I loved and cared for in the world.

It was a positive fact that I was only separated from her by a distance of forty leagues. But these forty leagues were of hard, impenetrable granite!

All these dreary and miserable reflections passed through my mind, before I attempted to answer my uncle’s question.

“Why, what is the matter?” he cried. “Cannot you say whether you have slept well or not?”

“I have slept very well,” was my reply, “but every bone in my body aches. I suppose that will lead to nothing.”

“Nothing at all, my boy. It is only the result of the fatigue of the last few days—that is all.”

“You appear—if I may be allowed to say so—to be very jolly this morning,” I said.

“Delighted, my dear boy, delighted. Was never happier in my life. We have at last reached the wished-for port.”

“The end of our expedition?” cried I, in a tone of considerable surprise.

“No; but to the confines of that sea which I began to fear would never end, but go round the whole world. We will now tranquilly resume our journey by land, and once again endeavor to dive into the centre of the earth.”

“My dear uncle,” I began, in a hesitating kind of way, “allow me to ask you one question.”

“Certainly, Harry; a dozen if you think proper.”

“One will suffice. How about getting back?” I asked.

“How about getting back? What a question to ask. We have not as yet reached the end of our journey.”

“I know that. All I want to know is how you propose we shall manage the return voyage?”

“In the most simple manner in the world,” said the imperturbable Professor. “Once we reach the exact centre of this sphere, either we shall find a new road by which to ascend to the surface, or we shall simply turn round and go back by the way we came. I have every reason to believe that while we are traveling forward, it will not close behind us.”

“Then one of the first matters to see to will be to repair the raft,” was my rather melancholy response.

“Of course. We must attend to that above all things,” continued the Professor.

“Then comes the all-important question of provisions,” I urged. “Have we anything like enough left to enable us to accomplish such great, such amazing, designs as you contemplate carrying out?”

“I have seen into the matter, and my answer is in the affirmative. Hans is a very clever fellow, and I have reason to believe that he has saved the greater part of the cargo. But the best way to satisfy your scruples is to come and judge for yourself.”

Saying which, he led the way out of the kind of open grotto in which we had taken shelter. I had almost begun to hope that which I should rather have feared, and this was the impossibility of such a shipwreck leaving even the slightest signs of what it had carried as freight. I was, however, thoroughly mistaken.

As soon as I reached the shores of this inland sea, I found Hans standing gravely in the midst of a large number of things laid out in complete order. My uncle wrung his hands with deep and silent gratitude. His heart was too full for speech.

This man, whose superhuman devotion to his employers I not only never saw surpassed, nor even equaled, had been hard at work all the time we slept, and at the risk of his life had succeeded in saving the most precious articles of our cargo.

Of course, under the circumstances, we necessarily experienced several severe losses. Our weapons had wholly vanished. But experience had taught us to do without them. The provision of powder had, however, remained intact, after having narrowly escaped blowing us all to atoms in the storm.

“Well,” said the Professor, who was now ready to make the best of everything, “as we have no guns, all we have to do is to give up all idea of hunting.”

“Yes, my dear sir, we can do without them, but what about all our instruments?”

“Here is the manometer, the most useful of all, and which I gladly accept in lieu of the rest. With it alone I can calculate the depth as we proceed; by its means alone I shall be able to decide when we have reached the centre of the earth. Ha, ha! but for this little instrument we might make a mistake, and run the risk of coming out at the antipodes!”

All this was said amid bursts of unnatural laughter.

“But the compass,” I cried, “without that what can we do?”

“Here it is, safe and sound!” he cried, with real joy, “ah, ah, and here we have the chronometer and the thermometers. Hans the hunter is indeed an invaluable man!”

It was impossible to deny this fact. As far as the nautical and other instruments were concerned, nothing was wanting. Then on further examination, I found ladders, cords, pickaxes, crowbars, and shovels, all scattered about on the shore.

There was, however, finally the most important question of all, and that was, provisions.

“But what are we to do for food?” I asked.

“Let us see to the commissariat department,” replied my uncle gravely.

The boxes which contained our supply of food for the voyage were placed in a row along the strand, and were in a capital state of preservation; the sea had in every case respected their contents, and to sum up in one sentence, taking into consideration, biscuits, salt meat, Schiedam and dried fish, we could still calculate on having about four months’ supply, if used with prudence and caution.

“Four months,” cried the sanguine Professor in high glee. “Then we shall have plenty of time both to go and to come, and with what remains I undertake to give a grand dinner to my colleagues of the Johanneum.”

I sighed. I should by this time have become used to the temperament of my uncle, and yet this man astonished me more and more every day. He was the greatest human enigma I ever had known.

“Now,” he, “before we do anything else, we must lay in a stock of fresh water. The rain has fallen in abundance, and filled the hollows of the granite. There is a rich supply of water, and we have no fear of suffering from thirst, which in our circumstances is of the last importance. As for the raft, I shall recommend Hans to repair it to the best of his abilities; though I have every reason to believe we shall not require it again.”

“How is that?” I cried, more amazed than ever at my uncle’s style of reasoning.

“I have an idea, my dear boy; it is none other than this simple fact; we shall not come out by the same opening as that by which we entered.”

I began to look at my uncle with vague suspicion. An idea had more than once taken possession of me; and this was, that he was going mad. And yet, little did I think how true and prophetic his words were doomed to be.

“And now,” he said, “having seen to all these matters of detail, to breakfast.”

I followed him to a sort of projecting cape, after he had given his last instructions to our guide. In this original position, with dried meat, biscuit, and a delicious cup of tea, we made a satisfactory meal—I may say one of the most welcome and pleasant I ever remember. Exhaustion, the keen atmosphere, the state of calm after so much agitation, all contributed to give me an excellent appetite. Indeed, it contributed very much to producing a pleasant and cheerful state of mind.

While breakfast was in hand, and between the sips of warm tea, I asked my uncle if he had any idea of how we now stood in relation to the world above.

“For my part,” I added, “I think it will be rather difficult to determine.”

“Well, if we were compelled to fix the exact spot,” said my uncle, “it might be difficult, since during the three days of that awful tempest I could keep no account either of the quickness of our pace, or of the direction in which the raft was going. Still, we will endeavor to approximate to the truth. We shall not, I believe, be so very far out.”

“Well, if I recollect rightly,” I replied, “our last observation was made at the geyser island.”

“Harry’s Island, my boy! Harry’s Island. Do not decline the honor of having named it; given your name to an island discovered by us, the first human beings who trod it since the creation of the world!”

“Let it be so, then. At Harry’s Island we had already gone over two hundred and seventy leagues of sea, and we were, I believe, about six hundred leagues, more or less, from Iceland.”

“Good. I am glad to see that you remember so well. Let us start from that point, and let us count four days of storm, during which our rate of traveling must have been very great. I should say that our velocity must have been about eighty leagues to the twenty-four hours.”

I agreed that I thought this a fair calculation. There were then three hundred leagues to be added to the grand total.

“Yes, and the Central Sea must extend at least six hundred leagues from side to side. Do you know, my boy, Harry, that we have discovered an inland lake larger than the Mediterranean?”

“Certainly, and we only know of its extent in one way. It may be hundreds of miles in length.”

“Very likely.”

“Then,” said I, after calculating for some for some minutes, “if your previsions are right, we are at this moment exactly under the Mediterranean itself.”

“Do you think so?”

“Yes, I am almost certain of it. Are we not nine hundred leagues distant from Reykjavik?”

“That is perfectly true, and a famous bit of road we have traveled, my boy. But why we should be under the Mediterranean more than under Turkey or the Atlantic Ocean can only be known when we are sure of not having deviated from our course; and of this we know nothing.”

“I do not think we were driven very far from our course; the wind appears to me to have been always about the same. My opinion is that this shore must be situated to the southeast of Port Gretchen.”

“Good—I hope so. It will, however, be easy to decide the matter by taking the bearings from our departure by means of the compass. Come along, and we will consult that invaluable invention.”

The Professor now walked eagerly in the direction of the rock where the indefatigable Hans had placed the instruments in safety. My uncle was gay and lighthearted; he rubbed his hands, and assumed all sorts of attitudes. He was to all appearance once more a young man. Since I had known him, never had he been so amiable and pleasant. I followed him, rather curious to know whether I had made any mistake in my estimation of our position.

As soon as we had reached the rock, my uncle took the compass, placed it horizontally before him, and looked keenly at the needle.

As he had at first shaken it to give it vivacity, it oscillated considerably, and then slowly assumed its right position under the influence of the magnetic power.

The Professor bent his eyes curiously over the wondrous instrument. A violent start immediately showed the extent of his emotion.

He closed his eyes, rubbed them, and took another and a keener survey.

Then he turned slowly round to me, stupefaction depicted on his countenance.

“What is the matter?” said I, beginning to be alarmed.

He could not speak. He was too overwhelmed for words. He simply pointed to the instrument.

I examined it eagerly according to his mute directions, and a loud cry of surprise escaped my lips. The needle of the compass pointed due north—in the direction we expected was the south!

It pointed to the shore instead of to the high seas.

I shook the compass; I examined it with a curious and anxious eye. It was in a state of perfection. No blemish in any way explained the phenomenon. Whatever position we forced the needle into, it returned invariably to the same unexpected point.

It was useless attempting to conceal from ourselves the fatal truth.

There could be no doubt about it, unwelcome as was the fact, that during the tempest, there had been a sudden slant of wind, of which we had been unable to take any account, and thus the raft had carried us back to the shores we had left, apparently forever, so many days before!

CHAPTER 34

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

It would be altogether impossible for me to give any idea of the utter astonishment which overcame the Professor on making this extraordinary discovery. Amazement, incredulity, and rage were blended in such a way as to alarm me.

During the whole course of my Life I had never seen a man at first so chapfallen; and then so furiously indignant.

The terrible fatigues of our sea voyage, the fearful dangers we had passed through, had all, all, gone for nothing. We had to begin them all over again.

Instead of progressing, as we fondly expected, during a voyage of so many days, we had retreated. Every hour of our expedition on the raft had been so much lost time!

Presently, however, the indomitable energy of my uncle overcame every other consideration.

“So,” he said, between his set teeth, “fatality will play me these terrible tricks. The elements themselves conspire to overwhelm me with mortification. Air, fire, and water combine their united efforts to oppose my passage. Well, they shall see what the earnest will of a determined man can do. I will not yield, I will not retreat even one inch; and we shall see who shall triumph in this great contest—man or nature.”

Standing upright on a rock, irritated and menacing, Professor Hardwigg, like the ferocious Ajax, seemed to defy the fates. I, however, took upon myself to interfere, and to impose some sort of check upon such insensate enthusiasm.

“Listen to me, Uncle,” I said, in a firm but temperate tone of voice, “there must be some limit to ambition here below. It is utterly useless to struggle against the impossible. Pray listen to reason. We are utterly unprepared for a sea voyage; it is simply madness to think of performing a journey of five hundred leagues upon a wretched pile of beams, with a counterpane for a sail, a paltry stick for a mast, and a tempest to contend with. As we are totally incapable of steering our frail craft, we shall become the mere plaything of the storm, and it is acting the part of madmen if we, a second time, run any risk upon this dangerous and treacherous Central Sea.”

These are only a few of the reasons and arguments I put together—reasons and arguments which to me appeared unanswerable. I was allowed to go on without interruption for about ten minutes. The explanation to this I soon discovered. The Professor was not even listening, and did not hear a word of all my eloquence.

“To the raft!” he cried in a hoarse voice, when I paused for a reply.

Such was the result of my strenuous effort to resist his iron will. I tried again; I begged and implored him; I got into a passion; but I had to deal with a will more determined than my own. I seemed to feel like the waves which fought and battled against the huge mass of granite at our feet, which had smiled grimly for so many ages at their puny efforts.

Hans, meanwhile, without taking part in our discussion, had been repairing the raft. One would have supposed that he instinctively guessed at the further projects of my uncle.

By means of some fragments of cordage, he had again made the raft seaworthy.

While I had been speaking, he had hoisted a new mast and sail, the latter already fluttering and waving in the breeze.

The worthy Professor spoke a few words to our imperturbable guide, who immediately began to put our baggage on board and to prepare for our departure. The atmosphere was now tolerably clear and pure, and the northeast wind blew steadily and serenely. It appeared likely to last for some time.

What, then, could I do? Could I undertake to resist the iron will of two men? It was simply impossible if even I could have hoped for the support of Hans. This, however, was out of the question. It appeared to me that the Icelander had set aside all personal will and identity. He was a picture of abnegation.

I could hope for nothing from one so infatuated with and devoted to his master. All I could do, therefore, was to swim with the stream.

In a mood of stolid and sullen resignation, I was about to take my accustomed place on the raft when my uncle placed his hand upon my shoulder.

“There is no hurry, my boy,” he said, “we shall not start until tomorrow.”

I looked the picture of resignation to the dire will of fate.

“Under the circumstances,” he said, “I ought to neglect no precautions. As fate has cast me upon these shores, I shall not leave without having completely examined them.”

In order to understand this remark, I must explain that though we had been driven back to the northern shore, we had landed at a very different spot from that which had been our starting point.

Port Gretchen must, we calculated, be very much to the westward. Nothing, therefore, was more natural and reasonable than that we should reconnoiter this new shore upon which we had so unexpectedly landed.

“Let us go on a journey of discovery,” I cried.

And leaving Hans to his important operation, we started on our expedition. The distance between the foreshore at high water and the foot of the rocks was considerable. It would take about half an hour’s walking to get from one to the other.

As we trudged along, our feet crushed innumerable shells of every shape and size—once the dwelling place of animals of every period of creation.

I particularly noticed some enormous shells—carapaces (turtle and tortoise species) the diameter of which exceeded fifteen feet.

They had in past ages belonged to those gigantic Glyptodons of the Pliocene period, of which the modern turtle is but a minute specimen. In addition, the whole soil was covered by a vast quantity of stony relics, having the appearance of flints worn by the action of the waves, and lying in successive layers one above the other. I came to the conclusion that in past ages the sea must have covered the whole district. Upon the scattered rocks, now lying far beyond its reach, the mighty waves of ages had left evident marks of their passage.

On reflection, this appeared to me partially to explain the existence of this remarkable ocean, forty leagues below the surface of the earth’s crust. According to my new, and perhaps fanciful, theory, this liquid mass must be gradually lost in the deep bowels of the earth. I had also no doubt that this mysterious sea was fed by infiltration of the ocean above, through imperceptible fissures.

Nevertheless, it was impossible not to admit that these fissures must now be nearly choked up, for if not, the cavern, or rather the immense and stupendous reservoir, would have been completely filled in a short space of time. Perhaps even this water, having to contend against the accumulated subterraneous fires of the interior of the earth, had become partially vaporized. Hence the explanation of those heavy clouds suspended over our heads, and the superabundant display of that electricity which occasioned such terrible storms in this deep and cavernous sea.

This lucid explanation of the phenomena we had witnessed appeared to me quite satisfactory. However great and mighty the marvels of nature may seem to us, they are always to be explained by physical reasons. Everything is subordinate to some great law of nature.

It now appeared clear that we were walking upon a kind of sedimentary soil, formed like all the soils of that period, so frequent on the surface of the globe, by the subsidence of the waters. The Professor, who was now in his element, carefully examined every rocky fissure. Let him only find an opening and it directly became important to him to examine its depth.

For a whole mile we followed the windings of the Central Sea, when suddenly an important change took place in the aspect of the soil. It seemed to have been rudely cast up, convulsionized, as it were, by a violent upheaving of the lower strata. In many places, hollows here and hillocks there attested great dislocations at some other period of the terrestrial mass.

We advanced with great difficulty over the broken masses of granite mixed with flint, quartz, and alluvial deposits, when a large field, more even than a field, a plain of bones, appeared suddenly before our eyes! It looked like an immense cemetery, where generation after generation had mingled their mortal dust.

Lofty barrows of early remains rose at intervals. They undulated away to the limits of the distant horizon and were lost in a thick and brown fog.

On that spot, some three square miles in extent, was accumulated the whole history of animal life—scarcely one creature upon the comparatively modern soil of the upper and inhabited world had not there existed.

Nevertheless, we were drawn forward by an all-absorbing and impatient curiosity. Our feet crushed with a dry and crackling sound the remains of those prehistoric fossils, for which the museums of great cities quarrel, even when they obtain only rare and curious morsels. A thousand such naturalists as Cuvier would not have sufficed to recompose the skeletons of the organic beings which lay in this magnificent osseous collection.

I was utterly confounded. My uncle stood for some minutes with his arms raised on high towards the thick granite vault which served us for a sky. His mouth was wide open; his eyes sparkled wildly behind his spectacles (which he had fortunately saved), his head bobbed up and down and from side to side, while his whole attitude and mien expressed unbounded astonishment.

He stood in the presence of an endless, wondrous, and inexhaustibly rich collection of antediluvian monsters, piled up for his own private and peculiar satisfaction.

Fancy an enthusiastic lover of books carried suddenly into the very midst of the famous library of Alexandria burned by the sacrilegious Omar, and which some miracle had restored to its pristine splendor! Such was something of the state of mind in which Uncle Hardwigg was now placed.

For some time he stood thus, literally aghast at the magnitude of his discovery.

But it was even a greater excitement when, darting wildly over this mass of organic dust, he caught up a naked skull and addressed me in a quivering voice:

“Harry, my boy—Harry—this is a human head!”

“A human head, Uncle!” I said, no less amazed and stupefied than himself.

“Yes, nephew. Ah! Mr. Milne-Edwards—ah! Mr. De Quatrefages—why are you not here where I am—I, Professor Hardwigg!”

A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 3]

CHAPTER 35

DISCOVERY UPON DISCOVERY

In order fully to understand the exclamation made by my uncle, and his allusions to these illustrious and learned men, it will be necessary to enter into certain explanations in regard to a circumstance of the highest importance to paleontology, or the science of fossil life, which had taken place a short time before our departure from the upper regions of the earth.

On the 28th of March, 1863, some navigators under the direction of M. Boucher de Perthes, were at work in the great quarries of Moulin-Quignon, near Abbeville, in the department of the Somme, in France. While at work, they unexpectedly came upon a human jawbone buried fourteen feet below the surface of the soil. It was the first fossil of the kind that had ever been brought to the light of day. Near this unexpected human relic were found stone hatchets and carved flints, colored and clothed by time in one uniform brilliant tint of verdigris.

The report of this extraordinary and unexpected discovery spread not only all over France, but over England and Germany. Many learned men belonging to various scientific bodies, and noteworthy among others, Messrs. Milne-Edwards and De Quatrefages, took the affair very much to heart, demonstrated the incontestable authenticity of the bone in question, and became—to use the phrase then recognized in England—the most ardent supporters of the “jawbone question.”

To the eminent geologists of the United Kingdom who looked upon the fact as certain—Messrs. Falconer, Buck, Carpenter, and others—were soon united the learned men of Germany, and among those in the first rank, the most eager, the most enthusiastic, was my worthy uncle, Professor Hardwigg.

The authenticity of a human fossil of the Quaternary period seemed then to be incontestably demonstrated, and even to be admitted by the most skeptical.

This system or theory, call it what you will, had, it is true, a bitter adversary in M. Elie de Beaumont. This learned man, who holds such a high place in the scientific world, holds that the soil of Moulin-Quignon does not belong to the diluvium but to a much less ancient stratum, and, in accordance with Cuvier in this respect, he would by no means admit that the human species was contemporary with the animals of the Quaternary epoch. My worthy uncle, Professor Hardwigg, in concert with the great majority of geologists, had held firm, had disputed, discussed, and finally, after considerable talking and writing, M. Elie de Beaumont had been pretty well left alone in his opinions.

We were familiar with all the details of this discussion, but were far from being aware then that since our departure the matter had entered upon a new phase. Other similar jawbones, though belonging to individuals of varied types and very different natures, had been found in the movable grey sands of certain grottoes in France, Switzerland, and Belgium; together with arms, utensils, tools, bones of children, of men in the prime of life, and of old men. The existence of men in the Quaternary period became, therefore, more positive every day.

But this was far from being all. New remains, dug up from the Pliocene or Tertiary deposits, had enabled the more far-seeing or audacious among learned men to assign even a far greater degree of antiquity to the human race. These remains, it is true, were not those of men; that is, were not the bones of men, but objects decidedly having served the human race: shinbones, thighbones of fossil animals, regularly scooped out, and in fact sculptured—bearing the unmistakable signs of human handiwork.

By means of these wondrous and unexpected discoveries, man ascended endless centuries in the scale of time; he, in fact, preceded the mastodon; became the contemporary of the Elephas meridionalis—the southern elephant; acquired an antiquity of over a hundred thousand years, since that is the date given by the most eminent geologists to the Pliocene period of the earth. Such was then the state of paleontologic science, and what we moreover knew sufficed to explain our attitude before this great cemetery of the plains of the Hardwigg Ocean.

It will now be easy to understand the Professor’s mingled astonishment and joy when, on advancing about twenty yards, he found himself in the presence of, I may say face to face with, a specimen of the human race actually belonging to the Quaternary period!

It was indeed a human skull, perfectly recognizable. Had a soil of very peculiar nature, like that of the cemetery of St. Michel at Bordeaux, preserved it during countless ages? This was the question I asked myself, but which I was wholly unable to answer. But this head with stretched and parchmenty skin, with the teeth whole, the hair abundant, was before our eyes as in life!

I stood mute, almost paralyzed with wonder and awe before this dread apparition of another age. My uncle, who on almost every occasion was a great talker, remained for a time completely dumfounded. He was too full of emotion for speech to be possible. After a while, however, we raised up the body to which the skull belonged. We stood it on end. It seemed, to our excited imaginations, to look at us with its terrible hollow eyes.

After some minutes of silence, the man was vanquished by the Professor. Human instincts succumbed to scientific pride and exultation. Professor Hardwigg, carried away by his enthusiasm, forgot all the circumstances of our journey, the extraordinary position in which we were placed, the immense cavern which stretched far away over our heads. There can be no doubt that he thought himself at the Institution addressing his attentive pupils, for he put on his most doctorial style, waved his hand, and began:

“Gentlemen, I have the honor on this auspicious occasion to present to you a man of the Quaternary period of our globe. Many learned men have denied his very existence, while other able persons, perhaps of even higher authority, have affirmed their belief in the reality of his life. If the St. Thomases of paleontology were present, they would reverentially touch him with their fingers and believe in his existence, thus acknowledging their obstinate heresy. I know that science should be careful in relation to all discoveries of this nature. I am not without having heard of the many Barnums and other quacks who have made a trade of suchlike pretended discoveries. I have, of course, heard of the discovery of the kneebones of Ajax, of the pretended finding of the body of Orestes by the Spartiates, and of the body of Asterius, ten spans long, fifteen feet—of which we read in Pausanias.

“I have read everything in relation to the skeleton of Trapani, discovered in the fourteenth century, and which many persons chose to regard as that of Polyphemus, and the history of the giant dug up during the sixteenth century in the environs of Palmyra. You are well aware as I am, gentlemen, of the existence of the celebrated analysis made near Lucerne, in 1577, of the great bones which the celebrated Doctor Felix Plater declared belonged to a giant about nineteen feet high. I have devoured all the treatises of Cassanion, and all those memoirs, pamphlets, speeches, and replies published in reference to the skeleton of Teutobochus, king of the Cimbri, the invader of Gaul, dug out of a gravel pit in Dauphine, in 1613. In the eighteenth century I should have denied, with Peter Campet, the existence of the preadamites of Scheuchzer. I have had in my hands the writing called Gigans—”

Here my uncle was afflicted by the natural infirmity which prevented him from pronouncing difficult words in public. It was not exactly stuttering, but a strange sort of constitutional hesitation.

“The writing named Gigans—” he repeated.

He, however, could get no further.

“Giganteo—”

Impossible! The unfortunate word would not come out. There would have been great laughter at the Institution, had the mistake happened there.

“Gigantosteology!” at last exclaimed Professor Hardwigg between two savage growls.

Having got over our difficulty, and getting more and more excited—

“Yes, gentlemen, I am well acquainted with all these matters, and know, also, that Cuvier and Blumenbach fully recognized in these bones the undeniable remains of mammoths of the Quaternary period. But after what we now see, to allow a doubt is to insult scientific inquiry. There is the body; you can see it; you can touch it. It is not a skeleton, it is a complete and uninjured body, preserved with an anthropological object.”

I did not attempt to controvert this singular and astounding assertion.

“If I could but wash this corpse in a solution of sulphuric acid,” continued my uncle, “I would undertake to remove all the earthy particles, and these resplendent shells, which are incrusted all over this body. But I am without this precious dissolving medium. Nevertheless, such as it is, this body will tell its own history.”

Here the Professor held up the fossil body, and exhibited it with rare dexterity. No professional showman could have shown more activity.

“As on examination you will see,” my uncle continued, “it is only about six feet in length, which is a long way from the pretended giants of early days. As to the particular race to which it belonged, it is incontestably Caucasian. It is of the white race, that is, of our own. The skull of this fossil being is a perfect ovoid without any remarkable or prominent development of the cheekbones, and without any projection of the jaw. It presents no indication of the prognathism which modifies the facial angle.4 Measure the angle for yourselves, and you will find that it is just ninety degrees. But I will advance still farther on the road of inquiry and deduction, and I dare venture to say that this human sample or specimen belongs to the Japhetic family, which spread over the world from India to the uttermost limits of western Europe. There is no occasion, gentlemen, to smile at my remarks.”

Of course nobody smiled. But the excellent Professor was so accustomed to beaming countenances at his lectures, that he believed he saw all his audience laughing during the delivery of his learned dissertation.

“Yes,” he continued, with renewed animation, “this is a fossil man, a contemporary of the mastodons, with the bones of which this whole amphitheater is covered. But if I am called on to explain how he came to this place, how these various strata by which he is covered have fallen into this vast cavity, I can undertake to give you no explanation. Doubtless, if we carry ourselves back to the Quaternary epoch, we shall find that great and mighty convulsions took place in the crust of the earth; the continually cooling operation, through which the earth had to pass, produced fissures, landslips, and chasms, through which a large portion of the earth made its way. I come to no absolute conclusion, but there is the man, surrounded by the works of his hands, his hatchets and his carved flints, which belong to the stony period; and the only rational supposition is, that, like myself, he visited the centre of the earth as a traveling tourist, a pioneer of science. At all events, there can be no doubt of his great age, and of his being one of the oldest race of human beings.”

The Professor with these words ceased his oration, and I burst forth into loud and “unanimous” applause. Besides, after all, my uncle was right. Much more learned men than his nephew would have found it rather hard to refute his facts and arguments.

Another circumstance soon presented itself. This fossilized body was not the only one in this vast plain of bones—the cemetery of an extinct world. Other bodies were found, as we trod the dusty plain, and my uncle was able to choose the most marvelous of these specimens in order to convince the most incredulous.

In truth, it was a surprising spectacle, the successive remains of generations and generations of men and animals confounded together in one vast cemetery. But a great question now presented itself to our notice, and one we were actually afraid to contemplate in all its bearings.

Had these once animated beings been buried so far beneath the soil by some tremendous convulsion of nature, after they had been earth to earth and ashes to ashes, or had they lived here below, in this subterranean world, under this factitious sky, borne, married, and given in marriage, and died at last, just like ordinary inhabitants of the earth?

Up to the present moment, marine monsters, fish, and suchlike animals had alone been seen alive!

The question which rendered us rather uneasy, was a pertinent one. Were any of these men of the abyss wandering about the deserted shores of this wondrous sea of the centre of the earth?

This was a question which rendered me very uneasy and uncomfortable. How, should they really be in existence, would they receive us men from above?

4 The facial angle is formed by two planes—one more or less vertical which is in a straight line with the forehead and the incisors; the other, horizontal, which passes through the organs of hearing, and the lower nasal bone. Prognathism, in anthropological language, means that particular projection of the jaw which modifies the facial angle.

4 The facial angle is formed by two planes—one more or less vertical which is in a straight line with the forehead and the incisors; the other, horizontal, which passes through the organs of hearing, and the lower nasal bone. Prognathism, in anthropological language, means that particular projection of the jaw which modifies the facial angle.

CHAPTER 36

WHAT IS IT?

For a long and weary hour we tramped over this great bed of bones. We advanced regardless of everything, drawn on by ardent curiosity. What other marvels did this great cavern contain—what other wondrous treasures for the scientific man? My eyes were quite prepared for any number of surprises, my imagination lived in expectation of something new and wonderful.

The borders of the great Central Ocean had for some time disappeared behind the hills that were scattered over the ground occupied by the plain of bones. The imprudent and enthusiastic Professor, who did not care whether he lost himself or not, hurried me forward. We advanced silently, bathed in waves of electric fluid.

By reason of a phenomenon which I cannot explain, and thanks to its extreme diffusion, now complete, the light illumined equally the sides of every hill and rock. Its seat appeared to be nowhere, in no determined force, and produced no shade whatever.

The appearance presented was that of a tropical country at midday in summer—in the midst of the equatorial regions and under the vertical rays of the sun.

All signs of vapor had disappeared. The rocks, the distant mountains, some confused masses of far-off forests, assumed a weird and mysterious aspect under this equal distribution of the luminous fluid!

We resembled, to a certain extent, the mysterious personage in one of Hoffmann’s fantastic tales—the man who lost his shadow.

After we had walked about a mile farther, we came to the edge of a vast forest not, however, one of the vast mushroom forests we had discovered near Port Gretchen.

It was the glorious and wild vegetation of the Tertiary period, in all its superb magnificence. Huge palms, of a species now unknown, superb palmacites—a genus of fossil palms from the coal formation—pines, yews, cypress, and conifers or cone-bearing trees, the whole bound together by an inextricable and complicated mass of creeping plants.

A beautiful carpet of mosses and ferns grew beneath the trees. Pleasant brooks murmured beneath umbrageous boughs, little worthy of this name, for no shade did they give. Upon their borders grew small treelike shrubs, such as are seen in the hot countries on our own inhabited globe.

The one thing wanting in these plants, these shrubs, these trees—was color! Forever deprived of the vivifying warmth of the sun, they were vapid and colorless. All shade was lost in one uniform tint, of a brown and faded character. The leaves were wholly devoid of verdure, and the flowers, so numerous during the Tertiary period which gave them birth, were without color and without perfume, something like paper discolored by long exposure to the atmosphere.

My uncle ventured beneath the gigantic groves. I followed him, though not without a certain amount of apprehension. Since nature had shown herself capable of producing such stupendous vegetable supplies, why might we not meet with mammals just as large, and therefore dangerous?

I particularly remarked, in the clearings left by trees that had fallen and been partially consumed by time, many leguminous (beanlike) shrubs, such as the maple and other eatable trees, dear to ruminating animals. Then there appeared confounded together and intermixed, the trees of such varied lands, specimens of the vegetation of every part of the globe; there was the oak near the palm tree, the Australian eucalyptus, an interesting class of the order Myrtaceae—leaning against the tall Norwegian pine, the poplar of the north, mixing its branches with those of the New Zealand kauris. It was enough to drive the most ingenious classifier of the upper regions out of his mind, and to upset all his received ideas about botany.

Suddenly I stopped short and restrained my uncle.

The extreme diffuseness of the light enabled me to see the smallest objects in the distant copses. I thought I saw—no, I really did see with my own eyes—immense, gigantic animals moving about under the mighty trees. Yes, they were truly gigantic animals, a whole herd of mastodons, not fossils, but living, and exactly like those discovered in 1801, on the marshy banks of the great Ohio, in North America.

Yes, I could see these enormous elephants, whose trunks were tearing down large boughs, and working in and out the trees like a legion of serpents. I could hear the sounds of the mighty tusks uprooting huge trees!

The boughs crackled, and the whole masses of leaves and green branches went down the capacious throats of these terrible monsters!

That wondrous dream, when I saw the antehistorical times revivified, when the Tertiary and Quaternary periods passed before me, was now realized!

And there we were alone, far down in the bowels of the earth, at the mercy of its ferocious inhabitants!

My uncle paused, full of wonder and astonishment.

“Come!” he said at last, when his first surprise was over, “Come along, my boy, and let us see them nearer.”

“No,” replied I, restraining his efforts to drag me forward, “we are wholly without arms. What should we do in the midst of that flock of gigantic quadrupeds? Come away, Uncle, I implore you. No human creature can with impunity brave the ferocious anger of these monsters.”

“No human creature,” said my uncle, suddenly lowering his voice to a mysterious whisper, “you are mistaken, my dear Henry. Look! look yonder! It seems to me that I behold a human being—a being like ourselves—a man!”

I looked, shrugging my shoulders, decided to push incredulity to its very last limits. But whatever might have been my wish, I was compelled to yield to the weight of ocular demonstration.

Yes—not more than a quarter of a mile off, leaning against the trunk of an enormous tree, was a human being—a Proteus of these subterranean regions, a new son of Neptune keeping this innumerable herd of mastodons.

Immanis pecoris custos, immanior ipse!5

Yes—it was no longer a fossil whose corpse we had raised from the ground in the great cemetery, but a giant capable of guiding and driving these prodigious monsters. His height was above twelve feet. His head, as big as the head of a buffalo, was lost in a mane of matted hair. It was indeed a huge mane, like those which belonged to the elephants of the earlier ages of the world.

In his hand was a branch of a tree, which served as a crook for this antediluvian shepherd.

We remained profoundly still, speechless with surprise.

But we might at any moment be seen by him. Nothing remained for us but instant flight.

“Come, come!” I cried, dragging my uncle along; and, for the first time, he made no resistance to my wishes.

A quarter of an hour later we were far away from that terrible monster!

Now that I think of the matter calmly, and that I reflect upon it dispassionately; now that months, years, have passed since this strange and unnatural adventure befell us—what am I to think, what am I to believe?

No, it is utterly impossible! Our ears must have deceived us, and our eyes have cheated us! we have not seen what we believed we had seen. No human being could by any possibility have existed in that subterranean world! No generation of men could inhabit the lower caverns of the globe without taking note of those who peopled the surface, without communication with them. It was folly, folly, folly! nothing else!

I am rather inclined to admit the existence of some animal resembling in structure the human race—of some monkey of the first geological epochs, like that discovered by M. Lartet in the ossiferous deposit of Sansan.

But this animal, or being, whichsoever it was, surpassed in height all things known to modern science. Never mind. However unlikely it may be, it might have been a monkey—but a man, a living man, and with him a whole generation of gigantic animals, buried in the entrails of the earth—it was too monstrous to be believed!

5 The keeper of gigantic cattle, himself still more gigantic!

5 The keeper of gigantic cattle, himself still more gigantic!

CHAPTER 37

THE MYSTERIOUS DAGGER

During this time, we had left the bright and transparent forest far behind us. We were mute with astonishment, overcome by a kind of feeling which was next door to apathy. We kept running in spite of ourselves. It was a perfect Right, which resembled one of those horrible sensations we sometimes meet with in our dreams.

Instinctively we made our way towards the Central Sea, and I cannot now tell what wild thoughts passed through my mind, nor of what follies I might have been guilty, but for a very serious preoccupation which brought me back to practical life.

Though I was aware that we were treading on a soil quite new to us, I, however, every now and then noticed certain aggregations of rock, the shape of which forcibly reminded me of those near Port Gretchen.

This confirmed, moreover, the indications of the compass and our extraordinary and unlooked-for, as well as involuntary, return to the north of this great Central Sea. It was so like our starting point, that I could scarcely doubt the reality of our position. Streams and cascades fell in hundreds over the numerous projections of the rocks.

I actually thought I could see our faithful and monotonous Hans and the wonderful grotto in which I had come back to life after my tremendous fall.

Then, as we advanced still farther, the position of the cliffs, the appearance of a stream, the unexpected profile of a rock, threw me again into a state of bewildering doubt.

After some time, I explained my state of mental indecision to my uncle. He confessed to a similar feeling of hesitation. He was totally unable to make up his mind in the midst of this extraordinary but uniform panorama.

“There can be no doubt,” I insisted, “that we have not landed exactly at the place whence we first took our departure; but the tempest has brought us above our starting point. I think, therefore, that if we follow the coast we shall once more find Port Gretchen.”

“In that case,” cried my uncle, “it is useless to continue our exploration. The very best thing we can do is to make our way back to the raft. Are you quite sure, Harry, that you are not mistaken?”

“It is difficult,” was my reply, “to come to any decision, for all these rocks are exactly alike. There is no marked difference between them. At the same time, the impression on my mind is that I recognize the promontory at the foot of which our worthy Hans constructed the raft. We are, I am nearly convinced, near the little port: if this be not it,” I added, carefully examining a creek which appeared singularly familiar to my mind.

“My dear Harry—if this were the case, we should find traces of our own footsteps, some signs of our passage; and I can really see nothing to indicate our having passed this way.”

“But I see something,” I cried, in an impetuous tone of voice, as I rushed forward and eagerly picked up something which shone in the sand under my feet.

“What is it?” cried the astonished and bewildered Professor.

“This,” was my reply.

And I handed to my startled relative a rusty dagger, of singular shape.

“What made you bring with you so useless a weapon?” he exclaimed. “It was needlessly hampering yourself.”

“I bring it? It is quite new to me. I never saw it before—are you sure it is not out of your collection?”

“Not that I know of,” said the Professor, puzzled. “I have no recollection of the circumstance. It was never my property.”

“This is very extraordinary,” I said, musing over the novel and singular incident.

“Not at all. There is a very simple explanation, Harry. The Icelanders are known to keep up the use of these antiquated weapons, and this must have belonged to Hans, who has let it fall without knowing it.”

I shook my head. That dagger had never been in the possession of the pacific and taciturn Hans. I knew him and his habits too well.

“Then what can it be—unless it be the weapon of some antediluvian warrior,” I continued, “of some living man, a contemporary of that mighty shepherd from whom we have just escaped? But no—mystery upon mystery—this is no weapon of the stony epoch, nor even of the bronze period. It is made of excellent steel—”

Ere I could finish my sentence, my uncle stopped me short from entering upon a whole train of theories, and spoke in his most cold and decided tone of voice.

“Calm yourself, my dear boy, and endeavor to use your reason. This weapon, upon which we have fallen so unexpectedly, is a true dague, one of those worn by gentlemen in their belts during the sixteenth century. Its use was to give the coup de grace, the final blow, to the foe who would not surrender. It is clearly of Spanish workmanship. It belongs neither to you, nor to me, nor the eider-down hunter, nor to any of the living beings who may still exist so marvelously in the interior of the earth.”

“What can you mean, Uncle?” I said, now lost in a host of surmises.

“Look closely at it,” he continued; “these jagged edges were never made by the resistance of human blood and bone. The blade is covered with a regular coating of iron mold and rust, which is not a day old, not a year old, not a century old, but much more—”

The Professor began to get quite excited, according to custom, and was allowing himself to be carried away by his fertile imagination. I could have said something. He stopped me.

“Harry,” he cried, “we are now on the verge of a great discovery. This blade of a dagger you have so marvelously discovered, after being abandoned upon the sand for more than a hundred, two hundred, even three hundred years, has been indented by someone endeavoring to carve an inscription on these rocks.”

“But this poniard never got here of itself,” I exclaimed, “it could not have twisted itself. Someone, therefore, must have preceded us upon the shores of this extraordinary sea.”

“Yes, a man.”

“But what man has been sufficiently desperate to do such a thing?”

“A man who has somewhere written his name with this very dagger—a man who has endeavored once more to indicate the right road to the interior of the earth. Let us look around, my boy. You know not the importance of your singular and happy discovery.”

Prodigiously interested, we walked along the wall of rock, examining the smallest fissures, which might finally expand into the much wished—for gully or shaft.

We at last reached a spot where the shore became extremely narrow. The sea almost bathed the foot of the rocks, which were here very lofty and steep. There was scarcely a path wider than two yards at any point. At last, under a huge over-hanging rock, we discovered the entrance of a dark and gloomy tunnel.

There, on a square tablet of granite, which had been smoothed by rubbing it with another stone, we could see two mysterious, and much worn letters, the two initials of the bold and extraordinary traveler who had preceded us on our adventurous journey.

“A. S.!” cried my uncle. “You see, I was right. Arne Saknussemm, always Arne Saknussemm!”

CHAPTER 38

NO OUTLET—BLASTING THE ROCK

Ever since the commencement of our marvelous journey, I had experienced many surprises, had suffered from many illusions. I thought that I was case-hardened against all surprises and could neither see nor hear anything to amaze me again.

I was like a many who, having been round the world, finds himself wholly blase and proof against the marvelous.

When, however, I saw these two letters, which had been engraven three hundred years before, I stood fixed in an attitude of mute surprise.

Not only was there the signature of the learned and enterprising alchemist written in the rock, but I held in my hand the very identical instrument with which he had laboriously engraved it.

It was impossible, without showing an amount of incredulity scarcely becoming a sane man, to deny the existence of the traveler, and the reality of that voyage which I believed all along to have been a myth—the mystification of some fertile brain.

While these reflections were passing through my mind, my uncle, the Professor, gave way to an access of feverish and poetical excitement.

“Wonderful and glorious genius, great Saknussemm,” he cried, “you have left no stone unturned, no resource omitted, to show to other mortals the way into the interior of our mighty globe, and your fellow creatures can find the trail left by your illustrious footsteps, three hundred years ago, at the bottom of these obscure subterranean abodes. You have been careful to secure for others the contemplation of these wonders and marvels of creation. Your name engraved at every important stage of your glorious journey leads the hopeful traveler direct to the great and mighty discovery to which you devoted such energy and courage. The audacious traveler, who shall follow your footsteps to the last, will doubtless find your initials engraved with your own hand upon the centre of the earth. I will be that audacious traveler—I, too, will sign my name upon the very same spot, upon the central granite stone of this wondrous work of the Creator. But in justice to your devotion, to your courage, and to your being the first to indicate the road, let this cape, seen by you upon the shores of this sea discovered by you, be called, of all time, Cape Saknussemm.”

This is what I heard, and I began to be roused to the pitch of enthusiasm indicated by those words. A fierce excitement roused me. I forgot everything. The dangers of the voyage and the perils of the return journey were now as nothing!

What another man had done in ages past could, I felt, be done again; I was determined to do it myself, and now nothing that man had accomplished appeared to me impossible.

“Forward—forward,” I cried in a burst of genuine and hearty enthusiasm.

I had already started in the direction of the somber and gloomy gallery when the Professor stopped me; he, the man so rash and hasty, he, the man so easily roused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, checked me, and asked me to be patient and show more calm.

“Let us return to our good friend, Hans,” he said; “we will then bring the raft down to this place.”

I must say that though I at once yielded to my uncle’s request, it was not without dissatisfaction, and I hastened along the rocks of that wonderful coast.

“Do you know, my dear uncle,” I said, as we walked along, “that we have been singularly helped by a concurrence of circumstances, right up to this very moment.”

“So you begin to see it, do you, Harry?” said the Professor with a smile.

“Doubtless,” I responded, “and strangely enough, even the tempest has been the means of putting us on the right road. Blessings on the tempest! It brought us safely back to the very spot from which fine weather would have driven us forever. Supposing we had succeeded in reaching the southern and distant shores of this extraordinary sea, what would have become of us? The name of Saknussemm would never have appeared to us, and at this moment we should have been cast away upon an inhospitable coast, probably without an outlet.”

“Yes, Harry, my boy, there is certainly something providential in that wandering at the mercy of wind and waves towards the south: we have come back exactly north; and what is better still, we fall upon this great discovery of Cape Saknussemm. I mean to say, that it is more than surprising; there is something in it which is far beyond my comprehension. The coincidence is unheard of, marvelous!”

“What matter! It is not our duty to explain facts, but to make the best possible use of them.”

“Doubtless, my boy; but if you will allow me—” said the really delighted Professor.

“Excuse me, sir, but I see exactly how it will be; we shall take the northern route; we shall pass under the northern regions of Europe, under Sweden, under Russia, under Siberia, and who knows where—instead of burying ourselves under the burning plains and deserts of Africa, or beneath the mighty waves of the ocean; and that is all, at this stage of our journey, that I care to know. Let us advance, and Heaven will be our guide!”

“Yes, Harry, you are right, quite right; all is for the best. Let us abandon this horizontal sea, which could never have led to anything satisfactory. We shall descend, descend, and everlastingly descend. Do you know, my dear boy, that to reach the interior of the earth we have only five thousand miles to travel!”

“Bah!” I cried, carried away by a burst of enthusiasm, “the distance is scarcely worth speaking about. The thing is to make a start.”

My wild, mad, and incoherent speeches continued until we rejoined our patient and phlegmatic guide. All was, we found, prepared for an immediate departure. There was not a single parcel but what was in its proper place. We all took up our posts on the raft, and the sail being hoisted, Hans received his directions, and guided the frail bark towards Cape Saknussemm, as we had definitely named it.

The wind was very unfavorable to a craft that was unable to sail close to the wind. It was constructed to go before the blast. We were continually reduced to pushing ourselves forward by means of poles. On several occasions the rocks ran far out into deep water and we were compelled to make a long round. At last, after three long and weary hours of navigation, that is to say, about six o’clock in the evening, we found a place at which we could land.

I jumped on shore first. In my present state of excitement and enthusiasm, I was always first. My uncle and the Icelander followed. The voyage from the port to this point of the sea had by no means calmed me. It had rather produced the opposite effect. I even proposed to burn our vessel, that is, to destroy our raft, in order to completely cut off our retreat. But my uncle sternly opposed this wild project. I began to think him particularly lukewarm and unenthusiastic.

“At any rate, my dear uncle,” I said, “let us start without delay.”

“Yes, my boy, I am quite as eager to do so as you can be. But, in the first place, let us examine this mysterious gallery, in order to find if we shall need to prepare and mend our ladders.”

My uncle now began to see to the efficiency of our Ruhmkorff coil, which would doubtless soon be needed; the raft, securely fastened to a rock, was left alone. Moreover, the opening into the new gallery was not twenty paces distant from the spot. Our little troop, with myself at the head, advanced.

The orifice, which was almost circular, presented a diameter of about five feet; the somber tunnel was cut in the living rock, and coated on the inside by the different material which had once passed through it in a state of fusion. The lower part was about level with the water, so that we were able to penetrate to the interior without difficulty.

We followed an almost horizontal direction; when, at the end of about a dozen paces, our further advance was checked by the interposition of an enormous block of granite rock.

“Accursed stone!” I cried furiously, on perceiving that we were stopped by what seemed an insurmountable obstacle.

In vain we looked to the right, in vain we looked to the left; in vain examined it above and below. There existed no passage, no sign of any other tunnel. I experienced the most bitter and painful disappointment. So enraged was I that I would not admit the reality of any obstacle. I stooped to my knees; I looked under the mass of stone. No hole, no interstice. I then looked above. The same barrier of granite! Hans, with the lamp, examined the sides of the tunnel in every direction.

But all in vain! It was necessary to renounce all hope of passing through.

I had seated myself upon the ground. My uncle walked angrily and hopelessly up and down. He was evidently desperate.

“But,” I cried, after some moments’ thought, “what about Arne Saknussemm?”

“You are right,” replied my uncle, “he can never have been checked by a lump of rock.”

“No—ten thousand times no,” I cried, with extreme vivacity. “This huge lump of rock, in consequence of some singular concussion, or process, one of those magnetic phenomena which have so often shaken the terrestrial crust, has in some unexpected way closed up the passage. Many and many years have passed away since the return of Saknussemm, and the fall of this huge block of granite. Is it not quite evident that this gallery was formerly the outlet for the pent-up lava in the interior of the earth, and that these eruptive matters then circulated freely? Look at these recent fissures in the granite roof; it is evidently formed of pieces of enormous stone, placed here as if by the hand of a giant, who had worked to make a strong and substantial arch. One day, after an unusually strong shock, the vast rock which stands in our way, and which was doubtless the key of a kind of arch, fell through to a level with the soil and has barred our further progress. We are right, then, in thinking that this is an unexpected obstacle, with which Saknussemm did not meet; and if we do not upset it in some way, we are unworthy of following in the footsteps of the great discoverer; and incapable of finding our way to the centre of the earth!”

In this wild way I addressed my uncle. The zeal of the Professor, his earnest longing for success, had become part and parcel of my being. I wholly forgot the past; I utterly despised the future. Nothing existed for me upon the surface of this spheroid in the bosom of which I was engulfed, no towns, no country, no Hamburg, no Koenigstrasse, not even my poor Gretchen, who by this time would believe me utterly lost in the interior of the earth!

“Well,” cried my uncle, roused to enthusiasm by my words, “Let us go to work with pickaxes, with crowbars, with anything that comes to hand—but down with these terrible walls.”

“It is far too tough and too big to be destroyed by a pickax or crowbar,” I replied.

“What then?”

“As I said, it is useless to think of overcoming such a difficulty by means of ordinary tools.”

“What then?”

“What else but gunpowder, a subterranean mine? Let us blow up the obstacle that stands in our way.”

“Gunpowder!”

“Yes; all we have to do is to get rid of this paltry obstacle.”

“To work, Hans, to work!” cried the Professor.

The Icelander went back to the raft, and soon returned with a huge crowbar, with which he began to dig a hole in the rock, which was to serve as a mine. It was by no means a slight task. It was necessary for our purpose to make a cavity large enough to hold fifty pounds of fulminating gun cotton, the expansive power of which is four times as great as that of ordinary gunpowder.

I had now roused myself to an almost miraculous state of excitement. While Hans was at work, I actively assisted my uncle to prepare a long wick, made from damp gunpowder, the mass of which we finally enclosed in a bag of linen.

“We are bound to go through,” I cried, enthusiastically.

“We are bound to go through,” responded the Professor, tapping me on the back.

At midnight, our work as miners was completely finished; the charge of fulminating cotton was thrust into the hollow, and the match, which we had made of considerable length, was ready.

A spark was now sufficient to ignite this formidable engine, and to blow the rock to atoms!

“We will now rest until tomorrow.”

It was absolutely necessary to resign myself to my fate, and to consent to wait for the explosion for six weary hours!

CHAPTER 39

THE EXPLOSION AND ITS RESULTS

The next day, which was the twenty-seventh of August, was a date celebrated in our wondrous subterranean journey. I never think of it even now, but I shudder with horror. My heart beats wildly at the very memory of that awful day.

From this time forward, our reason, our judgment, our human ingenuity, have nothing to do with the course of events. We are about to become the plaything of the great phenomena of the earth!

At six o’clock we were all up and ready. The dreaded moment was arriving when we were about to seek an opening into the interior of the earth by means of gunpowder. What would be the consequences of breaking through the crust of the earth?

I begged that it might be my duty to set fire to the mine. I looked upon it as an honor. This task once performed, I could rejoin my friends upon the raft, which had not been unloaded. As soon as we were all ready, we were to sail away to some distance to avoid the consequences of the explosion, the effects of which would certainly not be concentrated in the interior of the earth.

The slow match we calculated to burn for about ten minutes, more or less, before it reached the chamber in which the great body of powder was confined. I should therefore have plenty of time to reach the raft and put off to a safe distance.

I prepared to execute my self-allotted task—not, it must be confessed, without considerable emotion.

After a hearty repast, my uncle and the hunter-guide embarked on board the raft, while I remained alone upon the desolate shore.

I was provided with a lantern which was to enable me to set fire to the wick of the infernal machine.

“Go, my boy,” said my uncle, “and Heaven be with you. But come back as soon as you can. I shall be all impatience.”

“Be easy on that matter,” I replied, “there is no fear of my delaying on the road.”

Having said this, I advanced toward the opening of the somber gallery. My heart beat wildly. I opened my lantern and seized the extremity of the wick.

The Professor, who was looking on, held his chronometer in his hand.

“Are you ready?” cried he.

“Quite ready.”

“Well, then, fire away!”

I hastened to put the light to the wick, which crackled and sparkled, hissing and spitting like a serpent; then, running as fast as I could, I returned to the shore.

“Get on board, my lad, and you, Hans, shove off,” cried my uncle.

By a vigorous application of his pole Hans sent us flying over the water. The raft was quite twenty fathoms distant.

It was a moment of palpitating interest, of deep anxiety. My uncle, the Professor, never took his eyes off the chronometer.

“Only five minutes more,” he said in a low tone, “only four, only three.”

My pulse went a hundred to the minute. I could hear my heart beating.

“Only two, one! Now, then, mountains of granite, crumble beneath the power of man!”

What happened after that? As to the terrific roar of the explosion, I do not think I heard it. But the form of the rocks completely changed in my eyes—they seemed to be drawn aside like a curtain. I saw a fathomless, a bottomless abyss, which yawned beneath the turgid waves. The sea, which seemed suddenly to have gone mad, then became one great mountainous mass, upon the top of which the raft rose perpendicularly.

We were all thrown down. In less than a second the light gave place to the most profound obscurity. Then I felt all solid support give way not to my feet, but to the raft itself. I thought it was going bodily down a tremendous well. I tried to speak, to question my uncle. Nothing could be heard but the roaring of the mighty waves. We clung together in utter silence.

Despite the awful darkness, despite the noise, the surprise, the emotion, I thoroughly understood what had happened.

Beyond the rock which had been blown up, there existed a mighty abyss. The explosion had caused a kind of earthquake in this soil, broken by fissures and rents. The gulf, thus suddenly thrown open, was about to swallow the inland sea which, transformed into a mighty torrent, was dragging us with it.

Only one idea filled my mind. We were utterly and completely lost!

One hour, two hours—what more I cannot say, passed in this manner. We sat close together, elbow touching elbow, knee touching knee! We held one another’s hands not to be thrown off the raft. We were subjected to the most violent shocks, whenever our sole dependence, a frail wooden raft, struck against the rocky sides of the channel. Fortunately for us, these concussions became less and less frequent, which made me fancy that the gallery was getting wider and wider. There could be now no doubt that we had chanced upon the road once followed by Saknussemm, but instead of going down in a proper manner, we had, through our own imprudence, drawn a whole sea with us!

These ideas presented themselves to my mind in a very vague and obscure manner. I felt rather than reasoned. I put my ideas together only confusedly, while spinning along like a man going down a waterfall. To judge by the air which, as it were, whipped my face, we must have been rushing at a perfectly lightning rate.

To attempt under these circumstances to light a torch was simply impossible, and the last remains of our electric machine, of our Ruhmkorff coil, had been destroyed during the fearful explosion.

I was therefore very much confused to see at last a bright light shining close to me. The calm countenance of the guide seemed to gleam upon me. The clever and patient hunter had succeeded in lighting the lantern; and though, in the keen and thorough draft, the flame flickered and vacillated and was nearly put out, it served partially to dissipate the awful obscurity.

The gallery into which we had entered was very wide. I was, therefore, quite right in that part of my conjecture. The insufficient light did not allow us to see both of the walls at the same time. The slope of waters, which was carrying us away, was far greater than that of the most rapid river of America. The whole surface of the stream seemed to be composed of liquid arrows, darted forward with extreme violence and power. I can give no idea of the impression it made upon me.

The raft, at times, caught in certain whirlpools, and rushed forward, yet turned on itself all the time. How it did not upset I shall never be able to understand. When it approached the sides of the gallery, I took care to throw upon them the light of the lantern, and I was able to judge of the rapidity of motion by looking at the projecting masses of rock, which as soon as seen were again invisible. So rapid was our progress that points of rock at a considerable distance one from the other appeared like portions of transverse lines, which enclosed us in a kind of net, like that of a line of telegraphic wires.

I believe we were now going at a rate of not less than a hundred miles an hour.

My uncle and I looked at one another with wild and haggard eyes; we clung convulsively to the stump of the mast, which, at the moment when the catastrophe took place, had snapped short off. We turned our backs as much as possible to the wind, in order not to be stifled by a rapidity of motion which nothing human could face and live.

And still the long monotonous hours went on. The situation did not change in the least, though a discovery I suddenly made seemed to complicate it very much.

When we had slightly recovered our equilibrium, I proceeded to examine our cargo. I then made the unsatisfactory discovery that the greater part of it had utterly disappeared.

I became alarmed, and determined to discover what were our resources. My heart beat at the idea, but it was absolutely necessary to know on what we had to depend. With this view, I took the lantern and looked around.

Of all our former collection of nautical and philosophical instruments, there remained only the chronometer and the compass. The ladders and ropes were reduced to a small piece of rope fastened to the stump of the mast. Not a pickax, not a crowbar, not a hammer, and, far worse than all, no food—not enough for one day!

This discovery was a prelude to a certain and horrible death.

Seated gloomily on the raft, clasping the stump of the mast mechanically, I thought of all I had read as to sufferings from starvation.

I remembered everything that history had taught me on the subject, and I shuddered at the remembrance of the agonies to be endured.

Maddened at the prospects of enduring the miseries of starvation, I persuaded myself that I must be mistaken. I examined the cracks in the raft; I poked between the joints and beams; I examined every possible hole and corner. The result was—simply nothing!

Our stock of provisions consisted of nothing but a piece of dry meat and some soaked and half-moldy biscuits.

I gazed around me scared and frightened. I could not understand the awful truth. And yet of what consequence was it in regard to any new danger? Supposing that we had had provisions for months, and even for years, how could we ever get out of the awful abyss into which we were being hurled by the irresistible torrent we had let loose?

Why should we trouble ourselves about the sufferings and tortures to be endured from hunger when death stared us in the face under so many other swifter and perhaps even more horrid forms?

It was very doubtful, under the circumstances in which we were placed, if we should have time to die of inanition.

But the human frame is singularly constituted.

I know not how it was; but, from some singular hallucination of the mind, I forgot the real, serious, and immediate danger to which we were exposed, to think of the menaces of the future, which appeared before us in all their naked terror. Besides, after all, suggested Hope, perhaps we might finally escape the fury of the raging torrent, and once more revisit the glimpses of the moon, on the surface of our beautiful Mother Earth.

How was it to be done? I had not the remotest idea. Where were we to come out? No matter, so that we did.

One chance in a thousand is always a chance, while death from hunger gave us not even the faintest glimpse of hope. It left to the imagination nothing but blank horror, without the faintest chance of escape!

I had the greatest mind to reveal all to my uncle, to explain to him the extraordinary and wretched position to which we were reduced, in order that, between the two, we might make a calculation as to the exact space of time which remained for us to live.

It was, it appeared to me, the only thing to be done. But I had the courage to hold my tongue, to gnaw at my entrails like the Spartan boy. I wished to leave him all his coolness.

At this moment, the light of the lantern slowly fell, and at last went out!

The wick had wholly burnt to an end. The obscurity became absolute. It was no longer possible to see through the impenetrable darkness! There was one torch left, but it was impossible to keep it alight. Then, like a child, I shut my eyes, that I might not see the darkness.

After a great lapse of time, the rapidity of our journey increased. I could feel it by the rush of air upon my face. The slope of the waters was excessive. I began to feel that we were no longer going down a slope; we were falling. I felt as one does in a dream, going down bodily—falling; falling; falling!

I felt that the hands of my uncle and Hans were vigorously clasping my arms.

Suddenly, after a lapse of time scarcely appreciable, I felt something like a shock. The raft had not struck a hard body, but had suddenly been checked in its course. A waterspout, a liquid column of water, fell upon us. I felt suffocating. I was being drowned.

Still the sudden inundation did not last. In a few seconds I felt myself once more able to breathe. My uncle and Hans pressed my arms, and the raft carried us all three away.

CHAPTER 40

THE APE GIGANS

It is difficult for me to determine what was the real time, but I should suppose, by after calculation, that it must have been ten at night.

I lay in a stupor, a half dream, during which I saw visions of astounding character. Monsters of the deep were side by side with the mighty elephantine shepherd. Gigantic fish and animals seemed to form strange conjunctions.

The raft took a sudden turn, whirled round, entered another tunnel—this time illumined in a most singular manner. The roof was formed of porous stalactite, through which a moonlit vapor appeared to pass, casting its brilliant light upon our gaunt and haggard figures. The light increased as we advanced, while the roof ascended; until at last, we were once more in a kind of water cavern, the lofty dome of which disappeared in a luminous cloud!

A rugged cavern of small extent appeared to offer a halting place to our weary bodies.

My uncle and the guide moved as men in a dream. I was afraid to waken them, knowing the danger of such a sudden start. I seated myself beside them to watch.

As I did so, I became aware of something moving in the distance, which at once fascinated my eyes. It was floating, apparently, upon the surface of the water, advancing by means of what at first appeared paddles. I looked with glaring eyes. One glance told me that it was something monstrous.

But what?

It was the great “shark-crocodile” of the early writers on geology. About the size of an ordinary whale, with hideous jaws and two gigantic eyes, it advanced. Its eyes fixed on me with terrible sternness. Some indefinite warning told me that it had marked me for its own.

I attempted to rise—to escape, no matter where, but my knees shook under me; my limbs trembled violently; I almost lost my senses. And still the mighty monster advanced. My uncle and the guide made no effort to save themselves.

With a strange noise, like none other I had ever heard, the beast came on. His jaws were at least seven feet apart, and his distended mouth looked large enough to have swallowed a boatful of men.

We were about ten feet distant when I discovered that much as his body resembled that of a crocodile, his mouth was wholly that of a shark.

His twofold nature now became apparent. To snatch us up at a mouthful it was necessary for him to turn on his back, which motion necessarily caused his legs to kick up helplessly in the air.

I actually laughed even in the very jaws of death!

But next minute, with a wild cry, I darted away into the interior of the cave, leaving my unhappy comrades to their fate! This cavern was deep and dreary. After about a hundred yards, I paused and looked around.

The whole floor, composed of sand and malachite, was strewn with bones, freshly gnawed bones of reptiles and fish, with a mixture of mammalia. My very soul grew sick as my body shuddered with horror. I had truly, according to the old proverb, fallen out of the frying pan into the fire. Some beast larger and more ferocious even than the shark-crocodile inhabited this den.

What could I do? The mouth of the cave was guarded by one ferocious monster, the interior was inhabited by something too hideous to contemplate. Flight was impossible!

Only one resource remained, and that was to find some small hiding place to which the fearful denizens of the cavern could not penetrate. I gazed wildly around, and at last discovered a fissure in the rock, to which I rushed in the hope of recovering my scattered senses.

Crouching down, I waited shivering as in an ague fit. No man is brave in presence of an earthquake, or a bursting boiler, or an exploding torpedo. I could not be expected to feel much courage in presence of the fearful fate that appeared to await me.

An hour passed. I heard all the time a strange rumbling outside the cave.

What was the fate of my unhappy companions? It was impossible for me to pause to inquire. My own wretched existence was all I could think of.

Suddenly a groaning, as of fifty bears in a fight, fell upon my ears—hisses, spitting, moaning, hideous to hear—and then I saw—

Never, were ages to pass over my head, shall I forget the horrible apparition.

It was the Ape Gigans!

Fourteen feet high, covered with coarse hair, of a blackish brown, the hair on the arms, from the shoulder to the elbow joints, pointing downwards, while that from the wrist to the elbow pointed upwards, it advanced. Its arms were as long as its body, while its legs were prodigious. It had thick, long, and sharply pointed teeth—like a mammoth saw.

It struck its breast as it came on smelling and sniffing, reminding me of the stories we read in our early childhood of giants who ate the Flesh of men and little boys!

Suddenly it stopped. My heart beat wildly, for I was conscious that, somehow or other, the fearful monster had smelled me out and was peering about with his hideous eyes to try and discover my whereabouts.

My reading, which as a rule is a blessing, but which on this occasion, seemed momentarily to prove a curse, told me the real truth. It was the Ape Gigans, the antediluvian gorilla.

Yes! This awful monster, confined by good fortune to the interior of the earth, was the progenitor of the hideous monster of Africa.

He glared wildly about, seeking something—doubtless myself. I gave myself up for lost. No hope of safety or escape seemed to remain.

At this moment, just as my eyes appeared to close in death, there came a strange noise from the entrance of the cave; and turning, the gorilla evidently recognized some enemy more worthy his prodigious size and strength. It was the huge shark-crocodile, which perhaps having disposed of my friends, was coming in search of further prey.

The gorilla placed himself on the defensive, and clutching a bone some seven or eight feet in length, a perfect club, aimed a deadly blow at the hideous beast, which reared upwards and fell with all its weight upon its adversary.

A terrible combat, the details of which it is impossible to give, now ensued. The struggle was awful and ferocious, I, however, did not wait to witness the result. Regarding myself as the object of contention, I determined to remove from the presence of the victor. I slid down from my hiding place, reached the ground, and gliding against the wall, strove to gain the open mouth of the cavern.

But I had not taken many steps when the fearful clamor ceased, to be followed by a mumbling and groaning which appeared to be indicative of victory.

I looked back and saw the huge ape, gory with blood, coming after me with glaring eyes, with dilated nostrils that gave forth two columns of heated vapor. I could feel his hot and fetid breath on my neck; and with a horrid jump—awoke from my nightmare sleep.

Yes—it was all a dream. I was still on the raft with my uncle and the guide.

The relief was not instantaneous, for under the influence of the hideous nightmare my senses had become numbed. After a while, however, my feelings were tranquilized. The first of my perceptions which returned in full force was that of hearing. I listened with acute and attentive ears. All was still as death. All I comprehended was silence. To the roaring of the waters, which had filled the gallery with awful reverberations, succeeded perfect peace.

After some little time my uncle spoke, in a low and scarcely audible tone: “Harry, boy, where are you?”

“I am here,” was my faint rejoinder.

“Well, don’t you see what has happened? We are going upwards.”

“My dear uncle, what can you mean?” was my half-delirious reply.

“Yes, I tell you we are ascending rapidly. Our downward journey is quite checked.”

I held out my hand, and, after some little difficulty, succeeded in touching the wall. My hand was in an instant covered with blood. The skin was torn from the flesh. We were ascending with extraordinary rapidity.

“The torch—the torch!” cried the Professor, wildly; “it must be lighted.”

Hans, the guide, after many vain efforts, at last succeeded in lighting it, and the flame, having now nothing to prevent its burning, shed a tolerably clear light. We were enabled to form an approximate idea of the truth.

“It is just as I thought,” said my uncle, after a moment or two of silent attention. “We are in a narrow well about four fathoms square. The waters of the great inland sea, having reached the bottom of the gulf are now forcing themselves up the mighty shaft. As a natural consequence, we are being cast upon the summit of the waters.”

“That I can see,” was my lugubrious reply; “but where will this shaft end, and to what fall are we likely to be exposed?”

“Of that I am as ignorant as yourself. All I know is, that we should be prepared for the worst. We are going up at a fearfully rapid rate. As far as I can judge, we are ascending at the rate of two fathoms a second, of a hundred and twenty fathoms a minute, or rather more than three and a half leagues an hour. At this rate, our fate will soon be a matter of certainty.”

“No doubt of it,” was my reply. “The great concern I have now, however, is to know whether this shaft has any issue. It may end in a granite roof—in which case we shall be suffocated by compressed air, or dashed to atoms against the top. I fancy, already, that the air is beginning to be close and condensed. I have a difficulty in breathing.”

This might be fancy, or it might be the effect of our rapid motion, but I certainly felt a great oppression of the chest.

“Henry,” said the Professor, “I do believe that the situation is to a certain extent desperate. There remain, however, many chances of ultimate safety, and I have, in my own mind, been revolving them over, during your heavy but agitated sleep. I have come to this logical conclusion—whereas we may at any moment perish, so at any moment we may be saved! We need, therefore, prepare ourselves for whatever may turn up in the great chapter of accidents.”

“But what would you have us do?” I cried. “Are we not utterly helpless?”

“No! While there is life there is hope. At all events, there is one thing we can do—eat, and thus obtain strength to face victory or death.”

As he spoke, I looked at my uncle with a haggard glance. I had put off the fatal communication as long as possible. It was now forced upon me, and I must tell him the truth.

Still I hesitated.

“Eat,” I said, in a deprecating tone as if there were no hurry.

“Yes, and at once. I feel like a starving prisoner,” he said, rubbing his yellow and shivering hands together.

And, turning round to the guide, he spoke some hearty, cheering words, as I judged from his tone, in Danish. Hans shook his head in a terribly significant manner. I tried to look unconcerned.

“What!” cried the Professor, “you do not mean to say that all our provisions are lost?”

“Yes,” was my lowly spoken reply, as I held out something in my hand, “this morsel of dried meat is all that remains for us three.”

My uncle gazed at me as if he could not fully appreciate the meaning of my words. The blow seemed to stun him by its severity. I allowed him to reflect for some moments.

“Well,” said I, after a short pause, “what do you think now? Is there any chance of our escaping from our horrible subterranean dangers? Are we not doomed to perish in the great hollows of the centre of the earth?”

But my pertinent questions brought no answer. My uncle either heard me not, or appeared not to do so.

And in this way a whole hour passed. Neither of us cared to speak. For myself, I began to feel the most fearful and devouring hunger. My companions, doubtless, felt the same horrible tortures, but neither of them would touch the wretched morsel of meat that remained. It lay there, a last remnant of all our great preparations for the mad and senseless journey!

I looked back, with wonderment, to my own folly. Fully was I aware that, despite his enthusiasm, and the ever-to-be-hated scroll of Saknussemm, my uncle should never have started on his perilous voyage. What memories of the happy past, what previsions of the horrible future, now filled my brain!

CHAPTER 41

HUNGER

Hunger, prolonged, is temporary madness! The brain is at work without its required food, and the most fantastic notions fill the mind. Hitherto I had never known what hunger really meant. I was likely to understand it now.

And yet, three months before I could tell my terrible story of starvation, as I thought it. As a boy I used to make frequent excursions in the neighborhood of the Professor’s house.

My uncle always acted on system, and he believed that, in addition to the day of rest and worship, there should be a day of recreation. In consequence, I was always free to do as I liked on a Wednesday.

Now, as I had a notion to combine the useful and the agreeable, my favorite pastime was birds’ nesting. I had one of the best collections of eggs in all the town. They were classified, and under glass cases.

There was a certain wood, which, by rising at early morn, and taking the cheap train, I could reach at eleven in the morning. Here I would botanize or geologize at my will. My uncle was always glad of specimens for his herbarium, and stones to examine. When I had filled my wallet, I proceeded to search for nests.

After about two hours of hard work, I, one day, sat down by a stream to eat my humble but copious lunch. How the remembrance of the spiced sausage, the wheaten loaf, and the beer, made my mouth water now! I would have given every prospect of worldly wealth for such a meal. But to my story.

While seated thus at my leisure, I looked up at the ruins of an old castle, at no great distance. It was the remains of an historical dwelling, ivy-clad, and now falling to pieces.

While looking, I saw two eagles circling about the summit of a lofty tower. I soon became satisfied that there was a nest. Now, in all my collection, I lacked eggs of the native eagle and the large owl.

My mind was made up. I would reach the summit of that tower, or perish in the attempt. I went nearer, and surveyed the ruins. The old staircase, years before, had fallen in. The outer walls were, however, intact. There was no chance that way, unless I looked to the ivy solely for support. This was, as I soon found out, futile.

There remained the chimney, which still went up to the top, and had once served to carry off the smoke from every story of the tower.

Up this I determined to venture. It was narrow, rough, and therefore the more easily climbed. I took off my coat and crept into the chimney. Looking up, I saw a small, light opening, proclaiming the summit of the chimney.

Up—up I went, for some time using my hands and knees, after the fashion of a chimney sweep. It was slow work, but, there being continual projections, the task was comparatively easy. In this way, I reached halfway. The chimney now became narrower. The atmosphere was close, and, at last, to end the matter, I stuck fast. I could ascend no higher.

There could be no doubt of this, and there remained no resource but to descend, and give up my glorious prey in despair. I yielded to fate and endeavored to descend. But I could not move. Some unseen and mysterious obstacle intervened and stopped me. In an instant the full horror of my situation seized me.

I was unable to move either way, and was doomed to a terrible and horrible death, that of starvation. In a boy’s mind, however, there is an extraordinary amount of elasticity and hope, and I began to think of all sorts of plans to escape my gloomy fate.

In the first place, I required no food just at present, having had an excellent meal, and was therefore allowed time for reflection. My first thought was to try and move the mortar with my hand. Had I possessed a knife, something might have been done, but that useful instrument I had left in my coat pocket.

I soon found that all efforts of this kind were vain and useless, and that all I could hope to do was to wriggle downwards.

But though I jerked and struggled, and strove to turn, it was all in vain. I could not move an inch, one way or the other. And time flew rapidly. My early rising probably contributed to the fact that I felt sleepy, and gradually gave way to the sensation of drowsiness.

I slept, and awoke in darkness, ravenously hungry.

Night had come, and still I could not move. I was tight bound, and did not succeed in changing my position an inch. I groaned aloud. Never since the days of my happy childhood, when it was a hardship to go from meal to meal without eating, had I really experienced hunger. The sensation was as novel as it was painful. I began now to lose my head and to scream and cry out in my agony. Something appeared, startled by my noise. It was a harmless lizard, but it appeared to me a loathsome reptile. Again I made the old ruins resound with my cries, and finally so exhausted myself that I fainted.

How long I lay in a kind of trance or sleep I cannot say, but when again I recovered consciousness it was day. How ill I felt, how hunger still gnawed at me, it would be hard to say. I was too weak to scream now, far too weak to struggle.

Suddenly I was startled by a roar.

“Are you there, Henry?” said the voice of my uncle; “are you there, my boy?”

I could only faintly respond, but I also made a desperate effort to turn. Some mortar fell. To this I owed my being discovered. When the search took place, it was easily seen that mortar and small pieces of stone had recently fallen from above. Hence my uncle’s cry.

“Be calm,” he cried, “if we pull down the whole ruin, you shall be saved.”

They were delicious words, but I had little hope.

Soon however, about a quarter of an hour later I heard a voice above me, at one of the upper fireplaces.

“Are you below or above?”

“Below,” was my reply.

In an instant a basket was lowered with milk, a biscuit, and an egg. My uncle was fearful to be too ready with his supply of food. I drank the milk first, for thirst had nearly deadened hunger. I then, much refreshed, ate my bread and hard egg.

They were now at work at the wall. I could hear a pickax. Wishing to escape all danger from this terrible weapon I made a desperate struggle, and the belt, which surrounded my waist and which had been hitched on a stone, gave way. I was free, and only escaped falling down by a rapid motion of my hands and knees.

In ten minutes more I was in my uncle’s arms, after being two days and nights in that horrible prison. My occasional delirium prevented me from counting time.

I was weeks recovering from that awful starvation adventure; and yet what was that to the hideous sufferings I now endured?

After dreaming for some time, and thinking of this and other matters, I once more looked around me. We were still ascending with fearful rapidity. Every now and then the air appeared to check our respiration as it does that of aeronauts when the ascension of the balloon is too rapid. But if they feel a degree of cold in proportion to the elevation they attain in the atmosphere, we experienced quite a contrary effect. The heat began to increase in a most threatening and exceptional manner. I cannot tell exactly the mean, but I think it must have reached one hundred twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit.

What was the meaning of this extraordinary change in the temperature? As far as we had hitherto gone, facts had proved the theories of Davy and of Lidenbrock to be correct. Until now, all the peculiar conditions of refractory rocks, of electricity, of magnetism, had modified the general laws of nature, and had created for us a moderate temperature; for the theory of the central fire, remained, in my eyes, the only explainable one.

Were we, then, going to reach a position in which these phenomena were to be carried out in all their rigor, and in which the heat would reduce the rocks to a state of fusion?

Such was my not unnatural fear, and I did not conceal the fact from my uncle. My way of doing so might be cold and heartless, but I could not help it.

“If we are not drowned, or smashed into pancakes, and if we do not die of starvation, we have the satisfaction of knowing that we must be burned alive.”

My uncle, in presence of this brusque attack, simply shrugged his shoulders, and resumed his reflections—whatever they might be.

An hour passed away, and except that there was a slight increase in the temperature no incident modified the situation.

My uncle at last, of his own accord, broke silence.

“Well, Henry, my boy,” he said, in a cheerful way, “we must make up our minds.”

“Make up our minds to what?” I asked, in considerable surprise.

“Well—to something. We must at whatever risk recruit our physical strength. If we make the fatal mistake of husbanding our little remnant of food, we may probably prolong our wretched existence a few hours—but we shall remain weak to the end.”

“Yes,” I growled, “to the end. That, however, will not keep us long waiting.”

“Well, only let a chance of safety present itself—only allow that a moment of action be necessary—where shall we find the means of action if we allow ourselves to be reduced to physical weakness by inanition?”

“When this piece of meat is devoured, Uncle, what hope will there remain unto us?”

“None, my dear Henry, none. But will it do you any good to devour it with your eyes? You appear to me to reason like one without will or decision, like a being without energy.”

“Then,” cried I, exasperated to a degree which is scarcely to be explained, “you do not mean to tell me—that you—that you—have not lost all hope.”

“Certainly not,” replied the Professor with consummate coolness.

“You mean to tell me, Uncle, that we shall get out of this monstrous subterranean shaft?”

“While there is life there is hope. I beg to assert, Henry, that as long as a man’s heart beats, as long as a man’s flesh quivers, I do not allow that a being gifted with thought and will can allow himself to despair.”

What a nerve! The man placed in a position like that we occupied must have been very brave to speak like this.

“Well,” I cried, “what do you mean to do?”

“Eat what remains of the food we have in our hands; let us swallow the last crumb. It will bel Heaven willing, our last repast. Well, never mind—instead of being exhausted skeletons, we shall be men.”

“True,” muttered I in a despairing tone, “let us take our fill.”

“We must,” replied my uncle, with a deep sigh, “call it what you will.”

My uncle took a piece of the meat that remained, and some crusts of biscuit which had escaped the wreck. He divided the whole into three parts.

Each had one pound of food to last him as long as he remained in the interior of the earth.

Each now acted in accordance with his own private character.

My uncle, the Professor, ate greedily, but evidently without appetite, eating simply from some mechanical motion. I put the food inside my lips, and hungry as I was, chewed my morsel without pleasure, and without satisfaction.

Hans, the guide, just as if he had been eider-down hunting, swallowed every mouthful, as though it were a usual affair. He looked like a man equally prepared to enjoy superfluity or total want.

Hans, in all probability, was no more used to starvation than ourselves, but his hardy Icelandic nature had prepared him for many sufferings. As long as he received his three rix-dollars every Saturday night, he was prepared for anything.

The fact was, Hans never troubled himself about much except his money. He had undertaken to serve a certain man at so much per week, and no matter what evils befell his employer or himself, he never found fault or grumbled, so long as his wages were duly paid.

Suddenly my uncle roused himself. He had seen a smile on the face of our guide. I could not make it out.

“What is the matter?” said my uncle.

“Schiedam,” said the guide, producing a bottle of this precious fluid.

We drank. My uncle and myself will own to our dying day that hence we derived strength to exist until the last bitter moment. That precious bottle of Hollands was in reality only half full; but, under the circumstances, it was nectar.

It took some minutes for myself and my uncle to form a decided opinion on the subject. The worthy Professor swallowed about half a pint and did not seem able to drink any more.

“Fortrafflig,” said Hans, swallowing nearly all that was left.

“Excellent—very good,” said my uncle, with as much gusto as if he had just left the steps of the club at Hamburg.

I had begun to feel as if there had been one gleam of hope. Now all thought of the future vanished!

We had consumed our last ounce of food, and it was five o’clock in the morning!

CHAPTER 42

THE VOLCANIC SHAFT

Man’s constitution is so peculiar that his health is purely a negative matter. No sooner is the rage of hunger appeased than it becomes difficult to comprehend the meaning of starvation. It is only when you suffer that you really understand.

As to anyone who has not endured privation having any notion of the matter, it is simply absurd.

With us, after a long fast, some mouthfuls of bread and meat, a little moldy biscuit and salt beef triumphed over all our previous gloomy and saturnine thoughts.

Nevertheless, after this repast each gave way to his own reflections. I wondered what were those of Hans—the man of the extreme north, who was yet gifted with the fatalistic resignation of Oriental character. But the utmost stretch of the imagination would not allow me to realize the truth. As for my individual self, my thoughts had ceased to be anything but memories of the past, and were all connected with that upper world which I never should have left. I saw it all now, the beautiful house in the Konigstrasse, my poor Gretchen, the good Martha; they all passed before my mind like visions of the past. Every time any of the lugubrious groanings which were to be distinguished in the hollows around fell upon my ears, I fancied I heard the distant murmur of the great cities above my head.

As for my uncle, always thinking of his science, he examined the nature of the shaft by means of a torch. He closely examined the different strata one above the other, in order to recognize his situation by geological theory. This calculation, or rather this estimation, could by no means be anything but approximate. But a learned man, a philosopher, is nothing if not a philosopher, when he keeps his ideas calm and collected; and certainly the Professor possessed this quality to perfection.

I heard him, as I sat in silence, murmuring words of geological science. As I understood his object and his meaning, I could not but interest myself despite my preoccupation in that terrible hour.

“Eruptive granite,” he said to himself, “we are still in the primitive epoch. But we are going up—going up, still going up. But who knows? Who knows?”

Then he still hoped. He felt along the vertical sides of the shaft with his hand, and some few minutes later, he would go on again in the following style:

“This is gneiss. This is mica schist—siliceous mineral. Good again; this is the epoch of transition, at all events, we are close to them—and then, and then—”

What could the Professor mean? Could he, by any conceivable means, measure the thickness of the crust of the earth suspended above our heads? Did he possess any possible means of making any approximation to this calculation? No.

The manometer was wanting, and no summary estimation could take the place of it.

And yet, as we progressed, the temperature increased in the most extraordinary degree, and I began to feel as if I were bathed in a hot and burning atmosphere. Never before had I felt anything like it. I could only compare it to the hot vapor from an iron foundry, when the liquid iron is in a state of ebullition and runs over. By degrees, and one after the other, Hans, my uncle, and myself had taken off our coats and waistcoats. They were unbearable. Even the slightest garment was not only uncomfortable, but the cause of extreme suffering.

“Are we ascending to a living fire?” I cried; when, to my horror and astonishment, the heat became greater than before.

“No, no,” said my uncle, “it is simply impossible, quite impossible.”

“And yet,” said I, touching the side of the shaft with my naked hand, “this wall is literally burning.”

At this moment, feeling as I did that the sides of this extraordinary wall were red hot, I plunged my hands into the water to cool them. I drew them back with a cry of despair.

“The water is boiling!” I cried.

My uncle, the Professor, made no reply other than a gesture of rage and despair.

Something very like the truth had probably struck his imagination.

But I could take no share in either what was going on, or in his speculations. An invincible dread had taken possession of my brain and soul. I could only look forward to an immediate catastrophe, such a catastrophe as not even the most vivid imagination could have thought of. An idea, at first vague and uncertain, was gradually being changed into certainty.

I tremulously rejected it at first, but it forced itself upon me by degrees with extreme obstinacy. It was so terrible an idea that I scarcely dared to whisper it to myself.

And yet all the while certain, and as it were, involuntary observations determined my convictions. By the doubtful glare of the torch, I could make out some singular changes in the granitic strata; a strange and terrible phenomenon was about to be produced, in which electricity played a part.

Then this boiling water, this terrible and excessive heat? I determined as a last resource to examine the compass.

The compass had gone mad!

Yes, wholly stark staring mad. The needle jumped from pole to pole with sudden and surprising jerks, ran round, or as it is said, boxed the compass, and then ran suddenly back again as if it had the vertigo.

I was aware that, according to the best acknowledged theories, it was a received notion that the mineral crust of the globe is never, and never has been, in a state of complete repose.

It is perpetually undergoing the modifications caused by the decomposition of internal matter, the agitation consequent on the flowing of extensive liquid currents, the excessive action of magnetism which tends to shake it incessantly, at a time when even the multitudinous beings on its surface do not suspect the seething process to be going on.

Still this phenomenon would not have alarmed me alone; it would not have aroused in my mind a terrible, an awful idea.

But other facts could not allow my self-delusion to last.

Terrible detonations, like Heaven’s artillery, began to multiply themselves with fearful intensity. I could only compare them with the noise made by hundreds of heavily laden chariots being madly driven over a stone pavement. It was a continuous roll of heavy thunder.

And then the mad compass, shaken by the wild electric phenomena, confirmed me in my rapidly formed opinion. The mineral crust was about to burst, the heavy granite masses were about to rejoin, the fissure was about to close, the void was about to be filled up, and we poor atoms to be crushed in its awful embrace!

“Uncle, Uncle!” I cried, “we are wholly, irretrievably lost!”

“What, then, my young friend, is your new cause of terror and alarm?” he said in his calmest manner. “What fear you now?”

“What do I fear now!” I cried in fierce and angry tones. “Do you not see that the walls of the shaft are in motion? Do you not see that the solid granite masses are cracking? Do you not feel the terrible, torrid heat? Do you not observe the awful boiling water on which we float? Do you not remark this mad needle? Every sign and portent of an awful earthquake!”

My uncle coolly shook his head.

“An earthquake,” he replied in the most calm and provoking tone.

“Yes.”

“My nephew, I tell you that you are utterly mistaken,” he continued.

“Do you not, can you not, recognize all the well-known symtons—”

“Of an earthquake? By no means. I am expecting something far more important.”

“My brain is strained beyond endurance—what, what do you mean?” I cried.

“An eruption, Harry.”

“An eruption,” I gasped. “We are, then, in the volcanic shaft of a crater in full action and vigor.”

“I have every reason to think so,” said the Professor in a smiling tone, “and I beg to tell you that it is the most fortunate thing that could happen to us.”

The most fortunate thing! Had my uncle really and truly gone mad? What did he mean by these awful words—what did he mean by this terrible calm, this solemn smile?

“What!” cried I, in the height of my exasperation, “we are on the way to an eruption, are we? Fatality has cast us into a well of burning and boiling lava, of rocks on fire, of boiling water, in a word, filled with every kind of eruptive matter? We are about to be expelled, thrown up, vomited, spit out of the interior of the earth, in common with huge blocks of granite, with showers of cinders and scoriae, in a wild whirlwind of flame, and you say—the most fortunate thing which could happen to us.”

“Yes,” replied the Professor, looking at me calmly from under his spectacles, “it is the only chance which remains to us of ever escaping from the interior of the earth to the light of day.”

It is quite impossible that I can put on paper the thousand strange, wild thoughts which followed this extraordinary announcement.

But my uncle was right, quite right, and never had he appeared to me so audacious and so convinced as when he looked me calmly in the face and spoke of the chances of an eruption—of our being cast upon Mother Earth once more through the gaping crater of a volcano!

Nevertheless, while we were speaking we were still ascending; we passed the whole night going up, or to speak more scientifically, in an ascensional motion. The fearful noise redoubled; I was ready to suffocate. I seriously believed that my last hour was approaching, and yet, so strange is imagination, all I thought of was some childish hypothesis or other. In such circumstances you do not choose your own thoughts. They overcome you.

It was quite evident that we were being cast upwards by eruptive matter; under the raft there was a mass of boiling water, and under this was a heavier mass of lava, and an aggregate of rocks which, on reaching the summit of the water, would be dispersed in every direction.

That we were inside the chimney of a volcano there could no longer be the shadow of a doubt. Nothing more terrible could be conceived!

But on this occasion, instead of Sneffels, an old and extinct volcano, we were inside a mountain of fire in full activity. Several times I found myself asking, what mountain was it, and on what part of the world we should be shot out. As if it were of any consequence!

In the northern regions, there could be no reasonable doubt about that. Before it went decidedly mad, the compass had never made the slightest mistake. From the cape of Saknussemm, we had been swept away to the northward many hundreds of leagues. Now the question was, were we once more under Iceland—should we be belched forth on to the earth through the crater of Mount Hecla, or should we reappear through one of the other seven fire funnels of the island? Taking in my mental vision a radius of five hundred leagues to the westward, I could see under this parallel only the little-known volcanoes of the northwest coast of America.

To the east one only existed somewhere about the eightieth degree of latitude, the Esk, upon the island of Jan Mayen, not far from the frozen regions of Spitsbergen.

It was not craters that were wanting, and many of them were big enough to vomit a whole army; all I wished to know was the particular one towards which we were making with such fearful velocity.

I often think now of my folly: as if I should ever have expected to escape!

Towards morning, the ascending motion became greater and greater. If the degree of heat increased instead of decreasing, as we approached the surface of the earth, it was simply because the causes were local and wholly due to volcanic influence. Our very style of locomotion left in my mind no doubt upon the subject. An enormous force, a force of several hundreds of atmospheres produced by the vapors accumulated and long compressed in the interior of the earth, was hoisting us upwards with irresistible power.

But though we were approaching the light of day, to what fearful dangers were we about to be exposed?

Instant death appeared the only fate which we could expect or contemplate.

Soon a dim, sepulchral light penetrated the vertical gallery, which became wider and wider. I could make out to the right and left long dark corridors like immense tunnels, from which awful and horrid vapors poured out. Tongues of fire, sparkling and crackling, appeared about to lick us up.

The hour had come!

“Look, Uncle, look!” I cried.

“Well, what you see are the great sulphurous flames. Nothing more common in connection with an eruption.”

“But if they lap us round!” I angrily replied.

“They will not lap us round,” was his quiet and serene answer.

“But it will be all the same in the end if they stifle us,” I cried.

“We shall not be stifled. The gallery is rapidly becoming wider and wider, and if it be necessary, we will presently leave the raft and take refuge in some fissure in the rock.”

“But the water, the water, which is continually ascending?” I despairingly replied.

“There is no longer any water, Harry,” he answered, “but a kind of lava paste, which is heaving us up, in company with itself, to the mouth of the crater.”

In truth, the liquid column of water had wholly disappeared to give place to dense masses of boiling eruptive matter. The temperature was becoming utterly insupportable, and a thermometer exposed to this atmosphere would have marked between one hundred and eighty-nine and one hundred ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

Perspiration rushed from every pore. But for the extraordinary rapidity of our ascent we should have been stifled.

Nevertheless, the Professor did not carry out his proposition of abandoning the raft; and he did quite wisely. Those few ill-joined beams offered, anyway, a solid surface—a support which elsewhere must have utterly failed us.

Towards eight o’clock in the morning a new incident startled us. The ascensional movement suddenly ceased. The raft became still and motionless.

“What is the matter now?” I said, querulously, very much startled by this change.

“A simple halt,” replied my uncle.

“Is the eruption about to fail?” I asked.

“I hope not.”

Without making any reply, I rose. I tried to look around me. Perhaps the raft, checked by some projecting rock, opposed a momentary resistance to the eruptive mass. In this case, it was absolutely necessary to release it as quickly as possible.

Nothing of the kind had occurred. The column of cinders, of scoriae, of broken rocks and earth, had wholly ceased to ascend.

“I tell you, Uncle, that the eruption has stopped,” was my oracular decision.

“Ah,” said my uncle, “you think so, my boy. You are wrong. Do not be in the least alarmed; this sudden moment of calm will not last long, be assured. It has already endured five minutes, and before we are many minutes older we shall be continuing our journey to the mouth of the crater.”

All the time he was speaking the Professor continued to consult his chronometer, and he was probably right in his prognostics. Soon the raft resumed its motion, in a very rapid and disorderly way, which lasted two minutes or thereabout; and then again it stopped as suddenly as before.

“Good,” said my uncle, observing the hour, “in ten we shall start again.”

“In ten minutes?”

“Yes—precisely. We have to do with a volcano, the eruption of which is intermittent. We are compelled to breathe just as it does.”

Nothing could be more true. At the exact minute he had indicated, we were again launched on high with extreme rapidity. Not to be cast off the raft, it was necessary to hold on to the beams. Then the hoist again ceased.

Many times since have I thought of this singular phenomenon without being able to find for it any satisfactory explanation. Nevertheless, it appeared quite clear to me, that we were not in the principal chimney of the volcano, but in an accessory conduit, where we felt the counter shock of the great and principal tunnel filled by burning lava.

It is impossible for me to say how many times this maneuver was repeated. All that I can remember is, that on every ascensional motion, we were hoisted up with ever increasing velocity, as if we had been launched from a huge projectile. During the sudden halts we were nearly stifled; during the moments of projection the hot air took away our breath.

I thought for a moment of the voluptuous joy of suddenly finding myself in the hyperborean regions with the cold thirty degrees below zero!

My exalted imagination pictured to itself the vast snowy plains of the arctic regions, and I was impatient to roll myself on the icy carpet of the North Pole.

By degrees my head, utterly overcome by a series of violent emotions, began to give way to hallucination. I was delirious. Had it not been for the powerful arms of Hans, the guide, I should have broken my head against the granite masses of the shaft.

I have, in consequence, kept no account of what followed for many hours. I have a vague and confused remembrance of continual detonations, of the shaking of the huge granitic mass, and of the raft going round like a spinning top. It floated on the stream of hot lava, amidst a falling cloud of cinders. The huge flames roaring, wrapped us around.

A storm of wind which appeared to be cast forth from an immense ventilator roused up the interior fires of the earth. It was a hot, incandescent blast!

At last I saw the figure of Hans as if enveloped in the huge halo of burning blaze, and no other sense remained to me but that sinister dread which the condemned victim may be supposed to feel when led to the mouth of a cannon, at the supreme moment when the shot is fired and his limbs are dispersed into empty space.

CHAPTER 43

DAYLIGHT AT LAST

When I opened my eyes I felt the hand of the guide clutching me firmly by the belt. With his other hand he supported my uncle. I was not grievously wounded, but bruised all over in the most remarkable manner.

After a moment I looked around, and found that I was lying down on the slope of a mountain not two yards from a yawning gulf into which I should have fallen had I made the slightest false step. Hans had saved me from death, while I rolled insensible on the flanks of the crater.

“Where are we?” dreamily asked my uncle, who literally appeared to be disgusted at having returned to earth.

The eider-down hunter simply shrugged his shoulders as a mark of total ignorance.

“In Iceland?” said I, not positively but interrogatively.

“Nej,” said Hans.

“How do you mean?” cried the Professor; “no—what are your reasons?”

“Hans is wrong,” said I, rising.

After all the innumerable surprises of this journey, a yet more singular one was reserved to us. I expected to see a cone covered by snow, by extensive and widespread glaciers, in the midst of the arid deserts of the extreme northern regions, beneath the full rays of a polar sky, beyond the highest latitudes.

But contrary to all our expectations, I, my uncle, and the Icelander, were cast upon the slope of a mountain calcined by the burning rays of a sun which was literally baking us with its fires.

I could not believe my eyes, but the actual heat which affected my body allowed me no chance of doubting. We came out of the crater half naked, and the radiant star from which we had asked nothing for two months, was good enough to be prodigal to us of light and warmth—a light and warmth we could easily have dispensed with.

When our eyes were accustomed to the light we had lost sight of so long, I used them to rectify the errors of my imagination. Whatever happened, we should have been at Spitsbergen, and I was in no humor to yield to anything but the most absolute proof.

After some delay, the Professor spoke.

“Hem!” he said, in a hesitating kind of way, “it really does not look like Iceland.”

“But supposing it were the island of Jan Mayen?” I ventured to observe.

“Not in the least, my boy. This is not one of the volcanoes of the north, with its hills of granite and its crown of snow.”

“Nevertheless—”

“Look, look, my boy,” said the Professor, as dogmatically as usual.

Right above our heads, at a great height, opened the crater of a volcano from which escaped, from one quarter of an hour to the other, with a very loud explosion, a lofty jet of flame mingled with pumice stone, cinders, and lava. I could feel the convulsions of nature in the mountain, which breathed like a huge whale, throwing up from time to time fire and air through its enormous vents.

Below, and floating along a slope of considerable angularity, the stream of eruptive matter spread away to a depth which did not give the volcano a height of three hundred fathoms.

Its base disappeared in a perfect forest of green trees, among which I perceived olives, fig trees, and vines loaded with rich grapes.

Certainly this was not the ordinary aspect of the arctic regions. About that there could not be the slightest doubt.

When the eye was satisfied at its glimpse of this verdant expanse, it fell upon the waters of a lovely sea or beautiful lake, which made of this enchanted land an island of not many leagues in extent.

On the side of the rising sun was to be seen a little port, crowded with houses, and near which the boats and vessels of peculiar build were floating upon azure waves.

Beyond, groups of islands rose above the liquid plain, so numerous and close together as to resemble a vast beehive.

Towards the setting sun, some distant shores were to be made out on the edge of the horizon. Some presented the appearance of blue mountains of harmonious conformation; upon others, much more distant, there appeared a prodigiously lofty cone, above the summit of which hung dark and heavy clouds.

Towards the north, an immense expanse of water sparkled beneath the solar rays, occasionally allowing the extremity of a mast or the convexity of a sail bellying to the wind, to be seen.

The unexpected character of such a scene added a hundredfold to its marvelous beauties.

“Where can we be?” I asked, speaking in a low and solemn voice.

Hans shut his eyes with an air of indifference, and my uncle looked on without clearly understanding.

“Whatever this mountain may be,” he said, at last, “I must confess it is rather warm. The explosions do not leave off, and I do not think it is worthwhile to have left the interior of a volcano and remain here to receive a huge piece of rock upon one’s head. Let us carefully descend the mountain and discover the real state of the case. To confess the truth, I am dying of hunger and thirst.”

Decidedly the Professor was no longer a truly reflective character. For myself, forgetting all my necessities, ignoring my fatigues and sufferings, I should have remained still for several hours longer—but it was necessary to follow my companions.

The slope of the volcano was very steep and slippery; we slid over piles of ashes, avoiding the streams of hot lava which glided about like fiery serpents. Still, while we were advancing, I spoke with extreme volubility, for my imagination was too full not to explode in words.

“We are in Asia!” I exclaimed; “we are on the coast of India, in the great Malay islands, in the centre of Oceania. We have crossed the one half of the globe to come out right at the antipodes of Europe!”

“But the compass!” exclaimed my uncle; “explain that to me!”

“Yes—the compass,” I said with considerable hesitation. “I grant that is a difficulty. According to it, we have always been going northward.”

“Then it lied.”

“Hem—to say it lied is rather a harsh word,” was my answer.

“Then we are at the North Pole—”

“The Pole—no—well—well I give it up,” was my reply.

The plain truth was, that there was no explanation possible. I could make nothing of it.

And all the while we were approaching this beautiful verdure, hunger and thirst tormented me fearfully. Happily, after two long hours’ march, a beautiful country spread out before us, covered by olives, pomegranates, and vines, which appeared to belong to anybody and everybody. In any event, in the state of destitution into which we had fallen, we were not in a mood to ponder too scrupulously.

What delight it was to press these delicious fruits to our lips, and to bite at grapes and pomegranates fresh from the vine.

Not far off, near some fresh and mossy grass, under the delicious shade of some trees, I discovered a spring of fresh water, in which we voluptuously laved our faces, hands, and feet.

While we were all giving way to the delights of new-found pleasures, a little child appeared between two tufted olive trees.

“Ah,” cried I, “an inhabitant of this happy country.”

The little fellow was poorly dressed, weak, and suffering, and appeared terribly alarmed at our appearance. Half-naked, with tangled, matted and ragged beards, we did look supremely ill-favored; and unless the country was a bandit land, we were not likely to alarm the inhabitants!

Just as the boy was about to take to his heels, Hans ran after him, and brought him back, despite his cries and kicks.

My uncle tried to look as gentle as possible, and then spoke in German.

“What is the name of this mountain, my friend?”

The child made no reply.

“Good,” said my uncle, with a very positive air of conviction, “we are not in Germany.”

He then made the same demand in English, of which language he was an excellent scholar.

The child shook its head and made no reply. I began to be considerably puzzled.

“Is he dumb?” cried the Professor, who was rather proud of his polyglot knowledge of languages, and made the same demand in French.

The boy only stared in his face.

“I must perforce try him in Italian,” said my uncle, with a shrug.

“Dove noi siamo?”

“Yes, tell me where we are?” I added impatiently and eagerly.

Again the boy remained silent.

“My fine fellow, do you or do you not mean to speak?” cried my uncle, who began to get angry. He shook him, and spoke another dialect of the Italian language.

“Come si noma questa isola?”—“What is the name of this island?”

“Stromboli,” replied the rickety little shepherd, dashing away from Hans and disappearing in the olive groves.

We thought little enough about him.

Stromboli! What effect on the imagination did these few words produce! We were in the centre of the Mediterranean, amidst the eastern archipelago of mythological memory, in the ancient Strongylos, where AEolus kept the wind and the tempest chained up. And those blue mountains, which rose towards the rising sun, were the mountains of Calabria.

And that mighty volcano which rose on the southern horizon was Etna, the fierce and celebrated Etna!

“Stromboli! Stromboli!” I repeated to myself.

My uncle played a regular accompaniment to my gestures and words. We were singing together like an ancient chorus.

Ah—what a journey—what a marvelous and extraordinary journey! Here we had entered the earth by one volcano, and we had come out by another. And this other was situated more than twelve hundred leagues from Sneffels from that drear country of Iceland cast away on the confines of the earth. The wondrous changes of this expedition had transported us to the most harmonious and beautiful of earthly lands. We had abandoned the region of eternal snows for that of infinite verdure, and had left over our heads the gray fog of the icy regions to come back to the azure sky of Sicily!

After a delicious repast of fruits and fresh water, we again continued our journey in order to reach the port of Stromboli. To say how we had reached the island would scarcely have been prudent. The superstitious character of the Italians would have been at work, and we should have been called demons vomited from the infernal regions. It was therefore necessary to pass for humble and unfortunate shipwrecked travelers. It was certainly less striking and romantic, but it was decidedly safer.

As we advanced, I could hear my worthy uncle muttering to himself:

“But the compass. The compass most certainly marked north. This is a fact I cannot explain in any way.”

“Well, the fact is,” said I, with an air of disdain, “we must not explain anything. It will be much more easy.”

“I should like to see a professor of the Johanneum Institution who is unable to explain a cosmic phenomenon—it would indeed be strange.”

And speaking thus, my uncle, half-naked, his leathern purse round his loins, and his spectacles upon his nose, became once more the terrible Professor of Mineralogy.

An hour after leaving the wood of olives, we reached the fort of San Vicenza, where Hans demanded the price of his thirteenth week of service. My uncle paid him, with very many warm shakes of the hand.

At that moment, if he did not indeed quite share our natural emotion, he allowed his feelings so far to give way as to indulge in an extraordinary expression for him.

With the tips of two fingers he gently pressed our hands and smiled.

CHAPTER 44

THE JOURNEY ENDED

This is the final conclusion of a narrative which will be probably disbelieved even by people who are astonished at nothing. I am, however, armed at all points against human incredulity.

We were kindly received by the Strombolite fishermen, who treated us as shipwrecked travelers. They gave us clothes and food. After a delay of forty-eight hours, on the 30th of September a little vessel took us to Messina, where a few days of delightful and complete repose restored us to ourselves.

On Friday, the 4th of October, we embarked in the Volturne, one of the postal packets of the Imperial Messageries of France; and three days later we landed at Marseilles, having no other care on our minds but that of our precious but erratic compass. This inexplicable circumstance tormented me terribly. On the 9th of October, in the evening, we reached Hamburg.

What was the astonishment of Martha, what the joy of Gretchen! I will not attempt to define it.

“Now then, Harry, that you really are a hero,” she said, “there is no reason why you should ever leave me again.”

I looked at her. She was weeping tears of joy.

I leave it to be imagined if the return of Professor Hardwigg made or did not make a sensation in Hamburg. Thanks to the indiscretion of Martha, the news of his departure for the interior of the earth had been spread over the whole world.

No one would believe it—and when they saw him come back in safety they believed it all the less.

But the presence of Hans and many stray scraps of information by degrees modified public opinion.

Then my uncle became a great man and I the nephew of a great man, which, at all events, is something. Hamburg gave a festival in our honor. A public meeting of the Johanneum Institution was held, at which the Professor related the whole story of his adventures, omitting only the facts in connection with the compass.

That same day he deposited in the archives of the town the document he had found written by Saknussemm, and he expressed his great regret that circumstances, stronger than his will, did not allow him to follow the Icelandic traveler’s track into the very centre of the earth. He was modest in his glory, but his reputation only increased.

So much honor necessarily created for him many envious enemies. Of course they existed, and as his theories, supported by certain facts, contradicted the system of science upon the question of central heat, he maintained his own views both with pen and speech against the learned of every country. Although I still believe in the theory of central heat, I confess that certain circumstances, hitherto very ill defined, may modify the laws of such natural phenomena.

At the moment when these questions were being discussed with interest, my uncle received a rude shock—one that he felt very much. Hans, despite everything he could say to the contrary, quitted Hamburg; the man to whom we owed so much would not allow us to pay our deep debt of gratitude. He was taken with nostalgia; a love for his Icelandic home.

“Farval,” said he, one day, and with this one short word of adieu, he started for Reykjavik, which he soon reached in safety.

We were deeply attached to our brave eider-duck hunter. His absence will never cause him to be forgotten by those whose lives he saved, and I hope, at some not distant day, to see him again.

To conclude, I may say that our journey into the interior of the earth created an enormous sensation throughout the civilized world. It was translated and printed in many languages. All the leading journals published extracts from it, which were commentated, discussed, attacked, and supported with equal animation by those who believed in its episodes, and by those who were utterly incredulous.

Wonderful! My uncle enjoyed during his lifetime all the glory he deserved; and he was even offered a large sum of money, by Mr. Barnum, to exhibit himself in the United States; while I am credibly informed by a traveler that he is to be seen in waxwork at Madame Tussaud’s!

But one care preyed upon his mind, a care which rendered him very unhappy. One fact remained inexplicable—that of the compass. For a learned man to be baffled by such an inexplicable phenomenon was very aggravating. But Heaven was merciful, and in the end my uncle was happy.

One day, while he put some minerals belonging to his collection in order, I fell upon the famous compass and examined it keenly.

For six months it had lain unnoticed and untouched.

I looked at it with curiosity, which soon became surprise. I gave a loud cry. The Professor, who was at hand, soon joined me.

“What is the matter?” he cried.

“The compass!”

“What then?”

“Why its needle points to the south and not to the north.”

“My dear boy, you must be dreaming.”

“I am not dreaming. See—the poles are changed.”

“Changed!”

My uncle put on his spectacles, examined the instrument, and leaped with joy, shaking the whole house.

A clear light fell upon our minds.

“Here it is!” he cried, as soon as he had recovered the use of his speech, “after we had once passed Cape Saknussemm, the needle of this compass pointed to the southward instead of the northward.”

“Evidently.”

“Our error is now easily explained. But to what phenomenon do we owe this alteration in the needle?”

“Nothing more simple.”

“Explain yourself, my boy. I am on thorns.”

“During the storm, upon the Central Sea, the ball of fire which made a magnet of the iron in our raft, turned our compass topsy-turvy.”

“Ah!” cried the Professor, with a loud and ringing laugh, “it was a trick of that inexplicable electricity.”

From that hour my uncle was the happiest of learned men, and I the happiest of ordinary mortals. For my pretty Virland girl, abdicating her position as ward, took her place in the house in the Konigstrasse in the double quality of niece and wife.

We need scarcely mention that her uncle was the illustrious Professor Hardwigg, corresponding member of all the scientific, geographical, mineralogical, and geological societies of the five parts of the globe.

End of the Voyage Extraordinaire

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, by Rudyard Kipling

“Brother to a Prince and fellow to a beggar if he be found worthy.”

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near to kinship with what might have been a veritable King and was promised the reversion of a Kingdom— army, law-courts, revenue and policy all complete. But, to-day, I greatly fear that my King is dead, and if I want a crown I must go and hunt it for myself.

The beginning of everything was in a railway train upon the road to Mhow from Ajmir. There had been a deficit in the Budget, which necessitated travelling, not Second-class, which is only half as dear as First-class, but by Intermediate, which is very awful indeed. There are no cushions in the Intermediate class, and the population are either Intermediate, which is Eurasian, or native, which for a long night journey is nasty; or Loafer, which is amusing though intoxicated. Intermediates do not patronize refreshment-rooms. They carry their food in bundles and pots, and buy sweets from the native sweetmeat-sellers, and drink the roadside water. That is why in the hot weather Intermediates are taken out of the carriages dead, and in all weathers are most properly looked down upon.

My particular Intermediate happened to be empty till I reached Nasirabad, when a huge gentleman in shirt-sleeves entered, and, following the custom of Intermediates, passed the time of day. He was a wanderer and a vagabond like myself, but with an educated taste for whiskey. He told tales of things he had seen and done, of out-of-the-way corners of the Empire into which he had penetrated, and of adventures in which he risked his life for a few days’food. “If India was filled with men like you and me, not knowing more than the crows where they’d get their next day’s rations, it isn’t seventy millions of revenue the land would be paying—it’s seven hundred million,”said he; and as I looked at his mouth and chin I was disposed to agree with him. We talked politics—the politics of Loaferdom that sees things from the underside where the lath and plaster is not smoothed off—and we talked postal arrangements because my friend wanted to send a telegram back from the next station to Ajmir, which is the turning-off place from the Bombay to the Mhow line as you travel westward. My friend had no money beyond eight annas which he wanted for dinner, and I had no money at all, owing to the hitch in the Budget before mentioned. Further, I was going into a wilderness where, though I should resume touch with the Treasury, there were no telegraph offices. I was, therefore, unable to help him in any way.

“We might threaten a Station-master, and make him send a wire on tick,” said my friend, “but that’d mean inquiries for you and for me, and I’ve got my hands full these days. Did you say you are travelling back along this line within any days?”

“Within ten,” I said.

“Can’t you make it eight?” said he.“Mine is rather urgent business.”

“I can send your telegram within ten days if that will serve you,” I said.

“I couldn’t trust the wire to fetch him now I think of it. It’s this way. He leaves Delhi on the 23d for Bombay. That means he’ll be running through Ajmir about the night of the 23d.”

“But I’m going into the Indian Desert,” I explained.

“Well and good,” said he. “You’ll be changing at Marwar Junction to get into Jodhpore territory—you must do that—and he’ll be coming through Marwar Junction in the early morning of the 24th by the Bombay Mail. Can you be at Marwar Junction on that time?’Twon’t be inconveniencing you because I know that there’s precious few pickings to be got out of these Central India States—even though you pretend to be correspondent of the Backwoodsman.”

“Have you ever tried that trick?” I asked.

“Again and again, but the Residents find you out, and then you get escorted to the Border before you’ve time to get your knife into them. But about my friend here. I must give him a word o’ mouth to tell him what’s come to me or else he won’t know where to go. I would take it more than kind of you if you was to come out of Central India in time to catch him at Marwar Junction, and say to him:— ‘He has gone South for the week.’ He’ll know what that means. He’s a big man with a red beard, and a great swell he is. You’ll find him sleeping like a gentleman with all his luggage round him in a second-class compartment. But don’t you be afraid. Slip down the window, and say:— ‘He has gone South for the week,’ and he’ll tumble. It’s only cutting your time of stay in those parts by two days. I ask you as a stranger—going to the West,” he said with emphasis.

“Where have you come from?” said I.

“From the East,” said he, “and I am hoping that you will give him the message on the Square—for the sake of my Mother as well as your own.”

Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their mothers, but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, I saw fit to agree.

“It’s more than a little matter,” said he,“and that’s why I ask you to do it—and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep in it. You’ll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want.”

“I’ll give the message if I catch him,” I said, “and for the sake of your Mother as well as mine I’ll give you a word of advice. Don’t try to run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the Backwoodsman. There’s a real one knocking about here, and it might lead to trouble.”

“Thank you,” said he simply, “and when will the swine be gone? I can’t starve because he’s ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the Degumber Rajah down here about his father’s widow, and give him a jump.”

“What did he do to his father’s widow, then?”

“Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung from a beam. I found that out myself and I’m the only man that would dare going into the State to get hush-money for it. They’ll try to poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there. But you’ll give the man at Marwar Junction my message?”

He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard, more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne, or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end of the year to the other. Native States were created by Providence in order to supply picturesque scenery, tigers and tall-writing. They are the dark places of the earth, full of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver. Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from a plate made of a flapjack, and drank the running water, and slept under the same rug as my servant. It was all in a day’s work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native managed railway runs to Jodhpore. The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar. She arrived as I got in, and I had just time to hurry to her platform and go down the carriages. There was only one second-class on the train. I slipped the window and looked down upon a flaming red beard, half covered by a railway rug. That was my man, fast asleep, and I dug him gently in the ribs. He woke with a grunt and I saw his face in the light of the lamps. It was a great and shining face.

“Tickets again?” said he.

“No,” said I. “I am to tell you that he is gone South for the week. He is gone South for the week!”

The train had begun to move out. The red man rubbed his eyes.“He has gone South for the week,” he repeated.“Now that’s just like his impudence. Did he say that I was to give you anything?—’Cause I won’t.”

“He didn’t,” I said and dropped away, and watched the red lights die out in the dark. It was horribly cold because the wind was blowing off the sands. I climbed into my own train—not an Intermediate Carriage this time—and went to sleep.

If the man with the beard had given me a rupee I should have kept it as a memento of a rather curious affair. But the consciousness of having done my duty was my only reward.

Later on I reflected that two gentlemen like my friends could not do any good if they foregathered and personated correspondents of newspapers, and might, if they “stuck up” one of the little rat-trap states of Central India or Southern Rajputana, get themselves into serious difficulties. I therefore took some trouble to describe them as accurately as I could remember to people who would be interested in deporting them; and succeeded, so I was later informed, in having them headed back from the Degumber borders.

Then I became respectable, and returned to an Office where there were no Kings and no incidents except the daily manufacture of a newspaper. A newspaper office seems to attract every conceivable sort of person, to the prejudice of discipline. Zenana-mission ladies arrive, and beg that the Editor will instantly abandon all his duties to describe a Christian prize-giving in a back-slum of a perfectly inaccessible village; Colonels who have been overpassed for commands sit down and sketch the outline of a series of ten, twelve, or twenty-four leading articles on Seniority versus Selection; missionaries wish to know why they have not been permitted to escape from their regular vehicles of abuse and swear at a brother-missionary under special patronage of the editorial We; stranded theatrical companies troop up to explain that they cannot pay for their advertisements, but on their return from New Zealand or Tahiti will do so with interest; inventors of patent punkah-pulling machines, carriage couplings and unbreakable swords and axle-trees call with specifications in their pockets and hours at their disposal; tea-companies enter and elaborate their prospectuses with the office pens; secretaries of ball-committees clamor to have the glories of their last dance more fully expounded; strange ladies rustle in and say:— “I want a hundred lady’s cards printed at once, please,” which is manifestly part of an Editor’s duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires are saying,“You’re another,” and Mister Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black copy-boys are whining, “kaa-pi chayha-yeh” (copy wanted) like tired bees, and most of the paper is as blank as Modred’s shield.

But that is the amusing part of the year. There are other six months wherein none ever come to call, and the thermometer walks inch by inch up to the top of the glass, and the office is darkened to just above reading light, and the press machines are red-hot of touch, and nobody writes anything but accounts of amusements in the Hill-stations or obituary notices. Then the telephone becomes a tinkling terror, because it tells you of the sudden deaths of men and women that you knew intimately, and the prickly-heat covers you as with a garment, and you sit down and write:— “A slight increase of sickness is reported from the Khuda Janta Khan District. The outbreak is purely sporadic in its nature, and, thanks to the energetic efforts of the District authorities, is now almost at an end. It is, however, with deep regret we record the death, etc.”

Then the sickness really breaks out, and the less recording and reporting the better for the peace of the subscribers. But the Empires and the Kings continue to divert themselves as selfishly as before, and the foreman thinks that a daily paper really ought to come out once in twenty-four hours, and all the people at the Hill-stations in the middle of their amusements say:— “Good gracious! Why can’t the paper be sparkling? I’m sure there’s plenty going on up here.”

That is the dark half of the moon, and, as the advertisements say, “must be experienced to be appreciated.”

It was in that season, and a remarkably evil season, that the paper began running the last issue of the week on Saturday night, which is to say Sunday morning, after the custom of a London paper. This was a great convenience, for immediately after the paper was put to bed, the dawn would lower the thermometer from 96° to almost 84° for almost half an hour, and in that chill—you have no idea how cold is 84° on the grass until you begin to pray for it—a very tired man could set off to sleep ere the heat roused him.

One Saturday night it was my pleasant duty to put the paper to bed alone. A King or courtier or a courtesan or a community was going to die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water. The thing that was keeping us back, whatever it was, would not come off, though the loo dropped and the last type was set, and the whole round earth stood still in the choking heat, with its finger on its lip, to wait the event. I drowsed, and wondered whether the telegraph was a blessing, and whether this dying man, or struggling people, was aware of the inconvenience the delay was causing. There was no special reason beyond the heat and worry to make tension, but, as the clock-hands crept up to three o’clock and the machines spun their fly-wheels two and three times to see that all was in order, before I said the word that would set them off, I could have shrieked aloud.

Then the roar and rattle of the wheels shivered the quiet into little bits. I rose to go away, but two men in white clothes stood in front of me. The first one said:— “It’s him!” The second said—“So it is!” And they both laughed almost as loudly as the machinery roared, and mopped their foreheads. “We see there was a light burning across the road and we were sleeping in that ditch there for coolness, and I said to my friend here, the office is open. Let’s come along and speak to him as turned us back from the Degumber State,”said the smaller of the two. He was the man I had met in the Mhow train, and his fellow was the red-bearded man of Marwar Junction. There was no mistaking the eyebrows of the one or the beard of the other.

I was not pleased, because I wished to go to sleep, not to squabble with loafers. “What do you want?” I asked.

“Half an hour’s talk with you cool and comfortable, in the office,” said the red-bearded man. “We’d like some drink—the Contrack doesn’t begin yet, Peachey, so you needn’t look—but what we really want is advice. We don’t want money. We ask you as a favor, because you did us a bad turn about Degumber.”

I led from the press-room to the stifling office with the maps on the walls, and the red-haired man rubbed his hands.“That’s something like,” said he. “This was the proper shop to come to. Now, Sir, let me introduce to you Brother Peachey Carnehan, that’s him, and Brother Daniel Dravot, that is me, and the less said about our professions the better, for we have been most things in our time. Soldier, sailor, compositor, photographer, proof-reader, street-preacher, and correspondents of the Backwoodsman when we thought the paper wanted one. Carnehan is sober, and so am I. Look at us first and see that’s sure. It will save you cutting into my talk. We’ll take one of your cigars apiece, and you shall see us light.” I watched the test. The men were absolutely sober, so I gave them each a tepid peg.

“Well and good,” said Carnehan of the eyebrows, wiping the froth from his mustache. “Let me talk now, Dan. We have been all over India, mostly on foot. We have been boiler-fitters, engine-drivers, petty contractors, and all that, and we have decided that India isn’t big enough for such as us.”

They certainly were too big for the office. Dravot’s beard seemed to fill half the room and Carnehan’s shoulders the other half, as they sat on the big table. Carnehan continued:— “The country isn’t half worked out because they that governs it won’t let you touch it. They spend all their blessed time in governing it, and you can’t lift a spade, nor chip a rock, nor look for oil, nor anything like that without all the Government saying—‘Leave it alone and let us govern.’ Therefore, such as it is, we will let it alone, and go away to some other place where a man isn’t crowded and can come to his own. We are not little men, and there is nothing that we are afraid of except Drink, and we have signed a Contrack on that. Therefore, we are going away to be Kings.”

“Kings in our own right,” muttered Dravot.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “You’ve been tramping in the sun, and it’s a very warm night, and hadn’t you better sleep over the notion? Come to-morrow.”

“Neither drunk nor sunstruck,” said Dravot.“We have slept over the notion half a year, and require to see Books and Atlases, and we have decided that there is only one place now in the world that two strong men can Sar-a-whack. They call it Kafiristan. By my reckoning its the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan, not more than three hundred miles from Peshawar. They have two and thirty heathen idols there, and we’ll be the thirty-third. It’s a mountainous country, and the women of those parts are very beautiful.”

“But that is provided against in the Contrack,” said Carnehan. “Neither Women nor Liquor, Daniel.”

“And that’s all we know, except that no one has gone there, and they fight, and in any place where they fight a man who knows how to drill men can always be a King. We shall go to those parts and say to any King we find—‘D’ you want to vanquish your foes?’ and we will show him how to drill men; for that we know better than anything else. Then we will subvert that King and seize his Throne and establish a Dy-nasty.”

“You’ll be cut to pieces before you’re fifty miles across the Border,” I said. “You have to travel through Afghanistan to get to that country. It’s one mass of mountains and peaks and glaciers, and no Englishman has been through it. The people are utter brutes, and even if you reached them you couldn’t do anything.”

“That’s more like,” said Carnehan. “If you could think us a little more mad we would be more pleased. We have come to you to know about this country, to read a book about it, and to be shown maps. We want you to tell us that we are fools and to show us your books.” He turned to the book-cases.

“Are you at all in earnest?” I said.

“A little,” said Dravot, sweetly. “As big a map as you have got, even if it’s all blank where Kafiristan is, and any books you’ve got. We can read, though we aren’t very educated.”

I uncased the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map of India, and two smaller Frontier maps, hauled down volume INF-KAN of theEncyclopædia Britannica, and the men consulted them.

“See here!” said Dravot, his thumb on the map.“Up to Jagdallak, Peachey and me know the road. We was there with Roberts’s Army. We’ll have to turn off to the right at Jagdallak through Laghmann territory. Then we get among the hills—fourteen thousand feet—fifteen thousand—it will be cold work there, but it don’t look very far on the map.”

I handed him Wood on the Sources of the Oxus. Carnehan was deep in the Encyclopædia.

“They’re a mixed lot,” said Dravot, reflectively; “and it won’t help us to know the names of their tribes. The more tribes the more they’ll fight, and the better for us. From Jagdallak to Ashang. H’mm!”

“But all the information about the country is as sketchy and inaccurate as can be,” I protested. “No one knows anything about it really. Here’s the file of the United Services’ Institute. Read what Bellew says.”

“Blow Bellew!” said Carnehan. “Dan, they’re an all-fired lot of heathens, but this book here says they think they’re related to us English.”

I smoked while the men pored over Raverty, Wood, the maps and the Encyclopædia.

“There is no use your waiting,” said Dravot, politely. “It’s about four o’clock now. We’ll go before six o’clock if you want to sleep, and we won’t steal any of the papers. Don’t you sit up. We’re two harmless lunatics, and if you come, to-morrow evening, down to the Serai we’ll say good-by to you.”

“You are two fools,” I answered. “You’ll be turned back at the Frontier or cut up the minute you set foot in Afghanistan. Do you want any money or a recommendation down-country? I can help you to the chance of work next week.”

“Next week we shall be hard at work ourselves, thank you,” said Dravot. “It isn’t so easy being a King as it looks. When we’ve got our Kingdom in going order we’ll let you know, and you can come up and help us to govern it.”

“Would two lunatics make a Contrack like that!” said Carnehan, with subdued pride, showing me a greasy half-sheet of note-paper on which was written the following. I copied it, then and there, as a curiosity:—

This Contract between me and you persuing witnesseth in the name of God — Amen and so forth.

(One) That me and you will settle this matter together: i.e., to be Kings of Kafiristan.

(Two) That you and me will not while this matter is being settled, look at any Liquor, nor any Woman black, white or brown, so as to get mixed up with one or the other harmful.

(Three) That we conduct ourselves with Dignity and Discretion, and if one of us gets into trouble the other will stay by him.

Signed by you and me this day.

Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan.

Daniel Dravot.

Both Gentlemen at Large.

“There was no need for the last article,” said Carnehan, blushing modestly; “but it looks regular. Now you know the sort of men that loafers are — we are loafers, Dan, until we get out of India — and do you think that we could sign a Contrack like that unless we was in earnest? We have kept away from the two things that make life worth having.”

“You won’t enjoy your lives much longer if you are going to try this idiotic adventure. Don’t set the office on fire,” I said, “and go away before nine o’clock.”

I left them still poring over the maps and making notes on the back of the “Contrack.” “Be sure to come down to the Serai to-morrow,” were their parting words.

The Kumharsen Serai is the great four-square sink of humanity where the strings of camels and horses from the North load and unload. All the nationalities of Central Asia may be found there, and most of the folk of India proper. Balkh and Bokhara there meet Bengal and Bombay, and try to draw eye-teeth. You can buy ponies, turquoises, Persian pussy-cats, saddle-bags, fat-tailed sheep and musk in the Kumharsen Serai, and get many strange things for nothing. In the afternoon I went down there to see whether my friends intended to keep their word or were lying about drunk.

A priest attired in fragments of ribbons and rags stalked up to me, gravely twisting a child’s paper whirligig. Behind him was his servant, bending under the load of a crate of mud toys. The two were loading up two camels, and the inhabitants of the Serai watched them with shrieks of laughter.

“The priest is mad,” said a horse-dealer to me.“He is going up to Kabul to sell toys to the Amir. He will either be raised to honor or have his head cut off. He came in here this morning and has been behaving madly ever since.”

“The witless are under the protection of God,”stammered a flat-cheeked Usbeg in broken Hindi. “They foretell future events.”

“Would they could have foretold that my caravan would have been cut up by the Shinwaris almost within shadow of the Pass!” grunted the Eusufzai agent of a Rajputana trading-house whose goods had been feloniously diverted into the hands of other robbers just across the Border, and whose misfortunes were the laughing-stock of the bazar.“Ohé, priest, whence come you and whither do you go?”

“From Roum have I come,” shouted the priest, waving his whirligig; “from Roum, blown by the breath of a hundred devils across the sea! O thieves, robbers, liars, the blessing of Pir Khan on pigs, dogs, and perjurers! Who will take the Protected of God to the North to sell charms that are never still to the Amir? The camels shall not gall, the sons shall not fall sick, and the wives shall remain faithful while they are away, of the men who give me place in their caravan. Who will assist me to slipper the King of the Roos with a golden slipper with a silver heel? The protection of Pir Kahn be upon his labors!” He spread out the skirts of his gaberdine and pirouetted between the lines of tethered horses.

“There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days, Huzrut,” said the Eusufzai trader. “My camels go therewith. Do thou also go and bring us good luck.”

“I will go even now!” shouted the priest. “I will depart upon my winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir Khan,” he yelled to his servant “drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own.”

He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and turning round to me, cried:—

“Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee a charm—an amulet that shall make thee King of Kafiristan.”

Then the light broke upon me, and I followed the two camels out of the Serai till we reached open road and the priest halted.

“What d’ you think o’ that?” said he in English. “Carnehan can’t talk their patter, so I’ve made him my servant. He makes a handsome servant.’Tisn’t for nothing that I’ve been knocking about the country for fourteen years. Didn’t I do that talk neat? We’ll hitch on to a caravan at Peshawar till we get to Jagdallak, and then we’ll see if we can get donkeys for our camels, and strike into Kafiristan. Whirligigs for the Amir, O Lor! Put your hand under the camel-bags and tell me what you feel.”

I felt the butt of a Martini, and another and another.

“Twenty of ’em,” said Dravot, placidly.

“Twenty of ’em, and ammunition to correspond, under the whirligigs and the mud dolls.”

“Heaven help you if you are caught with those things!” I said. “A Martini is worth her weight in silver among the Pathans.”

“Fifteen hundred rupees of capital—every rupee we could beg, borrow, or steal—are invested on these two camels,” said Dravot. “We won’t get caught. We’re going through the Khaiber with a regular caravan. Who’d touch a poor mad priest?”

“Have you got everything you want?” I asked, overcome with astonishment.

“Not yet, but we shall soon. Give us a momento of your kindness, Brother. You did me a service yesterday, and that time in Marwar. Half my Kingdom shall you have, as the saying is.” I slipped a small charm compass from my watch-chain and handed it up to the priest.

“Good-by,” said Dravot, giving me his hand cautiously. “It’s the last time we’ll shake hands with an Englishman these many days. Shake hands with him, Carnehan,” he cried, as the second camel passed me.

Carnehan leaned down and shook hands. Then the camels passed away along the dusty road, and I was left alone to wonder. My eye could detect no failure in the disguises. The scene in the Serai attested that they were complete to the native mind. There was just the chance, therefore, that Carnehan and Dravot would be able to wander through Afghanistan without detection. But, beyond, they would find death, certain and awful death.

Ten days later a native friend of mine, giving me the news of the day from Peshawar, wound up his letter with:— “There has been much laughter here on account of a certain mad priest who is going in his estimation to sell petty gauds and insignificant trinkets which he ascribes as great charms to H. H. the Amir of Bokhara. He passed through Peshawar and associated himself to the Second Summer caravan that goes to Kabul. The merchants are pleased because through superstition they imagine that such mad fellows bring good-fortune.”

The two then, were beyond the Border. I would have prayed for them, but, that night, a real King died in Europe, and demanded an obituary notice.

The wheel of the world swings through the same phases again and again. Summer passed and winter thereafter, and came and passed again. The daily paper continued and I with it, and upon the third summer there fell a hot night, a night-issue, and a strained waiting for something to be telegraphed from the other side of the world, exactly as had happened before. A few great men had died in the past two years, the machines worked with more clatter, and some of the trees in the Office garden were a few feet taller. But that was all the difference.

I passed over to the press-room, and went through just such a scene as I have already described. The nervous tension was stronger than it had been two years before, and I felt the heat more acutely. At three o’clock I cried, “Print off,” and turned to go, when there crept to my chair what was left of a man. He was bent into a circle, his head was sunk between his shoulders, and he moved his feet one over the other like a bear. I could hardly see whether he walked or crawled—this rag-wrapped, whining cripple who addressed me by name, crying that he was come back. “Can you give me a drink?” he whimpered. “For the Lord’s sake, give me a drink!”

I went back to the office, the man following with groans of pain, and I turned up the lamp.

“Don’t you know me?” he gasped, dropping into a chair, and he turned his drawn face, surmounted by a shock of gray hair, to the light.

I looked at him intently. Once before had I seen eyebrows that met over the nose in an inch-broad black band, but for the life of me I could not tell where.

“I don’t know you,” I said, handing him the whiskey. “What can I do for you?”

He took a gulp of the spirit raw, and shivered in spite of the suffocating heat.

“I’ve come back,” he repeated; “and I was the King of Kafiristan—me and Dravot—crowned Kings we was! In this office we settled it—you setting there and giving us the books. I am Peachey—Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan, and you’ve been setting here ever since—O Lord!”

I was more than a little astonished, and expressed my feelings accordingly.

“It’s true,” said Carnehan, with a dry cackle, nursing his feet which were wrapped in rags. “True as gospel. Kings we were, with crowns upon our heads—me and Dravot—poor Dan—oh, poor, poor Dan, that would never take advice, not though I begged of him!”

“Take the whiskey,” I said, “and take your own time. Tell me all you can recollect of everything from beginning to end. You got across the border on your camels, Dravot dressed as a mad priest and you his servant. Do you remember that?”

“I ain’t mad—yet, but I will be that way soon. Of course I remember. Keep looking at me, or maybe my words will go all to pieces. Keep looking at me in my eyes and don’t say anything.”

I leaned forward and looked into his face as steadily as I could. He dropped one hand upon the table and I grasped it by the wrist. It was twisted like a bird’s claw, and upon the back was a ragged, red, diamond-shaped scar.

“No, don’t look there. Look at me,” said Carnehan.

“That comes afterwards, but for the Lord’s sake don’t distrack me. We left with that caravan, me and Dravot, playing all sorts of antics to amuse the people we were with. Dravot used to make us laugh in the evenings when all the people was cooking their dinners—cooking their dinners, and …what did they do then? They lit little fires with sparks that went into Dravot’s beard, and we all laughed—fit to die. Little red fires they was, going into Dravot’s big red beard—so funny.” His eyes left mine and he smiled foolishly.

“You went as far as Jagdallak with that caravan,” I said at a venture, “after you had lit those fires. To Jagdallak, where you turned off to try to get into Kafiristan.”

“No, we didn’t neither. What are you talking about? We turned off before Jagdallak, because we heard the roads was good. But they wasn’t good enough for our two camels—mine and Dravot’s. When we left the caravan, Dravot took off all his clothes and mine too, and said we would be heathen, because the Kafirs didn’t allow Mohammedans to talk to them. So we dressed betwixt and between, and such a sight as Daniel Dravot I never saw yet nor expect to see again. He burned half his beard, and slung a sheep-skin over his shoulder, and shaved his head into patterns. He shaved mine, too, and made me wear outrageous things to look like a heathen. That was in a most mountaineous country, and our camels couldn’t go along any more because of the mountains. They were tall and black, and coming home I saw them fight like wild goats—there are lots of goats in Kafiristan. And these mountains, they never keep still, no more than the goats. Always fighting they are, and don’t let you sleep at night.”

“Take some more whiskey,” I said, very slowly.“What did you and Daniel Dravot do when the camels could go no further because of the rough roads that led into Kafiristan?”

“What did which do? There was a party called Peachey Taliaferro Carnehan that was with Dravot. Shall I tell you about him? He died out there in the cold. Slap from the bridge fell old Peachey, turning and twisting in the air like a penny whirligig that you can sell to the Amir— No; they was two for three ha’pence, those whirligigs, or I am much mistaken and woful sore. And then these camels were no use, and Peachey said to Dravot—‘For the Lord’s sake, let’s get out of this before our heads are chopped off,’ and with that they killed the camels all among the mountains, not having anything in particular to eat, but first they took off the boxes with the guns and the ammunition, till two men came along driving four mules. Dravot up and dances in front of them, singing,—‘Sell me four mules.’ Says the first man,—‘If you are rich enough to buy, you are rich enough to rob;’ but before ever he could put his hand to his knife, Dravot breaks his neck over his knee, and the other party runs away. So Carnehan loaded the mules with the rifles that was taken off the camels, and together we starts forward into those bitter cold mountainous parts, and never a road broader than the back of your hand.”

He paused for a moment, while I asked him if he could remember the nature of the country through which he had journeyed.

“I am telling you as straight as I can, but my head isn’t as good as it might be. They drove nails through it to make me hear better how Dravot died. The country was mountainous and the mules were most contrary, and the inhabitants was dispersed and solitary. They went up and up, and down and down, and that other party Carnehan, was imploring of Dravot not to sing and whistle so loud, for fear of bringing down the tremenjus avalanches. But Dravot says that if a King couldn’t sing it wasn’t worth being King, and whacked the mules over the rump, and never took no heed for ten cold days. We came to a big level valley all among the mountains, and the mules were near dead, so we killed them, not having anything in special for them or us to eat. We sat upon the boxes, and played odd and even with the cartridges that was jolted out.

“Then ten men with bows and arrows ran down that valley, chasing twenty men with bows and arrows, and the row was tremenjus. They was fair men—fairer than you or me—with yellow hair and remarkable well built. Says Dravot, unpacking the guns—‘This is the beginning of the business. We’ll fight for the ten men,’ and with that he fires two rifles at the twenty men and drops one of them at two hundred yards from the rock where we was sitting. The other men began to run, but Carnehan and Dravot sits on the boxes picking them off at all ranges, up and down the valley. Then we goes up to the ten men that had run across the snow too, and they fires a footy little arrow at us. Dravot he shoots above their heads and they all falls down flat. Then he walks over them and kicks them, and then he lifts them up and shakes hands all around to make them friendly like. He calls them and gives them the boxes to carry, and waves his hand for all the world as though he was King already. They takes the boxes and him across the valley and up the hill into a pine wood on the top, where there was half a dozen big stone idols. Dravot he goes to the biggest—a fellow they call Imbra—and lays a rifle and a cartridge at his feet, rubbing his nose respectful with his own nose, patting him on the head, and saluting in front of it. He turns round to the men and nods his head, and says,—‘That’s all right. I’m in the know too, and these old jim-jams are my friends.’ Then he opens his mouth and points down it, and when the first man brings him food, he says—‘No;’ and when the second man brings him food, he says—‘No;’ but when one of the old priests and the boss of the village brings him food, he says—‘Yes;’ very haughty, and eats it slow. That was how we came to our first village, without any trouble, just as though we had tumbled from the skies. But we tumbled from one of those damned rope-bridges, you see, and you couldn’t expect a man to laugh much after that.”

“Take some more whiskey and go on,” I said.“That was the first village you came into. How did you get to be King?”

“I wasn’t King,” said Carnehan. “Dravot he was the King, and a handsome man he looked with the gold crown on his head and all. Him and the other party stayed in that village, and every morning Dravot sat by the side of old Imbra, and the people came and worshipped. That was Dravot’s order. Then a lot of men came into the valley, and Carnehan and Dravot picks them off with the rifles before they knew where they was, and runs down into the valley and up again the other side, and finds another village, same as the first one, and the people all falls down flat on their faces, and Dravot says,—‘Now what is the trouble between you two villages?’ and the people points to a woman, as fair as you or me, that was carried off, and Dravot takes her back to the first village and counts up the dead—eight there was. For each dead man Dravot pours a little milk on the ground and waves his arms like a whirligig and, ‘That’s all right,’ says he. Then he and Carnehan takes the big boss of each village by the arm and walks them down into the valley, and shows them how to scratch a line with a spear right down the valley, and gives each a sod of turf from both sides o’ the line. Then all the people comes down and shouts like the devil and all, and Dravot says,—‘Go and dig the land, and be fruitful and multiply,’ which they did, though they didn’t understand. Then we asks the names of things in their lingo—bread and water and fire and idols and such, and Dravot leads the priest of each village up to the idol, and says he must sit there and judge the people, and if anything goes wrong he is to be shot.

“Next week they was all turning up the land in the valley as quiet as bees and much prettier, and the priests heard all the complaints and told Dravot in dumb show what it was about.‘That’s just the beginning,’ says Dravot.‘They think we’re gods.’ He and Carnehan picks out twenty good men and shows them how to click off a rifle, and form fours, and advance in line, and they was very pleased to do so, and clever to see the hang of it. Then he takes out his pipe and his baccy-pouch and leaves one at one village, and one at the other, and off we two goes to see what was to be done in the next valley. That was all rock, and there was a little village there, and Carnehan says,—‘Send ’em to the old valley to plant,’ and takes ’em there and gives ’em some land that wasn’t took before. They were a poor lot, and we blooded ’em with a kid before letting ’em into the new Kingdom. That was to impress the people, and then they settled down quiet, and Carnehan went back to Dravot who had got into another valley, all snow and ice and most mountainous. There was no people there and the Army got afraid, so Dravot shoots one of them, and goes on till he finds some people in a village, and the Army explains that unless the people wants to be killed they had better not shoot their little matchlocks; for they had matchlocks. We makes friends with the priest and I stays there alone with two of the Army, teaching the men how to drill, and a thundering big Chief comes across the snow with kettledrums and horns twanging, because he heard there was a new god kicking about. Carnehan sights for the brown of the men half a mile across the snow and wings one of them. Then he sends a message to the Chief that, unless he wished to be killed, he must come and shake hands with me and leave his arms behind. The Chief comes alone first, and Carnehan shakes hands with him and whirls his arms about, same as Dravot used, and very much surprised that Chief was, and strokes my eyebrows. Then Carnehan goes alone to the Chief, and asks him in dumb show if he had an enemy he hated. ‘I have,’ says the Chief. So Carnehan weeds out the pick of his men, and sets the two of the Army to show them drill and at the end of two weeks the men can manœuvre about as well as Volunteers. So he marches with the Chief to a great big plain on the top of a mountain, and the Chiefs men rushes into a village and takes it; we three Martinis firing into the brown of the enemy. So we took that village too, and I gives the Chief a rag from my coat and says, ‘Occupy till I come’: which was scriptural. By way of a reminder, when me and the Army was eighteen hundred yards away, I drops a bullet near him standing on the snow, and all the people falls flat on their faces. Then I sends a letter to Dravot, wherever he be by land or by sea.”

At the risk of throwing the creature out of train I interrupted,—“How could you write a letter up yonder?”

“The letter?—Oh!—The letter! Keep looking at me between the eyes, please. It was a string-talk letter, that we’d learned the way of it from a blind beggar in the Punjab.”

I remember that there had once come to the office a blind man with a knotted twig and a piece of string which he wound round the twig according to some cypher of his own. He could, after the lapse of days or hours, repeat the sentence which he had reeled up. He had reduced the alphabet to eleven primitive sounds; and tried to teach me his method, but failed.

“I sent that letter to Dravot,” said Carnehan;“and told him to come back because this Kingdom was growing too big for me to handle, and then I struck for the first valley, to see how the priests were working. They called the village we took along with the Chief, Bashkai, and the first village we took, Er-Heb. The priest at Er-Heb was doing all right, but they had a lot of pending cases about land to show me, and some men from another village had been firing arrows at night. I went out and looked for that village and fired four rounds at it from a thousand yards. That used all the cartridges I cared to spend, and I waited for Dravot, who had been away two or three months, and I kept my people quiet.

“One morning I heard the devil’s own noise of drums and horns, and Dan Dravot marches down the hill with his Army and a tail of hundreds of men, and, which was the most amazing—a great gold crown on his head. ‘My Gord, Carnehan,’ says Daniel, ‘this is a tremenjus business, and we’ve got the whole country as far as it’s worth having. I am the son of Alexander by Queen Semiramis, and you’re my younger brother and a god too! It’s the biggest thing we’ve ever seen. I’ve been marching and fighting for six weeks with the Army, and every footy little village for fifty miles has come in rejoiceful; and more than that, I’ve got the key of the whole show, as you’ll see, and I’ve got a crown for you! I told ’em to make two of ’em at a place called Shu, where the gold lies in the rock like suet in mutton. Gold I’ve seen, and turquoise I’ve kicked out of the cliffs, and there’s garnets in the sands of the river, and here’s a chunk of amber that a man brought me. Call up all the priests and, here, take your crown.’

“One of the men opens a black hair bag and I slips the crown on. It was too small and too heavy, but I wore it for the glory. Hammered gold it was—five pound weight, like a hoop of a barrel.

“‘Peachey,’ says Dravot, ‘we don’t want to fight no more. The Craft’s the trick so help me!’ and he brings forward that same Chief that I left at Bashkai—Billy Fish we called him afterwards, because he was so like Billy Fish that drove the big tank-engine at Mach on the Bolan in the old days. ‘Shake hands with him,’ says Dravot, and I shook hands and nearly dropped, for Billy Fish gave me the Grip. I said nothing, but tried him with the Fellow Craft Grip. He answers, all right, and I tried the Master’s Grip, but that was a slip. ‘A Fellow Craft he is!’ I says to Dan. ‘Does he know the word?’ ‘He does,’says Dan, ‘and all the priests know. It’s a miracle! The Chiefs and the priest can work a Fellow Craft Lodge in a way that’s very like ours, and they’ve cut the marks on the rocks, but they don’t know the Third Degree, and they’ve come to find out. It’s Gord’s Truth. I’ve known these long years that the Afghans knew up to the Fellow Craft Degree, but this is a miracle. A god and a Grand-Master of the Craft am I, and a Lodge in the Third Degree I will open, and we’ll raise the head priests and the Chiefs of the villages.’

“‘It’s against all the law,’ I says,‘holding a Lodge without warrant from any one; and we never held office in any Lodge.’

“‘It’s a master-stroke of policy,’ says Dravot. ‘It means running the country as easy as a four-wheeled bogy on a down grade. We can’t stop to inquire now, or they’ll turn against us. I’ve forty Chiefs at my heel, and passed and raised according to their merit they shall be. Billet these men on the villages and see that we run up a Lodge of some kind. The temple of Imbra will do for the Lodge-room. The women must make aprons as you show them. I’ll hold a levee of Chiefs tonight and Lodge to-morrow.’

“I was fair rim off my legs, but I wasn’t such a fool as not to see what a pull this Craft business gave us. I showed the priests’ families how to make aprons of the degrees, but for Dravot’s apron the blue border and marks was made of turquoise lumps on white hide, not cloth. We took a great square stone in the temple for the Master’s chair, and little stones for the officers’ chairs, and painted the black pavement with white squares, and did what we could to make things regular.

“At the levee which was held that night on the hillside with big bonfires, Dravot gives out that him and me were gods and sons of Alexander, and Past Grand-Masters in the Craft, and was come to make Kafiristan a country where every man should eat in peace and drink in quiet, and specially obey us. Then the Chiefs come round to shake hands, and they was so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends. We gave them names according as they was like men we had known in India—Billy Fish, Holly Dilworth, Pikky Kergan that was Bazar-master when I was at Mhow, and so on, and so on.

“The most amazing miracle was at Lodge next night. One of the old priests was watching us continuous, and I felt uneasy, for I knew we’d have to fudge the Ritual, and I didn’t know what the men knew. The old priest was a stranger come in from beyond the village of Bashkai. The minute Dravot puts on the Master’s apron that the girls had made for him, the priest fetches a whoop and a howl, and tries to overturn the stone that Dravot was sitting on. ‘It’s all up now,’ I says.‘That comes of meddling with the Craft without warrant!’ Dravot never winked an eye, not when ten priests took and tilted over the Grand-Master’s chair—which was to say the stone of Imbra. The priest begins rubbing the bottom end of it to clear away the black dirt, and presently he shows all the other priests the Master’s Mark, same as was on Dravot’s apron, cut into the stone. Not even the priests of the temple of Imbra knew it was there. The old chap falls flat on his face at Dravot’s feet and kisses ’em. ‘Luck again,’ says Dravot, across the Lodge to me, ‘they say it’s the missing Mark that no one could understand the why of. We’re more than safe now.’ Then he bangs the butt of his gun for a gavel and says:— ‘By virtue of the authority vested in me by my own right hand and the help of Peachey, I declare myself Grand-Master of all Freemasonry in Kafiristan in this the Mother Lodge o’ the country, and King of Kafiristan equally with Peachey!’ At that he puts on his crown and I puts on mine—I was doing Senior Warden—and we opens the Lodge in most ample form. It was a amazing miracle! The priests moved in Lodge through the first two degrees almost without telling, as if the memory was coming back to them. After that, Peachey and Dravot raised such as was worthy—high priests and Chiefs of far-off villages. Billy Fish was the first, and I can tell you we scared the soul out of him. It was not in any way according to Ritual, but it served our turn. We didn’t raise more than ten of the biggest men because we didn’t want to make the Degree common. And they was clamoring to be raised.

“‘In another six months,’ says Dravot,‘we’ll hold another Communication and see how you are working.’ Then he asks them about their villages, and learns that they was fighting one against the other and were fair sick and tired of it. And when they wasn’t doing that they was fighting with the Mohammedans. ‘You can fight those when they come into our country,’ says Dravot. ‘Tell off every tenth man of your tribes for a Frontier guard, and send two hundred at a time to this valley to be drilled. Nobody is going to be shot or speared any more so long as he does well, and I know that you won’t cheat me because you’re white people—sons of Alexander—and not like common, black Mohammedans. You are my people and by God,’ says he, running off into English at the end—‘I’ll make a damned fine Nation of you, or I’ll die in the making!’

“I can’t tell all we did for the next six months because Dravot did a lot I couldn’t see the hang of, and he learned their lingo in a way I never could. My work was to help the people plough, and now and again to go out with some of the Army and see what the other villages were doing, and make ’em throw rope-bridges across the ravines which cut up the country horrid. Dravot was very kind to me, but when he walked up and down in the pine wood pulling that bloody red beard of his with both fists I knew he was thinking plans I could not advise him about, and I just waited for orders.

“But Dravot never showed me disrespect before the people. They were afraid of me and the Army, but they loved Dan. He was the best of friends with the priests and the Chiefs; but any one could come across the hills with a complaint and Dravot would hear him out fair, and call four priests together and say what was to be done. He used to call in Billy Fish from Bashkai, and Pikky Kergan from Shu, and an old Chief we called Kafuzelum—it was like enough to his real name—and hold councils with ’em when there was any fighting to be done in small villages. That was his Council of War, and the four priests of Bashkai, Shu, Khawak, and Madora was his Privy Council. Between the lot of ’em they sent me, with forty men and twenty rifles, and sixty men carrying turquoises, into the Ghorband country to buy those hand-made Martini rifles, that come out of the Amir’s workshops at Kabul, from one of the Amir’s Herati regiments that would have sold the very teeth out of their mouths for turquoises.

“I stayed in Ghorband a month, and gave the Governor the pick of my baskets for hush-money, and bribed the colonel of the regiment some more, and, between the two and the tribes-people, we got more than a hundred hand-made Martinis, a hundred good Kohat Jezails that’ll throw to six hundred yards, and forty manloads of very bad ammunition for the rifles. I came back with what I had, and distributed ’em among the men that the Chiefs sent in to me to drill. Dravot was too busy to attend to those things, but the old Army that we first made helped me, and we turned out five hundred men that could drill, and two hundred that knew how to hold arms pretty straight. Even those cork-screwed, hand-made guns was a miracle to them. Dravot talked big about powder-shops and factories, walking up and down in the pine wood when the winter was coming on.

“‘I won’t make a Nation,’ says he.‘I’ll make an Empire! These men aren’t niggers; they’re English! Look at their eyes—look at their mouths. Look at the way they stand up. They sit on chairs in their own houses. They’re the Lost Tribes, or something like it, and they’ve grown to be English. I’ll take a census in the spring if the priests don’t get frightened. There must be a fair two million of ’em in these hills. The villages are full o’ little children. Two million people—two hundred and fifty thousand fighting men—and all English! They only want the rifles and a little drilling. Two hundred and fifty thousand men, ready to cut in on Russia’s right flank when she tries for India! Peachey, man,’ he says, chewing his beard in great hunks, ‘we shall be Emperors—Emperors of the Earth! Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us. I’ll treat with the Viceroy on equal terms. I’ll ask him to send me twelve picked English—twelve that I know of—to help us govern a bit. There’s Mackray, Sergeant-pensioner at Segowli—many’s the good dinner he’s given me, and his wife a pair of trousers. There’s Donkin, the Warder of Tounghoo Jail; there’s hundreds that I could lay my hand on if I was in India. The Viceroy shall do it for me. I’ll send a man through in the spring for those men, and I’ll write for a dispensation from the Grand Lodge for what I’ve done as Grand-Master. That—and all the Sniders that’ll be thrown out when the native troops in India take up the Martini. They’ll be worn smooth, but they’ll do for fighting in these hills. Twelve English, a hundred thousand Sniders run through the Amir’s country in driblets—I’d be content with twenty thousand in one year—and we’d be an Empire. When everything was ship-shape, I’d hand over the crown—this crown I’m wearing now—to Queen Victoria on my knees, and she’d say:— “Rise up, Sir Daniel Dravot.” Oh, its big! It’s big, I tell you! But there’s so much to be done in every place—Bashkai, Khawak, Shu, and everywhere else.’

“‘What is it?’ I says. ‘There are no more men coming in to be drilled this autumn. Look at those fat, black clouds. They’re bringing the snow.’

“‘It isn’t that,’ says Daniel, putting his hand very hard on my shoulder; ‘and I don’t wish to say anything that’s against you, for no other living man would have followed me and made me what I am as you have done. You’re a first-class Commander-in-Chief, and the people know you; but—it’s a big country, and somehow you can’t help me, Peachey, in the way I want to be helped.’

“‘Go to your blasted priests, then!’ I said, and I was sorry when I made that remark, but it did hurt me sore to find Daniel talking so superior when I’d drilled all the men, and done all he told me.

“‘Don’t let’s quarrel, Peachey,’says Daniel without cursing. ‘You’re a King too, and the half of this Kingdom is yours; but can’t you see, Peachey, we want cleverer men than us now—three or four of’em that we can scatter about for our Deputies? It’s a hugeous great State, and I can’t always tell the right thing to do, and I haven’t time for all I want to do, and here’s the winter coming on and all.’ He put half his beard into his mouth, and it was as red as the gold of his crown.

“‘I’m sorry, Daniel,’ says I.‘I’ve done all I could. I’ve drilled the men and shown the people how to stack their oats better, and I’ve brought in those tinware rifles from Ghorband—but I know what you’re driving at. I take it Kings always feel oppressed that way.’

“‘There’s another thing too,’ says Dravot, walking up and down. ‘The winter’s coming and these people won’t be giving much trouble, and if they do we can’t move about. I want a wife.’

“‘For Gord’s sake leave the women alone!’ I says. ‘We’ve both got all the work we can, though I am a fool. Remember the Contrack, and keep clear o’ women.’

“‘The Contrack only lasted till such time as we was Kings; and Kings we have been these months past,’ says Dravot, weighing his crown in his hand. ‘You go get a wife too, Peachey—a nice, strappin’, plump girl that’ll keep you warm in the winter. They’re prettier than English girls, and we can take the pick of ’em. Boil’em once or twice in hot water, and they’ll come as fair as chicken and ham.’

“‘Don’t tempt me!’ I says. ‘I will not have any dealings with a woman not till we are a dam’side more settled than we are now. I’ve been doing the work o’ two men, and you’ve been doing the work o’three. Let’s lie off a bit, and see if we can get some better tobacco from Afghan country and run in some good liquor; but no women.’

“‘Who’s talking o’ women?’ says Dravot. ‘I said wife—a Queen to breed a King’s son for the King. A Queen out of the strongest tribe, that’ll make them your blood-brothers, and that’ll lie by your side and tell you all the people thinks about you and their own affairs. That’s what I want.’

“‘Do you remember that Bengali woman I kept at Mogul Serai when I was plate-layer?’ says I. ‘A fat lot o’ good she was to me. She taught me the lingo and one or two other things; but what happened? She ran away with the Station Master’s servant and half my month’s pay. Then she turned up at Dadur Junction in tow of a half-caste, and had the impidence to say I was her husband—all among the drivers of the running-shed!’

“‘We’ve done with that,’ says Dravot.‘These women are whiter than you or me, and a Queen I will have for the winter months.’

“‘For the last time o’ asking, Dan, do not,’ I says. ‘It’ll only bring us harm. The Bible says that Kings ain’t to waste their strength on women, ’specially when they’ve got a new raw Kingdom to work over.’

“‘For the last time of answering, I will,’said Dravot, and he went away through the pine-trees looking like a big red devil. The low sun hit his crown and beard on one side, and the two blazed like hot coals.

“But getting a wife was not as easy as Dan thought. He put it before the Council, and there was no answer till Billy Fish said that he’d better ask the girls. Dravot damned them all round.‘What’s wrong with me?’ he shouts, standing by the idol Imbra. ‘Am I a dog or am I not enough of a man for your wenches? Haven’t I put the shadow of my hand over this country? Who stopped the last Afghan raid?’ It was me really, but Dravot was too angry to remember. ‘Who bought your guns? Who repaired the bridges? Who’s the Grand-Master of the sign cut in the stone?’ and he thumped his hand on the block that he used to sit on in Lodge, and at Council, which opened like Lodge always. Billy Fish said nothing and no more did the others.‘Keep your hair on, Dan,’ said I; ‘and ask the girls. That’s how it’s done at home, and these people are quite English.’

“‘The marriage of a King is a matter of State,’ says Dan, in a white-hot rage, for he could feel, I hope, that he was going against his better mind. He walked out of the Council-room, and the others sat still, looking at the ground.

“‘Billy Fish,’ says I to the Chief of Bashkai,‘what’s the difficulty here? A straight answer to a true friend.’ ‘You know,’ says Billy Fish.‘How should a man tell you who know everything? How can daughters of men marry gods or devils? It’s not proper.’

“I remembered something like that in the Bible; but if, after seeing us as long as they had, they still believed we were gods it wasn’t for me to undeceive them.

“‘A god can do anything,’ says I. ‘If the King is fond of a girl he’ll not let her die.’ ‘She’ll have to,’ said Billy Fish. ‘There are all sorts of gods and devils in these mountains, and now and again a girl marries one of them and isn’t seen any more. Besides, you two know the Mark cut in the stone. Only the gods know that. We thought you were men till you showed the sign of the Master.’

“‘I wished then that we had explained about the loss of the genuine secrets of a Master-Mason at the first go-off; but I said nothing. All that night there was a blowing of horns in a little dark temple half-way down the hill, and I heard a girl crying fit to die. One of the priests told us that she was being prepared to marry the King.

“‘I’ll have no nonsense of that kind,’says Dan. ‘I don’t want to interfere with your customs, but I’ll take my own wife. ‘The girl’s a little bit afraid,’ says the priest. ‘She thinks she’s going to die, and they are a-heartening of her up down in the temple.’

“‘Hearten her very tender, then,’ says Dravot,‘or I’ll hearten you with the butt of a gun so that you’ll never want to be heartened again.’ He licked his lips, did Dan, and stayed up walking about more than half the night, thinking of the wife that he was going to get in the morning. I wasn’t any means comfortable, for I knew that dealings with a woman in foreign parts, though you was a crowned King twenty times over, could not but be risky. I got up very early in the morning while Dravot was asleep, and I saw the priests talking together in whispers, and the Chiefs talking together too, and they looked at me out of the corners of their eyes.

“‘What is up, Fish?’ I says to the Bashkai man, who was wrapped up in his furs and looking splendid to behold.

“‘I can’t rightly say,’ says he;‘but if you can induce the King to drop all this nonsense about marriage, you’ll be doing him and me and yourself a great service.’

“‘That I do believe,’ says I. ‘But sure, you know, Billy, as well as me, having fought against and for us, that the King and me are nothing more than two of the finest men that God Almighty ever made. Nothing more, I do assure you.’

“‘That may be,’ says Billy Fish, ‘and yet I should be sorry if it was.’ He sinks his head upon his great fur cloak for a minute and thinks. ‘King,’ says he, ‘be you man or god or devil, I’ll stick by you to-day. I have twenty of my men with me, and they will follow me. We’ll go to Bashkai until the storm blows over.’

“A little snow had fallen in the night, and everything was white except the greasy fat clouds that blew down and down from the north. Dravot came out with his crown on his head, swinging his arms and stamping his feet, and looking more pleased than Punch.

“‘For the last time, drop it, Dan,’ says I in a whisper. ‘Billy Fish here says that there will be a row.’

“‘A row among my people!’ says Dravot.‘Not much. Peachy, you’re a fool not to get a wife too. Where’s the girl?’ says he with a voice as loud as the braying of a jackass. ‘Call up all the Chiefs and priests, and let the Emperor see if his wife suits him.’

“There was no need to call any one. They were all there leaning on their guns and spears round the clearing in the centre of the pine wood. A deputation of priests went down to the little temple to bring up the girl, and the horns blew up fit to wake the dead. Billy Fish saunters round and gets as close to Daniel as he could, and behind him stood his twenty men with matchlocks. Not a man of them under six feet. I was next to Dravot, and behind me was twenty men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl, and a strapping wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises but white as death, and looking back every minute at the priests.

“‘She’ll do,’ said Dan, looking her over. ‘What’s to be afraid of, lass? Come and kiss me.’ He puts his arm round her. She shuts her eyes, gives a bit of a squeak, and down goes her face in the side of Dan’s flaming red beard.

“‘The slut’s bitten me!’ says he, clapping his hand to his neck, and, sure enough, his hand was red with blood. Billy Fish and two of his matchlock-men catches hold of Dan by the shoulders and drags him into the Bashkai lot, while the priests howls in their lingo,—‘Neither god nor devil but a man!’ I was all taken aback, for a priest cut at me in front, and the Army behind began firing into the Bashkai men.

“‘God A-mighty!’ says Dan. ‘What is the meaning o’ this?’

“‘Come back! Come away!’ says Billy Fish.‘Ruin and Mutiny is the matter. We’ll break for Bashkai if we can.’

“I tried to give some sort of orders to my men—the men o’ the regular Army—but it was no use, so I fired into the brown of ’em with an English Martini and drilled three beggars in a line. The valley was full of shouting, howling creatures, and every soul was shrieking, ‘Not a god nor a devil but only a man!’ The Bashkai troops stuck to Billy Fish all they were worth, but their matchlocks wasn’t half as good as the Kabul breech-loaders, and four of them dropped. Dan was bellowing like a bull, for he was very wrathy; and Billy Fish had a hard job to prevent him running out at the crowd.

“‘We can’t stand,’ says Billy Fish.‘Make a run for it down the valley! The whole place is against us.’ The matchlock-men ran, and we went down the valley in spite of Dravot’s protestations. He was swearing horribly and crying out that he was a King. The priests rolled great stones on us, and the regular Army fired hard, and there wasn’t more than six men, not counting Dan, Billy Fish, and Me, that came down to the bottom of the valley alive.

“‘Then they stopped firing and the horns in the temple blew again. ‘Come away—for Gord’s sake come away!’ says Billy Fish. ‘They’ll send runners out to all the villages before ever we get to Bashkai. I can protect you there, but I can’t do anything now.’

“My own notion is that Dan began to go mad in his head from that hour. He stared up and down like a stuck pig. Then he was all for walking back alone and killing the priests with his bare hands; which he could have done. ‘An Emperor am I,’says Daniel, ‘and next year I shall be a Knight of the Queen.

“‘All right, Dan,’ says I; ‘but come along now while there’s time.’

“‘It’s your fault,’ says he, ‘for not looking after your Army better. There was mutiny in the midst, and you didn’t know—you damned engine-driving, plate-laying, missionary’s-pass-hunting hound!’ He sat upon a rock and called me every foul name he could lay tongue to. I was too heart-sick to care, though it was all his foolishness that brought the smash.

“‘I’m sorry, Dan,’ says I, ‘but there’s no accounting for natives. This business is our Fifty-Seven. Maybe we’ll make something out of it yet, when we’ve got to Bashkai.’

“‘Let’s get to Bashkai, then,’ says Dan,‘and, by God, when I come back here again I’ll sweep the valley so there isn’t a bug in a blanket left!’

“‘We walked all that day, and all that night Dan was stumping up and down on the snow, chewing his beard and muttering to himself.

“‘There’s no hope o’ getting clear,’ said Billy Fish. ‘The priests will have sent runners to the villages to say that you are only men. Why didn’t you stick on as gods till things was more settled? I’m a dead man,’ says Billy Fish, and he throws himself down on the snow and begins to pray to his gods.

“Next morning we was in a cruel bad country—all up and down, no level ground at all, and no food either. The six Bashkai men looked at Billy Fish hungry-wise as if they wanted to ask something, but they said never a word. At noon we came to the top of a flat mountain all covered with snow, and when we climbed up into it, behold, there was an army in position waiting in the middle!

“‘The runners have been very quick,’ says Billy Fish, with a little bit of a laugh. ‘They are waiting for us.’

“Three or four men began to fire from the enemy’s side, and a chance shot took Daniel in the calf of the leg. That brought him to his senses. He looks across the snow at the Army, and sees the rifles that we had brought into the country.

“‘We’re done for,’ says he. ‘They are Englishmen, these people,—and it’s my blasted nonsense that has brought you to this. Get back, Billy Fish, and take your men away; you’ve done what you could, and now cut for it. Carnehan,’ says he, ‘shake hands with me and go along with Billy. Maybe they won’t kill you. I’ll go and meet ’em alone. It’s me that did it. Me, the King!’

“‘Go!’ says I. ‘Go to Hell, Dan. I’m with you here. Billy Fish, you clear out, and we two will meet those folk.’

“‘I’m a Chief,’ says Billy Fish, quite quiet. ‘I stay with you. My men can go.’

“The Bashkai fellows didn’t wait for a second word but ran off, and Dan and Me and Billy Fish walked across to where the drums were drumming and the horns were horning. It was cold-awful cold. I’ve got that cold in the back of my head now. There’s a lump of it there.”

The punkah-coolies had gone to sleep. Two kerosene lamps were blazing in the office, and the perspiration poured down my face and splashed on the blotter as I leaned forward. Carnehan was shivering, and I feared that his mind might go. I wiped my face, took a fresh grip of the piteously mangled hands, and said:— “What happened after that?”

The momentary shift of my eyes had broken the clear current.

“What was you pleased to say?” whined Carnehan.“They took them without any sound. Not a little whisper all along the snow, not though the King knocked down the first man that set hand on him—not though old Peachey fired his last cartridge into the brown of ’em. Not a single solitary sound did those swines make. They just closed up, tight, and I tell you their furs stunk. There was a man called Billy Fish, a good friend of us all, and they cut his throat, Sir, then and there, like a pig; and the King kicks up the bloody snow and says:— ‘We’ve had a dashed fine run for our money. What’s coming next?’ But Peachey, Peachey Taliaferro, I tell you, Sir, in confidence as betwixt two friends, he lost his head, Sir. No, he didn’t neither. The King lost his head, so he did, all along o’ one of those cunning rope-bridges. Kindly let me have the paper-cutter, Sir. It tilted this way. They marched him a mile across that snow to a rope-bridge over a ravine with a river at the bottom. You may have seen such. They prodded him behind like an ox. ‘Damn your eyes!’ says the King.‘D’you suppose I can’t die like a gentleman?’ He turns to Peachey—Peachey that was crying like a child. ‘I’ve brought you to this, Peachey,’ says he. ‘Brought you out of your happy life to be killed in Kafiristan, where you was late Commander-in-Chief of the Emperor’s forces. Say you forgive me, Peachey.’ ‘I do,’ says Peachey. ‘Fully and freely do I forgive you, Dan.’ ‘Shake hands, Peachey,’ says he. ‘I’m going now.’ Out he goes, looking neither right nor left, and when he was plumb in the middle of those dizzy dancing ropes, ‘Cut, you beggars,’ he shouts; and they cut, and old Dan fell, turning round and round and round, twenty thousand miles, for he took half an hour to fall till he struck the water, and I could see his body caught on a rock with the gold crown close beside.

“But do you know what they did to Peachey between two pine-trees? They crucified him, sir, as Peachey’s hands will show. They used wooden pegs for his hands and his feet; and he didn’t die. He hung there and screamed, and they took him down next day, and said it was a miracle that he wasn’t dead. They took him down—poor old Peachey that hadn’t done them any harm—that hadn’t done them any…”

He rocked to and fro and wept bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of his scarred hands and moaning like a child for some ten minutes.

“They was cruel enough to feed him up in the temple, because they said he was more of a god than old Daniel that was a man. Then they turned him out on the snow, and told him to go home, and Peachey came home in about a year, begging along the roads quite safe; for Daniel Dravot he walked before and said:— ‘Come along, Peachey. It’s a big thing we’re doing.’ The mountains they danced at night, and the mountains they tried to fall on Peachey’s head, but Dan he held up his hand, and Peachey came along bent double. He never let go of Dan’s hand, and he never let go of Dan’s head. They gave it to him as a present in the temple, to remind him not to come again, and though the crown was pure gold, and Peachey was starving, never would Peachey sell the same. You knew Dravot, sir! You knew Right Worshipful Brother Dravot! Look at him now!”

He fumbled in the mass of rags round his bent waist; brought out a black horsehair bag embroidered with silver thread; and shook therefrom on to my table—the dried, withered head of Daniel Dravot! The morning sun that had long been paling the lamps struck the red beard and blind sunken eyes; struck, too, a heavy circlet of gold studded with raw turquoises, that Carnehan placed tenderly on the battered temples.

“You behold now,” said Carnehan, “the Emperor in his habit as he lived—the King of Kafiristan with his crown upon his head. Poor old Daniel that was a monarch once!”

I shuddered, for, in spite of defacements manifold, I recognized the head of the man of Marwar Junction. Carnehan rose to go. I attempted to stop him. He was not fit to walk abroad. “Let me take away the whiskey, and give me a little money,” he gasped. “I was a King once. I’ll go to the Deputy Commissioner and ask to set in the Poor-house till I get my health. No, thank you, I can’t wait till you get a carriage for me. I’ve urgent private affairs—in the south—at Marwar.”

He shambled out of the office and departed in the direction of the Deputy Commissioner’s house. That day at noon I had occasion to go down the blinding hot Mall, and I saw a crooked man crawling along the white dust of the roadside, his hat in his hand, quavering dolorously after the fashion of street-singers at Home. There was not a soul in sight, and he was out of all possible earshot of the houses. And he sang through his nose, turning his head from right to left:—

“The Son of Man goes forth to war,

A golden crown to gain;

His blood-red banner streams afar—

Who follows in his train?”

I waited to hear no more, but put the poor wretch into my carriage and drove him off to the nearest missionary for eventual transfer to the Asylum. He repeated the hymn twice while he was with me whom he did not in the least recognize, and I left him singing to the missionary.

Two days later I inquired after his welfare of the Superintendent of the Asylum.

“He was admitted suffering from sun-stroke. He died early yesterday morning,” said the Superintendent. “Is it true that he was half an hour bareheaded in the sun at midday?”

“Yes,” said I, “but do you happen to know if he had anything upon him by any chance when he died?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said the Superintendent.

And there the matter rests.

THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 1]

PREFACE

SHALL RORAIMA1 BE GIVEN UP TO VENEZUELA?

Shall Roraima be handed over to Venezuela? Shall the mysterious mountain long known to scientists as foremost among the wonders of our earth—regarded by many as the greatest marvel of the world—become definitely Venezuelan territory?

This is the question that hangs in the balance at the time these words are being written, that is inseparably associated—though many of the public know it not—with the dispute that has arisen about the boundaries of British Guiana.

Ever since Sir Robert Schomburgk first explored the colony at the expense of the Royal Geographical Society some sixty years ago, Roraima has remained an unsolved problem of romantic and fascinating interest, as attractive to the ‘ordinary person’ as to the man of science. And to those acquainted with the wondrous possibilities that lie behind the solution of the problem, the prospect of its being handed over to a country so little worthy of the trust as is Venezuela, cannot be contemplated without feelings of disappointment and dismay.

This is not the place in which to give a long description of Roraima. It will suffice here to say that its summit is a table-land which, it is believed, has been isolated from all the rest of the world for untold ages; no wilderness of ice and snow, but a fertile country of wood and stream, and, probably, lake. Consequently it holds out to the successful explorer the chance—the probability even—of finding there hitherto unknown animals, plants, fish. In this respect it exceeds in interest all other parts of the earth’s surface, not excepting the polar regions; for the latter are but ice-bound wastes, while Roraima’s mysterious table-land lies in the tropics but a few degrees north of the equator.

Why, then, it may be asked, have our scientific societies not exhibited more zeal in the solving of the problem presented by this strange mountain? Why is it that unlimited money can, apparently, be raised for expeditions to the poles, while no attempt has been made to explore Roraima? Yet, sixty years ago, the Royal Geographical Society could find the money to send Sir Robert Schomburgk out to explore British Guiana—indeed, it is to that fact that we owe the discovery of Roraima—but nothing has been done since. Had the good work thus begun been followed up, we should today have been able to show better reason for claiming Roraima as a British possession. But, as the writer of the article in the Spectator quoted on page 3 says, “we leave the mystery unsolved, the marvel uncared for.” This article is commended to the perusal of those interested in the subject, as also are the following books, which give all the information at present available, viz.—Mr. Barrington Brown’s ‘Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana,’ and Mr. Boddam-Whetham’s ‘Roraima and British Guiana.’ Mr. Im Thurn’s ‘Among the Indians of British Guiana’ should also be mentioned, since it contains references to Roraima, though the author did not actually visit the mountain, as in the case of the first named.

As an illustration of the confusion and uncertainty that prevail as to the international status of this unique mountain, it may be mentioned that in the map of British Guiana which Sir Robert Schomburgk drew out for the British Government, it is placed within the British frontier. But in the map of the next Government explorer, Mr. Barrington Brown—‘based,’ he says, ‘upon Schomburgk’s map’—it is placed just inside the Venezuelan boundary; and no explanation is given of the apparent contradiction. Again, another authority, Mr. Im Thurn (above referred to), Curator of the Museum at Georgetown (the capital of the colony), in his book says that Roraima “lies on the extreme edge of the colony, or perhaps on the other side of the Brazilian boundary.” These references show the obscurity in which the whole matter is at present involved.

Apart, however, from the special interest that surrounds Roraima owing to the inaccessible character of its summit,2 it is of very great geographical importance, from the fact that it is the highest mountain in all that part of South America, i.e., in all the Guianas, in Venezuela, and in the north-east part of Brazil. Indeed, we must cross Brazil, that vast country of upwards of three million square miles, to find the nearest mountains that exceed in height Roraima. Consequently, it forms the apex of the water-shed of that part of South America; and it is, in fact, the source of several of the chief feeders of the great rivers Essequibo, Orinoco and Amazon. Schomburgk, in pointing this out, dwelt strongly upon the importance of the mountain to British Guiana, and insisted that its inclusion within the British boundary was a geographical necessity.

Finally, Sir Robert’s brother, Richard Schomburgk, a skilled botanist, who had visited almost all parts of Asia and Africa in search of orchids and other rare botanical productions, tells us that the country around Roraima is, from a botanical point of view, one of the most wonderful in the world. “Not only the orchids,” he says, “but the shrubs and low trees were unknown to me. Every shrub, herb and tree was new to me, if not as to family, yet as to species. I stood on the border of an unknown plant zone, full of wondrous forms which lay as if by magic before me.… Every step revealed something new.” (‘Reissen in Britisch Guiana,’ Leipzig, vol. ii., p. 216.)

Are our rulers, in their treatment of the question, bearing these facts sufficiently in mind? Are they as keenly alive as are the Venezuelans to the importance of Roraima? If they are, there is no sign of it; for while, in the Venezuelan statements of their case, there are lengthy, emphatic, and repeated references to the importance of Roraima, on the English side—in the English press even—there is scarcely a word about it.

From these observations it will be seen that there is reason to fear we may be on the point of allowing one of the most scientifically interesting and geographically important spots upon the surface of the globe to slip out of our possession into that of a miserable little state like Venezuela, where civil anarchy is chronic, and neither life nor property is secure.

One of the avowed objects of this book, therefore, is to stimulate public interest, and arouse public attention to the considerations that actually underlie the ‘Venezuelan Question,’ as well as to while away an idle hour for the lovers of romance.

It has been suggested that, if it is too late to retain the wonderful Roraima as exclusively British—and to effect this it would be well worth our while to barter away some other portion of the disputed territory—then an arrangement might be come to to make it neutral ground. Standing, as it does, in the corner where the three countries—Brazil, Venezuela and British Guiana—meet, it is of importance to all three, and, no doubt, in such an endeavour, we should have the support of Brazil as against Venezuela.

* * * *

With regard to the oft-discussed question of the situation of the traditional city of Manoa, or El Dorado—as the Spaniards called it—most authorities, including Humboldt and Schomburgk, agree in giving British Guiana as its probable site. We are told that it stood on an island in the midst of a great lake called ‘Parima’; but no such lake is now to be found in South America anywhere near the locality indicated. An explanation of the mystery, however, is afforded by the suggestion that such a great lake, or inland sea, almost certainly existed at one time in precisely this part of the continent; in that case what are now mountains in the country would then have been islands.

Indeed, most of British Guiana lies somewhat low, and it is estimated that if the highlands were to sink two thousand feet the whole country would be under water—the mountain summits excepted—and there would then be only ‘a narrow strait’ between the Roraima range and the Andes. In this great supposed ancient lake the group of islands now represented by mountain summits might well have been the home of a powerful and conquering race—as is today Japan with its group of more than three thousand islands—and Roraima, as the highest, and therefore the most easily defensible, may very well have been selected as their fastness, and the site of their capital city.

Schomburgk thus states his speculations upon the point, in his book on British Guiana, page 6:—

“The geological structure of this region leaves but little doubt that it was once the bed of an inland lake which, by one of those catastrophes of which even later times give us examples, broke its barriers, forcing for its waters a path to the Atlantic. May we not connect with the former existence of this inland sea the fable of the lake Parima and the El Dorado? Thousands of years may have elapsed; generations may have been buried and returned to dust; nations who once wandered on its banks may be extinct and exist no more in name; still, tradition of Parima and the El Dorado survived these changes of time; transmitted from father to son, its fame was carried across the Atlantic and kindled the romantic fire of the chivalric Raleigh.”

* * * *

As a natural sequence to the foregoing arises the inquiry, What sort of people were those who inhabited this island city, or who ‘wandered on the banks’ of the great lake? Here much is to be learned from the recent discoveries of the Government of the United States who, of late years, have devoted liberal sums to pre-historic research. The money so expended has been the means of unearthing evidence of a startling character—relics of a former civilisation that existed in America ages before the time of its discovery by Christopher Columbus. The Spaniards, as we know, found races that were white, or nearly so; but these later discoveries go to show that long anterior to these—at a time, in fact, probably coeval with what we call the Egyptian civilisation—America was peopled with a white race fully as cultured, as advanced in the sciences, and as powerful on their own ground as the ancient Egyptians; and as handsome in personal appearance—if some of the heads and faces on the specimens of pottery may be accepted as fair examples—as the ancient Greeks.

It has long been known that America possesses extraordinary relics of a former civilisation in what are known as the great ‘earthworks,’ which are still to be seen scattered about in many parts of the continent, and which, as vast engineering works, challenge comparison with the pyramids themselves. But now discovery has gone much further; bas-reliefs and pottery have been found that set forth with marvellous fidelity many minute details concerning this pre-historic people—their personal appearance, and their ornaments and habiliments; the style of wearing the hair and the beard; and other particulars that can be appreciated only by inspection and study of the reduced facsimiles lately printed and issued by the Government of the United States.

Many of them relate to the custom of human sacrifice which, as most people are probably aware, prevailed largely in America when the Spaniards first landed there; though few, perhaps, know the terrible extent to which it was carried. Prescott tells us that few writers have ventured to estimate the yearly number of victims at less than twenty thousand, while many put it as high as fifty thousand, in Mexico alone! If we consider that the lowest of these estimates represents an average of some four hundred a week, or nearly sixty a day, such figures are appalling! And now we learn, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that the same practices obtained in America in times that must have been ages before the Spanish conquest, and, judging by the frequency of the representations of such things in these old bas-reliefs, as extensively. In these sculptures we can see the very shape of the knives used; the form of the plates or platters on which severed heads of victims were placed, and other such details; and in a certain series we are enabled to note the curious point, that, while the officiating priests always wear full beards, the victims appear to have usually possessed no hirsute adornments, or to have ‘shaved clean,’ as we term it. It may be added that these ancient white people seem to have been a totally different race from those the Spaniards found on the continent; and that between the two there is believed to have been a gap lasting for many ages, during which the country was overrun by Indian or other barbaric hordes; though how or why this came about is one of those mysteries that will probably never be unravelled.

* * * *

In conclusion, I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to the writers whose books of travel I have named for the information I have made use of; as well as to express a hope that the writer of the review in the Spectator will regard with indulgence the liberties I have taken with his admirable article. I am sanguine enough to believe, however, that I shall have the sympathy and good wishes of all these in the endeavour here made to arouse public attention to the real meaning and importance of the ‘Venezuelan Question’; and to add to the number of those who feel an interest in the future status and ultimate exploration of the mysterious Roraima. I wish also to express my thanks to Messrs. Leigh Ellis and Fred Hyland, the artists to whom the illustrations were entrusted, for the thought and care they have bestowed upon the work, and the successful manner in which they have carried out my conceptions.

For the rest—if objection be taken to the accounts of the mountain and what is to be found on its summit given by the characters in my story—I desire to claim the licence of the romance-writer to maintain their accuracy—till the contrary be proved. If this shall serve to stimulate to renewed efforts at exploration, so much the better, and another of my objects in writing the book will thereby have been attained.

—FRANK AUBREY.

1 The Indians of British Guiana pronounce this word Roreema.

2 Mr. Barrington Brown says the mountain can only be ascended by means of balloons (see article previously referred to); and Mr. Boddam-Whetham came to the same conclusion.

1 The Indians of British Guiana pronounce this word Roreema.

2 Mr. Barrington Brown says the mountain can only be ascended by means of balloons (see article previously referred to); and Mr. Boddam-Whetham came to the same conclusion.

CHAPTER I

“WILL NO ONE EXPLORE RORAIMA?”3

Beneath the verandah of a handsome, comfortable-looking residence near Georgetown, the principal town of British Guiana, a young man sat one morning early in the year 1890, attentively studying a volume that lay open on a small table before him. It was easy to see that he was reading something that was, for him at least, of more than ordinary interest, something that seemed to carry his thoughts far away from the scene around him; for when, presently, he raised his eyes from the book, they looked out straight before him with a gaze that evidently saw nothing of that on which they rested.

He was a handsome young fellow of, perhaps, twenty-two years of age, rather tall, and well-made, with light wavy hair, and blue-grey eyes that had in them an introspective, somewhat dreamy expression, but that nevertheless could light up on occasion with an animated glance.

The house stood on a terrace that commanded a view of the sea, and, in the distance, white sails could be seen making their way across the blue water in the light breeze and the dazzling sunlight. Nearer at hand were waving palms, glowing flowers, humming insects and gaudily-coloured butterflies—all the beauties of a tropical garden. On one side of him was the open window of a sitting-room that, shaded, as it was, by the verandah, looked dark and cool compared with the glare of the scorching sun outside.

From this room came the sounds of a grand piano and of the sweet voice of a girl singing a simple and pathetic ballad.

At the moment the song ceased a brisk step was heard coming up the path through the garden, and a good-looking young fellow of tall figure and manly air made his way to where the other still sat with his eyes fixed on vacancy, as one who neither sees nor hears aught of what is going on about him.

“Ha, Leonard!” the new-comer exclaimed, with a light laugh, “caught you dreaming again, eh? In another of your reveries?”

The other roused himself with a start, and looked to see who was his visitor.

“Good-morning, Jack,” he then answered with a slight flush. “Well, yes—I suppose I must have been dreaming a little, for I did not hear you coming.”

“Bet I guess what you were dreaming about,” said the one addressed as Jack. “Roraima, as usual, eh?”

Leonard looked a little conscious.

“Why, yes,” he admitted, smiling. “But,” he continued seriously, “I have just been reading something that set me thinking. It is about Roraima, and it is old; that is to say, it is in an old number of a paper bound up in this book that a friend has lent me. I should like to read it to you. Shall I?”

“All right; if I may smoke the while. I suppose I may?” And the speaker, anticipating consent, pulled out a pipe, filled and lighted it, and then, having seated himself on a chair, crossed one leg over the other, and added, “Now, then, I am ready. Fire away, old man.”

And Leonard Elwood read the following extract from the book he had been studying:—

“Will no one explore Roraima, and bring us back the tidings which it has been waiting these thousands of years to give us? One of the greatest marvels and mysteries of the earth lies on the outskirt of one of our colonies, and we leave the mystery unsolved, the marvel uncared for. The description given of it (with a map and an illustrated sketch) in Mr. Barrington Brown’s ‘Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana’(one of the most fascinating books of travel the present writer has read for a long time) is a thing to dream of by the hour. A great table of pink and white and red sandstone, ‘interbedded with red shale,’ rises from a height of five thousand one hundred feet above the level of the sea, two thousand feet sheer into the sapphire tropical sky. A forest crowns it; the highest waterfall in the world—only one, it would seem, out of several—tumbles from its summit, two thousand feet at one leap, three thousand more on a slope of forty-five degrees to the bottom of the valley, broad enough to be seen thirty miles away. Only two parties of civilised explorers have reached the base of the table—Sir Robert Schomburgk many years ago, and Mr. Brown and a companion in 18694—each at different spots. Even the length of the mass has not been determined—Mr. Brown says from eight to twelve miles. And he cannot help speculating whether the remains of a former creation may not be found at the top. At any rate, there is the forest on its summit; of what trees is it composed? They cannot well be the same as those at its base. At a distance of fifteen hundred feet above sea-level the mango-tree of the West Indies, which produces fruit in abundance below, ceases to bear. The change in vegetation must be far more decided where the difference is between five thousand and seven thousand feet. Thus for millenniums this island of sandstone in the South American continent must have had its own distinct flora. What may be its fauna? Very few birds probably ascend to a height of two thousand feet in the air, the vulture tribe excepted. Nearly the whole of its animated inhabitants are likely to be as distinct as its plants.

“Is it peopled with human beings? Who can tell? Why not? The climate must be temperate, delicious. There is abundance of water, very probably issuing from some lake on the summit. Have we here a group of unknown brothers cut off from all the rest of their kind?

“The summit, Mr. Brown says, is inaccessible except by means of balloons. Well, that is a question to be settled on the spot, between an engineer and a first-rate ‘Alpine.’(What is the satisfaction of standing on the ice-ridge of the Matterhorn, or crossing the lava-wastes of the Vatna-Jökull, compared to what would be the sensation of reaching that aerial forest and gazing plumb down over the sea of tropical verdure beneath, within an horizon the limits of which are absolutely beyond guessing?)

“But put it that a balloon is required, surely it would be worth while for one of our learned societies to organise a balloon expedition for the purpose. No one can tell what problems in natural science might not be elucidated by the exploration. We have here an area of limited extent within which the secular variation of species, if any, must have gone on undisturbed, with only a limited number of conceivable exceptions, since at least the very beginning of the present age in the world’s life. Can there be a fairer field for the testing of those theories which are occupying men’s minds so much in our days? And if there be human beings on Roraima, what new data must not their language, their condition, contribute for the study of philologers, anthropologists, sociologists?

“One more wonder remains to be told. The traveller speaks of two other mountains in the same district which are of the same description as Roraima—tables of sand-stone rising up straight into the blue—one larger than (though not as high as) Roraima itself. It is only because of their existence, and because, for aught that appears, they may be equally inaccessible with Roraima, that one does not venture to call Roraima the greatest marvel and mystery of the earth!”

“What is that taken from?” asked Jack Templemore when the reader had put down the book.

“It is from the Spectator.5 I say, Jack, what a chance for an explorer! Fancy people spending their money and risking their lives in exploring an icy, cold, miserable, desolate region, like the Arctic Circle, when there is a wondrous land here in the blue skies—yet no wilderness of ice and snow—waiting to be won; and no one seems to trouble about it! I do wish you would do as I have so often suggested—set out with me upon an expedition and let us see whether we cannot solve the secret of this mysterious mountain. You have the leisure now, and I have the money. Dr. Lorien and his son are now on their way back from near there; if they can undertake the journey, so could we. Besides, it is not as though we were novices at this kind of travel; we have been on short trips to the interior times enough.”

Jack Templemore looked dubious. He was, it is true, used to roughing it in the wild parts of South America. He had been trained as an engineer, and, for some years—he was now twenty-eight—had been engaged in surveying or pioneering for new railways in various places on the Continent. His father having lately died and left him and his mother very poorly off, he was now somewhat anxiously looking about for something that would give him permanent occupation, or the chance of making a little money. He and Leonard Elwood were great friends; though they were, in many respects, of very different characters. Elwood was, essentially, of a romantic, poetic temperament; while Templemore affected always a direct, practical, matter-of-fact way of looking at things, as became an engineer. He was dark, tall and sturdily built, with keen, steady grey eyes, and a straight-forward, good-humoured manner. Both were used to hunting, shooting, and out-door sports, and, as Elwood had just said, they had had many short hunting trips into the interior together. But these had been in previous years, since which, both had been away from Georgetown. Templemore, as above stated, had been engaged in railway enterprises, Elwood had gone to Europe, where, after some time spent in England, during which his father and mother had both died, he had travelled for a while ‘to see the world,’ and finally had come out again to Georgetown to look after some property his father had left him. On arrival he had gone at first to an hotel, but some old friends of his parents, who lived on an estate known as ‘Meldona,’ had insisted upon his staying with them for a while. Here he found that his old friend Jack Templemore was a frequent visitor, and it was an open secret that Maud Kingsford, elder of the two daughters of Leonard’s host, was the real attraction that brought him there so constantly.

Now Jack Templemore, as has been said, was more practical-minded than Leonard. He had not shrunk from the hardships and privations of wild forest life when engaged upon railway-engineering work, when there had been something definite in view—money to be made, instruction to be gained, or promotion to be hoped for. But he did not view with enthusiasm the idea of leaving comfortable surroundings for the discomforts of rough travel, merely for travel’s sake, or upon what he deemed a sort of wild-goose chase. He had carefully read up all the information that was obtainable concerning the mountain Roraima, and had seen no reason to doubt the conclusions that had been come to by those who ought to know—that it was inaccessible. Of what use then to spend time, trouble, money—perhaps health and strength—upon attempting the impossible?

So Jack Templemore argued, and, be it said, there was the other reason. Why should he go away and separate himself for an indefinite period from his only surviving parent and the girl he loved best in the world, with no better object than a vague idea of scrambling up a mountain that had been pronounced by practical men unclimbable?

Thus, when Leonard appealed to him on this particular morning, merely because he had come across something that had fired his enthusiasm afresh, Jack did not respond to the proposal with the cordiality that the other evidently wished for.

“I don’t mind going a short trip with you, old man,” Jack said presently, “for a little hunting, if you feel restless and are a-hungering after a spell of wandering—a few days, or a week or two, if you like—but a long expedition with nothing to go upon, as it were, seems to me only next door to midsummer madness.”

Leonard turned away with an air of disappointment, and just then Maud Kingsford, who had been playing and singing inside the room, stepped out.

Leonard discreetly went into the house and left the two alone, and Maud greeted Jack with a rosy tell-tale flush that made her pretty face look still more charming. In appearance she was neither fair nor dark, her hair and eyebrows being brown and her eyes hazel. She was an unaffected, good-hearted girl, more thoughtful and serious, perhaps, than girls of her age usually are—she was twenty, while Stella, the younger sister, was between eighteen and nineteen—and had shown her capacity for managing a home by her success in that line in their own home since her mother’s death a few years before. The practical-minded Jack, who had duly noted this, saw in it additional cause for admiration; but, indeed, it was only a natural outcome of her innate good sense. She now asked what her lover and Leonard had been talking of.

“The usual thing,” was Jack’s reply. “He’s mad to go upon an exploring expedition; thinks we could succeed where others have failed. It’s so unlikely, you know. Now, if he would only look at the thing practically——”

Maud burst into a merry laugh.

“You do amuse me—you two,” she exclaimed; at which Jack looked a little disconcerted. “You always insisting so upon being strictly non-speculative, and Leonard, with his romantic phantasies, and his dreams and visions, and vague aspirations after castles in the air. You are always hammering away at him, trying to instil practical ideas into him with the same praiseworthy perseverance, though you know that in all these years you have never made the least little bit of impression upon him. Your ideas and his are like oil and water, you know. They will never mix, shake them together as you will.”

“But—don’t you think I am right? Isn’t it common sense?”

“Quite right, of course; and you are persevering; I’ll say that for you.”

“For the matter of that, so’s Leonard,” said Jack with a good-natured laugh. “He’s as persevering with this fad of his as any man I ever met in my life. I do believe he’s got a fixed idea that he has only to start upon this enterprise, and he will come back a made man with untold and undreamt-of wealth and——”

“And a princess for a bride—the fair maid of his dreams,” Maud put in, still laughing. “We have not heard so much of her, by the bye, lately. He has been rather shy of those things since his return from Europe, and does not like to be spoken to about them. We began to think he had grown out of his youthful fancies.”

The fact was, that, from his childhood, Leonard had been accustomed to strange dreams and fancies. These five—Leonard, Templemore, and Mr. Kingsford’s son and two daughters—had been children together, and in those days Leonard had talked freely to his childish companions of all his imaginative ideas; and as they grew older, he had not varied much in this respect. Moreover, Leonard had had an Indian nurse, named Carenna, who had encouraged him in his fantastic dreamings, and who had, by her Indian folk-lore tales, early excited his imagination. Her son Matava, too, had been Leonard’s constant companion almost so long as he could remember, first in all sorts of boyish games and amusements, and later in his hunting expeditions; and both Matava and Carenna had been always more devoted to Leonard than even to his father and mother.

But when Mr. and Mrs. Elwood left the estate they had been cultivating, to go to England, the two Indians had gone away into the interior to live at an Indian settlement with their own tribe. About twice a year, however—or even oftener, if there were occasion—Matava still came down to the coast upon some little trading expedition with other Indians; and at such times he never failed to come to see the Kingsfords and inquire after Leonard.

The Dr. Lorien, of whom mention had been made by Leonard, was a retired medical practitioner who had turned botanist and orchid-collector. He had been a ship’s doctor, and in that capacity had voyaged pretty well all over the world. Since he had given that up he had travelled further still by land—in the tropical regions in the heart of Africa, in Siam, the Malay Peninsular and, latterly, in South America—in search of orchids and other rare floral and botanical specimens. The vicinity of Roraima being one of the most remarkable in the world for such things—though so difficult of access as to be but seldom visited by white men—it is not surprising that he had lately planned a journey thither.

From this journey the doctor and his son were now daily expected back. One of the Indians of their party had, indeed, already arrived, having been despatched in advance, a few days before, to announce their safe return.

Thus it came about that Templemore and Maud, while still talking, were not greatly surprised at the sudden appearance of Matava, who stated that he had come down with the doctor’s party, who would follow very quickly on his heels.

Maud, who knew the Indian and his mother well, received him kindly; and, to his great delight, was able to inform him that his ‘young master’—as he always called Leonard Elwood—had returned to Georgetown, and was at present with them.

Matava had, indeed, expected this, for he had heard of Leonard’s intention at his last visit to the coast some six months before. He was greatly pleased to find he was not to be disappointed in his expectation. Moreover, the Indian declared, he had news for him—“news of the greatest importance”—and begged to be allowed to see him at once. So Maud sent him into the house—where he knew his way about perfectly—to find Leonard; and then, turning to Templemore, she said, laughing,

“I wonder what his ‘important’ intelligence can be? Some deeper secret than usual that his old nurse has to tell him, I suppose.”

“I hope it’s nothing likely to rouse a further desire to set off on this mad-cap expedition he has so long had in his mind,” Templemore returned; “for,” looking at her with a sigh, “if he should make up his mind to start, I am, in effect, pledged to go too, whether I wish or not.”

“Why should you expect it? and how are you obliged to go?” Maud inquired with evident uneasiness.

“I know that Leonard saw Dr. Lorien in London before he came out last, and had a long talk with him. When he learned of the expedition upon which the doctor was then setting out, he was much annoyed at being unable to join him. He said, however, that he should be in Georgetown himself in a few months, and hoped to see the doctor on his return; and he particularly asked him to try to collect for him all the information and particulars he could concerning the best route by which to make the journey to Roraima. Dr. Lorien told me all this before he left us, adding that he felt certain Leonard’s object in coming again to Georgetown was quite as much to arrange for an expedition as his ostensible one of looking after his property. And I know, too, from what I have seen since Leonard has been back, that his thoughts are full of the idea. You say he does not now talk much of it to you or to others?”

“No; and as I told you just now, we had begun rather to think he had given up his former romantic yearnings for adventure; and, when you have referred to them before him, I have thought that you were only teasing him a little about old times.”

“Oh dear no; by no means. Whatever he may say, or leave unsaid to you and his general acquaintances, he is, in his heart, just as much set upon it as ever.”

“It is odd, that,” Maud observed thoughtfully, “because he used to be so fond of telling us about his dreams and visions and all the castles in the air and half-mystical imaginings he used to build upon them. But,” she went on slowly, “I have noticed that, since his long absence from us, Leonard Elwood is very different from what he was as I remember him. He seems, at times, so reserved and distant, I almost feel inclined to call him ‘Mr. Elwood’ instead of ‘Leonard.’ And he is, in a manner, unsociable, too. He is so preoccupied always, so silent, and so wrapped up in himself, that you generally have to wait, if you speak to him, while he collects his thoughts—brings them back from the distant skies or wherever they have gone a-wandering—before he replies to you. Not that he is intentionally cool or distant, I think; and I am sure he is just as good-hearted as ever. Yet there is a change of some sort. Stella says the same. And, do you know, he sometimes gives me a sort of feeling as though he were not English at all, but of some other race, and that he feels half out-of-place amongst us, a fish out of water, as it were? I wonder whether he is in love!” And Maud gave a ringing little laugh.

Templemore shook his head.

“If he were, it would be with some young lady on the other side of the Atlantic,” he returned. “And he would not be desirous of prolonging his stay on this side. No;I know what is the matter with him. He talks freely enough to me. And, now that he is expecting Dr. Lorien back, he is gradually working himself up into a state of excitement and expectation. He has quite made up his mind for some news or information—Heaven only knows why—and that is what makes him by turns restless and preoccupied. If, therefore, what Matava has to tell has anything to do with what I know to be so much in his thoughts, it may be the means of deciding him to go; and then I should have to go too.”

“But why? I don’t see what it has to do with you, Jack.”

“It has this to do with me, dear Maud,” said Templemore, taking her hand; “Leonard, some time ago, made me a very handsome—to me a very tempting—offer if I would make up my mind to start with him on this vague expedition. He offered me £300 clear, he paying all expenses, and giving me, besides, half of whatever came out of it. Unfortunately for myself, I am not now in a position to say ‘no’ to such an offer. I have been, now, nearly a year waiting for something to ‘turn up.’ My mother has barely enough to live on, and depends upon me for ordinary comforts, to say nothing of little luxuries; and what I had saved up from former engagements is steadily getting less and less, and will shortly disappear. I do wish with all my heart I could get anything else, almost, rather than this wild-goose affair of Leonard’s. Yet nothing has offered itself; so what am I to do? For your sake, for the hope of being able one day to provide a home for you——”

“Nay, Jack,” Maud interposed, with a deep flush, “do not say for my sake. I would not have you set out on an enterprise of danger and difficulty for my sake. But I see clearly enough you must do it, if it be again offered, for your mother’s sake. Yes, for hers, you must.” The girl hesitated, and it was easy to see she found it hard to say the words, but she went on bravely, “So, I repeat, if it be again offered, you must accept it, Jack. And be sure I will look after your mother, and comfort her while you are away.”

“That is spoken like my own dear girl,” Templemore answered with emotion. “Yes, I cannot well refuse; and I know I may look to you to console my mother. You will comfort each other.”

Just then they heard Leonard’s voice calling out in excited tones for Templemore. A moment or two later he came rushing out of the house.

“Jack, Jack!” he cried. “Such a strange thing! Here is our opportunity! Matava has brought some extraordinary news!”

Leonard was so incoherent in his excitement, that it was some time before his hearers grasped his meaning.

His news amounted, in effect, to this. A white man had been staying for some time near the Indian village at which Carenna and her son Matava lived; and he had had many talks with both about a project for ascending the mountain of Roraima. It being an arduous undertaking, he sought the cooperation of one or two other white men; and Leonard’s old nurse had urged him to communicate with her young master, who would shortly be in Georgetown, assuring him that he would be the very one—from the interest and enthusiasm he would feel—to join him and help him to achieve success if success were possible. Matava, who knew of Dr. Lorien’s presence in the district, had suggested to the stranger to go to see him, and a meeting had thus been brought about. The doctor would tell him the result; but the main thing was that the stranger had sent an invitation to Leonard to join him and to bring, if he pleased, one other white man, but no more. The doctor was now at the Settlement, near the mouth of the Essequibo, transferring to the steamer, from the Indian canoes in which they had been brought down the river, his botanical treasures and other trophies of his journey. If Leonard wished to go back with the canoes and the Indians who were with them, he would have to let them know at once, and they would wait. Otherwise they would be on their way back in a day or two; which would involve the organising of a fresh expedition—a matter of great trouble—should Leonard make up his mind to proceed later.

The enthusiastic Leonard needed no time to make up his mind.

“I shall go,” said he. “If you will come too, Jack, I shall be only too glad. But, if not, I may be able to find some one else; or I shall go alone. So I shall send word at once to keep the boats and the Indians.”

“But,” objected Maud Kingsford, “consider! You know nothing of this stranger; he may be a blackleg, an escaped murderer or desperado, or all sorts of things.”

“No, no! Carenna knows. She has sent word that I can trust this man, and she knows. She is too fond of me to let me get mixed up with any doubtful character. Dr. Lorien, too, and Harry have seen him, and talked with him, and think well of him; so Matava says. I shall know more when I see them in a day or two. Meantime, I shall keep the canoes and Indians, and risk it.”

Then he rushed off to have a further talk with Matava, and, as he said, see about getting the Indian “some grub.”

Jack and Maud, left alone, looked at each other in dismay. It had been one thing to talk vaguely of what they would do in case Leonard should take what at the time seemed a very unlikely step. It was quite another to be thus suddenly brought face to face with it.

Maud turned very pale and seemed about to faint. She felt keenly how hard it would be to see her lover depart upon an adventure of this uncertain character, the end or duration of which no one could even guess at. But she recovered her self-possession with an effort and, looking steadily at Templemore, said,

“What you said you would do for our sakes is to be very quickly put to the test, it seems. You—will—go, Jack?”

“Yes,” he answered firmly; “since it is your wish.”

“You must,” she answered. “It is hard to lose you; it will be hard for us both. But go—and go with a good heart. Be sure I will be a daughter to your mother while you are away.”

He took her hand in his and pressed it to his lips.

“For your sake, dear Maud, I shall go,” he said. “For your sake and for my mother’s; in the hope that some success may result; but not—Heaven knows—for the mere sordid hope of gain.”

3 The Indians of British Guiana pronounce this word Roreema.

4 Since then Roraima has been visited by two or three other travellers; but their accounts have added little to our knowledge. They entirely confirm Mr. Brown’s statements as to its inaccessibility. (See Preface.)

5 This article appeared in the Spectator of April 1877.

3 The Indians of British Guiana pronounce this word Roreema.

4 Since then Roraima has been visited by two or three other travellers; but their accounts have added little to our knowledge. They entirely confirm Mr. Brown’s statements as to its inaccessibility. (See Preface.)

5 This article appeared in the Spectator of April 1877.

CHAPTER II

MONELLA

Two days later Dr. Lorien and his son arrived in Georgetown and, after taking rooms at the Kaieteur Hotel, went at once to call upon the Kingsfords. This haste was, in reality, prompted by Harry, whose thoughts were bent upon his hopes of once more seeing the pretty Stella; but the ostensible reason that he urged upon his father was somewhat different, and had to do with the message of which they were the bearers from the white stranger they had met in their travels.

At the evening dinner the matter was discussed, Mr. Kingsford and his son Robert and the others being present.

The two travellers had much to tell of their adventures, which had been full of both interest and danger, apart from the matter of the stranger’s message.

“And yet, I think,” observed the doctor, thoughtfully, “our meeting with this stranger, and his behaviour, impressed me more than almost all else that happened to us.”

“How so? What is he like?” asked Mr. Kingsford.

“In figure he is very tall; of a most commanding stature and appearance. I am not short.”

“Why, you are over six feet!” put in Harry.

“And yet I almost think, if he had held his arm straight out, I could have walked under it with my hat on, and without stooping.”

“I’m sure you could, dad,” Harry corroborated.

“As to age—there I confess myself at sea. As a doctor I am accustomed to judge of age; yet he thoroughly puzzled me. If I could believe in the possibility of a man’s being a hundred and fifty years old and yet remaining strong and hale and vigorous, I should not be surprised if he had claimed that age. On the other hand, if one could believe in a young, stalwart, muscular man of thirty with the face and white hair of an old-looking, but not very old man, then I could have believed it if I had been told he was no more than thirty. In fact, he was a complete puzzle to me; a mystery. But the most remarkable thing about him was the expression of his eyes; they were the most extraordinary I have ever seen in my life.”

“Wild—mad-looking?” Templemore asked.

“Oh no, by no means; quite the reverse. Very steady and piercing; but wonderfully fascinating. Mild and kind-looking to a fault; and yet changing to a look of quiet, almost stern resolution that had in it nothing hard, or cruel, or disagreeable. In fact, I hardly know how to describe that look, or convey an idea of it, except by saying that it was something between the gaze of a lion and that of a Newfoundland dog. It had all the majesty, the magnanimity, the conscious power of the one, with the benevolence and wistful kindness and affection of the other. Never have I seen such an expression. I really did not know the human countenance could express the mingled characteristics one seemed to read so plainly in his—all kindly, all noble, all suggestive of sincerity and integrity.”

“You are enthusiastic!” said Robert, laughing.

The old doctor coloured up a little; then took out his handkerchief and wiped his face.

“I know it sounds strange to hear an old man of the world like me speak so forcibly about a man’s appearance,” he returned; “but, if it is true, I do not see why I should not say it. Ask Harry here.”

“I couldn’t take my eyes off his face,” Harry declared. “He fairly fascinated me. I felt I should have to do anything he told me; even to taking my pistol and killing the first person I met. I do believe I should have done it—or any other out-of-the way thing. And he made you feel, too, as though you liked him so, that you longed to do any mortal thing you could to please him.”

“What’s his name?” asked Templemore.

“Monella.”

“Monella? Is that all? No other name?”

“None that I heard. And as to his nationality, I cannot even so much as guess. I have been in Central Africa, in Siam, in India, in China, in Russia, and have picked up a smattering of the languages of those countries; but this man jabbered away in all; additionally, he spoke French, German, Spanish and Portuguese, besides English. So much I know. How many more he speaks I can’t say.”

“Injun,” said Harry.

“Oh yes, I forgot that. We had some of three different tribes with us, and he spoke to each in his own tongue.”

“And what is his object in going in for this Roraima exploration?” asked Mr. Kingsford.

“He has a curious theory. He declares that the ancient island-city of El Dorado—or Manoa—was not at the lower end or part of the Pacaraima mountains, as some have surmised, but at the further and highest point of the range, which is Roraima itself. He holds that the great lake or inland sea of Parima once washed around the bases of all those mountains, making islands of what are now their summits; and that the highest and most inaccessible of all, Roraima, was selected by the Manoans for their fastness, and for the site of their wonderful ‘Golden City.’”

“But that theory won’t help him to get up there, will it?” Jack asked.

“Ah, but there is something else. He states that he was brought up by some people, the last members of what had once been a nation, but has now died out. They lived in a secluded valley high up on the slopes of the Andes. He has travelled all over the world, and went back to these friends of his, only to find that they were all dead, save one, and that he was fast dying. This survivor gave him an ancient parchment with plans and diagrams, by means of which, it was declared, the top of the mountain can be reached, where will be found whatever traces may be left of the famous city of Manoa or El Dorado. This man, Monella, has other old parchments which he can read, but I could not—he showed me some—and from these he declared his belief that there is almost unlimited wealth to be gained by those who find the site of this wonderful city.”

All this time Leonard had been listening with sparkling eyes and flushed cheeks, though in silence. Here he glanced with a satisfied smile at Templemore, and said,

“There’s method in all that; at all events he is not undertaking the thing in a haphazard way and without something to go upon, that’s certain.”

Jack did not look hopeful.

“It is probably just as wild and hopeless an adventure all the same,” was his reply. “What ‘directions’ or ‘plans’ or ‘diagrams’ can help a man today after the lapse of hundreds and hundreds of years—even if they were reliable, and the old party who handed them over was not mad—as he probably was?”

“As to Monella,” observed the doctor, “I could see no sign of madness in him. He is one of the most intelligent, best-informed men I ever met. I cannot say anything, of course, of his informant.”

“Has he any money, do you suppose—this man?” Robert asked.

“I don’t know. But he pays the Indians well, and has got together a lot of stores, it seems; which must have been a costly thing to do. They have been brought over the mountains from Brazil. And he specially said you need not trouble to load yourself up with much in the way of stores—only sufficient to get to him. After that you will be all right. And he said nothing about money being wanted. But,” and here the doctor hesitated, “he is very particular as to the character and disposition of those he purposes to work with. In fact, he subjected me to a long sort of cross-examination respecting our friend Leonard here. He had already gained a lot of information about him from the old Indian nurse, it seemed, and I was surprised at the details he had picked up and remembered. In fact, Master Leonard,” continued the doctor, addressing the young man, “he seemed to know you almost as well as if he had lived with you for years. And your friend Mr. Templemore, too, he seemed to know about him, and to expect that he would join you.”

“How could that be?” Jack demanded.

“Oh, from the old nurse and Matava, I suppose.”

“To tell you the honest truth,” Harry interposed, “I believe there’s some hocus-pocus business about those two. She is reputed to be a witch, you know; not a bad witch, but a good sort. And I quite believe Monella to be a wizard; also of a good sort. And when those two laid their heads together, they could know a lot between them, I suspect. I should not at all wonder if he were not magician enough to lead you to the ‘golden castle,’ or ‘city,’ or whatever it is, and find its hidden stores of gold. I wish I had a chance to join him. But dad’s wanting me somewhere else. So I am out of it.”

“Yes,” observed his father. “We have to go on to Rio, where I have some law business on. But we shall not be away a great while, and then we are going back to that district.”

“Going back?” said Templemore in surprise.

“Yes, there is a lot to be done there. It is a wonderful place for my sort of work, and we really saw but very little of it after all. So we are going again when we return from Rio; but I cannot at all tell when that may be.”

The doctor was a fine-looking specimen of a hardy, bronzed traveller. He was, as has been said, over six feet in height; his hair and beard were iron-grey, his complexion was a little florid beneath its tan, and his expression good-humoured and often jovial. His son, Harry, was somewhat slight in build, but wiry, and had been used to knocking about with his father. He was a young fellow with boundless animal spirits and plenty of pluck and courage. His ready kindness to every one made him a general favourite; and the lively, captivating Stella and he were special friends.

Mr. Kingsford asked the doctor whether any time had been estimated for the length of the expedition.

“That would be difficult,” Dr. Lorien answered. “Apart from the long and tedious journey there, there is the girdle of forest that surrounds Roraima to be cut through. That may take months, I am told.”

“Months!” The exclamation came from Maud who, with Stella, had been a silent but appreciative listener.

“Yes. It is a curious thing, but this forest belt is never approached even by any of the Indian tribes. They look upon it with superstitious awe and will not even go near it. Indeed, they all regard Roraima with a sort of horror. They declare there is a lake on the top guarded by demons and large white eagles, and that it will never be gazed on by mortal eyes; that in the forest that surrounds it are monstrous serpents—‘camoodis’ they call them—larger far than any to be found elsewhere in the land; besides these, there are ‘didis’, gigantic man-apes, bigger and more ferocious and formidable than the African gorilla. Altogether, this wood has a very bad reputation, and no Indian will venture near it. Indeed, the mountain of Roraima and all its surroundings are looked upon as weird and uncanny. As a former traveller has expressed it, ‘its very name has come to be surrounded by a halo of dread and indefinable fear.’”

“How, then, is the necessary road to be made through this promising bit of woodland?” asked Templemore.

“There has been Monella’s difficulty,” returned the doctor. “But for that, doubtless, he would not have troubled about any one else’s joining him. But, though he is very popular amongst the Indians, they cannot get over their fear of the ‘demons’ wood,’ as they call it. They are, in fact, quite devoted to him, for he has done much that has made him both loved and feared—as one must always be to gain the real devotion of these people. He has effected many wonderful cures amongst them, I was told; but, more than that, he has saved the lives of two or three by acts of great personal courage. So that, at last, he even prevailed upon them to enter the ‘haunted wood’ with him. But they are making very little progress, it appears; he cannot keep them together, and they give way to panic at the slightest thing and make a bolt of it; then he has to go hunting over the country for them, and it takes days to get them together again—and so on. He is in hopes that the presence and example of other white men will inspire them with greater confidence and courage.”

“A promising and inviting outlook, I must say,” said Jack, eyeing Leonard gravely.

“Never mind,” Leonard exclaimed with enthusiasm. “If he can face it, so can we; and if it is good enough for him to brave such difficulties, it is good enough for us. It only shows what sterling stuff he must be made of!”

At this Jack gave a sort of grunt that was clearly far from implying assent to Leonard’s view of the matter.

There was further talk, but it added little to the information given above; and, inasmuch as Leonard had already made up his mind, almost in advance, and had to ask no one’s permission but his own, he determined at once to set about the necessary preparations; and Jack Templemore—though with evident reluctance—agreed to accompany him.

“I have a list of all the things I took with me,” remarked Dr. Lorien, “and notes of a few that I afterwards found would have been useful and that I consequently regretted I had not taken; and also some specially suggested by the stranger Monella. You had better copy them all out carefully, for you will find it will save you a lot of time and trouble.”

Thus it came about that in less than a week their preparations were all made, and the two, with Matava as guide, were ready to set out. Matava had with him fourteen or fifteen Indians, who had formed the doctor’s party, and these, and the canoes with the stores on board, were soon after waiting at the Settlement, ready to make a start.

Then, one sunny day at the beginning of the dry season, the Kingsfords, with Mrs. Templemore, and the doctor and his son, all took the steamer to the “Penal Settlement” (a place a few miles inside the mouth of the Essequibo river, the starting place of all such parties),to see the young men off and wish them God speed. When it came to this point the struggle was a hard one for Maud and for Templemore’s mother; but they bore themselves bravely—outwardly at least. The three canoes put off amidst much fluttering of handkerchiefs, and soon all that could be seen of the adventurers were three small specks, gradually growing less and less, as the boats made their way up the bosom of the great Essequibo river—here some eight miles in width. Their intended journey had been kept more or less a secret; such had been the wish of him they were going to join. Hence no outside friends had accompanied the party to see them off. Those who knew of their going away thought they were only bent upon a hunting trip of a little longer duration than usual.

For two loving hearts left behind the separation was a trying one. For a few days Mrs. Templemore stayed on at ‘Meldona’ with Maud, and the presence of Dr. Lorien and the vivacious Harry helped to cheer them somewhat; but, when the doctor and his son started for Rio, the others returned sadly to the routine of their everyday life, with many anxious speculations and forebodings concerning the fortunes of the two explorers.

CHAPTER III

THE JOURNEY FROM THE COAST

The greater part of the interior of British Guiana consists of dense forests which are mostly unexplored. No roads traverse them, and but little would be known of the savannas, or open grassy plains, and the mountains that lie beyond—and they would indeed be inaccessible—were it not for the many wide rivers by which the forests are intersected. These form the only means of communication between the coast and the interior at the present day; and so vast is the extent of territory covered with forest growth that it is probable many years will elapse before any road communication is opened up between the sea and the open country lying beyond the woods.

Of these vast forests little—or rather practically nothing—is known save what can be seen of them from the rivers by those voyaging to and fro in canoes. There are a limited number of spots at which the Indians of the savannas come to the banks of the rivers to launch their canoes when journeying to the coast; and to reach these places they have what are known as ‘Indian paths’ through the intervening woods. These so-called paths are, for the most part, of such a character, however, that only Indians accustomed to them can find their way by them. Any white man who should venture to trust himself alone in them would inevitably get quickly and hopelessly lost. Hence—save for a few miles near the line of coast—there are, as yet, absolutely no roads in the country.

Naturally, under such conditions, the forest scenery is of the wildest imaginable character, and its flora and fauna flourish unchecked in the utmost luxuriance of tropical savage life; for the country lies but a few degrees from the equator, and is far more sparsely populated than even the surrounding tropical regions of Brazil and Venezuela.

Fortunately, however, for those who for any reason have occasion to traverse this wild region, there is no lack of water-ways. Several grand rivers of great breadth lead from the coast in different directions, most of them being navigable (for canoes and small boats) for great distances, leaving only comparatively short stretches of forest land to be crossed by travellers desiring to reach the open plains and hills.

Of these rivers, the Essequibo is one of the finest, and it was by this route that the two friends, Elwood and Templemore, set out, under Matava’s guidance, to reach their destination. From this river they branched off into one of its affluents, the Potaro, noted for its wonderful waterfall, the Kaieteur, which they visited en route. Here their canoes were left and exchanged for lighter ones, hired from the Ackawoi Indians, who live at a little distance above the fall; their stores and camp equipage being carried round. So far the journey had been uneventful, save for a little excitement in passing the various cataracts and rapids; but the two young men knew their way fairly well thus far, having visited the Kaieteur with Matava some years before.

When, however, the journey was resumed above the Kaieteur, the route was new to them; and, among the first things they noticed, were the alligators with which the river abounded. In the Essequibo they had seen none, and not many below the fall; but from this point, as far as they ascended the river, they saw them continually. Once they had a narrow escape. They were making arrangements for camping on the bank, and were nearing the shore in the last of the canoes, when a tremendous blow and a great splash overturned the boat, and they found themselves struggling in the stream. An alligator had struck the canoe a blow with its tail and upset it. Fortunately, however, it was in shallow water; and the Indians, seeing how matters were, made a great splashing, and thus frightened away the reptile. The contents of the canoe were partly recovered, not without difficulty; but some were damaged by the water.

As they proceeded up the river, the rapids and cataracts became more frequent, and the negotiation of them more difficult, till they reached a spot where further navigation was impossible, and they had to take to the forest, their stores and baggage being henceforward carried by the Indians.

This marked the commencement of the really arduous part of the journey. So long as the stores were carried in the boats, the Indians had been cheerful and docile, and easy to manage. But now their work was harder, and food was scarcer—for game is difficult to shoot in the forest. Then, after two or three days, the gloom of the woods began to have an evident effect upon their spirits; they first became depressed, and then began to grumble. This would not have been of so much consequence, perhaps, but that Matava became apprehensive that they might desert. They were not people of his tribe, it seemed; they had come with Dr. Lorien from a different district; and when they began to understand that the eventual destination was Roraima, they became still more depressed.

All the Indian tribes who have heard of Roraima, in any way, have the same superstitious dread of it; and those now with the two young men were evidently not exceptional in this respect. Templemore and Elwood began to feel anxious and, to make matters worse, food ran short for the Indians. The latter live chiefly on the native food, a kind of bread called cassava, and, of this, a good deal of what they had brought with them had been lost or spoiled by the upsetting of the canoe.

In consequence, Matava advised that they should interrupt their direct journey to turn aside to an Indian settlement that he knew of, about a day’s journey off the route they were pursuing; there they would be able to replenish their stores, he thought; and to this course a reluctant assent was given by the two friends.

It turned out to be more than a day’s journey, however; but they reached the place on the second day. It was called Karalang; there were not more than a dozen huts, and the people at first said that they had no food to spare; but eventually promised to procure some if the travellers would wait a few days; and this they were perforce compelled to do.

This village was situated on a hill in a piece of open country in the midst of the great forest; and, during their enforced rest, the two friends were enabled to engage in a little hunting, and to see more of the wild life of the woods than they had seen before.

The first thing they did on arrival was to procure a couple of fowls for cooking, of which there were plenty in the village. But these were of no use as food for the Indians, who never eat them. Throughout the country this is everywhere the case; the Indians keep fowls, yet never eat them; and it is said that, were it not for the vampire bats and tiger-cats, these would increase beyond all reason. Though, however, they object to fowls as a diet, they have no dislike to fish, and they were not long in discovering that there were some in a stream that ran near the village; and a supply was caught by their method of poisoning the fish in such a way that they float on top of the water as if dead, but are nevertheless palatable and wholesome as food. The poison is prepared from a root.

Amongst the miscellaneous stores the two had brought they had a liberal supply of firearms—five Winchester rifles, half-a-dozen revolvers and two guns, each with double barrels, one for shot and the other for ball. The extra weapons were in case of loss or accident, and Templemore had a good stock of tobacco, for he never felt happy for long together without his pipe.

On their way up they had had very little shooting. Jack had indeed killed an alligator, by way of relieving his feelings after the upsetting of the canoe; but there had been very little time to spare for sport. Every morning they had started as soon as the morning meal had been eaten, and had gone into camp at night only in time to cook a meal before it became dark. For in this part of the world night closes in at about half-past six on the shortest days of the year, and a little before seven on the longest. Practically, therefore, the varying seasons bring little difference in the length of the days. One cannot there get up at three or four o’clock and “have a good long day,” with an evening keeping light till eight and nine o’clock, as in summer-time in Europe. Hence the days seem short for travel and sport, and the nights very long.

“I think we’ve stuck to it pretty well,” Jack observed in the evening, as he sat smoking by the camp fire, outside their tent—for though the day had been hot the evening was chilly—“and we deserve a rest. So it is just as well. We will have two or three days’ shooting, and a look round, before we go on to tackle ‘the old man.’”

‘The old man’ was the one they were on their way to see—the one Dr. Lorien had met and described so enthusiastically. Jack was a little sceptical as to whether the good-natured doctor had not sacrificed strict accuracy to his friendly feeling for the stranger. Leonard, too, felt full of curiosity upon the same point.

“I can scarcely believe, you know,” Jack continued, “that our friend will turn out all that the doctor pictured him.”

“I shall be glad if he does, at any rate,” Leonard made reply. “He would be almost worth coming to see for himself alone.”

Jack laughed.

“That’s rather stretching a point, I think. However, I am keeping an open mind on the subject. The gentleman shall have ‘a fair field and no favour,’ so far as my judgment of him goes. I won’t let myself be prejudiced in advance, either one way or the other.”

During the following days they enriched their stores by the skin of a fine jaguar, shot by Templemore, a great boa-constrictor—or ‘camoodi’—twenty-four feet long, shot by Leonard, and many trophies of lesser account. Then, a fresh lot of cassava having been procured for the Indians, the journey was resumed.

In about three weeks from the time of their start, the party emerged from the forest into a more open country, where rolling savannas alternated with patches of woodland. Here the air was fresher and more bracing, so that the depressing effect of the gloomy forest was soon thrown off. They could shoot a little game, too, as they went along; there were splendid views to be had from the tops of the ridges and low hills they crossed. The ground steadily rose and became first hilly and then mountainous, till, having crossed a broad, undulating plateau, they once more entered a forest region, but this time of different character. The trees were farther apart; there were hills, and rocky ravines, and mountain torrents, steep mountains, and deep valleys. The way became toilsome and difficult; game was scarce, or at least not easy to obtain, owing to the nature of the ground; the cassava ran short, and, once more, grumbling arose and trouble threatened.

At last, one evening, Matava, with perplexity in his face, led the two young men aside to hold a consultation.

“These people,” he said in his own language, “say they will not go any farther!”

“How far do you reckon we are now from your own village?” asked Jack.

“About four days. If we could but persuade them to keep on for two days more, we could fix a camp, and I could go on alone and bring back some of my own people to take all the things on.”

“Ah! A good idea, Matava. Well, let us see what persuasion will effect. Any way, we had better get them to go as far as we can, and then encamp at the first likely camping-ground.”

In the end the Indians were prevailed upon, by promise of extra pay, to go the additional two days’ journey. Beyond that they would not budge.

“They think that mountain over there in the distance is Roraima,” Matava explained; “and I cannot get them to believe it isn’t. And they are frightened, and won’t go any nearer to it.”

There was, therefore, nothing to be done but to adopt Matava’s suggestion. It was agreed that the two friends would stay in camp and keep guard over their belongings, while he started next day for his village, to bring help.

The spot was a convenient one in which to camp for a few days, with a stream of water near. That evening, therefore, the Indians were paid, this being done in silver, which they knew how to make use of. The next morning, when Elwood and Templemore got out of their hammocks, they found they were alone with Matava. All the others had disappeared.

“Ungrateful beggars!” said Jack. “They might, at least, have gone in a respectable manner, and not like thieves slinking away. Let’s hope they are not thieves.”

But they were not. An examination showed that nothing had been stolen.

“The poor fellows were only frightened,” Leonard observed. “They are honest enough.”

Matava, meantime, was making ready to set off alone for carriers from his own village. When he was ready, Templemore expressed a desire to walk a little way on the road with him ‘to take a peep over that little ridge yonder’; which is a wish common to travellers in a country that is new to them. But when they reached the ridge, there was only to be seen another short expanse of undulating savanna, whereupon Jack decided to return, leaving Matava to continue on his way.

Leonard, left to himself, finished the occupation he had in hand—the cleaning of his double-barrel—and, having loaded it, strolled out of the camp in another direction, to take a look round. He left the camp to itself, not intending to go far, and expecting that his friend would be back in a quarter of an hour or so. Not far away a ‘bell-bird’ was ringing out its strange cry, that has been compared by travellers to the sound of a convent bell. He had heard these birds often in the forest since leaving the boats, but, in consequence of the density of the woods, had never been able to get near one. Here, where the trees were more open, there seemed to be a better chance, and he followed, as he thought, the sound. But soon he came to the conclusion that he had been in error; or the bird had flown across unseen; for the direction of the sound seemed to have changed. He, therefore, turned off towards where he fancied the bird now was; and this happened several times, till at last he became confused and found he had fairly lost his way. It is a peculiarity of the ‘bell-bird,’ as it is of many other birds of the forest, that their notes are often misleading; it is one of those cases of what has been termed by naturalists ‘Ventriloquism in Nature,’ many examples of which the traveller in these wild regions comes across. Leonard had arrived at the head of a small glen, and found himself on a grassy bank beside a little stream, sheltered from the glare of the sun by over-hanging branches. He laid down his gun and went to take a drink of the inviting limpid water, and then sat awhile on the bank looking down the picturesque ravine. It was very quiet and peaceful all around, and he fell into one of his day-dreams. At such times the minutes pass on unheeded; and he sat for a long while oblivious of all that went on about him. But presently, behind him, a silent, cunning enemy crept up unseen and unheard till near enough for a spring; then there was a loud roar, and the next moment Leonard was lying on the ground in the grasp of an enormous jaguar.

For a minute or two the beast stood over him growling, but not touching him after the first blow that had knocked him down; while Leonard lay dazed and helpless, with just enough consciousness to have a vague idea that the best thing he could do, for the moment, was to lie perfectly still. Then, with another roar, the animal seized him by the shoulder and began to drag him down the slope towards some bushes. At that moment Leonard, whose face was turned away from the brute, saw, like one in a dream, the undergrowth through which he himself had come, part asunder and three figures appear. Two of them were Templemore and Matava, who stood rooted to the spot with horror-stricken faces; the third was a tall stranger who towered above the other two, and who also stood still for a second or two eyeing the scene, while the jaguar growled threateningly.

Then the tall stranger advanced, and the animal released its hold and was itself seized and pulled from over Leonard. In another moment he felt himself lifted in two giant arms, and, looking up, saw the stranger bending upon him a gaze in which there seemed a world of tender anxiety and compassion. Everything appeared to swim around him, and he knew that consciousness was leaving him; yet, for a space, the fascination of that look seemed to hold him chained.

“You—must—be—Monella!” he said, softly. Then he fainted.

CHAPTER IV

THE FIRST VIEW OF RORAIMA

When Leonard came to himself sufficiently to see and understand what was going on around him, for the moment he thought himself once more in his days of childhood; for the first face he recognised was Carenna’s, his Indian nurse, who was bending over him in much the same way and with the same expression as of yore. But, when he looked round, he saw that he was in an Indian hut; and slowly the memory of what had occurred came back to him.

Carenna, when she saw that he was himself again, gave a joyous cry; then, conscious of her indiscretion, put her finger on her lips to imply that he must remain quiet. He felt no inclination to do otherwise, and soon fell into a refreshing sleep, which lasted for some time.

When next he opened his eyes they rested on another pair, large and steady, and that seemed to have a wondrous depth and meaning in them. Then he saw that they belonged to the stranger who had pulled the jaguar off, and was now sitting alongside the mattress on which he lay.

“Keep thee quiet, my son,” said he in a low, musical voice. “All goes well, and in two or three days you will be as strong as ever again.”

There was something soothing in the mere glance of the eye, and in the very tones of the man’s voice; and Leonard, reassured by them, remained passive for a while, till Carenna again appeared with a drink she had prepared for him.

When, later, Jack Templemore came in, and Leonard was able to talk, he found he had been ill for a week, and that he was then in the hut of Carenna at the village of Daranato.

“I’ve had an awfully anxious time of it,” Jack said;“but Monella seems skilled in doctoring, and Carenna has been most devoted in her nursing and attention and would brook no interference; so I’ve had to hang around and pass the time as best I could.”

When once Leonard had ‘turned the corner,’ as Jack called it, he recovered rapidly, and was able, in a few days, as Monella had predicted, to get about again. Nor was he any the worse for his mishap; for the beast’s teeth had just missed scrunching the bone.

When he wished to offer his thanks to Monella, the latter put him off with a quiet smile.

“We think nothing of little incidents like that, my son, in a land such as this. Your thanks are due to God who sent me to you at the moment; not to me. Being there, I could not well have done otherwise than I did.”

It appeared that Monella had come out from the village a day or two before to look out for them, and had fallen in with Matava. The Indian had led him towards the camp, near which they had met Jack, who was wandering about in search of Leonard. On learning that he was missing, Monella had proceeded to the camp and thence—by some method known only to himself—had tracked Leonard’s footsteps—a thing that even Matava confessed himself unable to do—and thus had come upon him just in time.

“When I saw how matters stood,” said Jack, “my very heart seemed to stand still. Neither I nor Matava dared to risk a shot, for the brute stood up nearly facing us and holding you in his mouth. But that wonder, Monella, quietly laid down his rifle and drew his knife, keeping the beast fixed with his eye all the time; then he walked up to it as coolly as though he were going to stroke a pet cat, put out his hand and caught it with such a grip on the throat that it nearly choked and had to let go of you at once. And presto! Before it could get its breath, whizz went the knife into its heart! And he lifted it up and threw it away from him, clear of you, as easily as one might a small dog. Then he picked you up and carried you to the camp, as though you were but a baby. The whole affair took only a few moments, and passed almost like a dream. It’s fortunate he happened to come out to meet us. How could he possibly know we were coming?”

“I have always told you,” said Leonard dreamily, “that there seems to be a strange sympathy between my old Indian nurse and myself. She tells me she ‘felt’ that I was in the neighbourhood, and sent word to Monella, who at once went to her, and then came on to try to intercept us. Only, you know, you never believed in those things. Yet here, you see, Monella must have believed her, or he would not have had such confidence in our coming as to wait about for us as he did.”

“It’s very strange,” Jack admitted. “I confess I do not understand you ‘dreamers.’ I am out of the running there altogether.

“They say,” he continued, “that from the top of yonder low mountain before us you can see Roraima pretty plainly. But I had no heart to go out to look for it while you were so ill, and, since you have been getting better, I have preferred to stay and keep you company. But now, I suppose, it will not be long before we set eyes, at last, upon the wonderful mountain that is to be our ‘El Dorado’!”

When Elwood heard this, he became anxious to get a sight of the object of their journey; so, two days after, they started before dawn, with Monella, to walk to the top of the low mountain Jack had pointed out.

They reached the summit of the ridge just when the sun was rising, and there before them, like a veritable fairy-land in the sky, they saw the mysterious Roraima, its pink-white and red cliffs illumined by the morning sun, and floating in a great sea of white mist, above which showed, here and there, the peaks of other lower mountains like the islands they once were, but looking dark and heavy, in their half-shadow, beside the glorious beauty of this queen of them all, that reared herself far above everything around.

It is impossible to give an adequate idea of the impressive grandeur of this mountain, which might be likened to a gigantic sphinx, serene and impassive in its inaccessibility.

Or it might be likened to a colossal fortress, built by Titans to guard the entrance to an enchanted land beyond; for the cliffs at its summit appeared curiously turreted, while at the corners were great rounded masses that might pass for towers and bastions.

In places, with the light-coloured cliffs were to be seen darker rocks, black and dark green and brown, worked in, as it were, with strange figures, as though inlaid by giant hands. And everywhere the sides were perpendicular, smooth, and glassy-looking. Scarce a shrub or creeper found a precarious hold there; but down from the height, at one spot, fell a great mass of water—like a broad band of silver sparkling and glistening in the sunlight—that came with one mad leap from the top and disappeared in a cloud of spray and mist two thousand feet below. Further along could be seen other narrower falls like silver threads.

There was no crest or peak as with most mountains. The top was a table-land, beyond whose edge one could see nothing. This edge was fringed with what looked like herbage, but, seen through a powerful field-glass, proved to be great forest trees.

Then, as the sun rose higher and warmed the air, the mist cleared somewhat around the lower part of the precipitous cliffs, so that far, far down could now be seen the foliage that crowned the great primæval forest—the ‘forest of demons’—that girdled the cliffs’ base. Gradually the mist descended, and the full forest’s height showed up like a Titanic pedestal of green, itself floating in the haze that still remained below.

By degrees the mist rolled down the mountain’s side, for below this extensive forest-girdle the actual base and lower slopes began slowly to appear, with waterfalls, and cascades, and rushing torrents and great rivers dashing and foaming in their rocky beds. Then other intervening ridges and patches of forest and open savanna gradually came into view, with the full forms of the surrounding smaller mountains, the whole making up a panorama that was marvellous in its extent and in the variety of its shapes and tints.

But scarcely had the sun revealed this wondrous sight to their astonished eyes, when a cloud descended upon Roraima’s height.

Almost imperceptibly it grew darker, then darker still and yet more sombre, till the erst-while fairy fortress seemed to frown in gloomy grandeur. Its salmon-tinted sides, but now so airy-looking in their lightness, turned almost black, and seemed to glower upon the brilliant landscape. The forest also lost its verdant colouring and looked dark and forbidding enough to pass for an enchanted wood peopled by dragons, demons, and hobgoblins to guard the grim castle in its centre.

Then the cloud descended lower still, and castle and haunted forest passed out of sight, as swiftly and completely as though all had been a magical illusion that had vanished at a touch of the magician’s wand.

Leonard rubbed his eyes and felt half inclined to think he had been dreaming. All this time not a word had been exchanged. Each had seemed wrapped up in the weird attraction of the scene; and the new-comers, even the practical Jack, had been astounded, almost overwhelmed, at the sight of the stupendous cliffs and tower-like rocks of the mysterious mountain, and its changes from gorgeous colouring and ethereal beauty to black opacity and shapelessness.

Presently Monella turned and led the way back to the camp, the others following, each absorbed in his own thoughts.

Templemore was more impressed by what he had just witnessed than he would have cared, perhaps, to own. Never before had he seen such a mountain, though he had crossed the Andes, and had looked upon the loftiest and grandest on the American Continent. To him there was something about Roraima that was wanting in all other mountains; a suggestiveness of the unseen, of latent possibilities. He could now understand why the Indians regarded it with fear and awe. It was, indeed, impossible to look upon it without believing that some wonderful story was hidden in its inaccessible bosom; some mysterious secret that it kept jealously concealed from the rest of the world. For, perhaps, the first time in his life, he was conscious of a feeling that bordered on the superstitious. What if that which they had witnessed were meant to shadow forth a warning; to be an omen! Did it portend that, should they gain the summit of Roraima, they would find there indeed a sort of earthly Paradise, but that it would turn—as suddenly and completely as the fairy-like first view had changed that morning—to the darksome solitude of a charnel house?

But Leonard, for his part, when he came to talk upon the matter, was only more enthusiastic than before; and Monella smiled with indulgent approbation when, with the ingenuous impulsiveness of youth, he enlarged upon his delight and expectations.

When they returned to the Indian village preparations were begun for a forward move to the place Monella had made his head-quarters; not far from the commencement of the mysterious forest the Indians regarded with such dread.

During the march thither they had many more glimpses of Roraima; finally they emerged upon the last ridge that faced it, from which a full view of its towering sides and of the forest at their base could be obtained.

Between them was a deep ravine, along which flowed a narrow river dotted with great boulders. Having crossed this with some difficulty and ascended the other side, they reached an extensive undulating plateau, an open savanna with here and there small clumps of trees. They were now almost under the shadow of the great cliffs, and before them, three or four miles away, was the beginning of the encircling wood.

Rounding the end of a thicket distant a mile or so from this wood, they came suddenly upon a large and substantially built log hut, and this, Monella told them, was his temporary residence. Near it were several smaller huts roughly but ingeniously formed of boughs and wood poles, which the Indians who worked with him had constructed for themselves.

As they entered the larger dwelling Monella thus addressed them:

“This, my friends, is where we shall have to live until our work in ‘Roraima Forest’ shall be completed. Make yourselves as much at home as the circumstances will permit; we are likely to occupy it for some time.”

And a fairly comfortable home it was; far more so indeed than the young men had ventured to expect. There was rough furniture, there were lamps for light at night, a number of books, and many other things that took them altogether by surprise.

“It must have taken you a long time,” said Jack Templemore, “to get all these things transported here, and this place built and its furniture made.”

“It has taken me years!” was the reply.

The Indians who accompanied them, numbering about twenty, were all of Matava’s own tribe; altogether a different race from those who had accompanied them nearly to Daranato and had been paid off and gone home. When Monella had left his abode, temporarily, at Carenna’s request, to come to meet the two, all the Indians had gone with him, objecting to be left so near to the “demons’ wood” without him. Now, however, they quickly distributed themselves among the huts, one acting as cook and servant in the house, and Matava attending to all other matters as general overlooker.

So far little had been said between the young men and their strange host as to the objects and details of their enterprise. The circumstances of their introduction had been so unusual that the discussion had been tacitly postponed until Leonard should have recovered sufficiently to take part in it. And even then, when Jack had broached the subject, Monella had remarked,

“You had better wait till you have been to my cabin near Roraima, when I can better explain the nature of the undertaking. Then, if you do not care to join me in it, or we seem unlikely to get on well together, we will part friends and you will merely have had an interesting bit of travelling.” So all farther explanation had been adjourned.

“I call this more than a ‘cabin,’” said Leonard, when they had had time to make a sort of tour of inspection. “I think we ought to give it a better name. Suppose we call it ‘Monella Lodge.’” And ‘Monella Lodge’ it was henceforth called.

CHAPTER V

IN THE ‘DEMONS’ WOOD.’

The following day, Monella led the two friends to the road he had begun to cut into Roraima Forest; but first he showed them two llamas that were kept in a rough corral near his dwelling.

“I brought them all the way from the other side of the continent,” he said. “You know that there they are the only beasts of burden, and in this country there are none. They will be useful to us later.”

As to the so-called ‘road,’ it was really but a pathway; and, in places, almost a kind of tunnel. The great trees of this primæval forest were so high and dense that but little daylight penetrated to the ground beneath; and on all sides the undergrowth was so thick and tangled that almost every foot had to be cut out with the axe. Here and there one could see for a few yards between the giant trunks, and at these spots the path had been made wider. One curious thing Jack noted: the path did not start from that part of the wood opposite to ‘Monella Lodge’; nor even from the margin of the wood itself.

Asked why this was, Monella thus made answer:“If in our absence others should come here, they might hunt up and down for the path a long time before they hit upon it—and very likely never find it. On this stony ground the tracks we leave are very slight and difficult to trace.”

“But,” said Jack, “your Indians know the way.”

Monella smiled.

“Not one of them would ever show another man the way,” he replied, “let him offer what he might.”

“But why all these precautions?”

“Later you will understand.”

But, when Jack came to look round, his heart sank within him.

“I should not care to have a few miles of railway to cut through wood like this,” he said. “It’s the worst I ever saw. I do not wonder you have found it more than you could manage—only yourself and these Indians—and it’s a wonder you ever got them to join at all, considering all the circumstances.”

“Yes; that’s where it is,” Monella answered. “Many men would have despaired, I think. We have had trouble, too. Two Indians met with accidents and were badly hurt; though now they are recovering. Then, some of the small streams that issue from the mountain became suddenly swollen once or twice, and washed away the rough bridges we had made across them; and we have met with many unexpected obstacles, such as great masses of rock, or a fallen tree, some giant of the forest that was so big it was easier to go round it than to cut through it.”

That evening, Monella explained his project, and showed the young men the plans and diagrams Dr. Lorien had spoken of, and then went on to say,

“If you decide to join me, you ought to know something of the language in which these old documents are written. I both read and write it, and I speak it too. You will find it interesting to decipher them, and an occupation for the evenings.”

Jack was not enthusiastic at this suggestion; but Leonard cordially embraced it.

“To learn the language of an unknown nation that has passed away will be curious and very interesting,” he declared, “and will, as you say, help to pass the time. You may as well learn it too, Jack. You speak the Indian—why not learn this? Then we can talk together in a tongue that no one but ourselves and our friend here can understand.”

“And where did these ancient people ‘hang out’?” asked Jack irreverently.

“Have you heard of the lake of Titicaca and the ancient ruins of the great city of Tiahuanaco; a city on this continent believed by archaeologists to be at least as old as Thebes and the Pyramids?” Monella asked.

“I have,” Leonard answered, “though I know very little about them. But I believe I was in that country when very young, and had a curious escape from death there.”

Monella turned his gaze quickly upon the young man.

“Tell me about it. What do you remember?” he asked.

“Oh, I do not remember anything; I was too young. But I have been told how that my father went somewhere in that district on a prospecting expedition, and, not liking to be separated from my mother, took her with him, and my nurse, Carenna, and myself. Whilst there they came across a small settlement of white people, as I understand, and remained with them some time. There was amongst these people a child of my own age, and so exactly like me, that my nurse grew almost as fond of it as she was of me, and used to like to take the two out together. One day, it seems, we both went to sleep on the grass, and she left us for a few minutes to gather fruit. When she returned a poisonous snake crawled hissing away, and she found the other poor little child had been bitten and was dead.

“That’s all I know about it. Who the people were, and where the place was, I cannot say. I have always understood, however, that it was somewhere in the direction of Lake Titicaca. But Carenna could tell you more.”

“And what about this ancient people of yours?” Templemore asked of Monella, who still gazed thoughtfully and inquiringly at Leonard. Templemore had heard of Elwood’s early adventure many times before.

“High up on the eastern slopes of the great Andes is an extensive plain, as large as the whole of British Guiana,” the old man replied. “It is twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea, and there, at that great height, is also the largest lake of South America, Lake Titicaca, over three thousand square miles in extent, on the shores of which was once a mighty city called Tiahuanaco. It is now in ruins; yet, even amongst its ruins, it boasts of some of the oldest and most wonderful monuments in the world. Two thousand feet above this again, are another large plain and another lake, little known to the outside world, being, indeed, almost inaccessible. It was there my people dwelt, and tradition asserts that they retired thither when driven out of Tiahuanaco by some invasion of hordes from other parts of the continent.”

“Is it a very old language, do you suppose?” Jack asked.

“Undoubtedly one of the oldest in the world; and yet not difficult to acquire by those who know the language of Matava and his tribe—as you do. It has some affinity to it.”

As regards the tongue spoken by the Indians, Leonard had learnt it from Carenna in his childhood; and Templemore had picked up a good deal from the same source, as well as on his hunting expeditions with Leonard and Matava.

When it came to discussing terms, Monella declared that he had none to make, except that on no consideration whatever should any other white man be invited or allowed to join them. As to the rest, he simply suggested that any wealth they might acquire by their enterprise should be shared equally between them.

“Suppose one of us were to die,” observed Jack. “How then? Might not the survivors choose some one else to join them? Though,” he added thoughtfully, “if it were you, we should not be likely to go on.”

“I shall not die, my friend, until my task be finished,” replied Monella with conviction.

“You cannot say,” was Jack’s rejoinder.

“No, I do not say I know, yet I can say I feel it. No man dieth till he hath fulfilled the work in life allotted to him by God,” Monella finished solemnly.

The others already knew him, by this time, as a man with deep-seated religious convictions; though he made no parade of his beliefs. He seemed to have a simple, steady faith in an overruling Providence, and showed it, unostentatiously, in many ways, both in his actions, and in the advice he gave, on occasion, to the young men.

In the result, the bargain—if it can be so termed—was concluded. Elwood and Templemore formally enrolled themselves under Monella’s leadership, and henceforth performed the duties he assigned to them; amongst other things assisting almost daily in the formation of the path that was to take them through the forest. When not so engaged, they would go out with some of the Indians on hunting or fishing excursions in search of food.

Monella had with him, amongst other things, a beautifully finished theodolite of wonderful accuracy and delicacy; with this he settled the direction of the road from day to day. Often, obstacles were encountered that made it impossible to go straight; these had to be worked round and the proper direction picked up again by means of Monella’s calculations.

Another circumstance worthy of note and that caused the two young men at first some surprise, was the fact that Monella had with him some mirrors specially prepared and fixed in strong cases for carrying about in rough travel, and intended for heliographic signalling. They frequently took these out and practised with them by sending messages to one another from the ridges of hills far apart. Monella tried also to instruct Matava and some of the Indians in the work, but without success. They were indeed afraid of the glasses, and looked upon it all as some kind of magic.

“Wouldn’t it be simpler to go up the bed of this stream that you seem to have been following more or less all the time, even if it be longer?” observed Jack one day.

Monella shook his head.

“No use, my friend. It divides into so many branches; and then again, in case of a rise of its waters, we should have all our road submerged at once.”

On Sundays they always rested. This, it appeared, had been Monella’s custom all along.

In his conversations in the evenings and during their Sunday strolls, he would instruct and amuse his hearers with his reminiscences and adventures in all parts of the world, or with his intimate knowledge of the wild life around them. From his account, he had undergone, at times, terrible and extraordinary hardships and privations on the plains and in the forests of India and Africa; of Australia; the Steppes of Tartary; the Highlands of Thibet; the interior of China and Japan; the wilds of Siberia; of Canada; the prairies of North America, and the pampas, plains, and rugged mountains of South America—all, as Dr. Lorien had said, seemed to be alike known to him. Nor was he less familiar with the countries and cities of Europe; yet he spoke of his travels and experiences in a simple manner that had in it nothing of boastfulness or ostentation, but as though his sole object were to amuse and entertain his two young friends.

As they penetrated farther into the forest, their work became harder and the progress slower. This latter was unavoidable, since each day they had to walk farther and farther to and fro. Moreover, the Indians, who had displayed greater courage—so Monella had said—now that they had two more white men with them, once more began to show signs of nervous apprehension and fear.

This was doubtless due to the great difference in many ways—some definite enough, others indefinable and vague—between this forest and those generally to be found in the tropical regions of South America. Not only were the trees still more gigantic—making it gloomier—and the undergrowths more dense and tangled, but the birds and animals, judging from their cries, were unfamiliar to them. Many of the sounds usual to forest life in British Guiana were absent; the constant note of the ‘bell-bird’ was not heard, nor was even the startling roar of the howling monkeys. Instead were heard other sounds and noises of an entirely novel and peculiar kind, unknown even to the Indians who had been used to forest travelling all their lives; sounds that even Monella either could not explain—or hesitated to. One of these was a horrid combination of hiss and snort and whistle, loud and prolonged like the stertorous breathings of some monstrous creature. Some of the Indians declared that this was the sound traditionally said to proceed from the great ‘camoodi,’ the monstrous serpent that is supposed to guard the way to Roraima mountain; while others inclined to the opinion that it was made by the equally dreaded ‘didi,’ the gigantic ‘wild man of the woods,’ that also had, as they averred, its special haunts in this particular forest. At times, a startling, long-drawn cry would echo through the wood, so human in its tones as sometimes to cause them to rush in the direction it seemed to come from, in the belief that it was a cry for help from one of the party who was in danger. This strange, harrowing cry, the Indians called ‘The cry of a Lost Soul’6; and they were always seized with panic when it was heard.

There were other cries and sounds equally mysterious and perplexing; and, so the Indians began to declare, strange sights too. Of these they could give no clear account, but they maintained that, in the shadows in the darker places, or just before nightfall, while returning from their work, they now and then caught passing glimpses of vague shapes that seemed to peer at them and then disappear within the gloomy forest depths. And even Elwood and Templemore were conscious of the occasional presence of these silent unfamiliar shapes, and sometimes fired at them, though without result. These facts they made no attempt to conceal from one another, though, in their intercourse with the Indians, they put a bold face on matters, and affected to disbelieve the stories told them.

Monella alone was—or appeared to be—entirely undisturbed by all these things. If conscious of them, he gave no sign of it, but went about whatever he had to do as though danger were to him an unknown quantity.

There was, however, one unpleasant fact that could not be ignored, and that was the unusual number of ‘bush-masters’ of large size in the wood. This is a poisonous snake, very gaudily coloured, whose bite is certain death. It does not—like most serpents—try to get out of the way of human beings, but, instead, rushes to attack them with great swiftness and ferocity. It is the only aggressive venomous snake of the American continent. It usually attains a length of five or six feet; but, in this forest, the explorers killed many of eight or nine feet, and two—that came on to the attack together—were nearly eleven feet long, with fangs as large as a parrot’s claw. In consequence of the frequency of the attacks of these reptiles, so much dreaded by the Indians, and indeed by all travellers, one or two of a working party, armed with shot guns, had to be told off to keep watch; rifles being of no use for the purpose.

Templemore, as it happened, had had a bad fright when a child from an adventure with a snake; and this—as is frequently the case—had left in his mind, all the rest of his life, a great horror of serpents. He found, therefore, the presence of these ‘lords of the woods,’ as their Indian name implies, a source of ever-present abhorrence.

Besides the ‘bush-masters,’ there were the ‘labarri’—also a large venomous snake, but not aggressive like the other—and rattlesnakes. There were also, no doubt, boa-constrictors, or ‘camoodis,’ of the ordinary kind; but, thus far, only one had been seen, and that, though large, was nothing out of the way as regards size for that country.

Nor were serpents their only visible enemies; there were others of a kind new to the two young men. One day, while with the working party at the farthest part of the track, they heard the whole forest suddenly resound with a perfect babel of discordant noises. There were shrill cries and squeals, hoarse roars and growls, then a kind of trumpeting. The Indians retreated, throwing down their axes to pick up their rifles. As they hastily retired, four large animals sprang into their path, one after the other, with loud roars and growls. But Monella, who was behind Elwood, stepped forward and rolled two over with his repeating rifle, and Jack stopped another of the beasts with his. The fourth, apparently not liking the way things were going, leaped into the thicket and disappeared; though, judging from the sounds that came from the direction it had taken, there were many more of its fellows close at hand. Gradually their cries grew fainter, until they died away in the distance.

Meanwhile, further shots had given the coup de grâce to the three that had been knocked over, and the victors went up to examine them. They seemed to be a kind of panther or leopard of a light grey colour, approaching white in places, with markings of a deeper colour.

Neither Templemore nor Elwood had ever previously seen any animal, or the skin of one, at all like these. They were, moreover, of different shape from either the jaguar or the tiger-cat; larger than the latter, and more thick-set than the former.

“These must be the ‘white jaguars’ that the Indians say help to guard Roraima,” Jack observed, looking in perplexity at the strange creatures.

“Yes,” said Matava, who had now come up, “and they are ‘Warracaba tigers.’”7

“What on earth are they?” asked Leonard.

“Warracaba tiger,” Monella said, “is the name given to a species of small ‘tiger’ (in America all such animals are called ‘tigers’) that hunts in packs, and is reputed to be unusually ferocious. They have a peculiar trumpeting cry, not unlike the sound made by the Warracaba bird—the ‘trumpet-bird’—hence their name.”

“They look to me more like light-coloured pumas,” Jack remarked.

“No; pumas are not marked like that, and do not make the sounds we heard. Besides, you need never fear a puma, and should never shoot at one, unless it is attacking your domestic animals.”

Both Templemore and Elwood looked up in surprise.

“I always thought,” the latter said, “that pumas were such bloodthirsty animals.”

“So they are, to other animals—even the jaguar they attack and kill. But men they never touch, if let alone. I do not believe there is a single authenticated instance of a puma’s hurting any human being, man, woman or child. In the Andes and Brazil—where I have lived long enough to know—the Gauchos call the puma ‘Amigo del cristiano’—‘the friend of man’—and they think it an evil thing to kill one.”8

A few days after, they were attacked again by these furious creatures, and this time did not come off so well, for two of the Indians were badly mauled. But for Monella’s cool bravery, indeed, matters would have been much worse; and Templemore had a narrow escape. Then, a day or two later, one of the Indians was stung by a scorpion; and Jack came near being bitten by a rattlesnake—would have been but for Monella, who, just in time, boldly seized the reptile by the tail, and, swinging it two or three times round his head, dashed its brains out against a piece of rock.

Indeed, upon all occasions where there was any kind of danger, Monella’s ready, quiet courage was always displayed in a manner that won both the admiration of his white colleagues and the devotion of his Indian followers. Moreover, as Dr. Lorien had stated, and as Leonard had found by actual experience, he was skilled in medicine and surgery. To wounds he applied the leaves of some plant, of which he had a store with him in a dried state, the curative effects of which were reputed among the Indians to be almost marvellous.

But even these incidents were surpassed by a startling experience they had a short time afterwards. On going to their working ground one morning, two or three Indians in advance of the remainder of the party saw, lying across the path, what they took to be the trunk of a tree that had fallen during the night; and they sat upon it, indolently, to wait for the others to come up. Suddenly, one of them sprang up, exclaiming, “It’s alive! I felt it move! It is breathing!” They all jumped up, in alarm, when the great snake—for such it proved to be—glided off into the wood. Most likely the others would have ridiculed their story, but that Templemore happened to come up in time to witness what occurred. And through the underwood, on both sides of the path, was plainly to be seen a sort of small tunnel that marked the place where the serpent had been lying asleep.

Matava and his fellows, of course, insisted that this was the great ‘camoodi,’ that Indian tradition had long declared existed in this forest—set there specially, by the demons of the mountain, to guard it from intrusion.

These constant dangers and adventures made the task of keeping the Indians from deserting doubly difficult, and rendered the work both harassing and tedious to the others. Only Monella showed no weariness, no sign of the strain it all involved; so far from that, these troubles seemed only to increase his vigilance, his power of endurance, and his determination.

And all the time they were cutting their way through vegetation that would have astonished and delighted the heart of a botanical collector such as Dr. Lorien. Not only within the wood, but in the whole district round, unknown and wondrous flowers and plants abounded. But the explorers had neither time nor inclination to take that interest in them they merited, and would, at any other time, have undoubtedly excited.9

6 This strange cry is often heard in the depths of the forests in this region, and has never been accounted for, the only explanation given by the Indians being the one stated above, viz., that it is ‘the cry of a Lost Soul.’ It is alluded to by the American poet, Whittier, in the following lines:—

“In that black forest where, when day is done,

* * * *

Darkly from sunset to the rising sun,

A cry as of the pained heart of the wood,

The long despairing moan of solitude

And darkness and the absence of all good,

Startles the traveller with a sound so drear,

So full of hopeless agony and fear,

His heart stands still, and listens with his ear.

—The guide, as if he heard a death-bell toll,

Crosses himself, and whispers, ‘A Lost Soul!’”

7 A vivid account of an adventure with these formidable animals will be found in Mr. Barrington Brown’s ‘Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana,’ page 71. Very little is known about them, but they are believed to have their haunts in the unexplored mountain districts, from which they occasionally descend into other parts. Mr. Brown states that the Indians fear them above everything; and, while comparatively brave as regards jaguars and tiger-cats of all kinds, give way to utter panic at the mere idea that ‘Warracaba tigers’ are in their neighbourhood. It is said that nothing stops or frightens them except a broad stream of water—not even fire.

8 A very interesting account of the South American puma will be found in ‘The Naturalist in La Plata,’ by Mr. W. H. Hudson. He states that the puma has a strange natural liking for, or sympathy with, man; that, though ferocious and bloodthirsty in the extreme as regards other animals, yet it never attacks man, woman, or child, awake or asleep. He quotes many authorities, and gives numerous instances, of a very remarkable character, from the accounts of hunters and others whom he has himself seen and questioned.

9 See extract given in the preface (page viii.) from Richard Schomburgk’s book ‘Reissen in Britisch Guiana.’

6 This strange cry is often heard in the depths of the forests in this region, and has never been accounted for, the only explanation given by the Indians being the one stated above, viz., that it is ‘the cry of a Lost Soul.’ It is alluded to by the American poet, Whittier, in the following lines:—

7 A vivid account of an adventure with these formidable animals will be found in Mr. Barrington Brown’s ‘Canoe and Camp Life in British Guiana,’ page 71. Very little is known about them, but they are believed to have their haunts in the unexplored mountain districts, from which they occasionally descend into other parts. Mr. Brown states that the Indians fear them above everything; and, while comparatively brave as regards jaguars and tiger-cats of all kinds, give way to utter panic at the mere idea that ‘Warracaba tigers’ are in their neighbourhood. It is said that nothing stops or frightens them except a broad stream of water—not even fire.

8 A very interesting account of the South American puma will be found in ‘The Naturalist in La Plata,’ by Mr. W. H. Hudson. He states that the puma has a strange natural liking for, or sympathy with, man; that, though ferocious and bloodthirsty in the extreme as regards other animals, yet it never attacks man, woman, or child, awake or asleep. He quotes many authorities, and gives numerous instances, of a very remarkable character, from the accounts of hunters and others whom he has himself seen and questioned.

9 See extract given in the preface (page viii.) from Richard Schomburgk’s book ‘Reissen in Britisch Guiana.’

CHAPTER VI

THE MYSTERIOUS CAVERN.

When the time drew near for the adventurers, if Monella’s calculations proved correct, to reach the base of the towering rock towards which they were making their way with so much labour, a suppressed excitement became apparent throughout nearly the whole party. It was clearly visible in the Indians and in Elwood; and Templemore, even, showed signs of anxiety. Monella alone was imperturbable as ever, and, if any unusual feeling arose in his mind, there was no trace of it to be seen in his placid manner. Perhaps a close observer might have seen, at times, a little more fire in the gaze of his keen eyes; but it was scarcely noticeable to those around him.

Elwood did not attempt to hide the state of expectancy into which he had gradually worked himself; but while he, on the one hand, grew more excited, Jack Templemore, on the other, became steadily more pessimistic and moody. Since the adventure of the great ‘camoodi’ he seemed nervous and depressed, and he no longer troubled himself to conceal the discontent that now possessed him. The continued sojourn in that terrible forest was becoming too much for his peculiar temperament. Its gloom oppressed him more and more each day; and he had become silent and unsociable, often sitting for long intervals stolidly smoking and, if addressed, replying only in monosyllables. They had now been for some weeks in the wood, camping in it every night, and going back to ‘Monella Lodge’ only for the Sundays. To this rule Monella rigidly adhered; but, since it took the greater part of a day to reach the edge of the forest from the point they had now attained, but little work was done at the path-making on Saturdays, Sundays, or Mondays. Hence their progress had become slower, and Templemore’s discontent and impatience increased in proportion.

One morning, after breakfast, Jack was sitting on a log moodily smoking, while Elwood was busying himself clearing up after the meal recently finished. Monella and all the Indians had gone to the path-end, and were out of sight; but the strokes of their axes, and their calls one to another, could be heard distinctly, now and again, echoing through the almost silent wood. Very little else broke the stillness, but once or twice they had heard that weird sound, half hiss, half whistle, that the Indians attributed to the monstrous serpent. Presently, Jack took his pipe from his mouth and addressed Elwood:—

“You heard what Monella said last night, that he hoped today or tomorrow would see the end of this work. Supposing, as I expect, that we find that we merely run against inaccessible cliff, I want to know what you intend to do. To attempt to work either to right or to left, along the foot of the rock, in the hope of finding an opening would be, I feel convinced, a mere wild-goose chase, and would lead us only farther into this hateful forest, and uselessly prolong our stay in it. Now, Leonard, is it agreed that the thing is to end when we get to the cliff? I’ve asked you again and again as to this, but you always put me off.”

“I put it off—till the time comes for deciding about it; that’s all, you old grumbler. What is the use of talking before we see how Monella’s calculations come out?”

“If I grumble, as you call it, it is because I am anxious for others. I gave a solemn promise before I left my poor old mother that I would not rush into any obvious and unnecessary danger; any danger, that is, beyond the ordinary risks of travel in a country like Guiana. Now——”

“Well, what dangers have we courted that are beyond the ‘ordinary risks of travel,’ as you call them?” Elwood demanded cheerfully. “We have come safely through forests and plains thus far, and now we are in another forest——”

“Yes, but what a forest! I have been, as you know, pioneering in the furthermost recesses of Brazil and Peru; I know a little—just a little—you will allow, of wild life; but never have I seen the like of this wood! No wonder the Indians shun and fear it; indeed, it is a marvel to me how Monella ever induced them to enter upon this work, and it is still more wonderful how he has managed to keep them from deserting him. Heaven knows what we have experienced of the place is enough to try the courage of the best—the most ferocious ‘tigers,’ the biggest serpents of one sort ever dreamed of, and the more deadly and more fiercely aggressive venomous ones; strange creatures that one can only catch glimpses of and can never see; sounds so weird and unnatural that even the Indians can offer no explanation. That great serpent, alone, fills me with a continual cold horror. We never know where it may be lurking; it may make a rush at one of us at any moment, and what chance would one have with such a beast? What consolation, to think it would probably get a bullet through its head from one of us, if, while that was being done, it crushed another to a jelly?”

“Your old horror and dislike of serpents make you nervous, old boy. I wish you could get over it. In all else, you know, you are as bold as—as—well, as Monella himself; and that is saying a lot, isn’t it? You must admit that, if our enterprise has its dangers, we have a leader who knows what he is doing.”

“A splendid fellow! but—a dreamer—or—a madman!”

“A madman! He has method in his madness then! I admire him more and more every day. He is a man to lead an army; to inspire the weakest; to put courage into the most timid. I do not wonder the Indians are so devoted to him. I would follow him anywhere, do anything he told me! His very glance seems to thrill you through with a courage that makes you ready to dare everything! He is a born leader of men! He carries out, in every action, in his manner, his air, his principles, his extraordinary cool courage, and his gentle, simple courtesy, all my ideas of a hero of romance of the olden time—the very beau idéal of a great king and chivalrous knight. I can see all this; his very looks, his slightest motions are full of a strange dignity; never have I seen one who so excited alike my admiration and my affection! Yet, I do admit he is a mystery. One knows nothing——”

“Exactly,” Jack burst in, interrupting at last the speech of the enthusiastic Leonard. “It is true, what you say, in a measure. He seems to have in him the making of such a man as you, I can see, have in your mind—a hero, a leader of men. Yet here is he, an unknown wanderer on the face of the earth, giving up the last years of his life to a fatuous chase after El Dorado, with a few Indians and a couple of credulous young idiots joining in his mad quest. I like him; I admire him; I believe in his sincerity. But I say he is mad all the same, a dreamer; and for the matter of that, so are you. You suit each other, you two. Two dreamers together!” And Templemore got up and began pacing up and down, restless in body and disturbed in mind.

Leonard watched him with a half smile; but Templemore looked serious and anxious.

“We are surrounded by hidden enemies—many of them deadly creatures,” he went on gloomily. “Already three of us have fallen victims, and we know not who may be the next. Even the most constant and watchful vigilance does not avail in a place like this; and the never-ceasing worry of it is becoming more than I can stand. One wants eyes like a hawk’s and ears like an Indian’s. One cannot feel safe for a single minute; you want eyes at the back of your head——”

Leonard went up and put his hand on the other’s arm.

“All because you are so anxious about me and others, dear old boy,” he said. “If you really thought of yourself alone you would never trouble; but you make a great affectation of nervous apprehension for yourself, while all the time you are thinking only of me.”

Templemore shook his head.

“I don’t know how it is,” he returned, “but the thought of that great snake haunts me. I feel as if some terrible trouble were in store for us through it. A kind of presentiment; a feeling I have never had before——”

Elwood burst out laughing.

“A presentiment! Great Scott! You confessing to a presentiment! You who always deride my presentiments, and dreams, and omens! Well, this is too good, upon my word! Who is the dreamer now, I should like to know?”

Just then they heard a call, and, looking along the path, saw Monella at some distance beckoning to them.

“Bring a lantern,” they heard him say, “and come with me, both of you.”

“A lantern!” exclaimed Jack. He took one up and examined it to see that there was plenty of oil. “What on earth can he want with a lantern? Is he going to look for the sun in this land of shadow?”

When they came up to Monella they looked at him inquiringly, but no sign was to be had from a study of his impassive face. Yet there seemed, Jack thought, a softer gleam in his eyes when he met his gaze.

“I think our work is at an end,” he said to the young men; “and,” addressing Jack more particularly, “your anxiety may now, let us hope, be lightened.”

Then he turned and walked on with a gesture for the two to follow. And Templemore felt confused; for the words Monella had spoken came like an answer to the thoughts that had been in his mind; so much so that he could not help asking himself, had this strange being divined what he and Elwood had been talking, and he (Jack) had been so seriously thinking, of?

However, these speculations were soon driven away by surprise at the change in the character of the wood. The trees grew less thickly, and the ground became more stony, the undergrowth gradually thinner; more daylight filtered down from above, and soon they found they could see between the trunks of the trees for some distance ahead. And then, in the front of them, it grew lighter and lighter, and shortly the welcome sound of falling water struck upon their ears. Then they came upon a stream—presumably the same that they had been, in a measure, following through the wood—rushing and tumbling in a rocky bed—for they were going up rising ground—and splashing and foaming in its leaps from rock to rock. The trees became still sparser, and the light stronger, till, finally, they emerged into an open space and saw, rising straight up before them, the perpendicular flat rock that formed the base of Roraima’s lofty summit.

It was here fairly light; indeed, a single ray of sunlight played upon the splashing water in the little stream, and the spray sparkled in the gleam. But still very little sunlight ever entered the place. The great wall of rock that reared itself in a plumb-line two thousand feet into the sky, overshadowed it completely on the one side; and on the other were the great trees of this primæval forest towering up three hundred feet or more, and extending their branches above across almost to the rock, though below, the nearest trunk was quite fifty yards away. They stood, in fact, upon the edge of a semi-circular clearing that extended for a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, its radius being about fifty yards if taken from the centre of the exposed portion of the cliff. At each end of this space the trees and undergrowth closed in again upon the rock in an impenetrable tangled mass, denser, and darker even, than that through which the explorers had been slowly cutting their way.

Some of the Indians were grouped round the stream, two or three enjoying the luxury of wading in it, or sitting on the bank and dangling their feet in the clear cool water. Matava and the others were busy upon some kind of rough carpentering. Templemore and Elwood saw that the stream issued from a hole in the rock near one end of the clearing; and this was of itself a matter for surprise. They were, however, still more astonished when Monella, with a strange smile, pointed out another aperture in the rock near the centre of the open portion of the cliff. It was about sixteen or eighteen feet from the ground, and was not unlike a window or embrasure in a stone building of considerable thickness. Within—at a distance of eighteen inches or so—it seemed however to be closed by solid rock.

The two gazed in silence at this unexpected sight; Elwood showing in his eager manner the hopes that it aroused, and Templemore pondering in silent wonder as to what it all meant. That Monella’s ‘calculations’ had led them to a most unexpected result thus far—whether by accident or otherwise—he could not but admit. Of the fact there was now no doubt. But a clearing of this character, opposite to what looked like an opening in the rock, or entrance to a cave, was a fact too startling to be the outcome of a mere coincidence, or a lucky chance. He knew that a party of explorers might spend years—centuries, indeed, if they could live long enough—in a search for such a place in that forest and never find it, unless guided by the most exact information. Then the fact that the opening was so nearly in the centre of the clearing had a significance of its own; the question whether it was actually the entrance to a cave or merely a curious accidental hollow in the rock was thus answered, as it were, in advance. Besides, just below the ’embrasure’ a small stream trickled out, and, falling down the rock, found its way amongst the stones to the larger water-course beyond. Here there seemed presumptive evidence that the space at the back of the rock was hollow—was, in fact, a cave. But in that case the entrance must have been purposely closed by human hands. If so, by whom? and when? and why?

These thoughts revolved rapidly in Templemore’s mind while he stood looking at the rock. He glanced around at the giant trees, and thought of the almost impenetrable character of the forest they had come through, and he felt that, if the ideas that had come into his mind were correct, it was impossible to suppose that such a cave could be the retreat say, of any unknown Indians living at the present time. Therefore, the puzzle seemed the greater. Who could have been there before them—and how long ago?

But Matava now approached the cliff bearing a sort of rough ladder that he had constructed under Monella’s directions; this he placed against the rock just under the opening, planting the ends firmly in the ground. He had cut down two young saplings and, partly by means of notches, and partly by twisting some strong fibres to hold them, had fastened cross-pieces at short intervals, and so fashioned the whole into a very serviceable ladder.

Monella signed to him to hold it firmly, and proceeded to test its strength. Then, satisfied as to this, he quietly mounted it till he could insert his hand into the aperture. After a moment or two he called to Elwood and Templemore to assist in steadying the ladder; and, when they had come to the assistance of Matava and another Indian who was with him, Monella leaned over into the opening and, exerting all his great strength, pushed away the stone that was closing it, exposing to view a cavern beyond. After a brief look inside, he asked for a lighted lantern and a long stick, and, while these were being handed up, the expectations and curiosity of his companions became excited to a lively degree. The Indians, who had been amusing themselves in the water, came crowding round, half pleased, half afraid at this unexpected development of events.

“You’re never going to venture into that place?” Templemore asked. “It may be full of deadly serpents. For Heaven’s sake do not be rash enough to risk it. Send one of the Indians——”

Monella replied with a look—a look that Jack remembered for many a day after. His eyes simply flashed; and then he said quickly,

“Did you ever know me bid another go where I would not venture myself?”

Then he took the lighted lantern, swung it into the cavern at the end of the stick, and, having satisfied himself that the air within was not foul, he threw the stick in first and followed, himself, into the semi-darkness.

A minute after, his head and shoulders re-appeared, just when Jack was half way up the ladder to follow him.

“Wait a few minutes before you come up,” he asked him. “I just want to give a glance round, and there is but one lantern. Or—well—suppose you come up and wait inside. But tell the others to keep to the bottom of the ladder, and be ready to hold it in case we should wish to beat a hasty retreat.”

This seemed prudent counsel, and was carried out. When Jack got off the ladder into the opening, he was told to jump down inside; and he found there a level rocky floor about three feet below the aperture, which had thus a resemblance to a veritable window. By the dim light it gave he could see that he was in a cavern of considerable height and extent, and Monella, with his lantern, disappearing through an arched opening at some distance that seemed to lead to another cave within. He had brought with him his double-barrel, one barrel loaded with small shot, the other with ball, and he gave a look at the revolver in his belt while he stood waiting at the entrance and gazing curiously about him. He saw that a small stream of water ran through one side of the cave; there were, in fact, two streams, for one ran in a ledge at some distance from the ground; but when it came to the opening they had come through, it fell to the floor and joined the other stream, the whole finding its way out through a fissure in the rock and running down outside, as has been before described. Now the stone slab that had closed the ‘window,’ as Jack called the opening, had rested on a continuation of what may be termed the sill, and, on being pushed, had rolled off. It was a thin slab, roughly circular in shape; not unlike what one might suppose a millstone to be in the rough. Jack regarded it with close attention, almost indeed with awe; it spoke so plainly of human beings having inhabited the place, or, at least, of their having fashioned this method of closing the entrance to the cave. How long ago had they been there? And, when they went away, why had they closed the entrance so carefully?

Monella seemed a long time away; so long that Jack at last began to think of starting to look for him—they had already sent for another lantern in case it should be required—when he heard his footsteps in the distance, and shortly afterwards saw the gleam from his lantern. When he came closer, Jack scanned his face keenly, but, as usual, read nothing there.

“You can call Elwood,” said Monella, “and I will take you to where I have been. You need have no fear; the place is quite free from reptiles.”

When, however, Leonard was called, a difficulty arose; Matava and his fellows objected very strongly to being left alone outside; but it also appeared that they objected still more strongly to coming into the cavern. On no consideration whatever would they enter “the demons’ den,” as they had already named it. But, since they had to make a choice, they elected, in the end, to remain outside and wait.

When Elwood was inside and had had a few moments in which to get accustomed to the obscurity and peer wonderingly about him, Monella pointed out how the opening had been closed.

“I want you to notice,” he observed, “that this stone was cemented, and this little stream of water that has accidentally found its way round here, has, in the course of time, loosened the cement; else I could not have pushed the stone away. We should have had to blast it.”

“Yes,” said Jack; “and it also shows that it was closed from the inside. Whoever last closed it never went out again—at least not by this entrance. Where then did they go to?”

“That’s what we have to see about,” returned Monella. “Now, follow me, and I will show you something that will surprise you.”

CHAPTER VII

THE CANYON WITHIN THE MOUNTAIN

Monella, with the lantern in his hand, led his two companions through an arched opening into a second cavern which seemed to be larger and loftier than the first; and this, in turn, opened into a third, at one end of which they could see that daylight entered. Monella stopped here and, lifting the light high in one hand, pointed with the other to side-openings in the rock.

“They are side-galleries, so to speak,” he said, “but do not appear to be of any great extent. I have been to the end of two or three. They all seem to be perfectly empty too; not so much as a trace of anything did I see, save loose pieces of stone here and there, that had, no doubt, fallen from the roof. Now we will go to the entrance on this side.” And he turned and walked on towards the place where they could see the glimmering of daylight.

Quite suddenly they turned a corner and saw before them a high archway, leading out into the open air; and, before the two young men had had time to express surprise, they had stepped out of the gloomy cavern into a valley, where they stood and stared in helpless astonishment upon a scene that was as lovely and enchanting as it was utterly unexpected.

They saw before them the bottom of a valley, or canyon, of about half a mile in length, and nearly a quarter of a mile in width; its floor, if one may use the expression, consisted chiefly of fine sand of a warm tawny hue; its sides, of rocks of white or pinkish white fine-grained sandstone, with here and there veins, two or three feet wide, of some metallic-looking material that glistened in the sunlight like masses of gold and silver. In other places were veins of jasper, porphyry, or some analogous rock, that sparkled and flashed as though embedded with diamonds; other parts again were dark-coloured, like black marble, throwing up in strong relief the ferns and flowers that grew in front of them.

At the further end of the valley a waterfall tumbled and foamed in the rays of the sun which, being now almost overhead, threw its beams along the whole length of the canyon. The stream that flowed below the fall widened out into clear pools here and there, fringed by stretches of velvety sward of a vivid green. The water of this stream was of a wonderful turquoise-blue tint, different from anything, Templemore thought, that he had ever seen before; and he and Elwood gazed with admiration at its inviting pellucid pools. But most extraordinary of all were the flowers that nearly everywhere were to be seen. In shape, in brilliancy of colouring, and in many other respects, they differed entirely from even the rare and wonderful orchids and other blossoms they had come across in the vicinity of Roraima. Of trees there were not many, though a few were dotted about here and there by the side of the river; and, in places, graceful palms grew out of the rocky slopes at the sides and leaned over, somewhat after the fashion of gigantic ferns. Though the valley was so shut in, and the heat in the sun very great, yet the amount of green vegetation on all sides, the blue water, and the light-coloured, cool-looking rocks, made up a scene that was gratefully refreshing after the gloom of the forest scenes to which the explorers had been so long accustomed. Moreover, by stepping back into the cool air of the cavern, they could look out upon it all without experiencing the drawback of the intense heat.

Elwood was in ecstasies. The triumphant light in his eyes, when he turned round and looked at his friend, was a thing to see.

“You confounded, wretched old grumbler,” he exclaimed, “what have you to say now? Is not this worth coming for? Or is it that even this will not suit you? Perhaps it is all too bright, the water too blue, the flowers too highly coloured, or”—here a most delicious scent was wafted across from some of the flowers—“they are perfumed too highly to please you! You haven’t found fault with anything yet, and we have been here nearly five minutes!”

Jack laughed; and Leonard noticed that it was more like his old, easy, good-natured laugh.

“I think you are too severe upon me, Leonard,” he replied. “Don’t you think so, Monella?”

Monella, the while, had been standing gazing on the scene like one in a dream. More than once he passed his hand across his eyes in a confused way, as though to make sure he was awake. When thus addressed, however, he seemed to rouse himself, and, without noticing the bantering question that had been addressed to him, and, extending one hand slowly towards the valley that lay before them, said,

“I praise Heaven that I have been led, after many days, to the land that I have seen in my visions. Now do I begin to understand why they were sent. And you too, my son,” he added, looking at Leonard, “you have had your visions and your dreams. Tell me, does this not remind you of them?”

“Indeed it does,” returned Leonard seriously. “Though, till you spoke of it, I had not thought of it. I felt so glad to think we had been successful so far, and that your expectations were being justified. It is all very strange.”

“I am out of all that,” observed Jack, with a comical mixture of offended dignity and good-natured condescension. “You dreamers of dreams have the best of such beings as I am. You are led on by visions of what is in store for you, as it would seem, while I have to work in the dark, and follow others blindly, and——”

“And think of nothing but how best you can serve and protect your friends,” said Monella, looking at him with a kindly smile. “We are not all alike, my friend. It is not given to all to ‘dream dreams,’ any more than it is given to all to have true manly courage combined with almost womanly affection for those they call their friends. We three have little to boast of as between one another, I fancy. Would it were so more often where three friends are found grouped together or associated in any undertaking. But now to consider what is next to be done. It seems to me we could not have a better place for our head-quarters in our future explorations than this cavern. Here we have all we want: shelter from rain, and sun, water—pretty well all we could ask for. We must see about getting our things along here.” He paused for a moment and then continued, “On second thoughts I see no reason why you should not remain here. There is no more baggage than the Indians can carry amongst them, and that is all we have to trouble about. I will go back, and you two stay here.”

“That seems scarcely fair,” Jack protested. “I have been lazy all the morning. I propose I go and leave you here.”

Monella shook his head.

“You cannot manage the Indians as I can,” he answered. “Indeed, that is one reason why I think you would do better to remain here. When they find you do not return, and that they have to obey me or remain in the forest alone, they are more likely to do what we require. But I will ask you not to go far away, and not to fire off a gun or anything, unless in case of actual danger and necessity.”

“You do not believe that the place is inhabited?” Jack exclaimed in surprise.

“Who can tell?” was the only reply, as Monella took up the lantern and turned away.

Left to themselves, Jack pulled out his inevitable pipe, the while that Elwood sought, and brought in, a couple of short logs from a fallen tree to serve as seats; and the two then sat down in the shade of the cavern-entrance.

Jack was very thoughtful; but his thoughtfulness now was of a different kind from his late moody silence. He, indeed, was ruminating deeply upon Monella, who was every day—every hour almost—becoming a greater mystery to him. He had been particularly struck with his manner and the expression of his face when they had stood together, looking out upon that curious scene. In Monella’s words there had not been much perhaps, but in other respects he had strangely impressed the usually unimpressionable Templemore. There had been in his features a sort of exaltation, a light and fire as of one actuated by a great and lofty purpose, so entirely opposed to the idea that his end and aim were connected with gold-seeking, that Jack Templemore confessed himself more puzzled with him than he had ever been before. Too often, as he reflected, when a man sets his mind, at the time of life Monella might be supposed to have reached, upon gold-seeking, he is actuated by sheer greed and covetousness. But by no single look or action whatever had Monella ever conveyed a suggestion that the lust of gold was in his breast. Yet, if that were not so, what was his object? Did he seek fame—the fame of being a great discoverer? Scarcely. Again and again he had declared, on the one hand, his contempt for and weariness of the world in general, and, on the other, his fixed intention never to return to civilised life. Jack began to suspect that all his talk about the wealth to be gained from their enterprise had been chiefly designed to secure their aid, and that for himself it had no weight—offered no incentive. What, then, was Monella’s secret aim or object? What was the hidden expectation or hope, or belief, or whatever it was, that had led him into an undertaking that had appeared almost a chimera; that had so taken possession of his mind as to have become almost a religion with him; that had enabled him to support fatigue and physical exertion, privation, hunger and thirst, as probably could few other men on the face of the earth; and that had become such an article of faith—had made him such a firm believer in his own destiny, that no danger seemed to have any meaning for him? Neither storm nor flood, lightning nor tempest, savage beasts nor deadly serpents—none of the dangers or risks that the bravest men acknowledged, even if they faced them, seemed to have existence so far as this strange man showed any consciousness of them. Never had they known him to step aside one foot, to pause or hesitate one moment, to avoid any of them. He simply went his way in supreme contempt of them all; and, until quite lately—till within the hour almost—Jack had attributed all this either to madness, or to an inordinate thirst for riches for riches’ sake—which, as he reflected, would be, in itself, a sort of madness. Now, however, his opinion was altering. The liking he had all along felt was changing to surprised admiration. He remembered the calm, unwavering confidence with which Monella had led them through all their seemingly interminable difficulties and discouragements to their present success—for success he felt it was, in one sense, if not in another. In the strange flowers and plants before them, alone, there were fame and fortune, and what might there not be yet beyond, now that they had in very truth penetrated into that mysterious mountain that had so long defied and baffled all would-be explorers? Monella, he still felt, might be a bit mad—a dreamer or a mystic—but, evidently, he was a man of great and strange resources. Few engineers, as Jack himself knew, could have led them thus straight to their goal from the data he had had to work upon. Yet he showed now neither elation nor surprise, and in particular, as Jack confessed to himself rather shamefacedly, no disposition to remind him of his many exhibitions of contemptuous unbelief. With these thoughts in his mind, and the remembrance of Monella’s unvarying kindness of manner—to say nothing of the way he had exposed himself to danger on his behalf—Templemore began to understand better than he ever had before the affection that the warm-hearted Leonard entertained for their strange friend, and he became conscious that a similar feeling was fast rooting itself in his own heart. In fact Monella was now, at last, exercising over the practical-minded Templemore that mysterious fascination and magic charm that had made the Indians his devoted slaves, and Leonard his unquestioning admirer and disciple.

Presently, Leonard, who had fallen into one of his daydreams, woke up with a slight start and exclaimed,

“What a paradise!”

Jack smiled, and said, “I wonder whether it is a paradise without a serpent, as it is without an Eve? But your dreams, Leonard, if I remember, were mixed up with a comely damsel; and there is none here. I fear we shall have to regard her as the part that goes by contraries, as they say.”

Leonard looked hard at him, and there was evident disappointment in his glance and tone when he asked,

“Do you then think this place is uninhabited?”

“I do,” was the reply. “And I will tell you why. That stone that closed the entrance from the forest was placed there by some one, no doubt, and by some one inside. Yes; but how long ago? A very long time! Hundreds of years, I should say. It has taken quite that time for that stream of water to hollow out the little channel in the rocky side of the cave and play upon the cement until it has become loosened. The wood outside tells the same tale. It must be hundreds of years since any human beings made their way to and fro through the wood, to or from this place. Once there were many people here; and they were not ordinary people either, I can tell you. Not Indians, I mean, for instance. They were clever workers in stone. That ‘window,’ as I call it, through which we came in, is artificial.”

Elwood gave an exclamation of surprise.

“Yes; I noticed it, though you did not. I have little doubt that Monella noticed it too. The cavern was formerly all open, or, at least, it had a large opening, and I am almost certain its floor was originally level with the ground outside. If so, the present floor is artificial, and there are probably vaults beneath. Outside, the stonework is so artfully done that you see no trace of it; it appears to be all solid rock; but inside I saw distinctly traces of the joints. Then, look at these archways, at the one we are now sitting under! They have been worked upon too—to enlarge them, probably; to give more head-room when the floor was made higher. See! Here are marks of the chisel!” And Templemore got up and pointed to many places where the marks left by the tool were clearly to be seen.

“Well,” said Elwood, “I suppose we shall solve the problem and set all doubts at rest before many days are over. For my part I am in a curious state of mind about it—half impatient, half the reverse. If it is to turn out as you say, I am in no hurry to terminate the uncertainty. This strange spot, the fact that we are really, at last, inside the wonderful mountain—these things open such a vista of marvellous possibilities that I—it seems to me—I would rather, you know——”

“Oh, yes, I know, you old dreamer,” Jack exclaimed, laughing. “You would rather wait and have time to dream on for a while than have your dreams rudely dispelled by hard facts. Now suppose we go and take a look round in the shade over there. We need not go out of sight of this entrance; so that Monella will find us immediately he returns.”

The sun had now moved so far over that one side of the valley was lying in shadow, and they strolled out to observe more closely the new flowers and plants they had thus far seen only from a distance.

CHAPTER VIII

ALONE ON RORAIMA’S SUMMIT

When Monella returned about two hours later, the two young men had much to tell him of the wonderful flowers and plants they had found, of strange fish in the water, and curious perfumed butterflies that they had mistaken for flowers.

There were many of these extraordinary insects flying about. In colouring and shape they resembled some of the flowers; when resting upon a spray or twig they looked exactly like blossoms, and upon nearing them, one became conscious of a most exquisite scent. But just when one leaned a little nearer to smell the supposed flower, it would flutter quickly away, and insect and perfume disappeared altogether. Many of the flowers that were scattered about the rocks were shaped like exquisitely moulded wax bells of all sorts and kinds of colours and patterns, white, red, yellow, blue, etc., striped, spotted, speckled. So distinct were they from anything the explorers had before seen, that they had picked some and brought them into the cavern to show Monella; but he could not give them a name.

The stream from the waterfall, they found, disappeared into the ground just before it reached the cavern. No doubt this was the stream they had seen issuing from the rock upon the other side.

At the further end the valley began to rise, following the stream, which came down in a series of small falls or cataracts. About this part they had found some other caves; but had not entered them.

“And most remarkable of all,” said Templemore, “we have not seen a single snake, lizard, or reptile of any sort or kind. Yet this is just the sort of place one would have expected to be full of them. Nor have we seen either animals or birds.”

Monella told them the Indians still refused to enter the cave. They all three, therefore, went to the ‘window,’ and assisted to get their camp equipage inside, the Indians bringing the things to the top of the ladder and handing them through the opening. They preferred, themselves, to camp outside, and had already made a fire to cook some monkeys they had killed with bows and arrows.

When all their things were safe inside, Leonard and Jack took some fishing nets and soon caught some fish in the pools of the stream in the canyon. They then made a fire just outside the cavern entrance, and cooked them for their evening meal. The fish seemed to be a kind of trout, but of a species they had never seen before.

Monella expressed his regret that all attempts to persuade the Indians out of their fear of ‘the demon-haunted mountain’ had failed.

“They will neither come inside nor remain outside by themselves; that is, if we go away from here to explore farther. It seems to me, therefore, that we ought to have all our stores brought here before we start, and then let the Indians go back by themselves. We may be here for months, so had better get them to fetch everything we can possibly require from ‘Monella Lodge.’”

Such was Monella’s advice.

“It will take two or three days at least—possibly more,” he continued, “to transport all our stores here. During that time we must be content to attend to nothing else, and postpone any further exploration of the mountain. Besides, when we once start, none can tell how far we may be led on. Better have our ‘base of operations’ settled and secure first. How far away are those other caves that you saw?”

“About a quarter of a mile,” Jack answered.

“We will have a look at them in the morning,” Monella said thoughtfully. “It may be wiser to hide some of our stores and belongings in different places, so that, if any accident should happen to one lot, the others may be all right. Eh, Templemore?”

“Just the very idea I had in my head when I spoke to you of those other caves,” Jack responded. “We can take half an hour or so to explore them in the morning.”

“Better take longer,” observed Monella. “Better take the day, and do it thoroughly. Much may depend upon it hereafter. Suppose, therefore, that you remain here while Elwood and I return to ‘Monella Lodge’ and see about packing and bringing some of the ‘belongings’?Then, if we find another journey necessary, you can go next time, and Elwood and I will remain here on guard. But we cannot get back tomorrow night. Do you mind staying here alone?”

“Not I!” said Jack, laughing.

“Very well then; we will arrange it so. We shall load up our two animals, and perhaps one journey will suffice after all. Any way, you hunt for the best and most secret hiding-places you can find. See that they are dry, you know. There are the three casks of powder——”

“What! Will you bring them too?”

“Certainly. We may have blasting to do before we have done with what we have in hand. The extra arms, too, we will divide, and secrete in different places.”

“I see the idea,” Jack assented. “Rely on me to do the best that can be done.”

The three went back, after their meal, to where the Indians were camping just outside the ‘window.’ Matava looked grave, and shook his head dubiously, when Leonard told him of the arrangements come to.

“My heart is heavy, my master,” he said in his own language, “at the thought of leaving you to fight the demons of the mountain. It is not good this thing that you are about to undertake. Doubtless the demons have left this place open as a trap to tempt you to enter their country. When you are well inside they will close it and have you securely captured and we shall never see you more. Alas! That my mother should ever have said aught to lead you on to this terrible enterprise. Better had she died first. I feel sure, if you go inside there, we shall never see you again!”

Elwood only smiled, and bid him be of good cheer.

“We shall return,” he replied, “and, I trust, not empty-handed. And, if so, you and my old nurse shall share in my good fortune. But, if you think there is danger, why do you not come with us to help? It is not like a brave Indian to be afraid!”

The Indian shook his head and sighed.

“Matava is no coward,” he responded. “His master knows that well. Against all earthly dangers Matava will help him to his last breath, but to battle with the demons of Roraima is but madness—and it is useless. No mortal man may brave them and live. Some one must take the tale to those left behind. It is not good that they should never know.”

“That is a nice way of getting out of it, Matava,” said Templemore, who had just come up and heard the last sentence. “But please don’t take intelligence of our fate till you have learned it. Above all,” he continued seriously, “do not alarm our friends in Georgetown by any wild, preposterous——”

“Oh, don’t trouble as to that,” Elwood interrupted. “Our friends know Matava and his superstitions about the mountain too well by this time. Besides, we will leave letters with him, to deliver, in case he returns before we get back.”

It was now getting dark, and the three white men went back into the cavern to prepare their sleeping arrangements. First, it was determined to make a more thorough examination of the side-galleries, and this was soon done, for they were found to be of very limited extent. In passing the archway that led into the canyon, however, Leonard happened to glance out, and uttered an exclamation which called the others to his side. They also looked out into the valley, and were as much astonished as at their first sight of it that morning. It seemed to be lighted up!

On all sides, high and low, small lights were seen. They were of various colours, and hung, some singly, some in groups or clusters. Many drooped over the water, and were reflected in the pools below. The effect was extraordinary. The place seemed a veritable fairy land; and exclamations of astonishment and admiration burst from each of them while he stood and gazed upon the scene.

Then they went out to the nearest lights, and the marvel was explained. The bell-shaped flowers that had excited their curiosity during the afternoon all glowed with radiance. Inside each was a small projection apparently of a fungoid character, that was phosphorescent. It sent forth a light nearly as brilliant as that of a firefly; and this illumined the bell-shaped blossom, which then appeared of different hues according to its colouring by daylight. Even those that Elwood had picked, and thrown down at the entrance of the cavern, glowed with appreciable glimmer.

“I’ve heard of some kinds of toadstools and fungi being phosphorescent,” Templemore remarked, “but never of such a thing in flowers.”

“Yet,” observed Monella, “if you come to consider the matter, there is nothing more remarkable in the one case than in the other.”

The night passed without incident, and all were astir before dawn, making preparations for the day’s work. After a light meal, all except Templemore set out on their way to ‘Monella Lodge,’ while Jack went out into the canyon to seek for caves and likely hiding-places for their stores, and to look about generally. He took with him his usual two-barrelled gun, a supply of cartridges, and some biscuits and other provisions. Water he knew he could get in plenty. He also took a lantern to enable him to explore the caves. Before leaving the ‘window,’ as he now always called the entrance by which they had found their way into the first cavern, he drew up the ladder, and then, with some difficulty, rolled the stone that had closed it into its place again. Most likely he could not have given any reason for this action if he had been asked; but probably a vague hatred of the gloomy forest, and satisfaction in shutting it out of view, were what chiefly prompted him.

“I will take all I want round to the other side,” he said to himself. “I like that side best. It’s a more cheerful outlook.”

He thoroughly explored the caves, and decided that they were fairly suitable for the purpose they had in view. Then, quite accidentally, he came upon another that was so hidden by a tangled mass of creepers that its existence would never have been suspected. He fancied he had seen a small animal disappear behind a bush, and trying with a stick to see whether he could rout it out, he found what at first he thought was a large hole; but, on pushing back the creepers, which hung like a curtain across it, he found a large opening about eight or nine feet high. Inside was a roomy cavern with many recesses here and there, like high shelves in the rock, and many short side-galleries. Just the very place they wanted, he decided. Neither here nor elsewhere did he meet with any signs of his pet aversion—the serpent tribe.

He now began the ascent of the canyon, following always the course of the stream that came down it. In some places the way was easy and direct; indeed, as he could not but remark, there was every appearance that a well-defined, wide pathway, with steps here and there, had at one time existed. But in places it was broken away; the steps cut in the rock had crumbled, or trees growing in the fissures had rent them asunder. In other places masses of rock, fallen from heights above, blocked the road; and, occasionally, the trunk of a fallen tree. Then he came to a wayside cave, and was glad to rest in its shade from the heat of the sun, which began to pour down into the canyon with intolerable fierceness. He had proceeded so far that he imagined he must be half way to the top; and he looked up the canyon still beyond him and at the overhanging cliffs with curiosity, wondering how much farther he would have to go to reach its head, and what he would see when he arrived there.

While he sat quietly pondering this question, and enjoying a smoke following upon a light lunch, the idea grew upon him to complete the ascent that afternoon. He knew that, if he did so, it would be impossible to return that night, and this meant passing it in the open air. But that he did not at all mind; he was accustomed to it; and, since he saw no signs of serpents anywhere, there was an absence of the only thing that troubled him in such case. Monella and the others would not return till the following evening; he had plenty of time to do it in, and nothing else to occupy his time.

But would Monella like it? Why, however, should he object? He could do no harm in going to the top and back. It was not as though the place were inhabited and he might get involved in any adventures with the ‘natives.’

The more he thus thought about it, the more strongly did the feeling grow upon him to make the venture. True, he had not much with him in the way of provisions; but he had enough for supper and breakfast if he put himself upon short rations. In the end he resolved to risk it.

Accordingly, so soon as the sun had gone across sufficiently to shade the path, he started off once more, and made his way still upwards. He encountered many obstacles that delayed his journey, but eventually, just when night was falling, he arrived at what he calculated must be the top of the ascent. It was a grassy plateau of a few hundred yards in extent, facing cliffs that rose still higher and shut out the view and were inaccessible. Down these the stream still flowed, though much smaller in volume than was the case below. What, however, caused him dismay, was to find that he was shut in on the other side by a belt of forest that seemed to be almost as dense and impenetrable as the hated wood below. It was too late to think of going back; there he must stay and pass the night. It was cold, too, up there, and he had no rug in which to roll himself. In fact, he began to wish himself back in the cavern, where he could have cooked himself a good supper and then rested comfortably. There was not even a view; he had hoped to have a glorious prospect and, having brought his field-glass, even that he might be able to look across the forest and savanna and make out ‘Monella Lodge’; possibly see his friends, who would now be nearing it. Instead of that, he was shut in upon a narrow ledge beside an unknown forest that might be full of wild animals of a dangerous kind.

Altogether Jack felt he had not acted wisely. He went a little way into the wood; but, finding it very dense, and fearful of losing his way in its dark recesses, he soon returned to the clearing. Finally, as it grew dark, being tired and drowsy after his exertions in climbing the canyon, he fell asleep.

CHAPTER IX

VISION OR REALITY?

The following afternoon, a long train of Indians, with Monella and Elwood at its head, was making its way slowly along the tunnel-like road that had been cut through the heart of Roraima Forest. They all carried loads, and they had with them, besides, Monella’s two llamas, which were also loaded with as much as they could carry. All looked more or less wearied from their long march, and cast many anxious glances ahead as they approached the end of their journey. When they reached the part where the path opened and the trees became thinner, Matava fired two shots, the agreed-on signal to Templemore; they were answered at once by one from him, and, shortly afterwards, he was seen making his way towards them. He relieved Elwood of a few things he was carrying, and inquired whether they brought any news.

“None,” said Elwood; “and you?”

“First of all,” returned Jack, “here’s a very curious and awkward thing. I have come across a large puma that has taken a great fancy to me, and has become somewhat of a ‘white elephant.’ At the present moment it is looking out of window, anxiously awaiting my return; and, though it has not yet learned to scramble down the ladder, I’m not at all sure it won’t acquire that accomplishment shortly—or it may even risk the leap down. What I am thinking of is the animals you have with you—they might tempt it; otherwise, it seems tame and good-natured enough, and I do not think it will hurt either you or the Indians.”

“Does it seem like an animal that has been tamed, then?” asked Monella. “And where did you come across it? Inside, I suppose?”

“Why, yes. But I’ll tell you later. Meantime, can’t we halt the animals here, and keep them out of sight for awhile? My new friend is as big as a lioness, and of the same sex—and would have one of them down in a moment, if she felt so inclined. You can’t tie her up, you know, without a collar and chain, even if one cared to make the attempt. I tried to drive her away, but it was of no use; and I’ve been sitting there racking my brains as to what on earth I was to do when you came, and hoping against hope that the beast would take herself off.” And Jack looked the picture of comical perplexity and bewilderment.

Meantime, the train had come to a halt, and Matava and the other Indians crowded round Templemore and examined him with great curiosity and attention. There were many strange Indians who had been induced, for a consideration, to accompany the party, and these were equally inquisitive. Some came and touched him, as though to make sure he was real flesh and blood. Since Jack seemed inclined to resent this, Leonard laughingly explained.

“They can scarcely believe that any man can have passed a night in the mountain and live to tell the tale,” Elwood told Templemore. “Their idea is that you have been eaten up or captured by the ‘demons,’ who have sent back a ghostly presentment of their victim to lead on the others. So they are anxious to know whether it is really yourself or a spectral imitation. You may be sure, too, your ‘lioness’ will be a matter of serious speculation to them. She will be looked upon as a familiar spirit, to a certainty.”

Monella had said little; but he now proposed to go on to the cave at once with Jack and Elwood, to see how matters really stood, leaving the others to await their return.

On nearing the ‘window’ they saw, sure enough, the head and paws of an immense tawny-coloured animal that gave a cry—a sort of half-whine, half-roar—of recognition on seeing Jack. The ladder was lying on the ground outside.

“There you are,” he observed with a mixture of mock gravity and real anxiety; and he waved his hand towards the animal. “Let me introduce you to the ‘Lady of the Mountain.’ I only hope to goodness she will behave herself and receive you in a friendly manner; for, if not, I have no control over her. I disclaim all responsibility.”

Monella and Elwood looked curiously at what they could see of the animal. It seemed, as Jack had said, nearly as large as a lioness.

“It is a puma,” said Monella decidedly, “though a very large one. I never saw one anything near the size. However, there is no need to be afraid of it; you have heard me say you need never fear a puma.”

“Yes,” returned Jack, “and here is an opportunity of testing your faith in your own theory. I confess, if I did not already know she was well-disposed towards myself, I should think twice before I ventured upon going near her.”

“Nonsense!” said Monella, taking up the ladder and placing it against the opening. “I will show you the creature is tame and friendly enough. I could see it at the first glance.” And he ascended the ladder and entered the cavern, pushing the puma on one side as coolly as if it were a pet dog. Then he turned and called to Elwood to follow.

Jack also went after them, and found the puma already on friendly terms with both, much to his own relief; for he had had misgivings.

“The question now is what about the llamas?” he next said. “Do you think she is to be trusted there—and with the Indians?”

“With the Indians—yes—though they probably would object,” replied Monella; “but, with the llamas, it is doubtful. So we had best be on the safe side, and keep them, if possible, out of her sight.”

“She’s wonderfully playful,” observed Jack; “just like a great kitten. I’ve been playing with her with my lasso, and she will run about after it by the hour together, just for all the world like a kitten. If you want to keep her out of the way on the other side, all that need be done is for one of us to stay there and play with her.”

“Let Elwood do so then,” Monella decided. “He is tired; and you can come and help unload.”

The animal had, in fact, already begun to show a liking for Leonard, and, when he went out towards the canyon, it followed him at once. Jack watched this with some surprise, and affected much disgust.

“Just like the generality of females,” he remarked, “inconstant and changeable. Here have I been at the trouble of capturing the beast, and being worried with her all day, only to see her transfer her affections and allegiance to some one else at the very first opportunity!”

The unloading was then proceeded with, and before dark everything they had brought was placed within the cavern temporarily, to be moved on to other places, as might subsequently be determined.

When all had been brought in, the Indians set to work to cook their evening meal, while Jack did the same outside the canyon entrance. The hunters had shot an antelope, and with some of this and some fish a satisfying meal was provided; the puma lying down and watching the proceedings with evident curiosity, but with no more attempt at interference or stealing than in the case of a well-trained dog. Needless to say she was rewarded for her patience with a share.

When the meal was over, and Jack and Leonard took out their pipes, Monella, looking at the former, said,—

“You have something of importance to tell us. What have you seen?”

At this Elwood turned and regarded Jack with surprise.

“Why, what is it?” he exclaimed. “You have said nothing about it all this time!”

Jack looked a little sheepish. He was somewhat taken aback, too, by Monella’s direct question. It brought to his mind the query that had often arisen before—could this strange being read his thoughts?

“I scarcely know whether I have seen something or only dreamed it,” he began hesitatingly; and seeing Leonard, at this, open his eyes, Jack went on desperately:“Well, yes! I may as well out with it and make a clean breast of it! I have something to tell you, and for the life of me, I cannot make up my mind whether I actually saw it, or dreamed it—whether, in short, it was reality, or only a vision!”

Leonard opened his eyes wider than ever, and gave a long whistle.

“You having ‘visions’!” he exclaimed in unbounded astonishment. “You, the scoffer, the hard-headed, prosaic-minded derider of dreams and visions! Great Scott! Is the world then coming to an end? Or have the demons of the mountain in truth bewitched you as Matava declared they would?”

“Ah! I knew you would laugh at me, of course. And I feel I deserve it. However, if you want to hear what I have to tell, you will have to keep quiet a bit. I cannot explain while you are talking, you know.”

“I’ll not say another word; I’m ‘mum,’ but amazed!” Elwood answered. “Now go a-head.”

“Well, yesterday, after you left, I pulled up the ladder and carefully closed the ‘window’ by rolling the stone back into the place, as we first found it. I thought to myself I would shut out the gloomy forest. Then I went up the canyon to explore the caves we spoke of, and soon, by accident, found a new one, so curiously hidden from sight, that it seemed the very thing we wanted; so there was no need to search farther. Then I thought I would stroll up the canyon a bit, and reconnoitre; and I found another cave about half way up, and, finding the sun getting warm, went in and had a rest. When it grew shady again, I thought, instead of coming back, I would go on to the top to see the view.”

Monella uttered an exclamation.

“Ah! Yes. I know you mean I ought to have kept below. However, no harm has been done, and I could see no objection to going up and taking a peep from the top. I had my glasses with me and thought I might even catch a glimpse of you on your way to ‘Monella Lodge.’ However, by the time I reached the top it was getting dusk, and, after all, I found myself quite shut in by yet higher rocks on one side that I could not climb, and a thick wood on the other. There was a grassy knoll of a few hundred square yards in extent, and there I had to make up my mind to pass the night. I was tired out; and, soon after it grew dark, I fell asleep.”

Templemore paused, and glanced doubtfully at Monella, as if expecting him to say something; but he remained silent, and Jack proceeded:—

“I seemed to wake up after being asleep for an hour or two. I say seemed to wake up—I really cannot say—but either that, or I dreamed the whole thing. Well, I seemed to wake up, and fancied I heard distant shouts. I looked sleepily round and was surprised and alarmed to see a very unmistakable glow in the sky through the trees. It struck me at once that the forest must be on fire, and if so, I thought, my position might be an awkward one. If the wood were burning, and the fire travelling in the direction of where I was, to have to retreat down the canyon in the dark would be anything but agreeable. After some consideration I decided to venture a little way into the wood, and climb a tree in the hope of getting a view of what was going on. I could hardly, I reflected, lose my way, for, when I wished to return, I should only have to turn my back on the direction in which the fire lay and march straight back. Accordingly, I made my way into the wood; at first it was very dense, but soon it grew thinner, and, encouraged by this, I went straight on, when I emerged on to a high plateau, where an extraordinary sight presented itself. I seemed to be on the edge of an extensive sort of basin; I could see for miles; and in the centre, as it appeared, there was a broad lake, and beside the lake were lofty buildings lighted up on all sides, the lights being reflected in the water. There seemed to me a large city; there were buildings that looked like grand palaces; there were wide noble-looking embankments and promenades and bridges, all well lighted; and, on the lake, boats, also lighted, were going to and fro, filled with people. I could hear shouts and cries, though of what nature it was impossible to say; and through my glasses I could plainly distinguish numbers of people moving about. It was as though some kind of fête were going on. The large buildings towered into the air, and their cupolas and turrets glistened as though built of gold and silver. In effect, it was a wonderful sight, and how long I stood watching it I cannot say; but, after a time, the lights went down and all became silent and dark. I managed to find my way back to my camping ground, and, while thinking it all over in astonished wonder, I fell asleep again, as I suppose. At any rate, when I finally awoke, the sun was shining and this animal was lying on the grass by my side.”

“What! The puma?” Leonard asked.

“Yes. I was rather upset at first sight of her, you may be sure. To wake and find oneself in a wild place at the mercy of a great animal like that is a startler for any one’s nerves, I can assure you. No chance to use one’s rifle or anything, you know. However, while I lay very still and watched it, not knowing what to do, I saw it must be a puma, though an unusually large one. Then I thought of what you, Monella, had told us—that we need never be afraid of a puma. And then the beast turned round and began licking my hand! It stood up, too, and purred, and put up its tail just like a tame cat; so I made friends with it and found it was quite disposed to be on good terms. After a bit my dream came back to me, and I went into the wood some distance, but could see nothing. The forest seemed awfully thick, and to get denser at every step; so I finally came away, thinking I must either have had a remarkably vivid dream or vision, or that I had really been the sport of some demons of the mountain such as Matava and his Indian friends so thoroughly believe in.” And Jack paused, and looked at his two companions with an odd mixture of doubt and bewilderment.

Elwood’s face, while he had been listening, had become lighted up with sympathetic enthusiasm. It fell a little at the end of the recital, when Jack made the suggestion about the ‘demons.’

“Certainly,” he said, “it sounds like witchcraft to hear you, our own matter-of-fact Jack, who never dreams, make such suggestions. But, either one way or the other, it goes to prove that there is something very extraordinary about this mountain.”

Elwood looked at Monella.

“What do you think of it all?” he asked.

“I think,” he replied, “that our friend ought, in future, to be less ready to deride those who may have to tell of strange things, whether dreams and visions, or out-of-the-way experiences.”

“I admit that to be a just rebuke,” Jack responded with a good-natured laugh; “but it does not tell us, all the same, what your real opinion may be.” But Monella had already risen from where he had been sitting and moved away to speak to the Indians.

“I say, Jack,” said Leonard, “can’t you really say, straight out, whether you saw this or only dreamed it?”

“Truly, my dear boy, it seemed so natural that I should say it was real, only for the inherent improbability of the thing. Then, too, I could see nothing this morning to confirm it, you know.”

“Surely,” Elwood said dreamily, “the Indian tales of demons that can bewitch you cannot have any foundation? There cannot be an unsubstantial city of demons to be seen at night, that vanishes and becomes only plain forest in the daytime? That is taking us back to the Arabian Nights, isn’t it?”

Jack shook his head.

“I am more bewildered and puzzled than I can possibly give you any idea of,” he returned. “The whole thing is beyond me; the sight I saw, or dreamed; and then, again, the behaviour of this animal here.”

“Ah,” Elwood said, “this puma! Does it not behave as though it were a tame animal used to the company of human beings?”

“I must say that idea has occurred to me more than once today; but the more I think over it, the more hopelessly puzzling the whole thing becomes.” And Templemore, for the time being, gave it up.

CHAPTER X

IN SIGHT OF EL DORADO

The next morning Templemore, after leading Monella and Elwood to the hidden cave he had discovered, set out early with the Indians for ‘Monella Lodge’ to bring in the remainder of the stores; and, while there, in the evening, he wrote long letters to his friends, to be entrusted to Matava to take to Georgetown. Amongst them, we may be sure, was one to the fair Maud, who, amidst all the excitement of his adventures, was never long absent from his thoughts. His letter to her was grave, almost sad in its tone. He knew he was about to set out upon a critical venture, the end of which none could see, and he warned her not to be surprised if nothing were heard of them for a long time.

When, the following afternoon, he and his party once more made their way back through the forest to where they had left Monella and Elwood, and had halted just out of sight, those two soon came to meet him in response to the usual signal-shots. The first glance at Elwood’s face told Jack that he had some important news to impart. While Monella was greeting the Indians and giving directions for the unloading and camping, Leonard whispered to Jack,

“We’ve been up to the top and have seen all you saw. It was no dream, old man, but simple reality. But don’t let the Indians hear anything about it, or they would stampede straight away.”

Jack stared in mute surprise, scarce knowing what to think, whether to be most pleased to have it established that he was not ‘a dreamer of dreams,’ or astonished at the almost incredible fact it conveyed—that the top of the mountain was, in very truth, inhabited.

“And the puma?” he asked.

“Is still with us. You had better go in and have a rest and take charge of her, while we see to the unloading.”

This Jack was glad to do, and, on entering the cavern, he was welcomed by the animal with every demonstration of gladness at his return.

“Ah! You have not forgotten me then, old girl,” he said, and he patted and stroked the creature. “You’re not so very fickle, then, after all. Now come along with me for a while—I’m going to have a wash.”

When all the fresh stores had been placed inside, and the Indians were engaged upon their evening meal, and Monella and the two young men were seated at theirs, Jack asked for further details of the wonderful news Leonard had briefly spoken of.

“It is substantially a repetition of what you told us,” said Elwood, “save that we managed a little better in the morning than you did. That is to say, we did not go the wrong way into the wood, as I suppose you did; and thus, at sunrise, sure enough, we saw the wonderful city, which Monella avers can be no other than Manoa—or, as the Spaniards called it, El Dorado! We saw its palaces, and towers, and spires, glistening and glittering in the sun—a marvellous sight! So, Jack, old boy, you can be at ease; you are not yet ‘a dreamer of dreams.’”

“But your intelligence, all the same, makes me feel quite dazed,” answered Jack. “Are you really sure about it? Are you certain—do you feel confident that—er—well, that it won’t all have melted into thin air by the time we get up there?”

“Scarcely. It is too substantial for that.”

“Then it means this—that the mountain is inhabited after all,” said the puzzled Jack. “If so, what sort of a reception are they likely to give us?”

“Well, that of course remains to be seen. But, meantime, it is certain that all your clever theories about the place ‘not having been peopled for hundreds of years’ are fallacious.”

Jack presently asked Monella what he purposed doing next.

“We must put away our stores,” was the reply, “and then arrange our plans for making our presence known to the inhabitants, whoever they may be, of the mountain.”

“Yes, and then, if they speak the same language that you have been teaching me,” Leonard put in, “Jack will have reason to be sorry he has not stuck to it a little more, I fancy.”

Of late, Jack had practically dropped all efforts in this direction, particularly during the last fortnight; while Elwood had neglected no opportunity for using it in his converse with Monella. Elwood had, in consequence, got so far as to be able to speak it fairly well; but Jack was much behind him.

“By Jupiter! But I begin to think there is wisdom in what you say,” was Jack’s response. “I must do my best to make up for lost time.”

The night passed without incident. The Indians stayed on through the following day, and Matava even yielded so far as to enter the dreaded cavern, and take a look into the canyon. Elwood managed to persuade him to do thus much, that he might take back to his friends at Georgetown a description of the scene. Matava was rather afraid of the puma, but the animal was quite friendly. The Indian evidently believed that Elwood and his friends were going to their destruction, and would never again be seen by mortal eyes. However, at Monella’s suggestion, he made for them during the day a more substantial ladder, which the nails and tools brought with the stores enabled him easily to do. He also made some poles or struts to form bars to close the stone from within, and, with much perseverance, cut slots in the rock and in the stone to receive them. When completed, and the struts put in their places, the stone was firmly fixed and could not be moved from the outside.

Then Monella made another suggestion. He arranged with Matava a few simple signals that might be made from the mountain-top by flashing small quantities of powder at night, and that Matava could, in turn, answer from the plain beyond the forest, or, indeed, from ‘Monella Lodge’.These signals were simply—“All well,” “Coming down,” “Not coming down.” It was deemed best not to risk more than these, Matava’s intelligence in such directions being limited; and, since he could not read, to write them down would have been useless.

When, on the last morning, the leave-taking came, the scene was an affecting one. The Indians were well pleased with the rewards given them for their services; but they were, one and all, in genuine distress at the thought of leaving the three adventurers to what they thoroughly believed would be a terrible fate. They even besought them to alter their minds and “come away from the accursed place”; needless to say in vain.

Matava, almost in tears, was loaded with messages to those in Georgetown, should he go back before seeing the travellers again; the understanding being that, if he found they did not return within a short time, he was to conclude they would remain for an indefinite period, in which case he would shut up ‘Monella Lodge’ and return to Georgetown, and only expect to hear of them when he came that way again in the usual course.

At last, the Indians sorrowfully set out and disappeared in the forest, and Monella and his two companions set to work to distribute their stores and spare arms and ammunition. It was decided, after some discussion, to place the larger portion in the secret cave; leaving only a comparatively small part hidden in the cavern they were in, it being obvious that the latter was the one most likely to be searched, if any should be.

In the carrying out of the plan settled by Monella, the whole of the stores were divided roughly into two parts; two-thirds, and all the spare arms, ammunition and powder, being hidden in the secret cave; the other third, including most of their camping equipage, lanterns, store of oil, etc., but no arms, being stowed away in various remote parts of the cavern by which they had entered from the outer forest. This was in accordance with certain anticipations and eventualities that he had carefully thought out. Thus, if the people of the place should prove unfriendly, and they were forced to retreat at once to the entrance cavern, they had there, ready to hand, in addition to the arms, etc., they took with them, all that was really necessary either for a temporary stay or for the journey back to ‘Monella Lodge.’ On the other hand, if the inhabitants should turn out to be hospitable, and invite the travellers to stay with them, it might be a little while before they returned to the cavern at the entrance; in the meanwhile it might be entered and searched by others, who might carry off what had been left there. But in that case the loss would not be a serious one to the explorers, nor would the thieves find any arms or powder.

Early the next morning Elwood went out a little way into the forest to cut some short poles he was in want of, when the puma—apparently finding the new ladder more to her taste than the old one had been—scrambled down after him and disappeared into the wood.

“We had better leave the ladder and go on with our work,” observed Monella, when told she had gone off and not returned. “No doubt she will find her way back presently.”

But they saw nothing of her till the afternoon, when she came in, bearing in her mouth a good-sized wild pig, which she laid down quietly at the feet of her astonished friends.

“Why, Puss,” exclaimed Jack—he had of late insisted upon giving her that name—“that is an accomplishment, and no mistake! You can go out hunting and get your own dinner, can you, and ours too? Well, after this we need not want for fresh meat, apparently, while we stay here.”

The meat was not only a welcome addition to their larder, so far as they themselves were concerned, but solved the difficulty that had begun to puzzle them, viz., how to find food for so large an animal. Up to now there had been enough left over from what the Indians had captured and brought in; but, since they had gone away, fresh meat had been growing scarce, and to feed ‘Puss’ out of their limited stores of tinned meats was, of course, out of the question.

“You’ll have to leave us and go back to your friends, whoever they are, Puss,” Jack had said only that very morning. “We appreciate your society and all that sort of thing, and shall be sorry to turn you out of doors; but, unless you can crunch up meat-tins and imagine they are marrow-bones, I really do not see where another meal for you is to come from.” Whether ‘Puss’ understood this speech or not, she had certainly settled the question in her own way, and very quickly.

“You shall go out again, tomorrow, on this sort of expedition, Puss,” observed Jack. And she did; and next time brought back a small antelope.

This led to a discussion and a good deal of speculation as to whom ‘Puss’ might actually belong to.

“I wonder who owns her, and whether they have missed her?” said Jack. “And I wonder too whether there are many more like her on the mountain? If so, why haven’t we seen anything of any of the others?” Since, however, no answer could be given to these questions, the speculation remained a barren one.

After the stores had all been disposed of to his satisfaction, Monella decided to stay on another day before making the venture of showing themselves to the inhabitants; this was partly by way of a rest and partly to give them an opportunity of studying the plants and rocks in the canyon. Most of this day he spent in hunting for strange herbs and leaves; while Jack and Elwood were more interested, after the first feeling of surprise and pleasure in examining the flowers had passed off, in searching for signs of gold among the rocks. They found undoubted traces of both gold and silver, but in what quantity they might exist it was not possible at the time to form any opinion.

Every night the canyon was lighted up in the fairy-like manner of the first evening; and, during the day, two harp-birds had visited the valley and enlivened it with their dreamy music. The travellers also caught sight of two or three small animals; but did not obtain a sufficiently good view to make them out, and Monella particularly desired that they should not shoot at anything.

Of fish there was plenty; and bathing in the cool, limpid pools of ‘The Blue River,’ as Jack had named the stream, was a welcome luxury.

Finally, having completed all their preparations, the three, on the morning of the third day after the departure of the Indians, set out on their enterprise of visiting the mysterious inhabitants of “The Golden City.”

They started at daylight, with just sufficient camping things for passing the one night, heavily laden with spare ammunition, and taking their Winchester rifles and revolvers, and one extra gun—a double-barrelled fowling-piece. After a midday rest in the cave that lay about half way up, they reached the summit, as before, at nightfall.

They assured themselves that the strange town was still in the same place—had not vanished into thin air as an illusive creation of the demons of the mountain. Then they settled down to sleep and were undisturbed during the night.

When they woke at dawn on the day that was to prove so eventful, they found that the puma had disappeared.

“Puss has deserted us,” said Jack. “She knew she was close at home and preferred the kitchen fireside, I suspect, like a respectable tabby, to passing the night out here; and small blame to her. I shouldn’t be surprised, if we happen to come across her when she is in the company of her own friends, to see her pass us by with her nose in the air with a ‘don’t-know-you’ sort of look. You’ll see, she won’t know us! she would lose caste, I expect, if it were known that she had been away for a week hob-nobbing with a party of houseless vagabonds like ourselves.”

CHAPTER XI

ULAMA, PRINCESS OF MANOA

The morning broke fine, and the sun rose with a splendour that was not often seen even in this land of gorgeous sunrises. As Leonard looked up at the sky above, with its tint of deep sapphire blue flecked with cloudy flakes, and cirri tinted with gold and pink and crimson, he thought he had never witnessed any effect to equal it. But, when they had quietly passed through the narrow belt of wood, and stood just within its cover, gazing down at the wondrous ‘golden city’ that lay sleeping at their feet, the three friends remained silent and almost spell-bound. The scene was indeed one to which no description can possibly do justice. The sun was just high enough to light up the glistening towers and cupolas; and these, and the spangled sky above, were reflected in the glassy waters of the lake. Beyond and around all was haze of a rose-coloured golden hue, which gave to the centre picture the effect of a vignette. From the upper parts, which showed the clearest against this background of rosy mist, the various buildings grew less substantial as the eye followed their lines downwards, till the bridges and embankments seemed almost ghostly and unreal, yet strangely beautiful in their airy lightness. And the picture was so faithfully repeated in the lake that, but for the reversal of the images, the line that divided the reality from the shadow could scarcely be discerned; while the whole seemed poised, as it were, in the ruddy-golden haze like a mirage in mid-air. Just below them a rocky spur jutted out with clear-cut outline against the central scene, the palms and other trees with which it was crowned showing a lace-work pattern of feathery foliage through which naught could be seen but the golden mist. This part alone seemed real; the city, with its towers, its lofty buildings, its bridges, and its lake, seemed too fairy-like a creation to be indeed an earthly reality.

Of the three who were thus looking out upon this glorious sight, it would be hard to say, perhaps, which was most affected by its subtle influence. Templemore, notwithstanding his affectation of putting on ultra-practical glasses through which to regard and analyse everything, had, in reality—as is not infrequent with such characters—a deep undercurrent of appreciation of beauty, whether exhibited in nature or in the works of man. As an engineer, he could appreciate the rare grace and exquisite proportions of the buildings, and of the bridges, viaducts, and other such works, far better than could Elwood’s less trained mind; and then, his was a naturally generous and unselfish nature, and—he was in love. Such a temperament cannot look upon anything that charms, that satisfies the senses, without wishing that the loved one were present to participate in the pleasure and gratification experienced. And the absence of that companionship must necessarily strike a chord of sadness and longing. He was one, at heart, deeply sensible of these emotions; so sensible, indeed, that he shrank from displaying them to onlookers; and thus it was that he half unknowingly hid them beneath a veneer of ‘matter-of-fact.’

Elwood’s younger impulses, on the other hand, bubbled up on all occasions unchecked and uncontrolled. He was of a highly imaginative and poetic turn of mind; he was not in love, and hence, the vague aspirations of his affections had as yet met with nothing upon which to rest, or, as it were, to centre themselves. He was filled with unformed hopes and shapeless expectations. The beautiful was not satisfying in itself; it was but a stepping-stone, an enticing indication of something still more pleasing yet to be met with beyond, in the indefinite future. Thus he was always looking forward to an horizon that lay beyond his ken; while Templemore’s hopes and longings, though they also turned upon the future, had found, in the being who had won his love, a settled, definite purpose in life. Not that the latter was altogether uninfluenced by that spirit of adventure which always actuates, more or less, young men of his age and character; though, in this respect, he might be swayed by somewhat more practical considerations than was the enthusiastic Elwood. In the breasts of the two, it could scarcely be but that there was some feeling of exultation and pride in the consciousness that what they had achieved was likely to bring them a high reward either directly or indirectly—in fame, or wealth, or both—even though no sordid, grasping greed mingled with the generous impulses natural to youth.

And Monella? With what feelings was he swayed while he silently surveyed the fair city that embodied the fulfilment of what he had been striving after for so many years? He was old, he had no children or other kin (he had declared) to interest himself in. Fame, power, riches, he despised—so he had uniformly given his two companions to understand. None of the motives that prompted the two younger men seemed to apply in his case; yet the fact was patent to them—had been all along, since first they met him—that he had been instigated by some overmastering idea that had become, as Templemore had phrased it, a sort of religion to him, a faith, a belief; that had urged him on unceasingly where success had seemed hopeless and the difficulties of his enterprise insurmountable. Templemore, at Monella’s side, could not but reflect upon this now; as he had similarly reflected upon it when first they had found themselves veritably inside—so to speak—of the hitherto inaccessible mountain. But now, mingled with Templemore’s admiring appreciation of all these things, there was a new element in his feelings towards Monella, which he could only define to himself as one of reverence. He felt inclined almost to take off his hat, and deferentially salute the indomitable, high spirit that had led them on to success, where success had seemed but a fallacious, impossible, fatuous dream.

But Monella seemed unconscious of all such thoughts. He gazed out on the scene before him with a countenance that expressed only a high and simple joy. His tall, commanding form had never seemed to his two companions so instinct with dignity and latent power as at this moment; and in his eyes, when he turned his glance, with a smile, to meet theirs, there were a kindness, a benevolence, a magnanimity even, that seemed to fill up the measure of the feeling of respect that was growing upon them—that made them wonder they had ever ventured to treat such a man as one of themselves. This strange emotion swayed both of them; they both felt it, though each thought it influenced himself alone. Afterwards they found this out by comparing notes; and yet again, in the time to come, they lived to comprehend that this vague idea had been something more than a fancy; it had been an instinct growing out of a solid, though then unknown, reason. It signified that the parting of their several ways, as between them and him who had been their comrade thus far, had commenced, had been already entered upon.

For a while they continued to gaze with swelling emotions upon the wonderful town. Bathed in the light of the rising sun, it slowly grew more substantial to the view, and its stately buildings gradually assumed increased solidity and reality. Their graceful outlines and proportions, their masterly design and bold execution, the novelty and originality everywhere apparent, impressed Templemore with astonishment, just as they delighted and satisfied the poetic fervour of Elwood. Templemore presently turned to Monella.

“Never have I seen the like of those structures,” he exclaimed, “either in the places I have visited or in the pictured representations of the most celebrated cities of the world. Surely this people must be a nation of architects!”

“You speak truly, my friend,” Monella returned. “I have travelled the world over and I have not seen the like elsewhere. But, as I have told you before—as I warned you I expected would be the case—we have here the chief town of an ancient people; a race so old that the oldest Egyptian records of which the world has any knowledge relate to peoples, and times, and things that are but as yesterday compared to the remote period to which these people can trace back their history. So is it written in my parchments.”

“And is what we see, that glistens everywhere, truly gold—upon the very spires and roofs?” asked Elwood.

“I cannot say; but it may well be so, for these parchments of mine assert that gold is the most plentiful metal of any in these mountains. They say that the inhabitants used it for common purposes as other nations use iron; and that, in fact, iron and steel were far less common than gold and silver. But I think it is time we started down the slope to reconnoitre and await our opportunity.”

The plan Monella had arranged was that, after concealing in the wood at the top the few camping requisites they had brought with them, they should move down towards the city through the clumps of trees, keeping within their cover, till they came to the point where the trees ended; that they should remain thus concealed for a time to see what sort of people passed to and fro, stepping out and making their presence known only when they saw any one who might be supposed to be a person of standing or authority.

Following out this plan, the three moved on through groves and plantations of trees bearing luscious, tempting fruits of a kind and nature totally unknown to them. Wonderful flowers, too, they saw on all sides, and many strange and curious birds; amongst them the harp-bird, whose enchanting notes came floating every now and then upon their ears. In due course they reached the farthest and lowermost clump, and here they were therefore compelled to pause. So far they had seen no one; but it was yet early morning.

The thicket within the shelter of which they now stood was upon a knoll that was not a great way from the lake. Looking across its waters of turquoise blue, they now made out that which had so puzzled them before. Moving on its surface were numbers of white swans of gigantic size; and it was these, as they subsequently ascertained, that drew the boats about which had seemed to glide here and there without sails or oars. They had seen these great swans through their glasses, but had believed them to be vessels fashioned in that shape; deeming them too large to be really living creatures.

Suddenly, Elwood gripped Templemore’s arm, and pointed to some one—a youthful maiden seemingly—walking along the border of the lake in their direction. She came to within a few hundred yards, and then stood looking dreamily out over the lake at the towering, palatial buildings upon the opposite side.

“Great heavens!” Elwood exclaimed in a whisper. “The face, the form, the very dress that I have so often seen in my dreams! Can it be possible? Am I awake, or is this, too, but a vision from which I shall awake by-and-by?”

Monella put his hand upon his shoulder as a sign to him to be silent, and pointed to other forms approaching from the same direction. They all seemed to have come from a great pile of buildings near the water’s edge some half-mile away. It was partially screened by groups of waving palms and other trees, which hid from view the entrances.

The new-comers consisted of a tall, handsome man, of a dark-hued skin, and richly dressed, and a following of a score or so of men, apparently a guard or escort. They carried spears that flashed and glittered in the sun, as did their burnished shields and helmets. These seemed to be of gold; they wore short black tunics and sandals. They halted—upon a sign from the one who seemed to be their leader—while he advanced towards the girl. Just then she turned and caught sight of him. At this she uttered a sharp cry expressive of surprise and fear; then walked quickly up the slope towards where the three travellers were concealed.

The man followed and overtook her when she was about a hundred and fifty yards from the edge of the wood. He seized her by the wrist; but she, wresting herself free, turned and confronted him, regarding him with a proud disdain, in which, however, fear was also plainly—too plainly—written.

Now that they were closer, the concealed witnesses could distinguish pretty clearly, through their glasses, the features of the two who stood facing one another, neither for a full minute uttering a word.

As to the maiden, she was in very truth a dream of loveliness. With skin as white and fair as the most delicately reared Englishwoman, glistening golden hair, large grey-blue eyes of entrancing and lustrous beauty, a perfect oval face, and a figure the very embodiment of grace, she appeared indeed more like the creation of a vision than an earthly being of flesh and blood. She was not exactly tall, yet of fair height for a woman. Her dress seemed of silk; it was rich-looking, but quiet in colour, and flowing in design. She wore golden ornaments enriched with glistening gems, and her hair, falling loosely over her shoulders, was confined by a broad gold circlet on the head and was cut short over the forehead. And in her face was an expression of exquisite sweetness—albeit now there were distracting emotions mingled with it. The clear-cut, pouting lip curled in scorn, though, the while, the eyes showed fear, as do those of the hunted hare. Timidly she glanced around, as if for aid; but not a soul was to be seen save those who accompanied the man she feared, and from them, it was clear, she could expect no help.

As to the man himself, he was, as has been said, of fine stature and handsome; but his was not beauty of a prepossessing character. His dark face expressed arrogance and cruelty; in his smile was cold, deadly menace; his haughty features wore a scowl; and his dark eyes fairly blazed with passion. Upon his head he wore a coronet of curious design in lieu of helmet or other covering. His tunic was of black material—silk apparently—with a large star worked in gold upon the breast. A belt as of gold was round his waist, and a short sword and a dagger were by his side. His hair, full beard, and bushy eyebrows were jet black; so far as one might judge he looked about thirty-five years of age. The tunic had short sleeves and was cut low so as to display his neck, round which was a kind of necklace; upon his bare arms were bracelets, and in all these ornaments there flashed, as he moved, sparkling jewels of large size and surprising lustre.

Then ensued, between the two, a hot discussion or dispute, though those within the wood were too far away to understand its purport. The man advanced again and again in a threatening manner towards the girl, who as often retreated a short distance up the slope; then, each time, turned and faced her adversary.

Suddenly, the man seemed to give way to a burst of fury; with a gesture whose murderous import there was no possibility of mistaking, he drew his dagger from its sheath, and tried to seize the girl; but she, eluding him, turned and ran farther up the slope. The man followed, and coming up with her, seized her by the wrist, and raised the hand that held the dagger.

At this moment Monella stepped out from the wood and called loudly to the assailant, at the same time holding up his hand in warning; but Elwood, revolver in hand, rushed forward in advance of him, and levelled the pistol at the moment when the blade was poised in the air and was about to be plunged into the bosom of the girl, who had now fallen upon her knees. He was only just in time; for the weapon had already commenced its fatal downward sweep when the report rang out; the murderer’s arm gave a jerk that cast the dagger a distance of some yards, and the man himself fell backwards with a bullet through his heart.

Elwood hastened to the assistance of the girl, who swayed as though about to faint; but the sight of the strangers seemed to rouse her, for she rose to her feet and stood regarding them with wondering and evidently doubtful looks. Then she turned her glance upon the dead man, and shuddered at the thought of the death she had so narrowly escaped. Looking once more at the three who now stood in a group a short distance from her—for Elwood had drawn back on seeing her rise to her feet—she drew herself up with a charming dignity and grace, and, to the surprise of the two young men, asked, in the language Monella had taught them,

“Who are you?”

The words were intelligible enough. The inflection, the accent, or the exact pronunciation, may have been slightly different from Monella’s, but the words rang out clear enough.

“Who are you?”

Monella stepped a pace or two towards her. His lofty form seemed to grow in dignity the while he bent his gaze upon her; and, looking up into his face, she could scarcely fail to read the true meaning of the glance she met. She felt its extraordinary fascination, and yielded to its influence, as so many had before. Her confidence went out to him at once; and her look, that for the moment had been proud and distrustful, softened into one of friendly interest. She bowed her head as though in involuntary respect—the respect a dutiful child might show to a parent—and spoke again; this time varying the form of her question:—

“My father, whence come you?”

“We are strangers from far countries, my daughter,” Monella made reply. “We came here in peaceful and friendly intent, but fate has so ordered it that our arrival has been marked by the shedding of blood. Still, though of that I am deeply regretful in one way, I cannot pretend to be sorry, if, as I see reason to believe, it has saved your young life.”

“Truly it has, and I thank you; and the king, my father, will thank you too; though I know not by what marvel it was accomplished, nor by what other marvel ye have come here, you who wield the lightning and the thunder, who hold men’s lives in the hollows of your hands, and yet speak our language.”

“Time enough to explain that, anon, my child,” was Monella’s answer. “For the moment we must know what yonder people are about to do. Their intentions seem scarcely to be friendly.”

This referred to the small company of guards or soldiers, who were being harangued by one who appeared to be their officer, and who, when he had ended his speech, formed them into line, as though for a charge upon the strangers.

The girl turned round and looked at them; and, doing so, her face grew pale.

“Alas, yes!” she exclaimed. “I had forgotten them for the moment. They are the special soldiers of Zelus whom ye have slain; and their officer will seek to carry you all before the father of Zelus, the dread High Priest. His vengeance will be cruel and terrible, if you fall into his power; but, if we could but get back to my father’s palace, you would be safe; for he would protect you for my sake—for the sake of what ye have done for me today. But alas! How can that be? They are many and ye are but three. Ye have not even swords or spears—unless, indeed, ye can serve them as ye have served this one.”

“Fear nothing for us, my daughter. We can truly serve these others in the same way, if the necessity unfortunately should arise. But we seek it not; we have come here, as I have told you, with peaceful intentions, and we have no wish to signalise our arrival by further bloodshed. Will you not, yourself, speak to these foolish people, and warn them not to rush upon destruction? Tell them we are powerful, and that, in your own words, we hold their lives in the hollows of our hands. If they will depart in peace, they may, and bear with them the body of their chief; but, if they dare approach with hostile intent, then shall they fall before us, ere even they have time to come a dozen paces, even as men are struck down by lightning. Tell them this, and urge them to be friendly; for we are not of the nature of those who take delight in slaying. To us, to slay is easy, but abhorrent.”

The girl heard this with increasing wonder. She viewed the rifles (which all three were now handling) with a curiosity she did not care to hide. She took them for some sort of magic wands.

“I will perform your wish,” she said, “but I doubt my power to stay them, for they are men used to working their own will, and now they seek your lives in revenge for this man’s death. Indeed, they well know they go to their own deaths if they return to Coryon, the High Priest, and bring not with them those who slew his son.”

She turned to go towards the soldiers, who were now standing in two ranks, with spears in rest, awaiting the word of command.

“Stay,” said Monella. “If they listen to your words, they will want to come here to take up the body of their chief. We are willing they should do so; but it were better we did not meet, for I do not trust them, and they might plot treachery. See!” And he took his lasso from where it hung at his waist and laid it in a straight line on the ground about twenty feet from the dead body. “We will retire towards the wood; and let it be clearly understood that they must not cross that line nor touch that cord. If any man do so, he shall surely die then and there. Let them not think, however, that we retire from fear, because of their number. But now, my daughter, take heed lest they seize you. Be sure you keep near enough to avail yourself of our protection; but stand not between us and them, lest the lightning strike your own form in its course. Once launched, it goes straight to its mark, and blasts all whom it meets upon its path.”

“I understand,” she answered. “But you need have no fear for me, so far as these people are concerned. Their chief has dared more today than has ever been known before; but none of these would lay hand upon Ulama, the daughter of their king.”

“Then,” said Monella, “if you feel sure as to that, do not approach them, but go thirty or forty yards to the right, and bid them come near enough for you to address them from there. For the rest we will answer.” And, with a sign to his companions, he walked slowly up the slope towards the wood they had left but a few minutes before.

THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 2]

CHAPTER XII

A PRELIMINARY SKIRMISH

The words that had been spoken on both sides in this conversation the two young men had followed fairly well; though they had listened in silence and made no attempt to join in the discussion. On their way back towards the wood, Elwood was at first very thoughtful; then he turned to Monella and said excitedly,

“How do we know she is safe, out there alone? And what will her father, the king, say to us, if harm come to her? It seems to me we are acting in strange fashion to leave her thus.”

“Patience, my son,” returned Monella quietly; “we must avoid the shedding of blood, if it be possible. We have come here, as I have already said, with peaceful motives. If violent acts be forced upon us in self-defence, let us keep at least our conscience clear; let us be in a position to show that they were forced upon us. Let it not be said of us that we have come into a strange land to introduce dissension, and discord, and internal warfare; and all for no other reason than the gratification of an adventurous spirit.”

“But,” said Elwood, “we have not introduced dissension and trouble. It is clear enough that a terrible murder would have been perpetrated had we not been here to prevent it. Surely, no one can accuse us of commencing bloodshed; and, as to the rest, why, what are the lives of two or three scoundrels like these, the infamous myrmidons—if we may believe what we heard—of a bloodthirsty ‘high priest’; what are the lives of two or three such wretches, compared with the safety of this gentle, trustful girl, whom we are leaving now almost at their mercy? In my view this is one of those cases in which offence is the best defence. They are showing their intentions pretty clearly; let us anticipate them by shooting one or two. That will frighten the remainder, and stop further hostile action; and, moreover, prevent their coming near this young lady, or princess, as I suppose she really is.”

“I am bound to say I rather agree with Leonard,” said Templemore. “I see, clearly enough, we are in for a fight, and shall have to kill two or three. Why not as well do it first as last? If, as she says, they are used to do as they please in the land, and if what we have just seen is a specimen of their style, pity is thrown away upon them. And, besides, is it good generalship, Monella? To attack first would be sure to scare them; but, if they make a rush, in absolute ignorance of the power of our rifles, may they not, some of them, charge home? And then we should have a hand-to-hand fight where they would be four or five to one.”

Monella passed his hand over his face, and answered almost sadly,

“There is a time to be forward in attack, and a time to be forbearing. If the time come for the former, no man will ever see me flinch from it. But you know what has been said, that the shedding of blood is like unto the letting out of water, and that he who begins it is accursed. If these people begin it, we will not shrink; but at least we shall have clear consciences. Now listen to my plan. We must not enter the wood, or they will think we have fled. If they cross the line I have laid down, let each take the man opposite to him in the line, and bring him down. Then, if they still rush on, fire once more, and step back into the shelter of the wood. If they follow, you know what to do; your revolvers will suffice.”

Meantime, Ulama, as she had called herself, had been addressing the soldiers. Their officer had advanced to speak to her, and angry talk had been exchanged, which those standing at the edge of the wood, with rifles at the ‘ready’, could not hear. But when, finally, she shook her head meaningfully, and began to retire towards them, Jack Templemore set his teeth and said,

“I told you so! I knew it meant a fight! We might just as well have begun it, as let them think we are afraid.”

“There is yet a chance,” replied Monella. “They may hesitate to pass the line I have laid down. In any case, all we can now do is to wait and see.” And, as Ulama came towards them, he signed to her to step aside, out of the line of fire.

The officer had returned to his men, and, after a short consultation with one who seemed to be next in command, the two ranks advanced, with the slow, measured tread of a well-disciplined troop, up the slope. On reaching the dead body they were halted while the two officers examined it. They had not understood how their leader had been killed; nor did they understand it now. They had heard the report of the pistol and had seen their chief fall, but the report had not been a loud one; and as Elwood had run forward at the time, for all they could see (Ulama being between them) he might have hurled a spear at Zelus. Yet the sound of the explosion had puzzled them, and stayed them from rushing instantly to the assistance of their leader. Altogether, they were perplexed. The dress of their opponents showed them to be strangers. They appeared to be unarmed, yet had they killed their dreaded master in the face of his guard. This argued conscious power; and it behoved them not to be too precipitate. After this fashion, probably, reasoned the two officers.

If so, the examination of the dead body could but add to their uncertainty; for they found there a wound they were quite unable to account for. It was not a spear thrust; it was not a wound from a sword or dagger. The scrutiny, in effect, yielded them no enlightenment; but the sight of the dead body of their leader and of the blood exasperated both officers and men, and murmurs were heard, and cries for vengeance. They probably began, too, to remember what Ulama had suggested—that if they went back with the dead body of their chief and without the slayer, their own lives would be forfeited. And all this time the strangers stood calmly regarding them, watchful of their movements, but offering neither to retreat nor to attack them.

After some further consultation, the one who seemed to be in command turned towards where the three strangers stood; flinging down his sword, he stepped forward and threw out both his hands, to signify that he desired a parley.

Thereupon Monella also advanced a few paces; then paused for the other to address him.

“Who are you? Whence come you? Why do you enter our land in this fashion by killing one of the greatest in the country?” asked the captain of the guard.

“The answers to your first questions are for your king’s ear alone,” returned Monella. “As to the last, we came in peace, but interfered to save a maiden from being murdered.”

The other’s face expressed an evil sneer, and he made answer:

“It is not usual, with us, for men to throw away their lives for women. For what you have done yours may be required. Still,” he added diplomatically, “I am not judge nor executioner—unless you resist me. If, therefore, you will surrender like men of peace—as you say you are—and will come with me to tell your tale to my master, I promise you good treatment while in my custody.”

Monella shook his head.

“You have had my answer,” he said. “We seek your king. We will yield ourselves to no one else. And,” he continued, with louder voice, “since you, my friend, dare to deride us for taking a woman’s part, know that in the land we come from we are not accustomed to stand still and look on while women are being murdered. What manner of men are ye who dare openly proclaim so vile a doctrine? Soldiers of a High Priest? Guardians of a ‘religion’ that teaches things like this? The span that shall be left to such a being as ye serve is growing short. His power is waning, his days are even now numbered.” He raised his arm, and extended it towards him he was addressing; then, with gathering force, and even passion, till he seemed like an inspired prophet of old thundering his denunciations against evil-doers—“We came here in goodwill and peace; we may remain to be a withering scourge to you and him you call your master. See to it, and take warning! There must—and there shall—be an end of such deeds as we have this day seen attempted by—as ye have no shame in avowing—the favoured son of your High Priest. Hence from my sight, ere scorn and anger overcome me! I have but to move my finger, and you fall dead before me!”

For the first time in their knowledge of him Templemore and Elwood saw their leader, usually so calm and equable, moved by a passion that was almost uncontrollable. They glanced at one another in surprise; and well indeed they might. For whereas, at first, they had felt almost impatient of his equanimity, and had feared he lacked the sternness to deal with those they were opposed to, yet now they thought only how to restrain his sudden and unlooked-for passion, lest it should embroil them further than was actually necessary.

But the fire of Monella’s rage expired as suddenly as it had kindled.

“You have heard,” he went on, coldly and disdainfully, to the captain of the hostile group. “I have warned you. I spare your life to give you time to do better.”

But this contemptuous treatment, so far from having the effect intended, seemed to rouse the other’s fury.

“Think not to impose on me by empty threats and vain-glorious boasting,” he retorted. “I summon you to yield and come with me. If not, and we have to kill you in striving to enforce obedience, the consequences be upon your own heads.”

“And I say that I have warned you,” returned Monella quietly. He stooped and picked up a stone, then threw it to within three or four feet of the cord that lay between them.

“If,” he said, “you but cross that cord so far as that stone, you die.”

Instantly the other took up the challenge. He stepped back for his sword, then walked boldly forward, Monella meanwhile falling back in line with his companions; but the instant the other crossed the cord, Monella’s rifle rang out, and the fatuous soldier fell prone upon the sward.

Then a tall fellow burst from the ranks and, brandishing his spear, rushed towards the fatal cord; he was followed by an adventurous comrade; but, e’en as they stepped across the line, they both bit the dust. Then all the others turned and fled; all save the second officer, who stood his ground, neither advancing nor retreating. He remained leaning on his sword, and looked, by turns, first at his flying men, then at the dead bodies that lay around him, finally at Monella and his companions.

Monella advanced and thus addressed him,

“How is it you stand thus in hesitation, friend? Are you in two minds, whether to fight or to fly?”

The second officer was a fine-looking young fellow with features that were not unpleasing. With a steady glance he looked Monella in the face and answered,

“I am no coward to run away, and no fool to rush to meet a thunderbolt. Whoever you are, it is plain that we are powerless against you. But indeed,” he went on, with something almost like a sigh, “when I heard your words I felt no stomach to fight against you, if so be that they are true.”

“I am well pleased to hear you say so, friend,” Monella said, laying his hand upon the other’s shoulder. “You have seen what it is in our power to do. I call upon you to be a witness in the presence of your king—of all your people—that we did not resort to force until all other means had failed.”

“That will I gladly do,” returned the officer, bending his head in courteous salutation. “Few would have been so persistent in their merciful intention. For myself, I know my fate if I rejoin my master; therefore, if you will accept my service, I would fain join myself to you. One can but fight and die; better to do so in the service of such a chief as you, than of him I have lately served,” and he seemed to shudder while he spoke.

Just then the maiden joined them, and he saluted her respectfully. She looked at him with sorrowful eyes.

“And is it Ergalon,” she said, “that could stand by today and see another man raise his hand to slay the daughter of his king, and not move a step to hinder him? Has Ergalon indeed sunk so low as this?”

The words were said in pained surprise rather than in anger; and in the gentle eyes she turned upon him there was no sign of aught but mild reproach. But this seemed to cut him to the heart, when ringing words of accusation would, perhaps, have failed to move him. He fell upon one knee and bent his head.

“Alas! Princess,” he cried, “I well deserve your scorn; yet knowest thou not how that against my will I have been forced into this service. Well I know that to ask pardon would be useless—the king will never pardon, should this reach his ears; still less will Coryon. Yet I care not if thou wilt but grant me thy forgiveness. If these strangers are thy friends, grant me to serve thee by serving them; and should this service be even to death, it will content me that thou shouldst say of me that Ergalon had done his duty, and redeemed himself in thine eyes.”

“Be it so, Ergalon,” Ulama answered, her voice and manner charged with a sweet graciousness that quite captivated the three bystanders. Then, turning to Monella, she continued, “My father, I owe you much for what you have done today. I shall try in the future to repay you to some measure. Meantime you will need friends—accept from Ergalon this proffered service. I feel sure, after what has happened, you may trust him—even to the death. I know not who you are, whether immortals, or beings of like nature to myself, thus timely sent by the Great Spirit to my aid. But this I know, that I may trust you; that you have come to be my friends, and my friends from henceforth you shall be.”

It would be difficult to convey an idea of the wonderful mixture of simple gentleness and queenly dignity with which these words were spoken. Further, it would be hard to say which of her hearers was most impressed. She had the art of winning hearts without intending or desiring it; and few could long resist the fascination of her presence. Small wonder then if Leonard Elwood had already fallen incontinently, helplessly, irretrievably in love.

“And now,” she finished, “I invite you to my home, where my father will bid you welcome.”

“And these?” Monella asked, pointing to the dead bodies.

“Ergalon will know what to do,” she answered; and moved away in the direction she had indicated.

But by this time a small crowd was on its way to meet them. Those forming it were, as it appeared, chiefly her maidens and attendants and a file of soldiers—her guards. They looked curiously at the strangers, but, at a sign from her, fell in respectfully behind the little party.

“Doubtless you marvel,” she observed to Elwood and Monella, between whom she walked, “how it comes about that with all these people to attend and guard me, I was alone this morning. But for that chance the dead Zelus had never found his opportunity of saying that he did to me. He must have been watching for it; perchance had heard that I sometimes like to steal away alone for a little ramble. One gets so tired of always having people around one,” she added, with an almost childish wilfulness. “But this will cure me. For the future I shall be more careful.”

Templemore, meantime, strolling along behind the others, found himself somehow placed between Ergalon and a dainty little damsel whose name, he afterwards found, was Zonella. She was Ulama’s close friend, and was most busy plying Ergalon with questions about what had taken place. At the noise of the firing they had rushed out in alarm; then, missing the princess, had set out to seek her. In reply to her inquiries, Ergalon gloomily referred her to Templemore, and on this slender introduction the two soon found themselves in friendly converse, rather to the increase of their companion’s moodiness.

It was well for Templemore that day that his affections were unalterably fixed upon a chosen fair one; else, inevitably, had he lost his heart either to the fair Ulama or to the dark-eyed, captivating Zonella. As it was, he was compelled to own that he had never seen two more fascinating maidens—save—save, of course, Maud Kingsford. In that reservation—and in that alone—lay the salvation of his heart. But this Ergalon knew not; and since he had long ardently—but vainly—sought the favour of Zonella, he was none too pleased to see her so quickly place herself on friendly terms with a total stranger.

But Templemore’s acquaintance with the language was so limited, that his part in the conversation consisted more in listening than in talking; and his thoughts were more concerned in observing all that went on around him than in studying Zonella herself.

CHAPTER XIII

A KING’S GREETING.

During the walk—which now more resembled a procession, for they had been joined by numbers of the inhabitants who had heard the rifle shots and had come out in curiosity or alarm to inquire into the cause—Jack Templemore had observed many pumas that, like tame dogs, accompanied the people who crowded round them. They were mostly smaller than the one that had followed him from the mountain top down the canyon, though a few equalled it in size. But he looked in vain for any sign of recognition from any of them; and it really seemed as though his own jesting prophecy were being actually fulfilled.

They now arrived at a colossal edifice that reared its soaring walls and towers high up in the sky. They passed between its open gates, that appeared to be of gold and iron, beneath an archway that, far above their heads, spanned the space between two lofty towers of pink-white stone. In the courtyard within were many other soldiers. These, when the party entered, seemed crowded together in some confusion; but, at sight of Ulama and her attendants, they quickly formed into lines, in obedience to hoarse words of command, shouted by officers in gorgeous blue uniforms, and with white plumes waving in their helmets.

The courtyard was large enough for two or three hundred men to drill and march about in. In the centre was a fountain that threw into the air a jet of water that fell back with a sound of refreshing coolness into a marble basin, from which rose curious-shaped green plants that showed in pleasing contrast to the dainty whiteness of the stonework. Here and there were marble statues, and, between them, large vases filled with flowering plants. Above, a broad gallery ran round the enclosure, and from this a number of richly-dressed people gazed down upon the strangers as they entered with Ulama. The latter, making signs to Monella and his two friends to follow her, proceeded, through lines of soldiers and attendants who fell back respectfully before her, to an apartment at one side, outside which all remained save two or three whom she specially invited to accompany her. Around, were benches or divans and couches covered with richly embroidered stuffs; upon these she bade her guests be seated, begging them to await her while she sought out the king and solicited an audience.

When she had gone, a sudden silence fell on those she left behind; a silence that was the more noticeable, coming, as it did, after the confused hubbub and clank of arms that had filled the courtyard on the arrival of the strangers.

The scene was certainly a curious one. The homely, travel-stained dress of the new-comers contrasted strangely in its nineteenth-century plainness with the elaborate, brilliantly-coloured costumes of Zonella and the half dozen members of the princess’s suite who had entered with her; with the luxurious carpets, rugs, and cushions everywhere around; and with the magnificence of the whole surroundings, that spoke more of the sumptuous luxury and elaborate decorations of a Moorish ‘Alhambra’ than of what one would have expected in this isolated city of the clouds.

Monella stood, lost in thought, with bowed head and folded arms, his rifle, that that day had sent three human beings to their long account, resting against the wall beside him. Elwood, whose eyes had followed Ulama till she had disappeared through the inner door, also stood plunged in reverie, not noticing aught of his surroundings. Of the three, Jack Templemore alone seemed alive to the interest and strangeness of the scene. His keen, steady eyes were making mental notes of every line of the architectural designs, as though with the object of afterwards constructing a like edifice from memory; and, from the building, they travelled to its furniture and decorations, and thence, finally, to the dress and appearance of those of the princess’s suite who stood or sat around. Ergalon had remained outside with many more.

Presently, Templemore said quietly to Zonella, somewhat to her astonishment,

“What is the name of this city?”

“What!” she exclaimed, “do you not know then that you are in Manoa? Where did you suppose you were?”

“Manoa! H’m. The same as ‘El Dorado,’ I suppose, as the Spaniards called it?”

“I know nothing of that, or of who you mean by ‘the Spaniards,’” she replied. “Fancy your coming here and not knowing the name of the place! Where have you come from? I long to hear all about it. Are all the people there white like you and those with you? We have always been instructed, by our teachers here, that only black demons lived in the world beyond our island—at least we still so call it; though, of course, it is no longer an island; has not been for many, many long ages.”

But when Jack attempted explanations, he soon discovered that he knew too little of the language to make things clear to his companion. He became hopelessly involved, his descriptions quite impossible, and, in the end, he had to give it up as hopeless.

“You must wait till I know your language better,” he said with a sigh; “or else question my friends, who know far more of it.”

“I will wait as patiently as I can until you can tell me yourself,” she answered with an arch look. “I shall like better to hear it from you. I feel, too, a little afraid of your friend there—the older of the two. He seems so proud and dignified.”

Jack laughed.

“He is anything but that. He is as kind-hearted and good-natured a man as I have ever known. Today he looks more serious than usual, perhaps. You see, we have had a disagreeable adventure, and do not yet know what may be its consequences.”

“I think, all the same, he is a man of great pride and dignity,” Zonella repeated. “He might be a great chief—a king—so far as one can judge from what one sees. He is not of the same race as you,” she went on with decision. “He is more like one of my own people. Your younger friend, too, is not unlike one of our people; though I do not see the resemblance so strongly there, as in the case of the other.”

This odd suggestion almost startled Templemore. Curiously enough, the same idea had struck him several times during the past half-hour; since, in fact, the opportunity had offered of comparing Monella’s face and form with those inhabitants he had seen. Except that he was taller than any, there were many points in which there was obvious resemblance; and Jack began to ponder upon it as a strange coincidence.

He was also surprised at the confidence with which the young girl had declared Monella to be of different race from himself.

“You must be an unusually quick observer,” he said presently, “to distinguish these things so readily. In my land young ladies do not much trouble themselves——”

Suddenly, Zonella laid her hand upon his arm and leaned forward with a look of fervid earnestness.

“Who is this man?” she asked. “What is his name, and what brings him here, and just at such a time, too?” This last seemed to be said more to herself than to her companion.

“He is called Monella,” Jack told her. “I know of no other name; and, as to why he is here, I can no more tell you that than why you yourself are here. In some things he keeps his own counsel absolutely, and is altogether inscrutable.”

“Ah!” Zonella said this with a long breath. “Then, though he is your friend, and you are here together, you really know nothing of him. Is that what you mean?”

“Well,” returned Jack slowly, “it’s rather an abrupt way of putting it, but—well, I never thought of it in that light before—but—I really think you have about hit it.”

“Yes! You and he have met by chance, and have agreed to travel together for a time. And you have let him bring you here, I suppose, without troubling yourself to ask him his objects?” Zonella went on, still with her glance fixed on Monella.

Jack opened his eyes.

“You have a very direct way of putting things, I must say,” he laughed. “But again, I am bound to admit you are not far out.”

“And your other friend—what do you know of him?”

“Oh, I have known him since he was a child.”

“And yet,” the girl persisted, “he is very different from you. Are you sure he is of the same race as yourself?”

“Quite,” Templemore replied, laughing. “We are both of a nation that I suppose you have never heard of, but that makes no small amount of noise in the outer world, I can assure you. We are both English.”

Just then a heavy curtain was drawn back, and Ulama entered, and with her an immense puma, larger even than their friend of the canyon, and behind it the latter animal itself!

“Why,” exclaimed Zonella, “there is ‘Nea,’ who has been missing for several days,” and she called the animal to her. Great was her surprise to see it, after a brief acknowledgment of her greeting, turn to Jack and his two friends, with every sign of recognition and delight.

“Why, it’s Puss, by all that’s wonderful!” Jack cried. “At least, that’s the name I gave her,” he added, by way of explanation to Zonella.

“Do you know her, then? But how can that be?”

“She has been living with us for the last week; but she deserted us last night, and we wondered where she had got to.”

“Then that accounts for it. We could not think what had become of her.” And she began to chide the animal for its desertion of its home and mate.

“If ‘Tuo’ had known you were off gallivanting with strange people, ‘Nea,’ I fancy he would have come after you and marched you back.” Then, to Templemore: “But how odd that she should attach herself to you like that; you must have had some strong attraction for her.”

“It was not what she got to eat, at any rate,” said Jack. “In fact, I fear she was half starved. And at last she got so disgusted at what, I suppose, she thought our stinginess, that she went off hunting on her own account; and what she caught she offered, with a splendid lack of selfishness, to share with us.” And he went on to tell how he first met the animal; Elwood, meanwhile, recounting the same story to Ulama; and they learned that the two pumas were named ‘Tuo’ and ‘Nea.’

Presently, the princess gave a sign to her attendants, and they all followed her from the apartment, leaving the three strangers by themselves.

Elwood was the first to speak.

“We are to wait till the king is ready to receive us,” he said. “I wonder what he is like, and what sort of a reception he will give us! What say you, Monella?”

The latter turned slowly, and seemed to wake as from a deep reverie.

“I know not what to say, my son; but I am full of pain at all that has happened today. My mind misgives me that civil war will come out of it; yet we can but try to do our best, and leave the rest to a higher power.”

It was not long before the curtain was drawn aside again, and one entered who seemed to be a dignitary of the court.

“I have come,” said he, “to conduct you to King Dranoa.” And, with a ceremonious bow, he motioned to them to follow him.

They passed through many passages, across galleries and large halls, and up broad staircases covered with thick soft carpet that was noiseless to the tread.

On their way they saw many people of various costumes and appearance, who regarded the new-comers curiously, but not rudely. Presently they reached a heavy curtain before a doorway, where stood more soldiers and officers in brilliant uniforms. The curtain being drawn aside, they entered an immense hall, its sides lined with people, but the whole centre part unoccupied. They were ushered up this hall and there left standing, their conductor retiring to one side.

They found themselves confronting a high canopy, beneath which, upon a raised dais, a man, apparently somewhat past middle age, was seated; they had little doubt he was the king. He was a man of a fine presence, and seemed hale and vigorous, though his dark hair and beard were streaked with grey. His features were regular and well formed, his eyes steady and piercing; his expression was not unkindly; but his chin suggested weakness, a wavering and unsettled temperament. He was dressed in a long flowing robe, and large jewels sparkled upon his breast and shoulders, in the belt that girdled his waist and in the hilt of his short sword. On his head he wore a circlet that was simple in design, and scarcely to be called a crown; it was a band of gold with gems set as stars. Ulama was seated by his side; she, also, wore a golden circlet in which gleamed, with softened radiance, one cluster of large pearls. She had changed the simple dress in which she had been clad when they had first seen her, and now appeared in a costume that was fairly dazzling in its richness, yet in exquisite taste, and well chosen for showing to advantage her graceful figure.

At her feet Zonella sat, or rather half reclined, and other members of her suite were grouped around. Upon the other side of the king stood his ministers and officers of state, and his body guard, and, ranged around the hall, were many others of both sexes, looking curiously and silently upon the strangers.

Over the canopy was an immense star wrought in solid gold. Statues on pedestals were to be seen at intervals, and, most curious of all, on the walls were well-executed coloured frescoes depicting battle scenes.

The king rose and addressed them.

“Friends, I know not whence ye come, what brought ye hither, nor how ye succeeded in passing the wood of black demons and forced your way into our land. In ordinary circumstances it would have been my duty to send ye away forthwith, or even to imprison ye—possibly, still worse might have befallen. But my daughter hath told me that ye have saved her life—a life doubly, trebly dear to me in that she is my only child. But that ye came so opportunely on the scene, she who is my heart’s pride would e’en now be lying in the cold grasp of death.”

Here he paused, overcome with emotion.

“So,” he presently went on, “it has been described to me. I understand, also, that, by some strange chance, ye speak our language, and comprehend what I would say. We knew not that there were people outside this land of ours who were white like us, and, above all, could speak our tongue. But these wonders ye shall explain afterwards at your leisure. At this moment not curiosity, but gratitude inspires me, in that ye have restored my child to me. There is not one here”—his eyes travelled round the packed assemblage—“who will not join with me in thanking ye for that which ye have done. What say ye, friends?”—this to his people—“Ye have heard in what dire peril hath my daughter been this day. Shall we not give to those who rescued her a right good welcome?”

At this, the hitherto silent crowd burst out into acclamations. They cheered, they clapped their hands; they waved banners, they raised their spears and swords aloft and flashed them in the air; again and again the shouts went up, till they seemed in very truth to shake the walls.

When, by a motion of his hand, silence had been restored, the king resumed,

“Ye hear! All greet ye, and I thank ye. Be assured of my protection an’ ye have come in peace. But alas! I grieve to say I am not all-powerful. There are reasons for enjoining upon ye that ye be circumspect in your going to and fro, have always with ye the escort I shall give ye, and visit only places they shall indicate. This is not the time or place for further explanations, nor is it fitting I should now hear the wondrous things I doubt not ye can tell me. I only wish it understood that while I shall give ye my protection, and that of those devoted to me, ye must not hope too much from it; and it may fail ye, if ye observe not the conditions and limitations I have stated; the cause whereof I shall explain hereafter.”

“While we return thee our thanks, O King,” Monella answered, “on our part, also, let it be understood that we can protect ourselves. The cowardly assailants of the princess thy daughter fell before us like chaff before the fire. We could, an’ we had chosen, have destroyed them all, even to the last one; but we spared some that they might noise the tale abroad and warn others of their kind not to raise their hands against us. Yet do I regret that it was necessary to kill any. We came in peace and goodwill, not to maim and slay, or to spread alarm and desolation through thy land. Yet this was forced upon us.”

“It hath been so told to me. Perhaps, as ye say, ye can protect yourselves; and it hath been further told to me how ye wield the lightning and the thunder and blast your enemies, hurling them to the ground ere they can reach ye. For all that, if ye would go about in peace, and avoid the need for further exercise of your death-dealing powers, accept the guard I offer. If occasion arise, and they fail ye, and ye can help in your own defence—well, by so much the better will it be.”

“Thou hast well said, O King. It shall be as thou hast spoken,” Monella returned.

Throughout the interview the king had been eyeing the commanding figure of the man before him, not only with great intentness, but also even anxiously. Indeed, Monella, with his lofty stature and intrepid bearing, his nobly chiselled features, his bold, unflinching glance, would have made no unfitting occupant of the throne. And, possibly, this thought had struck the king, who once more spoke.

“And now I would fain know thy name, and what hath brought thee.”

“I am called Monella.”

“Monella! It hath a sound as of our own tongue,” returned the king. “And thine end in journeying hither?”

“That is for thine ear alone, O King,” Monella replied with decision, thereby arousing the surprise of all, the king included. Then, drawing from his breast a sealed roll of parchment he had brought with him, “But here is that which will in part explain.” And he handed the document to the king.

The king unrolled the parchment, but, as the first words met his eye, he started; then, growing more intent, he read on. But presently, in evident agitation, he stepped down from the dais, placed his hand on the other’s arm, and said in a voice that trembled with emotion,

“I will speak with thee alone. Follow me into my private chamber.” And, looking neither to the right nor to the left, he passed down the hall, Monella following, the crowd opening out to give them egress.

No sooner had they gone, than confused murmurs of astonishment and curiosity burst out on all sides. Elwood and Templemore, as much taken by surprise as any one, looked each in the other’s face inquiringly; but Zonella glided to their side and said in a low tone to Templemore,

“Said I not that thy friend was no ordinary man? Monella! Is it not like my name, Zonella? Methought, the moment my eyes rested on him, ‘That man is a great man—a wondrous man—and he is one of our people!’”

CHAPTER XIV

DAKLA

Ulama also left her seat and came forward to the two young men.

“Your friend,” she said, “has taken my father by surprise; else had he bidden you be seated. Nor did I know that he could not earlier have received you, or I would have sent my maidens to you with refreshment. Come now and sit near us, and I will point out to you my friends that they may be your friends; meantime Zonella will order fruit and wine for your sustainment. Anon you will be invited to our table; but meantime you will need something. We all do,” she added, when they made gestures of dissent, “so you will not be conspicuous in partaking here of what we offer you.”

Pages then entered bearing luscious fruits and tempting-looking foaming drinks; the former on massive salvers of pure gold, the latter in chalices of gold and silver set with gems. The fruits were all new to them, as also were the drinks; but, on tasting them, they found them to be all they looked.

The fruits were indeed delicious and refreshing; the drinks cooling and exhilarating: to Elwood and Templemore they were as nectar and ambrosia, and they said so, and asked many questions concerning them. But, seeing that the only information they received was a string of names that conveyed to them no meaning, they added little to their stock of knowledge.

They now talked freely with those around them; but found the questions showered upon them from all sides somewhat more than they could answer, so that Templemore said at last in an aside to the other,

“Tell you what it is, Leonard; we shall have to give a public lecture—or perhaps a series—and invite as many at a time as the Town Hall of the place will contain. Pity we didn’t bring some magic lanterns and dissolving views to illustrate what we have to tell them. I would have done so if I had only known.”

They, in their turn, were not less full of curiosity and interest in all they saw around them. The statuary, and, above all, the pictures amazed them.

“It upsets all one’s notions of history and all that,” said Jack quietly to Leonard, “to find this sort of thing in the so-called ‘new’ world. We might be back in Ancient Greece.”

“Or Babylon, or Nineveh,” Elwood answered. “It’s like a dream—and, strange to say, I have dreamed much of it before. I keep thinking I shall wake up presently and find that this city, with all that it contains, has vanished.”

“I trust not,” said Ulama—to whom the last part of the sentence had been addressed—with a smile. “I should not like to think that I, myself, am but a dream. But, since you speak of having dreams of that which you find here, know that I have strange dreams also. All my life it has been thus with me. Of late they have been less frequent than of yore, and the memory of them is confused and indistinct; but I know that in them I have seen—aye, more than once—your face, and the face of him you call Monella.”

Elwood regarded the maiden in surprise, and she continued,

“Yes, it is true. Tell me, Zonella, have I not often described to thee those I had seen in my dreams; and did not some resemble these? As to face thou canst not know, but as to garb and other details?”

“’Tis true,” replied Zonella gravely.

But the matter-of-fact Templemore found it hard to credit this; visions and the like were nothing in his way.

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“Quite,” both said.

“And—me—a—I—myself, I mean; was I there too?”

Templemore’s manner when he asked this question was so humorously anxious that Ulama laughed—a joyous, ringing laugh, the token of a soul innocent and free from care.

“No, indeed,” she answered. “I never dreamed of you.”

“And you?” he asked, turning to Zonella.

“No, never;” and she too laughed merrily.

“It really doesn’t seem fair,” said Jack, with an injured air. “Waking or sleeping, my friend has been a dreamer all his life; when we met with Monella we found he was one of the same sort; so those two were on terms immediately; but I—I am out of it all. Never had a dream in my life worth remembering. Not only that, but—as it now seems—I can’t even get into other people’s. I put it to you, Princess, am I not a little hardly done by?”

Thus they laughed and chatted, and time passed on, and still Monella and the king were closeted together. It was more than an hour—nearer two—before the king returned; and then alone.

“My friends,” he said, “the audience is at an end. Affairs of state demand my earnest thought, and I must now dismiss you. But,” beckoning the two young men to him, and taking in his own a hand of each, “once more let me commend these strangers to your care and friendship. They have rendered me today a service that is beyond price, and in rendering it to me, they have rendered it to us all. More I need not say, except to charge you to make their stay with us a pleasant one.”

He withdrew, and, with his absence, the crowd began to thin; only those belonging to the court remaining.

And now Ulama spoke.

“I shall hand you over to my good friends here,” she said. “Doubtless you will wish to make a change in your apparel and——”

“Unfortunately we brought no change with us,” said Jack.

“They will bring you a choice of vestments,” she answered, laughing. “You will surely find something to your taste.” She bowed courteously, and went out, followed by Zonella and her attendants.

They were now taken in charge by the high chamberlain, whom they already knew by name—Colenna. He, in turn, handed them over to his son Kalaima, a bright-eyed, fair, talkative young fellow with whom they quickly found themselves on pleasant terms. He conducted them to a suite of chambers which would be, he said, reserved to them. They found there various suits which he laid out for their selection, instructing them, with much good humour, in the way in which they should be worn. These were, so he told them, the distinctive dresses of a noble of high degree; and were presents from the king as a mark of his special favour.

Elwood laughed at Jack’s expression while he turned over the various articles after Kalaima had left them to themselves, examining in turn the white tunic of finest silk embroidered with strange devices, the cap with jewelled plume, the heavy belt of solid gold, and the short sword and dagger; all ornamented with precious stones of greater value than they could estimate.

“Are you really going to deck yourself out in these things, Leonard?” he asked, with a rueful look. “Am I expected to do so too? Great Scott! What would our friends in Georgetown say if they could see us masquerading in this toggery?”

“When at Rome you must do as Rome does, I suppose,” Elwood returned lightly. “After all, I don’t suppose it will seem half so strange to the good people here as would our continuing to wear our present dress.”

“There’s a good deal, no doubt, to be said for that view,” Jack said with resignation. “And, since it is intended as a compliment, I suppose we must e’en accept it as such. I only hope I shall be able to keep my countenance when I look at you—that is, before the king and others. At present I feel very much afraid that it may prove beyond my powers.”

In their suite of chambers was a bath, with water deep and broad enough to swim in. A refreshing plunge, a reclothing in the unfamiliar raiment, and they emerged from their apartments dressed as nobles of the country. The attempts, honest, but too often futile, made by Templemore to preserve his gravity, caused him at times more personal discomfort than did even the strange garb but, since use accustoms us to pretty nearly everything the efforts required became gradually less and less.

But what sobered him, so to speak, the most, was his meeting with Monella, who was now attired in like fashion to themselves. The change seemed to have made an extraordinary alteration in the man. He looked taller and more imposing than ever, and in his gait and manner there were an added grace and dignity. It could now be seen that his form was supple and muscular as that of a young man’s, graceful in the swing of the limbs and in every pose. His eyes retained their unique expression that seemed to magnetise those upon whom they fell; but his face had a greater gravity than ever, and something of a majesty that awed Templemore when he noted it.

“Of a truth,” he said to Elwood, “that man seems to alter from day to day even from hour to hour. He is just as kindly, as courteous, and as gentle; just as thoughtful—yet, I feel somehow that there is a gulf deepening between us, and that it is widening, slowly but surely. Yet not because one likes him less—that’s just it, you seem to like him and admire him more and more—but you feel you do it from afar—from a gradually increasing distance.”

And when, later in the day, they sat down to a banquet at the king’s table, and saw Monella seated beside the king, taking the post of honour and accepting it with the easy dignity of one who had been used to it all his life; not only the observant Jack, but the less seriously-minded Leonard, felt, with increasing force, the feeling the former had described.

During this repast they learned that the Manoans were vegetarians; though their cookery was so skilful that such dishes as the strangers tasted they found both appetising and satisfying. Not only that, but, as they soon discovered, these dishes were fully as invigorating and nourishing as a meat diet. This was due to the presence of some strange vegetable or herb in nearly every dish; but what this was they could not then determine.

At dusk, a new surprise awaited them; for, not only the palace, but the whole city was lighted up by what they quickly recognised as the electric light. They now could understand the brilliant aspect of the city as first seen by them at night from the head of the canyon.

After the meal, Templemore and Elwood went out, with many more, upon a terrace that overlooked the lake; where now boats were going to and fro, some paddled by oars, some drawn by the large white swans. But what at first puzzled the new-comers were the antics of some who threw themselves into the water from considerable heights. Instead of falling almost vertically, as a diver would, they swept down in a graceful curve, striking the water almost horizontally, then bounded up and flew through the air for a short distance, till once more they touched the water and bounded up again. Finally, when the impetus was expended, they swam back to shore or were taken thither in a boat. Of course this style of bathing could not be practised in puris naturalibus, or in ordinary bathing dress; so they were furnished with a kind of divided parachute, or twin parachutes, not unlike artificial wings; with these they could descend from towers and great heights and with a long swallow-like sweep, striking the water and rebounding again and again. By practice some had obtained a wonderful dexterity in this amusement, and their evolutions would have deceived a stranger, viewing them from a distance, into a belief that they were actual flying creatures. Some of the children—who chiefly delighted in this pastime—were very expert at it.

While watching the gay scene before them—a repetition of what they had witnessed from afar—Kalaima came to say that the king requested their presence in his council chamber. Following the young man they entered a hall, smaller than that in which they had first been received, and found the king throned under a canopy as before, and Monella seated near him. Around the hall were ten or twelve of his chief ministers and officers, each placed before a small table, Upon which were ink-horns, pens, and sheets of parchment.

Standing in the centre of the chamber was a man of swarthy skin and haughty mien, his expression cruel and deceitful. He wore a black tunic on which was worked a large golden star like that displayed by the ill-fated Zelus. Standing respectfully a short distance behind this man were two others, somewhat similarly attired.

The leader had just finished speaking when Templemore and Elwood entered, and he cast at them a scowl that was almost appalling in its malignity.

The king signed to the young men to seat themselves beside Monella; then, turning to the man who had just spoken, said,

“It avails nothing, Dakla, for thee to come to us with messages of this intent, and with presentments, void of truth, of what befell today. Here are the three strangers who, as thou sayest, opposed themselves to Zelus, the son of Coryon thy master. They slew him, it is true, and some of those who followed him, but it was to save my daughter from his violence.”

“It is false, O King! They lie, if they say so! For our lord Zelus had no thought of violence!” This from Dakla.

“If thine errand here is but to charge with falsehood these three men, I’ll grant thee audience no longer.” The kings voice was stern, and his eyes flashed angrily, so that Dakla trembled, and there was less confidence in his tone when he replied,

“But they are strangers whom the king knows not; wherefore should he accept their word before our trusted servants?”

“Because it is confirmed by mine own daughter, sirrah! And if thou darest again to say it is untrue that Zelus lifted his hand to take her life, thou shalt not return unpunished, be the consequences what they may!”

By the king’s impressive manner, and still more by the menace he had thus let fall, Dakla seemed daunted. He had expected to be able to carry things his own way. He hesitated, then said in a milder tone,

“But even so, they should not have taken the life of our lord Zelus, but have brought him before thee.”

“How could they do that when he had more than a score of men with him, and they were but three? Furthermore, there was no time for parley. An instant’s hesitation, my daughter saith, and it would have been too late.”

Dakla reflected; then he made a fresh suggestion.

“It will content us if the king remit to us for trial him who, with his own hand, did slay our lord. If, on due inquisition, it shall be found even as the king hath said, then shall he be returned unhurt.”

The king’s face clouded, and his lips curled with scorn as he replied,

“Out upon thee, with thy tricks and cunning snares! Thinkest thou we do not know thy master by this time? These strangers are my guests—under my protection! Hark ye! I say under my protection! If harm shall befall them, I will seize thyself, an’ thou comest again within my reach, or any others of thy master’s minions on whom I can lay hands, and their lives shall pay the forfeit.”

“Thy words will grieve my master, King Dranoa,” said Dakla, with a scarcely hidden sneer. “He careth only for the welfare of the king and of his people. But how shall there be safety for the dwellers in this land if such as these may go abroad and slay at will, and be protected by the king?”

“What safety is there now for any, when even the king’s daughter cannot walk near mine own palace without assailment?” the king wrathfully demanded. “Hold thy peace, sirrah! and quit my sight ere worse betide thee!”

At this Monella rose, and, bending towards the king, said something in a low tone to him; the king, assenting with a nod, Monella slowly turned his glance upon the henchman of the priest, and thus addressed him,

“I have the king’s permission to send a message of my own to Coryon, since the opportunity now offers. It is well that thou shouldst bear it, and better still if thou takest it to heart. I sent the same message by the murderous crew that followed at the heels of thy late shameful lord—as thou callest him—Zelus. It is this: that such things as he attempted will bring down vengeance and retribution on you all. Bid Coryon take heed and mend his ways; if not, his doom is fixed. We are but three; yet, if we chose, and the king so willed it, we could clear thee and thy master and his brood from off the land—aye, ere another sun has risen and set. And tell Coryon this, by the king’s permission we are here, and, as thou hast heard, under his protection. For that protection we are grateful, but we need it not. If thou, or any of thy serpent brood molest us, we will hold you all to such a vengeance as shall repay the wrongs of others and rid the earth of you. I sent this message by Zelus’s craven hounds, but my mind misgives me that in their flight they scarce remembered it; or, perchance, they feared to give it. Wilt thou now bear it to thy master?”

“Who art thou that dares to send a message of defiance to the great Coryon?” Dakla asked.

“One who can carry out his words; one who, as the ally of the king, will bring upon your heads that which has been so long deserved. One who, though he spared thy myrmidons today, will spare no more. Beware! Attack us, and we show no mercy!”

With each succeeding sentence he seemed taller, more imposing, and more menacing; until the last words were fairly thundered out, and his eyes flashed fire.

The countenance of Dakla fell before his gaze; he hesitated, panted, turned to go, then turned back, and finally, as one who spoke against his will, he said, with no show of his former mocking insolence,

“Sir, I will bear thy message.” Then, with an obeisance to the king, he and his attendants left the place.

“I would give something to know what the king and Monella talked about so long today,” said Elwood to Templemore that night, when they found themselves alone together.

“So far as I can gather,” Jack replied, “there is a grand old feud on here between these rascally old priests, on the one side, and the king and his followers on the other; and Monella, I suspect, has learnt enough concerning it to lead him to back up the king. Well! So far as I am concerned, I am game to back him up, too, against such a murdering lot as they seem to be. What say you?”

“You need not ask me,” Elwood answered with some surprise. “But I thought that you—well—that is——”

“Would be rather more slow to get up enthusiasm, eh?” Jack interrupted with a laugh. “Not at all. Fooling about in a dark, gloomy forest, with no apparent end in view, was one thing; taking part in an adventure of this kind to help a lot of people who have received us kindly, is quite another; to say nothing of helping the king, who’s a regular brick, and his daughter, who’s——”

“An angel!” put in Leonard.

And Jack laughed, but approvingly, and said good-night.

CHAPTER XV

MARVELS OF MANOA

During the following days Elwood and Templemore learned much of the strange land in which they found themselves; of its people, of their condition, and other details. But, since to give every separate conversation, incident, or other means by which they gained their information, would be tedious, it will suffice to cite some extracts from Templemore’s diary that summarise the knowledge then and subsequently obtained.

* * * *

“I am able now to jot down some account of this strange place and its inhabitants, so far, at least, as my limited knowledge of its language and other means of information go.

“The people seem to be amiable, fairly intelligent—considering, of course, that they know nothing of the great world outside—and generally well disposed. Although they maintain a small force of ‘soldiers’ or ‘guards,’ and drill and discipline them with as much assiduity as though they might be called upon to engage in warfare, yet, as a matter of course, there are no people with whom they can go to war; nor is there any likelihood of their having to fight, except amongst themselves. And this, unfortunately, has not been unknown; moreover, there are ‘signs in the air’ that it may not be unknown again.

“An unexpected discovery we have made is, that this mountain is connected with another close to it and called ‘Myrlanda.’ The connection is underground, and was made originally in the course of mining operations.

“Undoubtedly, once these people were a great nation. Their arts and sciences, their buildings, their engineering works, and their knowledge of mechanics, all give evidence of this; but, since a nation, isolated as this has been for ages, must necessarily either progress or retrogress, the Manoans slowly, gradually, but surely, have done the latter. They have numerous museums which are full of wonders of all sorts, pointing to lost arts, lost sciences, lost inventions, lost knowledge of all kinds. The fact that the demand has fallen off with diminishing population has led to the discontinuance of manufactures; though, in the museums, there are evidences that they once existed.

“This is the case as regards chronometric instruments. Their occupations being desultory, they have little need to know the time of day; so the use of clocks and watches has ‘gone out of fashion,’ and there does not now exist a person in the two ‘islands’—as they still call these two inaccessible mountains—who can make a clock or a watch. Yet, in their museums they have many ancient specimens of clocks and watches of various kinds.

“Like remarks apply to many other arts and sciences and manufactures. The cause is likely to be found in the fact of their non-intercommunication with other nations.

“But the most wonderful thing of all, in this land of marvels, is a plant or herb they call the ‘Plant of Life.’ This, I am assured (though it seems hardly credible), if taken from time to time in certain forms, combined with other plants found here, induces great longevity in the recipients. The king, for instance, who looks between fifty and sixty years of age, I am seriously told is three hundred and forty! Yet that, even, is nothing out of the way here; for—assuming that they speak the truth—there are among the priesthood a few who have lived in the land one thousand, fifteen hundred, and two thousand years and more! I should scarcely take the trouble to write this down, were it not that I find it a matter of such common belief on all sides that it is impossible to avoid regarding it seriously. When first these statements were made to me I sought Monella and reported to him what had been told me, remarking that I thought it somewhat in bad taste on the part of my informants to combine together—as it seemed to me they must have—to palm off such tales upon a stranger. To my utter astonishment, he replied that he had reason to believe that there was truth in what I had been told! He had doubtless heard the same thing—and he is so quick to probe to the very root of whatever excites his interest, and a man so difficult to deceive, that, on receiving his solemn assurance (I asked for it) that he was not jesting, I felt bound to regard the matter attentively. I, therefore, set to work to get at all the facts as well as I could, and to see and examine the wonderful plant for myself. In this way I have arrived at the following data:—

“The plant, which is called ‘karina’ in the language of the country, is of a curious delicate, clear, blue tint—almost transparent in appearance, and in texture smooth and glassy-looking as to the leaves. It grows to a height of two or three feet, and is succulent in character; exuding freely, when squeezed, a juice which has a very strong bitter-sweet taste. It is prepared in several ways—many having, it is believed, secret recipes which have been handed down from father to son from generation to generation; but they all relate more or less to a tea or infusion of the leaves, with or without the admixture of other herbs or drugs. To have the full effect it must be taken regularly, almost from infancy; indeed, it is so powerful that those not accustomed to it must take but very weak doses at first for a long time, till the system learns to assimilate it; otherwise, it may even act as a poison. Taken, however, regularly from childhood, it produces and maintains perfect health, defying all those usual fevers and diseases that afflict humanity in other parts of the world, and carrying the body unimpaired in all its functions—accidents, of course, excepted—into extreme age, without loss of vitality or strength.

“People do not, however, live for ever; there is one disease and only one that the ‘karina’ cannot cure. This is called the ‘falloa’; there is also another name for it signifying the ‘don’t care sickness.’ Those attacked with it gradually sink, and die painlessly and easily. This disease, no doubt, must come to all sooner or later; but it is generally believed that the priests—and they alone—are aware of some way of so preparing the ‘karina,’ that they can either cure even the ‘falloa,’ or keep it at bay for very much longer periods than other people succeed in doing.

“It is certainly a remarkable fact that throughout the land disease, in the sense in which we understand it, is unknown. Consequently, physical pain is almost absent, save in case of physical injury. Nor is it necessary to be continually taking the preparation of the ‘karina.’ When once the system becomes inoculated with it, as it were, it is sufficient, afterwards, to repeat the doses at long intervals; and a traveller, as I gather, might take sufficient of the dried plant with him on his travels to keep him in perfect health for many years in any part of the world.

“And when, at last, the ‘falloa’ attacks its victim, it causes neither pain nor suffering of any kind; only melancholy, and a distaste for life in general; while its approach is so gradual as often to be unnoticed.

“There is little doubt that the absence of ordinary diseases exerts a corresponding effect upon the physical development; and this alone is sufficient to account for a fact that is very noticeable here, viz., the beauty of the inhabitants. Both the women and the men are remarkable in this respect; and probably not in all the rest of the world put together could so many beautiful women and handsome men be found as one sees in this small, but strange country; and this applies to the old, in a measure, as well as to the young generally. Whether it also applies to the old amongst the priests, one cannot say, for they seem to keep entirely to themselves.

“As regards these ‘priests,’ there are two sects in the country, called respectively the ‘Dark,’ or ‘Black,’ and the ‘White.’

“The religion of the ‘White’ priests, or ‘Brotherhood,’ resembles, in many respects, that of the Hebrews, save that for ‘God’ they use the term ‘Great Spirit,’ or ‘Good,’ or ‘Almighty’ Spirit. These have, however, now no influence in the country, and have been exiled to Myrlanda, where they confine themselves to a small ‘domain,’ have few followers and very little communication with the general inhabitants. The chief of these is named Sanaima.

“The chief of the ‘Dark Brotherhood’—as they denominate themselves, and well they deserve their name, from all I hear—is called Coryon; and he and Sanaima are both popularly supposed to be more than two thousand years old! But, since both these millenarian gentlemen keep themselves shut up amongst their own immediate adherents, and seldom show themselves to the people, it would not be very difficult to keep up a tradition of this sort without a word of truth to back it. It may be urged in support of it, however, that we see many going about who, we are assured, are three, four, or five hundred years old; and these assert that they have not the true secret of preparing the ‘karina’; this being known only to the priests.

“But whatever be the truth as to their longevity, the ‘Dark Brotherhood’ seem to be a set of bloodthirsty, licentious tyrants, ruling the people with a rod of iron, for the king, though nominally an autocrat, has but little real power; but his rule, so far as it extends, is mild, and his people appear loyal and well disposed towards him.

“The real ruler of the land is Coryon, the High Priest of the ‘Dark Brotherhood’; a man who, though never seen beyond the limits of his own domain, makes his power felt everywhere. What I have heard of him and his chosen band sounds too atrocious to be true; yet I am assured I have heard only a part; the whole truth is of such a nature that men shrink from speaking of it to one another.

“It is said that they have many wives, whom they choose at will from amongst the daughters of the people; but what becomes of them afterwards no one knows, for they are never seen again when once they disappear behind the gates that shut in the domain ‘sacred’ to the ‘Brotherhood.’ Further, they lay a ‘blood-tax’ upon the population for ‘religious sacrifices’; at certain intervals these victims are selected, it is said, by a sort of ballot, and from that moment vanish like the others, and their fate is never known; or at least no one professes to know. It is, indeed hinted, that it is too terrible to be published. One or two who have escaped back to their homes have, it is averred, died raving mad; their ravings being of so dread a nature that it could not be determined whether they referred to scenes actually witnessed, or were the offspring of their madness. What becomes of the children of these ‘priests’—or at least of a large proportion of them—is also a matter for conjecture. They cannot well all live, or they would probably overrun the land. It is darkly whispered that all but a certain definite proportion are sacrificed. At any rate they are seldom heard of. Zelus, the one Elwood killed, was an exception, it would appear. He is described as the ‘only remaining’ son of Coryon; but what has become of his other children, if any, is not known. Zelus had set his mind upon taking Ulama from her father to make her, against her will, his wife—or one of them. Now it is generally understood that the king and his family, and the members of his household, are safe from molestation by the ‘Brotherhood.’ Therefore, in seeking to force Ulama, Zelus was offending against the strict law; yet, such was his insolent contempt for all law but his own will, that he not only designed to bear her off, but, in his rage at her resistance and the scathing disdain and scorn she showed in her refusal, he would have killed her. And it is quite certain that, had he succeeded, he would have been protected by his father, so that no punishment would have fallen on him.

“If, however, as appears from this, even the king’s only child is not safe from these atrocious wretches, what must be the position of the common people? As a matter of fact, though they are by nature cheerful, contented and unselfish, yet over all there seems to hang the shadow of an ever-present dread, the overpowering, constant fear that tomorrow or the next day—this day, even, they or some of those they love, without the slightest warning, may be seized and borne off to an unknown fate. All the information vouchsafed in such a case is that the victim has been chosen by the so-called ballot; but it is hinted, and no doubt believed, that, if one of the priests, or one of their favourite adherents, happen to cast an approving eye upon a daughter of the people—be she maiden or wife—the ‘ballot’ is pretty sure to fall upon her before very long.

“This is the awful despotism wielded by these ‘priests’ in the name of religion. Needless to say, it is not confined to the particulars stated. If the priests themselves are not much seen in public, some of their emissaries and followers are continually about, and they domineer over the people and perpetrate many shameful acts of cruelty and injustice, in almost all of which they are supported and protected by those they serve. For, though these wretches are nominally amenable to the civil law, or to be brought before the king, few, even of the boldest of their victims, care to risk the after vengeance that they know would overtake them as the consequence.

“It was these miscreants that the king had in his mind when he insisted upon giving us an escort during our sojourn here. And, though our firearms are undoubtedly our best protection, still, as has been pointed out to us, we have made enemies who are treacherous and relentless, with fanatical adherents, who mingle with the people and might stab one of us in the back without warning, were they allowed the opportunity of coming near us in the guise of ordinary well-disposed or curious citizens. We have thought it, therefore, only prudent to accept the proffered guard.

“Of the ‘White Brotherhood’ one hears little. Sanaima, their chief, is reputed to be an upright, well-disposed man, who would, if he had his way, assist the king to put an end to the domination of the other sect and its human sacrifices and other evils and abominations; but they do not seem to have the power, or, if they have, they lack the resolution to take any decided or practical steps to shake off the tyranny of Coryon. Nor could it be done without plunging the country into a civil conflict that might last indefinitely and be productive of almost endless suffering; and the king, as a kind-hearted man, shrinks from precipitating such a calamity. So Sanaima shuts himself up in his own domain and gives himself up, it is understood, to abstruse study.

“Turning to another noteworthy and surprising thing—the fact that these people are acquainted with electricity and the electric light—it seems that they collect and store it underground in some way I do not yet understand. But upon all high rocks are placed metal rods—lightning rods, in fact—and it is asserted that at all times, day and night, but more particularly when there are clouds around the mountain, a constant stream of electricity passes down the rods and is retained and stored in insulated receptacles constructed for the purpose underground. The effect of this arrangement is that thunderstorms are unknown here. The armature of lightning rods draws off all the electricity from the surrounding atmosphere; and, though thunderstorms are often witnessed in the distance—playing round other mountains, for instance—yet they never burst over Manoa or Myrlanda.

“On this mountain—Roraima, as we call it—a name, by the way, entirely unknown to the inhabitants—the city of Manoa and its lake stand at one end of the great basin that lies within the summit. All around are terraces of rock rising, one behind the other, till they end in high wooded crags that form, in fact, the edge of the summit as seen from outside. Down these crags or cliffs pour numerous cascades that find their way, eventually, into the lake; whence they issue again as the great waterfalls that tumble from the summit—or near it—to the base of the mountain. For though, from a distance, these falls seem to start from almost the very summit, they, in reality, burst out from the level of the lake, more than a hundred feet lower than the highest rocks upon the top of the mountain.

“The rest of the top—apart from the lake and city—is a country of hill and dale, rocks and woods, very picturesque, and forming, in places, minor basins, or vales, of considerable extent and beauty, quite shut off from one another. I estimate the total extent roughly at a hundred square miles; but I believe Myrlanda covers nearly two hundred.

“None of the land in Manoa is given up to cultivation, save in the form of gardens, or orchards, and groves of fruit-bearing trees. The lower rocky terraces around the lake are beautifully laid out in this way. Here, are cultivated fruits of every kind. The trees are planted in such a way as to form shady walks and resting-places; beneath them are seats and fountains that are always playing, fed by the streams that rush down at intervals towards the lake. And across these streams are numerous bridges; some, where the torrents open out on approaching the lake, are necessarily of considerable width; those on the terraces above are small rustic structures—but all are ornamental, and some of exquisite design. Around the terraces flowers grow in profusion, partly wild and partly cultivated. Wonderful orchids, gloxinias, begonias; orange-groves covered with flowers and fruit; and gardenias with their deliciously scented blossoms; with many others that I have never seen before and have not yet learned the names of.

“The cereal and other crops required are grown in Myrlanda, which is principally devoted to agriculture; there also there are numbers of goats, and a kind of sheep, and large quantities of fowls. Pumas, which are kept as pets in Manoa, are not allowed in Myrlanda, for they would play sad havoc amongst the flocks and poultry; though, probably, they live upon them all the same; for the Manoans, being vegetarians, never eat meat, but give the flesh of their animals to their pets. The latter include cats, of which there are large numbers; some of most curious kinds. These two animals, between them, it is said—the puma and the cat—have cleared the land of all wild animals, including serpents; for there is no more deadly enemy of serpents—even venomous ones—than the cat; and the puma will attack and overcome larger non-venomous snakes.

“No one, to see these latter great animals playing continually with the children of their masters—as may be witnessed here all day long—would think they were naturally of such bloodthirsty instincts. It has been said of pumas that, with the possible exception of some kinds of monkeys, they are the most playful animals in existence. One can certainly see ample evidence of this in Manoa, for the creatures, whether large or small, old or young, seem ever ready to start a game of romps with whomever they can get to indulge them—whether little folk or their grown-up elders.

“The large swans that swim about on the lake, though very tame, can scarcely be regarded as pets, though they are frequently to be seen docilely drawing a small boat about; or a team of them will be harnessed to a vessel of larger size. They get their own living among the fish in the lake, and seem able to hold their own with the pumas. I am told that this comes about from the fact that the young pumas, being often foolish enough to attack them in the water, meet with such treatment that—if they succeed in escaping drowning—they ever afterward leave the birds alone. These swans make their nests and rear their young on some islands that lie out near the centre of the lake. Often, towards night, when the sun has perhaps set for the day on the lake and the country surrounding it, these birds may be seen in small flocks circling and whirling in the air, and presenting a very beautiful sight as they rise out of the shadow, and the rays of the setting sun light up their plumage. These are undoubtedly the ‘white eagles’ that are asserted by the Indians to be the ‘guardians of the lake’ on the top of Roraima.

“Myrlanda is honeycombed with mines, but hardly any are at present worked, the demand for their products having practically ceased; and such large stocks have accumulated from former workings that I am told they are not likely to be reopened for many years. So far, I have only partially inspected the museums. They are more surprising than even the people, for they speak plainly of a wonderful past history. Here are many strange inventions and machines, the very meaning and use of which are now but a matter of conjecture. They contain, too, stands of arms—spears, javelins, swords, daggers, shields, bows and arrows, etc., as well as suits of beautifully wrought chain armour—sufficient to fit out a small army. Most of these are mounted in gold, and many are ornamented with jewels. All are kept bright and in admirable order.

“The statues are surprising specimens of art, as are the bas-reliefs with which most of the buildings are embellished. Yet there are now no sculptors here, nor any painters. There are potters, but their work is inferior to specimens preserved in the museums. In many other branches of manufacture, also, the artificers of today are evidently unskilful as compared with those of former times.

“In the museums are also preserved manuscripts of great antiquity, and interesting as throwing light on the past history of the nation. Many of the nobles and chief people can write and read; but, printing being unknown, their opportunities of keeping up such accomplishments are necessarily very limited. The materials used for dress are mostly silk—obtained from silkworms—wool, and linen; the last being obtained from a fibre resembling flax. In the manufacture of these materials into fabrics the Manoans are particularly skilful; especially in working or embroidering upon them all kinds of new and quaint designs. Their boats, too, that float about the lake, are exquisite models; so that one can quite believe that the nation was once, as they declare, a maritime people, with fleets of ships, or, at least, large vessels of some kind. In the museums, by way of confirmation, are pictures—very cleverly executed works—of naval battles; and, in these, large vessels with two and three masts are represented.

“It is worthy of remark that in all these pictures representing battle-pieces—and these are many—none but white people are depicted. That different races intermingled in the fighting is indubitable; but the difference consists in dress and other details; not in the colour of their skins.

“It is a tradition of the Manoans that they formerly ruled over ‘the whole world.’ This may be taken to imply either the whole continent of America, or a large portion of it; but they knew nothing, formerly, of black or red races; and their archives bear this out—their pictures, perhaps, more forcibly than anything else.

“As regards the buildings, their architectural magnificence is undeniable—almost, indeed, defies description. On many structures gold has been freely employed in the roofing, and for other purposes where we should employ lead or iron. They say the gold came chiefly from Myrlanda, and certain neighbouring ‘islands’—i.e., mountains—from which they are now isolated. Gold cornices, and embellishments, of every conceivable shape and form, are commonly used for outside decorations; the very conduits to carry off water being often of gold or an amalgam consisting largely of that metal, and wrought into elaborate designs. Indeed, both iron and tin—and lead also—seem to have been much more sparingly employed than gold and silver. Iron seems to have been used only where extra strength and weight were required, and, in the form of steel, for weapons, or for common utensils, tools, etc.; and of copper there is very little anywhere to be seen. Silver, even, is less common in heavy decorative metal work than is solid gold.

“Thus the tales that Sir Walter Raleigh heard of the splendours of the ancient city of Manoa—or El Dorado—and that for many hundreds of years since have been regarded as fables, appear to have been based, after all, upon actual fact.”

CHAPTER XVI

LEONARD AND ULAMA

“How I should like to see this wondrous outside world that you come from!” said Ulama dreamily. “The more you tell me of it, the more you whet my curiosity, and the more I long to see its marvels for myself.”

“And yet,” was Elwood’s answer, “nowhere will you find so marvellously beautiful a scene as that which now surrounds us. I have travelled a good deal myself; and my friend Jack much more; and Monella, where has he not been? He seems to have visited every corner of the world! Yet he said to me, but yesterday, that he thought this the fairest spot on earth; and in this Jack agrees, so far as his experience extends.

“Since I first came here I have looked upon it from many points of view; from the water, as the boat drifts from one side to the other; from different places round the shore; from various spots on the rocky terraces above; and these different views I have seen under all the shifting effects of sunlight, moonlight, and in the mountain mist. Yet do I find myself unable to decide which I like the best. Whatever I do, wherever I happen to be, I see constantly some fresh enchantment, some new charm, some effect at once unexpected and delightful; till I strive in vain to make up my mind which I admire the most.”

It was about a week after the arrival in the city of the three travellers; and Ulama and Leonard were seated in a favourite boat in which the princess was wont to spend a large portion of her time. It was, really, a small barge, of curious but graceful design and elaborate decoration. Over the after part was a white and light-blue awning; the bow ran up in the shape of a bird with out-stretched wings wrought in gold and silver, and the stern was fashioned like a fish with scales of blue and gold, its tail being movable, and running down below the water-line to form the rudder. Upon the sides provision was made for several oars; but this morning Ulama and Elwood had put off alone, content that the boat should drift wherever the slight air or current might direct.

Truly Leonard had not over-rated the beauty of the scene around them; scarce indeed would it be possible to do so. The water was a dazzling blue, yet so clear and limpid that it seemed more like a film of tinted air than water, so that the eye could pierce to great depths where many strange creatures could be seen. The sun, high in the sky, poured down its rays upon the buildings and the trees, in some parts lighting up only the tops and throwing purple shadows over the rest; in other places, touches of vivid green contrasted with the pink-white tints of the faces of the buildings; the whole quivering in the shimmering haze that conveys an idea of unsubstantiality in what one sees—a suggestion that it may be only a mirage that a passing breeze may dissipate.

Ulama was leaning in contented listlessness over the boat’s side, her hand playing idly in the water. On the shapely arm, bare to the elbow, was a plain gold band in which was set a single diamond that even crowned heads might have envied. It flashed and sparkled in the sunlight with dazzling fire and power. A gold fillet, set with another matchless diamond, confined her hair, which fell loosely in wavy tresses round her shoulders. Her dress was of finest work, its texture thin as gossamer; pure white with here and there a silken knot of blue. It was gathered into her waist by a golden zone whose clasp was hidden by another and even larger diamond. No other style of dress could have so well set off the perfect symmetry and beauty of her figure. Thus, bending in unconscious ease over the boat’s side, the young girl formed one of the rarest models of maidenly grace and loveliness that could that morning have been found amongst Eve’s daughters.

Yet, probably, to most observers, the purity and sweetness that looked out from her soft, wistful eyes would have seemed the chief and most attractive charm of this radiant maiden of the ‘city of the clouds.’ And her gentle, lustrous eyes were the index of the pure and loving soul within.

No wonder, therefore, that she was, beyond compare, the best loved, the most honoured person in the land.

She was her father’s chief, almost his only, joy. Apart from her he found but little that gave him happiness. At the same time he loved his people and honestly desired to do his best for them; and gladly would he have made great sacrifices to bring about their emancipation from the priestly tyranny that oppressed them. But he shrank from the extreme step of precipitating a civil war; yet the alternative of allowing things to take their course and continue in the old groove grieved him deeply; so much so that his distress had begun to take the form of settled melancholy. His courtiers, who were devoted to him, noticing this, themselves became a prey to anxious misgivings, fearing in it the first symptoms of the sole incurable disease they knew—that which they termed the ‘falloa.’

Leonard’s last words had started a fresh train of thought in the young girl’s mind, and presently she spoke again.

“Do you then mean that you would fain pass your life with us; you to whom the great world beyond is known, with all its endless interest? It seems strange that! Methinks that, were I in your place, I should deem life here but colourless and childish. For me, certainly, it has sufficed. I have a father who loves me dearly—dotes on me; my mother I never knew. She died when I was very young. I have kind friends around me whom I love, and who love me, and who seem to think far more of me than I deserve. And, were it not for the sadness in the land, I think I should be very happy; certainly I should be contented. Yet, now that you have told me of a spacious world beyond, full of all sorts of mysteries and unheard-of marvels, I confess I should like to see something of it.”

“To do so would bring you no lasting pleasure,” Leonard answered. “If we—if I—who have looked upon these things, have been brought up amongst them, if I am weary of them, and never care to see them more, and would spend the remainder of my life here, for you they would have no attractions.”

Ulama glanced up shyly at him from under her long lashes.

“But are you—would you?” she asked with a slight blush. “Would you truly like to stay here all your life—never to go back to your own land?”

“Yes! I do mean that!” And there was a fervid glow in Leonard’s countenance. “All my life I have had a restlessness impelling me to seek—I knew not what—in distant lands. All my life I have had strange dreams and visions; not only in the stillness of the night, but also amidst the busy hum of day, and in all these one form was ever present; it hovered round me so that I could almost see and touch it. But—and now comes the strange part of it—that first day I set eyes on you, the moment you drew near, I saw in you the living image of her who had been the central figure of my waking visions, and held sweet converse with me while I slept. Then—when my eyes met yours—I understood it all! I knew then what had led me hither; what it was I had unconsciously been seeking, and wherefore I had been restless and unsatisfied at home. I knew that in you I had discovered all I craved for—the sweet fulfilment of my soul’s desire. And then—then—I saw you in the grasp of one who would have slain you! And my heart stood still, for I knew that, unless my hand were steady and my eye unerring, in striving to save your life I might destroy it. Oh, think, think what must have been my anguish! Think, how——Ah! Never will you know a tenth of what I suffered in that brief space; or my relief and thankfulness when I saw him fall, and you stand scatheless!”

The young girl looked shyly at him; then, noting the love-light in his eyes, and the glowing flush upon his cheeks, the while he had poured out all that he had felt for her, an answering blush stole over her own fair cheek; while a coy, dainty little smile seemed to flit airily around her mouth, setting into little dimples first here then there; in like manner as a ray of light, reflected from a mirror, will dance coquettishly to and fro in obedience to the hand that moves the glass.

There was silence for a space, she gazing downwards at the water, but now and then stealing a shy glance at her companion.

Then another line of thought passed over her mind and shadowed her face for a moment.

“I wonder,” she said with touching innocence, “what people see in me to like so much? I fear it is not always well that this should be. It was that which led—Zelus”—she shivered at the name—“to thrust himself upon, and at last threaten me, and has placed you in danger for having slain him. It is very strange! To like, to love, should mean naught but happiness and loving-kindness and innocent delight; yet here it has led a man to attempt an awful crime, and has placed others in great peril.”

“It was not love on that man’s part,” said Leonard, savagely, between his teeth. “At least, not the sort of love that urged me on, that has guided me—even as the unwinding of a clue leads the traveller through the maze—to the side of her I loved and worshipped in my visions. Mine is not the love that could ever do its object hurt; that could ever——”

He paused abruptly, seeing her glance up at him with a look of wonder on her face.

“You love me?” she exclaimed. “But that is past believing! ’Tis but a few days since you first saw me. You cannot know what I am really like! How then can you love me? I love my father because he has cared for me and loved me all my life; I love Zonella—and—and—other friends, because I have known them for so long, and they have been kind and good to me. How can you yet tell that you will love me? Perchance when you know me better you may even come to hate me.”

“Oh! Ulama! What is that you say?” he said impetuously. “You cannot mean it! You are playing with me! But it is cruel play! The love I mean is not such as the slow growth of a child’s affection for a parent or a girl-friend. It is a swift, resistless passion, that centres on one being above all others in the world, and says, ‘This one only do I love; this one possesses all my heart and soul! From this one I can never swerve—my love will end only when my heart no longer beats; I cannot live without it.’ Such a love bursts forth spontaneously from the heart, as does a tiny spring from the earth’s bosom and that, when once it has found vent, for ever bubbles up fresh and clear and pure, and, commencing in a little rill, increases to a torrent whose force no power can stem. That is the love I mean; and ’tis such a love I bear for you, Ulama. Can you not understand something of all this?”

“I know not,” replied the maiden in a low voice, and glancing timidly at him. “You frighten me a little—or you would, but that I like you too well to feel afraid of you—but—I have no knowledge of such love as you describe.”

“But, you have heard of a love that far exceeds mere friendship—far stronger than affection?”

“Y-es. I have heard of it; and—ridiculed it as fiction. Yet—if you affirm its truth, and in your own person have experienced it—I must fain believe you, for I know you would not say what is not true. But”—here she sagely shook her head—“though my ears receive your words, the time has not yet come when they have reached my heart.”

Leonard seized her hand.

“But, meanwhile, I have not offended you, Ulama?” he asked entreatingly. “You will let me love you? Indeed, I am powerless to help it. And you will try to—to—like me—ah, you have said you do like me already. Will you not try to love me a little?”

“Nay,” she frankly answered, “you would not surely have me try? What sort of love would that be that we had to try to bring into being—to force upon an unresponsive heart? You have said that it should burst forth spontaneously. I scarcely understand when you speak thus.”

Leonard sighed.

“You are right, Ulama, as you ever are; and I am wrong; but my love makes me impatient. I will not expect too much of you. I will wait with such content as is in me to command until your gentle heart shall beat in unison with mine; and something in me tells me that one day it will.”

Just then they heard the voice of some one calling to them, and, looking round, they saw Jack Templemore and Zonella, with several others, coming towards them in another boat.

When they were within speaking distance, Jack said that Monella had sent him to tell Leonard he wished to speak to him; Leonard accordingly took up the oars and rowed the barge slowly to shore. There he left Ulama with the party, and proceeded in search of Monella who, he had been told, was awaiting him upon a terrace that overlooked the lake.

Here Leonard found him seated with a field-glass in his hand. Monella turned and looked searchingly at the young man, who felt himself colouring under the other’s glance.

“I love not to seem to spy upon your acts, my son,” Monella began gravely, “but when I caught sight of you in yonder boat holding the hand of the princess, the daughter of the king, who is our kind and gracious host, I could not well do otherwise than seek a talk with you. I fear you have not well considered what you do.”

At this rebuke Leonard coloured up still more, albeit the words were spoken with evident kindness. For that very reason, probably, they sank the deeper. It was the first time anything savouring of reproof to him had fallen from Monella’s lips; and, up to that moment, its possibility had seemed remote; and now the young man deeply felt the fact that the other should have thought it necessary.

“I think I know what you would say,” he answered in a low voice. “I feel I have been wrong—guilty of thoughtlessness, presumption, and seemingly of breach of confidence. I understand what is in your mind. Yet let me say at once that so far little—practically nothing—has been said, and nothing more shall be—unless—you can tell me I dare hope. But oh, my good friend, you who have treated me always as a son, and shown such sympathy and kindness towards me—who have known of my half-formed aspirations, and the ideas that led me on and ended in my coming here, and encouraged me in those ideas—who have learned that in the king’s daughter I have found the living embodiment of the central figure of all my dreamings—you surely will not now turn upon me and tell me I must stifle all my feelings, and—give—up—the hopes—that had arisen—in my heart?” And Leonard sank wearily into a seat.

Then, for the first time realising his actual position, how next to impossible it was that the king would regard with favour his pretensions, he placed his hands before his face and groaned aloud.

Monella rose, and, going to him, laid his hand kindly upon his shoulder.

“I might bring all the arguments and platitudes of the ‘worldly-wise’ to bear on you,” he said, “but I forbear; and I know they will not weigh with you. Moreover, it is undeniable that the circumstances are unusual and unlooked-for. But they do not justify you in forgetting what you owe to a kingly host and—I may add—to others; to us, your friends, for instance. You know, also, that our position here is critical; there is trouble brewing in the land. If the king should have reason to believe that one of us has abused his confidence in one matter, he may lose his trust in all, as touching other, and far more weighty matters—matters that may affect even his own personal security; to say nothing of our own lives, and those of many of his subjects. Therefore——”

Leonard sprang up and looked at him imploringly.

“For pity’s sake say no more,” he said, “or I shall begin to hate myself. I understand—only too well. Trust me—if you will; if you feel you can; if you have not lost confidence. You shall not have further reason for complaint.”

Monella took Leonard’s hand in his and pressed it affectionately.

“’Tis well, my son,” he said. “I have full confidence, and will trust you. And you, on your side, must trust me. I may have opportunity to sound the king, and, if it so happen, you may count on me to say and do all that my friendship for you may dictate—and that will not be a little.”

Leonard wrung the other’s hand and tried to thank him, but a burst of emotion overcame him, and he turned away. When he again looked round he was alone.

CHAPTER XVII

THE FIGHT ON THE HILLSIDE

It had become the custom of the two young men to go every morning, when the atmosphere was clear, to a height at one end of the valley, from which a view could be obtained over the whole country surrounding that end of Roraima. The spot was a level table of rock under a picturesque group of fir-trees—for on the upper cliffs fir-trees were numerous—and from it, looking in the direction farthest from the mountain, the view was grand in the extreme; while, on the other side of them was the great valley or basin in which lay the lake and the city of Manoa.

It would be but labour lost to attempt to give an adequate idea of the prospect over which the eye could travel on a clear day, when one stood upon this giddy height. It extended to an almost illimitable distance; for, when one looked beyond the surrounding mountains of the Roraima range, there were no more hills to break the view till it reached the far distant Andes, had these been visible. Indeed, it was said that they were visible on a few days in the year; but, if that were so, it would perhaps be rather as an effect in the nature of a mirage than what is usually understood by an actual view of the far-away mountains. But nearer at hand, in other directions were mountain ridges and summits in seemingly endless succession, piled up in extraordinary confusion. From Roraima, as the highest of all, one could look down, to some extent, upon the others. Myrlanda was upon the other side, but Marima, and others of the strange group, lay before the eye, and one could see the woods and lakes upon their summits; but enough could not be seen to enable the spectator to decide whether they might be inhabited or not.

The beauty of the expanse of tropical vegetation immediately below was indeed marvellous. Here the explorers gazed down upon the tops of the trees of the gloomy forest that girdled the mountain (though not that part through which they had made their way with so much wearying, but dogged perseverance), and lo! It was a veritable garden of flowers of brilliant hue! For the trees beneath which they had crept, like ants among the stems of a field of clover, were gorgeous above in their display of blossoms, while shutting out the light from those who walked below.

Here and there, amid the green, the great cascades and torrents from the mountain side dashed impetuously from rock to rock; the streams that were in fact some of the feeders of the greatest of all rivers, the mighty Amazon; that river of wondrous mysteries, that pursues its course of four thousand miles through the plains of Brazil, and finds its way round at last into the Atlantic, there to hurl the volume of its waters with such force into the sea, that even the ocean waters are pushed aside to make a path for them hundreds of miles from land!

Here, upon the table of rock, in full view of one of the grandest and most eloquent natural panoramas it is possible for the mind of man to conceive, Leonard and Templemore stood the morning following the former’s interview with Monella, looking out upon the scene. A high wind, of bracing and exhilarating freshness, blew in their faces, rushed with a roar through the branches above them, swaying the great trees to and fro, and then, seeming to tear off across the valley at one leap, continued its wild course amongst the trees on the heights that lined the further side. Leonard, on turning to look across the lake, saw Ergalon advancing up the slope and making signs to him. He drew Jack’s attention to the signals, and they both descended the terraces of rock below to meet him. Here all was quiet; they were sheltered from the gusts of wind; the roar of the gale no longer met their ears.

All the time they had been in the city they had had a guard. It consisted of a file of soldiers with an officer, and they followed the two young men in all their walks, movements, journeys, never thrusting themselves on their attention, yet always ready to assist and defend them, if occasion should arise. Monella, also, had an escort whenever he went out. He had particularly enjoined on the other two never to stir abroad without their rifles, and this injunction, though they did not always see its necessity, they implicitly observed.

They had not seen much of Ergalon of late; he had attached himself more particularly to Monella, and had, in fact, become his particular attendant. Monella had trusted him so far as to explain to him something of the secrets of the firearms, and had instructed him in the loading of them in case circumstances should arise in which his assistance might be needed. Accordingly, when Leonard saw him coming up the hillside and signifying that he wished to speak to them, he at once called Templemore and left the ledge where they had been standing.

Soon they saw their guard approaching with Ergalon in advance of them, and, following them, Monella, who came on leisurely from ledge to ledge, occasionally giving a glance behind him.

The hillside was marked out in terraces, or tables of rock, most of them covered with greensward and fringed at the sides with belts of trees. Ergalon, who had taken his stand below, made signs to the two to come down to him, and, when they had descended within hearing, he addressed them.

“The lord Monella has sent me to warn you to await him here and to be ready for a contest. There is trouble afoot.”

“But why wait here?” asked Jack. “We will go down to him at once.”

Ergalon shook his head.

“No,” he said. “He particularly desired that you would await him here.”

“So be it; if you are sure you rightly understood him. But tell us, friend Ergalon, what all this means.”

Ergalon explained that Coryon had unexpectedly dispatched a large force of his soldiers to capture the three strangers. They had hoped to surprise them without giving time for others of the king’s soldiers to lend their aid. But he (Ergalon) had, through a former comrade who was still one of Coryon’s people, attained intimation of the intended movement, and had been able thus to warn Monella.

“So the lord Monella,” he explained, “sent on your guard in advance, and then himself walked up the hill towards you that they might see him. Thus he hoped to draw Coryon’s people away from the palace and the houses to this place, where, he says, it will be better to make a stand and fight them, since thus no other persons will be injured in the encounter.”

It was strange, but all who spoke of Monella, or to him, gave him some title of honour or respect. Ergalon called him ‘lord.’ Even Dakla, at the meeting in the king’s council chamber—spite of his insolent swagger towards the king—had been awed by this man’s look into addressing him by the equivalent in their language of ‘sir.’

“How many are there of them?” asked Jack.

“Oh, a hundred—or perhaps more. But the lord Monella has said their number matters not; and he sent me to the king to beg that none of his soldiers should interfere. ‘They would only be in the way,’ he said. He sent these extra things for you. See.” And he showed a parcel of cartridges he had brought with him.

“Good,” said Jack. “He is quite right. That’s all we wanted; we can answer for the rest. More soldiers would only be in the way; and some of them would be pretty sure to get hurt, if not killed outright—and all for nothing. I think I see Monella’s idea. It is”—turning to Elwood—“to take up our position here and shoot them down as they come across this wide terrace just below us. Not a man of them will ever cross that stretch alive.”

“Here are your guards,” observed Ergalon. “The lord Monella desired that you should place them somewhere where they would be out of the way, but within call.”

“Let them get on to this next ledge, then, just behind us. There they will have a fine view of everything. Did these people think to surprise us, do you think, friend Ergalon?”

“No doubt. Your habit of coming here of a morning has been noted, I suspect, and they had intended, I imagine, to creep round and get up through the woods unseen. But the lord Monella, being warned by me, went up on a high rock, where he could see them in the distance; when they saw they were observed by him, they gave up that plan and came straight on.”

“I see. Well, we owe you something for having warned us, friend.”

“It is nothing,” Ergalon answered simply. “My life was forfeited that day, and you spared me; and through the lord Monella and the princess, I gained the king’s pardon. I owe you all my service.”

By this time the guards and their officer had arrived, and were placed by Ergalon on a terrace above and behind that on which the two were standing.

“We like it not, this mode of yours—putting us in the background, out of danger, while you stand up in front,” observed the officer; “we consent only because the lord Monella so desires it. They are many, but we should not shrink; and others from the king’s palace would soon come to our assistance.”

“Yes, yes, good Abla. We have no misgivings of your courage. But you could do no good with so few men—they are more than ten to one, I hear—and your men would but impede us. Besides, it will give them a lesson for the future, if we deal with them ourselves, unaided.”

Abla bowed and walked away unwillingly, as one who is bound to obey orders, but does so against his will.

Monella now came in view, and was soon standing by their side. After a few words of explanation, he said gravely,

“They thought to have surprised us all three up here; but, when they saw they had failed in that, they took a bold course and came straight on. Now that means, in effect, an open challenge to the king. It means,” he continued with increased earnestness, “civil war. Civil war, you understand, has therefore broken out in the land—unless we nip it in the bud, here, now, as we can, if we show no untimely hesitation. These men are scoundrels of the serpent’s brood; cruel, bloodthirsty tools of the human fiends behind them. They deserve no mercy, no consideration. Let none be shown to them! My plan is simply to shoot them down the instant they appear on that ledge below us. They must climb up in front; there is no way round it, nor any means of getting to the height above us. Therefore, they must cross that piece of open ground. One word more. The chief, Dakla, leads them. Do not fire at him. I wish to take him alive, if possible; he will make our best ambassador hereafter.”

Under such conditions the battle could not be a long one. Monella had chosen his ground skilfully, so as to make the utmost of the advantage firearms gave him. The black-coated myrmidons of Coryon scaled the fatal terrace only to be shot down the moment that they came in sight. There were only four or five places where they could climb up and, at these, not more than two men could pass together. Those who reached the top and escaped a bullet, turned back when they heard the explosions of the firearms, saw the flashes and the smoke, saw also their comrades fall. Others of those below who could see nothing of what was going on, swarmed up in their places, only to fall or turn back at once in like manner; till, in a short time, every man had been up and witnessed the ghastly sight of the dead and wounded lying around, and had satisfied himself that not one could cross that level piece of rock to come near their foes. Finally, the survivors were all seized with panic when one of the last to show his head above the ridge came back crying out that “the white demons were coming down after them.” At this, all those who were unhurt turned and fled. But many had fallen, dead or wounded, and lay at the foot of the rock they had climbed up only to be instantly shot down. Above, on the terrace itself, but at one side, stood Dakla and one of his subordinates. These had been amongst the first to appear above the ledge, and had moved aside to let the men form into line up on the rock; but now they were left alone, and, when Monella quietly descended from the rock above, they had the mortification of seeing all their men who were capable of running disappear in frantic terror down the hillside.

Then he who stood by Dakla made a rush at Monella with uplifted sword, thinking, since he seemed to be unarmed, that he would fall an easy prey; but the man fell with a pistol ball in his breast ere he had gone half way to meet Monella.

“Now yield, Dakla,” Monella called to the other. “It is useless either to fight or run.”

“We will see to that,” Dakla exclaimed savagely. “If thou be man, and not demon, this sword shall find thine heart.” And he too made a sudden rush. But, before he had gone three yards, the sword flew from his hand and his arm dropped useless by his side. Monella had shot him in the arm.

“Thou see’st,” he said coldly, as he now approached the crestfallen chief, “how ill-advised thou hast been not to give heed to all my warnings. I could have slain thee earlier in the fight; I could have killed thee now, as I did thy friend there; but I have spared thy life. It is not for thine own sake, but that thou mayest bear a message to thy master, and witness to him of that which thou hast seen and warn him once more of the futility of warring against us, the allies of the king. Dost thou understand?”

The other cast a murderous scowl upon Monella, but made no answer for a moment. Then, after reflection, he said in a dogged, surly tone,

“So be it. But thou must give thy message quickly and let me go; for thou hast hurt me sore and the blood flows fast——”

“We will see to thy wound,” Monella replied composedly. “Let me bind it up till we get to the king’s palace; there it shall be seen to farther.”

And Dakla, reluctantly, and with an ill grace, submitted to have his wound bound up by his enemy, who, before commencing, took away the other’s dagger.

“I cannot trust thee with these playthings,” he observed. “Thou art of the wolf tribe, Dakla.”

Meanwhile, the officer and men of their guard had come down to the lower terrace, with Templemore and Elwood, and were looking in awe and horror upon the outcome of the fight—if so one-sided an encounter could be so called. On Monella and the two young men they gazed in wonder; and, gradually, they drew away from them in fear, from that moment treating them with even greater deference than before.

Monella despatched Abla to summon more soldiers from the king’s palace to bring down the dead and wounded; and himself set about attending to the latter, first handing Dakla over to Templemore.

“Look you!” said Jack to his prisoner, “if you attempt to escape, I shall not kill you, but hurt your other arm; and, if that does not stop you, I shall hurt your leg, and I know that that will. Do you follow me?”

Dakla nodded a sour assent; then stood looking with evident surprise at the trouble Monella was now taking with some of his late enemies. Such singular behaviour he did not understand, and he shrugged his shoulders in contempt.

When, after a time, more soldiers, with some officers, arrived upon the scene, these were at once set to work to bear the dead and wounded down the hill. Monella followed with his friends and Dakla. The noise of the firing had brought out great crowds of people, who were now massed about the palace waiting to receive them. They had watched the precipitate flight of the survivors of the soldiers of Coryon, and rejoiced greatly at their defeat. But, when they saw the dead and wounded, and that Dakla was himself a prisoner, and heard that not one had been hurt upon the other side, their astonishment was complete.

The king himself, with some of his ministers and officials, came out to meet the victors; and his gratitude and emotion, when he noted all these things and greeted Monella and his friends, were profuse and heartfelt.

“Ye have indeed rendered us a service,” he exclaimed, “and taught Coryon a lesson he will do well to take to heart. I feared me greatly that harm would come to ye, and that war would follow in the land.”

“Nay, we have laid the dogs of war, I trust, at any rate, for the present,” Monella returned, with a grave smile. “They will not attack us further, I opine, nor brave thee in the future in this rebellious fashion.”

Then they entered the palace, and Ulama came forward to welcome them, with Zonella and many more.

“We have been in such trouble about you,” she said, the tears standing in her tender eyes, “ever since they told us that over a hundred of Coryon’s people had gone up the rocks to take you. And we heard the noise of the thunder-wands, and were in great fear, till they told us that your enemies were fleeing. Then we looked out and saw them rushing madly down the hill, throwing away their spears, and their helmets, and even fighting one another in their haste to scramble down the rocks. Then Abla came and told us you were all safe, and then——”

“Then,” said Zonella, “you sat down and wept.” And at that Ulama laughed.

“I fear it is true,” she said.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE LEGEND OF MELLENDA

Monella’s anticipations of what would follow the severe lesson they had given Coryon’s followers turned out to be well founded. For when Dakla, with his arm in a sling, revisited his master, bearing a message from the king, the conditions offered were accepted.

Dakla had been straightly charged that these terms would have to be submitted to; if not that his master and all his followers would be starved into submission. They would be confined to their own colony, supplies of food refused, and any of their number leaving their retreat would be killed at sight.

The conditions imposed were that not merely the three strangers, but all the ‘lay’ inhabitants were to be free from molestation by Coryon’s people; and that no more ‘blood-tax’ was to be levied.

After many journeys to and fro, and much delay, Dakla at last announced that Coryon agreed to the conditions for a time—for four months. After that, their great festival would be coming on, and—well, time would show.

“It is only a truce,” said Monella, with a sigh, to his two young friends. “I would it had been permanent; but it will give us time, and the opportunity of shaping out our course. The people will have a respite from the terrible fear that now is ever with them; and, short of engaging in a protracted civil conflict, for which the people are not yet prepared, I see not what better could have been arranged.”

They were thus now able to move about more freely, and without a guard; their rifles, too, could be left behind when they went abroad; though Monella had counselled that they should always carry their revolvers; for he feared they were not altogether safe from treachery, or from some fanatical outbreak on the part of certain of the priests’ adherents.

Thus Templemore and Elwood were now able to mingle more freely with the populace and to see more of their social life. And, wherever they went, they were well received, and treated with both confidence and respect. They visited the houses of people of all classes, from the palaces of the nobles to the dwellings of the peasantry, if so the lower classes might be called. There were, however, no poor in the country, in the ordinary sense of the word. The crops grown were supplied to all alike; every one had plenty to eat, and plenty of clothes to wear, and well-built houses to live in. And, beyond these requisites, there was little in the land to pine for. There were forests, and from these all were free to cut wood for fuel; the electric light was laid on to all alike. The water they required they supplied themselves with from the lake, or from one or other of the streams that everywhere gushed forth from the rocks above. Of shops there were none; but there was a market-place, and a sort of market or exchange was held there once a week. Even this, however, was falling into disuse. There was a currency; and there were many kinds of coins; but they were seldom used. They were of ancient make and were preserved rather as curiosities, seemingly, than for use. There was so little that the people wanted, either to buy or sell, that a simple system of barter sufficed for practically all their needs.

Elwood and Templemore, as they came to know all these things, and gained experience of the simple good-nature of the people, felt increased indignation and resentment against the priests. They saw that the horrible tyranny of these men had turned a land that might have been a realm of perfect peace and goodwill, into one where constant dread and hopeless misery and suffering had become so common, that all seemed helplessly resigned to it.

One day, when the two were in a boat with Ulama and Zonella, Kalaima, and others, Templemore, who had been talking of these matters, asked whether the state of things they had seen had been of long duration.

The reply came from Zonella.

“Ever since the time of the great Mellenda. So we are told. It is the punishment sent by the Great Spirit upon the people for their ingratitude to him.”

“And who was Mellenda?” asked Elwood.

“What! You ask who was Mellenda? But I forgot; of course, you have not been here very long, and cannot know our history and legends.”

“I have been prying about more in your museums than has my friend,” Jack observed, “and I have learned something of Mellenda. But I know nothing of any legend. Pray let us hear it.”

“Yes, tell us about it,” Leonard urged. “I like fine old legends and tales of wonder.”

“Ask the princess to tell you.”

“No, no, Zonella,” Ulama interposed. “You began it; you finish it. Besides, you are more learned in such things than I am.”

“Very well,” Zonella said resignedly. “I can only give it as I know it. If you want further details, you must go to the museum, or ask Colenna, the High Chamberlain, who is a very learned man. Only I do not wish you to ridicule it”—this to the two young men—“for, though I call it a legend, yet it is history; and all our people implicitly believe it. You could not offend them more than by treating it lightly or affecting to disbelieve it. I give you that as a caution, more particularly,” she added, looking mischievously at Jack, “for I know that you are very much inclined to scepticism in such things.”

“I will promise to be very good, and to make no frivolous remarks,” was Jack’s laughing answer.

“Then you must know,” Zonella began, “that we deem Mellenda the greatest of our kings; that is, of our later kings. Our ancient line of kings before him had made Manoa the greatest, the most powerful, and the richest country of the world. These mountains that you have seen around us were all islands in a great lake—the lake of Parima. Its waters extended to the great mountains that we can sometimes see from the highest points about Manoa—far, far away. But over those, and over lands in every direction, our nation held sway. These islands were our chief fastnesses, and this one, Manoa, being the highest and the most naturally favoured of them all, was the seat of government, and its city was the capital to which were brought all the wealth and the most valued productions of the other countries that formed part of its empire.

“But, after many mighty kings had lived and died, a weakness seemed to fall upon the people. They were defeated in battle; provinces revolted, and many distant parts of the empire were lost, passing under other kings. At that time, it is said, our kings and nobles and chiefs among the nation were too much given to feasting and enjoyment; and, it is declared, they began cruelly to oppress the weaker of the people. And a change came over the religion. Up to then all had worshipped only one Great Spirit, who was said to be a good Spirit—the great ruler of all spirits, in fact, and his priests were called ‘Children of the Light.’ Their rule—what they taught—was gentle; it is recorded that they were men of peace and of great—very, very great—wisdom. But another religion had been introduced, coming, it is believed, from some of the lands that had been conquered; and this was the exact opposite of the old one. Its votaries and high priests called themselves ‘Children of the Night’; they worshipped, not one God, but many strange and terrible gods; their priests, also, were thought to possess great wisdom, but of an evil kind. They taught that there was but one way to escape the power of the Spirits of Darkness, and that was by propitiating them by constant sacrifices; and they killed many people at their festivals to give them to their gods.

“Then Mellenda came to the throne. He was the only son of the last of the ancient line of kings. While young he had travelled far and gained much knowledge in strange countries; and he had already, as general of some of his father’s armies, defeated the enemies of the country, and regained some of the lost provinces. His father was killed in battle, and Mellenda immediately set about plans for reviving the old power and recovering the former empire of the nation. He taught, too, that the White religion was the true religion, and he made endeavours to put down the other. But he was absent for long periods at a time, upon distant expeditions, from which, it is true, he always returned victorious; but, while he was away, establishing peace and order in some distant province, the Dark Priests were craftily at work undermining his authority at home. However, for a long time, nothing came of their plottings, and Mellenda reigned for several hundred years——”

“That’s a long time,” Jack interrupted, regardless of his promise.

“For several hundred years,” repeated Zonella with a reproving look at the interrupter, “which was not very long, considering that his father had reigned for fifteen hundred years, and was then cut off, in the flower of his age, by an accident in battle. He (Mellenda) had restored peace at last throughout the whole empire; reformed the style of living, himself setting an example of great simplicity; and his wisdom and justice and kindness of heart had made him revered and loved wherever the name of Manoa was known. Then, finally, he married a princess he was passionately fond of, named Elmonta, and had four children, upon whom, they say, he lavished the most tender love. But some occasion arose for him to leave Manoa once more, to visit a distant part of his great empire. There was a treaty of alliance to be made with another monarch, or some such matter of importance. He sailed away and returned after a long absence, to find that Coryon——”

“Coryon!” exclaimed Jack, once more forgetful of his promises.

“Yes, Coryon, the same Coryon, as is believed, that we have here in the land today. He had seized upon the government and gained over a vast number of the most dissolute and discontented spirits to his side. He was then, as now, the chief of the Dark Brotherhood, or Children of the Night. All the crowd of idle, self-indulgent nobles and men of wealth, but of loose life, among the people, whom Mellenda had rebuked and curbed, broke out and joined Coryon’s revolt; and they actually seized upon Elmonta, Mellenda’s queen, and his children, and offered them as sacrifices to their gods. Coryon set up a king of his own choosing; and, when Mellenda returned, he found his wife and children dead, and the government in the hands of a puppet king controlled by Coryon, who threatened him with death if he landed and fell into his hands. Such was the message sent out to Mellenda when he arrived in sight of our island on his return, successful in the mission that had called him away, and impatient to get back to his wife and children. He had with him a great fleet of vessels; and, though the revolt had spread to the other islands, he could, perhaps, have found followers enough in other parts of the empire to have regained his throne, had he been so minded. But he was broken-hearted, and said that, since his wife and children were no longer living, he had nothing left to fight for, and cared not to take part in a civil war with his own people. Instead, he decreed that their punishment should be that he (Mellenda) would go away and leave them for many ages to suffer under the lash of the foul religion they had supported; till all who had sinned against him saw their wicked error, when he would return to punish finally the Dark Priests and those who still wilfully supported them. Then, and for ever afterwards, there should be peace and happiness and justice throughout the land for all his people.

“So Mellenda sailed away, and was never seen or heard of more. Not long after his departure came the great sinking of the waters, and the lake of Parima disappeared. This the better-disposed inhabitants left here regarded as a special punishment for their allowing Coryon to usurp the government and drive away the great, good, and wise Mellenda. And they rose up against Coryon and the king he had set up. But the crafty priest had obtained too strong a position for the movement to succeed. Moreover, he managed to pacify a part of his opponents in a strange way. He declared he had not put to death all Mellenda’s children, and produced a boy, who, it is said, was recognised by those who ought to know as one of Mellenda’s children. This child he promised to place upon the throne; and afterwards he did so.

“The nation, shut off from all the world, has much decreased in numbers, and is now unknown where it was once all-powerful. For centuries, it is said, the surrounding country was but a chaos of swamp and mud. By degrees there grew up vegetation, and finally trees that, in time, became thick, tangled forests that could not be penetrated. Thus, for long ages, we have been cut off from all the other peoples of the world. Some parties were sent out, hundreds of years ago, to explore the surrounding country; but some never returned, and those who did brought back such terrible accounts of awful woods haunted by fearful creatures, and of deserts beyond, inhabited only by black demons, that it was considered better to keep the country here entirely to ourselves. So I believe the only known way that led out into the woods was sealed up for good; and thus ended the last attempt to communicate with the outside world.

“Many of the White Priests fled to Mellenda’s vessels, and were taken away with him when he departed; but the others, including their chief, Sanaima, retired to Myrlanda, where they have ever since maintained themselves.

“That is the story of Mellenda, and of how he left us, and of what befell the proud city of Manoa after his departure. When he will come back we know not; but some old prophecies obtain amongst the people according to which the time of his return is very near, if it is not indeed overpast.”

“His return!” said Jack. “You surely would not have us understand that you expect this venerable old fossil to return, in the flesh, to trouble himself about the present state of the descendants of his ungrateful people?”

Zonella stared.

“Why, of course we do!” she answered. “There is not a man or a woman—scarcely a child of a few years old—that has not been taught to believe in it.”

“I should think so,” Ulama exclaimed, almost indignantly. “We all know it will be so; we believe it absolutely.”

“But,” said Jack, “how long ago do you reckon all this took place?”

“About two thousand years,” Zonella replied, after a brief, but apparently careful, calculation, counting up on her fingers.

“Two thousand years! And you—you two sensible young people—tell us you expect to see this badly-treated, but respectable, old gentleman turn up again, just much as usual, I suppose, after two thousand years!”

“Why not?” Ulama asked. “We have Coryon and Sanaima, both said to be older than that.”

“Yes—but”—looking at Leonard—“I fancy that is like the Pharoahs of old, you know, where there was always a Pharoah on the throne, though kings were born and died. It would be easy to keep up a farce of that sort where, as here, the ‘High Priest,’ black or white, is so seldom visible—always in the background.”

“But if the king is three hundred and forty, may it not be possible to live to two thousand, or more? I can point out many men of more than five hundred in the king’s palace,” observed Zonella.

The gentle Ulama, even, looked somewhat offended.

“We do not question the wonderful things you tell us about the world outside,” she said. “Why should you question what we know to be true?”

“It seems to me,” said Leonard, “that it all depends upon the virtues of the ‘Plant of Life.’ Now, if that herb, or plant, or whatever it is, really has the qualities attributed to it, why, the rest is easy enough.”

“I admit that,” Jack said, laughing. “When once that is conceded, a man may just as easily live to five thousand years. Only, even in that case, I see a difficulty. How would Mellenda get the necessary ‘Plant of Life’ away from here?”

“The White Priests who went away with him would not be likely to leave their secret behind,” explained Zonella. “Besides, it is specially stated in our historical manuscripts—so Colenna has told me—that those who went out from the island for long periods—governors of distant provinces and the like—not only took a large supply of the dried plant with them, but seeds that they might grow it; and in some places they found the plant do well; though they kept its virtues a secret from the peoples they went amongst. These things would be known to Mellenda and to the White Priests who went away with him; and, probably, they settled in a place where they knew the plant was being grown.”

“Were that so, it would explain something of the former far-reaching fame and power of a small nation of islanders like these,” said Leonard. “The secret of such a plant—the rapid increase of population when there were so few deaths in proportion—would of course give them a long pull over other nations.”

“As to the question whether we seriously expect Mellenda to return to us,” resumed Zonella, “in the large museum you will see one of his suits of armour, his banner, and a celebrated sword of his, all kept bright and ready for use and well preserved. They are kept there waiting for him.”

“I saw them,” Jack remarked. “He must have been a big fine man, if that suit fitted him. But, to go back to the son of this great king, said to have been saved after all, and then put on the throne; did he have any descendants?”

Zonella nodded.

“There have been five kings in the direct line since.”

“I see. So that the present king is——”

“A great-great-great-grandson of the great Mellenda,” put in Ulama.

“I think it was rather fortunate you managed as you did when you came here,” Zonella said after a pause; “for, if Coryon had been the first to know of you strangers being in the country, he would have striven in every way to have killed or captured you. They say he is a firm believer in the early coming of Mellenda, and is in mortal terror about it.”

Jack was silent awhile, and then he observed drily,

“Well, all I can say is that I should very much like to see the good gentleman, if he is still about; and I only hope and wish he will arrive while we are here. If he has been travelling around all these years, by this time he must know a thing or two! I wonder whether he will come in a balloon!”

CHAPTER XIX

HOPES AND FEARS

Amongst other advantages of the peace or truce that had been arranged with the mysterious Coryon, one was that Elwood and Templemore were free to visit the canyon and the caves where their reserve stores lay, and assure themselves that they were all safe. To do this they had to arrange to be away one night, since it was a day’s journey each way. That night they passed in the cavern—which they had named ‘Monella Cave’ in honour of their friend; the canyon itself they called ‘Fairy Valley’—and their camp equipage being all found intact where they had hidden it away, they had everything at hand for making themselves comfortable. They found, on examination, that the stone that closed the entrance was in the same position as when they had left it. Having removed the wooden bars, they rolled it to one side, and looked out into the gloomy depths of Roraima Forest.

From this outlook Templemore turned back with a shudder of disgust.

“How I hate that forest!” he exclaimed. “How miserable it seems out there! Verily it is wonderful, if you come to think of it, that we ever had the patience and perseverance to cut our way through to this place.”

“We never should have done so, but for Monella’s influence,” observed Leonard. “How strange it all seems, doesn’t it? Now that we are back here, we could almost think all we have been through a dream. One thing is certain; no other party of explorers would ever work their way through this wood as we did; they would get disheartened before the end of the first week. Nor could they possibly do any good by persevering, unless they had that to guide them which Monella had. What is that piece of white over there?”

And Leonard indicated a white patch upon a tree-trunk at the edge of the clearing.

Templemore took out his glasses and looked through them.

“It’s a piece of paper,” he cried excitedly. “Some one’s been here! We must go out and inquire into this!” The ladder was quickly got out, and they hurried down it and across the clearing to the tree that bore the unexpected affiche. But, though the paper must have been purposely nailed in its place it was blank; on opening it, however, they found a few straight lines that formed a somewhat vague resemblance to the letter M.

“Matava has been here!” Leonard cried out. “All he can do in the writing line is to make some marks that mean M—his own initial, you know. Poor fellow! Fancy his venturing here to seek for us!”

The paper had been folded many times, the ‘M’ being in the inside; and it had been nailed just under an overhanging piece of bark, as a protection from the weather.

“He must have executed this elaborate piece of penmanship at ‘Monella Lodge’,” said Jack, “and brought it with him in case his journey here should be in vain. He’s a good fellow! Knowing, as we do, how he and all his tribe abhor this wood and the mountain, we can appreciate the devotion that led him to screw up his courage so far. And then to have come for nothing! It’s too bad, poor chap! What a pity we could not have got down here and seen him! Plainly he had some hope we might return, or he would not have left this simple yet ingeniously contrived message for us!”

“His hope would be but a faint one at best,” Leonard replied gravely. “Having been here and found the entrance fast closed, and after our failing to make any signals, as arranged, I fear he will carry back an alarming tale to Georgetown.”

“I fear so too, Leonard,” Jack assented very seriously. “They will be terribly alarmed about us; worse than if he had gone straight back without coming here.”

That evening, after they had cooked their evening meal, they sat by the smouldering fire, both silent and both thoughtful. Jack smoked away moodily at his pipe; Leonard was absolutely idle, except that he turned his eyes, now on the glow of failing daylight overhead, then down at the scene around him.

Each knew what was in the other’s mind; yet neither liked to be the first to speak of it. But at last Jack spoke.

“It’s no use blinking the fact, Leonard,” he began, “that this visit of Matava here and the account he is sure to carry back is a serious matter. Our friends will be more than alarmed; they will, perhaps, give us up for dead. This raises the whole question again, What are we going to do here, how long are we going to stay, and what about getting back? We can’t stay here for ever—at least, I certainly don’t mean to. I don’t like the idea of going away and leaving you here. Where are we drifting to?”

Leonard was gloomy. He had been so more or less ever since that conversation with Monella about Ulama. For a few minutes he made no reply; then said, with a tinge of bitterness in his tone,

“You must wait awhile, Jack. I am not prepared to say yet, but—it may be I shall be ready to clear out soon with you.”

Jack raised his eyebrows and gave a brief, but keen, glance at his friend. Then he smoked on stolidly for a while and ruminated.

“There’s one who will never go back with us,” presently he went on, “and that’s Monella. He spoke truly when he said he should never return to ‘civilisation.’ He seems to have resolved to make his home here for the future. He is now the king’s right hand—his ‘guide, counsellor, and friend,’ with him constantly, except when he’s away in the place they call Myrlanda, on some mysterious business. And, perhaps, the oddest thing of all is that he is the most popular man at the court—even with those he has, in a sense, displaced. You would think there would be all kinds of envy, and hatred, and jealousy, and counter-plotting, and general ‘ructions,’ when a stranger, suddenly come from goodness knows where, stepped upon the scene and became straight away the favourite and confidant and counsellor of the king! Yet, the more he takes that character upon himself, the more they all seem to like him!”

“Who can help liking him?” Leonard sighed. “Who can help loving him? Even where he reproves, he does it so tenderly you only love him the more for it. How can any one feel jealous, or angry, or envious with a man who behaves to all as he does? For myself I do not wonder; he was born to be a leader of men, as I said long ago; he has that magnetic attraction that makes a great commander—a commander who inspires such devotion that thousands and hundreds of thousands are ready to give their lives for but a glance of approval or a word of praise. There can’t be many such men at this moment in the world; there cannot have been many since the world was made. But, when such a man appears, he quickly spreads his influence around him.”

Jack gave a little laugh; but not an ill-natured one.

“You are as full as ever of enthusiasm for your hero,” he remarked, “though he has been a sort of cold shower-bath to you lately, eh?”

Leonard coloured, and shifted uneasily on his seat.

“How did you know that?” he asked.

“I guessed it, old man. In fact, I saw the ‘cold shower-bath’ in his eye that day—you know.”

“Yes—perhaps you are not far out, Jack. However, I promised to leave things in his hands, and there they must remain at present. Of his regard for me I have no doubt whatever—or for us both. If he cannot do the almost impossible, I shall accept my fate, and try to bear it as well as may be. Let us say no more about it now.”

Jack, who for all his usual habit of appearing somewhat unobservant, could see most things, thought he could have told his friend of some one else who was displaying signs of unhappiness under Monella’s ‘cold shower-bath’ treatment—Ulama, to wit. She had become very quiet and grave of late; and, indeed, the fresh, childish gaiety she had shown during the first few days after their arrival had disappeared. But Jack discreetly decided to keep these thoughts to himself, and let events take their course. He knew that they were in the keeping of a head wiser and more far-seeing than his own—Monella’s. Of late they had seen comparatively little of him; he was most of his time either closeted with the king, or had gone, it was said, to Myrlanda, to visit Sanaima, the chief of the ‘White Priests.’ On these occasions he would be away for two or three days together. Yet, whenever either of the young men chanced to run against him—or, if they met at the king’s table—they found no alteration in his manner. Indeed, he showed, if anything, increased kindliness in both his words and actions, often going out of his way to do some little thing, in a manner all his own, to show, before whoever might be present, his cordial feelings towards them. For the rest, he had the air of one whose mind is charged with anxious and weighty thoughts, and both Templemore and Elwood felt rather than knew that he was occupied with fears of trouble in the future.

One morning, a few days after the visit to the canyon, Monella invited Leonard to walk out with him, and they went together to the place they had named ‘Monella’s Height.’

The day was clear and bright, and a slight breeze came sighing through the tree-tops. The scene around was full of soft repose, soothing and curiously satisfying to the mind. But Leonard noticed it not today; his heart beat fast, and his colour came and went, for something in Monella’s manner told him that he was about to hear a statement of moment on the subject that was always uppermost in his thoughts. He tried to brace himself to bear the worst, if it must come; but his effort was not too successful.

“My son,” Monella presently began, “I promised to speak with you, when I could, upon the matter we talked about one day. Is your mind still the same concerning it?”

Was it? Did he need to ask? Leonard impulsively replied. And he launched into a rhapsody that need not here be given at length. Monella listened in silence till the young man had finished, and then went on,

“Have you considered whether your wish is a wise—a final one? That, were it granted, you must remain here for good? Never to return to your own people?”

“Why, never?” Leonard asked. “In the future—one day, perhaps——”

Monella shook his head.

“You must clearly understand,” he said, “that that cannot be. I have told you all along that I never expected to return from my journey here; and now I know that I shall never leave this place. And you and your friend—you will have ere long to decide either to stay here for good, or leave for good. If you elect to go, the king will send you away rich—so rich that you will no more need to strive for wealth; if to stay, he will give you posts of honour where you can profitably employ yourselves in helping me in the great task I have set myself—the teaching of the true religion of the one great God to these my people; for”—he continued, when Leonard looked up at him in surprise—“it is true that I am one of this nation by descent, and that I have, therefore,‘after many days,’ only wandered back to mine own people. But I have seen too much of the world outside to love it; my people desire to keep to themselves, and I can only, from what I have seen and experienced, confirm them in that wish. I cannot find it in my conscience to do otherwise. Therefore, we are resolved that there shall be no intercourse between us and the great world beyond. It is useless to say more upon the subject; it is settled beyond all reach of argument or discussion. Hence, it will be necessary for both you and your friend to decide whether to remain and cast in your lot with us for your whole future lives, or to say farewell and return—but not empty-handed—to your own people. It is a serious and weighty matter for you to decide; therefore should not be settled hastily. Nor is there any need for haste; take as long as you please to think it over. Wait awhile, till you have seen more of the place, and have come to know the people better. Or wait until”—here the speaker’s voice became impressive well-nigh to sternness—“until I shall have stamped out this serpent brood that hath too long held this fair land in its loathsome coils. Then shall ye see a new era here—an era of peace, and cheerfulness, and godliness—and ye shall see that it is good to dwell in such a country.”

“I do not believe that any amount of reflection can alter my wishes in this matter,” Leonard answered earnestly. “Painful as the thought of never seeing my friends again would be, yet it would be still harder to leave here and never look again on her my heart has chosen for its queen—aye, for years before I saw her. No! Now that fate has led me to her, nothing in this world shall part us—if the decision rests with me.”

Monella regarded the young man fixedly, and there were both affection and admiration in his glance. Very handsome Leonard looked, with the light in his open honest eyes, and the flush upon his cheek. Then Monella’s look waxed overcast as from a passing shadow, and he made answer, with a sigh,

“Youth, with its hopes and aspirations, when they come from honest promptings, is always fair to look upon; more’s the pity that these aspirations all lead to but one end—sorrow, and disappointment, and weariness. Verily, all is vanity, vanity! We travel by different roads, but we all arrive at the same goal.” He looked dreamily away across the landscape to the far distant horizon; then continued, as though talking to himself:“Yet youth pleases, because it desires to live in love—and love is God and Heaven in one. It is the principal of the only two things—it and memory—we carry with us in our passage from this life to the next. Love and memory are two great indestructible attributes of the human soul. True, we take with us our ‘character,’ as it may be called, but that counts little, unless it be founded upon love. And memory is the ever-living witness showing forth whether our life here has been influenced mainly by selfishness, or ambition, or hate, or cruelty, or—love. For only the love shall live and flourish again; all the rest shall wither and die. Ye hear of ‘undying hate,’ but there is no such thing. All hates, even, die out at last; love only lives for ever and can never die.”

He paused, and remained for a space gazing into the distance. Finally, he turned again to Leonard.

“Come with me, and find your friend; I have that to show you that I wish you seriously to consider.”

They walked together down the hill. Meanwhile he continued,

“You say your mind is made up, if the decision rests with you. Well, nominally, it rests with the king, of course; but, in reality, I suspect, in this case with the maiden herself. The king is too fond of her—too anxious for her happiness—to desire to thwart her wishes. And he has remarked of late that she is not as she used to be; that she has fits of sadness and melancholy. Her state alarms him. I think, perhaps, he fears it may be the first sign of what is called here the ‘falloa.’ But,” looking at Leonard with a half-smile, “I suspect there is a remedy for her disease, whereas there is none known for the ‘falloa.’”

When Leonard heard these words his heart and pulses bounded, and he felt indeed as though walking upon air. Nor did he forget what he owed in the matter to his friend. His breast swelled with gratitude, and he poured out his thanks with a rush of words that stopped only when he caught sight of Templemore coming towards them.

Leonard ran to meet him, and somewhat incoherently explained what Monella had been saying, while Monella led the way to his own apartments in the palace.

When they were seated there he went over again most of what he had impressed on Leonard—for Jack had understood but little of Elwood’s impetuous talk—and added,

“Now I want you to advise your friend and consult with him, lest he should decide too hastily; and that must not be. I also must speak further with the king. You see,” he continued gravely, “this is a serious thing. The king’s son-in-law will look forward to be king one day; therefore he must not be lightly chosen. Again, to choose one of an alien race is no small thing. For myself, I am free from any worldly prejudices about birth, and ‘family,’ and ‘royal blood,’ and all that vain, foolish cant. And the king is of the same mind, and wants only to choose for his child the one who pleases her, provided he is worthy. For that I have passed my word to him. I have lived long upon the earth and have consorted with many men; thus I have learned to judge of character and disposition. And I have met none to whom I would sooner trust a daughter of mine own, than to our friend here. On that point, therefore, I have been able to satisfy the king; and fate seems to have settled the rest beforehand. For, incredible as the sceptic may regard it, these two had met in visions long before they encountered one another in the flesh. Thus, in the present, as in the past, fate points the way, and so it will be in the future. For no one can escape his destiny. For good or ill, each has a destiny prepared for him, and that destiny he must perforce fulfil.”

CHAPTER XX

THE MESSAGE OF APALANO

The furniture in use in the city of Manoa, in material and style, was not unlike that found in Japan. That in the palace was of exquisite design and finish, much of it inlaid with gold and silver. It was such a cabinet that Monella now unlocked: he took from it a parchment roll.

“This,” said he, “is the document I gave the king the first day he received us. Now, of course, it belongs to him; but I have borrowed it, temporarily, to show you. It was written by Apalano, the last descendant of those ‘White Priests’ who fled this country ages ago with the king Mellenda. In some of the old parchments in my possession it is described how those who thus went away found the empire going everywhere to pieces, and falling a prey to barbaric hordes of black or red or cruel white races; and how they eventually took refuge in the secluded valley high up amongst the peaks of the Andes, of which I have already spoken to you, and dwelt there through many centuries. They had brought with them, and succeeded in cultivating, the ‘Plant of Life,’ or ‘karina’;but, notwithstanding—and albeit it made them all long-lived—the fatal disease, the ‘falloa,’ claimed them one after another, till Apalano and I alone were left. Then the ‘falloa’ laid its withering hand upon Apalano also; he lost his last child, and that affected him very deeply; for, before he died, he wrote this strange letter which tells all about myself that I know with certainty; yet hints, as you will see, at still more to be learned in the future. I will read it to you:—

“‘To Sanaima, the Chief White Priest of Manoa. Or, if dead, his Descendant or Successor. Or to the Reigning King of Manoa, Greeting.

“‘I, Apalano, the last of the descendants of the White Priests who fled with the great King Mellenda, do commend to your care the bearer of this letter, he whom ye will know by the name of Monella. He is, after myself, the sole survivor of our race outside thy land of Manoa. Treat him with all courtesy, respect and confidence, for he is of royal descent, and the unsullied blood of thine ancient line of kings flows in his veins. Mark well his counsels, give heed to his warnings, and observe his rulings; for he comes to restore the true religion of the Great Spirit, and to bring peace and happiness to our land. Long years ago he did receive a grievous injury to the head in combat with a savage foe. This cast a shadow upon his memory of the past, so that he knoweth naught of what went before, and his former life is blank, save for some vague passing glimpses that, at rare times, come back to him in the guise of dreams and visions. We could have told him much of all that went before, but we have refrained;—first for that he might not have rightly comprehended what we had to tell, and next, in mercy; for he hath suffered much. It was deemed best that the recollections of his sufferings should sleep until the time for his awakening should arrive, when the work for which the Great Spirit hath appointed him shall lie before him and shall form his sorrow’s antidote and comfort.

“‘The memory that hath untimely been suspended—for we know that it may not be destroyed—perchance may be restored to its full power by such an accident as wrecked it; but, failing that, there is but one sure treatment—namely, to drink of the infusion of the herb called ‘trenima’ that groweth in Myrlanda and nowhere else. Let the stranger Monella, that bringeth this to thee, drink of ‘trenima’ in accordance with the rules I have laid down for him upon another scroll; let him, for some weeks, take of it sparingly even as I have written; then more frequently, and lo! All his past life, now hidden, shall be revealed to him, the sun shall light up the recesses of his memory, and he shall know himself and what lies before him.

“‘And my dying eyes, though unable yet to pierce the future, still can see that his coming amongst you shall be in itself a sign of the truth of these my words. When he shall appear to you I know not; only that it will be at the time the Great Spirit hath appointed—not an hour sooner nor an hour behind that time—ay, not one minute. And herein ye shall read a message from the Almighty Spirit, and ye shall know that Monella’s coming at that special time was marked out by the hand of Destiny. And ye shall find upon his body marks whose meaning will be known unto Sanaima, or to him on whom hath fallen his mantle.

“‘With my greeting, I bid ye now farewell—ye unto whom this scroll shall be delivered—my first and last message to the land of my forefathers, and to those that now rule there. Through many centuries we, a faithful few, have kept your memory and our love for you green in our hearts; and I and those who have been with me had hoped, as the appointed time drew near, that the Great Spirit would have deigned to grant to us to see our ancient city and our native land. But it was not to be; all have gone save me and him who brings you this; but in him I send the blessing that we have preserved and nursed for you through long years of persecution and despair.

“‘If ye would return our love and care for you, I pray you show them unto him we send. I know that he is worthy of them; and, further, that in his own breast he bears for you the sum of all the love we in our own persons would have shown, had we been spared to greet ye—I and those who have preceded me to the land of the Great Spirit.

“‘Farewell!

“‘Apalano.’”

When Monella had finished reading this strange letter, he leaned his chin upon his hand and fell into a reverie, Leonard and Templemore meanwhile looking on in silence. Presently Monella roused himself, and, with a deep-drawn sigh, passed his hand across his forehead with a look of pain. His action was as though he had half-caught some flitting thought or memory, that had, after all, eluded him; and that the effort to retain it had cost him mental pain. After a short interval he said, with one of his rare smiles and in the musical voice that captivated every one, so full were they of kindliness,

“Now you know as much about me as I know myself. I did not show you this before, because I had been charged to hand it only to those to whom it was addressed; and this is the first opportunity I have since had, for the king sent it to Sanaima, who returned it only a day or two ago. But, since you must now consider seriously the question of your going or remaining, it is right that you should know all I can tell you of myself. It is very little; yet sufficient to explain my present feelings. You can understand, now that you have read that letter, that I am now, with all my heart and soul, one with these people. I look at everything from their point of view; I consider only their interest, their welfare, their safety, their advantage. If you shall elect to remain with us—to become one of us—you shall find me ever a staunch friend who will do all he can to make you feel at home amongst us, and will place you in positions of great honour. If, on the other hand, you prefer to leave us, you shall not go without such marks of the king’s favour as are beyond, perhaps, your dreams. These are the alternatives that lie before you. Take time to ponder them; there is, as I have already told you, no need for an immediate decision.”

When, after leaving Monella, the two were once more alone together, Leonard burst out with the thought that filled his mind,

“I scarcely know how to express my feelings. I am full of sadness and yet of joy, and I know not which predominates.”

“I know what it will be,” said Jack gloomily. “You will stay, and I shall have to return alone. What excuse I shall give to people for leaving you here—dead to them and to the world for ever—or whether I shall ever be forgiven for appearing to have deserted you, God only knows. I wish you would think a little upon all this. For the rest, I congratulate you with all my heart. To be the future king of so ancient and remarkable a nation, is a piece of ‘luck’ that does not fall to everybody. By Jove!” he exclaimed with increasing earnestness, “upon my word I don’t wonder at your going in for it—indeed, if—that is—well, if I had not already set my mind upon something else, I would chuck up the world in general and throw in my lot with you and be your—your Prime Minister—or State Engineer—or some other high functionary.” And he laughed good-naturedly at the ideas the suggestion called up in his mind.

“Don’t let us meet trouble half way,” said Leonard hopefully. “The time of parting is not yet; who knows what may turn up? Monella may make us some concession that will meet the case. And now look here. I have been thinking of a plan for sending a message home.”

Jack stared.

“How on earth?” he asked.

“It won’t be much of a message, and perhaps it will never reach home; but we can try. Let us find a place where we can get a view in the direction of ‘Monella Lodge’ and watch at night for camp fires out on the far savanna. We must find a spot screened from observation on this side. Then we will bring some powder up from our stores, and flash some signals as Monella had arranged.”

“But what good will that do? Even if they are seen it will only be by Indians who will not understand them.”

“Never mind. If any Indians see them they are sure to spread the news about; and probably the first place to hear of it will be Daranato, the Indian village where my old nurse Carenna lives. Matava may have told her about the signals, or even other Indians. At any rate, she will be pretty sure to hear of them and let Matava know when he returns; or perhaps even send a message down by some one going to the coast, to say that signals had been seen that showed we were alive on the summit of Roraima.”

Jack reflected.

“Yes!” he presently said slowly. “Yes. There is something in the idea. We will try it; it can do no harm. But, to be of any good, we shall have to signal frequently; once or twice would not be of much use.”

“Precisely. Before long, Matava will be back from the coast, and will hear of them, and will come out on to the savanna at night to see them for himself. And he would watch night after night with an Indian’s patience till he saw them.”

“Yes; I suppose Monella won’t object? We ought not to do it without his consent. But for that awful forest, we might even go farther; we might make an expedition for a week or two, and get to ‘Monella Lodge’ and leave a letter there; or even to Daranato, and leave letters to be taken to the coast by the first Indians going that way.”

“No, we can’t manage that, nor would Monella like us to be away so long. You never know what trouble might turn up here with these priests and their vile crew. And that reminds me of that letter Monella read today. What did you think of it?”

“An extraordinary letter! Really, I feel almost inclined to go back to my former idea that Monella and his friends were all mad together!”

Leonard stared aghast.

“What! You speak of that again?” he exclaimed, real indignation in his tones. “After the way everything has come out—after all Monella’s kindness——”

Jack stopped him with a smile and a touch of his hand on the other’s arm.

“Put the brake on, old man,” he said. “I don’t mean anything disrespectful. But if Monella, who already seems to have been about the world and to have seen as much as three ordinary men of three score years and ten—if the point to which his memory reaches is only a portion of his life—why, you see, he must be Methuselah, or the Wandering Jew himself, or some other mythical being. Already, he has puzzled me, times enough, with his extraordinary tales; at the same time you cannot doubt his absolute sincerity. So that if his ‘complete’ memory is to go back farther still, why—Heaven help us!—we sha’n’t know whether we are on our heads or our heels.”

After a short silence Leonard spoke.

“But, if they had this ‘Plant of Life’ with them—those he was with—would that not in part account for it?”

“It might; but it is making large demands on one’s credulity. But what I really mean is this. I am inclined, at times, to think Monella a bit mad. He has a religious mania; he has persuaded himself—and evidently, from that letter, has been encouraged by others to believe it—that he has a religious mission to these people. Well, no harm in that, you say. No; and that he is honourable, upright, sincere, I feel very certain. Still, he may be self-deceived. He seems to me to be one of those fervidly religious mystics who can persuade themselves into almost anything.”

“Yet he is no fanatic. See how mild and gentle he can be; how slow to anger, how just in his discrimination between right and wrong!”

“I admit all that. Still, I repeat, he might easily deceive himself.”

That afternoon Leonard sought out Ulama and asked to be allowed to row her on the lake; and to this she smiled a glad assent. When he had rowed the boat out a long distance from the shore, he laid down the oars, and let her drift. A gentle breeze was blowing, and this served to temper the ardour of the waning sun.

“Do you remember the last time we were thus alone, Ulama?” presently he asked her.

“Indeed I do,” she answered, her cheek, that had of late been very pale, now glowing with a rosy flush. “But I began to think you had forgotten, and were never going to take me out again.”

“Ah! It was not my fault, Ulama.”

“Whose else could it be?” she asked.

“Well—I cannot tell you now. But, if you remember the occasion, do you remember also what we spoke of?”

The colour deepened in the maiden’s face. She bent her head and fixed her eyes dreamily upon the water; and one hand dropped over the boat’s side, as on that day of which he had reminded her.

“I then said,” he went on, “that I loved you dearly, and asked you whether you could love me in return. And you said you did not understand such love as I described to you. Do you remember?”

“Yes; I remember,” she said softly. “But then I said I could scarce credit such sudden love for me; and that you might change. And it seems you have, for, since then, you have never told me that you loved me.”

He seized her hand.

“No, Ulama,” he cried passionately, “it was not so. I have not altered. But I feared—that—well, that your father might be angered. ’Twas for that reason that I spoke no more to you of love.”

“In that you did my father wrong,” she answered frankly. “My father loves me far too well to cause me pain and——”

“Ah! Then—would it pain you were I to go away from here and never see you more?”

She started, and a look of mingled fear and grief came into her eyes.

“You are—not—going away?” she faltered anxiously.

“Not if you bid me stay, Ulama. If you but whisper in my ear that you may come to love me—if only a little—then I will stay—stay on always—forget my country, my own people, my friends; give up everything, and live for you—for you alone, my sweet, my gentle Ulama; my beloved Ulama!”

Gradually her head sank until it rested on her hand; her colour deepened, she made no reply, but still gazed pensively into the water.

“Tell me, Ulama—am I to stay or go? Oh, say that you will try to love me!”

He still retained her hand, and now he passed his own gently over it, she making no effort to withdraw it. Thus answered, he pressed his lips upon it, and at this, also, she showed no resentment.

“I would have you stay,” she presently murmured softly; “but indeed I fear it is too late for me to try to love you, for my heart tells me you have my love already.”

And the boat drifted aimlessly in the evening light. The sun had set, and the moon, the witness of so many lovers’ vows—both true and false—had shown her silvery light above the surrounding cliffs; and still the two sat on and scarcely spoke, yet, in speechless eloquence, recounting to each other the old, old tale.

And, when the sweet Ulama left the boat, her heart could scarce contain the joy that filled it; and in her eye there was a light that it had lacked before, so that the king, her father, drew her affectionately to him and asked her what had wrought this wondrous change.

She shyly bent her head and answered him,

“Tomorrow thou shalt know, my father.” Then she hid her blushing face upon his shoulder. “I have a favour to ask of thee; but—I would fain not speak of it this evening.”

Then, as though fearing that he would wrest from her the secret of her joy, she stole swiftly to her room, and from her window looked across the lake, now shimmering in the silver moonbeams.

For long she sat there motionless, dreaming youth’s fond dreams; dwelling, in loving tenderness, on every word and look she could recall of Leonard while the boat had drifted here and there, and the lap, lap, lap, of the ripples against the sides had kept up a soft musical accompaniment to the rhythm of love’s heart-beats.

CHAPTER XXI

THE GREAT DEVIL-TREE

In pursuance of their design of making signals from the summit of Roraima, the two friends made further explorations of the northern side. And this led them into an adventure, one day, that had well-nigh proved fatal to them both.

On mentioning their intention to Monella, he had at first objected; but, upon Leonard’s reminding him of the anxiety and distress Templemore’s mother and fiancée might be, too probably were, in, he had given a reluctant consent.

“Your friends, Dr. Lorien and his son, talked of coming back again,” he remarked. “Do you think they are likely to make the journey with Matava, and to be coming to seek for you?”

“Certainly they are coming into this neighbourhood, after orchids,” Leonard replied; “and, now you speak of it—though I had not thought about it lately—the news Matava will probably take back may cause such anxiety that they may hurry to get here sooner than they would otherwise have been likely to, in order to make inquiry about us on the spot.”

“Matava might lead them to the cavern, if they came to Daranato,” said Monella thoughtfully.

“Yes; of course that is possible.”

“And a very little ingenuity or a small charge of powder would force an opening; and their way would then be easy to get up here?”

“Certainly.”

Monella’s face clouded.

“That must not be; you must clearly understand that you must tell me in time if there seems any such probability. I wish not to seem unfriendly towards your friends—and personally I liked them—but to allow them to come in here would be as the beginning of a flood, as the letting out of water. It cannot, must not be.”

“Well, after all, it is only a supposition,” observed Jack. “Time enough to deal with it, if the occasion actually arise. They were going on to Rio on some law business which was likely to occupy them some time; they might be detained there indefinitely, they said.”

“Quite so,” Monella answered decisively. “Only, remember, I rely upon you to inform me in time. And be very cautious and vigilant upon that side of the country, for, as you know, it is in that direction that Coryon and his people have their habitation.”

In their walks they were often accompanied by one or both of Ulama’s pumas, and on the day referred to the male one, ‘Tuo,’ as it was called, came after them when they had gone a little way, and trotted quietly beside them; and this, as it turned out, saved their lives.

They came upon a place they had not seen before. Two great iron gates of highly finished workmanship, and picked out with gold, shut in a narrow opening in a high rock. They were such as might form the entrance to a public garden. A broad road wound round from the inside of the gates; but outside, where Templemore and Elwood were, the rocks rose up fifty or sixty feet, or even more, on either side; and though they followed them a considerable distance on both sides of the gates, the rocks still towered up precipitously for as far as they could see.

“This can scarcely be the entrance to Coryon’s ‘domain,’” said Jack, “or there would be some people about on guard. It must be some kind of public place.”

“A cemetery, perhaps,” suggested Leonard.

“I believe you’ve hit it. Well, there’s a gate open, so I suppose there’s no harm in our having a peep inside.”

“Suppose some one were on the watch, and were to pop round and close and lock the gates when we were inside and out of sight,” said Leonard suspiciously. “Monella warned us to be wary and to suspect traps.”

“We have our revolvers; and, if the worse came to the worst, we could climb over these rocks.”

In the result they went inside; then made their way to a wide terrace that ran round an extensive area of horseshoe shape, half natural, half artificial, as they judged. This terrace extended several hundreds of yards in both directions from the point at which they stood; but it narrowed off considerably on one side of the horseshoe. Above and behind it, cut out of the rock, were other terraces, like steps or rows of seats, but broad below and narrowing as they got higher. These went all round, almost to the top of the rocks. It was, in fact, a vast amphitheatre where many thousands of people could stand or sit. At the farther end it was open; and in the centre was a large arena sunk some fifteen feet below the main terrace on which they stood.

This arena opened out into a deep defile beyond, from the rocky heights of which there issued a rushing stream of water that flowed into a large, dark-looking pool below.

But what at once riveted their attention, almost to the point of fascination, was an extraordinary-looking tree that stood in the arena. This tree had no leaves, but branches only. In colour it was of a sombre violet-blue, tinged in places with a ruddy hue. The trunk was about thirty feet in height, and eight or nine feet in diameter. The branches, which were many—a hundred or more probably—drooped over from where the trunk ended and trailed about the ground. But what was most astonishing, these branches were all in motion. Though there was no wind, they waved to and fro, ran restlessly along the ground like lithe snakes, and intertwined one with another, at the same time making a harsh, rustling sound.

Straight in front of where they stood was a long pier of masonry that ran out towards the tree, which was not in the centre of the arena but was nearer to that part of the terrace where it grew narrow. In order the better to observe the object that had so roused their curiosity, the two young men walked across the terrace and some distance along the pier; and, when they had proceeded a little more than half its length, one of the long trailing branches—some of them appeared to be two hundred or three hundred feet in length—came up over the end of the pier, and, with a rustle, made its way swiftly towards them. It was within two or three feet of where they stood looking at it, when the puma, with a loud growl, sprang forward and bit at it. Immediately the branch curled itself round the animal’s body and began dragging it along the pier towards the tree. Then two or three other branches advanced and went to the assistance of the first one, coiling round the poor puma and dragging it farther along, despite its teeth and claws and its desperate struggles. In succession, other branches crept up over the end of the stonework, and, just in time, Jack seized Leonard and dragged him back.

“For Heaven’s sake come away, man!” he exclaimed in horror. “That tree is alive, and will drag us off, if once one of those branches touch us!”

They had stepped back only barely in time, for a moment after a trailing branch swept over the very spot on which they had halted. When assured that they were really out of reach, they stood fascinated, but filled with horror, while they witnessed the unavailing fight made by the poor animal that had saved their lives. More branches came to the aid of the others; they coiled round its mouth and closed it; round its legs and bound them; and soon, helpless, a mere bundle in the coiling, curling branches, as it were, it was drawn off the pier to the ground below. Then it was rolled on and on till it had almost reached the tree-trunk, where were shorter but thicker and stronger branches waiting for it. These, in their turn, soon coiled round it; then, slowly, they bent upwards, carrying the poor animal in their relentless grasp, and lowered it into a hollow in the centre of the top of the trunk, where it almost disappeared from sight. Then all the thicker branches coiled round it and shut it completely out from view, forming a sort of huge knot round the top of the tree and remaining motionless; while the longer and more slender branches continued to play restlessly about, seeking for further prey. Then, without a word, the two turned away; nor did they speak till they found themselves safely outside the great gates. Then they looked, horror-struck, at each other.

Jack was the first to break the silence.

“Great heavens!” he exclaimed. “What an escape! What an awful monster! What a frightful death! And that poor animal—that saved us both! What shall we say to the princess? Talk of ‘traps’! If this gate was left open as a ‘trap’—and it looks to me so—we have reason indeed to be thankful!”

“What is it?” Leonard asked at last.

“A ‘devil-tree.’ It is a carnivorous tree. I’ve seen a small one before; in a forest in Brazil that we were working through. One of the dogs got caught in it and was nearly killed before we cut it free with our axes. And then it was badly hurt, and so was I; a branch caught hold of my hand and tore some of the flesh off it. And where we cut this branch it bled! A dark crimson-blue liquid oozed out that stank! Oh, there, I can’t tell you what the stench was like! I’ve smelt some bad smells in my time, but that beat anything I ever came across! But that was only a small bush. I had no idea they could grow into great flesh-eating monsters like this! Why, that thing must have been there a thousand—ah—two thousand years, I should say. Fully that.”

“But,” said Leonard, “why is it kept here? who feeds it—and—what—is—it—fed—on?”

He asked this last question slowly, and looked at the other in blank, horrified amazement.

“It can’t live without food,” he continued. “And it must want a lot too. Whoever can take the trouble to get it food of the only kind—as I suppose—that it would care for? And why is it there in the middle of that strange place? One would almost think it was kept there as a kind of show or curiosity; and yet—we have never heard about it all the time we have been here! And it is there, with the gate open, no fence to guard people, or notice to warn them. Well! It’s a mystery to me!”

But if they had been astounded and horror-stricken at what they had seen, they were still more mystified and upset by Ulama’s behaviour when they told her of their adventure; for she fainted right off and, when she recovered, seemed so overcome with terror as to be unable to say a word. No explanation would she give; save that now and then she murmured, almost in a moan, to herself,

“Then it is true! And I never knew! It is horrible—too horrible!”

When Leonard expressed his sorrow about the puma, she hardly seemed to notice it.

“Ah yes!” she said once. “Poor Tuo! I shall miss him—and such a death, too! But oh, he saved you and your friend! And then, he was but an animal—but the others!”

At her express desire they promised not to speak to any one else about it.

“I will tell you why—or you will know why—later,” she added. “But you can speak privately to Monella about it; to no one else just now!”

When they found an opportunity of speaking to him about it, he looked very grave.

“You have had a narrow escape,” he said. “Heaven be thanked you did escape. I cannot explain more to you now, but may be able to do so shortly. Meantime, please do as the princess says, and keep this matter to yourselves.”

All this time Leonard’s relations with Ulama had remained unchanged; they had not been placed on any settled footing. Monella had asked him to take time to make up his mind, and had intimated that nothing would be said or done meanwhile. Leonard had, however, been too impatient to put his fate to the test to be able to wait after the encouragement Monella had given to him. But, whether Ulama had spoken on the subject with her father, he knew not; for it so happened that he had not seen her alone since their love-scene in the boat.

And now she was evidently much discomposed about their adventure with the ‘devil-tree’; though she did not refer to it again.

Naturally too, the recollection of it was very much in the minds of the two young men. Leonard asked Templemore, one day, what the branches of the one he had seen were like.

“They were covered with small excrescences,” he replied, “that are suckers and piercers in one. They pierce the flesh and then suck the blood. The whole affair is a sort of gigantic vegetable ‘octopus,’ or devil-fish, only that it has a hundred or more ‘arms’ or branches instead of eight, as the octopus has. I have heard of devil-fish having been caught as large as eighty feet in length, on the coast of Newfoundland. But I never knew that its vegetable prototype grew to anything like the size.”

“Of course I have seen devil-fish,” said Leonard thoughtfully; “but they have a mouth—a great beak—to which their arms carry the food. Do you think it is the same here? You saw that the branches carried the poor puma up into a hollow in the top of the trunk. Do you suppose the thing has a kind of mouth there?”

“Goodness only knows! It must be an awful sort of affair, if it is so. The whole thing is monstrous and uncanny. Don’t let us talk about it!”

But, as a result of this experience, they sought in another direction for a likely place from which to make their intended signals; and finally they found one convenient for their purpose. Then they made two or three trips to the canyon to bring up the requisite powder. They also brought back from the secret cave a number of things Monella wanted. From the first, at his suggestion, they had told no one except the king, Ulama, and Zonella, of the means by which they had gained access to the mountain; and these had promised to keep the knowledge to themselves.

“The place has evidently been so long unvisited,” Monella had remarked, “that probably most of those who once knew of it have forgotten all about it. No need to remind them just now. Many years ago, as I have been informed, a project was started for filling it up.”

“Filling it up!”

“Yes, and if you go to the other end of the canyon—that by which we entered—you will find, even now, in the thick wood that everywhere surrounds the top of the canyon, vast numbers of great boulders that were quarried from the surrounding cliffs and hauled to the edge in readiness to be thrown down. They lie, in fact, just over the cavern we came in by. There they have remained for a very long time, it seems. Had that intention been carried out, all our work in cutting through the forest and finding the entrance to the cavern, as you can see, would have been thrown away.”

“And what stopped it?”

“It is said that the people threatened a rebellion. The belief in the eventual return of Mellenda—of whom you have heard—is deep-seated; and, though the people here are anxious enough to keep to themselves, they would not assent to closing irrevocably the only means by which their hero could gain admittance, should he ever come.”

“Do they expect him to come with a host of followers—a conquering army—or do they expect the great lake to come back, and that he will arrive with a grand fleet of ships?” Templemore asked, with somewhat of a sarcastic smile.

Monella passed his hand across his brow in the half-dreamy manner that was his at times, as though striving to collect his thoughts, or to arrest and force into shape some half-formed conception that had flitted across his mind and escaped his grasp. For a minute he stared vacantly away into the distance and was silent. Then, with a look as though of pain at failing to catch the fleeting image, he turned away, saying simply,

“I cannot tell you.”

During the days that followed, Templemore passed much of his time in the museums; time that Elwood spent in a lover’s dream of happiness with Ulama. In the relics of the former history of this strange people, Templemore took a deep interest; and in the archives and ancient manuscripts he found many evidences of the former existence of scientific and engineering knowledge that astonished and perplexed him. On the true meaning and import of some of these he sought the help of Monella, who would frequently accompany him in these visits, and, from his better knowledge of the language, was able to assist him to unravel their curious contents.

“These people must once have been great engineers and architects!” he exclaimed in surprised admiration on one of these occasions.

Monella smiled and made reply,

“There is nothing so surprising in that, if you comprehend the true significance of the gigantic earthworks still extant in many places on this continent. Have you seen any of them?”

“No; but I have both heard and read of them.”

“I have seen them; and I tell you your mind can form no idea of their extent, of the scientific knowledge and the prodigious amount of time and labour that must have been expended on them, unless you actually see them. They are of various forms, mostly geometrical figures upon a vast scale—miles in extent. The wonderful thing is that a certain figure is repeated exactly in different places hundreds of miles apart. Yet you shall take your cleverest engineers of the present day, give them the advantages—or supposed advantages—of all your modern discoveries and machinery, and scientific instruments, and, say, unlimited workpeople to do their building, and then it would tax all their skill to construct a work exactly similar to one of those great figures. Yet now, upon some of them, trees are growing that must be over a thousand years old!”

“And what were they for—what was their object?” Templemore asked.

Then there came over the other’s face again that curious look as of one seeking for a lost recollection; but it seemed to evade him, and he answered somewhat as before,

“I think I ought to be able to tell you,” he replied, “but I cannot now seem to remember.”

It was while thus together one day that Templemore asked him for some further information concerning the ‘Plant of Life.’

“You have told me,” he said, “that your people, with whom you lived in that secluded valley high up in the Andes, had with them the ‘karina’ and cultivated it. Therefore I suppose you yourself have been in the habit of taking it?”

“Always. And in my travelling to and fro in the world I always had with me a good supply of the dried herb. I was accustomed to leave stores of it in certain towns, so that if I lost what I had with me by any accident, there was more within easy reach.”

“I see. But what I am puzzled about is this: why, if the virtues of the plant are so great, do people ever die at all? And why do some live longer than others?”

“As to the first question,” Monella answered, “man was never intended to live on this earth for ever. The human frame must wear out sooner or later. As to the second query, some constitutions are naturally stronger than others, and these endure longer, just as is the case in the world outside where the plant is not known. The effect of the plant is simply to keep the blood pure, if originally pure. If, however, there is an inherited taint, that taint will make itself felt sooner or later and undermine the vitality of the system. In this case the plant will only result in ensuring a somewhat longer life than would otherwise have been the case. Sooner or later the vitality will fall off and gradual decay set in, although (the blood being kept still pure) ordinary diseases are kept at bay. Lastly, there is the question of the will.”

“The will?”

“Yes; that has a most powerful influence. If a man who has inherited a constitution that is absolutely sound, from ancestors who have possessed the same through many generations, and if he has, in addition, a strong will, powerful beyond the average, he may live longer—if he is so minded.”

“I—do not understand you,” said Templemore, somewhat puzzled.

Monella gazed at him with a smile that was full of sadness.

“You would,” he answered, “if you were old yourself; if you had outlived all that made life worth having—your wife, and others you love, your ambitions, your hopes. Then does the soul grow weary, and restless as well; it is like unto a bird that is caged whose time for migration has come. It will either fret or pine itself to death, or beat itself to death against the bars of its cage. Only two things can then keep the soul from taking its flight; the will to live to complete some unfinished work, or a delight in a worldly, wicked life. A nature superlatively evil, like Coryon’s, may enable its possessor to live on and on for an indefinite time; where better men take the ‘falloa’ and die. Or a man, not himself enamoured of life upon this earth, may exert his will to carry out to its end some great work to benefit his fellow-creatures, and he too may keep the ‘falloa’ at arm’s length for an unusually long period. In other words, the ‘falloa’ is a form of melancholia, of weariness with the world, of an inward sense that life’s work is completed. It is the result of that feeling that we are told took possession at last even of him who has been called the Wise Man of the World—King Solomon—whose wisdom and riches and power only brought him to the same point I have indicated—that at which the soul declares that all earthly things are but vanity.”

On another occasion, Templemore was accompanied by Zonella and Colenna; and the latter took him into a gallery he had not before seen, the door being usually kept locked.

In it, to his surprise, were ranged hundreds of stands of arms and military uniforms, helmets, spears, shields, swords, daggers, and red tunics, all kept in splendid condition, as though for instant use. All the helmets had little silver wings at their sides, and the shields were engraved in the centre with a strange hieroglyphic, the same that he had noticed chiselled upon the fronts of many of the principal buildings.

“There,” said Colenna, “are the arms and uniforms of Mellenda’s soldiers. Over in Myrlanda, in the great temple of the White Priests, are hundreds more; all kept ready for use, as you see these here. You see the silver wings upon the helmets, similar to those on that of Mellenda’s suit that stands in the other gallery. And that figure upon the shields is the sacred sign that was engraved upon his signet-ring. It signifies his seal or sign-manual. Wherever you see that mark, it refers to him; on a building it implies that he designed or built it. His royal colour was red, as the king’s today is blue; and these red tunics are for his soldiers.”

“When they come,” said Jack, discreetly repressing the incredulous smile that almost forced itself upon his lips.

“When he comes,” said Colenna, lifting his hat reverently. “Yes, when he returns to us.”

“You don’t believe in that, I know,” interposed Zonella;“yet we all do; and it is a good thing we do, I think, for I fear many in the land would go mad under their dread of Coryon, if they did not believe in a happier future for the country. But there,” she added sadly, “it does not matter to you. You have no interest in what may go on here in the future. You intend to go back to your own country, and care little for the sorrows or the fate of those you leave behind.”

Colenna had walked away some little distance, to examine a shield that he thought was not quite so bright as it should be.

“Not care!” Jack exclaimed, impulsively. “Why, how can you say that? It is that thought that grieves me all the time I am here; that makes me doubt how I shall ever be able to make up my mind to leave. To leave behind one’s dearest——”

Zonella turned to him quickly, with a heightened colour and a bright look. This was so unexpected that he stopped and hesitated.

“Well?” she said. “You said your dearest——”

“My dearest friend, Leonard—of course,” he answered, looking at her in some surprise.

But Zonella’s face paled, and she turned away.

“Let us go,” she said with a shiver, as though a cold wind had blown upon her. “This old gallery is kept locked up so much it gets to smell musty, and makes one feel quite faint.”

CHAPTER XXII

SMILES AND TEARS

One morning, Monella sought Leonard and reverted to their former conversation about Ulama.

“You have well considered all the words I spoke to you, my son?” he said. “Are you still of the same mind?”

“I had hoped that you knew me too well to think it necessary to ask the question,” Leonard said earnestly. “Since I first looked upon Ulama, my love for her has been given past all recall. I have never wavered in my resolution to remain here for her dear sake, if I may hope to gain the king’s consent.”

“Then,” returned Monella, “the king would talk with you concerning it. Let us go to him.”

And, without further preface, he led the young man into the private chamber of King Dranoa, where he left him.

The king, Leonard thought, looked ill and careworn; but he received him with great kindness, and in a manner that quickly reassured the anxious lover.

“It has been no secret to me for some time,” said Dranoa, “that thou hast looked with affection upon my child. She, too, hath spoken to me; I see that she hath set her heart upon this thing, and I love her too dearly to desire to thwart her wishes, unless for some weighty reason. Here I see no such reason; for, though thou art a stranger, yet thou art worthily recommended by one upon whose judgment I have learned to place reliance. He that led thee hither is not a man to act lightly or without full consideration in a matter of such paramount importance; if thou hast gained his confidence and esteem, I doubt not that there are good reasons for it. He hath the unerring eye that pierces to the very heart, and that no hypocrisy, no cunning, can deceive. Were it the case that my dominions were today the great empire over which my forefathers held sway, I would seek such a man’s advice in the appointment of my generals, my ministers, my governors for distant districts. Therefore do I feel that I can rely upon his judgment, even in a matter so momentous as the choice of one to espouse my child and to succeed me on my throne. And knowing, as I do full well, that the ‘falloa’ hath laid its hand upon me and that my days in this my land are numbered, it is grateful to mine heart to feel that my child will be comforted, when I am gone, by one whose affection for her is pure and wholly hers, and who will have at his side a friend and counsellor who will guide his youthful steps in the path that I would have him follow. This conviction hath lifted from mine heart a grievous trouble, and hath enabled me to bear without sorrow or regret the knowledge that the fatal sickness hath taken hold upon me. For the fact that I shall now soon quit this earthly life I care nothing in itself; it hath been the fear of what would then befall that hath filled me with forebodings and with fear. But, if I see—as I hope to see—the power of the Black Coryon broken and destroyed for ever; my child wedded to one worthy of her love and honour; my successor aided and advised by one so competent to guide as is thy friend, then indeed I shall feel I can lay down the burden of life with thanksgiving, and take my way to the great unknown of the hereafter without fear, without regret, without a sigh; but, instead, with the great content of one who feels he hath nothing more to wish or hope for upon earth. For know, my son,” continued Dranoa with grave emphasis, “no man wisheth to prolong his life for that which it hath yielded, but rather for that which he is hopeful it may yield. The proof of this is easy; no man desireth to live his life over again; therefore he is, at heart, and from actual experience, dissatisfied and wearied with life; not charmed with it. Yet do many cling to it, fatuously believing, in the face of all their own actual experience, that it shall yet, in the future, afford them joys and gratifications they have never found in the past. These, my son, are the words of one who hath lived long enough to gain the wisdom that teacheth how to sift the wheat from the chaff.”

Dranoa paused, and remained silent awhile. Then he resumed, with a change of tone,

“But I wish not to weigh down thy young imaginings with the sober knowledge that belongeth not to thine years but to mine. It will be sufficient to give thee counsel that is more suited to the circumstances. Therefore I say this to thee: thou hast a good heart and good instincts—trust them, follow them honestly; and leave the rest to the Great Spirit that ruleth over all. And now I have but one more thing to say; it were better for the present that this that is between us were not known openly. Personally, that will not concern thee. When the time hath come, I will myself announce it to my people. Meanwhile, thy mind will be at rest with the knowledge of my approval of thy suit.”

Leonard gratefully poured out his thanks to the kind-hearted king; then went to seek Ulama.

He found her sitting alone in an apartment that overlooked the lake, so deep in thought that she did not hear his coming. She was leaning on the window-sill gazing pensively upon the beauties of the scene that lay outspread before her.

But Leonard thought, as he caught sight of her and stayed his steps upon the threshold, that she herself was the fairest creation of all, posed as she was with that unconscious grace and charm that seemed with her to be innate. For a full minute he stood in silence; then, still without moving towards her, he softly called her name, as though fearing to approach her till he had permission.

She turned her head towards him with no surprise, but with a look of sweetest pleasure in her gentle eyes.

“I did not hear you,” she said dreamily, “and yet—I know not why—I was looking for your coming.”

“And what were you thinking of so profoundly, sweet Ulama?”

“I was thinking,” she replied, “how much more beautiful our lake and its surroundings have seemed to me of late. I scarce noticed them before; I suppose because I have known them all my life. Yet, now that you have pointed out some of their beauties, I not only feel and appreciate them, but I note many others on all sides that I never saw before. It is very strange! I wonder why it is?”

“It is love, Ulama,” Leonard said, coming quietly to her side and laying his hand lightly on her shoulder. “Love can make the plainest works of nature beautiful; small wonder then if it makes those that are really so display new and unsuspected charms. It is because love has taken up his dwelling in your heart that you now see new beauties in these familiar scenes.”

But Ulama shook her head sagely, and smilingly made answer,

“You know you told me that the first time you saw our lake you deemed it the fairest spot on all the earth. And you did not know me then, so could not love me. How then can what you say explain it?”

Leonard laughed and took her hand in his.

“You forget that I had seen you in my dreams and had loved you long before,” he said. “Perhaps some instinct told me that here I should find the abode of her who already had my heart. Or, if that explanation does not please you, here is another. Love and sympathy are inseparable; you admire, now, things that you thought little of before, because you see that I admire them.”

“Yes; that may be,” Ulama admitted, with a thoughtful look. “But then, it does not explain why you should see beauties where I did not. I think you must have a quicker appreciation of the beautiful in nature than is given to me.”

“It may be so; and that in turn explains how it came about that I was so quick to realise the beauty of the fairest daughter of Manoa!” And Leonard’s look was so tender, so full of loving admiration, that it brought a rosy glow to Ulama’s cheek. “And it also reminds me that I sought you here to tell you something of importance, something that has brought joy and gladness to my heart. I have just been talking about you with the king.”

The colour in the girl’s cheek grew deeper; and now she turned her glance again upon the landscape that lay sleeping in the morning sunlight.

“Dear love,” continued Leonard, “think what it means to me—to both of us, I hope—when I tell you that the king has given me permission to ask you to give yourself to me! Ah! Not only has he done that, but he has done it in a manner—accompanied it with kind words of trust and confidence that have filled my whole heart with gratitude. He speaks as though I had already proved that which I can only hope to show in the future—my true desire to make myself worthy of your love. His kindness and many marks of friendship towards one who is but a stranger here have overwhelmed me. I feel the whole devotion of my life to you and him can scarce repay such generous, ungrudging proofs of his confidence and favour.”

“You have a good friend in Monella,” Ulama said quietly. “He never fails to speak well of you when occasion offers. And he is one of our own race, and has had great experience of the world outside, of which we know nothing; and my father knows he can rely on his opinion.”

“Yes, I know that is true, dear love, and my heart burns with gratitude to him too. And now, beloved”—and he put his arms round her and drew her to him—“may I not think of you as all my own? Let me hear you say with those dear lips that you know now what love is, that it has sprung up unforced in your pure heart; let me hear you say, ‘Leonard, I love you!’”

And, as he drew her closer to him and her head nestled upon his shoulder, a whisper, that seemed but a faint sigh, breathed softly the words so sweet to hear for the first time from a loved-one’s lips—“I love you!”

Later in the day Leonard told Templemore of his interview with the king; and, as he did so, a look came over his face that, as his friend expressed it to himself, “did one’s heart good to see, even if but once in a lifetime!”

“In your happiness I too feel happy, dear old boy,” he said. “And I should have little concern, for the time being, if only those at home knew we were alive and well. As it is, the thought of their anxiety troubles me unceasingly.”

“Let us hope our signal flares were seen and will be reported,” Leonard answered. “I think they must have been seen; and, if so, Carenna is sure to hear of it, and will find some way of sending word.”

This referred to what they had done to carry out Leonard’s suggestion. After some perseverance in watching from the spot they had selected, they saw, one evening, camp fires far out on the savanna. At once they made their signals with small heaps of powder, and these they repeated several times. No response whatever came; nor did they expect any. There was nothing for it but to wait patiently in the hope that their signals had been seen.

Then ensued a time, lasting many weeks, which was almost uneventful. To Leonard and Ulama it was one uninterrupted dream of blissful happiness. To Templemore it was pleasant and interesting, for he found plenty to engage his mind. He studied the designs of the chief buildings; of the bridges that spanned the streams that fed the lake. In the arches and general construction of these he formed engineering ideas that were new to him. He visited often the great waterfall that formed the outlet of the lake, and declared that the sight of the vast body of water shooting out in its leap of two thousand feet, its deep, thundering roar, and the play of colour when the sun shone into the mist and spray, made up a combination that threw Niagara itself—which he had seen—into the shade.

One day, when Ulama and Zonella were alone together, the former thus addressed her friend,

“Sometimes of late I have fancied there has been some unpleasant passage between you and Leonard’s friend. I myself am so fortunate, so happy, that I like not to see those about me otherwise. I would have all my friends as happy as myself.” And she took Zonella’s hand and rubbed her face affectionately against it. “Tell me, Zonella, have you two quarrelled?”

For a moment Zonella’s face, usually so pleasant to behold, looked hard and almost fierce. Then it softened, and, with a loud cry, she threw her arms around Ulama; she hid her face in the gentle bosom, and burst into a torrent of impassioned tears.

It was some time before Ulama, greatly surprised as well as pained and puzzled, could understand the meaning of this outburst; but presently Zonella, growing somewhat calmer, sobbed out,

“Ah! You—you little know, little think what I have suffered. He cares no more for me than he does for you—perhaps less. His heart is elsewhere; he is set upon going away from our land, and only his regard for his friend delays him.”

Ulama’s beautiful face bent over Zonella’s, and her tears fell upon the other’s cheek as she pressed her lovingly to her bosom.

“Alas! Alas! My poor Zonella! And is it possible that love, which has been so sweet to me, should bring to you but pain and suffering? I almost fear for my own happiness; that my selfishness in yielding to it has blinded me to what was going on with the others. But it never occurred to me that love that is to me so wonderful in the joy and pleasure it confers, could also be the cause of misery and sorrow. And yet,” she added thoughtfully, “you are not without one to love you. Poor Ergalon has long been faithful to his love for you. Oh, how strange and contrary it all seems! Poor fellow! Perhaps you have made him suffer even as you yourself have suffered. Can his love not console you? I know so little myself that what I say may be only foolishness, yet——”

Zonella smiled faintly, and shook her head. Then she kissed the other tenderly.

“Let us say no more, my dear,” she said. “I am sorry I gave way as I did; but you took me by surprise. Perhaps, too, your implied advice is wise. It might be better to try to love the one you know does truly love you, than to fret your heart out after one who loves you not, and who is beyond your reach. At least, as you say, there is one in the world who loves me.”

Thus the time sped on. Monella was much away; sometimes for a week together; so the young men saw comparatively little of him. Templemore, on one occasion, expressed a wish to visit Myrlanda with him, but Monella said there were difficulties in the way.

“It is better you two should remain here for the present,” he declared. “At a future time, let us hope it may be different.”

But one day Monella came to him with a look of gravity that at once aroused his interest.

“It is time,” he said, “that I should show you something of the truth, that you may understand what lies before us. Can you brace up your courage and your nerve to stand a severe trial?”

Templemore opened his eyes in astonishment.

“Need you ask?” he answered. “Have you ever known me wanting in courage?”

“Ah, no. But this that I refer to requires courage of a different sort. Yet it must be faced. But I warn you it will be a shock. Make up your mind to a test that will tax all the nerve you can summon to your aid.”

“And Leonard too?” Jack inquired, wondering.

“No. Say nothing to him. Let his dream be happy while it may. Be ready to come out with me tonight, when Ergalon shall come to seek you. And bring your rifle.”

THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 3]

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DEVIL-TREE BY MOONLIGHT

It was about ten o’clock when Templemore, with Ergalon as guide, came out from the king’s palace by a side-entrance that was little used, and the door of which the latter now opened with a key. Outside, at a short distance, they found Monella pacing up and down.

Before leaving, Templemore had told Leonard just so much as would explain his absence; then had managed to slip away unobserved by their friends of the king’s court.

The night was fine but chilly, and all three were muffled up. In the sky overhead the moon shone calm and clear, lighting up the valley with great distinctness; but across its face wild-looking clouds were scurrying, showing that a strong wind was blowing up above, though little of it was felt below. Only now and then an eddying gust would sweep down the hillside and stir the trees around them, then die away with a rustling sigh or a low moan.

Ergalon led the way; skirting the town he took a roundabout road that Templemore soon saw led to the neighbourhood of the scene of their adventure with the devil-tree, though they were approaching it from a different direction. Finally, they entered a thick wood that covered a steep hill; and now Templemore’s companions made signs to him to observe strict silence and to proceed as quietly as possible. When they had reached the summit of the slope, and stood on the ridge within the shadow of the trees, which here ceased abruptly, Templemore uttered a half-smothered exclamation. Instantly, he felt Monella’s heavy hand upon his shoulder grasping him with a grip of iron; and it brought to him the recollection of the caution he had received.

“Whatever you see or hear,” Monella had rejoined, “you must remain absolutely quiet and utter no sound; do nothing that might betray our presence.”

What had excited Templemore’s surprise was the fact that he found himself looking down into the great amphitheatre in which stood the well-remembered tree. Its long trailing branches were still moving about swiftly in their strange, restless fashion; but most of the shorter and thicker branches were curled up at the top of the trunk in the same kind of knot as they had formed after carrying thither the body of the puma. Viewed in the bright moonlight, the tree was a hideous monstrosity that had yet a certain terrible fascination which attracted and retained the sight while it revolted and repelled the mind. The coiled branches upon the top reminded one irresistibly of the snakes entwined round the head of the Medusa; they formed a kind of crown, of a character suitable to the frightful monster whose formless head, if one may so term it, they encircled. The appearance of the whole thing was repulsive, ghastly, ghoulish. There was that in the mere form and outline of this gruesome wonder of the vegetable world that instinctively aroused aversion. Its naked branches—that in ordinary circumstances could belong only to a dead tree—its colour—half funereal, half of a deep blood-tint almost unknown amongst botanical productions—its never ceasing movement, so suggestive of an everlasting hunting after prey, of an insatiable craving for its hateful diet of flesh and blood, of sleepless hunger, of tireless rapacity and relentless cruelty—all these made up an unnatural creation that appalled the instincts and chilled the very blood of those who looked upon it. This had been the feeling, or combination of feelings, that had made itself felt in Templemore’s mind when he had first seen the spectacle by daylight; it impressed itself much more strongly now that he saw the tree in the cold moonlight—now standing out clear and well-defined, now plunged into semi-obscurity, as the hurrying clouds chased each other across the sky above and threw their fleeting shadows beneath.

From the spot where the three men stood a clear view was presented of the opposite side of the enclosure—i.e., of the side nearest to the tree, which was there sufficiently close to the main terrace for its branches to sweep over it; but the terrace was here protected by a covered-way or verandah formed of metal gratings, the interstices in which were small enough to keep the dreadful writhing snake-like branches from pushing through them. When Templemore had seen the place before, this part of the terrace had been open; for the metal screens, or gratings, were, in reality, sliding shutters that could be withdrawn into grooves in the rock beyond. Here, at the end of the covered-way, was a gateway that formed the entrance to the labyrinth of caverns and galleries in the cliff in which Coryon and his adherents lived.

These sliding screens were movable at the will of those within the gateway. They could be either moved along in their grooves and thus protect those traversing the covered-way, or withdrawn, so that the branches of the fatal tree, in that case, guarded the entrance most effectually; for no man might then venture to approach the gateway and live.

Underneath, there were cells in the terrace, also within reach of the tree; and screened off, in like manner, by sliding grated doors. Through these gratings came faint beams of light.

Templemore noted all these things; yet, while his gaze wandered to them, each time the tree itself attracted it again and seemed to hold it spell-bound; and he waited—waited, hardly daring to breathe; waited for he knew not what; waited as one expectant and oppressed by a dim unshapen foreshadowing of some new and nameless horror.

Nor was it without reason; for, slowly, the coiled ‘crown’ unfolded, and something came little by little into view. Gradually the something rose out of the hollow in the trunk, was carried up clear of it, then lowered over the side towards the ground. In shape it was cylindrical, and of a colour that could not be discovered in the fitful moonlight. Soon it was deposited upon the ground, and the branches that had lowered it released their hold, and it remained for a brief space untouched. Then other branches crept up to it with tortuous twistings and, coiling round it, raised and swung it to and fro, then quickly dropped it. Anon, yet other branches would do the same; only, in their turn, to drop it or to hand it on to others. Thus was it passed about; now lifted high in the air by one end, then by the other, anon dangled horizontally in mid-air. In time it made the circuit of the tree; but each branch, or set of branches that laid hold of it, rejected it eventually, as though, by some fell but unfailing instinct, they knew there was nothing left in it to minister to their hateful appetite. And all the while the shadows came and went, and the moon looked down between them and lighted up the hideous scene.

Meantime, from out the dark and filthy water and thick slime of the large pool a few hundred yards away, crawled uncouth monsters the like of which Templemore had never looked upon, save, perhaps, in some fanciful representations of creatures said to have existed in pre-historic times. These mis-shapen reptiles were from ten to twelve feet in length. They had heads and tails like crocodiles, and in many other respects resembled them; but in place of the usual scales they were covered with large horny plates several inches in diameter; and in the centre of each plate was a strong spine or spike, thick at the base but sharp at the point, and four or five inches long.

These creatures crawled up to the fateful tree; and it was quickly evident that they came to claim their share in the foul repast—the dry husk and bones from which the tree had sucked the rest. Their armour made them safe against the tree; for the branches no sooner touched their bodies than they recoiled, baffled by the sharp points they everywhere encountered. Two or three of these horrid reptiles began to drag the dead body towards their haunt, and finally carried it away, but not without several tussles with the twisting, curling branches which seemed loth to relinquish their prey; or, perhaps, wished to play with it a little longer, as a cat might with a mouse.

Monella had handed his field-glass to Templemore, still keeping a hand upon his shoulder. The young man placed it to his eyes, and in an instant gasped out,

“Great heavens! It is a human body!”

Yes!—if that may be so called which was but the mutilated husk of what had once been a living, breathing, human being! But now there was little left beyond a shapeless form!

Templemore felt sick, and almost reeled; but Monella’s grasp up-held him, and was a silent reminder that he was expected to master his emotions, however strong and painful they might be.

“It is no time to give way,” Monella whispered in his ear. “Wait and watch!”

It was, however, almost more than Templemore could do. He felt like Dante led by his guide to witness the tortures of the damned. But here, as it seemed to him, was a scene that rivalled in horror, if not in agony, even the scenes in the ‘Inferno.’ He set his teeth and clenched his hands; his breath was laboured, and his heart almost stood still. But for Monella’s hold upon his shoulder he must have fallen.

But now there came out of the covered-way two figures; they stood on the terrace and bent their gaze upon the scene, silent and motionless. They were dressed in flowing robes of black, or some dark colour, that were emblazoned on the breast with a golden star.

Grim, weird figures were they; their dark forms showing sharply against the light-coloured rocks behind them, the while they gazed with cruel composure upon the ghastly contention between the loathsome reptiles and the tree.

When it was ended, and the beasts had disappeared with their prey into the dark waters of the pool, one of the figures on the terrace put a whistle to his mouth, and a low piping sound reached the ears of the concealed watchers.

Immediately a rumbling noise was heard; and one of the sliding gratings beneath the terrace rolled back, thereby disclosing a cavernous cell, in which was a lighted lamp on a rough table. Then a figure seated by it, his face buried in his hands, sprang up with a loud cry, and retreated into the thick gloom beyond. But the terrible trailing branches swept in after him, twined round his legs and threw him down, then quickly drew him out feet foremost. Vainly he shrieked, and clutched at this and that; at the table, at the edge of the sliding door; relentlessly, inexorably, he was dragged from one futile hold to another, upsetting the lamp in his struggles, till he was outside. Other branches swooped down upon him, coiling round him in all directions, and stifling his cries as, slowly, with an awful deliberation and absence of hurry, or even of the appearance of effort, he was hauled high into the air and disappeared into the hollow of the fatal tree. The great branches silently arranged themselves into their knot-like circle; at another sound of the low whistle the sliding door returned to its place with a sullen rumble, and the two dark-robed spectators turned and left the place.

Then Monella and Ergalon also came away; and it is no disparagement of Templemore’s courage or ‘nerve’ to state that they had almost to carry him between them. When they had got to a safe distance, Monella placed him on a boulder, and held to his lips a flask containing a strong cordial. Templemore, who had been on the point of fainting, felt revived by it at once; the liquid seemed to course quickly through his veins, and the feeling of deadly sickness, after a time, passed away.

Monella, meanwhile, contemplated him with compassion and concern, but said no word. Presently Templemore gasped out,

“What horrors! What frightful, cold-blooded atrocity! What a race of foul fiends! Great heavens! To think such things go on in this fair land—a land that seems so peaceful, so contented, so free from ordinary pain and suffering!”

“Ah, my son,” replied Monella, and there was an indescribable sadness in his tones, “now you can understand the great horror in the land; that which has oppressed it for many long ages; that casts a gloom upon people’s lives; that turns to gall and bitterness what, but for it, would be a life of innocent enjoyment.”

“But why——?” Templemore exclaimed almost fiercely; but the other checked him.

“I think I know what you would say,” Monella went on. “You would know two or three things, I think. To the first question (as I read it) I reply that the reason you have not heard of this thing from other people is that they have learned, from long habit, never to refer to it, even to one another. Almost incredible, you think? Not more so than are many things that happen in your own life, in your own country. I could name many known to all, yet alluded to by none—often wrongly, as I hold. Still, there is the fact. It is the same here. This horror in the land broods over, enthrals the people; yet, because they hold it in such dread, they make an affectation of pretending not to know of its existence; perhaps, in mercy to their children.

“Next, it surprises you that I have not told you sooner. The answer is simple. You are not like myself; I am one of this people; you are but a sojourner in the land—a visitor. I had the desire to make your sojourn here as pleasant as it could be; that your interest in the many curious things you see about you should not be lessened, nor your stay here rendered unhappy by the knowledge of that which you have seen tonight—the earlier knowledge of which could have done no good to any one.

“Lastly, you naturally desire to know why, in that case, I have now chosen to enlighten you. For this reason: the time is approaching when certain plans of mine and of the king’s will be completed, and when I devoutly hope we may be able, with God’s help, to end this thing for ever. In that I shall ask you to help us—I hope you will aid us all you can.”

“I will,” said Templemore impetuously. “Against such a hellish crew as that I am with you heart and soul. I think I begin to understand——”

“Yes, I never doubted your readiness to take part with us. But it was necessary to give you absolute proof of what goes on, that you might understand those with whom we have to deal. You have now seen for yourself——”

“Ay, I have seen!” Jack shuddered.

“And will now understand that, when the time comes to extirpate this serpent brood, there must be no hesitation, no paltering, no half-and-half measures, no mercy. It will be of no use to kill the old snakes and leave the brood to grow up again, or eggs to hatch. Do you take in my meaning?”

“Yes, and think you will be right and well justified.”

“Good. If you wonder why, knowing all this, I have done nothing heretofore, it is that the king’s plans could not sooner be matured. Meantime we have stayed the horror for a while.”

Jack uttered an impatient exclamation.

“Oh, yes,” Monella declared, “we have, and you have helped to do it. These wretched creatures you have seen sacrificed to this horrible ‘fetish-tree’ of theirs, are their own soldiers—those who escaped from us by running away. They deserve no pity. They themselves have given many an innocent victim—even women and children—to that tree——”

“I know that to be true,” Ergalon interposed.

“The truce we forced on Coryon,” resumed Monella “has had this effect at least—it has saved the lives of numbers of poor creatures who would have been seized and sacrificed during the time that we have been here. Instead of that, however, the arch-fiend Coryon has had to content himself with making victims of his own wretched myrmidons by way of punishment for their running away from us. They are as bad as he—very nearly. At any rate they are not worth your pity.”

“Well, I am glad to hear that, at least,” said Templemore. “It takes away a little of the load of horror that turned me sick. Truly, of all the diabolical atrocities that the mind of man in its depths of cruelty and wickedness ever conceived——”

Ergalon shuddered now in his turn.

“I can look on at the sacrifice of victims such as these,” he said gravely, “because I know that every one of them has deserved his fate by acts of cruelty; but when it is a case, as it has been in the past, of women, young girls, and poor little children——”

“For Heaven’s sake say no more,” Jack entreated;“I begin to feel sick again at such suggestions! I will fight to the death against such wretches. As it is, for the rest of my life I shall see before me in my dreams what I saw tonight. Surely no wilder phantasy, no more outrageous, blood-curdling nightmare ever entered the most disordered brain. And now it will haunt me to my life’s end!”

CHAPTER XXIV

TRAPPED!

One day the king announced his intention to fix a day for Leonard’s formal betrothal to Ulama according to the usage of the country. Immediately the people began preparations to do honour to the event; and congratulations and marks of friendship and goodwill were showered upon the young couple by all those who were well affected towards the king.

In the opposite camp, however, as might be expected, the announcement was differently received; and, indeed, the crafty Coryon took advantage of it to sow dissension among some of the people, and to suggest opposition to the proposal. His adherents had certain supporters in the land; people who bought their own security by aiding Coryon secretly against their neighbours. This was why the king had shrunk from pushing matters to the extreme against the priest. He knew that these half-hearted or doubtful ones were quite as likely to side with Coryon, at the last moment, as with himself, and that thus a civil war would be inaugurated.

Monella, since he had come into the country and espoused the king’s side, had thrown more energy and method into the cause than had been previously bestowed upon it. Through the Fraternity of the White Priests, and their covert friends and sympathisers, and through Ergalon, who had secretly gained over some of Coryon’s people, an active work had been carried on amongst all classes, and with satisfactory results. But Coryon, on his side, had been busy too; though hitherto with less success. Now, however, he found a useful aid in the objection many felt to seeing the king’s only daughter wedded to one who—as it was cunningly suggested to them—was a stranger, an adventurer, come from no one knew where, and unable to show such evidence of descent and other qualifications as should entitle him to seek alliance with the daughter of their king.

But Coryon’s emissaries worked silently and unseen; and there was nothing outwardly to show that two undercurrents were gradually gaining strength and approaching that point whence the slightest accident might bring them into active opposition.

Indeed, in announcing the proposed betrothal, the king had, for once, acted directly against Monella’s advice. The latter had counselled that the matter should be kept secret until the contest with Coryon—now in abeyance—had been finally decided; for he foresaw the use to which Coryon would put it.

Leonard and Ulama were too much taken up with each other and with their own happiness to trouble themselves about the ‘pros and cons’ that had weighed in the minds of Monella and those who thought with him. That the effect of the proclamation would be to hasten his marriage was, of course, sufficient to commend it to Leonard; and he left all the rest to others.

Templemore knew not sufficient of what was going on around him to have any opinion upon the subject. Since the night when the real use to which the great devil-tree was put had been revealed to him, he had been very unhappy. He felt as might one who had been slumbering peacefully in sight of a terrible peril, to whose existence he had suddenly been awakened. Not that he had any fear for his own safety; yet he was filled with a nameless dread, a vague sense of horror and distrust, of unreality, in the life about him. He could not but realise that there would be no real peace, no security for life or property, until an absolute end had been put to Coryon and his atrocious crew, and their abominable fetish-tree destroyed. But when would that be? he wondered. His sense of disquiet was increased by having to keep from Leonard the knowledge he had gained, and being thus debarred from discussing matters with him. Not, however (as he acknowledged to himself), that that would have been of much advantage; for Leonard was too much absorbed in ‘love’s young dream’ to be likely to discuss such things coolly and critically.

Three days before that fixed for the ceremony of betrothal, which was to be marked by a still grander entertainment, the king gave a preliminary fête. There was much feasting for all and sundry; boats, gaily decorated with flowers and banners and coloured streamers, glided to and fro upon the lake; the young people skilled in diving from great heights into the water with their parachute aids, contended for prizes, and there were many other forms of gaiety and festivity.

Leonard and Ulama, seated upon a terrace, looked upon the scene, and waved their hands in frequent recognition of friendly faces and signals here and there amongst the crowd. Ulama’s lovely face was radiant, and the soft light in her gentle eyes, her pleased acknowledgment of the tokens of affection and the good wishes she received on every side, and her grateful smiles for all, were charming to behold. Her wondrous grace and beauty seemed, if possible, enhanced by her half-shy, half-proud glances, and the flush that mounted to her cheeks when she turned her eyes with love on Leonard. Never before, even in that country where the charms of the daughters of the land exceed the average, had such a vision of lovely maidenhood and such rare beauty been beheld. And yet all those who knew her, loved her as much for the innocence and sweetness that beamed ever in her face and guided all her thoughts and words and actions, as for the physical perfection that compelled their admiration.

She stole her little hand into her lover’s and sighed quietly.

“I am so happy, and yet my eyes are full of tears. And I feel half frightened too; frightened lest my happiness should be too great to last. Is it wrong, then, to be happy, think you? It almost seems so, when I know so many others are unhappy.”

Leonard fondly pressed her hand, and gazed deep down into her eyes.

“If you feel happy in your love, dear heart,” he answered, “it is because you love so much; and surely to love cannot be wrong, or to take pleasure in it. Besides, in that you think so much of others you but show your sweet unselfishness. Therefore, trouble not yourself about the regrets for others that accompany your love. For, if today they sorrow, they have had their times of happiness in the past, or may have them in the future.”

“It may be so,” replied Ulama. “I doubt whether in all the world there is another maiden who loves as I do, and therefore who could know the dread that weighs me down. But as for me—ah, I tremble at my own great joy, and fear it is too great to last. And every one is so kind to me and seems so rejoiced to see me happy—that—that I can hardly keep from crying.”

And for a brief minute the gentle-hearted girl placed her hands before her face to hide her tears—tears that were born of the great gladness of her love and her tender sympathy for others.

And so for these two the day passed, like many that had gone before it, in a blissful dream; but it was a dream from which they were soon to be roughly awakened to the dark knowledge of what wickedness can achieve.

For, amid the feasting and among the revellers, were evil beings who had plotted in their black hearts to kill the joy of the gentlest-hearted maiden that ever with her sweetness brightened this sorrow-laden earth; wretches that even then were spinning around her the treacherous web designed by the fell Coryon to end her dream of happiness for ever.

* * * *

When Templemore woke up the next morning he gazed about him in surprise. He was not in his usual sleeping apartment; but, instead, in some room that was strange to him. It was small, dingy and ill-lighted, and the couch upon which he found himself was not that on which he had lately slept. He sprang up and, in vague alarm, looked round for his clothes and his arms; the clothes were there, but there was no revolver, and his rifle was nowhere to be seen. Even his sword and dagger, that formed part of his usual dress, had been removed. Dressing himself hastily, he rushed to the door, but it was fastened.

“Great heavens!” he exclaimed, “I am a prisoner; my rifle and pistol have been taken away in my sleep. Oh, what, what has happened to Leonard? What can it all mean?”

He hammered at the door, but no answer came. Then he tried to look out of the window, but it was too high for him to be able to see anything through it but the sky. There was nothing to be done but wait; so he sat down upon the bed, a picture of misery and bewilderment, and forthwith began to formulate all sorts of theories and ideas to account for what had happened to him.

When, after a long interval, the door was opened, a man entered whose dress showed him to be one of Coryon’s black-tunicked soldiers. He brought in some food, and a pitcher and a mug, which he deposited upon a small table, and was turning to go, when Templemore sprang up and addressed him. He felt so incensed at the sight of this emissary of Coryon’s that he could indeed scarcely refrain from hurling himself upon him, despite the fact that the man was armed. But just outside the door, as he could see, were other soldiers; he could hear, too, the clank of their arms, so he knew that to attack the one before him would be worse than useless.

“What is the meaning of this?” he demanded.

The man, who was just on the point of going out, turned back for a step or two, and then said in a low tone,

“You are the prisoner of the High Priest Coryon.”

“But how, and why, and where?”

The man shook his head quietly. He was not an ill-favoured fellow, and regarded his prisoner in a half-friendly manner, Templemore thought.

“You are still in the king’s palace,” he continued, “but your friend and the princess have been taken away to Coryon’s abode.”

“Taken away to his place? Great God help them and help us all, then!” Jack moaned, as the picture of what he had seen there that well-remembered night rose up before his mind. “And how has all this come about? and where is Monella, and where is the king?”

“I may not talk to you,” the soldier answered. “I have disobeyed orders in telling you thus much. But Ergalon was a friend of mine and I know that he is a friend of yours.” And he went out, closing and fastening the door behind him.

Here was terrible news! Leonard and Ulama prisoners of Coryon; perhaps immured in one of those awful dungeons within reach of the terrible tree, where the very sight of what went on beyond those barred and grated doors was enough to drive the bravest mad; and where, at any moment, that whistle—a door run back—and then——!

“It’s too dreadful—too horrible to think of!” Templemore exclaimed. He sprang up and began pacing restlessly up and down. “I shall go mad myself, if I dwell upon such thoughts.”

The hours dragged slowly by till evening, when, just when it was growing dark, the door was once more opened and the same man came in and, looking at Templemore, made a sign to be silent. Then he returned to the door and led in a muffled figure, and, without a word, retired. The figure threw back a hood that covered the head, and Templemore, with glad surprise, saw that it was Zonella.

He ran forward and took her hand in his.

“Zonella!” he exclaimed. “This is surprising, and gladdening too. It does one good to see your face after all that I have been imagining. Tell me—what does it all mean?”

She laid her finger on her lips and said in a hushed voice,

“It means that the cunning, treacherous Coryon has played a trick upon us all, and made you prisoners. Your friend and our beloved princess have been carried off, the king himself is kept a prisoner in his room, and so are many of his ministers.”

“And Monella and Ergalon?”

“Monella was away in Myrlanda, as you know, and so has escaped; and Ergalon—who is free too, but in hiding—has sent a trusty messenger to warn him.”

“And you?”

“I am virtually a prisoner too. That is, I am forbidden to leave the palace. But I am free to go about within it. The whole place is full of Coryon’s soldiers.”

“Can you tell me how it was managed?”

“The ‘loving cup’ was drugged. All who partook of it fell into an unnaturally heavy sleep. You remember almost every one throughout the palace drank some, in honour of your friend and our poor princess. Alas! Alas! My dear, my loved Ulama!”

She sobbed bitterly, while Jack marched excitedly up and down the place.

“Is there no hope—nothing to be done?” he exclaimed despairingly.

“There is only one thing,” was answered in a low, hesitating tone.

“What is that?” he asked eagerly.

“I have come to try to aid you. If you wrap up in this cloak and go out quietly now, while it is half dark, you may get clear out of the palace unobserved. One of my maids is waiting for me without, and will show you the way. I warned her of my plan, and she is to be trusted.”

“What! And leave you here in my place to suffer Coryon’s vengeance? Why, Zonella—dear, kind friend—what must you think of me?”

“I can think of nothing else,” she answered simply. “And for me—I care not. Whatever may befall me, you will be able to get away; perhaps even to serve your friend.”

Jack took her hand in his, not noticing that she seemed to shiver under the touch.

“Such an offer is too kind, too much, my dear, good friend,” he said. “It cannot be; we must try——”

“For my sake, then,” she exclaimed impulsively. “I would rather die myself than see you carried off to yonder dens. Or”—she paused confusedly, and then went on—“for your friend’s sake. Think! Consider! Do you refuse merely from any thought about me? Think what you might be able to do for others—for your friend, for Ulama!”

Templemore passed his hand over his face; the tears were coming into his eyes. When he tried to speak again, he felt half choking.

“You are a noble girl, Zonella,” he answered with emotion; “and when you appeal to me on their behalf you cannot know how hard it is to me to stay on here, knowing that I have the chance—just the chance—of saving them. But it cannot be, dear friend, it cannot be; but—I thank you. My whole heart thanks you.” He pressed her hand, and turned sorrowfully away.

Presently, she spoke again, this time in a different tone; indeed, her voice sounded hard and strained.

“Then Ergalon shall risk his life for you,” she said. “I know that which will induce him to attempt what today he said could not be done. I will seek him at once. For now, good-bye; do not go to bed, but be ready, if you hear some one at the window. You can reach it, if you stand up on the table.” And, without further explanation, she left him.

Templemore sat for long pondering upon this strange interview, and wondering too what she had planned; and the time seemed to drag wearily while he waited for some signal at the window.

It was about midnight, as he judged, when there came a tap, tap from the outside. He sprang on to the table; then by the dim light that came through the window he could discern the upper part of a man’s body swinging on a rope.

“Is that Ergalon?” he whispered.

“Yes,” came back the answer. “If I send you in a short rope and you wait till I have gone down, you can then pull in the rope I am on, get on to it, and come down yourself. Do you dare try it?”

“Yes.”

“Then here it is. Now wait till you find you can pull this one in.”

Templemore felt about and caught hold of a small cord that was hanging inside the window—which was open to the air—and he pulled lightly at it till he felt the strain upon the rope to which it was attached, relaxed. Then he pulled harder, and a portion of a thicker rope came inside. By its means he was able to climb up on to the sill. With some trouble and manoeuvring he got outside and was soon sliding down the rope, which Ergalon steadied from below. It was very dark, and he descended amidst some trees where it was darker still. When he touched the ground, at first, he could see nothing; but Ergalon turned on the light of a bull’s-eye lantern. It was one of those Monella had brought with him, and lent by him to Ergalon.

A voice, that he knew to be Zonella’s, whispered,

“That has been well done. Now what do you propose to do?”

“I must get down to the canyon by which we came into the mountain. There we have left spare weapons. But I can’t get down in the dark; not even, I fear, with the lantern.”

“There will be a moon later; perhaps that will help. Let us go in that direction.”

“What! You, too?” Jack asked in surprise.

“Yes, why not? I shall be as safe with you as in the midst of Coryon’s hateful minions, and I may be of service.”

“You couldn’t climb down that place and up again,” Jack reminded her.

“Then I can wait near the top, and Ergalon can go with you to help you carry what you want.”

“But we shall be a long time, all day tomorrow.”

“No matter, I will manage.”

Then the three made their way with much difficulty, owing to the darkness, to the top of the canyon. Here they sat and talked in guarded voices till the moon had risen high enough to light the hazardous descent.

Templemore learned how Coryon’s plans had been carried out; how Ergalon’s escape had been due to his absence from the palace, awaiting the return of a messenger from Monella. At a late hour, on his way back to the palace, he had been warned by a friend amongst Coryon’s people. On this he had sent on the messenger to Monella to inform him of all that had occurred. The man had been only just in time to get through the subterranean road before Coryon’s soldiers took possession of it and closed it.

Templemore’s escape had been planned by Zonella. She had smuggled Ergalon into the palace and up to the roof disguised as one of her own maids; and in this she had been aided by one of his friends amongst the soldiers of the priest. Ergalon had at first objected strongly, conceiving that the attempt was foolhardy and could not succeed; that he would only lose his own liberty and, perhaps, his life, and that Monella might be displeased. In short, he had considered himself bound to do nothing that was in any way risky until Monella had communicated with him. But Zonella had contrived, by some means, to persuade him; and had herself stolen out and steadied the rope for Ergalon in his perilous descent.

From his friend in the opposite camp Ergalon had learned one very important thing—that nothing was likely to be done to Leonard or Ulama till the day that had been named for their betrothal. That day Coryon had fixed upon, with cruel irony, for the holding of a sort of trial, the result of which would be a foregone conclusion.

“Therefore,” said Ergalon, “if you can get back by the morning of tomorrow” (it being then already morning)“you will be in time; though I fear you will find it difficult to effect much good alone, and I cannot yet tell when the lord Monella may be able to get through the subterranean passage to come to your assistance.”

“We will try, anyhow,” said Jack, setting his teeth with grim determination. “And, if I fail, we will die together. One can but die once. I think it is possible to get back with a couple of rifles and pistols and the necessary ammunition by the morning. If human effort can do it, it shall be done; and I can then put a pistol into your hands, too, my good friend.”

CHAPTER XXV

‘IN THE DEVIL-TREE’S LARDER!’

Leonard awoke from a deep sleep, on the morning after the fête, to find himself, like Templemore, in a place that was strange to him.

So profound had been the slumber induced by the drug that had been mixed with the drink, that he had been carried all the way to Coryon’s retreat in absolute unconsciousness. When he at last woke up, he was in one of the cells under the terrace within the reach of the great flesh-eating tree.

No words can describe the horror and anguish that filled his breast when, by degrees, he realised the dreadful truth. Not only did he shudder at the thought of his own too probable fate, but the fear that his sweet Ulama might share the same awful doom drove him almost to the verge of madness. He cursed the false sense of security that had led up to this terrible result. A few simple precautions would have frustrated this treachery! But it was too late!

Through the grated door he could see the great devil-tree, hear the swishing of its long, trailing branches, watch them come up to the grating and search about over its face for some opening large enough to penetrate, even trying to wriggle in through its small slits and perforations. In the centre of the cell was a block of wood fixed in the ground to serve as a table. A small stream of water ran down from a pipe above and fell into a channel in the floor, and a pitcher stood beside it. For chair there was a smaller log of wood; the ‘bed’ on which he had found himself was simply a bag of straw whereon were laid two or three rugs. An iron door shut off the back from an interior gallery, and the cell was partitioned off from others, on each side, by grated screens, like that in the front. The occupants of adjacent cells could, therefore, see each other.

As Leonard looked round in astonishment and alarm, and exclaimed, involuntarily, “Where am I?” a discordant peal of mocking laughter rang out from the cell upon his right.

“Where is he! He doesn’t even know where he is!” a harsh voice cried out. “He—one of the gods that wielded the lightning and thunder! After all, caught by Coryon, and brought here like the rest of us! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Leonard, shocked and amazed, went to the side whence the sounds proceeded, and there saw, peering through the bars, a horrible face that grinned at him with hideous sneers and wild-looking eyes. The hair and beard were matted and dishevelled; the face and figure, so far as he could make them out, looked gaunt and thin. He was dressed in the black tunic with gold star that denoted one of Coryon’s soldiers.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” laughed the mocking voice. “You don’t know where you are, eh? I’ll tell you, my lord, son of the gods, that can kill us soldiers with a magic lightning wand, but can’t keep yourself out of Coryon’s clutches—you are in the ‘devil-tree’s larder’!”

“The devil-tree’s larder!”

“Yes, my lord; the devil-tree’s larder. That means that they have put you here to keep you cool and in good condition, before they hand you over to be food for their pet out there.” And he pointed to the tree.

Leonard shuddered, and the awful truth of the man’s statement forced itself upon his mind, in spite of his wish to believe it too atrocious to be possible. He went up to the door in the front and examined it. He saw that it ran in grooves at the top and bottom.

“Ah,” said the mocking voice behind him, “that’s right. You see how it’s done now. They run that back from inside, sudden-like, some time when you don’t expect it; and in come the twisting branches that lay hold of you, and out you go to make him a nice meal. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Leonard turned and stared in helpless horror. Was it possible that there was such cold-blooded, fiendish cruelty in the world? Yet—he remembered the fate of the poor puma. He trembled, and turned sick and faint; while the one in the next cell continued to jeer and mock at him.

“Where is your lightning-wand, my lord? Why have you not brought it to try it on the tree? You managed to get me brought here; and now you’ve managed to get here yourself!”

“I got you brought here? How? What then are you doing here?” Leonard asked, his surprise overcoming his disgust.

“What am I doing here? Why, the same as you—waiting in ‘the devil-tree’s larder’ till I’m given to him for a meal—as you will be. And it’s all through you; because you killed some of us and we others ran away; this is what they do with us.”

Leonard shuddered again, while the man went to the stream of water that, as in Leonard’s cell, was pouring down from a pipe above, and, filling the pitcher, took a long drink.

“Makes you thirsty, this sort of thing,” he said, with another jeering laugh. “You’ll find that water there mighty handy if they let you stay here long enough. Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The man was evidently in a state of high fever. The place was full of fetid odours given off by the foul tree; and, apart from that, the want of sleep would superinduce fever, if, indeed, it did not drive mad the wretched occupants of the cells; for who could sleep for more than a minute or two at a time in one of those dens, where, at any moment, the door might be run back and the miserable prisoner delivered over to the fatal branches? It was this constant, ever-present dread that banished sleep, and must inevitably end in madness for the victims, provided they were kept there long enough.

Then the thought flashed upon him that Ulama also might be an occupant of one of these awful cells; and at that such a burst of grief and agony came over him that he hid his face within his hands and groaned aloud.

“Yah! Don’t give way like that, my lord. Being here’s not so bad when once you’re used to it! Look at me! You don’t see me worry and cry like a great girl. I take it quietly; I’ve been too used to seeing others here. Many’s the time I’ve had the pulling back of these doors and have seen a man or a woman hauled out squealing and kicking like an animal going to be killed; and I’ve laughed at them. I thought it such fun! And now those who used to help me and laugh with me, they’re waiting to see how I like it; and they will laugh at me, too, just the same. But I don’t care. What does it matter? It’s nothing, I tell you, when you’re as used to it as I am.”

The wretched creature thus trying to delude himself with boastful talk and jeering at his fellow-captive, was himself, it was easy to see, worked up into the highest state of nervous dread and fear. The least sound made him start and look with straining eyeballs in the direction from which it came. He kept going to the pitcher for draughts of water, and never remained still for a single instant. If he sat down for a short space, the twitching of a foot, or leg, or hand, spoke of agitation within that would not be controlled.

Leonard turned from the sight with mingled feelings of disgust and loathing and, going to the other side, looked through the grating of the adjoining cell, to see whether it was occupied. And, looking, his heart seemed to come up into his throat when he saw a silent female form seated with its back to him. The exclamation that escaped him caused the form to turn, when he saw that the woman was a stranger. Her face was pleasing in its features, and good-looking, but had in its expression such a burden of unspeakable horror and despair that he shivered as he met her glance. At sight of it, for the moment, he almost forgot his own misery, and he asked gently,

“And who then are you?”

For a few seconds there was no reply; then, in a voice that had in it the suggestion of much sweetness, albeit now forced, and unnatural,

“I scarcely know. Once I was a happy young girl; then a well-beloved and loving wife and mother; now I am only something with which to feed yonder monster.”

“Yes,” continued the woman dreamily, “I was once good-looking, they said. Certainly, my husband thought so; and that was enough for me. But it was my curse, alas! For Skelda, the chief of the priests next to Coryon, thought so too. He stole me away from my home and my children and forced me to become one of his so-called wives. And now, because my sorrowing and pining have seared and furrowed my good looks, even as they had eaten into my heart, he has tired of me, and has sent me to the fate that, sooner or later, we all come to here—all of my sex, at least, as well as many of the other among those who are not priests. Yet,” she added, “it is but five years since they brought me here. What I look like now you can see for yourself!”

Leonard looked at her with pity; and there came into his mind the remembrance of Ulama’s words of the day before—“It seems almost wrong to be happy when I know so many others are unhappy”—and his own light rejoinder. And he reproached himself in that he had been content to bask in love and self-enjoyment while, close at hand, there were such abuses, such direful sufferings. True, he had not actually known their whole nature and extent; but he had known of the so-called ‘blood-tax’;and had heard enough to make it certain, had he given the matter due consideration, that there were evils in the land that cried aloud for remedy.

Then his thoughts reverted to Ulama, and he asked,

“Do you know aught concerning the Princess Ulama?”

“I know that she was to be brought to this place, and that she was to be put into the cell I occupied before they brought me here yesterday. It is underground; a long way from this part.”

At least, then, the poor child, Leonard thankfully reflected, was not in one of the cells in sight of the dreaded tree.

Presently he asked the woman whether she had known Zelus, the son of Coryon.

“Ah yes! Who did not in this land?” was the reply. “The monster! A great spasm as of relief and joy came upon us all—all the women, I mean—when we heard of his death. He was the worst of them all, though one of the youngest. No one was safe from him. Even the princess he sought to bring here to treat as he had treated so many others!”

“I know. I killed him when he was in the very act of raising his cowardly hand against the king’s daughter,” said Leonard quietly.

The woman turned and looked at him with more of interest in her manner than she had yet shown. She scanned him closely.

“Then,” she said, “you must be one of the strangers of whom we heard. But you are young, and not, as I have been told, of our race. We heard of one older, one who, it was said, belonged to our people. And when we heard that, we all rejoiced; for surely, we said, he brings us tidings of what all have been expecting. Therefore, we who were held here in a bondage that is a daily, hourly torture, a never-ceasing degradation, we welcomed your coming as a sign that the Great Spirit had at last brought our long punishment to an end. I, even I, dared to hope I should escape the fate that has befallen all others, and should live to see again my husband and children before I die. But, alas! It was but a dream—a delusive, passing hope, a thing too good to come in my time. Four months have passed and nothing has occurred, though ye smote the hated Zelus quickly; and even Coryon was filled with fear and dread. Why have ye failed to do more, and, instead, fallen victim to Coryon?”

Ah! Why? It was a question that now sank deep into Leonard’s soul and tortured him with vain regrets and self-reproach. For he had a heart that swelled with kindness towards his fellows, and a tender conscience; and the more he thought things over, the more difficult he found it to feel that he was without blame. He had been too selfishly wrapped up in his own personal feelings, he now acknowledged; too little interested in those very matters that, as the king’s future son-in-law, should have taken, if not the first, at least a prominent position in his mind. And then, to be ignobly trapped, at a time when there was nothing but feasting and amusement in their minds! Their arms taken from them—they who could have kept at bay all Coryon’s soldiers and dispersed them, had they but been vigilant and wakeful! It was a cruelly humiliating thought—it was worse; for the child-hearted, innocent Ulama, who had a right to rely on his protection, had been sacrificed also to his self-abandonment and want of watchfulness.

Thus did Leonard reason, now that his opportunities had vanished. He knew not what was the true explanation of the position in which he found himself; but a vague, half-formed idea crept into his mind that Coryon would hardly have ventured upon such a daring stroke unless he had felt he could rely upon the support, or, at least, the indifferent neutrality, of a certain proportion of the people. And if he, Leonard, had shown more interest in the affairs of the people over whom he was one day to be king, he might have gained so firm a hold on their confidence and affections as would have rendered Coryon’s schemes hopeless from the very start.

But such thoughts, whether well or ill-founded, came now all too late. Here he was, caged, and at Coryon’s mercy. His relentless enemy had but to give the signal and he would be consigned to an awful death.

He had some further talk with the woman, who told him terrible tales of indescribable barbarities and iniquities perpetrated by the priestly tyrants under the covering of their ‘religion’; tales that made the blood within him boil, and filled his soul with savage, though helpless, indignation. Then he asked the woman’s name, and was told it was Fernina.

At last, he asked the question that, though often upon his tongue, yet he had shrunk from giving voice to.

“And what do you suppose will happen—here?”

She sighed and shook her head, hopelessly, despairingly.

“Only what always happens,” she answered, in a dull, listless tone. “None that are once placed here ever escape the fatal tree; except that sometimes they are carried up above and laid on what they call ‘the devil-tree’s ladle.’”

“‘The devil-tree’s ladle?’”

“Yes; it is a contrivance on wheels; a kind of long plank shaped at one end like a great spoon. Those who are to be given to the tree are laid upon it, bound so that they cannot move, and then pushed out along the stone-work till they are within reach of the branches; those who push the plank at the other end being far enough away for their own safety. It is part of the system of terrorism and torture here,” Fernina added, “to place some of us, at times, in rooms that are in the rock above, and that overlook this place, and to keep us locked in there for days and nights, that we may be cowed and frightened at the scenes that are enacted here. Often, a hateful fascination compels you to become an unwilling witness; in any case, you cannot avoid hearing the shrieks and moans; imagination supplies the rest.”

Leonard turned away, not caring to hear more, and sat down to brood, eating his heart out with keen regrets, all now unavailing. The jeering of the half-mad wretch in the other cell had ceased; he, too, had fallen into a sort of brooding lethargy, and so was quiet; but a constant tap, tap, tap, of one foot on the stone floor told he was not asleep. Thus the hours dragged by in silence, save for the intermittent, stealthy rustle of the branches outside, as they came prowling over the face of the gratings in their sleepless seeking after the prey they seemed to scent within.

Once, a small grating at the bottom of the door of each cell was opened, and a platter with coarse food upon it was pushed in; then the space closed up again. The sounds made them all, for the moment, start; then they relapsed again into the stupor of despair. None touched the food or even noticed it. But the man in the further cell had now seated himself near the little stream of water and, every now and then, he roused himself to take long draughts.

When it grew dark, a lighted lantern was pushed under the door into each cell, as the food had been. Leonard felt drowsy and longed for rest; yet was afraid to lie down or to close his eyes. Now and again they even closed against his will in a short doze; but it was never of long duration, and each time he woke it was with a renewed sense of the horror of his situation.

He had just roused from one of these brief snatches of sleep, and had had time to remember once more where he was, when a low rumble made him spring up and look around. Then the man in the next cell gave an awful cry—a cry that rang in Leonard’s ears for many a day—and at the same moment the grated door of his prison slowly began to move. In his demented terror he banged himself against the partition between the two cells, tried to get his fingers into the slits that he might cling to it; then climbed up on to the wooden block in the middle of the cell. But the rustling branches neared him, sought for him on every side, and soon mounted the log and caught him in their deadly embrace. Slowly, but irresistibly, while he never ceased his cries or his vain struggles and clutchings, the coils around him tightened and dragged him out into the darkness, where his cries gradually became weaker, and were finally heard no more; and when they ceased, and he heard the door rolling back, with dull rumbling, to its place, Leonard tottered to the pile of rugs in the corner of his cell, and fell upon them in a swoon.

When he returned to consciousness a bright light was shining through the grated door. He got up and, like one who is but a helpless on-looker in a fevered dream, he went to the bars and gazed out. It was bright moonlight outside, and there he saw the same ghastly scene repeated that Templemore had witnessed a short time before. He saw the dead body of the latest victim of the tree’s insatiable thirst for blood dangling amongst the branches; caught up, now by the neck, and now by the feet, and passed on from one branch to another in what seemed a new dance or sport of death; and finally carried off by the great crawling reptiles that had come up to claim their share in the repast.

While the scene lasted, Leonard seemed incapable of volition; his limbs refused to obey the will of his reeling brain and to bear him away from the sight. But, when the creatures had disappeared, he turned and made his way once more to the low bed, where he remained in a state of torpor till the day was far advanced.

After what seemed a long interval, he sat up and rubbed his eyes, after the manner of one just awakened from the horror of a nightmare. Then he saw the woman who occupied the next cell standing with her eyes fixed on him; and, when she found he was once more awake and conscious, she addressed him.

“I am sorry for you,” she said. “Even in my own misery I am not so blinded but that I can see that your burden of sorrow is a heavy one—more than you can bear. Yet methinks, were I a man, I would not thus give way to it. I am but a woman, but my greatest wish—since nothing else is left me—is that I may see Coryon once more—stand face to face with him—and show him that all his calculated cruelty and subtle ingenuity of torture have not subdued my spirit, nor the scorn that a heart conscious of having done no wrong can feel for such as he. I would give him back look for look, hate for hate, as I have before today; and make his wicked eyes quail before mine with the consciousness that the spirit of one he has unjustly oppressed can show itself greater than his own. But with you—he will but laugh at you—for I feel, somehow, you will be taken from here to meet him. I suspect he has sent you here first to crush your spirit with the sight of the horrors that are perpetrated here. He—have you ever seen him?”

“No,” Leonard answered, staring at her in amazement.

“Ah! Then you know not what he is like. I tell you,” the strange woman went on, her eyes lighting up with unexpected fire, “he is a man whose mere glance strikes terror into the souls of ordinary men. There is that about him that makes you shrink as from some unearthly incarnation of all the powers of evil; and in that he delights, yea, more, even, than in torturing his victims.”

Here she broke off abruptly; then resumed, in a different manner.

“I have been wondering whether you are he who was to have wedded the princess?”

“Alas! Yes. You have divined aright,” Leonard answered sadly.

“Then,” said the woman, with increasing warmth, that gained as she went on an energy that was almost fierceness, “then, the greater the reason you should throw off this weakness and gird up your strength to meet the haughty tyrant and show him that your spirit is equal to his own. In all his ill-spent time upon this earth—and they say it has been a very long one—it is his boast and his pride that scarce any can meet his glance without quailing under it. Think! Think how he will triumph over you—how he will point the finger of scorn—turn the look of cold contempt upon the one who aspired to be the future king of this country—and that means to stand on an equality with himself—and yet, as he will declare, is but a weak, puling, or ordinary mortal. Ah! Would I were in your place! You can but die. But I would make him feel that I had a heart, a spirit, more dauntless, more unconquerable than his own. Ay! I would die knowing that for many and many and many a year to come, the remembrance that he had met one spirit he could not intimidate or master would be to him an instrument of defeat and shame, eating into his proud heart, even as the suffering he has caused to me has gnawed into my own.”

The woman spoke at the last with a force that almost electrified her hearer. Leonard felt roused as, perhaps he had never been roused before.

“You are right, my friend!” he exclaimed, “and I thank you. As you truly say, he who aspires to high things should show himself worthy to achieve them, and not even the shadow of a dreadful death and cruel sufferings should have the strength to cow his spirit in the presence of this most cold-blooded and revolting tyrant. If I have shown weakness, it was not from personal fear, but from thought of the suffering of one dearly loved, and my self-reproach for having been the unintentional cause of it. It is well that I met you; for you have taught me how I should meet this Coryon!”

“And,” said the woman, “if you want one unerring shaft to launch at him—one that I know will pierce the armour of his pride and drive him to the verge of madness—tell him you know one woman whose spirit more than matches his; tell him that she is called Fernina.”

CHAPTER XXVI

CORYON

At sunrise on the morning of the day that was to have witnessed Leonard’s public betrothal he was sitting staring gloomily, through the grating of his cell, at the never-resting branches without, when the sounds of drums, on which a long tattoo was being beaten, broke on his ear. The sounds came from both near and far, some half-muffled in the galleries and caverns of the cliff, others echoing from one side to the other of the rocky enclosure till they died away in the far distance.

Since the previous morning nothing further had occurred; the woman was still in the cell on one side of him; no new victim had been brought to occupy the other.

The roll of the drums caused Leonard to start up and look about him. He was haggard and worn from want of sleep, but his step was firm, and his face was stamped with a look of quiet resolution that showed he had taken to heart his fellow-prisoner’s advice. When he rose up she spoke.

“It is as I thought,” she said; “they are to have one of their gatherings today, when the tree will be given its meal in sight of all who are summoned to be present. That is why one of us was not given to it last night, no doubt.” And she gave a short, hard laugh, that was far from pleasant to hear.

“No doubt it is your turn,” she went on in a softer tone. “You must summon all your fortitude. Be brave! If one must die, one needs not show such craven fear as that half-mad wretch exhibited the other night.”

“You speak well, my good friend, and what you have said to me has braced me up. Would that, before we part, I could say or do something to serve or comfort you.”

“That cannot be; only remember what I told you—if you want a taunt to hurl at the tyrant’s head, a taunt that will stab him through his self-admiration, you know now what to say. Soon they will be here for you. Ah!” here she broke off, as though a new thought had come to her. “On these days they are all assembled outside—all the men. Only the women and children are left within their dens. Oh, if I could but get free for half an hour! I know some of their secrets, and could play a trick upon them that would go far to square accounts between us. But, of course,” she added mournfully, “it is foolishness to think of it.”

Overhead could now be heard the scuffling of many footsteps, and, anon, more drum-beating, with much blowing of horns and trumpets. Next, there were shouting and cheering, followed by what appeared to be a speech from some one; but the words were not intelligible to the two anxious listeners.

At one time the noise had brought a faint hope into Leonard’s mind that it might portend the approach of friends; but the words Fernina had just spoken quickly dissipated any such idea.

Presently, steps were heard in the gallery outside, a key was inserted in the lock, and two of Coryon’s black-coated soldiers entered. They were both armed with drawn swords; and one of them, addressing Leonard in gruff accents, said,

“You are to come with us.” Then, turning to his comrade, he asked, “Have you the cord?”

“No,” was the reply, “I thought you had it.”

“And I thought you were bringing it. Go, get it.”

The man went out.

Then he who had remained, raising a warning hand to Leonard, addressed him in low, guarded tones.

“The lord Monella,” he said, “is hastening to thine aid with many armed followers; but he has been detained in the underground pass. Whether he will arrive in time, I know not; if not and thou be harmed, thou wilt be avenged.”

“Who art thou, then?” asked Leonard.

“A friend of the lord Monella’s.”

“And my other friend—what of him?”

“He was a prisoner, but escaped, and has gone—I know not whither.”

“Heaven be praised for that! Ah, I can guess where he has gone!” Just then a sudden thought came into Leonard’s head.

“See, friend,” he said earnestly, “canst thou not turn the key in the lock of the next cell and give the poor creature there one little chance for liberty?”

“I do not know, but I will see. If the key fits, I might.”

“Quick, then, ere thy fellow returns.”

The man hastily took out the key and tried it in the lock of the woman’s cell; it fitted, and he unlocked the door; then withdrawing the key, he replaced it in the door of Leonard’s cell.

“Roll that log to the door to keep it close till you think it safe to venture out,” Leonard advised the woman. She had but just done so when they heard the steps of the other soldier in the gallery.

“What is thy name, friend?” Leonard asked him in a whisper.

“Melta,” the man answered; and then, when the other made his appearance with some cord, he began to rate him for having been so long.

Leonard was bound in a loose fashion, just sufficient to prevent his free use of either arms or legs, and led away. On his way out he said a kindly word to Fernina.

“The Great Spirit help you,” was the reply. “I have no fear for you now; you will die with courage, if it be so fated. A heart that can feel and think for a stranger in the midst of such distress as is yours today is the heart of a brave man. But we may yet meet again.”

Leonard shook his head sadly.

“I have no false hopes,” he answered. “I do not expect that help can now come in time. I may be avenged; that is the most I can hope for.”

“Yes!” said the woman in a meaning tone; “you will be avenged; and so shall I.”

The man who had been sent for the cord laughed jeeringly at the woman when she said this, but took no further notice of her; and the three proceeded along the gallery till they came to some steps at the end. Ascending these they entered a broader gallery or corridor above; then, turning back, they passed out through the gateway and along the covered-way, finally emerging on the main terrace of the great amphitheatre.

Round the sides of the enclosure a large number of people were gathered. Among these were black-coated soldiers to the number of, perhaps, two hundred; the others, of whom there were from four to five hundred, also carried arms of some sort, spears or swords. When Leonard cast his eyes around and noted them, the heart within him sank, for he saw how difficult would be a rescue, even with the armed followers that the man Melta had said accompanied Monella.

In the centre of the great terrace, upon a high chair carved and emblazoned, and with a great banner waving above his head, sat the dreaded Coryon. Round him were grouped, first his nine priests in black robes, and Dakla and others of his chief officers; then, ranks of soldiers and, among them, some of the king’s ministers and chief functionaries, all bound as Leonard was. But the king himself was not there; nor was Ulama; and Leonard, when he had assured himself of this, turned his gaze on Coryon.

It was well that he had been warned that he would need all his courage to enable him to look upon this man unflinchingly. Even thus prepared he found it barely possible to keep down the emotion the sight excited in his breast.

He saw before him a man of great height and powerful frame, clad in a black robe with a star on the breast worked in virgin gold and set with jewels. His grey hair and beard were unkempt and long, his skin of a dark swarthy hue, his forehead, albeit broad, was receding, and furrowed, and wrinkled into a sinister scowl, and his lips were parted or drawn up in a set snarl that disclosed teeth more like a wild beast’s fangs than a human being’s teeth. When Leonard first caught sight of him, he was standing with one arm extended as though he had just finished some harangue; but, when Leonard was brought up, Coryon sat down. Then he slowly turned his glance upon the prisoner.

And beneath that glance a feeling of cold horror stole into Leonard’s breast; he felt as though an icy hand were about to seize his very heart and wring it in a grip of iron. It was the nameless dread that a man may feel in the presence of something that his instincts tell him is a deadly enemy, yet of which he cannot discover the form, or size, or nature; whether earthly or supernatural. Here, certainly, the outward shape was that of a man, but in the eyes there was something suggesting that their owner was not a man at all, but a living incarnation of depravity—a demon with eyes, for the moment quiescent as with the cold glitter and deadly malignancy of the serpent, but instinct with suppressed power, and ready to flame up with terrible, relentless, overwhelming energy. Mingled with the snake-like glitter of malevolence there were lurid flashes that darted forth perpetually, causing the beholder to recoil as though from actual darts. At sight of him one thought of some nameless monster coiled up and meditating a spring upon its prey; a monster that was the implacable foe of the whole human race, that embodied, in human form, all the power, the attributes, the cruelty, of an arch-demon from another world.

From such a being the soul shrinks with a horror that is less earthly fear than the natural loathing of evil things that is implanted within the breasts of all endowed with pure and holy instincts; and this was Leonard’s feeling while he stood, half sick and faint, enduring and returning Coryon’s fixed look.

But just when it came upon him that he must either shift his glance or drop helpless to the ground, the thought of all the child-like, innocent Ulama must have suffered through the shameless treachery of this fiend in human shape came into his mind; and, with the thought, forth from his heart rushed out the blood, bursting through the icy grip that had all but closed upon it, and coursing through his veins in a leaping torrent, like one of those great waves of fiery indignation that sometimes, for a while, gives to one man the strength of ten. With a sudden impulse that forgot everything but his righteous anger, he put forth such an effort that he broke the cords that bound him; then, rushing impetuously upon Coryon, before any one could interfere, he actually had him by the throat in a clutch that, spite of the other’s own gigantic strength, would have ended his vile life if, for a few seconds longer, his assailant had been left alone. But a dozen hands laid hold of him and pulled him back, bruised and panting, to the custody of the men he had escaped from. But, though baffled and injured in the struggle, there was in his eyes a light almost of triumph when he turned round and faced his enemy once more.

“Aha!” he shouted. “Coward! Hateful murderer of women and children and unarmed men! Thou darest not come down and meet me man to man! Though thou art near twice my size, I had choked the foul life out of thee, had we been left alone!”

At first, Coryon made no answer, except to glare at his late assailant with his evil eyes; but they fell away under the other’s dauntless look, and he put his hands to his throat as if in pain.

“This will cost thee dear,” at last he said, in a harsh, croaking voice; but Leonard replied with a cold smile,

“Thou canst but kill me; and I would not beg mercy from such as thou. Why dost turn thine eyes away, coward Coryon? Dost feel at last that so foul a thing may not endure the glance of an honest man?”

Coryon sprang up and stood for a moment with his hands extended towards his prisoner, his fingers closing and opening convulsively as though he half intended to accept the challenge in the other’s words and looks. Then he managed to control his passion and sat down again, first addressing a few words in a low tone to a priest who stood beside him.

CHAPTER XXVII

ON THE ‘DEVIL-TREE’S LADLE!’

When Coryon sat down, a kind of buzzing or hum or talk in low tones broke out on all sides. Exclamations and expressions of astonishment were heard, for never had such audacity been known in a prisoner standing thus on the very brink of death and almost within reach of the clutch of the fatal tree.

Leonard was now bound again, and Dakla sent two or three of his subordinate officers to stand beside him. But, even while they bound him, the guards, as he could hardly fail to see, treated him with a measure of involuntary respect; and well they might, for there was not one amongst them that durst look the evil Coryon in the face.

Then was brought out the contrivance called the ‘devil-tree’s ladle’; it was simply a long plank widened out at one end, and mounted, in the centre, on wheels. An irrepressible shudder passed through Leonard when he saw this grim apparatus. But there was little outward sign of his emotion, and his eyes were soon again fixed on Coryon, who rose and thus addressed those present,

“Friends, ye all see here a confirmation of that which I have already explained unto you this morning. Yonder stands one of the strangers whom the king hath admitted to his friendship; the man he was about to honour by alliance with his royal house. Ye can see for yourselves the untutored passions by which this youth, who was, forsooth, to have been your future king, is swayed, and his lack of seemly behaviour in the presence of one like myself, who hath for so many years held a high position in the land, and hath conferred so many benefits upon it. Not the least of these, my friends, is that which I have just achieved—only just in time. I have, with the joint help of those powerful gods whom we all here serve, been able to defeat and overcome even the magic with which these men were armed. Ye all know, or have heard, how they came provided, by some enemies of our race outside the country, with magic wands that brought down lightning and thunder and death upon those opposed to them; and to their seeming power the king weakly yielded, and allowed these strangers to assume high stations in the land. Zelus, my well-beloved son, early fell a victim to their lawless intrusion into our domains, as did many of my people whom I sent to capture them. But in the end I have prevailed against them; I have taken from them their magic wands, and now they are, as ye all can see, but ordinary men. But a punishment hath fallen upon the king, for he is sick to death, and that is why he is not here today. He hath not long to live, and soon the country will be without a king. Now it seemeth to me certain that the people are averse from accepting this young stranger as the successor to their dying ruler, and that they desire one of their own race. This hath caused me much anxious thought, but I have at last, I think, discovered a solution of the difficulty. I will espouse the Princess Ulama, and become the king’s son-in-law; thus will your minds be set at rest; for ye will know that whenever the king dieth he will be succeeded by a ruler who is not only of your own race, but hath served his country long enough to satisfy all objectors as to his experience, or his ability, or his solicitude for the welfare of his native land.”

While uttering these words, Coryon looked with a hardly-veiled smile of malice at Leonard, who, listening to the infamous proposal wrapped up in such unblushing hypocrisy, started as though he would have rushed again upon the speaker; but he was held too firmly by those who now surrounded him. He could scarce keep from groaning aloud at what he had just heard.

Coryon marked with evident satisfaction this effect of his announcement, and proceeded, in an unctuous voice, and with an affectation of great resignation,

“In doing this, good friends, I have, I assure you, no thought, no feeling save the welfare of my country. I had not thought ever to take to me another wife; though I had looked with favour upon the desire of my son Zelus to ally himself with our king’s daughter. But, since this young stranger hath rendered that impossible by slaying treacherously mine only son, I will accept the necessities of the situation, and sacrifice my own feelings for the general good. Perhaps, after all, it is as well; for in me ye will have, as ye all know well, one who thinks always only of his people’s weal. For long ages I have guarded the land from outward foes by making friends of the powers of darkness. This, and this alone hath protected us from invasion by the hordes of wild men that we know exist beyond our borders. The powers, whose High Priest I am, have guarded us through many centuries, and have planted around the limits of our island a forest impenetrable and filled with terrible creatures for our protection. True, they let these strangers through, but only as a warning of that which might befall if we forgot, even for a moment, our religion, or rebelled against the sacrifices it requires and that our gods look for from us and will insist upon. True, we have to sacrifice some of those we love to our sacred tree, but what is that compared with the benefits and advantages that the rest receive? We have peace, prosperity, contentment, freedom from invasion, from wars, from enemies and dangers of all kinds; and, compared with these, the price that hath to be paid is, after all, but small. Henceforth, too, there will be a stronger guarantee for peace throughout the land, in that your king and the head of your religion will be one. And you, my faithful followers, who have served me well,” continued the arch-hypocrite, casting his eyes around, “will no more be called upon to reside in the rocky fastness that has been so long our home; for I shall take up my abode in the palace of the king and there shall ye all follow me.” At this a loud cheer went up from all. “And now to more immediate duties. I have condemned this murderer of my son to death; he shall end his life befittingly as a sacrifice to the gods whose power he hath defied in coming here—defied only to his own doom. So shall perish all who brave me; and so shall perish this man’s friends, his murderous abettors who, too, are in my power. And now, sirrah, if thou hast aught to say, thou hast just a minute. If thou hast aught to ask me, now is thy final opportunity.”

When he ceased speaking, Coryon sat down, first casting at Leonard a hideous glance of triumph. Leonard saw the sneer and knew that his enemy’s desire was to excite him to a farther display of useless anger; but the knowledge only served to calm him, and, when he spoke, it was in a voice that had in it neither bitterness nor passion, but only a great sadness. He did not wish to gratify Coryon by exhibiting anger; and thus he spoke,

“It is true I have something I would say, but it is not to thee, O Coryon, but to those who are not Coryon’s degraded servants, but free agents, who have been misled into supporting him here today. To you, good people, I address myself.” And Leonard cast his eyes around upon those who were not wearers of Coryon’s uniform. “I have much to say and much to ask. Know that the power of this boastful tyrant who declares with mock humility his wicked purpose to force the youthful daughter of his king into an alliance that revolts her—know, good people, that his power is almost at an end, and that he will never enter into that palace, in which he has promised to find place for his credulous followers. He may kill me if he will, but my death will naught avail; a few hours hence he will be either a prisoner in the hands of those who came with me, or hiding in his underground haunts like a hunted animal that dares not show its face above the ground. But the end will be the same. He will quickly be hurled out, and a terrible punishment will be meted out to him and to all those who abet him—every one, that is, who shall support him. Therefore I say this to you, when my friends come—as come they will—do not help Coryon’s myrmidons against them. They will come armed with a fearful power that you can scarce conceive; you shall see the very rocks fall away before them in crashing thunders as they hunt these rats out of their holes. If you fight on Coryon’s side, they will mow you down like grass before the scythe. On the other hand, if you side not with these doomed ones, but, instead, ask for mercy, you shall find it; for we came not to this land to teach cruelty and murder, but to deliver it from the tyranny that has so long oppressed it. That is my advice to you; what I would ask is that you tell your fellow-citizens that I am sore distressed in that I have done far less than I might to win their affections and their confidence. That I have made a terrible mistake, that it has led me to this situation, I now see. But my error I shall expiate with my life; when I am dead, and you see the benefits my friends will shower on the land, then tell all that I was of the same mind, and was full of naught but kindly feelings. But—my great—love for one so fair—as your young—princess—took up my thoughts, perhaps, more than should have been the case.” Leonard’s voice almost failed him here; but by a strong effort he recovered himself and went on. “That is all that I would ask; let them remember me and think kindly of me. You will see in those days who has spoken truly—whether I, or Coryon. You will know how false has been every word he has said to you today. Even what he says about my friends is false; they are not in his power, nor has he deprived them of their magic power, as you will all quickly see. To say that by his atrocious so-called religious rites he has guarded and advanced this country is a lie——”

“Silence!” exclaimed Coryon, who had all this time been moving restlessly in his seat.

“I come from a land—the greatest on the earth—that has an empire upon which the sun ne’er sets; we have no such wicked murders called sacrifices; yet we are safe against our enemies, and——”

“Silence, I tell thee! What think’st thou we care about thy country or thyself?” Coryon burst out.

“I say,” Leonard went on, disregarding him, “that every word this man utters is a lie. He cannot say one single sentence without uttering a lie——”

“If thou sayest more, I will have thee scourged as well as killed,” Coryon cried, in growing rage. “It speaketh well to these good people for my patience that I have let thee have thy say thus far. Never, for many a year, has mortal dared to flout me to my face as thou hast done.”

“O Coryon!” Leonard exclaimed, turning and facing him, “truly did I say that thou could’st not speak one single sentence without uttering some lie, and now thou art convicted. For I know of one, at least, that has flouted and dared thee to thy face; one whose spirit thou couldst not quell; and she but a woman—her name Fernina!”

At this a perfect howl of rage escaped from Coryon’s lips. He sprang up and clutched at the air, and gasped; and, for a moment, Leonard half thought he would have a fit. But he recovered himself, and shouted, in a screaming voice,

“Seize him! Gag him! Lay him on the feeding-ladle of our sacred tree! We will see how he fancies its embrace!” Then, turning round and addressing some one near him, he cried out,

“Bring forward the princess, that she may witness this my act of justice towards the murderer she would have taken to her bosom. Let my future wife look on. Ha! Ha! Ha! My future wife! How dost thou like the title, murderer of my son, and would-be king?”

His rage was something fearful to behold; many even of his own myrmidons trembled, and they made speed to do his bidding.

Leonard was seized and bound to the wheeled plank, and, after trying in vain to turn his head to take one last look at Ulama, he closed his eyes and resigned himself to prayer. At the same time Ulama, looking but the mere ghost of her former self, was led to the side of Coryon’s chair between two women, and forced to look upon the dreadful scene. At the sight of Leonard bound to the fatal plank, and the grim tree with its restless branches ever twisting in avid hunger for their prey, a look of stony horror came over her face; she gave one gasping, sobbing cry, and fell back unconscious.

For some moments Coryon paused; he was inclined to wait till Ulama should be restored to consciousness, for he wanted to prolong the torture of the lovers somewhat before finally consigning Leonard to his fate; but his fury mastered him, and he gave the signal to the two men holding one end of the plank to push it out along the stone pier.

They had just begun to move it when a shot was heard, and one of them fell to the ground; and Leonard, turning his head, saw Templemore, high on the rocks above, kneeling with his rifle at his shoulder.

Coryon saw it too, and, with a shout, and many threats, urged the other man to push out the plank; but, instead, he started back in terror, and only just in time to escape a second bullet that came singing past his ears and wounded a soldier standing near.

Coryon, mad with rage and disappointed malice, snatched a spear from a soldier beside him, and ordered others in front of him to seize the plank and push it out, prodding at them with the spear to force obedience; but one, who stepped forward at his bidding, fell before he could reach the plank. Meantime, Templemore, followed by Ergalon and the brave Zonella, had come leaping down from ledge to ledge, threatening all who barred his way, and shooting down one or two who tried to stop him. He now stood, a revolver in each hand, at the end of the plank, and there he kept a circle around him, while Ergalon cut the cords by which Leonard was bound, released the cloth that had been tied round his mouth to gag him, and helped him to his feet. Immediately he rushed to Templemore.

“Give me a rifle, Jack! Let me shoot down that son of Satan and rid the earth of him for ever.”

Ergalon was carrying three rifles, the one Templemore had been using and two spare ones; one of these he handed now to Leonard.

But, in the interval, Coryon’s chief officer, Dakla, had taken in the situation; and having already had experience of the weapons with which he saw Templemore was armed, had advised Coryon to retreat into the covered-way.

“It is useless to stay here, my lord,” he said. “Thou wilt surely be killed! Haste to the shelter while there is yet time! There I think thou wilt be safe. If not, thou canst retreat within the gates.”

“Dost think the danger is so great, good Dakla?” Coryon asked, incredulously.

“I am sure of it, my lord. Haste thee—and take some soldiers with thee and keep them between thee and thine enemies, or thou wilt never reach the shelter alive. I will leave some men here and take others up on to the rocks above, whence we can hurl down great stones upon them. Haply, if no more come, we may yet prevail against these.”

Coryon and his priests and immediate followers hastened away, accordingly, leaving the still unconscious Ulama, in charge of the two women, behind his chair. He was only just in time, for a soldier he forced to walk beside him fell by a shot from Leonard’s rifle a moment before they gained the shelter of the covered-way.

Leonard saw the women beside Coryon’s chair, and, though he knew not that Ulama was lying there unconscious, he guessed she was near the spot; therefore he feared to fire more shots in that direction; while he knew it would be useless to fire at the iron-work of the covered-way. For a space, therefore, there was a pause; but soon Dakla’s men appeared on the rocks above them and began to roll down stones and boulders.

The position of the little band was now becoming critical. To retreat, leaving Ulama in the hands of Coryon, was not to be conceived. Yet they could not advance, for a compact body of men stood ready to receive them; and at these they durst not fire lest they might hit Ulama or one of her attendants. Yet every minute they stayed where they were increased their danger. Great masses of rock, started by persons above who showed only an arm or hand above the ridge, came crashing down and shooting past them. And, when a head was raised above it here and there to take a hurried aim, it was seen only for a second, and gave little opportunity for a shot.

They had had two or three narrow escapes, and had avoided injury only by leaping out of the path of the rocks that came crashing and bounding down. Jack urged Zonella to go back, but she stoutly refused; and he was at his wits’ end what course to take, when loud shouting was heard in the direction of the entrance of the enclosure. Soon, a rush of armed men in red tunics came along the roadway at the rear of the black-coated soldiers standing around Coryon’s chair. Instantly Coryon’s men gave way, and rushed across the terrace towards the covered-way; while the red-coated men poured in and spread themselves out on either side.

And now could be seen men carrying flags and banners, and amongst them two of mighty stature; one of them, the taller, dressed in the coat of mail and the helmet with silver wings that had been preserved so long in the museum and that was said to have belonged to the legendary Mellenda. He wore, too, the great sword that belonged to the suit, and it seemed, upon his towering form, to be of no more than usual and proportionate size.

As this majestic figure came more closely into view, accompanied by Colenna and some others of the king’s officers, Leonard and Templemore’s astonishment were great at recognising no other than their friend Monella!

CHAPTER XXVIII

RALLYING TO THE CALL

To make clearer the events described in the previous chapters, it should be stated that, when Templemore and Ergalon had returned from their journey down the canyon in quest of arms and ammunition, they found with Zonella, who was anxiously awaiting them, a messenger from Monella.

It was not yet daylight, and the two who had made the descent and ascent of the difficult path under conditions of considerable hardship, were very much exhausted. They were therefore glad, though surprised, to find that, in their absence, Zonella had provided both food and wine for them.

“How pleased I am to see you I need scarcely say,” she exclaimed. “But first, eat and drink, while I talk. I have much to tell, and there is yet time to spare. Therefore, rest and refresh yourselves, while I relate what has been made known to me.

“Your friend, Monella, has done wondrous things. It seems—as Ergalon here no doubt has been aware—that he has long been quietly making preparations for some such crisis as the present. Coryon, it is true, by his treachery, has stolen a march upon him, but he is being gradually and surely enmeshed in the net that the lord Monella has drawn around him. For a long time Sanaima has been secretly drilling numbers of his followers in Myrlanda, where he has a large store of arms, and he and Monella have gained over many of Coryon’s men; in particular, some of those sent to close the subterranean pass. When, therefore, the two, with many armed men, presented themselves at the entrance to the pass and found the gates closed against them, instead of making a desperate fight of it in which many must have been killed on both sides and the news of it have been carried to Coryon’s ears, they waited for their friends inside to act. Soon, those of them amongst the soldiers who guarded the approach, seizing their opportunity, fell upon their fellows in their sleep, bound them, and opened the gates. The same thing has occurred in the palace; all Coryon’s soldiers really devoted to him have been quietly made prisoners, and the palace is now in the hands of Monella and Sanaima and their friends; and Coryon knows it not.

“Now, when Monella found that you had escaped, he divined whither you had gone, and sent messengers here to await your return; and I sent them back at once to tell him I expected you here ere long. And now another has arrived with instructions, in case you should return in time to put them into execution, as—the Great Spirit be praised!—you have. Monella has sent two or three of Coryon’s own people to him with various messages to allay his suspicions; and Coryon quite believes that you are still a prisoner, and that Monella is still in Myrlanda, unable to get through the pass. Others of Monella’s men, dressed in black tunics taken from the prisoners, are now placed at intervals on guard at all the approaches to Coryon’s retreat; where already, by this time, nearly all his followers and his adherents amongst the people are assembling. There will be some hundreds altogether; all hostile to you and your friends. But, when they are all assembled, Monella will gather together also many hundreds from the people outside, and march them to the amphitheatre and so surprise Coryon and all with him.”

“But how,” asked Templemore, “if Coryon gets to hear of it?”

“He will not. No move will be made till all are gathered in the amphitheatre; after that, any stragglers going thither from the town, and any messengers sent thence by Coryon, will fall into the hands of Monella’s disguised soldiers, and will be quietly seized and bound.”

“I see. And now what is to be done to make sure of the safety of our friends?”

“The directions are these. You are to go quietly, through the forest, to the wood at the edge of the amphitheatre where——”

“I understand,” broke in Ergalon. “It is the place,”—turning to Templemore—“where we stood and looked down upon the great devil-tree that night. I can take you by a route that leads through the woods all the way, and thus we shall not be seen.”

“Yes, that is right,” resumed Zonella. “When you get there, you are to remain concealed, and watch all that goes on, and, unless compelled, do nothing till the arrival of Monella and his friends. But, if it should be absolutely necessary to interfere before that to save our friends, why, then, of course, you must do the best you can.”

“I only hope we may be in time to save them,” said Templemore, with a sigh. “I am terribly anxious. Let us be going; it is already getting light.”

The three then started—for Zonella insisted on accompanying them—and the messenger was sent back to inform Monella. When they approached the amphitheatre, four black-coated soldiers suddenly sprang up before them from among the bushes, where they had been lying concealed. Templemore drew a pistol, but Zonella stepped in front of him, and said something in a low tone to the soldiers, who at once gave way and let them pass.

“What did you say to them?” asked Templemore.

“I gave them the pass-word,” she answered quietly.

“And what is that, if I may inquire?”

“It is a word you do not regard with the same feelings as ourselves,” she answered gravely. “But in Manoa it has always been a word to conjure with, and, so it is today—it is ‘Mellenda.’” And, while she spoke, she looked at Templemore half defiantly.

But he made no reply, and they walked on in silence, and now with all caution, to their destination.

Meanwhile, so soon as the sun had risen, messengers were hurrying hither and thither amongst the populace, knocking at doors, and summoning all friendly to the king and the princess, to assemble in the great square where stood the large museum. And, in reply to excited questionings, they often only gave the magic word, ‘Mellenda,’ or said, ‘Mellenda calls you.’

Most of the population were early astir that morning, restless with anxiety and fear for the princess and her betrothed, who had, they were told, been carried off by Coryon. As stated, by the great mass of people their princess was much beloved by the people; and Leonard, if he had not gained their affection, had the sympathy, for her sake, of all loyal subjects, and they were many. Indeed, all they wanted was a leader; they were too cowed to take action for themselves.

No wonder, then, that when such a leader came, announcing himself as the long-expected, legendary Mellenda, the whole population, outside those who were gathered around Coryon in the amphitheatre, rallied to his standard, and clamoured to be armed and led against their oppressor. That there were plenty of arms in the museum all well knew; and, when the messengers ran to and fro, spreading the news of the return of their hero-king, all the men who heard the tidings left at once whatever they might have in hand, and hurried to the museum. There they found Sanaima with a number of followers already equipped in the well-known red tunics and winged helmets; and Colenna and others engaged in giving out arms and uniforms to many more.

And when, shortly after, Monella appeared at the top of the wide flight of steps, clad in Mellenda’s coat of mail, with the well-known banner floating above him, and wearing at his side the mighty sword, every man and woman and child amongst the crowd below gave a great shout and knelt before him. Then Monella drew the mighty sword, that an ordinary man could hardly wield, and, flourishing it in the air as easily as though it were but the lightest cane, addressed the kneeling people in sonorous tones that were heard by all, and were delivered with an air of exceeding majesty and dignity,

“Yes, my children! I have returned to you! After many days the Great Spirit hath led my weary steps back to my beloved country, there to finish my life’s work, and end a long and troublous journey. My pilgrimage through the ages hath been a punishment to me, even as the same dreary time hath been a punishment to you; a punishment to myself for having placed too high a value, in the times that are long past, on power and conquest and dominion; to you, for that your forefathers forsook their faith—the worship of the one Great Spirit—and embraced the religion of the powers of darkness, and supported the atrocious Coryon in a rebellion against their lawful king, and in the murder of those near and dear to him. For that, the punishment hath been that they should be oppressed and cruelly ill-treated by him they thus supported, through many generations. But, at last, the anger of the Great Spirit is appeased. He hath led me hither to deliver this fair land from the horror that broods over it. I come to you, not with great fleets of ships, with armies and generals, as of yore; but as a simple wanderer returning to his home. Yet in my coming the Great Spirit sent you all a sign; for I arrived but just in time to save her who is the child of Manoa’s ancient race of kings and—my own descendant. This was the sign—this and the death of Zelus at the same time; which was a warning to Coryon that he heeded not. But time presses, and I may not say more now. The princess and our friends are in great peril, and I go to save them. I go to break Black Coryon’s power for ever, and to punish him as he deserves. Then will I bring again to this fair land peace, and happiness, and security for all.”

Then, amid acclamations, and shouts and cries of delight, Monella—or Mellenda, as he now called himself—moved off towards the place where Coryon, in fancied security, was boastfully proclaiming his intention to espouse the princess, and to live henceforth at the palace as supreme ruler of the country.

Those of Sanaima’s followers from Myrlanda, who had been instructed in their duties, took charge, as officers, of ranks and companies of the newly-recruited men. They were assisted by many officers of the king’s guard who had been held prisoners in the palace, but had been released, and had now changed their blue uniforms for the red tunics and winged helmets in the museum.

Some, however, remained behind, to equip and despatch reinforcements as men continued to arrive asking to be enrolled. Thus, if trouble should arise with Coryon, Monella would have at his back, eventually, an overwhelming force. And as the men kept marching off in companies, the crowd of women and children and old men collected in the square in which was the museum stood about in anxious groups, awaiting news; hardly daring to hope for what all so fervently desired—the final downfall of their ruthless tyrant.

CHAPTER XXIX

‘THOU ART MY LORD MELLENDA!’

To return to the scene in the amphitheatre. Monella, and those with him, advanced with measured tread; but suddenly his eyes fell on Ulama. For a few moments he bent over her, then he came slowly to the front and looked around him, and in that rapid survey he seemed to take in everything.

Beckoning to Leonard and Zonella he said, when they had joined him,

“The princess lies there in a dead faint. This is no place for the poor child. Bear her tenderly outside. My people will protect you.” Then he turned again to look around.

In their surprise at the unexpected inrush, those on the heights had ceased hurling down the rocks, and now they gazed in wonderment at Monella and those with him. Beside him stood a tall man in a white robe upon which was worked a figure of the sun in diamonds that flashed and sparkled as he moved. His long hair and beard were snowy white, his forehead, high and massive, was clear, and curiously free from lines and wrinkles. It had the impassive look of one who suffers few earthly cares to trouble him. His features were pleasant and benevolent in expression, and the clear grey eyes were open and candid in their glance. Like Monella, he was far above the usual height; and, like him, was of imposing presence and stately mien. Altogether, one would say of him that he was a good man, a man to be trusted and respected; he had at the same time the air of one deeply engrossed in intellectual pursuits, or leading an ascetic life. He lacked just that touch of tender human sympathy that made Monella’s mere look so fascinating to those with whom he came in contact, and that bound so thoroughly to him those who yielded to its subtle influence.

Ergalon had already whispered to the others that the stranger was Sanaima, the ancient chief of the White Priesthood; and Templemore regarded him with interest and curiosity.

Above their heads waved great red banners with strange devices and elaborately carved standard poles. At a sign from Monella, Coryon’s banner, that floated above his chair, was pulled down and trampled in the dust; then the largest of the red ones was hoisted in its place.

Next, Monella quietly seated himself in Coryon’s chair and gazed around the enclosure, his features set and stern, and his steady, piercing eyes seeming to read the very heart of every one upon whom he turned his gaze. The king’s ministers and other prisoners had been unbound, while Templemore had been hastily explaining, to the best of his ability, all that had taken place.

Presently Monella rose, and, waving his hand towards the people not clad in Coryon’s uniforms, he thus addressed them,

“How comes it, that in this place of evil deeds and heinous crimes, I find many of the king’s peaceful subjects—or they who should be peaceful—ranged round and calmly looking on at acts of cold-blooded cruelty against the king’s own child and those he calls his friends? What have ye to say in excuse or extenuation? Choose the highest among ye for a spokesman, and let him come forward and explain this shameful thing, if so he can. Else I may include ye all in the punishment I am here to mete out to these evil-doers.”

At this there was a great hubbub and commotion. Some of Coryon’s companions in the covered-way turned in a panic to make their escape into the interior gallery; but found, to their dismay, that the gates were fast closed and barred against them from within. And when they glanced out at the rocks above, they saw red-coated soldiers, who now lined the heights and kept still arriving in ever-increasing numbers. Dakla and his principal officers had withdrawn at their advance, and now stood, with the priests, crowded together just inside the covered-way. Outside the iron screens the long, trailing branches swept up from time to time, as though seeking to get at those within.

After a hurried conference among the people, one of their number stepped down on to the main terrace and placed himself before Monella.

Templemore stood on one side of Monella’s chair, rifle in hand, with Ergalon close by holding the spare rifles, all ready loaded. He watched with growing wonder the continual arrival of red-coated soldiers on all sides of the rocky ridges. They all carried spears, or swords and shields, and wore the curious helmets ornamented with little silver wings that he had seen in the museum. And now, amongst them, were to be seen many citizens in ordinary dress. But all kept a space between themselves and those who had been there on their arrival; their manner towards these was evidently unfriendly and threatening; and, since the newcomers outnumbered the others, including all Coryon’s people, the position of the latter was growing anything but comfortable. And still the red-coated men kept coming, pushing those in advance of them into positions lower down and farther round the terraces of the enclosure.

There was a general hush when the one who had been chosen spokesman came forward and stood in front of Monella, who asked curtly,

“Thy name?”

“Galaima,” was the reply, given in a clear, unhesitating voice. “I have been chosen by those whom thou didst but now address, to speak in their name. Seeing that punishment hath been spoken of, we desire first to ask what authority thou hast to speak in the king’s name; by what right thou dost threaten us; and who thou art?”

“You have the right to ask those questions,” returned Monella coldly. “Know then that I am King of Manoa—thy king, and the king of Coryon, and of all in this country.”

“King of Manoa!” echoed Galaima in surprise, while similar exclamations broke forth around. “But, my lord—I speak with all respect—how can that be?”

“The King Dranoa is sick even unto death. His illness hath been hastened in its course by acts of base treachery perpetrated by Coryon—with whom I shall deal anon. Finding himself dying and unable to lead his soldiers to the rescue of his child, he hath abdicated in my favour, for me to hold the post so long as I think fit in the interests of the nation. Here (taking out from his bosom a roll of parchment) is his sign-manual duly sealed and executed in the presence of the High Priest Sanaima and others who are with me; and here is his sceptre of office, and this is his signet-ring—these being given to me by him in token of my authority, and also in the presence of Sanaima and many others you see around me. Is it not so, friends?” Monella demanded, turning to Sanaima and the others near.

A loud shout went up in confirmation; then, at a wave of Monella’s hand, there was again a deep, expectant silence.

Coryon had come out from the covered-way on hearing the unlooked-for and unwelcome news, and now stood, a little in advance of his own people, an attentive listener and observer of what was going on.

“Thou hast heard,” resumed Monella, in the same cold, stern tone. “I come duly armed with authority to punish, and I have the power. Do thou and thy fellows yonder desire to take part with the traitor Coryon, and fight against us; or do ye disavow him and throw yourselves upon my mercy?”

“My lord, with all respect, I ask for the reply to my last question. We came hither—of a certainty I and my immediate friends so came—to protest against the king’s choice of a son-in-law. We were unwilling to have thrust upon us, as our future king, one who is of a different race—who is a stranger in the land—and who, so far as it appeareth, hath no claim to royal dignity. Now—with all respect, I say again—for all we know, those same objections apply to thine own case. If, however, I am wrong in this, and thou canst convince us that thou hast reasonable claim to the dignity the king hath conferred upon thee, then we are ready to submit ourselves as loyal subjects.”

“Thy logic is good,” observed Monella with bitter emphasis, “for thy present purpose; but it faileth to explain how it came about that, instead of making known your sentiment in a petition and awaiting the king’s friendly explanation, as befitted faithful subjects, ye supported Coryon in his treasonable acts—in kidnapping the king’s daughter and his friends. Further, ye were all proceeding, at Coryon’s mere suggestion, to put to death this stranger, without giving him either time or opportunity to afford the information ye now profess yourself so anxious to obtain. However, thou shalt have thy question answered—and, that done, let me warn thee that I am in no mood to suffer further trifling. King Dranoa’s good-natured weakness, and my own misplaced leniency, have already wrought too much misunderstanding. Ask thy question of the lord Colenna, the king’s High Chamberlain.”

Then Colenna stepped forward, and, in a loud, sonorous voice, that resounded throughout the vast amphitheatre, cried out,

“Know ye all, by the command of King Dranoa and the unanimous assent of his ministers, that the great lord Mellenda, who hath been hitherto known amongst us as Monella—which in ancient times had the same signification as the word Mellenda—hath made himself known to his people, and hath assumed the office of ruler of the countries of Manoa and Myrlanda.”

At this extraordinary announcement Coryon moved back into the covered-way with unsteady and almost tottering steps; while Monella rose and, with another wave of the hand, signalled for silence. Turning to Sanaima, he asked, with quiet dignity, but in a ringing voice that all could hear,

“And thou, august head of our religion, faithful through so many years of persecution and despair, who dost thou say I am?”

Then Sanaima raised his hands to heaven as though to invoke a blessing, and said, solemnly,

“In the name of the Great Spirit whom I serve, I recognise and welcome thee, my lord Mellenda!”

But still Monella waved his hand for silence; and, raising his voice, he cried,

“Come forth, Black Coryon! I command thee! Come forth!”

And Coryon came forward, and stood before him; but he durst not meet his eyes.

Monella slowly raised his arm and straightened it, pointing his finger at his enemy.

“And who, foul Coryon, who dost thou say I am?”

For the space of a few seconds Coryon looked his questioner in the face. There was a brief struggle to hold his own and to repel with proud defiance the glance Monella turned on him; then, bowing his head, he murmured humbly,

“Thou art my lord Mellenda!”

Then a great shout went up. Again, and again, and yet again it was repeated. “Mellenda! Mellenda! Mellenda!” It rang out from far and near. It was taken up by a crowd of women and children without the gates, and thence it travelled back and echoed from one side of the rocky amphitheatre to the other.

When, once more, there was silence, Galaima dropped upon one knee and begged for clemency for himself and friends.

“Lay down your arms, each one of you, and go!” the answer came. “Let me not look upon your faces again yet awhile.”

Then Monella, turning to Coryon’s soldiers, commanded them also to lay down their arms and surrender themselves prisoners.

Here Coryon showed the first signs of resistance he had yet exhibited, and his officers, who had stood watching for a sign from him, withdrew in a body into the entrance to the covered-way, seeing in it the best opportunities for a last desperate fight.

“My lord forgetteth,” said Coryon, “that he hath given no assurance that the lives of my people and servants will be spared.”

“I can make no terms with thee or with thy minions. I came here to punish the evil-doers, as well as to save my friends,” returned Monella with grave meaning. “Thou hast been warned again and again since I came into the land; I sent thee word that, if I came to thee, I would bring retribution in my hand.”

“But surely,” urged Coryon, in the smooth, oily manner he could put on at will, “if we submit, my lord will require no more? Thy friends are safe; no harm hath been done to them. May it not be that I remain here with mine own people, within mine own domain—the domain that hath been mine for centuries—in friendly alliance——”

“What!” exclaimed Monella, turning wrathfully upon the crafty hypocrite with a blaze of anger in his eyes, as might a lion turn upon a snapping cur. “Thou darest to speak to me of alliance! Alliance with thee! With a thing so foul, so loathsome, so detestable as thou! Shall the eagle ally himself with the carrion crow? Enough!” He broke off, in indignation at the insult, and, turning to the officers of his own party who stood near, cried,

“Seize them and bind them! Every one! Let not one escape! But take them alive, if possible.”

A large number of the red-coated soldiers, led by their officers, now advanced upon the crowd of Coryon’s people gathered at the entrance to the covered-way. Many of the latter came forward at once and threw down their arms; while others stood irresolute. Coryon, himself, made no effort to escape, and was seized by a couple of men, who quickly bound his hands behind him. But Dakla and all Coryon’s priests and some half-dozen of his lieutenants and a few soldiers—perhaps those who felt themselves most guilty—stood defiantly some little distance within the gallery, determined to resist capture to the last.

CHAPTER XXX

A TERRIBLE VENGEANCE!

Of all the spectators of what had occurred in the amphitheatre, no one, probably, was so utterly astonished and helplessly bewildered as was Templemore. At Monella’s assumption of the royal office he felt no great surprise. It seemed almost a natural thing, taking all the circumstances into account, that the king, finding his daughter stolen away and himself too ill to pursue and punish her captors, should delegate his authority to the man in whom he had of late reposed such confidence. But at Colenna’s announcement that in Monella he recognised the long-expected, legendary Mellenda, Templemore was, as may be supposed, considerably startled; and his perplexity was increased when Sanaima, in his turn, subscribed to Colenna’s declaration; but when Coryon himself affirmed his belief in the marvellous assertion, Templemore’s ideas became so hopelessly confused, that he knew not what to think or what to make of it. In other circumstances he would, no doubt, have quietly settled matters in his own mind by deciding that all present had become victims to a passing fit of madness or transient delusion; but the grim realities of the strange drama that was being played before him made it impossible to explain things by any such hypothesis.

It was in the midst of the conflict thus proceeding in his mind, that Dakla and his fellows took up their attitude of defiance; so Templemore promptly decided to postpone further thought upon the matter. It was sufficient, for the moment, that there was the prospect of a fight in which his friends would need his help; and he began handling his rifle significantly, glancing while he did so at Monella.

The latter had laid his hand upon his shoulder as though to stay him until he should have had more time to study the situation, when a rumbling noise was heard, and an iron door shot out from the inside wall a little distance from the end of the covered-way, completely closing it and shutting out from view the men within. So suddenly had this been done that Dakla was almost caught by it, and would have been jammed against the iron pillar into which it fitted, but that he had managed to withdraw himself inside just in time to escape it.

The impression upon the minds of those outside was that this unlooked-for obstacle that intervened between those within the protected gallery and their enemies, had been purposely made use of to gain time to force open the interior gates and thus assist their escape into the labyrinth of passages beyond. The first effect was to dishearten those of Coryon’s adherents who were still outside in a state of indecision. Seeing themselves thus, as they thought, incontinently abandoned by their leaders, they threw down their arms without further ado, submitted to their captors, and, in few minutes, were pinioned and marched out of the way.

It now became a question what steps were to be taken to follow up those who had so cleverly escaped, temporarily, at all events, from their pursuers. These were, after Coryon himself, the most guilty of the whole atrocious confederacy; and Templemore turned to Monella with a look of inquiry.

“What say you,” said he, “shall we try whether that door is bullet-proof?”

But Monella again laid his hand upon the other’s arm, and gazed, as though in expectation, first at Coryon—who was standing out in the centre of the terrace, guarded by two soldiers—and then, from him, to that part of the covered-way nearest to the rocks that ended it. His quick eye had noticed that Coryon seemed as much taken by surprise as all the rest, and that there was, in his face, no trace of that triumphant satisfaction that might have been expected if this manoeuvre of his chief friends had been looked for. Instead, there was a fixed look that was momentarily changing from surprise to terror.

Templemore, following Monella’s gaze, noted all this—and so did others. A hush fell upon all present; every one looked at Coryon, and, from him, to the length of grated iron screens, over the face of which the branches of the fatal tree were playing with busy sweep, evidently aware, by some unfailing instinct, that there was plenty of prey for them within. And it was now noticed that the larger number of the longer branches had gathered themselves upon that side.

Gradually, the look on Coryon’s face changed into one of absolute horror, the while he stood staring at the outside of the covered-gallery.

To make what follows clear, it is necessary to describe this covered-way a little more in detail. It has already been explained that it formed the approach to an opening in the rock—closed by gates—which was the principal entrance to Coryon’s retreat. When unprotected by the sliding gratings at the side, it was so near to the great devil-tree that the longer branches could sweep its whole width for some distance in front of the gates. At the side was some masonry, above which the rock rose steep and almost over-hanging. At the end, above the entrance, the rock rose also abruptly, and then followed the line of the arena, shutting in the latter at this part by a rocky wall that rose perpendicularly some fifty or sixty feet. But the part within reach of the tree was roofed over by iron gratings, forming a sort of verandah, which, in turn, could be rendered safe from the terrible branches by sliding grated doors or shutters that could, by machinery within, be moved forward in telescopic fashion along the whole length accessible to the tree, and a short distance beyond. Thus, when the side ‘shutters’ were withdrawn, the entrance-gates were very effectually guarded by the tree itself. When they were extended, they, in conjunction with the roof, constituted an efficient protection to the covered-way. But herein lay also a cunningly-devised and deadly trap; for, just within the entrance of this covered-gallery, was another iron door that could be moved across the passage so as to imprison any one caught between it and the gates at the other end. This door came out of a scarcely noticeable slot in the masonry at the side; and it was situated far enough along to place those thus caught within reach of the tree, if the side shutters were withdrawn.

Doubtless, many had fallen into this frightful trap. Thinking the gallery well protected they would walk unsuspiciously along it towards the closed gates, when those watching from within could close the gallery behind them and open the sides; and their fate would then be sealed.

This was the only part of the main terrace within reach of the tree. Round the remainder of the amphitheatre it was far removed from it, and was of ample width. Only at this part, and upon the stone pier that jutted out towards the tree from the centre, or down in the arena itself, was there danger to any one moving about within the vast enclosure.

At a point in the cliff, high above the covered-way, was a small grated door in the rock. This was another entrance to Coryon’s fastness; but it was sufficiently protected by the nature of the steep and narrow path by which alone it could be reached.

While those gathered around the enclosure, following Coryon’s fixed gaze, were watching the outside faces of the sliding doors or shutters, these doors began to move; and, amidst a hush of awe-struck expectation, they disclosed a gap which gradually widened, and through which the fatal branches quickly darted. Then, from within, arose a fearful and appalling cry, as the miserable prisoners caught in this trap of their own contriving began to realise their situation. The gap grew wider, and, anon, another opened farther on, and into this the searching branches likewise entered, hungry for the prey within. And, as the gaps grew wider, they disclosed to view an awful scene. Some dozens of terror-stricken wretches could be seen fighting and struggling with the writhing branches and with each other, amidst a deafening din of screams, and shrieks, and yells; the officers and soldiers using their swords, and the priests and others their daggers, in a hopeless contest with the twisting branches that kept coiling around them. In their mad struggles and desperate efforts the combatants fought with one another, the stronger striving to push the weaker in front of them; the latter, in turn, stabbing backwards at those who thus tried to make use of them. Three or four, in headlong terror, leaped from the terrace on to the ground beneath, where they fell with dull thuds, and probably broken limbs; but, ere they could rise, their legs were entangled in the ubiquitous branches and escape became impossible. Dakla was seen, with a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, at one moment slashing furiously at the branches that assailed him, at another striving to hold in front of him Skelda, the next in rank to Coryon. Two of the priests were seen engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle, apparently unmindful of the coils that gradually encircled them and presently dragged both out, locked together, and still frantically fighting with each other. They were carried up to the top of the tree, and disappeared, still fighting, within the cavity. But, though the rapacious tree had now as much as it could, for the time, dispose of in this way, it had no intention of giving up its hold upon the others. These it grappled in its toils, dragging them about hither and thither, dangling them now this way and now that, but never giving one a chance of escape—evidently bent on saving all up for future meals—perhaps days hence. It was a gruesome scene that shocked and sickened the spectators, for all they were so incensed, and justly so, against the victims.

Meanwhile, the iron door in the rock above had opened, and a woman was seen hurrying down the dangerous path. Her hair was streaming loosely about her shoulders, her eyes were wild and fierce, and she laughed and gesticulated in a fashion that made those who watched her think her crazy. She made her way to where Coryon still stood, a silent witness of what was going on before him; and she then paused and surveyed the awful scene with a smile that was almost devilish.

Just then Skelda leaped out of the covered-way on to the ground beneath; then, rising to his feet, looked round despairingly, and, glancing up, he met the fierce gaze and cruel smile of the woman he had so shamefully betrayed. She pointed her finger at him.

“Ha! Ha!” she cried triumphantly, “this is my work, Skelda! I closed the gates and shut you all in with the outer door. My love to you, my—husband!” This last word was hissed out at him between clenched teeth. “My love to you, dear friend.” And she mockingly threw him a kiss on the tips of her fingers. Then, when the wretched Skelda’s feet were dragged from under him by a branch that had coiled round his legs, she addressed herself to Coryon, who had now fixed his eyes upon her, his evil face twitching convulsively with the fury he could not suppress.

“See, great Coryon! Mighty Coryon! All-powerful Coryon! See my handiwork! Yes, mine! See what a woman’s wit hath done for thy precious friends. What a day to live to see! I saw thee in the clutch of thy prisoner; heard thee called ‘coward’ to thy face. It was sweet that; and sweet to see thy prey escape thee! And this is sweet too! Look at thy great friend Skelda; see how he kicks and shrieks! Think of it—all my doing! See how Dakla glares! Now he and Palana are fighting one another! Oh, but it is a brave sight to look upon! Fit even for the gods ye have served so well! I think I am almost avenged; but the sweetest of all is yet to come—when I see thee given to the tree, as I shall!”

Coryon struggled, but vainly, to get at her. She shrugged her shoulders and turned her back upon him, then slowly approached Monella; the look of triumph died away, and an expression that was partly of sorrow, and partly of hard determination, took its place. Arrived in front of him, she threw herself humbly on her knees.

“My lord,” she cried, with clasped hands, “I crave justice at thy hands, I demand it! In the names of the countless women and fair children whom yonder monster hath given over to the same awful death that hath now overtaken his own creatures; in the name of my own bitter wrongs and sufferings, I demand that this loathsome being shall not escape his just reward. I ask that he be given up to that tree to which he has consigned so many; and that first he be confined in the same cell from which I have escaped. I will lead thy officers to it. Let him be kept there till the wicked tree, with recovered appetite, shall be ready to devour him! Let him there endure the tortures he hath inflicted upon me and countless others!”

“Who art thou, daughter?” asked Monella gently.

She shook her head mournfully and replied, much as she had to Leonard,

“I am called Fernina, lord. Once, I was a joyous-hearted wife and mother; but Coryon stole me away from my home to give me to his friend Skelda. What I am now I scarcely know; misery and suffering, and shame and infamies unutterable have made me—alas, I know not what!”

“From my heart I pity thee, my daughter. Thy wrongs cry out for punishment, and thy prayer is just. Show my officers the place. Coryon shall be the last meal of the accursed fetish he has fed with the blood of so many victims.”

“I will go back by the way by which I came,” Fernina answered, “and will make safe again the covered-way; then will I open the gates, that thine officers may take him in that way.”

By this time the covered-way was empty; every occupant had been dragged or had leaped out and was held in the toils below. There was, therefore, nothing to prevent its being used again. Fernina went up the path and disappeared from view; then soon the sliding shutters were seen to move back in their places; and, shortly after, she appeared at one end of the covered-way and beckoned to those in charge of Coryon to follow her. He was led down and placed in the same cell she had occupied, and there shut in and left to himself, and to look out, if he chose, at his friends in the tree’s tenacious arms outside. Some of them were so close he could have spoken with them.

After Coryon had been removed, Sanaima turned to Monella; then raised his hands and eyes towards heaven.

“Let us thank the Great Spirit,” said he solemnly, “that hath, at last, delivered our enemies into our hands, and that without the loss of a life, or so much as a wound upon our side!”

And Monella added a heartfelt “Amen.”

“Of a truth,” he added reverently, “the wicked have been caught today in their own snare. At last, we may truly rejoice that the curse hath been removed, for ever, from the fair land of Manoa. But this is a fearful sight; let us hasten from it. But ere we do, Sanaima, send kindly and trustworthy people to care for the poor woman Fernina and the other women and children who are somewhere within. I cannot now stay longer; I must look after the princess and return to the palace.”

“I will remain and look to them myself,” answered Sanaima. “Now that the Great Spirit hath at last given them into my charge, it is a trust that belongeth to me, and to me alone.”

During the foregoing events, several messengers had passed to and fro delivering messages, in low tones, to Monella or some of his officers, and speeding away again with their replies, or upon other errands. In this way Monella had learned that the princess had recovered from her long swoon and expressed a strong desire to return to the palace to her father, and he had sent back word to Leonard to accompany her.

When, therefore, Templemore, with Monella and many more, reached the great gates on leaving the amphitheatre, they found Ulama and all those with her gone, and they now hastened to the palace after them.

CHAPTER XXXI

‘THE SON OF APALANO!’

On leaving the amphitheatre, Monella and his followers formed a long and imposing procession. Only a few had been left behind to guard the prisoners. These last were immured in cells pointed out by Fernina, who was well acquainted with the interior arrangements of Coryon’s retreat. For within the rocks was an almost endless series of passages and galleries opening, at the further end, on to an extensive hanging terrace on the very face of the great precipice that formed one end of Roraima’s perpendicular sides. Even those of Coryon’s followers who had gone over secretly to Monella, were only partially acquainted with the interior of this fastness; hence Fernina’s assistance was found of great use by Sanaima and those who remained with him.

It can scarcely be said that the procession, as it left the great gates of the amphitheatre, exhibited, at first, many signs of having just been engaged in a victorious and successful expedition. Those who formed it were, for the most part, silent and preoccupied; for the scenes they had witnessed—and that, as they knew, were still in progress—were of too horrible a character to be readily dismissed from the mind. But, as they proceeded on their way, they met and were joined by fresh bands of red-coated sympathisers; and these, not having the same reasons for repressing their elation at the result of the day’s proceedings, broke out into cheering as they passed the groups of people who were now coming out to meet them. For messengers had gone on in advance to tell the news, and the crowds who had been waiting so anxiously in the city, soon learned that Coryon’s downfall was an accomplished fact. They had already heard the good tidings of the rescue of the princess and her lover and friends, and were only waiting for this last crowning announcement; when it came, they became almost delirious with joy, and soon poured out to meet the victors and give them an enthusiastic welcome.

Thus the procession that started so quietly—almost in sadness, as it seemed—from the dismal amphitheatre, became at last, as it entered the city, a veritable triumphal pageant, meeting on all sides, and returning, cheers and shouts of joy and exultation. And when Monella, with Templemore, Colenna, and others came into view in the centre of the long array, every head was uncovered and every knee bent. Then, when he had passed, the excited crowds rose and shouted again louder than ever. And well might they do so; for they—and only they—knew the full meaning of the horrors from which they had that day been delivered.

By the time they had neared the king’s palace, the crowd had grown so dense that it was with some difficulty that space was cleared for the passage of the principal persons into the building. At the entrance, under the great archway, Leonard, looking pale and anxious, awaited them. Running forward to meet Monella, he said,

“I have heard the news and congratulate you all. But I am in sore distress about the princess. We had much ado to bring her here, and I fear she is very ill. Let me entreat you to go and see her at once, and then let me know what you think about her.”

“Certainly will I, my son,” replied Monella kindly, and hurried away; while Leonard turned and greeted Templemore and the others with him. Then they all entered the palace and went up one of the great staircases and on to a terrace overlooking the open space where the crowd was assembled, and there awaited Monella’s return.

Presently he came to them.

“The princess is weak and much depressed,” he said, “and will require care for awhile; but I see no cause for anxiety. Naturally, the poor child is terribly upset. She grieves, too, about the condition of the king her father, and wishes to help nurse him, but this she has not strength for at present. Patience, my son. Be patient and of good heart.” He looked with pity and concern at Leonard’s haggard face with its hollow, dark-ringed eyes and its worn-out look. “You have suffered—cruelly—I can see,” he added, placing his hand gently on the young man’s shoulder. “You have been sorely tried.”

“Ah!” returned Leonard with a heavy sigh. “You cannot imagine what I have been through! My thoughts still dwell upon the horror of it; my eyes still see the sights I gazed upon! I feel as though I shall never be my old self again. And Ulama! Though I do not yet know how much she saw or knew, I sadly believe she shares my feelings.”

“You are both worn out—exhausted, my son. Wait but a space—while I speak to the crowd and dismiss them—and then I will give you a cordial and refreshment; after that you must lie down and have a long sleep.”

“I fear even to sleep,” said Leonard, shaking his head sadly. “I dread the thought of sleep, for I know but too well what my dreams will be.”

“Nay, my son, have no fear. I will promise you dreamless, restful sleep,” Monella answered, and moved away to the front of the terrace.

At the sight of his commanding form and upraised hand the shouts and noise and all the subdued roar that till now had been continuous were hushed. Then, as with one accord, all uncovered and fell upon their knees. He spoke a few brief words and then dismissed them, pointing out that his friends were in need of rest and quiet.

The crowd, in respectful obedience, quietly dispersed, and Monella, motioning Elwood and Templemore to follow him, led them into his private apartments and there mixed and administered to both certain drinks that had an immediate and wonderfully revivifying effect. These potions had also the advantage of stimulating their appetites, so that they were the better enabled to take the nourishment he pressed upon them. Then he accompanied them to their sleeping chambers and bade them lie down and take the repose they so sorely needed. None of the three had had any sleep or rest—for Leonard’s swoon in his cell and subsequent state of torpor could scarcely be so called—for the past two nights. The two young men were not only worn out, but in that excited state in which the brain seems to insist upon going over and over and over again the events of the previous troubled time, in that ceaseless, monotonous whirl that makes all efforts at sleep so useless. But Monella—who alone showed no sign of the strain all had undergone—sat down by the side of each in succession for a short time, and talked to him in his low, musical tones. What he talked of, or what he did, neither could afterwards remember; but the effect was magical. As Leonard afterwards expressed it, a soothing, delicious sense of drowsy rest crept over his senses; a rest that was not sleep, for he could still hear the usual sounds around, but gradually growing hushed and muffled. Then came a sensation as of being lifted and wafted away by a gentle wind; and in the sighing of the breeze there seemed a delightful strain of music, a dreamy lullaby that carried with it a restful peace sinking imperceptibly into untroubled repose.

The strangest thing, perhaps, is that even the unimpressionable Templemore was affected in the same way, as he afterwards admitted. Nor was that all; for, on awaking, he was conscious of having had the most delicious dreams, though he could not quite recall their subject. For some time he lay in a state of blissful ease, striving to recollect the dream that had left sensations so delicious, and afraid to rouse himself for fear the remembrance should vanish altogether. He could hear the usual sounds going on in the palace, the tramp of armed men, and clashing and jingling of arms; but he was only half-conscious of them. Then he heard his name called in tones that seemed to come from the far distance, and, opening his eyes, he saw Monella standing beside his couch and regarding him with a grave smile.

“Wake up, my friend,” he said. “It is time you roused yourself. I wish to have some talk with you and Leonard. You have slept for eight-and-forty hours!”

Templemore sat up and rubbed his eyes.

“I feel as if I had slept for months,” he answered in a half-dazed way. “And I’ve had such curious dreams, or visions; I feel quite sorry to be awake again. It’s a strange thing for me to talk like that, I know,” he added with hesitation.

“What did you dream of?” asked Leonard, who had entered in time to hear the other’s concluding words.

“That’s the strange part of it,” returned Templemore, looking perplexed and somewhat sheepish. “I’ve had a most extraordinary dream of some kind, or a vision or something—that I know, yet I cannot remember what it was. All I can now tell you is that it was something so extremely pleasant that it has left the most agreeable sensations behind it. My very blood seems in a warm, delicious glow from it. What can it be?” he added, looking in a bewildered way from one to the other.

But Monella made no comment, and went away.

“It’s been just the same with me,” said Leonard, in a low voice, that had an expression almost of awe in it. “Monella woke me about half an hour ago and I felt much like what you have described.”

“It’s very odd,” Templemore returned thoughtfully. “It must be the drink he gave us. Do you remember what Harry Lorien said of him? That he believed Monella was a magician? I begin to think him a wizard myself. But, dear boy, how much better you look!”

“So do you, Jack; and he tells me Ulama is the same—and it’s all his doing, you know. He is a wizard; and that’s all there is to be said about it.”

“The question is,” Jack went on, “what was it he gave us? Here it has made us sleep nearly forty-eight hours; and it seems, has done us, in that time, as much good as one would have thought would have taken a week or two to accomplish, and yet it has left no dull, drowsy, listless feeling, such as opiates generally do. I can’t make it out.” And, shaking his head gravely, Templemore went to take his morning plunge.

When they sought Monella, he bade Leonard give him the particulars of all that had occurred to him. Leonard recounted them.

“It seemed very terrible to me,” he said when he had finished, “at the time; and truly I thought I should never get over it. Yet—now—it seems such a long while ago—so far off.”

“That is well, my son,” returned Monella. “For it has been a sore trial. I have heard about you,” he continued, turning to Templemore, “from the lady Zonella and from Ergalon.”

“I owe a great debt to her—to him—to both,” Templemore replied. “Without their aid I fear things would have gone badly with Leonard, and myself too.”

“Yes, Coryon had ably laid his treacherous schemes, and we all have reason to be thankful for their failure,” said Monella solemnly. “Things came to a crisis just then. I had just matured certain plans that Sanaima and I had laid out; and only the day before my long-lost memory returned to me, and I remembered, all in a flash, as it were, the whole of my former life.”

“That you were—that is—are——” Templemore began; but stopped and looked confused.

“Yes, that I am indeed Mellenda,” was the reply, given with an air of grave conviction. “I know the statement sounds incredible to you; you are of that nature, have been brought up in that kind of school, that makes such a thing sound impossible. But if I myself feel and know that it is true, and if my people around me know it and not only admit it but rejoice in it, then, for me, that is sufficient.”

“Certainly,” Templemore assented, feeling very uncomfortable under the other’s gaze.

“Still—to you—let me be, while you remain here, simply what I have been before—your friend Monella. I am the same being today that you have known and, I hope, liked—that you have joined with in facing danger and adventure—I am the same! The mere fact that I remember things now that I had forgotten before makes no difference to me or to our friendship.”

This was said with a look of such kind regard that Templemore felt his own heart swell with responsive feeling. It was true he had a strong inclination to regard the other as a sincere, but self-deceiving mystic; but, apart from that—apart from this strange delusion, as he deemed it, about Monella’s being the legendary Mellenda—Templemore looked upon him with feelings of the greatest admiration, affection, and respect. And he had never been so conscious of those feelings as at this moment. He took the hand that the other extended to him, and bent his head respectfully.

“Sir,” said he in a low tone, “no son could respect and reverence a beloved and honoured father more than I do you. No one could feel prouder of the love and esteem you have been kind enough to show me; no people, I feel satisfied, could have a worthier, a more disinterested, or exalted ruler. If I find it difficult to realise the marvel that you have related, if I have the idea that, perhaps, you are mistaking your own dreams for actual realities, it is not from any doubt of your sincerity or veracity—only that in that way alone can I bring myself to explain the wonder.”

“And I, on my side, respect the honesty that will not allow you to pretend what you cannot feel,” was the reply. “To you let me be simply Monella, and let us continue on our old terms of mutual friendship and esteem. And now I am going to rouse your wonder and surprise with yet one other unexpected statement. Your friend Leonard here is not the son of the parents he has all his life supposed himself to be.”

Leonard sprang up with an exclamation.

“I will explain how. You have already told us”—this to Leonard—“how that your supposed father and mother, with yourself, and your Indian nurse, once stayed some time with a strange people in a secluded valley among the peaks of the Andes. I was not there at the time, but they were my people.”

“Your people!” Leonard repeated with astonishment.

“Yes, my son, my people! Apalano, and two or three others of whom you have heard me speak—all, alas, now dead! I was informed of your visit when I next came back to them, for a while, from my wanderings. I heard of it and what had happened; how Apalano’s little child—his only one—had been killed by a venomous serpent.”

“The child of Apalano!” Leonard repeated in amaze.

“The two children,” Monella continued—“Mr. Elwood’s child and Apalano’s—were wonderfully alike, and your nurse, the Indian woman Carenna, was very fond of both, and was in the habit of taking them out together. She was out with them thus one day, and left them both sleeping in the shade of a clump of trees while she went a few yards away to gather some fruit. She returned (so she says) in a few minutes; then, thinking one of the children had a strange look she picked it up in alarm; at the same moment a serpent glided out from under its clothes and went away, hissing, into the wood. But the child was dead; and it was the child of the Englishman. Then Carenna, frantic with grief, and afraid to tell the truth to her master and mistress, exchanged the clothes and ornaments of the children. The trick succeeded; for the dead infant was swollen and discoloured; and Apalano mourned the death of his only child, when it went away, in reality, with the strangers and their Indian nurse.”

“Then,” said Leonard excitedly, “I am——”

“Ranelda, son of my well-beloved friend! Ah,” said Monella, sadly, “it was a cruel thing to do. It preyed upon the mind of my friend, and, I truly believe, brought on the fatal sickness. But for that he might have lived, haply, to see at last the land of his fathers—might have been one of us here today.”

Leonard felt the tears come into his eyes at the picture called up by this suggestion; and he said in a low tone,

“Alas! My poor father! It was cruel—very cruel!”

“It seems so,” Monella returned with a sigh. “But God so willed it. And He has also willed that you should be led back to your own nation—that, after many days, you should join with me in the work that I had set myself.”

“It’s very wonderful. Yet it seems to me to explain those strange dreams and visions that were ever urging me on to attempt the exploration of the mysterious Roraima! I suppose, when Carenna found out who you were, she confessed?”

“Well,” answered Monella, with a half-smile, “I made her do so. People find it difficult to hide anything from me. I saw she had some secret, and compelled her to divulge it. But, since she was so afraid to confess to others, and especially averse to your knowing it, I made her this promise, that, if you desired to return from our adventure, you should do so in ignorance of the actual facts. I was only to tell you in case you freely elected to stay here permanently. That is why I have kept it back thus far. I had intended to announce it to you and to the people at the time of your public betrothal. Then they would have received you, with one accord, as one having a right to rule over them. And now you can understand why I have regarded you with such affection from the first; and how glad I was to find, in Apalano’s son, one so worthy of my love and confidence. Your father was allied with my line, and you are, therefore, akin to me. Worthy son of a worthy father! Let me join with you in thankfulness that you have, after all, come into the heritage that is yours by right! The young eagle was bound to find its way to the eyrie for which it was best fitted.” And Monella stood up and laid his hand affectionately upon the young man’s shoulder. Leonard reverently bowed his head, and the other pressed his lips upon his forehead.

There was silence for some seconds. Then Templemore took Leonard’s hand.

“And let me too congratulate you, Leonard,” he said fervently. “It is good news for you—this; for, since you have elected to pass here the remainder of your life, it will be a great comfort and advantage to you that you have such good claims and qualifications for the position.”

“I am thinking about my poor father who died of heartache and disappointment,” rejoined Leonard; and in his tone there was a note of genuine sorrow. “And I can scarcely forgive Carenna—fond of me as I know her to have always been—for her cruelty to him.”

Presently Templemore turned again to Monella, saying,

“Did Carenna then believe this mountain was inhabited, that you would find here the people you came to seek? Did you yourself think that?”

“As to myself, I can scarcely tell you,” was the answer. “‘Reason’ said that the hope of finding here the people of whom Apalano had so often talked to me—for that was all I then knew—was chimerical; yet Apalano’s dying wishes, and some strange sentiment or instinct within me, urged me on. Then, when I met with Carenna, I found she quite thought it might turn out true.”

“Carenna thought it?”

“Why, yes; but that is not very surprising, for, according to the Indian ideas, it would not be the only instance in this country. There is a belief amongst the Indians in several parts that some of the unexplored mountains are inhabited by strange and unknown races. This applies to those—and there are many; Roraima is not the only one—that are surrounded by the curious belts of almost impenetrable forest. The Indians believe that, if these forests could be passed, strange peoples would be met with living on the mountains thus encircled; and they say that on clear nights the lights from their fires may often be seen.10 Therefore Carenna was quite prepared to believe we might find Roraima inhabited.”

“I see. Then she, at least, will not have been so very much surprised at our not returning, and may not have given us up for dead?”

“Yes; that is probable enough.”

“And if she has heard of the signal flares we made when some Indians—as I suppose they were—were camping in sight of the mountain, she would look upon that as a sign of our being up here alive?”

“I think that is very likely.”

“There is the suggestion of a little comfort in that,” said Templemore; “for, otherwise, those I left behind, and who are dear to me, must have given up all hope and be now mourning me as dead. With Leonard it is different. He stood alone in the world and has no one to grieve for him more than as an ordinary friend.”

10 Mr. Im Thurn, referring to this belief amongst the Indians, states that he has himself seen, from a distance, strange lights on the Canakoo Mountains for which he was quite unable to account. See ‘Among the Indians of British Guiana,’ p. 384.

10 Mr. Im Thurn, referring to this belief amongst the Indians, states that he has himself seen, from a distance, strange lights on the Canakoo Mountains for which he was quite unable to account. See ‘Among the Indians of British Guiana,’ p. 384.

CHAPTER XXXII

THE TREE’S LAST MEAL.

“And now,” said Monella, “I have some other news to give you; for you have slept for nearly two days, and in that time much has been done. While you slept we have been busy.”

“Do you never sleep—yourself?” Templemore asked.

“Yes; but not for long at a time. However, the long rest you have taken is no reproach to you, for it was my doing. I saw that it was needful to restore your strength and good spirits. You are the better for it; the princess, the lady Zonella, and others have also had long rests and are the better for it, as I have already told Leonard. The king Dranoa, too, is better—in a sense; for he has now no mental trouble, and with his sickness there is no physical pain nor suffering nor distress of any kind. But he is very wishful now that the marriage of his daughter should take place as soon as possible; for only then, he feels, will he be able to die happily. In deference to his earnest wish I have settled for it to be solemnised at the end of a fortnight; and, in view of the fact that the state of his health cannot but be a source of sadness to his people, I have deemed it better to order that it shall be a quiet ceremonial, and not a great fête, as had been planned. This will not offend your feelings, my son?”

Leonard looked up with a bright smile.

“After what you have told me,” he said, “I feel, with gladness and gratitude that it is not without reason that you have so often thus addressed me—as your son. Now, I may indeed claim you as a father.”

“You may indeed,” Monella assented; “I take the place of my lost friend.”

“Then you have no need to ask whether what you think best pleases me. If you will be my father, choose for me and instruct me; for I feel I have need of your help to enable me to take up, and bear worthily, the position I owe to you. I felt this,” continued Leonard, with great earnestness—“I felt this very strongly when I lay in that foul den that the poor demented wretch called ‘the devil-tree’s larder.’ I made then a vow that, if it should please God to deliver me from the peril that threatened me, I would thenceforth devote my life to the good of the people I had come amongst. I repented sorely that I had given my thoughts too much to selfish—albeit innocent—enjoyment; and I vowed I would not be guilty of that selfishness in the future, if the chance and the choice were offered to me. And now that they are, help me—instruct me, my father, I pray you, in all that may enable me to fulfil that vow.”

Monella gazed long and fixedly at the young man; and in his eyes there was a glistening as of a tear. Then he rose and went to the window that looked out over the lake, and stood awhile, with a far-off vacant look that told his thoughts were wandering to distant scenes or persons. It was some time before he looked round.

And, when he again turned to speak to the young men, they were both conscious that some indefinable change had taken place in his manner. His face expressed unmistakably a great and exalted joy; and the eyes, that at all times had had so strange a charm in them, had taken on a new expression. For a little while Templemore strove in vain to ascertain in what the change consisted; but presently it seemed to him that they had lost that half-sad, half-wistful expression he had so constantly remarked; and that they now conveyed, instead, a sense of contentment and repose.

“That which you have now told to me,” said Monella, walking slowly up to Leonard, “is as sweet to me as water to the thirsty in the desert.” With grave deliberation he placed both hands upon the young man’s shoulders and looked into his eyes with fatherly affection.

“Know, my son Leonard—or rather Ranelda, as you rightly should be called—know that in these words you bring to my soul the message it has been awaiting—sometimes in hope, too often, alas! In doubt and in despair—through the long ages. Yours is the hand—the hand of the son of Apalano—that bears to me the key of my fetters; and yours are the lips that announce my coming freedom! My work, then, nears its end, and soon—ay, soon—I—shall—be—free!”

While uttering these last words Monella raised his hand, and with upturned face looked rapturously above him, as if his sight, piercing the marble ceiling overhead, perceived some far-off scene that, while invisible to his companions, filled him with the most intense delight. Presently, he turned away with a regretful sigh, as though the vision he had been gazing at had vanished, and added, with an absent manner,

“Now, when I leave you, I shall feel——”

He stopped; in his eyes there was a far-off look; and Leonard, who had been looking on with wide-open, wondering eyes that comprehended little, if anything, of his discourse, exclaimed in anxious tones,

“Leave me—leave us! What mean you, my father? You surely do not think of leaving the people you so love, to become again a wanderer?”

Monella shook his head; and, appearing to rouse himself, he replied in quite a different voice,

“You misunderstand, my son; I speak of when I shall be called away—called from this earthly life.”

“But that will not be for a long, a very long time yet,” urged Leonard, looking with confidence at the stalwart frame, and remembering the many feats of strength the other had performed.

Monella turned his eyes on Templemore.

“Do you remember,” he asked, smiling, “a conversation we had one day in the museum; when I explained to you that no ‘Plant of Life’ or other specific—no power, indeed, of earth—can keep in its earthly cage the soul that feels its work is done, and that, therefore, frets itself against its prison bars?”

“I remember,” answered Templemore in a subdued tone, and avoiding Leonard’s questioning eyes.

“Ah! Then you understand me. And now”—this with a gesture that enforced obedience—“now let us go back to that which we were speaking of. I was saying that King Dranoa desires that you and Ulama should be wedded without delay. To spare the feelings of the maiden, and give her time, so that the matter may not come upon her too suddenly, I have named a day two weeks hence. There will be no pageant, no public fête; only the necessary ceremony, quiet and solemn.”

“I should prefer it so,” murmured Leonard.

“Then that is arranged; and it will take place in the great Temple of the White Priests that has been closed for so many years. Workmen are engaged upon it, and it is now being cleansed and renovated. It will be ready in time.

“The next thing I have to tell you is that Coryon has suffered his punishment, and is dead.”

“Coryon dead?” the other two exclaimed in a breath.

“He is dead,” Monella repeated solemnly. “It seems that during the night after we left, there were dreadful scenes in the amphitheatre. Those large reptiles—they are called ‘myrgolams’ here—came out of their pool and attacked the half-dead wretches entangled in the tree. But the branches tried hard to retain their victims, and so—well, you can almost imagine what took place. The creatures carried off the miserable beings in scraps; tore them piece by piece from the clutches of the branches till nothing was left!”

He paused for a moment, and his listeners shuddered.

“Thus it came about that the greedy tree was, after all, baulked of most of its intended victims; all, indeed, save three or four; though the deaths the others met with were not less horrible. Yesterday, finding the monster had no victims in its grasp, I ordered the separating door to be withdrawn. In a moment, Coryon was seized and carried up into its awful gorge. With that, the tale of this terrible tree must end. I have no heart to devote more criminals to it; though there are some among the prisoners who are scarcely less guilty than was Coryon. But these Sanaima will deal with; he will punish them as seems best to him; and I have set men to work to dig a mine from one of the cells so as to get underneath the tree. Then it can be blown up with gunpowder. And I designed to ask you to superintend the work for me,” turning to Templemore.

“That I will gladly do. And—the—reptiles?” Templemore was doubtful of the name.

“Kill them off, if you can, with bullets. And now, to turn to your own affairs. Think not I have forgotten them; I know you are anxious and will be getting restless and unhappy. As I said to you before, when you go away, you will not go empty-handed. On the contrary, you will carry with you such riches as will place you beyond the need of toil for the remainder of your life. I need not say, ‘Do not therefore be an idle man,’ for I know that you will never be. Whenever it pleases you to go, some of my people shall escort you through the wood to ‘Monella Lodge,’ as we called it, and there await you while you go on to Daranato and bring back such Indians as you require. Then, do you, in turn, with your Indians, re-escort my people to the cavern; for, you must remember, they are not used to forest life; nor can they, if left alone, protect themselves against wild animals. Will that please you?”

“Yes, truly it is all I can ask or wish for,” Templemore responded.

“I shall wish to know—that is, all here will wish to know,” said Monella, “that you get back in safety to ‘Monella Lodge.’ With the heliograph mirror which you will find packed away at ‘Monella Lodge’ you can send us back a message to that effect; then, with the one we brought here with us, we can reply, and send you a ‘God speed you’ to start you on your way. Shall it be so arranged?”

“Gladly,” responded Templemore with emotion. “But must I then resign myself to the thought that I shall never see Leonard or any of you any more?”

“You must,” Monella answered quietly, but firmly. “Leonard—or Ranelda, as I prefer to call him—has asked me to guide him and instruct him; and my first and last advice to him is, and will be, to keep his people to themselves. Now let us consider this question from what you yourself would term a practical point of view. The term ‘El Dorado’ has come to be a synonym in the outside world for a sort of earthly paradise, has it not? Originally handed down from actual facts and history relating to this, the celebrated island capital of Manoa—the Queen City of my once powerful and extensive empire—with the tales of its wonderful wealth and the virtues of the Plant of Life; its memory lingered through the ages long after the waters had receded and left it isolated and unknown. And the Spaniards called it ‘El Dorado,’ which has ever since been but another expression—as I have said—for ‘Earthly Paradise,’ or ‘summit of every man’s ambition.’ Is it not so? And seeing that the great curse that so long lay upon the land has been removed, can you say that now it does not deserve the term? Have we not here a veritable ‘Earthly Paradise’—an actual realisation of what you in the outside world understand when you use the expression ‘El Dorado?’”

“Truly I believe it.”

“Ah yes! It is so now—or will be henceforth, when those who have had such sorrows here shall have outlived them,” said Monella with impressive emphasis. “But what I would put to you, is this; you have, perhaps, seen something of frontier settlements, or miners’ camps, and gold diggings—at least, I have—and you have heard of them. Now, you know well enough that the only people who would care to brave the hardships of the journey hither would be those led on by the lust and greed of gold. Supposing things were reversed, and you were in Leonard’s place, and had here your wife—as he will have—your friends, your own people—all that was dearest in the world, with ample wealth, would you care to allow him, or any one else, to lead people hither, to turn this ‘El Dorado’ into a ‘Gold diggings,’ a ‘Miners’ camp,’ with all their hideous associations, their gambling and drunkenness; their rowdyism and their debauchery, their shootings and murders?”

“No!” said Templemore thoughtfully, “you are right there. Still—surely, between that, and forbidding intercourse altogether—forbidding me even to come to visit my friend——”

Monella smiled and gravely shook his head.

“You think that, between the two extremes, there should be some middle course possible,” he rejoined. “Unfortunately—or fortunately—there is none. You will have no need to come here seeking for wealth. You would not be likely to undertake the expedition alone. Those who accompanied you would do so from self-seeking motives. Then, again, you will have other ties; you will have your wife, children. You do not contemplate dragging them hither through trackless wastes to greet friends they have never known as you have? They would not like it, again, if you, a man of wealth, able to do as you pleased, were to leave them for a long space while you made the journey hither alone! And, finally, the thing is not practical or feasible for another reason. You will have much ado to find your way out from here. You know that in these regions vegetation spreads rapidly unless—as in the canyon we came up, or in the clearing immediately outside around the cavern by which we entered, or out on the savanna—there are special causes that check its spread. Should you come back in a year’s time, you would not only find the road we cut out impassable—you could not even trace it. The spread of the undergrowth, the fall of great trees or branches, the hurling down of rocks from the heights above, floods from the streams and watercourses—all these, and other forces of nature in this wild region, will, within a few months, have combined to block up or obliterate completely the path we cut with so much difficulty. Is it not so?”

“I fear you are right, though it had not occurred to me,” Templemore admitted with reluctance.

“Then, again, with the wealth you will take back with you, you will not care to remain in Georgetown. You will wish to travel with your wife; in any case, it would be years before you would be likely to think of undertaking another journey.”

“If ever you do, though, dear old Jack,” Leonard burst in impulsively, “if ever circumstances should arise to make you wish to communicate with me, you can always do so by the heliograph, you know, or perhaps by balloon, if I’m still alive.”

But, though Leonard put on a cheerful tone, it was easy to see that both he and his friend felt deeply the severance that too clearly lay before them. Yet, after Monella’s argument, they saw no alternative.

“I am as sorry as you can be,” Monella wound up kindly; “but your duties call you away from us, even as Leonard’s call upon him to stay. And now I must leave you, for many are waiting to see me. First, however”—this to Leonard—“I will lead you to the princess.”

Leonard followed him from the apartment into another, where Monella left him; and presently Ulama entered, looking radiant, lovely, beautiful—so Leonard thought—beyond belief.

At the sight of Leonard, she threw herself upon him with a joyous cry; with her face upon his shoulder, she sobbed and laughed by turns.

“Oh, my darling! My darling!” she murmured in gentle accents, “if you only knew how glad I am to see you! I’ve had such dreams—dreams about you—dreams that frightened me so! They were only dreams, were they not?”

She looked up anxiously, and fixed her glorious eyes upon his face, and closely scanned it. Then she gave a sigh, the token of relief, and once more she nestled her face upon his shoulder.

“Yes!” she said softly, “after all ’twas but a dream! For you look well, and your eyes are bright and happy-looking; and in my dream you were looking dreadful! Your poor face looked so thin, and so different, and your eyes so sunken, and they had dark rings around them, and oh! their terrible, despairing look! But it was only a dream, or you could not look well again so soon, as now you do. Yes, ’twas but a dream, my darling! But oh! an awful dream. I thought there was a great tree—like that you said you saw one day; and it was a tree that fed on human beings, and you were lying bound and they were going to give you to that dreadful tree! Oh, Leonard, my love, think what a dream that was for me! Think, for a moment, what I felt! And there were other dreadful, awful things!” She shivered and cried softly for a space.

“Yes, my darling,” Leonard answered soothingly. “But, as you say, ’twas but a dream!”

“Ah, yes! And now it seems far off; for, after it, came other dreams, that were happy and delightful, so that the bad one receded ever farther. Just when I seemed even at the very point of death from horror, a cool hand pressed tenderly on my brow, and brought me peace. It seemed to cool the fever that had made me think my very brain would burst; and a voice said—oh so kindly—‘Be at rest, my daughter, I bring thee peace, and surcease of thy sorrow.’ Then I opened my eyes and saw a strange form leaning over me. It was dressed in a warrior dress, just like that which stands in our museum and which is called Mellenda’s. Helmet, sword, everything the same. Then I felt secure and happy, for I thought the great Mellenda had come to deliver me in my trouble. But—and this seems so strange—when I looked up at his face, who do you think he was? Ah! You would never guess! But the countenance was Monella’s—your friend Monella’s! Was not my dream a strange one?”

“Strange, indeed, my dear one,” said Leonard tenderly.

“From that moment,” went on Ulama, “everything was changed, everything was lovely. It seemed to me that you then came to me, and led me from that scene of horror. Where we went I know not; but, hand in hand, we wandered on, till you led me home. Then once more things became confused—I can scarcely remember—but I’m nearly sure Mellenda seemed to come to me again. And—yes—I remember, he repeated, ‘Rest, my child; I bring thee rest and peace.’ Then he left me, and we wandered on—you and I, my Leonard—through the loveliest, the most entrancing scenes; among places, people, strange to me, yet all delightful; and, oh, it all seemed so sweet, so restful, so grateful, after the horror of that first awful dream! At last I wakened, and they tell me I have slept through two whole nights and nearly two whole days! Did you not wonder that you saw me not the while? Tell me how you have passed your time without me?”

And thus the gentle, loving girl talked on with childlike innocence, Leonard at first evading her inquiries, averse to mar her happiness by telling her the truth.

Indeed, it was not for some days, and then only by degrees and carefully guarded words, that he revealed the truth about her ‘dreams.’

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE LAST OF THE GREAT DEVIL-TREE.

Templemore did not find the occupation of directing the operations for destroying the great devil-tree a very agreeable or engrossing one. His memories of the amphitheatre filled him with disgust and loathing both of the place and of the vegetable monster it contained, and he never went near them without reluctance; for all that, he stuck conscientiously to the task now that he had undertaken it. But there was neither excitement nor interest in it to keep his thoughts engaged, and to prevent their brooding upon his desire to get back to those dear to him. Now that everything was settling down peacefully in the land, and there was nothing specially to keep him, he felt he was not justified in prolonging further unduly his friends’ suspense. He saw comparatively little, too, of Leonard, who was continually engaged with Monella and others in councils and consultations that naturally had little interest for Templemore; though, no doubt, they would have been glad enough of his company and assistance in their deliberations, had he chosen to offer them.

As a consequence, he wandered about a good deal alone; and took to haunting the spot from which he and Leonard had made their signal flares, and whence he could, with his glasses, just distinguish ‘Monella Lodge’ and the adjacent open country. Here he would sit by the hour together, wistfully gazing out over the vast panorama spread beneath him, and moodily watching for the slightest sign of life in the far distance. Sometimes ‘Nea,’ the puma, offered herself as a companion in his walks; at such times, when he went to the amphitheatre, he was always in some concern to keep her out of the reach of the fatal tree, lest she should meet the fate that had befallen her unfortunate mate.

It had been arranged that he would wait till Leonard’s marriage, since it was so near. But he had determined not to delay his going more than two days beyond it; and he now awaited the event with something akin to impatience. At the same time, he knew that the journey back to Georgetown would be anything but easy or agreeable. It had been arduous, difficult, wearisome, and dangerous enough on the way up, when he had the company of Leonard with his exhaustless boyish enthusiasm. What would it be like, he asked himself, going all that weary road again alone, for he would be alone in the sense of being the only white man amongst a number of Indians. Then again, he must return with very little to show for all the time, and trouble, and danger he had incurred. Monella, it was true, promised him ‘wealth’—and no doubt would keep his promise in the form of a selection of precious stones. They were numerous and comparatively cheap in the country; so Templemore had no scruples about accepting such a present. And, when he reached Georgetown, they would mean wealth. That was all satisfactory enough; but there was much, very much more he would have liked to carry away with him; things of much less intrinsic value, but of greater scientific interest. Of these there were more than could be catalogued in a few lines; vessels of gold and silver; wonderful antique jewellery, specimens of their armour, swords, etc., were some; dress-fabrics also; an endless number of curious botanical and zoological specimens, for others—these form only the beginning of a long list of things he had in his mind, and would have liked to carry with him. But well he knew the impossibility; the difficulties of transport were insurmountable. In a country where it was difficult to get carriers even for the bare food required, it was obviously useless to dream of carrying back with him a ‘collection’ such as he would have wished to take.

There was natural disappointment in all this. It is hard for an explorer to face danger, hardship, discomfort; to separate himself from civilisation and from those he loves, and to risk illness, fever, wounds and death, and then, having achieved success, to have to resign himself to returning without those trophies he would have delighted in exhibiting to an astonished and wondering world. But just, perhaps, when he had convinced himself, by dwelling morbidly upon such thoughts, that he had good cause for dissatisfaction, his good nature would assert itself and remind him of the other side to the picture. Was it a little matter to take back with him wealth enough to make his mother’s future secure and comfortable; to marry the girl of his heart, and to be henceforth a man of means and affluence? And if his part in the expedition ended in such result, had he any just cause for complaint? Did he not rather owe a debt of gratitude to those who had urged him on, in spite of his own scepticism, to share in their enterprise? At this thought a rush of gratitude would come into Templemore’s mind; then he would torment himself in turn, with misgivings as to whether he was not guilty of ingratitude in now feeling impatient to get away from—to leave for ever—the friends who had thrown such good fortune in his way.

And thus Jack Templemore felt anything but happy in the days that preceded Leonard’s marriage. And, of course, he was in love, and felt home-sick; so, perhaps, it is not much to be wondered at that he was restless and changeable and ill at ease.

Yet, had he been in a different mood, his stay in the place might now have been very enjoyable, and of surpassing interest. He was free to go where he liked and do as he pleased. The people were not only friendly and willing and anxious to please, but showed pride and pleasure, if he but spoke to them. The story of the rescue of Leonard and the princess had been noised abroad and told and re-told over and over again, and the part that Templemore had taken in it was well known. Then, again, it had also now become known who Leonard really was; and the people felt that what Templemore had done for his friend had been done for them, inasmuch as it had saved for them the life of one who was of their own nation and whom they now valued highly. Thus Templemore was regarded as a hero, second only to Monella (or Mellenda). The people were quite ready to credit him with qualities he did not possess; for was he not the close and trusted friend of their own great hero? If Mellenda had chosen this one from all the people of the outside world—for they knew by this time that there was a great world, outside their mountains, peopled with white races—must it not have been for some very good reason? Must he not be a great man, a hero, a wonder, for the great Mellenda to have chosen him as his friend and companion on his return to Manoa?

Thus reasoned the simple-hearted people; and, since it was also known that he was going away from them for ever—going back to the outer world that was his home—it created a sort of mystery about him. Must he not be some very great man in that world that could not spare him even to stay and enjoy the friendship and favour of their own great hero-king?

So they regarded him with an interest and curiosity almost amounting to awe. Mothers would bring out their children to look at him as he passed, bidding them remember, for the remainder of their lives, that they had once seen the wonderful stranger, the great friend of their own great hero.

Meanwhile, Ulama had given herself up zealously to joining with Leonard in the work he had set himself among the people. She had been gently and tactfully told the story of all that had occurred; she knew now that her ‘bad dream’ had been only too true. The knowledge cast for a while its shadow upon her fair face, and she seemed to lose some of her childish gaiety and to become more staid under its influence. But it also called into play all the womanly tenderness and sympathy of her nature. When she heard of unhappy women and children needing care and comforting, she eagerly desired to assist in the work in company with Leonard and Sanaima; and thenceforth she devoted to it all the time she could spare from attendance upon her ailing father.

Amongst those in constant attendance on the princess might now be seen Fernina. She had been brought to the palace by Sanaima, who had discovered that her husband was no longer living. The meeting between her and Leonard was affecting; he presented her to Ulama and commended the poor woman to her kindness. Ulama knew now the particulars of the terrible time the two had passed together in the dread cells within reach of the great tree, and received her with a heart filled with compassion. Fernina’s gratitude and pride at the kindliness of her reception were such that they went far to assuage her sorrows. Her two children also were well cared for, and, by degrees, the old look of dull misery in her face gave place to a softer expression that promised to bring back, in a measure, her former beauty. It was understood that Fernina would in the future take Zonella’s place; for it had been announced that the latter would shortly be married to Ergalon.

One day Templemore informed Monella that the mine had been completed, that he had placed the cask of gunpowder in position, and laid a fuse.

“And the reptiles?” asked Monella.

“I have left them alone—and for a reason. It seems to me they are inclined to attack the tree; have done so, in fact. They are getting hungry and have nothing else to attack, and, being well penned in, they are beginning to feed on the only thing within their reach. After all, the ‘flesh’—if one may so term it—of a ‘flesh-eating’ tree may quite possibly form an acceptable food for these ugly reptiles when they are starving. If, when we have blown it up—or down—they are disposed to devour it and so clear it out of the way, it may save some trouble.”

Then a day was fixed for firing the mine, and a large crowd of the citizens assembled to witness the destruction of their enemy; but many, whose memories of the place were sad, remained away.

When the explosion took place, a long tongue of flame shot up into the air with a thunderous roar, the great tree seemed lifted bodily up, swayed, and then fell with a mighty crash full length on the ground, disclosing a rent in the trunk from which a thick, noisome stream of dark-coloured fluid slowly flowed. This gave off an odour so offensive and over-powering that none could stay in the enclosure; so the crowd quickly dispersed, with loud expressions of wonderment and admiration at all that they had seen. But Templemore remained long enough to see, from a distance, that the foul reptiles had approached the tree, and were greedily drinking up the liquid that flowed from the wound in the trunk. And, visiting the place next day, he found that they had torn the rent still further open, and were busily tearing the trunk to pieces, the branches now showing but feeble signs of life. In the end they fulfilled his expectations and devoured every scrap of the monster. Thus ended the existence of the terrible, horror-laden devil-tree!

* * * *

It was shortly after he had completed the destruction of the hated tree that Templemore made a discovery that filled him with grave uneasiness. He was wandering about among the heights that lay at one end of the canyon—that immediately over the entrance-cavern—when he found himself amongst huge blocks which had been quarried out (as Monella had one day mentioned) with the idea of precipitating them into the canyon to block it up impenetrably. On examining the quarry from which they had been taken, he observed with alarm that some masses of overhanging rock seemed almost on the point of giving way. A sort of partial landslip had already taken place, and there were fresh-looking cracks and fissures that threatened shortly to loosen the overhanging masses and set them free to fall into the canyon below. He spoke to Monella about this, and he at once accompanied him to the spot, and his opinion confirmed his own. This made Templemore busy himself in earnest with his preparations for departure; for he feared that, if these rocks actually fell, the entrance to the cavern might be so blocked up as to take long and arduous labour to clear it.

It being now within a day or two of Leonard’s marriage this was all he could do in the matter. But Monella sent men down the canyon in charge of Ergalon—since the latter now knew the road—to carry in advance and deposit in the cavern some of the things Templemore desired to take with him. They returned on the eve of the wedding, Ergalon stating that all they had taken down had been duly stored as desired, ready for Templemore when he went down.

That evening King Dranoa was much better and insisted on presiding at the evening meal. He even hoped, he said, to be able to be present at the wedding. Ulama’s joy at this, and the sweet delight that lighted up her face, were alone enough to infuse happiness into those around her. She looked at Templemore, too, and smiled and nodded her head in a mysterious way that roused his curiosity; and, later, an explanation came.

At the very end of the repast a mysterious-looking dish or tray, whose contents were hidden by a golden cover, was brought in with a good deal of ceremony and was placed before the king. Then Ulama glanced shyly at Templemore and clapped her hands. At this the king lifted the cover, and displayed to view—not some new eatables, as Templemore had anticipated, but—a beautifully fashioned belt, and several exquisitely-worked purses that all sparkled and flashed with the little diamonds and other stones that were worked in patterns into the silken netting. And, when Templemore looked inquiringly at Leonard, that young man only smiled and nodded mysteriously like the others.

Then King Dranoa thus addressed him:

“My friend, thou hast already heard, I believe, that we do not purpose to allow thee to depart hence without begging thine acceptance of some little testimony of our appreciation of what thou hast done for us. I say we, for all here—all in the land indeed—are deeply in thy debt. Without thy courageous help and unselfish devotion my dear daughter would not now be here happy and joyous as she is tonight, and my kinsman and son-in-law that is to be would, I fear, only too probably have met a dreadful fate. Therefore, we have all joined in subscribing to these presents, of which we beg thy acceptance. The princess hath worked this belt, and inside it are some of her own chosen jewels that thou hast often seen her wear. The lady Zonella, and others of her maidens, have worked these purses—they are for thy friends—and we have all contributed to their contents. I know naught about thy world outside, but understand that what is in these satchels will be of far greater value to thee, and those dear to thee, than to us here. I truly hope it may be so; else I should hesitate to offer them, as being but a poor return for what thou hast done for us. If, however, they can purchase for thee, in the future, any surcease of toil, of trouble, of anxiety, then, and only from that point of view, may they be worth the offering. Take them, my friend; and may the blessing of the Great Spirit go with them, and accompany thy footsteps throughout thy life.”

Then Ulama took the belt and poured out its contents upon the tray—a magnificent, glittering heap of superb precious stones. Then she emptied each purse in turn, making other sparkling but smaller heaps. And each purse had a little label with a name to it; and Templemore looked on in wonder as the contents of each were revealed and the names read out by Leonard. There were three large purses, one for his mother, one for Maud, and one for Stella. Smaller ones for Mr. and Robert Kingsford, Dr. Lorien and his son; and two, still smaller, for Carenna and Matava. No one had been forgotten.

Templemore looked from the one to the other, his heart filled with emotion. Even more than the overwhelming value of the jewels, he felt the loving-kindness that had thus taken thought and trouble for those dear to him.

“But—Dr. Lorien and Harry—and—the others——” he said, hesitating. “I don’t see——”

“The good doctor,” Monella explained, “will be sorely disappointed that he cannot come to see us and take back to the world some of the botanical rarities we have here, and which, to him, would be great treasures. These are to console him. As to the others of your friends—this is the least we can do to show our regret for the sorrow and anxiety they will have borne on your behalf, through us. That is all.”

For some minutes Templemore was silent.

“It is too much—a great deal too much!” he got out presently. “I don’t know what to say——”

“Then say nothing, dear friend,” Ulama interposed, with a merry laugh. “Now let me put them back and show you how they all fit nicely into the belt. You see, while you were working for us at that horrid old tree, we had not forgotten you. Keep the belt always for my sake, and think of us all lovingly in the future, as we always shall of you. Now I want you to take me out on the terrace.”

CHAPTER XXXIV

A MARRIAGE AND A PARTING.

In the ancient Temple of the White Priests Leonard and Ulama were solemnly made man and wife according to the custom of the country. King Dranoa was able to be present at the ceremony, and nearly the whole population may be said to have assisted, for they thronged in crowds to the great building where in ages past their kings had all been married; though comparatively few of the populace could find room inside the Temple. The remainder filled all the surrounding open spaces, and waited patiently to greet the bride and bridegroom on their way back to the palace.

Templemore had a place of honour in the assemblage, and watched the function with curious interest. Sanaima, with an array of white-robed priests; Monella, with his commanding form, conspicuous by his noble bearing; the beautiful Ulama, all suffused with blushes; and her handsome bridegroom; the kindly, dignified Dranoa, looking weak and pale, yet well-pleased and content; and the brilliant crowd of spectators, officers in gleaming armour, and courtiers in gorgeous dresses—all combined to form a noble pageant. The building, whose interior Templemore now for the first time saw, was a magnificent structure, and helped to add grandeur to the imposing spectacle.

At the conclusion of the ceremony, the procession, on its way back to the palace, was greeted with excited and enthusiastic cheers and cries that seemed almost loud enough to shake the towering buildings past which it slowly filed.

In the evening there were general feastings and rejoicings. These were continued till the night was far advanced; and it was morning ere the city again subsided unto rest.

The following day, Templemore was busy completing his preparations, and going round to bid farewell to those he knew. But, towards the afternoon, he was surprised to see a large crowd outside the palace; and still more astonished on learning that the people were gathered in his honour. The good-hearted citizens, it appeared, liked not the notion of his going away without some public mark of the esteem in which they held him; so, somewhat against his will, he was called out on to the terrace that overlooked the place in which the people had assembled. Monella, Ulama, Leonard, and all the members of the court and of the king’s household, stepped out with him; and the first two each took him by the hand, and led him to a spot where all could see him. Then a great shout went up, and he was cheered again and yet again, till the strange feelings called up by the unexpected warmth of the welcome he received made him go red and white by turns.

“They have come for a sight of you, and a word of farewell ere you leave us,” explained Monella. “Will you not give them a few words?”

Templemore was unused to oratory, and he would fain have excused himself; but he saw that to do so would disappoint his friends. So he made them a short speech, assuring them of his appreciation of their friendly feelings.

“The unexpected warmth and kindness you have shown in thus coming here today,” he said, “I shall always gratefully remember. If, in company with the friends who led me hither, I have done aught that seems to you to call for commendation, I will only ask you, in return, to keep for me a tender corner in your memories when I have left you. If, when I have gone, you will but think as kindly of me as I shall of you, then indeed I shall be well repaid.”

Then Monella addressed them in his sonorous tones.

“My children, I am well pleased that ye should have thus gathered here today, and of your own accord, to show to my friend that you are not unmindful of his part in the events of the past few months. I am glad and proud that he should receive, before he leaves us, this proof that my people are not ungrateful to one who hath done so much for them. A great work hath been accomplished in the land since we three, as strangers to you all, arrived some months ago. At the last, its prompt completion was due in no small measure to your quick response to my urgent call, at a time when hours were precious—and even moments. When I left you in the times long past, I sailed away with fleets and armies; when returning I was a simple wanderer. Yet ye gathered gladly at my summons, and no voice was raised to question my authority. This was well, and helped me to achieve success; yet might we have been too late to save the well-beloved of your princess had not our friend here kept all Coryon’s vile following at bay till we could come to aid him. If the dread devil-tree exists, today, no more, and all the wickedness and cruelty that went with it have been trampled out for ever, if now your minds are all at peace, and your daughters and your other dear ones are secure—ye owe much of this to our friend’s ready courage and devotion; and I am rejoiced to see that ye have not forgotten it!

“Now will my friend know that he bears away with him the love and the good wishes of us all. We wish him all happiness in his future life; our sole regret is that he cannot stay and spend that life with us.”

At this there were shouts and roars of applause, and other tokens of assent.

“And now, my children,” went on the speaker, “I have somewhat else to say to you. The ancient Temple of the Great Spirit is once more open; see that ye neglect not to there offer up your thanks for the blessing that hath been vouchsafed you. Give heed to the teachings of the worthy Sanaima. See that ye take to your hearts the precepts that he will expound to you. So shall the good work that I have begun be continued and consummated after I shall have left you.”

Loud murmurs of surprise and objection were here heard.

“Nay, let not that which I have said arouse your grief, my children. Remember my long life and weary wanderings to and fro upon the earth; these have been a punishment to me, even as events, during this same time, have been to you. Ye would not wish to keep me here when I tell you that my task is done, and my tired soul is seeking rest—rest not to be found on earth, but only in the great domain beyond the skies. I may not linger here now that the work that I was sent to do is finished. I have freed you from the curse that did oppress you; have brought you one to govern you who combines within himself the blood both of your ancient White Priests and of our kings; and in Sanaima ye have a wise counsellor and guide. Seek not then to stay me; when the Great Spirit calleth, weep not and repine not, for then is the hour of my deliverance. Then shall I be united, at the last, to my well-beloved queen, my Elmonta, and my children that have gone before!”

When Monella ended, he raised his hands and face towards heaven, and stood gazing upwards like one inspired. His face seemed transfigured and was lighted up as by a thrilling joy; and, as on the occasion of his talk in the palace with Templemore and Leonard a few days before, he appeared to see something invisible to those around him, but the sight of which filled him with supreme content. Then he dropped his arms, looked around him as though he had just awaked from sleep, and, with bent head and tardy steps, walked silently away.

Ulama caught Templemore by the arm.

“Oh, do you think it can be true—what he says?” she exclaimed in anxious tones, almost a sob. “It cannot be that we are about to lose him? Do you think so?”

“Nay, I see no cause to apprehend it,” was Templemore’s reply. “Our friend seems as robust and as strong as a man can wish.”

“Yes! So think I, and yet—he has spoken in this strange fashion several times of late. His words fill me with foreboding.”

She looked at Templemore with such sorrow in her gentle eyes that he scarcely knew what to say to comfort her. And just then he was obliged to leave her to return the salutes of the people, who were now separating and returning to their homes or their various callings.

The next morning, shortly after sunrise, Templemore stood at the top of the hillside, not far from the entrance of the canyon—the spot from which he had first seen the ‘Golden City’—looking his last upon the fair scene outspread beneath, and saying the last words of farewell to his friends. Once more the people had assembled to do him honour, and they now crowded the slopes on every side.

Already some of the little party who were to accompany him to ‘Monella Lodge’ had started and were on their way down the canyon, and Ergalon, under whose charge they were, stood waiting for Jack Templemore. The latter was surrounded by a little group, of whom the chief were Leonard, Ulama, and Zonella, who seemed as if they could not make up their minds to let him go. Monella, his arms folded, stood apart, gravely looking, first at the group, and then out over the landscape with dreamy eyes, his noble figure, outlined against the dark foliage, the centre of a half-circle of officers and courtiers who stood respectfully a short distance from him. Templemore was dressed in the same clothes he had worn on his arrival; beneath them he had buckled on the precious belt with the jewels it contained; his rifle was slung across his shoulder.

Amongst those around were to be seen Colenna and his son, Abla, and others who had been amongst Templemore’s first friends; and all showed by their demeanour genuine sorrow at the parting. As a last and special gift—one more token of his remembrance of his boyhood’s friend—Leonard had that morning handed to Templemore a deed of gift making over all his property in the ‘outer world’ to Maud Kingsford.

“It is nothing to give, since it is no longer of any use to me,” he observed, with a quiet smile. “But, since I must convey it to some one, let it be a dowry for Maud in addition to the purse the others send.”

It would be difficult to say how many ‘last hand-shakes’ were given, or how many times Ulama, with tear-dimmed eyes, pleaded for ‘a minute longer—just a minute,’ Zonella, with sorrow in her looks, seeming mutely to second the appeal. But the parting came at last, and, amid loud huzzas, and the waving of hands and scarves, and other tokens of good will, Templemore turned away and, with Ergalon, disappeared into the thicket.

Little was said by either as they made their way down the rough path, and, even when they rested in the shade of the half-way cave, neither seemed disposed for talk. Almost in silence they ate the refreshments with which the forethought of their friends had loaded them, and drank cool draughts from the rocky shallows of the stream.

Suddenly, while they sat within the cave, waiting for the sun to move so far that the path should be in shade, a heavy booming detonation like the firing of cannon burst upon their astonished ears; and they started up together and stood listening anxiously.

“What on earth can that be?” exclaimed Templemore.

Ergalon gravely shook his head.

“Falling rock, I think,” he answered. “If so, it must be farther down the canyon.”

“Let us hasten,” cried the other, a vision rising before his eyes of the entrance-cavern blocked, and his being forced to return. “This is what I have been fearing.”

Despite the sun, he started off at a rapid pace down the path, Ergalon following and striving, as well as he could, to keep up with the other’s impetuous movements. During the remainder of the descent they heard two or three other similar noises; and at each of these Templemore hurried on still faster.

When they reached the bottom, they came upon the little party who had preceded them; they were standing in doubt and alarm, looking along the valley, which was already partially blocked by fallen rocks, while more continued to fall at intervals, crashing on to those already fallen and sending up clouds of dust. With the group, looking on at the scene in a sort of mild surprise, stood ‘Nea’ the puma.

“The stars be praised,” Ergalon exclaimed, relieved, “it’s all at the other end.”

“What do you mean?” asked Templemore in surprise.

“Why, the rocks have not fallen near your cave,” was the reply. “All is clear there,” and he pointed to the hidden cave.

Then there were explanations, and, to Templemore’s dismay, it now appeared that Ergalon had mistaken his instructions and placed all the things in the wrong place. He was not really to blame in the matter; for he only knew of the one cave—that to which he had accompanied Templemore when they had come down to fetch the spare weapons. He knew nothing of any other cavern, and Templemore had not remembered this.

The situation was a trying and terribly disappointing one, and Templemore found himself in a grave dilemma. If he hesitated, it was plain his way would soon be totally barred. If he went on, and risked being crushed by the falling rocks, he must go alone; leave behind him everything he had intended to take with him, save what he had on his person, and make up his mind to face the dangers of the gloomy forest by himself! Even now it was almost folly to risk death or serious injury by making for the cavern.

Templemore hesitated, the while that more boulders came crashing down. Then he thought of what it would mean for him were he to be shut up in the mountain for an indefinite period. He looked up keenly and saw enough of what was going on to grasp the fact that the whole sides of the canyon were crumbling and falling in, and it looked a sufficient quantity to make it likely that the reopening of the road would be a work of years. As that conviction dawned upon him, with a brief word of farewell he dashed away from the group, and, despite their startled endeavours to stay him and the entreaties they called after him, he ran swiftly along the valley towards the entrance-cavern. After him bounded the faithful puma; he had no time to give to the attempting to send her back, and the two went rapidly on, dodging the great masses that now crashed down faster than before. A massive boulder rolling down seemed about to crush them, but they escaped it and disappeared in a cloud of dust from the view of the spellbound witnesses of their hazardous race.

Just when they reached the cavern a great stone pitched upon one already fallen and, splitting into several pieces, sent heavy fragments flying around in all directions, like an exploding bomb-shell. One of these fragments struck Templemore in the back, smashing his rifle, and throwing him, stunned and bruised, upon the floor of the cavern.

CHAPTER XXXV

JUST IN TIME!

At sunrise, one morning, a fortnight after the events recorded in the last chapter, a party of travellers, consisting of three white men and a number of Indians, set out from the Indian village of Daranato, making their way in the direction of Roraima.

The three white men were Dr. Lorien, his son Harry, and Robert Kingsford; and among the Indians was Matava. As they toiled along the rough path it was easy to see that the travellers were, for the most part, travel-worn and weary; they moved forward in a half-listless fashion, scarcely looking to right or left, and showing but little interest in the scenes that lay along their route. Only when they came to the ridge from which the first view of Roraima is to be obtained did any of the party exhibit curiosity. Here a halt was made, and they all gazed for some time silently at the great mass that raised itself high above the surrounding landscape. This morning, clouds hung over it and it appeared sombre, dark and threatening, and gave no sign of the fairy-like lightness and beauty it sometimes assumed when seen from this same spot.

Robert Kingsford had come up from the coast, in the company of the doctor and his son, bent upon solving, if possible, the mystery that surrounded the fate of the two friends who had left Georgetown, nearly nine months before, to join with an unknown stranger in the exploration of Roraima. All that had since been heard of them was the strange, almost fantastic account that had been brought back by Matava, according to which they had actually found a way into the mountain, and thenceforth had disappeared. The very entrance by which they had made their way through the solid wall of cliff had been afterwards found fast sealed; and no trace or clue to their fate had been left behind. This had been Matava’s account, and he had not hesitated to express his belief that the three adventurers had been captured by the demons of the mountain, and either eaten up then and there, or kept as prisoners and slaves in durance vile.

This story, however, did not satisfy the minds of the others, and Robert Kingsford, seeing and compassionating the deep sorrow of Templemore’s widowed mother, and the still more passionate grief of his own sister Maud, determined to investigate matters for himself. Dr. Lorien was detained longer in Rio than he had expected; but, when at last he returned to Georgetown, he readily joined the other in the proposed expedition of inquiry.

They had a very arduous and difficult journey up from the coast. It happened to be a season of exceptional drought, and cassava, and food of all kinds, were extremely scarce. The sun had been unusually fierce, and the heat abnormal; hence, by the time they reached Daranato, even the sturdy and seasoned doctor—a very veteran in tropical travel—was nearly worn out; while the other two were in still worse plight.

Add to these trials the fact that they had little, if any, hope of succeeding in their quest, and felt, in reality, that the expedition was, at best, but a sort of forlorn hope; and it will be understood why they had started from Daranato dispirited and depressed.

Thus, when they obtained their first view of the mysterious mountain, the cause of all their trouble, they were not inclined to regard it with any very friendly feelings; and its gloomy, forbidding look this morning was reflected, so to speak, in their own minds. “There is our enemy,” they felt. “There is the fascinating, sinister chimera that has bewitched, and lured away from us, our dear friends, and caused us all this anxiety and useless trouble.” And so, as Roraima frowned upon them, they frowned back, and returned in kind its gloomy and unfriendly greeting.

But frowns and angry looks could do them no good; so the travellers, with a very few words of comment, continued their route towards ‘Monella Lodge,’ where they arrived towards evening.

Here, a mile or so from the ‘haunted wood,’ and almost, as it seemed to them, under the very shadow of the mighty towering walls, they set about making arrangements for a stay of several days. They found everything in the cabin much as Matava had led them to expect; the place, indeed, just as Templemore had left it at his last visit. Many things had been left there that the travellers now found useful, and that seemed veritable luxuries after the discomforts of their long journey.

Kingsford’s thoughts were intent upon his missing friends; and, indeed, this was also the case in only a slightly less degree with the other two. All were oppressed with vague suspicions of the Indians, even of Matava. Might these not have murdered the three travellers for the sake of the things they had with them—articles and stores which would be as priceless treasures to Indians; therefore which might quite conceivably have offered a temptation too great to be resisted?

However, amongst the tribe at the village, they had seen no signs of ‘white men’s’ belongings to any unusual extent; and, now that they saw what a number of things had been left undisturbed in ‘Monella Lodge,’ their suspicions were very considerably lightened. For all that, they found it difficult to believe implicitly the fantastic tale Matava had told about the three adventurers’ disappearance.

The Indians gathered wood and lighted fires, while the white men made a careful and interested inspection of the contents of the habitation and its surroundings (the two llamas had been removed to the village, where, however, they had both since died). Inside, they found a lamp and a small cask still partly full of oil, which was a discovery they appreciated when it grew dark.

After their evening meal, the three friends sat for some time smoking their pipes and discussing the strange situation in which they found themselves. They were now within reach of their journey’s end. If the tale told by Matava were correct, and the road through the forest were still fairly clear, they ought to be able to reach the mysterious cavern the next day; when they were determined, if requisite, to blow open the entrance with gunpowder. In addition to that which they had brought with them, they had found a considerable quantity at ‘Monella Lodge.’ This surprised them; for in this country gunpowder is more valued by Indians than almost anything else.

The three friends were sitting talking, and were thinking of retiring to rest for the night, when Matava came rushing excitedly into the place.

“Come quickly, my masters,” he exclaimed. “Come! Come and see the light on the mountain!”

Somewhat languidly those addressed rose and went out. They had so often heard the usual stories of lights seen at night on unexplored mountains that they attached but little importance to them. They had treated in like manner a statement by Carenna and Matava that some Indians, camping out on the savanna a few months before, had seen strange and unusually bright lights, that they took to be signals, on Roraima’s summit. The Indians had been scared and broke up their encampment at once, fearing the lights might have been placed there to lure them into the power of the demons of the mountain.

When, however, the doctor stepped outside, and looked up towards the top of the stupendous precipice, he saw a brilliant flame that had all the appearance of a signal beacon.

“It doesn’t look like a forest fire,” he said to Kingsford, while they were examining it carefully through their field-glasses. “And now and then I almost fancy I can make out human forms passing in front of it.”

The others had the same impression, and Harry Lorien declared he could see flashes of light, as though the beings round the fire were dressed in clothes, or carried something, that reflected the firelight.

“Let us try burning a little powder,” the doctor suggested, “after the fashion Matava says was arranged between him and the others, but which they never carried out.”

So they sent Matava for the powder, and told him to fire it in the manner that had been settled between him and Monella. It is true none of the three messages agreed upon would be applicable to the present occasion—but that they could not help.

Presently, three tongues of flame leaped up into the air, then suddenly died out, leaving those around temporarily half-blinded by the glare. Then they stood for some time anxiously watching through their glasses.

What seemed a long interval ensued; when, suddenly, three brilliant gleams flashed out on Roraima’s height, in exact imitation, as to the intervals between the flashes, of the signals they had themselves made.

“Try another,” Doctor Lorien cried, in growing excitement. “Arrange the three differently this time.”

This was done, and the answering flashes came back, again in exact imitation; and this time with scarcely any delay.

Doctor Lorien seized Kingsford by the hand.

“Heaven be praised for this!” he exclaimed, his voice half-choked with emotion. “It begins to look, indeed, as though Matava’s account were true; as if our dear friends may be alive after all!”

Words cannot describe the delight with which the travel-worn party hailed these signs, that so unmistakably pointed to the conclusion suggested in the doctor’s words. There was one thing, certainly, they could not understand; none of the signals agreed upon between Monella and Matava had been given from the mountain; but they were inclined to attribute this to Matava’s having, after the lapse of time, forgotten or mixed up what had been arranged. Only the thought that their supply of powder was not unlimited restrained them from continuing the signalling; but they were reluctantly compelled, as a matter of prudence, to discontinue it.

“Now,” said the doctor, “we can attack the ‘haunted wood’ with a good heart. Surely, our friends will come down to meet us, now that they know we are here!”

Before daylight they were all astir, and set off at once on the journey through the forest, Matava guiding them. The road, or track, was followed with difficulty, and was almost blocked at times. Only an Indian’s instinct, indeed, could have made it out. In places the rough temporary bridges that had been made over water-courses had been washed away, but, the water being very low from the long-continued drought, this caused no serious difficulty. They met with some adventures by the way, which were, however, suggestive of the dangers that lay around them rather than important in themselves. At last, towards evening, Matava told the doctor they were getting near the cavern. And now he begged him to proceed with caution. He could not get over the fear that the ‘demons of the mountain’ had eaten up or captured their friends, and were now awaiting more victims whom they had lured on by imitating and answering the signals of their murdered friends.

This theory did not find much favour with the doctor; for all that he so far yielded to the entreaties of the Indian as to send him on to scout in advance, while he, and the others of the party, walked in silence behind. And, since Matava now moved with especial care, they made slow progress.

As it happened, however, Matava’s caution was in a measure justified; for just when they came to the part where there was an opening in the trees, and they could see ahead of them the light that came down into the clearing round the cavern, Matava stopped and raised his hand.

All stood still, except the doctor, who moved up to the Indian’s side and looked whither he was pointing.

For a moment or so he could see nothing to account for the other’s behaviour. To the right the stream that came out of the rock was now plainly in sight; and ahead of them was the clearing. The entrance to the cavern was as yet hidden by intervening trunks, but the light-coloured rock could be seen between the trees. Matava slowly raised his rifle and took a careful aim; then, as though dissatisfied, he lowered the weapon and stood with up-lifted hand enjoining silence upon those behind him. To make sure, he turned round and, with many gestures, impressed upon them all to keep motionless and silent; then, having satisfied himself that they understood and would obey his signs, he faced round and again raised his rifle.

And now, Doctor Lorien, following the line of the Indian’s aim, became conscious of a slight movement among the trees in front of them. Presently—the Indian still waiting his opportunity to fire—he saw that a great hanging mass was swaying to and fro, passing and re-passing the space between the trunks of two trees. At first he thought it was a large mass of hanging creeper, but, remembering that there was no wind to cause the movement, he looked more closely and saw that it was the head and part of the body of a gigantic serpent that was depending from a branch above. Suddenly, Matava’s rifle rang out, and a moment after an enormous mass fell to the ground and writhed and twisted about in horrible contortions.

Then a loud, hoarse roar was heard, echoing through the forest. The startled travellers looked about on every side, but could see nothing to explain the sound; then it came again and again, while the colossal folds in front of them, half hidden by the trees, continued to rise and fall, lashing against the trees and shrubs with blows that seemed almost to shake the ground.

Matava advanced and fired other shots into the struggling monster; then, watching his opportunity, made a rush and dexterously cut off the creature’s head with a blow of his axe.

And now, looking towards the rock, they saw the ‘window’ entrance to the cavern, and the head of the big puma from which had proceeded the loud roars they had heard; and by the side of the puma was a pallid, thin, haggard face that they had some difficulty in recognising as Jack Templemore’s!

“You have come only just in time,” he said, in a weak voice, with a poor attempt at a smile, when the doctor had come near. “We were almost done for; at least, I know I am. I scarcely know whether I have strength enough to get the ladder out for you.”

They tied two lassoes together and threw one end in; this he fastened to the ladder, and, thus assisted, it was got out. Immediately the puma sprang down it and disappeared into the forest. Then the doctor, followed by Kingsford and Harry, climbed up and entered the cavern, to find Templemore lying on the floor unconscious.

He was suffering from a sprained ankle and a badly bruised arm, and was exhausted from want of food. It was some time before he could explain matters to his rescuers; and they, meantime, were anxiously wondering at finding him thus alone, with no sign about of his two friends. When he had briefly accounted for their absence, he told how he had been kept prisoner for more than a week by the great serpent that, all that time, had relentlessly watched and waited outside. But, apart from this, he could scarcely have got through the wood in his crippled state.

“Still,” he said, “but for that serpent, ‘Nea,’ the puma, would have brought in some fresh meat. As it is, I have had to share with her even the small amount of tinned food we happened to have left here.”

The flying pieces of rock that had injured him had broken his rifle; and he had only a few cartridges for his revolver.

“It’s all been unfortunate,” he said. “They put all the things in the wrong cave, and, when I came to myself after my desperate race between the falling rocks, I was in darkness and the puma was licking my hands and face. With much difficulty I found my way to the front here and pulled the stone away; then found a lantern and some oil, and got a light. The entrance to the canyon I found was all dark—buried—and I could still hear rumblings as of further falls of rock; but they sounded distant. I imagine, therefore, that the valley must be buried pretty deep. I set about making myself as comfortable as I could; and, when I put the ladder out,‘Puss,’ as I call her, went out hunting while I bathed my ankle and arm. Several days she went out and brought in something pretty regularly, and I thought I should be able to nurse myself up and get well enough to struggle through the wood alone. But, one morning, she refused to go out; that day I had a visit from a pack of ‘Warracaba tigers’; another time when she stayed in, looking out myself, I saw that awful serpent hanging from a bough; and there it has been day and night ever since; ‘Puss’ refusing to venture forth. I fired all my cartridges, except two, at it without any effect. It kept ceaselessly swaying its head about, and my arm pained me and my hand trembled; and, unless you can put a bullet through its head, it’s of no use firing at a creature like that, you know. If my rifle had been all right, the thing would have been easy enough. I kept two cartridges in reserve—one for poor ‘Puss’ and the other for myself—and I think you came only just about in time to save us both.” And Jack’s voice shook, and he felt a choking sensation in his throat. It was clear he had given up hope and had been making up his mind to face death alone.

Robert Kingsford’s gratification and delight in the fact that his journey had, after all, turned out to be the means of rescuing his friend, the lover of his sister, may be imagined. Nor were the others less pleased; only the good doctor’s satisfaction was clouded by his inability to get out into the wonderful valley to obtain any of the botanical treasures that lay so near at hand. But his chagrin disappeared when Templemore, as some consolation, showed him the purse of gems that had been sent to him.

“We’ll give up orchid-collecting after this, lad!” he exclaimed to his son. “No need to wear out my old bones any longer in toilsome wanderings, when we’ve got enough to live on comfortably without.”

Presently, ‘Puss’ came back with a wild pig, and great was the rejoicing over the meal that followed.

Then all, save Templemore—who could only look on from the window—went out to examine the reptile monster they had killed and to gaze in astonishment at its huge proportions. The Indians had already begun to skin it, but had not finished the operation when the time came for making their preparations to pass the night.

These were complete—the four white men sleeping in the cavern and the Indians bivouacking outside—when strange cries were heard echoing through the forest. Instantly there was a great stir among the Indians. With one accord they started up, exclaiming, “The tigers! The tigers are coming!” Forgetting their fear of the ‘demons’ cavern,’ they cried out piteously for the ladder to be put out for them; and no sooner was this done than they scrambled up it with all speed into the cave, and pulled it in after them.

In reply to the amazed inquiries of the others, Matava explained that they had recognised the distant trumpetings of ‘Warracaba tigers,’ those fierce animals that nothing—not even fires—can stay or keep at bay. Soon, in fact, the animals could be heard on all sides around the cavern, though but little could be seen of them in the darkness. Their growls and roars and squeals were answered by hoarse roars of defiance from the puma that were deafening as they reverberated through the galleries of the cavern. Outside, the ‘tigers’ made frantic efforts to leap up and get in at the window, while those within had much ado to keep the puma from leaping out amongst them. They also fired a few shots at them, but in the darkness—for the fires had burned low—they were fired at random.

“Why,” said the doctor, “I should think there must be a hundred of them! What an awful place this forest must be! I know that wolves hunt in packs, but I never before heard of ‘tigers’ doing so. Wolves can’t climb trees as these can. It’s awful, perfectly awful!” he added, the while he listened to the diabolical noises going on outside. It was, indeed, as a former traveller has expressed it, ‘like a withering scourge sweeping through the forest.’11

It was hours before the din died down; and then, just when the tired travellers were falling asleep, the most appalling, human-like cries broke forth, sounding first quite close at hand, and then dying away in a long-drawn wail or shriek.

Again the new-comers started up in alarm; but Templemore, smiling feebly, bade them take no notice.

“It is only the ‘lost souls’,” said he.12

“The ‘lost souls’!” exclaimed Kingsford. “What can you mean?” He began to think the other must be raving.

“I know no more than you do,” was Templemore’s reply. “So the Indians account for those sounds, and that is all I can tell you. Since I have been here they have serenaded me thus every night—even sometimes by day—and at times I have thought all the ‘lost souls’ from the Infernal Regions must have been let loose for my especial entertainment—or to frighten me to death or drive me mad—I know not which. I really think, if I had not had the company of this faithful beast—she always roars back defiance at them—I should have gone mad.”

Towards morning the sounds ceased, and sleep became possible for two or three hours. But when, at daylight, the Indians rose and ventured out, they found the great snake had been almost completely devoured. Only some bones and a few bits of skin were left.

11 See Mr. Barrington Brown’s ‘Canoe and Camp Life Among the Indians of British Guiana,’ p. 71. He says these animals hunt in packs of as many as a hundred or more.

12 See foot-note, Chapter V.

11 See Mr. Barrington Brown’s ‘Canoe and Camp Life Among the Indians of British Guiana,’ p. 71. He says these animals hunt in packs of as many as a hundred or more.

12 See foot-note, Chapter V.

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE END

Templemore was carried, with much difficulty, to ‘Monella Lodge,’ where an attack of fever supervened, and it was nearly two weeks before the doctor pronounced him out of danger.

Carenna came over from her village to nurse him, and tended him as devotedly as she had Leonard. In the height of the fever he raved constantly of the great devil-tree, of gigantic serpents, of Monella, and of ‘lost souls’; and, mixed up with all, were a number of names strange to those who listened to him; for he had been too ill when found in the cavern to give more than a brief idea of the adventures he had passed through.

While he lay upon his bed of sickness, anxious friends watched from the mountain top for tidings of his fate, but received no intelligible answers to their signals; for none of those now with Templemore knew how to reply to them. Thus it was not till he was convalescent and well enough to be taken out into the open air, that any interchange of messages became possible.

Those below, looking up, day after day had seen little flashes of light, of which they could make nothing; but now Templemore explained their meaning. A search in the cabin brought to light the mirror Monella had thoughtfully packed up and hidden carefully away; and Templemore was thus able at last to open communication with his Roraima friends.

His first signalled message to them brought back the reply:—

“Heaven be praised! We are all so thankful! We have mourned you as dead! And we are in great affliction, besides, for Monella, the great, great-hearted Mellenda, is dead! He died peacefully the day after you went away.”

Then, presently, when Templemore had sent back a message of sorrow and condolence, another came.

“The whole valley at the bottom of the canyon is half-filled up. It would take years to clear it. And we pictured you as lying dead beneath it all!”

Many messages passed to and fro during the remainder of the travellers’ stay; and then, after a time, Templemore having thoroughly recovered, preparations were made for the journey back to the coast.

Both Carenna and Matava were grieved at the thought that Leonard had remained on the mountain for good, and that they were never likely to see him more. Carenna, alone, however, expressed no surprise. She told Templemore that the deception as to Leonard she had practised upon the good people who had received them so hospitably in their lonely mountain retreat had, all her life, been a sore trouble to her. It was some consolation to her, therefore, to know that he had, after all, been led back to his own people. She at first refused the valuable present Leonard had sent her, saying that to receive forgiveness was in itself more than she had hoped for. But, needless to say, Templemore persuaded her into accepting it. Matava’s delight with what had been sent him was unbounded; especially when Templemore told him what treasures he could purchase with it: rifles, pistols, unbounded supplies of powder, and unlimited tobacco, and other things that Indians prize.

Meanwhile, Doctor Lorien and his son had been assiduous in collecting specimens of all the botanical and zoological treasures with which the neighbourhood of Roraima abounds; and, when the time for starting came, they had good reason to be satisfied with the result. They might have done still better, perhaps, if they had gone more into Roraima Forest; but this they could not make up their minds to do. Indeed, they could not venture far without an Indian guide; and this they could not get. Neither Matava nor any one of the other Indians could be prevailed upon to go into the wood again; and even the doctor was not very pressing. All had had quite enough of the ‘haunted wood.’ For it now came out, too, that Templemore had become a believer in the ‘didi.’ He declared that more than once during his imprisonment in the cavern he had seen, either at early morning or at dusk, strange human-like shapes—gigantic apes—standing watching within the shadow of the trees.

Nothing, he said, would induce him to enter that wood again. And he felt certain that only the fact that the entrance to the cavern was so high from the ground had enabled him to escape with his life.

‘Nea,’ the puma, alone showed no fear of the gloomy forest. She went hunting there daily, and nearly always returned with something to reward her enterprise.

When all was ready for the start, two or three last messages passed between the travellers and their friends upon the mountain.

“Heaven keep you and all those dear to you! Your memory will always be cherished by all here,” came from Leonard. To which Templemore replied:—

“Long life and happiness to you and your dear wife and all your people.”

“God bless you, Jack!”

“God bless you, Leonard!”

Thus they finally parted; and a few hours later the homeward-bound friends looked their last upon Roraima from the ridge near Daranato. The mountain was lighted with the red rays of the setting sun and towered up in glowing splendour. The greens of the wood at its base, varied and vivid in colouring, as they were, contrasted with the pinks, and purples, and reds of the precipitous walls above, that now looked again like a fairy fortress in the clouds, smiling, and fascinating in its light, aerial beauty.

“What a pity the city does not show!” said Harry. “What a glorious sight it would make!”

“At least you have conquered the secret the mysterious mountain has so long and so well concealed,” Doctor Lorien observed to Templemore.

The latter gazed on the mountain gloomily. His mind went back to the morning when he saw it first and the vague forebodings that had then come into his mind.

“I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “I have not brought away with me the most wonderful secret of all—the ‘Plant of Life.’ When I think how I was cheated out of that, by the mountain itself, as you may truly say—for its very rocks came crashing down to prevent my escape, or to kill me if I persisted; or at least, to insure my leaving nearly everything behind—when I think of this, it seems to me that Roraima has guarded most of its secrets pretty effectually, and I am almost persuaded there is something uncanny about it.”

Harry laughed at this; the more so that it came from Jack.

“That’s very fanciful—for you,” he returned. “If it had been Leonard, now, I should not have been surprised.”

“I am afraid my ideas of what is precisely practical and what is fanciful have been a good deal modified,” Jack confessed. “So would yours, if you had passed through my experiences.”

“Well, after all, perhaps you haven’t lost much,” Harry returned. “A small bundle of dried plants wouldn’t have been of much use, and as to the seeds, if, as I understand you, they only thrive high up on the mountains, I don’t see what you were going to do with them. Moreover, very likely they would have been eaten up by insects, or lost, or got wetted and spoiled, or something, before you got back or could have planted them in a likely spot.”

Then they continued their journey, staying that night in Daranato, where the great puma at first created a scare among the dusky inhabitants, but, showing friendliness towards all, she was soon the object of unbounded wonder and interest on every side.

Some two months later there was again a little dinner party at ‘Meldona,’ Mr. Kingsford’s residence, and the same faces were gathered round the hospitable board—all but Leonard Elwood’s. Maud looked charming and happy as she glanced, now and again, first at Jack Templemore’s bronzed face, and then at her brother, listening, not for the first time now, to her lover’s wondrous tale.

She and Stella had shuddered before at the accounts of the great tree and its victims, and of the horrors of the ‘haunted wood’; and had talked of Ulama and Zonella, and wondered, again and again, what they were like.

“Poor Leonard! I am sorry to lose him,” Maud said. “Yet, I suppose, he does not need pity; for he is to be envied in many ways. Fancy his dreamings—about which we used to tease him so—coming true after all!”

“It is just a year ago today,” observed Mr. Kingsford to the doctor, “that you were at dinner here and first told us about that wondrous stranger, Monella. We’ve had an anxious time ever since.”

“I have never known a happy moment till you all came back the other day,” said Maud sadly. “I am so thankful that the cruel suspense is ended at last. I have often recalled the words Dr. Lorien used about Roraima; that ‘its very name had come to be surrounded by a halo of dread and indefinable fear.’ I can truly declare that it has been so with me. I, too, had come to hate and dread the very name. It has seemed to me like a great, remorseless ogre that had swallowed up two of our friends, and, as I feared, was going to swallow up my brother and two more. Yet,” she added, looking at Jack, “had I known how things really were, had I known of your lying lamed, and ill, and alone in the den in that horrible forest, I think I should have gone mad! What a comfort to you this dear, faithful animal must have been!”

‘Nea’ was by her side, and she put her tear-stained face affectionately down to the animal’s head. The big puma had already established herself as a favourite with every one in the house.

“Truly,” returned Jack, “such thoughts occurred to me while I was cooped up there. I couldn’t help going over things in my mind; and, when I considered how the mountain itself, and all the horrors of the forest, seemed to have combined against me to prevent my escape, I was seized with a sort of hate and detestation of the place. And, ever since, my sleep has been disturbed—and will be for years to come, I feel convinced—by nightmare dreams of the sights and sounds that haunt my memory!”

“I feel that I have a grudge against it, too,” the doctor avowed. “Consider all the wonderful things you have told us that are to be found inside! Then, just when I got so near, to be shut out in that way! That ‘Plant of Life,’ too! I’d have given a good deal to have some specimens of that, and some seeds. I would have got them to grow, somehow, if the thing could be done!”

“I’m precious glad, then, that you didn’t,” the irreverent Harry put in. “I’m hoping to be a physician—one day—remember! And what chance would there be for me and the rest of the profession, if you taught people how to live for hundreds of years without so much as an illness?”

This very unexpected view of the matter from the vivacious ‘budding doctor’ had the effect of turning the thoughts of the others from the somewhat gloomy channel into which they seemed to have drifted.

After dinner, the belt, and the purses, and their glittering contents, were brought in and spread out to view.

“Whatever else may be said,” Mr. Kingsford declared, with emotion, “there is not one here who will not have cause to remember the stranger Monella, and Leonard, and their friends, with grateful feelings. And you, Jack, above all; for, if I am any judge of the value of your share of these things, you are a millionaire. And that brings back to my mind the thought that is now constantly perplexing me, Who was this wondrous Monella after all? I really cannot bring myself to believe he was—what was his name?—Mellenda, you know.”

“No,” assented the doctor. “As a man, I have the greatest liking and respect for him; but, as a scientist, I am bound to disbelieve in that part.”

“Since I have no claim yet to be considered a scientist,” said Harry, “I suppose I am free to believe what I like. So I go the whole ticket. I believe he was what I first pronounced him to be—a magician—and—I swallow the Mellenda legend—whole! So there!” This very emphatically.

“Oh dear, yes!” Stella exclaimed, her blue eyes opening wide at the doubting ones. “Why, of course, it must be true. It is so much more romantic and poetic, you know!”

Robert shook his head gravely.

“No!” he said, very decidedly. “I honour and respect the man, and his memory, from all I have heard of him, but—I cannot accept that wonderful part of it.”

“Well, I do,” Maud exclaimed, looking round with a pretty air of defiance, more particularly directed against Jack. “So that makes opinion even, so far—three for, and three against. Now,” to Templemore, “of course, I know you will side with the others.”

To every one’s surprise, however, Jack also shook his head.

“I don’t know that,” he answered, with a comically bewildered air. “I’ve really had all my old notions so mixed up and blown about, that I honestly admit I really cannot make up my mind. The whole thing is an enigma that I cannot solve as yet—probably never shall. So you may put me down as neutral—undecided—whatever you like to call it.”

Maud clapped her hands; and upon that the puma gave a loud roar, evidently signifying her assent and approbation.

“Three for, three against, and one neutral,” Maud cried. “That’s better than I hoped for!”

The doctor laughed, and his good-natured eyes twinkled.

“You’ve all but beaten us,” he said good-humouredly. “But, going away from that part of the subject, I feel truly sorry to think that he should have died so soon after he had accomplished the work he had had so much at heart.”

“There again I am inclined to differ,” Templemore answered slowly. “I honestly believe that nothing could have happened to please him more. All his later talk clearly showed that. He said he was utterly weary of life, and anxious to be ‘released,’ as he called it; yet his love for his people was so great, he let no sign of this appear till he felt sure all had been finally achieved. It was the fear that that work might be upset after he had gone—and that alone—that made him so anxious to shut out all future communication with the world outside; of that I feel convinced. It was that that influenced him too, I have no doubt, in making me promise to keep my adventures there a secret from the world in general. But, just at the last, almost when I was coming away, a doubt seemed to come into his mind, and he said to me, ‘I release you from that promise, if circumstances should arise in which you conscientiously believe it would be conducive to the good of my country to tell the story of your sojourn here.’ What he meant I cannot conceive; I only tell you what he said. Possibly time may show. He seemed to have the ‘gift of prophecy’ to some extent in those days; certainly, everything went to show that he foresaw, or expected, his own approaching death.”

* * * *

This was all some years ago.

Maud Kingsford and Templemore were married shortly after; and Stella and Harry Lorien are now married too. And, when the two sisters appear in society, they excite admiration, not only by their beauty, but also by their matchless jewels—that once glittered on the bosom of Ulama, Princess of Manoa, and that had adorned, probably, the persons of generations of descendants of former mighty kings of that once mighty empire.

But of this nothing is known to the general public. Templemore and his friends have kept the promise he gave, and preserved the secret of Roraima. It was only a short time ago that circumstances arose that seemed to him to justify a departure from the course he had hitherto observed. This was when the dispute which has been dormant for just upon a hundred years respecting the boundaries of British Guiana suddenly reached an acute stage.

“Truly,” he said to his wife, then, “I think this is the contingency our friend Monella must have had in his mind when he intimated that in certain circumstances I was to be free to depart from the silence he had enjoined. It seems to me more than ever the case that he must have had ‘the gift of prophecy’ at that time. I cannot doubt that, if he were alive now, and saw that the future international position of Roraima was hanging in the balance, he would wish it to become permanently British territory, rather than Venezuelan. And, if he could know of the present state of indifference—or want of information—that seems to prevail in England, I feel satisfied he would wish me to do what I could to awaken the English nation to the true facts of the question that is at stake.”

And that is how it has come about that, after some years of silence, this strange story of Roraima and the ancient city of El Dorado is now given to the world.

TERROR ISLAND, by Alex Shell Briscoe

Originally published in All-Story Weekly, July 3, 1915.

CHAPTER I

A CHALLENGE

This is the story of a world within a world—a land of creatures beautiful and creatures revolting; a place of things that crawl and things that fly, and things that do both; a savage realm where the strong live on the weak and the weak on the weaker.

It deals with fierce warriors with gaudy trappings and stings of death, and hideous monsters with crushing jaws; it relates of iridescent, fluttering things that are helpless, and brilliant fliers that range the air in search of prey; it tells of soft-bodied weaklings whose sober hues are their sole protection, and of predatory creepers whose neutral coloring conceals their presence from intended victims.

Then, too, it has to do with a man and a maid.

The man’s six feet two inches of muscle and bone sprawled lazily in a chair as he listened half contemptuously to an earnest argument between his employers, Professor G. C. Gast and his colleague, Professor Elias Potter.

The girl, a rather colorless, prim creature, paused occasionally in her work of classifying and arranging a mass of scientific data to listen to the discussion with a cold sparkle of interest in her eyes.

Dent Hammond, the man, had been employed by the scientists to act as guide and manager of the practical affairs of a proposed expedition to the tropics, and had come down to the Maryland retreat of the savants to talk over arrangements.

Physically, he undoubtedly was fitted for his post; and though he made no pretension to scientific attainments, he had led a party of naturalists successfully through the difficult Amazon region a year before.

Decidedly confident in his own powers was Dent, though not boastful; slightly intolerant of the opinions of others, though not given to expressing his own in words; and he possessed something of the mild contempt of a man of decision and action for the irresolute and weak.

He was thirty years old, and his life since twenty had been passed in going from “somewhere to somewhere else,” with adventure as the lure. His eyes were gray and cool, and they looked straight at you from under level brows; the tan of his face was that of ten years of the sun and wind of many lands; his slow ease of movement held the catlike quality of perfectly coordinated muscles.

Salva Tyrrell, the girl, acted as secretary to the two scientists.

She was of medium height and rather slender, with an old maid primness of manner. But her eyes were bright, her features regular; the thin nostrils denoted breeding, the high forehead intelligence; and Dent conceded she would be good looking if she replaced the stiff-collared shirt-waist with something ruffled and lacy, and fluffed her hair instead of drawing it tightly back from her temples.

Dent had made a half-hearted attempt to become better acquainted with her after he learned she was to be a member of the proposed expedition, but had found her difficult.

“She doesn’t think of anything but weeds and bugs,” was his verdict regarding her. “Most of the time she’s about as conversational as an ice-box, and when she does loosen up she talks clear over your head.”

Salva, on her part, had seen little of interest in Dent. She regarded him as a remarkably perfect physical specimen, appraised his ability for the position of leading the expedition, and, having decided he would do, went back to her work of classifying Professor Gast’s notes regarding “Analogies in the Relations of Slaves and Masters of the Formicidæ.” So absorbed was she in her work that there was no room in her life for anything else.

Decidedly different in type, also, were the two scientists. Gast, with his fan-like sweep of beard and jade-black eyes, was fiery of speech and assertive of manner, but hollow-chested and puny of limb. His colleague was chubby and mild, with a nervous habit of polishing his bald head with a huge handkerchief and peering with round-eyed inquisitiveness over his spectacles.

But, despite his meekness, Potter was singularly tenacious of his own opinions, and held his ground firmly in the many arguments he had with Gast. Almost anything was sufficient to start a dispute between the two, and consequently in the two days since Dent had come down from Baltimore little progress had been made in perfecting arrangements for the expedition.

The discussion now raging had been prompted by a chance remark by Dent regarding the great size of certain caterpillars he had observed at one time. “They’re big fellows and look dangerous, but they’re perfectly harmless,” he had commented, and Gast had seized the opportunity to wander far a-field following a favorite train of thought.

“The larvae of a large species of Sphinx moth,” he declared—“that was what you observed. Their great size and ferocious appearance is their only defense from their enemies, and that is a phenomenon not uncommonly noted in certain forms of insects.”

“Nothing unusual about it at all,” Potter agreed. “Nature invariably provides each creature with some means of protection against its natural enemies.”

“To a certain extent your reasoning is fallacious,” Gast promptly retorted, and Dent slid down a trifle in his chair. They were off! Nothing could check them, and there was nothing to do but wait until the storm of argument blew over.

That had been an hour before. Since, the two had wrestled through a maze of fact and deduction, and now Gast was in possession of the floor.

“That nature in the beginning provided each creature with the implements, powers, and weapons necessary to the perpetuation of the species is fallacious,” he declared. “The form and powers of animals are a result of development in accordance with conditions and environment.

“Natural weapons are developed in accordance with the needs of the individual, thus the proboscis of the butterfly, the wings of the bee, and the jumping legs of the grasshopper.

“Also, parts once needed by a species cease to be or to function when a change of environment or habits renders them unnecessary. Take two of the simpler forms of life and place them under different conditions. One will become predaceous and develop strong mandibles; the other becomes—er—vegetarian and creates for itself a sucking proboscis to extract the nectar from flowers, or jaws for feeding upon the pulp of plants.

“Consider man. Once he was equipped with natural weapons—fangs and tearing claws—but he eliminated the necessity of these by creating more effective artificial weapons and implements.

“Look at man today; a puny, helpless thing, incapable of sustaining life or prevailing against his enemies except through the artificial weapons he has provided himself with. No longer has he fangs—he cuts his meat with a knife—and he needs must have dentists or he would lose his teeth entirely.

“Man is the most striking example of environment. He represents life in its most highly developed form; yet he is like the slave-making ant which has been served so long it no longer is capable of serving itself.

“The man of primeval times was equipped to preserve himself; but man of today has developed the artificial at the expense of his body. Take a man of today and strip him of artificial aids; erase from his mind all memory of what the species has accomplished; then put him naked in a wilderness to compete with the well-equipped lower forms of life. Hah! Can you imagine anything more poorly fitted for a struggle for existence?

“But suppose this weak, soft-bodied thing should be able to escape his enemies for a time, what would happen? If he retained the power of reasoning he would provide himself again with implements and weapons—to make up for his natural deficiencies by artificial means.

“However, if the power of reasoning also was taken from him, and he managed to survive a few generations the exigencies of his struggle for life would force the development of natural powers. The eye-teeth again would become fangs; a forced arboreal existence would result in the lengthening of the arms; the bones of the fingers would become longer, the thumb shorter; his shoe-cramped toes would again become prehensile; the sense of smell and hearing would be sharpened; hair again would cover his body—in short, man would assume the form best suited to his new state.

“Yes,” he nodded, “it would be most interesting to observe man under primitive conditions.”

He was looking at Dent, and the ophidian luster of the eyes back of the thick glasses caused that individual a throb of unexplained disquiet.

“I get you,” Dent observed, and drew back his left sleeve. A twist of his powerful fingers opened the cuff and he thrust forth an arm which seemed one huge scar.

“Cheetah,” he explained as he covered the marks of what must have been a frightful wound. “Hunting-leopard—went bad in camp.”

“And you—” Gast’s tone was eager.

“I couldn’t reach a gun, and it ripped me rather badly before I broke its back.”

“But,” Gast asked softly, “would you care to live under conditions when such encounters were matters of daily possibility?”

“Not for mine,” Dent replied promptly. “A man would have a hard time in the jungle without clothes or weapons of some sort.”

“Would he survive?”

The other considered the question as he fumbled with his cuff. “It would depend upon the man—and his luck,” was his answer. “The blacks live in the jungle.”

“They have weapons,” the scientist pointed out.

“Mighty poor sort,” Dent retorted. “Blow-pipes and bows and spears are not very effective against the big cats. Still they get away with it.”

“However, they are weapons,” Gast argued. “Suppose the blacks were deprived of even bows and spears?”

“They’d survive anyhow,” the other said with conviction. “They’re not much on what you call reasoning power, but they know a lot more than any beast.”

“Then you think man could meet nature on equal terms—without weapons or clothing—and conquer!” Gast’s voice was a challenge. “Could you?”

“I lost my outfit in a cataract once,” Dent said slowly; “and the Caymans got my black boys. I made my way through the bush two hundred miles with only a pocket-knife.”

Gast arose and looked Dent over with a curious expression on his face. Then he nodded twice, and without speaking turned toward his laboratory.

Soon afterward the throb of a gasoline engine and the moan of a dynamo was heard.

CHAPTER II

MYSTERIES

Dent sat following with a straw the movements of one of the members of a colony of black ants in a glass case. The stratum of sand in which the tiny insects worked was so thin that every chamber and passage could be seen, and he watched their complex activities with mild interest.

The case was one of many in the room. Over by a window was a community of bees, and along the wall was ranged the elaborate outfit used by Professor Gast in his study of the habits of slave-making insects, a field in which he was considered the foremost authority of his time.

There were glass boxes devoted to the culture of beetles of various kinds, and others which contained insects whose very names were unknown to Dent; but most interesting to him was a colony of wasps, and he was moved to interrupt Salva who was at work over Professor Gast’s notes, to relate a certain painful experience with black insects of this species in the tropics.

Salva listened with interest a moment, asked a question, and gave him the name of the species. “They are among the most venomous of wasps,” she said; then turned again to her work.

Dent yawned. The things which absorbed the attention of the others bored him. He was naturally observing, and in the tropics had acquired a certain interest in insects; but he had no desire for more knowledge regarding them than was necessary to evade their attentions.

There was nothing in common between him and the members of the household, and he longed to have his business there over with so he could get back to the city. However, there was no chance of a conference with the scientists at this hour of the day. Gast was in his laboratory, and Potter was in the glass-roofed greenhouse. Dent would have liked to visit the laboratory, from inside which came the thump of an engine and the hum of machinery; but that was forbidden ground. Even Professor Potter was not privileged to enter it at will.

So, when Salva declined to respond to his conversational advances, Dent wandered out of doors.

The house stood in a pleasant valley with sun-flooded meadows stretching away to the hills on three sides. On the other, a hundred yards away, was a lake several miles long. A hundred and fifty yards off the shore was a small island covered with a thick growth of grass and bushes.

Very drowsy and peaceful it appeared to Dent—very different from snake-infested jungles he had known—but he was looking upon the scene of adventures which would make all he had passed through seem commonplace—adventures which would have caused his hair to stiffen could he have foreseen them.

But all was quiet now. Even the sound of Gast’s engine no longer could be heard. Dent stretched himself languidly, seated himself on the steps, and fumbled in a pocket for a pipe. Then he paused, his chin lifting alertly. From inside the house came a cry, a rush of feet, and he turned.

Professor Gast, wildly excited, was running toward the door, stooping to snatch at a moving thing on the floor which eluded his grasp. Dent’s hand shot forward and caught up the thing, holding it kicking and squirming in his cupped palms.

With interest and something of bewilderment he stared at the tiny creature he had captured, while Gast danced around and shouted commands that it be handled with care.

It was a dog!

Dent rubbed his eyes and looked at it again. Yes, it was a dog, perfectly formed but hardly an inch in height. Its frantic yelps, thin of timbre but unmistakable, came to his ears, and with a shock he recognized a marvelous resemblance between the miniature creature and a dog which he had seen Gast take into the laboratory that morning.

“Give it to me,” Gast commanded, and Dent surrendered the animal, which the other bore away without comment or explanation. The door of the laboratory slammed and Dent turned a puzzled face toward Salva.

“Well, I’ll be—” he began, but thought better of it and scratched his head in the manner of men who meet something beyond their comprehension.

The girl’s eyes were bright with interest as she watched Gast’s retreat. Far better than Dent she realized the significance of what she had seen; then she caught that young man’s searching glance and composed her own features.

She turned toward her desk, but he confronted her with a question in his eyes.

“Listen,” he said. “Was that a dog—or what was it?”

Salva shook her head. “Professor Gast’s experiments are not to be discussed,” she reminded him. “That was the understanding, you may recall, when you came here.”

“But—” Dent began.

She checked him.

“It is better not to speak of anything you may see here,” she said firmly. “Professor Gast is a very wonderful man. He can do many things. Of his recent experiments I know nothing—it is not for me to know, or any one else—and it would be well for you to curb your curiosity.”

“But—good Heavens!” Dent exploded; then he shook his head hopelessly and turned away.

Long he pondered over the matter, however, and he still was thinking of it that afternoon, as he sat smoking in the shade beside the greenhouse. It was impossible, he tried to tell himself; yet he had held the thing in his hands, had heard its thin yelps.

A door in the wing of the house which contained the laboratory was opened and Gast looked out. Apparently he did not observe Dent, and disappeared. An instant later a small, spotted dog shot through the door and scurried down the walk with its tail between its legs—a sadly frightened dog.

Dent’s jaws dropped and wobbled helplessly as he watched the thing dash toward the gate, saw it stop and shake itself, then make off down the road at a pace which evidenced a desire to remove itself from that vicinity as speedily as possible.

Slowly Dent closed one eye and then the other. He pinched himself to make sure his faculties were not deceiving him.

For the dog which was disappearing down the rusty road was the dog he had seen Gast take into the laboratory that morning—the same dog which, in miniature, he had held squirming and yelping in the cupped palms of his hands!

Half an hour later Dent was still sitting in a dazed and wondering silence beside the greenhouse when from within came the sound of voices. Gast and Potter were talking, and he caught fragments of sentences. Potter seemed to be arguing against some suggestion made by Gast.

“The cause of science justifies anything which will be of ultimate benefit to the world,” Gast declared, “just as it justifies vivisection.”

Dent could not understand all of Potter’s reply, but he caught the closing words:

“—But not humans. There are limits to everything. I do not agree with you. I would not countenance an experiment of a serious nature with a human being as the subject.”

Gast retorted angrily, and the voices of the two receded as they moved away, leaving Dent wondering what the argument was about.

But the incident had served to take his mind off the mysterious happenings of the day, and he strolled around to the front of the house, where he met Professor Potter on his way toward the lake with an insect net and a specimen-box.

The scientist was headed for the island in the lake, and Dent watched him row across in one of the boats which lay at a small private dock. He saw Potter run the boat ashore and go hunting around among the bushes with his net ready, evidently in search of insects.

Suddenly Dent jumped to his feet. He had seen Potter slip and fall heavily from a ledge. A moment’s wait and the other made no effort to regain his feet, and Dent ran toward the lake, shouting a warning to Giles, the caretaker, who was at work in a garden behind the house.

Within ten minutes Dent had crossed to the island in one of the other boats and was stooping over Potter, who lay half conscious with one leg doubled under him. Evidently the bone had snapped just above the ankle. His smashed specimen-case lay beside him, and Dent kicked it aside as he lifted the injured man in his arms to carry him to the boat.

Potter recovered consciousness as Dent placed him on a couch in the house, and lay gritting his teeth with pain as Gast made an examination of the broken limb.

“A bad fracture—compound, I’m afraid,” was the latter’s verdict as he stood up. “We’ll have to send him to a hospital. No, place to care for him properly here.”

While Giles made preparations to take Potter to town in a wagon Gast adjusted a temporary bandage, drawing the broken bones together in a manner which showed considerable skill; then stepped across the room to a medicine-case.

Dent, watching the pain-twisted features of the injured man, was surprised to note a jerk of the other’s chin, an unspoken command for him to come nearer.

“Closer,” Potter whispered as Dent leaned over the couch; then: “Watch, Gast. He—”

There was a sound of hasty footsteps as the other scientist hurried toward them, his eyes aglitter with suspicion. Potter’s lips moved silently as Dent straightened up, and it seemed the word they formed was “Beware!”

Gast smiled genially as he leaned over his colleague. “That trip will be too much for you without a bit of morphia,” he said.

Potter made no protest as the other bared his arm. There was a movement of a glittering hypodermic needle, and a few minutes later the injured man lay in a drugged slumber. Giles drew up in front of the door with a light spring wagon in which had been piled straw; pillows, and blankets were placed over the straw, and Potter soon was on his way to the hospital with Mrs. Giles, the housekeeper, beside him to keep him comfortable on the journey.

And as the wagon rolled away Dent, chancing to glance at Gast, surprised a gleam of triumph in the other’s eyes.

Coupled with the warning from Potter, this caused Dent some disquieting thoughts, and he sought an opportunity to speak to Salva; but she had repaired to the kitchen to prepare the evening meal in the absence of Mrs. Giles, a task in which Gast strangely enough had insisted on taking part.

So Dent decided to wait until after dinner; but he was moody and silent as the three sat down to the table and kept a wary eye on Gast, who maintained his usual flow of comment.

Conversation with Gast meant a series of monologues and tonight he was particularly garrulous, regaling Dent with curious facts regarding the insects of that latitude, explaining their habits and characteristics and the kind of food they sought.

As he listened a feeling of numbness crept over Dent. The perspective of the room seemed to have altered. Gast’s features appeared distorted. Things grew wavery and crooked before his eyes.

With an effort he turned toward Salva. She was drooping slightly, and he observed her sweep a hand across her face as though to brush something away from her eyes.

Again he looked at Gast. The scientist’s head now was a monstrous thing, which floated and wobbled. He felt himself sagging in his chair, and strove to straighten; but his limbs and body were leaden. Gast’s voice was like the distant booming of breakers; the room was reeling; then, with a last flash of activity, his numbed reason gave warning.

He had been drugged!

With a mighty effort of will Dent half dragged himself erect. Stupidly he stared at Salva, who had slumped in her chair. He opened his mouth to shout an accusation at Gast, but his jaw dropped helplessly.

For a moment he fought against that which was stealing over him, but the effort was vain. He reeled drunkenly, clutching at the table; and Gast eased him back into his chair.

Then a sensation of sinking to undreamed depths—and utter blackness!

CHAPTER III

IN THE NAME OF SCIENCE

A whiff of something pungent brought Dent back to a strangely distorted world. He lay on a heap of coarse, cotton-like material in the center of a wide, smooth plain, and over him leaned a colossal being that peered at him through a prodigious glass like a microscope.

Dent closed his eyes and mentally shook himself. “The effects of the drug would wear off presently,” he told himself; but when he glanced up again the monster still was there, only now he could recognize the huge beard and features of Gast. Yes, the tremendous thing was Gast!

“Oh, well, I’ll be better in a moment,” Dent muttered, and turned his head aside. Then a startled exclamation escaped his lips, and for a moment he lay staring.

A few paces away Salva, her face red and her eyes flashing, was wrapping her body in a strip of cloth. It was silk of the finest weave, but so coarse did it appear to Dent’s eyes that it seemed like matting.

Then as he met her indignant glance Dent’s face, too, flushed, and he snatched at the cloth which partly covered him. He, too, was nude!

Slowly Dent raised himself and looked around the room, a great fear gripping him as he recognized his surroundings.

The things he saw were familiar, though inconceivably enlarged. The room appeared miles in width. The tremendous fiery globe above him was an ordinary lamp. The plateau on which he lay was the top of a table. The giant who observed him through a glass was Gast—Gast swollen to impossible proportions!

The world about him had changed, or—memory came of the miniature dog—and the truth swept over him!

He and Salva had been made smaller—so small that in stature Dent hardly equaled the length of the first joint of Gast’s thumb, which rested on the table. The shape of his body was the same; apparently he possessed all his former powers—but he was less than an inch in height!

Stunned, overcome, he turned to the girl.

“Tell me,” he implored, “is this a nightmare, or have we—”

Salva bowed her head hopelessly. “I’m afraid it’s true,” she said. “I long have known Professor Gast was working on something of this sort.”

Black rage gripped Dent, “I suppose this is in the cause of science,” he jeered; “to sacrifice us as an experiment!” He lifted his hand in impotent fury and shook his fist at Gast.

His answer was a tremendous bellow. He could see the huge, bearded lips drawn back from enormous yellow fangs.

Gast was laughing!

Again the billows of sound, swelling and rumbling, and they could see the scientist leaning closer, a hand behind his ear. Then they understood. Gast was speaking, but the vibrations of his thick vocal cords were too heavy for their greatly reduced eardrums.

Nor could they speak to him, his ears being unable to catch the variations of their tiny voices, though they could understand each other plainly.

Apparently he understood the situation, for he made no further attempt to communicate with them by voice, and reached for a pad, upon which he started writing. As he finished each sheet he leaned it against a book, and, as they read, fuller appreciation of the horror of their position came to Dent and Salva.

The message ran:

The interests of humanity and the cause of science justify much—even this. You will suffer no permanent ill-effects from passing through your present state, and you will add much to the knowledge of the world. In time you will be restored to your former selves without having suffered harm, but for the present you must serve the cause of science.

It is with regret that I am forced to send Miss Tyrrell on this mission, but it is necessary for someone with a fair knowledge of entomology to go; and I am sending Mr. Hammond as her protector. You will be placed on the island in the lake, and will be provided with both food and the means of dealing with any foes you may meet. You are to observe the creatures with which you come in contact from an intimate point of view not possible for an ordinary human, and the result of these observations is to be recorded by Miss Tyrrell.

I shall visit you often, and from time to time will communicate further instructions. I shall watch over you as much as possible, and you will be in no particular danger, though you must be watchful.

The necessity of sending Miss Tyrrell has caused me to abandon any idea of putting to the test Mr. Hammond’s belief that unarmed and naked he could meet and cope with the beasts of the wilderness.

Miss Tyrrell will be furnished with materials for recording her observations, and she will turn over her notes to me daily. I can read them with the aid of a microscope, and thus will be able to keep in touch with the progress of your work. So, the question of whether you shall be permitted to return to your natural sphere depends entirely upon how faithfully you labor, and the length of your sojourn in your present state will be determined by the speed with which you accomplish your task.

Gast ceased to write, and the girl and the man sat staring dumbly at each other. They were helpless even to appeal for mercy, entirely in the power of the monstrous thing which observed them through the glass.

Both recalled Gast’s words regarding man’s inability to cope with animals equipped with natural weapons, and even as they strove to grasp the horror of their situation there came an example of the terrors in store for them.

A huge beetle, attracted by the light, landed on the table with a thump and a great roar of wings. Its horny feet and wing-cases scraped and rattled as it scrambled up; then it stood regarding them with staring, many-faced eyes and waving sensitive antennae—a monster out of a legend, twice as long as Dent and with jaws capable of severing his body.

Only for an instant did it menace them. A fillip of Gast’s fingers and it was gone, leaving Dent and Salva white and shaken with the thought that they were doomed to meet many such monsters—and worse!

Dent recalled Potter’s attempt to warn him against Gast, and realized the meaning of the mysterious conversation he had overheard in the greenhouse. Gast had proposed using them in an experiment, but his colleague had demurred. Then the accident had given him an opportunity to carry out his plans.

Apparently Gast did not propose they should suffer from hunger, for he brought a saucer of water, and another on which was a small pile of bread crumbs, a dab of marmalade, and a few shreds of ground meat—a huge mountain of food compared to the bulk of the two.

Salva shook her head when the food was placed before them, but Dent urged her to eat, and finally she nibbled one of the crumbs which appeared to them as large as a loaf of bread.

Dent made a hearty meal, and as he tore with his teeth at a strand of the meat he recalled Gast’s words regarding the fangs for which man no longer had any use.

“Gosh, I’d like to have some of those teeth we used to have before they improved the species,” he said, and the comment brought the ghost of a smile to the girl’s lips.

“Listen,” Dent went on; “we’re up against it—you and I—and we might as well make the best of it. We’ve got a tough job laid out for us, and I guess you’d have picked different company than me for this sort of an excursion; but Gast settled all that for us, so all we can do is go ahead.

“And say, the best way to meet old man trouble is with a grin. He’ll be a lot easier to get along with. Worry just makes things worse.”

She glanced at him a little tremulously, and he grinned back. “Now smile,” he commanded. “No, not that way—you turn the corners of your mouth up—that’s better. Now try again!

“Good! You showed your teeth that time. Did any one ever tell you that you had pretty teeth? There, that’s great—regular smile, that one! “Salva couldn’t help it. She laughed and felt much better.

And while Dent was trying to coax the girl into better spirits, Gast had busied himself with a small, wooden box which he was dividing into compartments of cardboard. These rooms were connected with doors at the bottom, and in the side of the box he had cut a door, which could be closed by a piece of wood pivoted on a nail.

Gathering the strip of silk around him, Dent walked over to watch the progress of the work, and Gast showed how the door was operated by opening and closing it several times.

“He’s fixing us up pretty cozy, anyhow,” Dent called to Salva after walking around the house. “We’ll be safe from the bugs in there, though it’s a bit shy on plumbing and other modern improvements.”

Gast even provided the dwelling with a window, cutting a hole in one side and tacking a strip of glass over it; then, before he fastened on the lid which was to form the roof, he proceeded to fill the house with supplies, and the manner in which he went about the task showed he carefully had thought out everything in advance.

He shaved dried beef on a paper and packed the particles in gelatin capstiles. Marmalade and bread were placed in similar receptacles, as were salt and many other things. These, with a roll of silk cloth, a spool of thread an4 several small needles, were placed in the house, then the roof was tacked on.

A gesture from Gast indicated that he wished them to enter, and they heard his rumbling chuckles as they made a tour of their quarters. Dent picked up one of the needles and realized why they had been provided. They would make excellent spears.

When they had finished the inspection of the house they started outside, but Gast had fastened the door, and a new phase of her position dawned on the girl. Her face grew pale and she faced Dent.

He understood, and very gently took one of her hands. “We’re up against a tough proposition, little girl,” he said softly; “but we’ll pull through all right—and you’ve nothing to fear from me.”

“Thank you,” she said simply, “and good night.”

She turned and went into one of the compartments into which Gast had put a small quantity of cotton, and Dent turned toward the other. A moment later the light which streamed through the window flashed out, and lying in the darkness they strove to picture the future.

CHAPTER IV

THE CATASTROPHE

Salva sat cross-legged in front of the one great window of the house the next morning brushing her hair with a handful of cotton fiber. With a woman’s knack in such matters she already had fashioned a square of silk into a fairly presentable garment adjusted with thread; and under her instructions Dent managed to arrange his own garb so it was more comfortable and gave him greater freedom of movement.

He watched her as she finished her toilet, making up for the lack of hair-pins by doing her hair in a braid which she wound around her head and fastened with a silken cord. It was vastly different from her former manner of dressing her hair, and Dent liked the effect.

Also, he noted the roundness of her bare arms, the smooth whiteness of her throat, the softness of her eyes.

“Why,” he exclaimed, “you’re pretty!”

A tinge of color appeared in the girl’s cheeks and spread until her face glowed, then it receded slowly and her eyes were cool as she arose.

“Am I?” she said indifferently; and Dent, duly rebuked, followed her toward the door.

Gast already had removed the fastening, and food awaited them when they emerged. Salva had more nearly recovered her usual poise and she as well as Dent ate heartily.

Dent, on his part, was beginning to feel decidedly sure of himself. He recalled the dog he had seen emerge from the laboratory did not appear to be any the worse as a result of its experience; and his confidence in his ability to cope with whatever lay ahead was strengthened a few minutes later when Gast’s hand hovered over the table an instant and there came a clank of metal.

Hurrying toward the spot where the thing had fallen, Dent picked it up and uttered a shout of glee. It was a heavy steel saber; thick and broad toward the end like a cleaver, evidently filed from the thin part of a razor blade.

It was extremely sharp, and the handle had been ground down to afford a good grip. With such a weapon Dent could give a good account of himself against any creature anything near his size, and as he made a trial swing with it around his head there came a great chuckle from Gast who was watching. For Salva, Gast had prepared a tiny packet of thin India paper and a capsule of splinters of graphite. Their purpose was obvious, and Dent pushed them through the swinging door into the house, but kept the sword beside him.

Immediately afterward Gast produced a small box into which he lifted them, then with their house in his other hand he started toward the lake.

The girl’s face paled with the nearness of the plunge into the wilderness, and Dent, too, looked sober. In the minds of both for an instant was the thought that it all was part of a nightmare, or the distorted creation of a drug-fevered mind.

Dent pinched himself, and grimaced. The pain was real. The rough weapon he held in his hand was real—he chopped at the side of the box to prove it—and the colossal thing which carried them was real.

The girl opposite him was real—as real as the terror that looked out of her eyes.

Now they had reached the boat, and Gast placed the box which held them and their house on a seat. There came the thump and creak of oars, the gurgle and slap of waves as he pushed off for the island.

Peering over the rim of the box, Dent surveyed the scene. The lake was a sea, the morning sun a tremendous glowing orb, the island toward which they were bearing swiftly was a continent covered with gigantic trees that yesterday had appeared as low bushes.

The difference was merely one of relative proportions. Dent’s natural height was six feet two inches; he now was less than an inch in stature. In his eyes familiar objects apparently had been magnified seventy-five times.

A distance of only seventy feet as measured by ordinary human standards was to Dent and Salva a mile.

The boat ran upon the bank with a tremendous shock. Gast pulled in the oars, then stepped ashore, bearing Dent and Salva in his hands and carefully placed them on a smooth stretch of the sloping beach.

For a moment he stood glancing around as though looking for a proper place to establish them; then he stepped back into the boat to get the house which stood on a seat in the stern.

Salva was watching and saw him slip. Her shriek and a mighty crash caused Dent to whirl as Gast fell sprawling, his head striking an oarlock. The boat tipped to one side, and very quietly the unconscious figure slipped into the water and disappeared.

Great waves rolled away from the spot and beat upon the beach. The house which had been prepared for them floated away before the breeze, turning around slowly as the girl and the man watched with despair in their eyes.

They had been thrust into a new sphere of existence, transported to a wilderness of monsters—and now there was no hope of return.

Gast, the one man who knew the secret of restoring them to their former state, was dead.

When at last there no longer was any possibility that the scientist would reappear Dent turned away. The girl stood with her hands to her cheeks, her eyes on the spot where the tragedy had taken place.

Dent tried to speak, but there came only a dry, clicking sound from his anguish-contracted throat. Slowly the girl turned her great eyes upon him. She swayed and he caught her as she swooned.

The collapse of his companion was the spur the half-dazed man needed. He again became a man of action. It was necessary to find shelter at once and, bearing the girl and his great sword, he set out for a grass forest not far distant.

Thick and matted and tall was the rank jungle growth—huge, saw-edged spears of grass five times Dent’s height; twisted masses of creepers thicker than his arm; great leaves; swollen, gaudy flowers; tangled roots and plants larger than his body—and its strange odors, the gloom of its depths, the tremendous rustlings under the stirring of the breeze, hinted of lurking perils.

Salva opened her eyes as Dent placed her in the shade of a large leaf at the edge of the forest.

“It’s all right,” he assured her, and as he watched the color slowly creep back into her cheeks his thoughts were busy with the problems the future presented.

The girl, studying him through half-closed lids, noted the strong line of his jaw, the vertical furrow between his brows, his intent eyes, and sought in vain for a hint of weakness.

Here was the one being on whom she could depend for protection in a world of strange terrors, and as she appraised his powers and spirit it was with a throb of thankfulness she found they promised to stand the test.

“I’m afraid I have not proved a very good companion in adventure,” she said. “I’ve been telling myself I’d be brave, and now I find I am not. I’ll try to do better, though—and now what are we to do?”

Dent nodded at this calm recognition of her reliance on him and rubbed his chin.

“It sure is no time for fainting,” he observed, “though you had a pretty good excuse—Gast being drowned was a jolt we hardly looked for—but we’re here and we can’t help what’s happened. Getting away is one matter, but the first thing we must look for is some sort of shelter.”

He lifted her to her feet. “Feel strong enough to travel?” he asked. “We’d better be hiking. I’m figuring we can find seeds and things like that to eat, but we’ve got to get near water, too, and it’s quite a way to the shore. First thing, though, is your morning smile. Now! No, that’s a bum one, try again. That’s better.”

Salva’s smile was rather wan and halfhearted, but it passed muster. “That’s to be your regular morning exercise,” Dent informed her with a grin. “It’s a good thing to practice all day, too. You’ll soon get the habit, and it’s a good one.”

As they turned to depart he uttered a sharp exclamation, thrust her to one side, and stepped forward with his cleaver-like sword ready. The girl followed his glance and stifled a shriek.

A few paces away a monstrous head peered over a leaf. Two great compound eyes whose thousand facets glittered in the sun stared at them; delicate, feathery antennae were thrust forward inquisitively, and below was a group of powerful mouth parts—mandibles, capable of snipping an arm or a leg from the human creatures which confronted it, a broad, lip-like under jaw, and above a hideous opening fringed with stiff bristles.

More terrible in appearance and more strongly armed it was than any beast Dent had met in a tropic jungle, and very prudently he started backing away, calling to Salva to flee. However, the monster displayed no hostile intentions and they soon left its covert behind.

Warned by the encounter, they kept well beyond the edge of the jungle, but they had gone only a short distance when the girl paused.

“I think we’d better go some other way,” she said and sniffed the air. Dent noted a pungent odor and asked a question.

“Formicina,” she said; then at his puzzled look: “Ants, you know.”

Dent sniffed the air again. “I get you,” he said. “I remember that’s how an ant’s nest smells when you stir it up.”

Then a thought struck him and he turned to the girl. “Say,” he burst out, “that scientific work of yours is going to come in handy. Why, you’re a partner worth having. By the way, what was that big thing we saw?”

Salva dimpled at his enthusiasm.

Incidentally it was the first time he had observed she possessed dimples, and he approved them.

“What you saw,” Salva replied, “was a species of Coleoptera, a member of the tribe of Lamellicornia, of the family Lucanidae. I did not examine it closely, but from its size and the great length of its mandibles, I believe it was a Lucanus Elaphus.”

“Is that all?” Dent retorted. “Come again and shoot lower.”

“A stag beetle,” Salva explained.

Both laughed, and their spirits rose somewhat.

“Are we likely to meet any more things like that?” Dent asked as he helped Salva over a barrier of boulders.

The sand, which appeared smooth to the eye of an ordinary human, was decidedly rough going for them and bruised their unshod feet cruelly.

“I’m afraid we will,” she admitted, “though they’re not particularly dangerous. The stag beetle is not considered predaceous, but there are other species that are—most large insects are, in fact—and there are the ants. They are very numerous and extremely ferocious.

“Then there are the big tiger beetles—you will recognize them by their brilliant markings—and the bees and wasps which carry stings. Besides, there are dragon-flies that might attack us; big scavenger beetles we may meet near the water; toad bugs, water striders, and—”

“That’s enough for one lecture,” Dent interrupted. “Let’s hike. I want to find a hole and pull it in after me so the dragon-flies and the ants can’t get me.”

“And when you find the hole, you’d better make sure it isn’t inhabited already,” Salva warned; “most holes are, and intrusion is likely to be resented.”

Dent was smiling at her remark as they skirted a clump of thick undergrowth, taking a new course to avoid the ants whose nest Dent had located by climbing to the top of a rock. Salva’s evident bravery had heartened him mightily.

He saw the oval gray object as he passed near it, but saw no difference between it and other boulders. Then Salva screamed. The gray object reared up and shot forward, a pair of huge jaws caught the girl’s loose garment, and she was dragged shrieking toward the monster’s burrow.

Dent whirled up his great sword and sprang forward. The heavy blade bit deep into the hideous head, but the jaws did not relax. Again and again he struck, but slowly, steadily Salva was drawn toward the terrible den.

In a supreme effort Dent brought his weapon down at the base of one of the mandibles, the edge shearing completely through the horny jaw. Another blow and Salva was free, while the creature withdrew itself rapidly out of sight into the ground.

“My God!” burst from the man’s lips as he steadied the shaken, white-faced girl. “What was it?”

Salva withdrew herself from his arms and glanced toward the hole into which the deadly thing had disappeared.

“I think it was a larva of the tiger beetle,” she said. “We must be careful.”

“I know how it got its name,” Dent declared with conviction.

CHAPTER V

A WORLD OF MONSTERS

From the top of a huge rock near the water’s edge Dent and Salva surveyed the monstrous place which was their new abode.

Over clover and grass forests hovered great buzzing things, banded with yellow and black and gold, with hairy, crawling legs and flashing wings. On the swollen blossoms they sprawled with eager, spatulate bills, gathering pollen and honey nectar, shoving and crowding industriously.

Along the stems and leaves were smaller creatures, some in search of food, others slitting openings in which to place eggs. Near by a white larva, soft-bodied and helpless, was spinning a cocoon in which to pupate. Under a great leaf a hairy caterpillar was squirming furiously, while a delicate-winged insect calmly proceeded to use its body as a depository for eggs.

A fly hovered overhead with a whir of wings. Dent watched it warily, for twice it had swept by very close, and he had glimpsed its staring eyes and bristly mouthparts. Then—something like a monster of prehistoric times shot down out of the sky! An iridescent flash and it was gone—and so was the fly!

“A dragon-fly,” Salva said.

Dent glanced toward where the thing of prey hovered over the water. “We used to call them ‘snake doctors’,” he said.

Near the shore a short distance away a great oval shape moved along just under the surface of the water. It was ten times the size of either of the human creatures, and its jaws could have bitten them in two.

“A scavenger beetle,” Salva explained, then indicated a spraddle-legged thing that ran with incredible swiftness over the surface of the water. “Hygrotrechus,” she said; “a water-strider. They’re dangerous.”

Dent carefully surveyed the vicinity. He was hungry, and so was Salva. They had constructed a safe shelter for the night by walling up the mouth of a crevice with stones, but it now was necessary to find food.

Apparently there were no ants in the neighborhood, a fact for which they were thankful, for twice they had engaged in sharp struggles with fierce warriors of that species; and the two set out for a part of the jungle where the presence of many winged insects indicated flowers could be found.

Salva’s knowledge of botany now came in handy, and under instructions from her Dent climbed up one of the plants and severed the stems of several blossoms. In so doing, he disturbed a great bee which buzzed angrily, but made no move to attack him.

The girl was examining one of the flowers when Dent clambered to the ground, and he aided her in cutting down through the stamens until the nectar cup was reached, managing to get himself well dusted with pollen.

Salva laughed as he brushed himself off. “I’m afraid you would not be of much value as a cross-pollination agent,” she remarked.

“The thing I want to know is whether this yellow stuff is good to eat,” he retorted.

“Try it,” she told him; “I have already, and it’s not bad.”

Dent bit into a mass of the grains and nodded approval. “Very good,” he declared; “a little waxy, but it has a fine, nutty flavor.”

Then he cut away the pistil of the flower and revealed the drop of honeydew in the nectarine. “Here’s the dessert,” he said when he had sampled it, finding the sweet substance very palatable, though not as thick as the honey secreted by a bee, and Salva assured him it contained considerable nourishment.

“There are seeds, too,” she said, and led the way to a plant which bore well-developed pods. Dent hacked open several of them; in one they found grains that were pulpy, and the starchy germ at the base was not a bad substitute for bread.

“We’ve solved the food problem, anyhow,” Dent observed when they had eaten their fill.

“Except for meat,” Salva replied, but he jerked his head confidently toward the lake.

“We’ll have meat, too,” he declared; “I’ve got several plans for catching fish—I saw minnows only about twice as big as I swimming along the bank—then there are snails. Don’t shudder; they’re good—I’ve tried them. Besides, there’s locusts. They eat them in the East, and they consider them quite a delicacy.

“And now let’s go down to the lake and get a drink. This sweet stuff has made me thirsty.”

The stones had bruised Salva’s feet until she limped as she walked, and after they had satisfied their thirst Dent left her near the shore while he went on a tour of exploration, which led him across the strip of beach to investigate several bushes which were covered with berries.

He was scrambling up a thorny stalk to reach one of the berries when the sound of a shrill scream sent him tumbling to the ground. The voice was that of Salva!

An instant later he dashed out of the jungle with a yell of encouragement and a desperate fear that he would be too late.

Backed against an outcropping mass of rock, Salva was facing a thick-bodied thing with great eyes that jutted out from the corners of its triangular head like polished black knobs and an eager, snapping beak.

Even as Dent dashed toward the spot the creature hurled itself forward. The girl drove the stick she held into its mouth, and for an instant it paused, crumpling the wood between its powerful jaws; then again it rushed. Salva turned to flee, and managed to evade the horrible mouth; but one of its legs tripped her, and as she went sprawling it caught her flowing garment.

Savagely it tore at the silk, seeking her shrinking body; but as the clashing mandibles came closer there was a floundering rush over the stones, the dull flash of metal, the sodden impact of a blow!

Straight down through the creature’s head Dent hewed, his sword severing one of the strong jaws. Experience with the larva of the tiger beetle had taught him the futility of trying to deliver a blow immediately fatal to an animal whose life centered at no one spot, but was distributed through many nerve ganglia in different parts of its body.

But when he had cut through both the thing’s mandibles it was helpless to harm, though it continued to fight furiously until he literally had hacked it to pieces.

Tenderly, with a new light in his eyes, Dent lifted the girl to her feet and guided her away. She leaned against him, but assured him she was not hurt.

“I’m mighty glad,” he muttered again and again, and the fervency of his tone brought the color to her cheeks.

“What was that thing?” he asked as they turned toward the rock where they had prepared a retreat for the night, and there was a gleam of mischief in her eyes as she answered:

“That was a Galgulus Oculatus.”

He scratched his head ruefully. “I’m afraid my education has been neglected,” he admitted. “Try again.”

“A toad-bug,” she explained. “They are predaceous and very ferocious, although not very large.”

“Well,” Dent said with decision, “I’m not going to leave you alone again—not with things with names like that hanging around. I need you myself.”

The sun was dropping low when they reached the cave in the ledge, and while they were gathering mosses for couches the winged terrors of the night began to appear—blood-lusting mosquitoes, velvet-winged moths, and great horny-backed beetles that blundered and buzzed prodigiously in flight.

From the shrubbery came the metallic chirp of crickets, and from the shores of the lake the guttural croaking of frogs. The gleam of fireflies over the grass was like the play of heat lightning, and back and forth in the dusk swept titanic bats taking their toll of smaller flying things.

All about them was the whir of wings, the shock of attacks, the frenzied flutter of victims whose blood was drained from their bodies while they still lived.

It was the mighty blood-carnival of a land of terror, and two tiny creatures in the form of humans, crouching in a narrow cave, listened in fear as it raged—fear for the coming of some monster which would tear away the thin barrier of stones and seek them out.

And in the dark Dent’s hands went out and grasped the girl’s in reassurance, and she, taking courage, slept like a tired child.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE WILDERNESS

Forests jeweled with dew, glittering in the slanting rays of the morning sun, and a lake that was a crinkly sheet of silver greeted Dent and Salva when they emerged from the cavern to face a future as dull and hopeless as the day was bright.

From across the lake came shouts and the thump and splash of oars. Men were dragging the bottom with grappling hooks. The two on the island saw the body of Gast brought up and taken ashore, but the dragging continued for hours.

Dent and Salva had been missed, and it was believed they, too, had been drowned.

Helpless, unable even to communicate with those who sought them, the two stood on a rock for a time and watched the dragging of the lake; then they turned away to take up the burdens, to face the problems, to meet the dangers of a new sphere of existence—two exiles in a land of terrors.

It is but a step from culture to the primitive. A change of form and environment, and these two creatures of this day of high development of the species found their chief concerns no higher than those of the troglodytes—food, shelter, and safety.

As on the day before, nectar from flowers and partly hardened seeds served to satisfy their hunger. They slaked their thirst with dew, then started to find a permanent domicile.

From the top of the rock Dent had carefully examined the vicinity. A ledge which jutted from the slope near the water’s edge looked promising, but his powers of vision had decreased in proportion to his lessened stature and a closer examination was necessary.

A journey to the spot meant a dangerous trip through the jungle, but Dent was determined to make it at once, and Salva approved his decision. It was obvious they must find more suitable living quarters than the cleft in which they had slept the first night. It was small and exposed as well as difficult to reach, and was not conveniently located with regard to the larger forests from which they would draw the most of their food.

Dent already was concerned with the problem of preparing for an indefinite stay on the island. Hope of returning to their natural sphere had not died, though how it was to be accomplished was a matter he had not yet dared to consider in detail; but, meantime, they must go ahead exactly as though they intended remaining there the rest of their lives.

Obtaining food was an easy matter in summer, but what would it be in winter? Dent already was making plans for laying up a sufficient store of grain to last them through the colder months.

Also, there was the question of clothing. The silken garments provided by Gast would not last overlong. Means must be found to replace them.

But first they must find a retreat large enough to enable them to store a large quantity of food; deep enough to provide shelter against the cold, and secure against the attack of enemies.

The difficulties and dangers ahead were sufficient to daunt even a stouthearted man, but Dent seemingly faced them with confidence.

The spirit of the adventurer was strong in him—the type of adventurer who blazes trails for more timid feet, who endures privations without a murmur, who meets danger with a smile.

Before they started toward the distant ledge he turned to Salva with a grin. “Your morning smile now,” he said.

Salva protested. “Oh, you mustn’t be ridiculous,” she said.

“I’m not,” he returned. “It’s the most sensible thing I ever said in my life. Now—try again—look at me! I ought to be funny enough in this Roman toga effect. Great! That’s the finest smile yet. You’ll get the habit soon; and now let’s go.”

There was assurance in his manner as he turned toward the grass jungle with its lurking perils, self-reliance in the swing of his shoulders; and there was approval in Salva’s eyes as she followed him.

She was beginning to hold this muscular man with the gray eyes in great respect. Already he had demonstrated indomitable courage, an ability to adapt himself to conditions, capacity for making the best of difficult situations; and had displayed ingenuity and foresight.

The progress over the rough beach was not painful as it had been the day before. Dent had made sandals from the chitinous shell of the toad-bug, fastening them with silk cords raveled from the fringe of their garments.

As he strode along with his sword ready for instant use and his eyes searching every possible cover for an enemy, Dent asked frequent questions regarding various plants they passed, and occasionally stopped to examine a seedpod or flower. Once he tore a long strip of pliant bark from a creeping vine and showed it to Salva.

“Guess we could make pretty good baskets out of that stuff,” he said, and the girl’s eyes lighted as she took it from his hand.

“I’ll take charge of the weaving,” she volunteered. “I learned something of it while I was studying to be a school-teacher, before I became secretary to Professor Potter.”

“You seem to know a lot of things that will come in handy,” he said dryly.

The passage of the grass-jungle proved difficult. So thick was the growth that at several points they were forced to make considerable detours or literally chop their way through.

They encountered no hostile animals, however, though myriads of hideous-eyed things scuttled out of their path or hid as they approached, and finally they emerged on a smooth stretch of beach near their goal.

Twenty minutes of walking brought them to the foot of the ledge, and they quickly found several crevices which would provide shelter; but none was any better than the one they had slept in the previous night, so they continued the search.

They had come to a wide gap in the rocks where a gentle slope led up from the beach toward the center of the island, when Salva called Dent’s attention to an opening in the opposite wall. The opening appeared about twice Dent’s height, and he determined to explore it without delay.

As they approached closer, Dent surveyed the vicinity with lively satisfaction. The ledge jutted out into the beach at this point, though it was well above the high-water mark, and the gap provided a quick way to reach the jungle above without having to go a long way around.

Dent jerked his head toward the lake. “There’s water close at hand,” he said, “and up there is food and firewood. Looks good to me.”

The girl turned puzzled eyes toward him. “Fire?” she asked.

“Sure,” was the reply; “regular cooking kind o’ fire. That’s easy. I’ve learned a lot of heathen tricks in my time.”

Closer at hand, the cavern appeared even more promising. It was reached easily by a ledge which ran up from the beach, but as they made their way toward the entrance Dent suddenly stopped.

“You’d better stay back,” he said casually; “something may live there, and it may be at home.”

Salva obediently halted as he went forward. Had she noted that which had caused Dent to pause, she would have understood the caution with which he approached the opening in the rocks.

There was nothing of bravado in Dent’s manner. He looped the skirt of his loose garment a trifle higher, revealing the play of clean muscles in his thick calves, and kicked off his clumsy sandals.

Salva saw him peer cautiously around a corner of the rock; then he waved his hand encouragingly and disappeared. A pause, while she waited with straining ears; then the muffled thump of a blow and the pulsing roar of mighty wings.

With palms pressed to her cheeks to repress the shrieks that struggled for utterance, heart laboring in her breast, Salva stood helpless, watching with terror-filled eyes the mouth of the cavern from which came the uproar of a tremendous battle—crashing blows, the grind and clash of great jaws, the grate and scrape of horny feet, and ever the furious drumming of wings!

In there a man creature was fighting a monstrous thing—fighting for his life and hers—and she stood powerless to aid.

Now the thunder of beating wing membranes did not appear so loud. She heard the chop! chop! chop! of Dent’s sword. Another furious outburst; then silence.

The battle had ended. But how?

There was a brief wait—it seemed hours to the half-fainting girl—then Dent staggered out of the cave and reeled against the rocky wall.

At the sight of him, Salva gave a little cry of joy that changed to one of pity as she saw his condition, and she hurried to his side.

Dent’s magnificent body was naked to the waist and red from a dozen wounds; his face was bruised and cut from the battering of the monster’s wings; but the light of victory was in his eyes, and he still gripped his sword.

It was a very tender Salva who put her arms around him and helped him to the ground, and tended his hurts and cried over them—a vastly different Salva from the precise, old-maidish person of a few days before.

Dent quickly recovered from the strain of the struggle, and his wounds were found to be superficial, though the buffeting of the huge wings had half stunned him; but he permitted her to assist him as they moved toward the water, where his cuts could be properly cleansed.

“Gosh,” he said, “I ran into a hot one that time! Those things are hard to kill. You’ve got to chop them darn near to pieces before they quit fighting; and that one would have got me sure if I hadn’t crippled its beak first thing. What was it, anyhow?”

“A tiger beetle, I think,” Salva replied. “I didn’t take a very good look at it.”

“Well, they’re sure bad medicine,” was Dent’s laconic comment.

Later, when he was clearing the cave, Salva, who had been looking down at the foot of the ledge, suddenly turned to him accusingly.

Directly under the mouth of the cavern lay a gruesome heap—severed legs, horny wing-shields, and chitinous skins—grim remnants of feasts of the monster Dent had slain.

“You knew it was there!” Salva cried. “You knew when you went in.”

Dent looked a trifle sheepish.

“Well,” he argued, “it had to be evicted—we need this cave to set up housekeeping ourselves; besides, I didn’t know how big the blamed thing was.”

CHAPTER VII

CULTURED TROGLODYTES

The warm autumn sun which bathed the towering ledge and wind-ruffled lake looked down a scene which might have been taken in its entirety from a time when the world was young—the days when the troglodyte and his mate found safety from the saber-toothed tiger in a cave in the rocks; when the flint-tipped spear and the stone hatchet were man’s most effective weapons; when the human creature was but a step removed from his ancestors who swung from limb to limb in the forests.

Inside a semicircular stockade of thorns, whose bases were set in the ground, with the points projecting outward so as to form a difficult barrier, sat Dent and Salva; and in appearance and employment they harmonized with their surroundings.

Roughly clad they were, tanned and toil-hardened; and in reversion to the primitive, they had been true to the habits of the species since the world began.

Always has the male been the fighter, the hunter, the maker of tools and weapons. Dent sat fixing a barbed head to a long fish-spear.

Ever has the female flayed the skins, kept the household, and prepared the food. Salva was rocking a heavy round boulder in a bowl-like depression of the rock, grinding dried seeds to a flour, from which she could make bread.

Near at hand stood unfinished baskets she was weaving from strips of tough creepers. On racks were stretched squares of the skin of a young mouse which Dent had slain. These skins would provide heavy clothing for the cold weather not far distant.

From under an overhanging ledge smoke was curling from the fires of the drying-shed where strips of fish and flesh of the mouse were curing, and nearby was a great store of wood.

Decidedly different was the lot of Dent and Salva from the day a few months before when they had been cast helpless upon the island. They had labored and prospered, and, though perils still surrounded them, they had found something that approached content in their work.

The cave, for the possession of which Dent had battled the tiger beetle, had been converted into a comfortable dwelling. The entrance had been partly closed with stones cemented with clay, leaving only a small door, which, by means of an ingeniously placed boulder, could be opened and closed at will.

The interior had been walled off into rooms, and rude furnishings had been installed. Comfortable beds had been made of the silk from caterpillar cocoons, there was a fireplace with a mud chimney, of which Dent was decidedly proud, and wood had been gathered to last the winter through.

Also, there was a great store of food—dried seeds, edible roots, honey, and dried meat and fish. The honey and fruit had been preserved in receptacles made of hollow reeds plugged at the ends, and pollen grains had been put up in the same manner.

No longer were the exiles compelled to subsist on raw food. Dent had made fire by a method learned in some out-of-the-way corner of the world, and had taught Salva to bake bread with flour made from dried seeds. It was coarse in appearance, but palatable and nourishing, and they fared well on it.

Dent had found fish easy to obtain. The lake swarmed with minnows, and with a harpoon and a tough silk line he had captured many, some twice the length of his own body.

In this manner he had provided a stock of meat sufficient for a year. Strips of the meat, dried over a slow fire and packed in tight baskets in the recesses of the cave, would last indefinitely. Then, too, he had killed locusts, and they had found the white flesh extremely delicate and palatable. Also, the bagging of the mouse had proved a boon, not only providing them with material for warm clothing, but its flesh serving as a welcome change of diet; and they had proceeded to smoke a large quantity of it.

And they had been fortunate in yet another way. The finding of Professor Potter’s specimen case under the bush where Dent had kicked it the day of the accident had given them weapons effective against even the strongest of the enemies which daily menaced them.

The box contained specimen jars, the bottoms of which contained a quantity of cyanide of potassium covered with a thin layer of plaster of Paris, and a box of small pins used for impaling specimens.

Dent promptly had seized upon the pins for spears, but it was Salva who had suggested the use of the poison.

The great danger in an encounter with one of the numerous enemies which surrounded them was in the great tenacity of life possessed by these monsters. A wound, or several wounds, was not sufficient to kill. They would fight with half their legs severed, their jaws shattered, and their heads split.

However, when Dent, under Salva’s instructions, smeared the head of a spear with cyanide, he possessed a weapon which quickly proved fatal to even the largest of the predaceous beetles and bugs, The poison acted very quickly, and the two now ranged the island confident in their ability to protect themselves.

True they ever were on the alert against a surprise attack, and kept a wary outlook for birds from which they several times had narrowly escaped; but they no longer dreaded encounters with their most numerous foes.

The wolf packs of ants could have pulled them down by sheer weight of numbers, but they could avoid the ants, and they could cope with the fierce tiger beetles and voracious water striders.

Then, too, they now were familiar with the habits and the haunts of most of the creatures which surrounded them. They knew where the different species usually lurked, what their dispositions were, and which were dangerous.

Crickets, katydids, locusts, cicadas, and other vegetarians were inoffensive, they had learned, despite their ferocious appearance. Many other formidable-looking creatures likewise were harmless, but a majority of the things that buzzed and fought each other in the grass-jungles were predaceous, and, until they had obtained the poisoned spears they had been in constant danger.

With any of them Dent now was able to cope, with the exception of the wasps and bees, which carried deadly stings and could strike from the air with incredible swiftness. The bees, however, were peaceable, unless disturbed; and the wasps, fortunately, were few in the vicinity.

Another circumstance for which Dent and Salva were thankful was that no big spiders made their home on the island. There were small ones, though not many, but they had observed none of the larger, venomous kind.

Yes, fortune had been kind to the exiles in many ways, but in the main they had hewn their own path. The rude comforts which now surrounded them—the safe home in the rocks, the store of food for the coming winter, their implements and weapons—these were the fruits of industry, foresight and ingenuity.

They had made the best of a difficult situation, and even found a meed of contentment.

And in the months of their exile there had grown up a warm companionship between the two. They had labored side by side; had shared privations; had met danger together, and each had stood the test.

Salva appreciated Dent’s courage and resolution, his strength and ability. She had gained his regard by her cheerfulness and fortitude, his respect by her scientific knowledge, which had proved a great asset.

So, the months in passing had seen an ever-growing, mutual admiration which seemed destined to become something stronger—something which neither had ever put into words, but of which each daily became more conscious.

It betrayed itself in many ways—the light which came into his face when he greeted her on a return from a journey; in the little brooding glances she bent on him as he sat fashioning a weapon or an implement; in their frank enjoyment of each other’s company.

Today a curious unrest possessed Dent—the unrest of a man whose work is done for the moment. The house was finished and stored with food; materials for clothing had been gathered, and wood to last the winter through was piled in the cave and along the base of the ledge. There was no pressing task to be performed.

Suddenly he tossed the spear aside and sprang to his feet. Leaning over he stopped the rocking millstone and smiled down at the girl.

“Let’s cut out the work for today,” he suggested. “Come on, let’s go on a picnic. Come to think of it, we haven’t been on a pleasure jaunt since—since we’ve been here.

“What do you say to scrambling up on the hill and taking a good look at the Promised Land?” He indicated with a sweep of his arm the distant shore across the lake and the house looming dimly through the haze.

For a moment a suggestion of a shadow came into the girl’s eyes. “The Promised Land,” he had called it—the place whence they came and to which they might never return—and the memories of an exile are not always pleasant.

Just a little way across the water it was, measured by former standards; but to them it was a gulf impassable. Then, too, there was the knowledge that the one man who could bridge the gap between what they were and what they had been was dead.

Quickly she was whirled from her downcast mood, for Dent lifted her to her feet with a laughing remark, and started bundling the drying skins inside the cave, which he closed with the boulder door. The hedge of thorns sufficed to stop most creeping things, but it was of no avail against winged creatures.

It was a strangely garbed and primitively armed pair which left the stockade a few minutes later and toiled up the slope of the hill.

Both were browned from the sun, and Dent’s beard grew thick. The hats which shaded them were woven of strips of bark, and their loose garments which fell to their knees were woven of silk spun by pupating moth-caterpillars. Their shoes, rough in shape but serviceable, were made of the chitinous skins of monster insects bent into proper form while green. And hats and clothing were of a uniform light brown, like the earth, for they had learned from the creatures about them the advantages of protective coloring.

As they reached the summit of the ridge Salva looked back toward the stockade. “Just wanted to see if all was all right at home,” she explained.

Dent turned and stood a moment, surveying the vicinity of the cave.

“Home,” he mused as he started on; “she had called it home.” And the word somehow seemed to have taken on a new meaning.

CHAPTER VIII

CASTLES AND RUIINS

Somewhere in the marrow of every normal man is a streak of the boy he left behind the day he donned his first long trousers. It may be broad or only a narrow stripe; but it’s there, and at times it crops out.

It is that which prompts the head of the house to play with Johnny’s Christmas toys; that causes staid business men to indulge in horse-play at the expense of “candidates” in the privacy of lodge-rooms; that which leads a man of mature years on a visit to the old farm to slide down a haystack.

“Just to see if he could do it,” the latter usually explains, but that isn’t the reason. It’s the boy in him.

And the boy in him ruled Dent today. Never had Salva seen him in such a humor. His face even appeared changed—the firm lips had softened, the usually cool gray eyes were warm and glowing with a new light, the hardness of the jaw had vanished.

He broke his habit of silence while in the jungle and whistled as he strode along, though his eyes were alert and his weapons ready. Salva, too, carried a spear with a poisoned tip. It was lighter than the formidable one borne by Dent in addition to his heavy sword; but a thrust from it was equally deadly, so this pair who fared forth in search of pleasure were decidedly well equipped to cope with anything which might seek to interfere with their plans.

At the crest of the hill at the edge of a clover-forest, over which hovered and buzzed several velvet-coated, furry-legged bumblebees, they found an ideal picnic place. The ground was carpeted with soft moss, and they could look down on the flashing lake, stretching toward the distant green shore.

But the habit of caution and constant watchfulness, which was the price of safety on the island, ruled Dent, and he carefully examined the vicinity before he thrust the spears in the ground so the points stood straight up, ready to be grasped in an instant.

A great leaf swaying near the ground from a thick-stemmed plant caught his eye, and there came an inspiration. Turning, he swung Salva from the ground and placed her in the leaf, which sustained her weight easily.

“There,” he said, “that’s a regular picnic hammock, and I’m going to take it easy, too.”

Dropping to the ground, he looped his arms around his doubled-up knees, and sat smiling up at the girl.

Casual conversation was something awkward for both. For months they had talked little, and then only in the most serious vein, except for the morning smile which Dent religiously exacted from Salva, and their tongues loosened slowly.

But Dent’s boyish humor was as infectious as his smile, and soon both were laughing and chatting. Salva found herself questioning Dent regarding his past, leading him to talk of curious experiences and adventures of his years of world wandering. Strangely they never had talked of their lives before they met at the home of the scientists, and each found pleasure in exploring the other’s past.

Dent, it appeared, had found both profit and pleasure in his adventures. As he put it: “He had made a stake in pearls in the islands, took a flier in rubber, and cleaned up; then he had planted the roll in bonds as a provision against the time when he no longer could rustle a living.”

Salva told of her studies to be a teacher, and of the fortunate circumstance which had brought her to the attention of Professor Potter, whose secretary she eventually had become.

After a time they fell silent, and sat looking out over the lake. “You know,” Dent said suddenly, “this place sort o’ reminds me of one on the east coast. I saw it the day I came in from a long trip through the bush, and it sure did look good.

“That was the time I’d lost my outfit and had to make my way alone. It was a tough trip. It took me seven weeks to make two hundred miles, and I was rather tuckered out when I hit the coast station.

“I’d have got through sooner but for a little touch of fever; and I wouldn’t have got through at all if it hadn’t been for a little pot-black heathen who picked me up in the bush when I was about to go ‘top-side,’ as the chinks say.”

He paused. “Tell me about it,” Salva said softly.

“Not much to tell,” he went on. “Had both canoes dumped in cataract, and lost all my boys. Had a gun and knife, but broke the rifle-bolt and threw it away—too heavy to carry—then I had to live on fruits and birds’ eggs.”

“I suppose you had some terrible experiences,” the girl suggested.

“What we’ve been through the last few months puts anything else I’ve seen in the shade,” he retorted promptly, “but it’s funny how much the lake and that bay down there looks like the place I landed after that trip alone through the bush.

“The plant things are a lot bigger here—that is, the way we see them—and there wasn’t any land in sight over there. Then there should be a reef with the waves making soapsuds over it, and the beach should be a bit whiter.

“At the head of the bay should be the commissioner’s house, with the English ladies in their white dresses playing tennis, and the commissioner in his flannels drinking gin and lemon in the shade, and talking with the officers of the gunboat that ought to be just inside the hook, but isn’t.

“Over there should be the beehive huts of the Kafirs, and along the beach the red warehouses of the company.

“Yes, there’s a lot of things missing; but they’re only details of the picture. The sweep of the shoreline, the strip of beach, the sand-hook, and the way the headland juts out to sea all are the same.

“I had a good look at it, for the bearers stopped quite a while to rest on top of the hill—you see I wasn’t in any shape to walk, and they were toting me—and if there ever was a place that looked like the Promised Land it was that little old coast station.”

Somehow the obviously glossed-over account of what must have been a terrible journey moved Salva more than if he had told of his sufferings in detail. The terrors amid which she had lived on the island enabled her to appreciate the plight of a fever-racked man in a jungle, alone and unarmed.

She pictured him staggering through swamps and thorn-bushes, haggard and weak, his laggard limbs driven by an indomitable will.

“You poor boy!” she said, and there was a note in her voice which caused him to look up quickly, a hint of tenderness—and something else.

“Yes, it was tough,” he admitted; “but no worse, in a way, than what we’ve been up against here. It’s been mighty hard on you, but you’ve stood up under it like a good fellow. You’re the bravest, the best partner a fellow ever had.”

There was just a suggestion of a quiver about the girl’s lips as she listened. She recalled his reference to the Promised Land, and there came a sudden rush of tears.

“Oh!” she wailed, and hid her face in her hands as he arose and stood over her, surprise and distress in his eyes. “It’s all so horrible—to think—we may never go back! I—I’ve tried to be brave—to do my part—not to be just a burden—but I’ve been horribly scared all the time. I’ve just been bluffing! At night when they light the lamps over there and they gleam across the water—so near and yet—I always have the longing to go back—and we can’t—maybe never! Over there—just a little way—other people—normal people, like we were once—are living happy—and we—”

Sobs choked her, and he patted her on the shoulder, repressing a desire to take her in his arms and comfort her; then she went on:

“And when you’ve gone away and left me in the cavern I’ve always been terribly afraid—I tried not to show it; but I was—and I’d think of all sorts of things happening to you, and I—I—”

It never was clear to either how it happened; but suddenly she was in his arms, her wet cheek pressed hard against his rough beard; and his arms were about her, holding her tight, as though he never would let her go.

A green aphid watched from a nearby leaf; a gorgeous butterfly wobbled uncertainly overhead; a great bee buzzed by importantly; a cicada set up its shrill rasping; but they neither saw nor heard.

What mattered it if venomous-winged things hovered near; if the jungle around them was the abode of voracious monsters; if the stone a few paces away was the lurking-place of a fierce assassin-bug?

In this land of terrors they had found each other.

Later, as they stood at the edge of the hill, looking out across the lake toward the land of other days, there was joy in Dent’s eyes and a great peace, and the girl’s held shy happiness.

“It’s a fine old world, after all,” Dent said; “a funny place full of funny things. That bug over yonder, you tell me, breathes through holes in its abdomen, hears through its sides, and smells with those long feeler things.

“That beetle with the big jaws lives on plants, and the little one with the beak eats other insects.

“Yes, this is a funny place—a place of strange contrasts. One butterfly is brilliantly marked, and is safe from attack because it has a disagreeable odor; another protects itself by looking like a dead leaf.

“That big, green caterpillar that looks so dangerous is perfectly harmless, and the little brown devil on that leaf could bite your leg off.

“But it’s a fine old world, too. Ever see anything prettier than that big, striped fellow, mulling over the flowers, or that butterfly with the mottled wings? Ever see any greener grass, any shinier beach, or bluer lake?

“And we’ve been mighty lucky here. We’ve got a nice home down there in the rocks, and plenty to eat and wear—and I’ve got you.”

Salva laughed happily. “And I’ve got you,” she retorted.

Vastly contented they were as they moved off down the ridge; but as they started down the slope toward the stockade Dent halted suddenly, his eyes spanning the distance to the other shore of the lake.

“I wonder,” he mused aloud, “if Potter’s leg is well?”

Salva glanced at him quickly. “Why do you ask?”

“I was thinking,” he said slowly, “that he might know enough of Gast’s experiments to—to straighten out our present difficulties.”

“I don’t know,” she replied; “Professor Gast was very secretive.”

Then Dent told her of the happenings the day of the accident, and of the conversation he had overheard between the scientists. “I believe Potter knows something about the matter,” he said; “and I do know that Gast restored that dog to its former size. If we only could reach Potter—”

He paused and glanced across the lake. “It would be difficult to build a craft which would stand those waves,” he said, “and the worst feature is that the wind usually blows the wrong way. I’ve done a heap of thinking about the matter—figured on building a boat or a raft—but there’s always the question of taking the chance of being carried out into the wide part of the lake.

“We’d have no chance then, that’s certain; and, even if we were not drowned, there is no telling where we’d land.

“Still, we’ve got to do it. That will be our next job—to figure out a way to get across the lake safely. Then we can hunt up Potter and find a way to communicate with him.”

The possibility he suggested brought a sparkle into Salva’s eyes, but there was a touch of genuine regret in her voice when she spoke.

“But wouldn’t it be too bad to have to leave our nice house?”

Dent stared at her open-mouthed.

“Why—why, you dear,” he said with a chuckle. “I believe you’d be sorry to go.”

“I don’t care,” she retorted. “It’s our home—we built it—and I’ll be happy if we never go back.”

“But can’t you see,” Dent argued, “we’ve got to try?” His face went red. “There are not many ministers handy around here, and—”

Salva was gone, her cheeks flaming. As Dent started after her a sound from the direction of the lake caused both to pause.

A boat was approaching the island. They recognized the man at the oars as Giles, Potter’s caretaker, and he was fishing. They watched him land and go poking about among the stones in search of bait evidently; saw him stoop to lift a heavy stone; heard the thunderous crash of an avalanche!

A single shriek from Salva; an oath that was more of a sob from Dent! The ledge’ which towered above the mouth of the cave where they made their home crumbled before their eyes and slid down upon the beach!

Knowing nothing of the havoc he had wrought in dislodging the stone which caused the landslide, Giles picked up a fat white grub, with which he baited his hook and pushed his boat away from the island.

Half an hour of desperate hurrying over the tumbled stones, a dash through a matted jungle, and a rapid scramble down a rough slope brought Dent and Salva to the beach. Their worst fears were confirmed. The cavern, which represented months of toil—their home—was buried under a mountain-high mass.

CHAPTER IX

THE CROSSING

“And just as it really came to be home to us, too!” was Salva’s woeful comment as the two stood staring at the scene of ruin. Dent, his jaw set, his eyes somber, made no reply.

No complaint had escaped him when it became certain that the fruit of months of planning and labor had been swept away. He accepted this catastrophe, as he had others, in silence.

Inwardly he was resentful against the fate which had proved so unkind; but if his heart was bitter his head was cool. Already he had turned his back on the scene of the landslide, and his mind was busy with plans for the future.

Not long was he in deciding upon a course of action, and he turned abruptly to the despairing girl. Gently he swung her until her back was turned to the place where the cavern had been, then tilted her chin until she looked into his eyes.

“Now,” he said, “smile!”

And Salva did, bravely!

Then with confidence in his ability to master the future she followed him as he turned to begin all over.

Hardly a dozen paces had they moved along the beach when Dent, glancing out over the lake, suddenly stopped and hastily climbed to the top of a boulder. For a moment he stood peering at something, then he jumped to the ground and caught up the two spears.

“Come on!” he shouted to the girl, and started on a run. “Hurry!”

He paused to make no explanation, nor did the girl ask one. She simply followed as swiftly as she could, and he set a cruelly rapid pace. Life on the island had taught her to obey Dent’s instructions first, and ask questions later—if questions were necessary in the end.

And it happened that as they left the pebble-strewn upper beach and raced along a smooth stretch of sand which ran like a hook out into the lake she saw his objective and realized the need of haste.

A current which set in at that side of the island when the wind blew in from the wide part of the lake had created the sand hook, and drifting in the grasp of this same eddy was a large plank.

Not for an instant did Dent hesitate as he hurried along. He was carrying the two spears and his heavy sword, but Salva had trouble in keeping up.

Dent was heading for a certain point. Many times he had watched sticks circling in the eddy, and knew exactly where the plank would approach closest to the shore.

Outside the little bay the lake was ruffled by the breeze, but under the lee of the island the water was almost of glassy smoothness, and the current which carried the plank was sluggish. But at that the finish of the race was desperately close. The plank was almost opposite when they dashed into the shallow water, floundering over the sand.

The water deepened to their thighs, to their armpits. The floating board now was only a few paces away. Dent flung a question over his shoulder.

“Can you swim?”

Salva answered by driving her body forward with a long, overhand stroke, and he, too, struck out. He reached the plank first, flung the sword and spears aboard and stretched out a hand to the girl.

Another moment and both lay panting on the raft.

Wide and long was the board, and it floated high, not having been long in the water apparently. The sight of several nails jutting up near the center was a welcome one to Dent, and he hurried Salva toward them as soon as they had recovered their breath.

“It’s going to be rough farther out,” he explained, and proceeded to lash both of them to the nails with strips of silken cord taken from around their waists.

It was a wise precaution. The craft had drifted beyond the influence of the eddy, and as they left the lee of the island the water grew rougher. As long as the end of the board pointed into the wind it rode steadily because of its great length, but there was no means of guiding it and finally it started swinging broadside to the waves.

Dent saw what was coming and shouted a warning to the girl. He already had made the spears safe by driving the points firmly in a crack, and his sword hung as usual from a loop about his wrist.

The board heaved and sagged heavily as the first waves caught it at an angle, and the water lapped over the edge; then came a sharp puff of wind and the raft swung around and dropped into the trough, rolling and pitching like a water-logged ship while every breaker swept clear across it, buffeting the two human creatures who clung to the nails.

But as Dent bobbed up after the first heavy wave he shouted encouragement to Salva. “Not so bad,” he declared; “and this wind is taking us just where we want to go.”

The crossing of the hundred and fifty yards of breeze-ruffled lake between the island and the shore at this point would have presented no difficulties to the average human; but to Dent and Salva it was equivalent to six miles of storm-tossed sea. The waves, which would have meant nothing even to a small skiff, were mountain high to the two on the floating board.

Progress of the raft was fairly rapid, however, considering the small surface exposed to the wind, and in less than half an hour the shore loomed close at hand. Part of the voyage had been made in comparative comfort despite the wetting they suffered, for the board constantly turned, and when it was pointed into the wind the waves did not break over it.

Luck was with them in the landing, the raft driving end first against the beach, and they managed to scramble ashore before it swung around.

Salva turned to Dent with sparkling eyes.

“We’ve reached it!” she cried. “The Promised Land!”

Dent nodded. “We were lucky,” he commented. “I’ve been watching for something like this for a long time, and studying the currents; so, when I saw that board come drifting along in the eddy I figured—well, if we had to make a fresh start it might as well be somewhere else.”

Both turned and looked long at where the glass roof of Potter’s greenhouse reflected the sun. The same thought was in their minds.

Three hours of tramping along a graveled path brought them to the yard of the house, but by this time the sun already had dipped below the horizon, and it was necessary to find shelter for the night.

The journey along the path had been enlivened by an encounter with a black ant which Dent had disposed of only after a sharp fight, the poison having been washed from the tips of the spears in4 the voyage on the board; and Dent had no desire to meet any of the big night-flying beetles.

Under a rosebush near the front door they found a retreat which suited their needs admirably—an empty whisky bottle.

Moss and several strips of paper collected by Dent served as beds, and the two passed a fairly comfortable night in the bottle, but morning found them decidedly hungry. This was a matter easy of solution, however, for a flowerbed ran along the walk, and they made a meal of pollen grains and nectar.

Then they turned to face the more difficult problem of how to get into the house. The stone steps which ran to the front porch were each eight times Dent’s height, and about as easy for him to scale as the smooth wall of a three-story house.

Salva’s acquaintance with the household and its daily routine enabled them to solve the difficulty. They waited near a side door until Mrs. Giles appeared with several rugs which she shook vigorously, then spread on the steps to air.

The rugs were long and formed a rough incline up which Dent and Salva made their way as soon as the woman disappeared. She had left the door open as she went about her household work, and they reached the interior of the house without further trouble.

They found themselves in a long hall, and down this they ran toward a tall, old-fashioned wardrobe under which they could remain concealed, for there was a strong probability they would be mistaken for some sort of insects, and exterminated forthwith should they be observed by Mrs. Giles.

Almost had they reached their goal when from behind came the pad of feet, and as Dent turned he was bowled over and pinned to the floor by a furry paw.

For an instant he was stunned by the shock and lay motionless staring into the amber-colored eyes of a tremendous monster six times his height—a yellow kitten!

It was a very pretty kitten, and playful, too, it’s deep purring showing its pleasure over the plaything it had captured; but it appeared neither pretty nor playful to Dent.

Also the kitten was somewhat puzzled, for it caught from the tiny thing under its paw the odor of the humans which petted it and gave it milk. But instinct triumphed, and it proceeded to play with Dent as it would with a mouse, rolling him over with its paws, jumping away to pounce upon him from a distance, though as yet its claws were sheathed.

The time had not yet come for a death-stroke.

Then Salva, who had stood half paralyzed with horror for a moment after she saw Dent overthrown, rushed forward with a little cry.

The monster lifted his head a trifle as it observed her approach, but lowered it and its muscles tightened for a spring as she came straight on.

Salva did not falter. In her hand, ready for a thrust, was her long spear. Now she was within striking distance.

The hair on the great creature’s back stiffened a trifle, its ears flattened!

Another step and the girl’s arm went back, poised an instant—then straight into one of the lambent, amber eyes she drove the heavy weapon!

With a hideous shriek the injured animal recoiled, rolling over and over on the floor clawing at the thing thrust deep into its eye, stirring the household with its cries! Salva dragged Dent to his feet. He was bruised and shaken, but not seriously hurt, and the two quickly found safety under the wardrobe.

CHAPTER X

THE RAY

Professor Elias Potter sat at the desk of his late colleague, Professor G. C. Gast, and contemplated ruefully the jumble of notebooks and papers—the accumulation of years.

Wistfully he thought of Salva Tyrrell, who would have found joy in reducing this chaos to order. Then he shook his head sadly. Salva was gone, as was Gast and the young man who was to have guided that proposed expedition to the tropics.

Potter had returned to the house in the country several days before, but this was his first visit to the laboratory over which Gast had presided. The dead scientist’s will had left everything he owned to his colleague, and the latter now faced the task of taking an inventory.

The notebooks, in which were recorded data regarding Gast’s more important experiments of recent years, were in a large safe in a corner, and Potter, deciding to begin there, opened it by means of the combination which was attached to the will.

When the door swung open there was revealed a triple row of labeled volumes filled with the transcribed observations of years of scientific labor. Many of them were familiar to Potter, who had collaborated with Gast in several fields of research; but as he ran over the note-books his eye caught one captioned “The Ray.”

Potter pulled it from its place and glanced through it, casually at first, then with quickening interest; and finally he carried it to a desk and sat poring over it.

An hour later he still sat at the desk, so intent on the wonder-story of Gast’s achievements with a new helium-ray that he did not hear the wails of a hurt kitten in another part of the house.

Neither did he observe a stir and movement of a thick spider-web which spanned the narrow space between the desk and the wall at one side, nor see a tiny thing which scrambled over the edge and stood cleansing itself of the dust and lint accumulated in climbing the web from the floor.

Not until it walked across the desk and tapped sharply on the edge of the book did Potter lift his eyes from the absorbing page to stare, open-mouthed, at the thing in the form of a human which confronted him.

Decidedly unwise it would have been to have approached the average man as Dent did Potter. The chances were he would have been “swatted” first and investigated afterward. The scientist, however, looked first—looked, rubbed his glasses, and looked again!

A big magnifying lens lay on the desk. Potter caught it up and gasped startled recognition as he observed Dent’s face through it. Then the truth came home to him with a rush, and he uttered a cry of horror.

Gast’s claims of being able to reduce the stature of living creatures at will were true. And he had not confined his experiments to dumb beasts. He had dared to use man as a subject!

Hurriedly Potter turned to the back of the book he held. There he found the whole story of how Salva and Dent had been subjected to the ray. Gast had recorded the result of the experiment immediately, but Potter was not permitted to read all about it at once.

Dent had advanced until he could reach the scientist’s finger, and had rapped it with his sword.

Potter turned his attention toward the tiny thing on his desk. It was making angry gestures and pointing toward the floor. Finally he came to understand. The girl was down there, and he cautiously got down on his knees.

Almost immediately Salva came from under the desk and advanced toward him, and he lifted her to Dent’s side. Incidentally, Professor Potter was somewhat startled to note the meeting of the two was the occasion of marked demonstrations of affection.

Then Dent waved a friendly greeting and walked to where a lead pencil lay. His sword flashed in a sweeping blow, and with a large chunk of graphite in his hand he made his way to a sheet of paper.

With Salva beside him to make suggestions, he started writing a brief account of how they came to be in their present state. Potter easily read it through the microscope. When Dent’s message closed with an appeal for assistance, Potter wrote an answer:

May be able to aid you. Will try. First must look over Gast’s notes.

For hours he remained at the desk going over the book, occasionally visiting the safe for other data, or examining a strange machine of many bulbs and tubes which stood in a corner. Dent and Salva waited patiently as the shadows grew long, watching him, with hope in their eyes.

At dinner-time Potter declined to leave the laboratory, and Mrs. Giles, knowing his habits, brought in a tray of wafers and a glass of milk, which she placed beside him. The scientist nibbled at the wafers as he continued reading, never noticing that Dent had possessed himself of a crumb, upon which he and Salva made a hearty meal.

It was near midnight when Potter laid aside the books and turned to the machine. They saw him examine the connections and wires of what seemed to be an elaborate system of cells and bulbs surrounding a metal and glass case about seven feet long; then he went into an adjoining room and started a gasoline engine which drove a dynamo.

On his return he again bent over the machine, and there came a blaze of yellow light, the humming of transformers, and a strange, high-tension buzzing, like that of a swarm of bees, only higher pitched, more metallic.

For several minutes he went over the various bulbs and coils; then he switched off the yellow light and turned his attention to two large tanks which stood near by. Carefully he examined a card attached to one, then adjusted several connections and set the indicators of two large dials which were a part of the apparatus.

When at last all preparations were made Potter stepped to a cabinet, and when he approached the desk he carried a small atomizer. Dent was preparing to write a question when the scientist suddenly thrust the thing toward him and pressed the bulb.

A spray of vapor struck Dent in the face, and he recognized the smell of ether as his senses departed.

* * * *

Again it was pungent ammonia that brought Dent back to consciousness. He felt stupid, heavy, and as his faculties quickened he became conscious of a strange numbness throughout his body—a keen tingling, like the smart of blood again coursing freely through flesh that has been half frozen.

Then fuller realization came, and with a choking cry he raised himself, staring wildly around the room. He lay on a couch, and everything around him seemed of normal proportions. He had been restored to his former size!

But Salva! What of her?

A door opened and Professor Potter came in, mopping his bald head as though he had passed through a trying experience. Dent staggered toward him, a question in his eyes, and the scientist understood.

“She is all right,” he said as he gripped the other’s hand. “Mrs. Giles is with her now.”

Half an hour later Dent stood beside Potter, examining the strange machine which transformed living flesh.

“It’s the ray that tears down and builds up,” the scientist explained with enthusiasm. “A very wonderful man was Professor Gast—a very wonderful man.”

Dent placed his hand on one of the large tanks. “Then I am to understand that most of my body remained in this tank in the form of gas during the time we were away?” he asked.

“All except the water in the tissues,” Potter nodded. “All the solids were converted to gas as they were drawn off and held in suspension. When you were restored, a jet of spray played constantly in the transforming chamber, and supplied water for the tissues as they built up.

“The ray may be either positive or negative. The positive ray tears down tissue; the reverse builds it up. However, Professor Gast had not perfected a system of supplying artificial materials for the up-building of a body, but I already have a theory upon which I intend working in an effort to—”

“Not with this machine,” Dent said with conviction. “I’m going to use an ax on this as soon as I can get hold of one, and those note-books are going in the fire.”

The opening of a door caused him to turn. Salva stood there, blushing, hesitant; but Dent went forward eagerly with arms outstretched, and with a little cry of joy she ran to him.

* * * *

Sometimes Dent wonders if it all was not merely a fantastic dream; if the terrors and toiling and adventures of the island did not exist only in his own imagination.

However, it is an undisputed fact that several books which Mrs. Dent Hammond has written on American insects are recognized universally as surpassing any similar works ever printed, though some of the statements contained in them have been challenged by learned persons, who maintain no human could so closely observe the actions of such tiny creatures in their native habitat.

Also, there is a tiny sword of steel, heavy at the end like a cleaver, which rests in a locket constantly worn by Mrs. Hammond; and there are scars on Dent’s shoulders and chest that bring recollections of the day he battled the tiger beetle for possession of the cavern in the rocks.

Then, too, there is about the house a yellow cat with a single amber-colored eye, of which neither Dent nor his wife seem to be exceptionally fond.

AT THE EARTH’S CORE, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

PROLOGUE

In the first place please bear in mind that I do not expect you to believe this story. Nor could you wonder had you witnessed a recent experience of mine when, in the armor of blissful and stupendous ignorance, I gaily narrated the gist of it to a Fellow of the Royal Geological Society on the occasion of my last trip to London.

You would surely have thought that I had been detected in no less a heinous crime than the purloining of the Crown Jewels from the Tower, or putting poison in the coffee of His Majesty the King.

The erudite gentleman in whom I confided congealed before I was half through!—it is all that saved him from exploding—and my dreams of an Honorary Fellowship, gold medals, and a niche in the Hall of Fame faded into the thin, cold air of his arctic atmosphere.

But I believe the story, and so would you, and so would the learned Fellow of the Royal Geological Society, had you and he heard it from the lips of the man who told it to me. Had you seen, as I did, the fire of truth in those gray eyes; had you felt the ring of sincerity in that quiet voice; had you realized the pathos of it all—you, too, would believe. You would not have needed the final ocular proof that I had—the weird rhamphorhynchus-like creature which he had brought back with him from the inner world.

I came upon him quite suddenly, and no less unexpectedly, upon the rim of the great Sahara Desert. He was standing before a goat-skin tent amidst a clump of date palms within a tiny oasis. Close by was an Arab douar of some eight or ten tents.

I had come down from the north to hunt lion. My party consisted of a dozen children of the desert—I was the only “white” man. As we approached the little clump of verdure I saw the man come from his tent and with hand-shaded eyes peer intently at us. At sight of me he advanced rapidly to meet us.

“A white man!” he cried. “May the good Lord be praised! I have been watching you for hours, hoping against hope that this time there would be a white man. Tell me the date. What year is it?”

And when I had told him he staggered as though he had been struck full in the face, so that he was compelled to grasp my stirrup leather for support.

“It cannot be!” he cried after a moment. “It cannot be! Tell me that you are mistaken, or that you are but joking.”

“I am telling you the truth, my friend,” I replied. “Why should I deceive a stranger, or attempt to, in so simple a matter as the date?”

For some time he stood in silence, with bowed head.

“Ten years!” he murmured, at last. “Ten years, and I thought that at the most it could be scarce more than one!” That night he told me his story—the story that I give you here as nearly in his own words as I can recall them.

CHAPTER I

TOWARD THE ETERNAL FIRES

I was born in Connecticut about thirty years ago. My name is David Innes. My father was a wealthy mine owner. When I was nineteen he died. All his property was to be mine when I had attained my majority—provided that I had devoted the two years intervening in close application to the great business I was to inherit.

I did my best to fulfill the last wishes of my parent—not because of the inheritance, but because I loved and honored my father. For six months I toiled in the mines and in the counting-rooms, for I wished to know every minute detail of the business.

Then Perry interested me in his invention. He was an old fellow who had devoted the better part of a long life to the perfection of a mechanical subterranean prospector. As relaxation he studied paleontology. I looked over his plans, listened to his arguments, inspected his working model—and then, convinced, I advanced the funds necessary to construct a full-sized, practical prospector.

I shall not go into the details of its construction—it lies out there in the desert now—about two miles from here. Tomorrow you may care to ride out and see it. Roughly, it is a steel cylinder a hundred feet long, and jointed so that it may turn and twist through solid rock if need be. At one end is a mighty revolving drill operated by an engine which Perry said generated more power to the cubic inch than any other engine did to the cubic foot. I remember that he used to claim that that invention alone would make us fabulously wealthy—we were going to make the whole thing public after the successful issue of our first secret trial—but Perry never returned from that trial trip, and I only after ten years.

I recall as it were but yesterday the night of that momentous occasion upon which we were to test the practicality of that wondrous invention. It was near midnight when we repaired to the lofty tower in which Perry had constructed his “iron mole” as he was wont to call the thing. The great nose rested upon the bare earth of the floor. We passed through the doors into the outer jacket, secured them, and then passing on into the cabin, which contained the controlling mechanism within the inner tube, switched on the electric lights.

Perry looked to his generator; to the great tanks that held the life-giving chemicals with which he was to manufacture fresh air to replace that which we consumed in breathing; to his instruments for recording temperatures, speed, distance, and for examining the materials through which we were to pass.

He tested the steering device, and overlooked the mighty cogs which transmitted its marvelous velocity to the giant drill at the nose of his strange craft.

Our seats, into which we strapped ourselves, were so arranged upon transverse bars that we would be upright whether the craft were ploughing her way downward into the bowels of the earth, or running horizontally along some great seam of coal, or rising vertically toward the surface again.

At length all was ready. Perry bowed his head in prayer. For a moment we were silent, and then the old man’s hand grasped the starting lever. There was a frightful roaring beneath us—the giant frame trembled and vibrated—there was a rush of sound as the loose earth passed up through the hollow space between the inner and outer jackets to be deposited in our wake. We were off!

The noise was deafening. The sensation was frightful. For a full minute neither of us could do aught but cling with the proverbial desperation of the drowning man to the handrails of our swinging seats. Then Perry glanced at the thermometer.

“Gad!” he cried, “it cannot be possible—quick! What does the distance meter read?”

That and the speedometer were both on my side of the cabin, and as I turned to take a reading from the former I could see Perry muttering.

“Ten degrees rise—it cannot be possible!” and then I saw him tug frantically upon the steering wheel.

As I finally found the tiny needle in the dim light I translated Perry’s evident excitement, and my heart sank within me. But when I spoke I hid the fear which haunted me. “It will be seven hundred feet, Perry,” I said, “by the time you can turn her into the horizontal.”

“You’d better lend me a hand then, my boy,” he replied, “for I cannot budge her out of the vertical alone. God give that our combined strength may be equal to the task, for else we are lost.”

I wormed my way to the old man’s side with never a doubt but that the great wheel would yield on the instant to the power of my young and vigorous muscles. Nor was my belief mere vanity, for always had my physique been the envy and despair of my fellows. And for that very reason it had waxed even greater than nature had intended, since my natural pride in my great strength had led me to care for and develop my body and my muscles by every means within my power. What with boxing, football, and baseball, I had been in training since childhood.

And so it was with the utmost confidence that I laid hold of the huge iron rim; but though I threw every ounce of my strength into it, my best effort was as unavailing as Perry’s had been—the thing would not budge—the grim, insensate, horrible thing that was holding us upon the straight road to death!

At length I gave up the useless struggle, and without a word returned to my seat. There was no need for words—at least none that I could imagine, unless Perry desired to pray. And I was quite sure that he would, for he never left an opportunity neglected where he might sandwich in a prayer. He prayed when he arose in the morning, he prayed before he ate, he prayed when he had finished eating, and before he went to bed at night he prayed again. In between he often found excuses to pray even when the provocation seemed far-fetched to my worldly eyes—now that he was about to die I felt positive that I should witness a perfect orgy of prayer—if one may allude with such a simile to so solemn an act.

But to my astonishment I discovered that with death staring him in the face Abner Perry was transformed into a new being. From his lips there flowed—not prayer—but a clear and limpid stream of undiluted profanity, and it was all directed at that quietly stubborn piece of unyielding mechanism.

“I should think, Perry,” I chided, “that a man of your professed religiousness would rather be at his prayers than cursing in the presence of imminent death.”

“Death!” he cried. “Death is it that appalls you? That is nothing by comparison with the loss the world must suffer. Why, David within this iron cylinder we have demonstrated possibilities that science has scarce dreamed. We have harnessed a new principle, and with it animated a piece of steel with the power of ten thousand men. That two lives will be snuffed out is nothing to the world calamity that entombs in the bowels of the earth the discoveries that I have made and proved in the successful construction of the thing that is now carrying us farther and farther toward the eternal central fires.”

I am frank to admit that for myself I was much more concerned with our own immediate future than with any problematic loss which the world might be about to suffer. The world was at least ignorant of its bereavement, while to me it was a real and terrible actuality.

“What can we do?” I asked, hiding my perturbation beneath the mask of a low and level voice.

“We may stop here, and die of asphyxiation when our atmosphere tanks are empty,” replied Perry, “or we may continue on with the slight hope that we may later sufficiently deflect the prospector from the vertical to carry us along the arc of a great circle which must eventually return us to the surface. If we succeed in so doing before we reach the higher internal temperature we may even yet survive. There would seem to me to be about one chance in several million that we shall succeed—otherwise we shall die more quickly but no more surely than as though we sat supinely waiting for the torture of a slow and horrible death.”

I glanced at the thermometer. It registered 110 degrees. While we were talking the mighty iron mole had bored its way over a mile into the rock of the earth’s crust.

“Let us continue on, then,” I replied. “It should soon be over at this rate. You never intimated that the speed of this thing would be so high, Perry. Didn’t you know it?”

“No,” he answered. “I could not figure the speed exactly, for I had no instrument for measuring the mighty power of my generator. I reasoned, however, that we should make about five hundred yards an hour.”

“And we are making seven miles an hour,” I concluded for him, as I sat with my eyes upon the distance meter. “How thick is the Earth’s crust, Perry?” I asked.

“There are almost as many conjectures as to that as there are geologists,” was his answer. “One estimates it thirty miles, because the internal heat, increasing at the rate of about one degree to each sixty to seventy feet depth, would be sufficient to fuse the most refractory substances at that distance beneath the surface. Another finds that the phenomena of precession and nutation require that the earth, if not entirely solid, must at least have a shell not less than eight hundred to a thousand miles in thickness. So there you are. You may take your choice.”

“And if it should prove solid?” I asked.

“It will be all the same to us in the end, David,” replied Perry. “At the best our fuel will suffice to carry us but three or four days, while our atmosphere cannot last to exceed three. Neither, then, is sufficient to bear us in the safety through eight thousand miles of rock to the antipodes.”

“If the crust is of sufficient thickness we shall come to a final stop between six and seven hundred miles beneath the earth’s surface; but during the last hundred and fifty miles of our journey we shall be corpses. Am I correct?” I asked.

“Quite correct, David. Are you frightened?”

“I do not know. It all has come so suddenly that I scarce believe that either of us realizes the real terrors of our position. I feel that I should be reduced to panic; but yet I am not. I imagine that the shock has been so great as to partially stun our sensibilities.”

Again I turned to the thermometer. The mercury was rising with less rapidity. It was now but 140 degrees, although we had penetrated to a depth of nearly four miles. I told Perry, and he smiled.

“We have shattered one theory at least,” was his only comment, and then he returned to his self-assumed occupation of fluently cursing the steering wheel. I once heard a pirate swear, but his best efforts would have seemed like those of a tyro alongside of Perry’s masterful and scientific imprecations.

Once more I tried my hand at the wheel, but I might as well have essayed to swing the earth itself. At my suggestion Perry stopped the generator, and as we came to rest I again threw all my strength into a supreme effort to move the thing even a hair’s breadth—but the results were as barren as when we had been traveling at top speed.

I shook my head sadly, and motioned to the starting lever. Perry pulled it toward him, and once again we were plunging downward toward eternity at the rate of seven miles an hour. I sat with my eyes glued to the thermometer and the distance meter. The mercury was rising very slowly now, though even at 145 degrees it was almost unbearable within the narrow confines of our metal prison.

About noon, or twelve hours after our start upon this unfortunate journey, we had bored to a depth of eighty-four miles, at which point the mercury registered 153 degrees F.

Perry was becoming more hopeful, although upon what meager food he sustained his optimism I could not conjecture. From cursing he had turned to singing—I felt that the strain had at last affected his mind. For several hours we had not spoken except as he asked me for the readings of the instruments from time to time, and I announced them. My thoughts were filled with vain regrets. I recalled numerous acts of my past life which I should have been glad to have had a few more years to live down. There was the affair in the Latin Commons at Andover when Calhoun and I had put gunpowder in the stove—and nearly killed one of the masters. And then—but what was the use, I was about to die and atone for all these things and several more. Already the heat was sufficient to give me a foretaste of the hereafter. A few more degrees and I felt that I should lose consciousness.

“What are the readings now, David?” Perry’s voice broke in upon my somber reflections.

“Ninety miles and 153 degrees,” I replied.

“Gad, but we’ve knocked that thirty-mile-crust theory into a cocked hat!” he cried gleefully.

“Precious lot of good it will do us,” I growled back.

“But my boy,” he continued, “doesn’t that temperature reading mean anything to you? Why it hasn’t gone up in six miles. Think of it, son!”

“Yes, I’m thinking of it,” I answered; “but what difference will it make when our air supply is exhausted whether the temperature is 153 degrees or 153,000? We’ll be just as dead, and no one will know the difference, anyhow.” But I must admit that for some unaccountable reason the stationary temperature did renew my waning hope. What I hoped for I could not have explained, nor did I try. The very fact, as Perry took pains to explain, of the blasting of several very exact and learned scientific hypotheses made it apparent that we could not know what lay before us within the bowels of the earth, and so we might continue to hope for the best, at least until we were dead—when hope would no longer be essential to our happiness. It was very good, and logical reasoning, and so I embraced it.

At one hundred miles the temperature had dropped to 152.5 degrees! When I announced it Perry reached over and hugged me.

From then on until noon of the second day, it continued to drop until it became as uncomfortably cold as it had been unbearably hot before. At the depth of two hundred and forty miles our nostrils were assailed by almost overpowering ammonia fumes, and the temperature had dropped to ten below zero! We suffered nearly two hours of this intense and bitter cold, until at about two hundred and forty-five miles from the surface of the earth we entered a stratum of solid ice, when the mercury quickly rose to 32 degrees. During the next three hours we passed through ten miles of ice, eventually emerging into another series of ammonia-impregnated strata, where the mercury again fell to ten degrees below zero.

Slowly it rose once more until we were convinced that at last we were nearing the molten interior of the earth. At four hundred miles the temperature had reached 153 degrees. Feverishly I watched the thermometer. Slowly it rose. Perry had ceased singing and was at last praying.

Our hopes had received such a deathblow that the gradually increasing heat seemed to our distorted imaginations much greater than it really was. For another hour I saw that pitiless column of mercury rise and rise until at four hundred and ten miles it stood at 153 degrees. Now it was that we began to hang upon those readings in almost breathless anxiety.

One hundred and fifty-three degrees had been the maximum temperature above the ice stratum. Would it stop at this point again, or would it continue its merciless climb? We knew that there was no hope, and yet with the persistence of life itself we continued to hope against practical certainty.

Already the air tanks were at low ebb—there was barely enough of the precious gases to sustain us for another twelve hours. But would we be alive to know or care? It seemed incredible.

At four hundred and twenty miles I took another reading.

“Perry!” I shouted. “Perry, man! She’s going down! She’s going down! She’s 152 degrees again.”

“Gad!” he cried. “What can it mean? Can the earth be cold at the center?”

“I do not know, Perry,” I answered; “but thank God, if I am to die it shall not be by fire—that is all that I have feared. I can face the thought of any death but that.”

Down, down went the mercury until it stood as low as it had seven miles from the surface of the earth, and then of a sudden the realization broke upon us that death was very near. Perry was the first to discover it. I saw him fussing with the valves that regulate the air supply. And at the same time I experienced difficulty in breathing. My head felt dizzy—my limbs heavy.

I saw Perry crumple in his seat. He gave himself a shake and sat erect again. Then he turned toward me.

“Good-bye, David,” he said. “I guess this is the end,” and then he smiled and closed his eyes.

“Good-bye, Perry, and good luck to you,” I answered, smiling back at him. But I fought off that awful lethargy. I was very young—I did not want to die.

For an hour I battled against the cruelly enveloping death that surrounded me upon all sides. At first I found that by climbing high into the framework above me I could find more of the precious life-giving elements, and for a while these sustained me. It must have been an hour after Perry had succumbed that I at last came to the realization that I could no longer carry on this unequal struggle against the inevitable.

With my last flickering ray of consciousness I turned mechanically toward the distance meter. It stood at exactly five hundred miles from the earth’s surface—and then of a sudden the huge thing that bore us came to a stop. The rattle of hurtling rock through the hollow jacket ceased. The wild racing of the giant drill betokened that it was running loose in air—and then another truth flashed upon me. The point of the prospector was above us. Slowly it dawned on me that since passing through the ice strata it had been above. We had turned in the ice and sped upward toward the earth’s crust. Thank God! We were safe!

I put my nose to the intake pipe through which samples were to have been taken during the passage of the prospector through the earth, and my fondest hopes were realized—a flood of fresh air was pouring into the iron cabin. The reaction left me in a state of collapse, and I lost consciousness.

CHAPTER II

A STRANGE WORLD

I was unconscious little more than an instant, for as I lunged forward from the crossbeam to which I had been clinging, and fell with a crash to the floor of the cabin, the shock brought me to myself.

My first concern was with Perry. I was horrified at the thought that upon the very threshold of salvation he might be dead. Tearing open his shirt I placed my ear to his breast. I could have cried with relief—his heart was beating quite regularly.

At the water tank I wetted my handkerchief, slapping it smartly across his forehead and face several times. In a moment I was rewarded by the raising of his lids. For a time he lay wide-eyed and quite uncomprehending. Then his scattered wits slowly foregathered, and he sat up sniffing the air with an expression of wonderment upon his face.

“Why, David,” he cried at last, “it’s air, as sure as I live. Why—why what does it mean? Where in the world are we? What has happened?”

“It means that we’re back at the surface all right, Perry,” I cried; “but where, I don’t know. I haven’t opened her up yet. Been too busy reviving you. Lord, man, but you had a close squeak!”

“You say we’re back at the surface, David? How can that be? How long have I been unconscious?”

“Not long. We turned in the ice stratum. Don’t you recall the sudden whirling of our seats? After that the drill was above you instead of below. We didn’t notice it at the time; but I recall it now.”

“You mean to say that we turned back in the ice stratum, David? That is not possible. The prospector cannot turn unless its nose is deflected from the outside—by some external force or resistance—the steering wheel within would have moved in response. The steering wheel has not budged, David, since we started. You know that.”

I did know it; but here we were with our drill racing in pure air, and copious volumes of it pouring into the cabin.

“We couldn’t have turned in the ice stratum, Perry, I know as well as you,” I replied; “but the fact remains that we did, for here we are this minute at the surface of the earth again, and I am going out to see just where.”

“Better wait till morning, David—it must be midnight now.”

I glanced at the chronometer.

“Half after twelve. We have been out seventy-two hours, so it must be midnight. Nevertheless I am going to have a look at the blessed sky that I had given up all hope of ever seeing again,” and so saying I lifted the bars from the inner door, and swung it open. There was quite a quantity of loose material in the jacket, and this I had to remove with a shovel to get at the opposite door in the outer shell.

In a short time I had removed enough of the earth and rock to the floor of the cabin to expose the door beyond. Perry was directly behind me as I threw it open. The upper half was above the surface of the ground. With an expression of surprise I turned and looked at Perry—it was broad daylight without!

“Something seems to have gone wrong either with our calculations or the chronometer,” I said. Perry shook his head—there was a strange expression in his eyes.

“Let’s have a look beyond that door, David,” he cried.

Together we stepped out to stand in silent contemplation of a landscape at once weird and beautiful. Before us a low and level shore stretched down to a silent sea. As far as the eye could reach the surface of the water was dotted with countless tiny isles—some of towering, barren, granitic rock—others resplendent in gorgeous trappings of tropical vegetation, myriad starred with the magnificent splendor of vivid blooms.

Behind us rose a dark and forbidding wood of giant arborescent ferns intermingled with the commoner types of a primeval tropical forest. Huge creepers depended in great loops from tree to tree, dense under-brush overgrew a tangled mass of fallen trunks and branches. Upon the outer verge we could see the same splendid coloring of countless blossoms that glorified the islands, but within the dense shadows all seemed dark and gloomy as the grave.

And upon all the noonday sun poured its torrid rays out of a cloudless sky.

“Where on earth can we be?” I asked, turning to Perry.

For some moments the old man did not reply. He stood with bowed head, buried in deep thought. But at last he spoke.

“David,” he said, “I am not so sure that we are on earth.”

“What do you mean Perry?” I cried. “Do you think that we are dead, and this is heaven?” He smiled, and turning, pointing to the nose of the prospector protruding from the ground at our backs.

“But for that, David, I might believe that we were indeed come to the country beyond the Styx. The prospector renders that theory untenable—it, certainly, could never have gone to heaven. However I am willing to concede that we actually may be in another world from that which we have always known. If we are not on earth, there is every reason to believe that we may be in it.”

“We may have quartered through the earth’s crust and come out upon some tropical island of the West Indies,” I suggested. Again Perry shook his head.

“Let us wait and see, David,” he replied, “and in the meantime suppose we do a bit of exploring up and down the coast—we may find a native who can enlighten us.”

As we walked along the beach Perry gazed long and earnestly across the water. Evidently he was wrestling with a mighty problem.

“David,” he said abruptly, “do you perceive anything unusual about the horizon?”

As I looked I began to appreciate the reason for the strangeness of the landscape that had haunted me from the first with an illusive suggestion of the bizarre and unnatural—there was no horizon! As far as the eye could reach out the sea continued and upon its bosom floated tiny islands, those in the distance reduced to mere specks; but ever beyond them was the sea, until the impression became quite real that one was looking up at the most distant point that the eyes could fathom—the distance was lost in the distance. That was all—there was no clear-cut horizontal line marking the dip of the globe below the line of vision.

“A great light is commencing to break on me,” continued Perry, taking out his watch. “I believe that I have partially solved the riddle. It is now two o’clock. When we emerged from the prospector the sun was directly above us. Where is it now?”

I glanced up to find the great orb still motionless in the center of the heaven. And such a sun! I had scarcely noticed it before. Fully thrice the size of the sun I had known throughout my life, and apparently so near that the sight of it carried the conviction that one might almost reach up and touch it.

“My God, Perry, where are we?” I exclaimed. “This thing is beginning to get on my nerves.”

“I think that I may state quite positively, David,” he commenced, “that we are—” but he got no further. From behind us in the vicinity of the prospector there came the most thunderous, awe-inspiring roar that ever had fallen upon my ears. With one accord we turned to discover the author of that fearsome noise.

Had I still retained the suspicion that we were on earth the sight that met my eyes would quite entirely have banished it. Emerging from the forest was a colossal beast which closely resembled a bear. It was fully as large as the largest elephant and with great forepaws armed with huge claws. Its nose, or snout, depended nearly a foot below its lower jaw, much after the manner of a rudimentary trunk. The giant body was covered by a coat of thick, shaggy hair.

Roaring horribly it came toward us at a ponderous, shuffling trot. I turned to Perry to suggest that it might be wise to seek other surroundings—the idea had evidently occurred to Perry previously, for he was already a hundred paces away, and with each second his prodigious bounds increased the distance. I had never guessed what latent speed possibilities the old gentleman possessed.

I saw that he was headed toward a little point of the forest which ran out toward the sea not far from where we had been standing, and as the mighty creature, the sight of which had galvanized him into such remarkable action, was forging steadily toward me. I set off after Perry, though at a somewhat more decorous pace. It was evident that the massive beast pursuing us was not built for speed, so all that I considered necessary was to gain the trees sufficiently ahead of it to enable me to climb to the safety of some great branch before it came up.

Notwithstanding our danger I could not help but laugh at Perry’s frantic capers as he essayed to gain the safety of the lower branches of the trees he now had reached. The stems were bare for a distance of some fifteen feet—at least on those trees which Perry attempted to ascend, for the suggestion of safety carried by the larger of the forest giants had evidently attracted him to them. A dozen times he scrambled up the trunks like a huge cat only to fall back to the ground once more, and with each failure he cast a horrified glance over his shoulder at the oncoming brute, simultaneously emitting terror-stricken shrieks that awoke the echoes of the grim forest.

At length he spied a dangling creeper about the bigness of one’s wrist, and when I reached the trees he was racing madly up it, hand over hand. He had almost reached the lowest branch of the tree from which the creeper depended when the thing parted beneath his weight and he fell sprawling at my feet.

The misfortune now was no longer amusing, for the beast was already too close to us for comfort. Seizing Perry by the shoulder I dragged him to his feet, and rushing to a smaller tree—one that he could easily encircle with his arms and legs—I boosted him as far up as I could, and then left him to his fate, for a glance over my shoulder revealed the awful beast almost upon me.

It was the great size of the thing alone that saved me. Its enormous bulk rendered it too slow upon its feet to cope with the agility of my young muscles, and so I was enabled to dodge out of its way and run completely behind it before its slow wits could direct it in pursuit.

The few seconds of grace that this gave me found me safely lodged in the branches of a tree a few paces from that in which Perry had at last found a haven.

Did I say safely lodged? At the time I thought we were quite safe, and so did Perry. He was praying—raising his voice in thanksgiving at our deliverance—and had just completed a sort of paeon of gratitude that the thing couldn’t climb a tree when without warning it reared up beneath him on its enormous tail and hind feet, and reached those fearfully armed paws quite to the branch upon which he crouched.

The accompanying roar was all but drowned in Perry’s scream of fright, and he came near tumbling headlong into the gaping jaws beneath him, so precipitate was his impetuous haste to vacate the dangerous limb. It was with a deep sigh of relief that I saw him gain a higher branch in safety.

And then the brute did that which froze us both anew with horror. Grasping the tree’s stem with his powerful paws he dragged down with all the great weight of his huge bulk and all the irresistible force of those mighty muscles. Slowly, but surely, the stem began to bend toward him. Inch by inch he worked his paws upward as the tree leaned more and more from the perpendicular. Perry clung chattering in a panic of terror. Higher and higher into the bending and swaying tree he clambered. More and more rapidly was the tree top inclining toward the ground.

I saw now why the great brute was armed with such enormous paws. The use that he was putting them to was precisely that for which nature had intended them. The sloth-like creature was herbivorous, and to feed that mighty carcass entire trees must be stripped of their foliage. The reason for its attacking us might easily be accounted for on the supposition of an ugly disposition such as that which the fierce and stupid rhinoceros of Africa possesses. But these were later reflections. At the moment I was too frantic with apprehension on Perry’s behalf to consider aught other than a means to save him from the death that loomed so close.

Realizing that I could outdistance the clumsy brute in the open, I dropped from my leafy sanctuary intent only on distracting the thing’s attention from Perry long enough to enable the old man to gain the safety of a larger tree. There were many close by which not even the terrific strength of that titanic monster could bend.

As I touched the ground I snatched a broken limb from the tangled mass that matted the jungle-like floor of the forest and, leaping unnoticed behind the shaggy back, dealt the brute a terrific blow. My plan worked like magic. From the previous slowness of the beast I had been led to look for no such marvelous agility as he now displayed. Releasing his hold upon the tree he dropped on all fours and at the same time swung his great, wicked tail with a force that would have broken every bone in my body had it struck me; but, fortunately, I had turned to flee at the very instant that I felt my blow land upon the towering back.

As it started in pursuit of me I made the mistake of running along the edge of the forest rather than making for the open beach. In a moment I was knee-deep in rotting vegetation, and the awful thing behind me was gaining rapidly as I floundered and fell in my efforts to extricate myself.

A fallen log gave me an instant’s advantage, for climbing upon it I leaped to another a few paces farther on, and in this way was able to keep clear of the mush that carpeted the surrounding ground. But the zigzag course that this necessitated was placing such a heavy handicap upon me that my pursuer was steadily gaining upon me.

Suddenly from behind I heard a tumult of howls, and sharp, piercing barks—much the sound that a pack of wolves raises when in full cry. Involuntarily I glanced backward to discover the origin of this new and menacing note with the result that I missed my footing and went sprawling once more upon my face in the deep muck.

My mammoth enemy was so close by this time that I knew I must feel the weight of one of his terrible paws before I could rise, but to my surprise the blow did not fall upon me. The howling and snapping and barking of the new element which had been infused into the melee now seemed centered quite close behind me, and as I raised myself upon my hands and glanced around I saw what it was that had distracted the dyryth, as I afterward learned the thing is called, from my trail.

It was surrounded by a pack of some hundred wolf-like creatures—wild dogs they seemed—that rushed growling and snapping in upon it from all sides, so that they sank their white fangs into the slow brute and were away again before it could reach them with its huge paws or sweeping tail.

But these were not all that my startled eyes perceived. Chattering and gibbering through the lower branches of the trees came a company of manlike creatures evidently urging on the dog pack. They were to all appearances strikingly similar in aspect to the Negro of Africa. Their skins were very black, and their features much like those of the more pronounced Negroid type except that the head receded more rapidly above the eyes, leaving little or no forehead. Their arms were rather longer and their legs shorter in proportion to the torso than in man, and later I noticed that their great toes protruded at right angles from their feet—because of their arboreal habits, I presume. Behind them trailed long, slender tails which they used in climbing quite as much as they did either their hands or feet.

I had stumbled to my feet the moment that I discovered that the wolf-dogs were holding the dyryth at bay. At sight of me several of the savage creatures left off worrying the great brute to come slinking with bared fangs toward me, and as I turned to run toward the trees again to seek safety among the lower branches, I saw a number of the man-apes leaping and chattering in the foliage of the nearest tree.

Between them and the beasts behind me there was little choice, but at least there was a doubt as to the reception these grotesque parodies on humanity would accord me, while there was none as to the fate which awaited me beneath the grinning fangs of my fierce pursuers.

And so I raced on toward the trees intending to pass beneath that which held the man-things and take refuge in another farther on; but the wolf-dogs were very close behind me—so close that I had despaired of escaping them, when one of the creatures in the tree above swung down headforemost, his tail looped about a great limb, and grasping me beneath my armpits swung me in safety up among his fellows.

There they fell to examining me with the utmost excitement and curiosity. They picked at my clothing, my hair, and my flesh. They turned me about to see if I had a tail, and when they discovered that I was not so equipped they fell into roars of laughter. Their teeth were very large and white and even, except for the upper canines which were a trifle longer than the others—protruding just a bit when the mouth was closed.

When they had examined me for a few moments one of them discovered that my clothing was not a part of me, with the result that garment by garment they tore it from me amidst peals of the wildest laughter. Apelike, they essayed to don the apparel themselves, but their ingenuity was not sufficient to the task and so they gave it up.

In the meantime I had been straining my eyes to catch a glimpse of Perry, but nowhere about could I see him, although the clump of trees in which he had first taken refuge was in full view. I was much exercised by fear that something had befallen him, and though I called his name aloud several times there was no response.

Tired at last of playing with my clothing the creatures threw it to the ground, and catching me, one on either side, by an arm, started off at a most terrifying pace through the tree tops. Never have I experienced such a journey before or since—even now I oftentimes awake from a deep sleep haunted by the horrid remembrance of that awful experience.

From tree to tree the agile creatures sprang like flying squirrels, while the cold sweat stood upon my brow as I glimpsed the depths beneath, into which a single misstep on the part of either of my bearers would hurl me. As they bore me along, my mind was occupied with a thousand bewildering thoughts. What had become of Perry? Would I ever see him again? What were the intentions of these half-human things into whose hands I had fallen? Were they inhabitants of the same world into which I had been born? No! It could not be. But yet where else? I had not left that earth—of that I was sure. Still neither could I reconcile the things which I had seen to a belief that I was still in the world of my birth. With a sigh I gave it up.

CHAPTER III

A CHANGE OF MASTERS

We must have traveled several miles through the dark and dismal wood when we came suddenly upon a dense village built high among the branches of the trees. As we approached it my escort broke into wild shouting which was immediately answered from within, and a moment later a swarm of creatures of the same strange race as those who had captured me poured out to meet us. Again I was the center of a wildly chattering horde. I was pulled this way and that. Pinched, pounded, and thumped until I was black and blue, yet I do not think that their treatment was dictated by either cruelty or malice—I was a curiosity, a freak, a new plaything, and their childish minds required the added evidence of all their senses to back up the testimony of their eyes.

Presently they dragged me within the village, which consisted of several hundred rude shelters of boughs and leaves supported upon the branches of the trees.

Between the huts, which sometimes formed crooked streets, were dead branches and the trunks of small trees which connected the huts upon one tree to those within adjoining trees; the whole network of huts and pathways forming an almost solid flooring a good fifty feet above the ground.

I wondered why these agile creatures required connecting bridges between the trees, but later when I saw the motley aggregation of half-savage beasts which they kept within their village I realized the necessity for the pathways. There were a number of the same vicious wolf-dogs which we had left worrying the dyryth, and many goatlike animals whose distended udders explained the reasons for their presence.

My guard halted before one of the huts into which I was pushed; then two of the creatures squatted down before the entrance—to prevent my escape, doubtless. Though where I should have escaped to I certainly had not the remotest conception. I had no more than entered the dark shadows of the interior than there fell upon my ears the tones of a familiar voice, in prayer.

“Perry!” I cried. “Dear old Perry! Thank the Lord you are safe.”

“David! Can it be possible that you escaped?” And the old man stumbled toward me and threw his arms about me.

He had seen me fall before the dyryth, and then he had been seized by a number of the ape-creatures and borne through the tree tops to their village. His captors had been as inquisitive as to his strange clothing as had mine, with the same result. As we looked at each other we could not help but laugh.

“With a tail, David,” remarked Perry, “you would make a very handsome ape.”

“Maybe we can borrow a couple,” I rejoined. “They seem to be quite the thing this season. I wonder what the creatures intend doing with us, Perry. They don’t seem really savage. What do you suppose they can be? You were about to tell me where we are when that great hairy frigate bore down upon us—have you really any idea at all?”

“Yes, David,” he replied, “I know precisely where we are. We have made a magnificent discovery, my boy! We have proved that the earth is hollow. We have passed entirely through its crust to the inner world.”

“Perry, you are mad!”

“Not at all, David. For two hundred and fifty miles our prospector bore us through the crust beneath our outer world. At that point it reached the center of gravity of the five-hundred-mile-thick crust. Up to that point we had been descending—direction is, of course, merely relative. Then at the moment that our seats revolved—the thing that made you believe that we had turned about and were speeding upward—we passed the center of gravity and, though we did not alter the direction of our progress, yet we were in reality moving upward—toward the surface of the inner world. Does not the strange fauna and flora which we have seen convince you that you are not in the world of your birth? And the horizon—could it present the strange aspects which we both noted unless we were indeed standing upon the inside surface of a sphere?”

“But the sun, Perry!” I urged. “How in the world can the sun shine through five hundred miles of solid crust?”

“It is not the sun of the outer world that we see here. It is another sun—an entirely different sun—that casts its eternal noonday effulgence upon the face of the inner world. Look at it now, David—if you can see it from the doorway of this hut—and you will see that it is still in the exact center of the heavens. We have been here for many hours—yet it is still noon.

“And withal it is very simple, David. The earth was once a nebulous mass. It cooled, and as it cooled it shrank. At length a thin crust of solid matter formed upon its outer surface—a sort of shell; but within it was partially molten matter and highly expanded gases. As it continued to cool, what happened? Centrifugal force burled the particles of the nebulous center toward the crust as rapidly as they approached a solid state. You have seen the same principle practically applied in the modern cream separator. Presently there was only a small super-heated core of gaseous matter remaining within a huge vacant interior left by the contraction of the cooling gases. The equal attraction of the solid crust from all directions maintained this luminous core in the exact center of the hollow globe. What remains of it is the sun you saw today—a relatively tiny thing at the exact center of the earth. Equally to every part of this inner world it diffuses its perpetual noonday light and torrid heat.

“This inner world must have cooled sufficiently to support animal life long ages after life appeared upon the outer crust, but that the same agencies were at work here is evident from the similar forms of both animal and vegetable creation which we have already seen. Take the great beast which attacked us, for example. Unquestionably a counterpart of the Megatherium of the post-Pliocene period of the outer crust, whose fossilized skeleton has been found in South America.”

“But the grotesque inhabitants of this forest?” I urged. “Surely they have no counterpart in the earth’s history.”

“Who can tell?” he rejoined. “They may constitute the link between ape and man, all traces of which have been swallowed by the countless convulsions which have racked the outer crust, or they may be merely the result of evolution along slightly different lines—either is quite possible.”

Further speculation was interrupted by the appearance of several of our captors before the entrance of the hut. Two of them entered and dragged us forth. The perilous pathways and the surrounding trees were filled with the black ape-men, their females, and their young. There was not an ornament, a weapon, or a garment among the lot.

“Quite low in the scale of creation,” commented Perry.

“Quite high enough to play the deuce with us, though,” I replied. “Now what do you suppose they intend doing with us?”

We were not long in learning. As on the occasion of our trip to the village we were seized by a couple of the powerful creatures and whirled away through the tree tops, while about us and in our wake raced a chattering, jabbering, grinning horde of sleek, black ape-things.

Twice my bearers missed their footing, and my heart ceased beating as we plunged toward instant death among the tangled deadwood beneath. But on both occasions those lithe, powerful tails reached out and found sustaining branches, nor did either of the creatures loosen their grasp upon me. In fact, it seemed that the incidents were of no greater moment to them than would be the stubbing of one’s toe at a street crossing in the outer world—they but laughed uproariously and sped on with me.

For some time they continued through the forest—how long I could not guess for I was learning, what was later borne very forcefully to my mind, that time ceases to be a factor the moment means for measuring it cease to exist. Our watches were gone, and we were living beneath a stationary sun. Already I was puzzled to compute the period of time which had elapsed since we broke through the crust of the inner world. It might be hours, or it might be days—who in the world could tell where it was always noon! By the sun, no time had elapsed—but my judgment told me that we must have been several hours in this strange world.

Presently the forest terminated, and we came out upon a level plain. A short distance before us rose a few low, rocky hills. Toward these our captors urged us, and after a short time led us through a narrow pass into a tiny, circular valley. Here they got down to work, and we were soon convinced that if we were not to die to make a Roman holiday, we were to die for some other purpose. The attitude of our captors altered immediately as they entered the natural arena within the rocky hills. Their laughter ceased. Grim ferocity marked their bestial faces—bared fangs menaced us.

We were placed in the center of the amphitheater—the thousand creatures forming a great ring about us. Then a wolf-dog was brought—hyaenadon Perry called it—and turned loose with us inside the circle. The thing’s body was as large as that of a full-grown mastiff, its legs were short and powerful, and its jaws broad and strong. Dark, shaggy hair covered its back and sides, while its breast and belly were quite white. As it slunk toward us it presented a most formidable aspect with its upcurled lips baring its mighty fangs.

Perry was on his knees, praying. I stooped and picked up a small stone. At my movement the beast veered off a bit and commenced circling us. Evidently it had been a target for stones before. The ape-things were dancing up and down urging the brute on with savage cries, until at last, seeing that I did not throw, he charged us.

At Andover, and later at Yale, I had pitched on winning ball teams. My speed and control must both have been above the ordinary, for I made such a record during my senior year at college that overtures were made to me in behalf of one of the great major-league teams; but in the tightest pitch that ever had confronted me in the past I had never been in such need for control as now.

As I wound up for the delivery, I held my nerves and muscles under absolute command, though the grinning jaws were hurtling toward me at terrific speed. And then I let go, with every ounce of my weight and muscle and science in back of that throw. The stone caught the hyaenodon full upon the end of the nose, and sent him bowling over upon his back.

At the same instant a chorus of shrieks and howls arose from the circle of spectators, so that for a moment I thought that the upsetting of their champion was the cause; but in this I soon saw that I was mistaken. As I looked, the ape-things broke in all directions toward the surrounding hills, and then I distinguished the real cause of their perturbation. Behind them, streaming through the pass which leads into the valley, came a swarm of hairy men—gorilla-like creatures armed with spears and hatchets, and bearing long, oval shields. Like demons they set upon the ape-things, and before them the hyaenodon, which had now regained its senses and its feet, fled howling with fright. Past us swept the pursued and the pursuers, nor did the hairy ones accord us more than a passing glance until the arena had been emptied of its former occupants. Then they returned to us, and one who seemed to have authority among them directed that we be brought with them.

When we had passed out of the amphitheater onto the great plain we saw a caravan of men and women—human beings like ourselves—and for the first time hope and relief filled my heart, until I could have cried out in the exuberance of my happiness. It is true that they were a half-naked, wild-appearing aggregation; but they at least were fashioned along the same lines as ourselves—there was nothing grotesque or horrible about them as about the other creatures in this strange, weird world.

But as we came closer, our hearts sank once more, for we discovered that the poor wretches were chained neck to neck in a long line, and that the gorilla-men were their guards. With little ceremony Perry and I were chained at the end of the line, and without further ado the interrupted march was resumed.

Up to this time the excitement had kept us both up; but now the tiresome monotony of the long march across the sun-baked plain brought on all the agonies consequent to a long-denied sleep. On and on we stumbled beneath that hateful noonday sun. If we fell we were prodded with a sharp point. Our companions in chains did not stumble. They strode along proudly erect. Occasionally they would exchange words with one another in a monosyllabic language. They were a noble-appearing race with well-formed heads and perfect physiques. The men were heavily bearded, tall and muscular; the women, smaller and more gracefully molded, with great masses of raven hair caught into loose knots upon their heads. The features of both sexes were well proportioned—there was not a face among them that would have been called even plain if judged by earthly standards. They wore no ornaments; but this I later learned was due to the fact that their captors had stripped them of everything of value. As garmenture the women possessed a single robe of some light-colored, spotted hide, rather similar in appearance to a leopard’s skin. This they wore either supported entirely about the waist by a leathern thong, so that it hung partially below the knee on one side, or possibly looped gracefully across one shoulder. Their feet were shod with skin sandals. The men wore loin cloths of the hide of some shaggy beast, long ends of which depended before and behind nearly to the ground. In some instances these ends were finished with the strong talons of the beast from which the hides had been taken.

Our guards, whom I already have described as gorilla-like men, were rather lighter in build than a gorilla, but even so they were indeed mighty creatures. Their arms and legs were proportioned more in conformity with human standards, but their entire bodies were covered with shaggy, brown hair, and their faces were quite as brutal as those of the few stuffed specimens of the gorilla which I had seen in the museums at home.

Their only redeeming feature lay in the development of the head above and back of the ears. In this respect they were not one whit less human than we. They were clothed in a sort of tunic of light cloth which reached to the knees. Beneath this they wore only a loin cloth of the same material, while their feet were shod with thick hide of some mammoth creature of this inner world.

Their arms and necks were encircled by many ornaments of metal—silver predominating—and on their tunics were sewn the heads of tiny reptiles in odd and rather artistic designs. They talked among themselves as they marched along on either side of us, but in a language which I perceived differed from that employed by our fellow prisoners. When they addressed the latter they used what appeared to be a third language, and which I later learned is a mongrel tongue rather analogous to the Pidgin-English of the Chinese coolie.

How far we marched I have no conception, nor has Perry. Both of us were asleep much of the time for hours before a halt was called—then we dropped in our tracks. I say “for hours,” but how may one measure time where time does not exist! When our march commenced the sun stood at zenith. When we halted our shadows still pointed toward nadir. Whether an instant or an eternity of earthly time elapsed who may say. That march may have occupied nine years and eleven months of the ten years that I spent in the inner world, or it may have been accomplished in the fraction of a second—I cannot tell. But this I do know that since you have told me that ten years have elapsed since I departed from this earth I have lost all respect for time—I am commencing to doubt that such a thing exists other than in the weak, finite mind of man.

CHAPTER IV

DIAN THE BEAUTIFUL

When our guards aroused us from sleep we were much refreshed. They gave us food. Strips of dried meat it was, but it put new life and strength into us, so that now we too marched with high-held heads, and took noble strides. At least I did, for I was young and proud; but poor Perry hated walking. On earth I had often seen him call a cab to travel a square—he was paying for it now, and his old legs wobbled so that I put my arm about him and half carried him through the balance of those frightful marches.

The country began to change at last, and we wound up out of the level plain through mighty mountains of virgin granite. The tropical verdure of the lowlands was replaced by hardier vegetation, but even here the effects of constant heat and light were apparent in the immensity of the trees and the profusion of foliage and blooms. Crystal streams roared through their rocky channels, fed by the perpetual snows which we could see far above us. Above the snowcapped heights hung masses of heavy clouds. It was these, Perry explained, which evidently served the double purpose of replenishing the melting snows and protecting them from the direct rays of the sun.

By this time we had picked up a smattering of the bastard language in which our guards addressed us, as well as making good headway in the rather charming tongue of our co-captives. Directly ahead of me in the chain gang was a young woman. Three feet of chain linked us together in a forced companionship which I, at least, soon rejoiced in. For I found her a willing teacher, and from her I learned the language of her tribe, and much of the life and customs of the inner world—at least that part of it with which she was familiar.

She told me that she was called Dian the Beautiful, and that she belonged to the tribe of Amoz, which dwells in the cliffs above the Darel Az, or shallow sea.

“How came you here?” I asked her.

“I was running away from Jubal the Ugly One,” she answered, as though that was explanation quite sufficient.

“Who is Jubal the Ugly One?” I asked. “And why did you run away from him?”

She looked at me in surprise.

“Why does a woman run away from a man?” she answered my question with another.

“They do not, where I come from,” I replied. “Sometimes they run after them.”

But she could not understand. Nor could I get her to grasp the fact that I was of another world. She was quite as positive that creation was originated solely to produce her own kind and the world she lived in as are many of the outer world.

“But Jubal,” I insisted. “Tell me about him, and why you ran away to be chained by the neck and scourged across the face of a world.”

“Jubal the Ugly One placed his trophy before my father’s house. It was the head of a mighty tandor. It remained there and no greater trophy was placed beside it. So I knew that Jubal the Ugly One would come and take me as his mate. None other so powerful wished me, or they would have slain a mightier beast and thus have won me from Jubal. My father is not a mighty hunter. Once he was, but a sadok tossed him, and never again had he the full use of his right arm. My brother, Dacor the Strong One, had gone to the land of Sari to steal a mate for himself. Thus there was none, father, brother, or lover, to save me from Jubal the Ugly One, and I ran away and hid among the hills that skirt the land of Amoz. And there these Sagoths found me and made me captive.”

“What will they do with you?” I asked. “Where are they taking us?”

Again she looked her incredulity.

“I can almost believe that you are of another world,” she said, “for otherwise such ignorance were inexplicable. Do you really mean that you do not know that the Sagoths are the creatures of the Mahars—the mighty Mahars who think they own Pellucidar and all that walks or grows upon its surface, or creeps or burrows beneath, or swims within its lakes and oceans, or flies through its air? Next you will be telling me that you never before heard of the Mahars!”

I was loath to do it, and further incur her scorn; but there was no alternative if I were to absorb knowledge, so I made a clean breast of my pitiful ignorance as to the mighty Mahars. She was shocked. But she did her very best to enlighten me, though much that she said was as Greek would have been to her. She described the Mahars largely by comparisons. In this way they were like unto thipdars, in that to the hairless lidi.

About all I gleaned of them was that they were quite hideous, had wings, and webbed feet; lived in cities built beneath the ground; could swim under water for great distances, and were very, very wise. The Sagoths were their weapons of offense and defense, and the races like herself were their hands and feet—they were the slaves and servants who did all the manual labor. The Mahars were the heads—the brains—of the inner world. I longed to see this wondrous race of supermen.

Perry learned the language with me. When we halted, as we occasionally did, though sometimes the halts seemed ages apart, he would join in the conversation, as would Ghak the Hairy One, he who was chained just ahead of Dian the Beautiful. Ahead of Ghak was Hooja the Sly One. He too entered the conversation occasionally. Most of his remarks were directed toward Dian the Beautiful. It didn’t take half an eye to see that he had developed a bad case; but the girl appeared totally oblivious to his thinly veiled advances. Did I say thinly veiled? There is a race of men in New Zealand, or Australia, I have forgotten which, who indicate their preference for the lady of their affections by banging her over the head with a bludgeon. By comparison with this method Hooja’s lovemaking might be called thinly veiled. At first it caused me to blush violently although I have seen several Old Years out at Rectors, and in other less fashionable places off Broadway, and in Vienna, and Hamburg.

But the girl! She was magnificent. It was easy to see that she considered herself as entirely above and apart from her present surroundings and company. She talked with me, and with Perry, and with the taciturn Ghak because we were respectful; but she couldn’t even see Hooja the Sly One, much less hear him, and that made him furious. He tried to get one of the Sagoths to move the girl up ahead of him in the slave gang, but the fellow only poked him with his spear and told him that he had selected the girl for his own property—that he would buy her from the Mahars as soon as they reached Phutra. Phutra, it seemed, was the city of our destination.

After passing over the first chain of mountains we skirted a salt sea, upon whose bosom swam countless horrid things. Seal-like creatures there were with long necks stretching ten and more feet above their enormous bodies and whose snake heads were split with gaping mouths bristling with countless fangs. There were huge tortoises too, paddling about among these other reptiles, which Perry said were Plesiosaurs of the Lias. I didn’t question his veracity—they might have been most anything.

Dian told me they were tandorazes, or tandors of the sea, and that the other, and more fearsome reptiles, which occasionally rose from the deep to do battle with them, were azdyryths, or sea-dyryths—Perry called them Ichthyosaurs. They resembled a whale with the head of an alligator.

I had forgotten what little geology I had studied at school—about all that remained was an impression of horror that the illustrations of restored prehistoric monsters had made upon me, and a well-defined belief that any man with a pig’s shank and a vivid imagination could “restore” most any sort of paleolithic monster he saw fit, and take rank as a first class paleontologist. But when I saw these sleek, shiny carcasses shimmering in the sunlight as they emerged from the ocean, shaking their giant heads; when I saw the waters roll from their sinuous bodies in miniature waterfalls as they glided hither and thither, now upon the surface, now half submerged; as I saw them meet, open-mouthed, hissing and snorting, in their titanic and interminable warring I realized how futile is man’s poor, weak imagination by comparison with Nature’s incredible genius.

And Perry! He was absolutely flabbergasted. He said so himself.

“David,” he remarked, after we had marched for a long time beside that awful sea. “David, I used to teach geology, and I thought that I believed what I taught; but now I see that I did not believe it—that it is impossible for man to believe such things as these unless he sees them with his own eyes. We take things for granted, perhaps, because we are told them over and over again, and have no way of disproving them—like religions, for example; but we don’t believe them, we only think we do. If you ever get back to the outer world you will find that the geologists and paleontologists will be the first to set you down a liar, for they know that no such creatures as they restore ever existed. It is all right to imagine them as existing in an equally imaginary epoch—but now? poof!”

At the next halt Hooja the Sly One managed to find enough slack chain to permit him to worm himself back quite close to Dian. We were all standing, and as he edged near the girl she turned her back upon him in such a truly earthly feminine manner that I could scarce repress a smile; but it was a short-lived smile for on the instant the Sly One’s hand fell upon the girl’s bare arm, jerking her roughly toward him.

I was not then familiar with the customs or social ethics which prevailed within Pellucidar; but even so I did not need the appealing look which the girl shot to me from her magnificent eyes to influence my subsequent act. What the Sly One’s intention was I paused not to inquire; but instead, before he could lay hold of her with his other hand, I placed a right to the point of his jaw that felled him in his tracks.

A roar of approval went up from those of the other prisoners and the Sagoths who had witnessed the brief drama; not, as I later learned, because I had championed the girl, but for the neat and, to them, astounding method by which I had bested Hooja.

And the girl? At first she looked at me with wide, wondering eyes, and then she dropped her head, her face half averted, and a delicate flush suffused her cheek. For a moment she stood thus in silence, and then her head went high, and she turned her back upon me as she had upon Hooja. Some of the prisoners laughed, and I saw the face of Ghak the Hairy One go very black as he looked at me searchingly. And what I could see of Dian’s cheek went suddenly from red to white.

Immediately after we resumed the march, and though I realized that in some way I had offended Dian the Beautiful I could not prevail upon her to talk with me that I might learn wherein I had erred—in fact I might quite as well have been addressing a sphinx for all the attention I got. At last my own foolish pride stepped in and prevented my making any further attempts, and thus a companionship that without my realizing it had come to mean a great deal to me was cut off. Thereafter I confined my conversation to Perry. Hooja did not renew his advances toward the girl, nor did he again venture near me.

Again the weary and apparently interminable marching became a perfect nightmare of horrors to me. The more firmly fixed became the realization that the girl’s friendship had meant so much to me, the more I came to miss it; and the more impregnable the barrier of silly pride. But I was very young and would not ask Ghak for the explanation which I was sure he could give, and that might have made everything all right again.

On the march, or during halts, Dian refused consistently to notice me—when her eyes wandered in my direction she looked either over my head or directly through me. At last I became desperate, and determined to swallow my self-esteem, and again beg her to tell me how I had offended, and how I might make reparation. I made up my mind that I should do this at the next halt. We were approaching another range of mountains at the time, and when we reached them, instead of winding across them through some high-flung pass we entered a mighty natural tunnel—a series of labyrinthine grottoes, dark as Erebus.

The guards had no torches or light of any description. In fact we had seen no artificial light or sign of fire since we had entered Pellucidar. In a land of perpetual noon there is no need of light above ground, yet I marveled that they had no means of lighting their way through these dark, subterranean passages. So we crept along at a snail’s pace, with much stumbling and falling—the guards keeping up a singsong chant ahead of us, interspersed with certain high notes which I found always indicated rough places and turns.

Halts were now more frequent, but I did not wish to speak to Dian until I could see from the expression of her face how she was receiving my apologies. At last a faint glow ahead forewarned us of the end of the tunnel, for which I for one was devoutly thankful. Then at a sudden turn we emerged into the full light of the noonday sun.

But with it came a sudden realization of what meant to me a real catastrophe—Dian was gone, and with her a half-dozen other prisoners. The guards saw it too, and the ferocity of their rage was terrible to behold. Their awesome, bestial faces were contorted in the most diabolical expressions, as they accused each other of responsibility for the loss. Finally they fell upon us, beating us with their spear shafts, and hatchets. They had already killed two near the head of the line, and were like to have finished the balance of us when their leader finally put a stop to the brutal slaughter. Never in all my life had I witnessed a more horrible exhibition of bestial rage—I thanked God that Dian had not been one of those left to endure it.

Of the twelve prisoners who had been chained ahead of me each alternate one had been freed commencing with Dian. Hooja was gone. Ghak remained. What could it mean? How had it been accomplished? The commander of the guards was investigating. Soon he discovered that the rude locks which had held the neckbands in place had been deftly picked.

“Hooja the Sly One,” murmured Ghak, who was now next to me in line. “He has taken the girl that you would not have,” he continued, glancing at me.

“That I would not have!” I cried. “What do you mean?”

He looked at me closely for a moment.

“I have doubted your story that you are from another world,” he said at last, “but yet upon no other grounds could your ignorance of the ways of Pellucidar be explained. Do you really mean that you do not know that you offended the Beautiful One, and how?”

“I do not know, Ghak,” I replied.

“Then shall I tell you. When a man of Pellucidar intervenes between another man and the woman the other man would have, the woman belongs to the victor. Dian the Beautiful belongs to you. You should have claimed her or released her. Had you taken her hand, it would have indicated your desire to make her your mate, and had you raised her hand above her head and then dropped it, it would have meant that you did not wish her for a mate and that you released her from all obligation to you. By doing neither you have put upon her the greatest affront that a man may put upon a woman. Now she is your slave. No man will take her as mate, or may take her honorably, until he shall have overcome you in combat, and men do not choose slave women as their mates—at least not the men of Pellucidar.”

“I did not know, Ghak,” I cried. “I did not know. Not for all Pellucidar would I have harmed Dian the Beautiful by word, or look, or act of mine. I do not want her as my slave. I do not want her as my—” but here I stopped. The vision of that sweet and innocent face floated before me amidst the soft mists of imagination, and where I had on the second believed that I clung only to the memory of a gentle friendship I had lost, yet now it seemed that it would have been disloyalty to her to have said that I did not want Dian the Beautiful as my mate. I had not thought of her except as a welcome friend in a strange, cruel world. Even now I did not think that I loved her.

I believe Ghak must have read the truth more in my expression than in my words, for presently he laid his hand upon my shoulder.

“Man of another world,” he said, “I believe you. Lips may lie, but when the heart speaks through the eyes it tells only the truth. Your heart has spoken to me. I know now that you meant no affront to Dian the Beautiful. She is not of my tribe; but her mother is my sister. She does not know it—her mother was stolen by Dian’s father who came with many others of the tribe of Amoz to battle with us for our women—the most beautiful women of Pellucidar. Then was her father king of Amoz, and her mother was daughter of the king of Sari—to whose power I, his son, have succeeded. Dian is the daughter of kings, though her father is no longer king since the sadok tossed him and Jubal the Ugly One wrested his kingship from him. Because of her lineage the wrong you did her was greatly magnified in the eyes of all who saw it. She will never forgive you.”

I asked Ghak if there was not some way in which I could release the girl from the bondage and ignominy I had unwittingly placed upon her.

“If ever you find her, yes,” he answered. “Merely to raise her hand above her head and drop it in the presence of others is sufficient to release her; but how may you ever find her, you who are doomed to a life of slavery yourself in the buried city of Phutra?”

“Is there no escape?” I asked.

“Hooja the Sly One escaped and took the others with him,” replied Ghak. “But there are no more dark places on the way to Phutra, and once there it is not so easy—the Mahars are very wise. Even if one escaped from Phutra there are the thipdars—they would find you, and then—” the Hairy One shuddered. “No, you will never escape the Mahars.”

It was a cheerful prospect. I asked Perry what he thought about it; but he only shrugged his shoulders and continued a longwinded prayer he had been at for some time. He was wont to say that the only redeeming feature of our captivity was the ample time it gave him for the improvisation of prayers—it was becoming an obsession with him. The Sagoths had begun to take notice of his habit of declaiming throughout entire marches. One of them asked him what he was saying—to whom he was talking. The question gave me an idea, so I answered quickly before Perry could say anything.

“Do not interrupt him,” I said. “He is a very holy man in the world from which we come. He is speaking to spirits which you cannot see—do not interrupt him or they will spring out of the air upon you and rend you limb from limb—like that,” and I jumped toward the great brute with a loud “Boo!” that sent him stumbling backward.

I took a long chance, I realized, but if we could make any capital out of Perry’s harmless mania I wanted to make it while the making was prime. It worked splendidly. The Sagoths treated us both with marked respect during the balance of the journey, and then passed the word along to their masters, the Mahars.

Two marches after this episode we came to the city of Phutra. The entrance to it was marked by two lofty towers of granite, which guarded a flight of steps leading to the buried city. Sagoths were on guard here as well as at a hundred or more other towers scattered about over a large plain.

CHAPTER V

SLAVES

As we descended the broad staircase which led to the main avenue of Phutra I caught my first sight of the dominant race of the inner world. Involuntarily I shrank back as one of the creatures approached to inspect us. A more hideous thing it would be impossible to imagine. The all-powerful Mahars of Pellucidar are great reptiles, some six or eight feet in length, with long narrow heads and great round eyes. Their beak-like mouths are lined with sharp, white fangs, and the backs of their huge, lizard bodies are serrated into bony ridges from their necks to the end of their long tails. Their feet are equipped with three webbed toes, while from the fore feet membranous wings, which are attached to their bodies just in front of the hind legs, protrude at an angle of 45 degrees toward the rear, ending in sharp points several feet above their bodies.

I glanced at Perry as the thing passed me to inspect him. The old man was gazing at the horrid creature with wide astonished eyes. When it passed on, he turned to me.

“A rhamphorhynchus of the Middle Olitic, David,” he said, “but, gad, how enormous! The largest remains we ever have discovered have never indicated a size greater than that attained by an ordinary crow.”

As we continued on through the main avenue of Phutra we saw many thousand of the creatures coming and going upon their daily duties. They paid but little attention to us. Phutra is laid out underground with a regularity that indicates remarkable engineering skill. It is hewn from solid limestone strata. The streets are broad and of a uniform height of twenty feet. At intervals tubes pierce the roof of this underground city, and by means of lenses and reflectors transmit the sunlight, softened and diffused, to dispel what would otherwise be Cimmerian darkness. In like manner air is introduced.

Perry and I were taken, with Ghak, to a large public building, where one of the Sagoths who had formed our guard explained to a Maharan official the circumstances surrounding our capture. The method of communication between these two was remarkable in that no spoken words were exchanged. They employed a species of sign language. As I was to learn later, the Mahars have no ears, not any spoken language. Among themselves they communicate by means of what Perry says must be a sixth sense which is cognizant of a fourth dimension.

I never did quite grasp him, though he endeavored to explain it to me upon numerous occasions. I suggested telepathy, but he said no, that it was not telepathy since they could only communicate when in each others’ presence, nor could they talk with the Sagoths or the other inhabitants of Pellucidar by the same method they used to converse with one another.

“What they do,” said Perry, “is to project their thoughts into the fourth dimension, when they become appreciable to the sixth sense of their listener. Do I make myself quite clear?”

“You do not, Perry,” I replied. He shook his head in despair, and returned to his work. They had set us to carrying a great accumulation of Maharan literature from one apartment to another, and there arranging it upon shelves. I suggested to Perry that we were in the public library of Phutra, but later, as he commenced to discover the key to their written language, he assured me that we were handling the ancient archives of the race.

During this period my thoughts were continually upon Dian the Beautiful. I was, of course, glad that she had escaped the Mahars, and the fate that had been suggested by the Sagoth who had threatened to purchase her upon our arrival at Phutra. I often wondered if the little party of fugitives had been overtaken by the guards who had returned to search for them. Sometimes I was not so sure but that I should have been more contented to know that Dian was here in Phutra, than to think of her at the mercy of Hooja the Sly One. Ghak, Perry, and I often talked together of possible escape, but the Sarian was so steeped in his lifelong belief that no one could escape from the Mahars except by a miracle, that he was not much aid to us—his attitude was of one who waits for the miracle to come to him.

At my suggestion Perry and I fashioned some swords of scraps of iron which we discovered among some rubbish in the cells where we slept, for we were permitted almost unrestrained freedom of action within the limits of the building to which we had been assigned. So great were the number of slaves who waited upon the inhabitants of Phutra that none of us was apt to be overburdened with work, nor were our masters unkind to us.

We hid our new weapons beneath the skins which formed our beds, and then Perry conceived the idea of making bows and arrows—weapons apparently unknown within Pellucidar. Next came shields; but these I found it easier to steal from the walls of the outer guardroom of the building.

We had completed these arrangements for our protection after leaving Phutra when the Sagoths who had been sent to recapture the escaped prisoners returned with four of them, of whom Hooja was one. Dian and two others had eluded them. It so happened that Hooja was confined in the same building with us. He told Ghak that he had not seen Dian or the others after releasing them within the dark grotto. What had become of them he had not the faintest conception—they might be wandering yet, lost within the labyrinthine tunnel, if not dead from starvation.

I was now still further apprehensive as to the fate of Dian, and at this time, I imagine, came the first realization that my affection for the girl might be prompted by more than friendship. During my waking hours she was constantly the subject of my thoughts, and when I slept her dear face haunted my dreams. More than ever was I determined to escape the Mahars.

“Perry,” I confided to the old man, “if I have to search every inch of this diminutive world I am going to find Dian the Beautiful and right the wrong I unintentionally did her.” That was the excuse I made for Perry’s benefit.

“Diminutive world!” he scoffed. “You don’t know what you are talking about, my boy,” and then he showed me a map of Pellucidar which he had recently discovered among the manuscript he was arranging.

“Look,” he cried, pointing to it, “this is evidently water, and all this land. Do you notice the general configuration of the two areas? Where the oceans are upon the outer crust, is land here. These relatively small areas of ocean follow the general lines of the continents of the outer world.

“We know that the crust of the globe is 500 miles in thickness; then the inside diameter of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles, and the superficial area 165,480,000 square miles. Three-fourths of this is land. Think of it! A land area of 124,110,000 square miles! Our own world contains but 53,000,000 square miles of land, the balance of its surface being covered by water. Just as we often compare nations by their relative land areas, so if we compare these two worlds in the same way we have the strange anomaly of a larger world within a smaller one!

“Where within vast Pellucidar would you search for your Dian? Without stars, or moon, or changing sun how could you find her even though you knew where she might be found?”

The proposition was a corker. It quite took my breath away; but I found that it left me all the more determined to attempt it.

“If Ghak will accompany us we may be able to do it,” I suggested.

Perry and I sought him out and put the question straight to him.

“Ghak,” I said, “we are determined to escape from this bondage. Will you accompany us?”

“They will set the thipdars upon us,” he said, “and then we shall be killed; but—” he hesitated—“I would take the chance if I thought that I might possibly escape and return to my own people.”

“Could you find your way back to your own land?” asked Perry. “And could you aid David in his search for Dian?”

“Yes.”

“But how,” persisted Perry, “could you travel to strange country without heavenly bodies or a compass to guide you?”

Ghak didn’t know what Perry meant by heavenly bodies or a compass, but he assured us that you might blindfold any man of Pellucidar and carry him to the farthermost corner of the world, yet he would be able to come directly to his own home again by the shortest route. He seemed surprised to think that we found anything wonderful in it. Perry said it must be some sort of homing instinct such as is possessed by certain breeds of earthly pigeons. I didn’t know, of course, but it gave me an idea.

“Then Dian could have found her way directly to her own people?” I asked.

“Surely,” replied Ghak, “unless some mighty beast of prey killed her.”

I was for making the attempted escape at once, but both Perry and Ghak counseled waiting for some propitious accident which would insure us some small degree of success. I didn’t see what accident could befall a whole community in a land of perpetual daylight where the inhabitants had no fixed habits of sleep. Why, I am sure that some of the Mahars never sleep, while others may, at long intervals, crawl into the dark recesses beneath their dwellings and curl up in protracted slumber. Perry says that if a Mahar stays awake for three years he will make up all his lost sleep in a long year’s snooze. That may be all true, but I never saw but three of them asleep, and it was the sight of these three that gave me a suggestion for our means of escape.

I had been searching about far below the levels that we slaves were supposed to frequent—possibly fifty feet beneath the main floor of the building—among a network of corridors and apartments, when I came suddenly upon three Mahars curled up upon a bed of skins. At first I thought they were dead, but later their regular breathing convinced me of my error. Like a flash the thought came to me of the marvelous opportunity these sleeping reptiles offered as a means of eluding the watchfulness of our captors and the Sagoth guards.

Hastening back to Perry where he pored over a musty pile of, to me, meaningless hieroglyphics, I explained my plan to him. To my surprise he was horrified.

“It would be murder, David,” he cried.

“Murder to kill a reptilian monster?” I asked in astonishment.

“Here they are not monsters, David,” he replied. “Here they are the dominant race—we are the ‘monsters’—the lower orders. In Pellucidar evolution has progressed along different lines than upon the outer earth. These terrible convulsions of nature time and time again wiped out the existing species—but for this fact some monster of the Saurozoic epoch might rule today upon our own world. We see here what might well have occurred in our own history had conditions been what they have been here.

“Life within Pellucidar is far younger than upon the outer crust. Here man has but reached a stage analogous to the Stone Age of our own world’s history, but for countless millions of years these reptiles have been progressing. Possibly it is the sixth sense which I am sure they possess that has given them an advantage over the other and more frightfully armed of their fellows; but this we may never know. They look upon us as we look upon the beasts of our fields, and I learn from their written records that other races of Mahars feed upon men—they keep them in great droves, as we keep cattle. They breed them most carefully, and when they are quite fat, they kill and eat them.”

I shuddered.

“What is there horrible about it, David?” the old man asked. “They understand us no better than we understand the lower animals of our own world. Why, I have come across here very learned discussions of the question as to whether gilaks, that is men, have any means of communication. One writer claims that we do not even reason—that our every act is mechanical, or instinctive. The dominant race of Pellucidar, David, have not yet learned that men converse among themselves, or reason. Because we do not converse as they do it is beyond them to imagine that we converse at all. It is thus that we reason in relation to the brutes of our own world. They know that the Sagoths have a spoken language, but they cannot comprehend it, or how it manifests itself, since they have no auditory apparatus. They believe that the motions of the lips alone convey the meaning. That the Sagoths can communicate with us is incomprehensible to them.

“Yes, David,” he concluded, “it would entail murder to carry out your plan.”

“Very well then, Perry.” I replied. “I shall become a murderer.”

He got me to go over the plan again most carefully, and for some reason which was not at the time clear to me insisted upon a very careful description of the apartments and corridors I had just explored.

“I wonder, David,” he said at length, “as you are determined to carry out your wild scheme, if we could not accomplish something of very real and lasting benefit for the human race of Pellucidar at the same time. Listen, I have learned much of a most surprising nature from these archives of the Mahars. That you may not appreciate my plan I shall briefly outline the history of the race.

“Once the males were all-powerful, but ages ago the females, little by little, assumed the mastery. For other ages no noticeable change took place in the race of Mahars. It continued to progress under the intelligent and beneficent rule of the ladies. Science took vast strides. This was especially true of the sciences which we know as biology and eugenics. Finally a certain female scientist announced the fact that she had discovered a method whereby eggs might be fertilized by chemical means after they were laid—all true reptiles, you know, are hatched from eggs.

“What happened? Immediately the necessity for males ceased to exist—the race was no longer dependent upon them. More ages elapsed until at the present time we find a race consisting exclusively of females. But here is the point. The secret of this chemical formula is kept by a single race of Mahars. It is in the city of Phutra, and unless I am greatly in error I judge from your description of the vaults through which you passed today that it lies hidden in the cellar of this building.

“For two reasons they hide it away and guard it jealously. First, because upon it depends the very life of the race of Mahars, and second, owing to the fact that when it was public property as at first so many were experimenting with it that the danger of over-population became very grave.

“David, if we can escape, and at the same time take with us this great secret what will we not have accomplished for the human race within Pellucidar!” The very thought of it fairly overpowered me. Why, we two would be the means of placing the men of the inner world in their rightful place among created things. Only the Sagoths would then stand between them and absolute supremacy, and I was not quite sure but that the Sagoths owed all their power to the greater intelligence of the Mahars—I could not believe that these gorilla-like beasts were the mental superiors of the human race of Pellucidar.

“Why, Perry,” I exclaimed, “you and I may reclaim a whole world! Together we can lead the races of men out of the darkness of ignorance into the light of advancement and civilization. At one step we may carry them from the Age of Stone to the twentieth century. It’s marvelous—absolutely marvelous just to think about it.”

“David,” said the old man, “I believe that God sent us here for just that purpose—it shall be my life work to teach them His word—to lead them into the light of His mercy while we are training their hearts and hands in the ways of culture and civilization.”

“You are right, Perry,” I said, “and while you are teaching them to pray I’ll be teaching them to fight, and between us we’ll make a race of men that will be an honor to us both.”

Ghak had entered the apartment some time before we concluded our conversation, and now he wanted to know what we were so excited about. Perry thought we had best not tell him too much, and so I only explained that I had a plan for escape. When I had outlined it to him, he seemed about as horror-struck as Perry had been; but for a different reason. The Hairy One only considered the horrible fate that would be ours were we discovered; but at last I prevailed upon him to accept my plan as the only feasible one, and when I had assured him that I would take all the responsibility for it were we captured, he accorded a reluctant assent.

CHAPTER VI

THE BEGINNING OF HORROR

Within Pellucidar one time is as good as another. There were no nights to mask our attempted escape. All must be done in broad daylight—all but the work I had to do in the apartment beneath the building. So we determined to put our plan to an immediate test lest the Mahars who made it possible should awake before I reached them; but we were doomed to disappointment, for no sooner had we reached the main floor of the building on our way to the pits beneath, than we encountered hurrying bands of slaves being hastened under strong Sagoth guard out of the edifice to the avenue beyond.

Other Sagoths were darting hither and thither in search of other slaves, and the moment that we appeared we were pounced upon and hustled into the line of marching humans.

What the purpose or nature of the general exodus we did not know, but presently through the line of captives ran the rumor that two escaped slaves had been recaptured—a man and a woman—and that we were marching to witness their punishment, for the man had killed a Sagoth of the detachment that had pursued and overtaken them.

At the intelligence my heart sprang to my throat, for I was sure that the two were of those who escaped in the dark grotto with Hooja the Sly One, and that Dian must be the woman. Ghak thought so too, as did Perry.

“Is there naught that we may do to save her?” I asked Ghak.

“Naught,” he replied.

Along the crowded avenue we marched, the guards showing unusual cruelty toward us, as though we, too, had been implicated in the murder of their fellow. The occasion was to serve as an object-lesson to all other slaves of the danger and futility of attempted escape, and the fatal consequences of taking the life of a superior being, and so I imagine that Sagoths felt amply justified in making the entire proceeding as uncomfortable and painful to us as possible.

They jabbed us with their spears and struck at us with the hatchets at the least provocation, and at no provocation at all. It was a most uncomfortable half-hour that we spent before we were finally herded through a low entrance into a huge building the center of which was given up to a good-sized arena. Benches surrounded this open space upon three sides, and along the fourth were heaped huge bowlders which rose in receding tiers toward the roof.

At first I couldn’t make out the purpose of this mighty pile of rock, unless it were intended as a rough and picturesque background for the scenes which were enacted in the arena before it, but presently, after the wooden benches had been pretty well filled by slaves and Sagoths, I discovered the purpose of the bowlders, for then the Mahars began to file into the enclosure.

They marched directly across the arena toward the rocks upon the opposite side, where, spreading their bat-like wings, they rose above the high wall of the pit, settling down upon the bowlders above. These were the reserved seats, the boxes of the elect.

Reptiles that they are, the rough surface of a great stone is to them as plush as upholstery to us. Here they lolled, blinking their hideous eyes, and doubtless conversing with one another in their sixth-sense- fourth-dimension language.

For the first time I beheld their queen. She differed from the others in no feature that was appreciable to my earthly eyes, in fact all Mahars look alike to me: but when she crossed the arena after the balance of her female subjects had found their bowlders, she was preceded by a score of huge Sagoths, the largest I ever had seen, and on either side of her waddled a huge thipdar, while behind came another score of Sagoth guardsmen.

At the barrier the Sagoths clambered up the steep side with truly apelike agility, while behind them the haughty queen rose upon her wings with her two frightful dragons close beside her, and settled down upon the largest bowlder of them all in the exact center of that side of the amphitheater which is reserved for the dominant race. Here she squatted, a most repulsive and uninteresting queen; though doubtless quite as well assured of her beauty and divine right to rule as the proudest monarch of the outer world.

And then the music started—music without sound! The Mahars cannot hear, so the drums and fifes and horns of earthly bands are unknown among them. The “band” consists of a score or more Mahars. It filed out in the center of the arena where the creatures upon the rocks might see it, and there it performed for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Their technic consisted in waving their tails and moving their heads in a regular succession of measured movements resulting in a cadence which evidently pleased the eye of the Mahar as the cadence of our own instrumental music pleases our ears. Sometimes the band took measured steps in unison to one side or the other, or backward and again forward—it all seemed very silly and meaningless to me, but at the end of the first piece the Mahars upon the rocks showed the first indications of enthusiasm that I had seen displayed by the dominant race of Pellucidar. They beat their great wings up and down, and smote their rocky perches with their mighty tails until the ground shook. Then the band started another piece, and all was again as silent as the grave. That was one great beauty about Mahar music—if you didn’t happen to like a piece that was being played all you had to do was shut your eyes.

When the band had exhausted its repertory it took wing and settled upon the rocks above and behind the queen. Then the business of the day was on. A man and woman were pushed into the arena by a couple of Sagoth guardsmen. I leaned forward in my seat to scrutinize the female—hoping against hope that she might prove to be another than Dian the Beautiful. Her back was toward me for a while, and the sight of the great mass of raven hair piled high upon her head filled me with alarm.

Presently a door in one side of the arena wall was opened to admit a huge, shaggy, bull-like creature.

“A Bos,” whispered Perry, excitedly. “His kind roamed the outer crust with the cave bear and the mammoth ages and ages ago. We have been carried back a million years, David, to the childhood of a planet—is it not wondrous?”

But I saw only the raven hair of a half-naked girl, and my heart stood still in dumb misery at the sight of her, nor had I any eyes for the wonders of natural history. But for Perry and Ghak I should have leaped to the floor of the arena and shared whatever fate lay in store for this priceless treasure of the Stone Age.

With the advent of the Bos—they call the thing a thag within Pellucidar—two spears were tossed into the arena at the feet of the prisoners. It seemed to me that a bean shooter would have been as effective against the mighty monster as these pitiful weapons.

As the animal approached the two, bellowing and pawing the ground with the strength of many earthly bulls, another door directly beneath us was opened, and from it issued the most terrific roar that ever had fallen upon my outraged ears. I could not at first see the beast from which emanated this fearsome challenge, but the sound had the effect of bringing the two victims around with a sudden start, and then I saw the girl’s face—she was not Dian! I could have wept for relief.

And now, as the two stood frozen in terror, I saw the author of that fearsome sound creeping stealthily into view. It was a huge tiger—such as hunted the great Bos through the jungles primeval when the world was young. In contour and markings it was not unlike the noblest of the Bengals of our own world, but as its dimensions were exaggerated to colossal proportions so too were its colorings exaggerated. Its vivid yellows fairly screamed aloud; its whites were as eider down; its blacks glossy as the finest anthracite coal, and its coat long and shaggy as a mountain goat. That it is a beautiful animal there is no gainsaying, but if its size and colors are magnified here within Pellucidar, so is the ferocity of its disposition. It is not the occasional member of its species that is a man hunter—all are man hunters; but they do not confine their foraging to man alone, for there is no flesh or fish within Pellucidar that they will not eat with relish in the constant efforts which they make to furnish their huge carcasses with sufficient sustenance to maintain their mighty thews.

Upon one side of the doomed pair the thag bellowed and advanced, and upon the other tarag, the frightful, crept toward them with gaping mouth and dripping fangs.

The man seized the spears, handing one of them to the woman. At the sound of the roaring of the tiger the bull’s bellowing became a veritable frenzy of rageful noise. Never in my life had I heard such an infernal din as the two brutes made, and to think it was all lost upon the hideous reptiles for whom the show was staged!

The thag was charging now from one side, and the tarag from the other. The two puny things standing between them seemed already lost, but at the very moment that the beasts were upon them the man grasped his companion by the arm and together they leaped to one side, while the frenzied creatures came together like locomotives in collision.

There ensued a battle royal which for sustained and frightful ferocity transcends the power of imagination or description. Time and again the colossal bull tossed the enormous tiger high into the air, but each time that the huge cat touched the ground he returned to the encounter with apparently undiminished strength, and seemingly increased ire.

For a while the man and woman busied themselves only with keeping out of the way of the two creatures, but finally I saw them separate and each creep stealthily toward one of the combatants. The tiger was now upon the bull’s broad back, clinging to the huge neck with powerful fangs while its long, strong talons ripped the heavy hide into shreds and ribbons.

For a moment the bull stood bellowing and quivering with pain and rage, its cloven hoofs widespread, its tail lashing viciously from side to side, and then, in a mad orgy of bucking it went careening about the arena in frenzied attempt to unseat its rending rider. It was with difficulty that the girl avoided the first mad rush of the wounded animal.

All its efforts to rid itself of the tiger seemed futile, until in desperation it threw itself upon the ground, rolling over and over. A little of this so disconcerted the tiger, knocking its breath from it I imagine, that it lost its hold and then, quick as a cat, the great thag was up again and had buried those mighty horns deep in the tarag’s abdomen, pinning him to the floor of the arena.

The great cat clawed at the shaggy head until eyes and ears were gone, and naught but a few strips of ragged, bloody flesh remained upon the skull. Yet through all the agony of that fearful punishment the thag still stood motionless pinning down his adversary, and then the man leaped in, seeing that the blind bull would be the least formidable enemy, and ran his spear through the tarag’s heart.

As the animal’s fierce clawing ceased, the bull raised his gory, sightless head, and with a horrid roar ran headlong across the arena. With great leaps and bounds he came, straight toward the arena wall directly beneath where we sat, and then accident carried him, in one of his mighty springs, completely over the barrier into the midst of the slaves and Sagoths just in front of us. Swinging his bloody horns from side to side the beast cut a wide swath before him straight upward toward our seats. Before him slaves and gorilla-men fought in mad stampede to escape the menace of the creature’s death agonies, for such only could that frightful charge have been.

Forgetful of us, our guards joined in the general rush for the exits, many of which pierced the wall of the amphitheater behind us. Perry, Ghak, and I became separated in the chaos which reigned for a few moments after the beast cleared the wall of the arena, each intent upon saving his own hide.

I ran to the right, passing several exits choked with the fear mad mob that were battling to escape. One would have thought that an entire herd of thags was loose behind them, rather than a single blinded, dying beast; but such is the effect of panic upon a crowd.

CHAPTER VII

FREEDOM

Once out of the direct path of the animal, fear of it left me, but another emotion as quickly gripped me—hope of escape that the demoralized condition of the guards made possible for the instant.

I thought of Perry, but for the hope that I might better encompass his release if myself free I should have put the thought of freedom from me at once. As it was I hastened on toward the right searching for an exit toward which no Sagoths were fleeing, and at last I found it—a low, narrow aperture leading into a dark corridor.

Without thought of the possible consequence, I darted into the shadows of the tunnel, feeling my way along through the gloom for some distance. The noises of the amphitheater had grown fainter and fainter until now all was as silent as the tomb about me. Faint light filtered from above through occasional ventilating and lighting tubes, but it was scarce sufficient to enable my human eyes to cope with the darkness, and so I was forced to move with extreme care, feeling my way along step by step with a hand upon the wall beside me.

Presently the light increased and a moment later, to my delight, I came upon a flight of steps leading upward, at the top of which the brilliant light of the noonday sun shone through an opening in the ground.

Cautiously I crept up the stairway to the tunnel’s end, and peering out saw the broad plain of Phutra before me. The numerous lofty, granite towers which mark the several entrances to the subterranean city were all in front of me—behind, the plain stretched level and unbroken to the nearby foothills. I had come to the surface, then, beyond the city, and my chances for escape seemed much enhanced.

My first impulse was to await darkness before attempting to cross the plain, so deeply implanted are habits of thought; but of a sudden I recollected the perpetual noonday brilliance which envelopes Pellucidar, and with a smile I stepped forth into the day-light.

Rank grass, waist high, grows upon the plain of Phutra—the gorgeous flowering grass of the inner world, each particular blade of which is tipped with a tiny, five-pointed blossom—brilliant little stars of varying colors that twinkle in the green foliage to add still another charm to the weird, yet lovely, land-scape.

But then the only aspect which attracted me was the distant hills in which I hoped to find sanctuary, and so I hastened on, trampling the myriad beauties beneath my hurrying feet. Perry says that the force of gravity is less upon the surface of the inner world than upon that of the outer. He explained it all to me once, but I was never particularly brilliant in such matters and so most of it has escaped me. As I recall it the difference is due in some part to the counter-attraction of that portion of the earth’s crust directly opposite the spot upon the face of Pellucidar at which one’s calculations are being made. Be that as it may, it always seemed to me that I moved with greater speed and agility within Pellucidar than upon the outer surface—there was a certain airy lightness of step that was most pleasing, and a feeling of bodily detachment which I can only compare with that occasionally experienced in dreams.

And as I crossed Phutra’s flower-bespangled plain that time I seemed almost to fly, though how much of the sensation was due to Perry’s suggestion and how much to actuality I am sure I do not know. The more I thought of Perry the less pleasure I took in my new-found freedom. There could be no liberty for me within Pellucidar unless the old man shared it with me, and only the hope that I might find some way to encompass his release kept me from turning back to Phutra.

Just how I was to help Perry I could scarce imagine, but I hoped that some fortuitous circumstance might solve the problem for me. It was quite evident however that little less than a miracle could aid me, for what could I accomplish in this strange world, naked and unarmed? It was even doubtful that I could retrace my steps to Phutra should I once pass beyond view of the plain, and even were that possible, what aid could I bring to Perry no matter how far I wandered?

The case looked more and more hopeless the longer I viewed it, yet with a stubborn persistency I forged ahead toward the foothills. Behind me no sign of pursuit developed, before me I saw no living thing. It was as though I moved through a dead and forgotten world.

I have no idea, of course, how long it took me to reach the limit of the plain, but at last I entered the foothills, following a pretty little canyon upward toward the mountains. Beside me frolicked a laughing brooklet, hurrying upon its noisy way down to the silent sea. In its quieter pools I discovered many small fish, of four- or five-pound weight I should imagine. In appearance, except as to size and color, they were not unlike the whale of our own seas. As I watched them playing about I discovered, not only that they suckled their young, but that at intervals they rose to the surface to breathe as well as to feed upon certain grasses and a strange, scarlet lichen which grew upon the rocks just above the water line.

It was this last habit that gave me the opportunity I craved to capture one of these herbivorous cetaceans—that is what Perry calls them—and make as good a meal as one can on raw, warm-blooded fish; but I had become rather used, by this time, to the eating of food in its natural state, though I still balked on the eyes and entrails, much to the amusement of Ghak, to whom I always passed these delicacies.

Crouching beside the brook, I waited until one of the diminutive purple whales rose to nibble at the long grasses which overhung the water, and then, like the beast of prey that man really is, I sprang upon my victim, appeasing my hunger while he yet wriggled to escape.

Then I drank from the clear pool, and after washing my hands and face continued my flight. Above the source of the brook I encountered a rugged climb to the summit of a long ridge. Beyond was a steep declivity to the shore of a placid, inland sea, upon the quiet surface of which lay several beautiful islands.

The view was charming in the extreme, and as no man or beast was to be seen that might threaten my new-found liberty, I slid over the edge of the bluff, and half sliding, half falling, dropped into the delightful valley, the very aspect of which seemed to offer a haven of peace and security.

The gently sloping beach along which I walked was thickly strewn with strangely shaped, colored shells; some empty, others still housing as varied a multitude of mollusks as ever might have drawn out their sluggish lives along the silent shores of the antediluvian seas of the outer crust. As I walked I could not but compare myself with the first man of that other world, so complete the solitude which surrounded me, so primal and untouched the virgin wonders and beauties of adolescent nature. I felt myself a second Adam wending my lonely way through the childhood of a world, searching for my Eve, and at the thought there rose before my mind’s eye the exquisite outlines of a perfect face surmounted by a loose pile of wondrous, raven hair.

As I walked, my eyes were bent upon the beach so that it was not until I had come quite upon it that I discovered that which shattered all my beautiful dream of solitude and safety and peace and primal overlordship. The thing was a hollowed log drawn upon the sands, and in the bottom of it lay a crude paddle.

The rude shock of awakening to what doubtless might prove some new form of danger was still upon me when I heard a rattling of loose stones from the direction of the bluff, and turning my eyes in that direction I beheld the author of the disturbance, a great copper-colored man, running rapidly toward me.

There was that in the haste with which he came which seemed quite sufficiently menacing, so that I did not need the added evidence of brandishing spear and scowling face to warn me that I was in no safe position, but whither to flee was indeed a momentous question.

The speed of the fellow seemed to preclude the possibility of escaping him upon the open beach. There was but a single alternative—the rude skiff—and with a celerity which equaled his, I pushed the thing into the sea and as it floated gave a final shove and clambered in over the end.

A cry of rage rose from the owner of the primitive craft, and an instant later his heavy, stone-tipped spear grazed my shoulder and buried itself in the bow of the boat beyond. Then I grasped the paddle, and with feverish haste urged the awkward, wobbly thing out upon the surface of the sea.

A glance over my shoulder showed me that the copper-colored one had plunged in after me and was swimming rapidly in pursuit. His mighty strokes bade fair to close up the distance between us in short order, for at best I could make but slow progress with my unfamiliar craft, which nosed stubbornly in every direction but that which I desired to follow, so that fully half my energy was expended in turning its blunt prow back into the course.

I had covered some hundred yards from shore when it became evident that my pursuer must grasp the stern of the skiff within the next half-dozen strokes. In a frenzy of despair, I bent to the grandfather of all paddles in a hopeless effort to escape, and still the copper giant behind me gained and gained.

His hand was reaching upward for the stern when I saw a sleek, sinuous body shoot from the depths below. The man saw it too, and the look of terror that overspread his face assured me that I need have no further concern as to him, for the fear of certain death was in his look.

And then about him coiled the great, slimy folds of a hideous monster of that prehistoric deep—a mighty serpent of the sea, with fanged jaws, and darting forked tongue, with bulging eyes, and bony protuberances upon head and snout that formed short, stout horns.

As I looked at that hopeless struggle my eyes met those of the doomed man, and I could have sworn that in his I saw an expression of hopeless appeal. But whether I did or not there swept through me a sudden compassion for the fellow. He was indeed a brother-man, and that he might have killed me with pleasure had he caught me was forgotten in the extremity of his danger.

Unconsciously I had ceased paddling as the serpent rose to engage my pursuer, so now the skiff still drifted close beside the two. The monster seemed to be but playing with his victim before he closed his awful jaws upon him and dragged him down to his dark den beneath the surface to devour him. The huge, snakelike body coiled and uncoiled about its prey. The hideous, gaping jaws snapped in the victim’s face. The forked tongue, lightning-like, ran in and out upon the copper skin.

Nobly the giant battled for his life, beating with his stone hatchet against the bony armor that covered that frightful carcass; but for all the damage he inflicted he might as well have struck with his open palm.

At last I could endure no longer to sit supinely by while a fellowman was dragged down to a horrible death by that repulsive reptile. Embedded in the prow of the skiff lay the spear that had been cast after me by him whom I suddenly desired to save. With a wrench I tore it loose, and standing upright in the wobbly log drove it with all the strength of my two arms straight into the gaping jaws of the hydrophidian.

With a loud hiss the creature abandoned its prey to turn upon me, but the spear, imbedded in its throat, prevented it from seizing me though it came near to overturning the skiff in its mad efforts to reach me.

CHAPTER VIII

THE MAHAR TEMPLE

The aborigine, apparently uninjured, climbed quickly into the skiff, and seizing the spear with me helped to hold off the infuriated creature. Blood from the wounded reptile was now crimsoning the waters about us and soon from the weakening struggles it became evident that I had inflicted a death wound upon it. Presently its efforts to reach us ceased entirely, and with a few convulsive movements it turned upon its back quite dead.

And then there came to me a sudden realization of the predicament in which I had placed myself. I was entirely within the power of the savage man whose skiff I had stolen. Still clinging to the spear I looked into his face to find him scrutinizing me intently, and there we stood for some several minutes, each clinging tenaciously to the weapon the while we gazed in stupid wonderment at each other.

What was in his mind I do not know, but in my own was merely the question as to how soon the fellow would recommence hostilities.

Presently he spoke to me, but in a tongue which I was unable to translate. I shook my head in an effort to indicate my ignorance of his language, at the same time addressing him in the bastard tongue that the Sagoths use to converse with the human slaves of the Mahars.

To my delight he understood and answered me in the same jargon.

“What do you want of my spear?” he asked.

“Only to keep you from running it through me,” I replied.

“I would not do that,” he said, “for you have just saved my life,” and with that he released his hold upon it and squatted down in the bottom of the skiff.

“Who are you,” he continued, “and from what country do you come?”

I too sat down, laying the spear between us, and tried to explain how I came to Pellucidar, and wherefrom, but it was as impossible for him to grasp or believe the strange tale I told him as I fear it is for you upon the outer crust to believe in the existence of the inner world. To him it seemed quite ridiculous to imagine that there was another world far beneath his feet peopled by beings similar to himself, and he laughed uproariously the more he thought upon it. But it was ever thus. That which has never come within the scope of our really pitifully meager world-experience cannot be—our finite minds cannot grasp that which may not exist in accordance with the conditions which obtain about us upon the outside of the insignificant grain of dust which wends its tiny way among the bowlders of the universe—the speck of moist dirt we so proudly call the World.

So I gave it up and asked him about himself. He said he was a Mezop, and that his name was Ja.

“Who are the Mezops?” I asked. “Where do they live?”

He looked at me in surprise.

“I might indeed believe that you were from another world,” he said, “for who of Pellucidar could be so ignorant! The Mezops live upon the islands of the seas. In so far as I ever have heard no Mezop lives elsewhere, and no others than Mezops dwell upon islands, but of course it may be different in other far-distant lands. I do not know. At any rate in this sea and those near by it is true that only people of my race inhabit the islands.

“We are fishermen, though we be great hunters as well, often going to the mainland in search of the game that is scarce upon all but the larger islands. And we are warriors also,” he added proudly. “Even the Sagoths of the Mahars fear us. Once, when Pellucidar was young, the Sagoths were wont to capture us for slaves as they do the other men of Pellucidar, it is handed down from father to son among us that this is so; but we fought so desperately and slew so many Sagoths, and those of us that were captured killed so many Mahars in their own cities that at last they learned that it were better to leave us alone, and later came the time that the Mahars became too indolent even to catch their own fish, except for amusement, and then they needed us to supply their wants, and so a truce was made between the races. Now they give us certain things which we are unable to produce in return for the fish that we catch, and the Mezops and the Mahars live in peace.

“The great ones even come to our islands. It is there, far from the prying eyes of their own Sagoths, that they practice their religious rites in the temples they have builded there with our assistance. If you live among us you will doubtless see the manner of their worship, which is strange indeed, and most unpleasant for the poor slaves they bring to take part in it.”

As Ja talked I had an excellent opportunity to inspect him more closely. He was a huge fellow, standing I should say six feet six or seven inches, well developed and of a coppery red not unlike that of our own North American Indian, nor were his features dissimilar to theirs. He had the aquiline nose found among many of the higher tribes, the prominent cheek bones, and black hair and eyes, but his mouth and lips were better molded. All in all, Ja was an impressive and handsome creature, and he talked well too, even in the miserable makeshift language we were compelled to use.

During our conversation Ja had taken the paddle and was propelling the skiff with vigorous strokes toward a large island that lay some half-mile from the mainland. The skill with which he handled his crude and awkward craft elicited my deepest admiration, since it had been so short a time before that I had made such pitiful work of it.

As we touched the pretty, level beach Ja leaped out and I followed him. Together we dragged the skiff far up into the bushes that grew beyond the sand.

“We must hide our canoes,” explained Ja, “for the Mezops of Luana are always at war with us and would steal them if they found them,” he nodded toward an island farther out at sea, and at so great a distance that it seemed but a blur hanging in the distant sky. The upward curve of the surface of Pellucidar was constantly revealing the impossible to the surprised eyes of the outer-earthly. To see land and water curving upward in the distance until it seemed to stand on edge where it melted into the distant sky, and to feel that seas and mountains hung suspended directly above one’s head required such a complete reversal of the perceptive and reasoning faculties as almost to stupefy one.

No sooner had we hidden the canoe than Ja plunged into the jungle, presently emerging into a narrow but well-defined trail which wound hither and thither much after the manner of the highways of all primitive folk, but there was one peculiarity about this Mezop trail which I was later to find distinguished them from all other trails that I ever have seen within or without the earth.

It would run on, plain and clear and well defined to end suddenly in the midst of a tangle of matted jungle, then Ja would turn directly back in his tracks for a little distance, spring into a tree, climb through it to the other side, drop onto a fallen log, leap over a low bush and alight once more upon a distinct trail which he would follow back for a short distance only to turn directly about and retrace his steps until after a mile or less this new pathway ended as suddenly and mysteriously as the former section. Then he would pass again across some media which would reveal no spoor, to take up the broken thread of the trail beyond.

As the purpose of this remarkable avenue dawned upon me I could not but admire the native shrewdness of the ancient progenitor of the Mezops who hit upon this novel plan to throw his enemies from his track and delay or thwart them in their attempts to follow him to his deep-buried cities.

To you of the outer earth it might seem a slow and tortuous method of traveling through the jungle, but were you of Pellucidar you would realize that time is no factor where time does not exist. So labyrinthine are the windings of these trails, so varied the connecting links and the distances which one must retrace one’s steps from the paths’ ends to find them that a Mezop often reaches man’s estate before he is familiar even with those which lead from his own city to the sea.

In fact three-fourths of the education of the young male Mezop consists in familiarizing himself with these jungle avenues, and the status of an adult is largely determined by the number of trails which he can follow upon his own island. The females never learn them, since from birth to death they never leave the clearing in which the village of their nativity is situated except they be taken to mate by a male from another village, or captured in war by the enemies of their tribe.

After proceeding through the jungle for what must have been upward of five miles we emerged suddenly into a large clearing in the exact center of which stood as strange an appearing village as one might well imagine.

Large trees had been chopped down fifteen or twenty feet above the ground, and upon the tops of them spherical habitations of woven twigs, mud covered, had been built. Each ball-like house was surmounted by some manner of carven image, which Ja told me indicated the identity of the owner.

Horizontal slits, six inches high and two or three feet wide, served to admit light and ventilation. The entrances to the house were through small apertures in the bases of the trees and thence upward by rude ladders through the hollow trunks to the rooms above. The houses varied in size from two to several rooms. The largest that I entered was divided into two floors and eight apartments.

All about the village, between it and the jungle, lay beautifully cultivated fields in which the Mezops raised such cereals, fruits, and vegetables as they required. Women and children were working in these gardens as we crossed toward the village. At sight of Ja they saluted deferentially, but to me they paid not the slightest attention. Among them and about the outer verge of the cultivated area were many warriors. These too saluted Ja, by touching the points of their spears to the ground directly before them.

Ja conducted me to a large house in the center of the village—the house with eight rooms—and taking me up into it gave me food and drink. There I met his mate, a comely girl with a nursing baby in her arms. Ja told her of how I had saved his life, and she was thereafter most kind and hospitable toward me, even permitting me to hold and amuse the tiny bundle of humanity whom Ja told me would one day rule the tribe, for Ja, it seemed, was the chief of the community.

We had eaten and rested, and I had slept, much to Ja’s amusement, for it seemed that he seldom if ever did so, and then the red man proposed that I accompany him to the temple of the Mahars which lay not far from his village. “We are not supposed to visit it,” he said; “but the great ones cannot hear and if we keep well out of sight they need never know that we have been there. For my part I hate them and always have, but the other chieftains of the island think it best that we continue to maintain the amicable relations which exist between the two races; otherwise I should like nothing better than to lead my warriors amongst the hideous creatures and exterminate them—Pellucidar would be a better place to live were there none of them.”

I wholly concurred in Ja’s belief, but it seemed that it might be a difficult matter to exterminate the dominant race of Pellucidar. Thus conversing we followed the intricate trail toward the temple, which we came upon in a small clearing surrounded by enormous trees similar to those which must have flourished upon the outer crust during the carboniferous age.

Here was a mighty temple of hewn rock built in the shape of a rough oval with rounded roof in which were several large openings. No doors or windows were visible in the sides of the structure, nor was there need of any, except one entrance for the slaves, since, as Ja explained, the Mahars flew to and from their place of ceremonial, entering and leaving the building by means of the apertures in the roof.

“But,” added Ja, “there is an entrance near the base of which even the Mahars know nothing. Come,” and he led me across the clearing and about the end to a pile of loose rock which lay against the foot of the wall. Here he removed a couple of large bowlders, revealing a small opening which led straight within the building, or so it seemed, though as I entered after Ja I discovered myself in a narrow place of extreme darkness.

“We are within the outer wall,” said Ja. “It is hollow. Follow me closely.”

The red man groped ahead a few paces and then began to ascend a primitive ladder similar to that which leads from the ground to the upper stories of his house. We ascended for some forty feet when the interior of the space between the walls commenced to grow lighter and presently we came opposite an opening in the inner wall which gave us an unobstructed view of the entire interior of the temple.

The lower floor was an enormous tank of clear water in which numerous hideous Mahars swam lazily up and down. Artificial islands of granite rock dotted this artificial sea, and upon several of them I saw men and women like myself.

“What are the human beings doing here?” I asked.

“Wait and you shall see,” replied Ja. “They are to take a leading part in the ceremonies which will follow the advent of the queen. You may be thankful that you are not upon the same side of the wall as they.”

Scarcely had he spoken than we heard a great fluttering of wings above and a moment later a long procession of the frightful reptiles of Pellucidar winged slowly and majestically through the large central opening in the roof and circled in stately manner about the temple.

There were several Mahars first, and then at least twenty awe-inspiring pterodactyls—thipdars, they are called within Pellucidar. Behind these came the queen, flanked by other thipdars as she had been when she entered the amphitheater at Phutra.

Three times they wheeled about the interior of the oval chamber, to settle finally upon the damp, cold bowlders that fringe the outer edge of the pool. In the center of one side the largest rock was reserved for the queen, and here she took her place surrounded by her terrible guard.

All lay quiet for several minutes after settling to their places. One might have imagined them in silent prayer. The poor slaves upon the diminutive islands watched the horrid creatures with wide eyes. The men, for the most part, stood erect and stately with folded arms, awaiting their doom; but the women and children clung to one another, hiding behind the males. They are a noble-looking race, these cave men of Pellucidar, and if our progenitors were as they, the human race of the outer crust has deteriorated rather than improved with the march of the ages. All they lack is opportunity. We have opportunity, and little else.

Now the queen moved. She raised her ugly head, looking about; then very slowly she crawled to the edge of her throne and slid noiselessly into the water. Up and down the long tank she swam, turning at the ends as you have seen captive seals turn in their tiny tanks, turning upon their backs and diving below the surface.

Nearer and nearer to the island she came until at last she remained at rest before the largest, which was directly opposite her throne. Raising her hideous head from the water she fixed her great, round eyes upon the slaves. They were fat and sleek, for they had been brought from a distant Mahar city where human beings are kept in droves, and bred and fattened, as we breed and fatten beef cattle.

The queen fixed her gaze upon a plump young maiden. Her victim tried to turn away, hiding her face in her hands and kneeling behind a woman; but the reptile, with unblinking eyes, stared on with such fixity that I could have sworn her vision penetrated the woman, and the girl’s arms to reach at last the very center of her brain.

Slowly the reptile’s head commenced to move to and fro, but the eyes never ceased to bore toward the frightened girl, and then the victim responded. She turned wide, fear-haunted eyes toward the Mahar queen, slowly she rose to her feet, and then as though dragged by some unseen power she moved as one in a trance straight toward the reptile, her glassy eyes fixed upon those of her captor. To the water’s edge she came, nor did she even pause, but stepped into the shallows beside the little island. On she moved toward the Mahar, who now slowly retreated as though leading her victim on. The water rose to the girl’s knees, and still she advanced, chained by that clammy eye. Now the water was at her waist; now her armpits. Her fellows upon the island looked on in horror, helpless to avert her doom in which they saw a forecast of their own.

The Mahar sank now till only the long upper bill and eyes were exposed above the surface of the water, and the girl had advanced until the end of that repulsive beak was but an inch or two from her face, her horror-filled eyes riveted upon those of the reptile.

Now the water passed above the girl’s mouth and nose—her eyes and forehead all that showed—yet still she walked on after the retreating Mahar. The queen’s head slowly disappeared beneath the surface and after it went the eyes of her victim—only a slow ripple widened toward the shores to mark where the two vanished.

For a time all was silence within the temple. The slaves were motionless in terror. The Mahars watched the surface of the water for the reappearance of their queen, and presently at one end of the tank her head rose slowly into view. She was backing toward the surface, her eyes fixed before her as they had been when she dragged the helpless girl to her doom.

And then to my utter amazement I saw the forehead and eyes of the maiden come slowly out of the depths, following the gaze of the reptile just as when she had disappeared beneath the surface. On and on came the girl until she stood in water that reached barely to her knees, and though she had been beneath the surface sufficient time to have drowned her thrice over there was no indication, other than her dripping hair and glistening body, that she had been submerged at all.

Again and again the queen led the girl into the depths and out again, until the uncanny weirdness of the thing got on my nerves so that I could have leaped into the tank to the child’s rescue had I not taken a firm hold of myself.

Once they were below much longer than usual, and when they came to the surface I was horrified to see that one of the girl’s arms was gone—gnawed completely off at the shoulder—but the poor thing gave no indication of realizing pain, only the horror in her set eyes seemed intensified.

The next time they appeared the other arm was gone, and then the breasts, and then a part of the face—it was awful. The poor creatures on the islands awaiting their fate tried to cover their eyes with their hands to hide the fearful sight, but now I saw that they too were under the hypnotic spell of the reptiles, so that they could only crouch in terror with their eyes fixed upon the terrible thing that was transpiring before them.

Finally the queen was under much longer than ever before, and when she rose she came alone and swam sleepily toward her bowlder. The moment she mounted it seemed to be the signal for the other Mahars to enter the tank, and then commenced, upon a larger scale, a repetition of the uncanny performance through which the queen had led her victim.

Only the women and children fell prey to the Mahars—they being the weakest and most tender—and when they had satisfied their appetite for human flesh, some of them devouring two and three of the slaves, there were only a score of full-grown men left, and I thought that for some reason these were to be spared, but such was far from the case, for as the last Mahar crawled to her rock the queen’s thipdars darted into the air, circled the temple once and then, hissing like steam engines, swooped down upon the remaining slaves.

There was no hypnotism here—just the plain, brutal ferocity of the beast of prey, tearing, rending, and gulping its meat, but at that it was less horrible than the uncanny method of the Mahars. By the time the thipdars had disposed of the last of the slaves the Mahars were all asleep upon their rocks, and a moment later the great pterodactyls swung back to their posts beside the queen, and themselves dropped into slumber.

“I thought the Mahars seldom, if ever, slept,” I said to Ja.

“They do many things in this temple which they do not do elsewhere,” he replied. “The Mahars of Phutra are not supposed to eat human flesh, yet slaves are brought here by thousands and almost always you will find Mahars on hand to consume them. I imagine that they do not bring their Sagoths here, because they are ashamed of the practice, which is supposed to obtain only among the least advanced of their race; but I would wager my canoe against a broken paddle that there is no Mahar but eats human flesh whenever she can get it.”

“Why should they object to eating human flesh,” I asked, “if it is true that they look upon us as lower animals?”

“It is not because they consider us their equals that they are supposed to look with abhorrence upon those who eat our flesh,” replied Ja; “it is merely that we are warm-blooded animals. They would not think of eating the meat of a thag, which we consider such a delicacy, any more than I would think of eating a snake. As a matter of fact it is difficult to explain just why this sentiment should exist among them.”

“I wonder if they left a single victim,” I remarked, leaning far out of the opening in the rocky wall to inspect the temple better. Directly below me the water lapped the very side of the wall, there being a break in the bowlders at this point as there was at several other places about the side of the temple.

My hands were resting upon a small piece of granite which formed a part of the wall, and all my weight upon it proved too much for it. It slipped and I lunged forward. There was nothing to save myself and I plunged headforemost into the water below.

Fortunately the tank was deep at this point, and I suffered no injury from the fall, but as I was rising to the surface my mind filled with the horrors of my position as I thought of the terrible doom which awaited me the moment the eyes of the reptiles fell upon the creature that had disturbed their slumber.

As long as I could I remained beneath the surface, swimming rapidly in the direction of the islands that I might prolong my life to the utmost. At last I was forced to rise for air, and as I cast a terrified glance in the direction of the Mahars and the thipdars I was almost stunned to see that not a single one remained upon the rocks where I had last seen them, nor as I searched the temple with my eyes could I discern any within it.

For a moment I was puzzled to account for the thing, until I realized that the reptiles, being deaf, could not have been disturbed by the noise my body made when it hit the water, and that as there is no such thing as time within Pellucidar there was no telling how long I had been beneath the surface. It was a difficult thing to attempt to figure out by earthly standards—this matter of elapsed time—but when I set myself to it I began to realize that I might have been submerged a second or a month or not at all. You have no conception of the strange contradictions and impossibilities which arise when all methods of measuring time, as we know them upon earth, are non-existent.

I was about to congratulate myself upon the miracle which had saved me for the moment, when the memory of the hypnotic powers of the Mahars filled me with apprehension lest they be practicing their uncanny art upon me to the end that I merely imagined that I was alone in the temple. At the thought cold sweat broke out upon me from every pore, and as I crawled from the water onto one of the tiny islands I was trembling like a leaf—you cannot imagine the awful horror which even the simple thought of the repulsive Mahars of Pellucidar induces in the human mind, and to feel that you are in their power—that they are crawling, slimy, and abhorrent, to drag you down beneath the waters and devour you! It is frightful.

But they did not come, and at last I came to the conclusion that I was indeed alone within the temple. How long I should be alone was the next question to assail me as I swam frantically about once more in search of a means to escape.

Several times I called to Ja, but he must have left after I tumbled into the tank, for I received no response to my cries. Doubtless he had felt as certain of my doom when he saw me topple from our hiding place as I had, and lest he too should be discovered, had hastened from the temple and back to his village.

I knew that there must be some entrance to the building beside the doorways in the roof, for it did not seem reasonable to believe that the thousands of slaves which were brought here to feed the Mahars the human flesh they craved would all be carried through the air, and so I continued my search until at last it was rewarded by the discovery of several loose granite blocks in the masonry at one end of the temple.

A little effort proved sufficient to dislodge enough of these stones to permit me to crawl through into the clearing, and a moment later I had scurried across the intervening space to the dense jungle beyond.

Here I sank panting and trembling upon the matted grasses beneath the giant trees, for I felt that I had escaped from the grinning fangs of death out of the depths of my own grave. Whatever dangers lay hidden in this island jungle, there could be none so fearsome as those which I had just escaped. I knew that I could meet death bravely enough if it but came in the form of some familiar beast or man—anything other than the hideous and uncanny Mahars.

CHAPTER IX

THE FACE OF DEATH

I must have fallen asleep from exhaustion. When I awoke I was very hungry, and after busying myself searching for fruit for a while, I set off through the jungle to find the beach. I knew that the island was not so large but that I could easily find the sea if I did but move in a straight line, but there came the difficulty as there was no way in which I could direct my course and hold it, the sun, of course, being always directly above my head, and the trees so thickly set that I could see no distant object which might serve to guide me in a straight line.

As it was I must have walked for a great distance since I ate four times and slept twice before I reached the sea, but at last I did so, and my pleasure at the sight of it was greatly enhanced by the chance discovery of a hidden canoe among the bushes through which I had stumbled just prior to coming upon the beach.

I can tell you that it did not take me long to pull that awkward craft down to the water and shove it far out from shore. My experience with Ja had taught me that if I were to steal another canoe I must be quick about it and get far beyond the owner’s reach as soon as possible.

I must have come out upon the opposite side of the island from that at which Ja and I had entered it, for the mainland was nowhere in sight. For a long time I paddled around the shore, though well out, before I saw the mainland in the distance. At the sight of it I lost no time in directing my course toward it, for I had long since made up my mind to return to Phutra and give myself up that I might be once more with Perry and Ghak the Hairy One.

I felt that I was a fool ever to have attempted to escape alone, especially in view of the fact that our plans were already well formulated to make a break for freedom together. Of course I realized that the chances of the success of our proposed venture were slim indeed, but I knew that I never could enjoy freedom without Perry so long as the old man lived, and I had learned that the probability that I might find him was less than slight.

Had Perry been dead, I should gladly have pitted my strength and wit against the savage and primordial world in which I found myself. I could have lived in seclusion within some rocky cave until I had found the means to outfit myself with the crude weapons of the Stone Age, and then set out in search of her whose image had now become the constant companion of my waking hours, and the central and beloved figure of my dreams.

But, to the best of my knowledge, Perry still lived and it was my duty and wish to be again with him, that we might share the dangers and vicissitudes of the strange world we had discovered. And Ghak, too; the great, shaggy man had found a place in the hearts of us both, for he was indeed every inch a man and king. Uncouth, perhaps, and brutal, too, if judged too harshly by the standards of effete twentieth- century civilization, but withal noble, dignified, chivalrous, and loveable.

Chance carried me to the very beach upon which I had discovered Ja’s canoe, and a short time later I was scrambling up the steep bank to retrace my steps from the plain of Phutra. But my troubles came when I entered the canyon beyond the summit, for here I found that several of them centered at the point where I crossed the divide, and which one I had traversed to reach the pass I could not for the life of me remember.

It was all a matter of chance and so I set off down that which seemed the easiest going, and in this I made the same mistake that many of us do in selecting the path along which we shall follow out the course of our lives, and again learned that it is not always best to follow the line of least resistance.

By the time I had eaten eight meals and slept twice I was convinced that I was upon the wrong trail, for between Phutra and the inland sea I had not slept at all, and had eaten but once. To retrace my steps to the summit of the divide and explore another canyon seemed the only solution of my problem, but a sudden widening and levelness of the canyon just before me seemed to suggest that it was about to open into a level country, and with the lure of discovery strong upon me I decided to proceed but a short distance farther before I turned back.

The next turn of the canyon brought me to its mouth, and before me I saw a narrow plain leading down to an ocean. At my right the side of the canyon continued to the water’s edge, the valley lying to my left, and the foot of it running gradually into the sea, where it formed a broad level beach.

Clumps of strange trees dotted the landscape here and there almost to the water, and rank grass and ferns grew between. From the nature of the vegetation I was convinced that the land between the ocean and the foothills was swampy, though directly before me it seemed dry enough all the way to the sandy strip along which the restless waters advanced and retreated.

Curiosity prompted me to walk down to the beach, for the scene was very beautiful. As I passed along beside the deep and tangled vegetation of the swamp I thought that I saw a movement of the ferns at my left, but though I stopped a moment to look it was not repeated, and if anything lay hid there my eyes could not penetrate the dense foliage to discern it.

Presently I stood upon the beach looking out over the wide and lonely sea across whose forbidding bosom no human being had yet ventured, to discover what strange and mysterious lands lay beyond, or what its invisible islands held of riches, wonders, or adventure. What savage faces, what fierce and formidable beasts were this very instant watching the lapping of the waves upon its farther shore! How far did it extend? Perry had told me that the seas of Pellucidar were small in comparison with those of the outer crust, but even so this great ocean might stretch its broad expanse for thousands of miles. For countless ages it had rolled up and down its countless miles of shore, and yet today it remained all unknown beyond the tiny strip that was visible from its beaches.

The fascination of speculation was strong upon me. It was as though I had been carried back to the birth time of our own outer world to look upon its lands and seas ages before man had traversed either. Here was a new world, all untouched. It called to me to explore it. I was dreaming of the excitement and adventure which lay before us could Perry and I but escape the Mahars, when something, a slight noise I imagine, drew my attention behind me.

As I turned, romance, adventure, and discovery in the abstract took wing before the terrible embodiment of all three in concrete form that I beheld advancing upon me.

A huge, slimy amphibian it was, with toad-like body and the mighty jaws of an alligator. Its immense carcass must have weighed tons, and yet it moved swiftly and silently toward me. Upon one hand was the bluff that ran from the canyon to the sea, on the other the fearsome swamp from which the creature had sneaked upon me, behind lay the mighty untracked sea, and before me in the center of the narrow way that led to safety stood this huge mountain of terrible and menacing flesh.

A single glance at the thing was sufficient to assure me that I was facing one of those long-extinct, prehistoric creatures whose fossilized remains are found within the outer crust as far back as the Triassic formation, a gigantic labyrinthodon. And there I was, unarmed, and, with the exception of a loin cloth, as naked as I had come into the world. I could imagine how my first ancestor felt that distant, prehistoric morn that he encountered for the first time the terrifying progenitor of the thing that had me cornered now beside the restless, mysterious sea.

Unquestionably he had escaped, or I should not have been within Pellucidar or elsewhere, and I wished at that moment that he had handed down to me with the various attributes that I presumed I have inherited from him, the specific application of the instinct of self-preservation which saved him from the fate which loomed so close before me today.

To seek escape in the swamp or in the ocean would have been similar to jumping into a den of lions to escape one upon the outside. The sea and swamp both were doubtless alive with these mighty, carnivorous amphibians, and if not, the individual that menaced me would pursue me into either the sea or the swamp with equal facility.

There seemed nothing to do but stand supinely and await my end. I thought of Perry—how he would wonder what had become of me. I thought of my friends of the outer world, and of how they all would go on living their lives in total ignorance of the strange and terrible fate that had overtaken me, or unguessing the weird surroundings which had witnessed the last frightful agony of my extinction. And with these thoughts came a realization of how unimportant to the life and happiness of the world is the existence of any one of us. We may be snuffed out without an instant’s warning, and for a brief day our friends speak of us with subdued voices. The following morning, while the first worm is busily engaged in testing the construction of our coffin, they are teeing up for the first hole to suffer more acute sorrow over a sliced ball than they did over our, to us, untimely demise. The labyrinthodon was coming more slowly now. He seemed to realize that escape for me was impossible, and I could have sworn that his huge, fanged jaws grinned in pleasurable appreciation of my predicament, or was it in anticipation of the juicy morsel which would so soon be pulp between those formidable teeth?

He was about fifty feet from me when I heard a voice calling to me from the direction of the bluff at my left. I looked and could have shouted in delight at the sight that met my eyes, for there stood Ja, waving frantically to me, and urging me to run for it to the cliff’s base.

I had no idea that I should escape the monster that had marked me for his breakfast, but at least I should not die alone. Human eyes would watch me end. It was cold comfort I presume, but yet I derived some slight peace of mind from the contemplation of it.

To run seemed ridiculous, especially toward that steep and unscalable cliff, and yet I did so, and as I ran I saw Ja, agile as a monkey, crawl down the precipitous face of the rocks, clinging to small projections, and the tough creepers that had found root-hold here and there.

The labyrinthodon evidently thought that Ja was coming to double his portion of human flesh, so he was in no haste to pursue me to the cliff and frighten away this other tidbit. Instead he merely trotted along behind me.

As I approached the foot of the cliff I saw what Ja intended doing, but I doubted if the thing would prove successful. He had come down to within twenty feet of the bottom, and there, clinging with one hand to a small ledge, and with his feet resting, precariously upon tiny bushes that grew from the solid face of the rock, he lowered the point of his long spear until it hung some six feet above the ground.

To clamber up that slim shaft without dragging Ja down and precipitating both to the same doom from which the copper-colored one was attempting to save me seemed utterly impossible, and as I came near the spear I told Ja so, and that I could not risk him to try to save myself.

But he insisted that he knew what he was doing and was in no danger himself.

“The danger is still yours,” he called, “for unless you move much more rapidly than you are now, the sithic will be upon you and drag you back before ever you are halfway up the spear—he can rear up and reach you with ease anywhere below where I stand.”

Well, Ja should know his own business, I thought, and so I grasped the spear and clambered up toward the red man as rapidly as I could—being so far removed from my simian ancestors as I am. I imagine the slow-witted sithic, as Ja called him, suddenly realized our intentions and that he was quite likely to lose all his meal instead of having it doubled as he had hoped.

When he saw me clambering up that spear he let out a hiss that fairly shook the ground, and came charging after me at a terrific rate. I had reached the top of the spear by this time, or almost; another six inches would give me a hold on Ja’s hand, when I felt a sudden wrench from below and glancing fearfully downward saw the mighty jaws of the monster close on the sharp point of the weapon.

I made a frantic effort to reach Ja’s hand, the sithic gave a tremendous tug that came near to jerking Ja from his frail hold on the surface of the rock, the spear slipped from his fingers, and still clinging to it I plunged feet foremost toward my executioner.

At the instant that he felt the spear come away from Ja’s hand the creature must have opened his huge jaws to catch me, for when I came down, still clinging to the butt end of the weapon, the point yet rested in his mouth and the result was that the sharpened end transfixed his lower jaw.

With the pain he snapped his mouth closed. I fell upon his snout, lost my hold upon the spear, rolled the length of his face and head, across his short neck onto his broad back and from there to the ground.

Scarce had I touched the earth than I was upon my feet, dashing madly for the path by which I had entered this horrible valley. A glance over my shoulder showed me the sithic engaged in pawing at the spear stuck through his lower jaw, and so busily engaged did he remain in this occupation that I had gained the safety of the cliff top before he was ready to take up the pursuit. When he did not discover me in sight within the valley he dashed, hissing into the rank vegetation of the swamp and that was the last I saw of him.

CHAPTER X

PHUTRA AGAIN

I hastened to the cliff edge above Ja and helped him to a secure footing. He would not listen to any thanks for his attempt to save me, which had come so near miscarrying.

“I had given you up for lost when you tumbled into the Mahar temple,” he said, “for not even I could save you from their clutches, and you may imagine my surprise when on seeing a canoe dragged up upon the beach of the mainland I discovered your own footprints in the sand beside it.

“I immediately set out in search of you, knowing as I did that you must be entirely unarmed and defenseless against the many dangers which lurk upon the mainland both in the form of savage beasts and reptiles, and men as well. I had no difficulty in tracking you to this point. It is well that I arrived when I did.”

“But why did you do it?” I asked, puzzled at this show of friendship on the part of a man of another world and a different race and color.

“You saved my life,” he replied; “from that moment it became my duty to protect and befriend you. I would have been no true Mezop had I evaded my plain duty; but it was a pleasure in this instance for I like you. I wish that you would come and live with me. You shall become a member of my tribe. Among us there is the best of hunting and fishing, and you shall have, to choose a mate from, the most beautiful girls of Pellucidar. Will you come?”

I told him about Perry then, and Dian the Beautiful, and how my duty was to them first. Afterward I should return and visit him—if I could ever find his island.

“Oh, that is easy, my friend,” he said. “You need merely to come to the foot of the highest peak of the Mountains of the Clouds. There you will find a river which flows into the Lural Az. Directly opposite the mouth of the river you will see three large islands far out, so far that they are barely discernible, the one to the extreme left as you face them from the mouth of the river is Anoroc, where I rule the tribe of Anoroc.”

“But how am I to find the Mountains of the Clouds?” I asked. “Men say that they are visible from half Pellucidar,” he replied.

“How large is Pellucidar?” I asked, wondering what sort of theory these primitive men had concerning the form and substance of their world.

“The Mahars say it is round, like the inside of a tola shell,” he answered, “but that is ridiculous, since, were it true, we should fall back were we to travel far in any direction, and all the waters of Pellucidar would run to one spot and drown us. No, Pellucidar is quite flat and extends no man knows how far in all directions. At the edges, so my ancestors have reported and handed down to me, is a great wall that prevents the earth and waters from escaping over into the burning sea whereon Pellucidar floats; but I never have been so far from Anoroc as to have seen this wall with my own eyes. However, it is quite reasonable to believe that this is true, whereas there is no reason at all in the foolish belief of the Mahars. According to them Pellucidarians who live upon the opposite side walk always with their heads pointed downward!” and Ja laughed uproariously at the very thought.

It was plain to see that the human folk of this inner world had not advanced far in learning, and the thought that the ugly Mahars had so outstripped them was a very pathetic one indeed. I wondered how many ages it would take to lift these people out of their ignorance even were it given to Perry and me to attempt it. Possibly we would be killed for our pains as were those men of the outer world who dared challenge the dense ignorance and superstitions of the earth’s younger days. But it was worth the effort if the opportunity ever presented itself.

And then it occurred to me that here was an opportunity—that I might make a small beginning upon Ja, who was my friend, and thus note the effect of my teaching upon a Pellucidarian.

“Ja,” I said, “what would you say were I to tell you that in so far as the Mahars’ theory of the shape of Pellucidar is concerned it is correct?”

“I would say,” he replied, “that either you are a fool, or took me for one.”

“But, Ja,” I insisted, “if their theory is incorrect how do you account for the fact that I was able to pass through the earth from the outer crust to Pellucidar. If your theory is correct all is a sea of flame beneath us, where in no peoples could exist, and yet I come from a great world that is covered with human beings, and beasts, and birds, and fishes in mighty oceans.”

“You live upon the under side of Pellucidar, and walk always with your head pointed downward?” he scoffed. “And were I to believe that, my friend, I should indeed be mad.”

I attempted to explain the force of gravity to him, and by the means of the dropped fruit to illustrate how impossible it would be for a body to fall off the earth under any circumstances. He listened so intently that I thought I had made an impression, and started the train of thought that would lead him to a partial understanding of the truth. But I was mistaken.

“Your own illustration,” he said finally, “proves the falsity of your theory.” He dropped a fruit from his hand to the ground. “See,” he said, “without support even this tiny fruit falls until it strikes something that stops it. If Pellucidar were not supported upon the flaming sea it too would fall as the fruit falls—you have proven it yourself!” He had me, that time—you could see it in his eye.

It seemed a hopeless job and I gave it up, temporarily at least, for when I contemplated the necessity explanation of our solar system and the universe I realized how futile it would be to attempt to picture to Ja or any other Pellucidarian the sun, the moon, the planets, and the countless stars. Those born within the inner world could no more conceive of such things than can we of the outer crust reduce to factors appreciable to our finite minds such terms as space and eternity.

“Well, Ja,” I laughed, “whether we be walking with our feet up or down, here we are, and the question of greatest importance is not so much where we came from as where we are going now. For my part I wish that you could guide me to Phutra where I may give myself up to the Mahars once more that my friends and I may work out the plan of escape which the Sagoths interrupted when they gathered us together and drove us to the arena to witness the punishment of the slaves who killed the guardsman. I wish now that I had not left the arena for by this time my friends and I might have made good our escape, whereas this delay may mean the wrecking of all our plans, which depended for their consummation upon the continued sleep of the three Mahars who lay in the pit beneath the building in which we were confined.”

“You would return to captivity?” cried Ja.

“My friends are there,” I replied, “the only friends I have in Pellucidar, except yourself. What else may I do under the circumstances?”

He thought for a moment in silence. Then he shook his head sorrowfully.

“It is what a brave man and a good friend should do,” he said; “yet it seems most foolish, for the Mahars will most certainly condemn you to death for running away, and so you will be accomplishing nothing for your friends by returning. Never in all my life have I heard of a prisoner returning to the Mahars of his own free will. There are but few who escape them, though some do, and these would rather die than be recaptured.”

“I see no other way, Ja,” I said, “though I can assure you that I would rather go to Sheol after Perry than to Phutra. However, Perry is much too pious to make the probability at all great that I should ever be called upon to rescue him from the former locality.”

Ja asked me what Sheol was, and when I explained, as best I could, he said, “You are speaking of Molop Az, the flaming sea upon which Pellucidar floats. All the dead who are buried in the ground go there. Piece by piece they are carried down to Molop Az by the little demons who dwell there. We know this because when graves are opened we find that the bodies have been partially or entirely borne off. That is why we of Anoroc place our dead in high trees where the birds may find them and bear them bit by bit to the Dead World above the Land of Awful Shadow. If we kill an enemy we place his body in the ground that it may go to Molop Az.”

As we talked we had been walking up the canyon down which I had come to the great ocean and the sithic. Ja did his best to dissuade me from returning to Phutra, but when he saw that I was determined to do so, he consented to guide me to a point from which I could see the plain where lay the city. To my surprise the distance was but short from the beach where I had again met Ja. It was evident that I had spent much time following the windings of a tortuous canon, while just beyond the ridge lay the city of Phutra near to which I must have come several times.

As we topped the ridge and saw the granite gate towers dotting the flowered plain at our feet Ja made a final effort to persuade me to abandon my mad purpose and return with him to Anoroc, but I was firm in my resolve, and at last he bid me good-bye, assured in his own mind that he was looking upon me for the last time.

I was sorry to part with Ja, for I had come to like him very much indeed. With his hidden city upon the island of Anoroc as a base, and his savage warriors as escort Perry and I could have accomplished much in the line of exploration, and I hoped that were we successful in our effort to escape we might return to Anoroc later.

There was, however, one great thing to be accomplished first—at least it was the great thing to me—the finding of Dian the Beautiful. I wanted to make amends for the affront I had put upon her in my ignorance, and I wanted to—well, I wanted to see her again, and to be with her.

Down the hillside I made my way into the gorgeous field of flowers, and then across the rolling land toward the shadowless columns that guard the ways to buried Phutra. At a quarter-mile from the nearest entrance I was discovered by the Sagoth guard, and in an instant four of the gorilla-men were dashing toward me.

Though they brandished their long spears and yelled like wild Comanches I paid not the slightest attention to them, walking quietly toward them as though unaware of their existence. My manner had the effect upon them that I had hoped, and as we came quite near together they ceased their savage shouting. It was evident that they had expected me to turn and flee at sight of them, thus presenting that which they most enjoyed, a moving human target at which to cast their spears.

“What do you here?” shouted one, and then as he recognized me, “Ho! It is the slave who claims to be from another world—he who escaped when the thag ran amuck within the amphitheater. But why do you return, having once made good your escape?”

“I did not ‘escape’,” I replied. “I but ran away to avoid the thag, as did others, and coming into a long passage I became confused and lost my way in the foothills beyond Phutra. Only now have I found my way back.”

“And you come of your free will back to Phutra!” exclaimed one of the guardsmen.

“Where else might I go?” I asked. “I am a stranger within Pellucidar and know no other where than Phutra. Why should I not desire to be in Phutra? Am I not well fed and well treated? Am I not happy? What better lot could man desire?”

The Sagoths scratched their heads. This was a new one on them, and so being stupid brutes they took me to their masters whom they felt would be better fitted to solve the riddle of my return, for riddle they still considered it.

I had spoken to the Sagoths as I had for the purpose of throwing them off the scent of my purposed attempt at escape. If they thought that I was so satisfied with my lot within Phutra that I would voluntarily return when I had once had so excellent an opportunity to escape, they would never for an instant imagine that I could be occupied in arranging another escape immediately upon my return to the city.

So they led me before a slimy Mahar who clung to a slimy rock within the large room that was the thing’s office. With cold, reptilian eyes the creature seemed to bore through the thin veneer of my deceit and read my inmost thoughts. It heeded the story which the Sagoths told of my return to Phutra, watching the gorilla-men’s lips and fingers during the recital. Then it questioned me through one of the Sagoths.

“You say that you returned to Phutra of your own free will, because you think yourself better off here than elsewhere—do you not know that you may be the next chosen to give up your life in the interests of the wonderful scientific investigations that our learned ones are continually occupied with?”

I hadn’t heard of anything of that nature, but I thought best not to admit it.

“I could be in no more danger here,” I said, “than naked and unarmed in the savage jungles or upon the lonely plains of Pellucidar. I was fortunate, I think, to return to Phutra at all. As it was I barely escaped death within the jaws of a huge sithic. No, I am sure that I am safer in the hands of intelligent creatures such as rule Phutra. At least such would be the case in my own world, where human beings like myself rule supreme. There the higher races of man extend protection and hospitality to the stranger within their gates, and being a stranger here I naturally assumed that a like courtesy would be accorded me.”

The Mahar looked at me in silence for some time after I ceased speaking and the Sagoth had translated my words to his master. The creature seemed deep in thought. Presently he communicated some message to the Sagoth. The latter turned, and motioning me to follow him, left the presence of the reptile. Behind and on either side of me marched the balance of the guard.

“What are they going to do with me?” I asked the fellow at my right.

“You are to appear before the learned ones who will question you regarding this strange world from which you say you come.”

After a moment’s silence he turned to me again.

“Do you happen to know,” he asked, “what the Mahars do to slaves who lie to them?”

“No,” I replied, “nor does it interest me, as I have no intention of lying to the Mahars.”

“Then be careful that you don’t repeat the impossible tale you told Sol-to-to just now—another world, indeed, where human beings rule!” he concluded in fine scorn.

“But it is the truth,” I insisted. “From where else then did I come? I am not of Pellucidar. Anyone with half an eye could see that.”

“It is your misfortune then,” he remarked dryly, “that you may not be judged by one with but half an eye.”

“What will they do with me,” I asked, “if they do not have a mind to believe me?”

“You may be sentenced to the arena, or go to the pits to be used in research work by the learned ones,” he replied.

“And what will they do with me there?” I persisted.

“No one knows except the Mahars and those who go to the pits with them, but as the latter never return, their knowledge does them but little good. It is said that the learned ones cut up their subjects while they are yet alive, thus learning many useful things. However I should not imagine that it would prove very useful to him who was being cut up; but of course this is all but conjecture. The chances are that ere long you will know much more about it than I,” and he grinned as he spoke. The Sagoths have a well-developed sense of humor.

“And suppose it is the arena,” I continued; “what then?”

“You saw the two who met the tarag and the thag the time that you escaped?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Your end in the arena would be similar to what was intended for them,” he explained, “though of course the same kinds of animals might not be employed.”

“It is sure death in either event?” I asked.

“What becomes of those who go below with the learned ones I do not know, nor does any other,” he replied; “but those who go to the arena may come out alive and thus regain their liberty, as did the two whom you saw.”

“They gained their liberty? And how?”

“It is the custom of the Mahars to liberate those who remain alive within the arena after the beasts depart or are killed. Thus it has happened that several mighty warriors from far distant lands, whom we have captured on our slave raids, have battled the brutes turned in upon them and slain them, thereby winning their freedom. In the instance which you witnessed the beasts killed each other, but the result was the same—the man and woman were liberated, furnished with weapons, and started on their homeward journey. Upon the left shoulder of each a mark was burned—the mark of the Mahars—which will forever protect these two from slaving parties.”

“There is a slender chance for me then if I be sent to the arena, and none at all if the learned ones drag me to the pits?”

“You are quite right,” he replied; “but do not felicitate yourself too quickly should you be sent to the arena, for there is scarce one in a thousand who comes out alive.”

To my surprise they returned me to the same building in which I had been confined with Perry and Ghak before my escape. At the doorway I was turned over to the guards there.

“He will doubtless be called before the investigators shortly,” said he who had brought me back,” so have him in readiness.”

The guards in whose hands I now found myself, upon hearing that I had returned of my own volition to Phutra evidently felt that it would be safe to give me liberty within the building as had been the custom before I had escaped, and so I was told to return to whatever duty had been mine formerly.

My first act was to hunt up Perry; whom I found poring as usual over the great tomes that he was supposed to be merely dusting and rearranging upon new shelves.

As I entered the room he glanced up and nodded pleasantly to me, only to resume his work as though I had never been away at all. I was both astonished and hurt at his indifference. And to think that I was risking death to return to him purely from a sense of duty and affection!

“Why, Perry!” I exclaimed, “haven’t you a word for me after my long absence?”

“Long absence!” he repeated in evident astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“Are you crazy, Perry? Do you mean to say that you have not missed me since that time we were separated by the charging thag within the arena?”

“‘That time’,” he repeated. “Why man, I have but just returned from the arena! You reached here almost as soon as I. Had you been much later I should indeed have been worried, and as it is I had intended asking you about how you escaped the beast as soon as I had completed the translation of this most interesting passage.”

“Perry, you are mad,” I exclaimed. “Why, the Lord only knows how long I have been away. I have been to other lands, discovered a new race of humans within Pellucidar, seen the Mahars at their worship in their hidden temple, and barely escaped with my life from them and from a great labyrinthodon that I met afterward, following my long and tedious wanderings across an unknown world. I must have been away for months, Perry, and now you barely look up from your work when I return and insist that we have been separated but a moment. Is that any way to treat a friend? I’m surprised at you, Perry, and if I’d thought for a moment that you cared no more for me than this I should not have returned to chance death at the hands of the Mahars for your sake.”

The old man looked at me for a long time before he spoke. There was a puzzled expression upon his wrinkled face, and a look of hurt sorrow in his eyes.

“David, my boy,” he said, “how could you for a moment doubt my love for you? There is something strange here that I cannot understand. I know that I am not mad, and I am equally sure that you are not; but how in the world are we to account for the strange hallucinations that each of us seems to harbor relative to the passage of time since last we saw each other. You are positive that months have gone by, while to me it seems equally certain that not more than an hour ago I sat beside you in the amphitheater. Can it be that both of us are right and at the same time both are wrong? First tell me what time is, and then maybe I can solve our problem. Do you catch my meaning?”

I didn’t and said so.

“Yes,” continued the old man, “we are both right. To me, bent over my book here, there has been no lapse of time. I have done little or nothing to waste my energies and so have required neither food nor sleep, but you, on the contrary, have walked and fought and wasted strength and tissue which must needs be rebuilt by nutriment and food, and so, having eaten and slept many times since last you saw me you naturally measure the lapse of time largely by these acts. As a matter of fact, David, I am rapidly coming to the conviction that there is no such thing as time—surely there can be no time here within Pellucidar, where there are no means for measuring or recording time. Why, the Mahars themselves take no account of such a thing as time. I find here in all their literary works but a single tense, the present. There seems to be neither past nor future with them. Of course it is impossible for our outer-earthly minds to grasp such a condition, but our recent experiences seem to demonstrate its existence.”

It was too big a subject for me, and I said so, but Perry seemed to enjoy nothing better than speculating upon it, and after listening with interest to my account of the adventures through which I had passed he returned once more to the subject, which he was enlarging upon with considerable fluency when he was interrupted by the entrance of a Sagoth.

“Come!” commanded the intruder, beckoning to me. “The investigators would speak with you.”

“Good-bye, Perry!” I said, clasping the old man’s hand. “There may be nothing but the present and no such thing as time, but I feel that I am about to take a trip into the hereafter from which I shall never return. If you and Ghak should manage to escape I want you to promise me that you will find Dian the Beautiful and tell her that with my last words I asked her forgiveness for the unintentional affront I put upon her, and that my one wish was to be spared long enough to right the wrong that I had done her.”

Tears came to Perry’s eyes.

“I cannot believe but that you will return, David,” he said. “It would be awful to think of living out the balance of my life without you among these hateful and repulsive creatures. If you are taken away I shall never escape, for I feel that I am as well off here as I should be anywhere within this buried world. Good-bye, my boy, good-bye!” and then his old voice faltered and broke, and as he hid his face in his hands the Sagoth guardsman grasped me roughly by the shoulder and hustled me from the chamber.

CHAPTER XI

FOUR DEAD MAHARS

A moment later I was standing before a dozen Mahars—the social investigators of Phutra. They asked me many questions, through a Sagoth interpreter. I answered them all truthfully. They seemed particularly interested in my account of the outer earth and the strange vehicle which had brought Perry and me to Pellucidar. I thought that I had convinced them, and after they had sat in silence for a long time following my examination, I expected to be ordered returned to my quarters.

During this apparent silence they were debating through the medium of strange, unspoken language the merits of my tale. At last the head of the tribunal communicated the result of their conference to the officer in charge of the Sagoth guard.

“Come,” he said to me, “you are sentenced to the experimental pits for having dared to insult the intelligence of the mighty ones with the ridiculous tale you have had the temerity to unfold to them.”

“Do you mean that they do not believe me?” I asked, totally astonished.

“Believe you!” he laughed. “Do you mean to say that you expected any one to believe so impossible a lie?”

It was hopeless, and so I walked in silence beside my guard down through the dark corridors and runways toward my awful doom. At a low level we came upon a number of lighted chambers in which we saw many Mahars engaged in various occupations. To one of these chambers my guard escorted me, and before leaving they chained me to a side wall. There were other humans similarly chained. Upon a long table lay a victim even as I was ushered into the room. Several Mahars stood about the poor creature holding him down so that he could not move. Another, grasping a sharp knife with her three-toed fore foot, was laying open the victim’s chest and abdomen. No anesthetic had been administered and the shrieks and groans of the tortured man were terrible to hear. This, indeed, was vivisection with a vengeance. Cold sweat broke out upon me as I realized that soon my turn would come. And to think that where there was no such thing as time I might easily imagine that my suffering was enduring for months before death finally released me!

The Mahars had paid not the slightest attention to me as I had been brought into the room. So deeply immersed were they in their work that I am sure they did not even know that the Sagoths had entered with me. The door was close by. Would that I could reach it! But those heavy chains precluded any such possibility. I looked about for some means of escape from my bonds. Upon the floor between me and the Mahars lay a tiny surgical instrument which one of them must have dropped. It looked not unlike a button-hook, but was much smaller, and its point was sharpened. A hundred times in my boyhood days had I picked locks with a buttonhook. Could I but reach that little bit of polished steel I might yet effect at least a temporary escape.

Crawling to the limit of my chain, I found that by reaching one hand as far out as I could my fingers still fell an inch short of the coveted instrument. It was tantalizing! Stretch every fiber of my being as I would, I could not quite make it.

At last I turned about and extended one foot toward the object. My heart came to my throat! I could just touch the thing! But suppose that in my effort to drag it toward me I should accidentally shove it still farther away and thus entirely out of reach! Cold sweat broke out upon me from every pore. Slowly and cautiously I made the effort. My toes dropped upon the cold metal. Gradually I worked it toward me until I felt that it was within reach of my hand and a moment later I had turned about and the precious thing was in my grasp.

Assiduously I fell to work upon the Mahar lock that held my chain. It was pitifully simple. A child might have picked it, and a moment later I was free. The Mahars were now evidently completing their work at the table. One already turned away and was examining other victims, evidently with the intention of selecting the next subject.

Those at the table had their backs toward me. But for the creature walking toward us I might have escaped that moment. Slowly the thing approached me, when its attention was attracted by a huge slave chained a few yards to my right. Here the reptile stopped and commenced to go over the poor devil carefully, and as it did so its back turned toward me for an instant, and in that instant I gave two mighty leaps that carried me out of the chamber into the corridor beyond, down which I raced with all the speed I could command.

Where I was, or whither I was going, I knew not. My only thought was to place as much distance as possible between me and that frightful chamber of torture.

Presently I reduced my speed to a brisk walk, and later realizing the danger of running into some new predicament, were I not careful, I moved still more slowly and cautiously. After a time I came to a passage that seemed in some mysterious way familiar to me, and presently, chancing to glance within a chamber which led from the corridor I saw three Mahars curled up in slumber upon a bed of skins. I could have shouted aloud in joy and relief. It was the same corridor and the same Mahars that I had intended to have lead so important a role in our escape from Phutra. Providence had indeed been kind to me, for the reptiles still slept.

My one great danger now lay in returning to the upper levels in search of Perry and Ghak, but there was nothing else to be done, and so I hastened upward. When I came to the frequented portions of the building, I found a large burden of skins in a corner and these I lifted to my head, carrying them in such a way that ends and corners fell down about my shoulders completely hiding my face. Thus disguised I found Perry and Ghak together in the chamber where we had been wont to eat and sleep.

Both were glad to see me, it was needless to say, though of course they had known nothing of the fate that had been meted out to me by my judges. It was decided that no time should now be lost before attempting to put our plan of escape to the test, as I could not hope to remain hidden from the Sagoths long, nor could I forever carry that bale of skins about upon my head without arousing suspicion. However it seemed likely that it would carry me once more safely through the crowded passages and chambers of the upper levels, and so I set out with Perry and Ghak—the stench of the illy cured pelts fairly choking me.

Together we repaired to the first tier of corridors beneath the main floor of the buildings, and here Perry and Ghak halted to await me. The buildings are cut out of the solid limestone formation. There is nothing at all remarkable about their architecture. The rooms are sometimes rectangular, sometimes circular, and again oval in shape. The corridors which connect them are narrow and not always straight. The chambers are lighted by diffused sunlight reflected through tubes similar to those by which the avenues are lighted. The lower the tiers of chambers, the darker. Most of the corridors are entirely unlighted. The Mahars can see quite well in semidarkness.

Down to the main floor we encountered many Mahars, Sagoths, and slaves; but no attention was paid to us as we had become a part of the domestic life of the building. There was but a single entrance leading from the place into the avenue and this was well guarded by Sagoths—this doorway alone were we forbidden to pass. It is true that we were not supposed to enter the deeper corridors and apartments except on special occasions when we were instructed to do so; but as we were considered a lower order without intelligence there was little reason to fear that we could accomplish any harm by so doing, and so we were not hindered as we entered the corridor which led below.

Wrapped in a skin I carried three swords, and the two bows, and the arrows which Perry and I had fashioned. As many slaves bore skin-wrapped burdens to and fro my load attracted no comment. Where I left Ghak and Perry there were no other creatures in sight, and so I withdrew one sword from the package, and leaving the balance of the weapons with Perry, started on alone toward the lower levels.

Having come to the apartment in which the three Mahars slept I entered silently on tiptoe, forgetting that the creatures were without the sense of hearing. With a quick thrust through the heart I disposed of the first but my second thrust was not so fortunate, so that before I could kill the next of my victims it had hurled itself against the third, who sprang quickly up, facing me with wide-distended jaws. But fighting is not the occupation which the race of Mahars loves, and when the thing saw that I already had dispatched two of its companions, and that my sword was red with their blood, it made a dash to escape me. But I was too quick for it, and so, half hopping, half flying, it scurried down another corridor with me close upon its heels.

Its escape meant the utter ruin of our plan, and in all probability my instant death. This thought lent wings to my feet; but even at my best I could do no more than hold my own with the leaping thing before me.

Of a sudden it turned into an apartment on the right of the corridor, and an instant later as I rushed in I found myself facing two of the Mahars. The one who had been there when we entered had been occupied with a number of metal vessels, into which had been put powders and liquids as I judged from the array of flasks standing about upon the bench where it had been working. In an instant I realized what I had stumbled upon. It was the very room for the finding of which Perry had given me minute directions. It was the buried chamber in which was hidden the Great Secret of the race of Mahars. And on the bench beside the flasks lay the skin-bound book which held the only copy of the thing I was to have sought, after dispatching the three Mahars in their sleep.

There was no exit from the room other than the doorway in which I now stood facing the two frightful reptiles. Cornered, I knew that they would fight like demons, and they were well equipped to fight if fight they must. Together they launched themselves upon me, and though I ran one of them through the heart on the instant, the other fastened its gleaming fangs about my sword arm above the elbow, and then with her sharp talons commenced to rake me about the body, evidently intent upon disemboweling me. I saw that it was useless to hope that I might release my arm from that powerful, viselike grip which seemed to be severing my arm from my body. The pain I suffered was intense, but it only served to spur me to greater efforts to overcome my antagonist.

Back and forth across the floor we struggled—the Mahar dealing me terrific, cutting blows with her fore feet, while I attempted to protect my body with my left hand, at the same time watching for an opportunity to transfer my blade from my now useless sword hand to its rapidly weakening mate. At last I was successful, and with what seemed to me my last ounce of strength I ran the blade through the ugly body of my foe.

Soundless, as it had fought, it died, and though weak from pain and loss of blood, it was with an emotion of triumphant pride that I stepped across its convulsively stiffening corpse to snatch up the most potent secret of a world. A single glance assured me it was the very thing that Perry had described to me.

And as I grasped it did I think of what it meant to the human race of Pellucidar—did there flash through my mind the thought that countless generations of my own kind yet unborn would have reason to worship me for the thing that I had accomplished for them? I did not. I thought of a beautiful oval face, gazing out of limpid eyes, through a waving mass of jet-black hair. I thought of red, red lips, God-made for kissing. And of a sudden, apropos of nothing, standing there alone in the secret chamber of the Mahars of Pellucidar, I realized that I loved Dian the Beautiful.

CHAPTER XII

PURSUIT

For an instant I stood there thinking of her, and then, with a sigh, I tucked the book in the thong that supported my loin cloth, and turned to leave the apartment. At the bottom of the corridor which leads aloft from the lower chambers I whistled in accordance with the prearranged signal which was to announce to Perry and Ghak that I had been successful. A moment later they stood beside me, and to my surprise I saw that Hooja the Sly One accompanied them.

“He joined us,” explained Perry, “and would not be denied. The fellow is a fox. He scents escape, and rather than be thwarted of our chance now I told him that I would bring him to you, and let you decide whether he might accompany us.”

I had no love for Hooja, and no confidence in him. I was sure that if he thought it would profit him he would betray us; but I saw no way out of it now, and the fact that I had killed four Mahars instead of only the three I had expected to, made it possible to include the fellow in our scheme of escape.

“Very well,” I said, “you may come with us, Hooja; but at the first intimation of treachery I shall run my sword through you. Do you understand?”

He said that he did.

Some time later we had removed the skins from the four Mahars, and so succeeded in crawling inside of them ourselves that there seemed an excellent chance for us to pass unnoticed from Phutra. It was not an easy thing to fasten the hides together where we had split them along the belly to remove them from their carcasses, but by remaining out until the others had all been sewed in with my help, and then leaving an aperture in the breast of Perry’s skin through which he could pass his hands to sew me up, we were enabled to accomplish our design to really much better purpose than I had hoped. We managed to keep the heads erect by passing our swords up through the necks, and by the same means were enabled to move them about in a life-like manner. We had our greatest difficulty with the webbed feet, but even that problem was finally solved, so that when we moved about we did so quite naturally. Tiny holes punctured in the baggy throats into which our heads were thrust permitted us to see well enough to guide our progress.

Thus we started up toward the main floor of the building. Ghak headed the strange procession, then came Perry, followed by Hooja, while I brought up the rear, after admonishing Hooja that I had so arranged my sword that I could thrust it through the head of my disguise into his vitals were he to show any indication of faltering.

As the noise of hurrying feet warned me that we were entering the busy corridors of the main level, my heart came up into my mouth. It is with no sense of shame that I admit that I was frightened—never before in my life, nor since, did I experience any such agony of soulsearing fear and suspense as enveloped me. If it be possible to sweat blood, I sweat it then.

Slowly, after the manner of locomotion habitual to the Mahars, when they are not using their wings, we crept through throngs of busy slaves, Sagoths, and Mahars. After what seemed an eternity we reached the outer door which leads into the main avenue of Phutra. Many Sagoths loitered near the opening. They glanced at Ghak as he padded between them. Then Perry passed, and then Hooja. Now it was my turn, and then in a sudden fit of freezing terror I realized that the warm blood from my wounded arm was trickling down through the dead foot of the Mahar skin I wore and leaving its tell-tale mark upon the pavement, for I saw a Sagoth call a companion’s attention to it.

The guard stepped before me and pointing to my bleeding foot spoke to me in the sign language which these two races employ as a means of communication. Even had I known what he was saying I could not have replied with the dead thing that covered me. I once had seen a great Mahar freeze a presumptuous Sagoth with a look. It seemed my only hope, and so I tried it. Stopping in my tracks I moved my sword so that it made the dead head appear to turn inquiring eyes upon the gorilla-man. For a long moment I stood perfectly still, eyeing the fellow with those dead eyes. Then I lowered the head and started slowly on. For a moment all hung in the balance, but before I touched him the guard stepped to one side, and I passed on out into the avenue.

On we went up the broad street, but now we were safe for the very numbers of our enemies that surrounded us on all sides. Fortunately, there was a great concourse of Mahars repairing to the shallow lake which lies a mile or more from the city. They go there to indulge their amphibian proclivities in diving for small fish, and enjoying the cool depths of the water. It is a fresh-water lake, shallow, and free from the larger reptiles which make the use of the great seas of Pellucidar impossible for any but their own kind.

In the thick of the crowd we passed up the steps and out onto the plain. For some distance Ghak remained with the stream that was traveling toward the lake, but finally, at the bottom of a little gully he halted, and there we remained until all had passed and we were alone. Then, still in our disguises, we set off directly away from Phutra.

The heat of the vertical rays of the sun was fast making our horrible prisons unbearable, so that after passing a low divide, and entering a sheltering forest, we finally discarded the Mahar skins that had brought us thus far in safety.

I shall not weary you with the details of that bitter and galling flight. How we traveled at a dogged run until we dropped in our tracks. How we were beset by strange and terrible beasts. How we barely escaped the cruel fangs of lions and tigers the size of which would dwarf into pitiful insignificance the greatest felines of the outer world.

On and on we raced, our one thought to put as much distance between ourselves and Phutra as possible. Ghak was leading us to his own land—the land of Sari. No sign of pursuit had developed, and yet we were sure that somewhere behind us relentless Sagoths were dogging our tracks. Ghak said they never failed to hunt down their quarry until they had captured it or themselves been turned back by a superior force.

Our only hope, he said, lay in reaching his tribe which was quite strong enough in their mountain fastness to beat off any number of Sagoths.

At last, after what seemed months, and may, I now realize, have been years, we came in sight of the dun escarpment which buttressed the foothills of Sari. At almost the same instant, Hooja, who looked ever quite as much behind as before, announced that he could see a body of men far behind us topping a low ridge in our wake. It was the long-expected pursuit.

I asked Ghak if we could make Sari in time to escape them.

“We may,” he replied; “but you will find that the Sagoths can move with incredible swiftness, and as they are almost tireless they are doubtless much fresher than we. Then—” he paused, glancing at Perry.

I knew what he meant. The old man was exhausted. For much of the period of our flight either Ghak or I had half supported him on the march. With such a handicap, less fleet pursuers than the Sagoths might easily overtake us before we could scale the rugged heights which confronted us.

“You and Hooja go on ahead,” I said. “Perry and I will make it if we are able. We cannot travel as rapidly as you two, and there is no reason why all should be lost because of that. It can’t be helped—we have simply to face it.”

“I will not desert a companion,” was Ghak’s simple reply. I hadn’t known that this great, hairy, primeval man had any such nobility of character stowed away inside him. I had always liked him, but now to my liking was added honor and respect. Yes, and love.

But still I urged him to go on ahead, insisting that if he could reach his people he might be able to bring out a sufficient force to drive off the Sagoths and rescue Perry and myself.

No, he wouldn’t leave us, and that was all there was to it, but he suggested that Hooja might hurry on and warn the Sarians of the king’s danger. It didn’t require much urging to start Hooja—the naked idea was enough to send him leaping on ahead of us into the foothills which we now had reached.

Perry realized that he was jeopardizing Ghak’s life and mine and the old fellow fairly begged us to go on without him, although I knew that he was suffering a perfect anguish of terror at the thought of falling into the hands of the Sagoths. Ghak finally solved the problem, in part, by lifting Perry in his powerful arms and carrying him. While the act cut down Ghak’s speed he still could travel faster thus than when half supporting the stumbling old man.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SLY ONE

The Sagoths were gaining on us rapidly, for once they had sighted us they had greatly increased their speed. On and on we stumbled up the narrow canyon that Ghak had chosen to approach the heights of Sari. On either side rose precipitous cliffs of gorgeous, parti-colored rock, while beneath our feet a thick mountain grass formed a soft and noiseless carpet. Since we had entered the canyon we had had no glimpse of our pursuers, and I was commencing to hope that they had lost our trail and that we would reach the now rapidly nearing cliffs in time to scale them before we should be overtaken.

Ahead we neither saw nor heard any sign which might betoken the success of Hooja’s mission. By now he should have reached the outposts of the Sarians, and we should at least hear the savage cries of the tribesmen as they swarmed to arms in answer to their king’s appeal for succor. In another moment the frowning cliffs ahead should be black with primeval warriors. But nothing of the kind happened—as a matter of fact the Sly One had betrayed us. At the moment that we expected to see Sarian spearmen charging to our relief at Hooja’s back, the craven traitor was sneaking around the outskirts of the nearest Sarian village, that he might come up from the other side when it was too late to save us, claiming that he had become lost among the mountains.

Hooja still harbored ill will against me because of the blow I had struck in Dian’s protection, and his malevolent spirit was equal to sacrificing us all that he might be revenged upon me.

As we drew nearer the barrier cliffs and no sign of rescuing Sarians appeared Ghak became both angry and alarmed, and presently as the sound of rapidly approaching pursuit fell upon our ears, he called to me over his shoulder that we were lost.

A backward glance gave me a glimpse of the first of the Sagoths at the far end of a considerable stretch of canyon through which we had just passed, and then a sudden turning shut the ugly creature from my view; but the loud howl of triumphant rage which rose behind us was evidence that the gorilla-man had sighted us.

Again the canyon veered sharply to the left, but to the right another branch ran on at a lesser deviation from the general direction, so that appeared more like the main canyon than the lefthand branch. The Sagoths were now not over two hundred and fifty yards behind us, and I saw that it was hopeless for us to expect to escape other than by a ruse. There was a bare chance of saving Ghak and Perry, and as I reached the branching of the canyon I took the chance.

Pausing there I waited until the foremost Sagoth hove into sight. Ghak and Perry had disappeared around a bend in the left-hand canyon, and as the Sagoth’s savage yell announced that he had seen me I turned and fled up the right-hand branch. My ruse was successful, and the entire party of man-hunters raced headlong after me up one canyon while Ghak bore Perry to safety up the other.

Running has never been my particular athletic forte, and now when my very life depended upon fleetness of foot I cannot say that I ran any better than on the occasions when my pitiful base running had called down upon my head the rooter’s raucous and reproachful cries of “Ice Wagon,” and “Call a cab.”

The Sagoths were gaining on me rapidly. There was one in particular, fleeter than his fellows, who was perilously close. The canyon had become a rocky slit, rising roughly at a steep angle toward what seemed a pass between two abutting peaks. What lay beyond I could not even guess—possibly a sheer drop of hundreds of feet into the corresponding valley upon the other side. Could it be that I had plunged into a cul-de-sac?

Realizing that I could not hope to outdistance the Sagoths to the top of the canyon I had determined to risk all in an attempt to check them temporarily, and to this end had unslung my rudely made bow and plucked an arrow from the skin quiver which hung behind my shoulder. As I fitted the shaft with my right hand I stopped and wheeled toward the gorilla-man.

In the world of my birth I never had drawn a shaft, but since our escape from Phutra I had kept the party supplied with small game by means of my arrows, and so, through necessity, had developed a fair degree of accuracy. During our flight from Phutra I had restrung my bow with a piece of heavy gut taken from a huge tiger which Ghak and I had worried and finally dispatched with arrows, spear, and sword. The hard wood of the bow was extremely tough and this, with the strength and elasticity of my new string, gave me unwonted confidence in my weapon.

Never had I greater need of steady nerves than then—never were my nerves and muscles under better control. I sighted as carefully and deliberately as though at a straw target. The Sagoth had never before seen a bow and arrow, but of a sudden it must have swept over his dull intellect that the thing I held toward him was some sort of engine of destruction, for he too came to a halt, simultaneously swinging his hatchet for a throw. It is one of the many methods in which they employ this weapon, and the accuracy of aim which they achieve, even under the most unfavorable circumstances, is little short of miraculous.

My shaft was drawn back its full length—my eye had centered its sharp point upon the left breast of my adversary; and then he launched his hatchet and I released my arrow. At the instant that our missiles flew I leaped to one side, but the Sagoth sprang forward to follow up his attack with a spear thrust. I felt the swish of the hatchet at it grazed my head, and at the same instant my shaft pierced the Sagoth’s savage heart, and with a single groan he lunged almost at my feet—stone dead. Close behind him were two more—fifty yards perhaps—but the distance gave me time to snatch up the dead guardsman’s shield, for the close call his hatchet had just given me had borne in upon me the urgent need I had for one. Those which I had purloined at Phutra we had not been able to bring along because their size precluded our concealing them within the skins of the Mahars which had brought us safely from the city.

With the shield slipped well up on my left arm I let fly with another arrow, which brought down a second Sagoth, and then as his fellow’s hatchet sped toward me I caught it upon the shield, and fitted another shaft for him; but he did not wait to receive it. Instead, he turned and retreated toward the main body of gorilla-men. Evidently he had seen enough of me for the moment.

Once more I took up my flight, nor were the Sagoths apparently overanxious to press their pursuit so closely as before. Unmolested I reached the top of the canyon where I found a sheer drop of two or three hundred feet to the bottom of a rocky chasm; but on the left a narrow ledge rounded the shoulder of the overhanging cliff. Along this I advanced, and at a sudden turning, a few yards beyond the canyon’s end, the path widened, and at my left I saw the opening to a large cave. Before, the ledge continued until it passed from sight about another projecting buttress of the mountain.

Here, I felt, I could defy an army, for but a single foeman could advance upon me at a time, nor could he know that I was awaiting him until he came full upon me around the corner of the turn. About me lay scattered stones crumbled from the cliff above. They were of various sizes and shapes, but enough were of handy dimensions for use as ammunition in lieu of my precious arrows. Gathering a number of stones into a little pile beside the mouth of the cave I waited the advance of the Sagoths.

As I stood there, tense and silent, listening for the first faint sound that should announce the approach of my enemies, a slight noise from within the cave’s black depths attracted my attention. It might have been produced by the moving of the great body of some huge beast rising from the rock floor of its lair. At almost the same instant I thought that I caught the scraping of hide sandals upon the ledge beyond the turn. For the next few seconds my attention was considerably divided.

And then from the inky blackness at my right I saw two flaming eyes glaring into mine. They were on a level that was over two feet above my head. It is true that the beast who owned them might be standing upon a ledge within the cave, or that it might be rearing up upon its hind legs; but I had seen enough of the monsters of Pellucidar to know that I might be facing some new and frightful Titan whose dimensions and ferocity eclipsed those of any I had seen before.

Whatever it was, it was coming slowly toward the entrance of the cave, and now, deep and forbidding, it uttered a low and ominous growl. I waited no longer to dispute possession of the ledge with the thing which owned that voice. The noise had not been loud—I doubt if the Sagoths heard it at all—but the suggestion of latent possibilities behind it was such that I knew it would only emanate from a gigantic and ferocious beast.

As I backed along the ledge I soon was past the mouth of the cave, where I no longer could see those fearful flaming eyes, but an instant later I caught sight of the fiendish face of a Sagoth as it warily advanced beyond the cliff’s turn on the far side of the cave’s mouth. As the fellow saw me he leaped along the ledge in pursuit, and after him came as many of his companions as could crowd upon each other’s heels. At the same time the beast emerged from the cave, so that he and the Sagoths came face to face upon that narrow ledge.

The thing was an enormous cave bear, rearing its colossal bulk fully eight feet at the shoulder, while from the tip of its nose to the end of its stubby tail it was fully twelve feet in length. As it sighted the Sagoths it emitted a most frightful roar, and with open mouth charged full upon them. With a cry of terror the foremost gorilla-man turned to escape, but behind him he ran full upon his on-rushing companions.

The horror of the following seconds is indescribable. The Sagoth nearest the cave bear, finding his escape blocked, turned and leaped deliberately to an awful death upon the jagged rocks three hundred feet below. Then those giant jaws reached out and gathered in the next—there was a sickening sound of crushing bones, and the mangled corpse was dropped over the cliff’s edge. Nor did the mighty beast even pause in his steady advance along the ledge.

Shrieking Sagoths were now leaping madly over the precipice to escape him, and the last I saw he rounded the turn still pursuing the demoralized remnant of the man hunters. For a long time I could hear the horrid roaring of the brute intermingled with the screams and shrieks of his victims, until finally the awful sounds dwindled and disappeared in the distance.

Later I learned from Ghak, who had finally come to his tribesmen and returned with a party to rescue me, that the ryth, as it is called, pursued the Sagoths until it had exterminated the entire band. Ghak was, of course, positive that I had fallen prey to the terrible creature, which, within Pellucidar, is truly the king of beasts.

Not caring to venture back into the canyon, where I might fall prey either to the cave bear or the Sagoths I continued on along the ledge, believing that by following around the mountain I could reach the land of Sari from another direction. But I evidently became confused by the twisting and turning of the canyons and gullies, for I did not come to the land of Sari then, nor for a long time thereafter.

XIV

THE GARDEN OF EDEN

With no heavenly guide, it is little wonder that I became confused and lost in the labyrinthine maze of those mighty hills. What, in reality, I did was to pass entirely through them and come out above the valley upon the farther side. I know that I wandered for a long time, until tired and hungry I came upon a small cave in the face of the limestone formation which had taken the place of the granite farther back.

The cave which took my fancy lay halfway up the precipitous side of a lofty cliff. The way to it was such that I knew no extremely formidable beast could frequent it, nor was it large enough to make a comfortable habitat for any but the smaller mammals or reptiles. Yet it was with the utmost caution that I crawled within its dark interior.

Here I found a rather large chamber, lighted by a narrow cleft in the rock above which let the sunlight filter in in sufficient quantities partially to dispel the utter darkness which I had expected. The cave was entirely empty, nor were there any signs of its having been recently occupied. The opening was comparatively small, so that after considerable effort I was able to lug up a bowlder from the valley below which entirely blocked it.

Then I returned again to the valley for an armful of grasses and on this trip was fortunate enough to knock over an orthopi, the diminutive horse of Pellucidar, a little animal about the size of a fox terrier, which abounds in all parts of the inner world. Thus, with food and bedding I returned to my lair, where after a meal of raw meat, to which I had now become quite accustomed, I dragged the bowlder before the entrance and curled myself upon a bed of grasses—a naked, primeval, cave man, as savagely primitive as my prehistoric progenitors.

I awoke rested but hungry, and pushing the bowlder aside crawled out upon the little rocky shelf which was my front porch. Before me spread a small but beautiful valley, through the center of which a clear and sparkling river wound its way down to an inland sea, the blue waters of which were just visible between the two mountain ranges which embraced this little paradise. The sides of the opposite hills were green with verdure, for a great forest clothed them to the foot of the red and yellow and copper green of the towering crags which formed their summit. The valley itself was carpeted with a luxuriant grass, while here and there patches of wild flowers made great splashes of vivid color against the prevailing green.

Dotted over the face of the valley were little clusters of palmlike trees—three or four together as a rule. Beneath these stood antelope, while others grazed in the open, or wandered gracefully to a near-by ford to drink. There were several species of this beautiful animal, the most magnificent somewhat resembling the giant eland of Africa, except that their spiral horns form a complete curve backward over their ears and then forward again beneath them, ending in sharp and formidable points some two feet before the face and above the eyes. In size they remind one of a pure bred Hereford bull, yet they are very agile and fast. The broad yellow bands that stripe the dark roan of their coats made me take them for zebra when I first saw them. All in all they are handsome animals, and added the finishing touch to the strange and lovely landscape that spread before my new home.

I had determined to make the cave my headquarters, and with it as a base make a systematic exploration of the surrounding country in search of the land of Sari. First I devoured the remainder of the carcass of the orthopi I had killed before my last sleep. Then I hid the Great Secret in a deep niche at the back of my cave, rolled the bowlder before my front door, and with bow, arrows, sword, and shield scrambled down into the peaceful valley.

The grazing herds moved to one side as I passed through them, the little orthopi evincing the greatest wariness and galloping to safest distances. All the animals stopped feeding as I approached, and after moving to what they considered a safe distance stood contemplating me with serious eyes and up-cocked ears. Once one of the old bull antelopes of the striped species lowered his head and bellowed angrily—even taking a few steps in my direction, so that I thought he meant to charge; but after I had passed, he resumed feeding as though nothing had disturbed him.

Near the lower end of the valley I passed a number of tapirs, and across the river saw a great sadok, the enormous double-horned progenitor of the modern rhinoceros. At the valley’s end the cliffs upon the left ran out into the sea, so that to pass around them as I desired to do it was necessary to scale them in search of a ledge along which I might continue my journey. Some fifty feet from the base I came upon a projection which formed a natural path along the face of the cliff, and this I followed out over the sea toward the cliff’s end.

Here the ledge inclined rapidly upward toward the top of the cliffs—the stratum which formed it evidently having been forced up at this steep angle when the mountains behind it were born. As I climbed carefully up the ascent my attention suddenly was attracted aloft by the sound of strange hissing, and what resembled the flapping of wings.

And at the first glance there broke upon my horrified vision the most frightful thing I had seen even within Pellucidar. It was a giant dragon such as is pictured in the legends and fairy tales of earth folk. Its huge body must have measured forty feet in length, while the batlike wings that supported it in midair had a spread of fully thirty. Its gaping jaws were armed with long, sharp teeth, and its claw equipped with horrible talons.

The hissing noise which had first attracted my attention was issuing from its throat, and seemed to be directed at something beyond and below me which I could not see. The ledge upon which I stood terminated abruptly a few paces farther on, and as I reached the end I saw the cause of the reptile’s agitation.

Some time in past ages an earthquake had produced a fault at this point, so that beyond the spot where I stood the strata had slipped down a matter of twenty feet. The result was that the continuation of my ledge lay twenty feet below me, where it ended as abruptly as did the end upon which I stood.

And here, evidently halted in flight by this insurmountable break in the ledge, stood the object of the creature’s attack—a girl cowering upon the narrow platform, her face buried in her arms, as though to shut out the sight of the frightful death which hovered just above her.

The dragon was circling lower, and seemed about to dart in upon its prey. There was no time to be lost, scarce an instant in which to weigh the possible chances that I had against the awfully armed creature; but the sight of that frightened girl below me called out to all that was best in me, and the instinct for protection of the other sex, which nearly must have equaled the instinct of self-preservation in primeval man, drew me to the girl’s side like an irresistible magnet.

Almost thoughtless of the consequences, I leaped from the end of the ledge upon which I stood, for the tiny shelf twenty feet below. At the same instant the dragon darted in toward the girl, but my sudden advent upon the scene must have startled him for he veered to one side, and then rose above us once more.

The noise I made as I landed beside her convinced the girl that the end had come, for she thought I was the dragon; but finally when no cruel fangs closed upon her she raised her eyes in astonishment. As they fell upon me the expression that came into them would be difficult to describe; but her feelings could scarcely have been one whit more complicated than my own—for the wide eyes that looked into mine were those of Dian the Beautiful.

“Dian!” I cried. “Dian! Thank God that I came in time.”

“You?” she whispered, and then she hid her face again; nor could I tell whether she were glad or angry that I had come.

Once more the dragon was sweeping toward us, and so rapidly that I had no time to unsling my bow. All that I could do was to snatch up a rock, and hurl it at the thing’s hideous face. Again my aim was true, and with a hiss of pain and rage the reptile wheeled once more and soared away.

Quickly I fitted an arrow now that I might be ready at the next attack, and as I did so I looked down at the girl, so that I surprised her in a surreptitious glance which she was stealing at me; but immediately, she again covered her face with her hands.

“Look at me, Dian,” I pleaded. “Are you not glad to see me?”

She looked straight into my eyes.

“I hate you,” she said, and then, as I was about to beg for a fair hearing she pointed over my shoulder. “The thipdar comes,” she said, and I turned again to meet the reptile.

So this was a thipdar. I might have known it. The cruel bloodhound of the Mahars. The long-extinct pterodactyl of the outer world. But this time I met it with a weapon it never had faced before. I had selected my longest arrow, and with all my strength had bent the bow until the very tip of the shaft rested upon the thumb of my left hand, and then as the great creature darted toward us I let drive straight for that tough breast.

Hissing like the escape valve of a steam engine, the mighty creature fell turning and twisting into the sea below, my arrow buried completely in its carcass. I turned toward the girl. She was looking past me. It was evident that she had seen the thipdar die.

“Dian,” I said, “won’t you tell me that you are not sorry that I have found you?”

“I hate you,” was her only reply; but I imagined that there was less vehemence in it than before—yet it might have been but my imagination.

“Why do you hate me, Dian?” I asked, but she did not answer me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, “and what has happened to you since Hooja freed you from the Sagoths?”

At first I thought that she was going to ignore me entirely, but finally she thought better of it.

“I was again running away from Jubal the Ugly One,” she said. “After I escaped from the Sagoths I made my way alone back to my own land; but on account of Jubal I did not dare enter the villages or let any of my friends know that I had returned for fear that Jubal might find out. By watching for a long time I found that my brother had not yet returned, and so I continued to live in a cave beside a valley which my race seldom frequents, awaiting the time that he should come back and free me from Jubal.

“But at last one of Jubal’s hunters saw me as I was creeping toward my father’s cave to see if my brother had yet returned and he gave the alarm and Jubal set out after me. He has been pursuing me across many lands. He cannot be far behind me now. When he comes he will kill you and carry me back to his cave. He is a terrible man. I have gone as far as I can go, and there is no escape,” and she looked hopelessly up at the continuation of the ledge twenty feet above us.

“But he shall not have me,” she suddenly cried, with great vehemence. “The sea is there”—she pointed over the edge of the cliff—“and the sea shall have me rather than Jubal.”

“But I have you now Dian,” I cried; “nor shall Jubal, nor any other have you, for you are mine,” and I seized her hand, nor did I lift it above her head and let it fall in token of release.

She had risen to her feet, and was looking straight into my eyes with level gaze.

“I do not believe you,” she said, “for if you meant it you would have done this when the others were present to witness it—then I should truly have been your mate; now there is no one to see you do it, for you know that without witnesses your act does not bind you to me,” and she withdrew her hand from mine and turned away.

I tried to convince her that I was sincere, but she simply couldn’t forget the humiliation that I had put upon her on that other occasion.

“If you mean all that you say you will have ample chance to prove it,” she said, “if Jubal does not catch and kill you. I am in your power, and the treatment you accord me will be the best proof of your intentions toward me. I am not your mate, and again I tell you that I hate you, and that I should be glad if I never saw you again.”

Dian certainly was candid. There was no gainsaying that. In fact I found candor and directness to be quite a marked characteristic of the cave men of Pellucidar. Finally I suggested that we make some attempt to gain my cave, where we might escape the searching Jubal, for I am free to admit that I had no considerable desire to meet the formidable and ferocious creature, of whose mighty prowess Dian had told me when I first met her. He it was who, armed with a puny knife, had met and killed a cave bear in a hand-to-hand struggle. It was Jubal who could cast his spear entirely through the armored carcass of the sadok at fifty paces. It was he who had crushed the skull of a charging dyryth with a single blow of his war club. No, I was not pining to meet the Ugly One-and it was quite certain that I should not go out and hunt for him; but the matter was taken out of my hands very quickly, as is often the way, and I did meet Jubal the Ugly One face to face.

This is how it happened. I had led Dian back along the ledge the way she had come, searching for a path that would lead us to the top of the cliff, for I knew that we could then cross over to the edge of my own little valley, where I felt certain we should find a means of ingress from the cliff top. As we proceeded along the ledge I gave Dian minute directions for finding my cave against the chance of something happening to me. I knew that she would be quite safely hidden away from pursuit once she gained the shelter of my lair, and the valley would afford her ample means of sustenance.

Also, I was very much piqued by her treatment of me. My heart was sad and heavy, and I wanted to make her feel badly by suggesting that something terrible might happen to me—that I might, in fact, be killed. But it didn’t work worth a cent, at least as far as I could perceive. Dian simply shrugged those magnificent shoulders of hers, and murmured something to the effect that one was not rid of trouble so easily as that.

For a while I kept still. I was utterly squelched. And to think that I had twice protected her from attack—the last time risking my life to save hers. It was incredible that even a daughter of the Stone Age could be so ungrateful—so heartless; but maybe her heart partook of the qualities of her epoch.

Presently we found a rift in the cliff which had been widened and extended by the action of the water draining through it from the plateau above. It gave us a rather rough climb to the summit, but finally we stood upon the level mesa which stretched back for several miles to the mountain range. Behind us lay the broad inland sea, curving upward in the horizonless distance to merge into the blue of the sky, so that for all the world it looked as though the sea lapped back to arch completely over us and disappear beyond the distant mountains at our backs—the weird and uncanny aspect of the seascapes of Pellucidar balk description.

At our right lay a dense forest, but to the left the country was open and clear to the plateau’s farther verge. It was in this direction that our way led, and we had turned to resume our journey when Dian touched my arm. I turned to her, thinking that she was about to make peace overtures; but I was mistaken.

“Jubal,” she said, and nodded toward the forest.

I looked, and there, emerging from the dense wood, came a perfect whale of a man. He must have been seven feet tall, and proportioned accordingly. He still was too far off to distinguish his features.

“Run,” I said to Dian. “I can engage him until you get a good start. Maybe I can hold him until you have gotten entirely away,” and then, without a backward glance, I advanced to meet the Ugly One. I had hoped that Dian would have a kind word to say to me before she went, for she must have known that I was going to my death for her sake; but she never even so much as bid me good-bye, and it was with a heavy heart that I strode through the flower-bespangled grass to my doom.

When I had come close enough to Jubal to distinguish his features I understood how it was that he had earned the sobriquet of Ugly One. Apparently some fearful beast had ripped away one entire side of his face. The eye was gone, the nose, and all the flesh, so that his jaws and all his teeth were exposed and grinning through the horrible scar.

Formerly he may have been as good to look upon as the others of his handsome race, and it may be that the terrible result of this encounter had tended to sour an already strong and brutal character. However this may be it is quite certain that he was not a pretty sight, and now that his features, or what remained of them, were distorted in rage at the sight of Dian with another male, he was indeed most terrible to see—and much more terrible to meet.

He had broken into a run now, and as he advanced he raised his mighty spear, while I halted and fitting an arrow to my bow took as steady aim as I could. I was somewhat longer than usual, for I must confess that the sight of this awful man had wrought upon my nerves to such an extent that my knees were anything but steady. What chance had I against this mighty warrior for whom even the fiercest cave bear had no terrors! Could I hope to best one who slaughtered the sadok and dyryth singlehanded! I shuddered; but, in fairness to myself, my fear was more for Dian than for my own fate.

And then the great brute launched his massive stone-tipped spear, and I raised my shield to break the force of its terrific velocity. The impact hurled me to my knees, but the shield had deflected the missile and I was unscathed. Jubal was rushing upon me now with the only remaining weapon that he carried—a murderous-looking knife. He was too close for a careful bowshot, but I let drive at him as he came, without taking aim. My arrow pierced the fleshy part of his thigh, inflicting a painful but not disabling wound. And then he was upon me.

My agility saved me for the instant. I ducked beneath his raised arm, and when he wheeled to come at me again he found a sword’s point in his face. And a moment later he felt an inch or two of it in the muscles of his knife arm, so that thereafter he went more warily.

It was a duel of strategy now—the great, hairy man maneuvering to get inside my guard where he could bring those giant thews to play, while my wits were directed to the task of keeping him at arm’s length. Thrice he rushed me, and thrice I caught his knife blow upon my shield. Each time my sword found his body—once penetrating to his lung. He was covered with blood by this time, and the internal hemorrhage induced paroxysms of coughing that brought the red stream through the hideous mouth and nose, covering his face and breast with bloody froth. He was a most unlovely spectacle, but he was far from dead.

As the duel continued I began to gain confidence, for, to be perfectly candid, I had not expected to survive the first rush of that monstrous engine of ungoverned rage and hatred. And I think that Jubal, from utter contempt of me, began to change to a feeling of respect, and then in his primitive mind there evidently loomed the thought that perhaps at last he had met his master, and was facing his end.

At any rate it is only upon this hypothesis that I can account for his next act, which was in the nature of a last resort—a sort of forlorn hope, which could only have been born of the belief that if he did not kill me quickly I should kill him. It happened on the occasion of his fourth charge, when, instead of striking at me with his knife, he dropped that weapon, and seizing my sword blade in both his hands wrenched the weapon from my grasp as easily as from a babe.

Flinging it far to one side he stood motionless for just an instant glaring into my face with such a horrid leer of malignant triumph as to almost unnerve me—then he sprang for me with his bare hands. But it was Jubal’s day to learn new methods of warfare. For the first time he had seen a bow and arrows, never before that duel had he beheld a sword, and now he learned what a man who knows may do with his bare fists.

As he came for me, like a great bear, I ducked again beneath his outstretched arm, and as I came up planted as clean a blow upon his jaw as ever you have seen. Down went that great mountain of flesh sprawling upon the ground. He was so surprised and dazed that he lay there for several seconds before he made any attempt to rise, and I stood over him with another dose ready when he should gain his knees.

Up he came at last, almost roaring in his rage and mortification; but he didn’t stay up—I let him have a left fair on the point of the jaw that sent him tumbling over on his back. By this time I think Jubal had gone mad with hate, for no sane man would have come back for more as many times as he did. Time after time I bowled him over as fast as he could stagger up, until toward the last he lay longer on the ground between blows, and each time came up weaker than before.

He was bleeding very profusely now from the wound in his lungs, and presently a terrific blow over the heart sent him reeling heavily to the ground, where he lay very still, and somehow I knew at once that Jubal the Ugly One would never get up again. But even as I looked upon that massive body lying there so grim and terrible in death, I could not believe that I, single-handed, had bested this slayer of fearful beasts—this gigantic ogre of the Stone Age.

Picking up my sword I leaned upon it, looking down on the dead body of my foeman, and as I thought of the battle I had just fought and won a great idea was born in my brain—the outcome of this and the suggestion that Perry had made within the city of Phutra. If skill and science could render a comparative pygmy the master of this mighty brute, what could not the brute’s fellows accomplish with the same skill and science. Why all Pellucidar would be at their feet—and I would be their king and Dian their queen.

Dian! A little wave of doubt swept over me. It was quite within the possibilities of Dian to look down upon me even were I king. She was quite the most superior person I ever had met—with the most convincing way of letting you know that she was superior. Well, I could go to the cave, and tell her that I had killed Jubal, and then she might feel more kindly toward me, since I had freed her of her tormentor. I hoped that she had found the cave easily—it would be terrible had I lost her again, and I turned to gather up my shield and bow to hurry after her, when to my astonishment I found her standing not ten paces behind me.

“Girl!” I cried, “what are you doing here? I thought that you had gone to the cave, as I told you to do.”

Up went her head, and the look that she gave me took all the majesty out of me, and left me feeling more like the palace janitor—if palaces have janitors.

“As you told me to do!” she cried, stamping her little foot. “I do as I please. I am the daughter of a king, and furthermore, I hate you.”

I was dumbfounded—this was my thanks for saving her from Jubal! I turned and looked at the corpse. “May be that I saved you from a worse fate, old man,” I said, but I guess it was lost on Dian, for she never seemed to notice it at all.

“Let us go to my cave,” I said, “I am tired and hungry.”

She followed along a pace behind me, neither of us speaking. I was too angry, and she evidently didn’t care to converse with the lower orders. I was mad all the way through, as I had certainly felt that at least a word of thanks should have rewarded me, for I knew that even by her own standards, I must have done a very wonderful thing to have killed the redoubtable Jubal in a hand-to-hand encounter.

We had no difficulty in finding my lair, and then I went down into the valley and bowled over a small antelope, which I dragged up the steep ascent to the ledge before the door. Here we ate in silence. Occasionally I glanced at her, thinking that the sight of her tearing at raw flesh with her hands and teeth like some wild animal would cause a revulsion of my sentiments toward her; but to my surprise I found that she ate quite as daintily as the most civilized woman of my acquaintance, and finally I found myself gazing in foolish rapture at the beauties of her strong, white teeth. Such is love.

After our repast we went down to the river together and bathed our hands and faces, and then after drinking our fill went back to the cave. Without a word I crawled into the farthest corner and, curling up, was soon asleep.

When I awoke I found Dian sitting in the doorway looking out across the valley. As I came out she moved to one side to let me pass, but she had no word for me. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t. Every time I looked at her something came up in my throat, so that I nearly choked. I had never been in love before, but I did not need any aid in diagnosing my case—I certainly had it and had it bad. God, how I loved that beautiful, disdainful, tantalizing, prehistoric girl!

After we had eaten again I asked Dian if she intended returning to her tribe now that Jubal was dead, but she shook her head sadly, and said that she did not dare, for there was still Jubal’s brother to be considered—his oldest brother.

“What has he to do with it?” I asked. “Does he too want you, or has the option on you become a family heirloom, to be passed on down from generation to generation?”

She was not quite sure as to what I meant.

“It is probable,” she said, “that they all will want revenge for the death of Jubal—there are seven of them—seven terrible men. Someone may have to kill them all, if I am to return to my people.”

It began to look as though I had assumed a contract much too large for me—about seven sizes, in fact.

“Had Jubal any cousins?” I asked. It was just as well to know the worst at once.

“Yes,” replied Dian, “but they don’t count—they all have mates. Jubal’s brothers have no mates because Jubal could get none for himself. He was so ugly that women ran away from him—some have even thrown themselves from the cliffs of Amoz into the Darel Az rather than mate with the Ugly One.”

“But what had that to do with his brothers?” I asked.

“I forget that you are not of Pellucidar,” said Dian, with a look of pity mixed with contempt, and the contempt seemed to be laid on a little thicker than the circumstance warranted—as though to make quite certain that I shouldn’t overlook it. “You see,” she continued, “a younger brother may not take a mate until all his older brothers have done so, unless the older brother waives his prerogative, which Jubal would not do, knowing that as long as he kept them single they would be all the keener in aiding him to secure a mate.”

Noticing that Dian was becoming more communicative I began to entertain hopes that she might be warming up toward me a bit, although upon what slender thread I hung my hopes I soon discovered.

“As you dare not return to Amoz,” I ventured, “what is to become of you since you cannot be happy here with me, hating me as you do?”

“I shall have to put up with you,” she replied coldly, “until you see fit to go elsewhere and leave me in peace, then I shall get along very well alone.”

I looked at her in utter amazement. It seemed incredible that even a prehistoric woman could be so cold and heartless and ungrateful. Then I arose.

“I shall leave you NOW,” I said haughtily, “I have had quite enough of your ingratitude and your insults,” and then I turned and strode majestically down toward the valley. I had taken a hundred steps in absolute silence, and then Dian spoke.

“I hate you!” she shouted, and her voice broke—in rage, I thought.

I was absolutely miserable, but I hadn’t gone too far when I began to realize that I couldn’t leave her alone there without protection, to hunt her own food amid the dangers of that savage world. She might hate me, and revile me, and heap indignity after indignity upon me, as she already had, until I should have hated her; but the pitiful fact remained that I loved her, and I couldn’t leave her there alone.

The more I thought about it the madder I got, so that by the time I reached the valley I was furious, and the result of it was that I turned right around and went up that cliff again as fast as I had come down. I saw that Dian had left the ledge and gone within the cave, but I bolted right in after her. She was lying upon her face on the pile of grasses I had gathered for her bed. When she heard me enter she sprang to her feet like a tigress.

“I hate you!” she cried.

Coming from the brilliant light of the noonday sun into the semidarkness of the cave I could not see her features, and I was rather glad, for I disliked to think of the hate that I should have read there.

I never said a word to her at first. I just strode across the cave and grasped her by the wrists, and when she struggled, I put my arm around her so as to pinion her hands to her sides. She fought like a tigress, but I took my free hand and pushed her head back—I imagine that I had suddenly turned brute, that I had gone back a thousand million years, and was again a veritable cave man taking my mate by force—and then I kissed that beautiful mouth again and again.

“Dian,” I cried, shaking her roughly, “I love you. Can’t you understand that I love you? That I love you better than all else in this world or my own? That I am going to have you? That love like mine cannot be denied?”

I noticed that she lay very still in my arms now, and as my eyes became accustomed to the light I saw that she was smiling—a very contented, happy smile. I was thunderstruck. Then I realized that, very gently, she was trying to disengage her arms, and I loosened my grip upon them so that she could do so. Slowly they came up and stole about my neck, and then she drew my lips down to hers once more and held them there for a long time. At last she spoke.

“Why didn’t you do this at first, David? I have been waiting so long.”

“What!” I cried. “You said that you hated me!”

“Did you expect me to run into your arms, and say that I loved you before I knew that you loved me?” she asked.

“But I have told you right along that I love you,” I said. “Love speaks in acts,” she replied. “You could have made your mouth say what you wished it to say, but just now when you came and took me in your arms your heart spoke to mine in the language that a woman’s heart understands. What a silly man you are, David?”

“Then you haven’t hated me at all, Dian?” I asked.

“I have loved you always,” she whispered, “from the first moment that I saw you, although I did not know it until that time you struck down Hooja the Sly One, and then spurned me.”

“But I didn’t spurn you, dear,” I cried. “I didn’t know your ways—I doubt if I do now. It seems incredible that you could have reviled me so, and yet have cared for me all the time.”

“You might have known,” she said, “when I did not run away from you that it was not hate which chained me to you. While you were battling with Jubal, I could have run to the edge of the forest, and when I learned the outcome of the combat it would have been a simple thing to have eluded you and returned to my own people.”

“But Jubal’s brothers—and cousins—” I reminded her, “how about them?”

She smiled, and hid her face on my shoulder.

“I had to tell you something, David,” she whispered. “I must needs have some excuse for remaining near you.”

“You little sinner!” I exclaimed. “And you have caused me all this anguish for nothing!”

“I have suffered even more,” she answered simply, “for I thought that you did not love me, and I was helpless. I couldn’t come to you and demand that my love be returned, as you have just come to me. Just now when you went away hope went with you. I was wretched, terrified, miserable, and my heart was breaking. I wept, and I have not done that before since my mother died,” and now I saw that there was the moisture of tears about her eyes. It was near to making me cry myself when I thought of all that poor child had been through. Motherless and unprotected; hunted across a savage, primeval world by that hideous brute of a man; exposed to the attacks of the countless fearsome denizens of its mountains, its plains, and its jungles—it was a miracle that she had survived it all.

To me it was a revelation of the things my early forebears must have endured that the human race of the outer crust might survive. It made me very proud to think that I had won the love of such a woman. Of course she couldn’t read or write; there was nothing cultured or refined about her as you judge culture and refinement; but she was the essence of all that is best in woman, for she was good, and brave, and noble, and virtuous. And she was all these things in spite of the fact that their observance entailed suffering and danger and possible death.

How much easier it would have been to have gone to Jubal in the first place! She would have been his lawful mate. She would have been queen in her own land—and it meant just as much to the cave woman to be a queen in the Stone Age as it does to the woman of today to be a queen now; it’s all comparative glory any way you look at it, and if there were only half-naked savages on the outer crust today, you’d find that it would be considerable glory to be the wife a Dahomey chief.

I couldn’t help but compare Dian’s action with that of a splendid young woman I had known in New York—I mean splendid to look at and to talk to. She had been head over heels in love with a chum of mine—a clean, manly chap—but she had married a broken-down, disreputable old debauchee because he was a count in some dinky little European principality that was not even accorded a distinctive color by Rand McNally.

Yes, I was mighty proud of Dian.

After a time we decided to set out for Sari, as I was anxious to see Perry, and to know that all was right with him. I had told Dian about our plan of emancipating the human race of Pellucidar, and she was fairly wild over it. She said that if Dacor, her brother, would only return he could easily be king of Amoz, and that then he and Ghak could form an alliance. That would give us a flying start, for the Sarians and the Amozites were both very powerful tribes. Once they had been armed with swords, and bows and arrows, and trained in their use we were confident that they could overcome any tribe that seemed disinclined to join the great army of federated states with which we were planning to march upon the Mahars.

I explained the various destructive engines of war which Perry and I could construct after a little experimentation—gunpowder, rifles, cannon, and the like, and Dian would clap her hands, and throw her arms about my neck, and tell me what a wonderful thing I was. She was beginning to think that I was omnipotent although I really hadn’t done anything but talk—but that is the way with women when they love. Perry used to say that if a fellow was one-tenth as remarkable as his wife or mother thought him, he would have the world by the tail with a down-hill drag.

The first time we started for Sari I stepped into a nest of poisonous vipers before we reached the valley. A little fellow stung me on the ankle, and Dian made me come back to the cave. She said that I mustn’t exercise, or it might prove fatal—if it had been a full-grown snake that struck me she said, I wouldn’t have moved a single pace from the nest—I’d have died in my tracks, so virulent is the poison. As it was I must have been laid up for quite a while, though Dian’s poultices of herbs and leaves finally reduced the swelling and drew out the poison.

The episode proved most fortunate, however, as it gave me an idea which added a thousand-fold to the value of my arrows as missiles of offense and defense. As soon as I was able to be about again, I sought out some adult vipers of the species which had stung me, and having killed them, I extracted their virus, smearing it upon the tips of several arrows. Later I shot a hyaenodon with one of these, and though my arrow inflicted but a superficial flesh wound the beast crumpled in death almost immediately after he was hit.

We now set out once more for the land of the Sarians, and it was with feelings of sincere regret that we bade good-bye to our beautiful Garden of Eden, in the comparative peace and harmony of which we had lived the happiest moments of our lives. How long we had been there I did not know, for as I have told you, time had ceased to exist for me beneath that eternal noonday sun—it may have been an hour, or a month of earthly time; I do not know.

CHAPTER XV

BACK TO EARTH

We crossed the river and passed through the mountains beyond, and finally we came out upon a great level plain which stretched away as far as the eye could reach. I cannot tell you in what direction it stretched even if you would care to know, for all the while that I was within Pellucidar I never discovered any but local methods of indicating direction—there is no north, no south, no east, no west. Up is about the only direction which is well defined, and that, of course, is down to you of the outer crust. Since the sun neither rises nor sets there is no method of indicating direction beyond visible objects such as high mountains, forests, lakes, and seas.

The plain which lies beyond the white cliffs which flank the Darel Az upon the shore nearest the Mountains of the Clouds is about as near to any direction as any Pellucidarian can come. If you happen not to have heard of the Darel Az, or the white cliffs, or the Mountains of the Clouds you feel that there is something lacking, and long for the good old understandable northeast and southwest of the outer world.

We had barely entered the great plain when we discovered two enormous animals approaching us from a great distance. So far were they that we could not distinguish what manner of beasts they might be, but as they came closer, I saw that they were enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a hundred feet long, with tiny heads perched at the top of very long necks. Their heads must have been quite forty feet from the ground. The beasts moved very slowly—that is their action was slow—but their strides covered such a great distance that in reality they traveled considerably faster than a man walks.

As they drew still nearer we discovered that upon the back of each sat a human being. Then Dian knew what they were, though she never before had seen one.

“They are lidis from the land of the Thorians,” she cried. “Thoria lies at the outer verge of the Land of Awful Shadow. The Thorians alone of all the races of Pellucidar ride the lidi, for nowhere else than beside the dark country are they found.”

“What is the Land of Awful Shadow?” I asked.

“It is the land which lies beneath the Dead World,” replied Dian; “the Dead World which hangs forever between the sun and Pellucidar above the Land of Awful Shadow. It is the Dead World which makes the great shadow upon this portion of Pellucidar.”

I did not fully understand what she meant, nor am I sure that I do yet, for I have never been to that part of Pellucidar from which the Dead World is visible; but Perry says that it is the moon of Pellucidar—a tiny planet within a planet—and that it revolves around the earth’s axis coincidently with the earth, and thus is always above the same spot within Pellucidar.

I remember that Perry was very much excited when I told him about this Dead World, for he seemed to think that it explained the hitherto inexplicable phenomena of nutation and the precession of the equinoxes.

When the two upon the lidis had come quite close to us we saw that one was a man and the other a woman. The former had held up his two hands, palms toward us, in sign of peace, and I had answered him in kind, when he suddenly gave a cry of astonishment and pleasure, and slipping from his enormous mount ran forward toward Dian, throwing his arms about her.

In an instant I was white with jealousy, but only for an instant; since Dian quickly drew the man toward me, telling him that I was David, her mate.

“And this is my brother, Dacor the Strong One, David,” she said to me.

It appeared that the woman was Dacor’s mate. He had found none to his liking among the Sari, nor farther on until he had come to the land of the Thoria, and there he had found and fought for this very lovely Thorian maiden whom he was bringing back to his own people.

When they had heard our story and our plans they decided to accompany us to Sari, that Dacor and Ghak might come to an agreement relative to an alliance, as Dacor was quite as enthusiastic about the proposed annihilation of the Mahars and Sagoths as either Dian or I.

After a journey which was, for Pellucidar, quite uneventful, we came to the first of the Sarian villages which consists of between one and two hundred artificial caves cut into the face of a great cliff. Here to our immense delight, we found both Perry and Ghak. The old man was quite overcome at sight of me for he had long since given me up as dead.

When I introduced Dian as my wife, he didn’t quite know what to say, but he afterward remarked that with the pick of two worlds I could not have done better.

Ghak and Dacor reached a very amicable arrangement, and it was at a council of the head men of the various tribes of the Sari that the eventual form of government was tentatively agreed upon. Roughly, the various kingdoms were to remain virtually independent, but there was to be one great overlord, or emperor. It was decided that I should be the first of the dynasty of the emperors of Pellucidar.

We set about teaching the women how to make bows and arrows, and poison pouches. The young men hunted the vipers which provided the virus, and it was they who mined the iron ore, and fashioned the swords under Perry’s direction. Rapidly the fever spread from one tribe to another until representatives from nations so far distant that the Sarians had never even heard of them came in to take the oath of allegiance which we required, and to learn the art of making the new weapons and using them.

We sent our young men out as instructors to every nation of the federation, and the movement had reached colossal proportions before the Mahars discovered it. The first intimation they had was when three of their great slave caravans were annihilated in rapid succession. They could not comprehend that the lower orders had suddenly developed a power which rendered them really formidable.

In one of the skirmishes with slave caravans some of our Sarians took a number of Sagoth prisoners, and among them were two who had been members of the guards within the building where we had been confined at Phutra. They told us that the Mahars were frantic with rage when they discovered what had taken place in the cellars of the buildings. The Sagoths knew that something very terrible had befallen their masters, but the Mahars had been most careful to see that no inkling of the true nature of their vital affliction reached beyond their own race. How long it would take for the race to become extinct it was impossible even to guess; but that this must eventually happen seemed inevitable.

The Mahars had offered fabulous rewards for the capture of any one of us alive, and at the same time had threatened to inflict the direst punishment upon whomever should harm us. The Sagoths could not understand these seemingly paradoxical instructions, though their purpose was quite evident to me. The Mahars wanted the Great Secret, and they knew that we alone could deliver it to them.

Perry’s experiments in the manufacture of gunpowder and the fashioning of rifles had not progressed as rapidly as we had hoped—there was a whole lot about these two arts which Perry didn’t know. We were both assured that the solution of these problems would advance the cause of civilization within Pellucidar thousands of years at a single stroke. Then there were various other arts and sciences which we wished to introduce, but our combined knowledge of them did not embrace the mechanical details which alone could render them of commercial, or practical value.

“David,” said Perry, immediately after his latest failure to produce gunpowder that would even burn, “one of us must return to the outer world and bring back the information we lack. Here we have all the labor and materials for reproducing anything that ever has been produced above—what we lack is knowledge. Let us go back and get that knowledge in the shape of books—then this world will indeed be at our feet.”

And so it was decided that I should return in the prospector, which still lay upon the edge of the forest at the point where we had first penetrated to the surface of the inner world. Dian would not listen to any arrangement for my going which did not include her, and I was not sorry that she wished to accompany me, for I wanted her to see my world, and I wanted my world to see her.

With a large force of men we marched to the great iron mole, which Perry soon had hoisted into position with its nose pointed back toward the outer crust. He went over all the machinery carefully. He replenished the air tanks, and manufactured oil for the engine. At last everything was ready, and we were about to set out when our pickets, a long, thin line of which had surrounded our camp at all times, reported that a great body of what appeared to be Sagoths and Mahars were approaching from the direction of Phutra.

Dian and I were ready to embark, but I was anxious to witness the first clash between two fair-sized armies of the opposing races of Pellucidar. I realized that this was to mark the historic beginning of a mighty struggle for possession of a world, and as the first emperor of Pellucidar I felt that it was not alone my duty, but my right, to be in the thick of that momentous struggle.

As the opposing army approached we saw that there were many Mahars with the Sagoth troops—an indication of the vast importance which the dominant race placed upon the outcome of this campaign, for it was not customary with them to take active part in the sorties which their creatures made for slaves—the only form of warfare which they waged upon the lower orders.

Ghak and Dacor were both with us, having come primarily to view the prospector. I placed Ghak with some of his Sarians on the right of our battle line. Dacor took the left, while I commanded the center. Behind us I stationed a sufficient reserve under one of Ghak’s head men. The Sagoths advanced steadily with menacing spears, and I let them come until they were within easy bowshot before I gave the word to fire.

At the first volley of poison-tipped arrows the front ranks of the gorilla-men crumpled to the ground; but those behind charged over the prostrate forms of their comrades in a wild, mad rush to be upon us with their spears. A second volley stopped them for an instant, and then my reserve sprang through the openings in the firing line to engage them with sword and shield. The clumsy spears of the Sagoths were no match for the swords of the Sarian and Amozite, who turned the spear thrusts aside with their shields and leaped to close quarters with their lighter, handier weapons.

Ghak took his archers along the enemy’s flank, and while the swordsmen engaged them in front, he poured volley after volley into their unprotected left. The Mahars did little real fighting, and were more in the way than otherwise, though occasionally one of them would fasten its powerful jaw upon the arm or leg of a Sarian.

The battle did not last a great while, for when Dacor and I led our men in upon the Sagoth’s right with naked swords they were already so demoralized that they turned and fled before us. We pursued them for some time, taking many prisoners and recovering nearly a hundred slaves, among whom was Hooja the Sly One.

He told me that he had been captured while on his way to his own land; but that his life had been spared in hope that through him the Mahars would learn the whereabouts of their Great Secret. Ghak and I were inclined to think that the Sly One had been guiding this expedition to the land of Sari, where he thought that the book might be found in Perry’s possession; but we had no proof of this and so we took him in and treated him as one of us, although none liked him. And how he rewarded my generosity you will presently learn.

There were a number of Mahars among our prisoners, and so fearful were our own people of them that they would not approach them unless completely covered from the sight of the reptiles by a piece of skin. Even Dian shared the popular superstition regarding the evil effects of exposure to the eyes of angry Mahars, and though I laughed at her fears I was willing enough to humor them if it would relieve her apprehension in any degree, and so she sat apart from the prospector, near which the Mahars had been chained, while Perry and I again inspected every portion of the mechanism.

At last I took my place in the driving seat, and called to one of the men without to fetch Dian. It happened that Hooja stood quite close to the doorway of the prospector, so that it was he who, without my knowledge, went to bring her; but how he succeeded in accomplishing the fiendish thing he did, I cannot guess, unless there were others in the plot to aid him. Nor can I believe that, since all my people were loyal to me and would have made short work of Hooja had he suggested the heartless scheme, even had he had time to acquaint another with it. It was all done so quickly that I may only believe that it was the result of sudden impulse, aided by a number of, to Hooja, fortuitous circumstances occurring at precisely the right moment.

All I know is that it was Hooja who brought Dian to the prospector, still wrapped from head to toe in the skin of an enormous cave lion which covered her since the Mahar prisoners had been brought into camp. He deposited his burden in the seat beside me. I was all ready to get under way. The good-byes had been said. Perry had grasped my hand in the last, long farewell. I closed and barred the outer and inner doors, took my seat again at the driving mechanism, and pulled the starting lever.

As before on that far-gone night that had witnessed our first trial of the iron monster, there was a frightful roaring beneath us—the giant frame trembled and vibrated—there was a rush of sound as the loose earth passed up through the hollow space between the inner and outer jackets to be deposited in our wake. Once more the thing was off.

But on the instant of departure I was nearly thrown from my seat by the sudden lurching of the prospector. At first I did not realize what had happened, but presently it dawned upon me that just before entering the crust the towering body had fallen through its supporting scaffolding, and that instead of entering the ground vertically we were plunging into it at a different angle. Where it would bring us out upon the upper crust I could not even conjecture. And then I turned to note the effect of this strange experience upon Dian. She still sat shrouded in the great skin.

“Come, come,” I cried, laughing, “come out of your shell. No Mahar eyes can reach you here,” and I leaned over and snatched the lion skin from her. And then I shrank back upon my seat in utter horror.

The thing beneath the skin was not Dian—it was a hideous Mahar. Instantly I realized the trick that Hooja had played upon me, and the purpose of it. Rid of me, forever as he doubtless thought, Dian would be at his mercy. Frantically I tore at the steering wheel in an effort to turn the prospector back toward Pellucidar; but, as on that other occasion, I could not budge the thing a hair.

It is needless to recount the horrors or the monotony of that journey. It varied but little from the former one which had brought us from the outer to the inner world. Because of the angle at which we had entered the ground the trip required nearly a day longer, and brought me out here upon the sand of the Sahara instead of in the United States as I had hoped.

For months I have been waiting here for a white man to come. I dared not leave the prospector for fear I should never be able to find it again—the shifting sands of the desert would soon cover it, and then my only hope of returning to my Dian and her Pellucidar would be gone forever.

That I ever shall see her again seems but remotely possible, for how may I know upon what part of Pellucidar my return journey may terminate—and how, without a north or south or an east or a west may I hope ever to find my way across that vast world to the tiny spot where my lost love lies grieving for me?

That is the story as David Innes told it to me in the goat-skin tent upon the rim of the great Sahara Desert. The next day he took me out to see the prospector—it was precisely as he had described it. So huge was it that it could have been brought to this inaccessible part of the world by no means of transportation that existed there—it could only have come in the way that David Innes said it came—up through the crust of the earth from the inner world of Pellucidar.

I spent a week with him, and then, abandoned my lion hunt, returned directly to the coast and hurried to London where I purchased a great quantity of stuff which he wished to take back to Pellucidar with him. There were books, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, cameras, chemicals, telephones, telegraph instruments, wire, tool and more books—books upon every subject under the sun. He said he wanted a library with which they could reproduce the wonders of the twentieth century in the Stone Age and if quantity counts for anything I got it for him.

I took the things back to Algeria myself, and accompanied them to the end of the railroad; but from here I was recalled to America upon important business. However, I was able to employ a very trustworthy man to take charge of the caravan—the same guide, in fact, who had accompanied me on the previous trip into the Sahara—and after writing a long letter to Innes in which I gave him my American address, I saw the expedition head south.

Among the other things which I sent to Innes was over five hundred miles of double, insulated wire of a very fine gauge. I had it packed on a special reel at his suggestion, as it was his idea that he could fasten one end here before he left and by paying it out through the end of the prospector lay a telegraph line between the outer and inner worlds. In my letter I told him to be sure to mark the terminus of the line very plainly with a high cairn, in case I was not able to reach him before he set out, so that I might easily find and communicate with him should he be so fortunate as to reach Pellucidar.

I received several letters from him after I returned to America—in fact he took advantage of every northward-passing caravan to drop me word of some sort. His last letter was written the day before he intended to depart. Here it is.

My Dear Friend:

Tomorrow I shall set out in quest of Pellucidar and Dian. That is if the Arabs don’t get me. They have been very nasty of late. I don’t know the cause, but on two occasions they have threatened my life. One, more friendly than the rest, told me today that they intended attacking me tonight. It would be unfortunate should anything of that sort happen now that I am so nearly ready to depart.

However, maybe I will be as well off, for the nearer the hour approaches, the slenderer my chances for success appear.

Here is the friendly Arab who is to take this letter north for me, so good-bye, and God bless you for your kindness to me.

The Arab tells me to hurry, for he sees a cloud of sand to the south—he thinks it is the party coming to murder me, and he doesn’t want to be found with me. So goodbye again.

Yours,

David Innes.

A year later found me at the end of the railroad once more, headed for the spot where I had left Innes. My first disappointment was when I discovered that my old guide had died within a few weeks of my return, nor could I find any member of my former party who could lead me to the same spot.

For months I searched that scorching land, interviewing countless desert sheiks in the hope that at last I might find one who had heard of Innes and his wonderful iron mole. Constantly my eyes scanned the blinding waste of sand for the ricky cairn beneath which I was to find the wires leading to Pellucidar—but always was I unsuccessful.

And always do these awful questions harass me when I think of David Innes and his strange adventures.

Did the Arabs murder him, after all, just on the eve of his departure? Or, did he again turn the nose of his iron monster toward the inner world? Did he reach it, or lies he somewhere buried in the heart of the great crust? And if he did come again to Pellucidar was it to break through into the bottom of one of her great island seas, or among some savage race far, far from the land of his heart’s desire?

Does the answer lie somewhere upon the bosom of the broad Sahara, at the end of two tiny wires, hidden beneath a lost cairn? I wonder.

PELLUCIDAR, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Originally published in 1914.

PROLOGUE

Several years had elapsed since I had found the opportunity to do any big-game hunting; for at last I had my plans almost perfected for a return to my old stamping-grounds in northern Africa, where in other days I had had excellent sport in pursuit of the king of beasts.

The date of my departure had been set; I was to leave in two weeks. No schoolboy counting the lagging hours that must pass before the beginning of “long vacation” released him to the delirious joys of the summer camp could have been filled with greater impatience or keener anticipation.

And then came a letter that started me for Africa twelve days ahead of my schedule.

Often am I in receipt of letters from strangers who have found something in a story of mine to commend or to condemn. My interest in this department of my correspondence is ever fresh. I opened this particular letter with all the zest of pleasurable anticipation with which I had opened so many others. The post-mark (Algiers) had aroused my interest and curiosity, especially at this time, since it was Algiers that was presently to witness the termination of my coming sea voyage in search of sport and adventure.

Before the reading of that letter was completed lions and lion-hunting had fled my thoughts, and I was in a state of excitement bordering upon frenzy.

It—well, read it yourself, and see if you, too, do not find food for frantic conjecture, for tantalizing doubts, and for a great hope.

Here it is:

* * * *

DEAR SIR:

I think that I have run across one of the most remarkable coincidences in modern literature. But let me start at the beginning:

I am, by profession, a wanderer upon the face of the earth. I have no trade—nor any other occupation.

My father bequeathed me a competency; some remoter ancestors lust to roam. I have combined the two and invested them carefully and without extravagance.

I became interested in your story, At the Earth’s Core, not so much because of the probability of the tale as of a great and abiding wonder that people should be paid real money for writing such impossible trash. You will pardon my candor, but it is necessary that you understand my mental attitude toward this particular story—that you may credit that which follows.

Shortly thereafter I started for the Sahara in search of a rather rare species of antelope that is to be found only occasionally within a limited area at a certain season of the year. My chase led me far from the haunts of man.

It was a fruitless search, however, in so far as antelope is concerned; but one night as I lay courting sleep at the edge of a little cluster of date-palms that surround an ancient well in the midst of the arid, shifting sands, I suddenly became conscious of a strange sound coming apparently from the earth beneath my head.

It was an intermittent ticking!

No reptile or insect with which I am familiar reproduces any such notes. I lay for an hour—listening intently.

At last my curiosity got the better of me. I arose, lighted my lamp and commenced to investigate.

My bedding lay upon a rug stretched directly upon the warm sand. The noise appeared to be coming from beneath the rug. I raised it, but found nothing—yet, at intervals, the sound continued.

I dug into the sand with the point of my hunting-knife. A few inches below the surface of the sand I encountered a solid substance that had the feel of wood beneath the sharp steel.

Excavating about it, I unearthed a small wooden box. From this receptacle issued the strange sound that I had heard.

How had it come here?

What did it contain?

In attempting to lift it from its burying place I discovered that it seemed to be held fast by means of a very small insulated cable running farther into the sand beneath it.

My first impulse was to drag the thing loose by main strength; but fortunately I thought better of this and fell to examining the box. I soon saw that it was covered by a hinged lid, which was held closed by a simple screwhook and eye.

It took but a moment to loosen this and raise the cover, when, to my utter astonishment, I discovered an ordinary telegraph instrument clicking away within.

“What in the world,” thought I, “is this thing doing here?”

That it was a French military instrument was my first guess; but really there didn’t seem much likelihood that this was the correct explanation, when one took into account the loneliness and remoteness of the spot.

As I sat gazing at my remarkable find, which was ticking and clicking away there in the silence of the desert night, trying to convey some message which I was unable to interpret, my eyes fell upon a bit of paper lying in the bottom of the box beside the instrument. I picked it up and examined it. Upon it were written but two letters:

D. I.

They meant nothing to me then. I was baffled.

Once, in an interval of silence upon the part of the receiving instrument, I moved the sending-key up and down a few times. Instantly the receiving mechanism commenced to work frantically.

I tried to recall something of the Morse Code, with which I had played as a little boy—but time had obliterated it from my memory. I became almost frantic as I let my imagination run riot among the possibilities for which this clicking instrument might stand.

Some poor devil at the unknown other end might be in dire need of succor. The very franticness of the instrument’s wild clashing betokened something of the kind.

And there sat I, powerless to interpret, and so powerless to help!

It was then that the inspiration came to me. In a flash there leaped to my mind the closing paragraphs of the story I had read in the club at Algiers:

Does the answer lie somewhere upon the bosom of the broad Sahara, at the ends of two tiny wires, hidden beneath a lost cairn?

The idea seemed preposterous. Experience and intelligence combined to assure me that there could be no slightest grain of truth or possibility in your wild tale—it was fiction pure and simple.

And yet where WERE the other ends of those wires?

What was this instrument—ticking away here in the great Sahara—but a travesty upon the possible!

Would I have believed in it had I not seen it with my own eyes?

And the initials—D. I.—upon the slip of paper!

David’s initials were these—David Innes.

I smiled at my imaginings. I ridiculed the assumption that there was an inner world and that these wires led downward through the earth’s crust to the surface of Pellucidar. And yet—

Well, I sat there all night, listening to that tantalizing clicking, now and then moving the sending-key just to let the other end know that the instrument had been discovered. In the morning, after carefully returning the box to its hole and covering it over with sand, I called my servants about me, snatched a hurried breakfast, mounted my horse, and started upon a forced march for Algiers.

I arrived here today. In writing you this letter I feel that I am making a fool of myself.

There is no David Innes.

There is no Dian the Beautiful.

There is no world within a world.

Pellucidar is but a realm of your imagination—nothing more.

BUT—

The incident of the finding of that buried telegraph instrument upon the lonely Sahara is little short of uncanny, in view of your story of the adventures of David Innes.

I have called it one of the most remarkable coincidences in modern fiction. I called it literature before, but—again pardon my candor—your story is not.

And now—why am I writing you?

Heaven knows, unless it is that the persistent clicking of that unfathomable enigma out there in the vast silences of the Sahara has so wrought upon my nerves that reason refuses longer to function sanely.

I cannot hear it now, yet I know that far away to the south, all alone beneath the sands, it is still pounding out its vain, frantic appeal.

It is maddening.

It is your fault—I want you to release me from it.

Cable me at once, at my expense, that there was no basis of fact for your story, At the Earth’s Core.

Very respectfully yours,

COGDON NESTOR,

—— and —— Club,

Algiers.

June 1st, —.

* * * *

Ten minutes after reading this letter I had cabled Mr. Nestor as follows:

Story true. Await me Algiers.

As fast as train and boat would carry me, I sped toward my destination. For all those dragging days my mind was a whirl of mad conjecture, of frantic hope, of numbing fear.

The finding of the telegraph-instrument practically assured me that David Innes had driven Perry’s iron mole back through the earth’s crust to the buried world of Pellucidar; but what adventures had befallen him since his return?

Had he found Dian the Beautiful, his half-savage mate, safe among his friends, or had Hooja the Sly One succeeded in his nefarious schemes to abduct her?

Did Abner Perry, the lovable old inventor and paleontologist, still live?

Had the federated tribes of Pellucidar succeeded in overthrowing the mighty Mahars, the dominant race of reptilian monsters, and their fierce, gorilla-like soldiery, the savage Sagoths?

I must admit that I was in a state bordering upon nervous prostration when I entered thec— and —— Club, in Algiers, and inquired for Mr. Nestor. A moment later I was ushered into his presence, to find myself clasping hands with the sort of chap that the world holds only too few of.

He was a tall, smooth-faced man of about thirty, clean-cut, straight, and strong, and weather-tanned to the hue of a desert Arab. I liked him immensely from the first, and I hope that after our three months together in the desert country—three months not entirely lacking in adventure—he found that a man may be a writer of “impossible trash” and yet have some redeeming qualities.

The day following my arrival at Algiers we left for the south, Nestor having made all arrangements in advance, guessing, as he naturally did, that I could be coming to Africa for but a single purpose—to hasten at once to the buried telegraph-instrument and wrest its secret from it.

In addition to our native servants, we took along an English telegraph-operator named Frank Downes. Nothing of interest enlivened our journey by rail and caravan till we came to the cluster of date-palms about the ancient well upon the rim of the Sahara.

It was the very spot at which I first had seen David Innes. If he had ever raised a cairn above the telegraph instrument no sign of it remained now. Had it not been for the chance that caused Cogdon Nestor to throw down his sleeping rug directly over the hidden instrument, it might still be clicking there unheard—and this story still unwritten.

When we reached the spot and unearthed the little box the instrument was quiet, nor did repeated attempts upon the part of our telegrapher succeed in winning a response from the other end of the line. After several days of futile endeavor to raise Pellucidar, we had begun to despair. I was as positive that the other end of that little cable protruded through the surface of the inner world as I am that I sit here today in my study—when about midnight of the fourth day I was awakened by the sound of the instrument.

Leaping to my feet I grasped Downes roughly by the neck and dragged him out of his blankets. He didn’t need to be told what caused my excitement, for the instant he was awake he, too, heard the long-hoped for click, and with a whoop of delight pounced upon the instrument.

Nestor was on his feet almost as soon as I. The three of us huddled about that little box as if our lives depended upon the message it had for us.

Downes interrupted the clicking with his sending-key. The noise of the receiver stopped instantly.

“Ask who it is, Downes,” I directed.

He did so, and while we awaited the Englishman’s translation of the reply, I doubt if either Nestor or I breathed.

“He says he’s David Innes,” said Downes. “He wants to know who we are.”

“Tell him,” said I; “and that we want to know how he is—and all that has befallen him since I last saw him.”

For two months I talked with David Innes almost every day, and as Downes translated, either Nestor or I took notes. From these, arranged in chronological order, I have set down the following account of the further adventures of David Innes at the earth’s core, practically in his own words.

CHAPTER I

LOST ON PELLUCIDAR

The Arabs, of whom I wrote you at the end of my last letter (Innes began), and whom I thought to be enemies intent only upon murdering me, proved to be exceedingly friendly—they were searching for the very band of marauders that had threatened my existence. The huge rhamphorhynchus-like reptile that I had brought back with me from the inner world—the ugly Mahar that Hooja the Sly One had substituted for my dear Dian at the moment of my departure—filled them with wonder and with awe.

Nor less so did the mighty subterranean prospector which had carried me to Pellucidar and back again, and which lay out in the desert about two miles from my camp.

With their help I managed to get the unwieldy tons of its great bulk into a vertical position—the nose deep in a hole we had dug in the sand and the rest of it supported by the trunks of date-palms cut for the purpose.

It was a mighty engineering job with only wild Arabs and their wilder mounts to do the work of an electric crane—but finally it was completed, and I was ready for departure.

For some time I hesitated to take the Mahar back with me. She had been docile and quiet ever since she had discovered herself virtually a prisoner aboard the “iron mole.” It had been, of course, impossible for me to communicate with her since she had no auditory organs and I no knowledge of her fourth-dimension, sixth-sense method of communication.

Naturally I am kind-hearted, and so I found it beyond me to leave even this hateful and repulsive thing alone in a strange and hostile world. The result was that when I entered the iron mole I took her with me.

That she knew that we were about to return to Pellucidar was evident, for immediately her manner changed from that of habitual gloom that had pervaded her, to an almost human expression of contentment and delight.

Our trip through the earth’s crust was but a repetition of my two former journeys between the inner and the outer worlds. This time, however, I imagine that we must have maintained a more nearly perpendicular course, for we accomplished the journey in a few minutes’ less time than upon the occasion of my first journey through the five-hundred-mile crust. Just a trifle less than seventy-two hours after our departure into the sands of the Sahara, we broke through the surface of Pellucidar.

Fortune once again favored me by the slightest of margins, for when I opened the door in the prospector’s outer jacket I saw that we had missed coming up through the bottom of an ocean by but a few hundred yards.

The aspect of the surrounding country was entirely unfamiliar to me—I had no conception of precisely where I was upon the one hundred and twenty-four million square miles of Pellucidar’s vast land surface.

The perpetual midday sun poured down its torrid rays from zenith, as it had done since the beginning of Pellucidarian time—as it would continue to do to the end of it. Before me, across the wide sea, the weird, horizonless seascape folded gently upward to meet the sky until it lost itself to view in the azure depths of distance far above the level of my eyes.

How strange it looked! How vastly different from the flat and puny area of the circumscribed vision of the dweller upon the outer crust!

I was lost. Though I wandered ceaselessly throughout a lifetime, I might never discover the whereabouts of my former friends of this strange and savage world. Never again might I see dear old Perry, nor Ghak the Hairy One, nor Dacor the Strong One, nor that other infinitely precious one—my sweet and noble mate, Dian the Beautiful!

But even so I was glad to tread once more the surface of Pellucidar. Mysterious and terrible, grotesque and savage though she is in many of her aspects, I can not but love her. Her very savagery appealed to me, for it is the savagery of unspoiled Nature.

The magnificence of her tropic beauties enthralled me. Her mighty land areas breathed unfettered freedom.

Her untracked oceans, whispering of virgin wonders unsullied by the eye of man, beckoned me out upon their restless bosoms.

Not for an instant did I regret the world of my nativity. I was in Pellucidar. I was home. And I was content.

As I stood dreaming beside the giant thing that had brought me safely through the earth’s crust, my traveling companion, the hideous Mahar, emerged from the interior of the prospector and stood beside me. For a long time she remained motionless.

What thoughts were passing through the convolutions of her reptilian brain?

I do not know.

She was a member of the dominant race of Pellucidar. By a strange freak of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason in that world of anomalies.

To her, creatures such as I were of a lower order. As Perry had discovered among the writings of her kind in the buried city of Phutra, it was still an open question among the Mahars as to whether man possessed means of intelligent communication or the power of reason.

Her kind believed that in the center of all-pervading solidity there was a single, vast, spherical cavity, which was Pellucidar. This cavity had been left there for the sole purpose of providing a place for the creation and propagation of the Mahar race. Everything within it had been put there for the uses of the Mahar.

I wondered what this particular Mahar might think now. I found pleasure in speculating upon just what the effect had been upon her of passing through the earth’s crust, and coming out into a world that one of even less intelligence than the great Mahars could easily see was a different world from her own Pellucidar.

What had she thought of the outer world’s tiny sun?

What had been the effect upon her of the moon and myriad stars of the clear African nights?

How had she explained them?

With what sensations of awe must she first have watched the sun moving slowly across the heavens to disappear at last beneath the western horizon, leaving in his wake that which the Mahar had never before witnessed—the darkness of night? For upon Pellucidar there is no night. The stationary sun hangs forever in the center of the Pellucidarian sky—directly overhead.

Then, too, she must have been impressed by the wondrous mechanism of the prospector which had bored its way from world to world and back again. And that it had been driven by a rational being must also have occurred to her.

Too, she had seen me conversing with other men upon the earth’s surface. She had seen the arrival of the caravan of books and arms, and ammunition, and the balance of the heterogeneous collection which I had crammed into the cabin of the iron mole for transportation to Pellucidar.

She had seen all these evidences of a civilization and brain-power transcending in scientific achievement anything that her race had produced; nor once had she seen a creature of her own kind.

There could have been but a single deduction in the mind of the Mahar—there were other worlds than Pellucidar, and the gilak was a rational being.

Now the creature at my side was creeping slowly toward the near-by sea. At my hip hung a long-barreled six-shooter—somehow I had been unable to find the same sensation of security in the newfangled automatics that had been perfected since my first departure from the outer world—and in my hand was a heavy express rifle.

I could have shot the Mahar with ease, for I knew intuitively that she was escaping—but I did not.

I felt that if she could return to her own kind with the story of her adventures, the position of the human race within Pellucidar would be advanced immensely at a single stride, for at once man would take his proper place in the considerations of the reptilia.

At the edge of the sea the creature paused and looked back at me. Then she slid sinuously into the surf.

For several minutes I saw no more of her as she luxuriated in the cool depths.

Then a hundred yards from shore she rose and there for another short while she floated upon the surface.

Finally she spread her giant wings, flapped them vigorously a score of times and rose above the blue sea. A single time she circled far aloft—and then straight as an arrow she sped away.

I watched her until the distant haze enveloped her and she had disappeared. I was alone.

My first concern was to discover where within Pellucidar I might be—and in what direction lay the land of the Sarians where Ghak the Hairy One ruled.

But how was I to guess in which direction lay Sari?

And if I set out to search—what then?

Could I find my way back to the prospector with its priceless freight of books, firearms, ammunition, scientific instruments, and still more books—its great library of reference works upon every conceivable branch of applied sciences?

And if I could not, of what value was all this vast storehouse of potential civilization and progress to be to the world of my adoption?

Upon the other hand, if I remained here alone with it, what could I accomplish single-handed?

Nothing.

But where there was no east, no west, no north, no south, no stars, no moon, and only a stationary midday sun, how was I to find my way back to this spot should ever I get out of sight of it?

I didn’t know.

For a long time I stood buried in deep thought, when it occurred to me to try out one of the compasses I had brought and ascertain if it remained steadily fixed upon an unvarying pole. I reentered the prospector and fetched a compass without.

Moving a considerable distance from the prospector that the needle might not be influenced by its great bulk of iron and steel I turned the delicate instrument about in every direction.

Always and steadily the needle remained rigidly fixed upon a point straight out to sea, apparently pointing toward a large island some ten or twenty miles distant. This then should be north.

I drew my note-book from my pocket and made a careful topographical sketch of the locality within the range of my vision. Due north lay the island, far out upon the shimmering sea.

The spot I had chosen for my observations was the top of a large, flat boulder which rose six or eight feet above the turf. This spot I called Greenwich. The boulder was the “Royal Observatory.”

I had made a start! I cannot tell you what a sense of relief was imparted to me by the simple fact that there was at least one spot within Pellucidar with a familiar name and a place upon a map.

It was with almost childish joy that I made a little circle in my note-book and traced the word Greenwich beside it.

Now I felt I might start out upon my search with some assurance of finding my way back again to the prospector.

I decided that at first I would travel directly south in the hope that I might in that direction find some familiar landmark. It was as good a direction as any. This much at least might be said of it.

Among the many other things I had brought from the outer world were a number of pedometers. I slipped three of these into my pockets with the idea that I might arrive at a more or less accurate mean from the registrations of them all.

On my map I would register so many paces south, so many east, so many west, and so on. When I was ready to return I would then do so by any route that I might choose.

I also strapped a considerable quantity of ammunition across my shoulders, pocketed some matches, and hooked an aluminum fry-pan and a small stew-kettle of the same metal to my belt.

I was ready—ready to go forth and explore a world!

Ready to search a land area of 124,110,000 square miles for my friends, my incomparable mate, and good old Perry!

And so, after locking the door in the outer shell of the prospector, I set out upon my quest. Due south I traveled, across lovely valleys thick-dotted with grazing herds.

Through dense primeval forests I forced my way and up the slopes of mighty mountains searching for a pass to their farther sides.

Ibex and musk-sheep fell before my good old revolver, so that I lacked not for food in the higher altitudes. The forests and the plains gave plentifully of fruits and wild birds, antelope, aurochsen, and elk.

Occasionally, for the larger game animals and the gigantic beasts of prey, I used my express rifle, but for the most part the revolver filled all my needs.

There were times, too, when faced by a mighty cave bear, a saber-toothed tiger, or huge felis spelaea, black-maned and terrible, even my powerful rifle seemed pitifully inadequate—but fortune favored me so that I passed unscathed through adventures that even the recollection of causes the short hairs to bristle at the nape of my neck.

How long I wandered toward the south I do not know, for shortly after I left the prospector something went wrong with my watch, and I was again at the mercy of the baffling timelessness of Pellucidar, forging steadily ahead beneath the great, motionless sun which hangs eternally at noon.

I ate many times, however, so that days must have elapsed, possibly months with no familiar landscape rewarding my eager eyes.

I saw no men nor signs of men. Nor is this strange, for Pellucidar, in its land area, is immense, while the human race there is very young and consequently far from numerous.

Doubtless upon that long search mine was the first human foot to touch the soil in many places—mine the first human eye to rest upon the gorgeous wonders of the landscape.

It was a staggering thought. I could not but dwell upon it often as I made my lonely way through this virgin world. Then, quite suddenly, one day I stepped out of the peace of manless primality into the presence of man—and peace was gone.

It happened thus:

I had been following a ravine downward out of a chain of lofty hills and had paused at its mouth to view the lovely little valley that lay before me. At one side was tangled wood, while straight ahead a river wound peacefully along parallel to the cliffs in which the hills terminated at the valley’s edge.

Presently, as I stood enjoying the lovely scene, as insatiate for Nature’s wonders as if I had not looked upon similar landscapes countless times, a sound of shouting broke from the direction of the woods. That the harsh, discordant notes rose from the throats of men I could not doubt.

I slipped behind a large boulder near the mouth of the ravine and waited. I could hear the crashing of underbrush in the forest, and I guessed that whoever came came quickly—pursued and pursuers, doubtless.

In a short time some hunted animal would break into view, and a moment later a score of half-naked savages would come leaping after with spears or club or great stone-knives.

I had seen the thing so many times during my life within Pellucidar that I felt that I could anticipate to a nicety precisely what I was about to witness. I hoped that the hunters would prove friendly and be able to direct me toward Sari.

Even as I was thinking these thoughts the quarry emerged from the forest. But it was no terrified four-footed beast. Instead, what I saw was an old man—a terrified old man!

Staggering feebly and hopelessly from what must have been some very terrible fate, if one could judge from the horrified expressions he continually cast behind him toward the wood, he came stumbling on in my direction.

He had covered but a short distance from the forest when I beheld the first of his pursuers—a Sagoth, one of those grim and terrible gorilla-men who guard the mighty Mahars in their buried cities, faring forth from time to time upon slave-raiding or punitive expeditions against the human race of Pellucidar, of whom the dominant race of the inner world think as we think of the bison or the wild sheep of our own world.

Close behind the foremost Sagoth came others until a full dozen raced, shouting after the terror-stricken old man. They would be upon him shortly, that was plain.

One of them was rapidly overhauling him, his back-thrown spear-arm testifying to his purpose.

And then, quite with the suddenness of an unexpected blow, I realized a past familiarity with the gait and carriage of the fugitive.

Simultaneously there swept over me the staggering fact that the old man was—PERRY! That he was about to die before my very eyes with no hope that I could reach him in time to avert the awful catastrophe—for to me it meant a real catastrophe!

Perry was my best friend.

Dian, of course, I looked upon as more than friend. She was my mate—a part of me.

I had entirely forgotten the rifle in my hand and the revolvers at my belt; one does not readily synchronize his thoughts with the stone age and the twentieth century simultaneously.

Now from past habit I still thought in the stone age, and in my thoughts of the stone age there were no thoughts of firearms.

The fellow was almost upon Perry when the feel of the gun in my hand awoke me from the lethargy of terror that had gripped me. From behind my boulder I threw up the heavy express rifle—a mighty engine of destruction that might bring down a cave bear or a mammoth at a single shot—and let drive at the Sagoth’s broad, hairy breast.

At the sound of the shot he stopped stock-still. His spear dropped from his hand.

Then he lunged forward upon his face.

The effect upon the others was little less remarkable. Perry alone could have possibly guessed the meaning of the loud report or explained its connection with the sudden collapse of the Sagoth. The other gorilla-men halted for but an instant. Then with renewed shrieks of rage they sprang forward to finish Perry.

At the same time I stepped from behind my boulder, drawing one of my revolvers that I might conserve the more precious ammunition of the express rifle. Quickly I fired again with the lesser weapon.

Then it was that all eyes were directed toward me. Another Sagoth fell to the bullet from the revolver; but it did not stop his companions. They were out for revenge as well as blood now, and they meant to have both.

As I ran forward toward Perry I fired four more shots, dropping three of our antagonists. Then at last the remaining seven wavered. It was too much for them, this roaring death that leaped, invisible, upon them from a great distance.

As they hesitated I reached Perry’s side. I have never seen such an expression upon any man’s face as that upon Perry’s when he recognized me. I have no words wherewith to describe it. There was not time to talk then—scarce for a greeting. I thrust the full, loaded revolver into his hand, fired the last shot in my own, and reloaded. There were but six Sagoths left then.

They started toward us once more, though I could see that they were terrified probably as much by the noise of the guns as by their effects. They never reached us. Half-way the three that remained turned and fled, and we let them go.

The last we saw of them they were disappearing into the tangled undergrowth of the forest. And then Perry turned and threw his arms about my neck and, burying his old face upon my shoulder, wept like a child.

CHAPTER II

TRAVELING WITH TERROR

We made camp there beside the peaceful river. There Perry told me all that had befallen him since I had departed for the outer crust.

It seemed that Hooja had made it appear that I had intentionally left Dian behind, and that I did not purpose ever returning to Pellucidar. He told them that I was of another world and that I had tired of this and of its inhabitants.

To Dian he had explained that I had a mate in the world to which I was returning; that I had never intended taking Dian the Beautiful back with me; and that she had seen the last of me.

Shortly afterward Dian had disappeared from the camp, nor had Perry seen or heard aught of her since.

He had no conception of the time that had elapsed since I had departed, but guessed that many years had dragged their slow way into the past.

Hooja, too, had disappeared very soon after Dian had left. The Sarians, under Ghak the Hairy One, and the Amozites under Dacor the Strong One, Dian’s brother, had fallen out over my supposed defection, for Ghak would not believe that I had thus treacherously deceived and deserted them.

The result had been that these two powerful tribes had fallen upon one another with the new weapons that Perry and I had taught them to make and to use. Other tribes of the new federation took sides with the original disputants or set up petty revolutions of their own.

The result was the total demolition of the work we had so well started.

Taking advantage of the tribal war, the Mahars had gathered their Sagoths in force and fallen upon one tribe after another in rapid succession, wreaking awful havoc among them and reducing them for the most part to as pitiable a state of terror as that from which we had raised them.

Alone of all the once-mighty federation the Sarians and the Amozites with a few other tribes continued to maintain their defiance of the Mahars; but these tribes were still divided among themselves, nor had it seemed at all probable to Perry when he had last been among them that any attempt at re-amalgamation would be made.

“And thus, your majesty,” he concluded, “has faded back into the oblivion of the Stone Age our wondrous dream and with it has gone the First Empire of Pellucidar.”

We both had to smile at the use of my royal title, yet I was indeed still “Emperor of Pellucidar,” and some day I meant to rebuild what the vile act of the treacherous Hooja had torn down.

But first I would find my empress. To me she was worth forty empires.

“Have you no clue as to the whereabouts of Dian?” I asked.

“None whatever,” replied Perry. “It was in search of her that I came to the pretty pass in which you discovered me, and from which, David, you saved me.

“I knew perfectly well that you had not intentionally deserted either Dian or Pellucidar. I guessed that in some way Hooja the Sly One was at the bottom of the matter, and I determined to go to Amoz, where I guessed that Dian might come to the protection of her brother, and do my utmost to convince her, and through her Dacor the Strong One, that we had all been victims of a treacherous plot to which you were no party.

“I came to Amoz after a most trying and terrible journey, only to find that Dian was not among her brother’s people and that they knew naught of her whereabouts.

“Dacor, I am sure, wanted to be fair and just, but so great were his grief and anger over the disappearance of his sister that he could not listen to reason, but kept repeating time and again that only your return to Pellucidar could prove the honesty of your intentions.

“Then came a stranger from another tribe, sent I am sure at the instigation of Hooja. He so turned the Amozites against me that I was forced to flee their country to escape assassination.

“In attempting to return to Sari I became lost, and then the Sagoths discovered me. For a long time I eluded them, hiding in caves and wading in rivers to throw them off my trail.

“I lived on nuts and fruits and the edible roots that chance threw in my way.

“I traveled on and on, in what directions I could not even guess; and at last I could elude them no longer and the end came as I had long foreseen that it would come, except that I had not foreseen that you would be there to save me.”

We rested in our camp until Perry had regained sufficient strength to travel again. We planned much, rebuilding all our shattered air-castles; but above all we planned most to find Dian.

I could not believe that she was dead, yet where she might be in this savage world, and under what frightful conditions she might be living, I could not guess.

When Perry was rested we returned to the prospector, where he fitted himself out fully like a civilized human being—under-clothing, socks, shoes, khaki jacket and breeches and good, substantial puttees.

When I had come upon him he was clothed in rough sadak sandals, a gee-string and a tunic fashioned from the shaggy hide of a thag. Now he wore real clothing again for the first time since the ape-folk had stripped us of our apparel that long-gone day that had witnessed our advent within Pellucidar.

With a bandoleer of cartridges across his shoulder, two six-shooters at his hips, and a rifle in his hand he was a much rejuvenated Perry.

Indeed he was quite a different person altogether from the rather shaky old man who had entered the prospector with me ten or eleven years before, for the trial trip that had plunged us into such wondrous adventures and into such a strange and hitherto undreamed-of-world.

Now he was straight and active. His muscles, almost atrophied from disuse in his former life, had filled out.

He was still an old man of course, but instead of appearing ten years older than he really was, as he had when we left the outer world, he now appeared about ten years younger. The wild, free life of Pellucidar had worked wonders for him.

Well, it must need have done so or killed him, for a man of Perry’s former physical condition could not long have survived the dangers and rigors of the primitive life of the inner world.

Perry had been greatly interested in my map and in the “royal observatory” at Greenwich. By use of the pedometers we had retraced our way to the prospector with ease and accuracy.

Now that we were ready to set out again we decided to follow a different route on the chance that it might lead us into more familiar territory.

I shall not weary you with a repetition of the countless adventures of our long search. Encounters with wild beasts of gigantic size were of almost daily occurrence; but with our deadly express rifles we ran comparatively little risk when one recalls that previously we had both traversed this world of frightful dangers inadequately armed with crude, primitive weapons and all but naked.

We ate and slept many times—so many that we lost count—and so I do not know how long we roamed, though our map shows the distances and directions quite accurately. We must have covered a great many thousand square miles of territory, and yet we had seen nothing in the way of a familiar landmark, when from the heights of a mountain-range we were crossing I descried far in the distance great masses of billowing clouds.

Now clouds are practically unknown in the skies of Pellucidar. The moment that my eyes rested upon them my heart leaped. I seized Perry’s arm and, pointing toward the horizonless distance, shouted:

“The Mountains of the Clouds!”

“They lie close to Phutra, and the country of our worst enemies, the Mahars,” Perry remonstrated.

“I know it,” I replied, “but they give us a starting-point from which to prosecute our search intelligently. They are at least a familiar landmark.

“They tell us that we are upon the right trail and not wandering far in the wrong direction.

“Furthermore, close to the Mountains of the Clouds dwells a good friend, Ja the Mezop. You did not know him, but you know all that he did for me and all that he will gladly do to aid me.

“At least he can direct us upon the right direction toward Sari.”

“The Mountains of the Clouds constitute a mighty range,” replied Perry. “They must cover an enormous territory. How are you to find your friend in all the great country that is visible from their rugged flanks?”

“Easily,” I answered him, “for Ja gave me minute directions. I recall almost his exact words:

“‘You need merely come to the foot of the highest peak of the Mountains of the Clouds. There you will find a river that flows into the Lural Az.

“‘Directly opposite the mouth of the river you will see three large islands far out—so far that they are barely discernible. The one to the extreme left as you face them from the mouth of the river is Anoroc, where I rule the tribe of Anoroc.’”

And so we hastened onward toward the great cloud-mass that was to be our guide for several weary marches. At last we came close to the towering crags, Alp-like in their grandeur.

Rising nobly among its noble fellows, one stupendous peak reared its giant head thousands of feet above the others. It was he whom we sought; but at its foot no river wound down toward any sea.

“It must rise from the opposite side,” suggested Perry, casting a rueful glance at the forbidding heights that barred our further progress. “We cannot endure the arctic cold of those high flung passes, and to traverse the endless miles about this interminable range might require a year or more. The land we seek must lie upon the opposite side of the mountains.”

“Then we must cross them,” I insisted.

Perry shrugged.

“We can’t do it, David,” he repeated. “We are dressed for the tropics. We should freeze to death among the snows and glaciers long before we had discovered a pass to the opposite side.”

“We must cross them,” I reiterated. “We will cross them.”

I had a plan, and that plan we carried out. It took some time.

First we made a permanent camp part way up the slopes where there was good water. Then we set out in search of the great, shaggy cave bear of the higher altitudes.

He is a mighty animal—a terrible animal. He is but little larger than his cousin of the lesser, lower hills; but he makes up for it in the awfulness of his ferocity and in the length and thickness of his shaggy coat. It was his coat that we were after.

We came upon him quite unexpectedly. I was trudging in advance along a rocky trail worn smooth by the padded feet of countless ages of wild beasts. At a shoulder of the mountain around which the path ran I came face to face with the Titan.

I was going up for a fur coat. He was coming down for breakfast. Each realized that here was the very thing he sought.

With a horrid roar the beast charged me.

At my right the cliff rose straight upward for thousands of feet.

At my left it dropped into a dim, abysmal cañon.

In front of me was the bear.

Behind me was Perry.

I shouted to him in warning, and then I raised my rifle and fired into the broad breast of the creature. There was no time to take aim; the thing was too close upon me.

But that my bullet took effect was evident from the howl of rage and pain that broke from the frothing jowls. It didn’t stop him, though.

I fired again, and then he was upon me. Down I went beneath his ton of maddened, clawing flesh and bone and sinew.

I thought my time had come. I remember feeling sorry for poor old Perry, left all alone in this inhospitable, savage world.

And then of a sudden I realized that the bear was gone and that I was quite unharmed. I leaped to my feet, my rifle still clutched in my hand, and looked about for my antagonist.

I thought that I should find him farther down the trail, probably finishing Perry, and so I leaped in the direction I supposed him to be, to find Perry perched upon a projecting rock several feet above the trail. My cry of warning had given him time to reach this point of safety.

There he squatted, his eyes wide and his mouth ajar, the picture of abject terror and consternation.

“Where is he?” he cried when he saw me. “Where is he?”

“Didn’t he come this way?” I asked.

“Nothing came this way,” replied the old man. “But I heard his roars—he must have been as large as an elephant.”

“He was,” I admitted; “but where in the world do you suppose he disappeared to?”

Then came a possible explanation to my mind. I returned to the point at which the bear had hurled me down and peered over the edge of the cliff into the abyss below.

Far, far down I saw a small brown blotch near the bottom of the canon. It was the bear.

My second shot must have killed him, and so his dead body, after hurling me to the path, had toppled over into the abyss. I shivered at the thought of how close I, too, must have been to going over with him.

It took us a long time to reach the carcass, and arduous labor to remove the great pelt. But at last the thing was accomplished, and we returned to camp dragging the heavy trophy behind us.

Here we devoted another considerable period to scraping and curing it. When this was done to our satisfaction we made heavy boots, trousers, and coats of the shaggy skin, turning the fur in.

From the scraps we fashioned caps that came down around our ears, with flaps that fell about our shoulders and breasts. We were now fairly well equipped for our search for a pass to the opposite side of the Mountains of the Clouds.

Our first step now was to move our camp upward to the very edge of the perpetual snows which cap this lofty range. Here we built a snug, secure little hut, which we provisioned and stored with fuel for its diminutive fireplace.

With our hut as a base we sallied forth in search of a pass across the range.

Our every move was carefully noted upon our maps which we now kept in duplicate. By this means we were saved tedious and unnecessary retracing of ways already explored.

Systematically we worked upward in both directions from our base, and when we had at last discovered what seemed might prove a feasible pass we moved our belongings to a new hut farther up.

It was hard work—cold, bitter, cruel work. Not a step did we take in advance but the grim reaper strode silently in our tracks.

There were the great cave bears in the timber, and gaunt, lean wolves—huge creatures twice the size of our Canadian timber-wolves. Farther up we were assailed by enormous white bears—hungry, devilish fellows, who came roaring across the rough glacier tops at the first glimpse of us, or stalked us stealthily by scent when they had not yet seen us.

It is one of the peculiarities of life within Pellucidar that man is more often the hunted than the hunter. Myriad are the huge-bellied carnivora of this primitive world. Never, from birth to death, are those great bellies sufficiently filled, so always are their mighty owners prowling about in search of meat.

Terribly armed for battle as they are, man presents to them in his primal state an easy prey, slow of foot, puny of strength, ill-equipped by nature with natural weapons of defense.

The bears looked upon us as easy meat. Only our heavy rifles saved us from prompt extinction. Poor Perry never was a raging lion at heart, and I am convinced that the terrors of that awful period must have caused him poignant mental anguish.

When we were abroad pushing our trail farther and farther toward the distant break which, we assumed, marked a feasible way across the range, we never knew at what second some great engine of clawed and fanged destruction might rush upon us from behind, or lie in wait for us beyond an ice-hummock or a jutting shoulder of the craggy steeps.

The roar of our rifles was constantly shattering the world-old silence of stupendous canons upon which the eye of man had never before gazed. And when in the comparative safety of our hut we lay down to sleep the great beasts roared and fought without the walls, clawed and battered at the door, or rushed their colossal frames headlong against the hut’s sides until it rocked and trembled to the impact.

Yes, it was a gay life.

Perry had got to taking stock of our ammunition each time we returned to the hut. It became something of an obsession with him.

He’d count our cartridges one by one and then try to figure how long it would be before the last was expended and we must either remain in the hut until we starved to death or venture forth, empty, to fill the belly of some hungry bear.

I must admit that I, too, felt worried, for our progress was indeed snail-like, and our ammunition could not last forever. In discussing the problem, finally we came to the decision to burn our bridges behind us and make one last supreme effort to cross the divide.

It would mean that we must go without sleep for a long period, and with the further chance that when the time came that sleep could no longer be denied we might still be high in the frozen regions of perpetual snow and ice, where sleep would mean certain death, exposed as we would be to the attacks of wild beasts and without shelter from the hideous cold.

But we decided that we must take these chances and so at last we set forth from our hut for the last time, carrying such necessities as we felt we could least afford to do without. The bears seemed unusually troublesome and determined that time, and as we clambered slowly upward beyond the highest point to which we had previously attained, the cold became infinitely more intense.

Presently, with two great bears dogging our footsteps we entered a dense fog.

We had reached the heights that are so often cloud-wrapped for long periods. We could see nothing a few paces beyond our noses.

We dared not turn back into the teeth of the bears which we could hear grunting behind us. To meet them in this bewildering fog would have been to court instant death.

Perry was almost overcome by the hopelessness of our situation. He flopped down on his knees and began to pray.

It was the first time I had heard him at his old habit since my return to Pellucidar, and I had thought that he had given up his little idiosyncrasy; but he hadn’t. Far from it.

I let him pray for a short time undisturbed, and then as I was about to suggest that we had better be pushing along one of the bears in our rear let out a roar that made the earth fairly tremble beneath our feet.

It brought Perry to his feet as if he had been stung by a wasp, and sent him racing ahead through the blinding fog at a gait that I knew must soon end in disaster were it not checked.

Crevasses in the glacier-ice were far too frequent to permit of reckless speed even in a clear atmosphere, and then there were hideous precipices along the edges of which our way often led us. I shivered as I thought of the poor old fellow’s peril.

At the top of my lungs I called to him to stop, but he did not answer me. And then I hurried on in the direction he had gone, faster by far than safety dictated.

For a while I thought I heard him ahead of me, but at last, though I paused often to listen and to call to him, I heard nothing more, not even the grunting of the bears that had been behind us. All was deathly silence—the silence of the tomb. About me lay the thick, impenetrable fog.

I was alone. Perry was gone—gone forever, I had not the slightest doubt.

Somewhere near by lay the mouth of a treacherous fissure, and far down at its icy bottom lay all that was mortal of my old friend, Abner Perry. There would his body be preserved in its icy sepulcher for countless ages, until on some far distant day the slow-moving river of ice had wound its snail-like way down to the warmer level, there to disgorge its grisly evidence of grim tragedy, and what in that far future age, might mean baffling mystery.

CHAPTER III

SHOOTING THE CHUTES—AND AFTER

Through the fog I felt my way along by means of my compass. I no longer heard the bears, nor did I encounter one within the fog.

Experience has since taught me that these great beasts are as terror-stricken by this phenomenon as a landsman by a fog at sea, and that no sooner does a fog envelop them than they make the best of their way to lower levels and a clear atmosphere. It was well for me that this was true.

I felt very sad and lonely as I crawled along the difficult footing. My own predicament weighed less heavily upon me than the loss of Perry, for I loved the old fellow.

That I should ever win the opposite slopes of the range I began to doubt, for though I am naturally sanguine, I imagine that the bereavement which had befallen me had cast such a gloom over my spirits that I could see no slightest ray of hope for the future.

Then, too, the blighting, gray oblivion of the cold, damp clouds through which I wandered was distressing. Hope thrives best in sunlight, and I am sure that it does not thrive at all in a fog.

But the instinct of self-preservation is stronger than hope. It thrives, fortunately, upon nothing. It takes root upon the brink of the grave, and blossoms in the jaws of death. Now it flourished bravely upon the breast of dead hope, and urged me onward and upward in a stern endeavor to justify its existence.

As I advanced the fog became denser. I could see nothing beyond my nose. Even the snow and ice I trod were invisible.

I could not see below the breast of my bearskin coat. I seemed to be floating in a sea of vapor.

To go forward over a dangerous glacier under such conditions was little short of madness; but I could not have stopped going had I known positively that death lay two paces before my nose. In the first place, it was too cold to stop, and in the second, I should have gone mad but for the excitement of the perils that beset each forward step.

For some time the ground had been rougher and steeper, until I had been forced to scale a considerable height that had carried me from the glacier entirely. I was sure from my compass that I was following the right general direction, and so I kept on.

Once more the ground was level. From the wind that blew about me I guessed that I must be upon some exposed peak of ridge.

And then quite suddenly I stepped out into space. Wildly I turned and clutched at the ground that had slipped from beneath my feet.

Only a smooth, icy surface was there. I found nothing to clutch or stay my fall, and a moment later so great was my speed that nothing could have stayed me.

As suddenly as I had pitched into space, with equal suddenness did I emerge from the fog, out of which I shot like a projectile from a cannon into clear daylight. My speed was so great that I could see nothing about me but a blurred and indistinct sheet of smooth and frozen snow, that rushed past me with express-train velocity.

I must have slid downward thousands of feet before the steep incline curved gently on to a broad, smooth, snow-covered plateau. Across this I hurtled with slowly diminishing velocity, until at last objects about me began to take definite shape.

Far ahead, miles and miles away, I saw a great valley and mighty woods, and beyond these a broad expanse of water. In the nearer foreground I discerned a small, dark blob of color upon the shimmering whiteness of the snow.

“A bear,” thought I, and thanked the instinct that had impelled me to cling tenaciously to my rifle during the moments of my awful tumble.

At the rate I was going it would be but a moment before I should be quite abreast the thing; nor was it long before I came to a sudden stop in soft snow, upon which the sun was shining, not twenty paces from the object of my most immediate apprehension.

It was standing upon its hind legs waiting for me. As I scrambled to my feet to meet it, I dropped my gun in the snow and doubled up with laughter.

It was Perry.

The expression upon his face, combined with the relief I felt at seeing him again safe and sound, was too much for my overwrought nerves.

“David!” he cried. “David, my boy! God has been good to an old man. He has answered my prayer.”

It seems that Perry in his mad flight had plunged over the brink at about the same point as that at which I had stepped over it a short time later. Chance had done for us what long periods of rational labor had failed to accomplish.

We had crossed the divide. We were upon the side of the Mountains of the Clouds that we had for so long been attempting to reach.

We looked about. Below us were green trees and warm jungles. In the distance was a great sea.

“The Lural Az,” I said, pointing toward its blue-green surface.

Somehow—the gods alone can explain it—Perry, too, had clung to his rifle during his mad descent of the icy slope. For that there was cause for great rejoicing.

Neither of us was worse for his experience, so after shaking the snow from our clothing, we set off at a great rate down toward the warmth and comfort of the forest and the jungle.

The going was easy by comparison with the awful obstacles we had had to encounter upon the opposite side of the divide. There were beasts, of course, but we came through safely.

Before we halted to eat or rest, we stood beside a little mountain brook beneath the wondrous trees of the primeval forest in an atmosphere of warmth and comfort. It reminded me of an early June day in the Maine woods.

We fell to work with our short axes and cut enough small trees to build a rude protection from the fiercer beasts. Then we lay down to sleep.

How long we slept I do not know. Perry says that inasmuch as there is no means of measuring time within Pellucidar, there can be no such thing as time here, and that we may have slept an outer earthly year, or we may have slept but a second.

But this I know. We had stuck the ends of some of the saplings into the ground in the building of our shelter, first stripping the leaves and branches from them, and when we awoke we found that many of them had thrust forth sprouts.

Personally, I think that we slept at least a month; but who may say? The sun marked midday when we closed our eyes; it was still in the same position when we opened them; nor had it varied a hair’s breadth in the interim.

It is most baffling, this question of elapsed time within Pellucidar.

Anyhow, I was famished when we awoke. I think that it was the pangs of hunger that awoke me. Ptarmigan and wild boar fell before my revolver within a dozen moments of my awakening. Perry soon had a roaring fire blazing by the brink of the little stream.

It was a good and delicious meal we made. Though we did not eat the entire boar, we made a very large hole in him, while the ptarmigan was but a mouthful.

Having satisfied our hunger, we determined to set forth at once in search of Anoroc and my old friend, Ja the Mezop. We each thought that by following the little stream downward, we should come upon the large river which Ja had told me emptied into the Lural Az op-posite his island.

We did so; nor were we disappointed, for at last after a pleasant journey—and what journey would not be pleasant after the hardships we had endured among the peaks of the Mountains of the Clouds—we came upon a broad flood that rushed majestically onward in the direction of the great sea we had seen from the snowy slopes of the mountains.

For three long marches we followed the left bank of the growing river, until at last we saw it roll its mighty volume into the vast waters of the sea. Far out across the rippling ocean we descried three islands. The one to the left must be Anoroc.

At last we had come close to a solution of our problem—the road to Sari.

But how to reach the islands was now the foremost question in our minds. We must build a canoe.

Perry is a most resourceful man. He has an axiom which carries the thought-kernel that what man has done, man can do, and it doesn’t cut any figure with Perry whether a fellow knows how to do it or not.

He set out to make gunpowder once, shortly after our escape from Phutra and at the beginning of the confederation of the wild tribes of Pellucidar. He said that some one, without any knowledge of the fact that such a thing might be concocted, had once stumbled upon it by accident, and so he couldn’t see why a fellow who knew all about powder except how to make it couldn’t do as well.

He worked mighty hard mixing all sorts of things together, until finally he evolved a substance that looked like powder. He had been very proud of the stuff, and had gone about the village of the Sarians exhibiting it to every one who would listen to him, and explaining what its purpose was and what terrific havoc it would work, until finally the natives became so terrified at the stuff that they wouldn’t come within a rod of Perry and his invention.

Finally, I suggested that we experiment with it and see what it would do, so Perry built a fire, after placing the powder at a safe distance, and then touched a glowing ember to a minute particle of the deadly explosive. It extinguished the ember.

Repeated experiments with it determined me that in searching for a high explosive, Perry had stumbled upon a fire-extinguisher that would have made his fortune for him back in our own world.

So now he set himself to work to build a scientific canoe. I had suggested that we construct a dugout, but Perry convinced me that we must build something more in keeping with our positions of supermen in this world of the Stone Age.

“We must impress these natives with our superiority,” he explained. “You must not forget, David, that you are emperor of Pellucidar. As such you may not with dignity approach the shores of a foreign power in so crude a vessel as a dugout.”

I pointed out to Perry that it wasn’t much more incongruous for the emperor to cruise in a canoe, than it was for the prime minister to attempt to build one with his own hands.

He had to smile at that; but in extenuation of his act he assured me that it was quite customary for prime ministers to give their personal attention to the building of imperial navies; “and this,” he said, “is the imperial navy of his Serene Highness, David I, Emperor of the Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar.”

I grinned; but Perry was quite serious about it. It had always seemed rather more or less of a joke to me that I should be addressed as majesty and all the rest of it. Yet my imperial power and dignity had been a very real thing during my brief reign.

Twenty tribes had joined the federation, and their chiefs had sworn eternal fealty to one another and to me. Among them were many powerful though savage nations. Their chiefs we had made kings; their tribal lands kingdoms.

We had armed them with bows and arrows and swords, in addition to their own more primitive weapons. I had trained them in military discipline and in so much of the art of war as I had gleaned from extensive reading of the campaigns of Napoleon, Von Moltke, Grant, and the ancients.

We had marked out as best we could natural boundaries dividing the various kingdoms. We had warned tribes beyond these boundaries that they must not trespass, and we had marched against and severely punished those who had.

We had met and defeated the Mahars and the Sagoths. In short, we had demonstrated our rights to empire, and very rapidly were we being recognized and heralded abroad when my departure for the outer world and Hooja’s treachery had set us back.

But now I had returned. The work that fate had undone must be done again, and though I must need smile at my imperial honors, I none the less felt the weight of duty and obligation that rested upon my shoulders.

Slowly the imperial navy progressed toward completion. She was a wondrous craft, but I had my doubts about her. When I voiced them to Perry, he reminded me gently that my people for many generations had been mine-owners, not ship-builders, and consequently I couldn’t be expected to know much about the matter.

I was minded to inquire into his hereditary fitness to design battleships; but inasmuch as I already knew that his father had been a minister in a back-woods village far from the coast, I hesitated lest I offend the dear old fellow.

He was immensely serious about his work, and I must admit that in so far as appearances went he did extremely well with the meager tools and assistance at his command. We had only two short axes and our hunting-knives; yet with these we hewed trees, split them into planks, surfaced and fitted them.

The “navy” was some forty feet in length by ten feet beam. Her sides were quite straight and fully ten feet high—“for the purpose,” explained Perry, “of adding dignity to her appearance and rendering it less easy for an enemy to board her.”

As a matter of fact, I knew that he had had in mind the safety of her crew under javelin-fire—the lofty sides made an admirable shelter. Inside she reminded me of nothing so much as a floating trench. There was also some slight analogy to a huge coffin.

Her prow sloped sharply backward from the water-line—quite like a line of battleship. Perry had designed her more for moral effect upon an enemy, I think, than for any real harm she might inflict, and so those parts which were to show were the most imposing.

Below the water-line she was practically non-existent. She should have had considerable draft; but, as the enemy couldn’t have seen it, Perry decided to do away with it, and so made her flat-bottomed. It was this that caused my doubts about her.

There was another little idiosyncrasy of design that escaped us both until she was about ready to launch—there was no method of propulsion. Her sides were far too high to permit the use of sweeps, and when Perry suggested that we pole her, I remonstrated on the grounds that it would be a most undignified and awkward manner of sweeping down upon the foe, even if we could find or wield poles that would reach to the bottom of the ocean.

Finally I suggested that we convert her into a sailing vessel. When once the idea took hold Perry was most enthusiastic about it, and nothing would do but a four-masted, full-rigged ship.

Again I tried to dissuade him, but he was simply crazy over the psychological effect which the appearance of this strange and mighty craft would have upon the natives of Pellucidar. So we rigged her with thin hides for sails and dried gut for rope.

Neither of us knew much about sailing a full-rigged ship; but that didn’t worry me a great deal, for I was confident that we should never be called upon to do so, and as the day of launching approached I was positive of it.

We had built her upon a low bank of the river close to where it emptied into the sea, and just above high tide. Her keel we had laid upon several rollers cut from small trees, the ends of the rollers in turn resting upon parallel tracks of long saplings. Her stern was toward the water.

A few hours before we were ready to launch her she made quite an imposing picture, for Perry had insisted upon setting every shred of “canvas.” I told him that I didn’t know much about it, but I was sure that at launching the hull only should have been completed, everything else being completed after she had floated safely.

At the last minute there was some delay while we sought a name for her. I wanted her christened the Perry in honor both of her designer and that other great naval genius of another world, Captain Oliver Hazard Perry, of the United States Navy. But Perry was too modest; he wouldn’t hear of it.

We finally decided to establish a system in the naming of the fleet. Battle-ships of the first-class should bear the names of kingdoms of the federation; armored cruisers the names of kings; cruisers the names of cities, and so on down the line. Therefore, we decided to name the first battle-ship Sari, after the first of the federated kingdoms.

The launching of the Sari proved easier than I contemplated. Perry wanted me to get in and break something over the bow as she floated out upon the bosom of the river, but I told him that I should feel safer on dry land until I saw which side up the Sari would float.

I could see by the expression of the old man’s face that my words had hurt him; but I noticed that he didn’t offer to get in himself, and so I felt less contrition than I might otherwise.

When we cut the ropes and removed the blocks that held the Sari in place she started for the water with a lunge. Before she hit it she was going at a reckless speed, for we had laid our tracks quite down to the water, greased them, and at intervals placed rollers all ready to receive the ship as she moved forward with stately dignity. But there was no dignity in the Sari.

When she touched the surface of the river she must have been going twenty or thirty miles an hour. Her momentum carried her well out into the stream, until she came to a sudden halt at the end of the long line which we had had the foresight to attach to her bow and fasten to a large tree upon the bank.

The moment her progress was checked she promptly capsized. Perry was overwhelmed. I didn’t upbraid him, nor remind him that I had “told him so.”

His grief was so genuine and so apparent that I didn’t have the heart to reproach him, even were I inclined to that particular sort of meanness.

“Come, come, old man!” I cried. “It’s not as bad as it looks. Give me a hand with this rope, and we’ll drag her up as far as we can; and then when the tide goes out we’ll try another scheme. I think we can make a go of her yet.”

Well, we managed to get her up into shallow water. When the tide receded she lay there on her side in the mud, quite a pitiable object for the premier battle-ship of a world—“the terror of the seas” was the way Perry had occasionally described her.

We had to work fast; but before the tide came in again we had stripped her of her sails and masts, righted her, and filled her about a quarter full of rock ballast. If she didn’t stick too fast in the mud I was sure that she would float this time right side up.

I can tell you that it was with palpitating hearts that we sat upon the river-bank and watched that tide come slowly in. The tides of Pellucidar don’t amount to much by comparison with our higher tides of the outer world, but I knew that it ought to prove ample to float the Sari.

Nor was I mistaken. Finally we had the satisfaction of seeing the vessel rise out of the mud and float slowly upstream with the tide. As the water rose we pulled her in quite close to the bank and clambered aboard.

She rested safely now upon an even keel; nor did she leak, for she was well calked with fiber and tarry pitch. We rigged up a single short mast and light sail, fastened planking down over the ballast to form a deck, worked her out into midstream with a couple of sweeps, and dropped our primitive stone anchor to await the turn of the tide that would bear us out to sea.

While we waited we devoted the time to the construction of an upper deck, since the one immediately above the ballast was some seven feet from the gunwale. The second deck was four feet above this. In it was a large, commodious hatch, leading to the lower deck. The sides of the ship rose three feet above the upper deck, forming an excellent breastwork, which we loopholed at intervals that we might lie prone and fire upon an enemy.

Though we were sailing out upon a peaceful mission in search of my friend Ja, we knew that we might meet with people of some other island who would prove unfriendly.

At last the tide turned. We weighed anchor. Slowly we drifted down the great river toward the sea.

About us swarmed the mighty denizens of the primeval deep—plesiosauri and ichthyosauria with all their horrid, slimy cousins whose names were as the names of aunts and uncles to Perry, but which I have never been able to recall an hour after having heard them.

At last we were safely launched upon the journey to which we had looked forward for so long, and the results of which meant so much to me.

CHAPTER IV

FRIENDSHIP AND TREACHERY

The Sari proved a most erratic craft. She might have done well enough upon a park lagoon if safely anchored, but upon the bosom of a mighty ocean she left much to be desired.

Sailing with the wind she did her best; but in quartering or when close-hauled she drifted terribly, as a nautical man might have guessed she would. We couldn’t keep within miles of our course, and our progress was pitifully slow.

Instead of making for the island of Anoroc, we bore far to the right, until it became evident that we should have to pass between the two right-hand islands and attempt to return toward Anoroc from the opposite side.

As we neared the islands Perry was quite overcome by their beauty. When we were directly between two of them he fairly went into raptures; nor could I blame him.

The tropical luxuriance of the foliage that dripped almost to the water’s edge and the vivid colors of the blooms that shot the green made a most gorgeous spectacle.

Perry was right in the midst of a flowery panegyric on the wonders of the peaceful beauty of the scene when a canoe shot out from the nearest island. There were a dozen warriors in it; it was quickly followed by a second and third.

Of course we couldn’t know the intentions of the strangers, but we could pretty well guess them.

Perry wanted to man the sweeps and try to get away from them, but I soon convinced him that any speed of which the Sari was capable would be far too slow to outdistance the swift, though awkward, dugouts of the Mezops.

I waited until they were quite close enough to hear me, and then I hailed them. I told them that we were friends of the Mezops, and that we were upon a visit to Ja of Anoroc, to which they replied that they were at war with Ja, and that if we would wait a minute they’d board us and throw our corpses to the azdyryths.

I warned them that they would get the worst of it if they didn’t leave us alone, but they only shouted in derision and paddled swiftly toward us. It was evident that they were considerably impressed by the appearance and dimensions of our craft, but as these fellows know no fear they were not at all awed.

Seeing that they were determined to give battle, I leaned over the rail of the Sari and brought the imperial battle-squadron of the Emperor of Pellucidar into action for the first time in the history of a world. In other and simpler words, I fired my revolver at the nearest canoe.

The effect was magical. A warrior rose from his knees, threw his paddle aloft, stiffened into rigidity for an instant, and then toppled overboard.

The others ceased paddling, and, with wide eyes, looked first at me and then at the battling sea-things which fought for the corpse of their comrade. To them it must have seemed a miracle that I should be able to stand at thrice the range of the most powerful javelin-thrower and with a loud noise and a smudge of smoke slay one of their number with an invisible missile.

But only for an instant were they paralyzed with wonder. Then, with savage shouts, they fell once more to their paddles and forged rapidly toward us.

Again and again I fired. At each shot a warrior sank to the bottom of the canoe or tumbled overboard.

When the prow of the first craft touched the side of the Sari it contained only dead and dying men. The other two dugouts were approaching rapidly, so I turned my attention toward them.

I think that they must have been commencing to have some doubts—those wild, naked, red warriors—for when the first man fell in the second boat, the others stopped paddling and commenced to jabber among themselves.

The third boat pulled up alongside the second and its crews joined in the conference. Taking advantage of the lull in the battle, I called out to the survivors to return to their shore.

“I have no fight with you,” I cried, and then I told them who I was and added that if they would live in peace they must sooner or later join forces with me.

“Go back now to your people,” I counseled them, “and tell them that you have seen David I, Emperor of the Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar, and that single-handed he has overcome you, just as he intends overcoming the Mahars and the Sagoths and any other peoples of Pellucidar who threaten the peace and welfare of his empire.”

Slowly they turned the noses of their canoes toward land. It was evident that they were impressed; yet that they were loath to give up without further contesting my claim to naval supremacy was also apparent, for some of their number seemed to be exhorting the others to a renewal of the conflict.

However, at last they drew slowly away, and the Sari, which had not decreased her snail-like speed during this, her first engagement, continued upon her slow, uneven way.

Presently Perry stuck his head up through the hatch and hailed me.

“Have the scoundrels departed?” he asked. “Have you killed them all?”

“Those whom I failed to kill have departed, Perry,” I replied.

He came out on deck and, peering over the side, descried the lone canoe floating a short distance astern with its grim and grisly freight. Farther his eyes wandered to the retreating boats.

“David,” said he at last, “this is a notable occasion. It is a great day in the annals of Pellucidar. We have won a glorious victory.

“Your majesty’s navy has routed a fleet of the enemy thrice its own size, manned by ten times as many men. Let us give thanks.”

I could scarce restrain a smile at Perry’s use of the pronoun “we,” yet I was glad to share the rejoicing with him as I shall always be glad to share everything with the dear old fellow.

Perry is the only male coward I have ever known whom I could respect and love. He was not created for fighting; but I think that if the occasion should ever arise where it became necessary he would give his life cheerfully for me—yes, I KNOW it.

It took us a long time to work around the islands and draw in close to Anoroc. In the leisure afforded we took turns working on our map, and by means of the compass and a little guesswork we set down the shoreline we had left and the three islands with fair accuracy.

Crossed sabers marked the spot where the first great naval engagement of a world had taken place. In a note-book we jotted down, as had been our custom, details that would be of historical value later.

Opposite Anoroc we came to anchor quite close to shore. I knew from my previous experience with the tortuous trails of the island that I could never find my way inland to the hidden tree-village of the Mezop chieftain, Ja; so we remained aboard the Sari, firing our express rifles at intervals to attract the attention of the natives.

After some ten shots had been fired at considerable intervals a body of copper-colored warriors appeared upon the shore. They watched us for a moment and then I hailed them, asking the whereabouts of my old friend Ja.

They did not reply at once, but stood with their heads together in serious and animated discussion. Continually they turned their eyes toward our strange craft. It was evident that they were greatly puzzled by our appearance as well as unable to explain the source of the loud noises that had attracted their attention to us. At last one of the warriors addressed us.

“Who are you who seek Ja?” he asked. “What would you of our chief?”

“We are friends,” I replied. “I am David. Tell Ja that David, whose life he once saved from a sithic, has come again to visit him.

“If you will send out a canoe we will come ashore. We cannot bring our great warship closer in.”

Again they talked for a considerable time. Then two of them entered a canoe that several dragged from its hiding-place in the jungle and paddled swiftly toward us.

They were magnificent specimens of manhood. Perry had never seen a member of this red race close to before. In fact, the dead men in the canoe we had left astern after the battle and the survivors who were paddling rapidly toward their shore were the first he ever had seen. He had been greatly impressed by their physical beauty and the promise of superior intelligence which their well-shaped skulls gave.

The two who now paddled out received us into their canoe with dignified courtesy. To my inquiries relative to Ja they explained that he had not been in the village when our signals were heard, but that runners had been sent out after him and that doubtless he was already upon his way to the coast.

One of the men remembered me from the occasion of my former visit to the island; he was extremely agree-able the moment that he came close enough to recognize me. He said that Ja would be delighted to welcome me, and that all the tribe of Anoroc knew of me by repute, and had received explicit instructions from their chieftain that if any of them should ever come upon me to show me every kindness and attention.

Upon shore we were received with equal honor. While we stood conversing with our bronze friends a tall warrior leaped suddenly from the jungle.

It was Ja. As his eyes fell upon me his face lighted with pleasure. He came quickly forward to greet me after the manner of his tribe.

Toward Perry he was equally hospitable. The old man fell in love with the savage giant as completely as had I. Ja conducted us along the maze-like trail to his strange village, where he gave over one of the tree-houses for our exclusive use.

Perry was much interested in the unique habitation, which resembled nothing so much as a huge wasp’s nest built around the bole of a tree well above the ground.

After we had eaten and rested Ja came to see us with a number of his head men. They listened attentively to my story, which included a narrative of the events leading to the formation of the federated kingdoms, the battle with the Mahars, my journey to the outer world, and my return to Pellucidar and search for Sari and my mate.

Ja told me that the Mezops had heard something of the federation and had been much interested in it. He had even gone so far as to send a party of warriors toward Sari to investigate the reports, and to arrange for the entrance of Anoroc into the empire in case it appeared that there was any truth in the rumors that one of the aims of the federation was the overthrow of the Mahars.

The delegation had met with a party of Sagoths. As there had been a truce between the Mahars and the Mezops for many generations, they camped with these warriors of the reptiles, from whom they learned that the federation had gone to pieces. So the party returned to Anoroc.

When I showed Ja our map and explained its purpose to him, he was much interested. The location of Anoroc, the Mountains of the Clouds, the river, and the strip of seacoast were all familiar to him.

He quickly indicated the position of the inland sea and close beside it, the city of Phutra, where one of the powerful Mahar nations had its seat. He likewise showed us where Sari should be and carried his own coast-line as far north and south as it was known to him.

His additions to the map convinced us that Greenwich lay upon the verge of this same sea, and that it might be reached by water more easily than by the arduous crossing of the mountains or the dangerous approach through Phutra, which lay almost directly in line between Anoroc and Greenwich to the northwest.

If Sari lay upon the same water then the shore-line must bend far back toward the southwest of Greenwich—an assumption which, by the way, we found later to be true. Also, Sari was upon a lofty plateau at the southern end of a mighty gulf of the Great Ocean.

The location which Ja gave to distant Amoz puzzled us, for it placed it due north of Greenwich, apparently in mid-ocean. As Ja had never been so far and knew only of Amoz through hearsay, we thought that he must be mistaken; but he was not. Amoz lies directly north of Greenwich across the mouth of the same gulf as that upon which Sari is.

The sense of direction and location of these primitive Pellucidarians is little short of uncanny, as I have had occasion to remark in the past. You may take one of them to the uttermost ends of his world, to places of which he has never even heard, yet without sun or moon or stars to guide him, without map or compass, he will travel straight for home in the shortest direction.

Mountains, rivers, and seas may have to be gone around, but never once does his sense of direction fail him—the homing instinct is supreme.

In the same remarkable way they never forget the location of any place to which they have ever been, and know that of many of which they have only heard from others who have visited them.

In short, each Pellucidarian is a walking geography of his own district and of much of the country contiguous thereto. It always proved of the greatest aid to Perry and me; nevertheless we were anxious to enlarge our map, for we at least were not endowed with the homing instinct.

After several long councils it was decided that, in order to expedite matters, Perry should return to the prospector with a strong party of Mezops and fetch the freight I had brought from the outer world. Ja and his warriors were much impressed by our firearms, and were also anxious to build boats with sails.

As we had arms at the prospector and also books on boat-building we thought that it might prove an excellent idea to start these naturally maritime people upon the construction of a well built navy of staunch sailing-vessels. I was sure that with definite plans to go by Perry could oversee the construction of an adequate flotilla.

I warned him, however, not to be too ambitious, and to forget about dreadnoughts and armored cruisers for a while and build instead a few small sailing-boats that could be manned by four or five men.

I was to proceed to Sari, and while prosecuting my search for Dian attempt at the same time the rehabilitation of the federation. Perry was going as far as possible by water, with the chances that the entire trip might be made in that manner, which proved to be the fact.

With a couple of Mezops as companions I started for Sari. In order to avoid crossing the principal range of the Mountains of the Clouds we took a route that passed a little way south of Phutra. We had eaten four times and slept once, and were, as my companions told me, not far from the great Mahar city, when we were suddenly confronted by a considerable band of Sagoths.

They did not attack us, owing to the peace which exists between the Mahars and the Mezops, but I could see that they looked upon me with considerable suspicion. My friends told them that I was a stranger from a remote country, and as we had previously planned against such a contingency I pretended ignorance of the language which the human beings of Pellucidar employ in conversing with the gorilla-like soldiery of the Mahars.

I noticed, and not without misgivings, that the leader of the Sagoths eyed me with an expression that betokened partial recognition. I was sure that he had seen me before during the period of my incarceration in Phutra and that he was trying to recall my identity.

It worried me not a little. I was extremely thankful when we bade them adieu and continued upon our journey.

Several times during the next few marches I became acutely conscious of the sensation of being watched by unseen eyes, but I did not speak of my suspicions to my companions. Later I had reason to regret my reticence, for—

Well, this is how it happened:

We had killed an antelope and after eating our fill I had lain down to sleep. The Pellucidarians, who seem seldom if ever to require sleep, joined me in this instance, for we had had a very trying march along the northern foothills of the Mountains of the Clouds, and now with their bellies filled with meat they seemed ready for slumber.

When I awoke it was with a start to find a couple of huge Sagoths astride me. They pinioned my arms and legs, and later chained my wrists behind my back. Then they let me up.

I saw my companions; the brave fellows lay dead where they had slept, javelined to death without a chance at self-defense.

I was furious. I threatened the Sagoth leader with all sorts of dire reprisals; but when he heard me speak the hybrid language that is the medium of communication between his kind and the human race of the inner world he only grinned, as much as to say, “I thought so!”

They had not taken my revolvers or ammunition away from me because they did not know what they were; but my heavy rifle I had lost. They simply left it where it had lain beside me.

So low in the scale of intelligence are they, that they had not sufficient interest in this strange object even to fetch it along with them.

I knew from the direction of our march that they were taking me to Phutra. Once there I did not need much of an imagination to picture what my fate would be. It was the arena and a wild thag or fierce tarag for me—unless the Mahars elected to take me to the pits.

In that case my end would be no more certain, though infinitely more horrible and painful, for in the pits I should be subjected to cruel vivisection. From what I had once seen of their methods in the pits of Phutra I knew them to be the opposite of merciful, whereas in the arena I should be quickly despatched by some savage beast.

Arrived at the underground city, I was taken immediately before a slimy Mahar. When the creature had received the report of the Sagoth its cold eyes glistened with malice and hatred as they were turned balefully upon me.

I knew then that my identity had been guessed. With a show of excitement that I had never before seen evinced by a member of the dominant race of Pellucidar, the Mahar hustled me away, heavily guarded, through the main avenue of the city to one of the principal buildings.

Here we were ushered into a great hall where presently many Mahars gathered.

In utter silence they conversed, for they have no oral speech since they are without auditory nerves. Their method of communication Perry has likened to the projection of a sixth sense into a fourth dimension, where it becomes cognizable to the sixth sense of their audience.

Be that as it may, however, it was evident that I was the subject of discussion, and from the hateful looks bestowed upon me not a particularly pleasant subject.

How long I waited for their decision I do not know, but it must have been a very long time. Finally one of the Sagoths addressed me. He was acting as interpreter for his masters.

“The Mahars will spare your life,” he said, “and release you on one condition.”

“And what is that condition?” I asked, though I could guess its terms.

“That you return to them that which you stole from the pits of Phutra when you killed the four Mahars and escaped,” he replied.

I had thought that that would be it. The great secret upon which depended the continuance of the Mahar race was safely hid where only Dian and I knew.

I ventured to imagine that they would have given me much more than my liberty to have it safely in their keeping again; but after that—what?

Would they keep their promises?

I doubted it. With the secret of artificial propagation once more in their hands their numbers would soon be made so to overrun the world of Pellucidar that there could be no hope for the eventual supremacy of the human race, the cause for which I so devoutly hoped, for which I had consecrated my life, and for which I was not willing to give my life.

Yes! In that moment as I stood before the heartless tribunal I felt that my life would be a very little thing to give could it save to the human race of Pellucidar the chance to come into its own by insuring the eventual extinction of the hated, powerful Mahars.

“Come!” exclaimed the Sagoths. “The mighty Mahars await your reply.”

“You may say to them,” I answered, “that I shall not tell them where the great secret is hid.”

When this had been translated to them there was a great beating of reptilian wings, gaping of sharp-fanged jaws, and hideous hissing. I thought that they were about to fall upon me on the spot, and so I laid my hands upon my revolvers; but at length they became more quiet and presently transmitted some command to my Sagoth guard, the chief of which laid a heavy hand upon my arm and pushed me roughly before him from the audience-chamber.

They took me to the pits, where I lay carefully guarded. I was sure that I was to be taken to the vivisection laboratory, and it required all my courage to fortify myself against the terrors of so fearful a death. In Pellucidar, where there is no time, death-agonies may endure for eternities.

Accordingly, I had to steel myself against an endless doom, which now stared me in the face!

CHAPTER V

SURPRISES

But at last the allotted moment arrived—the moment for which I had been trying to prepare myself, for how long I could not even guess. A great Sagoth came and spoke some words of command to those who watched over me. I was jerked roughly to my feet and with little consideration hustled upward toward the higher levels.

Out into the broad avenue they conducted me, where, amid huge throngs of Mahars, Sagoths, and heavily guarded slaves, I was led, or, rather, pushed and shoved roughly, along in the same direction that the mob moved. I had seen such a concourse of people once before in the buried city of Phutra; I guessed, and rightly, that we were bound for the great arena where slaves who are condemned to death meet their end.

Into the vast amphitheater they took me, stationing me at the extreme end of the arena. The queen came, with her slimy, sickening retinue. The seats were filled. The show was about to commence.

Then, from a little doorway in the opposite end of the structure, a girl was led into the arena. She was at a considerable distance from me. I could not see her features.

I wondered what fate awaited this other poor victim and myself, and why they had chosen to have us die together. My own fate, or rather, my thought of it, was submerged in the natural pity I felt for this lone girl, doomed to die horribly beneath the cold, cruel eyes of her awful captors. Of what crime could she be guilty that she must expiate it in the dreaded arena?

As I stood thus thinking, another door, this time at one of the long sides of the arena, was thrown open, and into the theater of death slunk a mighty tarag, the huge cave tiger of the Stone Age. At my sides were my revolvers. My captors had not taken them from me, because they did not yet realize their nature. Doubtless they thought them some strange manner of war-club, and as those who are condemned to the arena are permitted weapons of defense, they let me keep them.

The girl they had armed with a javelin. A brass pin would have been almost as effective against the ferocious monster they had loosed upon her.

The tarag stood for a moment looking about him—first up at the vast audience and then about the arena. He did not seem to see me at all, but his eyes fell presently upon the girl. A hideous roar broke from his titanic lungs—a roar which ended in a long-drawn scream that is more human than the death-cry of a tortured woman—more human but more awesome. I could scarce restrain a shudder.

Slowly the beast turned and moved toward the girl. Then it was that I came to myself and to a realization of my duty. Quickly and as noiselessly as possible I ran down the arena in pursuit of the grim creature. As I ran I drew one of my pitifully futile weapons. Ah! Could I but have had my lost express-gun in my hands at that moment! A single well-placed shot would have crumbled even this great monster. The best I could hope to accomplish was to divert the thing from the girl to myself and then to place as many bullets as possible in it before it reached and mauled me into insensibility and death.

There is a certain unwritten law of the arena that vouchsafes freedom and immunity to the victor, be he beast or human being—both of whom, by the way, are all the same to the Mahar. That is, they were accustomed to look upon man as a lower animal before Perry and I broke through the Pellucidarian crust, but I imagine that they were beginning to alter their views a trifle and to realize that in the gilak—their word for human being—they had a highly organized, reasoning being to contend with.

Be that as it may, the chances were that the tarag alone would profit by the law of the arena. A few more of his long strides, a prodigious leap, and he would be upon the girl. I raised a revolver and fired. The bullet struck him in the left hind leg. It couldn’t have damaged him much; but the report of the shot brought him around, facing me.

I think the snarling visage of a huge, enraged, saber-toothed tiger is one of the most terrible sights in the world. Especially if he be snarling at you and there be nothing between the two of you but bare sand.

Even as he faced me a little cry from the girl carried my eyes beyond the brute to her face. Hers was fastened upon me with an expression of incredulity that baffles description. There was both hope and horror in them, too.

“Dian!” I cried. “My Heavens, Dian!”

I saw her lips form the name David, as with raised javelin she rushed forward upon the tarag. She was a tigress then—a primitive savage female defending her loved one. Before she could reach the beast with her puny weapon, I fired again at the point where the tarag’s neck met his left shoulder. If I could get a bullet through there it might reach his heart. The bullet didn’t reach his heart, but it stopped him for an instant.

It was then that a strange thing happened. I heard a great hissing from the stands occupied by the Mahars, and as I glanced toward them I saw three mighty thipdars—the winged dragons that guard the queen, or, as Perry calls them, pterodactyls—rise swiftly from their rocks and dart lightning-like, toward the center of the arena. They are huge, powerful reptiles. One of them, with the advantage which his wings might give him, would easily be a match for a cave bear or a tarag.

These three, to my consternation, swooped down upon the tarag as he was gathering himself for a final charge upon me. They buried their talons in his back and lifted him bodily from the arena as if he had been a chicken in the clutches of a hawk.

What could it mean?

I was baffled for an explanation; but with the tarag gone I lost no time in hastening to Dian’s side. With a little cry of delight she threw herself into my arms. So lost were we in the ecstasy of reunion that neither of us—to this day—can tell what became of the tarag.

The first thing we were aware of was the presence of a body of Sagoths about us. Gruffly they commanded us to follow them. They led us from the arena and back through the streets of Phutra to the audience chamber in which I had been tried and sentenced. Here we found ourselves facing the same cold, cruel tribunal.

Again a Sagoth acted as interpreter. He explained that our lives had been spared because at the last moment Tu-al-sa had returned to Phutra, and seeing me in the arena had prevailed upon the queen to spare my life.

“Who is Tu-al-sa?” I asked.

“A Mahar whose last male ancestor was—ages ago—the last of the male rulers among the Mahars,” he replied.

“Why should she wish to have my life spared?”

He shrugged his shoulders and then repeated my question to the Mahar spokesman. When the latter had explained in the strange sign-language that passes for speech between the Mahars and their fighting men the Sagoth turned again to me:

“For a long time you had Tu-al-sa in your power,” he explained. “You might easily have killed her or abandoned her in a strange world—but you did neither. You did not harm her, and you brought her back with you to Pellucidar and set her free to return to Phutra. This is your reward.”

Now I understood. The Mahar who had been my involuntary companion upon my return to the outer world was Tu-al-sa. This was the first time that I had learned the lady’s name. I thanked fate that I had not left her upon the sands of the Sahara—or put a bullet in her, as I had been tempted to do. I was surprised to discover that gratitude was a characteristic of the dominant race of Pellucidar. I could never think of them as aught but cold-blooded, brainless reptiles, though Perry had devoted much time in explaining to me that owing to a strange freak of evolution among all the genera of the inner world, this species of the reptilia had advanced to a position quite analogous to that which man holds upon the outer crust.

He had often told me that there was every reason to believe from their writings, which he had learned to read while we were incarcerated in Phutra, that they were a just race, and that in certain branches of science and arts they were quite well advanced, especially in genetics and metaphysics, engineering and architecture.

While it had always been difficult for me to look upon these things as other than slimy, winged crocodiles—which, by the way, they do not at all resemble—I was now forced to a realization of the fact that I was in the hands of enlightened creatures—for justice and gratitude are certain hallmarks of rationality and culture.

But what they purposed for us further was of most imminent interest to me. They might save us from the tarag and yet not free us. They looked upon us yet, to some extent, I knew, as creatures of a lower order, and so as we are unable to place ourselves in the position of the brutes we enslave—thinking that they are happier in bondage than in the free fulfilment of the purposes for which nature intended them—the Mahars, too, might consider our welfare better conserved in captivity than among the dangers of the savage freedom we craved. Naturally, I was next impelled to inquire their further intent.

To my question, put through the Sagoth interpreter, I received the reply that having spared my life they considered that Tu-al-sa’s debt of gratitude was canceled. They still had against me, however, the crime of which I had been guilty—the unforgivable crime of stealing the great secret. They, therefore, intended holding Dian and me prisoners until the manuscript was returned to them.

They would, they said, send an escort of Sagoths with me to fetch the precious document from its hiding-place, keeping Dian at Phutra as a hostage and releasing us both the moment that the document was safely restored to their queen.

There was no doubt but that they had the upper hand. However, there was so much more at stake than the liberty or even the lives of Dian and myself, that I did not deem it expedient to accept their offer without giving the matter careful thought.

Without the great secret this maleless race must eventually become extinct. For ages they had fertilized their eggs by an artificial process, the secret of which lay hidden in the little cave of a far-off valley where Dian and I had spent our honeymoon. I was none too sure that I could find the valley again, nor that I cared to. So long as the powerful reptilian race of Pellucidar continued to propagate, just so long would the position of man within the inner world be jeopardized. There could not be two dominant races.

I said as much to Dian.

“You used to tell me,” she replied, “of the wonderful things you could accomplish with the inventions of your own world. Now you have returned with all that is necessary to place this great power in the hands of the men of Pellucidar.

“You told me of great engines of destruction which would cast a bursting ball of metal among our enemies, killing hundreds of them at one time.

“You told me of mighty fortresses of stone which a thousand men armed with big and little engines such as these could hold forever against a million Sagoths.

“You told me of great canoes which moved across the water without paddles, and which spat death from holes in their sides.

“All these may now belong to the men of Pellucidar. Why should we fear the Mahars?

“Let them breed! Let their numbers increase by thousands. They will be helpless before the power of the Emperor of Pellucidar.

“But if you remain a prisoner in Phutra, what may we accomplish?

“What could the men of Pellucidar do without you to lead them?

“They would fight among themselves, and while they fought the Mahars would fall upon them, and even though the Mahar race should die out, of what value would the emancipation of the human race be to them without the knowledge, which you alone may wield, to guide them toward the wonderful civilization of which you have told me so much that I long for its comforts and luxuries as I never before longed for anything.

“No, David; the Mahars cannot harm us if you are at liberty. Let them have their secret that you and I may return to our people, and lead them to the conquest of all Pellucidar.”

It was plain that Dian was ambitious, and that her ambition had not dulled her reasoning faculties. She was right. Nothing could be gained by remaining bottled up in Phutra for the rest of our lives.

It was true that Perry might do much with the contents of the prospector, or iron mole, in which I had brought down the implements of outer-world civilization; but Perry was a man of peace. He could never weld the warring factions of the disrupted federation. He could never win new tribes to the empire. He would fiddle around manufacturing gun-powder and trying to improve upon it until some one blew him up with his own invention. He wasn’t practical. He never would get anywhere without a balance-wheel—without some one to direct his energies.

Perry needed me and I needed him. If we were going to do anything for Pellucidar we must be free to do it together.

The outcome of it all was that I agreed to the Mahars’ proposition. They promised that Dian would be well treated and protected from every indignity during my absence. So I set out with a hundred Sagoths in search of the little valley which I had stumbled upon by accident, and which I might and might not find again.

We traveled directly toward Sari. Stopping at the camp where I had been captured I recovered my express rifle, for which I was very thankful. I found it lying where I had left it when I had been overpowered in my sleep by the Sagoths who had captured me and slain my Mezop companions.

On the way I added materially to my map, an occupation which did not elicit from the Sagoths even a shadow of interest. I felt that the human race of Pellucidar had little to fear from these gorilla-men. They were fighters—that was all. We might even use them later ourselves in this same capacity. They had not sufficient brain power to constitute a menace to the advancement of the human race.

As we neared the spot where I hoped to find the little valley I became more and more confident of success. Every landmark was familiar to me, and I was sure now that I knew the exact location of the cave.

It was at about this time that I sighted a number of the half-naked warriors of the human race of Pellucidar. They were marching across our front. At sight of us they halted; that there would be a fight I could not doubt. These Sagoths would never permit an opportunity for the capture of slaves for their Mahar masters to escape them.

I saw that the men were armed with bows and arrows, long lances and swords, so I guessed that they must have been members of the federation, for only my people had been thus equipped. Before Perry and I came the men of Pellucidar had only the crudest weapons wherewith to slay one another.

The Sagoths, too, were evidently expecting battle. With savage shouts they rushed forward toward the human warriors.

Then a strange thing happened. The leader of the human beings stepped forward with upraised hands. The Sagoths ceased their war-cries and advanced slowly to meet him. There was a long parley during which I could see that I was often the subject of their discourse. The Sagoths’ leader pointed in the direction in which I had told him the valley lay. Evidently he was explaining the nature of our expedition to the leader of the warriors. It was all a puzzle to me.

What human being could be upon such excellent terms with the gorilla-men?

I couldn’t imagine. I tried to get a good look at the fellow, but the Sagoths had left me in the rear with a guard when they had advanced to battle, and the distance was too great for me to recognize the features of any of the human beings.

Finally the parley was concluded and the men continued on their way while the Sagoths returned to where I stood with my guard. It was time for eating, so we stopped where we were and made our meal. The Sagoths didn’t tell me who it was they had met, and I did not ask, though I must confess that I was quite curious.

They permitted me to sleep at this halt. Afterward we took up the last leg of our journey. I found the valley without difficulty and led my guard directly to the cave. At its mouth the Sagoths halted and I entered alone.

I noticed as I felt about the floor in the dim light that there was a pile of fresh-turned rubble there. Presently my hands came to the spot where the great secret had been buried. There was a cavity where I had carefully smoothed the earth over the hiding-place of the document—the manuscript was gone!

Frantically I searched the whole interior of the cave several times over, but without other result than a complete confirmation of my worst fears. Someone had been here ahead of me and stolen the great secret.

The one thing within Pellucidar which might free Dian and me was gone, nor was it likely that I should ever learn its whereabouts. If a Mahar had found it, which was quite improbable, the chances were that the dominant race would never divulge the fact that they had recovered the precious document. If a cave man had happened upon it he would have no conception of its meaning or value, and as a consequence it would be lost or destroyed in short order.

With bowed head and broken hopes I came out of the cave and told the Sagoth chieftain what I had discovered. It didn’t mean much to the fellow, who doubt-less had but little better idea of the contents of the document I had been sent to fetch to his masters than would the cave man who in all probability had discovered it.

The Sagoth knew only that I had failed in my mission, so he took advantage of the fact to make the return journey to Phutra as disagreeable as possible. I did not rebel, though I had with me the means to destroy them all. I did not dare rebel because of the consequences to Dian. I intended demanding her release on the grounds that she was in no way guilty of the theft, and that my failure to recover the document had not lessened the value of the good faith I had had in offering to do so. The Mahars might keep me in slavery if they chose, but Dian should be returned safely to her people.

I was full of my scheme when we entered Phutra and I was conducted directly to the great audience-chamber. The Mahars listened to the report of the Sagoth chieftain, and so difficult is it to judge their emotions from their almost expressionless countenance, that I was at a loss to know how terrible might be their wrath as they learned that their great secret, upon which rested the fate of their race, might now be irretrievably lost.

Presently I could see that she who presided was communicating something to the Sagoth interpreter—doubt-less something to be transmitted to me which might give me a forewarning of the fate which lay in store for me. One thing I had decided definitely: If they would not free Dian I should turn loose upon Phutra with my little arsenal. Alone I might even win to freedom, and if I could learn where Dian was imprisoned it would be worth the attempt to free her. My thoughts were interrupted by the interpreter.

“The mighty Mahars,” he said, “are unable to reconcile your statement that the document is lost with your action in sending it to them by a special messenger. They wish to know if you have so soon forgotten the truth or if you are merely ignoring it.”

“I sent them no document,” I cried. “Ask them what they mean.”

“They say,” he went on after conversing with the Mahar for a moment, “that just before your return to Phutra, Hooja the Sly One came, bringing the great secret with him. He said that you had sent him ahead with it, asking him to deliver it and return to Sari where you would await him, bringing the girl with him.”

“Dian?” I gasped. “The Mahars have given over Dian into the keeping of Hooja.”

“Surely,” he replied. “What of it? She is only a gilak,” as you or I would say, “She is only a cow.”

CHAPTER VI

A PENDENT WORLD

The Mahars set me free as they had promised, but with strict injunctions never to approach Phutra or any other Mahar city. They also made it perfectly plain that they considered me a dangerous creature, and that having wiped the slate clean in so far as they were under obligations to me, they now considered me fair prey. Should I again fall into their hands, they intimated it would go ill with me.

They would not tell me in which direction Hooja had set forth with Dian, so I departed from Phutra, filled with bitterness against the Mahars, and rage toward the Sly One who had once again robbed me of my greatest treasure.

At first I was minded to go directly back to Anoroc; but upon second thought turned my face toward Sari, as I felt that somewhere in that direction Hooja would travel, his own country lying in that general direction.

Of my journey to Sari it is only necessary to say that it was fraught with the usual excitement and adventure, incident to all travel across the face of savage Pellucidar. The dangers, however, were greatly reduced through the medium of my armament. I often wondered how it had happened that I had ever survived the first ten years of my life within the inner world, when, naked and primitively armed, I had traversed great areas of her beast-ridden surface.

With the aid of my map, which I had kept with great care during my march with the Sagoths in search of the great secret, I arrived at Sari at last. As I topped the lofty plateau in whose rocky cliffs the principal tribe of Sarians find their cave-homes, a great hue and cry arose from those who first discovered me.

Like wasps from their nests the hairy warriors poured from their caves. The bows with their poison-tipped arrows, which I had taught them to fashion and to use, were raised against me. Swords of hammered iron—another of my innovations—menaced me, as with lusty shouts the horde charged down.

It was a critical moment. Before I should be recognized I might be dead. It was evident that all semblance of intertribal relationship had ceased with my going, and that my people had reverted to their former savage, suspicious hatred of all strangers. My garb must have puzzled them, too, for never before of course had they seen a man clothed in khaki and puttees.

Leaning my express rifle against my body I raised both hands aloft. It was the peace-sign that is recognized everywhere upon the surface of Pellucidar. The charging warriors paused and surveyed me. I looked for my friend Ghak, the Hairy One, king of Sari, and presently I saw him coming from a distance. Ah, but it was good to see his mighty, hairy form once more! A friend was Ghak—a friend well worth the having; and it had been some time since I had seen a friend.

Shouldering his way through the throng of warriors, the mighty chieftain advanced toward me. There was an expression of puzzlement upon his fine features. He crossed the space between the warriors and myself, halting before me.

I did not speak. I did not even smile. I wanted to see if Ghak, my principal lieutenant, would recognize me. For some time he stood there looking me over carefully. His eyes took in my large pith helmet, my khaki jacket, and bandoleers of cartridges, the two revolvers swinging at my hips, the large rifle resting against my body. Still I stood with my hands above my head. He examined my puttees and my strong tan shoes—a little the worse for wear now. Then he glanced up once more to my face. As his gaze rested there quite steadily for some moments I saw recognition tinged with awe creep across his countenance.

Presently without a word he took one of my hands in his and dropping to one knee raised my fingers to his lips. Perry had taught them this trick, nor ever did the most polished courtier of all the grand courts of Europe perform the little act of homage with greater grace and dignity.

Quickly I raised Ghak to his feet, clasping both his hands in mine. I think there must have been tears in my eyes then—I know I felt too full for words. The king of Sari turned toward his warriors.

“Our emperor has come back,” he announced. “Come hither and—”

But he got no further, for the shouts that broke from those savage throats would have drowned the voice of heaven itself. I had never guessed how much they thought of me. As they clustered around, almost fighting for the chance to kiss my hand, I saw again the vision of empire which I had thought faded forever.

With such as these I could conquer a world. With such as these I would conquer one! If the Sarians had remained loyal, so too would the Amozites be loyal still, and the Kalians, and the Suvians, and all the great tribes who had formed the federation that was to emancipate the human race of Pellucidar.

Perry was safe with the Mezops; I was safe with the Sarians; now if Dian were but safe with me the future would look bright indeed.

It did not take long to outline to Ghak all that had befallen me since I had departed from Pellucidar, and to get down to the business of finding Dian, which to me at that moment was of even greater importance than the very empire itself.

When I told him that Hooja had stolen her, he stamped his foot in rage.

“It is always the Sly One!” he cried. “It was Hooja who caused the first trouble between you and the Beautiful One.

“It was Hooja who betrayed our trust, and all but caused our recapture by the Sagoths that time we escaped from Phutra.

“It was Hooja who tricked you and substituted a Mahar for Dian when you started upon your return journey to your own world.

“It was Hooja who schemed and lied until he had turned the kingdoms one against another and destroyed the federation.

“When we had him in our power we were foolish to let him live. Next time—”

Ghak did not need to finish his sentence.

“He has become a very powerful enemy now,” I replied. “That he is allied in some way with the Mahars is evidenced by the familiarity of his relations with the Sagoths who were accompanying me in search of the great secret, for it must have been Hooja whom I saw conversing with them just before we reached the valley. Doubtless they told him of our quest and he hastened on ahead of us, discovered the cave and stole the document. Well does he deserve his appellation of the Sly One.”

With Ghak and his head men I held a number of consultations. The upshot of them was a decision to combine our search for Dian with an attempt to rebuild the crumbled federation. To this end twenty warriors were despatched in pairs to ten of the leading kingdoms, with instructions to make every effort to discover the whereabouts of Hooja and Dian, while prosecuting their missions to the chieftains to whom they were sent.

Ghak was to remain at home to receive the various delegations which we invited to come to Sari on the business of the federation. Four hundred warriors were started for Anoroc to fetch Perry and the contents of the prospector, to the capitol of the empire, which was also the principal settlements of the Sarians.

At first it was intended that I remain at Sari, that I might be in readiness to hasten forth at the first report of the discovery of Dian; but I found the inaction in the face of my deep solicitude for the welfare of my mate so galling that scarce had the several units departed upon their missions before I, too, chafed to be actively engaged upon the search.

It was after my second sleep, subsequent to the departure of the warriors, as I recall, that I at last went to Ghak with the admission that I could no longer support the intolerable longing to be personally upon the trail of my lost love.

Ghak tried to dissuade me, though I could tell that his heart was with me in my wish to be away and really doing something. It was while we were arguing upon the subject that a stranger, with hands above his head, entered the village. He was immediately surrounded by warriors and conducted to Ghak’s presence.

The fellow was a typical cave man-squat muscular, and hairy, and of a type I had not seen before. His features, like those of all the primeval men of Pellucidar, were regular and fine. His weapons consisted of a stone ax and knife and a heavy knobbed bludgeon of wood. His skin was very white.

“Who are you?” asked Ghak. “And whence come you?”

“I am Kolk, son of Goork, who is chief of the Thurians,” replied the stranger. “From Thuria I have come in search of the land of Amoz, where dwells Dacor, the Strong One, who stole my sister, Canda, the Grace-ful One, to be his mate.

“We of Thuria had heard of a great chieftain who has bound together many tribes, and my father has sent me to Dacor to learn if there be truth in these stories, and if so to offer the services of Thuria to him whom we have heard called emperor.”

“The stories are true,” replied Ghak, “and here is the emperor of whom you have heard. You need travel no farther.”

Kolk was delighted. He told us much of the wonderful resources of Thuria, the Land of Awful Shadow, and of his long journey in search of Amoz.

“And why,” I asked, “does Goork, your father, desire to join his kingdom to the empire?”

“There are two reasons,” replied the young man. “Forever have the Mahars, who dwell beyond the Lidi Plains which lie at the farther rim of the Land of Awful Shadow, taken heavy toll of our people, whom they either force into lifelong slavery or fatten for their feasts. We have heard that the great emperor makes successful war upon the Mahars, against whom we should be glad to fight.

“Recently has another reason come. Upon a great island which lies in the Sojar Az, but a short distance from our shores, a wicked man has collected a great band of outcast warriors of all tribes. Even are there many Sagoths among them, sent by the Mahars to aid the Wicked One.

“This band makes raids upon our villages, and it is constantly growing in size and strength, for the Mahars give liberty to any of their male prisoners who will promise to fight with this band against the enemies of the Mahars. It is the purpose of the Mahars thus to raise a force of our own kind to combat the growth and menace of the new empire of which I have come to seek information. All this we learned from one of our own warriors who had pretended to sympathize with this band and had then escaped at the first opportunity.”

“Who could this man be,” I asked Ghak, “who leads so vile a movement against his own kind?”

“His name is Hooja,” spoke up Kolk, answering my question.

Ghak and I looked at each other. Relief was written upon his countenance and I know that it was beating strongly in my heart. At last we had discovered a tangible clue to the whereabouts of Hooja—and with the clue a guide!

But when I broached the subject to Kolk he demurred. He had come a long way, he explained, to see his sister and to confer with Dacor. Moreover, he had instructions from his father which he could not ignore lightly. But even so he would return with me and show me the way to the island of the Thurian shore if by doing so we might accomplish anything.

“But we cannot,” he urged. “Hooja is powerful. He has thousands of warriors. He has only to call upon his Mahar allies to receive a countless horde of Sagoths to do his bidding against his human enemies.

“Let us wait until you may gather an equal horde from the kingdoms of your empire. Then we may march against Hooja with some show of success.

“But first must you lure him to the mainland, for who among you knows how to construct the strange things that carry Hooja and his band back and forth across the water?

“We are not island people. We do not go upon the water. We know nothing of such things.”

I couldn’t persuade him to do more than direct me upon the way. I showed him my map, which now included a great area of country extending from Anoroc upon the east to Sari upon the west, and from the river south of the Mountains of the Clouds north to Amoz. As soon as I had explained it to him he drew a line with his finger, showing a sea-coast far to the west and south of Sari, and a great circle which he said marked the extent of the Land of Awful Shadow in which lay Thuria.

The shadow extended southeast of the coast out into the sea half-way to a large island, which he said was the seat of Hooja’s traitorous government. The island itself lay in the light of the noonday sun. Northwest of the coast and embracing a part of Thuria lay the Lidi Plains, upon the northwestern verge of which was situated the Mahar city which took such heavy toll of the Thurians.

Thus were the unhappy people now between two fires, with Hooja upon one side and the Mahars upon the other. I did not wonder that they sent out an appeal for succor.

Though Ghak and Kolk both attempted to dissuade me, I was determined to set out at once, nor did I delay longer than to make a copy of my map to be given to Perry that he might add to his that which I had set down since we parted. I left a letter for him as well, in which among other things I advanced the theory that the Sojar Az, or Great Sea, which Kolk mentioned as stretching eastward from Thuria, might indeed be the same mighty ocean as that which, swinging around the southern end of a continent ran northward along the shore opposite Phutra, mingling its waters with the huge gulf upon which lay Sari, Amoz, and Greenwich.

Against this possibility I urged him to hasten the building of a fleet of small sailing-vessels, which we might utilize should I find it impossible to entice Hooja’s horde to the mainland.

I told Ghak what I had written, and suggested that as soon as he could he should make new treaties with the various kingdoms of the empire, collect an army and march toward Thuria—this of course against the possibility of my detention through some cause or other.

Kolk gave me a sign to his father—a lidi, or beast of burden, crudely scratched upon a bit of bone, and beneath the lidi a man and a flower; all very rudely done perhaps, but none the less effective as I well knew from my long years among the primitive men of Pellucidar.

The lidi is the tribal beast of the Thurians; the man and the flower in the combination in which they appeared bore a double significance, as they constituted not only a message to the effect that the bearer came in peace, but were also Kolk’s signature.

And so, armed with my credentials and my small arsenal, I set out alone upon my quest for the dearest girl in this world or yours.

Kolk gave me explicit directions, though with my map I do not believe that I could have gone wrong. As a matter of fact I did not need the map at all, since the principal landmark of the first half of my journey, a gigantic mountain-peak, was plainly visible from Sari, though a good hundred miles away.

At the southern base of this mountain a river rose and ran in a westerly direction, finally turning south and emptying into the Sojar Az some forty miles northeast of Thuria. All that I had to do was follow this river to the sea and then follow the coast to Thuria.

Two hundred and forty miles of wild mountain and primeval jungle, of untracked plain, of nameless rivers, of deadly swamps and savage forests lay ahead of me, yet never had I been more eager for an adventure than now, for never had more depended upon haste and success.

I do not know how long a time that journey required, and only half did I appreciate the varied wonders that each new march unfolded before me, for my mind and heart were filled with but a single image—that of a perfect girl whose great, dark eyes looked bravely forth from a frame of raven hair.

It was not until I had passed the high peak and found the river that my eyes first discovered the pendent world, the tiny satellite which hangs low over the surface of Pellucidar casting its perpetual shadow always upon the same spot—the area that is known here as the Land of Awful Shadow, in which dwells the tribe of Thuria.

From the distance and the elevation of the highlands where I stood the Pellucidarian noonday moon showed half in sunshine and half in shadow, while directly beneath it was plainly visible the round dark spot upon the surface of Pellucidar where the sun has never shone. From where I stood the moon appeared to hang so low above the ground as almost to touch it; but later I was to learn that it floats a mile above the surface—which seems indeed quite close for a moon.

Following the river downward I soon lost sight of the tiny planet as I entered the mazes of a lofty forest. Nor did I catch another glimpse of it for some time—several marches at least. However, when the river led me to the sea, or rather just before it reached the sea, of a sudden the sky became overcast and the size and luxuriance of the vegetation diminished as by magic—as if an omni-potent hand had drawn a line upon the earth, and said:

“Upon this side shall the trees and the shrubs, the grasses and the flowers, riot in profusion of rich colors, gigantic size and bewildering abundance; and upon that side shall they be dwarfed and pale and scant.”

Instantly I looked above, for clouds are so uncommon in the skies of Pellucidar—they are practically unknown except above the mightiest mountain ranges—that it had given me something of a start to discover the sun obliterated. But I was not long in coming to a realization of the cause of the shadow.

Above me hung another world. I could see its mountains and valleys, oceans, lakes, and rivers, its broad, grassy plains and dense forests. But too great was the distance and too deep the shadow of its under side for me to distinguish any movement as of animal life.

Instantly a great curiosity was awakened within me. The questions which the sight of this planet, so tantalizingly close, raised in my mind were numerous and unanswerable.

Was it inhabited?

If so, by what manner and form of creature?

Were its people as relatively diminutive as their little world, or were they as disproportionately huge as the lesser attraction of gravity upon the surface of their globe would permit of their being?

As I watched it, I saw that it was revolving upon an axis that lay parallel to the surface of Pellucidar, so that during each revolution its entire surface was once exposed to the world below and once bathed in the heat of the great sun above. The little world had that which Pellucidar could not have—a day and night, and—greatest of boons to one outer-earthly born—time.

Here I saw a chance to give time to Pellucidar, using this mighty clock, revolving perpetually in the heavens, to record the passage of the hours for the earth below. Here should be located an observatory, from which might be flashed by wireless to every corner of the empire the correct time once each day. That this time would be easily measured I had no doubt, since so plain were the landmarks upon the under surface of the satellite that it would be but necessary to erect a simple instrument and mark the instant of passage of a given landmark across the instrument.

But then was not the time for dreaming; I must devote my mind to the purpose of my journey. So I hastened onward beneath the great shadow. As I advanced I could not but note the changing nature of the vegetation and the paling of its hues.

The river led me a short distance within the shadow before it emptied into the Sojar Az. Then I continued in a southerly direction along the coast toward the village of Thuria, where I hoped to find Goork and deliver to him my credentials.

I had progressed no great distance from the mouth of the river when I discerned, lying some distance at sea, a great island. This I assumed to be the stronghold of Hooja, nor did I doubt that upon it even now was Dian.

The way was most difficult, since shortly after leaving the river I encountered lofty cliffs split by numerous long, narrow fiords, each of which necessitated a considerable detour. As the crow flies it is about twenty miles from the mouth of the river to Thuria, but before I had covered half of it I was fagged. There was no familiar fruit or vegetable growing upon the rocky soil of the cliff-tops, and I would have fared ill for food had not a hare broken cover almost beneath my nose.

I carried bow and arrows to conserve my ammunition-supply, but so quick was the little animal that I had no time to draw and fit a shaft. In fact my dinner was a hundred yards away and going like the proverbial bat when I dropped my six-shooter on it. It was a pretty shot and when coupled with a good dinner made me quite contented with myself.

After eating I lay down and slept. When I awoke I was scarcely so self-satisfied, for I had not more than opened my eyes before I became aware of the presence, barely a hundred yards from me, of a pack of some twenty huge wolf-dogs—the things which Perry insisted upon calling hyaenodons—and almost simultaneously I discovered that while I slept my revolvers, rifle, bow, arrows, and knife had been stolen from me.

And the wolf-dog pack was preparing to rush me.

CHAPTER VII

FROM PLIGHT TO PLIGHT

I have never been much of a runner; I hate running. But if ever a sprinter broke into smithereens all world’s records it was I that day when I fled before those hideous beasts along the narrow spit of rocky cliff between two narrow fiords toward the Sojar Az. Just as I reached the verge of the cliff the foremost of the brutes was upon me. He leaped and closed his massive jaws upon my shoulder.

The momentum of his flying body, added to that of my own, carried the two of us over the cliff. It was a hideous fall. The cliff was almost perpendicular. At its foot broke the sea against a solid wall of rock.

We struck the cliff-face once in our descent and then plunged into the salt sea. With the impact with the water the hyaenodon released his hold upon my shoulder.

As I came sputtering to the surface I looked about for some tiny foot- or hand-hold where I might cling for a moment of rest and recuperation. The cliff itself offered me nothing, so I swam toward the mouth of the fiord.

At the far end I could see that erosion from above had washed down sufficient rubble to form a narrow ribbon of beach. Toward this I swam with all my strength. Not once did I look behind me, since every unnecessary movement in swimming detracts so much from one’s endurance and speed. Not until I had drawn myself safely out upon the beach did I turn my eyes back toward the sea for the hyaenodon. He was swimming slowly and apparently painfully toward the beach upon which I stood.

I watched him for a long time, wondering why it was that such a doglike animal was not a better swimmer. As he neared me I realized that he was weakening rapidly. I had gathered a handful of stones to be ready for his assault when he landed, but in a moment I let them fall from my hands. It was evident that the brute either was no swimmer or else was severely injured, for by now he was making practically no headway. Indeed, it was with quite apparent difficulty that he kept his nose above the surface of the sea.

He was not more than fifty yards from shore when he went under. I watched the spot where he had disappeared, and in a moment I saw his head reappear. The look of dumb misery in his eyes struck a chord in my breast, for I love dogs. I forgot that he was a vicious, primordial wolf-thing—a man-eater, a scourge, and a terror. I saw only the sad eyes that looked like the eyes of Raja, my dead collie of the outer world.

I did not stop to weigh and consider. In other words, I did not stop to think, which I believe must be the way of men who do things—in contradistinction to those who think much and do nothing. Instead, I leaped back into the water and swam out toward the drowning beast. At first he showed his teeth at my approach, but just before I reached him he went under for the second time, so that I had to dive to get him.

I grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, and though he weighed as much as a Shetland pony, I managed to drag him to shore and well up upon the beach. Here I found that one of his forelegs was broken—the crash against the cliff-face must have done it.

By this time all the fight was out of him, so that when I had gathered a few tiny branches from some of the stunted trees that grew in the crevices of the cliff, and returned to him he permitted me to set his broken leg and bind it in splints. I had to tear part of my shirt into bits to obtain a bandage, but at last the job was done. Then I sat stroking the savage head and talking to the beast in the man-dog talk with which you are familiar, if you ever owned and loved a dog.

When he is well, I thought, he probably will turn upon me and attempt to devour me, and against that eventuality I gathered together a pile of rocks and set to work to fashion a stone-knife. We were bottled up at the head of the fiord as completely as if we had been behind prison bars. Before us spread the Sojar Az, and elsewhere about us rose unscalable cliffs.

Fortunately a little rivulet trickled down the side of the rocky wall, giving us ample supply of fresh water—some of which I kept constantly beside the hyaenodon in a huge, bowl-shaped shell, of which there were countless numbers among the rubble of the beach.

For food we subsisted upon shellfish and an occasional bird that I succeeded in knocking over with a rock, for long practice as a pitcher on prep-school and varsity nines had made me an excellent shot with a hand-thrown missile.

It was not long before the hyaenodon’s leg was sufficiently mended to permit him to rise and hobble about on three legs. I shall never forget with what intent interest I watched his first attempt. Close at my hand lay my pile of rocks. Slowly the beast came to his three good feet. He stretched himself, lowered his head, and lapped water from the drinking-shell at his side, turned and looked at me, and then hobbled off toward the cliffs.

Thrice he traversed the entire extent of our prison, seeking, I imagine, a loop-hole for escape, but finding none he returned in my direction. Slowly he came quite close to me, sniffed at my shoes, my puttees, my hands, and then limped off a few feet and lay down again.

Now that he was able to get around, I was a little uncertain as to the wisdom of my impulsive mercy.

How could I sleep with that ferocious thing prowling about the narrow confines of our prison?

Should I close my eyes it might be to open them again to the feel of those mighty jaws at my throat. To say the least, I was uncomfortable.

I have had too much experience with dumb animals to bank very strongly on any sense of gratitude which may be attributed to them by inexperienced sentimentalists. I believe that some animals love their masters, but I doubt very much if their affection is the outcome of gratitude—a characteristic that is so rare as to be only occasionally traceable in the seemingly unselfish acts of man himself.

But finally I was forced to sleep. Tired nature would be put off no longer. I simply fell asleep, willy nilly, as I sat looking out to sea. I had been very uncomfortable since my ducking in the ocean, for though I could see the sunlight on the water half-way toward the island and upon the island itself, no ray of it fell upon us. We were well within the Land of Awful Shadow. A perpetual half-warmth pervaded the atmosphere, but clothing was slow in drying, and so from loss of sleep and great physical discomfort, I at last gave way to nature’s demands and sank into profound slumber.

When I awoke it was with a start, for a heavy body was upon me. My first thought was that the hyaenodon had at last attacked me, but as my eyes opened and I struggled to rise, I saw that a man was astride me and three others bending close above him.

I am no weakling—and never have been. My experience in the hard life of the inner world has turned my thews to steel. Even such giants as Ghak the Hairy One have praised my strength; but to it is added another quality which they lack—science.

The man upon me held me down awkwardly, leaving me many openings—one of which I was not slow in taking advantage of, so that almost before the fellow knew that I was awake I was upon my feet with my arms over his shoulders and about his waist and had hurled him heavily over my head to the hard rubble of the beach, where he lay quite still.

In the instant that I arose I had seen the hyaenodon lying asleep beside a boulder a few yards away. So nearly was he the color of the rock that he was scarcely discernible. Evidently the newcomers had not seen him.

I had not more than freed myself from one of my antagonists before the other three were upon me. They did not work silently now, but charged me with savage cries—a mistake upon their part. The fact that they did not draw their weapons against me convinced me that they desired to take me alive; but I fought as desperately as if death loomed immediate and sure.

The battle was short, for scarce had their first wild whoop reverberated through the rocky fiord, and they had closed upon me, than a hairy mass of demoniacal rage hurtled among us.

It was the hyaenodon!

In an instant he had pulled down one of the men, and with a single shake, terrier-like, had broken his neck. Then he was upon another. In their efforts to vanquish the wolf-dog the savages forgot all about me, thus giving me an instant in which to snatch a knife from the loin-string of him who had first fallen and account for another of them. Almost simultaneously the hyaenodon pulled down the remaining enemy, crushing his skull with a single bite of those fearsome jaws.

The battle was over—unless the beast considered me fair prey, too. I waited, ready for him with knife and bludgeon—also filched from a dead foeman; but he paid no attention to me, falling to work instead to devour one of the corpses.

The beast bad been handicapped but little by his splinted leg; but having eaten he lay down and commenced to gnaw at the bandage. I was sitting some little distance away devouring shellfish, of which, by the way, I was becoming exceedingly tired.

Presently, the hyaenodon arose and came toward me. I did not move. He stopped in front of me and deliberately raised his bandaged leg and pawed my knee. His act was as intelligible as words—he wished the bandage removed.

I took the great paw in one hand and with the other hand untied and unwound the bandage, removed the splints and felt of the injured member. As far as I could judge the bone was completely knit. The joint was stiff; when I bent it a little the brute winced—but he neither growled nor tried to pull away. Very slowly and gently I rubbed the joint and applied pressure to it for a few moments.

Then I set it down upon the ground. The hyaenodon walked around me a few times, and then lay down at my side, his body touching mine. I laid my hand upon his head. He did not move. Slowly, I scratched about his ears and neck and down beneath the fierce jaws. The only sign he gave was to raise his chin a trifle that I might better caress him.

That was enough! From that moment I have never again felt suspicion of Raja, as I immediately named him. Somehow all sense of loneliness vanished, too—I had a dog! I had never guessed precisely what it was that was lacking to life in Pellucidar, but now I knew it was the total absence of domestic animals.

Man here had not yet reached the point where he might take the time from slaughter and escaping slaughter to make friends with any of the brute creation. I must qualify this statement a trifle and say that this was true of those tribes with which I was most familiar. The Thurians do domesticate the colossal lidi, traversing the great Lidi Plains upon the backs of these grotesque and stupendous monsters, and possibly there may also be other, far-distant peoples within the great world, who have tamed others of the wild things of jungle, plain or mountain.

The Thurians practice agriculture in a crude sort of way. It is my opinion that this is one of the earliest steps from savagery to civilization. The taming of wild beasts and their domestication follows.

Perry argues that wild dogs were first domesticated for hunting purposes; but I do not agree with him. I believe that if their domestication were not purely the result of an accident, as, for example, my taming of the hyaenodon, it came about through the desire of tribes who had previously domesticated flocks and herds to have some strong, ferocious beast to guard their roaming property. However, I lean rather more strongly to the theory of accident.

As I sat there upon the beach of the little fiord eating my unpalatable shell-fish, I commenced to wonder how it had been that the four savages had been able to reach me, though I had been unable to escape from my natural prison. I glanced about in all directions, searching for an explanation. At last my eyes fell upon the bow of a small dugout protruding scarce a foot from behind a large boulder lying half in the water at the edge of the beach.

At my discovery I leaped to my feet so suddenly that it brought Raja, growling and bristling, upon all fours in an instant. For the moment I had forgotten him. But his savage rumbling did not cause me any uneasiness. He glanced quickly about in all directions as if searching for the cause of my excitement. Then, as I walked rapidly down toward the dugout, he slunk silently after me.

The dugout was similar in many respects to those which I had seen in use by the Mezops. In it were four paddles. I was much delighted, as it promptly offered me the escape I had been craving.

I pushed it out into water that would float it, stepped in and called to Raja to enter. At first he did not seem to understand what I wished of him, but after I had paddled out a few yards he plunged through the surf and swam after me. When he had come alongside I grasped the scruff of his neck, and after a considerable struggle, in which I several times came near to overturning the canoe, I managed to drag him aboard, where he shook himself vigorously and squatted down before me.

After emerging from the fiord, I paddled southward along the coast, where presently the lofty cliffs gave way to lower and more level country. It was here somewhere that I should come upon the principal village of the Thurians. When, after a time, I saw in the distance what I took to be huts in a clearing near the shore, I drew quickly into land, for though I had been furnished credentials by Kolk, I was not sufficiently familiar with the tribal characteristics of these people to know whether I should receive a friendly welcome or not; and in case I should not, I wanted to be sure of having a canoe hidden safely away so that I might undertake the trip to the island, in any event—provided, of course, that I escaped the Thurians should they prove belligerent.

At the point where I landed the shore was quite low. A forest of pale, scrubby ferns ran down almost to the beach. Here I dragged up the dugout, hiding it well within the vegetation, and with some loose rocks built a cairn upon the beach to mark my cache. Then I turned my steps toward the Thurian village.

As I proceeded I began to speculate upon the possible actions of Raja when we should enter the presence of other men than myself. The brute was padding softly at my side, his sensitive nose constantly atwitch and his fierce eyes moving restlessly from side to side—nothing would ever take Raja unawares!

The more I thought upon the matter the greater became my perturbation. I did not want Raja to attack any of the people upon whose friendship I so greatly depended, nor did I want him injured or slain by them.

I wondered if Raja would stand for a leash. His head as he paced beside me was level with my hip. I laid my hand upon it caressingly. As I did so he turned and looked up into my face, his jaws parting and his red tongue lolling as you have seen your own dog’s beneath a love pat.

“Just been waiting all your life to be tamed and loved, haven’t you, old man?” I asked. “You’re nothing but a good pup, and the man who put the hyaeno in your name ought to be sued for libel.”

Raja bared his mighty fangs with upcurled, snarling lips and licked my hand.

“You’re grinning, you old fraud, you!” I cried. “If you’re not, I’ll eat you. I’ll bet a doughnut you’re nothing but some kid’s poor old Fido, masquerading around as a real, live man-eater.”

Raja whined. And so we walked on together toward Thuria—I talking to the beast at my side, and he seeming to enjoy my company no less than I enjoyed his. If you don’t think it’s lonesome wandering all by yourself through savage, unknown Pellucidar, why, just try it, and you will not wonder that I was glad of the company of this first dog—this living replica of the fierce and now extinct hyaenodon of the outer crust that hunted in savage packs the great elk across the snows of southern France, in the days when the mastodon roamed at will over the broad continent of which the British Isles were then a part, and perchance left his footprints and his bones in the sands of Atlantis as well.

Thus I dreamed as we moved on toward Thuria. My dreaming was rudely shattered by a savage growl from Raja. I looked down at him. He had stopped in his tracks as one turned to stone. A thin ridge of stiff hair bristled along the entire length of his spine. His yellow green eyes were fastened upon the scrubby jungle at our right.

I fastened my fingers in the bristles at his neck and turned my eyes in the direction that his pointed. At first I saw nothing. Then a slight movement of the bushes riveted my attention. I thought it must be some wild beast, and was glad of the primitive weapons I had taken from the bodies of the warriors who had attacked me.

Presently I distinguished two eyes peering at us from the vegetation. I took a step in their direction, and as I did so a youth arose and fled precipitately in the direction we had been going. Raja struggled to be after him, but I held tightly to his neck, an act which he did not seem to relish, for he turned on me with bared fangs.

I determined that now was as good a time as any to discover just how deep was Raja’s affection for me. One of us could be master, and logically I was the one. He growled at me. I cuffed him sharply across the nose. He looked it me for a moment in surprised bewilderment, and then he growled again. I made another feint at him, expecting that it would bring him at my throat; but instead he winced and crouched down.

Raja was subdued!

I stooped and patted him. Then I took a piece of the rope that constituted a part of my equipment and made a leash for him.

Thus we resumed our journey toward Thuria. The youth who had seen us was evidently of the Thurians. That he had lost no time in racing homeward and spreading the word of my coming was evidenced when we had come within sight of the clearing, and the village—the first real village, by the way, that I had ever seen constructed by human Pellucidarians. There was a rude rectangle walled with logs and boulders, in which were a hundred or more thatched huts of similar construction. There was no gate. Ladders that could be removed by night led over the palisade.

Before the village were assembled a great concourse of warriors. Inside I could see the heads of women and children peering over the top of the wall; and also, farther back, the long necks of lidi, topped by their tiny heads. Lidi, by the way, is both the singular and plural form of the noun that describes the huge beasts of burden of the Thurians. They are enormous quadrupeds, eighty or a hundred feet long, with very small heads perched at the top of very long, slender necks. Their heads are quite forty feet from the ground. Their gait is slow and deliberate, but so enormous are their strides that, as a matter of fact, they cover the ground quite rapidly.

Perry has told me that they are almost identical with the fossilized remains of the diplodocus of the outer crust’s Jurassic age. I have to take his word for it—and I guess you will, unless you know more of such matters than I.

As we came in sight of the warriors the men set up a great jabbering. Their eyes were wide in astonishment—not only, I presume, because of my strange garmenture, but as well from the fact that I came in company with a jalok, which is the Pellucidarian name of the hyaenodon.

Raja tugged at his leash, growling and showing his long white fangs. He would have liked nothing better than to be at the throats of the whole aggregation; but I held him in with the leash, though it took all my strength to do it. My free hand I held above my head, palm out, in token of the peacefulness of my mission.

In the foreground I saw the youth who had discovered us, and I could tell from the way he carried himself that he was quite overcome by his own importance. The warriors about him were all fine looking fellows, though shorter and squatter than the Sarians or the Amozites. Their color, too, was a bit lighter, owing, no doubt, to the fact that much of their lives is spent within the shadow of the world that hangs forever above their country.

A little in advance of the others was a bearded fellow tricked out in many ornaments. I didn’t need to ask to know that he was the chieftain—doubtless Goork, father of Kolk. Now to him I addressed myself.

“I am David,” I said, “Emperor of the Federated Kingdoms of Pellucidar. Doubtless you have heard of me?”

He nodded his head affirmatively.

“I come from Sari,” I continued, “where I just met Kolk, the son of Goork. I bear a token from Kolk to his father, which will prove that I am a friend.”

Again the warrior nodded. “I am Goork,” he said. “Where is the token?”

“Here,” I replied, and fished into the game-bag where I had placed it.

Goork and his people waited in silence. My hand searched the inside of the bag.

It was empty!

The token had been stolen with my arms!

CHAPTER VIII

CAPTIVE

When Goork and his people saw that I had no token they commenced to taunt me.

“You do not come from Kolk, but from the Sly One!” they cried. “He has sent you from the island to spy upon us. Go away, or we will set upon you and kill you.”

I explained that all my belongings had been stolen from me, and that the robber must have taken the token too; but they didn’t believe me. As proof that I was one of Hooja’s people, they pointed to my weapons, which they said were ornamented like those of the island clan. Further, they said that no good man went in company with a jalok—and that by this line of reasoning I certainly was a bad man.

I saw that they were not naturally a war-like tribe, for they preferred that I leave in peace rather than force them to attack me, whereas the Sarians would have killed a suspicious stranger first and inquired into his purposes later.

I think Raja sensed their antagonism, for he kept tugging at his leash and growling ominously. They were a bit in awe of him, and kept at a safe distance. It was evident that they could not comprehend why it was that this savage brute did not turn upon me and rend me.

I wasted a long time there trying to persuade Goork to accept me at my own valuation, but he was too canny. The best he would do was to give us food, which he did, and direct me as to the safest portion of the island upon which to attempt a landing, though even as he told me I am sure that he thought my request for information but a blind to deceive him as to my true knowledge of the insular stronghold.

At last I turned away from them—rather disheartened, for I had hoped to be able to enlist a considerable force of them in an attempt to rush Hooja’s horde and rescue Dian. Back along the beach toward the hidden canoe we made our way.

By the time we came to the cairn I was dog-tired. Throwing myself upon the sand I soon slept, and with Raja stretched out beside me I felt a far greater security than I had enjoyed for a long time.

I awoke much refreshed to find Raja’s eyes glued upon me. The moment I opened mine he rose, stretched himself, and without a backward glance plunged into the jungle. For several minutes I could hear him crashing through the brush. Then all was silent.

I wondered if he had left me to return to his fierce pack. A feeling of loneliness overwhelmed me. With a sigh I turned to the work of dragging the canoe down to the sea. As I entered the jungle where the dugout lay a hare darted from beneath the boat’s side, and a well-aimed cast of my javelin brought it down. I was hungry—I had not realized it before—so I sat upon the edge of the canoe and devoured my repast. The last remnants gone, I again busied myself with preparations for my expedition to the island.

I did not know for certain that Dian was there; but I surmised as much. Nor could I guess what obstacles might confront me in an effort to rescue her. For a time I loitered about after I had the canoe at the water’s edge, hoping against hope that Raja would return; but he did not, so I shoved the awkward craft through the surf and leaped into it.

I was still a little downcast by the desertion of my new-found friend, though I tried to assure myself that it was nothing but what I might have expected.

The savage brute had served me well in the short time that we had been together, and had repaid his debt of gratitude to me, since he had saved my life, or at least my liberty, no less certainly than I had saved his life when he was injured and drowning.

The trip across the water to the island was uneventful. I was mighty glad to be in the sunshine again when I passed out of the shadow of the dead world about half-way between the mainland and the island. The hot rays of the noonday sun did a great deal toward raising my spirits, and dispelling the mental gloom in which I had been shrouded almost continually since entering the Land of Awful Shadow. There is nothing more dispiriting to me than absence of sunshine.

I had paddled to the southwestern point, which Goork said he believed to be the least frequented portion of the island, as he had never seen boats put off from there. I found a shallow reef running far out into the sea and rather precipitous cliffs running almost to the surf. It was a nasty place to land, and I realized now why it was not used by the natives; but at last I managed, after a good wetting, to beach my canoe and scale the cliffs.

The country beyond them appeared more open and park-like than I had anticipated, since from the mainland the entire coast that is visible seems densely clothed with tropical jungle. This jungle, as I could see from the vantage-point of the cliff-top, formed but a relatively narrow strip between the sea and the more open forest and meadow of the interior. Farther back there was a range of low but apparently very rocky hills, and here and there all about were visible flat-topped masses of rock—small mountains, in fact—which reminded me of pictures I had seen of landscapes in New Mexico. Altogether, the country was very much broken and very beautiful. From where I stood I counted no less than a dozen streams winding down from among the table-buttes and emptying into a pretty river which flowed away in a northeasterly direction toward the op-posite end of the island.

As I let my eyes roam over the scene I suddenly became aware of figures moving upon the flat top of a far-distant butte. Whether they were beast or human, though, I could not make out; but at least they were alive, so I determined to prosecute my search for Hooja’s stronghold in the general direction of this butte.

To descend to the valley required no great effort. As I swung along through the lush grass and the fragrant flowers, my cudgel swinging in my hand and my javelin looped across my shoulders with its aurochs-hide strap, I felt equal to any emergency, ready for any danger.

I had covered quite a little distance, and I was passing through a strip of wood which lay at the foot of one of the flat-topped hills, when I became conscious of the sensation of being watched. My life within Pellucidar has rather quickened my senses of sight, hearing, and smell, and, too, certain primitive intuitive or instinctive qualities that seem blunted in civilized man. But, though I was positive that eyes were upon me, I could see no sign of any living thing within the wood other than the many, gay-plumaged birds and little monkeys which filled the trees with life, color, and action.

To you it may seem that my conviction was the result of an overwrought imagination, or to the actual reality of the prying eyes of the little monkeys or the curious ones of the birds; but there is a difference which I cannot explain between the sensation of casual observation and studied espionage. A sheep might gaze at you without transmitting a warning through your subjective mind, because you are in no danger from a sheep. But let a tiger gaze fixedly at you from ambush, and unless your primitive instincts are completely calloused you will presently commence to glance furtively about and be filled with vague, unreasoning terror.

Thus was it with me then. I grasped my cudgel more firmly and unslung my javelin, carrying it in my left hand. I peered to left and right, but I saw nothing. Then, all quite suddenly, there fell about my neck and shoulders, around my arms and body, a number of pliant fiber ropes.

In a jiffy I was trussed up as neatly as you might wish. One of the nooses dropped to my ankles and was jerked up with a suddenness that brought me to my face upon the ground. Then something heavy and hairy sprang upon my back. I fought to draw my knife, but hairy hands grasped my wrists and, dragging them behind my back, bound them securely.

Next my feet were bound. Then I was turned over upon my back to look up into the faces of my captors.

And what faces! Imagine if you can a cross between a sheep and a gorilla, and you will have some conception of the physiognomy of the creature that bent close above me, and of those of the half-dozen others that clustered about. There was the facial length and great eyes of the sheep, and the bull-neck and hideous fangs of the gorilla. The bodies and limbs were both man and gorilla-like.

As they bent over me they conversed in a mono-syllabic tongue that was perfectly intelligible to me. It was something of a simplified language that had no need for aught but nouns and verbs, but such words as it included were the same as those of the human beings of Pellucidar. It was amplified by many gestures which filled in the speech-gaps.

I asked them what they intended doing with me; but, like our own North American Indians when questioned by a white man, they pretended not to understand me. One of them swung me to his shoulder as lightly as if I had been a shoat. He was a huge creature, as were his fellows, standing fully seven feet upon his short legs and weighing considerably more than a quarter of a ton.

Two went ahead of my bearer and three behind. In this order we cut to the right through the forest to the foot of the hill where precipitous cliffs appeared to bar our farther progress in this direction. But my escort never paused. Like ants upon a wall, they scaled that seemingly unscalable barrier, clinging, Heaven knows how, to its ragged perpendicular face. During most of the short journey to the summit I must admit that my hair stood on end. Presently, however, we topped the thing and stood upon the level mesa which crowned it.

Immediately from all about, out of burrows and rough, rocky lairs, poured a perfect torrent of beasts similar to my captors. They clustered about, jabbering at my guards and attempting to get their hands upon me, whether from curiosity or a desire to do me bodily harm I did not know, since my escort with bared fangs and heavy blows kept them off.

Across the mesa we went, to stop at last before a large pile of rocks in which an opening appeared. Here my guards set me upon my feet and called out a word which sounded like “Gr-gr-gr!” and which I later learned was the name of their king.

Presently there emerged from the cavernous depths of the lair a monstrous creature, scarred from a hundred battles, almost hairless and with an empty socket where one eye had been. The other eye, sheeplike in its mildness, gave the most startling appearance to the beast, which but for that single timid orb was the most fearsome thing that one could imagine.

I had encountered the black, hairless, long-tailed ape—things of the mainland—the creatures which Perry thought might constitute the link between the higher orders of apes and man—but these brute-men of Gr-gr-gr seemed to set that theory back to zero, for there was less similarity between the black ape-men and these creatures than there was between the latter and man, while both had many human attributes, some of which were better developed in one species and some in the other.

The black apes were hairless and built thatched huts in their arboreal retreats; they kept domesticated dogs and ruminants, in which respect they were farther advanced than the human beings of Pellucidar; but they appeared to have only a meager language, and sported long, apelike tails.

On the other hand, Gr-gr-gr’s people were, for the most part, quite hairy, but they were tailless and had a language similar to that of the human race of Pellucidar; nor were they arboreal. Their skins, where skin showed, were white.

From the foregoing facts and others that I have noted during my long life within Pellucidar, which is now passing through an age analogous to some pre-glacial age of the outer crust, I am constrained to the belief that evolution is not so much a gradual transition from one form to another as it is an accident of breeding, either by crossing or the hazards of birth. In other words, it is my belief that the first man was a freak of nature—nor would one have to draw overstrongly upon his credulity to be convinced that Gr-gr-gr and his tribe were also freaks.

The great man-brute seated himself upon a flat rock—his throne, I imagine—just before the entrance to his lair. With elbows on knees and chin in palms he regarded me intently through his lone sheep-eye while one of my captors told of my taking.

When all had been related Gr-gr-gr questioned me. I shall not attempt to quote these people in their own abbreviated tongue—you would have even greater difficulty in interpreting them than did I. Instead, I shall put the words into their mouths which will carry to you the ideas which they intended to convey.

“You are an enemy,” was Gr-gr-gr’s initial declaration. “You belong to the tribe of Hooja.”

Ah! So they knew Hooja and he was their enemy! Good!

“I am an enemy of Hooja,” I replied. “He has stolen my mate and I have come here to take her away from him and punish Hooja.”

“How could you do that alone?”

“I do not know,” I answered, “but I should have tried had you not captured me. What do you intend to do with me?”

“You shall work for us.”

“You will not kill me?” I asked.

“We do not kill except in self-defense,” he replied; “self-defense and punishment. Those who would kill us and those who do wrong we kill. If we knew you were one of Hooja’s people we might kill you, for all Hooja’s people are bad people; but you say you are an enemy of Hooja. You may not speak the truth, but until we learn that you have lied we shall not kill you. You shall work.”

“If you hate Hooja,” I suggested, “why not let me, who hate him, too, go and punish him?”

For some time Gr-gr-gr sat in thought. Then he raised his head and addressed my guard.

“Take him to his work,” he ordered.

His tone was final. As if to emphasize it he turned and entered his burrow. My guard conducted me farther into the mesa, where we came presently to a tiny depression or valley, at one end of which gushed a warm spring.

The view that opened before me was the most surprising that I have ever seen. In the hollow, which must have covered several hundred acres, were numerous fields of growing things, and working all about with crude implements or with no implements at all other than their bare hands were many of the brute-men engaged in the first agriculture that I had seen within Pellucidar.

They put me to work cultivating in a patch of melons.

I never was a farmer nor particularly keen for this sort of work, and I am free to confess that time never had dragged so heavily as it did during the hour or the year I spent there at that work. How long it really was I do not know, of course; but it was all too long.

The creatures that worked about me were quite simple and friendly. One of them proved to be a son of Gr-gr-gr. He had broken some minor tribal law, and was working out his sentence in the fields. He told me that his tribe had lived upon this hilltop always, and that there were other tribes like them dwelling upon other hilltops. They had no wars and had always lived in peace and harmony, menaced only by the larger carnivora of the island, until my kind had come under a creature called Hooja, and attacked and killed them when they chanced to descend from their natural fortresses to visit their fellows upon other lofty mesas.

Now they were afraid; but some day they would go in a body and fall upon Hooja and his people and slay them all. I explained to him that I was Hooja’s enemy, and asked, when they were ready to go, that I be allowed to go with them, or, better still, that they let me go ahead and learn all that I could about the village where Hooja dwelt so that they might attack it with the best chance of success.

Gr-gr-gr’s son seemed much impressed by my suggestion. He said that when he was through in the fields he would speak to his father about the matter.

Some time after this Gr-gr-gr came through the fields where we were, and his son spoke to him upon the subject, but the old gentleman was evidently in anything but a good humor, for he cuffed the youngster and, turning upon me, informed me that he was convinced that I had lied to him, and that I was one of Hooja’s people.

“Wherefore,” he concluded, “we shall slay you as soon as the melons are cultivated. Hasten, therefore.”

And hasten I did. I hastened to cultivate the weeds which grew among the melon-vines. Where there had been one sickly weed before, I nourished two healthy ones. When I found a particularly promising variety of weed growing elsewhere than among my melons, I forthwith dug it up and transplanted it among my charges.

My masters did not seem to realize my perfidy. They saw me always laboring diligently in the melon-patch, and as time enters not into the reckoning of Pellucidarians—even of human beings and much less of brutes and half brutes—I might have lived on indefinitely through this subterfuge had not that occurred which took me out of the melon-patch for good and all.

CHAPTER IX

HOOJA’S CUTTHROATS APPEAR

I had built a little shelter of rocks and brush where I might crawl in and sleep out of the perpetual light and heat of the noonday sun. When I was tired or hungry I retired to my humble cot.

My masters never interposed the slightest objection. As a matter of fact, they were very good to me, nor did I see aught while I was among them to indicate that they are ever else than a simple, kindly folk when left to themselves. Their awe-inspiring size, terrific strength, mighty fighting-fangs, and hideous appearance are but the attributes necessary to the successful waging of their constant battle for survival, and well do they employ them when the need arises. The only flesh they eat is that of herbivorous animals and birds. When they hunt the mighty thag, the prehistoric bos of the outer crust, a single male, with his fiber rope, will catch and kill the greatest of the bulls.

Well, as I was about to say, I had this little shelter at the edge of my melon-patch. Here I was resting from my labors on a certain occasion when I heard a great hub-bub in the village, which lay about a quarter of a mile away.

Presently a male came racing toward the field, shouting excitedly. As he approached I came from my shelter to learn what all the commotion might be about, for the monotony of my existence in the melon-patch must have fostered that trait of my curiosity from which it had always been my secret boast I am peculiarly free.

The other workers also ran forward to meet the messenger, who quickly unburdened himself of his information, and as quickly turned and scampered back toward the village. When running these beast-men often go upon all fours. Thus they leap over obstacles that would slow up a human being, and upon the level attain a speed that would make a thoroughbred look to his laurels. The result in this instance was that before I had more than assimilated the gist of the word which had been brought to the fields, I was alone, watching my co-workers speeding villageward.

I was alone! It was the first time since my capture that no beast-man had been within sight of me. I was alone! And all my captors were in the village at the op-posite edge of the mesa repelling an attack of Hooja’s horde!

It seemed from the messenger’s tale that two of Gr-gr-gr’s great males had been set upon by a half-dozen of Hooja’s cutthroats while the former were peaceably returning from the thag hunt. The two had returned to the village unscratched, while but a single one of Hooja’s half-dozen had escaped to report the outcome of the battle to their leader. Now Hooja was coming to punish Gr-gr-gr’s people. With his large force, armed with the bows and arrows that Hooja had learned from me to make, with long lances and sharp knives, I feared that even the mighty strength of the beastmen could avail them but little.

At last had come the opportunity for which I waited! I was free to make for the far end of the mesa, find my way to the valley below, and while the two forces were engaged in their struggle, continue my search for Hooja’s village, which I had learned from the beast-men lay farther on down the river that I had been following when taken prisoner.

As I turned to make for the mesa’s rim the sounds of battle came plainly to my ears—the hoarse shouts of men mingled with the half-beastly roars and growls of the brute-folk.

Did I take advantage of my opportunity?

I did not. Instead, lured by the din of strife and by the desire to deliver a stroke, however feeble, against hated Hooja, I wheeled and ran directly toward the village.

When I reached the edge of the plateau such a scene met my astonished gaze as never before had startled it, for the unique battle-methods of the half-brutes were rather the most remarkable I had ever witnessed. Along the very edge of the cliff-top stood a thin line of mighty males—the best rope-throwers of the tribe. A few feet behind these the rest of the males, with the exception of about twenty, formed a second line. Still farther in the rear all the women and young children were clustered into a single group under the protection of the remaining twenty fighting males and all the old males.

But it was the work of the first two lines that interested me. The forces of Hooja—a great horde of savage Sagoths and primeval cave men—were working their way up the steep cliff-face, their agility but slightly less than that of my captors who had clambered so nimbly aloft—even he who was burdened by my weight.

As the attackers came on they paused occasionally wherever a projection gave them sufficient foothold and launched arrows and spears at the defenders above them. During the entire battle both sides hurled taunts and insults at one another—the human beings naturally excelling the brutes in the coarseness and vileness of their vilification and invective.

The “firing-line” of the brute-men wielded no weapon other than their long fiber nooses. When a foeman came within range of them a noose would settle unerringly about him and he would be dragged, fighting and yelling, to the cliff-top, unless, as occasionally occurred, he was quick enough to draw his knife and cut the rope above him, in which event he usually plunged down-ward to a no less certain death than that which awaited him above.

Those who were hauled up within reach of the powerful clutches of the defenders had the nooses snatched from them and were catapulted back through the first line to the second, where they were seized and killed by the simple expedient of a single powerful closing of mighty fangs upon the backs of their necks.

But the arrows of the invaders were taking a much heavier toll than the nooses of the defenders and I foresaw that it was but a matter of time before Hooja’s forces must conquer unless the brute-men changed their tactics, or the cave men tired of the battle.

Gr-gr-gr was standing in the center of the first line. All about him were boulders and large fragments of broken rock. I approached him and without a word toppled a large mass of rock over the edge of the cliff. It fell directly upon the head of an archer, crushing him to instant death and carrying his mangled corpse with it to the bottom of the declivity, and on its way brushing three more of the attackers into the hereafter.

Gr-gr-gr turned toward me in surprise. For an instant he appeared to doubt the sincerity of my motives. I felt that perhaps my time had come when he reached for me with one of his giant paws; but I dodged him, and running a few paces to the right hurled down another missile. It, too, did its allotted work of destruction. Then I picked up smaller fragments and with all the control and accuracy for which I had earned justly deserved fame in my collegiate days I rained down a hail of death upon those beneath me.

Gr-gr-gr was coming toward me again. I pointed to the litter of rubble upon the cliff-top.

“Hurl these down upon the enemy!” I cried to him. “Tell your warriors to throw rocks down upon them!”

At my words the others of the first line, who had been interested spectators of my tactics, seized upon great boulders or bits of rock, whichever came first to their hands, and, without waiting for a command from Gr-gr-gr, deluged the terrified cave men with a perfect avalanche of stone. In less than no time the cliff-face was stripped of enemies and the village of Gr-gr-gr was saved.

Gr-gr-gr was standing beside me when the last of the cave men disappeared in rapid flight down the valley. He was looking at me intently.

“Those were your people,” he said. “Why did you kill them?”

“They were not my people,” I returned. “I have told you that before, but you would not believe me. Will you believe me now when I tell you that I hate Hooja and his tribe as much as you do? Will you believe me when I tell you that I wish to be the friend of Gr-gr-gr?”

For some time he stood there beside me, scratching his head. Evidently it was no less difficult for him to readjust his preconceived conclusions than it is for most human beings; but finally the idea percolated—which it might never have done had he been a man, or I might qualify that statement by saying had he been some men. Finally he spoke.

“Gilak,” he said, “you have made Gr-gr-gr ashamed. He would have killed you. How can he reward you?”

“Set me free,” I replied quickly.

“You are free,” he said. “You may go down when you wish, or you may stay with us. If you go you may always return. We are your friends.”

Naturally, I elected to go. I explained all over again to Gr-gr-gr the nature of my mission. He listened attentively; after I had done he offered to send some of his people with me to guide me to Hooja’s village. I was not slow in accepting his offer.

First, however, we must eat. The hunters upon whom Hooja’s men had fallen had brought back the meat of a great thag. There would be a feast to commemorate the victory—a feast and dancing.

I had never witnessed a tribal function of the brute-folk, though I had often heard strange sounds coming from the village, where I had not been allowed since my capture. Now I took part in one of their orgies.

It will live forever in my memory. The combination of bestiality and humanity was oftentimes pathetic, and again grotesque or horrible. Beneath the glaring noonday sun, in the sweltering heat of the mesa-top, the huge, hairy creatures leaped in a great circle. They coiled and threw their fiber-ropes; they hurled taunts and insults at an imaginary foe; they fell upon the carcass of the thag and literally tore it to pieces; and they ceased only when, gorged, they could no longer move.

I had to wait until the processes of digestion had released my escort from its torpor. Some had eaten until their abdomens were so distended that I thought they must burst, for beside the thag there had been fully a hundred antelopes of various sizes and varied degrees of decomposition, which they had unearthed from burial beneath the floors of their lairs to grace the banquet-board.

But at last we were started—six great males and myself. Gr-gr-gr had returned my weapons to me, and at last I was once more upon my oft-interrupted way toward my goal. Whether I should find Dian at the end of my journey or no I could not even surmise; but I was none the less impatient to be off, for if only the worst lay in store for me I wished to know even the worst at once.

I could scarce believe that my proud mate would still be alive in the power of Hooja; but time upon Pellucidar is so strange a thing that I realized that to her or to him only a few minutes might have elapsed since his subtle trickery had enabled him to steal her away from Phutra. Or she might have found the means either to repel his advances or escape him.

As we descended the cliff we disturbed a great pack of large hyena-like beasts—hyaena spelaeus, Perry calls them—who were busy among the corpses of the cave men fallen in battle. The ugly creatures were far from the cowardly things that our own hyenas are reputed to be; they stood their ground with bared fangs as we approached them. But, as I was later to learn, so formidable are the brute-folk that there are few even of the larger carnivora that will not make way for them when they go abroad. So the hyenas moved a little from our line of march, closing in again upon their feasts when we had passed.

We made our way steadily down the rim of the beautiful river which flows the length of the island, coming at last to a wood rather denser than any that I had before encountered in this country. Well within this forest my escort halted.

“There!” they said, and pointed ahead. “We are to go no farther.”

Thus having guided me to my destination they left me. Ahead of me, through the trees, I could see what appeared to be the foot of a steep hill. Toward this I made my way. The forest ran to the very base of a cliff, in the face of which were the mouths of many caves. They appeared untenanted; but I decided to watch for a while before venturing farther. A large tree, densely foliaged, offered a splendid vantage-point from which to spy upon the cliff, so I clambered among its branches where, securely hidden, I could watch what transpired about the caves.

It seemed that I had scarcely settled myself in a comfortable position before a party of cave men emerged from one of the smaller apertures in the cliff-face, about fifty feet from the base. They descended into the forest and disappeared. Soon after came several others from the same cave, and after them, at a short interval, a score of women and children, who came into the wood to gather fruit. There were several warriors with them—a guard, I presume.

After this came other parties, and two or three groups who passed out of the forest and up the cliff-face to enter the same cave. I could not understand it. All who came out had emerged from the same cave. All who returned reentered it. No other cave gave evidence of habitation, and no cave but one of extraordinary size could have accommodated all the people whom I had seen pass in and out of its mouth.

For a long time I sat and watched the coming and going of great numbers of the cave-folk. Not once did one leave the cliff by any other opening save that from which I had seen the first party come, nor did any reenter the cliff through another aperture.

What a cave it must be, I thought, that houses an entire tribe! But dissatisfied of the truth of my surmise, I climbed higher among the branches of the tree that I might get a better view of other portions of the cliff. High above the ground I reached a point whence I could see the summit of the hill. Evidently it was a flat-topped butte similar to that on which dwelt the tribe of Gr-gr-gr.

As I sat gazing at it a figure appeared at the very edge. It was that of a young girl in whose hair was a gorgeous bloom plucked from some flowering tree of the forest. I had seen her pass beneath me but a short while before and enter the small cave that had swallowed all of the returning tribesmen.

The mystery was solved. The cave was but the mouth of a passage that led upward through the cliff to the summit of the hill. It served merely as an avenue from their lofty citadel to the valley below.

No sooner had the truth flashed upon me than the realization came that I must seek some other means of reaching the village, for to pass unobserved through this well-traveled thoroughfare would be impossible. At the moment there was no one in sight below me, so I slid quickly from my arboreal watch-tower to the ground and moved rapidly away to the right with the intention of circling the hill if necessary until I had found an unwatched spot where I might have some slight chance of scaling the heights and reaching the top unseen.

I kept close to the edge of the forest, in the very midst of which the hill seemed to rise. Though I carefully scanned the cliff as I traversed its base, I saw no sign of any other entrance than that to which my guides had led me.

After some little time the roar of the sea broke upon my ears. Shortly after I came upon the broad ocean which breaks at this point at the very foot of the great hill where Hooja had found safe refuge for himself and his villains.

I was just about to clamber along the jagged rocks which lie at the base of the cliff next to the sea, in search of some foothold to the top, when I chanced to see a canoe rounding the end of the island. I threw myself down behind a large boulder where I could watch the dugout and its occupants without myself being seen.

They paddled toward me for a while and then, about a hundred yards from me, they turned straight in toward the foot of the frowning cliffs. From where I was it seemed that they were bent upon self-destruction, since the roar of the breakers beating upon the perpendicular rock-face appeared to offer only death to any one who might venture within their relentless clutch.

A mass of rock would soon hide them from my view; but so keen was the excitement of the instant that I could not refrain from crawling forward to a point whence I could watch the dashing of the small craft to pieces on the jagged rocks that loomed before her, although I risked discovery from above to accomplish my design.

When I had reached a point where I could again see the dugout, I was just in time to see it glide unharmed between two needle-pointed sentinels of granite and float quietly upon the unruffled bosom of a tiny cove.

Again I crouched behind a boulder to observe what would next transpire; nor did I have long to wait. The dugout, which contained but two men, was drawn close to the rocky wall. A fiber rope, one end of which was tied to the boat, was made fast about a projection of the cliff face.

Then the two men commenced the ascent of the almost perpendicular wall toward the summit several hundred feet above. I looked on in amazement, for, splendid climbers though the cave men of Pellucidar are, I never before had seen so remarkable a feat performed. Upwardly they moved without a pause, to disappear at last over the summit.

When I felt reasonably sure that they had gone for a while at least I crawled from my hiding-place and at the risk of a broken neck leaped and scrambled to the spot where their canoe was moored.

If they had scaled that cliff I could, and if I couldn’t I should die in the attempt.

But when I turned to the accomplishment of the task I found it easier than I had imagined it would be, since I immediately discovered that shallow hand and foot-holds had been scooped in the cliff’s rocky face, forming a crude ladder from the base to the summit.

At last I reached the top, and very glad I was, too. Cautiously I raised my head until my eyes were above the cliff-crest. Before me spread a rough mesa, liberally sprinkled with large boulders. There was no village in sight nor any living creature.

I drew myself to level ground and stood erect. A few trees grew among the boulders. Very carefully I advanced from tree to tree and boulder to boulder toward the inland end of the mesa. I stopped often to listen and look cautiously about me in every direction.

How I wished that I had my revolvers and rifle! I would not have to worm my way like a scared cat toward Hooja’s village, nor did I relish doing so now; but Dian’s life might hinge upon the success of my venture, and so I could not afford to take chances. To have met suddenly with discovery and had a score or more of armed warriors upon me might have been very grand and heroic; but it would have immediately put an end to all my earthly activities, nor have accomplished aught in the service of Dian.

Well, I must have traveled nearly a mile across that mesa without seeing a sign of anyone, when all of a sudden, as I crept around the edge of a boulder, I ran plump into a man, down on all fours like myself, crawling toward me.

CHAPTER X

THE RAID ON THE CAVE-PRISON

His head was turned over his shoulder as I first saw him—he was looking back toward the village. As I leaped for him his eyes fell upon me. Never in my life have I seen a more surprised mortal than this poor cave man. Before he could utter a single scream of warning or alarm I had my fingers on his throat and had dragged him behind the boulder, where I proceeded to sit upon him, while I figured out what I had best do with him.

He struggled a little at first, but finally lay still, and so I released the pressure of my fingers at his windpipe, for which I imagine he was quite thankful—I know that I should have been.

I hated to kill him in cold blood; but what else I was to do with him I could not see, for to turn him loose would have been merely to have the entire village aroused and down upon me in a moment. The fellow lay looking up at me with the surprise still deeply written on his countenance. At last, all of a sudden, a look of recognition entered his eyes.

“I have seen you before,” he said. “I saw you in the arena at the Mahars’ city of Phutra when the thipdars dragged the tarag from you and your mate. I never understood that. Afterward they put me in the arena with two warriors from Gombul.”

He smiled in recollection.

“It would have been the same had there been ten warriors from Gombul. I slew them, winning my freedom. Look!”

He half turned his left shoulder toward me, exhibiting the newly healed scar of the Mahars’ branded mark.

“Then,” he continued, “as I was returning to my people I met some of them fleeing. They told me that one called Hooja the Sly One had come and seized our village, putting our people into slavery. So I hurried hither to learn the truth, and, sure enough, here I found Hooja and his wicked men living in my village, and my father’s people but slaves among them.

“I was discovered and captured, but Hooja did not kill me. I am the chief’s son, and through me he hoped to win my father’s warriors back to the village to help him in a great war he says that he will soon commence.

“Among his prisoners is Dian the Beautiful One, whose brother, Dacor the Strong One, chief of Amoz, once saved my life when he came to Thuria to steal a mate. I helped him capture her, and we are good friends. So when I learned that Dian the Beautiful One was Hooja’s prisoner, I told him that I would not aid him if he harmed her.

“Recently one of Hooja’s warriors overheard me talking with another prisoner. We were planning to combine all the prisoners, seize weapons, and when most of Hooja’s warriors were away, slay the rest and retake our hilltop. Had we done so we could have held it, for there are only two entrances—the narrow tunnel at one end and the steep path up the cliffs at the other.

“But when Hooja heard what we had planned he was very angry, and ordered that I die. They bound me hand and foot and placed me in a cave until all the warriors should return to witness my death; but while they were away I heard someone calling me in a muffled voice which seemed to come from the wall of the cave. When I replied the voice, which was a woman’s, told me that she had overheard all that had passed between me and those who had brought me thither, and that she was Dacor’s sister and would find a way to help me.

“Presently a little hole appeared in the wall at the point from which the voice had come. After a time I saw a woman’s hand digging with a bit of stone. Dacor’s sister made a hole in the wall between the cave where I lay bound and that in which she had been confined, and soon she was by my side and had cut my bonds.

“We talked then, and I offered to make the attempt to take her away and back to the land of Sari, where she told me she would be able to learn the whereabouts of her mate. Just now I was going to the other end of the island to see if a boat lay there, and if the way was clear for our escape. Most of the boats are always away now, for a great many of Hooja’s men and nearly all the slaves are upon the Island of Trees, where Hooja is having many boats built to carry his warriors across the water to the mouth of a great river which he discovered while he was returning from Phutra—a vast river that empties into the sea there.”

The speaker pointed toward the northeast. “It is wide and smooth and slow-running almost to the land of Sari,” he added.

“And where is Dian the Beautiful One now?” I asked.

I had released my prisoner as soon as I found that he was Hooja’s enemy, and now the pair of us were squat-ting beside the boulder while he told his story.

“She returned to the cave where she had been imprisoned,” he replied, “and is awaiting me there.”

“There is no danger that Hooja will come while you are away?”

“Hooja is upon the Island of Trees,” he replied.

“Can you direct me to the cave so that I can find it alone?” I asked.

He said he could, and in the strange yet explicit fashion of the Pellucidarians he explained minutely how I might reach the cave where he had been imprisoned, and through the hole in its wall reach Dian.

I thought it best for but one of us to return, since two could accomplish but little more than one and would double the risk of discovery. In the meantime he could make his way to the sea and guard the boat, which I told him lay there at the foot of the cliff.

I told him to await us at the cliff-top, and if Dian came alone to do his best to get away with her and take her to Sari, as I thought it quite possible that, in case of detection and pursuit, it might be necessary for me to hold off Hooja’s people while Dian made her way alone to where my new friend was to await her. I impressed upon him the fact that he might have to resort to trickery or even to force to get Dian to leave me; but I made him promise that he would sacrifice everything, even his life, in an attempt to rescue Dacor’s sister.

Then we parted—he to take up his position where he could watch the boat and await Dian, I to crawl cautiously on toward the caves. I had no difficulty in following the directions given me by Juag, the name by which Dacor’s friend said he was called. There was the leaning tree, my first point he told me to look for after rounding the boulder where we had met. After that I crawled to the balanced rock, a huge boulder resting upon a tiny base no larger than the palm of your hand.

From here I had my first view of the village of caves. A low bluff ran diagonally across one end of the mesa, and in the face of this bluff were the mouths of many caves. Zig-zag trails led up to them, and narrow ledges scooped from the face of the soft rock connected those upon the same level.

The cave in which Juag had been confined was at the extreme end of the cliff nearest me. By taking advantage of the bluff itself, I could approach within a few feet of the aperture without being visible from any other cave. There were few people about at the time; most of these were congregated at the foot of the far end of the bluff, where they were so engrossed in excited conversation that I felt but little fear of detection. However I exercised the greatest care in approaching the cliff. After watching for a while until I caught an instant when every head was turned away from me, I darted, rabbitlike, into the cave.

Like many of the man-made caves of Pellucidar, this one consisted of three chambers, one behind another, and all unlit except for what sunlight filtered in through the external opening. The result was gradually increasing darkness as one passed into each succeeding chamber.

In the last of the three I could just distinguish objects, and that was all. As I was groping around the walls for the hole that should lead into the cave where Dian was imprisoned, I heard a man’s voice quite close to me.

The speaker had evidently but just entered, for he spoke in a loud tone, demanding the whereabouts of one whom he had come in search of.

“Where are you, woman?” he cried. “Hooja has sent for you.”

And then a woman’s voice answered him:

“And what does Hooja want of me?”

The voice was Dian’s. I groped in the direction of the sounds, feeling for the hole.

“He wishes you brought to the Island of Trees,” replied the man; “for he is ready to take you as his mate.”

“I will not go,” said Dian. “I will die first.”

“I am sent to bring you, and bring you I shall.”

I could hear him crossing the cave toward her.

Frantically I clawed the wall of the cave in which I was in an effort to find the elusive aperture that would lead me to Dian’s side.

I heard the sound of a scuffle in the next cave. Then my fingers sank into loose rock and earth in the side of the cave. In an instant I realized why I had been unable to find the opening while I had been lightly feeling the surface of the walls—Dian had blocked up the hole she had made lest it arouse suspicion and lead to an early discovery of Juag’s escape.

Plunging my weight against the crumbling mass, I sent it crashing into the adjoining cavern. With it came I, David, Emperor of Pellucidar. I doubt if any other potentate in a world’s history ever made a more undignified entrance. I landed head first on all fours, but I came quickly and was on my feet before the man in the dark guessed what had happened.

He saw me, though, when I arose and, sensing that no friend came thus precipitately, turned to meet me even as I charged him. I had my stone knife in my hand, and he had his. In the darkness of the cave there was little opportunity for a display of science, though even at that I venture to say that we fought a very pretty duel.

Before I came to Pellucidar I do not recall that I ever had seen a stone knife, and I am sure that I never fought with a knife of any description; but now I do not have to take my hat off to any of them when it comes to wielding that primitive yet wicked weapon.

I could just see Dian in the darkness, but I knew that she could not see my features or recognize me; and I enjoyed in anticipation, even while I was fighting for her life and mine, her dear joy when she should discover that it was I who was her deliverer.

My opponent was large, but he also was active and no mean knife-man. He caught me once fairly in the shoulder—I carry the scar yet, and shall carry it to the grave. And then he did a foolish thing, for as I leaped back to gain a second in which to calm the shock of the wound he rushed after me and tried to clinch. He rather neglected his knife for the moment in his greater desire to get his hands on me. Seeing the opening, I swung my left fist fairly to the point of his jaw.

Down he went. Before ever he could scramble up again I was on him and had buried my knife in his heart. Then I stood up—and there was Dian facing me and peering at me through the dense gloom.

“You are not Juag!” she exclaimed. “Who are you?”

I took a step toward her, my arms outstretched.

“It is I, Dian,” I said. “It is David.”

At the sound of my voice she gave a little cry in which tears were mingled—a pathetic little cry that told me all without words how far hope had gone from her—and then she ran forward and threw herself in my arms. I covered her perfect lips and her beautiful face with kisses, and stroked her thick black hair, and told her again and again what she already knew—what she had known for years—that I loved her better than all else which two worlds had to offer. We couldn’t devote much time, though, to the happiness of love-making, for we were in the midst of enemies who might discover us at any moment.

I drew her into the adjoining cave. Thence we made our way to the mouth of the cave that had given me entrance to the cliff. Here I reconnoitered for a moment, and seeing the coast clear, ran swiftly forth with Dian at my side. We dodged around the cliff-end, then paused for an instant, listening. No sound reached our ears to indicate that any had seen us, and we moved cautiously onward along the way by which I had come.

As we went Dian told me that her captors had informed her how close I had come in search of her—even to the Land of Awful Shadow—and how one of Hooja’s men who knew me had discovered me asleep and robbed me of all my possessions. And then how Hooja had sent four others to find me and take me prisoner. But these men, she said, had not yet returned, or at least she had not heard of their return.

“Nor will you ever,” I responded, “for they have gone to that place whence none ever returns.” I then related my adventure with these four.

We had come almost to the cliff-edge where Juag should be awaiting us when we saw two men walking rapidly toward the same spot from another direction. They did not see us, nor did they see Juag, whom I now discovered hiding behind a low bush close to the verge of the precipice which drops into the sea at this point. As quickly as possible, without exposing ourselves too much to the enemy, we hastened forward that we might reach Juag as quickly as they.

But they noticed him first and immediately charged him, for one of them had been his guard, and they had both been sent to search for him, his escape having been discovered between the time he left the cave and the time when I reached it. Evidently they had wasted precious moments looking for him in other portions of the mesa.

When I saw that the two of them were rushing him, I called out to attract their attention to the fact that they had more than a single man to cope with. They paused at the sound of my voice and looked about.

When they discovered Dian and me they exchanged a few words, and one of them continued toward Juag while the other turned upon us. As he came nearer I saw that he carried in his hand one of my six-shooters, but he was holding it by the barrel, evidently mistaking it for some sort of warclub or tomahawk.

I could scarce refrain a grin when I thought of the wasted possibilities of that deadly revolver in the hands of an untutored warrior of the stone age. Had he but reversed it and pulled the trigger he might still be alive; maybe he is for all I know, since I did not kill him then. When he was about twenty feet from me I flung my javelin with a quick movement that I had learned from Ghak. He ducked to avoid it, and instead of receiving it in his heart, for which it was intended, he got it on the side of the head.

Down he went all in a heap. Then I glanced toward Juag. He was having a most exciting time. The fellow pitted against Juag was a veritable giant; he was hacking and hewing away at the poor slave with a villainous-looking knife that might have been designed for butchering mastodons. Step by step, he was forcing Juag back toward the edge of the cliff with a fiendish cunning that permitted his adversary no chance to side-step the terrible consequences of retreat in this direction. I saw quickly that in another moment Juag must deliberately hurl himself to death over the precipice or be pushed over by his foeman.

And as I saw Juag’s predicament I saw, too, in the same instant, a way to relieve him. Leaping quickly to the side of the fellow I had just felled, I snatched up my fallen revolver. It was a desperate chance to take, and I realized it in the instant that I threw the gun up from my hip and pulled the trigger. There was no time to aim. Juag was upon the very brink of the chasm. His relentless foe was pushing him hard, beating at him furiously with the heavy knife.

And then the revolver spoke—loud and sharp. The giant threw his hands above his head, whirled about like a huge top, and lunged forward over the precipice.

And Juag?

He cast a single affrighted glance in my direction—never before, of course, had he heard the report of a firearm—and with a howl of dismay he, too, turned and plunged headforemost from sight. Horror-struck, I hastened to the brink of the abyss just in time to see two splashes upon the surface of the little cove below.

For an instant I stood there watching with Dian at my side. Then, to my utter amazement, I saw Juag rise to the surface and swim strongly toward the boat.

The fellow had dived that incredible distance and come up unharmed!

I called to him to await us below, assuring him that he need have no fear of my weapon, since it would harm only my enemies. He shook his head and mut-tered something which I could not hear at so great a distance; but when I pushed him he promised to wait for us. At the same instant Dian caught my arm and pointed toward the village. My shot had brought a crowd of natives on the run toward us.

The fellow whom I had stunned with my javelin had regained consciousness and scrambled to his feet. He was now racing as fast as he could go back toward his people. It looked mighty dark for Dian and me with that ghastly descent between us and even the beginnings of liberty, and a horde of savage enemies advancing at a rapid run.

There was but one hope. That was to get Dian started for the bottom without delay. I took her in my arms just for an instant—I felt, somehow, that it might be for the last time. For the life of me I couldn’t see how both of us could escape.

I asked her if she could make the descent alone—if she were not afraid. She smiled up at me bravely and shrugged her shoulders. She afraid! So beautiful is she that I am always having difficulty in remembering that she is a primitive, half-savage cave girl of the stone age, and often find myself mentally limiting her capacities to those of the effete and overcivilized beauties of the outer crust.

“And you?” she asked as she swung over the edge of the cliff.

“I shall follow you after I take a shot or two at our friends,” I replied. “I just want to give them a taste of this new medicine which is going to cure Pellucidar of all its ills. That will stop them long enough for me to join you. Now hurry, and tell Juag to be ready to shove off the moment I reach the boat, or the instant that it becomes apparent that I cannot reach it.

“You, Dian, must return to Sari if anything happens to me, that you may devote your life to carrying out with Perry the hopes and plans for Pellucidar that are so dear to my heart. Promise me, dear.”

She hated to promise to desert me, nor would she; only shaking her head and making no move to descend. The tribesmen were nearing us. Juag was shouting up to us from below. It was evident that he realized from my actions that I was attempting to persuade Dian to descend, and that grave danger threatened us from above.

“Dive!” he cried. “Dive!”

I looked at Dian and then down at the abyss below us. The cove appeared no larger than a saucer. How Juag ever had hit it I could not guess.

“Dive!” cried Juag. “It is the only way—there is no time to climb down.”

CHAPTER XI

ESCAPE

Dian glanced downward and shuddered. Her tribe were hill people—they were not accustomed to swimming other than in quiet rivers and placid lakelets. It was not the steep that appalled her. It was the ocean—vast, mysterious, terrible.

To dive into it from this great height was beyond her. I couldn’t wonder, either. To have attempted it myself seemed too preposterous even for thought. Only one consideration could have prompted me to leap headforemost from that giddy height—suicide; or at least so I thought at the moment.

“Quick!” I urged Dian. “You cannot dive; but I can hold them until you reach safety.”

“And you?” she asked once more. “Can you dive when they come too close? Otherwise you could not escape if you waited here until I reached the bottom.”

I saw that she would not leave me unless she thought that I could make that frightful dive as we had seen Juag make it. I glanced once downward; then with a mental shrug I assured her that I would dive the moment that she reached the boat. Satisfied, she began the descent carefully, yet swiftly. I watched her for a moment, my heart in my mouth lest some slight mis-step or the slipping of a finger-hold should pitch her to a frightful death upon the rocks below.

Then I turned toward the advancing Hoojans—“Hoosiers,” Perry dubbed them—even going so far as to christen this island where Hooja held sway Indiana; it is so marked now upon our maps. They were coming on at a great rate. I raised my revolver, took deliberate aim at the foremost warrior, and pulled the trigger. With the bark of the gun the fellow lunged forward. His head doubled beneath him. He rolled over and over two or three times before he came to a stop, to lie very quietly in the thick grass among the brilliant wild flowers.

Those behind him halted. One of them hurled a javelin toward me, but it fell short—they were just beyond javelin-range. There were two armed with bows and arrows; these I kept my eyes on. All of them appeared awe-struck and frightened by the sound and effect of the firearm. They kept looking from the corpse to me and jabbering among themselves.

I took advantage of the lull in hostilities to throw a quick glance over the edge toward Dian. She was half-way down the cliff and progressing finely. Then I turned back toward the enemy. One of the bowmen was fitting an arrow to his bow. I raised my hand.

“Stop!” I cried. “Whoever shoots at me or advances toward me I shall kill as I killed him!”

I pointed at the dead man. The fellow lowered his bow. Again there was animated discussion. I could see that those who were not armed with bows were urging something upon the two who were.

At last the majority appeared to prevail, for simu-taneously the two archers raised their weapons. At the same instant I fired at one of them, dropping him in his tracks. The other, however, launched his missile, but the report of my gun had given him such a start that the arrow flew wild above my head. A second after and he, too, was sprawled upon the sward with a round hole between his eyes. It had been a rather good shot.

I glanced over the edge again. Dian was almost at the bottom. I could see Juag standing just beneath her with his hands upstretched to assist her.

A sullen roar from the warriors recalled my attention toward them. They stood shaking their fists at me and yelling insults. From the direction of the village I saw a single warrior coming to join them. He was a huge fellow, and when he strode among them I could tell by his bearing and their deference toward him that he was a chieftain. He listened to all they had to tell of the happenings of the last few minutes; then with a command and a roar he started for me with the whole pack at his heels. All they had needed had arrived—namely, a brave leader.

I had two unfired cartridges in the chambers of my gun. I let the big warrior have one of them, thinking that his death would stop them all. But I guess they were worked up to such a frenzy of rage by this time that nothing would have stopped them. At any rate, they only yelled the louder as he fell and increased their speed toward me. I dropped another with my remaining cartridge.

Then they were upon me—or almost. I thought of my promise to Dian—the awful abyss was behind me—a big devil with a huge bludgeon in front of me. I grasped my six-shooter by the barrel and hurled it squarely in his face with all my strength.

Then, without waiting to learn the effect of my throw, I wheeled, ran the few steps to the edge, and leaped as far out over that frightful chasm as I could. I know something of diving, and all that I know I put into that dive, which I was positive would be my last.

For a couple of hundred feet I fell in horizontal position. The momentum I gained was terrific. I could feel the air almost as a solid body, so swiftly I hurtled through it. Then my position gradually changed to the vertical, and with hands outstretched I slipped through the air, cleaving it like a flying arrow. Just before I struck the water a perfect shower of javelins fell all about. My enemies had rushed to the brink and hurled their weapons after me. By a miracle I was untouched.

In the final instant I saw that I had cleared the rocks and was going to strike the water fairly. Then I was in and plumbing the depths. I suppose I didn’t really go very far down, but it seemed to me that I should never stop. When at last I dared curve my hands upward and divert my progress toward the surface, I thought that I should explode for air before I ever saw the sun again except through a swirl of water. But at last my head popped above the waves, and I filled my lungs with air.

Before me was the boat, from which Juag and Dian were clambering. I couldn’t understand why they were deserting it now, when we were about to set out for the mainland in it; but when I reached its side I understood. Two heavy javelins, missing Dian and Juag by but a hair’s breadth, had sunk deep into the bottom of the dugout in a straight line with the grain of the wood, and split her almost in two from stem to stern. She was useless.

Juag was leaning over a near-by rock, his hand out-stretched to aid me in clambering to his side; nor did I lose any time in availing myself of his proffered assistance. An occasional javelin was still dropping perilously close to us, so we hastened to draw as close as possible to the cliffside, where we were comparatively safe from the missiles.

Here we held a brief conference, in which it was decided that our only hope now lay in making for the opposite end of the island as quickly as we could, and utilizing the boat that I had hidden there, to continue our journey to the mainland.

Gathering up three of the least damaged javelins that had fallen about us, we set out upon our journey, keeping well toward the south side of the island, which Juag said was less frequented by the Hoojans than the central portion where the river ran. I think that this ruse must have thrown our pursuers off our track, since we saw nothing of them nor heard any sound of pursuit during the greater portion of our march the length of the island.

But the way Juag had chosen was rough and round-about, so that we consumed one or two more marches in covering the distance than if we had followed the river. This it was which proved our undoing.

Those who sought us must have sent a party up the river immediately after we escaped; for when we came at last onto the river-trail not far from our destination, there can be no doubt but that we were seen by Hoojans who were just ahead of us on the stream. The result was that as we were passing through a clump of bush a score of warriors leaped out upon us, and before we could scarce strike a blow in defense, had disarmed and bound us.

For a time thereafter I seemed to be entirely bereft of hope. I could see no ray of promise in the future—only immediate death for Juag and me, which didn’t concern me much in the face of what lay in store for Dian.

Poor child! What an awful life she had led! From the moment that I had first seen her chained in the slave caravan of the Mahars until now, a prisoner of a no less cruel creature, I could recall but a few brief intervals of peace and quiet in her tempestuous existence. Before I had known her, Jubal the Ugly One had pursued her across a savage world to make her his mate. She had eluded him, and finally I had slain him; but terror and privations, and exposure to fierce beasts had haunted her footsteps during all her lonely flight from him. And when I had returned to the outer world the old trials had recommenced with Hooja in Jubal’s role. I could almost have wished for death to vouchsafe her that peace which fate seemed to deny her in this life.

I spoke to her on the subject, suggesting that we expire together.

“Do not fear, David,” she replied. “I shall end my life before ever Hooja can harm me; but first I shall see that Hooja dies.”

She drew from her breast a little leathern thong, to the end of which was fastened a tiny pouch.

“What have you there?” I asked.

“Do you recall that time you stepped upon the thing you call viper in your world?” she asked.

I nodded.

“The accident gave you the idea for the poisoned arrows with which we fitted the warriors of the empire,” she continued. “And, too, it gave me an idea. For a long time I have carried a viper’s fang in my bosom. It has given me strength to endure many dangers, for it has always assured me immunity from the ultimate insult. I am not ready to die yet. First let Hooja embrace the viper’s fang.”

So we did not die together, and I am glad now that we did not. It is always a foolish thing to contemplate suicide; for no matter how dark the future may appear today, tomorrow may hold for us that which will alter our whole life in an instant, revealing to us nothing but sunshine and happiness. So, for my part, I shall always wait for tomorrow.

In Pellucidar, where it is always today, the wait may not be so long, and so it proved for us. As we were passing a lofty, flat-topped hill through a park-like wood a perfect network of fiber ropes fell suddenly about our guard, enmeshing them. A moment later a horde of our friends, the hairy gorilla-men, with the mild eyes and long faces of sheep leaped among them.

It was a very interesting fight. I was sorry that my bonds prevented me from taking part in it, but I urged on the brutemen with my voice, and cheered old Gr-gr-gr, their chief, each time that his mighty jaws crunched out the life of a Hoojan. When the battle was over we found that a few of our captors had escaped, but the majority of them lay dead about us. The gorilla-men paid no further attention to them. Gr-gr-gr turned to me.

“Gr-gr-gr and all his people are your friends,” he said. “One saw the warriors of the Sly One and followed them. He saw them capture you, and then he flew to the village as fast as he could go and told me all that he had seen. The rest you know. You did much for Gr-gr-gr and Gr-gr-gr’s people. We shall always do much for you.”

I thanked him; and when I had told him of our escape and our destination, he insisted on accompanying us to the sea with a great number of his fierce males. Nor were we at all loath to accept his escort. We found the canoe where I had hidden it, and bidding Gr-gr-gr and his warriors farewell, the three of us embarked for the mainland.

I questioned Juag upon the feasibility of attempting to cross to the mouth of the great river of which he had told me, and up which he said we might paddle almost to Sari; but he urged me not to attempt it, since we had but a single paddle and no water or food. I had to admit the wisdom of his advice, but the desire to explore this great waterway was strong upon me, arousing in me at last a determination to make the attempt after first gaining the mainland and rectifying our deficiencies.

We landed several miles north of Thuria in a little cove that seemed to offer protection from the heavier seas which sometimes run, even upon these usually pacific oceans of Pellucidar. Here I outlined to Dian and Juag the plans I had in mind. They were to fit the canoe with a small sail, the purposes of which I had to explain to them both—since neither had ever seen or heard of such a contrivance before. Then they were to hunt for food which we could transport with us, and prepare a receptacle for water.

These two latter items were more in Juag’s line, but he kept muttering about the sail and the wind for a long time. I could see that he was not even half convinced that any such ridiculous contraption could make a canoe move through the water.

We hunted near the coast for a while, but were not rewarded with any particular luck. Finally we decided to hide the canoe and strike inland in search of game. At Juag’s suggestion we dug a hole in the sand at the upper edge of the beach and buried the craft, smoothing the surface over nicely and throwing aside the excess material we had excavated. Then we set out away from the sea. Traveling in Thuria is less arduous than under the midday sun which perpetually glares down on the rest of Pellucidar’s surface; but it has its draw-backs, one of which is the depressing influence exerted by the everlasting shade of the Land of Awful Shadow.

The farther inland we went the darker it became, until we were moving at last through an endless twilight. The vegetation here was sparse and of a weird, colorless nature, though what did grow was wondrous in shape and form. Often we saw huge lidi, or beasts of burden, striding across the dim landscape, browsing upon the grotesque vegetation or drinking from the slow and sullen rivers that run down from the Lidi Plains to empty into the sea in Thuria.

What we sought was either a thag—a sort of gigantic elk—or one of the larger species of antelope, the flesh of either of which dries nicely in the sun. The bladder of the thag would make a fine water-bottle, and its skin, I figured, would be a good sail. We traveled a considerable distance inland, entirely crossing the Land of Awful Shadow and emerging at last upon that portion of the Lidi Plains which lies in the pleasant sunlight. Above us the pendent world revolved upon its axis, filling me especially—and Dian to an almost equal state—with wonder and insatiable curiosity as to what strange forms of life existed among the hills and valleys and along the seas and rivers, which we could plainly see.

Before us stretched the horizonless expanses of vast Pellucidar, the Lidi Plains rolling up about us, while hanging high in the heavens to the northwest of us I thought I discerned the many towers which marked the entrances to the distant Mahar city, whose inhabitants preyed upon the Thurians.

Juag suggested that we travel to the northeast, where, he said, upon the verge of the plain we would find a wooded country in which game should be plentiful. Acting upon his advice, we came at last to a forest-jungle, through which wound innumerable game-paths. In the depths of this forbidding wood we came upon the fresh spoor of thag.

Shortly after, by careful stalking, we came within javelin-range of a small herd. Selecting a great bull, Juag and I hurled our weapons simultaneously, Dian reserving hers for an emergency. The beast staggered to his feet, bellowing. The rest of the herd was up and away in an instant, only the wounded bull remaining, with lowered head and roving eyes searching for the foe.

Then Juag exposed himself to the view of the bull—it is a part of the tactics of the hunt—while I stepped to one side behind a bush. The moment that the savage beast saw Juag he charged him. Juag ran straight away, that the bull might be lured past my hiding-place. On he came—tons of mighty bestial strength and rage.

Dian had slipped behind me. She, too, could fight a thag should emergency require. Ah, such a girl! A rightful empress of a stone age by every standard which two worlds might bring to measure her!

Crashing down toward us came the bull thag, bellowing and snorting, with the power of a hundred outer-earthly bulls. When he was opposite me I sprang for the heavy mane that covered his huge neck. To tangle my fingers in it was the work of but an instant. Then I was running along at the beast’s shoulder.

Now, the theory upon which this hunting custom is based is one long ago discovered by experience, and that is that a thag cannot be turned from his charge once he has started toward the object of his wrath, so long as he can still see the thing he charges. He evidently believes that the man clinging to his mane is attempting to restrain him from overtaking his prey, and so he pays no attention to this enemy, who, of course, does not retard the mighty charge in the least.

Once in the gait of the plunging bull, it was but a slight matter to vault to his back, as cavalrymen mount their chargers upon the run. Juag was still running in plain sight ahead of the bull. His speed was but a trifle less than that of the monster that pursued him. These Pellucidarians are almost as fleet as deer; because I am not is one reason that I am always chosen for the close-in work of the thag-hunt. I could not keep in front of a charging thag long enough to give the killer time to do his work. I learned that the first—and last—time I tried it.

Once astride the bull’s neck, I drew my long stone knife and, setting the point carefully over the brute’s spine, drove it home with both hands. At the same instant I leaped clear of the stumbling animal. Now, no vertebrate can progress far with a knife through his spine, and the thag is no exception to the rule.

The fellow was down instantly. As he wallowed Juag returned, and the two of us leaped in when an opening afforded the opportunity and snatched our javelins from his side. Then we danced about him, more like two savages than anything else, until we got the opening we were looking for, when simultaneously, our javelins pierced his wild heart, stilling it forever.

The thag had covered considerable ground from the point at which I had leaped upon him. When, after despatching him, I looked back for Dian, I could see nothing of her. I called aloud, but receiving no reply, set out at a brisk trot to where I had left her. I had no difficulty in finding the self-same bush behind which we had hidden, but Dian was not there. Again and again I called, to be rewarded only by silence. Where could she be? What could have become of her in the brief interval since I had seen her standing just behind me?

CHAPTER XII

KIDNAPPED!

I searched about the spot carefully. At last I was rewarded by the discovery of her javelin, a few yards from the bush that had concealed us from the charging thag—her javelin and the indications of a struggle revealed by the trampled vegetation and the overlapping footprints of a woman and a man. Filled with consternation and dismay, I followed these latter to where they suddenly disappeared a hundred yards from where the struggle had occurred. There I saw the huge imprints of a lidi’s feet.

The story of the tragedy was all too plain. A Thurian had either been following us, or had accidentally espied Dian and taken a fancy to her. While Juag and I had been engaged with the thag, he had abducted her. I ran swiftly back to where Juag was working over the kill. As I approached him I saw that something was wrong in this quarter as well, for the islander was standing upon the carcass of the thag, his javelin poised for a throw.

When I had come nearer I saw the cause of his belligerent attitude. Just beyond him stood two large jaloks, or wolf-dogs, regarding him intently—a male and a female. Their behavior was rather peculiar, for they did not seem preparing to charge him. Rather, they were contemplating him in an attitude of questioning.

Juag heard me coming and turned toward me with a grin. These fellows love excitement. I could see by his expression that he was enjoying in anticipation the battle that seemed imminent. But he never hurled his javelin. A shout of warning from me stopped him, for I had seen the remnants of a rope dangling from the neck of the male jalok.

Juag again turned toward me, but this time in surprise. I was abreast him in a moment and, passing him, walked straight toward the two beasts. As I did so the female crouched with bared fangs. The male, however, leaped forward to meet me, not in deadly charge, but with every expression of delight and joy which the poor animal could exhibit.

It was Raja—the jalok whose life I had saved, and whom I then had tamed! There was no doubt that he was glad to see me. I now think that his seeming desertion of me had been but due to a desire to search out his ferocious mate and bring her, too, to live with me.

When Juag saw me fondling the great beast he was filled with consternation, but I did not have much time to spare to Raja while my mind was filled with the grief of my new loss. I was glad to see the brute, and I lost no time in taking him to Juag and making him understand that Juag, too, was to be Raja’s friend. With the female the matter was more difficult, but Raja helped us out by growling savagely at her whenever she bared her fangs against us.

I told Juag of the disappearance of Dian, and of my suspicions as to the explanation of the catastrophe. He wanted to start right out after her, but I suggested that with Raja to help me it might be as well were he to remain and skin the thag, remove its bladder, and then return to where we had hidden the canoe on the beach. And so it was arranged that he was to do this and await me there for a reasonable time. I pointed to a great lake upon the surface of the pendent world above us, telling him that if after this lake had appeared four times I had not returned to go either by water or land to Sari and fetch Ghak with an army. Then, calling Raja after me, I set out after Dian and her abductor. First I took the wolf dog to the spot where the man had fought with Dian. A few paces behind us followed Raja’s fierce mate. I pointed to the ground where the evidences of the struggle were plainest and where the scent must have been strong to Raja’s nostrils.

Then I grasped the remnant of leash that hung about his neck and urged him forward upon the trail. He seemed to understand. With nose to ground he set out upon his task. Dragging me after him, he trotted straight out upon the Lidi Plains, turning his steps in the direction of the Thurian village. I could have guessed as much!

Behind us trailed the female. After a while she closed upon us, until she ran quite close to me and at Raja’s side. It was not long before she seemed as easy in my company as did her lord and master.

We must have covered considerable distance at a very rapid pace, for we had reentered the great shadow, when we saw a huge lidi ahead of us, moving leisurely across the level plain. Upon its back were two human figures. If I could have known that the jaloks would not harm Dian I might have turned them loose upon the lidi and its master; but I could not know, and so dared take no chances.

However, the matter was taken out of my hands presently when Raja raised his head and caught sight of his quarry. With a lunge that hurled me flat and jerked the leash from my hand, he was gone with the speed of the wind after the giant lidi and its riders. At his side raced his shaggy mate, only a trifle smaller than he and no whit less savage.

They did not give tongue until the lidi itself discovered them and broke into a lumbering, awkward, but none the less rapid gallop. Then the two hound-beasts commenced to bay, starting with a low, plaintive note that rose, weird and hideous, to terminate in a series of short, sharp yelps. I feared that it might be the hunting-call of the pack; and if this were true, there would be slight chance for either Dian or her abductor—or myself, either, as far as that was concerned. So I redoubled my efforts to keep pace with the hunt; but I might as well have attempted to distance the bird upon the wing; as I have often reminded you, I am no runner. In that instance it was just as well that I am not, for my very slowness of foot played into my hands; while had I been fleeter, I might have lost Dian that time forever.

The lidi, with the hounds running close on either side, had almost disappeared in the darkness that enveloped the surrounding landscape, when I noted that it was bearing toward the right. This was accounted for by the fact that Raja ran upon his left side, and unlike his mate, kept leaping for the great beast’s shoulder. The man on the lidi’s back was prodding at the hyaenodon with his long spear, but still Raja kept springing up and snapping.

The effect of this was to turn the lidi toward the right, and the longer I watched the procedure the more convinced I became that Raja and his mate were working together with some end in view, for the she-dog merely galloped steadily at the lidi’s right about op-posite his rump.

I had seen jaloks hunting in packs, and I recalled now what for the time I had not thought of—the several that ran ahead and turned the quarry back toward the main body. This was precisely what Raja and his mate were doing—they were turning the lidi back toward me, or at least Raja was. Just why the female was keeping out of it I did not understand, unless it was that she was not entirely clear in her own mind as to precisely what her mate was attempting.

At any rate, I was sufficiently convinced to stop where I was and await developments, for I could readily realize two things. One was that I could never overhaul them before the damage was done if they should pull the lidi down now. The other thing was that if they did not pull it down for a few minutes it would have completed its circle and returned close to where I stood.

And this is just what happened. The lot of them were almost swallowed up in the twilight for a moment. Then they reappeared again, but this time far to the right and circling back in my general direction. I waited until I could get some clear idea of the right spot to gain that I might intercept the lidi; but even as I waited I saw the beast attempt to turn still more to the right—a move that would have carried him far to my left in a much more circumscribed circle than the hyaenodons had mapped out for him. Then I saw the female leap forward and head him; and when he would have gone too far to the left, Raja sprang, snapping at his shoulder and held him straight.

Straight for me the two savage beasts were driving their quarry! It was wonderful.

It was something else, too, as I realized while the monstrous beast neared me. It was like standing in the middle of the tracks in front of an approaching express-train. But I didn’t dare waver; too much depended upon my meeting that hurtling mass of terrified flesh with a well-placed javelin. So I stood there, waiting to be run down and crushed by those gigantic feet, but determined to drive home my weapon in the broad breast before I fell.

The lidi was only about a hundred yards from me when Raja gave a few barks in a tone that differed materially from his hunting-cry. Instantly both he and his mate leaped for the long neck of the ruminant.

Neither missed. Swinging in mid-air, they hung tenaciously, their weight dragging down the creature’s head and so retarding its speed that before it had reached me it was almost stopped and devoting all its energies to attempting to scrape off its attackers with its forefeet.

Dian had seen and recognized me, and was trying to extricate herself from the grasp of her captor, who, handicapped by his strong and agile prisoner, was unable to wield his lance effectively upon the two jaloks. At the same time I was running swiftly toward them.

When the man discovered me he released his hold upon Dian and sprang to the ground, ready with his lance to meet me. My javelin was no match for his longer weapon, which was used more for stabbing than as a missile. Should I miss him at my first cast, as was quite probable, since he was prepared for me, I would have to face his formidable lance with nothing more than a stone knife. The outlook was scarcely entrancing. Evidently I was soon to be absolutely at his mercy.

Seeing my predicament, he ran toward me to get rid of one antagonist before he had to deal with the other two. He could not guess, of course, that the two jaloks were hunting with me; but he doubtless thought that after they had finished the lidi they would make after the human prey—the beasts are notorious killers, often slaying wantonly.

But as the Thurian came Raja loosened his hold upon the lidi and dashed for him, with the female close after. When the man saw them he yelled to me to help him, protesting that we should both be killed if we did not fight together. But I only laughed at him and ran toward Dian.

Both the fierce beasts were upon the Thurian simu-taneously—he must have died almost before his body tumbled to the ground. Then the female wheeled toward Dian. I was standing by her side as the thing charged her, my javelin ready to receive her.

But again Raja was too quick for me. I imagined he thought she was making for me, for he couldn’t have known anything of my relations toward Dian. At any rate he leaped full upon her back and dragged her down. There ensued forthwith as terrible a battle as one would wish to see if battles were gaged by volume of noise and riotousness of action. I thought that both the beasts would be torn to shreds.

When finally the female ceased to struggle and rolled over on her back, her forepaws limply folded, I was sure that she was dead. Raja stood over her, growling, his jaws close to her throat. Then I saw that neither of them bore a scratch. The male had simply administered a severe drubbing to his mate. It was his way of teaching her that I was sacred.

After a moment he moved away and let her rise, when she set about smoothing down her rumpled coat, while he came stalking toward Dian and me. I had an arm about Dian now. As Raja came close I caught him by the neck and pulled him up to me. There I stroked him and talked to him, bidding Dian do the same, until I think he pretty well understood that if I was his friend, so was Dian.

For a long time he was inclined to be shy of her, often baring his teeth at her approach, and it was a much longer time before the female made friends with us. But by careful kindness, by never eating without sharing our meat with them, and by feeding them from our hands, we finally won the confidence of both animals. However, that was a long time after.

With the two beasts trotting after us, we returned to where we had left Juag. Here I had the dickens’ own time keeping the female from Juag’s throat. Of all the venomous, wicked, cruel-hearted beasts on two worlds, I think a female hyaenodon takes the palm.

But eventually she tolerated Juag as she had Dian and me, and the five of us set out toward the coast, for Juag had just completed his labors on the thag when we arrived. We ate some of the meat before starting, and gave the hounds some. All that we could we carried upon our backs.

On the way to the canoe we met with no mishaps. Dian told me that the fellow who had stolen her had come upon her from behind while the roaring of the thag had drowned all other noises, and that the first she had known he had disarmed her and thrown her to the back of his lidi, which had been lying down close by waiting for him. By the time the thag had ceased bellowing the fellow had got well away upon his swift mount. By holding one palm over her mouth he had prevented her calling for help.

“I thought,” she concluded, “that I should have to use the viper’s tooth, after all.”

We reached the beach at last and unearthed the canoe. Then we busied ourselves stepping a mast and rigging a small sail—Juag and I, that is—while Dian cut the thag meat into long strips for drying when we should be out in the sunlight once more.

At last all was done. We were ready to embark. I had no difficulty in getting Raja aboard the dugout; but Ranee—as we christened her after I had explained to Dian the meaning of Raja and its feminine equivalent—positively refused for a time to follow her mate aboard. In fact, we had to shove off without her. After a moment, however, she plunged into the water and swam after us.

I let her come alongside, and then Juag and I pulled her in, she snapping and snarling at us as we did so; but, strange to relate, she didn’t offer to attack us after we had ensconced her safely in the bottom alongside Raja.

The canoe behaved much better under sail than I had hoped—infinitely better than the battle-ship Sari had—and we made good progress almost due west across the gulf, upon the opposite side of which I hoped to find the mouth of the river of which Juag had told me.

The islander was much interested and impressed by the sail and its results. He had not been able to understand exactly what I hoped to accomplish with it while we were fitting up the boat; but when he saw the clumsy dugout move steadily through the water without paddles, he was as delighted as a child. We made splendid headway on the trip, coming into sight of land at last.

Juag had been terror-stricken when he had learned that I intended crossing the ocean, and when we passed out of sight of land he was in a blue funk. He said that he had never heard of such a thing before in his life, and that always he had understood that those who ventured far from land never returned; for how could they find their way when they could see no land to steer for?

I tried to explain the compass to him; and though he never really grasped the scientific explanation of it, yet he did learn to steer by it quite as well as I. We passed several islands on the journey—islands which Juag told me were entirely unknown to his own island folk. Indeed, our eyes may have been the first ever to rest upon them. I should have liked to stop off and explore them, but the business of empire would brook no unnecessary delays.

I asked Juag how Hooja expected to reach the mouth of the river which we were in search of if he didn’t cross the gulf, and the islander explained that Hooja would undoubtedly follow the coast around. For some time we sailed up the coast searching for the river, and at last we found it. So great was it that I thought it must be a mighty gulf until the mass of driftwood that came out upon the first ebb tide convinced me that it was the mouth of a river. There were the trunks of trees uprooted by the undermining of the river banks, giant creepers, flowers, grasses, and now and then the body of some land animal or bird.

I was all excitement to commence our upward journey when there occurred that which I had never before seen within Pellucidar—a really terrific wind-storm. It blew down the river upon us with a ferocity and suddenness that took our breaths away, and before we could get a chance to make the shore it became too late. The best that we could do was to hold the scud-ding craft before the wind and race along in a smother of white spume. Juag was terrified. If Dian was, she hid it; for was she not the daughter of a once great chief, the sister of a king, and the mate of an emperor?

Raja and Ranee were frightened. The former crawled close to my side and buried his nose against me. Finally even fierce Ranee was moved to seek sympathy from a human being. She slunk to Dian, pressing close against her and whimpering, while Dian stroked her shaggy neck and talked to her as I talked to Raja.

There was nothing for us to do but try to keep the canoe right side up and straight before the wind. For what seemed an eternity the tempest neither increased nor abated. I judged that we must have blown a hundred miles before the wind and straight out into an unknown sea!

As suddenly as the wind rose it died again, and when it died it veered to blow at right angles to its former course in a gentle breeze. I asked Juag then what our course was, for he had had the compass last. It had been on a leather thong about his neck. When he felt for it, the expression that came into his eyes told me as plainly as words what had happened—the compass was lost! The compass was lost!

And we were out of sight of land without a single celestial body to guide us! Even the pendent world was not visible from our position!

Our plight seemed hopeless to me, but I dared not let Dian and Juag guess how utterly dismayed I was; though, as I soon discovered, there was nothing to be gained by trying to keep the worst from Juag—he knew it quite as well as I. He had always known, from the legends of his people, the dangers of the open sea beyond the sight of land. The compass, since he had learned its uses from me, had been all that he had to buoy his hope of eventual salvation from the watery deep. He had seen how it had guided me across the water to the very coast that I desired to reach, and so he had implicit confidence in it. Now that it was gone, his confidence had departed, also.

There seemed but one thing to do; that was to keep on sailing straight before the wind—since we could travel most rapidly along that course—until we sighted land of some description. If it chanced to be the mainland, well and good; if an island—well, we might live upon an island. We certainly could not live long in this little boat, with only a few strips of dried thag and a few quarts of water left.

Quite suddenly a thought occurred to me. I was surprised that it had not come before as a solution to our problem. I turned toward Juag.

“You Pellucidarians are endowed with a wonderful instinct,” I reminded him, “an instinct that points the way straight to your homes, no matter in what strange land you may find yourself. Now all we have to do is let Dian guide us toward Amoz, and we shall come in a short time to the same coast whence we just were blown.”

As I spoke I looked at them with a smile of renewed hope; but there was no answering smile in their eyes. It was Dian who enlightened me.

“We could do all this upon land,” she said. “But upon the water that power is denied us. I do not know why; but I have always heard that this is true—that only upon the water may a Pellucidarian be lost. This is, I think, why we all fear the great ocean so—even those who go upon its surface in canoes. Juag has told us that they never go beyond the sight of land.”

We had lowered the sail after the blow while we were discussing the best course to pursue. Our little craft had been drifting idly, rising and falling with the great waves that were now diminishing. Sometimes we were upon the crest—again in the hollow. As Dian ceased speaking she let her eyes range across the limitless expanse of billowing waters. We rose to a great height upon the crest of a mighty wave. As we topped it Dian gave an exclamation and pointed astern.

“Boats!” she cried. “Boats! Many, many boats!”

Juag and I leaped to our feet; but our little craft had now dropped to the trough, and we could see nothing but walls of water close upon either hand. We waited for the next wave to lift us, and when it did we strained our eyes in the direction that Dian had indicated. Sure enough, scarce half a mile away were several boats, and scattered far and wide behind us as far as we could see were many others! We could not make them out in the distance or in the brief glimpse that we caught of them before we were plunged again into the next wave canon; but they were boats.

And in them must be human beings like ourselves.

CHAPTER XIII

RACING FOR LIFE

At last the sea subsided, and we were able to get a better view of the armada of small boats in our wake. There must have been two hundred of them. Juag said that he had never seen so many boats before in all his life. Where had they come from? Juag was first to hazard a guess.

“Hooja,” he said, “was building many boats to carry his warriors to the great river and up it toward Sari. He was building them with almost all his warriors and many slaves upon the Island of Trees. No one else in all the history of Pellucidar has ever built so many boats as they told me Hooja was building. These must be Hooja’s boats.”

“And they were blown out to sea by the great storm just as we were,” suggested Dian.

“There can be no better explanation of them,” I agreed.

“What shall we do?” asked Juag.

“Suppose we make sure that they are really Hooja’s people,” suggested Dian. “It may be that they are not, and that if we run away from them before we learn definitely who they are, we shall be running away from a chance to live and find the mainland. They may be a people of whom we have never even heard, and if so we can ask them to help us—if they know the way to the mainland.”

“Which they will not,’ interposed Juag.

“Well,” I said, “it can’t make our predicament any more trying to wait until we find out who they are. They are heading for us now. Evidently they have spied our sail, and guess that we do not belong to their fleet.”

“They probably want to ask the way to the mainland themselves,” said Juag, who was nothing if not a pessimist.

“If they want to catch us, they can do it if they can paddle faster than we can sail,” I said. “If we let them come close enough to discover their identity, and can then sail faster than they can paddle, we can get away from them anyway, so we might as well wait.”

And wait we did.

The sea calmed rapidly, so that by the time the foremost canoe had come within five hundred yards of us we could see them all plainly. Every one was headed for us. The dugouts, which were of unusual length, were manned by twenty paddlers, ten to a side. Besides the paddlers there were twenty-five or more warriors in each boat.

When the leader was a hundred yards from us Dian called our attention to the fact that several of her crew were Sagoths. That convinced us that the flotilla was indeed Hooja’s. I told Juag to hail them and get what information he could, while I remained in the bottom of our canoe as much out of sight as possible. Dian lay down at full length in the bottom; I did not want them to see and recognize her if they were in truth Hooja’s people.

“Who are you?” shouted Juag, standing up in the boat and making a megaphone of his palms.

A figure arose in the bow of the leading canoe—a figure that I was sure I recognized even before he spoke.

“I am Hooja!” cried the man, in answer to Juag.

For some reason he did not recognize his former prisoner and slave—possibly because he had so many of them.

“I come from the Island of Trees,” he continued. “A hundred of my boats were lost in the great storm and all their crews drowned. Where is the land? What are you, and what strange thing is that which flutters from the little tree in the front of your canoe?”

He referred to our sail, flapping idly in the wind.

“We, too, are lost,” replied Juag. “We know not where the land is. We are going back to look for it now.”

So saying he commenced to scull the canoe’s nose before the wind, while I made fast the primitive sheets that held our crude sail. We thought it time to be going.

There wasn’t much wind at the time, and the heavy, lumbering dugout was slow in getting under way. I thought it never would gain any momentum. And all the while Hooja’s canoe was drawing rapidly nearer, propelled by the strong arms of his twenty paddlers. Of course, their dugout was much larger than ours, and, consequently, infinitely heavier and more cumbersome; nevertheless, it was coming along at quite a clip, and ours was yet but barely moving. Dian and I remained out of sight as much as possible, for the two craft were now well within bow-shot of one another, and I knew that Hooja had archers.

Hooja called to Juag to stop when he saw that our craft was moving. He was much interested in the sail, and not a little awed, as I could tell by his shouted remarks and questions. Raising my head, I saw him plainly. He would have made an excellent target for one of my guns, and I had never been sorrier that I had lost them.

We were now picking up speed a trifle, and he was not gaining upon us so fast as at first. In consequence, his requests that we stop suddenly changed to commands as he became aware that we were trying to escape him.

“Come back!” he shouted. “Come back, or I’ll fire!”

I use the word fire because it more nearly translates into English the Pellucidarian word trag, which covers the launching of any deadly missile.

But Juag only seized his paddle more tightly—the paddle that answered the purpose of rudder, and commenced to assist the wind by vigorous strokes. Then Hooja gave the command to some of his archers to fire upon us. I couldn’t lie hidden in the bottom of the boat, leaving Juag alone exposed to the deadly shafts, so I arose and, seizing another paddle, set to work to help him. Dian joined me, though I did my best to persuade her to remain sheltered; but being a woman, she must have her own way.

The instant that Hooja saw us he recognized us. The whoop of triumph he raised indicated how certain he was that we were about to fall into his hands. A shower of arrows fell about us. Then Hooja caused his men to cease firing—he wanted us alive. None of the missiles struck us, for Hooja’s archers were not nearly the marksmen that are my Sarians and Amozites.

We had now gained sufficient headway to hold our own on about even terms with Hooja’s paddlers. We did not seem to be gaining, though; and neither did they. How long this nerve-racking experience lasted I cannot guess, though we had pretty nearly finished our meager supply of provisions when the wind picked up a bit and we commenced to draw away.

Not once yet had we sighted land, nor could I understand it, since so many of the seas I had seen before were thickly dotted with islands. Our plight was anything but pleasant, yet I think that Hooja and his forces were even worse off than we, for they had no food nor water at all.

Far out behind us in a long line that curved upward in the distance, to be lost in the haze, strung Hooja’s two hundred boats. But one would have been enough to have taken us could it have come alongside. We had drawn some fifty yards ahead of Hooja—there had been times when we were scarce ten yards in advance-and were feeling considerably safer from capture. Hooja’s men, working in relays, were commencing to show the effects of the strain under which they had been forced to work without food or water, and I think their weakening aided us almost as much as the slight freshening of the wind.

Hooja must have commenced to realize that he was going to lose us, for he again gave orders that we be fired upon. Volley after volley of arrows struck about us. The distance was so great by this time that most of the arrows fell short, while those that reached us were sufficiently spent to allow us to ward them off with our paddles. However, it was a most exciting ordeal.

Hooja stood in the bow of his boat, alternately urging his men to greater speed and shouting epithets at me. But we continued to draw away from him. At last the wind rose to a fair gale, and we simply raced away from our pursuers as if they were standing still. Juag was so tickled that he forgot all about his hunger and thirst. I think that he had never been entirely reconciled to the heathenish invention which I called a sail, and that down in the bottom of his heart he believed that the paddlers would eventually overhaul us; but now he couldn’t praise it enough.

We had a strong gale for a considerable time, and eventually dropped Hooja’s fleet so far astern that we could no longer discern them. And then—ah, I shall never forget that moment—Dian sprang to her feet with a cry of “Land!”

Sure enough, dead ahead, a long, low coast stretched across our bow. It was still a long way off, and we couldn’t make out whether it was island or mainland; but at least it was land. If ever shipwrecked mariners were grateful, we were then. Raja and Ranee were commencing to suffer for lack of food, and I could swear that the latter often cast hungry glances upon us, though I am equally sure that no such hideous thoughts ever entered the head of her mate. We watched them both most closely, however. Once while stroking Ranee I managed to get a rope around her neck and make her fast to the side of the boat. Then I felt a bit safer for Dian. It was pretty close quarters in that little dugout for three human beings and two practically wild, man-eating dogs; but we had to make the best of it, since I would not listen to Juag’s suggestion that we kill and eat Raja and Ranee.

We made good time to within a few miles of the shore. Then the wind died suddenly out. We were all of us keyed up to such a pitch of anticipation that the blow was doubly hard to bear. And it was a blow, too, since we could not tell in what quarter the wind might rise again; but Juag and I set to work to paddle the remaining distance.

Almost immediately the wind rose again from precisely the opposite direction from which it had formerly blown, so that it was mighty hard work making progress against it. Next it veered again so that we had to turn and run with it parallel to the coast to keep from being swamped in the trough of the seas.

And while we were suffering all these disappointments Hooja’s fleet appeared in the distance!

They evidently had gone far to the left of our course, for they were now almost behind us as we ran parallel to the coast; but we were not much afraid of being overtaken in the wind that was blowing. The gale kept on increasing, but it was fitful, swooping down upon us in great gusts and then going almost calm for an instant. It was after one of these momentary calms that the catastrophe occurred. Our sail hung limp and our momentum decreased when of a sudden a particularly vicious squall caught us. Before I could cut the sheets the mast had snapped at the thwart in which it was stepped.

The worst had happened; Juag and I seized paddles and kept the canoe with the wind; but that squall was the parting shot of the gale, which died out immediately after, leaving us free to make for the shore, which we lost no time in attempting. But Hooja had drawn closer in toward shore than we, so it looked as if he might head us off before we could land. However, we did our best to distance him, Dian taking a paddle with us.

We were in a fair way to succeed when there appeared, pouring from among the trees beyond the beach, a horde of yelling, painted savages, brandishing all sorts of devilish-looking primitive weapons. So menacing was their attitude that we realized at once the folly of attempting to land among them.

Hooja was drawing closer to us. There was no wind. We could not hope to outpaddle him. And with our sail gone, no wind would help us, though, as if in derision at our plight, a steady breeze was now blowing. But we had no intention of sitting idle while our fate overtook us, so we bent to our paddles and, keeping parallel with the coast, did our best to pull away from our pursuers.

It was a grueling experience. We were weakened by lack of food. We were suffering the pangs of thirst. Capture and death were close at hand. Yet I think that we gave a good account of ourselves in our final effort to escape. Our boat was so much smaller and lighter than any of Hooja’s that the three of us forced it ahead almost as rapidly as his larger craft could go under their twenty paddles.

As we raced along the coast for one of those seemingly interminable periods that may draw hours into eternities where the labor is soul-searing and there is no way to measure time, I saw what I took for the opening to a bay or the mouth of a great river a short distance ahead of us. I wished that we might make for it; but with the menace of Hooja close behind and the screaming natives who raced along the shore parallel to us, I dared not attempt it.

We were not far from shore in that mad flight from death. Even as I paddled I found opportunity to glance occasionally toward the natives. They were white, but hideously painted. From their gestures and weapons I took them to be a most ferocious race. I was rather glad that we had not succeeded in landing among them.

Hooja’s fleet had been in much more compact formation when we sighted them this time than on the occasion following the tempest. Now they were moving rapidly in pursuit of us, all well within the radius of a mile. Five of them were leading, all abreast, and were scarce two hundred yards from us. When I glanced over my shoulder I could see that the archers had already fitted arrows to their bows in readiness to fire upon us the moment that they should draw within range.

Hope was low in my breast. I could not see the slightest chance of escaping them, for they were overhauling us rapidly now, since they were able to work their paddles in relays, while we three were rapidly wearying beneath the constant strain that had been put upon us.

It was then that Juag called my attention to the rift in the shore-line which I had thought either a bay or the mouth of a great river. There I saw moving slowly out into the sea that which filled my soul with wonder.

CHAPTER XIV

GORE AND DREAMS

It was a two-masted felucca with lateen sails! The craft was long and low. In it were more than fifty men, twenty or thirty of whom were at oars with which the craft was being propelled from the lee of the land. I was dumbfounded.

Could it be that the savage, painted natives I had seen on shore had so perfected the art of navigation that they were masters of such advanced building and rigging as this craft proclaimed? It seemed impossible! And as I looked I saw another of the same type swing into view and follow its sister through the narrow strait out into the ocean.

Nor were these all. One after another, following closely upon one another’s heels, came fifty of the trim, graceful vessels. They were cutting in between Hooja’s fleet and our little dugout.

When they came a bit closer my eyes fairly popped from my head at what I saw, for in the eye of the leading felucca stood a man with a sea-glass leveled upon us. Who could they be? Was there a civilization within Pellucidar of such wondrous advancement as this? Were there far-distant lands of which none of my people had ever heard, where a race had so greatly outstripped all other races of this inner world?

The man with the glass had lowered it and was shouting to us. I could not make out his words, but presently I saw that he was pointing aloft. When I looked I saw a pennant fluttering from the peak of the forward lateen yard—a red, white, and blue pennant, with a single great white star in a field of blue.

Then I knew. My eyes went even wider than they had before. It was the navy! It was the navy of the empire of Pellucidar which I had instructed Perry to build in my absence. It was my navy!

I dropped my paddle and stood up and shouted and waved my hand. Juag and Dian looked at me as if I had gone suddenly mad. When I could stop shouting I told them, and they shared my joy and shouted with me.

But still Hooja was coming nearer, nor could the leading felucca overhaul him before he would be along-side or at least within bow-shot.

Hooja must have been as much mystified as we were as to the identity of the strange fleet; but when he saw me waving to them he evidently guessed that they were friendly to us, so he urged his men to redouble their efforts to reach us before the felucca cut him off.

He shouted word back to others of his fleet—word that was passed back until it had reached them all—directing them to run alongside the strangers and board them, for with his two hundred craft and his eight or ten thousand warriors he evidently felt equal to overcoming the fifty vessels of the enemy, which did not seem to carry over three thousand men all told.

His own personal energies he bent to reaching Dian and me first, leaving the rest of the work to his other boats. I thought that there could be little doubt that he would be successful in so far as we were concerned, and I feared for the revenge that he might take upon us should the battle go against his force, as I was sure it would; for I knew that Perry and his Mezops must have brought with them all the arms and ammunition that had been contained in the prospector. But I was not prepared for what happened next.

As Hooja’s canoe reached a point some twenty yards from us a great puff of smoke broke from the bow of the leading felucca, followed almost simultaneously by a terrific explosion, and a solid shot screamed close over the heads of the men in Hooja’s craft, raising a great splash where it clove the water just beyond them.

Perry had perfected gunpowder and built cannon! It was marvelous! Dian and Juag, as much surprised as Hooja, turned wondering eyes toward me. Again the cannon spoke. I suppose that by comparison with the great guns of modern naval vessels of the outer world it was a pitifully small and inadequate thing; but here in Pellucidar, where it was the first of its kind, it was about as awe-inspiring as anything you might imagine.

With the report an iron cannonball about five inches in diameter struck Hooja’s dugout just above the water-line, tore a great splintering hole in its side, turned it over, and dumped its occupants into the sea.

The four dugouts that had been abreast of Hooja had turned to intercept the leading felucca. Even now, in the face of what must have been a withering catastrophe to them, they kept bravely on toward the strange and terrible craft.

In them were fully two hundred men, while but fifty lined the gunwale of the felucca to repel them. The commander of the felucca, who proved to be Ja, let them come quite close and then turned loose upon them a volley of shots from small-arms.

The cave men and Sagoths in the dugouts seemed to wither before that blast of death like dry grass before a prairie fire. Those who were not hit dropped their bows and javelins and, seizing upon paddles, attempted to escape. But the felucca pursued them relentlessly, her crew firing at will.

At last I heard Ja shouting to the survivors in the dugouts—they were all quite close to us now—offering them their lives if they would surrender. Perry was standing close behind Ja, and I knew that this merciful action was prompted, perhaps commanded, by the old man; for no Pellucidarian would have thought of showing leniency to a defeated foe.

As there was no alternative save death, the survivors surrendered and a moment later were taken aboard the Amoz, the name that I could now see printed in large letters upon the felucca’s bow, and which no one in that whole world could read except Perry and I.

When the prisoners were aboard, Ja brought the felucca alongside our dugout. Many were the willing hands that reached down to lift us to her decks. The bronze faces of the Mezops were broad with smiles, and Perry was fairly beside himself with joy.

Dian went aboard first and then Juag, as I wished to help Raja and Ranee aboard myself, well knowing that it would fare ill with any Mezop who touched them. We got them aboard at last, and a great commotion they caused among the crew, who had never seen a wild beast thus handled by man before.

Perry and Dian and I were so full of questions that we fairly burst, but we had to contain ourselves for a while, since the battle with the rest of Hooja’s fleet had scarce commenced. From the small forward decks of the feluccas Perry’s crude cannon were belching smoke, flame, thunder, and death. The air trembled to the roar of them. Hooja’s horde, intrepid, savage fighters that they were, were closing in to grapple in a last death-struggle with the Mezops who manned our vessels.

The handling of our fleet by the red island warriors of Ja’s clan was far from perfect. I could see that Perry had lost no time after the completion of the boats in setting out upon this cruise. What little the captains and crews had learned of handling feluccas they must have learned principally since they embarked upon this voyage, and while experience is an excellent teacher and had done much for them, they still had a great deal to learn. In maneuvering for position they were continually fouling one another, and on two occasions shots from our batteries came near to striking our own ships.

No sooner, however, was I aboard the flagship than I attempted to rectify this trouble to some extent. By passing commands by word of mouth from one ship to another I managed to get the fifty feluccas into some sort of line, with the flag-ship in the lead. In this formation we commenced slowly to circle the position of the enemy. The dugouts came for us right along in an attempt to board us, but by keeping on the move in one direction and circling, we managed to avoid getting in each other’s way, and were enabled to fire our cannon and our small arms with less danger to our own comrades.

When I had a moment to look about me, I took in the felucca on which I was. I am free to confess that I marveled at the excellent construction and stanch yet speedy lines of the little craft. That Perry had chosen this type of vessel seemed rather remarkable, for though I had warned him against turreted battle-ships, armor, and like useless show, I had fully expected that when I beheld his navy I should find considerable attempt at grim and terrible magnificence, for it was always Perry’s idea to overawe these ignorant cave men when we had to contend with them in battle. But I had soon learned that while one might easily astonish them with some new engine of war, it was an utter impossibility to frighten them into surrender.

I learned later that Ja had gone carefully over the plans of various craft with Perry. The old man had explained in detail all that the text told him of them. The two had measured out dimensions upon the ground, that Ja might see the sizes of different boats. Perry had built models, and Ja had had him read carefully and explain all that they could find relative to the handling of sailing vessels. The result of this was that Ja was the one who had chosen the felucca. It was well that Perry had had so excellent a balance wheel, for he had been wild to build a huge frigate of the Nelsonian era—he told me so himself.

One thing that had inclined Ja particularly to the felucca was the fact that it included oars in its equipment. He realized the limitations of his people in the matter of sails, and while they had never used oars, the implement was so similar to a paddle that he was sure they quickly could master the art—and they did. As soon as one hull was completed Ja kept it on the water constantly, first with one crew and then with another, until two thousand red warriors had learned to row. Then they stepped their masts and a crew was told off for the first ship.

While the others were building they learned to handle theirs. As each succeeding boat was launched its crew took it out and practiced with it under the tutorage of those who had graduated from the first ship, and so on until a full complement of men had been trained for every boat.

Well, to get back to the battle: The Hoojans kept on coming at us, and as fast as they came we mowed them down. It was little else than slaughter. Time and time again I cried to them to surrender, promising them their lives if they would do so. At last there were but ten boatloads left. These turned in flight. They thought they could paddle away from us—it was pitiful! I passed the word from boat to boat to cease firing—not to kill another Hoojan unless they fired on us. Then we set out after them. There was a nice little breeze blowing and we bowled along after our quarry as gracefully and as lightly as swans upon a park lagoon. As we approached them I could see not only wonder but admiration in their eyes. I hailed the nearest dugout.

“Throw down your arms and come aboard us,” I cried, “and you shall not be harmed. We will feed you and return you to the mainland. Then you shall go free upon your promise never to bear arms against the Emperor of Pellucidar again!”

I think it was the promise of food that interested them most. They could scarce believe that we would not kill them. But when I exhibited the prisoners we already had taken, and showed them that they were alive and unharmed, a great Sagoth in one of the boats asked me what guarantee I could give that I would keep my word.

“None other than my word,” I replied. “That I do not break.”

The Pellucidarians themselves are rather punctilious about this same matter, so the Sagoth could understand that I might possibly be speaking the truth. But he could not understand why we should not kill them unless we meant to enslave them, which I had as much as denied already when I had promised to set them free. Ja couldn’t exactly see the wisdom of my plan, either. He thought that we ought to follow up the ten remaining dugouts and sink them all; but I insisted that we must free as many as possible of our enemies upon the mainland.

“You see,” I explained, “these men will return at once to Hooja’s Island, to the Mahar cities from which they come, or to the countries from which they were stolen by the Mahars. They are men of two races and of many countries. They will spread the story of our victory far and wide, and while they are with us, we will let them see and hear many other wonderful things which they may carry back to their friends and their chiefs. It’s the finest chance for free publicity, Perry,” I added to the old man, “that you or I have seen in many a day.”

Perry agreed with me. As a matter of fact, he would have agreed to anything that would have restrained us from killing the poor devils who fell into our hands. He was a great fellow to invent gunpowder and firearms and cannon; but when it came to using these things to kill people, he was as tender-hearted as a chicken.

The Sagoth who had spoken was talking to other Sagoths in his boat. Evidently they were holding a council over the question of the wisdom of surrendering.

“What will become of you if you don’t surrender to us?” I asked. “If we do not open up our batteries on you again and kill you all, you will simply drift about the sea helplessly until you die of thirst and starvation. You cannot return to the islands, for you have seen as well as we that the natives there are very numerous and warlike. They would kill you the moment you landed.”

The upshot of it was that the boat of which the Sagoth speaker was in charge surrendered. The Sagoths threw down their weapons, and we took them aboard the ship next in line behind the Amoz. First Ja had to impress upon the captain and crew of the ship that the prisoners were not to be abused or killed. After that the remaining dugouts paddled up and surrendered. We distributed them among the entire fleet lest there be too many upon any one vessel. Thus ended the first real naval engagement that the Pellucidarian seas had ever witnessed—though Perry still insists that the action in which the Sari took part was a battle of the first magnitude.

The battle over and the prisoners disposed of and fed—and do not imagine that Dian, Juag, and I, as well as the two hounds were not fed also—I turned my attention to the fleet. We had the feluccas close in about the flag-ship, and with all the ceremony of a medieval potentate on parade I received the commanders of the forty-nine feluccas that accompanied the flag-ship—Dian and I together—the empress and the emperor of Pellucidar.

It was a great occasion. The savage, bronze warriors entered into the spirit of it, for as I learned later dear old Perry had left no opportunity neglected for impressing upon them that David was emperor of Pellucidar, and that all that they were accomplishing and all that he was accomplishing was due to the power, and redounded to the glory of David. The old man must have rubbed it in pretty strong, for those fierce warriors nearly came to blows in their efforts to be among the first of those to kneel before me and kiss my hand. When it came to kissing Dian’s I think they enjoyed it more; I know I should have.

A happy thought occurred to me as I stood upon the little deck of the Amoz with the first of Perry’s primitive cannon behind me. When Ja kneeled at my feet, and first to do me homage, I drew from its scabbard at his side the sword of hammered iron that Perry had taught him to fashion. Striking him lightly on the shoulder I created him king of Anoroc. Each captain of the forty-nine other feluccas I made a duke. I left it to Perry to enlighten them as to the value of the honors I had bestowed upon them.

During these ceremonies Raja and Ranee had stood beside Dian and me. Their bellies had been well filled, but still they had difficulty in permitting so much edible humanity to pass unchallenged. It was a good education for them though, and never after did they find it difficult to associate with the human race without arousing their appetites.

After the ceremonies were over we had a chance to talk with Perry and Ja. The former told me that Ghak, king of Sari, had sent my letter and map to him by a runner, and that he and Ja had at once decided to set out on the completion of the fleet to ascertain the correctness of my theory that the Lural Az, in which the Anoroc Islands lay, was in reality the same ocean as that which lapped the shores of Thuria under the name of Sojar Az, or Great Sea.

Their destination had been the island retreat of Hooja, and they had sent word to Ghak of their plans that we might work in harmony with them. The tempest that had blown us off the coast of the continent had blown them far to the south also. Shortly before discovering us they had come into a great group of islands, from between the largest two of which they were sailing when they saw Hooja’s fleet pursuing our dugout.

I asked Perry if he had any idea as to where we were, or in what direction lay Hooja’s island or the continent. He replied by producing his map, on which he had carefully marked the newly discovered islands—there described as the Unfriendly Isles—which showed Hooja’s island northwest of us about two points West.

He then explained that with compass, chronometer, log and reel, they had kept a fairly accurate record of their course from the time they had set out. Four of the feluccas were equipped with these instruments, and all of the captains had been instructed in their use.

I was very greatly surprised at the ease with which these savages had mastered the rather intricate detail of this unusual work, but Perry assured me that they were a wonderfully intelligent race, and had been quick to grasp all that he had tried to teach them.

Another thing that surprised me was the fact that so much had been accomplished in so short a time, for I could not believe that I had been gone from Anoroc for a sufficient period to permit of building a fleet of fifty feluccas and mining iron ore for the cannon and balls, to say nothing of manufacturing these guns and the crude muzzle-loading rifles with which every Mezop was armed, as well as the gunpowder and ammunition they had in such ample quantities.

“Time!” exclaimed Perry. “Well, how long were you gone from Anoroc before we picked you up in the Sojar Az?”

That was a puzzler, and I had to admit it. I didn’t know how much time had elapsed and neither did Perry, for time is nonexistent in Pellucidar.

“Then, you see, David,” he continued, “I had almost unbelievable resources at my disposal. The Mezops inhabiting the Anoroc Islands, which stretch far out to sea beyond the three principal isles with which you are familiar, number well into the millions, and by far the greater part of them are friendly to Ja. Men, women, and children turned to and worked the moment Ja explained the nature of our enterprise.

“And not only were they anxious to do all in their power to hasten the day when the Mahars should be overthrown, but—and this counted for most of all—they are simply ravenous for greater knowledge and for better ways of doing things.

“The contents of the prospector set their imaginations to working overtime, so that they craved to own, themselves, the knowledge which had made it possible for other men to create and build the things which you brought back from the outer world.

“And then,” continued the old man, “the element of time, or, rather, lack of time, operated to my advantage. There being no nights, there was no laying off from work—they labored incessantly stopping only to eat and, on rare occasions, to sleep. Once we had discovered iron ore we had enough mined in an incredibly short time to build a thousand cannon. I had only to show them once how a thing should be done, and they would fall to work by thousands to do it.

“Why, no sooner had we fashioned the first muzzle-loader and they had seen it work successfully, than fully three thousand Mezops fell to work to make rifles. Of course there was much confusion and lost motion at first, but eventually Ja got them in hand, detailing squads of them under competent chiefs to certain work.

“We now have a hundred expert gun-makers. On a little isolated isle we have a great powder-factory. Near the iron-mine, which is on the mainland, is a smelter, and on the eastern shore of Anoroc, a well equipped ship-yard. All these industries are guarded by forts in which several cannon are mounted and where warriors are always on guard.

“You would be surprised now, David, at the aspect of Anoroc. I am surprised myself; it seems always to me as I compare it with the day that I first set foot upon it from the deck of the Sari that only a miracle could have worked the change that has taken place.”

“It is a miracle,” I said; “it is nothing short of a miracle to transplant all the wondrous possibilities of the twentieth century back to the Stone Age. It is a miracle to think that only five hundred miles of earth separate two epochs that are really ages and ages apart.”

“It is stupendous, Perry! But still more stupendous is the power that you and I wield in this great world. These people look upon us as little less than supermen. We must show them that we are all of that.

“We must give them the best that we have, Perry.”

“Yes,” he agreed; “we must. I have been thinking a great deal lately that some kind of shrapnel shell or explosive bomb would be a most splendid innovation in their warfare. Then there are breech-loading rifles and those with magazines that I must hasten to study out and learn to reproduce as soon as we get settled down again; and—”

“Hold on, Perry!” I cried. “I didn’t mean these sorts of things at all. I said that we must give them the best we have. What we have given them so far has been the worst. We have given them war and the munitions of war. In a single day we have made their wars infinitely more terrible and bloody than in all their past ages they have been able to make them with their crude, primitive weapons.

“In a period that could scarcely have exceeded two outer earthly hours, our fleet practically annihilated the largest armada of native canoes that the Pellucidarians ever before had gathered together. We butchered some eight thousand warriors with the twentieth-century gifts we brought. Why, they wouldn’t have killed that many warriors in the entire duration of a dozen of their wars with their own weapons! No, Perry; we’ve got to give them something better than scientific methods of killing one another.”

The old man looked at me in amazement. There was reproach in his eyes, too.

“Why, David!” he said sorrowfully. “I thought that you would be pleased with what I had done. We planned these things together, and I am sure that it was you who suggested practically all of it. I have done only what I thought you wished done and I have done it the best that I know how.”

I laid my hand on the old man’s shoulder.

“Bless your heart, Perry!” I cried. “You’ve accomplished miracles. You have done precisely what I should have done, only you’ve done it better. I’m not finding fault; but I don’t wish to lose sight myself, or let you lose sight, of the greater work which must grow out of this preliminary and necessary carnage. First we must place the empire upon a secure footing, and we can do so only by putting the fear of us in the hearts of our enemies; but after that—

“Ah, Perry! That is the day I look forward to! When you and I can build sewing-machines instead of battle-ships, harvesters of crops instead of harvesters of men, plow-shares and telephones, schools and colleges, printing-presses and paper! When our merchant marine shall ply the great Pellucidarian seas, and cargoes of silks and typewriters and books shall forge their ways where only hideous saurians have held sway since time began!”

“Amen!” said Perry.

And Dian, who was standing at my side, pressed my hand.

CHAPTER XV

CONQUEST AND PEACE

The fleet sailed directly for Hooja’s island, coming to anchor at its north-eastern extremity before the flat-topped hill that had been Hooja’s stronghold. I sent one of the prisoners ashore to demand an immediate surrender; but as he told me afterward they wouldn’t believe all that he told them, so they congregated on the cliff-top and shot futile arrows at us.

In reply I had five of the feluccas cannonade them. When they scampered away at the sound of the terrific explosions, and at sight of the smoke and the iron balls I landed a couple of hundred red warriors and led them to the opposite end of the hill into the tunnel that ran to its summit. Here we met a little resistance; but a volley from the muzzle-loaders turned back those who disputed our right of way, and presently we gained the mesa. Here again we met resistance, but at last the remnant of Hooja’s horde surrendered.

Juag was with me, and I lost no time in returning to him and his tribe the hilltop that had been their ancestral home for ages until they were robbed of it by Hooja. I created a kingdom of the island, making Juag king there. Before we sailed I went to Gr-gr-gr, chief of the beast-men, taking Juag with me. There the three of us arranged a code of laws that would permit the brute-folk and the human beings of the island to live in peace and harmony. Gr-gr-gr sent his son with me back to Sari, capital of my empire, that he might learn the ways of the human beings. I have hopes of turning this race into the greatest agriculturists of Pellucidar. When I returned to the fleet I found that one of the islanders of Juag’s tribe, who had been absent when we arrived, had just returned from the mainland with the news that a great army was encamped in the Land of Awful Shadow, and that they were threatening Thuria. I lost no time in weighing anchors and setting out for the continent, which we reached after a short and easy voyage.

From the deck of the Amoz I scanned the shore through the glasses that Perry had brought with him. When we were close enough for the glasses to be of value I saw that there was indeed a vast concourse of warriors entirely encircling the walled-village of Goork, chief of the Thurians. As we approached smaller objects became distinguishable. It was then that I discovered numerous flags and pennants floating above the army of the besiegers.

I called Perry and passed the glasses to him.

“Ghak of Sari,” I said.

Perry looked through the lenses of a moment, and then turned to me with a smile.

“The red, white, and blue of the empire,” he said. “It is indeed your majesty’s army.”

It soon became apparent that we had been sighted by those on shore, for a great multitude of warriors had congregated along the beach watching us. We came to anchor as close in as we dared, which with our light feluccas was within easy speaking-distance of the shore. Ghak was there and his eyes were mighty wide, too; for, as he told us later, though he knew this must be Perry’s fleet it was so wonderful to him that he could not believe the testimony of his own eyes even while he was watching it approach.

To give the proper effect to our meeting I commanded that each felucca fire twenty-one guns as a salute to His Majesty Ghak, King of Sari. Some of the gunners, in the exuberance of their enthusiasm, fired solid shot; but fortunately they had sufficient good judg-ment to train their pieces on the open sea, so no harm was done. After this we landed—an arduous task since each felucca carried but a single light dugout.

I learned from Ghak that the Thurian chieftain, Goork, had been inclined to haughtiness, and had told Ghak, the Hairy One, that he knew nothing of me and cared less; but I imagine that the sight of the fleet and the sound of the guns brought him to his senses, for it was not long before he sent a deputation to me, inviting me to visit him in his village. Here he apologized for the treatment he had accorded me, very gladly swore allegiance to the empire, and received in return the title of king.

We remained in Thuria only long enough to arrange the treaty with Goork, among the other details of which was his promise to furnish the imperial army with a thousand lidi, or Thurian beasts of burden, and drivers for them. These were to accompany Ghak’s army back to Sari by land, while the fleet sailed to the mouth of the great river from which Dian, Juag, and I had been blown.

The voyage was uneventful. We found the river easily, and sailed up it for many miles through as rich and wonderful a plain as I have ever seen. At the head of navigation we disembarked, leaving a sufficient guard for the feluccas, and marched the remaining distance to Sari.

Ghak’s army, which was composed of warriors of all the original tribes of the federation, showing how successful had been his efforts to rehabilitate the empire, marched into Sari some time after we arrived. With them were the thousand lidi from Thuria.

At a council of the kings it was decided that we should at once commence the great war against the Mahars, for these haughty reptiles presented the greatest obstacle to human progress within Pellucidar. I laid out a plan of campaign which met with the enthusiastic indorsement of the kings. Pursuant to it, I at once despatched fifty lidi to the fleet with orders to fetch fifty cannon to Sari. I also ordered the fleet to proceed at once to Anoroc, where they were to take aboard all the rifles and ammunition that had been completed since their departure, and with a full complement of men to sail along the coast in an attempt to find a passage to the inland sea near which lay the Mahars’ buried city of Phutra.

Ja was sure that a large and navigable river connected the sea of Phutra with the Lural Az, and that, barring accident, the fleet would be before Phutra as soon as the land forces were.

At last the great army started upon its march. There were warriors from every one of the federated kingdoms. All were armed either with bow and arrows or muzzle-loaders, for nearly the entire Mezop contingent had been enlisted for this march, only sufficient having been left aboard the feluccas to man them properly. I divided the forces into divisions, regiments, battalions, companies, and even to platoons and sections, appointing the full complement of officers and noncommissioned officers. On the long march I schooled them in their duties, and as fast as one learned I sent him among the others as a teacher.

Each regiment was made up of about a thousand bowmen, and to each was temporarily attached a company of Mezop musketeers and a battery of artillery—the latter, our naval guns, mounted upon the broad backs of the mighty lidi. There was also one full regiment of Mezop musketeers and a regiment of primitive spearmen. The rest of the lidi that we brought with us were used for baggage animals and to transport our women and children, for we had brought them with us, as it was our intention to march from one Mahar city to another until we had subdued every Mahar nation that menaced the safety of any kingdom of the empire.

Before we reached the plain of Phutra we were discovered by a company of Sagoths, who at first stood to give battle; but upon seeing the vast numbers of our army they turned and fled toward Phutra. The result of this was that when we came in sight of the hundred towers which mark the entrances to the buried city we found a great army of Sagoths and Mahars lined up to give us battle.

At a thousand yards we halted, and, placing our artillery upon a slight eminence at either flank, we commenced to drop solid shot among them. Ja, who was chief artillery officer, was in command of this branch of the service, and he did some excellent work, for his Mezop gunners had become rather proficient by this time. The Sagoths couldn’t stand much of this sort of warfare, so they charged us, yelling like fiends. We let them come quite close, and then the musketeers who formed the first line opened up on them.

The slaughter was something frightful, but still the remnants of them kept on coming until it was a matter of hand-to-hand fighting. Here our spearmen were of value, as were also the crude iron swords with which most of the imperial warriors were armed.

We lost heavily in the encounter after the Sagoths reached us; but they were absolutely exterminated—not one remained even as a prisoner. The Mahars, seeing how the battle was going, had hastened to the safety of their buried city. When we had overcome their gorilla-men we followed after them.

But here we were doomed to defeat, at least temporarily; for no sooner had the first of our troops descended into the subterranean avenues than many of them came stumbling and fighting their way back to the surface, half-choked by the fumes of some deadly gas that the reptiles had liberated upon them. We lost a number of men here. Then I sent for Perry, who had remained discreetly in the rear, and had him construct a little affair that I had had in my mind against the possibility of our meeting with a check at the entrances to the underground city.

Under my direction he stuffed one of his cannon full of powder, small bullets, and pieces of stone, almost to the muzzle. Then he plugged the muzzle tight with a cone-shaped block of wood, hammered and jammed in as tight as it could be. Next he inserted a long fuse. A dozen men rolled the cannon to the top of the stairs leading down into the city, first removing it from its carriage. One of them then lit the fuse and the whole thing was given a shove down the stairway, while the detachment turned and scampered to a safe distance.

For what seemed a very long time nothing happened. We had commenced to think that the fuse had been put out while the piece was rolling down the stairway, or that the Mahars had guessed its purpose and extinguished it themselves, when the ground about the entrance rose suddenly into the air, to be followed by a terrific explosion and a burst of smoke and flame that shot high in company with dirt, stone, and fragments of cannon.

Perry had been working on two more of these giant bombs as soon as the first was completed. Presently we launched these into two of the other entrances. They were all that were required, for almost immediately after the third explosion a stream of Mahars broke from the exits furthest from us, rose upon their wings, and soared northward. A hundred men on lidi were despatched in pursuit, each lidi carrying two riflemen in addition to its driver. Guessing that the inland sea, which lay not far north of Phutra, was their destination, I took a couple of regiments and followed.

A low ridge intervenes between the Phutra plain where the city lies, and the inland sea where the Mahars were wont to disport themselves in the cool waters. Not until we had topped this ridge did we get a view of the sea.

Then we beheld a scene that I shall never forget so long as I may live.

Along the beach were lined up the troop of lidi, while a hundred yards from shore the surface of the water was black with the long snouts and cold, reptilian eyes of the Mahars. Our savage Mezop riflemen, and the shorter, squatter, white-skinned Thurian drivers, shading their eyes with their hands, were gazing seaward beyond the Mahars, whose eyes were fastened upon the same spot. My heart leaped when I discovered that which was chaining the attention of them all. Twenty graceful feluccas were moving smoothly across the waters of the sea toward the reptilian horde!

The sight must have filled the Mahars with awe and consternation, for never had they seen the like of these craft before. For a time they seemed unable to do aught but gaze at the approaching fleet; but when the Mezops opened on them with their muskets the reptiles swam rapidly in the direction of the feluccas, evidently thinking that these would prove the easier to overcome. The commander of the fleet permitted them to approach within a hundred yards. Then he opened on them with all the cannon that could be brought to bear, as well as with the small arms of the sailors.

A great many of the reptiles were killed at the first volley. They wavered for a moment, then dived; nor did we see them again for a long time.

But finally they rose far out beyond the fleet, and when the feluccas came about and pursued them they left the water and flew away toward the north.

Following the fall of Phutra I visited Anoroc, where I found the people busy in the shipyards and the factories that Perry had established. I discovered something, too, that he had not told me of—something that seemed infinitely more promising than the powder-factory or the arsenal. It was a young man poring over one of the books I had brought back from the outer world! He was sitting in the log cabin that Perry had had built to serve as his sleeping quarters and office. So absorbed was he that he did not notice our entrance. Perry saw the look of astonishment in my eyes and smiled.

“I started teaching him the alphabet when we first reached the prospector, and were taking out its contents,” he explained. “He was much mystified by the books and anxious to know of what use they were. When I explained he asked me to teach him to read, and so I worked with him whenever I could. He is very intelligent and learns quickly. Before I left he had made great progress, and as soon as he is qualified he is going to teach others to read. It was mighty hard work getting started, though, for everything had to be translated into Pellucidarian.

“It will take a long time to solve this problem, but I think that by teaching a number of them to read and write English we shall then be able more quickly to give them a written language of their own.”

And this was the nucleus about which we were to build our great system of schools and colleges—this almost naked red warrior, sitting in Perry’s little cabin upon the island of Anoroc, picking out words letter by letter from a work on intensive farming. Now we have—

But I’ll get to all that before I finish.

While we were at Anoroc I accompanied Ja in an expedition to South Island, the southernmost of the three largest which form the Anoroc group—Perry had given it its name—where we made peace with the tribe there that had for long been hostile toward Ja. They were now glad enough to make friends with him and come into the federation. From there we sailed with sixty-five feluccas for distant Luana, the main island of the group where dwell the hereditary enemies of Anoroc.

Twenty-five of the feluccas were of a new and larger type than those with which Ja and Perry had sailed on the occasion when they chanced to find and rescue Dian and me. They were longer, carried much larger sails, and were considerably swifter. Each carried four guns instead of two, and these were so arranged that one or more of them could be brought into action no matter where the enemy lay.

The Luana group lies just beyond the range of vision from the mainland. The largest island of it alone is visible from Anoroc; but when we neared it we found that it comprised many beautiful islands, and that they were thickly populated. The Luanians had not, of course, been ignorant of all that had been going on in the domains of their nearest and dearest enemies. They knew of our feluccas and our guns, for several of their riding-parties had had a taste of both. But their principal chief, an old man, had never seen either. So, when he sighted us, he put out to overwhelm us, bringing with him a fleet of about a hundred large war-canoes, loaded to capacity with javelin-armed warriors. It was pitiful, and I told Ja as much. It seemed a shame to massacre these poor fellows if there was any way out of it.

To my surprise Ja felt much as I did. He said he had always hated to war with other Mezops when there were so many alien races to fight against. I suggested that we hail the chief and request a parley; but when Ja did so the old fool thought that we were afraid, and with loud cries of exultation urged his warriors upon us.

So we opened up on them, but at my suggestion centered our fire upon the chief’s canoe. The result was that in about thirty seconds there was nothing left of that war dugout but a handful of splinters, while its crew—those who were not killed—were struggling in the water, battling with the myriad terrible creatures that had risen to devour them.

We saved some of them, but the majority died just as had Hooja and the crew of his canoe that time our second shot capsized them.

Again we called to the remaining warriors to enter into a parley with us; but the chief’s son was there and he would not, now that he had seen his father killed. He was all for revenge. So we had to open up on the brave fellows with all our guns; but it didn’t last long at that, for there chanced to be wiser heads among the Luanians than their chief or his son had possessed. Presently, an old warrior who commanded one of the dugouts surrendered. After that they came in one by one until all had laid their weapons upon our decks.

Then we called together upon the flag-ship all our captains, to give the affair greater weight and dignity, and all the principal men of Luana. We had conquered them, and they expected either death or slavery; but they deserved neither, and I told them so. It is always my habit here in Pellucidar to impress upon these savage people that mercy is as noble a quality as physical bravery, and that next to the men who fight shoulder to shoulder with one, we should honor the brave men who fight against us, and if we are victorious, award them both the mercy and honor that are their due.

By adhering to this policy I have won to the federation many great and noble peoples, who under the ancient traditions of the inner world would have been massacred or enslaved after we had conquered them; and thus I won the Luanians. I gave them their freedom, and returned their weapons to them after they had sworn loyalty to me and friendship and peace with Ja, and I made the old fellow, who had had the good sense to surrender, king of Luana, for both the old chief and his only son had died in the battle.

When I sailed away from Luana she was included among the kingdoms of the empire, whose boundaries were thus pushed eastward several hundred miles.

We now returned to Anoroc and thence to the mainland, where I again took up the campaign against the Mahars, marching from one great buried city to another until we had passed far north of Amoz into a country where I had never been. At each city we were victorious, killing or capturing the Sagoths and driving the Mahars further away.

I noticed that they always fled toward the north. The Sagoth prisoners we usually found quite ready to trans-fer their allegiance to us, for they are little more than brutes, and when they found that we could fill their stomachs and give them plenty of fighting, they were nothing loath to march with us against the next Mahar city and battle with men of their own race.

Thus we proceeded, swinging in a great half-circle north and west and south again until we had come back to the edge of the Lidi Plains north of Thuria. Here we overcame the Mahar city that had ravaged the Land of Awful Shadow for so many ages. When we marched on to Thuria, Goork and his people went mad with joy at the tidings we brought them.

During this long march of conquest we had passed through seven countries, peopled by primitive human tribes who had not yet heard of the federation, and succeeded in joining them all to the empire. It was noticeable that each of these peoples had a Mahar city situated near by, which had drawn upon them for slaves and human food for so many ages that not even in legend had the population any folk-tale which did not in some degree reflect an inherent terror of the reptilians.

In each of these countries I left an officer and warriors to train them in military discipline, and prepare them to receive the arms that I intended furnishing them as rapidly as Perry’s arsenal could turn them out, for we felt that it would be a long, long time before we should see the last of the Mahars. That they had flown north but temporarily until we should be gone with our great army and terrifying guns I was positive, and equally sure was I that they would presently return.

The task of ridding Pellucidar of these hideous creatures is one which in all probability will never be entirely completed, for their great cities must abound by the hundreds and thousands in the far-distant lands that no subject of the empire has ever laid eyes upon.

But within the present boundaries of my domain there are now none left that I know of, for I am sure we should have heard indirectly of any great Mahar city that had escaped us, although of course the imperial army has by no means covered the vast area which I now rule.

After leaving Thuria we returned to Sari, where the seat of government is located. Here, upon a vast, fertile plateau, overlooking the great gulf that runs into the continent from the Lural Az, we are building the great city of Sari. Here we are erecting mills and factories. Here we are teaching men and women the rudiments of agriculture. Here Perry has built the first printing-press, and a dozen young Sarians are teaching their fellows to read and write the language of Pellucidar.

We have just laws and only a few of them. Our people are happy because they are always working at something which they enjoy. There is no money, nor is any money value placed upon any commodity. Perry and I were as one in resolving that the root of all evil should not be introduced into Pellucidar while we lived.

A man may exchange that which he produces for something which he desires that another has produced; but he cannot dispose of the thing he thus acquires. In other words, a commodity ceases to have pecuniary value the instant that it passes out of the hands of its producer. All excess reverts to government; and, as this represents the production of the people as a government, government may dispose of it to other peoples in exchange for that which they produce. Thus we are establishing a trade between kingdoms, the profits from which go to the betterment of the people—to building factories for the manufacture of agricultural implements, and machinery for the various trades we are gradually teaching the people.

Already Anoroc and Luana are vying with one another in the excellence of the ships they build. Each has several large ship-yards. Anoroc makes gunpowder and mines iron ore, and by means of their ships they carry on a very lucrative trade with Thuria, Sari, and Amoz. The Thurians breed lidi, which, having the strength and intelligence of an elephant, make excellent draft animals.

Around Sari and Amoz the men are domesticating the great striped antelope, the meat of which is most delicious. I am sure that it will not be long before they will have them broken to harness and saddle. The horses of Pellucidar are far too diminutive for such uses, some species of them being little larger than fox-terriers.

Dian and I live in a great palace overlooking the gulf. There is no glass in our windows, for we have no windows, the walls rising but a few feet above the floor-line, the rest of the space being open to the ceilings; but we have a roof to shade us from the perpetual noon-day sun. Perry and I decided to set a style in architecture that would not curse future generations with the white plague, so we have plenty of ventilation. Those of the people who prefer, still inhabit their caves, but many are building houses similar to ours.

At Greenwich we have located a town and an observatory—though there is nothing to observe but the stationary sun directly overhead. Upon the edge of the Land of Awful Shadow is another observatory, from which the time is flashed by wireless to every corner of the empire twenty-four times a day. In addition to the wireless, we have a small telephone system in Sari. Everything is yet in the early stages of development; but with the science of the outer-world twentieth century to draw upon we are making rapid progress, and with all the faults and errors of the outer world to guide us clear of dangers, I think that it will not be long before Pellucidar will become as nearly a Utopia as one may expect to find this side of heaven.

Perry is away just now, laying out a railway-line from Sari to Amoz. There are immense anthracite coal-fields at the head of the gulf not far from Sari, and the railway will tap these. Some of his students are working on a locomotive now. It will be a strange sight to see an iron horse puffing through the primeval jungles of the stone age, while cave bears, saber-toothed tigers, mastodons and the countless other terrible creatures of the past look on from their tangled lairs in wide-eyed astonishment.

We are very happy, Dian and I, and I would not return to the outer world for all the riches of all its princes. I am content here. Even without my imperial powers and honors I should be content, for have I not that greatest of all treasures, the love of a good woman—my wondrous empress, Dian the Beautiful?

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Originally published in 1918.

Chapter 1

It must have been a little after three o’clock in the afternoon that it happened—the afternoon of June 3rd, 1916. It seems incredible that all that I have passed through—all those weird and terrifying experiences—should have been encompassed within so short a span as three brief months. Rather might I have experienced a cosmic cycle, with all its changes and evolutions for that which I have seen with my own eyes in this brief interval of time—things that no other mortal eye had seen before, glimpses of a world past, a world dead, a world so long dead that even in the lowest Cambrian stratum no trace of it remains. Fused with the melting inner crust, it has passed forever beyond the ken of man other than in that lost pocket of the earth whither fate has borne me and where my doom is sealed. I am here and here must remain.

After reading this far, my interest, which already had been stimulated by the finding of the manuscript, was approaching the boiling-point. I had come to Greenland for the summer, on the advice of my physician, and was slowly being bored to extinction, as I had thoughtlessly neglected to bring sufficient reading-matter. Being an indifferent fisherman, my enthusiasm for this form of sport soon waned; yet in the absence of other forms of recreation I was now risking my life in an entirely inadequate boat off Cape Farewell at the southernmost extremity of Greenland.

Greenland! As a descriptive appellation, it is a sorry joke—but my story has nothing to do with Greenland, nothing to do with me; so I shall get through with the one and the other as rapidly as possible.

The inadequate boat finally arrived at a precarious landing, the natives, waist-deep in the surf, assisting. I was carried ashore, and while the evening meal was being prepared, I wandered to and fro along the rocky, shattered shore. Bits of surf-harried beach clove the worn granite, or whatever the rocks of Cape Farewell may be composed of, and as I followed the ebbing tide down one of these soft stretches, I saw the thing. Were one to bump into a Bengal tiger in the ravine behind the Bimini Baths, one could be no more surprised than was I to see a perfectly good quart thermos bottle turning and twisting in the surf of Cape Farewell at the southern extremity of Greenland. I rescued it, but I was soaked above the knees doing it; and then I sat down in the sand and opened it, and in the long twilight read the manuscript, neatly written and tightly folded, which was its contents.

You have read the opening paragraph, and if you are an imaginative idiot like myself, you will want to read the rest of it; so I shall give it to you here, omitting quotation marks—which are difficult of remembrance. In two minutes you will forget me.

My home is in Santa Monica. I am, or was, junior member of my father’s firm. We are ship-builders. Of recent years we have specialized on submarines, which we have built for Germany, England, France and the United States. I know a sub as a mother knows her baby’s face, and have commanded a score of them on their trial runs. Yet my inclinations were all toward aviation. I graduated under Curtiss, and after a long siege with my father obtained his permission to try for the Lafayette Escadrille. As a stepping-stone I obtained an appointment in the American ambulance service and was on my way to France when three shrill whistles altered, in as many seconds, my entire scheme of life.

I was sitting on deck with some of the fellows who were going into the American ambulance service with me, my Airedale, Crown Prince Nobbler, asleep at my feet, when the first blast of the whistle shattered the peace and security of the ship. Ever since entering the U-boat zone we had been on the lookout for periscopes, and children that we were, bemoaning the unkind fate that was to see us safely into France on the morrow without a glimpse of the dread marauders. We were young; we craved thrills, and God knows we got them that day; yet by comparison with that through which I have since passed they were as tame as a Punch-and-Judy show.

I shall never forget the ashy faces of the passengers as they stampeded for their life-belts, though there was no panic. Nobs rose with a low growl. I rose, also, and over the ship’s side, I saw not two hundred yards distant the periscope of a submarine, while racing toward the liner the wake of a torpedo was distinctly visible. We were aboard an American ship—which, of course, was not armed. We were entirely defenseless; yet without warning, we were being torpedoed.

I stood rigid, spellbound, watching the white wake of the torpedo. It struck us on the starboard side almost amidships. The vessel rocked as though the sea beneath it had been uptorn by a mighty volcano. We were thrown to the decks, bruised and stunned, and then above the ship, carrying with it fragments of steel and wood and dismembered human bodies, rose a column of water hundreds of feet into the air.

The silence which followed the detonation of the exploding torpedo was almost equally horrifying. It lasted for perhaps two seconds, to be followed by the screams and moans of the wounded, the cursing of the men and the hoarse commands of the ship’s officers. They were splendid—they and their crew. Never before had I been so proud of my nationality as I was that moment. In all the chaos which followed the torpedoing of the liner no officer or member of the crew lost his head or showed in the slightest any degree of panic or fear.

While we were attempting to lower boats, the submarine emerged and trained guns on us. The officer in command ordered us to lower our flag, but this the captain of the liner refused to do. The ship was listing frightfully to starboard, rendering the port boats useless, while half the starboard boats had been demolished by the explosion. Even while the passengers were crowding the starboard rail and scrambling into the few boats left to us, the submarine commenced shelling the ship. I saw one shell burst in a group of women and children, and then I turned my head and covered my eyes.

When I looked again to horror was added chagrin, for with the emerging of the U-boat I had recognized her as a product of our own shipyard. I knew her to a rivet. I had superintended her construction. I had sat in that very conning-tower and directed the efforts of the sweating crew below when first her prow clove the sunny summer waters of the Pacific; and now this creature of my brain and hand had turned Frankenstein, bent upon pursuing me to my death.

A second shell exploded upon the deck. One of the lifeboats, frightfully overcrowded, swung at a dangerous angle from its davits. A fragment of the shell shattered the bow tackle, and I saw the women and children and the men vomited into the sea beneath, while the boat dangled stern up for a moment from its single davit, and at last with increasing momentum dived into the midst of the struggling victims screaming upon the face of the waters.

Now I saw men spring to the rail and leap into the ocean. The deck was tilting to an impossible angle. Nobs braced himself with all four feet to keep from slipping into the scuppers and looked up into my face with a questioning whine. I stooped and stroked his head.

“Come on, boy!” I cried, and running to the side of the ship, dived headforemost over the rail. When I came up, the first thing I saw was Nobs swimming about in a bewildered sort of way a few yards from me. At sight of me his ears went flat, and his lips parted in a characteristic grin.

The submarine was withdrawing toward the north, but all the time it was shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the gunwales with survivors. Fortunately the small boats presented a rather poor target, which, combined with the bad marksmanship of the Germans preserved their occupants from harm; and after a few minutes a blotch of smoke appeared upon the eastern horizon and the U-boat submerged and disappeared.

All the time the lifeboats had been pulling away from the danger of the sinking liner, and now, though I yelled at the top of my lungs, they either did not hear my appeals for help or else did not dare return to succor me. Nobs and I had gained some little distance from the ship when it rolled completely over and sank. We were caught in the suction only enough to be drawn backward a few yards, neither of us being carried beneath the surface. I glanced hurriedly about for something to which to cling. My eyes were directed toward the point at which the liner had disappeared when there came from the depths of the ocean the muffled reverberation of an explosion, and almost simultaneously a geyser of water in which were shattered lifeboats, human bodies, steam, coal, oil, and the flotsam of a liner’s deck leaped high above the surface of the sea—a watery column momentarily marking the grave of another ship in this greatest cemetery of the seas.

When the turbulent waters had somewhat subsided and the sea had ceased to spew up wreckage, I ventured to swim back in search of something substantial enough to support my weight and that of Nobs as well. I had gotten well over the area of the wreck when not a half-dozen yards ahead of me a lifeboat shot bow foremost out of the ocean almost its entire length to flop down upon its keel with a mighty splash. It must have been carried far below, held to its mother ship by a single rope which finally parted to the enormous strain put upon it. In no other way can I account for its having leaped so far out of the water—a beneficent circumstance to which I doubtless owe my life, and that of another far dearer to me than my own. I say beneficent circumstance even in the face of the fact that a fate far more hideous confronts us than that which we escaped that day; for because of that circumstance I have met her whom otherwise I never should have known; I have met and loved her. At least I have had that great happiness in life; nor can Caspak, with all her horrors, expunge that which has been.

So for the thousandth time I thank the strange fate which sent that lifeboat hurtling upward from the green pit of destruction to which it had been dragged—sent it far up above the surface, emptying its water as it rose above the waves, and dropping it upon the surface of the sea, buoyant and safe.

It did not take me long to clamber over its side and drag Nobs in to comparative safety, and then I glanced around upon the scene of death and desolation which surrounded us. The sea was littered with wreckage among which floated the pitiful forms of women and children, buoyed up by their useless lifebelts. Some were torn and mangled; others lay rolling quietly to the motion of the sea, their countenances composed and peaceful; others were set in hideous lines of agony or horror. Close to the boat’s side floated the figure of a girl. Her face was turned upward, held above the surface by her life-belt, and was framed in a floating mass of dark and waving hair. She was very beautiful. I had never looked upon such perfect features, such a divine molding which was at the same time human—intensely human. It was a face filled with character and strength and femininity—the face of one who was created to love and to be loved. The cheeks were flushed to the hue of life and health and vitality, and yet she lay there upon the bosom of the sea, dead. I felt something rise in my throat as I looked down upon that radiant vision, and I swore that I should live to avenge her murder.

And then I let my eyes drop once more to the face upon the water, and what I saw nearly tumbled me backward into the sea, for the eyes in the dead face had opened; the lips had parted; and one hand was raised toward me in a mute appeal for succor. She lived! She was not dead! I leaned over the boat’s side and drew her quickly in to the comparative safety which God had given me. I removed her life-belt and my soggy coat and made a pillow for her head. I chafed her hands and arms and feet. I worked over her for an hour, and at last I was rewarded by a deep sigh, and again those great eyes opened and looked into mine.

At that I was all embarrassment. I have never been a ladies’ man; at Leland-Stanford I was the butt of the class because of my hopeless imbecility in the presence of a pretty girl; but the men liked me, nevertheless. I was rubbing one of her hands when she opened her eyes, and I dropped it as though it were a red-hot rivet. Those eyes took me in slowly from head to foot; then they wandered slowly around the horizon marked by the rising and falling gunwales of the lifeboat. They looked at Nobs and softened, and then came back to me filled with questioning.

“I—I—” I stammered, moving away and stumbling over the next thwart. The vision smiled wanly.

“Aye-aye, sir!” she replied faintly, and again her lips drooped, and her long lashes swept the firm, fair texture of her skin.

“I hope that you are feeling better,” I finally managed to say.

“Do you know,” she said after a moment of silence, “I have been awake for a long time! But I did not dare open my eyes. I thought I must be dead, and I was afraid to look, for fear that I should see nothing but blackness about me. I am afraid to die! Tell me what happened after the ship went down. I remember all that happened before—oh, but I wish that I might forget it!” A sob broke her voice. “The beasts!” she went on after a moment. “And to think that I was to have married one of them—a lieutenant in the German navy.”

Presently she resumed as though she had not ceased speaking. “I went down and down and down. I thought I should never cease to sink. I felt no particular distress until I suddenly started upward at ever-increasing velocity; then my lungs seemed about to burst, and I must have lost consciousness, for I remember nothing more until I opened my eyes after listening to a torrent of invective against Germany and Germans. Tell me, please, all that happened after the ship sank.”

I told her, then, as well as I could, all that I had seen—the submarine shelling the open boats and all the rest of it. She thought it marvelous that we should have been spared in so providential a manner, and I had a pretty speech upon my tongue’s end, but lacked the nerve to deliver it. Nobs had come over and nosed his muzzle into her lap, and she stroked his ugly face, and at last she leaned over and put her cheek against his forehead. I have always admired Nobs; but this was the first time that it had ever occurred to me that I might wish to be Nobs. I wondered how he would take it, for he is as unused to women as I. But he took to it as a duck takes to water. What I lack of being a ladies’ man, Nobs certainly makes up for as a ladies’ dog. The old scalawag just closed his eyes and put on one of the softest “sugar-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth” expressions you ever saw and stood there taking it and asking for more. It made me jealous.

“You seem fond of dogs,” I said.

“I am fond of this dog,” she replied.

Whether she meant anything personal in that reply I did not know; but I took it as personal and it made me feel mighty good.

As we drifted about upon that vast expanse of loneliness it is not strange that we should quickly become well acquainted. Constantly we scanned the horizon for signs of smoke, venturing guesses as to our chances of rescue; but darkness settled, and the black night enveloped us without ever the sight of a speck upon the waters.

We were thirsty, hungry, uncomfortable, and cold. Our wet garments had dried but little and I knew that the girl must be in grave danger from the exposure to a night of cold and wet upon the water in an open boat, without sufficient clothing and no food. I had managed to bail all the water out of the boat with cupped hands, ending by mopping the balance up with my handkerchief—a slow and back-breaking procedure; thus I had made a comparatively dry place for the girl to lie down low in the bottom of the boat, where the sides would protect her from the night wind, and when at last she did so, almost overcome as she was by weakness and fatigue, I threw my wet coat over her further to thwart the chill. But it was of no avail; as I sat watching her, the moonlight marking out the graceful curves of her slender young body, I saw her shiver.

“Isn’t there something I can do?” I asked. “You can’t lie there chilled through all night. Can’t you suggest something?”

She shook her head. “We must grin and bear it,” she replied after a moment.

Nobbler came and lay down on the thwart beside me, his back against my leg, and I sat staring in dumb misery at the girl, knowing in my heart of hearts that she might die before morning came, for what with the shock and exposure, she had already gone through enough to kill almost any woman. And as I gazed down at her, so small and delicate and helpless, there was born slowly within my breast a new emotion. It had never been there before; now it will never cease to be there. It made me almost frantic in my desire to find some way to keep warm the cooling lifeblood in her veins. I was cold myself, though I had almost forgotten it until Nobbler moved and I felt a new sensation of cold along my leg against which he had lain, and suddenly realized that in that one spot I had been warm. Like a great light came the understanding of a means to warm the girl. Immediately I knelt beside her to put my scheme into practice when suddenly I was overwhelmed with embarrassment. Would she permit it, even if I could muster the courage to suggest it? Then I saw her frame convulse, shudderingly, her muscles reacting to her rapidly lowering temperature, and casting prudery to the winds, I threw myself down beside her and took her in my arms, pressing her body close to mine.

She drew away suddenly, voicing a little cry of fright, and tried to push me from her.

“Forgive me,” I managed to stammer. “It is the only way. You will die of exposure if you are not warmed, and Nobs and I are the only means we can command for furnishing warmth.” And I held her tightly while I called Nobs and bade him lie down at her back. The girl didn’t struggle any more when she learned my purpose; but she gave two or three little gasps, and then began to cry softly, burying her face on my arm, and thus she fell asleep.

CHAPTER 2

Toward morning, I must have dozed, though it seemed to me at the time that I had lain awake for days, instead of hours. When I finally opened my eyes, it was daylight, and the girl’s hair was in my face, and she was breathing normally. I thanked God for that. She had turned her head during the night so that as I opened my eyes I saw her face not an inch from mine, my lips almost touching hers.

It was Nobs who finally awoke her. He got up, stretched, turned around a few times and lay down again, and the girl opened her eyes and looked into mine. Hers went very wide at first, and then slowly comprehension came to her, and she smiled.

“You have been very good to me,” she said, as I helped her to rise, though if the truth were known I was more in need of assistance than she; the circulation all along my left side seeming to be paralyzed entirely. “You have been very good to me.” And that was the only mention she ever made of it; yet I know that she was thankful and that only reserve prevented her from referring to what, to say the least, was an embarrassing situation, however unavoidable.

Shortly after daylight we saw smoke apparently coming straight toward us, and after a time we made out the squat lines of a tug—one of those fearless exponents of England’s supremacy of the sea that tows sailing ships into French and English ports. I stood up on a thwart and waved my soggy coat above my head. Nobs stood upon another and barked. The girl sat at my feet straining her eyes toward the deck of the oncoming boat. “They see us,” she said at last. “There is a man answering your signal.” She was right. A lump came into my throat—for her sake rather than for mine. She was saved, and none too soon. She could not have lived through another night upon the Channel; she might not have lived through the coming day.

The tug came close beside us, and a man on deck threw us a rope. Willing hands dragged us to the deck, Nobs scrambling nimbly aboard without assistance. The rough men were gentle as mothers with the girl. Plying us both with questions they hustled her to the captain’s cabin and me to the boiler-room. They told the girl to take off her wet clothes and throw them outside the door that they might be dried, and then to slip into the captain’s bunk and get warm. They didn’t have to tell me to strip after I once got into the warmth of the boiler-room. In a jiffy, my clothes hung about where they might dry most quickly, and I myself was absorbing, through every pore, the welcome heat of the stifling compartment. They brought us hot soup and coffee, and then those who were not on duty sat around and helped me damn the Kaiser and his brood.

As soon as our clothes were dry, they bade us don them, as the chances were always more than fair in those waters that we should run into trouble with the enemy, as I was only too well aware. What with the warmth and the feeling of safety for the girl, and the knowledge that a little rest and food would quickly overcome the effects of her experiences of the past dismal hours, I was feeling more content than I had experienced since those three whistle-blasts had shattered the peace of my world the previous afternoon.

But peace upon the Channel has been but a transitory thing since August, 1914. It proved itself such that morning, for I had scarce gotten into my dry clothes and taken the girl’s apparel to the captain’s cabin when an order was shouted down into the engine-room for full speed ahead, and an instant later I heard the dull boom of a gun. In a moment I was up on deck to see an enemy submarine about two hundred yards off our port bow. She had signaled us to stop, and our skipper had ignored the order; but now she had her gun trained on us, and the second shot grazed the cabin, warning the belligerent tug-captain that it was time to obey. Once again an order went down to the engine-room, and the tug reduced speed. The U-boat ceased firing and ordered the tug to come about and approach. Our momentum had carried us a little beyond the enemy craft, but we were turning now on the arc of a circle that would bring us alongside her. As I stood watching the maneuver and wondering what was to become of us, I felt something touch my elbow and turned to see the girl standing at my side. She looked up into my face with a rueful expression. “They seem bent on our destruction,” she said, “and it looks like the same boat that sunk us yesterday.”

“It is,” I replied. “I know her well. I helped design her and took her out on her first run.”

The girl drew back from me with a little exclamation of surprise and disappointment. “I thought you were an American,” she said. “I had no idea you were a—a—”

“Nor am I,” I replied. “Americans have been building submarines for all nations for many years. I wish, though, that we had gone bankrupt, my father and I, before ever we turned out that Frankenstein of a thing.”

We were approaching the U-boat at half speed now, and I could almost distinguish the features of the men upon her deck. A sailor stepped to my side and slipped something hard and cold into my hand. I did not have to look at it to know that it was a heavy pistol. “Tyke ’er an’ use ’er,” was all he said.

Our bow was pointed straight toward the U-boat now as I heard word passed to the engine for full speed ahead. I instantly grasped the brazen effrontery of the plucky English skipper—he was going to ram five hundreds tons of U-boat in the face of her trained gun. I could scarce repress a cheer. At first the boches didn’t seem to grasp his intention. Evidently they thought they were witnessing an exhibition of poor seamanship, and they yelled their warnings to the tug to reduce speed and throw the helm hard to port.

We were within fifty feet of them when they awakened to the intentional menace of our maneuver. Their gun crew was off its guard; but they sprang to their piece now and sent a futile shell above our heads. Nobs leaped about and barked furiously. “Let ’em have it!” commanded the tug-captain, and instantly revolvers and rifles poured bullets upon the deck of the submersible. Two of the gun-crew went down; the other trained their piece at the water-line of the oncoming tug. The balance of those on deck replied to our small-arms fire, directing their efforts toward the man at our wheel.

I hastily pushed the girl down the companionway leading to the engine-room, and then I raised my pistol and fired my first shot at a boche. What happened in the next few seconds happened so quickly that details are rather blurred in my memory. I saw the helmsman lunge forward upon the wheel, pulling the helm around so that the tug sheered off quickly from her course, and I recall realizing that all our efforts were to be in vain, because of all the men aboard, Fate had decreed that this one should fall first to an enemy bullet. I saw the depleted gun-crew on the submarine fire their piece and I felt the shock of impact and heard the loud explosion as the shell struck and exploded in our bows.

I saw and realized these things even as I was leaping into the pilot-house and grasping the wheel, standing astride the dead body of the helmsman. With all my strength I threw the helm to starboard; but it was too late to effect the purpose of our skipper. The best I did was to scrape alongside the sub. I heard someone shriek an order into the engine-room; the boat shuddered and trembled to the sudden reversing of the engines, and our speed quickly lessened. Then I saw what that madman of a skipper planned since his first scheme had gone wrong.

With a loud-yelled command, he leaped to the slippery deck of the submersible, and at his heels came his hardy crew. I sprang from the pilot-house and followed, not to be left out in the cold when it came to strafing the boches. From the engine room companionway came the engineer and stockers, and together we leaped after the balance of the crew and into the hand-to-hand fight that was covering the wet deck with red blood. Beside me came Nobs, silent now, and grim. Germans were emerging from the open hatch to take part in the battle on deck. At first the pistols cracked amidst the cursing of the men and the loud commands of the commander and his junior; but presently we were too indiscriminately mixed to make it safe to use our firearms, and the battle resolved itself into a hand-to-hand struggle for possession of the deck.

The sole aim of each of us was to hurl one of the opposing force into the sea. I shall never forget the hideous expression upon the face of the great Prussian with whom chance confronted me. He lowered his head and rushed at me, bellowing like a bull. With a quick side-step and ducking low beneath his outstretched arms, I eluded him; and as he turned to come back at me, I landed a blow upon his chin which sent him spinning toward the edge of the deck. I saw his wild endeavors to regain his equilibrium; I saw him reel drunkenly for an instant upon the brink of eternity and then, with a loud scream, slip into the sea. At the same instant a pair of giant arms encircled me from behind and lifted me entirely off my feet. Kick and squirm as I would, I could neither turn toward my antagonist nor free myself from his maniacal grasp. Relentlessly he was rushing me toward the side of the vessel and death. There was none to stay him, for each of my companions was more than occupied by from one to three of the enemy. For an instant I was fearful for myself, and then I saw that which filled me with a far greater terror for another.

My boche was bearing me toward the side of the submarine against which the tug was still pounding. That I should be ground to death between the two was lost upon me as I saw the girl standing alone upon the tug’s deck, as I saw the stern high in air and the bow rapidly settling for the final dive, as I saw death from which I could not save her clutching at the skirts of the woman I now knew all too well that I loved.

I had perhaps the fraction of a second longer to live when I heard an angry growl behind us mingle with a cry of pain and rage from the giant who carried me. Instantly he went backward to the deck, and as he did so he threw his arms outwards to save himself, freeing me. I fell heavily upon him, but was upon my feet in the instant. As I arose, I cast a single glance at my opponent. Never again would he menace me or another, for Nob’s great jaws had closed upon his throat. Then I sprang toward the edge of the deck closest to the girl upon the sinking tug.

“Jump!” I cried. “Jump!” And I held out my arms to her. Instantly as though with implicit confidence in my ability to save her, she leaped over the side of the tug onto the sloping, slippery side of the U-boat. I reached far over to seize her hand. At the same instant the tug pointed its stern straight toward the sky and plunged out of sight. My hand missed the girl’s by a fraction of an inch, and I saw her slip into the sea; but scarce had she touched the water when I was in after her.

The sinking tug drew us far below the surface; but I had seized her the moment I struck the water, and so we went down together, and together we came up—a few yards from the U-boat. The first thing I heard was Nobs barking furiously; evidently he had missed me and was searching. A single glance at the vessel’s deck assured me that the battle was over and that we had been victorious, for I saw our survivors holding a handful of the enemy at pistol points while one by one the rest of the crew was coming out of the craft’s interior and lining up on deck with the other prisoners.

As I swam toward the submarine with the girl, Nobs’ persistent barking attracted the attention of some of the tug’s crew, so that as soon as we reached the side there were hands to help us aboard. I asked the girl if she was hurt, but she assured me that she was none the worse for this second wetting; nor did she seem to suffer any from shock. I was to learn for myself that this slender and seemingly delicate creature possessed the heart and courage of a warrior.

As we joined our own party, I found the tug’s mate checking up our survivors. There were ten of us left, not including the girl. Our brave skipper was missing, as were eight others. There had been nineteen of us in the attacking party and we had accounted in one way and another during the battle for sixteen Germans and had taken nine prisoners, including the commander. His lieutenant had been killed.

“Not a bad day’s work,” said Bradley, the mate, when he had completed his roll. “Only losing the skipper,” he added, “was the worst. He was a fine man, a fine man.”

Olson—who in spite of his name was Irish, and in spite of his not being Scotch had been the tug’s engineer—was standing with Bradley and me. “Yis,” he agreed, “it’s a day’s wor-rk we’re after doin’, but what are we goin’ to be doin’ wid it now we got it?”

“We’ll run her into the nearest English port,” said Bradley, “and then we’ll all go ashore and get our V. C.’s,” he concluded, laughing.

“How you goin’ to run her?” queried Olson. “You can’t trust these Dutchmen.”

Bradley scratched his head. “I guess you’re right,” he admitted. “And I don’t know the first thing about a sub.”

“I do,” I assured him. “I know more about this particular sub than the officer who commanded her.”

Both men looked at me in astonishment, and then I had to explain all over again as I had explained to the girl. Bradley and Olson were delighted. Immediately I was put in command, and the first thing I did was to go below with Olson and inspect the craft thoroughly for hidden boches and damaged machinery. There were no Germans below, and everything was intact and in ship-shape working order. I then ordered all hands below except one man who was to act as lookout. Questioning the Germans, I found that all except the commander were willing to resume their posts and aid in bringing the vessel into an English port. I believe that they were relieved at the prospect of being detained at a comfortable English prison-camp for the duration of the war after the perils and privations through which they had passed. The officer, however, assured me that he would never be a party to the capture of his vessel.

There was, therefore, nothing to do but put the man in irons. As we were preparing to put this decision into force, the girl descended from the deck. It was the first time that she or the German officer had seen each other’s faces since we had boarded the U-boat. I was assisting the girl down the ladder and still retained a hold upon her arm—possibly after such support was no longer necessary—when she turned and looked squarely into the face of the German. Each voiced a sudden exclamation of surprise and dismay.

“Lys!” he cried, and took a step toward her.

The girl’s eyes went wide, and slowly filled with a great horror, as she shrank back. Then her slender figure stiffened to the erectness of a soldier, and with chin in air and without a word she turned her back upon the officer.

“Take him away,” I directed the two men who guarded him, “and put him in irons.”

When he had gone, the girl raised her eyes to mine. “He is the German of whom I spoke,” she said. “He is Baron von Schoenvorts.”

I merely inclined my head. She had loved him! I wondered if in her heart of hearts she did not love him yet. Immediately I became insanely jealous. I hated Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts with such utter intensity that the emotion thrilled me with a species of exaltation.

But I didn’t have much chance to enjoy my hatred then, for almost immediately the lookout poked his face over the hatchway and bawled down that there was smoke on the horizon, dead ahead. Immediately I went on deck to investigate, and Bradley came with me.

“If she’s friendly,” he said, “we’ll speak her. If she’s not, we’ll sink her—eh, captain?”

“Yes, lieutenant,” I replied, and it was his turn to smile.

We hoisted the Union Jack and remained on deck, asking Bradley to go below and assign to each member of the crew his duty, placing one Englishman with a pistol beside each German.

“Half speed ahead,” I commanded.

More rapidly now we closed the distance between ourselves and the stranger, until I could plainly see the red ensign of the British merchant marine. My heart swelled with pride at the thought that presently admiring British tars would be congratulating us upon our notable capture; and just about then the merchant steamer must have sighted us, for she veered suddenly toward the north, and a moment later dense volumes of smoke issued from her funnels. Then, steering a zigzag course, she fled from us as though we had been the bubonic plague. I altered the course of the submarine and set off in chase; but the steamer was faster than we, and soon left us hopelessly astern.

With a rueful smile, I directed that our original course be resumed, and once again we set off toward merry England. That was three months ago, and we haven’t arrived yet; nor is there any likelihood that we ever shall.

The steamer we had just sighted must have wirelessed a warning, for it wasn’t half an hour before we saw more smoke on the horizon, and this time the vessel flew the white ensign of the Royal Navy and carried guns. She didn’t veer to the north or anywhere else, but bore down on us rapidly. I was just preparing to signal her, when a flame flashed from her bows, and an instant later the water in front of us was thrown high by the explosion of a shell.

Bradley had come on deck and was standing beside me. “About one more of those, and she’ll have our range,” he said. “She doesn’t seem to take much stock in our Union Jack.”

A second shell passed over us, and then I gave the command to change our direction, at the same time directing Bradley to go below and give the order to submerge. I passed Nobs down to him, and following, saw to the closing and fastening of the hatch.

It seemed to me that the diving-tanks never had filled so slowly. We heard a loud explosion apparently directly above us; the craft trembled to the shock which threw us all to the deck. I expected momentarily to feel the deluge of inrushing water, but none came. Instead we continued to submerge until the manometer registered forty feet and then I knew that we were safe. Safe! I almost smiled. I had relieved Olson, who had remained in the tower at my direction, having been a member of one of the early British submarine crews, and therefore having some knowledge of the business. Bradley was at my side. He looked at me quizzically.

“What the devil are we to do?” he asked. “The merchantman will flee us; the war-vessel will destroy us; neither will believe our colors or give us a chance to explain. We will meet even a worse reception if we go nosing around a British port—mines, nets and all of it. We can’t do it.”

“Let’s try it again when this fellow has lost the scent,” I urged. “There must come a ship that will believe us.”

And try it again we did, only to be almost rammed by a huge freighter. Later we were fired upon by a destroyer, and two merchantmen turned and fled at our approach. For two days we cruised up and down the Channel trying to tell some one, who would listen, that we were friends; but no one would listen. After our encounter with the first warship I had given instructions that a wireless message be sent out explaining our predicament; but to my chagrin I discovered that both sending and receiving instruments had disappeared.

“There is only one place you can go,” von Schoenvorts sent word to me, “and that is Kiel. You can’t land anywhere else in these waters. If you wish, I will take you there, and I can promise that you will be treated well.”

“There is another place we can go,” I sent back my reply, “and we will before we’ll go to Germany. That place is hell.”

CHAPTER 3

Those were anxious days, during which I had but little opportunity to associate with Lys. I had given her the commander’s room, Bradley and I taking that of the deck-officer, while Olson and two of our best men occupied the room ordinarily allotted to petty officers. I made Nobs’ bed down in Lys’ room, for I knew she would feel less alone.

Nothing of much moment occurred for a while after we left British waters behind us. We ran steadily along upon the surface, making good time. The first two boats we sighted made off as fast as they could go; and the third, a huge freighter, fired on us, forcing us to submerge. It was after this that our troubles commenced. One of the Diesel engines broke down in the morning, and while we were working on it, the forward port diving-tank commenced to fill. I was on deck at the time and noted the gradual list. Guessing at once what was happening, I leaped for the hatch and slamming it closed above my head, dropped to the centrale. By this time the craft was going down by the head with a most unpleasant list to port, and I didn’t wait to transmit orders to some one else but ran as fast as I could for the valve that let the sea into the forward port diving-tank. It was wide open. To close it and to have the pump started that would empty it were the work of but a minute; but we had had a close call.

I knew that the valve had never opened itself. Some one had opened it—some one who was willing to die himself if he might at the same time encompass the death of all of us.

After that I kept a guard pacing the length of the narrow craft. We worked upon the engine all that day and night and half the following day. Most of the time we drifted idly upon the surface, but toward noon we sighted smoke due west, and having found that only enemies inhabited the world for us, I ordered that the other engine be started so that we could move out of the path of the oncoming steamer. The moment the engine started to turn, however, there was a grinding sound of tortured steel, and when it had been stopped, we found that some one had placed a cold-chisel in one of the gears.

It was another two days before we were ready to limp along, half repaired. The night before the repairs were completed, the sentry came to my room and awoke me. He was rather an intelligent fellow of the English middle class, in whom I had much confidence.

“Well, Wilson,” I asked. “What’s the matter now?”

He raised his finger to his lips and came closer to me. “I think I’ve found out who’s doin’ the mischief,” he whispered, and nodded his head toward the girl’s room. “I seen her sneakin’ from the crew’s room just now,” he went on. “She’d been in gassin’ wit’ the boche commander. Benson seen her in there las’ night, too, but he never said nothin’ till I goes on watch tonight. Benson’s sorter slow in the head, an’ he never puts two an’ two together till some one else has made four out of it.”

If the man had come in and struck me suddenly in the face, I could have been no more surprised.

“Say nothing of this to anyone,” I ordered. “Keep your eyes and ears open and report every suspicious thing you see or hear.”

The man saluted and left me; but for an hour or more I tossed, restless, upon my hard bunk in an agony of jealousy and fear. Finally I fell into a troubled sleep. It was daylight when I awoke. We were steaming along slowly upon the surface, my orders having been to proceed at half speed until we could take an observation and determine our position. The sky had been overcast all the previous day and all night; but as I stepped into the centrale that morning I was delighted to see that the sun was again shining. The spirits of the men seemed improved; everything seemed propitious. I forgot at once the cruel misgivings of the past night as I set to work to take my observations.

What a blow awaited me! The sextant and chronometer had both been broken beyond repair, and they had been broken just this very night. They had been broken upon the night that Lys had been seen talking with von Schoenvorts. I think that it was this last thought which hurt me the worst. I could look the other disaster in the face with equanimity; but the bald fact that Lys might be a traitor appalled me.

I called Bradley and Olson on deck and told them what had happened, but for the life of me I couldn’t bring myself to repeat what Wilson had reported to me the previous night. In fact, as I had given the matter thought, it seemed incredible that the girl could have passed through my room, in which Bradley and I slept, and then carried on a conversation in the crew’s room, in which Von Schoenvorts was kept, without having been seen by more than a single man.

Bradley shook his head. “I can’t make it out,” he said. “One of those boches must be pretty clever to come it over us all like this; but they haven’t harmed us as much as they think; there are still the extra instruments.”

It was my turn now to shake a doleful head. “There are no extra instruments,” I told them. “They too have disappeared as did the wireless apparatus.”

Both men looked at me in amazement. “We still have the compass and the sun,” said Olson. “They may be after getting the compass some night; but they’s too many of us around in the daytime fer ’em to get the sun.”

It was then that one of the men stuck his head up through the hatchway and seeing me, asked permission to come on deck and get a breath of fresh air. I recognized him as Benson, the man who, Wilson had said, reported having seen Lys with von Schoenvorts two nights before. I motioned him on deck and then called him to one side, asking if he had seen anything out of the way or unusual during his trick on watch the night before. The fellow scratched his head a moment and said, “No,” and then as though it was an afterthought, he told me that he had seen the girl in the crew’s room about midnight talking with the German commander, but as there hadn’t seemed to him to be any harm in that, he hadn’t said anything about it. Telling him never to fail to report to me anything in the slightest out of the ordinary routine of the ship, I dismissed him.

Several of the other men now asked permission to come on deck, and soon all but those actually engaged in some necessary duty were standing around smoking and talking, all in the best of spirits. I took advantage of the absence of the men upon the deck to go below for my breakfast, which the cook was already preparing upon the electric stove. Lys, followed by Nobs, appeared as I entered the centrale. She met me with a pleasant “Good morning!” which I am afraid I replied to in a tone that was rather constrained and surly.

“Will you breakfast with me?” I suddenly asked the girl, determined to commence a probe of my own along the lines which duty demanded.

She nodded a sweet acceptance of my invitation, and together we sat down at the little table of the officers’ mess.

“You slept well last night?” I asked.

“All night,” she replied. “I am a splendid sleeper.”

Her manner was so straightforward and honest that I could not bring myself to believe in her duplicity; yet—Thinking to surprise her into a betrayal of her guilt, I blurted out: “The chronometer and sextant were both destroyed last night; there is a traitor among us.” But she never turned a hair by way of evidencing guilty knowledge of the catastrophe.

“Who could it have been?” she cried. “The Germans would be crazy to do it, for their lives are as much at stake as ours.”

“Men are often glad to die for an ideal—an ideal of patriotism, perhaps,” I replied; “and a willingness to martyr themselves includes a willingness to sacrifice others, even those who love them. Women are much the same, except that they will go even further than most men—they will sacrifice everything, even honor, for love.”

I watched her face carefully as I spoke, and I thought that I detected a very faint flush mounting her cheek. Seeing an opening and an advantage, I sought to follow it up.

“Take von Schoenvorts, for instance,” I continued: “he would doubtless be glad to die and take us all with him, could he prevent in no other way the falling of his vessel into enemy hands. He would sacrifice anyone, even you; and if you still love him, you might be his ready tool. Do you understand me?”

She looked at me in wide-eyed consternation for a moment, and then she went very white and rose from her seat. “I do,” she replied, and turning her back upon me, she walked quickly toward her room. I started to follow, for even believing what I did, I was sorry that I had hurt her. I reached the door to the crew’s room just behind her and in time to see von Schoenvorts lean forward and whisper something to her as she passed; but she must have guessed that she might be watched, for she passed on.

That afternoon it clouded over; the wind mounted to a gale, and the sea rose until the craft was wallowing and rolling frightfully. Nearly everyone aboard was sick; the air became foul and oppressive. For twenty-four hours I did not leave my post in the conning tower, as both Olson and Bradley were sick. Finally I found that I must get a little rest, and so I looked about for some one to relieve me. Benson volunteered. He had not been sick, and assured me that he was a former R.N. man and had been detailed for submarine duty for over two years. I was glad that it was he, for I had considerable confidence in his loyalty, and so it was with a feeling of security that I went below and lay down.

I slept twelve hours straight, and when I awoke and discovered what I had done, I lost no time in getting to the conning tower. There sat Benson as wide awake as could be, and the compass showed that we were heading straight into the west. The storm was still raging; nor did it abate its fury until the fourth day. We were all pretty well done up and looked forward to the time when we could go on deck and fill our lungs with fresh air. During the whole four days I had not seen the girl, as she evidently kept closely to her room; and during this time no untoward incident had occurred aboard the boat—a fact which seemed to strengthen the web of circumstantial evidence about her.

For six more days after the storm lessened we still had fairly rough weather; nor did the sun once show himself during all that time. For the season—it was now the middle of June—the storm was unusual; but being from southern California, I was accustomed to unusual weather. In fact, I have discovered that the world over, unusual weather prevails at all times of the year.

We kept steadily to our westward course, and as the U-33 was one of the fastest submersibles we had ever turned out, I knew that we must be pretty close to the North American coast. What puzzled me most was the fact that for six days we had not sighted a single ship. It seemed remarkable that we could cross the Atlantic almost to the coast of the American continent without glimpsing smoke or sail, and at last I came to the conclusion that we were way off our course, but whether to the north or to the south of it I could not determine.

On the seventh day the sea lay comparatively calm at early dawn. There was a slight haze upon the ocean which had cut off our view of the stars; but conditions all pointed toward a clear morrow, and I was on deck anxiously awaiting the rising of the sun. My eyes were glued upon the impenetrable mist astern, for there in the east I should see the first glow of the rising sun that would assure me we were still upon the right course. Gradually the heavens lightened; but astern I could see no intenser glow that would indicate the rising sun behind the mist. Bradley was standing at my side. Presently he touched my arm.

“Look, captain,” he said, and pointed south.

I looked and gasped, for there directly to port I saw outlined through the haze the red top of the rising sun. Hurrying to the tower, I looked at the compass. It showed that we were holding steadily upon our westward course. Either the sun was rising in the south, or the compass had been tampered with. The conclusion was obvious.

I went back to Bradley and told him what I had discovered. “And,” I concluded, “we can’t make another five hundred knots without oil; our provisions are running low and so is our water. God only knows how far south we have run.”

“There is nothing to do,” he replied, “other than to alter our course once more toward the west; we must raise land soon or we shall all be lost.”

I told him to do so; and then I set to work improvising a crude sextant with which we finally took our bearings in a rough and most unsatisfactory manner; for when the work was done, we did not know how far from the truth the result might be. It showed us to be about 20° north and 30° west—nearly twenty-five hundred miles off our course. In short, if our reading was anywhere near correct, we must have been traveling due south for six days. Bradley now relieved Benson, for we had arranged our shifts so that the latter and Olson now divided the nights, while Bradley and I alternated with one another during the days.

I questioned both Olson and Benson closely in the matter of the compass; but each stoutly maintained that no one had tampered with it during his tour of duty. Benson gave me a knowing smile, as much as to say: “Well, you and I know who did this.” Yet I could not believe that it was the girl.

We kept to our westerly course for several hours when the lookout’s cry announced a sail. I ordered the U-33’s course altered, and we bore down upon the stranger, for I had come to a decision which was the result of necessity. We could not lie there in the middle of the Atlantic and starve to death if there was any way out of it. The sailing ship saw us while we were still a long way off, as was evidenced by her efforts to escape. There was scarcely any wind, however, and her case was hopeless; so when we drew near and signaled her to stop, she came into the wind and lay there with her sails flapping idly. We moved in quite close to her. She was the Balmen of Halmstad, Sweden, with a general cargo from Brazil for Spain.

I explained our circumstances to her skipper and asked for food, water and oil; but when he found that we were not German, he became very angry and abusive and started to draw away from us; but I was in no mood for any such business. Turning toward Bradley, who was in the conning-tower, I snapped out: “Gun-service on deck! To the diving stations!” We had no opportunity for drill; but every man had been posted as to his duties, and the German members of the crew understood that it was obedience or death for them, as each was accompanied by a man with a pistol. Most of them, though, were only too glad to obey me.

Bradley passed the order down into the ship and a moment later the gun-crew clambered up the narrow ladder and at my direction trained their piece upon the slow-moving Swede. “Fire a shot across her bow,” I instructed the gun-captain.

Accept it from me, it didn’t take that Swede long to see the error of his way and get the red and white pennant signifying “I understand” to the masthead. Once again the sails flapped idly, and then I ordered him to lower a boat and come after me. With Olson and a couple of the Englishmen I boarded the ship, and from her cargo selected what we needed—oil, provisions and water. I gave the master of the Balmen a receipt for what we took, together with an affidavit signed by Bradley, Olson, and myself, stating briefly how we had come into possession of the U-33 and the urgency of our need for what we took. We addressed both to any British agent with the request that the owners of the Balmen be reimbursed; but whether or not they were, I do not know.1

With water, food, and oil aboard, we felt that we had obtained a new lease of life. Now, too, we knew definitely where we were, and I determined to make for Georgetown, British Guiana—but I was destined to again suffer bitter disappointment.

Six of us of the loyal crew had come on deck either to serve the gun or board the Swede during our set-to with her; and now, one by one, we descended the ladder into the centrale. I was the last to come, and when I reached the bottom, I found myself looking into the muzzle of a pistol in the hands of Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts—I saw all my men lined up at one side with the remaining eight Germans standing guard over them.

I couldn’t imagine how it had happened; but it had. Later I learned that they had first overpowered Benson, who was asleep in his bunk, and taken his pistol from him, and then had found it an easy matter to disarm the cook and the remaining two Englishmen below. After that it had been comparatively simple to stand at the foot of the ladder and arrest each individual as he descended.

The first thing von Schoenvorts did was to send for me and announce that as a pirate I was to be shot early the next morning. Then he explained that the U-33 would cruise in these waters for a time, sinking neutral and enemy shipping indiscriminately, and looking for one of the German raiders that was supposed to be in these parts.

He didn’t shoot me the next morning as he had promised, and it has never been clear to me why he postponed the execution of my sentence. Instead he kept me ironed just as he had been; then he kicked Bradley out of my room and took it all to himself.

We cruised for a long time, sinking many vessels, all but one by gunfire, but we did not come across a German raider. I was surprised to note that von Schoenvorts often permitted Benson to take command; but I reconciled this by the fact that Benson appeared to know more of the duties of a submarine commander than did any of the stupid Germans.

Once or twice Lys passed me; but for the most part she kept to her room. The first time she hesitated as though she wished to speak to me; but I did not raise my head, and finally she passed on. Then one day came the word that we were about to round the Horn and that von Schoenvorts had taken it into his fool head to cruise up along the Pacific coast of North America and prey upon all sorts and conditions of merchantmen.

“I’ll put the fear of God and the Kaiser into them,” he said.

The very first day we entered the South Pacific we had an adventure. It turned out to be quite the most exciting adventure I had ever encountered. It fell about this way. About eight bells of the forenoon watch I heard a hail from the deck, and presently the footsteps of the entire ship’s company, from the amount of noise I heard at the ladder. Some one yelled back to those who had not yet reached the level of the deck: “It’s the raider, the German raider Geier!”

I saw that we had reached the end of our rope. Below all was quiet—not a man remained. A door opened at the end of the narrow hull, and presently Nobs came trotting up to me. He licked my face and rolled over on his back, reaching for me with his big, awkward paws. Then other footsteps sounded, approaching me. I knew whose they were, and I looked straight down at the flooring. The girl was coming almost at a run—she was at my side immediately. “Here!” she cried. “Quick!” And she slipped something into my hand. It was a key—the key to my irons. At my side she also laid a pistol, and then she went on into the centrale. As she passed me, I saw that she carried another pistol for herself. It did not take me long to liberate myself, and then I was at her side. “How can I thank you?” I started; but she shut me up with a word.

“Do not thank me,” she said coldly. “I do not care to hear your thanks or any other expression from you. Do not stand there looking at me. I have given you a chance to do something—now do it!” The last was a peremptory command that made me jump.

Glancing up, I saw that the tower was empty, and I lost no time in clambering up, looking about me. About a hundred yards off lay a small, swift cruiser-raider, and above her floated the German man-of-war’s flag. A boat had just been lowered, and I could see it moving toward us filled with officers and men. The cruiser lay dead ahead. “My,” I thought, “what a wonderful targ—” I stopped even thinking, so surprised and shocked was I by the boldness of my imagery. The girl was just below me. I looked down on her wistfully. Could I trust her? Why had she released me at this moment? I must! I must! There was no other way. I dropped back below. “Ask Olson to step down here, please,” I requested; “and don’t let anyone see you ask him.”

She looked at me with a puzzled expression on her face for the barest fraction of a second, and then she turned and went up the ladder. A moment later Olson returned, and the girl followed him. “Quick!” I whispered to the big Irishman, and made for the bow compartment where the torpedo-tubes are built into the boat; here, too, were the torpedoes. The girl accompanied us, and when she saw the thing I had in mind, she stepped forward and lent a hand to the swinging of the great cylinder of death and destruction into the mouth of its tube. With oil and main strength we shoved the torpedo home and shut the tube; then I ran back to the conning-tower, praying in my heart of hearts that the U-33 had not swung her bow away from the prey. No, thank God!

Never could aim have been truer. I signaled back to Olson: “Let ’er go!” The U-33 trembled from stem to stern as the torpedo shot from its tube. I saw the white wake leap from her bow straight toward the enemy cruiser. A chorus of hoarse yells arose from the deck of our own craft: I saw the officers stand suddenly erect in the boat that was approaching us, and I heard loud cries and curses from the raider. Then I turned my attention to my own business. Most of the men on the submarine’s deck were standing in paralyzed fascination, staring at the torpedo. Bradley happened to be looking toward the conning-tower and saw me. I sprang on deck and ran toward him. “Quick!” I whispered. “While they are stunned, we must overcome them.”

A German was standing near Bradley—just in front of him. The Englishman struck the fellow a frantic blow upon the neck and at the same time snatched his pistol from its holster. Von Schoenvorts had recovered from his first surprise quickly and had turned toward the main hatch to investigate. I covered him with my revolver, and at the same instant the torpedo struck the raider, the terrific explosion drowning the German’s command to his men.

Bradley was now running from one to another of our men, and though some of the Germans saw and heard him, they seemed too stunned for action.

Olson was below, so that there were only nine of us against eight Germans, for the man Bradley had struck still lay upon the deck. Only two of us were armed; but the heart seemed to have gone out of the boches, and they put up but half-hearted resistance. Von Schoenvorts was the worst—he was fairly frenzied with rage and chagrin, and he came charging for me like a mad bull, and as he came he discharged his pistol. If he’d stopped long enough to take aim, he might have gotten me; but his pace made him wild, so that not a shot touched me, and then we clinched and went to the deck. This left two pistols, which two of my own men were quick to appropriate. The Baron was no match for me in a hand-to-hand encounter, and I soon had him pinned to the deck and the life almost choked out of him.

A half-hour later things had quieted down, and all was much the same as before the prisoners had revolted—only we kept a much closer watch on von Schoenvorts. The Geier had sunk while we were still battling upon our deck, and afterward we had drawn away toward the north, leaving the survivors to the attention of the single boat which had been making its way toward us when Olson launched the torpedo. I suppose the poor devils never reached land, and if they did, they most probably perished on that cold and unhospitable shore; but I couldn’t permit them aboard the U-33. We had all the Germans we could take care of.

That evening the girl asked permission to go on deck. She said that she felt the effects of long confinement below, and I readily granted her request. I could not understand her, and I craved an opportunity to talk with her again in an effort to fathom her and her intentions, and so I made it a point to follow her up the ladder. It was a clear, cold, beautiful night. The sea was calm except for the white water at our bows and the two long radiating swells running far off into the distance upon either hand astern, forming a great V which our propellers filled with choppy waves. Benson was in the tower, we were bound for San Diego and all looked well.

Lys stood with a heavy blanket wrapped around her slender figure, and as I approached her, she half turned toward me to see who it was. When she recognized me, she immediately turned away.

“I want to thank you,” I said, “for your bravery and loyalty—you were magnificent. I am sorry that you had reason before to think that I doubted you.”

“You did doubt me,” she replied in a level voice. “You practically accused me of aiding Baron von Schoenvorts. I can never forgive you.”

There was a great deal of finality in both her words and tone.

“I could not believe it,” I said; “and yet two of my men reported having seen you in conversation with von Schoenvorts late at night upon two separate occasions—after each of which some great damage was found done us in the morning. I didn’t want to doubt you; but I carried all the responsibility of the lives of these men, of the safety of the ship, of your life and mine. I had to watch you, and I had to put you on your guard against a repetition of your madness.”

She was looking at me now with those great eyes of hers, very wide and round.

“Who told you that I spoke with Baron von Schoenvorts at night, or any other time?” she asked.

“I cannot tell you, Lys,” I replied, “but it came to me from two different sources.”

“Then two men have lied,” she asserted without heat. “I have not spoken to Baron von Schoenvorts other than in your presence when first we came aboard the U-33. And please, when you address me, remember that to others than my intimates I am Miss La Rue.”

Did you ever get slapped in the face when you least expected it? No? Well, then you do not know how I felt at that moment. I could feel the hot, red flush surging up my neck, across my cheeks, over my ears, clear to my scalp. And it made me love her all the more; it made me swear inwardly a thousand solemn oaths that I would win her.

CHAPTER 4

For several days things went along in about the same course. I took our position every morning with my crude sextant; but the results were always most unsatisfactory. They always showed a considerable westing when I knew that we had been sailing due north. I blamed my crude instrument, and kept on. Then one afternoon the girl came to me.

“Pardon me,” she said, “but were I you, I should watch this man Benson—especially when he is in charge.” I asked her what she meant, thinking I could see the influence of von Schoenvorts raising a suspicion against one of my most trusted men.

“If you will note the boat’s course a half-hour after Benson goes on duty,” she said, “you will know what I mean, and you will understand why he prefers a night watch. Possibly, too, you will understand some other things that have taken place aboard.”

Then she went back to her room, thus ending the conversation. I waited until half an hour after Benson had gone on duty, and then I went on deck, passing through the conning-tower where Benson sat, and looking at the compass. It showed that our course was north by west—that is, one point west of north, which was, for our assumed position, about right. I was greatly relieved to find that nothing was wrong, for the girl’s words had caused me considerable apprehension. I was about to return to my room when a thought occurred to me that again caused me to change my mind—and, incidentally, came near proving my death-warrant.

When I had left the conning-tower little more than a half-hour since, the sea had been breaking over the port bow, and it seemed to me quite improbable that in so short a time an equally heavy sea could be deluging us from the opposite side of the ship—winds may change quickly, but not a long, heavy sea. There was only one other solution—since I left the tower, our course had been altered some eight points. Turning quickly, I climbed out upon the conning-tower. A single glance at the heavens confirmed my suspicions; the constellations which should have been dead ahead were directly starboard. We were sailing due west.

Just for an instant longer I stood there to check up my calculations—I wanted to be quite sure before I accused Benson of perfidy, and about the only thing I came near making quite sure of was death. I cannot see even now how I escaped it. I was standing on the edge of the conning-tower, when a heavy palm suddenly struck me between the shoulders and hurled me forward into space. The drop to the triangular deck forward of the conning-tower might easily have broken a leg for me, or I might have slipped off onto the deck and rolled overboard; but fate was upon my side, as I was only slightly bruised. As I came to my feet, I heard the conning-tower cover slam. There is a ladder which leads from the deck to the top of the tower. Up this I scrambled, as fast as I could go; but Benson had the cover tight before I reached it.

I stood there a moment in dumb consternation. What did the fellow intend? What was going on below? If Benson was a traitor, how could I know that there were not other traitors among us? I cursed myself for my folly in going out upon the deck, and then this thought suggested another—a hideous one: who was it that had really been responsible for my being here?

Thinking to attract attention from inside the craft, I again ran down the ladder and onto the small deck only to find that the steel covers of the conning-tower windows were shut, and then I leaned with my back against the tower and cursed myself for a gullible idiot.

I glanced at the bow. The sea seemed to be getting heavier, for every wave now washed completely over the lower deck. I watched them for a moment, and then a sudden chill pervaded my entire being. It was not the chill of wet clothing, or the dashing spray which drenched my face; no, it was the chill of the hand of death upon my heart. In an instant I had turned the last corner of life’s highway and was looking God Almighty in the face—the U-33 was being slowly submerged!

It would be difficult, even impossible, to set down in writing my sensations at that moment. All I can particularly recall is that I laughed, though neither from a spirit of bravado nor from hysteria. And I wanted to smoke. Lord! how I did want to smoke; but that was out of the question.

I watched the water rise until the little deck I stood on was awash, and then I clambered once more to the top of the conning-tower. From the very slow submergence of the boat I knew that Benson was doing the entire trick alone—that he was merely permitting the diving-tanks to fill and that the diving-rudders were not in use. The throbbing of the engines ceased, and in its stead came the steady vibration of the electric motors. The water was halfway up the conning-tower! I had perhaps five minutes longer on the deck. I tried to decide what I should do after I was washed away. Should I swim until exhaustion claimed me, or should I give up and end the agony at the first plunge?

From below came two muffled reports. They sounded not unlike shots. Was Benson meeting with resistance? Personally it could mean little to me, for even though my men might overcome the enemy, none would know of my predicament until long after it was too late to succor me. The top of the conning-tower was now awash. I clung to the wireless mast, while the great waves surged sometimes completely over me.

I knew the end was near and, almost involuntarily, I did that which I had not done since childhood—I prayed. After that I felt better.

I clung and waited, but the water rose no higher.

Instead it receded. Now the top of the conning-tower received only the crests of the higher waves; now the little triangular deck below became visible! What had occurred within? Did Benson believe me already gone, and was he emerging because of that belief, or had he and his forces been vanquished? The suspense was more wearing than that which I had endured while waiting for dissolution. Presently the main deck came into view, and then the conning-tower opened behind me, and I turned to look into the anxious face of Bradley. An expression of relief overspread his features.

“Thank God, man!” was all he said as he reached forth and dragged me into the tower. I was cold and numb and rather all in. Another few minutes would have done for me, I am sure, but the warmth of the interior helped to revive me, aided and abetted by some brandy which Bradley poured down my throat, from which it nearly removed the membrane. That brandy would have revived a corpse.

When I got down into the centrale, I saw the Germans lined up on one side with a couple of my men with pistols standing over them. Von Schoenvorts was among them. On the floor lay Benson, moaning, and beyond him stood the girl, a revolver in one hand. I looked about, bewildered.

“What has happened down here?” I asked. “Tell me!”

Bradley replied. “You see the result, sir,” he said. “It might have been a very different result but for Miss La Rue. We were all asleep. Benson had relieved the guard early in the evening; there was no one to watch him—no one but Miss La Rue. She felt the submergence of the boat and came out of her room to investigate. She was just in time to see Benson at the diving rudders. When he saw her, he raised his pistol and fired point-blank at her, but he missed and she fired—and didn’t miss. The two shots awakened everyone, and as our men were armed, the result was inevitable as you see it; but it would have been very different had it not been for Miss La Rue. It was she who closed the diving-tank sea-cocks and roused Olson and me, and had the pumps started to empty them.”

And there I had been thinking that through her machinations I had been lured to the deck and to my death! I could have gone on my knees to her and begged her forgiveness—or at least I could have, had I not been Anglo-Saxon. As it was, I could only remove my soggy cap and bow and mumble my appreciation. She made no reply—only turned and walked very rapidly toward her room. Could I have heard aright? Was it really a sob that came floating back to me through the narrow aisle of the U-33?

Benson died that night. He remained defiant almost to the last; but just before he went out, he motioned to me, and I leaned over to catch the faintly whispered words.

“I did it alone,” he said. “I did it because I hate you—I hate all your kind. I was kicked out of your shipyard at Santa Monica. I was locked out of California. I am an I. W. W. I became a German agent—not because I love them, for I hate them too—but because I wanted to injure Americans, whom I hated more. I threw the wireless apparatus overboard. I destroyed the chronometer and the sextant. I devised a scheme for varying the compass to suit my wishes. I told Wilson that I had seen the girl talking with von Schoenvorts, and I made the poor egg think he had seen her doing the same thing. I am sorry—sorry that my plans failed. I hate you.”

He didn’t die for a half-hour after that; nor did he speak again—aloud; but just a few seconds before he went to meet his Maker, his lips moved in a faint whisper; and as I leaned closer to catch his words, what do you suppose I heard? “Now—I—lay me—down—to—sleep” That was all; Benson was dead. We threw his body overboard.

The wind of that night brought on some pretty rough weather with a lot of black clouds which persisted for several days. We didn’t know what course we had been holding, and there was no way of finding out, as we could no longer trust the compass, not knowing what Benson had done to it. The long and the short of it was that we cruised about aimlessly until the sun came out again. I’ll never forget that day or its surprises. We reckoned, or rather guessed, that we were somewhere off the coast of Peru. The wind, which had been blowing fitfully from the east, suddenly veered around into the south, and presently we felt a sudden chill.

“Peru!” snorted Olson. “When were yez after smellin’ iceber-rgs off Peru?”

Icebergs! “Icebergs, nothin’!” exclaimed one of the Englishmen. “Why, man, they don’t come north of fourteen here in these waters.”

“Then,” replied Olson, “ye’re sout’ of fourteen, me b’y.”

We thought he was crazy; but he wasn’t, for that afternoon we sighted a great berg south of us, and we’d been running north, we thought, for days. I can tell you we were a discouraged lot; but we got a faint thrill of hope early the next morning when the lookout bawled down the open hatch: “Land! Land northwest by west!”

I think we were all sick for the sight of land. I know that I was; but my interest was quickly dissipated by the sudden illness of three of the Germans. Almost simultaneously they commenced vomiting. They couldn’t suggest any explanation for it. I asked them what they had eaten, and found they had eaten nothing other than the food cooked for all of us. “Have you drunk anything?” I asked, for I knew that there was liquor aboard, and medicines in the same locker.

“Only water,” moaned one of them. “We all drank water together this morning. We opened a new tank. Maybe it was the water.”

I started an investigation which revealed a terrifying condition—some one, probably Benson, had poisoned all the running water on the ship. It would have been worse, though, had land not been in sight. The sight of land filled us with renewed hope.

Our course had been altered, and we were rapidly approaching what appeared to be a precipitous headland. Cliffs, seemingly rising perpendicularly out of the sea, faded away into the mist upon either hand as we approached. The land before us might have been a continent, so mighty appeared the shoreline; yet we knew that we must be thousands of miles from the nearest western land-mass—New Zealand or Australia.

We took our bearings with our crude and inaccurate instruments; we searched the chart; we cudgeled our brains; and at last it was Bradley who suggested a solution. He was in the tower and watching the compass, to which he called my attention. The needle was pointing straight toward the land. Bradley swung the helm hard to starboard. I could feel the U-33 respond, and yet the arrow still clung straight and sure toward the distant cliffs.

“What do you make of it?” I asked him.

“Did you ever hear of Caproni?” he asked.

“An early Italian navigator?” I returned.

“Yes; he followed Cook about 1721. He is scarcely mentioned even by contemporaneous historians—probably because he got into political difficulties on his return to Italy. It was the fashion to scoff at his claims, but I recall reading one of his works—his only one, I believe—in which he described a new continent in the south seas, a continent made up of ‘some strange metal’ which attracted the compass; a rockbound, inhospitable coast, without beach or harbor, which extended for hundreds of miles. He could make no landing; nor in the several days he cruised about it did he see sign of life. He called it Caprona and sailed away. I believe, sir, that we are looking upon the coast of Caprona, uncharted and forgotten for two hundred years.”

“If you are right, it might account for much of the deviation of the compass during the past two days,” I suggested. “Caprona has been luring us upon her deadly rocks. Well, we’ll accept her challenge. We’ll land upon Caprona. Along that long front there must be a vulnerable spot. We will find it, Bradley, for we must find it. We must find water on Caprona, or we must die.”

And so we approached the coast upon which no living eyes had ever rested. Straight from the ocean’s depths rose towering cliffs, shot with brown and blues and greens—withered moss and lichen and the verdigris of copper, and everywhere the rusty ocher of iron pyrites. The cliff-tops, though ragged, were of such uniform height as to suggest the boundaries of a great plateau, and now and again we caught glimpses of verdure topping the rocky escarpment, as though bush or jungle-land had pushed outward from a lush vegetation farther inland to signal to an unseeing world that Caprona lived and joyed in life beyond her austere and repellent coast.

But metaphor, however poetic, never slaked a dry throat. To enjoy Caprona’s romantic suggestions we must have water, and so we came in close, always sounding, and skirted the shore. As close in as we dared cruise, we found fathomless depths, and always the same undented coastline of bald cliffs. As darkness threatened, we drew away and lay well off the coast all night. We had not as yet really commenced to suffer for lack of water; but I knew that it would not be long before we did, and so at the first streak of dawn I moved in again and once more took up the hopeless survey of the forbidding coast.

Toward noon we discovered a beach, the first we had seen. It was a narrow strip of sand at the base of a part of the cliff that seemed lower than any we had before scanned. At its foot, half buried in the sand, lay great boulders, mute evidence that in a bygone age some mighty natural force had crumpled Caprona’s barrier at this point. It was Bradley who first called our attention to a strange object lying among the boulders above the surf.

“Looks like a man,” he said, and passed his glasses to me.

I looked long and carefully and could have sworn that the thing I saw was the sprawled figure of a human being. Miss La Rue was on deck with us. I turned and asked her to go below. Without a word she did as I bade. Then I stripped, and as I did so, Nobs looked questioningly at me. He had been wont at home to enter the surf with me, and evidently he had not forgotten it.

“What are you going to do, sir?” asked Olson.

“I’m going to see what that thing is on shore,” I replied. “If it’s a man, it may mean that Caprona is inhabited, or it may merely mean that some poor devils were shipwrecked here. I ought to be able to tell from the clothing which is more near the truth.

“How about sharks?” queried Olson. “Sure, you ought to carry a knoife.”

“Here you are, sir,” cried one of the men.

It was a long slim blade he offered—one that I could carry between my teeth—and so I accepted it gladly.

“Keep close in,” I directed Bradley, and then I dived over the side and struck out for the narrow beach. There was another splash directly behind me, and turning my head, I saw faithful old Nobs swimming valiantly in my wake.

The surf was not heavy, and there was no undertow, so we made shore easily, effecting an equally easy landing. The beach was composed largely of small stones worn smooth by the action of water. There was little sand, though from the deck of the U-33 the beach had appeared to be all sand, and I saw no evidences of mollusca or crustacea such as are common to all beaches I have previously seen. I attribute this to the fact of the smallness of the beach, the enormous depth of surrounding water and the great distance at which Caprona lies from her nearest neighbor.

As Nobs and I approached the recumbent figure farther up the beach, I was appraised by my nose that whether or not, the thing had once been organic and alive, but that for some time it had been dead. Nobs halted, sniffed and growled. A little later he sat down upon his haunches, raised his muzzle to the heavens and bayed forth a most dismal howl. I shied a small stone at him and bade him shut up—his uncanny noise made me nervous. When I had come quite close to the thing, I still could not say whether it had been man or beast. The carcass was badly swollen and partly decomposed. There was no sign of clothing upon or about it. A fine, brownish hair covered the chest and abdomen, and the face, the palms of the hands, the feet, the shoulders and back were practically hairless. The creature must have been about the height of a fair sized man; its features were similar to those of a man; yet had it been a man?

I could not say, for it resembled an ape no more than it did a man. Its large toes protruded laterally as do those of the semiarboreal peoples of Borneo, the Philippines and other remote regions where low types still persist. The countenance might have been that of a cross between Pithecanthropus, the Java ape-man, and a daughter of the Piltdown race of prehistoric Sussex. A wooden cudgel lay beside the corpse.

Now this fact set me thinking. There was no wood of any description in sight. There was nothing about the beach to suggest a wrecked mariner. There was absolutely nothing about the body to suggest that it might possibly in life have known a maritime experience. It was the body of a low type of man or a high type of beast. In neither instance would it have been of a seafaring race. Therefore I deduced that it was native to Caprona—that it lived inland, and that it had fallen or been hurled from the cliffs above. Such being the case, Caprona was inhabitable, if not inhabited, by man; but how to reach the inhabitable interior! That was the question. A closer view of the cliffs than had been afforded me from the deck of the U-33 only confirmed my conviction that no mortal man could scale those perpendicular heights; there was not a finger-hold, not a toe-hold, upon them. I turned away baffled.

Nobs and I met with no sharks upon our return journey to the submarine. My report filled everyone with theories and speculations, and with renewed hope and determination. They all reasoned along the same lines that I had reasoned—the conclusions were obvious, but not the water. We were now thirstier than ever.

The balance of that day we spent in continuing a minute and fruitless exploration of the monotonous coast. There was not another break in the frowning cliffs—not even another minute patch of pebbly beach. As the sun fell, so did our spirits. I had tried to make advances to the girl again; but she would have none of me, and so I was not only thirsty but otherwise sad and downhearted. I was glad when the new day broke the hideous spell of a sleepless night.

The morning’s search brought us no shred of hope. Caprona was impregnable—that was the decision of all; yet we kept on. It must have been about two bells of the afternoon watch that Bradley called my attention to the branch of a tree, with leaves upon it, floating on the sea. “It may have been carried down to the ocean by a river,” he suggested.

“Yes,” I replied, “it may have; it may have tumbled or been thrown off the top of one of these cliffs.”

Bradley’s face fell. “I thought of that, too,” he replied, “but I wanted to believe the other.”

“Right you are!” I cried. “We must believe the other until we prove it false. We can’t afford to give up heart now, when we need heart most. The branch was carried down by a river, and we are going to find that river.” I smote my open palm with a clenched fist, to emphasize a determination unsupported by hope. “There!” I cried suddenly. “See that, Bradley?” And I pointed at a spot closer to shore. “See that, man!” Some flowers and grasses and another leafy branch floated toward us. We both scanned the water and the coastline. Bradley evidently discovered something, or at least thought that he had. He called down for a bucket and a rope, and when they were passed up to him, he lowered the former into the sea and drew it in filled with water. Of this he took a taste, and straightening up, looked into my eyes with an expression of elation—as much as to say “I told you so!”

“This water is warm,” he announced, “and fresh!”

I grabbed the bucket and tasted its contents. The water was very warm, and it was fresh, but there was a most unpleasant taste to it.

“Did you ever taste water from a stagnant pool full of tadpoles?” Bradley asked.

“That’s it,” I exclaimed, “—that’s just the taste exactly, though I haven’t experienced it since boyhood; but how can water from a flowing stream, taste thus, and what the dickens makes it so warm? It must be at least 70 or 80 Fahrenheit, possibly higher.”

“Yes,” agreed Bradley, “I should say higher; but where does it come from?”

“That is easily discovered now that we have found it,” I answered. “It can’t come from the ocean; so it must come from the land. All that we have to do is follow it, and sooner or later we shall come upon its source.”

We were already rather close in; but I ordered the U-33’s prow turned inshore and we crept slowly along, constantly dipping up the water and tasting it to assure ourselves that we didn’t get outside the fresh-water current. There was a very light off-shore wind and scarcely any breakers, so that the approach to the shore was continued without finding bottom; yet though we were already quite close, we saw no indication of any indention in the coast from which even a tiny brooklet might issue, and certainly no mouth of a large river such as this must necessarily be to freshen the ocean even two hundred yards from shore. The tide was running out, and this, together with the strong flow of the freshwater current, would have prevented our going against the cliffs even had we not been under power; as it was we had to buck the combined forces in order to hold our position at all. We came up to within twenty-five feet of the sheer wall, which loomed high above us. There was no break in its forbidding face. As we watched the face of the waters and searched the cliff’s high face, Olson suggested that the fresh water might come from a submarine geyser. This, he said, would account for its heat; but even as he spoke a bush, covered thickly with leaves and flowers, bubbled to the surface and floated off astern.

“Flowering shrubs don’t thrive in the subterranean caverns from which geysers spring,” suggested Bradley.

Olson shook his head. “It beats me,” he said.

“I’ve got it!” I exclaimed suddenly. “Look there!” And I pointed at the base of the cliff ahead of us, which the receding tide was gradually exposing to our view. They all looked, and all saw what I had seen—the top of a dark opening in the rock, through which water was pouring out into the sea. “It’s the subterranean channel of an inland river,” I cried. “It flows through a land covered with vegetation—and therefore a land upon which the sun shines. No subterranean caverns produce any order of plant life even remotely resembling what we have seen disgorged by this river. Beyond those cliffs lie fertile lands and fresh water—perhaps, game!”

“Yis, sir,” said Olson, “behoind the cliffs! Ye spoke a true word, sir—behoind!”

Bradley laughed—a rather sorry laugh, though. “You might as well call our attention to the fact, sir,” he said, “that science has indicated that there is fresh water and vegetation on Mars.”

“Not at all,” I rejoined. “A U-boat isn’t constructed to navigate space, but it is designed to travel below the surface of the water.”

“You’d be after sailin’ into that blank pocket?” asked Olson.

“I would, Olson,” I replied. “We haven’t one chance for life in a hundred thousand if we don’t find food and water upon Caprona. This water coming out of the cliff is not salt; but neither is it fit to drink, though each of us has drunk. It is fair to assume that inland the river is fed by pure streams, that there are fruits and herbs and game. Shall we lie out here and die of thirst and starvation with a land of plenty possibly only a few hundred yards away? We have the means for navigating a subterranean river. Are we too cowardly to utilize this means?”

“Be afther goin’ to it,” said Olson.

“I’m willing to see it through,” agreed Bradley.

“Then under the bottom, wi’ the best o’ luck an’ give ’em hell!” cried a young fellow who had been in the trenches.

“To the diving-stations!” I commanded, and in less than a minute the deck was deserted, the conning-tower covers had slammed to and the U-33 was submerging—possibly for the last time. I know that I had this feeling, and I think that most of the others did.

As we went down, I sat in the tower with the searchlight projecting its seemingly feeble rays ahead. We submerged very slowly and without headway more than sufficient to keep her nose in the right direction, and as we went down, I saw outlined ahead of us the black opening in the great cliff. It was an opening that would have admitted a half-dozen U-boats at one and the same time, roughly cylindrical in contour—and dark as the pit of perdition.

As I gave the command which sent the U-33 slowly ahead, I could not but feel a certain uncanny presentiment of evil. Where were we going? What lay at the end of this great sewer? Had we bidden farewell forever to the sunlight and life, or were there before us dangers even greater than those which we now faced? I tried to keep my mind from vain imagining by calling everything which I observed to the eager ears below. I was the eyes of the whole company, and I did my best not to fail them. We had advanced a hundred yards, perhaps, when our first danger confronted us. Just ahead was a sharp right-angle turn in the tunnel. I could see the river’s flotsam hurtling against the rocky wall upon the left as it was driven on by the mighty current, and I feared for the safety of the U-33 in making so sharp a turn under such adverse conditions; but there was nothing for it but to try. I didn’t warn my fellows of the danger—it could have but caused them useless apprehension, for if we were to be smashed against the rocky wall, no power on earth could avert the quick end that would come to us. I gave the command full speed ahead and went charging toward the menace. I was forced to approach the dangerous left-hand wall in order to make the turn, and I depended upon the power of the motors to carry us through the surging waters in safety. Well, we made it; but it was a narrow squeak. As we swung around, the full force of the current caught us and drove the stern against the rocks; there was a thud which sent a tremor through the whole craft, and then a moment of nasty grinding as the steel hull scraped the rock wall. I expected momentarily the inrush of waters that would seal our doom; but presently from below came the welcome word that all was well.

In another fifty yards there was a second turn, this time toward the left! but it was more of a gentle curve, and we took it without trouble. After that it was plain sailing, though as far as I could know, there might be most anything ahead of us, and my nerves strained to the snapping-point every instant. After the second turn the channel ran comparatively straight for between one hundred and fifty and two hundred yards. The waters grew suddenly lighter, and my spirits rose accordingly. I shouted down to those below that I saw daylight ahead, and a great shout of thanksgiving reverberated through the ship. A moment later we emerged into sunlit water, and immediately I raised the periscope and looked about me upon the strangest landscape I had ever seen.

We were in the middle of a broad and now sluggish river the banks of which were lined by giant, arboraceous ferns, raising their mighty fronds fifty, one hundred, two hundred feet into the quiet air. Close by us something rose to the surface of the river and dashed at the periscope. I had a vision of wide, distended jaws, and then all was blotted out. A shiver ran down into the tower as the thing closed upon the periscope. A moment later it was gone, and I could see again. Above the trees there soared into my vision a huge thing on batlike wings—a creature large as a large whale, but fashioned more after the order of a lizard. Then again something charged the periscope and blotted out the mirror. I will confess that I was almost gasping for breath as I gave the commands to emerge. Into what sort of strange land had fate guided us?

The instant the deck was awash, I opened the conning-tower hatch and stepped out. In another minute the deck-hatch lifted, and those who were not on duty below streamed up the ladder, Olson bringing Nobs under one arm. For several minutes no one spoke; I think they must each have been as overcome by awe as was I. All about us was a flora and fauna as strange and wonderful to us as might have been those upon a distant planet had we suddenly been miraculously transported through ether to an unknown world. Even the grass upon the nearer bank was unearthly—lush and high it grew, and each blade bore upon its tip a brilliant flower—violet or yellow or carmine or blue—making as gorgeous a sward as human imagination might conceive. But the life! It teemed. The tall, fernlike trees were alive with monkeys, snakes, and lizards. Huge insects hummed and buzzed hither and thither. Mighty forms could be seen moving upon the ground in the thick forest, while the bosom of the river wriggled with living things, and above flapped the wings of gigantic creatures such as we are taught have been extinct throughout countless ages.

“Look!” cried Olson. “Would you look at the giraffe comin’ up out o’ the bottom of the say?” We looked in the direction he pointed and saw a long, glossy neck surmounted by a small head rising above the surface of the river. Presently the back of the creature was exposed, brown and glossy as the water dripped from it. It turned its eyes upon us, opened its lizard-like mouth, emitted a shrill hiss and came for us. The thing must have been sixteen or eighteen feet in length and closely resembled pictures I had seen of restored plesiosaurs of the lower Jurassic. It charged us as savagely as a mad bull, and one would have thought it intended to destroy and devour the mighty U-boat, as I verily believe it did intend.

We were moving slowly up the river as the creature bore down upon us with distended jaws. The long neck was far outstretched, and the four flippers with which it swam were working with powerful strokes, carrying it forward at a rapid pace. When it reached the craft’s side, the jaws closed upon one of the stanchions of the deck rail and tore it from its socket as though it had been a toothpick stuck in putty. At this exhibition of titanic strength I think we all simultaneously stepped backward, and Bradley drew his revolver and fired. The bullet struck the thing in the neck, just above its body; but instead of disabling it, merely increased its rage. Its hissing rose to a shrill scream as it raised half its body out of water onto the sloping sides of the hull of the U-33 and endeavored to scramble upon the deck to devour us. A dozen shots rang out as we who were armed drew our pistols and fired at the thing; but though struck several times, it showed no signs of succumbing and only floundered farther aboard the submarine.

I had noticed that the girl had come on deck and was standing not far behind me, and when I saw the danger to which we were all exposed, I turned and forced her toward the hatch. We had not spoken for some days, and we did not speak now; but she gave me a disdainful look, which was quite as eloquent as words, and broke loose from my grasp. I saw I could do nothing with her unless I exerted force, and so I turned with my back toward her that I might be in a position to shield her from the strange reptile should it really succeed in reaching the deck; and as I did so I saw the thing raise one flipper over the rail, dart its head forward and with the quickness of lightning seize upon one of the boches. I ran forward, discharging my pistol into the creature’s body in an effort to force it to relinquish its prey; but I might as profitably have shot at the sun.

Shrieking and screaming, the German was dragged from the deck, and the moment the reptile was clear of the boat, it dived beneath the surface of the water with its terrified prey. I think we were all more or less shaken by the frightfulness of the tragedy—until Olson remarked that the balance of power now rested where it belonged. Following the death of Benson we had been nine and nine—nine Germans and nine “Allies,” as we called ourselves, now there were but eight Germans. We never counted the girl on either side, I suppose because she was a girl, though we knew well enough now that she was ours.

And so Olson’s remark helped to clear the atmosphere for the Allies at least, and then our attention was once more directed toward the river, for around us there had sprung up a perfect bedlam of screams and hisses and a seething caldron of hideous reptiles, devoid of fear and filled only with hunger and with rage. They clambered, squirmed and wriggled to the deck, forcing us steadily backward, though we emptied our pistols into them. There were all sorts and conditions of horrible things—huge, hideous, grotesque, monstrous—a veritable Mesozoic nightmare. I saw that the girl was gotten below as quickly as possible, and she took Nobs with her—poor Nobs had nearly barked his head off; and I think, too, that for the first time since his littlest puppyhood he had known fear; nor can I blame him. After the girl I sent Bradley and most of the Allies and then the Germans who were on deck—von Schoenvorts being still in irons below.

The creatures were approaching perilously close before I dropped through the hatchway and slammed down the cover. Then I went into the tower and ordered full speed ahead, hoping to distance the fearsome things; but it was useless. Not only could any of them easily outdistance the U-33, but the further upstream we progressed the greater the number of our besiegers, until fearful of navigating a strange river at high speed, I gave orders to reduce and moved slowly and majestically through the plunging, hissing mass. I was mighty glad that our entrance into the interior of Caprona had been inside a submarine rather than in any other form of vessel. I could readily understand how it might have been that Caprona had been invaded in the past by venturesome navigators without word of it ever reaching the outside world, for I can assure you that only by submarine could man pass up that great sluggish river, alive.

We proceeded up the river for some forty miles before darkness overtook us. I was afraid to submerge and lie on the bottom overnight for fear that the mud might be deep enough to hold us, and as we could not hold with the anchor, I ran in close to shore, and in a brief interim of attack from the reptiles we made fast to a large tree. We also dipped up some of the river water and found it, though quite warm, a little sweeter than before. We had food enough, and with the water we were all quite refreshed; but we missed fresh meat. It had been weeks, now, since we had tasted it, and the sight of the reptiles gave me an idea—that a steak or two from one of them might not be bad eating. So I went on deck with a rifle, twenty of which were aboard the U-33. At sight of me a huge thing charged and climbed to the deck. I retreated to the top of the conning-tower, and when it had raised its mighty bulk to the level of the little deck on which I stood, I let it have a bullet right between the eyes.

The thing stopped then and looked at me a moment as much as to say: “Why this thing has a stinger! I must be careful.” And then it reached out its long neck and opened its mighty jaws and grabbed for me; but I wasn’t there. I had tumbled backward into the tower, and I mighty near killed myself doing it. When I glanced up, that little head on the end of its long neck was coming straight down on top of me, and once more I tumbled into greater safety, sprawling upon the floor of the centrale.

Olson was looking up, and seeing what was poking about in the tower, ran for an ax; nor did he hesitate a moment when he returned with one, but sprang up the ladder and commenced chopping away at that hideous face. The thing didn’t have sufficient brainpan to entertain more than a single idea at once. Though chopped and hacked, and with a bullethole between its eyes, it still persisted madly in its attempt to get inside the tower and devour Olson, though its body was many times the diameter of the hatch; nor did it cease its efforts until after Olson had succeeded in decapitating it. Then the two men went on deck through the main hatch, and while one kept watch, the other cut a hind quarter off Plesiosaurus Olsoni, as Bradley dubbed the thing. Meantime Olson cut off the long neck, saying that it would make fine soup. By the time we had cleared away the blood and refuse in the tower, the cook had juicy steaks and a steaming broth upon the electric stove, and the aroma arising from P. Olsoni filled us all with a hitherto unfelt admiration for him and all his kind.

CHAPTER 5

The steaks we had that night, and they were fine; and the following morning we tasted the broth. It seemed odd to be eating a creature that should, by all the laws of paleontology, have been extinct for several million years. It gave one a feeling of newness that was almost embarrassing, although it didn’t seem to embarrass our appetites. Olson ate until I thought he would burst.

The girl ate with us that night at the little officers’ mess just back of the torpedo compartment. The narrow table was unfolded; the four stools were set out; and for the first time in days we sat down to eat, and for the first time in weeks we had something to eat other than the monotony of the short rations of an impoverished U-boat. Nobs sat between the girl and me and was fed with morsels of the Plesiosaurus steak, at the risk of forever contaminating his manners. He looked at me sheepishly all the time, for he knew that no well-bred dog should eat at table; but the poor fellow was so wasted from improper food that I couldn’t enjoy my own meal had he been denied an immediate share in it; and anyway Lys wanted to feed him. So there you are.

Lys was coldly polite to me and sweetly gracious to Bradley and Olson. She wasn’t of the gushing type, I knew; so I didn’t expect much from her and was duly grateful for the few morsels of attention she threw upon the floor to me. We had a pleasant meal, with only one unfortunate occurrence—when Olson suggested that possibly the creature we were eating was the same one that ate the German. It was some time before we could persuade the girl to continue her meal, but at last Bradley prevailed upon her, pointing out that we had come upstream nearly forty miles since the boche had been seized, and that during that time we had seen literally thousands of these denizens of the river, indicating that the chances were very remote that this was the same Plesiosaur. “And anyway,” he concluded, “it was only a scheme of Mr. Olson’s to get all the steaks for himself.”

We discussed the future and ventured opinions as to what lay before us; but we could only theorize at best, for none of us knew. If the whole land was infested by these and similar horrid monsters, life would be impossible upon it, and we decided that we would only search long enough to find and take aboard fresh water and such meat and fruits as might be safely procurable and then retrace our way beneath the cliffs to the open sea.

And so at last we turned into our narrow bunks, hopeful, happy and at peace with ourselves, our lives and our God, to awaken the following morning refreshed and still optimistic. We had an easy time getting away—as we learned later, because the saurians do not commence to feed until late in the morning. From noon to midnight their curve of activity is at its height, while from dawn to about nine o’clock it is lowest. As a matter of fact, we didn’t see one of them all the time we were getting under way, though I had the cannon raised to the deck and manned against an assault. I hoped, but I was none too sure, that shells might discourage them. The trees were full of monkeys of all sizes and shades, and once we thought we saw a manlike creature watching us from the depth of the forest.

Shortly after we resumed our course upstream, we saw the mouth of another and smaller river emptying into the main channel from the south—that is, upon our right; and almost immediately after we came upon a large island five or six miles in length; and at fifty miles there was a still larger river than the last coming in from the northwest, the course of the main stream having now changed to northeast by southwest. The water was quite free from reptiles, and the vegetation upon the banks of the river had altered to more open and parklike forest, with eucalyptus and acacia mingled with a scattering of tree ferns, as though two distinct periods of geologic time had overlapped and merged. The grass, too, was less flowering, though there were still gorgeous patches mottling the greensward; and lastly, the fauna was less multitudinous.

Six or seven miles farther, and the river widened considerably; before us opened an expanse of water to the farther horizon, and then we sailed out upon an inland sea so large that only a shore-line upon our side was visible to us. The waters all about us were alive with life. There were still a few reptiles; but there were fish by the thousands, by the millions.

The water of the inland sea was very warm, almost hot, and the atmosphere was hot and heavy above it. It seemed strange that beyond the buttressed walls of Caprona icebergs floated and the south wind was biting, for only a gentle breeze moved across the face of these living waters, and that was damp and warm. Gradually, we commenced to divest ourselves of our clothing, retaining only sufficient for modesty; but the sun was not hot. It was more the heat of a steam-room than of an oven.

We coasted up the shore of the lake in a north-westerly direction, sounding all the time. We found the lake deep and the bottom rocky and steeply shelving toward the center, and once when I moved straight out from shore to take other soundings we could find no bottom whatsoever. In open spaces along the shore we caught occasional glimpses of the distant cliffs, and here they appeared only a trifle less precipitous than those which bound Caprona on the seaward side. My theory is that in a far distant era Caprona was a mighty mountain—perhaps the world’s mightiest mountain—and that in some titanic eruption volcanic action blew off the entire crest, blew thousands of feet of the mountain upward and outward and onto the surrounding continent, leaving a great crater; and then, possibly, the continent sank as ancient continents have been known to do, leaving only the summit of Caprona above the sea. The encircling walls, the central lake, the hot springs which feed the lake, all point to such a conclusion, and the fauna and the flora bear indisputable evidence that Caprona was once part of some great land-mass.

As we cruised up along the coast, the landscape continued a more or less open forest, with here and there a small plain where we saw animals grazing. With my glass I could make out a species of large red deer, some antelope and what appeared to be a species of horse; and once I saw the shaggy form of what might have been a monstrous bison. Here was game a plenty! There seemed little danger of starving upon Caprona. The game, however, seemed wary; for the instant the animals discovered us, they threw up their heads and tails and went cavorting off, those farther inland following the example of the others until all were lost in the mazes of the distant forest. Only the great, shaggy ox stood his ground. With lowered head he watched us until we had passed, and then continued feeding.

About twenty miles up the coast from the mouth of the river we encountered low cliffs of sandstone, broken and tortured evidence of the great upheaval which had torn Caprona asunder in the past, intermingling upon a common level the rock formations of widely separated eras, fusing some and leaving others untouched.

We ran along beside them for a matter of ten miles, arriving off a broad cleft which led into what appeared to be another lake. As we were in search of pure water, we did not wish to overlook any portion of the coast, and so after sounding and finding that we had ample depth, I ran the U-33 between head-lands into as pretty a landlocked harbor as sailormen could care to see, with good water right up to within a few yards of the shore. As we cruised slowly along, two of the boches again saw what they believed to be a man, or manlike creature, watching us from a fringe of trees a hundred yards inland, and shortly after we discovered the mouth of a small stream emptying into the bay. It was the first stream we had found since leaving the river, and I at once made preparations to test its water. To land, it would be necessary to run the U-33 close in to the shore, at least as close as we could, for even these waters were infested, though, not so thickly, by savage reptiles. I ordered sufficient water let into the diving-tanks to lower us about a foot, and then I ran the bow slowly toward the shore, confident that should we run aground, we still had sufficient lifting force to free us when the water should be pumped out of the tanks; but the bow nosed its way gently into the reeds and touched the shore with the keel still clear.

My men were all armed now with both rifles and pistols, each having plenty of ammunition. I ordered one of the Germans ashore with a line, and sent two of my own men to guard him, for from what little we had seen of Caprona, or Caspak as we learned later to call the interior, we realized that any instant some new and terrible danger might confront us. The line was made fast to a small tree, and at the same time I had the stern anchor dropped.

As soon as the boche and his guard were aboard again, I called all hands on deck, including von Schoenvorts, and there I explained to them that the time had come for us to enter into some sort of an agreement among ourselves that would relieve us of the annoyance and embarrassment of being divided into two antagonistic parts—prisoners and captors. I told them that it was obvious our very existence depended upon our unity of action, that we were to all intent and purpose entering a new world as far from the seat and causes of our own world-war as if millions of miles of space and eons of time separated us from our past lives and habitations.

“There is no reason why we should carry our racial and political hatreds into Caprona,” I insisted. “The Germans among us might kill all the English, or the English might kill the last German, without affecting in the slightest degree either the outcome of even the smallest skirmish upon the western front or the opinion of a single individual in any belligerent or neutral country. I therefore put the issue squarely to you all; shall we bury our animosities and work together with and for one another while we remain upon Caprona, or must we continue thus divided and but half armed, possibly until death has claimed the last of us? And let me tell you, if you have not already realized it, the chances are a thousand to one that not one of us ever will see the outside world again. We are safe now in the matter of food and water; we could provision the U-33 for a long cruise; but we are practically out of fuel, and without fuel we cannot hope to reach the ocean, as only a submarine can pass through the barrier cliffs. What is your answer?” I turned toward von Schoenvorts.

He eyed me in that disagreeable way of his and demanded to know, in case they accepted my suggestion, what their status would be in event of our finding a way to escape with the U-33. I replied that I felt that if we had all worked loyally together we should leave Caprona upon a common footing, and to that end I suggested that should the remote possibility of our escape in the submarine develop into reality, we should then immediately make for the nearest neutral port and give ourselves into the hands of the authorities, when we should all probably be interned for the duration of the war. To my surprise he agreed that this was fair and told me that they would accept my conditions and that I could depend upon their loyalty to the common cause.

I thanked him and then addressed each one of his men individually, and each gave me his word that he would abide by all that I had outlined. It was further understood that we were to act as a military organization under military rules and discipline—I as commander, with Bradley as my first lieutenant and Olson as my second, in command of the Englishmen; while von Schoenvorts was to act as an additional second lieutenant and have charge of his own men. The four of us were to constitute a military court under which men might be tried and sentenced to punishment for infraction of military rules and discipline, even to the passing of the death-sentence.

I then had arms and ammunition issued to the Germans, and leaving Bradley and five men to guard the U-33, the balance of us went ashore. The first thing we did was to taste the water of the little stream—which, to our delight, we found sweet, pure and cold. This stream was entirely free from dangerous reptiles, because, as I later discovered, they became immediately dormant when subjected to a much lower temperature than 70 degrees Fahrenheit. They dislike cold water and keep as far away from it as possible. There were countless brook-trout here, and deep holes that invited us to bathe, and along the bank of the stream were trees bearing a close resemblance to ash and beech and oak, their characteristics evidently induced by the lower temperature of the air above the cold water and by the fact that their roots were watered by the water from the stream rather than from the warm springs which we afterward found in such abundance elsewhere.

Our first concern was to fill the water tanks of the U-33 with fresh water, and that having been accomplished, we set out to hunt for game and explore inland for a short distance. Olson, von Schoenvorts, two Englishmen and two Germans accompanied me, leaving ten to guard the ship and the girl. I had intended leaving Nobs behind, but he got away and joined me and was so happy over it that I hadn’t the heart to send him back. We followed the stream upward through a beautiful country for about five miles, and then came upon its source in a little boulder-strewn clearing. From among the rocks bubbled fully twenty ice-cold springs. North of the clearing rose sandstone cliffs to a height of some fifty to seventy-five feet, with tall trees growing at their base and almost concealing them from our view. To the west the country was flat and sparsely wooded, and here it was that we saw our first game—a large red deer. It was grazing away from us and had not seen us when one of my men called my attention to it. Motioning for silence and having the rest of the party lie down, I crept toward the quarry, accompanied only by Whitely. We got within a hundred yards of the deer when he suddenly raised his antlered head and pricked up his great ears. We both fired at once and had the satisfaction of seeing the buck drop; then we ran forward to finish him with our knives. The deer lay in a small open space close to a clump of acacias, and we had advanced to within several yards of our kill when we both halted suddenly and simultaneously. Whitely looked at me, and I looked at Whitely, and then we both looked back in the direction of the deer.

“Blime!” he said. “Wot is hit, sir?”

“It looks to me, Whitely, like an error,” I said; “some assistant god who had been creating elephants must have been temporarily transferred to the lizard-department.”

“Hi wouldn’t s’y that, sir,” said Whitely; “it sounds blasphemous.”

“It is no more blasphemous than that thing which is swiping our meat,” I replied, for whatever the thing was, it had leaped upon our deer and was devouring it in great mouthfuls which it swallowed without mastication. The creature appeared to be a great lizard at least ten feet high, with a huge, powerful tail as long as its torso, mighty hind legs and short forelegs. When it had advanced from the wood, it hopped much after the fashion of a kangaroo, using its hind feet and tail to propel it, and when it stood erect, it sat upon its tail. Its head was long and thick, with a blunt muzzle, and the opening of the jaws ran back to a point behind the eyes, and the jaws were armed with long sharp teeth. The scaly body was covered with black and yellow spots about a foot in diameter and irregular in contour. These spots were outlined in red with edgings about an inch wide. The underside of the chest, body and tail were a greenish white.

“Wot s’y we pot the bloomin’ bird, sir?” suggested Whitely.

I told him to wait until I gave the word; then we would fire simultaneously, he at the heart and I at the spine.

“Hat the ’eart, sir—yes, sir,” he replied, and raised his piece to his shoulder.

Our shots rang out together. The thing raised its head and looked about until its eyes rested upon us; then it gave vent to a most appalling hiss that rose to the crescendo of a terrific shriek and came for us.

“Beat it, Whitely!” I cried as I turned to run.

We were about a quarter of a mile from the rest of our party, and in full sight of them as they lay in the tall grass watching us. That they saw all that had happened was evidenced by the fact that they now rose and ran toward us, and at their head leaped Nobs. The creature in our rear was gaining on us rapidly when Nobs flew past me like a meteor and rushed straight for the frightful reptile. I tried to recall him, but he would pay no attention to me, and as I couldn’t see him sacrificed, I, too, stopped and faced the monster. The creature appeared to be more impressed with Nobs than by us and our firearms, for it stopped as the Airedale dashed at it growling, and struck at him viciously with its powerful jaws.

Nobs, though, was lightning by comparison with the slow thinking beast and dodged his opponent’s thrust with ease. Then he raced to the rear of the tremendous thing and seized it by the tail. There Nobs made the error of his life. Within that mottled organ were the muscles of a Titan, the force of a dozen mighty catapults, and the owner of the tail was fully aware of the possibilities which it contained. With a single flip of the tip it sent poor Nobs sailing through the air a hundred feet above the ground, straight back into the clump of acacias from which the beast had leaped upon our kill—and then the grotesque thing sank lifeless to the ground.

Olson and von Schoenvorts came up a minute later with their men; then we all cautiously approached the still form upon the ground. The creature was quite dead, and an examination resulted in disclosing the fact that Whitely’s bullet had pierced its heart, and mine had severed the spinal cord.

“But why didn’t it die instantly?” I exclaimed.

“Because,” said von Schoenvorts in his disagreeable way, “the beast is so large, and its nervous organization of so low a caliber, that it took all this time for the intelligence of death to reach and be impressed upon the minute brain. The thing was dead when your bullets struck it; but it did not know it for several seconds—possibly a minute. If I am not mistaken, it is an Allosaurus of the Upper Jurassic, remains of which have been found in Central Wyoming, in the suburbs of New York.”

An Irishman by the name of Brady grinned. I afterward learned that he had served three years on the traffic-squad of the Chicago police force.

I had been calling Nobs in the meantime and was about to set out in search of him, fearing, to tell the truth, to do so lest I find him mangled and dead among the trees of the acacia grove, when he suddenly emerged from among the boles, his ears flattened, his tail between his legs and his body screwed into a suppliant S. He was unharmed except for minor bruises; but he was the most chastened dog I have ever seen.

We gathered up what was left of the red deer after skinning and cleaning it, and set out upon our return journey toward the U-boat. On the way Olson, von Schoenvorts and I discussed the needs of our immediate future, and we were unanimous in placing foremost the necessity of a permanent camp on shore. The interior of a U-boat is about as impossible and uncomfortable an abiding-place as one can well imagine, and in this warm climate, and in warm water, it was almost unendurable. So we decided to construct a palisaded camp.

CHAPTER 6

As we strolled slowly back toward the boat, planning and discussing this, we were suddenly startled by a loud and unmistakable detonation.

“A shell from the U-33!” exclaimed von Schoenvorts.

“What can be after signifyin’?” queried Olson.

“They are in trouble,” I answered for all, “and it’s up to us to get back to them. Drop that carcass,” I directed the men carrying the meat, “and follow me!” I set off at a rapid run in the direction of the harbor.

We ran for the better part of a mile without hearing anything more from the direction of the harbor, and then I reduced the speed to a walk, for the exercise was telling on us who had been cooped up for so long in the confined interior of the U-33. Puffing and panting, we plodded on until within about a mile of the harbor we came upon a sight that brought us all up standing. We had been passing through a little heavier timber than was usual to this part of the country, when we suddenly emerged into an open space in the center of which was such a band as might have caused the most courageous to pause. It consisted of upward of five hundred individuals representing several species closely allied to man. There were anthropoid apes and gorillas—these I had no difficulty in recognizing; but there were other forms which I had never before seen, and I was hard put to it to say whether they were ape or man. Some of them resembled the corpse we had found upon the narrow beach against Caprona’s sea-wall, while others were of a still lower type, more nearly resembling the apes, and yet others were uncannily manlike, standing there erect, being less hairy and possessing better shaped heads.

There was one among the lot, evidently the leader of them, who bore a close resemblance to the so-called Neanderthal man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints. There was the same short, stocky trunk upon which rested an enormous head habitually bent forward into the same curvature as the back, the arms shorter than the legs, and the lower leg considerably shorter than that of modern man, the knees bent forward and never straightened. This creature and one or two others who appeared to be of a lower order than he, yet higher than that of the apes, carried heavy clubs; the others were armed only with giant muscles and fighting fangs—nature’s weapons. All were males, and all were entirely naked; nor was there upon even the highest among them a sign of ornamentation.

At sight of us they turned with bared fangs and low growls to confront us. I did not wish to fire among them unless it became absolutely necessary, and so I started to lead my party around them; but the instant that the Neanderthal man guessed my intention, he evidently attributed it to cowardice upon our part, and with a wild cry he leaped toward us, waving his cudgel above his head. The others followed him, and in a minute we should have been overwhelmed. I gave the order to fire, and at the first volley six of them went down, including the Neanderthal man. The others hesitated a moment and then broke for the trees, some running nimbly among the branches, while others lost themselves to us between the boles. Both von Schoenvorts and I noticed that at least two of the higher, manlike types took to the trees quite as nimbly as the apes, while others that more nearly approached man in carriage and appearance sought safety upon the ground with the gorillas.

An examination disclosed that five of our erstwhile opponents were dead and the sixth, the Neanderthal man, was but slightly wounded, a bullet having glanced from his thick skull, stunning him. We decided to take him with us to camp, and by means of belts we managed to secure his hands behind his back and place a leash around his neck before he regained consciousness. We then retraced our steps for our meat being convinced by our own experience that those aboard the U-33 had been able to frighten off this party with a single shell—but when we came to where we had left the deer it had disappeared.

On the return journey Whitely and I preceded the rest of the party by about a hundred yards in the hope of getting another shot at something edible, for we were all greatly disgusted and disappointed by the loss of our venison. Whitely and I advanced very cautiously, and not having the whole party with us, we fared better than on the journey out, bagging two large antelope not a half-mile from the harbor; so with our game and our prisoner we made a cheerful return to the boat, where we found that all were safe. On the shore a little north of where we lay there were the corpses of twenty of the wild creatures who had attacked Bradley and his party in our absence, and the rest of whom we had met and scattered a few minutes later.

We felt that we had taught these wild ape-men a lesson and that because of it we would be safer in the future—at least safer from them; but we decided not to abate our carefulness one whit, feeling that this new world was filled with terrors still unknown to us; nor were we wrong.

The following morning we commenced work upon our camp, Bradley, Olson, von Schoenvorts, Miss La Rue, and I having sat up half the night discussing the matter and drawing plans. We set the men at work felling trees, selecting for the purpose jarrah, a hard, weather-resisting timber which grew in profusion near by. Half the men labored while the other half stood guard, alternating each hour with an hour off at noon. Olson directed this work. Bradley, von Schoenvorts and I, with Miss La Rue’s help, staked out the various buildings and the outer wall. When the day was done, we had quite an array of logs nicely notched and ready for our building operations on the morrow, and we were all tired, for after the buildings had been staked out we all fell in and helped with the logging—all but von Schoenvorts. He, being a Prussian and a gentleman, couldn’t stoop to such menial labor in the presence of his men, and I didn’t see fit to ask it of him, as the work was purely voluntary upon our part. He spent the afternoon shaping a swagger-stick from the branch of jarrah and talking with Miss La Rue, who had sufficiently unbent toward him to notice his existence.

We saw nothing of the wild men of the previous day, and only once were we menaced by any of the strange denizens of Caprona, when some frightful nightmare of the sky swooped down upon us, only to be driven off by a fusillade of bullets. The thing appeared to be some variety of pterodactyl, and what with its enormous size and ferocious aspect was most awe-inspiring. There was another incident, too, which to me at least was far more unpleasant than the sudden onslaught of the prehistoric reptile. Two of the men, both Germans, were stripping a felled tree of its branches. Von Schoenvorts had completed his swagger-stick, and he and I were passing close to where the two worked.

One of them threw to his rear a small branch that he had just chopped off, and as misfortune would have it, it struck von Schoenvorts across the face. It couldn’t have hurt him, for it didn’t leave a mark; but he flew into a terrific rage, shouting: “Attention!” in a loud voice. The sailor immediately straightened up, faced his officer, clicked his heels together and saluted. “Pig!” roared the Baron, and struck the fellow across the face, breaking his nose. I grabbed von Schoenvorts’ arm and jerked him away before he could strike again, if such had been his intention, and then he raised his little stick to strike me; but before it descended the muzzle of my pistol was against his belly and he must have seen in my eyes that nothing would suit me better than an excuse to pull the trigger. Like all his kind and all other bullies, von Schoenvorts was a coward at heart, and so he dropped his hand to his side and started to turn away; but I pulled him back, and there before his men I told him that such a thing must never again occur—that no man was to be struck or otherwise punished other than in due process of the laws that we had made and the court that we had established. All the time the sailor stood rigidly at attention, nor could I tell from his expression whether he most resented the blow his officer had struck him or my interference in the gospel of the Kaiser-breed. Nor did he move until I said to him: “Plesser, you may return to your quarters and dress your wound.” Then he saluted and marched stiffly off toward the U-33.

Just before dusk we moved out into the bay a hundred yards from shore and dropped anchor, for I felt that we should be safer there than elsewhere. I also detailed men to stand watch during the night and appointed Olson officer of the watch for the entire night, telling him to bring his blankets on deck and get what rest he could. At dinner we tasted our first roast Caprona antelope, and we had a mess of greens that the cook had found growing along the stream. All during the meal von Schoenvorts was silent and surly.

After dinner we all went on deck and watched the unfamiliar scenes of a Capronian night—that is, all but von Schoenvorts. There was less to see than to hear. From the great inland lake behind us came the hissing and the screaming of countless saurians. Above us we heard the flap of giant wings, while from the shore rose the multitudinous voices of a tropical jungle—of a warm, damp atmosphere such as must have enveloped the entire earth during the Palezeoic and Mesozoic eras. But here were intermingled the voices of later eras—the scream of the panther, the roar of the lion, the baying of wolves and a thunderous growling which we could attribute to nothing earthly but which one day we were to connect with the most fearsome of ancient creatures.

One by one the others went to their rooms, until the girl and I were left alone together, for I had permitted the watch to go below for a few minutes, knowing that I would be on deck. Miss La Rue was very quiet, though she replied graciously enough to whatever I had to say that required reply. I asked her if she did not feel well.

“Yes,” she said, “but I am depressed by the awfulness of it all. I feel of so little consequence—so small and helpless in the face of all these myriad manifestations of life stripped to the bone of its savagery and brutality. I realize as never before how cheap and valueless a thing is life. Life seems a joke, a cruel, grim joke. You are a laughable incident or a terrifying one as you happen to be less powerful or more powerful than some other form of life which crosses your path; but as a rule you are of no moment whatsoever to anything but yourself. You are a comic little figure, hopping from the cradle to the grave. Yes, that is our trouble—we take ourselves too seriously; but Caprona should be a sure cure for that.” She paused and laughed.

“You have evolved a beautiful philosophy,” I said. “It fills such a longing in the human breast. It is full, it is satisfying, it is ennobling. What wondrous strides toward perfection the human race might have made if the first man had evolved it and it had persisted until now as the creed of humanity.”

“I don’t like irony,” she said; “it indicates a small soul.”

“What other sort of soul, then, would you expect from ‘a comic little figure hopping from the cradle to the grave’?” I inquired. “And what difference does it make, anyway, what you like and what you don’t like? You are here for but an instant, and you mustn’t take yourself too seriously.”

She looked up at me with a smile. “I imagine that I am frightened and blue,” she said, “and I know that I am very, very homesick and lonely.” There was almost a sob in her voice as she concluded. It was the first time that she had spoken thus to me. Involuntarily, I laid my hand upon hers where it rested on the rail.

“I know how difficult your position is,” I said; “but don’t feel that you are alone. There is—is one here who—who would do anything in the world for you,” I ended lamely. She did not withdraw her hand, and she looked up into my face with tears on her cheeks and I read in her eyes the thanks her lips could not voice. Then she looked away across the weird moonlit landscape and sighed. Evidently her new-found philosophy had tumbled about her ears, for she was seemingly taking herself seriously. I wanted to take her in my arms and tell her how I loved her, and had taken her hand from the rail and started to draw her toward me when Olson came blundering up on deck with his bedding.

The following morning we started building operations in earnest, and things progressed finely. The Neanderthal man was something of a care, for we had to keep him in irons all the time, and he was mighty savage when approached; but after a time he became more docile, and then we tried to discover if he had a language. Lys spent a great deal of time talking to him and trying to draw him out; but for a long while she was unsuccessful. It took us three weeks to build all the houses, which we constructed close by a cold spring some two miles from the harbor.

We changed our plans a trifle when it came to building the palisade, for we found a rotted cliff near by where we could get all the flat building-stone we needed, and so we constructed a stone wall entirely around the buildings. It was in the form of a square, with bastions and towers at each corner which would permit an enfilading fire along any side of the fort, and was about one hundred and thirty-five feet square on the outside, with walls three feet thick at the bottom and about a foot and a half wide at the top, and fifteen feet high. It took a long time to build that wall, and we all turned in and helped except von Schoenvorts, who, by the way, had not spoken to me except in the line of official business since our encounter—a condition of armed neutrality which suited me to a T. We have just finished it, the last touches being put on today. I quit about a week ago and commenced working on this chronicle for our strange adventures, which will account for any minor errors in chronology which may have crept in; there was so much material that I may have made some mistakes, but I think they are but minor and few.

I see in reading over the last few pages that I neglected to state that Lys finally discovered that the Neanderthal man possessed a language. She has learned to speak it, and so have I, to some extent. It was he—his name he says is Am, or Ahm—who told us that this country is called Caspak. When we asked him how far it extended, he waved both arms about his head in an all-including gesture which took in, apparently, the entire universe. He is more tractable now, and we are going to release him, for he has assured us that he will not permit his fellows to harm us. He calls us Galus and says that in a short time he will be a Galu. It is not quite clear to us what he means. He says that there are many Galus north of us, and that as soon as he becomes one he will go and live with them.

Ahm went out to hunt with us yesterday and was much impressed by the ease with which our rifles brought down antelopes and deer. We have been living upon the fat of the land, Ahm having shown us the edible fruits, tubers and herbs, and twice a week we go out after fresh meat. A certain proportion of this we dry and store away, for we do not know what may come. Our drying process is really smoking. We have also dried a large quantity of two varieties of cereal which grow wild a few miles south of us. One of these is a giant Indian maize—a lofty perennial often fifty and sixty feet in height, with ears the size of a man’s body and kernels as large as your fist. We have had to construct a second store house for the great quantity of this that we have gathered.

September 3, 1916: Three months ago today the torpedo from the U-33 started me from the peaceful deck of the American liner upon the strange voyage which has ended here in Caspak. We have settled down to an acceptance of our fate, for all are convinced that none of us will ever see the outer world again. Ahm’s repeated assertions that there are human beings like ourselves in Caspak have roused the men to a keen desire for exploration. I sent out one party last week under Bradley. Ahm, who is now free to go and come as he wishes, accompanied them. They marched about twenty-five miles due west, encountering many terrible beasts and reptiles and not a few manlike creatures whom Ahm sent away. Here is Bradley’s report of the expedition:

Marched fifteen miles the first day, camping on the bank of a large stream which runs southward. Game was plentiful and we saw several varieties which we had not before encountered in Caspak. Just before making camp we were charged by an enormous woolly rhinoceros, which Plesser dropped with a perfect shot. We had rhinoceros-steaks for supper. Ahm called the thing “Atis.” It was almost a continuous battle from the time we left the fort until we arrived at camp. The mind of man can scarce conceive the plethora of carnivorous life in this lost world; and their prey, of course, is even more abundant.

The second day we marched about ten miles to the foot of the cliffs. Passed through dense forests close to the base of the cliffs. Saw manlike creatures and a low order of ape in one band, and some of the men swore that there was a white man among them. They were inclined to attack us at first; but a volley from our rifles caused them to change their minds. We scaled the cliffs as far as we could; but near the top they are absolutely perpendicular without any sufficient cleft or protuberance to give hand or foot-hold. All were disappointed, for we hungered for a view of the ocean and the outside world. We even had a hope that we might see and attract the attention of a passing ship. Our exploration has determined one thing which will probably be of little value to us and never heard of beyond Caprona’s walls—this crater was once entirely filled with water. Indisputable evidence of this is on the face of the cliffs.

Our return journey occupied two days and was as filled with adventure as usual. We are all becoming accustomed to adventure. It is beginning to pall on us. We suffered no casualties and there was no illness.

I had to smile as I read Bradley’s report. In those four days he had doubtless passed through more adventures than an African big-game hunter experiences in a lifetime, and yet he covered it all in a few lines. Yes, we are becoming accustomed to adventure. Not a day passes that one or more of us does not face death at least once. Ahm taught us a few things that have proved profitable and saved us much ammunition, which it is useless to expend except for food or in the last recourse of self-preservation. Now when we are attacked by large flying reptiles we run beneath spreading trees; when land carnivora threaten us, we climb into trees, and we have learned not to fire at any of the dinosaurs unless we can keep out of their reach for at least two minutes after hitting them in the brain or spine, or five minutes after puncturing their hearts—it takes them so long to die. To hit them elsewhere is worse than useless, for they do not seem to notice it, and we had discovered that such shots do not kill or even disable them.

September 7, 1916: Much has happened since I last wrote. Bradley is away again on another exploration expedition to the cliffs. He expects to be gone several weeks and to follow along their base in search of a point where they may be scaled. He took Sinclair, Brady, James, and Tippet with him. Ahm has disappeared. He has been gone about three days; but the most startling thing I have on record is that von Schoenvorts and Olson while out hunting the other day discovered oil about fifteen miles north of us beyond the sandstone cliffs. Olson says there is a geyser of oil there, and von Schoenvorts is making preparations to refine it. If he succeeds, we shall have the means for leaving Caspak and returning to our own world. I can scarce believe the truth of it. We are all elated to the seventh heaven of bliss. Pray God we shall not be disappointed.

I have tried on several occasions to broach the subject of my love to Lys; but she will not listen.

CHAPTER 7

October 8, 1916: This is the last entry I shall make upon my manuscript. When this is done, I shall be through. Though I may pray that it reaches the haunts of civilized man, my better judgment tells me that it will never be perused by other eyes than mine, and that even though it should, it would be too late to avail me. I am alone upon the summit of the great cliff overlooking the broad Pacific. A chill south wind bites at my marrow, while far below me I can see the tropic foliage of Caspak on the one hand and huge icebergs from the near Antarctic upon the other. Presently I shall stuff my folded manuscript into the thermos bottle I have carried with me for the purpose since I left the fort—Fort Dinosaur we named it—and hurl it far outward over the cliff-top into the Pacific. What current washes the shore of Caprona I know not; whither my bottle will be borne I cannot even guess; but I have done all that mortal man may do to notify the world of my whereabouts and the dangers that threaten those of us who remain alive in Caspak—if there be any other than myself.

About the 8th of September I accompanied Olson and von Schoenvorts to the oil-geyser. Lys came with us, and we took a number of things which von Schoenvorts wanted for the purpose of erecting a crude refinery. We went up the coast some ten or twelve miles in the U-33, tying up to shore near the mouth of a small stream which emptied great volumes of crude oil into the sea—I find it difficult to call this great lake by any other name. Then we disembarked and went inland about five miles, where we came upon a small lake entirely filled with oil, from the center of which a geyser of oil spouted.

On the edge of the lake we helped von Schoenvorts build his primitive refinery. We worked with him for two days until he got things fairly well started, and then we returned to Fort Dinosaur, as I feared that Bradley might return and be worried by our absence. The U-33 merely landed those of us that were to return to the fort and then retraced its course toward the oil-well. Olson, Whitely, Wilson, Miss La Rue, and myself disembarked, while von Schoenvorts and his German crew returned to refine the oil. The next day Plesser and two other Germans came down overland for ammunition. Plesser said they had been attacked by wild men and had exhausted a great deal of ammunition. He also asked permission to get some dried meat and maize, saying that they were so busy with the work of refining that they had no time to hunt. I let him have everything he asked for, and never once did a suspicion of their intentions enter my mind. They returned to the oil-well the same day, while we continued with the multitudinous duties of camp life.

For three days nothing of moment occurred. Bradley did not return; nor did we have any word from von Schoenvorts. In the evening Lys and I went up into one of the bastion towers and listened to the grim and terrible nightlife of the frightful ages of the past. Once a saber-tooth screamed almost beneath us, and the girl shrank close against me. As I felt her body against mine, all the pent love of these three long months shattered the bonds of timidity and conviction, and I swept her up into my arms and covered her face and lips with kisses. She did not struggle to free herself; but instead her dear arms crept up about my neck and drew my own face even closer to hers.

“You love me, Lys?” I cried.

I felt her head nod an affirmative against my breast. “Tell me, Lys,” I begged, “tell me in words how much you love me.”

Low and sweet and tender came the answer: “I love you beyond all conception.”

My heart filled with rapture then, and it fills now as it has each of the countless times I have recalled those dear words, as it shall fill always until death has claimed me. I may never see her again; she may not know how I love her—she may question, she may doubt; but always true and steady, and warm with the fires of love my heart beats for the girl who said that night: “I love you beyond all conception.”

For a long time we sat there upon the little bench constructed for the sentry that we had not as yet thought it necessary to post in more than one of the four towers. We learned to know one another better in those two brief hours than we had in all the months that had intervened since we had been thrown together. She told me that she had loved me from the first, and that she never had loved von Schoenvorts, their engagement having been arranged by her aunt for social reasons.

That was the happiest evening of my life; nor ever do I expect to experience its like; but at last, as is the way of happiness, it terminated. We descended to the compound, and I walked with Lys to the door of her quarters. There again she kissed me and bade me good night, and then she went in and closed the door.

I went to my own room, and there I sat by the light of one of the crude candles we had made from the tallow of the beasts we had killed, and lived over the events of the evening. At last I turned in and fell asleep, dreaming happy dreams and planning for the future, for even in savage Caspak I was bound to make my girl safe and happy. It was daylight when I awoke. Wilson, who was acting as cook, was up and astir at his duties in the cook-house. The others slept; but I arose and followed by Nobs went down to the stream for a plunge. As was our custom, I went armed with both rifle and revolver; but I stripped and had my swim without further disturbance than the approach of a large hyena, a number of which occupied caves in the sand-stone cliffs north of the camp. These brutes are enormous and exceedingly ferocious. I imagine they correspond with the cave-hyena of prehistoric times. This fellow charged Nobs, whose Capronian experiences had taught him that discretion is the better part of valor—with the result that he dived head foremost into the stream beside me after giving vent to a series of ferocious growls which had no more effect upon Hyaena spelaeus than might a sweet smile upon an enraged tusker. Afterward I shot the beast, and Nobs had a feast while I dressed, for he had become quite a raw-meat eater during our numerous hunting expeditions, upon which we always gave him a portion of the kill.

Whitely and Olson were up and dressed when we returned, and we all sat down to a good breakfast. I could not but wonder at Lys’ absence from the table, for she had always been one of the earliest risers in camp; so about nine o’clock, becoming apprehensive lest she might be indisposed, I went to the door of her room and knocked. I received no response, though I finally pounded with all my strength; then I turned the knob and entered, only to find that she was not there. Her bed had been occupied, and her clothing lay where she had placed it the previous night upon retiring; but Lys was gone. To say that I was distracted with terror would be to put it mildly. Though I knew she could not be in camp, I searched every square inch of the compound and all the buildings, yet without avail.

It was Whitely who discovered the first clue—a huge human-like footprint in the soft earth beside the spring, and indications of a struggle in the mud.

Then I found a tiny handkerchief close to the outer wall. Lys had been stolen! It was all too plain. Some hideous member of the ape-man tribe had entered the fort and carried her off. While I stood stunned and horrified at the frightful evidence before me, there came from the direction of the great lake an increasing sound that rose to the volume of a shriek. We all looked up as the noise approached apparently just above us, and a moment later there followed a terrific explosion which hurled us to the ground. When we clambered to our feet, we saw a large section of the west wall torn and shattered. It was Olson who first recovered from his daze sufficiently to guess the explanation of the phenomenon.

“A shell!” he cried. “And there ain’t no shells in Caspak besides what’s on the U-33. The dirty boches are shellin’ the fort. Come on!” And he grasped his rifle and started on a run toward the lake. It was over two miles, but we did not pause until the harbor was in view, and still we could not see the lake because of the sandstone cliffs which intervened. We ran as fast as we could around the lower end of the harbor, scrambled up the cliffs and at last stood upon their summit in full view of the lake. Far away down the coast, toward the river through which we had come to reach the lake, we saw upon the surface the outline of the U-33, black smoke vomiting from her funnel.

Von Schoenvorts had succeeded in refining the oil! The cur had broken his every pledge and was leaving us there to our fates. He had even shelled the fort as a parting compliment; nor could anything have been more truly Prussian than this leave-taking of the Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts.

Olson, Whitely, Wilson, and I stood for a moment looking at one another. It seemed incredible that man could be so perfidious—that we had really seen with our own eyes the thing that we had seen; but when we returned to the fort, the shattered wall gave us ample evidence that there was no mistake.

Then we began to speculate as to whether it had been an ape-man or a Prussian that had abducted Lys. From what we knew of von Schoenvorts, we would not have been surprised at anything from him; but the footprints by the spring seemed indisputable evidence that one of Caprona’s undeveloped men had borne off the girl I loved.

As soon as I had assured myself that such was the case, I made my preparations to follow and rescue her. Olson, Whitely, and Wilson each wished to accompany me; but I told them that they were needed here, since with Bradley’s party still absent and the Germans gone it was necessary that we conserve our force as far as might be possible.

CHAPTER 8

It was a sad leave-taking as in silence I shook hands with each of the three remaining men. Even poor Nobs appeared dejected as we quit the compound and set out upon the well-marked spoor of the abductor. Not once did I turn my eyes backward toward Fort Dinosaur. I have not looked upon it since—nor in all likelihood shall I ever look upon it again. The trail led northwest until it reached the western end of the sandstone cliffs to the north of the fort; there it ran into a well-defined path which wound northward into a country we had not as yet explored. It was a beautiful, gently rolling country, broken by occasional outcroppings of sandstone and by patches of dense forest relieved by open, park-like stretches and broad meadows whereon grazed countless herbivorous animals—red deer, aurochs, and infinite variety of antelope and at least three distinct species of horse, the latter ranging in size from a creature about as large as Nobs to a magnificent animal fourteen to sixteen hands high. These creatures fed together in perfect amity; nor did they show any great indications of terror when Nobs and I approached. They moved out of our way and kept their eyes upon us until we had passed; then they resumed their feeding.

The path led straight across the clearing into another forest, lying upon the verge of which I saw a bit of white. It appeared to stand out in marked contrast and incongruity to all its surroundings, and when I stopped to examine it, I found that it was a small strip of muslin—part of the hem of a garment. At once I was all excitement, for I knew that it was a sign left by Lys that she had been carried this way; it was a tiny bit torn from the hem of the undergarment that she wore in lieu of the night-robes she had lost with the sinking of the liner. Crushing the bit of fabric to my lips, I pressed on even more rapidly than before, because I now knew that I was upon the right trail and that up to this point at least, Lys still had lived.

I made over twenty miles that day, for I was now hardened to fatigue and accustomed to long hikes, having spent considerable time hunting and exploring in the immediate vicinity of camp. A dozen times that day was my life threatened by fearsome creatures of the earth or sky, though I could not but note that the farther north I traveled, the fewer were the great dinosaurs, though they still persisted in lesser numbers. On the other hand the quantity of ruminants and the variety and frequency of carnivorous animals increased. Each square mile of Caspak harbored its terrors.

At intervals along the way I found bits of muslin, and often they reassured me when otherwise I should have been doubtful of the trail to take where two crossed or where there were forks, as occurred at several points. And so, as night was drawing on, I came to the southern end of a line of cliffs loftier than any I had seen before, and as I approached them, there was wafted to my nostrils the pungent aroma of woodsmoke. What could it mean? There could, to my mind, be but a single solution: man abided close by, a higher order of man than we had as yet seen, other than Ahm, the Neanderthal man. I wondered again as I had so many times that day if it had not been Ahm who stole Lys.

Cautiously I approached the flank of the cliffs, where they terminated in an abrupt escarpment as though some all powerful hand had broken off a great section of rock and set it upon the surface of the earth. It was now quite dark, and as I crept around the edge of the cliff, I saw at a little distance a great fire around which were many figures—apparently human figures. Cautioning Nobs to silence, and he had learned many lessons in the value of obedience since we had entered Caspak, I slunk forward, taking advantage of whatever cover I could find, until from behind a bush I could distinctly see the creatures assembled by the fire. They were human and yet not human. I should say that they were a little higher in the scale of evolution than Ahm, possibly occupying a place of evolution between that of the Neanderthal man and what is known as the Grimaldi race. Their features were distinctly negroid, though their skins were white. A considerable portion of both torso and limbs were covered with short hair, and their physical proportions were in many aspects apelike, though not so much so as were Ahm’s. They carried themselves in a more erect position, although their arms were considerably longer than those of the Neanderthal man. As I watched them, I saw that they possessed a language, that they had knowledge of fire and that they carried besides the wooden club of Ahm, a thing which resembled a crude stone hatchet. Evidently they were very low in the scale of humanity, but they were a step upward from those I had previously seen in Caspak.

But what interested me most was the slender figure of a dainty girl, clad only in a thin bit of muslin which scarce covered her knees—a bit of muslin torn and ragged about the lower hem. It was Lys, and she was alive and so far as I could see, unharmed. A huge brute with thick lips and prognathous jaw stood at her shoulder. He was talking loudly and gesticulating wildly. I was close enough to hear his words, which were similar to the language of Ahm, though much fuller, for there were many words I could not understand. However I caught the gist of what he was saying—which in effect was that he had found and captured this Galu, that she was his and that he defied anyone to question his right of possession. It appeared to me, as I afterward learned was the fact, that I was witnessing the most primitive of marriage ceremonies. The assembled members of the tribe looked on and listened in a sort of dull and perfunctory apathy, for the speaker was by far the mightiest of the clan.

There seemed no one to dispute his claims when he said, or rather shouted, in stentorian tones: “I am Tsa. This is my she. Who wishes her more than Tsa?”

“I do,” I said in the language of Ahm, and I stepped out into the firelight before them. Lys gave a little cry of joy and started toward me, but Tsa grasped her arm and dragged her back.

“Who are you?” shrieked Tsa. “I kill! I kill! I kill!”

“The she is mine,” I replied, “and I have come to claim her. I kill if you do not let her come to me.” And I raised my pistol to a level with his heart. Of course the creature had no conception of the purpose of the strange little implement which I was poking toward him. With a sound that was half human and half the growl of a wild beast, he sprang toward me. I aimed at his heart and fired, and as he sprawled headlong to the ground, the others of his tribe, overcome by fright at the report of the pistol, scattered toward the cliffs—while Lys, with outstretched arms, ran toward me.

As I crushed her to me, there rose from the black night behind us and then to our right and to our left a series of frightful screams and shrieks, bellowings, roars and growls. It was the night-life of this jungle world coming into its own—the huge, carnivorous nocturnal beasts which make the nights of Caspak hideous. A shuddering sob ran through Lys’ figure. “O God,” she cried, “give me the strength to endure, for his sake!” I saw that she was upon the verge of a breakdown, after all that she must have passed through of fear and horror that day, and I tried to quiet and reassure her as best I might; but even to me the future looked most unpromising, for what chance of life had we against the frightful hunters of the night who even now were prowling closer to us?

Now I turned to see what had become of the tribe, and in the fitful glare of the fire I perceived that the face of the cliff was pitted with large holes into which the man-things were clambering. “Come,” I said to Lys, “we must follow them. We cannot last a half-hour out here. We must find a cave.” Already we could see the blazing green eyes of the hungry carnivora. I seized a brand from the fire and hurled it out into the night, and there came back an answering chorus of savage and rageful protest; but the eyes vanished for a short time. Selecting a burning branch for each of us, we advanced toward the cliffs, where we were met by angry threats.

“They will kill us,” said Lys. “We may as well keep on in search of another refuge.”

“They will not kill us so surely as will those others out there,” I replied. “I am going to seek shelter in one of these caves; nor will the man-things prevent.” And I kept on in the direction of the cliff’s base. A huge creature stood upon a ledge and brandished his stone hatchet. “Come and I will kill you and take the she,” he boasted.

“You saw how Tsa fared when he would have kept my she,” I replied in his own tongue. “Thus will you fare and all your fellows if you do not permit us to come in peace among you out of the dangers of the night.”

“Go north,” he screamed. “Go north among the Galus, and we will not harm you. Some day will we be Galus; but now we are not. You do not belong among us. Go away or we will kill you. The she may remain if she is afraid, and we will keep her; but the he must depart.”

“The he won’t depart,” I replied, and approached still nearer. Rough and narrow ledges formed by nature gave access to the upper caves. A man might scale them if unhampered and unhindered, but to clamber upward in the face of a belligerent tribe of half-men and with a girl to assist was beyond my capability.

“I do not fear you,” screamed the creature. “You were close to Tsa; but I am far above you. You cannot harm me as you harmed Tsa. Go away!”

I placed a foot upon the lowest ledge and clambered upward, reaching down and pulling Lys to my side. Already I felt safer. Soon we would be out of danger of the beasts again closing in upon us. The man above us raised his stone hatchet above his head and leaped lightly down to meet us. His position above me gave him a great advantage, or at least so he probably thought, for he came with every show of confidence. I hated to do it, but there seemed no other way, and so I shot him down as I had shot down Tsa.

“You see,” I cried to his fellows, “that I can kill you wherever you may be. A long way off I can kill you as well as I can kill you near by. Let us come among you in peace. I will not harm you if you do not harm us. We will take a cave high up. Speak!”

“Come, then,” said one. “If you will not harm us, you may come. Take Tsa’s hole, which lies above you.”

The creature showed us the mouth of a black cave, but he kept at a distance while he did it, and Lys followed me as I crawled in to explore. I had matches with me, and in the light of one I found a small cavern with a flat roof and floor which followed the cleavage of the strata. Pieces of the roof had fallen at some long-distant date, as was evidenced by the depth of the filth and rubble in which they were embedded. Even a superficial examination revealed the fact that nothing had ever been attempted that might have improved the livability of the cavern; nor, should I judge, had it ever been cleaned out. With considerable difficulty I loosened some of the larger pieces of broken rock which littered the floor and placed them as a barrier before the doorway. It was too dark to do more than this. I then gave Lys a piece of dried meat, and sitting inside the entrance, we dined as must have some of our ancient forbears at the dawning of the age of man, while far below the open diapason of the savage night rose weird and horrifying to our ears. In the light of the great fire still burning we could see huge, skulking forms, and in the blacker background countless flaming eyes.

Lys shuddered, and I put my arm around her and drew her to me; and thus we sat throughout the hot night. She told me of her abduction and of the fright she had undergone, and together we thanked God that she had come through unharmed, because the great brute had dared not pause along the danger-infested way. She said that they had but just reached the cliffs when I arrived, for on several occasions her captor had been forced to take to the trees with her to escape the clutches of some hungry cave-lion or saber-toothed tiger, and that twice they had been obliged to remain for considerable periods before the beasts had retired.

Nobs, by dint of much scrambling and one or two narrow escapes from death, had managed to follow us up the cliff and was now curled between me and the doorway, having devoured a piece of the dried meat, which he seemed to relish immensely. He was the first to fall asleep; but I imagine we must have followed suit soon, for we were both tired. I had laid aside my ammunition-belt and rifle, though both were close beside me; but my pistol I kept in my lap beneath my hand. However, we were not disturbed during the night, and when I awoke, the sun was shining on the tree-tops in the distance. Lys’ head had drooped to my breast, and my arm was still about her.

Shortly afterward Lys awoke, and for a moment she could not seem to comprehend her situation. She looked at me and then turned and glanced at my arm about her, and then she seemed quite suddenly to realize the scantiness of her apparel and drew away, covering her face with her palms and blushing furiously. I drew her back toward me and kissed her, and then she threw her arms about my neck and wept softly in mute surrender to the inevitable.

It was an hour later before the tribe began to stir about. We watched them from our “apartment,” as Lys called it. Neither men nor women wore any sort of clothing or ornaments, and they all seemed to be about of an age; nor were there any babies or children among them. This was, to us, the strangest and most inexplicable of facts, but it recalled to us that though we had seen many of the lesser developed wild people of Caspak, we had never yet seen a child or an old man or woman.

After a while they became less suspicious of us and then quite friendly in their brutish way. They picked at the fabric of our clothing, which seemed to interest them, and examined my rifle and pistol and the ammunition in the belt around my waist. I showed them the thermos-bottle, and when I poured a little water from it, they were delighted, thinking that it was a spring which I carried about with me—a never-failing source of water supply.

One thing we both noticed among their other characteristics: they never laughed nor smiled; and then we remembered that Ahm had never done so, either. I asked them if they knew Ahm; but they said they did not.

One of them said: “Back there we may have known him.” And he jerked his head to the south.

“You came from back there?” I asked. He looked at me in surprise.

“We all come from there,” he said. “After a while we go there.” And this time he jerked his head toward the north. “Be Galus,” he concluded.

Many times now had we heard this reference to becoming Galus. Ahm had spoken of it many times. Lys and I decided that it was a sort of original religious conviction, as much a part of them as their instinct for self-preservation—a primal acceptance of a hereafter and a holier state. It was a brilliant theory, but it was all wrong. I know it now, and how far we were from guessing the wonderful, the miraculous, the gigantic truth which even yet I may only guess at—the thing that sets Caspak apart from all the rest of the world far more definitely than her isolated geographical position or her impregnable barrier of giant cliffs. If I could live to return to civilization, I should have meat for the clergy and the layman to chew upon for years—and for the evolutionists, too.

After breakfast the men set out to hunt, while the women went to a large pool of warm water covered with a green scum and filled with billions of tadpoles. They waded in to where the water was about a foot deep and lay down in the mud. They remained there from one to two hours and then returned to the cliff. While we were with them, we saw this same thing repeated every morning; but though we asked them why they did it we could get no reply which was intelligible to us. All they vouchsafed in way of explanation was the single word Ata. They tried to get Lys to go in with them and could not understand why she refused. After the first day I went hunting with the men, leaving my pistol and Nobs with Lys, but she never had to use them, for no reptile or beast ever approached the pool while the women were there—nor, so far as we know, at other times. There was no spoor of wild beast in the soft mud along the banks, and the water certainly didn’t look fit to drink.

This tribe lived largely upon the smaller animals which they bowled over with their stone hatchets after making a wide circle about their quarry and driving it so that it had to pass close to one of their number. The little horses and the smaller antelope they secured in sufficient numbers to support life, and they also ate numerous varieties of fruits and vegetables. They never brought in more than sufficient food for their immediate needs; but why bother? The food problem of Caspak is not one to cause worry to her inhabitants.

The fourth day Lys told me that she thought she felt equal to attempting the return journey on the morrow, and so I set out for the hunt in high spirits, for I was anxious to return to the fort and learn if Bradley and his party had returned and what had been the result of his expedition. I also wanted to relieve their minds as to Lys and myself, as I knew that they must have already given us up for dead. It was a cloudy day, though warm, as it always is in Caspak. It seemed odd to realize that just a few miles away winter lay upon the storm-tossed ocean, and that snow might be falling all about Caprona; but no snow could ever penetrate the damp, hot atmosphere of the great crater.

We had to go quite a bit farther than usual before we could surround a little bunch of antelope, and as I was helping drive them, I saw a fine red deer a couple of hundred yards behind me. He must have been asleep in the long grass, for I saw him rise and look about him in a bewildered way, and then I raised my gun and let him have it. He dropped, and I ran forward to finish him with the long thin knife, which one of the men had given me; but just as I reached him, he staggered to his feet and ran on for another two hundred yards—when I dropped him again. Once more was this repeated before I was able to reach him and cut his throat; then I looked around for my companions, as I wanted them to come and carry the meat home; but I could see nothing of them. I called a few times and waited, but there was no response and no one came. At last I became disgusted, and cutting off all the meat that I could conveniently carry, I set off in the direction of the cliffs. I must have gone about a mile before the truth dawned upon me—I was lost, hopelessly lost.

The entire sky was still completely blotted out by dense clouds; nor was there any landmark visible by which I might have taken my bearings. I went on in the direction I thought was south but which I now imagine must have been about due north, without detecting a single familiar object. In a dense wood I suddenly stumbled upon a thing which at first filled me with hope and later with the most utter despair and dejection. It was a little mound of new-turned earth sprinkled with flowers long since withered, and at one end was a flat slab of sandstone stuck in the ground. It was a grave, and it meant for me that I had at last stumbled into a country inhabited by human beings. I would find them; they would direct me to the cliffs; perhaps they would accompany me and take us back with them to their abodes—to the abodes of men and women like ourselves. My hopes and my imagination ran riot in the few yards I had to cover to reach that lonely grave and stoop that I might read the rude characters scratched upon the simple headstone. This is what I read:

HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET
ENGLISHMAN
KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS
10 SEPT., A.D. 1916
R. I. P.

Tippet! It seemed incredible. Tippet lying here in this gloomy wood! Tippet dead! He had been a good man, but the personal loss was not what affected me. It was the fact that this silent grave gave evidence that Bradley had come this far upon his expedition and that he too probably was lost, for it was not our intention that he should be long gone. If I had stumbled upon the grave of one of the party, was it not within reason to believe that the bones of the others lay scattered somewhere near?

CHAPTER 9

As I stood looking down upon that sad and lonely mound, wrapped in the most dismal of reflections and premonitions, I was suddenly seized from behind and thrown to earth. As I fell, a warm body fell on top of me, and hands grasped my arms and legs. When I could look up, I saw a number of giant figures pinioning me down, while others stood about surveying me. Here again was a new type of man—a higher type than the primitive tribe I had just quitted. They were a taller people, too, with better-shaped skulls and more intelligent faces. There were less of the ape characteristics about their features, and less of the negroid, too. They carried weapons, stone-shod spears, stone knives, and hatchets—and they wore ornaments and breech-cloths—the former of feathers worn in their hair and the latter made of a single snake-skin cured with the head on, the head depending to their knees.

Of course I did not take in all these details upon the instant of my capture, for I was busy with other matters. Three of the warriors were sitting upon me, trying to hold me down by main strength and awkwardness, and they were having their hands full in the doing, I can tell you. I don’t like to appear conceited, but I may as well admit that I am proud of my strength and the science that I have acquired and developed in the directing of it—that and my horsemanship I always have been proud of. And now, that day, all the long hours that I had put into careful study, practice and training brought me in two or three minutes a full return upon my investment. Californians, as a rule, are familiar with ju-jutsu, and I especially had made a study of it for several years, both at school and in the gym of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, while recently I had had, in my employ, a Jap who was a wonder at the art.

It took me just about thirty seconds to break the elbow of one of my assailants, trip another and send him stumbling backward among his fellows, and throw the third completely over my head in such a way that when he fell his neck was broken. In the instant that the others of the party stood in mute and inactive surprise, I unslung my rifle—which, carelessly, I had been carrying across my back; and when they charged, as I felt they would, I put a bullet in the forehead of one of them. This stopped them all temporarily—not the death of their fellow, but the report of the rifle, the first they had ever heard. Before they were ready to attack me again, one of them spoke in a commanding tone to his fellows, and in a language similar but still more comprehensive than that of the tribe to the south, as theirs was more complete than Ahm’s. He commanded them to stand back and then he advanced and addressed me.

He asked me who I was, from whence I came and what my intentions were. I replied that I was a stranger in Caspak, that I was lost and that my only desire was to find my way back to my companions. He asked where they were and I told him toward the south somewhere, using the Caspakian phrase which, literally translated, means “toward the beginning.” His surprise showed upon his face before he voiced it in words. “There are no Galus there,” he said.

“I tell you,” I said angrily, “that I am from another country, far from Caspak, far beyond the high cliffs. I do not know who the Galus may be; I have never seen them. This is the farthest north I have been. Look at me—look at my clothing and my weapons. Have you ever seen a Galu or any other creature in Caspak who possessed such things?”

He had to admit that he had not, and also that he was much interested in me, my rifle and the way I had handled his three warriors. Finally he became half convinced that I was telling him the truth and offered to aid me if I would show him how I had thrown the man over my head and also make him a present of the “bang-spear,” as he called it. I refused to give him my rifle, but promised to show him the trick he wished to learn if he would guide me in the right direction. He told me that he would do so tomorrow, that it was too late today and that I might come to their village and spend the night with them. I was loath to lose so much time; but the fellow was obdurate, and so I accompanied them. The two dead men they left where they had fallen, nor gave them a second glance—thus cheap is life upon Caspak.

These people also were cave-dwellers, but their caves showed the result of a higher intelligence that brought them a step nearer to civilized man than the tribe next “toward the beginning.” The interiors of their caverns were cleared of rubbish, though still far from clean, and they had pallets of dried grasses covered with the skins of leopard, lynx, and bear, while before the entrances were barriers of stone and small, rudely circular stone ovens. The walls of the cavern to which I was conducted were covered with drawings scratched upon the sandstone. There were the outlines of the giant red-deer, of mammoths, of tigers and other beasts. Here, as in the last tribe, there were no children or any old people. The men of this tribe had two names, or rather names of two syllables, and their language contained words of two syllables; whereas in the tribe of Tsa the words were all of a single syllable, with the exception of a very few like Atis and Galus. The chief’s name was To-jo, and his household consisted of seven females and himself. These women were much more comely, or rather less hideous than those of Tsa’s people; one of them, even, was almost pretty, being less hairy and having a rather nice skin, with high coloring.

They were all much interested in me and examined my clothing and equipment carefully, handling and feeling and smelling of each article. I learned from them that their people were known as Band-lu, or spear-men; Tsa’s race was called Sto-lu—hatchet-men. Below these in the scale of evolution came the Bo-lu, or club-men, and then the Alus, who had no weapons and no language. In that word I recognized what to me seemed the most remarkable discovery I had made upon Caprona, for unless it were mere coincidence, I had come upon a word that had been handed down from the beginning of spoken language upon earth, been handed down for millions of years, perhaps, with little change. It was the sole remaining thread of the ancient woof of a dawning culture which had been woven when Caprona was a fiery mount upon a great land-mass teeming with life. It linked the unfathomable then to the eternal now. And yet it may have been pure coincidence; my better judgment tells me that it is coincidence that in Caspak the term for speechless man is Alus, and in the outer world of our own day it is Alalus.

The comely woman of whom I spoke was called So-ta, and she took such a lively interest in me that To-jo finally objected to her attentions, emphasizing his displeasure by knocking her down and kicking her into a corner of the cavern. I leaped between them while he was still kicking her, and obtaining a quick hold upon him, dragged him screaming with pain from the cave. Then I made him promise not to hurt the she again, upon pain of worse punishment. So-ta gave me a grateful look; but To-jo and the balance of his women were sullen and ominous.

Later in the evening So-ta confided to me that she was soon to leave the tribe.

“So-ta soon to be Kro-lu,” she confided in a low whisper. I asked her what a Kro-lu might be, and she tried to explain, but I do not yet know if I understood her. From her gestures I deduced that the Kro-lus were a people who were armed with bows and arrows, had vessels in which to cook their food and huts of some sort in which they lived, and were accompanied by animals. It was all very fragmentary and vague, but the idea seemed to be that the Kro-lus were a more advanced people than the Band-lus. I pondered a long time upon all that I had heard, before sleep came to me. I tried to find some connection between these various races that would explain the universal hope which each of them harbored that some day they would become Galus. So-ta had given me a suggestion; but the resulting idea was so weird that I could scarce even entertain it; yet it coincided with Ahm’s expressed hope, with the various steps in evolution I had noted in the several tribes I had encountered and with the range of type represented in each tribe. For example, among the Band-lu were such types as So-ta, who seemed to me to be the highest in the scale of evolution, and To-jo, who was just a shade nearer the ape, while there were others who had flatter noses, more prognathous faces and hairier bodies. The question puzzled me. Possibly in the outer world the answer to it is locked in the bosom of the Sphinx. Who knows? I do not.

Thinking the thoughts of a lunatic or a dope-fiend, I fell asleep; and when I awoke, my hands and feet were securely tied and my weapons had been taken from me. How they did it without awakening me I cannot tell you. It was humiliating, but it was true. To-jo stood above me. The early light of morning was dimly filtering into the cave.

“Tell me,” he demanded, “how to throw a man over my head and break his neck, for I am going to kill you, and I wish to know this thing before you die.”

Of all the ingenuous declarations I have ever heard, this one copped the proverbial bun. It struck me as so funny that, even in the face of death, I laughed. Death, I may remark here, had, however, lost much of his terror for me. I had become a disciple of Lys’ fleeting philosophy of the valuelessness of human life. I realized that she was quite right—that we were but comic figures hopping from the cradle to the grave, of interest to practically no other created thing than ourselves and our few intimates.

Behind To-jo stood So-ta. She raised one hand with the palm toward me—the Caspakian equivalent of a negative shake of the head.

“Let me think about it,” I parried, and To-jo said that he would wait until night. He would give me a day to think it over; then he left, and the women left—the men for the hunt, and the women, as I later learned from So-ta, for the warm pool where they immersed their bodies as did the shes of the Sto-lu. “Ata,” explained So-ta, when I questioned her as to the purpose of this matutinal rite; but that was later.

I must have lain there bound and uncomfortable for two or three hours when at last So-ta entered the cave. She carried a sharp knife—mine, in fact, and with it she cut my bonds.

“Come!” she said. “So-ta will go with you back to the Galus. It is time that So-ta left the Band-lu. Together we will go to the Kro-lu, and after that the Galus. To-jo will kill you tonight. He will kill So-ta if he knows that So-ta aided you. We will go together.”

“I will go with you to the Kro-lu,” I replied, “but then I must return to my own people toward the beginning.’”

“You cannot go back,” she said. “It is forbidden. They would kill you. Thus far have you come—there is no returning.”

“But I must return,” I insisted. “My people are there. I must return and lead them in this direction.”

She insisted, and I insisted; but at last we compromised. I was to escort her as far as the country of the Kro-lu and then I was to go back after my own people and lead them north into a land where the dangers were fewer and the people less murderous. She brought me all my belongings that had been filched from me—rifle, ammunition, knife, and thermos bottle, and then hand in hand we descended the cliff and set off toward the north.

For three days we continued upon our way, until we arrived outside a village of thatched huts just at dusk. So-ta said that she would enter alone; I must not be seen if I did not intend to remain, as it was forbidden that one should return and live after having advanced this far. So she left me. She was a dear girl and a stanch and true comrade—more like a man than a woman. In her simple barbaric way she was both refined and chaste. She had been the wife of To-jo. Among the Kro-lu she would find another mate after the manner of the strange Caspakian world; but she told me very frankly that whenever I returned, she would leave her mate and come to me, as she preferred me above all others. I was becoming a ladies’ man after a lifetime of bashfulness!

At the outskirts of the village I left her without even seeing the sort of people who inhabited it, and set off through the growing darkness toward the south. On the third day I made a detour westward to avoid the country of the Band-lu, as I did not care to be detained by a meeting with To-jo. On the sixth day I came to the cliffs of the Sto-lu, and my heart beat fast as I approached them, for here was Lys. Soon I would hold her tight in my arms again; soon her warm lips would merge with mine. I felt sure that she was still safe among the hatchet people, and I was already picturing the joy and the love-light in her eyes when she should see me once more as I emerged from the last clump of trees and almost ran toward the cliffs.

It was late in the morning. The women must have returned from the pool; yet as I drew near, I saw no sign of life whatever. “They have remained longer,” I thought; but when I was quite close to the base of the cliffs, I saw that which dashed my hopes and my happiness to earth. Strewn along the ground were a score of mute and horrible suggestions of what had taken place during my absence—bones picked clean of flesh, the bones of manlike creatures, the bones of many of the tribe of Sto-lu; nor in any cave was there sign of life.

Closely I examined the ghastly remains fearful each instant that I should find the dainty skull that would shatter my happiness for life; but though I searched diligently, picking up every one of the twenty-odd skulls, I found none that was the skull of a creature but slightly removed from the ape. Hope, then, still lived. For another three days I searched north and south, east and west for the hatchetmen of Caspak; but never a trace of them did I find. It was raining most of the time now, and the weather was as near cold as it ever seems to get on Caprona.

At last I gave up the search and set off toward Fort Dinosaur. For a week—a week filled with the terrors and dangers of a primeval world—I pushed on in the direction I thought was south. The sun never shone; the rain scarcely ever ceased falling. The beasts I met with were fewer in number but infinitely more terrible in temper; yet I lived on until there came to me the realization that I was hopelessly lost, that a year of sunshine would not again give me my bearings; and while I was cast down by this terrifying knowledge, the knowledge that I never again could find Lys, I stumbled upon another grave—the grave of William James, with its little crude headstone and its scrawled characters recording that he had died upon the 13th of September—killed by a saber-tooth tiger.

I think that I almost gave up then. Never in my life have I felt more hopeless or helpless or alone. I was lost. I could not find my friends. I did not even know that they still lived; in fact, I could not bring myself to believe that they did. I was sure that Lys was dead. I wanted myself to die, and yet I clung to life—useless and hopeless and harrowing a thing as it had become. I clung to life because some ancient, reptilian forbear had clung to life and transmitted to me through the ages the most powerful motive that guided his minute brain—the motive of self-preservation.

At last I came to the great barrier-cliffs; and after three days of mad effort—of maniacal effort—I scaled them. I built crude ladders; I wedged sticks in narrow fissures; I chopped toe-holds and finger-holds with my long knife; but at last I scaled them. Near the summit I came upon a huge cavern. It is the abode of some mighty winged creature of the Triassic—or rather it was. Now it is mine. I slew the thing and took its abode. I reached the summit and looked out upon the broad gray terrible Pacific of the far-southern winter. It was cold up there. It is cold here today; yet here I sit watching, watching, watching for the thing I know will never come—for a sail.

CHAPTER 10

Once a day I descend to the base of the cliff and hunt, and fill my stomach with water from a clear cold spring. I have three gourds which I fill with water and take back to my cave against the long nights. I have fashioned a spear and a bow and arrow, that I may conserve my ammunition, which is running low. My clothes are worn to shreds. Tomorrow I shall discard them for leopard-skins which I have tanned and sewn into a garment strong and warm. It is cold up here. I have a fire burning and I sit bent over it while I write; but I am safe here. No other living creature ventures to the chill summit of the barrier cliffs. I am safe, and I am alone with my sorrows and my remembered joys—but without hope. It is said that hope springs eternal in the human breast; but there is none in mine.

I am about done. Presently I shall fold these pages and push them into my thermos bottle. I shall cork it and screw the cap tight, and then I shall hurl it as far out into the sea as my strength will permit. The wind is off-shore; the tide is running out; perhaps it will be carried into one of those numerous ocean-currents which sweep perpetually from pole to pole and from continent to continent, to be deposited at last upon some inhabited shore. If fate is kind and this does happen, then, for God’s sake, come and get me!

It was a week ago that I wrote the preceding paragraph, which I thought would end the written record of my life upon Caprona. I had paused to put a new point on my quill and stir the crude ink (which I made by crushing a black variety of berry and mixing it with water) before attaching my signature, when faintly from the valley far below came an unmistakable sound which brought me to my feet, trembling with excitement, to peer eagerly downward from my dizzy ledge. How full of meaning that sound was to me you may guess when I tell you that it was the report of a firearm! For a moment my gaze traversed the landscape beneath until it was caught and held by four figures near the base of the cliff—a human figure held at bay by three hyaenodons, those ferocious and blood-thirsty wild dogs of the Eocene. A fourth beast lay dead or dying near by.

I couldn’t be sure, looking down from above as I was; but yet I trembled like a leaf in the intuitive belief that it was Lys, and my judgment served to confirm my wild desire, for whoever it was carried only a pistol, and thus had Lys been armed. The first wave of sudden joy which surged through me was short-lived in the face of the swift-following conviction that the one who fought below was already doomed. Luck and only luck it must have been which had permitted that first shot to lay low one of the savage creatures, for even such a heavy weapon as my pistol is entirely inadequate against even the lesser carnivora of Caspak. In a moment the three would charge! A futile shot would but tend more greatly to enrage the one it chanced to hit; and then the three would drag down the little human figure and tear it to pieces.

And maybe it was Lys! My heart stood still at the thought, but mind and muscle responded to the quick decision I was forced to make. There was but a single hope—a single chance—and I took it. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and took careful aim. It was a long shot, a dangerous shot, for unless one is accustomed to it, shooting from a considerable altitude is most deceptive work. There is, though, something about marksmanship which is quite beyond all scientific laws.

Upon no other theory can I explain my marksmanship of that moment. Three times my rifle spoke—three quick, short syllables of death. I did not take conscious aim; and yet at each report a beast crumpled in its tracks!

From my ledge to the base of the cliff is a matter of several thousand feet of dangerous climbing; yet I venture to say that the first ape from whose loins my line has descended never could have equaled the speed with which I literally dropped down the face of that rugged escarpment. The last two hundred feet is over a steep incline of loose rubble to the valley bottom, and I had just reached the top of this when there arose to my ears an agonized cry—“Bowen! Bowen! Quick, my love, quick!”

I had been too much occupied with the dangers of the descent to glance down toward the valley; but that cry which told me that it was indeed Lys, and that she was again in danger, brought my eyes quickly upon her in time to see a hairy, burly brute seize her and start off at a run toward the near-by wood. From rock to rock, chamoislike, I leaped downward toward the valley, in pursuit of Lys and her hideous abductor.

He was heavier than I by many pounds, and so weighted by the burden he carried that I easily overtook him; and at last he turned, snarling, to face me. It was Kho of the tribe of Tsa, the hatchet-men. He recognized me, and with a low growl he threw Lys aside and came for me. “The she is mine,” he cried. “I kill! I kill!”

I had had to discard my rifle before I commenced the rapid descent of the cliff, so that now I was armed only with a hunting knife, and this I whipped from its scabbard as Kho leaped toward me. He was a mighty beast, mightily muscled, and the urge that has made males fight since the dawn of life on earth filled him with the blood-lust and the thirst to slay; but not one whit less did it fill me with the same primal passions. Two abysmal beasts sprang at each other’s throats that day beneath the shadow of earth’s oldest cliffs—the man of now and the man-thing of the earliest, forgotten then, imbued by the same deathless passion that has come down unchanged through all the epochs, periods and eras of time from the beginning, and which shall continue to the incalculable end—woman, the imperishable Alpha and Omega of life.

Kho closed and sought my jugular with his teeth. He seemed to forget the hatchet dangling by its aurochs-hide thong at his hip, as I forgot, for the moment, the dagger in my hand. And I doubt not but that Kho would easily have bested me in an encounter of that sort had not Lys’ voice awakened within my momentarily reverted brain the skill and cunning of reasoning man.

“Bowen!” she cried. “Your knife! Your knife!”

It was enough. It recalled me from the forgotten eon to which my brain had flown and left me once again a modern man battling with a clumsy, unskilled brute. No longer did my jaws snap at the hairy throat before me; but instead my knife sought and found a space between two ribs over the savage heart. Kho voiced a single horrid scream, stiffened spasmodically and sank to the earth. And Lys threw herself into my arms. All the fears and sorrows of the past were wiped away, and once again I was the happiest of men.

With some misgivings I shortly afterward cast my eyes upward toward the precarious ledge which ran before my cave, for it seemed to me quite beyond all reason to expect a dainty modern belle to essay the perils of that frightful climb. I asked her if she thought she could brave the ascent, and she laughed gayly in my face.

“Watch!” she cried, and ran eagerly toward the base of the cliff. Like a squirrel she clambered swiftly aloft, so that I was forced to exert myself to keep pace with her. At first she frightened me; but presently I was aware that she was quite as safe here as was I. When we finally came to my ledge and I again held her in my arms, she recalled to my mind that for several weeks she had been living the life of a cave-girl with the tribe of hatchet-men. They had been driven from their former caves by another tribe which had slain many and carried off quite half the females, and the new cliffs to which they had flown had proven far higher and more precipitous, so that she had become, through necessity, a most practiced climber.

She told me of Kho’s desire for her, since all his females had been stolen and of how her life had been a constant nightmare of terror as she sought by night and by day to elude the great brute. For a time Nobs had been all the protection she required; but one day he disappeared—nor has she seen him since. She believes that he was deliberately made away with; and so do I, for we both are sure that he never would have deserted her. With her means of protection gone, Lys was now at the mercy of the hatchet-man; nor was it many hours before he had caught her at the base of the cliff and seized her; but as he bore her triumphantly aloft toward his cave, she had managed to break loose and escape him.

“For three days he has pursued me,” she said, “through this horrible world. How I have passed through in safety I cannot guess, nor how I have always managed to outdistance him; yet I have done it, until just as you discovered me. Fate was kind to us, Bowen.”

I nodded my head in assent and crushed her to me. And then we talked and planned as I cooked antelope-steaks over my fire, and we came to the conclusion that there was no hope of rescue, that she and I were doomed to live and die upon Caprona. Well, it might be worse! I would rather live here always with Lys than to live elsewhere without her; and she, dear girl, says the same of me; but I am afraid of this life for her. It is a hard, fierce, dangerous life, and I shall pray always that we shall be rescued from it—for her sake.

That night the clouds broke, and the moon shone down upon our little ledge; and there, hand in hand, we turned our faces toward heaven and plighted our troth beneath the eyes of God. No human agency could have married us more sacredly than we are wed. We are man and wife, and we are content. If God wills it, we shall live out our lives here. If He wills otherwise, then this manuscript which I shall now consign to the inscrutable forces of the sea shall fall into friendly hands. However, we are each without hope. And so we say good-bye in this, our last message to the world beyond the barrier cliffs.

(Signed) Bowen J. Tyler, Jr. Lys La R. Tyler.

1 Late in July, 1916, an item in the shipping news mentioned a Swedish sailing vessel, Balmen, Rio de Janeiro to Barcelona, sunk by a German raider sometime in June. A single survivor in an open boat was picked up off the Cape Verde Islands, in a dying condition. He expired without giving any details.

1 Late in July, 1916, an item in the shipping news mentioned a Swedish sailing vessel, Balmen, Rio de Janeiro to Barcelona, sunk by a German raider sometime in June. A single survivor in an open boat was picked up off the Cape Verde Islands, in a dying condition. He expired without giving any details.

THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Originally published in 1918.

CHAPTER 1

I am forced to admit that even though I had traveled a long distance to place Bowen Tyler’s manuscript in the hands of his father, I was still a trifle skeptical as to its sincerity, since I could not but recall that it had not been many years since Bowen had been one of the most notorious practical jokers of his alma mater. The truth was that as I sat in the Tyler library at Santa Monica I commenced to feel a trifle foolish and to wish that I had merely forwarded the manuscript by express instead of bearing it personally, for I confess that I do not enjoy being laughed at. I have a well-developed sense of humor—when the joke is not on me.

Mr. Tyler, Sr., was expected almost hourly. The last steamer in from Honolulu had brought information of the date of the expected sailing of his yacht Toreador, which was now twenty-four hours overdue. Mr. Tyler’s assistant secretary, who had been left at home, assured me that there was no doubt but that the Toreador had sailed as promised, since he knew his employer well enough to be positive that nothing short of an act of God would prevent his doing what he had planned to do. I was also aware of the fact that the sending apparatus of the Toreador’s wireless equipment was sealed, and that it would only be used in event of dire necessity. There was, therefore, nothing to do but wait, and we waited.

We discussed the manuscript and hazarded guesses concerning it and the strange events it narrated. The torpedoing of the liner upon which Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., had taken passage for France to join the American Ambulance was a well-known fact, and I had further substantiated by wire to the New York office of the owners, that a Miss La Rue had been booked for passage. Further, neither she nor Bowen had been mentioned among the list of survivors; nor had the body of either of them been recovered.

Their rescue by the English tug was entirely probable; the capture of the enemy U-33 by the tug’s crew was not beyond the range of possibility; and their adventures during the perilous cruise which the treachery and deceit of Benson extended until they found themselves in the waters of the far South Pacific with depleted stores and poisoned water-casks, while bordering upon the fantastic, appeared logical enough as narrated, event by event, in the manuscript.

Caprona has always been considered a more or less mythical land, though it is vouched for by an eminent navigator of the eighteenth century; but Bowen’s narrative made it seem very real, however many miles of trackless ocean lay between us and it. Yes, the narrative had us guessing. We were agreed that it was most improbable; but neither of us could say that anything which it contained was beyond the range of possibility. The weird flora and fauna of Caspak were as possible under the thick, warm atmospheric conditions of the super-heated crater as they were in the Mesozoic era under almost exactly similar conditions, which were then probably world-wide. The assistant secretary had heard of Caproni and his discoveries, but admitted that he never had taken much stock in the one nor the other. We were agreed that the one statement most difficult of explanation was that which reported the entire absence of human young among the various tribes with which Tyler had had intercourse. This was the one irreconcilable statement of the manuscript. A world of adults! It was impossible.

We speculated upon the probable fate of Bradley and his party of English sailors. Tyler had found the graves of two of them; how many more might have perished! And Miss La Rue—could a young girl long have survived the horrors of Caspak after having been separated from all of her own kind? The assistant secretary wondered if Nobs still was with her, and then we both smiled at this tacit acceptance of the truth of the whole uncanny tale:

“I suppose I’m a fool,” remarked the assistant secretary; “but by George, I can’t help believing it, and I can see that girl now, with the big Airedale at her side protecting her from the terrors of a million years ago. I can visualize the entire scene—the apelike Grimaldi men huddled in their filthy caves; the huge pterodactyls soaring through the heavy air upon their bat-like wings; the mighty dinosaurs moving their clumsy hulks beneath the dark shadows of preglacial forests—the dragons which we considered myths until science taught us that they were the true recollections of the first man, handed down through countless ages by word of mouth from father to son out of the unrecorded dawn of humanity.”

“It is stupendous—if true,” I replied. “And to think that possibly they are still there—Tyler and Miss La Rue—surrounded by hideous dangers, and that possibly Bradley still lives, and some of his party! I can’t help hoping all the time that Bowen and the girl have found the others; the last Bowen knew of them, there were six left, all told—the mate Bradley, the engineer Olson, and Wilson, Whitely, Brady and Sinclair. There might be some hope for them if they could join forces; but separated, I’m afraid they couldn’t last long.”

“If only they hadn’t let the German prisoners capture the U-33! Bowen should have had better judgment than to have trusted them at all. The chances are von Schoenvorts succeeded in getting safely back to Kiel and is strutting around with an Iron Cross this very minute. With a large supply of oil from the wells they discovered in Caspak, with plenty of water and ample provisions, there is no reason why they couldn’t have negotiated the submerged tunnel beneath the barrier cliffs and made good their escape.”

“I don’t like ’em,” said the assistant secretary; “but sometimes you got to hand it to ’em.”

“Yes,” I growled, “and there’s nothing I’d enjoy more than handing it to them!” And then the telephone-bell rang.

The assistant secretary answered, and as I watched him, I saw his jaw drop and his face go white. “My God!” he exclaimed as he hung up the receiver as one in a trance. “It can’t be!”

“What?” I asked.

“Mr. Tyler is dead,” he answered in a dull voice. “He died at sea, suddenly, yesterday.”

The next ten days were occupied in burying Mr. Bowen J. Tyler, Sr., and arranging plans for the succor of his son. Mr. Tom Billings, the late Mr. Tyler’s secretary, did it all. He is force, energy, initiative and good judgment combined and personified. I never have beheld a more dynamic young man. He handled lawyers, courts and executors as a sculptor handles his modeling clay. He formed, fashioned and forced them to his will. He had been a classmate of Bowen Tyler at college, and a fraternity brother, and before that he had been an impoverished and improvident cow-puncher on one of the great Tyler ranches. Tyler, Sr., had picked him out of thousands of employees and made him; or rather Tyler had given him the opportunity, and then Billings had made himself. Tyler, Jr., as good a judge of men as his father, had taken him into his friendship, and between the two of them they had turned out a man who would have died for a Tyler as quickly as he would have for his flag. Yet there was none of the sycophant or fawner in Billings; ordinarily I do not wax enthusiastic about men, but this man Billings comes as close to my conception of what a regular man should be as any I have ever met. I venture to say that before Bowen J. Tyler sent him to college he had never heard the word ethics, and yet I am equally sure that in all his life he never has transgressed a single tenet of the code of ethics of an American gentleman.

Ten days after they brought Mr. Tyler’s body off the Toreador, we steamed out into the Pacific in search of Caprona. There were forty in the party, including the master and crew of the Toreador; and Billings the indomitable was in command. We had a long and uninteresting search for Caprona, for the old map upon which the assistant secretary had finally located it was most inaccurate. When its grim walls finally rose out of the ocean’s mists before us, we were so far south that it was a question as to whether we were in the South Pacific or the Antarctic. Bergs were numerous, and it was very cold.

All during the trip Billings had steadfastly evaded questions as to how we were to enter Caspak after we had found Caprona. Bowen Tyler’s manuscript had made it perfectly evident to all that the subterranean outlet of the Caspakian River was the only means of ingress or egress to the crater world beyond the impregnable cliffs. Tyler’s party had been able to navigate this channel because their craft had been a submarine; but the Toreador could as easily have flown over the cliffs as sailed under them. Jimmy Hollis and Colin Short whiled away many an hour inventing schemes for surmounting the obstacle presented by the barrier cliffs, and making ridiculous wagers as to which one Tom Billings had in mind; but immediately we were all assured that we had raised Caprona, Billings called us together.

“There was no use in talking about these things,” he said, “until we found the island. At best it can be but conjecture on our part until we have been able to scrutinize the coast closely. Each of us has formed a mental picture of the Capronian seacoast from Bowen’s manuscript, and it is not likely that any two of these pictures resemble each other, or that any of them resemble the coast as we shall presently find it. I have in view three plans for scaling the cliffs, and the means for carrying out each is in the hold. There is an electric drill with plenty of waterproof cable to reach from the ship’s dynamos to the cliff-top when the Toreador is anchored at a safe distance from shore, and there is sufficient half-inch iron rod to build a ladder from the base to the top of the cliff. It would be a long, arduous and dangerous work to bore the holes and insert the rungs of the ladder from the bottom upward; yet it can be done.

“I also have a life-saving mortar with which we might be able to throw a line over the summit of the cliffs; but this plan would necessitate one of us climbing to the top with the chances more than even that the line would cut at the summit, or the hooks at the upper end would slip.

“My third plan seems to me the most feasible. You all saw a number of large, heavy boxes lowered into the hold before we sailed. I know you did, because you asked me what they contained and commented upon the large letter H’ which was painted upon each box. These boxes contain the various parts of a hydro-aeroplane. I purpose assembling this upon the strip of beach described in Bowen’s manuscript—the beach where he found the dead body of the apelike man—provided there is sufficient space above high water; otherwise we shall have to assemble it on deck and lower it over the side. After it is assembled, I shall carry tackle and ropes to the cliff-top, and then it will be comparatively simple to hoist the search-party and its supplies in safety. Or I can make a sufficient number of trips to land the entire party in the valley beyond the barrier; all will depend, of course, upon what my first reconnaissance reveals.”

That afternoon we steamed slowly along the face of Caprona’s towering barrier.

“You see now,” remarked Billings as we craned our necks to scan the summit thousands of feet above us, “how futile it would have been to waste our time in working out details of a plan to surmount those.” And he jerked his thumb toward the cliffs. “It would take weeks, possibly months, to construct a ladder to the top. I had no conception of their formidable height. Our mortar would not carry a line halfway to the crest of the lowest point. There is no use discussing any plan other than the hydro-aeroplane. We’ll find the beach and get busy.”

Late the following morning the lookout announced that he could discern surf about a mile ahead; and as we approached, we all saw the line of breakers broken by a long sweep of rolling surf upon a narrow beach. The launch was lowered, and five of us made a landing, getting a good ducking in the ice-cold waters in the doing of it; but we were rewarded by the finding of the clean-picked bones of what might have been the skeleton of a high order of ape or a very low order of man, lying close to the base of the cliff. Billings was satisfied, as were the rest of us, that this was the beach mentioned by Bowen, and we further found that there was ample room to assemble the sea-plane.

Billings, having arrived at a decision, lost no time in acting, with the result that before mid-afternoon we had landed all the large boxes marked “H” upon the beach, and were busily engaged in opening them. Two days later the plane was assembled and tuned. We loaded tackles and ropes, water, food and ammunition in it, and then we each implored Billings to let us be the one to accompany him. But he would take no one. That was Billings; if there was any especially difficult or dangerous work to be done, that one man could do, Billings always did it himself. If he needed assistance, he never called for volunteers—just selected the man or men he considered best qualified for the duty. He said that he considered the principles underlying all volunteer service fundamentally wrong, and that it seemed to him that calling for volunteers reflected upon the courage and loyalty of the entire command.

We rolled the plane down to the water’s edge, and Billings mounted the pilot’s seat. There was a moment’s delay as he assured himself that he had everything necessary. Jimmy Hollis went over his armament and ammunition to see that nothing had been omitted. Besides pistol and rifle, there was the machine-gun mounted in front of him on the plane, and ammunition for all three. Bowen’s account of the terrors of Caspak had impressed us all with the necessity for proper means of defense.

At last all was ready. The motor was started, and we pushed the plane out into the surf. A moment later, and she was skimming seaward. Gently she rose from the surface of the water, executed a wide spiral as she mounted rapidly, circled once far above us and then disappeared over the crest of the cliffs. We all stood silent and expectant, our eyes glued upon the towering summit above us. Hollis, who was now in command, consulted his wrist-watch at frequent intervals.

“Gad,” exclaimed Short, “we ought to be hearing from him pretty soon!”

Hollis laughed nervously. “He’s been gone only ten minutes,” he announced.

“Seems like an hour,” snapped Short. “What’s that? Did you hear that? He’s firing! It’s the machine-gun! Oh, Lord; and here we are as helpless as a lot of old ladies ten thousand miles away! We can’t do a thing. We don’t know what’s happening. Why didn’t he let one of us go with him?”

Yes, it was the machine-gun. We would hear it distinctly for at least a minute. Then came silence. That was two weeks ago. We have had no sign nor signal from Tom Billings since.

CHAPTER 2

I’ll never forget my first impressions of Caspak as I circled in, high over the surrounding cliffs. From the plane I looked down through a mist upon the blurred landscape beneath me. The hot, humid atmosphere of Caspak condenses as it is fanned by the cold Antarctic air-currents which sweep across the crater’s top, sending a tenuous ribbon of vapor far out across the Pacific. Through this the picture gave one the suggestion of a colossal impressionistic canvas in greens and browns and scarlets and yellows surrounding the deep blue of the inland sea—just blobs of color taking form through the tumbling mist.

I dived close to the cliffs and skirted them for several miles without finding the least indication of a suitable landing-place; and then I swung back at a lower level, looking for a clearing close to the bottom of the mighty escarpment; but I could find none of sufficient area to insure safety. I was flying pretty low by this time, not only looking for landing places but watching the myriad life beneath me. I was down pretty well toward the south end of the island, where an arm of the lake reaches far inland, and I could see the surface of the water literally black with creatures of some sort. I was too far up to recognize individuals, but the general impression was of a vast army of amphibious monsters. The land was almost equally alive with crawling, leaping, running, flying things. It was one of the latter which nearly did for me while my attention was fixed upon the weird scene below.

The first intimation I had of it was the sudden blotting out of the sunlight from above, and as I glanced quickly up, I saw a most terrific creature swooping down upon me. It must have been fully eighty feet long from the end of its long, hideous beak to the tip of its thick, short tail, with an equal spread of wings. It was coming straight for me and hissing frightfully—I could hear it above the whir of the propeller. It was coming straight down toward the muzzle of the machine-gun and I let it have it right in the breast; but still it came for me, so that I had to dive and turn, though I was dangerously close to earth.

The thing didn’t miss me by a dozen feet, and when I rose, it wheeled and followed me, but only to the cooler air close to the level of the cliff-tops; there it turned again and dropped. Something—man’s natural love of battle and the chase, I presume—impelled me to pursue it, and so I too circled and dived. The moment I came down into the warm atmosphere of Caspak, the creature came for me again, rising above me so that it might swoop down upon me. Nothing could better have suited my armament, since my machine-gun was pointed upward at an angle of about 45° and could not be either depressed or elevated by the pilot. If I had brought someone along with me, we could have raked the great reptile from almost any position, but as the creature’s mode of attack was always from above, he always found me ready with a hail of bullets. The battle must have lasted a minute or more before the thing suddenly turned completely over in the air and fell to the ground.

Bowen and I roomed together at college, and I learned a lot from him outside my regular course. He was a pretty good scholar despite his love of fun, and his particular hobby was paleontology. He used to tell me about the various forms of animal and vegetable life which had covered the globe during former eras, and so I was pretty well acquainted with the fishes, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals of paleolithic times. I knew that the thing that had attacked me was some sort of pterodactyl which should have been extinct millions of years ago. It was all that I needed to realize that Bowen had exaggerated nothing in his manuscript.

Having disposed of my first foe, I set myself once more to search for a landing-place near to the base of the cliffs beyond which my party awaited me. I knew how anxious they would be for word from me, and I was equally anxious to relieve their minds and also to get them and our supplies well within Caspak, so that we might set off about our business of finding and rescuing Bowen Tyler; but the pterodactyl’s carcass had scarcely fallen before I was surrounded by at least a dozen of the hideous things, some large, some small, but all bent upon my destruction. I could not cope with them all, and so I rose rapidly from among them to the cooler strata wherein they dared not follow; and then I recalled that Bowen’s narrative distinctly indicated that the farther north one traveled in Caspak, the fewer were the terrible reptiles which rendered human life impossible at the southern end of the island.

There seemed nothing now but to search out a more northerly landing-place and then return to the Toreador and transport my companions, two by two, over the cliffs and deposit them at the rendezvous. As I flew north, the temptation to explore overcame me. I knew that I could easily cover Caspak and return to the beach with less petrol than I had in my tanks; and there was the hope, too, that I might find Bowen or some of his party. The broad expanse of the inland sea lured me out over its waters, and as I crossed, I saw at either extremity of the great body of water an island—one to the south and one to the north; but I did not alter my course to examine either closely, leaving that to a later time.

The further shore of the sea revealed a much narrower strip of land between the cliffs and the water than upon the western side; but it was a hillier and more open country. There were splendid landing-places, and in the distance, toward the north, I thought I descried a village; but of that I was not positive. However, as I approached the land, I saw a number of human figures apparently pursuing one who fled across a broad expanse of meadow. As I dropped lower to have a better look at these people, they caught the whirring of my propellers and looked aloft. They paused an instant—pursuers and pursued; and then they broke and raced for the shelter of the nearest wood. Almost instantaneously a huge bulk swooped down upon me, and as I looked up, I realized that there were flying reptiles even in this part of Caspak. The creature dived for my right wing so quickly that nothing but a sheer drop could have saved me. I was already close to the ground, so that my maneuver was extremely dangerous; but I was in a fair way of making it successfully when I saw that I was too closely approaching a large tree. My effort to dodge the tree and the pterodactyl at the same time resulted disastrously. One wing touched an upper branch; the plane tipped and swung around, and then, out of control, dashed into the branches of the tree, where it came to rest, battered and torn, forty feet above the ground.

Hissing loudly, the huge reptile swept close above the tree in which my plane had lodged, circled twice over me and then flapped away toward the south. As I guessed then and was to learn later, forests are the surest sanctuary from these hideous creatures, which, with their enormous spread of wing and their great weight, are as much out of place among trees as is a seaplane.

For a minute or so I clung there to my battered flyer, now useless beyond redemption, my brain numbed by the frightful catastrophe that had befallen me. All my plans for the succor of Bowen and Miss La Rue had depended upon this craft, and in a few brief minutes my own selfish love of adventure had wrecked their hopes and mine. And what effect it might have upon the future of the balance of the rescuing expedition I could not even guess. Their lives, too, might be sacrificed to my suicidal foolishness. That I was doomed seemed inevitable; but I can honestly say that the fate of my friends concerned me more greatly than did my own.

Beyond the barrier cliffs my party was even now nervously awaiting my return. Presently apprehension and fear would claim them—and they would never know! They would attempt to scale the cliffs—of that I was sure; but I was not so positive that they would succeed; and after a while they would turn back, what there were left of them, and go sadly and mournfully upon their return journey to home. Home! I set my jaws and tried to forget the word, for I knew that I should never again see home.

And what of Bowen and his girl? I had doomed them too. They would never even know that an attempt had been made to rescue them. If they still lived, they might some day come upon the ruined remnants of this great plane hanging in its lofty sepulcher and hazard vain guesses and be filled with wonder; but they would never know; and I could not but be glad that they would not know that Tom Billings had sealed their death-warrants by his criminal selfishness.

All these useless regrets were getting me in a bad way; but at last I shook myself and tried to put such things out of my mind and take hold of conditions as they existed and do my level best to wrest victory from defeat. I was badly shaken up and bruised, but considered myself mighty lucky to escape with my life. The plane hung at a precarious angle, so that it was with difficulty and considerable danger that I climbed from it into the tree and then to the ground.

My predicament was grave. Between me and my friends lay an inland sea fully sixty miles wide at this point and an estimated land-distance of some three hundred miles around the northern end of the sea, through such hideous dangers as I am perfectly free to admit had me pretty well buffaloed. I had seen quite enough of Caspak this day to assure me that Bowen had in no way exaggerated its perils. As a matter of fact, I am inclined to believe that he had become so accustomed to them before he started upon his manuscript that he rather slighted them. As I stood there beneath that tree—a tree which should have been part of a coal-bed countless ages since—and looked out across a sea teeming with frightful life—life which should have been fossil before God conceived of Adam—I would not have given a minim of stale beer for my chances of ever seeing my friends or the outside world again; yet then and there I swore to fight my way as far through this hideous land as circumstances would permit. I had plenty of ammunition, an automatic pistol and a heavy rifle—the latter one of twenty added to our equipment on the strength of Bowen’s description of the huge beasts of prey which ravaged Caspak. My greatest danger lay in the hideous reptilia whose low nervous organizations permitted their carnivorous instincts to function for several minutes after they had ceased to live.

But to these things I gave less thought than to the sudden frustration of all our plans. With the bitterest of thoughts I condemned myself for the foolish weakness that had permitted me to be drawn from the main object of my flight into premature and useless exploration. It seemed to me then that I must be totally eliminated from further search for Bowen, since, as I estimated it, the three hundred miles of Caspakian territory I must traverse to reach the base of the cliffs beyond which my party awaited me were practically impassable for a single individual unaccustomed to Caspakian life and ignorant of all that lay before him. Yet I could not give up hope entirely. My duty lay clear before me; I must follow it while life remained to me, and so I set forth toward the north.

The country through which I took my way was as lovely as it was unusual—I had almost said unearthly, for the plants, the trees, the blooms were not of the earth that I knew. They were larger, the colors more brilliant and the shapes startling, some almost to grotesqueness, though even such added to the charm and romance of the landscape as the giant cacti render weirdly beautiful the waste spots of the sad Mohave. And over all the sun shone huge and round and red, a monster sun above a monstrous world, its light dispersed by the humid air of Caspak—the warm, moist air which lies sluggish upon the breast of this great mother of life, Nature’s mightiest incubator.

All about me, in every direction, was life. It moved through the tree-tops and among the boles; it displayed itself in widening and intermingling circles upon the bosom of the sea; it leaped from the depths; I could hear it in a dense wood at my right, the murmur of it rising and falling in ceaseless volumes of sound, riven at intervals by a horrid scream or a thunderous roar which shook the earth; and always I was haunted by that inexplicable sensation that unseen eyes were watching me, that soundless feet dogged my trail. I am neither nervous nor highstrung; but the burden of responsibility upon me weighed heavily, so that I was more cautious than is my wont. I turned often to right and left and rear lest I be surprised, and I carried my rifle at the ready in my hand. Once I could have sworn that among the many creatures dimly perceived amidst the shadows of the wood I saw a human figure dart from one cover to another, but I could not be sure.

For the most part I skirted the wood, making occasional detours rather than enter those forbidding depths of gloom, though many times I was forced to pass through arms of the forest which extended to the very shore of the inland sea. There was so sinister a suggestion in the uncouth sounds and the vague glimpses of moving things within the forest, of the menace of strange beasts and possibly still stranger men, that I always breathed more freely when I had passed once more into open country.

I had traveled northward for perhaps an hour, still haunted by the conviction that I was being stalked by some creature which kept always hidden among the trees and shrubbery to my right and a little to my rear, when for the hundredth time I was attracted by a sound from that direction, and turning, saw some animal running rapidly through the forest toward me. There was no longer any effort on its part at concealment; it came on through the underbrush swiftly, and I was confident that whatever it was, it had finally gathered the courage to charge me boldly. Before it finally broke into plain view, I became aware that it was not alone, for a few yards in its rear a second thing thrashed through the leafy jungle. Evidently I was to be attacked in force by a pair of hunting beasts or men.

And then through the last clump of waving ferns broke the figure of the foremost creature, which came leaping toward me on light feet as I stood with my rifle to my shoulder covering the point at which I had expected it would emerge. I must have looked foolish indeed if my surprise and consternation were in any way reflected upon my countenance as I lowered my rifle and gazed incredulous at the lithe figure of the girl speeding swiftly in my direction. But I did not have long to stand thus with lowered weapon, for as she came, I saw her cast an affrighted glance over her shoulder, and at the same moment there broke from the jungle at the same spot at which I had seen her, the hugest cat I had ever looked upon.

At first I took the beast for a saber-tooth tiger, as it was quite the most fearsome-appearing beast one could imagine; but it was not that dread monster of the past, though quite formidable enough to satisfy the most fastidious thrill-hunter. On it came, grim and terrible, its baleful eyes glaring above its distended jaws, its lips curled in a frightful snarl which exposed a whole mouthful of formidable teeth. At sight of me it had abandoned its impetuous rush and was now sneaking slowly toward us; while the girl, a long knife in her hand, took her stand bravely at my left and a little to my rear. She had called something to me in a strange tongue as she raced toward me, and now she spoke again; but what she said I could not then, of course, know—only that her tones were sweet, well modulated and free from any suggestion of panic.

Facing the huge cat, which I now saw was an enormous panther, I waited until I could place a shot where I felt it would do the most good, for at best a frontal shot at any of the large carnivora is a ticklish matter. I had some advantage in that the beast was not charging; its head was held low and its back exposed; and so at forty yards I took careful aim at its spine at the junction of neck and shoulders. But at the same instant, as though sensing my intention, the great creature lifted its head and leaped forward in full charge. To fire at that sloping forehead I knew would be worse than useless, and so I quickly shifted my aim and pulled the trigger, hoping against hope that the soft-nosed bullet and the heavy charge of powder would have sufficient stopping effect to give me time to place a second shot.

In answer to the report of the rifle I had the satisfaction of seeing the brute spring into the air, turning a complete somersault; but it was up again almost instantly, though in the brief second that it took it to scramble to its feet and get its bearings, it exposed its left side fully toward me, and a second bullet went crashing through its heart. Down it went for the second time—and then up and at me. The vitality of these creatures of Caspak is one of the marvelous features of this strange world and bespeaks the low nervous organization of the old paleolithic life which has been so long extinct in other portions of the world.

I put a third bullet into the beast at three paces, and then I thought that I was done for; but it rolled over and stopped at my feet, stone dead. I found that my second bullet had torn its heart almost completely away, and yet it had lived to charge ferociously upon me, and but for my third shot would doubtless have slain me before it finally expired—or as Bowen Tyler so quaintly puts it, before it knew that it was dead.

With the panther quite evidently conscious of the fact that dissolution had overtaken it, I turned toward the girl, who was regarding me with evident admiration and not a little awe, though I must admit that my rifle claimed quite as much of her attention as did I. She was quite the most wonderful animal that I have ever looked upon, and what few of her charms her apparel hid, it quite effectively succeeded in accentuating. A bit of soft, undressed leather was caught over her left shoulder and beneath her right breast, falling upon her left side to her hip and upon the right to a metal band which encircled her leg above the knee and to which the lowest point of the hide was attached. About her waist was a loose leather belt, to the center of which was attached the scabbard belonging to her knife. There was a single armlet between her right shoulder and elbow, and a series of them covered her left forearm from elbow to wrist. These, I learned later, answered the purpose of a shield against knife attack when the left arm is raised in guard across the breast or face.

Her masses of heavy hair were held in place by a broad metal band which bore a large triangular ornament directly in the center of her forehead. This ornament appeared to be a huge turquoise, while the metal of all her ornaments was beaten, virgin gold, inlaid in intricate design with bits of mother-of-pearl and tiny pieces of stone of various colors. From the left shoulder depended a leopard’s tail, while her feet were shod with sturdy little sandals. The knife was her only weapon. Its blade was of iron, the grip was wound with hide and protected by a guard of three out-bowing strips of flat iron, and upon the top of the hilt was a knob of gold.

I took in much of this in the few seconds during which we stood facing each other, and I also observed another salient feature of her appearance: she was frightfully dirty! Her face and limbs and garment were streaked with mud and perspiration, and yet even so, I felt that I had never looked upon so perfect and beautiful a creature as she. Her figure beggars description, and equally so, her face. Were I one of these writer-fellows, I should probably say that her features were Grecian, but being neither a writer nor a poet I can do her greater justice by saying that she combined all of the finest lines that one sees in the typical American girl’s face rather than the pronounced sheeplike physiognomy of the Greek goddess. No, even the dirt couldn’t hide that fact; she was beautiful beyond compare.

As we stood looking at each other, a slow smile came to her face, parting her symmetrical lips and disclosing a row of strong white teeth.

“Galu?” she asked with rising inflection.

And remembering that I read in Bowen’s manuscript that Galu seemed to indicate a higher type of man, I answered by pointing to myself and repeating the word. Then she started off on a regular catechism, if I could judge by her inflection, for I certainly understood no word of what she said. All the time the girl kept glancing toward the forest, and at last she touched my arm and pointed in that direction.

Turning, I saw a hairy figure of a manlike thing standing watching us, and presently another and another emerged from the jungle and joined the leader until there must have been at least twenty of them. They were entirely naked. Their bodies were covered with hair, and though they stood upon their feet without touching their hands to the ground, they had a very ape-like appearance, since they stooped forward and had very long arms and quite apish features. They were not pretty to look upon with their close-set eyes, flat noses, long upper lips and protruding yellow fangs.

“Alus!” said the girl.

I had reread Bowen’s adventures so often that I knew them almost by heart, and so now I knew that I was looking upon the last remnant of that ancient man-race—the Alus of a forgotten period—the speechless man of antiquity.

“Kazor!” cried the girl, and at the same moment the Alus came jabbering toward us. They made strange growling, barking noises, as with much baring of fangs they advanced upon us. They were armed only with nature’s weapons—powerful muscles and giant fangs; yet I knew that these were quite sufficient to overcome us had we nothing better to offer in defense, and so I drew my pistol and fired at the leader. He dropped like a stone, and the others turned and fled. Once again the girl smiled her slow smile and stepping closer, caressed the barrel of my automatic. As she did so, her fingers came in contact with mine, and a sudden thrill ran through me, which I attributed to the fact that it had been so long since I had seen a woman of any sort or kind.

She said something to me in her low, liquid tones; but I could not understand her, and then she pointed toward the north and started away. I followed her, for my way was north too; but had it been south I still should have followed, so hungry was I for human companionship in this world of beasts and reptiles and half-men.

We walked along, the girl talking a great deal and seeming mystified that I could not understand her. Her silvery laugh rang merrily when I in turn essayed to speak to her, as though my language was the quaintest thing she ever had heard. Often after fruitless attempts to make me understand she would hold her palm toward me, saying, “Galu!” and then touch my breast or arm and cry, “Alu, alu!” I knew what she meant, for I had learned from Bowen’s narrative the negative gesture and the two words which she repeated. She meant that I was no Galu, as I claimed, but an Alu, or speechless one. Yet every time she said this she laughed again, and so infectious were her tones that I could only join her. It was only natural, too, that she should be mystified by my inability to comprehend her or to make her comprehend me, for from the club-men, the lowest human type in Caspak to have speech, to the golden race of Galus, the tongues of the various tribes are identical—except for amplifications in the rising scale of evolution. She, who is a Galu, can understand one of the Bo-lu and make herself understood to him, or to a hatchet-man, a spear-man or an archer. The Ho-lus, or apes, the Alus and myself were the only creatures of human semblance with which she could hold no converse; yet it was evident that her intelligence told her that I was neither Ho-lu nor Alu, neither anthropoid ape nor speechless man.

Yet she did not despair, but set out to teach me her language; and had it not been that I worried so greatly over the fate of Bowen and my companions of the Toreador, I could have wished the period of instruction prolonged.

I never have been what one might call a ladies’ man, though I like their company immensely, and during my college days and since have made various friends among the sex. I think that I rather appeal to a certain type of girl for the reason that I never make love to them; I leave that to the numerous others who do it infinitely better than I could hope to, and take my pleasure out of girls’ society in what seem to be more rational ways—dancing, golfing, boating, riding, tennis, and the like. Yet in the company of this half-naked little savage I found a new pleasure that was entirely distinct from any that I ever had experienced. When she touched me, I thrilled as I had never before thrilled in contact with another woman. I could not quite understand it, for I am sufficiently sophisticated to know that this is a symptom of love and I certainly did not love this filthy little barbarian with her broken, unkempt nails and her skin so besmeared with mud and the green of crushed foliage that it was difficult to say what color it originally had been. But if she was outwardly uncouth, her clear eyes and strong white, even teeth, her silvery laugh and her queenly carriage, bespoke an innate fineness which dirt could not quite successfully conceal.

The sun was low in the heavens when we came upon a little river which emptied into a large bay at the foot of low cliffs. Our journey so far had been beset with constant danger, as is every journey in this frightful land. I have not bored you with a recital of the wearying successions of attacks by the multitude of creatures which were constantly crossing our path or deliberately stalking us. We were always upon the alert; for here, to paraphrase, eternal vigilance is indeed the price of life.

I had managed to progress a little in the acquisition of a knowledge of her tongue, so that I knew many of the animals and reptiles by their Caspakian names, and trees and ferns and grasses. I knew the words for sea and river and cliff, for sky and sun and cloud. Yes, I was getting along finely, and then it occurred to me that I didn’t know my companion’s name; so I pointed to myself and said, “Tom,” and to her and raised my eyebrows in interrogation. The girl ran her fingers into that mass of hair and looked puzzled. I repeated the action a dozen times.

“Tom,” she said finally in that clear, sweet, liquid voice. “Tom!”

I had never thought much of my name before; but when she spoke it, it sounded to me for the first time in my life like a mighty nice name, and then she brightened suddenly and tapped her own breast and said: “Ajor!”

“Ajor!” I repeated, and she laughed and struck her palms together.

Well, we knew each other’s names now, and that was some satisfaction. I rather liked hers—Ajor! And she seemed to like mine, for she repeated it.

We came to the cliffs beside the little river where it empties into the bay with the great inland sea beyond. The cliffs were weather-worn and rotted, and in one place a deep hollow ran back beneath the overhanging stone for several feet, suggesting shelter for the night. There were loose rocks strewn all about with which I might build a barricade across the entrance to the cave, and so I halted there and pointed out the place to Ajor, trying to make her understand that we would spend the night there.

As soon as she grasped my meaning, she assented with the Caspakian equivalent of an affirmative nod, and then touching my rifle, motioned me to follow her to the river. At the bank she paused, removed her belt and dagger, dropping them to the ground at her side; then unfastening the lower edge of her garment from the metal leg-band to which it was attached, slipped it off her left shoulder and let it drop to the ground around her feet. It was done so naturally, so simply and so quickly that it left me gasping like a fish out of water. Turning, she flashed a smile at me and then dived into the river, and there she bathed while I stood guard over her. For five or ten minutes she splashed about, and when she emerged her glistening skin was smooth and white and beautiful. Without means of drying herself, she simply ignored what to me would have seemed a necessity, and in a moment was arrayed in her simple though effective costume.

It was now within an hour of darkness, and as I was nearly famished, I led the way back about a quarter of a mile to a low meadow where we had seen antelope and small horses a short time before. Here I brought down a young buck, the report of my rifle sending the balance of the herd scampering for the woods, where they were met by a chorus of hideous roars as the carnivora took advantage of their panic and leaped among them.

With my hunting-knife I removed a hind-quarter, and then we returned to camp. Here I gathered a great quantity of wood from fallen trees, Ajor helping me; but before I built a fire, I also gathered sufficient loose rock to build my barricade against the frightful terrors of the night to come.

I shall never forget the expression upon Ajor’s face as she saw me strike a match and light the kindling beneath our camp-fire. It was such an expression as might transform a mortal face with awe as its owner beheld the mysterious workings of divinity. It was evident that Ajor was quite unfamiliar with modern methods of fire-making. She had thought my rifle and pistol wonderful; but these tiny slivers of wood which from a magic rub brought flame to the camp hearth were indeed miracles to her.

As the meat roasted above the fire, Ajor and I tried once again to talk; but though copiously filled with incentive, gestures and sounds, the conversation did not flourish notably. And then Ajor took up in earnest the task of teaching me her language. She commenced, as I later learned, with the simplest form of speech known to Caspak or for that matter to the world—that employed by the Bo-lu. I found it far from difficult, and even though it was a great handicap upon my instructor that she could not speak my language, she did remarkably well and demonstrated that she possessed ingenuity and intelligence of a high order.

After we had eaten, I added to the pile of firewood so that I could replenish the fire before the entrance to our barricade, believing this as good a protection against the carnivora as we could have; and then Ajor and I sat down before it, and the lesson proceeded, while from all about us came the weird and awesome noises of the Caspakian night—the moaning and the coughing and roaring of the tigers, the panthers and the lions, the barking and the dismal howling of a wolf, jackal and hyaenadon, the shrill shrieks of stricken prey and the hissing of the great reptiles; the voice of man alone was silent.

But though the voice of this choir-terrible rose and fell from far and near in all directions, reaching at time such a tremendous volume of sound that the earth shook to it, yet so engrossed was I in my lesson and in my teacher that often I was deaf to what at another time would have filled me with awe. The face and voice of the beautiful girl who leaned so eagerly toward me as she tried to explain the meaning of some word or correct my pronunciation of another quite entirely occupied my every faculty of perception. The firelight shone upon her animated features and sparkling eyes; it accentuated the graceful motions of her gesturing arms and hands; it sparkled from her white teeth and from her golden ornaments, and glistened on the smooth firmness of her perfect skin. I am afraid that often I was more occupied with admiration of this beautiful animal than with a desire for knowledge; but be that as it may, I nevertheless learned much that evening, though part of what I learned had naught to do with any new language.

Ajor seemed determined that I should speak Caspakian as quickly as possible, and I thought I saw in her desire a little of that all-feminine trait which has come down through all the ages from the first lady of the world—curiosity. Ajor desired that I should speak her tongue in order that she might satisfy a curiosity concerning me that was filling her to a point where she was in danger of bursting; of that I was positive. She was a regular little animated question-mark. She bubbled over with interrogations which were never to be satisfied unless I learned to speak her tongue. Her eyes sparkled with excitement; her hand flew in expressive gestures; her little tongue raced with time; yet all to no avail. I could say man and tree and cliff and lion and a number of other words in perfect Caspakian; but such a vocabulary was only tantalizing; it did not lend itself well to a very general conversation, and the result was that Ajor would wax so wroth that she would clench her little fists and beat me on the breast as hard as ever she could, and then she would sink back laughing as the humor of the situation captured her.

She was trying to teach me some verbs by going through the actions herself as she repeated the proper word. We were very much engrossed—so much so that we were giving no heed to what went on beyond our cave—when Ajor stopped very suddenly, crying: “Kazor!” Now she had been trying to teach me that ju meant stop; so when she cried kazor and at the same time stopped, I thought for a moment that this was part of my lesson—for the moment I forgot that kazor means beware. I therefore repeated the word after her; but when I saw the expression in her eyes as they were directed past me and saw her point toward the entrance to the cave, I turned quickly—to see a hideous face at the small aperture leading out into the night. It was the fierce and snarling countenance of a gigantic bear. I have hunted silvertips in the White Mountains of Arizona and thought them quite the largest and most formidable of big game; but from the appearance of the head of this awful creature I judged that the largest grizzly I had ever seen would shrink by comparison to the dimensions of a Newfoundland dog.

Our fire was just within the cave, the smoke rising through the apertures between the rocks that I had piled in such a way that they arched inward toward the cliff at the top. The opening by means of which we were to reach the outside was barricaded with a few large fragments which did not by any means close it entirely; but through the apertures thus left no large animal could gain ingress. I had depended most, however, upon our fire, feeling that none of the dangerous nocturnal beasts of prey would venture close to the flames. In this, however, I was quite evidently in error, for the great bear stood with his nose not a foot from the blaze, which was now low, owing to the fact that I had been so occupied with my lesson and my teacher that I had neglected to replenish it.

Ajor whipped out her futile little knife and pointed to my rifle. At the same time she spoke in a quite level voice entirely devoid of nervousness or any evidence of fear or panic. I knew she was exhorting me to fire upon the beast; but this I did not wish to do other than as a last resort, for I was quite sure that even my heavy bullets would not more than further enrage him—in which case he might easily force an entrance to our cave.

Instead of firing, I piled some more wood upon the fire, and as the smoke and blaze arose in the beast’s face, it backed away, growling most frightfully; but I still could see two ugly points of light blazing in the outer darkness and hear its growls rumbling terrifically without. For some time the creature stood there watching the entrance to our frail sanctuary while I racked my brains in futile endeavor to plan some method of defense or escape. I knew full well that should the bear make a determined effort to get at us, the rocks I had piled as a barrier would come tumbling down about his giant shoulders like a house of cards, and that he would walk directly in upon us.

Ajor, having less knowledge of the effectiveness of firearms than I, and therefore greater confidence in them, entreated me to shoot the beast; but I knew that the chance that I could stop it with a single shot was most remote, while that I should but infuriate it was real and present; and so I waited for what seemed an eternity, watching those devilish points of fire glaring balefully at us, and listening to the ever-increasing volume of those seismic growls which seemed to rumble upward from the bowels of the earth, shaking the very cliffs beneath which we cowered, until at last I saw that the brute was again approaching the aperture. It availed me nothing that I piled the blaze high with firewood, until Ajor and I were near to roasting; on came that mighty engine of destruction until once again the hideous face yawned its fanged yawn directly within the barrier’s opening. It stood thus a moment, and then the head was withdrawn. I breathed a sigh of relief, the thing had altered its intention and was going on in search of other and more easily procurable prey; the fire had been too much for it.

But my joy was short-lived, and my heart sank once again as a moment later I saw a mighty paw insinuated into the opening—a paw as large around as a large dishpan. Very gently the paw toyed with the great rock that partly closed the entrance, pushed and pulled upon it and then very deliberately drew it outward and to one side. Again came the head, and this time much farther into the cavern; but still the great shoulders would not pass through the opening. Ajor moved closer to me until her shoulder touched my side, and I thought I felt a slight tremor run through her body, but otherwise she gave no indication of fear. Involuntarily I threw my left arm about her and drew her to me for an instant. It was an act of reassurance rather than a caress, though I must admit that again and even in the face of death I thrilled at the contact with her; and then I released her and threw my rifle to my shoulder, for at last I had reached the conclusion that nothing more could be gained by waiting. My only hope was to get as many shots into the creature as I could before it was upon me. Already it had torn away a second rock and was in the very act of forcing its huge bulk through the opening it had now made.

So now I took careful aim between its eyes; my right fingers closed firmly and evenly upon the small of the stock, drawing back my trigger-finger by the muscular action of the hand. The bullet could not fail to hit its mark! I held my breath lest I swerve the muzzle a hair by my breathing. I was as steady and cool as I ever had been upon a target-range, and I had the full consciousness of a perfect hit in anticipation; I knew that I could not miss. And then, as the bear surged forward toward me, the hammer fell—futilely, upon an imperfect cartridge.

Almost simultaneously I heard from without a perfectly hellish roar; the bear gave voice to a series of growls far transcending in volume and ferocity anything that he had yet essayed and at the same time backed quickly from the cave. For an instant I couldn’t understand what had happened to cause this sudden retreat when his prey was practically within his clutches. The idea that the harmless clicking of the hammer had frightened him was too ridiculous to entertain. However, we had not long to wait before we could at least guess at the cause of the diversion, for from without came mingled growls and roars and the sound of great bodies thrashing about until the earth shook. The bear had been attacked in the rear by some other mighty beast, and the two were now locked in a titanic struggle for supremacy. With brief respites, during which we could hear the labored breathing of the contestants, the battle continued for the better part of an hour until the sounds of combat grew gradually less and finally ceased entirely.

At Ajor’s suggestion, made by signs and a few of the words we knew in common, I moved the fire directly to the entrance to the cave so that a beast would have to pass directly through the flames to reach us, and then we sat and waited for the victor of the battle to come and claim his reward; but though we sat for a long time with our eyes glued to the opening, we saw no sign of any beast.

At last I signed to Ajor to lie down, for I knew that she must have sleep, and I sat on guard until nearly morning, when the girl awoke and insisted that I take some rest; nor would she be denied, but dragged me down as she laughingly menaced me with her knife.

CHAPTER 3

When I awoke, it was daylight, and I found Ajor squatting before a fine bed of coals roasting a large piece of antelope-meat. Believe me, the sight of the new day and the delicious odor of the cooking meat filled me with renewed happiness and hope that had been all but expunged by the experience of the previous night; and perhaps the slender figure of the bright-faced girl proved also a potent restorative. She looked up and smiled at me, showing those perfect teeth, and dimpling with evident happiness—the most adorable picture that I had ever seen. I recall that it was then I first regretted that she was only a little untutored savage and so far beneath me in the scale of evolution.

Her first act was to beckon me to follow her outside, and there she pointed to the explanation of our rescue from the bear—a huge saber-tooth tiger, its fine coat and its flesh torn to ribbons, lying dead a few paces from our cave, and beside it, equally mangled, and disemboweled, was the carcass of a huge cave-bear. To have had one’s life saved by a saber-tooth tiger, and in the twentieth century into the bargain, was an experience that was to say the least unique; but it had happened—I had the proof of it before my eyes.

So enormous are the great carnivora of Caspak that they must feed perpetually to support their giant thews, and the result is that they will eat the meat of any other creature and will attack anything that comes within their ken, no matter how formidable the quarry. From later observation—I mention this as worthy the attention of paleontologists and naturalists—I came to the conclusion that such creatures as the cave-bear, the cave-lion and the saber-tooth tiger, as well as the larger carnivorous reptiles make, ordinarily, two kills a day—one in the morning and one after night. They immediately devour the entire carcass, after which they lie up and sleep for a few hours. Fortunately their numbers are comparatively few; otherwise there would be no other life within Caspak. It is their very voracity that keeps their numbers down to a point which permits other forms of life to persist, for even in the season of love the great males often turn upon their own mates and devour them, while both males and females occasionally devour their young. How the human and semihuman races have managed to survive during all the countless ages that these conditions must have existed here is quite beyond me.

After breakfast Ajor and I set out once more upon our northward journey. We had gone but a little distance when we were attacked by a number of apelike creatures armed with clubs. They seemed a little higher in the scale than the Alus. Ajor told me they were Bo-lu, or clubmen. A revolver-shot killed one and scattered the others; but several times later during the day we were menaced by them, until we had left their country and entered that of the Sto-lu, or hatchet-men. These people were less hairy and more man-like; nor did they appear so anxious to destroy us. Rather they were curious, and followed us for some distance examining us most closely. They called out to us, and Ajor answered them; but her replies did not seem to satisfy them, for they gradually became threatening, and I think they were preparing to attack us when a small deer that had been hiding in some low brush suddenly broke cover and dashed across our front. We needed meat, for it was near one o’clock and I was getting hungry; so I drew my pistol and with a single shot dropped the creature in its tracks. The effect upon the Bo-lu was electrical. Immediately they abandoned all thoughts of war, and turning, scampered for the forest which fringed our path.

That night we spent beside a little stream in the Sto-lu country. We found a tiny cave in the rock bank, so hidden away that only chance could direct a beast of prey to it, and after we had eaten of the deer-meat and some fruit which Ajor gathered, we crawled into the little hole, and with sticks and stones which I had gathered for the purpose I erected a strong barricade inside the entrance. Nothing could reach us without swimming and wading through the stream, and I felt quite secure from attack. Our quarters were rather cramped. The ceiling was so low that we could not stand up, and the floor so narrow that it was with difficulty that we both wedged into it together; but we were very tired, and so we made the most of it; and so great was the feeling of security that I am sure I fell asleep as soon as I had stretched myself beside Ajor.

During the three days which followed, our progress was exasperatingly slow. I doubt if we made ten miles in the entire three days. The country was hideously savage, so that we were forced to spend hours at a time in hiding from one or another of the great beasts which menaced us continually. There were fewer reptiles; but the quantity of carnivora seemed to have increased, and the reptiles that we did see were perfectly gigantic. I shall never forget one enormous specimen which we came upon browsing upon water-reeds at the edge of the great sea. It stood well over twelve feet high at the rump, its highest point, and with its enormously long tail and neck it was somewhere between seventy-five and a hundred feet in length. Its head was ridiculously small; its body was unarmored, but its great bulk gave it a most formidable appearance. My experience of Caspakian life led me to believe that the gigantic creature would but have to see us to attack us, and so I raised my rifle and at the same time drew away toward some brush which offered concealment; but Ajor only laughed, and picking up a stick, ran toward the great thing, shouting. The little head was raised high upon the long neck as the animal stupidly looked here and there in search of the author of the disturbance. At last its eyes discovered tiny little Ajor, and then she hurled the stick at the diminutive head. With a cry that sounded not unlike the bleat of a sheep, the colossal creature shuffled into the water and was soon submerged.

As I slowly recalled my collegiate studies and paleontological readings in Bowen’s textbooks, I realized that I had looked upon nothing less than a diplodocus of the Upper Jurassic; but how infinitely different was the true, live thing from the crude restorations of Hatcher and Holland! I had had the idea that the diplodocus was a land-animal, but evidently it is partially amphibious. I have seen several since my first encounter, and in each case the creature took to the sea for concealment as soon as it was disturbed. With the exception of its gigantic tail, it has no weapon of defense; but with this appendage it can lash so terrific a blow as to lay low even a giant cave-bear, stunned and broken. It is a stupid, simple, gentle beast—one of the few within Caspak which such a description might even remotely fit.

For three nights we slept in trees, finding no caves or other places of concealment. Here we were free from the attacks of the large land carnivora; but the smaller flying reptiles, the snakes, leopards, and panthers were a constant menace, though by no means as much to be feared as the huge beasts that roamed the surface of the earth.

At the close of the third day Ajor and I were able to converse with considerable fluency, and it was a great relief to both of us, especially to Ajor. She now did nothing but ask questions whenever I would let her, which could not be all the time, as our preservation depended largely upon the rapidity with which I could gain knowledge of the geography and customs of Caspak, and accordingly I had to ask numerous questions myself.

I enjoyed immensely hearing and answering her, so naive were many of her queries and so filled with wonder was she at the things I told her of the world beyond the lofty barriers of Caspak; not once did she seem to doubt me, however marvelous my statements must have seemed; and doubtless they were the cause of marvel to Ajor, who before had never dreamed that any life existed beyond Caspak and the life she knew.

Artless though many of her questions were, they evidenced a keen intellect and a shrewdness which seemed far beyond her years or her experience. Altogether I was finding my little savage a mighty interesting and companionable person, and I often thanked the kind fate that directed the crossing of our paths. From her I learned much of Caspak, but there still remained the mystery that had proved so baffling to Bowen Tyler—the total absence of young among the ape, the semihuman and the human races with which both he and I had come in contact upon opposite shores of the inland sea. Ajor tried to explain the matter to me, though it was apparent that she could not conceive how so natural a condition should demand explanation. She told me that among the Galus there were a few babies, that she had once been a baby but that most of her people “came up,” as he put it, “cor sva jo,” or literally, “from the beginning”; and as they all did when they used that phrase, she would wave a broad gesture toward the south.

“For long,” she explained, leaning very close to me and whispering the words into my ear while she cast apprehensive glances about and mostly skyward, “for long my mother kept me hidden lest the Wieroo, passing through the air by night, should come and take me away to Oo-oh.” And the child shuddered as she voiced the word. I tried to get her to tell me more; but her terror was so real when she spoke of the Wieroo and the land of Oo-oh where they dwell that I at last desisted, though I did learn that the Wieroo carried off only female babes and occasionally women of the Galus who had “come up from the beginning.” It was all very mysterious and unfathomable, but I got the idea that the Wieroo were creatures of imagination—the demons or gods of her race, omniscient and omnipresent. This led me to assume that the Galus had a religious sense, and further questioning brought out the fact that such was the case. Ajor spoke in tones of reverence of Luata, the god of heat and life. The word is derived from two others: Lua, meaning sun, and ata, meaning variously eggs, life, young, and reproduction. She told me that they worshiped Luata in several forms, as fire, the sun, eggs and other material objects which suggested heat and reproduction.

I had noticed that whenever I built a fire, Ajor outlined in the air before her with a forefinger an isosceles triangle, and that she did the same in the morning when she first viewed the sun. At first I had not connected her act with anything in particular, but after we learned to converse and she had explained a little of her religious superstitions, I realized that she was making the sign of the triangle as a Roman Catholic makes the sign of the cross. Always the short side of the triangle was uppermost. As she explained all this to me, she pointed to the decorations on her golden armlets, upon the knob of her dagger-hilt and upon the band which encircled her right leg above the knee—always was the design partly made up of isosceles triangles, and when she explained the significance of this particular geometric figure, I at once grasped its appropriateness.

We were now in the country of the Band-lu, the spearmen of Caspak. Bowen had remarked in his narrative that these people were analogous to the so-called Cro-Magnon race of the Upper Paleolithic, and I was therefore very anxious to see them. Nor was I to be disappointed; I saw them, all right! We had left the Sto-lu country and literally fought our way through cordons of wild beasts for two days when we decided to make camp a little earlier than usual, owing to the fact that we had reached a line of cliffs running east and west in which were numerous likely cave-lodgings. We were both very tired, and the sight of these caverns, several of which could be easily barricaded, decided us to halt until the following morning. It took but a few minutes’ exploration to discover one particular cavern high up the face of the cliff which seemed ideal for our purpose. It opened upon a narrow ledge where we could build our cook-fire; the opening was so small that we had to lie flat and wriggle through it to gain ingress, while the interior was high-ceiled and spacious. I lighted a faggot and looked about; but as far as I could see, the chamber ran back into the cliff.

Laying aside my rifle, pistol and heavy ammunition-belt, I left Ajor in the cave while I went down to gather firewood. We already had meat and fruits which we had gathered just before reaching the cliffs, and my canteen was filled with fresh water. Therefore, all we required was fuel, and as I always saved Ajor’s strength when I could, I would not permit her to accompany me. The poor girl was very tired; but she would have gone with me until she dropped, I know, so loyal was she. She was the best comrade in the world, and sometimes I regretted and sometimes I was glad that she was not of my own caste, for had she been, I should unquestionably have fallen in love with her. As it was, we traveled together like two boys, with huge respect for each other but no softer sentiment.

There was little timber close to the base of the cliffs, and so I was forced to enter the wood some two hundred yards distant. I realize now how foolhardy was my act in such a land as Caspak, teeming with danger and with death; but there is a certain amount of fool in every man; and whatever proportion of it I own must have been in the ascendant that day, for the truth of the matter is that I went down into those woods absolutely defenseless; and I paid the price, as people usually do for their indiscretions. As I searched around in the brush for likely pieces of firewood, my head bowed and my eyes upon the ground, I suddenly felt a great weight hurl itself upon me. I struggled to my knees and seized my assailant, a huge, naked man—naked except for a breechcloth of snakeskin, the head hanging down to the knees. The fellow was armed with a stone-shod spear, a stone knife and a hatchet. In his black hair were several gay-colored feathers. As we struggled to and fro, I was slowly gaining advantage of him, when a score of his fellows came running up and overpowered me.

They bound my hands behind me with long rawhide thongs and then surveyed me critically. I found them fine-looking specimens of manhood, for the most part. There were some among them who bore a resemblance to the Sto-lu and were hairy; but the majority had massive heads and not unlovely features. There was little about them to suggest the ape, as in the Sto-lu, Bo-lu and Alus. I expected them to kill me at once, but they did not. Instead they questioned me; but it was evident that they did not believe my story, for they scoffed and laughed.

“The Galus have turned you out,” they cried. “If you go back to them, you will die. If you remain here, you will die. We shall kill you; but first we shall have a dance and you shall dance with us—the dance of death.”

It sounded quite reassuring! But I knew that I was not to be killed immediately, and so I took heart. They led me toward the cliffs, and as we approached them, I glanced up and was sure that I saw Ajor’s bright eyes peering down upon us from our lofty cave; but she gave no sign if she saw me; and we passed on, rounded the end of the cliffs and proceeded along the opposite face of them until we came to a section literally honeycombed with caves. All about, upon the ground and swarming the ledges before the entrances, were hundreds of members of the tribe. There were many women but no babes or children, though I noticed that the females had better developed breasts than any that I had seen among the hatchet-men, the club-men, the Alus or the apes. In fact, among the lower orders of Caspakian man the female breast is but a rudimentary organ, barely suggested in the apes and Alus, and only a little more defined in the Bo-lu and Sto-lu, though always increasingly so until it is found about half developed in the females of the spear-men; yet never was there an indication that the females had suckled young; nor were there any young among them. Some of the Band-lu women were quite comely. The figures of all, both men and women, were symmetrical though heavy, and though there were some who verged strongly upon the Sto-lu type, there were others who were positively handsome and whose bodies were quite hairless. The Alus are all bearded, but among the Bo-lu the beard disappears in the women. The Sto-lu men show a sparse beard, the Band-lu none; and there is little hair upon the bodies of their women.

The members of the tribe showed great interest in me, especially in my clothing, the like of which, of course, they never had seen. They pulled and hauled upon me, and some of them struck me; but for the most part they were not inclined to brutality. It was only the hairier ones, who most closely resembled the Sto-lu, who maltreated me. At last my captors led me into a great cave in the mouth of which a fire was burning. The floor was littered with filth, including the bones of many animals, and the atmosphere reeked with the stench of human bodies and putrefying flesh. Here they fed me, releasing my arms, and I ate of half-cooked aurochs steak and a stew which may have been made of snakes, for many of the long, round pieces of meat suggested them most nauseatingly.

The meal completed, they led me well within the cavern, which they lighted with torches stuck in various crevices in the light of which I saw, to my astonishment, that the walls were covered with paintings and etchings. There were aurochs, red deer, saber-tooth tiger, cave-bear, hyaenadon and many other examples of the fauna of Caspak done in colors, usually of four shades of brown, or scratched upon the surface of the rock. Often they were super-imposed upon each other until it required careful examination to trace out the various outlines. But they all showed a rather remarkable aptitude for delineation which further fortified Bowen’s comparisons between these people and the extinct Cro-Magnons whose ancient art is still preserved in the caverns of Niaux and Le Portel. The Band-lu, however, did not have the bow and arrow, and in this respect they differ from their extinct progenitors, or descendants, of Western Europe.

Should any of my friends chance to read the story of my adventures upon Caprona, I hope they will not be bored by these diversions, and if they are, I can only say that I am writing my memoirs for my own edification and therefore setting down those things which interested me particularly at the time. I have no desire that the general public should ever have access to these pages; but it is possible that my friends may, and also certain savants who are interested; and to them, while I do not apologize for my philosophizing, I humbly explain that they are witnessing the gropings of a finite mind after the infinite, the search for explanations of the inexplicable.

In a far recess of the cavern my captors bade me halt. Again my hands were secured, and this time my feet as well. During the operation they questioned me, and I was mighty glad that the marked similarity between the various tribal tongues of Caspak enabled us to understand each other perfectly, even though they were unable to believe or even to comprehend the truth of my origin and the circumstances of my advent in Caspak; and finally they left me saying that they would come for me before the dance of death upon the morrow. Before they departed with their torches, I saw that I had not been conducted to the farthest extremity of the cavern, for a dark and gloomy corridor led beyond my prison room into the heart of the cliff.

I could not but marvel at the immensity of this great underground grotto. Already I had traversed several hundred yards of it, from many points of which other corridors diverged. The whole cliff must be honeycombed with apartments and passages of which this community occupied but a comparatively small part, so that the possibility of the more remote passages being the lair of savage beasts that have other means of ingress and egress than that used by the Band-lu filled me with dire forebodings.

I believe that I am not ordinarily hysterically apprehensive; yet I must confess that under the conditions with which I was confronted, I felt my nerves to be somewhat shaken. On the morrow I was to die some sort of nameless death for the diversion of a savage horde, but the morrow held fewer terrors for me than the present, and I submit to any fair-minded man if it is not a terrifying thing to lie bound hand and foot in the Stygian blackness of an immense cave peopled by unknown dangers in a land overrun by hideous beasts and reptiles of the greatest ferocity. At any moment, perhaps at this very moment, some silent-footed beast of prey might catch my scent where it laired in some contiguous passage, and might creep stealthily upon me. I craned my neck about, and stared through the inky darkness for the twin spots of blazing hate which I knew would herald the coming of my executioner. So real were the imaginings of my overwrought brain that I broke into a cold sweat in absolute conviction that some beast was close before me; yet the hours dragged, and no sound broke the grave-like stillness of the cavern.

During that period of eternity many events of my life passed before my mental vision, a vast parade of friends and occurrences which would be blotted out forever on the morrow. I cursed myself for the foolish act which had taken me from the search-party that so depended upon me, and I wondered what progress, if any, they had made. Were they still beyond the barrier cliffs, awaiting my return? Or had they found a way into Caspak? I felt that the latter would be the truth, for the party was not made up of men easily turned from a purpose. Quite probable it was that they were already searching for me; but that they would ever find a trace of me I doubted. Long since, had I come to the conclusion that it was beyond human prowess to circle the shores of the inland sea of Caspak in the face of the myriad menaces which lurked in every shadow by day and by night. Long since, had I given up any hope of reaching the point where I had made my entry into the country, and so I was now equally convinced that our entire expedition had been worse than futile before ever it was conceived, since Bowen J. Tyler and his wife could not by any possibility have survived during all these long months; no more could Bradley and his party of seamen be yet in existence. If the superior force and equipment of my party enabled them to circle the north end of the sea, they might some day come upon the broken wreck of my plane hanging in the great tree to the south; but long before that, my bones would be added to the litter upon the floor of this mighty cavern.

And through all my thoughts, real and fanciful, moved the image of a perfect girl, clear-eyed and strong and straight and beautiful, with the carriage of a queen and the supple, undulating grace of a leopard. Though I loved my friends, their fate seemed of less importance to me than the fate of this little barbarian stranger for whom, I had convinced myself many a time, I felt no greater sentiment than passing friendship for a fellow-wayfarer in this land of horrors. Yet I so worried and fretted about her and her future that at last I quite forgot my own predicament, though I still struggled intermittently with my bonds in vain endeavor to free myself; as much, however, that I might hasten to her protection as that I might escape the fate which had been planned for me. And while I was thus engaged and had for the moment forgotten my apprehensions concerning prowling beasts, I was startled into tense silence by a distinct and unmistakable sound coming from the dark corridor farther toward the heart of the cliff—the sound of padded feet moving stealthily in my direction.

I believe that never before in all my life, even amidst the terrors of childhood nights, have I suffered such a sensation of extreme horror as I did that moment in which I realized that I must lie bound and helpless while some horrid beast of prey crept upon me to devour me in that utter darkness of the Band-lu pits of Caspak. I reeked with cold sweat, and my flesh crawled—I could feel it crawl. If ever I came nearer to abject cowardice, I do not recall the instance; and yet it was not that I was afraid to die, for I had long since given myself up as lost—a few days of Caspak must impress anyone with the utter nothingness of life. The waters, the land, the air teem with it, and always it is being devoured by some other form of life. Life is the cheapest thing in Caspak, as it is the cheapest thing on earth and, doubtless, the cheapest cosmic production. No, I was not afraid to die; in fact, I prayed for death, that I might be relieved of the frightfulness of the interval of life which remained to me—the waiting, the awful waiting, for that fearsome beast to reach me and to strike.

Presently it was so close that I could hear its breathing, and then it touched me and leaped quickly back as though it had come upon me unexpectedly. For long moments no sound broke the sepulchral silence of the cave. Then I heard a movement on the part of the creature near me, and again it touched me, and I felt something like a hairless hand pass over my face and down until it touched the collar of my flannel shirt. And then, subdued, but filled with pent emotion, a voice cried: “Tom!”

I think I nearly fainted, so great was the reaction. “Ajor!” I managed to say. “Ajor, my girl, can it be you?”

“Oh, Tom!” she cried again in a trembly little voice and flung herself upon me, sobbing softly. I had not known that Ajor could cry.

As she cut away my bonds, she told me that from the entrance to our cave she had seen the Band-lu coming out of the forest with me, and she had followed until they took me into the cave, which she had seen was upon the opposite side of the cliff in which ours was located; and then, knowing that she could do nothing for me until after the Band-lu slept, she had hastened to return to our cave. With difficulty she had reached it, after having been stalked by a cave-lion and almost seized. I trembled at the risk she had run.

It had been her intention to wait until after midnight, when most of the carnivora would have made their kills, and then attempt to reach the cave in which I was imprisoned and rescue me. She explained that with my rifle and pistol—both of which she assured me she could use, having watched me so many times—she planned upon frightening the Band-lu and forcing them to give me up. Brave little girl! She would have risked her life willingly to save me. But some time after she reached our cave she heard voices from the far recesses within, and immediately concluded that we had but found another entrance to the caves which the Band-lu occupied upon the other face of the cliff. Then she had set out through those winding passages and in total darkness had groped her way, guided solely by a marvelous sense of direction, to where I lay. She had had to proceed with utmost caution lest she fall into some abyss in the darkness and in truth she had thrice come upon sheer drops and had been forced to take the most frightful risks to pass them. I shudder even now as I contemplate what this girl passed through for my sake and how she enhanced her peril in loading herself down with the weight of my arms and ammunition and the awkwardness of the long rifle which she was unaccustomed to bearing.

I could have knelt and kissed her hand in reverence and gratitude; nor am I ashamed to say that that is precisely what I did after I had been freed from my bonds and heard the story of her trials. Brave little Ajor! Wonder-girl out of the dim, unthinkable past! Never before had she been kissed; but she seemed to sense something of the meaning of the new caress, for she leaned forward in the dark and pressed her own lips to my forehead. A sudden urge surged through me to seize her and strain her to my bosom and cover her hot young lips with the kisses of a real love, but I did not do so, for I knew that I did not love her; and to have kissed her thus, with passion, would have been to inflict a great wrong upon her who had offered her life for mine.

No, Ajor should be as safe with me as with her own mother, if she had one, which I was inclined to doubt, even though she told me that she had once been a babe and hidden by her mother. I had come to doubt if there was such a thing as a mother in Caspak, a mother such as we know. From the Bo-lu to the Kro-lu there is no word which corresponds with our word mother. They speak of ata and cor sva jo, meaning reproduction and from the beginning, and point toward the south; but no one has a mother.

After considerable difficulty we gained what we thought was our cave, only to find that it was not, and then we realized that we were lost in the labyrinthine mazes of the great cavern. We retraced our steps and sought the point from which we had started, but only succeeded in losing ourselves the more. Ajor was aghast—not so much from fear of our predicament; but that she should have failed in the functioning of that wonderful sense she possessed in common with most other creatures Caspakian, which makes it possible for them to move unerringly from place to place without compass or guide.

Hand in hand we crept along, searching for an opening into the outer world, yet realizing that at each step we might be burrowing more deeply into the heart of the great cliff, or circling futilely in the vague wandering that could end only in death. And the darkness! It was almost palpable, and utterly depressing. I had matches, and in some of the more difficult places I struck one; but we couldn’t afford to waste them, and so we groped our way slowly along, doing the best we could to keep to one general direction in the hope that it would eventually lead us to an opening into the outer world. When I struck matches, I noticed that the walls bore no paintings; nor was there other sign that man had penetrated this far within the cliff, nor any spoor of animals of other kinds.

It would be difficult to guess at the time we spent wandering through those black corridors, climbing steep ascents, feeling our way along the edges of bottomless pits, never knowing at what moment we might be plunged into some abyss and always haunted by the ever-present terror of death by starvation and thirst. As difficult as it was, I still realized that it might have been infinitely worse had I had another companion than Ajor—courageous, uncomplaining, loyal little Ajor! She was tired and hungry and thirsty, and she must have been discouraged; but she never faltered in her cheerfulness. I asked her if she was afraid, and she replied that here the Wieroo could not get her, and that if she died of hunger, she would at least die with me and she was quite content that such should be her end. At the time I attributed her attitude to something akin to a doglike devotion to a new master who had been kind to her. I can take oath to the fact that I did not think it was anything more.

Whether we had been imprisoned in the cliff for a day or a week I could not say; nor even now do I know. We became very tired and hungry; the hours dragged; we slept at least twice, and then we rose and stumbled on, always weaker and weaker. There were ages during which the trend of the corridors was always upward. It was heartbreaking work for people in the state of exhaustion in which we then were, but we clung tenaciously to it. We stumbled and fell; we sank through pure physical inability to retain our feet; but always we managed to rise at last and go on. At first, wherever it had been possible, we had walked hand in hand lest we become separated, and later, when I saw that Ajor was weakening rapidly, we went side by side, I supporting her with an arm about her waist. I still retained the heavy burden of my armament; but with the rifle slung to my back, my hands were free. When I too showed indisputable evidences of exhaustion, Ajor suggested that I lay aside my arms and ammunition; but I told her that as it would mean certain death for me to traverse Caspak without them, I might as well take the chance of dying here in the cave with them, for there was the other chance that we might find our way to liberty.

There came a time when Ajor could no longer walk, and then it was that I picked her up in my arms and carried her. She begged me to leave her, saying that after I found an exit, I could come back and get her; but she knew, and she knew that I knew, that if ever I did leave her, I could never find her again. Yet she insisted. Barely had I sufficient strength to take a score of steps at a time; then I would have to sink down and rest for five to ten minutes. I don’t know what force urged me on and kept me going in the face of an absolute conviction that my efforts were utterly futile. I counted us already as good as dead; but still I dragged myself along until the time came that I could no longer rise, but could only crawl along a few inches at a time, dragging Ajor beside me. Her sweet voice, now almost inaudible from weakness, implored me to abandon her and save myself—she seemed to think only of me. Of course I couldn’t have left her there alone, no matter how much I might have desired to do so; but the fact of the matter was that I didn’t desire to leave her. What I said to her then came very simply and naturally to my lips. It couldn’t very well have been otherwise, I imagine, for with death so close, I doubt if people are much inclined to heroics. “I would rather not get out at all, Ajor,” I said to her, “than to get out without you.” We were resting against a rocky wall, and Ajor was leaning against me, her head on my breast. I could feel her press closer to me, and one hand stroked my arm in a weak caress; but she didn’t say anything, nor were words necessary.

After a few minutes’ more rest, we started on again upon our utterly hopeless way; but I soon realized that I was weakening rapidly, and presently I was forced to admit that I was through. “It’s no use, Ajor,” I said, “I’ve come as far as I can. It may be that if I sleep, I can go on again after,” but I knew that that was not true, and that the end was near. “Yes, sleep,” said Ajor. “We will sleep together—forever.”

She crept close to me as I lay on the hard floor and pillowed her head upon my arm. With the little strength which remained to me, I drew her up until our lips touched, and, then I whispered: “Good-bye!” I must have lost consciousness almost immediately, for I recall nothing more until I suddenly awoke out of a troubled sleep, during which I dreamed that I was drowning, to find the cave lighted by what appeared to be diffused daylight, and a tiny trickle of water running down the corridor and forming a puddle in the little depression in which it chanced that Ajor and I lay. I turned my eyes quickly upon Ajor, fearful for what the light might disclose; but she still breathed, though very faintly. Then I searched about for an explanation of the light, and soon discovered that it came from about a bend in the corridor just ahead of us and at the top of a steep incline; and instantly I realized that Ajor and I had stumbled by night almost to the portal of salvation. Had chance taken us a few yards further, up either of the corridors which diverged from ours just ahead of us, we might have been irrevocably lost; we might still be lost; but at least we could die in the light of day, out of the horrid blackness of this terrible cave.

I tried to rise, and found that sleep had given me back a portion of my strength; and then I tasted the water and was further refreshed. I shook Ajor gently by the shoulder; but she did not open her eyes, and then I gathered a few drops of water in my cupped palm and let them trickle between her lips. This revived her so that she raised her lids, and when she saw me, she smiled.

“What happened?” she asked. “Where are we?”

“We are at the end of the corridor,” I replied, “and daylight is coming in from the outside world just ahead. We are saved, Ajor!”

She sat up then and looked about, and then, quite womanlike, she burst into tears. It was the reaction, of course; and then too, she was very weak. I took her in my arms and quieted her as best I could, and finally, with my help, she got to her feet; for she, as well as I, had found some slight recuperation in sleep. Together we staggered upward toward the light, and at the first turn we saw an opening a few yards ahead of us and a leaden sky beyond—a leaden sky from which was falling a drizzling rain, the author of our little, trickling stream which had given us drink when we were most in need of it.

The cave had been damp and cold; but as we crawled through the aperture, the muggy warmth of the Caspakian air caressed and confronted us; even the rain was warmer than the atmosphere of those dark corridors. We had water now, and warmth, and I was sure that Caspak would soon offer us meat or fruit; but as we came to where we could look about, we saw that we were upon the summit of the cliffs, where there seemed little reason to expect game. However, there were trees, and among them we soon descried edible fruits with which we broke our long fast.

CHAPTER 4

We spent two days upon the cliff-top, resting and recuperating. There was some small game which gave us meat, and the little pools of rainwater were sufficient to quench our thirst. The sun came out a few hours after we emerged from the cave, and in its warmth we soon cast off the gloom which our recent experiences had saddled upon us.

Upon the morning of the third day we set out to search for a path down to the valley. Below us, to the north, we saw a large pool lying at the foot of the cliffs, and in it we could discern the women of the Band-lu lying in the shallow waters, while beyond and close to the base of the mighty barrier-cliffs there was a large party of Band-lu warriors going north to hunt. We had a splendid view from our lofty cliff-top. Dimly, to the west, we could see the farther shore of the inland sea, and southwest the large southern island loomed distinctly before us. A little east of north was the northern island, which Ajor, shuddering, whispered was the home of the Wieroo—the land of Oo-oh. It lay at the far end of the lake and was barely visible to us, being fully sixty miles away.

From our elevation, and in a clearer atmosphere, it would have stood out distinctly; but the air of Caspak is heavy with moisture, with the result that distant objects are blurred and indistinct. Ajor also told me that the mainland east of Oo-oh was her land—the land of the Galu. She pointed out the cliffs at its southern boundary, which mark the frontier, south of which lies the country of Kro-lu—the archers. We now had but to pass through the balance of the Band-lu territory and that of the Kro-lu to be within the confines of her own land; but that meant traversing thirty-five miles of hostile country filled with every imaginable terror, and possibly many beyond the powers of imagination. I would certainly have given a lot for my plane at that moment, for with it, twenty minutes would have landed us within the confines of Ajor’s country.

We finally found a place where we could slip over the edge of the cliff onto a narrow ledge which seemed to give evidence of being something of a game-path to the valley, though it apparently had not been used for some time. I lowered Ajor at the end of my rifle and then slid over myself, and I am free to admit that my hair stood on end during the process, for the drop was considerable and the ledge appallingly narrow, with a frightful drop sheer below down to the rocks at the base of the cliff; but with Ajor there to catch and steady me, I made it all right, and then we set off down the trail toward the valley. There were two or three more bad places, but for the most part it was an easy descent, and we came to the highest of the Band-lu caves without further trouble. Here we went more slowly, lest we should be set upon by some member of the tribe.

We must have passed about half the Band-lu cave-levels before we were accosted, and then a huge fellow stepped out in front of me, barring our further progress.

“Who are you?” he asked; and he recognized me and I him, for he had been one of those who had led me back into the cave and bound me the night that I had been captured. From me his gaze went to Ajor. He was a fine-looking man with clear, intelligent eyes, a good forehead and superb physique—by far the highest type of Caspakian I had yet seen, barring Ajor, of course.

“You are a true Galu,” he said to Ajor, “but this man is of a different mold. He has the face of a Galu, but his weapons and the strange skins he wears upon his body are not of the Galus nor of Caspak. Who is he?”

“He is Tom,” replied Ajor succinctly.

“There is no such people,” asserted the Band-lu quite truthfully, toying with his spear in a most suggestive manner.

“My name is Tom,” I explained, “and I am from a country beyond Caspak.” I thought it best to propitiate him if possible, because of the necessity of conserving ammunition as well as to avoid the loud alarm of a shot which might bring other Band-lu warriors upon us. “I am from America, a land of which you never heard, and I am seeking others of my countrymen who are in Caspak and from whom I am lost. I have no quarrel with you or your people. Let us go our way in peace.”

“You are going there?” he asked, and pointed toward the north.

“I am,” I replied.

He was silent for several minutes, apparently weighing some thought in his mind. At last he spoke. “What is that?” he asked. “And what is that?” He pointed first at my rifle and then to my pistol.

“They are weapons,” I replied, “weapons which kill at a great distance.” I pointed to the women in the pool beneath us. “With this,” I said, tapping my pistol, “I could kill as many of those women as I cared to, without moving a step from where we now stand.”

He looked his incredulity, but I went on. “And with this”—I weighed my rifle at the balance in the palm of my right hand—“I could slay one of those distant warriors.” And I waved my left hand toward the tiny figures of the hunters far to the north.

The fellow laughed. “Do it,” he cried derisively, “and then it may be that I shall believe the balance of your strange story.”

“But I do not wish to kill any of them,” I replied. “Why should I?”

“Why not?” he insisted. “They would have killed you when they had you prisoner. They would kill you now if they could get their hands on you, and they would eat you into the bargain. But I know why you do not try it—it is because you have spoken lies; your weapon will not kill at a great distance. It is only a queerly wrought club. For all I know, you are nothing more than a lowly Bo-lu.”

“Why should you wish me to kill your own people?” I asked.

“They are no longer my people,” he replied proudly. “Last night, in the very middle of the night, the call came to me. Like that it came into my head”—and he struck his hands together smartly once—“that I had risen. I have been waiting for it and expecting it for a long time; today I am a Kro-lu. Today I go into the coslupak” (unpeopled country, or literally, no man’s land) “between the Band-lu and the Kro-lu, and there I fashion my bow and my arrows and my shield; there I hunt the red deer for the leathern jerkin which is the badge of my new estate. When these things are done, I can go to the chief of the Kro-lu, and he dare not refuse me. That is why you may kill those low Band-lu if you wish to live, for I am in a hurry.

“But why do you wish to kill me?” I asked.

He looked puzzled and finally gave it up. “I do not know,” he admitted. “It is the way in Caspak. If we do not kill, we shall be killed, therefore it is wise to kill first whomever does not belong to one’s own people. This morning I hid in my cave till the others were gone upon the hunt, for I knew that they would know at once that I had become a Kro-lu and would kill me. They will kill me if they find me in the coslupak; so will the Kro-lu if they come upon me before I have won my Kro-lu weapons and jerkin. You would kill me if you could, and that is the reason I know that you speak lies when you say that your weapons will kill at a great distance. Would they, you would long since have killed me. Come! I have no more time to waste in words. I will spare the woman and take her with me to the Kro-lu, for she is comely.” And with that he advanced upon me with raised spear.

My rifle was at my hip at the ready. He was so close that I did not need to raise it to my shoulder, having but to pull the trigger to send him into Kingdom Come whenever I chose; but yet I hesitated. It was difficult to bring myself to take a human life. I could feel no enmity toward this savage barbarian who acted almost as wholly upon instinct as might a wild beast, and to the last moment I was determined to seek some way to avoid what now seemed inevitable. Ajor stood at my shoulder, her knife ready in her hand and a sneer on her lips at his suggestion that he would take her with him.

Just as I thought I should have to fire, a chorus of screams broke from the women beneath us. I saw the man halt and glance downward, and following his example my eyes took in the panic and its cause. The women had, evidently, been quitting the pool and slowly returning toward the caves, when they were confronted by a monstrous cave-lion which stood directly between them and their cliffs in the center of the narrow path that led down to the pool among the tumbled rocks. Screaming, the women were rushing madly back to the pool.

“It will do them no good,” remarked the man, a trace of excitement in his voice. “It will do them no good, for the lion will wait until they come out and take as many as he can carry away; and there is one there,” he added, a trace of sadness in his tone, “whom I hoped would soon follow me to the Kro-lu. Together have we come up from the beginning.” He raised his spear above his head and poised it ready to hurl downward at the lion. “She is nearest to him,” he muttered. “He will get her and she will never come to me among the Kro-lu, or ever thereafter. It is useless! No warrior lives who could hurl a weapon so great a distance.”

But even as he spoke, I was leveling my rifle upon the great brute below; and as he ceased speaking, I squeezed the trigger. My bullet must have struck to a hair the point at which I had aimed, for it smashed the brute’s spine back of his shoulders and tore on through his heart, dropping him dead in his tracks. For a moment the women were as terrified by the report of the rifle as they had been by the menace of the lion; but when they saw that the loud noise had evidently destroyed their enemy, they came creeping cautiously back to examine the carcass.

The man, toward whom I had immediately turned after firing, lest he should pursue his threatened attack, stood staring at me in amazement and admiration.

“Why,” he asked, “if you could do that, did you not kill me long before?”

“I told you,” I replied, “that I had no quarrel with you. I do not care to kill men with whom I have no quarrel.”

But he could not seem to get the idea through his head. “I can believe now that you are not of Caspak,” he admitted, “for no Caspakian would have permitted such an opportunity to escape him.” This, however, I found later to be an exaggeration, as the tribes of the west coast and even the Kro-lu of the east coast are far less bloodthirsty than he would have had me believe. “And your weapon!” he continued. “You spoke true words when I thought you spoke lies.” And then, suddenly: “Let us be friends!”

I turned to Ajor. “Can I trust him?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “Why not? Has he not asked to be friends?”

I was not at the time well enough acquainted with Caspakian ways to know that truthfulness and loyalty are two of the strongest characteristics of these primitive people. They are not sufficiently cultured to have become adept in hypocrisy, treason and dissimulation. There are, of course, a few exceptions.

“We can go north together,” continued the warrior. “I will fight for you, and you can fight for me. Until death will I serve you, for you have saved So-al, whom I had given up as dead.” He threw down his spear and covered both his eyes with the palms of his two hands. I looked inquiringly toward Ajor, who explained as best she could that this was the form of the Caspakian oath of allegiance. “You need never fear him after this,” she concluded.

“What should I do?” I asked.

“Take his hands down from before his eyes and return his spear to him,” she explained.

I did as she bade, and the man seemed very pleased. I then asked what I should have done had I not wished to accept his friendship. They told me that had I walked away, the moment that I was out of sight of the warrior we would have become deadly enemies again. “But I could so easily have killed him as he stood there defenseless!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” replied the warrior, “but no man with good sense blinds his eyes before one whom he does not trust.”

It was rather a decent compliment, and it taught me just how much I might rely on the loyalty of my new friend. I was glad to have him with us, for he knew the country and was evidently a fearless warrior. I wished that I might have recruited a battalion like him.

As the women were now approaching the cliffs, To-mar the warrior suggested that we make our way to the valley before they could intercept us, as they might attempt to detain us and were almost certain to set upon Ajor. So we hastened down the narrow path, reaching the foot of the cliffs but a short distance ahead of the women. They called after us to stop; but we kept on at a rapid walk, not wishing to have any trouble with them, which could only result in the death of some of them.

We had proceeded about a mile when we heard some one behind us calling To-mar by name, and when we stopped and looked around, we saw a woman running rapidly toward us. As she approached nearer I could see that she was a very comely creature, and like all her sex that I had seen in Caspak, apparently young.

“It is So-al!” exclaimed To-mar. “Is she mad that she follows me thus?”

In another moment the young woman stopped, panting, before us. She paid not the slightest attention to Ajor or me; but devouring To-mar with her sparkling eyes, she cried: “I have risen! I have risen!”

“So-al!” was all that the man could say.

“Yes,” she went on, “the call came to me just before I quit the pool; but I did not know that it had come to you. I can see it in your eyes, To-mar, my To-mar! We shall go on together!” And she threw herself into his arms.

It was a very affecting sight, for it was evident that these two had been mates for a long time and that they had each thought that they were about to be separated by that strange law of evolution which holds good in Caspak and which was slowly unfolding before my incredulous mind. I did not then comprehend even a tithe of the wondrous process, which goes on eternally within the confines of Caprona’s barrier cliffs nor am I any too sure that I do even now.

To-mar explained to So-al that it was I who had killed the cave-lion and saved her life, and that Ajor was my woman and thus entitled to the same loyalty which was my due.

At first Ajor and So-al were like a couple of stranger cats on a back fence but soon they began to accept each other under something of an armed truce, and later became fast friends. So-al was a mighty fine-looking girl, built like a tigress as to strength and sinuosity, but withal sweet and womanly. Ajor and I came to be very fond of her, and she was, I think, equally fond of us. To-mar was very much of a man—a savage, if you will, but none the less a man.

Finding that traveling in company with To-mar made our journey both easier and safer, Ajor and I did not continue on our way alone while the novitiates delayed their approach to the Kro-lu country in order that they might properly fit themselves in the matter of arms and apparel, but remained with them. Thus we became well acquainted—to such an extent that we looked forward with regret to the day when they took their places among their new comrades and we should be forced to continue upon our way alone. It was a matter of much concern to To-mar that the Kro-lu would undoubtedly not receive Ajor and me in a friendly manner, and that consequently we should have to avoid these people.

It would have been very helpful to us could we have made friends with them, as their country abutted directly upon that of the Galus. Their friendship would have meant that Ajor’s dangers were practically passed, and that I had accomplished fully one-half of my long journey. In view of what I had passed through, I often wondered what chance I had to complete that journey in search of my friends. The further south I should travel on the west side of the island, the more frightful would the dangers become as I neared the stamping-grounds of the more hideous reptilia and the haunts of the Alus and the Ho-lu, all of which were at the southern half of the island; and then if I should not find the members of my party, what was to become of me? I could not live for long in any portion of Caspak with which I was familiar; the moment my ammunition was exhausted, I should be as good as dead.

There was a chance that the Galus would receive me; but even Ajor could not say definitely whether they would or not, and even provided that they would, could I retrace my steps from the beginning, after failing to find my own people, and return to the far northern land of Galus? I doubted it. However, I was learning from Ajor, who was more or less of a fatalist, a philosophy which was as necessary in Caspak to peace of mind as is faith to the devout Christian of the outer world.

CHAPTER 5

We were sitting before a little fire inside a safe grotto one night shortly after we had quit the cliff-dwellings of the Band-lu, when So-al raised a question which it had never occurred to me to propound to Ajor. She asked her why she had left her own people and how she had come so far south as the country of the Alus, where I had found her.

At first Ajor hesitated to explain; but at last she consented, and for the first time I heard the complete story of her origin and experiences. For my benefit she entered into greater detail of explanation than would have been necessary had I been a native Caspakian.

“I am a cos-ata-lo,” commenced Ajor, and then she turned toward me. “A cos-ata-lo, my Tom, is a woman” (lo) “who did not come from an egg and thus on up from the beginning.” (Cor sva jo.) “I was a babe at my mother’s breast. Only among the Galus are such, and then but infrequently. The Wieroo get most of us; but my mother hid me until I had attained such size that the Wieroo could not readily distinguish me from one who had come up from the beginning. I knew both my mother and my father, as only such as I may. My father is high chief among the Galus. His name is Jor, and both he and my mother came up from the beginning; but one of them, probably my mother, had completed the seven cycles” (approximately seven hundred years), “with the result that their offspring might be cos-ata-lo, or born as are all the children of your race, my Tom, as you tell me is the fact. I was therefore apart from my fellows in that my children would probably be as I, of a higher state of evolution, and so I was sought by the men of my people; but none of them appealed to me. I cared for none. The most persistent was Du-seen, a huge warrior of whom my father stood in considerable fear, since it was quite possible that Du-seen could wrest from him his chieftainship of the Galus. He has a large following of the newer Galus, those most recently come up from the Kro-lu, and as this class is usually much more powerful numerically than the older Galus, and as Du-seen’s ambition knows no bounds, we have for a long time been expecting him to find some excuse for a break with Jor the High Chief, my father.

“A further complication lay in the fact that Du-seen wanted me, while I would have none of him, and then came evidence to my father’s ears that he was in league with the Wieroo; a hunter, returning late at night, came trembling to my father, saying that he had seen Du-seen talking with a Wieroo in a lonely spot far from the village, and that plainly he had heard the words: ‘If you will help me, I will help you—I will deliver into your hands all cos-ata-lo among the Galus, now and hereafter; but for that service you must slay Jor the High Chief and bring terror and confusion to his followers.’

“Now, when my father heard this, he was angry; but he was also afraid—afraid for me, who am cos-ata-lo. He called me to him and told me what he had heard, pointing out two ways in which we might frustrate Du-seen. The first was that I go to Du-seen as his mate, after which he would be loath to give me into the hands of the Wieroo or to further abide by the wicked compact he had made—a compact which would doom his own offspring, who would doubtless be as am I, their mother. The alternative was flight until Du-seen should have been overcome and punished. I chose the latter and fled toward the south. Beyond the confines of the Galu country is little danger from the Wieroo, who seek ordinarily only Galus of the highest orders. There are two excellent reasons for this: One is that from the beginning of time jealousy has existed between the Wieroo and the Galus as to which would eventually dominate the world. It seems generally conceded that that race which first reaches a point of evolution which permits them to produce young of their own species and of both sexes must dominate all other creatures. The Wieroo first began to produce their own kind—after which evolution from Galu to Wieroo ceased gradually until now it is unknown; but the Wieroo produce only males—which is why they steal our female young, and by stealing cos-ata-lo they increase their own chances of eventually reproducing both sexes and at the same time lessen ours. Already the Galus produce both male and female; but so carefully do the Wieroo watch us that few of the males ever grow to manhood, while even fewer are the females that are not stolen away. It is indeed a strange condition, for while our greatest enemies hate and fear us, they dare not exterminate us, knowing that they too would become extinct but for us.

“Ah, but could we once get a start, I am sure that when all were true cos-ata-lo there would have been evolved at last the true dominant race before which all the world would be forced to bow.”

Ajor always spoke of the world as though nothing existed beyond Caspak. She could not seem to grasp the truth of my origin or the fact that there were countless other peoples outside her stern barrier-cliffs. She apparently felt that I came from an entirely different world. Where it was and how I came to Caspak from it were matters quite beyond her with which she refused to trouble her pretty head.

“Well,” she continued, “and so I ran away to hide, intending to pass the cliffs to the south of Galu and find a retreat in the Kro-lu country. It would be dangerous, but there seemed no other way.

“The third night I took refuge in a large cave in the cliffs at the edge of my own country; upon the following day I would cross over into the Kro-lu country, where I felt that I should be reasonably safe from the Wieroo, though menaced by countless other dangers. However, to a cos-ata-lo any fate is preferable to that of falling into the clutches of the frightful Wieroo, from whose land none returns.

“I had been sleeping peacefully for several hours when I was awakened by a slight noise within the cavern. The moon was shining brightly, illumining the entrance, against which I saw silhouetted the dread figure of a Wieroo. There was no escape. The cave was shallow, the entrance narrow. I lay very still, hoping against hope, that the creature had but paused here to rest and might soon depart without discovering me; yet all the while I knew that he came seeking me.

“I waited, scarce breathing, watching the thing creep stealthily toward me, its great eyes luminous in the darkness of the cave’s interior, and at last I knew that those eyes were directed upon me, for the Wieroo can see in the darkness better than even the lion or the tiger. But a few feet separated us when I sprang to my feet and dashed madly toward my menacer in a vain effort to dodge past him and reach the outside world. It was madness of course, for even had I succeeded temporarily, the Wieroo would have but followed and swooped down upon me from above. As it was, he reached forth and seized me, and though I struggled, he overpowered me. In the duel his long, white robe was nearly torn from him, and he became very angry, so that he trembled and beat his wings together in his rage.

“He asked me my name; but I would not answer him, and that angered him still more. At last he dragged me to the entrance of the cave, lifted me in his arms, spread his great wings and leaping into the air, flapped dismally through the night. I saw the moonlit landscape sliding away beneath me, and then we were out above the sea and on our way to Oo-oh, the country of the Wieroo.

“The dim outlines of Oo-oh were unfolding below us when there came from above a loud whirring of giant wings. The Wieroo and I glanced up simultaneously, to see a pair of huge jo-oos” (flying reptiles—pterodactyls) “swooping down upon us. The Wieroo wheeled and dropped almost to sea-level, and then raced southward in an effort to outdistance our pursuers. The great creatures, notwithstanding their enormous weight, are swift on their wings; but the Wieroo are swifter. Even with my added weight, the creature that bore me maintained his lead, though he could not increase it. Faster than the fastest wind we raced through the night, southward along the coast. Sometimes we rose to great heights, where the air was chill and the world below but a blur of dim outlines; but always the jo-oos stuck behind us.

“I knew that we had covered a great distance, for the rush of the wind by my face attested the speed of our progress, but I had no idea where we were when at last I realized that the Wieroo was weakening. One of the jo-oos gained on us and succeeded in heading us, so that my captor had to turn in toward the coast. Further and further they forced him to the left; lower and lower he sank. More labored was his breathing, and weaker the stroke of his once powerful wings. We were not ten feet above the ground when they overtook us, and at the edge of a forest. One of them seized the Wieroo by his right wing, and in an effort to free himself, he loosed his grasp upon me, dropping me to earth. Like a frightened ecca I leaped to my feet and raced for the sheltering sanctuary of the forest, where I knew neither could follow or seize me. Then I turned and looked back to see two great reptiles tear my abductor asunder and devour him on the spot.

“I was saved; yet I felt that I was lost. How far I was from the country of the Galus I could not guess; nor did it seem probable that I ever could make my way in safety to my native land.

“Day was breaking; soon the carnivora would stalk forth for their first kill; I was armed only with my knife. About me was a strange landscape—the flowers, the trees, the grasses, even, were different from those of my northern world, and presently there appeared before me a creature fully as hideous as the Wieroo—a hairy manthing that barely walked erect. I shuddered, and then I fled. Through the hideous dangers that my forebears had endured in the earlier stages of their human evolution I fled; and always pursuing was the hairy monster that had discovered me. Later he was joined by others of his kind. They were the speechless men, the Alus, from whom you rescued me, my Tom. From then on, you know the story of my adventures, and from the first, I would endure them all again because they led me to you!”

It was very nice of her to say that, and I appreciated it. I felt that she was a mighty nice little girl whose friendship anyone might be glad to have; but I wished that when she touched me, those peculiar thrills would not run through me. It was most discomforting, because it reminded me of love; and I knew that I never could love this half-baked little barbarian. I was very much interested in her account of the Wieroo, which up to this time I had considered a purely mythological creature; but Ajor shuddered so at even the veriest mention of the name that I was loath to press the subject upon her, and so the Wieroo still remained a mystery to me.

While the Wieroo interested me greatly, I had little time to think about them, as our waking hours were filled with the necessities of existence—the constant battle for survival which is the chief occupation of Caspakians. To-mar and So-al were now about fitted for their advent into Kro-lu society and must therefore leave us, as we could not accompany them without incurring great danger ourselves and running the chance of endangering them; but each swore to be always our friend and assured us that should we need their aid at any time we had but to ask it; nor could I doubt their sincerity, since we had been so instrumental in bringing them safely upon their journey toward the Kro-lu village.

This was our last day together. In the afternoon we should separate, To-mar and So-al going directly to the Kro-lu village, while Ajor and I made a detour to avoid a conflict with the archers. The former both showed evidence of nervous apprehension as the time approached for them to make their entry into the village of their new people, and yet both were very proud and happy. They told us that they would be well received as additions to a tribe always are welcomed, and the more so as the distance from the beginning increased, the higher tribes or races being far weaker numerically than the lower. The southern end of the island fairly swarms with the Ho-lu, or apes; next above these are the Alus, who are slightly fewer in number than the Ho-lu; and again there are fewer Bo-lu than Alus, and fewer Sto-lu than Bo-lu. Thus it goes until the Kro-lu are fewer in number than any of the others; and here the law reverses, for the Galus outnumber the Kro-lu. As Ajor explained it to me, the reason for this is that as evolution practically ceases with the Galus, there is no less among them on this score, for even the cos-ata-lo are still considered Galus and remain with them. And Galus come up both from the west and east coasts. There are, too, fewer carnivorous reptiles at the north end of the island, and not so many of the great and ferocious members of the cat family as take their hideous toll of life among the races further south.

By now I was obtaining some idea of the Caspakian scheme of evolution, which partly accounted for the lack of young among the races I had so far seen. Coming up from the beginning, the Caspakian passes, during a single existence, through the various stages of evolution, or at least many of them, through which the human race has passed during the countless ages since life first stirred upon a new world; but the question which continued to puzzle me was: What creates life at the beginning, cor sva jo?

I had noticed that as we traveled northward from the Alus’ country the land had gradually risen until we were now several hundred feet above the level of the inland sea. Ajor told me that the Galus country was still higher and considerably colder, which accounted for the scarcity of reptiles. The change in form and kinds of the lower animals was even more marked than the evolutionary stages of man. The diminutive ecca, or small horse, became a rough-coated and sturdy little pony in the Kro-lu country. I saw a greater number of small lions and tigers, though many of the huge ones still persisted, while the woolly mammoth was more in evidence, as were several varieties of the Labyrinthadonta. These creatures, from which God save me, I should have expected to find further south; but for some unaccountable reason they gain their greatest bulk in the Kro-lu and Galu countries, though fortunately they are rare. I rather imagine that they are a very early life which is rapidly nearing extinction in Caspak, though wherever they are found, they constitute a menace to all forms of life.

It was mid-afternoon when To-mar and So-al bade us good-bye. We were not far from Kro-lu village; in fact, we had approached it much closer than we had intended, and now Ajor and I were to make a detour toward the sea while our companions went directly in search of the Kro-lu chief.

Ajor and I had gone perhaps a mile or two and were just about to emerge from a dense wood when I saw that ahead of us which caused me to draw back into concealment, at the same time pushing Ajor behind me. What I saw was a party of Band-lu warriors—large, fierce-appearing men. From the direction of their march I saw that they were returning to their caves, and that if we remained where we were, they would pass without discovering us.

Presently Ajor nudged me. “They have a prisoner,” she whispered. “He is a Kro-lu.”

And then I saw him, the first fully developed Kro-lu I had seen. He was a fine-looking savage, tall and straight with a regal carriage. To-mar was a handsome fellow; but this Kro-lu showed plainly in his every physical attribute a higher plane of evolution. While To-mar was just entering the Kro-lu sphere, this man, it seemed to me, must be close indeed to the next stage of his development, which would see him an envied Galu.

“They will kill him?” I whispered to Ajor.

“The dance of death,” she replied, and I shuddered, so recently had I escaped the same fate. It seemed cruel that one who must have passed safely up through all the frightful stages of human evolution within Caspak, should die at the very foot of his goal. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and took careful aim at one of the Band-lu. If I hit him, I would hit two, for another was directly behind the first.

Ajor touched my arm. “What would you do?” she asked. “They are all our enemies.”

“I am going to save him from the dance of death,” I replied, “enemy or no enemy,” and I squeezed the trigger. At the report, the two Band-lu lunged forward upon their faces. I handed my rifle to Ajor, and drawing my pistol, stepped out in full view of the startled party. The Band-lu did not run away as had some of the lower orders of Caspakians at the sound of the rifle. Instead, the moment they saw me, they let out a series of demoniac war-cries, and raising their spears above their heads, charged me.

The Kro-lu stood silent and statuesque, watching the proceedings. He made no attempt to escape, though his feet were not bound and none of the warriors remained to guard him. There were ten of the Band-lu coming for me. I dropped three of them with my pistol as rapidly as a man might count by three, and then my rifle spoke close to my left shoulder, and another of them stumbled and rolled over and over upon the ground. Plucky little Ajor! She had never fired a shot before in all her life, though I had taught her to sight and aim and how to squeeze the trigger instead of pulling it. She had practiced these new accomplishments often, but little had I thought they would make a marksman of her so quickly.

With six of their fellows put out of the fight so easily, the remaining six sought cover behind some low bushes and commenced a council of war. I wished that they would go away, as I had no ammunition to waste, and I was fearful that should they institute another charge, some of them would reach us, for they were already quite close. Suddenly one of them rose and launched his spear. It was the most marvelous exhibition of speed I have ever witnessed. It seemed to me that he had scarce gained an upright position when the weapon was half-way upon its journey, speeding like an arrow toward Ajor. And then it was, with that little life in danger, that I made the best shot I have ever made in my life! I took no conscious aim; it was as though my subconscious mind, impelled by a stronger power even than that of self-preservation, directed my hand. Ajor was in danger! Simultaneously with the thought my pistol flew to position, a streak of incandescent powder marked the path of the bullet from its muzzle; and the spear, its point shattered, was deflected from its path. With a howl of dismay the six Band-lu rose from their shelter and raced away toward the south.

I turned toward Ajor. She was very white and wide-eyed, for the clutching fingers of death had all but seized her; but a little smile came to her lips and an expression of great pride to her eyes. “My Tom!” she said, and took my hand in hers. That was all—“My Tom!” and a pressure of the hand. Her Tom! Something stirred within my bosom. Was it exaltation or was it consternation? Impossible! I turned away almost brusquely.

“Come!” I said, and strode off toward the Kro-lu prisoner.

The Kro-lu stood watching us with stolid indifference. I presume that he expected to be killed; but if he did, he showed no outward sign of fear. His eyes, indicating his greatest interest, were fixed upon my pistol or the rifle which Ajor still carried. I cut his bonds with my knife. As I did so, an expression of surprise tinged and animated the haughty reserve of his countenance. He eyed me quizzically.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked.

“You are free,” I replied. “Go home, if you wish.”

“Why don’t you kill me?” he inquired. “I am defenseless.”

“Why should I kill you? I have risked my life and that of this young lady to save your life. Why, therefore should I now take it?” Of course, I didn’t say “young lady” as there is no Caspakian equivalent for that term; but I have to allow myself considerable latitude in the translation of Caspakian conversations. To speak always of a beautiful young girl as a “she” may be literal; but it seems far from gallant.

The Kro-lu concentrated his steady, level gaze upon me for at least a full minute. Then he spoke again.

“Who are you, man of strange skins?” he asked. “Your she is Galu; but you are neither Galu nor Kro-lu nor Band-lu, nor any other sort of man which I have seen before. Tell me from whence comes so mighty a warrior and so generous a foe.”

“It is a long story,” I replied, “but suffice it to say that I am not of Caspak. I am a stranger here, and—let this sink in—I am not a foe. I have no wish to be an enemy of any man in Caspak, with the possible exception of the Galu warrior Du-seen.”

“Du-seen!” he exclaimed. “You are an enemy of Du-seen? And why?”

“Because he would harm Ajor,” I replied. “You know him?”

“He cannot know him,” said Ajor. “Du-seen rose from the Kro-lu long ago, taking a new name, as all do when they enter a new sphere. He cannot know him, as there is no intercourse between the Kro-lu and the Galu.”

The warrior smiled. “Du-seen rose not so long ago,” he said, “that I do not recall him well, and recently he has taken it upon himself to abrogate the ancient laws of Caspak; he had had intercourse with the Kro-lu. Du-seen would be chief of the Galus, and he has come to the Kro-lu for help.”

Ajor was aghast. The thing was incredible. Never had Kro-lu and Galu had friendly relations; by the savage laws of Caspak they were deadly enemies, for only so can the several races maintain their individuality.

“Will the Kro-lu join him?” asked Ajor. “Will they invade the country of Jor my father?”

“The younger Kro-lu favor the plan,” replied the warrior, “since they believe they will thus become Galus immediately. They hope to span the long years of change through which they must pass in the ordinary course of events and at a single stride become Galus. We of the older Kro-lu tell them that though they occupy the land of the Galu and wear the skins and ornaments of the golden people, still they will not be Galus till the time arrives that they are ripe to rise. We also tell them that even then they will never become a true Galu race, since there will still be those among them who can never rise. It is all right to raid the Galu country occasionally for plunder, as our people do; but to attempt to conquer it and hold it is madness. For my part, I have been content to wait until the call came to me. I feel that it cannot now be long.”

“What is your name?” asked Ajor.

“Chal-az,” replied the man.

“You are chief of the Kro-lu?” Ajor continued.

“No, it is Al-tan who is chief of the Kro-lu of the east,” answered Chal-az.

“And he is against this plan to invade my father’s country?”

“Unfortunately he is rather in favor of it,” replied the man, “since he has about come to the conclusion that he is batu. He has been chief ever since, before I came up from the Band-lu, and I can see no change in him in all those years. In fact, he still appears to be more Band-lu than Kro-lu. However, he is a good chief and a mighty warrior, and if Du-seen persuades him to his cause, the Galus may find themselves under a Kro-lu chieftain before long—Du-seen as well as the others, for Al-tan would never consent to occupy a subordinate position, and once he plants a victorious foot in Galu, he will not withdraw it without a struggle.”

I asked them what batu meant, as I had not before heard the word. Literally translated, it is equivalent to through, finished, done-for, as applied to an individual’s evolutionary progress in Caspak, and with this information was developed the interesting fact that not every individual is capable of rising through every stage to that of Galu. Some never progress beyond the Alu stage; others stop as Bo-lu, as Sto-lu, as Band-lu or as Kro-lu. The Ho-lu of the first generation may rise to become Alus; the Alus of the second generation may become Bo-lu, while it requires three generations of Bo-lu to become Band-lu, and so on until Kro-lu’s parent on one side must be of the sixth generation.

It was not entirely plain to me even with this explanation, since I couldn’t understand how there could be different generations of peoples who apparently had no offspring. Yet I was commencing to get a slight glimmer of the strange laws which govern propagation and evolution in this weird land. Already I knew that the warm pools which always lie close to every tribal abiding-place were closely linked with the Caspakian scheme of evolution, and that the daily immersion of the females in the greenish slimy water was in response to some natural law, since neither pleasure nor cleanliness could be derived from what seemed almost a religious rite. Yet I was still at sea; nor, seemingly, could Ajor enlighten me, since she was compelled to use words which I could not understand and which it was impossible for her to explain the meanings of.

As we stood talking, we were suddenly startled by a commotion in the bushes and among the boles of the trees surrounding us, and simultaneously a hundred Kro-lu warriors appeared in a rough circle about us. They greeted Chal-az with a volley of questions as they approached slowly from all sides, their heavy bows fitted with long, sharp arrows. Upon Ajor and me they looked with covetousness in the one instance and suspicion in the other; but after they had heard Chal-az’s story, their attitude was more friendly. A huge savage did all the talking. He was a mountain of a man, yet perfectly proportioned.

“This is Al-tan the chief,” said Chal-az by way of introduction. Then he told something of my story, and Al-tan asked me many questions of the land from which I came. The warriors crowded around close to hear my replies, and there were many expressions of incredulity as I spoke of what was to them another world, of the yacht which had brought me over vast waters, and of the plane that had borne me Jo-oo-like over the summit of the barrier-cliffs. It was the mention of the hydroaeroplane which precipitated the first outspoken skepticism, and then Ajor came to my defense.

“I saw it with my own eyes!” she exclaimed. “I saw him flying through the air in battle with a Jo-oo. The Alus were chasing me, and they saw and ran away.”

“Whose is this she?” demanded Al-tan suddenly, his eyes fixed fiercely upon Ajor.

For a moment there was silence. Ajor looked up at me, a hurt and questioning expression on her face. “Whose she is this?” repeated Al-tan.

“She is mine,” I replied, though what force it was that impelled me to say it I could not have told; but an instant later I was glad that I had spoken the words, for the reward of Ajor’s proud and happy face was reward indeed.

Al-tan eyed her for several minutes and then turned to me. “Can you keep her?” he asked, just the tinge of a sneer upon his face.

I laid my palm upon the grip of my pistol and answered that I could. He saw the move, glanced at the butt of the automatic where it protruded from its holster, and smiled. Then he turned and raising his great bow, fitted an arrow and drew the shaft far back. His warriors, supercilious smiles upon their faces, stood silently watching him. His bow was the longest and the heaviest among them all. A mighty man indeed must he be to bend it; yet Al-tan drew the shaft back until the stone point touched his left forefinger, and he did it with consummate ease. Then he raised the shaft to the level of his right eye, held it there for an instant and released it. When the arrow stopped, half its length protruded from the opposite side of a six-inch tree fifty feet away. Al-tan and his warriors turned toward me with expressions of immense satisfaction upon their faces, and then, apparently for Ajor’s benefit, the chieftain swaggered to and fro a couple of times, swinging his great arms and his bulky shoulders for all the world like a drunken prize-fighter at a beach dancehall.

I saw that some reply was necessary, and so in a single motion, I drew my gun, dropped it on the still quivering arrow and pulled the trigger. At the sound of the report, the Kro-lu leaped back and raised their weapons; but as I was smiling, they took heart and lowered them again, following my eyes to the tree; the shaft of their chief was gone, and through the bole was a little round hole marking the path of my bullet. It was a good shot if I do say it myself, “as shouldn’t” but necessity must have guided that bullet; I simply had to make a good shot, that I might immediately establish my position among those savage and warlike Caspakians of the sixth sphere. That it had its effect was immediately noticeable, but I am none too sure that it helped my cause with Al-tan. Whereas he might have condescended to tolerate me as a harmless and interesting curiosity, he now, by the change in his expression, appeared to consider me in a new and unfavorable light. Nor can I wonder, knowing this type as I did, for had I not made him ridiculous in the eyes of his warriors, beating him at his own game? What king, savage or civilized, could condone such impudence? Seeing his black scowls, I deemed it expedient, especially on Ajor’s account, to terminate the interview and continue upon our way; but when I would have done so, Al-tan detained us with a gesture, and his warriors pressed around us.

“What is the meaning of this?” I demanded, and before Al-tan could reply, Chal-az raised his voice in our behalf.

“Is this the gratitude of a Kro-lu chieftain, Al-tan,” he asked, “to one who has served you by saving one of your warriors from the enemy—saving him from the death dance of the Band-lu?”

Al-tan was silent for a moment, and then his brow cleared, and the faint imitation of a pleasant expression struggled for existence as he said: “The stranger will not be harmed. I wished only to detain him that he may be feasted tonight in the village of Al-tan the Kro-lu. In the morning he may go his way. Al-tan will not hinder him.”

I was not entirely reassured; but I wanted to see the interior of the Kro-lu village, and anyway I knew that if Al-tan intended treachery I would be no more in his power in the morning than I now was—in fact, during the night I might find opportunity to escape with Ajor, while at the instant neither of us could hope to escape unscathed from the encircling warriors. Therefore, in order to disarm him of any thought that I might entertain suspicion as to his sincerity, I promptly and courteously accepted his invitation. His satisfaction was evident, and as we set off toward his village, he walked beside me, asking many questions as to the country from which I came, its peoples and their customs. He seemed much mystified by the fact that we could walk abroad by day or night without fear of being devoured by wild beasts or savage reptiles, and when I told him of the great armies which we maintained, his simple mind could not grasp the fact that they existed solely for the slaughtering of human beings.

“I am glad,” he said, “that I do not dwell in your country among such savage peoples. Here, in Caspak, men fight with men when they meet—men of different races—but their weapons are first for the slaying of beasts in the chase and in defense. We do not fashion weapons solely for the killing of man as do your peoples. Your country must indeed be a savage country, from which you are fortunate to have escaped to the peace and security of Caspak.”

Here was a new and refreshing viewpoint; nor could I take exception to it after what I had told Al-tan of the great war which had been raging in Europe for over two years before I left home.

On the march to the Kro-lu village we were continually stalked by innumerable beasts of prey, and three times we were attacked by frightful creatures; but Al-tan took it all as a matter of course, rushing forward with raised spear or sending a heavy shaft into the body of the attacker and then returning to our conversation as though no interruption had occurred. Twice were members of his band mauled, and one was killed by a huge and bellicose rhinoceros; but the instant the action was over, it was as though it never had occurred. The dead man was stripped of his belongings and left where he had died; the carnivora would take care of his burial. The trophies that these Kro-lu left to the meat-eaters would have turned an English big-game hunter green with envy. They did, it is true, cut all the edible parts from the rhino and carry them home; but already they were pretty well weighted down with the spoils of the chase, and only the fact that they are particularly fond of rhino-meat caused them to do so.

They left the hide on the pieces they selected, as they use it for sandals, shield-covers, the hilts of their knives and various other purposes where tough hide is desirable. I was much interested in their shields, especially after I saw one used in defense against the attack of a saber-tooth tiger. The huge creature had charged us without warning from a clump of dense bushes where it was lying up after eating. It was met with an avalanche of spears, some of which passed entirely through its body, with such force were they hurled. The charge was from a very short distance, requiring the use of the spear rather than the bow and arrow; but after the launching of the spears, the men not directly in the path of the charge sent bolt after bolt into the great carcass with almost incredible rapidity. The beast, screaming with pain and rage, bore down upon Chal-az while I stood helpless with my rifle for fear of hitting one of the warriors who were closing in upon it. But Chal-az was ready. Throwing aside his bow, he crouched behind his large oval shield, in the center of which was a hole about six inches in diameter. The shield was held by tight loops to his left arm, while in his right hand he grasped his heavy knife. Bristling with spears and arrows, the great cat hurled itself upon the shield, and down went Chal-az upon his back with the shield entirely covering him. The tiger clawed and bit at the heavy rhinoceros hide with which the shield was faced, while Chal-az, through the round hole in the shield’s center, plunged his blade repeatedly into the vitals of the savage animal. Doubtless the battle would have gone to Chal-az even though I had not interfered; but the moment that I saw a clean opening, with no Kro-lu beyond, I raised my rifle and killed the beast.

When Chal-az arose, he glanced at the sky and remarked that it looked like rain. The others already had resumed the march toward the village. The incident was closed. For some unaccountable reason the whole thing reminded me of a friend who once shot a cat in his backyard. For three weeks he talked of nothing else.

It was almost dark when we reached the village—a large palisaded enclosure of several hundred leaf-thatched huts set in groups of from two to seven. The huts were hexagonal in form, and where grouped were joined so that they resembled the cells of a bee-hive. One hut meant a warrior and his mate, and each additional hut in a group indicated an additional female. The palisade which surrounded the village was of logs set close together and woven into a solid wall with tough creepers which were planted at their base and trained to weave in and out to bind the logs together. The logs slanted outward at an angle of about thirty degrees, in which position they were held by shorter logs embedded in the ground at right angles to them and with their upper ends supporting the longer pieces a trifle above their centers of equilibrium. Along the top of the palisade sharpened stakes had been driven at all sorts of angles.

The only opening into the inclosure was through a small aperture three feet wide and three feet high, which was closed from the inside by logs about six feet long laid horizontally, one upon another, between the inside face of the palisade and two other braced logs which paralleled the face of the wall upon the inside.

As we entered the village, we were greeted by a not unfriendly crowd of curious warriors and women, to whom Chal-az generously explained the service we had rendered him, whereupon they showered us with the most well-meant attentions, for Chal-az, it seemed, was a most popular member of the tribe. Necklaces of lion- and tiger-teeth, bits of dried meat, finely tanned hides and earthen pots, beautifully decorated, they thrust upon us until we were loaded down, and all the while Al-tan glared balefully upon us, seemingly jealous of the attentions heaped upon us because we had served Chal-az.

At last we reached a hut that they set apart for us, and there we cooked our meat and some vegetables the women brought us, and had milk from cows—the first I had had in Caspak—and cheese from the milk of wild goats, with honey and thin bread made from wheat flour of their own grinding, and grapes and the fermented juice of grapes. It was quite the most wonderful meal I had eaten since I quit the Toreador and Bowen J. Tyler’s colored chef, who could make pork-chops taste like chicken, and chicken taste like heaven.

CHAPTER 6

After dinner I rolled a cigaret and stretched myself at ease upon a pile of furs before the doorway, with Ajor’s head pillowed in my lap and a feeling of great content pervading me. It was the first time since my plane had topped the barrier-cliffs of Caspak that I had felt any sense of peace or security. My hand wandered to the velvet cheek of the girl I had claimed as mine, and to her luxuriant hair and the golden fillet which bound it close to her shapely head. Her slender fingers groping upward sought mine and drew them to her lips, and then I gathered her in my arms and crushed her to me, smothering her mouth with a long, long kiss. It was the first time that passion had tinged my intercourse with Ajor. We were alone, and the hut was ours until morning.

But now from beyond the palisade in the direction of the main gate came the hallooing of men and the answering calls and queries of the guard. We listened. Returning hunters, no doubt. We heard them enter the village amidst the barking dogs. I have forgotten to mention the dogs of Kro-lu. The village swarmed with them, gaunt, wolflike creatures that guarded the herd by day when it grazed without the palisade, ten dogs to a cow. By night the cows were herded in an outer inclosure roofed against the onslaughts of the carnivorous cats; and the dogs, with the exception of a few, were brought into the village; these few well-tested brutes remained with the herd. During the day they fed plentifully upon the beasts of prey which they killed in protection of the herd, so that their keep amounted to nothing at all.

Shortly after the commotion at the gate had subsided, Ajor and I arose to enter the hut, and at the same time a warrior appeared from one of the twisted alleys which, lying between the irregularly placed huts and groups of huts, form the streets of the Kro-lu village. The fellow halted before us and addressed me, saying that Al-tan desired my presence at his hut. The wording of the invitation and the manner of the messenger threw me entirely off my guard, so cordial was the one and respectful the other, and the result was that I went willingly, telling Ajor that I would return presently. I had laid my arms and ammunition aside as soon as we had taken over the hut, and I left them with Ajor now, as I had noticed that aside from their hunting-knives the men of Kro-lu bore no weapons about the village streets. There was an atmosphere of peace and security within that village that I had not hoped to experience within Caspak, and after what I had passed through, it must have cast a numbing spell over my faculties of judgment and reason. I had eaten of the lotus-flower of safety; dangers no longer threatened for they had ceased to be.

The messenger led me through the labyrinthine alleys to an open plaza near the center of the village. At one end of this plaza was a long hut, much the largest that I had yet seen, before the door of which were many warriors. I could see that the interior was lighted and that a great number of men were gathered within. The dogs about the plaza were as thick as fleas, and those I approached closely evinced a strong desire to devour me, their noses evidently apprising them of the fact that I was of an alien race, since they paid no attention whatever to my companion. Once inside the council-hut, for such it appeared to be, I found a large concourse of warriors seated, or rather squatted, around the floor. At one end of the oval space which the warriors left down the center of the room stood Al-tan and another warrior whom I immediately recognized as a Galu, and then I saw that there were many Galus present. About the walls were a number of flaming torches stuck in holes in a clay plaster which evidently served the purpose of preventing the inflammable wood and grasses of which the hut was composed from being ignited by the flames. Lying about among the warriors or wandering restlessly to and fro were a number of savage dogs.

The warriors eyed me curiously as I entered, especially the Galus, and then I was conducted into the center of the group and led forward toward Al-tan. As I advanced I felt one of the dogs sniffing at my heels, and of a sudden a great brute leaped upon my back. As I turned to thrust it aside before its fangs found a hold upon me, I beheld a huge Airedale leaping frantically about me. The grinning jaws, the half-closed eyes, the back-laid ears spoke to me louder than might the words of man that here was no savage enemy but a joyous friend, and then I recognized him, and fell to one knee and put my arms about his neck while he whined and cried with joy. It was Nobs, dear old Nobs. Bowen Tyler’s Nobs, who had loved me next to his master.

“Where is the master of this dog?” I asked, turning toward Al-tan.

The chieftain inclined his head toward the Galu standing at his side. “He belongs to Du-seen the Galu,” he replied.

“He belongs to Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., of Santa Monica,” I retorted, “and I want to know where his master is.”

The Galu shrugged. “The dog is mine,” he said. “He came to me cor-sva-jo, and he is unlike any dog in Caspak, being kind and docile and yet a killer when aroused. I would not part with him. I do not know the man of whom you speak.”

So this was Du-seen! This was the man from whom Ajor had fled. I wondered if he knew that she was here. I wondered if they had sent for me because of her; but after they had commenced to question me, my mind was relieved; they did not mention Ajor. Their interest seemed centered upon the strange world from which I had come, my journey to Caspak and my intentions now that I had arrived. I answered them frankly as I had nothing to conceal and assured them that my only wish was to find my friends and return to my own country. In the Galu Du-seen and his warriors I saw something of the explanation of the term “golden race” which is applied to them, for their ornaments and weapons were either wholly of beaten gold or heavily decorated with the precious metal. They were a very imposing set of men—tall and straight and handsome. About their heads were bands of gold like that which Ajor wore, and from their left shoulders depended the leopard-tails of the Galus. In addition to the deer-skin tunic which constituted the major portion of their apparel, each carried a light blanket of barbaric yet beautiful design—the first evidence of weaving I had seen in Caspak. Ajor had had no blanket, having lost it during her flight from the attentions of Du-seen; nor was she so heavily incrusted with gold as these male members of her tribe.

The audience must have lasted fully an hour when Al-tan signified that I might return to my hut. All the time Nobs had lain quietly at my feet; but the instant that I turned to leave, he was up and after me. Du-seen called to him; but the terrier never even so much as looked in his direction. I had almost reached the doorway leading from the council-hall when Al-tan rose and called after me. “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop, stranger! The beast of Du-seen the Galu follows you.”

“The dog is not Du-seen’s,” I replied. “He belongs to my friend, as I told you, and he prefers to stay with me until his master is found.” And I turned again to resume my way. I had taken but a few steps when I heard a commotion behind me, and at the same moment a man leaned close and whispered “Kazar!” close to my ear—kazar, the Caspakian equivalent of beware. It was To-mar. As he spoke, he turned quickly away as though loath to have others see that he knew me, and at the same instant I wheeled to discover Du-seen striding rapidly after me. Al-tan followed him, and it was evident that both were angry.

Du-seen, a weapon half drawn, approached truculently. “The beast is mine,” he reiterated. “Would you steal him?”

“He is not yours nor mine,” I replied, “and I am not stealing him. If he wishes to follow you, he may; I will not interfere; but if he wishes to follow me, he shall; nor shall you prevent.” I turned to Al-tan. “Is not that fair?” I demanded. “Let the dog choose his master.”

Du-seen, without waiting for Al-tan’s reply, reached for Nobs and grasped him by the scruff of the neck. I did not interfere, for I guessed what would happen; and it did. With a savage growl Nobs turned like lightning upon the Galu, wrenched loose from his hold and leaped for his throat. The man stepped back and warded off the first attack with a heavy blow of his fist, immediately drawing his knife with which to meet the Airedale’s return. And Nobs would have returned, all right, had not I spoken to him. In a low voice I called him to heel. For just an instant he hesitated, standing there trembling and with bared fangs, glaring at his foe; but he was well trained and had been out with me quite as much as he had with Bowen—in fact, I had had most to do with his early training; then he walked slowly and very stiff-legged to his place behind me.

Du-seen, red with rage, would have had it out with the two of us had not Al-tan drawn him to one side and whispered in his ear—upon which, with a grunt, the Galu walked straight back to the opposite end of the hall, while Nobs and I continued upon our way toward the hut and Ajor. As we passed out into the village plaza, I saw Chal-az—we were so close to one another that I could have reached out and touched him—and our eyes met; but though I greeted him pleasantly and paused to speak to him, he brushed past me without a sign of recognition. I was puzzled at his behavior, and then I recalled that To-mar, though he had warned me, had appeared not to wish to seem friendly with me. I could not understand their attitude, and was trying to puzzle out some sort of explanation, when the matter was suddenly driven from my mind by the report of a firearm. Instantly I broke into a run, my brain in a whirl of forebodings, for the only firearms in the Kro-lu country were those I had left in the hut with Ajor.

That she was in danger I could not but fear, as she was now something of an adept in the handling of both the pistol and rifle, a fact which largely eliminated the chance that the shot had come from an accidentally discharged firearm. When I left the hut, I had felt that she and I were safe among friends; no thought of danger was in my mind; but since my audience with Al-tan, the presence and bearing of Du-seen and the strange attitude of both To-mar and Chal-az had each contributed toward arousing my suspicions, and now I ran along the narrow, winding alleys of the Kro-lu village with my heart fairly in my mouth.

I am endowed with an excellent sense of direction, which has been greatly perfected by the years I have spent in the mountains and upon the plains and deserts of my native state, so that it was with little or no difficulty that I found my way back to the hut in which I had left Ajor. As I entered the doorway, I called her name aloud. There was no response. I drew a box of matches from my pocket and struck a light and as the flame flared up, a half-dozen brawny warriors leaped upon me from as many directions; but even in the brief instant that the flare lasted, I saw that Ajor was not within the hut, and that my arms and ammunition had been removed.

As the six men leaped upon me, an angry growl burst from behind them. I had forgotten Nobs. Like a demon of hate he sprang among those Kro-lu fighting-men, tearing, rending, ripping with his long tusks and his mighty jaws. They had me down in an instant, and it goes without saying that the six of them could have kept me there had it not been for Nobs; but while I was struggling to throw them off, Nobs was springing first upon one and then upon another of them until they were so put to it to preserve their hides and their lives from him that they could give me only a small part of their attention. One of them was assiduously attempting to strike me on the head with his stone hatchet; but I caught his arm and at the same time turned over upon my belly, after which it took but an instant to get my feet under me and rise suddenly.

As I did so, I kept a grip upon the man’s arm, carrying it over one shoulder. Then I leaned suddenly forward and hurled my antagonist over my head to a hasty fall at the opposite side of the hut. In the dim light of the interior I saw that Nobs had already accounted for one of the others—one who lay very quiet upon the floor—while the four remaining upon their feet were striking at him with knives and hatchets.

Running to one side of the man I had just put out of the fighting, I seized his hatchet and knife, and in another moment was in the thick of the argument. I was no match for these savage warriors with their own weapons and would soon have gone down to ignominious defeat and death had it not been for Nobs, who alone was a match for the four of them. I never saw any creature so quick upon its feet as was that great Airedale, nor such frightful ferocity as he manifested in his attacks. It was as much the latter as the former which contributed to the undoing of our enemies, who, accustomed though they were to the ferocity of terrible creatures, seemed awed by the sight of this strange beast from another world battling at the side of his equally strange master. Yet they were no cowards, and only by teamwork did Nobs and I overcome them at last. We would rush for a man, simultaneously, and as Nobs leaped for him upon one side, I would strike at his head with the stone hatchet from the other.

As the last man went down, I heard the running of many feet approaching us from the direction of the plaza. To be captured now would mean death; yet I could not attempt to leave the village without first ascertaining the whereabouts of Ajor and releasing her if she were held a captive. That I could escape the village I was not at all sure; but of one thing I was positive; that it would do neither Ajor nor myself any service to remain where I was and be captured; so with Nobs, bloody but happy, following at heel, I turned down the first alley and slunk away in the direction of the northern end of the village.

Friendless and alone, hunted through the dark labyrinths of this savage community, I seldom have felt more helpless than at that moment; yet far transcending any fear which I may have felt for my own safety was my concern for that of Ajor. What fate had befallen her? Where was she, and in whose power? That I should live to learn the answers to these queries I doubted; but that I should face death gladly in the attempt—of that I was certain. And why? With all my concern for the welfare of my friends who had accompanied me to Caprona, and of my best friend of all, Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., I never yet had experienced the almost paralyzing fear for the safety of any other creature which now threw me alternately into a fever of despair and into a cold sweat of apprehension as my mind dwelt upon the fate on one bit of half-savage femininity of whose very existence even I had not dreamed a few short weeks before.

What was this hold she had upon me? Was I bewitched, that my mind refused to function sanely, and that judgment and reason were dethroned by some mad sentiment which I steadfastly refused to believe was love? I had never been in love. I was not in love now—the very thought was preposterous. How could I, Thomas Billings, the right-hand man of the late Bowen J. Tyler, Sr., one of America’s foremost captains of industry and the greatest man in California, be in love with a—a—the word stuck in my throat; yet by my own American standards Ajor could be nothing else; at home, for all her beauty, for all her delicately tinted skin, little Ajor by her apparel, by the habits and customs and manners of her people, by her life, would have been classed a squaw. Tom Billings in love with a squaw! I shuddered at the thought.

And then there came to my mind, in a sudden, brilliant flash upon the screen of recollection the picture of Ajor as I had last seen her, and I lived again the delicious moment in which we had clung to one another, lips smothering lips, as I left her to go to the council hall of Al-tan; and I could have kicked myself for the snob and the cad that my thoughts had proven me—me, who had always prided myself that I was neither the one nor the other!

These things ran through my mind as Nobs and I made our way through the dark village, the voices and footsteps of those who sought us still in our ears. These and many other things, nor could I escape the incontrovertible fact that the little figure round which my recollections and my hopes entwined themselves was that of Ajor—beloved barbarian! My reveries were broken in upon by a hoarse whisper from the black interior of a hut past which we were making our way. My name was called in a low voice, and a man stepped out beside me as I halted with raised knife. It was Chal-az.

“Quick!” he warned. “In here! It is my hut, and they will not search it.”

I hesitated, recalled his attitude of a few minutes before; and as though he had read my thoughts, he said quickly: “I could not speak to you in the plaza without danger of arousing suspicions which would prevent me aiding you later, for word had gone out that Al-tan had turned against you and would destroy you—this was after Du-seen the Galu arrived.”

I followed him into the hut, and with Nobs at our heels we passed through several chambers into a remote and windowless apartment where a small lamp sputtered in its unequal battle with the inky darkness. A hole in the roof permitted the smoke from burning oil egress; yet the atmosphere was far from lucid. Here Chal-az motioned me to a seat upon a furry hide spread upon the earthen floor.

“I am your friend,” he said. “You saved my life; and I am no ingrate as is the batu Al-tan. I will serve you, and there are others here who will serve you against Al-tan and this renegade Galu, Du-seen.”

“But where is Ajor?” I asked, for I cared little for my own safety while she was in danger.

“Ajor is safe, too,” he answered. “We learned the designs of Al-tan and Du-seen. The latter, learning that Ajor was here, demanded her; and Al-tan promised that he should have her; but when the warriors went to get her To-mar went with them. Ajor tried to defend herself. She killed one of the warriors, and then To-mar picked her up in his arms when the others had taken her weapons from her. He told the others to look after the wounded man, who was really already dead, and to seize you upon your return, and that he, To-mar, would bear Ajor to Al-tan; but instead of bearing her to Al-tan, he took her to his own hut, where she now is with So-al, To-mar’s she. It all happened very quickly. To-mar and I were in the council-hut when Du-seen attempted to take the dog from you. I was seeking To-mar for this work. He ran out immediately and accompanied the warriors to your hut while I remained to watch what went on within the council-hut and to aid you if you needed aid. What has happened since you know.”

I thanked him for his loyalty and then asked him to take me to Ajor; but he said that it could not be done, as the village streets were filled with searchers. In fact, we could hear them passing to and fro among the huts, making inquiries, and at last Chal-az thought it best to go to the doorway of his dwelling, which consisted of many huts joined together, lest they enter and search.

Chal-az was absent for a long time—several hours which seemed an eternity to me. All sounds of pursuit had long since ceased, and I was becoming uneasy because of his protracted absence when I heard him returning through the other apartments of his dwelling. He was perturbed when he entered that in which I awaited him, and I saw a worried expression upon his face.

“What is wrong?” I asked. “Have they found Ajor?”

“No,” he replied; “but Ajor has gone. She learned that you had escaped them and was told that you had left the village, believing that she had escaped too. So-al could not detain her. She made her way out over the top of the palisade, armed with only her knife.”

“Then I must go,” I said, rising. Nobs rose and shook himself. He had been dead asleep when I spoke.

“Yes,” agreed Chal-az, “you must go at once. It is almost dawn. Du-seen leaves at daylight to search for her.” He leaned close to my ear and whispered: “There are many to follow and help you. Al-tan has agreed to aid Du-seen against the Galus of Jor; but there are many of us who have combined to rise against Al-tan and prevent this ruthless desecration of the laws and customs of the Kro-lu and of Caspak. We will rise as Luata has ordained that we shall rise, and only thus. No batu may win to the estate of a Galu by treachery and force of arms while Chal-az lives and may wield a heavy blow and a sharp spear with true Kro-lus at his back!”

“I hope that I may live to aid you,” I replied. “If I had my weapons and my ammunition, I could do much. Do you know where they are?”

“No,” he said, “they have disappeared.” And then: “Wait! You cannot go forth half armed, and garbed as you are. You are going into the Galu country, and you must go as a Galu. Come!” And without waiting for a reply, he led me into another apartment, or to be more explicit, another of the several huts which formed his cellular dwelling.

Here was a pile of skins, weapons, and ornaments. “Remove your strange apparel,” said Chal-az, “and I will fit you out as a true Galu. I have slain several of them in the raids of my early days as a Kro-lu, and here are their trappings.”

I saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and as my clothes were by now so ragged as to but half conceal my nakedness, I had no regrets in laying them aside. Stripped to the skin, I donned the red-deerskin tunic, the leopard-tail, the golden fillet, armlets and leg-ornaments of a Galu, with the belt, scabbard and knife, the shield, spear, bow and arrow and the long rope which I learned now for the first time is the distinctive weapon of the Galu warrior. It is a rawhide rope, not dissimilar to those of the Western plains and cow-camps of my youth. The honda is a golden oval and accurate weight for the throwing of the noose. This heavy honda, Chal-az explained, is used as a weapon, being thrown with great force and accuracy at an enemy and then coiled in for another cast. In hunting and in battle, they use both the noose and the honda. If several warriors surround a single foeman or quarry, they rope it with the noose from several sides; but a single warrior against a lone antagonist will attempt to brain his foe with the metal oval.

I could not have been more pleased with any weapon, short of a rifle, which he could have found for me, since I have been adept with the rope from early childhood; but I must confess that I was less favorably inclined toward my apparel. In so far as the sensation was concerned, I might as well have been entirely naked, so short and light was the tunic. When I asked Chal-az for the Caspakian name for rope, he told me ga, and for the first time I understood the derivation of the word Galu, which means ropeman.

Entirely outfitted I would not have known myself, so strange was my garb and my armament. Upon my back were slung my bow, arrows, shield, and short spear; from the center of my girdle depended my knife; at my right hip was my stone hatchet; and at my left hung the coils of my long rope. By reaching my right hand over my left shoulder, I could seize the spear or arrows; my left hand could find my bow over my right shoulder, while a veritable contortionist-act was necessary to place my shield in front of me and upon my left arm. The shield, long and oval, is utilized more as back-armor than as a defense against frontal attack, for the close-set armlets of gold upon the left forearm are principally depended upon to ward off knife, spear, hatchet, or arrow from in front; but against the greater carnivora and the attacks of several human antagonists, the shield is utilized to its best advantage and carried by loops upon the left arm.

Fully equipped, except for a blanket, I followed Chal-az from his domicile into the dark and deserted alleys of Kro-lu. Silently we crept along, Nobs silent at heel, toward the nearest portion of the palisade. Here Chal-az bade me farewell, telling me that he hoped to see me soon among the Galus, as he felt that “the call soon would come” to him. I thanked him for his loyal assistance and promised that whether I reached the Galu country or not, I should always stand ready to repay his kindness to me, and that he could count on me in the revolution against Al-tan.

CHAPTER 7

To run up the inclined surface of the palisade and drop to the ground outside was the work of but a moment, or would have been but for Nobs. I had to put my rope about him after we reached the top, lift him over the sharpened stakes and lower him upon the outside. To find Ajor in the unknown country to the north seemed rather hopeless; yet I could do no less than try, praying in the meanwhile that she would come through unscathed and in safety to her father.

As Nobs and I swung along in the growing light of the coming day, I was impressed by the lessening numbers of savage beasts the farther north I traveled. With the decrease among the carnivora, the herbivora increased in quantity, though anywhere in Caspak they are sufficiently plentiful to furnish ample food for the meateaters of each locality. The wild cattle, antelope, deer, and horses I passed showed changes in evolution from their cousins farther south. The kine were smaller and less shaggy, the horses larger. North of the Kro-lu village I saw a small band of the latter of about the size of those of our old Western plains—such as the Indians bred in former days and to a lesser extent even now. They were fat and sleek, and I looked upon them with covetous eyes and with thoughts that any old cow-puncher may well imagine I might entertain after having hoofed it for weeks; but they were wary, scarce permitting me to approach within bow-and-arrow range, much less within roping-distance; yet I still had hopes which I never discarded.

Twice before noon we were stalked and charged by man-eaters; but even though I was without firearms, I still had ample protection in Nobs, who evidently had learned something of Caspakian hunt rules under the tutelage of Du-seen or some other Galu, and of course a great deal more by experience. He always was on the alert for dangerous foes, invariably warning me by low growls of the approach of a large carnivorous animal long before I could either see or hear it, and then when the thing appeared, he would run snapping at its heels, drawing the charge away from me until I found safety in some tree; yet never did the wily Nobs take an unnecessary chance of a mauling. He would dart in and away so quickly that not even the lightning-like movements of the great cats could reach him. I have seen him tantalize them thus until they fairly screamed in rage.

The greatest inconvenience the hunters caused me was the delay, for they have a nasty habit of keeping one treed for an hour or more if balked in their designs; but at last we came in sight of a line of cliffs running east and west across our path as far as the eye could see in either direction, and I knew that we reached the natural boundary which marks the line between the Kro-lu and Galu countries. The southern face of these cliffs loomed high and forbidding, rising to an altitude of some two hundred feet, sheer and precipitous, without a break that the eye could perceive. How I was to find a crossing I could not guess. Whether to search to the east toward the still loftier barrier-cliffs fronting upon the ocean, or westward in the direction of the inland sea was a question which baffled me. Were there many passes or only one? I had no way of knowing. I could but trust to chance. It never occurred to me that Nobs had made the crossing at least once, possibly a greater number of times, and that he might lead me to the pass; and so it was with no idea of assistance that I appealed to him as a man alone with a dumb brute so often does.

“Nobs,” I said, “how the devil are we going to cross those cliffs?”

I do not say that he understood me, even though I realize that an Airedale is a mighty intelligent dog; but I do swear that he seemed to understand me, for he wheeled about, barking joyously and trotted off toward the west; and when I didn’t follow him, he ran back to me barking furiously, and at last taking hold of the calf of my leg in an effort to pull me along in the direction he wished me to go. Now, as my legs were naked and Nobs’ jaws are much more powerful than he realizes, I gave in and followed him, for I knew that I might as well go west as east, as far as any knowledge I had of the correct direction went.

We followed the base of the cliffs for a considerable distance. The ground was rolling and tree-dotted and covered with grazing animals, alone, in pairs and in herds—a motley aggregation of the modern and extinct herbivora of the world. A huge woolly mastodon stood swaying to and fro in the shade of a giant fern—a mighty bull with enormous upcurving tusks. Near him grazed an aurochs bull with a cow and a calf, close beside a lone rhinoceros asleep in a dust-hole. Deer, antelope, bison, horses, sheep, and goats were all in sight at the same time, and at a little distance a great megatherium reared up on its huge tail and massive hind feet to tear the leaves from a tall tree. The forgotten past rubbed flanks with the present—while Tom Billings, modern of the moderns, passed in the garb of pre-Glacial man, and before him trotted a creature of a breed scarce sixty years old. Nobs was a parvenu; but it failed to worry him.

As we neared the inland sea we saw more flying reptiles and several great amphibians, but none of them attacked us. As we were topping a rise in the middle of the afternoon, I saw something that brought me to a sudden stop. Calling Nobs in a whisper, I cautioned him to silence and kept him at heel while I threw myself flat and watched, from behind a sheltering shrub, a body of warriors approaching the cliff from the south. I could see that they were Galus, and I guessed that Du-seen led them. They had taken a shorter route to the pass and so had overhauled me. I could see them plainly, for they were no great distance away, and saw with relief that Ajor was not with them.

The cliffs before them were broken and ragged, those coming from the east overlapping the cliffs from the west. Into the defile formed by this overlapping the party filed. I could see them climbing upward for a few minutes, and then they disappeared from view. When the last of them had passed from sight, I rose and bent my steps in the direction of the pass—the same pass toward which Nobs had evidently been leading me. I went warily as I approached it, for fear the party might have halted to rest. If they hadn’t halted, I had no fear of being discovered, for I had seen that the Galus marched without point, flankers or rear guard; and when I reached the pass and saw a narrow, one-man trail leading upward at a stiff angle, I wished that I were chief of the Galus for a few weeks. A dozen men could hold off forever in that narrow pass all the hordes which might be brought up from the south; yet there it lay entirely unguarded.

The Galus might be a great people in Caspak; but they were pitifully inefficient in even the simpler forms of military tactics. I was surprised that even a man of the Stone Age should be so lacking in military perspicacity. Du-seen dropped far below par in my estimation as I saw the slovenly formation of his troop as it passed through an enemy country and entered the domain of the chief against whom he had risen in revolt; but Du-seen must have known Jor the chief and known that Jor would not be waiting for him at the pass. Nevertheless he took unwarranted chances. With one squad of a home-guard company I could have conquered Caspak.

Nobs and I followed to the summit of the pass, and there we saw the party defiling into the Galu country, the level of which was not, on an average, over fifty feet below the summit of the cliffs and about a hundred and fifty feet above the adjacent Kro-lu domain. Immediately the landscape changed. The trees, the flowers and the shrubs were of a hardier type, and I realized that at night the Galu blanket might be almost a necessity. Acacia and eucalyptus predominated among the trees; yet there were ash and oak and even pine and fir and hemlock. The tree-life was riotous. The forests were dense and peopled by enormous trees. From the summit of the cliff I could see forests rising hundreds of feet above the level upon which I stood, and even at the distance they were from me I realized that the boles were of gigantic size.

At last I had come to the Galu country. Though not conceived in Caspak, I had indeed come up cor-sva jo—from the beginning I had come up through the hideous horrors of the lower Caspakian spheres of evolution, and I could not but feel something of the elation and pride which had filled To-mar and So-al when they realized that the call had come to them and they were about to rise from the estate of Band-lus to that of Kro-lus. I was glad that I was not batu.

But where was Ajor? Though my eyes searched the wide landscape before me, I saw nothing other than the warriors of Du-seen and the beasts of the fields and the forests. Surrounded by forests, I could see wide plains dotting the country as far as the eye could reach; but nowhere was a sign of a small Galu she—the beloved she whom I would have given my right hand to see.

Nobs and I were hungry; we had not eaten since the preceding night, and below us was game—deer, sheep, anything that a hungry hunter might crave; so down the steep trail we made our way, and then upon my belly with Nobs crouching low behind me, I crawled toward a small herd of red deer feeding at the edge of a plain close beside a forest. There was ample cover, what with solitary trees and dotting bushes so that I found no difficulty in stalking up wind to within fifty feet of my quarry—a large, sleek doe unaccompanied by a fawn. Greatly then did I regret my rifle. Never in my life had I shot an arrow, but I knew how it was done, and fitting the shaft to my string, I aimed carefully and let drive. At the same instant I called to Nobs and leaped to my feet.

The arrow caught the doe full in the side, and in the same moment Nobs was after her. She turned to flee with the two of us pursuing her, Nobs with his great fangs bared and I with my short spear poised for a cast. The balance of the herd sprang quickly away; but the hurt doe lagged, and in a moment Nobs was beside her and had leaped at her throat. He had her down when I came up, and I finished her with my spear. It didn’t take me long to have a fire going and a steak broiling, and while I was preparing for my own feast, Nobs was filling himself with raw venison. Never have I enjoyed a meal so heartily.

For two days I searched fruitlessly back and forth from the inland sea almost to the barrier cliffs for some trace of Ajor, and always I trended northward; but I saw no sign of any human being, not even the band of Galu warriors under Du-seen; and then I commenced to have misgivings. Had Chal-az spoken the truth to me when he said that Ajor had quit the village of the Kro-lu? Might he not have been acting upon the orders of Al-tan, in whose savage bosom might have lurked some small spark of shame that he had attempted to do to death one who had befriended a Kro-lu warrior—a guest who had brought no harm upon the Kro-lu race—and thus have sent me out upon a fruitless mission in the hope that the wild beasts would do what Al-tan hesitated to do? I did not know; but the more I thought upon it, the more convinced I became that Ajor had not quitted the Kro-lu village; but if not, what had brought Du-seen forth without her? There was a puzzler, and once again I was all at sea.

On the second day of my experience of the Galu country I came upon a bunch of as magnificent horses as it has ever been my lot to see. They were dark bays with blazed faces and perfect surcingles of white about their barrels. Their forelegs were white to the knees. In height they stood almost sixteen hands, the mares being a trifle smaller than the stallions, of which there were three or four in this band of a hundred, which comprised many colts and half-grown horses. Their markings were almost identical, indicating a purity of strain that might have persisted since long ages ago. If I had coveted one of the little ponies of the Kro-lu country, imagine my state of mind when I came upon these magnificent creatures! No sooner had I espied them than I determined to possess one of them; nor did it take me long to select a beautiful young stallion—a four-year-old, I guessed him.

The horses were grazing close to the edge of the forest in which Nobs and I were concealed, while the ground between us and them was dotted with clumps of flowering brush which offered perfect concealment. The stallion of my choice grazed with a filly and two yearlings a little apart from the balance of the herd and nearest to the forest and to me. At my whispered “Charge!” Nobs flattened himself to the ground, and I knew that he would not again move until I called him, unless danger threatened me from the rear. Carefully I crept forward toward my unsuspecting quarry, coming undetected to the concealment of a bush not more than twenty feet from him. Here I quietly arranged my noose, spreading it flat and open upon the ground.

To step to one side of the bush and throw directly from the ground, which is the style I am best in, would take but an instant, and in that instant the stallion would doubtless be under way at top speed in the opposite direction. Then he would have to wheel about when I surprised him, and in doing so, he would most certainly rise slightly upon his hind feet and throw up his head, presenting a perfect target for my noose as he pivoted.

Yes, I had it beautifully worked out, and I waited until he should turn in my direction. At last it became evident that he was doing so, when apparently without cause, the filly raised her head, neighed and started off at a trot in the opposite direction, immediately followed, of course, by the colts and my stallion. It looked for a moment as though my last hope was blasted; but presently their fright, if fright it was, passed, and they resumed grazing again a hundred yards farther on. This time there was no bush within fifty feet of them, and I was at a loss as to how to get within safe roping-distance. Anywhere under forty feet I am an excellent roper, at fifty feet I am fair; but over that I knew it would be a matter of luck if I succeeded in getting my noose about that beautiful arched neck.

As I stood debating the question in my mind, I was almost upon the point of making the attempt at the long throw. I had plenty of rope, this Galu weapon being fully sixty feet long. How I wished for the collies from the ranch! At a word they would have circled this little bunch and driven it straight down to me; and then it flashed into my mind that Nobs had run with those collies all one summer, that he had gone down to the pasture with them after the cows every evening and done his part in driving them back to the milking-barn, and had done it intelligently; but Nobs had never done the thing alone, and it had been a year since he had done it at all. However, the chances were more in favor of my foozling the long throw than that Nobs would fall down in his part if I gave him the chance.

Having come to a decision, I had to creep back to Nobs and get him, and then with him at my heels return to a large bush near the four horses. Here we could see directly through the bush, and pointing the animals out to Nobs I whispered: “Fetch ’em, boy!”

In an instant he was gone, circling wide toward the rear of the quarry. They caught sight of him almost immediately and broke into a trot away from him; but when they saw that he was apparently giving them a wide berth they stopped again, though they stood watching him, with high-held heads and quivering nostrils. It was a beautiful sight. And then Nobs turned in behind them and trotted slowly back toward me. He did not bark, nor come rushing down upon them, and when he had come closer to them, he proceeded at a walk. The splendid creatures seemed more curious than fearful, making no effort to escape until Nobs was quite close to them; then they trotted slowly away, but at right angles.

And now the fun and trouble commenced. Nobs, of course, attempted to turn them, and he seemed to have selected the stallion to work upon, for he paid no attention to the others, having intelligence enough to know that a lone dog could run his legs off before he could round up four horses that didn’t wish to be rounded up. The stallion, however, had notions of his own about being headed, and the result was as pretty a race as one would care to see. Gad, how that horse could run! He seemed to flatten out and shoot through the air with the very minimum of exertion, and at his forefoot ran Nobs, doing his best to turn him. He was barking now, and twice he leaped high against the stallion’s flank; but this cost too much effort and always lost him ground, as each time he was hurled heels over head by the impact; yet before they disappeared over a rise in the ground I was sure that Nobs’ persistence was bearing fruit; it seemed to me that the horse was giving way a trifle to the right. Nobs was between him and the main herd, to which the yearling and filly had already fled.

As I stood waiting for Nobs’ return, I could not but speculate upon my chances should I be attacked by some formidable beast. I was some distance from the forest and armed with weapons in the use of which I was quite untrained, though I had practiced some with the spear since leaving the Kro-lu country. I must admit that my thoughts were not pleasant ones, verging almost upon cowardice, until I chanced to think of little Ajor alone in this same land and armed only with a knife! I was immediately filled with shame; but in thinking the matter over since, I have come to the conclusion that my state of mind was influenced largely by my approximate nakedness. If you have never wandered about in broad daylight garbed in a bit of red-deer skin in inadequate length, you can have no conception of the sensation of futility that overwhelms one. Clothes, to a man accustomed to wearing clothes, impart a certain self-confidence; lack of them induces panic.

But no beast attacked me, though I saw several menacing forms passing through the dark aisles of the forest. At last I commenced to worry over Nobs’ protracted absence and to fear that something had befallen him. I was coiling my rope to start out in search of him, when I saw the stallion leap into view at almost the same spot behind which he had disappeared, and at his heels ran Nobs. Neither was running so fast or furiously as when last I had seen them.

The horse, as he approached me, I could see was laboring hard; yet he kept gamely to his task, and Nobs, too. The splendid fellow was driving the quarry straight toward me. I crouched behind my bush and laid my noose in readiness to throw. As the two approached my hiding-place, Nobs reduced his speed, and the stallion, evidently only too glad of the respite, dropped into a trot. It was at this gait that he passed me; my rope-hand flew forward; the honda, well down, held the noose open, and the beautiful bay fairly ran his head into it.

Instantly he wheeled to dash off at right angles. I braced myself with the rope around my hip and brought him to a sudden stand. Rearing and struggling, he fought for his liberty while Nobs, panting and with lolling tongue, came and threw himself down near me. He seemed to know that his work was done and that he had earned his rest. The stallion was pretty well spent, and after a few minutes of struggling he stood with feet far spread, nostrils dilated and eyes wide, watching me as I edged toward him, taking in the slack of the rope as I advanced. A dozen times he reared and tried to break away; but always I spoke soothingly to him and after an hour of effort I succeeded in reaching his head and stroking his muzzle. Then I gathered a handful of grass and offered it to him, and always I talked to him in a quiet and reassuring voice.

I had expected a battle royal; but on the contrary I found his taming a matter of comparative ease. Though wild, he was gentle to a degree, and of such remarkable intelligence that he soon discovered that I had no intention of harming him. After that, all was easy. Before that day was done, I had taught him to lead and to stand while I stroked his head and flanks, and to eat from my hand, and had the satisfaction of seeing the light of fear die in his large, intelligent eyes.

The following day I fashioned a hackamore from a piece which I cut from the end of my long Galu rope, and then I mounted him fully prepared for a struggle of titanic proportions in which I was none too sure that he would not come off victor; but he never made the slightest effort to unseat me, and from then on his education was rapid. No horse ever learned more quickly the meaning of the rein and the pressure of the knees. I think he soon learned to love me, and I know that I loved him; while he and Nobs were the best of pals. I called him Ace. I had a friend who was once in the French flying-corps, and when Ace let himself out, he certainly flew.

I cannot explain to you, nor can you understand, unless you too are a horseman, the exhilarating feeling of well-being which pervaded me from the moment that I commenced riding Ace. I was a new man, imbued with a sense of superiority that led me to feel that I could go forth and conquer all Caspak single-handed. Now, when I needed meat, I ran it down on Ace and roped it, and when some great beast with which we could not cope threatened us, we galloped away to safety; but for the most part the creatures we met looked upon us in terror, for Ace and I in combination presented a new and unusual beast beyond their experience and ken.

For five days I rode back and forth across the southern end of the Galu country without seeing a human being; yet all the time I was working slowly toward the north, for I had determined to comb the territory thoroughly in search of Ajor; but on the fifth day as I emerged from a forest, I saw some distance ahead of me a single small figure pursued by many others. Instantly I recognized the quarry as Ajor. The entire party was fully a mile away from me, and they were crossing my path at right angles, Ajor a few hundred yards in advance of those who followed her. One of her pursuers was far in advance of the others, and was gaining upon her rapidly. With a word and a pressure of the knees I sent Ace leaping out into the open, and with Nobs running close alongside, we raced toward her.

At first none of them saw us; but as we neared Ajor, the pack behind the foremost pursuer discovered us and set up such a howl as I never before have heard. They were all Galus, and I soon recognized the foremost as Du-seen. He was almost upon Ajor now, and with a sense of terror such as I had never before experienced, I saw that he ran with his knife in his hand, and that his intention was to slay rather than capture. I could not understand it, but I could only urge Ace to greater speed, and most nobly did the wondrous creature respond to my demands. If ever a four-footed creature approximated flying, it was Ace that day.

Du-seen, intent upon his brutal design, had as yet not noticed us. He was within a pace of Ajor when Ace and I dashed between them, and I, leaning down to the left, swept my little barbarian into the hollow of an arm and up on the withers of my glorious Ace. We had snatched her from the very clutches of Du-seen, who halted, mystified and raging. Ajor, too, was mystified, as we had come up from diagonally behind her so that she had no idea that we were near until she was swung to Ace’s back. The little savage turned with drawn knife to stab me, thinking that I was some new enemy, when her eyes found my face and she recognized me. With a little sob she threw her arms about my neck, gasping: “My Tom! My Tom!”

And then Ace sank suddenly into thick mud to his belly, and Ajor and I were thrown far over his head. He had run into one of those numerous springs which cover Caspak. Sometimes they are little lakes, again but tiny pools, and often mere quagmires of mud, as was this one overgrown with lush grasses which effectually hid its treacherous identity. It is a wonder that Ace did not break a leg, so fast he was going when he fell; but he didn’t, though with four good legs he was unable to wallow from the mire. Ajor and I had sprawled face down in the covering grasses and so had not sunk deeply; but when we tried to rise, we found that there was not footing, and presently we saw that Du-seen and his followers were coming down upon us. There was no escape. It was evident that we were doomed.

“Slay me!” begged Ajor. “Let me die at thy loved hands rather than beneath the knife of this hateful thing, for he will kill me. He has sworn to kill me. Last night he captured me, and when later he would have his way with me, I struck him with my fists and with my knife I stabbed him, and then I escaped, leaving him raging in pain and thwarted desire. Today they searched for me and found me; and as I fled, Du-seen ran after me crying that he would slay me. Kill me, my Tom, and then fall upon thine own spear, for they will kill you horribly if they take you alive.”

I couldn’t kill her—not at least until the last moment; and I told her so, and that I loved her, and that until death came, I would live and fight for her.

Nobs had followed us into the bog and had done fairly well at first, but when he neared us he too sank to his belly and could only flounder about. We were in this predicament when Du-seen and his followers approached the edge of the horrible swamp. I saw that Al-tan was with him and many other Kro-lu warriors. The alliance against Jor the chief had, therefore, been consummated, and this horde was already marching upon the Galu city. I sighed as I thought how close I had been to saving not only Ajor but her father and his people from defeat and death.

Beyond the swamp was a dense wood. Could we have reached this, we would have been safe; but it might as well have been a hundred miles away as a hundred yards across that hidden lake of sticky mud. Upon the edge of the swamp Du-seen and his horde halted to revile us. They could not reach us with their hands; but at a command from Du-seen they fitted arrows to their bows, and I saw that the end had come. Ajor huddled close to me, and I took her in my arms. “I love you, Tom,” she said, “only you.” Tears came to my eyes then, not tears of self-pity for my predicament, but tears from a heart filled with a great love—a heart that sees the sun of its life and its love setting even as it rises.

The renegade Galus and their Kro-lu allies stood waiting for the word from Du-seen that would launch that barbed avalanche of death upon us, when there broke from the wood beyond the swamp the sweetest music that ever fell upon the ears of man—the sharp staccato of at least two score rifles fired rapidly at will. Down went the Galu and Kro-lu warriors like tenpins before that deadly fusillade.

What could it mean? To me it meant but one thing, and that was that Hollis and Short and the others had scaled the cliffs and made their way north to the Galu country upon the opposite side of the island in time to save Ajor and me from almost certain death. I didn’t have to have an introduction to them to know that the men who held those rifles were the men of my own party; and when, a few minutes later, they came forth from their concealment, my eyes verified my hopes. There they were, every man-jack of them; and with them were a thousand straight, sleek warriors of the Galu race; and ahead of the others came two men in the garb of Galus. Each was tall and straight and wonderfully muscled; yet they differed as Ace might differ from a perfect specimen of another species. As they approached the mire, Ajor held forth her arms and cried, “Jor, my chief! My father!” and the elder of the two rushed in knee-deep to rescue her, and then the other came close and looked into my face, and his eyes went wide, and mine too, and I cried: “Bowen! For heaven’s sake, Bowen Tyler!”

It was he. My search was ended. Around me were all my company and the man we had searched a new world to find. They cut saplings from the forest and laid a road into the swamp before they could get us all out, and then we marched back to the city of Jor the Galu chief, and there was great rejoicing when Ajor came home again mounted upon the glossy back of the stallion Ace.

Tyler and Hollis and Short and all the rest of us Americans nearly worked our jaws loose on the march back to the village, and for days afterward we kept it up. They told me how they had crossed the barrier cliffs in five days, working twenty-four hours a day in three eight-hour shifts with two reliefs to each shift alternating half-hourly. Two men with electric drills driven from the dynamos aboard the Toreador drilled two holes four feet apart in the face of the cliff and in the same horizontal planes. The holes slanted slightly downward. Into these holes the iron rods brought as a part of our equipment and for just this purpose were inserted, extending about a foot beyond the face of the rock, across these two rods a plank was laid, and then the next shift, mounting to the new level, bored two more holes five feet above the new platform, and so on.

During the nights the searchlights from the Toreador were kept playing upon the cliff at the point where the drills were working, and at the rate of ten feet an hour the summit was reached upon the fifth day. Ropes were lowered, blocks lashed to trees at the top, and crude elevators rigged, so that by the night of the fifth day the entire party, with the exception of the few men needed to man the Toreador, were within Caspak with an abundance of arms, ammunition and equipment.

From then on, they fought their way north in search of me, after a vain and perilous effort to enter the hideous reptile-infested country to the south. Owing to the number of guns among them, they had not lost a man; but their path was strewn with the dead creatures they had been forced to slay to win their way to the north end of the island, where they had found Bowen and his bride among the Galus of Jor.

The reunion between Bowen and Nobs was marked by a frantic display upon Nobs’ part, which almost stripped Bowen of the scanty attire that the Galu custom had vouchsafed him. When we arrived at the Galu city, Lys La Rue was waiting to welcome us. She was Mrs. Tyler now, as the master of the Toreador had married them the very day that the search-party had found them, though neither Lys nor Bowen would admit that any civil or religious ceremony could have rendered more sacred the bonds with which God had united them.

Neither Bowen nor the party from the Toreador had seen any sign of Bradley and his party. They had been so long lost now that any hopes for them must be definitely abandoned. The Galus had heard rumors of them, as had the Western Kro-lu and Band-lu; but none had seen aught of them since they had left Fort Dinosaur months since.

We rested in Jor’s village for a fortnight while we prepared for the southward journey to the point where the Toreador was to lie off shore in wait for us. During these two weeks Chal-az came up from the Kro-lu country, now a full-fledged Galu. He told us that the remnants of Al-tan’s party had been slain when they attempted to re-enter Kro-lu. Chal-az had been made chief, and when he rose, had left the tribe under a new leader whom all respected.

Nobs stuck close to Bowen; but Ace and Ajor and I went out upon many long rides through the beautiful north Galu country. Chal-az had brought my arms and ammunition up from Kro-lu with him; but my clothes were gone; nor did I miss them once I became accustomed to the free attire of the Galu.

At last came the time for our departure; upon the following morning we were to set out toward the south and the Toreador and dear old California. I had asked Ajor to go with us; but Jor her father had refused to listen to the suggestion. No pleas could swerve him from his decision: Ajor, the cos-ata-lo, from whom might spring a new and greater Caspakian race, could not be spared. I might have any other she among the Galus; but Ajor—no!

The poor child was heartbroken; and as for me, I was slowly realizing the hold that Ajor had upon my heart and wondered how I should get along without her. As I held her in my arms that last night, I tried to imagine what life would be like without her, for at last there had come to me the realization that I loved her—loved my little barbarian; and as I finally tore myself away and went to my own hut to snatch a few hours’ sleep before we set off upon our long journey on the morrow, I consoled myself with the thought that time would heal the wound and that back in my native land I should find a mate who would be all and more to me than little Ajor could ever be—a woman of my own race and my own culture.

Morning came more quickly than I could have wished. I rose and breakfasted, but saw nothing of Ajor. It was best, I thought, that I go thus without the harrowing pangs of a last farewell. The party formed for the march, an escort of Galu warriors ready to accompany us. I could not even bear to go to Ace’s corral and bid him farewell. The night before, I had given him to Ajor, and now in my mind the two seemed inseparable.

And so we marched away, down the street flanked with its stone houses and out through the wide gateway in the stone wall which surrounds the city and on across the clearing toward the forest through which we must pass to reach the northern boundary of Galu, beyond which we would turn south. At the edge of the forest I cast a backward glance at the city which held my heart, and beside the massive gateway I saw that which brought me to a sudden halt. It was a little figure leaning against one of the great upright posts upon which the gates swing—a crumpled little figure; and even at this distance I could see its shoulders heave to the sobs that racked it. It was the last straw.

Bowen was near me. “Good-bye old man,” I said. “I’m going back.”

He looked at me in surprise. “Good-bye, old man,” he said, and grasped my hand. “I thought you’d do it in the end.”

And then I went back and took Ajor in my arms and kissed the tears from her eyes and a smile to her lips while together we watched the last of the Americans disappear into the forest.

OUT OF TIME’S ABYSS, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Originally published in 1918.

CHAPTER I

This is the tale of Bradley after he left Fort Dinosaur upon the west coast of the great lake that is in the center of the island.

Upon the fourth day of September, 1916, he set out with four companions, Sinclair, Brady, James, and Tippet, to search along the base of the barrier cliffs for a point at which they might be scaled.

Through the heavy Caspakian air, beneath the swollen sun, the five men marched northwest from Fort Dinosaur, now waist-deep in lush, jungle grasses starred with myriad gorgeous blooms, now across open meadow-land and parklike expanses and again plunging into dense forests of eucalyptus and acacia and giant arboreous ferns with feathered fronds waving gently a hundred feet above their heads.

About them upon the ground, among the trees and in the air over them moved and swung and soared the countless forms of Caspak’s teeming life. Always were they menaced by some frightful thing and seldom were their rifles cool, yet even in the brief time they had dwelt upon Caprona they had become callous to danger, so that they swung along laughing and chatting like soldiers on a summer hike.

“This reminds me of South Clark Street,” remarked Brady, who had once served on the traffic squad in Chicago; and as no one asked him why, he volunteered that it was “because it’s no place for an Irishman.”

“South Clark Street and heaven have something in common, then,” suggested Sinclair. James and Tippet laughed, and then a hideous growl broke from a dense thicket ahead and diverted their attention to other matters.

“One of them behemoths of ’Oly Writ,” muttered Tippet as they came to a halt and with guns ready awaited the almost inevitable charge.

“Hungry lot o’ beggars, these,” said Bradley; “always trying to eat everything they see.”

For a moment no further sound came from the thicket. “He may be feeding now,” suggested Bradley. “We’ll try to go around him. Can’t waste ammunition. Won’t last forever. Follow me.” And he set off at right angles to their former course, hoping to avert a charge. They had taken a dozen steps, perhaps, when the thicket moved to the advance of the thing within it, the leafy branches parted, and the hideous head of a gigantic bear emerged.

“Pick your trees,” whispered Bradley. “Can’t waste ammunition.”

The men looked about them. The bear took a couple of steps forward, still growling menacingly. He was exposed to the shoulders now. Tippet took one look at the monster and bolted for the nearest tree; and then the bear charged. He charged straight for Tippet. The other men scattered for the various trees they had selected—all except Bradley. He stood watching Tippet and the bear. The man had a good start and the tree was not far away; but the speed of the enormous creature behind him was something to marvel at, yet Tippet was in a fair way to make his sanctuary when his foot caught in a tangle of roots and down he went, his rifle flying from his hand and falling several yards away. Instantly Bradley’s piece was at his shoulder, there was a sharp report answered by a roar of mingled rage and pain from the carnivore. Tippet attempted to scramble to his feet.

“Lie still!” shouted Bradley. “Can’t waste ammunition.”

The bear halted in its tracks, wheeled toward Bradley and then back again toward Tippet. Again the former’s rifle spit angrily, and the bear turned again in his direction. Bradley shouted loudly. “Come on, you behemoth of Holy Writ!” he cried. “Come on, you duffer! Can’t waste ammunition.” And as he saw the bear apparently upon the verge of deciding to charge him, he encouraged the idea by backing rapidly away, knowing that an angry beast will more often charge one who moves than one who lies still.

And the bear did charge. Like a bolt of lightning he flashed down upon the Englishman. “Now run!” Bradley called to Tippet and himself turned in flight toward a nearby tree. The other men, now safely ensconced upon various branches, watched the race with breathless interest. Would Bradley make it? It seemed scarce possible. And if he didn’t! James gasped at the thought. Six feet at the shoulder stood the frightful mountain of blood-mad flesh and bone and sinew that was bearing down with the speed of an express train upon the seemingly slow-moving man.

It all happened in a few seconds; but they were seconds that seemed like hours to the men who watched. They saw Tippet leap to his feet at Bradley’s shouted warning. They saw him run, stooping to recover his rifle as he passed the spot where it had fallen. They saw him glance back toward Bradley, and then they saw him stop short of the tree that might have given him safety and turn back in the direction of the bear. Firing as he ran, Tippet raced after the great cave bear—the monstrous thing that should have been extinct ages before—ran for it and fired even as the beast was almost upon Bradley. The men in the trees scarcely breathed. It seemed to them such a futile thing for Tippet to do, and Tippet of all men! They had never looked upon Tippet as a coward—there seemed to be no cowards among that strangely assorted company that Fate had gathered together from the four corners of the earth—but Tippet was considered a cautious man. Overcautious, some thought him. How futile he and his little pop-gun appeared as he dashed after that living engine of destruction! But, oh, how glorious! It was some such thought as this that ran through Brady’s mind, though articulated it might have been expressed otherwise, albeit more forcefully.

Just then it occurred to Brady to fire and he, too, opened upon the bear, but at the same instant the animal stumbled and fell forward, though still growling most fearsomely. Tippet never stopped running or firing until he stood within a foot of the brute, which lay almost touching Bradley and was already struggling to regain its feet. Placing the muzzle of his gun against the bear’s ear, Tippet pulled the trigger. The creature sank limply to the ground and Bradley scrambled to his feet.

“Good work, Tippet,” he said. “Mightily obliged to you—awful waste of ammunition, really.”

And then they resumed the march and in fifteen minutes the encounter had ceased even to be a topic of conversation.

For two days they continued upon their perilous way. Already the cliffs loomed high and forbidding close ahead without sign of break to encourage hope that somewhere they might be scaled. Late in the afternoon the party crossed a small stream of warm water upon the sluggishly moving surface of which floated countless millions of tiny green eggs surrounded by a light scum of the same color, though of a darker shade. Their past experience of Caspak had taught them that they might expect to come upon a stagnant pool of warm water if they followed the stream to its source; but there they were almost certain to find some of Caspak’s grotesque, manlike creatures. Already since they had disembarked from the U-33 after its perilous trip through the subterranean channel beneath the barrier cliffs had brought them into the inland sea of Caspak, had they encountered what had appeared to be three distinct types of these creatures. There had been the pure apes—huge, gorillalike beasts—and those who walked, a trifle more erect and had features with just a shade more of the human cast about them. Then there were men like Ahm, whom they had captured and confined at the fort—Ahm, the club-man. “Well-known club-man,” Tyler had called him. Ahm and his people had knowledge of a speech. They had a language, in which they were unlike the race just inferior to them, and they walked much more erect and were less hairy: but it was principally the fact that they possessed a spoken language and carried a weapon that differentiated them from the others.

All of these peoples had proven belligerent in the extreme. In common with the rest of the fauna of Caprona the first law of nature as they seemed to understand it was to kill—kill—kill. And so it was that Bradley had no desire to follow up the little stream toward the pool near which were sure to be the caves of some savage tribe, but fortune played him an unkind trick, for the pool was much closer than he imagined, its southern end reaching fully a mile south of the point at which they crossed the stream, and so it was that after forcing their way through a tangle of jungle vegetation they came out upon the edge of the pool which they had wished to avoid.

Almost simultaneously there appeared south of them a party of naked men armed with clubs and hatchets. Both parties halted as they caught sight of one another. The men from the fort saw before them a hunting party evidently returning to its caves or village laden with meat. They were large men with features closely resembling those of the African Negro though their skins were white. Short hair grew upon a large portion of their limbs and bodies, which still retained a considerable trace of apish progenitors. They were, however, a distinctly higher type than the Bo-lu, or club-men.

Bradley would have been glad to have averted a meeting; but as he desired to lead his party south around the end of the pool, and as it was hemmed in by the jungle on one side and the water on the other, there seemed no escape from an encounter.

On the chance that he might avoid a clash, Bradley stepped forward with upraised hand. “We are friends,” he called in the tongue of Ahm, the Bo-lu, who had been held a prisoner at the fort; “permit us to pass in peace. We will not harm you.”

At this the hatchet-men set up a great jabbering with much laughter, loud and boisterous. “No,” shouted one, “you will not harm us, for we shall kill you. Come! We kill! We kill!” And with hideous shouts they charged down upon the Europeans.

“Sinclair, you may fire,” said Bradley quietly. “Pick off the leader. Can’t waste ammunition.”

The Englishman raised his piece to his shoulder and took quick aim at the breast of the yelling savage leaping toward them. Directly behind the leader came another hatchet-man, and with the report of Sinclair’s rifle both warriors lunged forward in the tall grass, pierced by the same bullet. The effect upon the rest of the band was electrical. As one man they came to a sudden halt, wheeled to the east and dashed into the jungle, where the men could hear them forcing their way in an effort to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the authors of this new and frightful noise that killed warriors at a great distance.

Both the savages were dead when Bradley approached to examine them, and as the Europeans gathered around, other eyes were bent upon them with greater curiosity than they displayed for the victim of Sinclair’s bullet. When the party again took up the march around the southern end of the pool the owner of the eyes followed them—large, round eyes, almost expressionless except for a certain cold cruelty which glinted malignly from under their pale gray irises.

All unconscious of the stalker, the men came, late in the afternoon, to a spot which seemed favorable as a campsite. A cold spring bubbled from the base of a rocky formation which overhung and partially encircled a small inclosure. At Bradley’s command, the men took up the duties assigned them—gathering wood, building a cook-fire and preparing the evening meal. It was while they were thus engaged that Brady’s attention was attracted by the dismal flapping of huge wings. He glanced up, expecting to see one of the great flying reptiles of a bygone age, his rifle ready in his hand. Brady was a brave man. He had groped his way up narrow tenement stairs and taken an armed maniac from a dark room without turning a hair; but now as he looked up, he went white and staggered back.

“Gawd!” he almost screamed. “What is it?”

Attracted by Brady’s cry the others seized their rifles as they followed his wide-eyed, frozen gaze, nor was there one of them that was not moved by some species of terror or awe. Then Brady spoke again in an almost inaudible voice. “Holy Mother protect us—it’s a banshee!”

Bradley, always cool almost to indifference in the face of danger, felt a strange, creeping sensation run over his flesh, as slowly, not a hundred feet above them, the thing flapped itself across the sky, its huge, round eyes glaring down upon them. And until it disappeared over the tops of the trees of a near-by wood the five men stood as though paralyzed, their eyes never leaving the weird shape; nor never one of them appearing to recall that he grasped a loaded rifle in his hands.

With the passing of the thing, came the reaction. Tippet sank to the ground and buried his face in his hands. “Oh, Gord,” he moaned. “Tyke me awy from this orful plice.” Brady, recovered from the first shock, swore loud and luridly. He called upon all the saints to witness that he was unafraid and that anybody with half an eye could have seen that the creature was nothing more than “one av thim flyin’ alligators” that they all were familiar with.

“Yes,” said Sinclair with fine sarcasm, “we’ve saw so many of them with white shrouds on ’em.”

“Shut up, you fool!” growled Brady. “If you know so much, tell us what it was after bein’ then.”

Then he turned toward Bradley. “What was it, sir, do you think?” he asked.

Bradley shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “It looked like a winged human being clothed in a flowing white robe. Its face was more human than otherwise. That is the way it looked to me; but what it really was I can’t even guess, for such a creature is as far beyond my experience or knowledge as it is beyond yours. All that I am sure of is that whatever else it may have been, it was quite material—it was no ghost; rather just another of the strange forms of life which we have met here and with which we should be accustomed by this time.”

Tippet looked up. His face was still ashy. “Yer cawn’t tell me,” he cried. “Hi seen hit. Blime, Hi seen hit. Hit was ha dead man flyin’ through the hair. Didn’t Hi see ’is heyes? Oh, Gord! Didn’t Hi see ’em?”

“It didn’t look like any beast or reptile to me,” spoke up Sinclair. “It was lookin’ right down at me when I looked up and I saw its face plain as I see yours. It had big round eyes that looked all cold and dead, and its cheeks were sunken in deep, and I could see its yellow teeth behind thin, tight-drawn lips—like a man who had been dead a long while, sir,” he added, turning toward Bradley.

“Yes!” James had not spoken since the apparition had passed over them, and now it was scarce speech which he uttered—rather a series of articulate gasps. “Yes—dead—a—long—while. It—means something. It—come—for some—one. For one—of us. One—of us is goin’—to die. I’m goin’ to die!” he ended in a wail.

“Come! Come!” snapped Bradley. “Won’t do. Won’t do at all. Get to work, all of you. Waste of time. Can’t waste time.”

His authoritative tones brought them all up standing, and presently each was occupied with his own duties; but each worked in silence and there was no singing and no bantering such as had marked the making of previous camps. Not until they had eaten and to each had been issued the little ration of smoking tobacco allowed after each evening meal did any sign of a relaxation of taut nerves appear. It was Brady who showed the first signs of returning good spirits. He commenced humming “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” and presently to voice the words, but he was well into his third song before anyone joined him, and even then there seemed a dismal note in even the gayest of tunes.

A huge fire blazed in the opening of their rocky shelter that the prowling carnivora might be kept at bay; and always one man stood on guard, watchfully alert against a sudden rush by some maddened beast of the jungle. Beyond the fire, yellow-green spots of flame appeared, moved restlessly about, disappeared and reappeared, accompanied by a hideous chorus of screams and growls and roars as the hungry meat-eaters hunting through the night were attracted by the light or the scent of possible prey.

But to such sights and sounds as these the five men had become callous. They sang or talked as unconcernedly as they might have done in the bar-room of some publichouse at home.

Sinclair was standing guard. The others were listening to Brady’s description of traffic congestion at the Rush Street bridge during the rush hour at night. The fire crackled cheerily. The owners of the yellow-green eyes raised their frightful chorus to the heavens. Conditions seemed again to have returned to normal. And then, as though the hand of Death had reached out and touched them all, the five men tensed into sudden rigidity.

Above the nocturnal diapason of the teeming jungle sounded a dismal flapping of wings and over head, through the thick night, a shadowy form passed across the diffused light of the flaring camp-fire. Sinclair raised his rifle and fired. An eerie wail floated down from above and the apparition, whatever it might have been, was swallowed by the darkness. For several seconds the listening men heard the sound of those dismally flapping wings lessening in the distance until they could no longer be heard.

Bradley was the first to speak. “Shouldn’t have fired, Sinclair,” he said; “can’t waste ammunition.” But there was no note of censure in his tone. It was as though he understood the nervous reaction that had compelled the other’s act.

“I couldn’t help it, sir,” said Sinclair. “Lord, it would take an iron man to keep from shootin’ at that awful thing. Do you believe in ghosts, sir?”

“No,” replied Bradley. “No such things.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Brady. “There was a woman murdered over on the prairie near Brighton—her throat was cut from ear to ear, and—”

“Shut up,” snapped Bradley.

“My grandaddy used to live down Coppington wy,” said Tippet. “They were a hold ruined castle on a ’ill near by, hand at midnight they used to see pale blue lights through the windows an ’ear—”

“Will you close your hatch!” demanded Bradley. “You fools will have yourselves scared to death in a minute. Now go to sleep.”

But there was little sleep in camp that night until utter exhaustion overtook the harassed men toward morning; nor was there any return of the weird creature that had set the nerves of each of them on edge.

The following forenoon the party reached the base of the barrier cliffs and for two days marched northward in an effort to discover a break in the frowning abutment that raised its rocky face almost perpendicularly above them, yet nowhere was there the slightest indication that the cliffs were scalable.

Disheartened, Bradley determined to turn back toward the fort, as he already had exceeded the time decided upon by Bowen Tyler and himself for the expedition. The cliffs for many miles had been trending in a northeasterly direction, indicating to Bradley that they were approaching the northern extremity of the island. According to the best of his calculations they had made sufficient easting during the past two days to have brought them to a point almost directly north of Fort Dinosaur and as nothing could be gained by retracing their steps along the base of the cliffs he decided to strike due south through the unexplored country between them and the fort.

That night (September 9, 1916), they made camp a short distance from the cliffs beside one of the numerous cool springs that are to be found within Caspak, oftentimes close beside the still more numerous warm and hot springs which feed the many pools. After supper the men lay smoking and chatting among themselves. Tippet was on guard. Fewer night prowlers threatened them, and the men were commenting upon the fact that the farther north they had traveled the smaller the number of all species of animals became, though it was still present in what would have seemed appalling plenitude in any other part of the world. The diminution in reptilian life was the most noticeable change in the fauna of northern Caspak. Here, however, were forms they had not met elsewhere, several of which were of gigantic proportions.

According to their custom all, with the exception of the man on guard, sought sleep early, nor, once disposed upon the ground for slumber, were they long in finding it. It seemed to Bradley that he had scarcely closed his eyes when he was brought to his feet, wide awake, by a piercing scream which was punctuated by the sharp report of a rifle from the direction of the fire where Tippet stood guard. As he ran toward the man, Bradley heard above him the same uncanny wail that had set every nerve on edge several nights before, and the dismal flapping of huge wings. He did not need to look up at the white-shrouded figure winging slowly away into the night to know that their grim visitor had returned.

The muscles of his arm, reacting to the sight and sound of the menacing form, carried his hand to the butt of his pistol; but after he had drawn the weapon, he immediately returned it to its holster with a shrug.

“What for?” he muttered. “Can’t waste ammunition.” Then he walked quickly to where Tippet lay sprawled upon his face. By this time James, Brady and Sinclair were at his heels, each with his rifle in readiness.

“Is he dead, sir?” whispered James as Bradley kneeled beside the prostrate form.

Bradley turned Tippet over on his back and pressed an ear close to the other’s heart. In a moment he raised his head. “Fainted,” he announced. “Get water. Hurry!” Then he loosened Tippet’s shirt at the throat and when the water was brought, threw a cupful in the man’s face. Slowly Tippet regained consciousness and sat up. At first he looked curiously into the faces of the men about him; then an expression of terror overspread his features. He shot a startled glance up into the black void above and then burying his face in his arms began to sob like a child.

“What’s wrong, man?” demanded Bradley. “Buck up! Can’t play cry-baby. Waste of energy. What happened?”

“Wot ’appened, sir!” wailed Tippet. “Oh, Gord, sir! Hit came back. Hit came for me, sir. Right hit did, sir; strite hat me, sir; hand with long w’ite ’ands it clawed for me. Oh, Gord! Hit almost caught me, sir. Hi’m has good as dead; Hi’m a marked man; that’s wot Hi ham. Hit was a-goin’ for to carry me horf, sir.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” snapped Bradley. “Did you get a good look at it?”

Tippet said that he did—a much better look than he wanted. The thing had almost clutched him, and he had looked straight into its eyes—“dead heyes in a dead face,” he had described them.

“Wot was it after bein’, do you think?” inquired Brady.

“Hit was Death,” moaned Tippet, shuddering, and again a pall of gloom fell upon the little party.

The following day Tippet walked as one in a trance. He never spoke except in reply to a direct question, which more often than not had to be repeated before it could attract his attention. He insisted that he was already a dead man, for if the thing didn’t come for him during the day he would never live through another night of agonized apprehension, waiting for the frightful end that he was positive was in store for him. “I’ll see to that,” he said, and they all knew that Tippet meant to take his own life before darkness set in.

Bradley tried to reason with him, in his short, crisp way, but soon saw the futility of it; nor could he take the man’s weapons from him without subjecting him to almost certain death from any of the numberless dangers that beset their way.

The entire party was moody and glum. There was none of the bantering that had marked their intercourse before, even in the face of blighting hardships and hideous danger. This was a new menace that threatened them, something that they couldn’t explain; and so, naturally, it aroused within them superstitious fear which Tippet’s attitude only tended to augment. To add further to their gloom, their way led through a dense forest, where, on account of the underbrush, it was difficult to make even a mile an hour. Constant watchfulness was required to avoid the many snakes of various degrees of repulsiveness and enormity that infested the wood; and the only ray of hope they had to cling to was that the forest would, like the majority of Caspakian forests, prove to be of no considerable extent.

Bradley was in the lead when he came suddenly upon a grotesque creature of Titanic proportions. Crouching among the trees, which here commenced to thin out slightly, Bradley saw what appeared to be an enormous dragon devouring the carcass of a mammoth. From frightful jaws to the tip of its long tail it was fully forty feet in length. Its body was covered with plates of thick skin which bore a striking resemblance to armor-plate. The creature saw Bradley almost at the same instant that he saw it and reared up on its enormous hind legs until its head towered a full twenty-five feet above the ground. From the cavernous jaws issued a hissing sound of a volume equal to the escaping steam from the safety-valves of half a dozen locomotives, and then the creature came for the man.

“Scatter!” shouted Bradley to those behind him; and all but Tippet heeded the warning. The man stood as though dazed, and when Bradley saw the other’s danger, he too stopped and wheeling about sent a bullet into the massive body forcing its way through the trees toward him. The shot struck the creature in the belly where there was no protecting armor, eliciting a new note which rose in a shrill whistle and ended in a wail. It was then that Tippet appeared to come out of his trance, for with a cry of terror he turned and fled to the left. Bradley, seeing that he had as good an opportunity as the others to escape, now turned his attention to extricating himself; and as the woods seemed dense on the right, he ran in that direction, hoping that the close-set boles would prevent pursuit on the part of the great reptile. The dragon paid no further attention to him, however, for Tippet’s sudden break for liberty had attracted its attention; and after Tippet it went, bowling over small trees, uprooting underbrush and leaving a wake behind it like that of a small tornado.

Bradley, the moment he had discovered the thing was pursuing Tippet, had followed it. He was afraid to fire for fear of hitting the man, and so it was that he came upon them at the very moment that the monster lunged its great weight forward upon the doomed man. The sharp, three-toed talons of the forelimbs seized poor Tippet, and Bradley saw the unfortunate fellow lifted high above the ground as the creature again reared up on its hind legs, immediately transferring Tippet’s body to its gaping jaws, which closed with a sickening, crunching sound as Tippet’s bones cracked beneath the great teeth.

Bradley half raised his rifle to fire again and then lowered it with a shake of his head. Tippet was beyond succor—why waste a bullet that Caspak could never replace? If he could now escape the further notice of the monster it would be a wiser act than to throw his life away in futile revenge. He saw that the reptile was not looking in his direction, and so he slipped noiselessly behind the bole of a large tree and thence quietly faded away in the direction he believed the others to have taken. At what he considered a safe distance he halted and looked back. Half hidden by the intervening trees he still could see the huge head and the massive jaws from which protruded the limp legs of the dead man. Then, as though struck by the hammer of Thor, the creature collapsed and crumpled to the ground. Bradley’s single bullet, penetrating the body through the soft skin of the belly, had slain the Titan.

A few minutes later, Bradley found the others of the party. The four returned cautiously to the spot where the creature lay and after convincing themselves that it was quite dead, came close to it. It was an arduous and gruesome job extricating Tippet’s mangled remains from the powerful jaws, the men working for the most part silently.

“It was the work of the banshee all right,” muttered Brady. “It warned poor Tippet, it did.”

“Hit killed him, that’s wot hit did, hand hit’ll kill some more of us,” said James, his lower lip trembling.

“If it was a ghost,” interjected Sinclair, “and I don’t say as it was; but if it was, why, it could take on any form it wanted to. It might have turned itself into this thing, which ain’t no natural thing at all, just to get poor Tippet. If it had of been a lion or something else humanlike it wouldn’t look so strange; but this here thing ain’t humanlike. There ain’t no such thing an’ never was.”

“Bullets don’t kill ghosts,” said Bradley, “so this couldn’t have been a ghost. Furthermore, there are no such things. I’ve been trying to place this creature. Just succeeded. It’s a tyrannosaurus. Saw picture of skeleton in magazine. There’s one in New York Natural History Museum. Seems to me it said it was found in place called Hell Creek somewhere in western North America. Supposed to have lived about six million years ago.”

“Hell Creek’s in Montana,” said Sinclair. “I used to punch cows in Wyoming, an’ I’ve heard of Hell Creek. Do you s’pose that there thing’s six million years old?” His tone was skeptical.

“No,” replied Bradley; “But it would indicate that the island of Caprona has stood almost without change for more than six million years.”

The conversation and Bradley’s assurance that the creature was not of supernatural origin helped to raise a trifle the spirits of the men; and then came another diversion in the form of ravenous meat-eaters attracted to the spot by the uncanny sense of smell which had apprised them of the presence of flesh, killed and ready for the eating.

It was a constant battle while they dug a grave and consigned all that was mortal of John Tippet to his last, lonely resting-place. Nor would they leave then; but remained to fashion a rude headstone from a crumbling out-cropping of sandstone and to gather a mass of the gorgeous flowers growing in such great profusion around them and heap the new-made grave with bright blooms. Upon the headstone Sinclair scratched in rude characters the words:

HERE LIES JOHN TIPPET
ENGLISHMAN
KILLED BY TYRANNOSAURUS
10 SEPT. A.D. 1916
R.I.P.

and Bradley repeated a short prayer before they left their comrade forever.

For three days the party marched due south through forests and meadow-land and great park-like areas where countless herbivorous animals grazed—deer and antelope and bos and the little ecca, the smallest species of Caspakian horse, about the size of a rabbit. There were other horses too; but all were small, the largest being not above eight hands in height. Preying continually upon the herbivora were the meat-eaters, large and small—wolves, hyaenodons, panthers, lions, tigers, and bears as well as several large and ferocious species of reptilian life.

On September twelfth the party scaled a line of sandstone cliffs which crossed their route toward the south; but they crossed them only after an encounter with the tribe that inhabited the numerous caves which pitted the face of the escarpment. That night they camped upon a rocky plateau which was sparsely wooded with jarrah, and here once again they were visited by the weird, nocturnal apparition that had already filled them with a nameless terror.

As on the night of September ninth the first warning came from the sentinel standing guard over his sleeping companions. A terror-stricken cry punctuated by the crack of a rifle brought Bradley, Sinclair and Brady to their feet in time to see James, with clubbed rifle, battling with a white-robed figure that hovered on widespread wings on a level with the Englishman’s head. As they ran, shouting, forward, it was obvious to them that the weird and terrible apparition was attempting to seize James; but when it saw the others coming to his rescue, it desisted, flapping rapidly upward and away, its long, ragged wings giving forth the peculiarly dismal notes which always characterized the sound of its flying.

Bradley fired at the vanishing menacer of their peace and safety; but whether he scored a hit or not, none could tell, though, following the shot, there was wafted back to them the same piercing wail that had on other occasions frozen their marrow.

Then they turned toward James, who lay face downward upon the ground, trembling as with ague. For a time he could not even speak, but at last regained sufficient composure to tell them how the thing must have swooped silently upon him from above and behind as the first premonition of danger he had received was when the long, clawlike fingers had clutched him beneath either arm. In the melee his rifle had been discharged and he had broken away at the same instant and turned to defend himself with the butt. The rest they had seen.

From that instant James was an absolutely broken man. He maintained with shaking lips that his doom was sealed, that the thing had marked him for its own, and that he was as good as dead, nor could any amount of argument or raillery convince him to the contrary. He had seen Tippet marked and claimed and now he had been marked. Nor were his constant reiterations of this belief without effect upon the rest of the party. Even Bradley felt depressed, though for the sake of the others he managed to hide it beneath a show of confidence he was far from feeling.

And on the following day William James was killed by a saber-tooth tiger—September 13, 1916. Beneath a jarrah tree on the stony plateau on the northern edge of the Sto-lu country in the land that Time forgot, he lies in a lonely grave marked by a rough headstone.

Southward from his grave marched three grim and silent men. To the best of Bradley’s reckoning they were some twenty-five miles north of Fort Dinosaur, and that they might reach the fort on the following day, they plodded on until darkness overtook them. With comparative safety fifteen miles away, they made camp at last; but there was no singing now and no joking. In the bottom of his heart each prayed that they might come safely through just this night, for they knew that during the morrow they would make the final stretch, yet the nerves of each were taut with strained anticipation of what gruesome thing might flap down upon them from the black sky, marking another for its own. Who would be the next?

As was their custom, they took turns at guard, each man doing two hours and then arousing the next. Brady had gone on from eight to ten, followed by Sinclair from ten to twelve, then Bradley had been awakened. Brady would stand the last guard from two to four, as they had determined to start the moment that it became light enough to insure comparative safety upon the trail.

The snapping of a twig aroused Brady out of a dead sleep, and as he opened his eyes, he saw that it was broad daylight and that at twenty paces from him stood a huge lion. As the man sprang to his feet, his rifle ready in his hand, Sinclair awoke and took in the scene in a single swift glance. The fire was out and Bradley was nowhere in sight. For a long moment the lion and the men eyed one another. The latter had no mind to fire if the beast minded its own affairs—they were only too glad to let it go its way if it would; but the lion was of a different mind.

Suddenly the long tail snapped stiffly erect, and as though it had been attached to two trigger fingers the two rifles spoke in unison, for both men knew this signal only too well—the immediate forerunner of a deadly charge. As the brute’s head had been raised, his spine had not been visible; and so they did what they had learned by long experience was best to do. Each covered a front leg, and as the tail snapped aloft, fired. With a hideous roar the mighty flesh-eater lurched forward to the ground with both front legs broken. It was an easy accomplishment in the instant before the beast charged—after, it would have been well-nigh an impossible feat. Brady stepped close in and finished him with a shot in the base of the brain lest his terrific roarings should attract his mate or others of their kind.

Then the two men turned and looked at one another. “Where is Lieutenant Bradley?” asked Sinclair. They walked to the fire. Only a few smoking embers remained. A few feet away lay Bradley’s rifle. There was no evidence of a struggle. The two men circled about the camp twice and on the last lap Brady stooped and picked up an object which had lain about ten yards beyond the fire—it was Bradley’s cap. Again the two looked questioningly at one another, and then, simultaneously, both pairs of eyes swung upward and searched the sky. A moment later Brady was examining the ground about the spot where Bradley’s cap had lain. It was one of those little barren, sandy stretches that they had found only upon this stony plateau. Brady’s own footsteps showed as plainly as black ink upon white paper; but his was the only foot that had marred the smooth, windswept surface—there was no sign that Bradley had crossed the spot upon the surface of the ground, and yet his cap lay well toward the center of it.

Breakfastless and with shaken nerves the two survivors plunged madly into the long day’s march. Both were strong, courageous, resourceful men; but each had reached the limit of human nerve endurance and each felt that he would rather die than spend another night in the hideous open of that frightful land. Vivid in the mind of each was a picture of Bradley’s end, for though neither had witnessed the tragedy, both could imagine almost precisely what had occurred. They did not discuss it—they did not even mention it—yet all day long the thing was uppermost in the mind of each and mingled with it a similar picture with himself as victim should they fail to make Fort Dinosaur before dark.

And so they plunged forward at reckless speed, their clothes, their hands, their faces torn by the retarding underbrush that reached forth to hinder them. Again and again they fell; but be it to their credit that the one always waited and helped the other and that into the mind of neither entered the thought or the temptation to desert his companion—they would reach the fort together if both survived, or neither would reach it.

They encountered the usual number of savage beasts and reptiles; but they met them with a courageous recklessness born of desperation, and by virtue of the very madness of the chances they took, they came through unscathed and with the minimum of delay.

Shortly after noon they reached the end of the plateau. Before them was a drop of two hundred feet to the valley beneath. To the left, in the distance, they could see the waters of the great inland sea that covers a considerable portion of the area of the crater island of Caprona and at a little lesser distance to the south of the cliffs they saw a thin spiral of smoke arising above the tree-tops.

The landscape was familiar—each recognized it immediately and knew that that smoky column marked the spot where Dinosaur had stood. Was the fort still there, or did the smoke arise from the smoldering embers of the building they had helped to fashion for the housing of their party? Who could say!

Thirty precious minutes that seemed as many hours to the impatient men were consumed in locating a precarious way from the summit to the base of the cliffs that bounded the plateau upon the south, and then once again they struck off upon level ground toward their goal. The closer they approached the fort the greater became their apprehension that all would not be well. They pictured the barracks deserted or the small company massacred and the buildings in ashes. It was almost in a frenzy of fear that they broke through the final fringe of jungle and stood at last upon the verge of the open meadow a half-mile from Fort Dinosaur.

“Lord!” ejaculated Sinclair. “They are still there!” And he fell to his knees, sobbing.

Brady trembled like a leaf as he crossed himself and gave silent thanks, for there before them stood the sturdy ramparts of Dinosaur and from inside the inclosure rose a thin spiral of smoke that marked the location of the cook-house. All was well, then, and their comrades were preparing the evening meal!

Across the clearing they raced as though they had not already covered in a single day a trackless, primeval country that might easily have required two days by fresh and untired men. Within hailing distance they set up such a loud shouting that presently heads appeared above the top of the parapet and soon answering shouts were rising from within Fort Dinosaur. A moment later three men issued from the inclosure and came forward to meet the survivors and listen to the hurried story of the eleven eventful days since they had set out upon their expedition to the barrier cliffs. They heard of the deaths of Tippet and James and of the disappearance of Lieutenant Bradley, and a new terror settled upon Dinosaur.

Olson, the Irish engineer, with Whitely and Wilson constituted the remnants of Dinosaur’s defenders, and to Brady and Sinclair they narrated the salient events that had transpired since Bradley and his party had marched away on September 4th. They told them of the infamous act of Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts and his German crew who had stolen the U-33, breaking their parole, and steaming away toward the subterranean opening through the barrier cliffs that carried the waters of the inland sea into the open Pacific beyond; and of the cowardly shelling of the fort.

They told of the disappearance of Miss La Rue in the night of September 11th, and of the departure of Bowen Tyler in search of her, accompanied only by his Airedale, Nobs. Thus of the original party of eleven Allies and nine Germans that had constituted the company of the U-33 when she left English waters after her capture by the crew of the English tug there were but five now to be accounted for at Fort Dinosaur. Benson, Tippet, James, and one of the Germans were known to be dead. It was assumed that Bradley, Tyler and the girl had already succumbed to some of the savage denizens of Caspak, while the fate of the Germans was equally unknown, though it might readily be believed that they had made good their escape. They had had ample time to provision the ship and the refining of the crude oil they had discovered north of the fort could have insured them an ample supply to carry them back to Germany.

CHAPTER 2

When Bradley went on guard at midnight, September 14th, his thoughts were largely occupied with rejoicing that the night was almost spent without serious mishap and that the morrow would doubtless see them all safely returned to Fort Dinosaur. The hopefulness of his mood was tinged with sorrow by recollection of the two members of his party who lay back there in the savage wilderness and for whom there would never again be a homecoming.

No premonition of impending ill cast gloom over his anticipations for the coming day, for Bradley was a man who, while taking every precaution against possible danger, permitted no gloomy forebodings to weigh down his spirit. When danger threatened, he was prepared; but he was not forever courting disaster, and so it was that when about one o’clock in the morning of the fifteenth, he heard the dismal flapping of giant wings overhead, he was neither surprised nor frightened but idly prepared for an attack he had known might reasonably be expected.

The sound seemed to come from the south, and presently, low above the trees in that direction, the man made out a dim, shadowy form circling slowly about. Bradley was a brave man, yet so keen was the feeling of revulsion engendered by the sight and sound of that grim, uncanny shape that he distinctly felt the gooseflesh rise over the surface of his body, and it was with difficulty that he refrained from following an instinctive urge to fire upon the nocturnal intruder. Better, far better would it have been had he given in to the insistent demand of his subconscious mentor; but his almost fanatical obsession to save ammunition proved now his undoing, for while his attention was riveted upon the thing circling before him and while his ears were filled with the beating of its wings, there swooped silently out of the black night behind him another weird and ghostly shape. With its huge wings partly closed for the dive and its white robe fluttering in its wake, the apparition swooped down upon the Englishman.

So great was the force of the impact when the thing struck Bradley between the shoulders that the man was half stunned. His rifle flew from his grasp; he felt clawlike talons of great strength seize him beneath his arms and sweep him off his feet; and then the thing rose swiftly with him, so swiftly that his cap was blown from his head by the rush of air as he was borne rapidly upward into the inky sky and the cry of warning to his companions was forced back into his lungs.

The creature wheeled immediately toward the east and was at once joined by its fellow, who circled them once and then fell in behind them. Bradley now realized the strategy that the pair had used to capture him and at once concluded that he was in the power of reasoning beings closely related to the human race if not actually of it.

Past experience suggested that the great wings were a part of some ingenious mechanical device, for the limitations of the human mind, which is always loath to accept aught beyond its own little experience, would not permit him to entertain the idea that the creatures might be naturally winged and at the same time of human origin. From his position Bradley could not see the wings of his captor, nor in the darkness had he been able to examine those of the second creature closely when it circled before him. He listened for the puff of a motor or some other telltale sound that would prove the correctness of his theory. However, he was rewarded with nothing more than the constant flap-flap.

Presently, far below and ahead, he saw the waters of the inland sea, and a moment later he was borne over them. Then his captor did that which proved beyond doubt to Bradley that he was in the hands of human beings who had devised an almost perfect scheme of duplicating, mechanically, the wings of a bird—the thing spoke to its companion and in a language that Bradley partially understood, since he recognized words that he had learned from the savage races of Caspak. From this he judged that they were human, and being human, he knew that they could have no natural wings—for who had ever seen a human being so adorned! Therefore their wings must be mechanical. Thus Bradley reasoned—thus most of us reason; not by what might be possible; but by what has fallen within the range of our experience.

What he heard them say was to the effect that having covered half the distance the burden would now be transferred from one to the other. Bradley wondered how the exchange was to be accomplished. He knew that those giant wings would not permit the creatures to approach one another closely enough to effect the transfer in this manner; but he was soon to discover that they had other means of doing it.

He felt the thing that carried him rise to a greater altitude, and below he glimpsed momentarily the second white-robed figure; then the creature above sounded a low call, it was answered from below, and instantly Bradley felt the clutching talons release him; gasping for breath, he hurtled downward through space.

For a terrifying instant, pregnant with horror, Bradley fell; then something swooped for him from behind, another pair of talons clutched him beneath the arms, his downward rush was checked, within another hundred feet, and close to the surface of the sea he was again borne upward. As a hawk dives for a songbird on the wing, so this great, human bird dived for Bradley. It was a harrowing experience, but soon over, and once again the captive was being carried swiftly toward the east and what fate he could not even guess.

It was immediately following his transfer in mid-air that Bradley made out the shadowy form of a large island far ahead, and not long after, he realized that this must be the intended destination of his captors. Nor was he mistaken. Three quarters of an hour from the time of his seizure his captors dropped gently to earth in the strangest city that human eye had ever rested upon. Just a brief glimpse of his immediate surroundings vouchsafed Bradley before he was whisked into the interior of one of the buildings; but in that momentary glance he saw strange piles of stone and wood and mud fashioned into buildings of all conceivable sizes and shapes, sometimes piled high on top of one another, sometimes standing alone in an open court-way, but usually crowded and jammed together, so that there were no streets or alleys between them other than a few which ended almost as soon as they began. The principal doorways appeared to be in the roofs, and it was through one of these that Bradley was inducted into the dark interior of a low-ceiled room. Here he was pushed roughly into a corner where he tripped over a thick mat, and there his captors left him. He heard them moving about in the darkness for a moment, and several times he saw their large luminous eyes glowing in the dark. Finally, these disappeared and silence reigned, broken only by the breathing of the creature which indicated to the Englishman that they were sleeping somewhere in the same apartment.

It was now evident that the mat upon the floor was intended for sleeping purposes and that the rough shove that had sent him to it had been a rude invitation to repose. After taking stock of himself and finding that he still had his pistol and ammunition, some matches, a little tobacco, a canteen full of water and a razor, Bradley made himself comfortable upon the mat and was soon asleep, knowing that an attempted escape in the darkness without knowledge of his surroundings would be predoomed to failure.

When he awoke, it was broad daylight, and the sight that met his eyes made him rub them again and again to assure himself that they were really open and that he was not dreaming. A broad shaft of morning light poured through the open doorway in the ceiling of the room which was about thirty feet square, or roughly square, being irregular in shape, one side curving outward, another being indented by what might have been the corner of another building jutting into it, another alcoved by three sides of an octagon, while the fourth was serpentine in contour. Two windows let in more daylight, while two doors evidently gave ingress to other rooms. The walls were partially ceiled with thin strips of wood, nicely fitted and finished, partially plastered and the rest covered with a fine, woven cloth. Figures of reptiles and beasts were painted without regard to any uniform scheme here and there upon the walls. A striking feature of the decorations consisted of several engaged columns set into the walls at no regular intervals, the capitals of each supporting a human skull the cranium of which touched the ceiling, as though the latter was supported by these grim reminders either of departed relatives or of some hideous tribal rite—Bradley could not but wonder which.

Yet it was none of these things that filled him with greatest wonder—no, it was the figures of the two creatures that had captured him and brought him hither. At one end of the room a stout pole about two inches in diameter ran horizontally from wall to wall some six or seven feet from the floor, its ends securely set in two of the columns. Hanging by their knees from this perch, their heads downward and their bodies wrapped in their huge wings, slept the creatures of the night before—like two great, horrid bats they hung, asleep.

As Bradley gazed upon them in wide-eyed astonishment, he saw plainly that all his intelligence, all his acquired knowledge through years of observation and experience were set at naught by the simple evidence of the fact that stood out glaringly before his eyes—the creatures’ wings were not mechanical devices but as natural appendages, growing from their shoulderblades, as were their arms and legs. He saw, too, that except for their wings the pair bore a strong resemblance to human beings, though fashioned in a most grotesque mold.

As he sat gazing at them, one of the two awoke, separated his wings to release his arms that had been folded across his breast, placed his hands upon the floor, dropped his feet and stood erect. For a moment he stretched his great wings slowly, solemnly blinking his large round eyes. Then his gaze fell upon Bradley. The thin lips drew back tightly against yellow teeth in a grimace that was nothing but hideous. It could not have been termed a smile, and what emotion it registered the Englishman was at a loss to guess. No expression whatever altered the steady gaze of those large, round eyes; there was no color upon the pasty, sunken cheeks. A death’s head grimaced as though a man long dead raised his parchment-covered skull from an old grave.

The creature stood about the height of an average man but appeared much taller from the fact that the joints of his long wings rose fully a foot above his hairless head. The bare arms were long and sinewy, ending in strong, bony hands with clawlike fingers—almost talonlike in their suggestiveness. The white robe was separated in front, revealing skinny legs and the further fact that the thing wore but the single garment, which was of fine, woven cloth. From crown to sole the portions of the body exposed were entirely hairless, and as he noted this, Bradley also noted for the first time the cause of much of the seeming expressionlessness of the creature’s countenance—it had neither eye-brows or lashes. The ears were small and rested flat against the skull, which was noticeably round, though the face was quite flat. The creature had small feet, beautifully arched and plump, but so out of keeping with every other physical attribute it possessed as to appear ridiculous.

After eyeing Bradley for a moment the thing approached him. “Where from?” it asked.

“England,” replied Bradley, as briefly.

“Where is England and what?” pursued the questioner.

“It is a country far from here,” answered the Englishman.

“Are your people cor-sva-jo or cos-ata-lu?”

“I do not understand you,” said Bradley; “and now suppose you answer a few questions. Who are you? What country is this? Why did you bring me here?”

Again the sepulchral grimace. “We are Wieroos—Luata is our father. Caspak is ours. This, our country, is called Oo-oh. We brought you here for (literally) Him Who Speaks for Luata to gaze upon and question. He would know from whence you came and why; but principally if you be cos-ata-lu.”

“And if I am not cos—whatever you call the bloomin’ beast—what of it?”

The Wieroo raised his wings in a very human shrug and waved his bony claws toward the human skulls supporting the ceiling. His gesture was eloquent; but he embellished it by remarking, “And possibly if you are.”

“I’m hungry,” snapped Bradley.

The Wieroo motioned him to one of the doors which he threw open, permitting Bradley to pass out onto another roof on a level lower than that upon which they had landed earlier in the morning. By daylight the city appeared even more remarkable than in the moonlight, though less weird and unreal. The houses of all shapes and sizes were piled about as a child might pile blocks of various forms and colors. He saw now that there were what might be called streets or alleys, but they ran in baffling turns and twists, nor ever reached a destination, always ending in a dead wall where some Wieroo had built a house across them.

Upon each house was a slender column supporting a human skull. Sometimes the columns were at one corner of the roof, sometimes at another, or again they rose from the center or near the center, and the columns were of varying heights, from that of a man to those which rose twenty feet above their roofs. The skulls were, as a rule, painted—blue or white, or in combinations of both colors. The most effective were painted blue with the teeth white and the eye-sockets rimmed with white.

There were other skulls—thousands of them—tens, hundreds of thousands. They rimmed the eaves of every house, they were set in the plaster of the outer walls and at no great distance from where Bradley stood rose a round tower built entirely of human skulls. And the city extended in every direction as far as the Englishman could see.

All about him Wieroos were moving across the roofs or winging through the air. The sad sound of their flapping wings rose and fell like a solemn dirge. Most of them were appareled all in white, like his captors; but others had markings of red or blue or yellow slashed across the front of their robes.

His guide pointed toward a doorway in an alley below them. “Go there and eat,” he commanded, “and then come back. You cannot escape. If any question you, say that you belong to Fosh-bal-soj. There is the way.” And this time he pointed to the top of a ladder which protruded above the eaves of the roof near-by. Then he turned and reentered the house.

Bradley looked about him. No, he could not escape—that seemed evident. The city appeared interminable, and beyond the city, if not a savage wilderness filled with wild beasts, there was the broad inland sea infested with horrid monsters. No wonder his captor felt safe in turning him loose in Oo-oh—he wondered if that was the name of the country or the city and if there were other cities like this upon the island.

Slowly he descended the ladder to the seemingly deserted alley which was paved with what appeared to be large, round cobblestones. He looked again at the smooth, worn pavement, and a rueful grin crossed his features—the alley was paved with skulls. “The City of Human Skulls,” mused Bradley. “They must have been collectin’ ’em since Adam,” he thought, and then he crossed and entered the building through the doorway that had been pointed out to him.

Inside he found a large room in which were many Wieroos seated before pedestals the tops of which were hollowed out so that they resembled the ordinary bird drinking- and bathing-fonts so commonly seen on suburban lawns. A seat protruded from each of the four sides of the pedestals—just a flat board with a support running from its outer end diagonally to the base of the pedestal.

As Bradley entered, some of the Wieroos espied him, and a dismal wail arose. Whether it was a greeting or a threat, Bradley did not know. Suddenly from a dark alcove another Wieroo rushed out toward him. “Who are you?” he cried. “What do you want?”

“Fosh-bal-soj sent me here to eat,” replied Bradley.

“Do you belong to Fosh-bal-soj?” asked the other.

“That appears to be what he thinks,” answered the Englishman.

“Are you cos-ata-lu?” demanded the Wieroo.

“Give me something to eat or I’ll be all of that,” replied Bradley.

The Wieroo looked puzzled. “Sit here, jaal-lu,” he snapped, and Bradley sat down unconscious of the fact that he had been insulted by being called a hyena-man, an appellation of contempt in Caspak.

The Wieroo had seated him at a pedestal by himself, and as he sat waiting for what was next to transpire, he looked about him at the Wieroo in his immediate vicinity. He saw that in each font was a quantity of food, and that each Wieroo was armed with a wooden skewer, sharpened at one end; with which they carried solid portions of food to their mouths. At the other end of the skewer was fastened a small clam-shell. This was used to scoop up the smaller and softer portions of the repast into which all four of the occupants of each table dipped impartially. The Wieroo leaned far over their food, scooping it up rapidly and with much noise, and so great was their haste that a part of each mouthful always fell back into the common dish; and when they choked, by reason of the rapidity with which they attempted to bolt their food, they often lost it all. Bradley was glad that he had a pedestal all to himself.

Soon the keeper of the place returned with a wooden bowl filled with food. This he dumped into Bradley’s “trough,” as he already thought of it. The Englishman was glad that he could not see into the dark alcove or know what were all the ingredients that constituted the mess before him, for he was very hungry.

After the first mouthful he cared even less to investigate the antecedents of the dish, for he found it peculiarly palatable. It seemed to consist of a combination of meat, fruits, vegetables, small fish and other undistinguishable articles of food all seasoned to produce a gastronomic effect that was at once baffling and delicious.

When he had finished, his trough was empty, and then he commenced to wonder who was to settle for his meal. As he waited for the proprietor to return, he fell to examining the dish from which he had eaten and the pedestal upon which it rested. The font was of stone worn smooth by long-continued use, the four outer edges hollowed and polished by the contact of the countless Wieroo bodies that had leaned against them for how long a period of time Bradley could not even guess. Everything about the place carried the impression of hoary age. The carved pedestals were black with use, the wooden seats were worn hollow, the floor of stone slabs was polished by the contact of possibly millions of naked feet and worn away in the aisles between the pedestals so that the latter rested upon little mounds of stone several inches above the general level of the floor.

Finally, seeing that no one came to collect, Bradley arose and started for the doorway. He had covered half the distance when he heard the voice of mine host calling to him: “Come back, jaal-lu,” screamed the Wieroo; and Bradley did as he was bid. As he approached the creature which stood now behind a large, flat-topped pedestal beside the alcove, he saw lying upon the smooth surface something that almost elicited a gasp of astonishment from him—a simple, common thing it was, or would have been almost anywhere in the world but Caspak—a square bit of paper!

And on it, in a fine hand, written compactly, were many strange hieroglyphics! These remarkable creatures, then, had a written as well as a spoken language and besides the art of weaving cloth possessed that of paper-making. Could it be that such grotesque beings represented the high culture of the human race within the boundaries of Caspak? Had natural selection produced during the countless ages of Caspakian life a winged monstrosity that represented the earthly pinnacle of man’s evolution?

Bradley had noted something of the obvious indications of a gradual evolution from ape to spearman as exemplified by the several overlapping races of Alalus, club-men and hatchet-men that formed the connecting links between the two extremes with which he, had come in contact. He had heard of the Krolus and the Galus—reputed to be still higher in the plane of evolution—and now he had indisputable evidence of a race possessing refinements of civilization eons in advance of the spear-men. The conjectures awakened by even a momentary consideration of the possibilities involved became at once as wildly bizarre as the insane imaginings of a drug addict.

As these thoughts flashed through his mind, the Wieroo held out a pen of bone fixed to a wooden holder and at the same time made a sign that Bradley was to write upon the paper. It was difficult to judge from the expressionless features of the Wieroo what was passing in the creature’s mind, but Bradley could not but feel that the thing cast a supercilious glance upon him as much as to say, “Of course you do not know how to write, you poor, low creature; but you can make your mark.”

Bradley seized the pen and in a clear, bold hand wrote: “John Bradley, England.” The Wieroo showed evidences of consternation as it seized the piece of paper and examined the writing with every mark of incredulity and surprise. Of course it could make nothing of the strange characters; but it evidently accepted them as proof that Bradley possessed knowledge of a written language of his own, for following the Englishman’s entry it made a few characters of its own.

“You will come here again just before Lua hides his face behind the great cliff,” announced the creature, “unless before that you are summoned by Him Who Speaks for Luata, in which case you will not have to eat any more.”

“Reassuring cuss,” thought Bradley as he turned and left the building.

Outside were several Wieroos that had been eating at the pedestals within. They immediately surrounded him, asking all sorts of questions, plucking at his garments, his ammunition-belt and his pistol. Their demeanor was entirely different from what it had been within the eating-place and Bradley was to learn that a house of food was sanctuary for him, since the stern laws of the Wieroos forbade altercations within such walls. Now they were rough and threatening, as with wings half spread they hovered about him in menacing attitudes, barring his way to the ladder leading to the roof from whence he had descended; but the Englishman was not one to brook interference for long. He attempted at first to push his way past them, and then when one seized his arm and jerked him roughly back, Bradley swung upon the creature and with a heavy blow to the jaw felled it.

Instantly pandemonium reigned. Loud wails arose, great wings opened and closed with a loud, beating noise and many clawlike hands reached forth to clutch him. Bradley struck to right and left. He dared not use his pistol for fear that once they discovered its power he would be overcome by weight of numbers and relieved of possession of what he considered his trump card, to be reserved until the last moment that it might be used to aid in his escape, for already the Englishman was planning, though almost hopelessly, such an attempt.

A few blows convinced Bradley that the Wieroos were arrant cowards and that they bore no weapons, for after two or three had fallen beneath his fists the others formed a circle about him, but at a safe distance and contented themselves with threatening and blustering, while those whom he had felled lay upon the pavement without trying to arise, the while they moaned and wailed in lugubrious chorus.

Again Bradley strode toward the ladder, and this time the circle parted before him; but no sooner had he ascended a few rungs than he was seized by one foot and an effort made to drag him down. With a quick backward glance the Englishman, clinging firmly to the ladder with both hands, drew up his free foot and with all the strength of a powerful leg, planted a heavy shoe squarely in the flat face of the Wieroo that held him. Shrieking horribly, the creature clapped both hands to its face and sank to the ground while Bradley clambered quickly the remaining distance to the roof, though no sooner did he reach the top of the ladder than a great flapping of wings beneath him warned him that the Wieroos were rising after him. A moment later they swarmed about his head as he ran for the apartment in which he had spent the early hours of the morning after his arrival.

It was but a short distance from the top of the ladder to the doorway, and Bradley had almost reached his goal when the door flew open and Fosh-bal-soj stepped out. Immediately the pursuing Wieroos demanded punishment of the jaal-lu who had so grievously maltreated them. Fosh-bal-soj listened to their complaints and then with a sudden sweep of his right hand seized Bradley by the scruff of the neck and hurled him sprawling through the doorway upon the floor of the chamber.

So sudden was the assault and so surprising the strength of the Wieroo that the Englishman was taken completely off his guard. When he arose, the door was closed, and Fosh-bal-soj was standing over him, his hideous face contorted into an expression of rage and hatred.

“Hyena, snake, lizard!” he screamed. “You would dare lay your low, vile, profaning hands upon even the lowliest of the Wieroos—the sacred chosen of Luata!”

Bradley was mad, and so he spoke in a very low, calm voice while a half-smile played across his lips but his cold, gray eyes were unsmiling.

“What you did to me just now,” he said, “—I am going to kill you for that,” and even as he spoke, he launched himself at the throat of Fosh-bal-soj. The other Wieroo that had been asleep when Bradley left the chamber had departed, and the two were alone. Fosh-bal-soj displayed little of the cowardice of those that had attacked Bradley in the alleyway, but that may have been because he had so slight opportunity, for Bradley had him by the throat before he could utter a cry and with his right hand struck him heavily and repeatedly upon his face and over his heart—ugly, smashing, short-arm jabs of the sort that take the fight out of a man in quick time.

But Fosh-bal-soj was of no mind to die passively. He clawed and struck at Bradley while with his great wings he attempted to shield himself from the merciless rain of blows, at the same time searching for a hold upon his antagonist’s throat. Presently he succeeded in tripping the Englishman, and together the two fell heavily to the floor, Bradley underneath, and at the same instant the Wieroo fastened his long talons about the other’s windpipe.

Fosh-bal-soj was possessed of enormous strength and he was fighting for his life. The Englishman soon realized that the battle was going against him. Already his lungs were pounding painfully for air as he reached for his pistol. It was with difficulty that he drew it from its holster, and even then, with death staring him in the face, he thought of his precious ammunition. “Can’t waste it,” he thought; and slipping his fingers to the barrel he raised the weapon and struck Fosh-bal-soj a terrific blow between the eyes. Instantly the clawlike fingers released their hold, and the creature sank limply to the floor beside Bradley, who lay for several minutes gasping painfully in an effort to regain his breath.

When he was able, he rose, and leaned close over the Wieroo, lying silent and motionless, his wings drooping limply and his great, round eyes staring blankly toward the ceiling. A brief examination convinced Bradley that the thing was dead, and with the conviction came an overwhelming sense of the dangers which must now confront him; but how was he to escape?

His first thought was to find some means for concealing the evidence of his deed and then to make a bold effort to escape. Stepping to the second door he pushed it gently open and peered in upon what seemed to be a store room. In it was a litter of cloth such as the Wieroos’ robes were fashioned from, a number of chests painted blue and white, with white hieroglyphics painted in bold strokes upon the blue and blue hieroglyphics upon the white. In one corner was a pile of human skulls reaching almost to the ceiling and in another a stack of dried Wieroo wings. The chamber was as irregularly shaped as the other and had but a single window and a second door at the further end, but was without the exit through the roof and, most important of all, there was no creature of any sort in it.

As quickly as possible Bradley dragged the dead Wieroo through the doorway and closed the door; then he looked about for a place to conceal the corpse. One of the chests was large enough to hold the body if the knees were bent well up, and with this idea in view Bradley approached the chest to open it. The lid was made in two pieces, each being hinged at an opposite end of the chest and joining nicely where they met in the center of the chest, making a snug, well-fitting joint. There was no lock. Bradley raised one half the cover and looked in. With a smothered “By Jove!” he bent closer to examine the contents—the chest was about half filled with an assortment of golden trinkets. There were what appeared to be bracelets, anklets and brooches of virgin gold.

Realizing that there was no room in the chest for the body of the Wieroo, Bradley turned to seek another means of concealing the evidence of his crime. There was a space between the chests and the wall, and into this he forced the corpse, piling the discarded robes upon it until it was entirely hidden from sight; but now how was he to make good his escape in the bright glare of that early Spring day?

He walked to the door at the far end of the apartment and cautiously opened it an inch. Before him and about two feet away was the blank wall of another building. Bradley opened the door a little farther and looked in both directions. There was no one in sight to the left over a considerable expanse of roof-top, and to the right another building shut off his line of vision at about twenty feet. Slipping out, he turned to the right and in a few steps found a narrow passageway between two buildings. Turning into this he passed about half its length when he saw a Wieroo appear at the opposite end and halt. The creature was not looking down the passageway; but at any moment it might turn its eyes toward him, when he would be immediately discovered.

To Bradley’s left was a triangular niche in the wall of one of the houses and into this he dodged, thus concealing himself from the sight of the Wieroo. Beside him was a door painted a vivid yellow and constructed after the same fashion as the other Wieroo doors he had seen, being made up of countless narrow strips of wood from four to six inches in length laid on in patches of about the same width, the strips in adjacent patches never running in the same direction. The result bore some resemblance to a crazy patchwork quilt, which was heightened when, as in one of the doors he had seen, contiguous patches were painted different colors. The strips appeared to have been bound together and to the underlying framework of the door with gut or fiber and also glued, after which a thick coating of paint had been applied. One edge of the door was formed of a straight, round pole about two inches in diameter that protruded at top and bottom, the projections setting in round holes in both lintel and sill forming the axis upon which the door swung. An eccentric disk upon the inside face of the door engaged a slot in the frame when it was desired to secure the door against intruders.

As Bradley stood flattened against the wall waiting for the Wieroo to move on, he heard the creature’s wings brushing against the sides of the buildings as it made its way down the narrow passage in his direction. As the yellow door offered the only means of escape without detection, the Englishman decided to risk whatever might lie beyond it, and so, boldly pushing it in, he crossed the threshold and entered a small apartment.

As he did so, he heard a muffled ejaculation of surprise, and turning his eyes in the direction from whence the sound had come, he beheld a wide-eyed girl standing flattened against the opposite wall, an expression of incredulity upon her face. At a glance he saw that she was of no race of humans that he had come in contact with since his arrival upon Caprona—there was no trace about her form or features of any relationship to those low orders of men, nor was she appareled as they—or, rather, she did not entirely lack apparel as did most of them.

A soft hide fell from her left shoulder to just below her left hip on one side and almost to her right knee on the other, a loose girdle was about her waist, and golden ornaments such as he had seen in the blue-and-white chest encircled her arms and legs, while a golden fillet with a triangular diadem bound her heavy hair above her brows. Her skin was white as from long confinement within doors; but it was clear and fine. Her figure, but partially concealed by the soft deerskin, was all curves of symmetry and youthful grace, while her features might easily have been the envy of the most feted of Continental beauties.

If the girl was surprised by the sudden appearance of Bradley, the latter was absolutely astounded to discover so wondrous a creature among the hideous inhabitants of the City of Human Skulls. For a moment the two looked at one another in unconcealed consternation, and then Bradley spoke, using to the best of his poor ability, the common tongue of Caspak.

“Who are you,” he asked, “and from where do you come? Do not tell me that you are a Wieroo.”

“No,” she replied, “I am no Wieroo.” And she shuddered slightly as she pronounced the word. “I am a Galu; but who and what are you? I am sure that you are no Galu, from your garments; but you are like the Galus in other respects. I know that you are not of this frightful city, for I have been here for almost ten moons, and never have I seen a male Galu brought hither before, nor are there such as you and I, other than prisoners in the land of Oo-oh, and these are all females. Are you a prisoner, then?”

He told her briefly who and what he was, though he doubted if she understood, and from her he learned that she had been a prisoner there for many months; but for what purpose he did not then learn, as in the midst of their conversation the yellow door swung open and a Wieroo with a robe slashed with yellow entered.

At sight of Bradley the creature became furious. “Whence came this reptile?” it demanded of the girl. “How long has it been here with you?”

“It came through the doorway just ahead of you,” Bradley answered for the girl.

The Wieroo looked relieved. “It is well for the girl that this is so,” it said, “for now only you will have to die.” And stepping to the door the creature raised its voice in one of those uncanny, depressing wails.

The Englishman looked toward the girl. “Shall I kill it?” he asked, half drawing his pistol. “What is best to do?—I do not wish to endanger you.”

The Wieroo backed toward the door. “Defiler!” it screamed. “You dare to threaten one of the sacred chosen of Luata!”

“Do not kill him,” cried the girl, “for then there could be no hope for you. That you are here, alive, shows that they may not intend to kill you at all, and so there is a chance for you if you do not anger them; but touch him in violence and your bleached skull will top the loftiest pedestal of Oo-oh.”

“And what of you?” asked Bradley.

“I am already doomed,” replied the girl; “I am cos-ata-lo.”

“Cos-ata-lo! cos-ata-lu!” What did these phrases mean that they were so oft repeated by the denizens of Oo-oh? Lu and lo, Bradley knew to mean man and woman; ata; was employed variously to indicate life, eggs, young, reproduction and kindred subjects; cos was a negative; but in combination they were meaningless to the European.

“Do you mean they will kill you?” asked Bradley.

“I but wish that they would,” replied the girl. “My fate is to be worse than death—in just a few nights more, with the coming of the new moon.”

“Poor she-snake!” snapped the Wieroo. “You are to become sacred above all other shes. He Who Speaks for Luata has chosen you for himself. Today you go to his temple—” the Wieroo used a phrase meaning literally High Place—“where you will receive the sacred commands.”

The girl shuddered and cast a sorrowful glance toward Bradley. “Ah,” she sighed, “if I could but see my beloved country once again!”

The man stepped suddenly close to her side before the Wieroo could interpose and in a low voice asked her if there was no way by which he might encompass her escape. She shook her head sorrowfully. “Even if we escaped the city,” she replied, “there is the big water between the island of Oo-oh and the Galu shore.”

“And what is beyond the city, if we could leave it?” pursued Bradley.

“I may only guess from what I have heard since I was brought here,” she answered; “but by reports and chance remarks I take it to be a beautiful land in which there are but few wild beasts and no men, for only the Wieroos live upon this island and they dwell always in cities of which there are three, this being the largest. The others are at the far end of the island, which is about three marches from end to end and at its widest point about one march.”

From his own experience and from what the natives on the mainland had told him, Bradley knew that ten miles was a good day’s march in Caspak, owing to the fact that at most points it was a trackless wilderness and at all times travelers were beset by hideous beasts and reptiles that greatly impeded rapid progress.

The two had spoken rapidly but were now interrupted by the advent through the opening in the roof of several Wieroos who had come in answer to the alarm it of the yellow slashing had uttered.

“This jaal-lu,” cried the offended one, “has threatened me. Take its hatchet from it and make it fast where it can do no harm until He Who Speaks for Luata has said what shall be done with it. It is one of those strange creatures that Fosh-bal-soj discovered first above the Band-lu country and followed back toward the beginning. He Who Speaks for Luata sent Fosh-bal-soj to fetch him one of the creatures, and here it is. It is hoped that it may be from another world and hold the secret of the cos-ata-lus.”

The Wieroos approached boldly to take Bradley’s “hatchet” from him, their leader having indicated the pistol hanging in its holster at the Englishman’s hip, but the first one went reeling backward against his fellows from the blow to the chin which Bradley followed up with a rush and the intention to clean up the room in record time; but he had reckoned without the opening in the roof. Two were down and a great wailing and moaning was arising when reinforcements appeared from above. Bradley did not see them; but the girl did, and though she cried out a warning, it came too late for him to avoid a large Wieroo who dived headforemost for him, striking him between the shoulders and bearing him to the floor. Instantly a dozen more were piling on top of him. His pistol was wrenched from its holster and he was securely pinioned down by the weight of numbers.

At a word from the Wieroo of the yellow slashing who evidently was a person of authority, one left and presently returned with fiber ropes with which Bradley was tightly bound.

“Now bear him to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls,” directed the chief Wieroo, “and one take the word of all that has passed to Him Who Speaks for Luata.”

Each of the creatures raised a hand, the back against its face, as though in salute. One seized Bradley and carried him through the yellow doorway to the roof from whence it rose upon its wide-spread wings and flapped off across the roof-tops of Oo-oh with its heavy burden clutched in its long talons.

Below him Bradley could see the city stretching away to a distance on every hand. It was not as large as he had imagined, though he judged that it was at least three miles square. The houses were piled in indescribable heaps, sometimes to a height of a hundred feet. The streets and alleys were short and crooked and there were many areas where buildings had been wedged in so closely that no light could possibly reach the lowest tiers, the entire surface of the ground being packed solidly with them.

The colors were varied and startling, the architecture amazing. Many roofs were cup or saucer-shaped with a small hole in the center of each, as though they had been constructed to catch rain-water and conduct it to a reservoir beneath; but nearly all the others had the large opening in the top that Bradley had seen used by these flying men in lieu of doorways. At all levels were the myriad poles surmounted by grinning skulls; but the two most prominent features of the city were the round tower of human skulls that Bradley had noted earlier in the day and another and much larger edifice near the center of the city. As they approached it, Bradley saw that it was a huge building rising a hundred feet in height from the ground and that it stood alone in the center of what might have been called a plaza in some other part of the world. Its various parts, however, were set together with the same strange irregularity that marked the architecture of the city as a whole; and it was capped by an enormous saucer-shaped roof which projected far beyond the eaves, having the appearance of a colossal Chinese coolie hat, inverted.

The Wieroo bearing Bradley passed over one corner of the open space about the large building, revealing to the Englishman grass and trees and running water beneath. They passed the building and about five hundred yards beyond the creature alighted on the roof of a square, blue building surmounted by seven poles bearing seven skulls. This then, thought Bradley, is the Blue Place of Seven Skulls.

Over the opening in the roof was a grated covering, and this the Wieroo removed. The thing then tied a piece of fiber rope to one of Bradley’s ankles and rolled him over the edge of the opening. All was dark below and for an instant the Englishman came as near to experiencing real terror as he had ever come in his life before. As he rolled off into the black abyss he felt the rope tighten about his ankle and an instant later he was stopped with a sudden jerk to swing pendulumlike, head downward. Then the creature lowered away until Bradley’s head came in sudden and painful contact with the floor below, after which the Wieroo let loose of the rope entirely and the Englishman’s body crashed to the wooden planking. He felt the free end of the rope dropped upon him and heard the grating being slid into place above him.

CHAPTER 3

Half-stunned, Bradley lay for a minute as he had fallen and then slowly and painfully wriggled into a less uncomfortable position. He could see nothing of his surroundings in the gloom about him until after a few minutes his eyes became accustomed to the dark interior when he rolled them from side to side in survey of his prison.

He discovered himself to be in a bare room which was windowless, nor could he see any other opening than that through which he had been lowered. In one corner was a huddled mass that might have been almost anything from a bundle of rags to a dead body.

Almost immediately after he had taken his bearings Bradley commenced working with his bonds. He was a man of powerful physique, and as from the first he had been imbued with a belief that the fiber ropes were too weak to hold him, he worked on with a firm conviction that sooner or later they would part to his strainings. After a matter of five minutes he was positive that the strands about his wrists were beginning to give; but he was compelled to rest then from exhaustion.

As he lay, his eyes rested upon the bundle in the corner, and presently he could have sworn that the thing moved. With eyes straining through the gloom the man lay watching the grim and sinister thing in the corner. Perhaps his overwrought nerves were playing a sorry joke upon him. He thought of this and also that his condition of utter helplessness might still further have stimulated his imagination. He closed his eyes and sought to relax his muscles and his nerves; but when he looked again, he knew that he had not been mistaken—the thing had moved; now it lay in a slightly altered form and farther from the wall. It was nearer him.

With renewed strength Bradley strained at his bonds, his fascinated gaze still glued upon the shapeless bundle. No longer was there any doubt that it moved—he saw it rise in the center several inches and then creep closer to him. It sank and arose again—a headless, hideous, monstrous thing of menace. Its very silence rendered it the more terrible.

Bradley was a brave man; ordinarily his nerves were of steel; but to be at the mercy of some unknown and nameless horror, to be unable to defend himself—it was these things that almost unstrung him, for at best he was only human. To stand in the open, even with the odds all against him; to be able to use his fists, to put up some sort of defense, to inflict punishment upon his adversary—then he could face death with a smile. It was not death that he feared now—it was that horror of the unknown that is part of the fiber of every son of woman.

Closer and closer came the shapeless mass. Bradley lay motionless and listened. What was that he heard! Breathing? He could not be mistaken—and then from out of the bundle of rags issued a hollow groan. Bradley felt his hair rise upon his head. He struggled with the slowly parting strands that held him. The thing beside him rose up higher than before and the Englishman could have sworn that he saw a single eye peering at him from among the tumbled cloth. For a moment the bundle remained motionless—only the sound of breathing issued from it, then there broke from it a maniacal laugh.

Cold sweat stood upon Bradley’s brow as he tugged for liberation. He saw the rags rise higher and higher above him until at last they tumbled upon the floor from the body of a naked man—a thin, a bony, a hideous caricature of man, that mouthed and mummed and, wabbling upon its weak and shaking legs, crumpled to the floor again, still laughing—laughing horribly.

It crawled toward Bradley. “Food! Food!” it screamed. “There is a way out! There is a way out!”

Dragging itself to his side the creature slumped upon the Englishman’s breast. “Food!” it shrilled as with its bony fingers and its teeth, it sought the man’s bare throat.

“Food! There is a way out!” Bradley felt teeth upon his jugular. He turned and twisted, shaking himself free for an instant; but once more with hideous persistence the thing fastened itself upon him. The weak jaws were unable to send the dull teeth through the victim’s flesh; but Bradley felt it pawing, pawing, pawing, like a monstrous rat, seeking his life’s blood.

The skinny arms now embraced his neck, holding the teeth to his throat against all his efforts to dislodge the thing. Weak as it was it had strength enough for this in its mad efforts to eat. Mumbling as it worked, it repeated again and again, “Food! Food! There is a way out!” until Bradley thought those two expressions alone would drive him mad.

And all but mad he was as with a final effort backed by almost maniacal strength he tore his wrists from the confining bonds and grasping the repulsive thing upon his breast hurled it halfway across the room. Panting like a spent hound Bradley worked at the thongs about his ankles while the maniac lay quivering and mumbling where it had fallen. Presently the Englishman leaped to his feet—freer than he had ever before felt in all his life, though he was still hopelessly a prisoner in the Blue Place of Seven Skulls.

With his back against the wall for support, so weak the reaction left him, Bradley stood watching the creature upon the floor. He saw it move and slowly raise itself to its hands and knees, where it swayed to and fro as its eyes roved about in search of him; and when at last they found him, there broke from the drawn lips the mumbled words: “Food! Food! There is a way out!” The pitiful supplication in the tones touched the Englishman’s heart. He knew that this could be no Wieroo, but possibly once a man like himself who had been cast into this pit of solitary confinement with this hideous result that might in time be his fate, also.

And then, too, there was the suggestion of hope held out by the constant reiteration of the phrase, “There is a way out.” Was there a way out? What did this poor thing know?

“Who are you and how long have you been here?” Bradley suddenly demanded.

For a moment the man upon the floor made no response, then mumblingly came the words: “Food! Food!”

“Stop!” commanded the Englishman—the injunction might have been barked from the muzzle of a pistol. It brought the man to a sitting posture, his hands off the ground. He stopped swaying to and fro and appeared to be startled into an attempt to master his faculties of concentration and thought.

Bradley repeated his questions sharply.

“I am An-Tak, the Galu,” replied the man. “Luata alone knows how long I have been here—maybe ten moons, maybe ten moons three times”—it was the Caspakian equivalent of thirty. “I was young and strong when they brought me here. Now I am old and very weak. I am cos-ata-lu—that is why they have not killed me. If I tell them the secret of becoming cos-ata-lu they will take me out; but how can I tell them that which Luata alone knows?

“What is cos-ata-lu?” demanded Bradley.

“Food! Food! There is a way out!” mumbled the Galu.

Bradley strode across the floor, seized the man by his shoulders and shook him.

“Tell me,” he cried, “what is cos-ata-lu?”

“Food!” whimpered An-Tak.

Bradley bethought himself. His haversack had not been taken from him. In it besides his razor and knife were odds and ends of equipment and a small quantity of dried meat. He tossed a small strip of the latter to the starving Galu. An-Tak seized upon it and devoured it ravenously. It instilled new life in the man.

“What is cos-ata-lu?” insisted Bradley again.

An-Tak tried to explain. His narrative was often broken by lapses of concentration during which he reverted to his plaintive mumbling for food and recurrence to the statement that there was a way out; but by firmness and patience the Englishman drew out piece-meal a more or less lucid exposition of the remarkable scheme of evolution that rules in Caspak. In it he found explanations of the hitherto inexplicable. He discovered why he had seen no babes or children among the Caspakian tribes with which he had come in contact; why each more northerly tribe evinced a higher state of development than those south of them; why each tribe included individuals ranging in physical and mental characteristics from the highest of the next lower race to the lowest of the next higher, and why the women of each tribe immersed themselves morning for an hour or more in the warm pools near which the habitations of their people always were located; and, too, he discovered why those pools were almost immune from the attacks of carnivorous animals and reptiles.

He learned that all but those who were cos-ata-lu came up cor-sva-jo, or from the beginning. The egg from which they first developed into tadpole form was deposited, with millions of others, in one of the warm pools and with it a poisonous serum that the carnivora instinctively shunned. Down the warm stream from the pool floated the countless billions of eggs and tadpoles, developing as they drifted slowly toward the sea. Some became tadpoles in the pool, some in the sluggish stream and some not until they reached the great inland sea. In the next stage they became fishes or reptiles, An-Tak was not positive which, and in this form, always developing, they swam far to the south, where, amid the rank and teeming jungles, some of them evolved into amphibians. Always there were those whose development stopped at the first stage, others whose development ceased when they became reptiles, while by far the greater proportion formed the food supply of the ravenous creatures of the deep.

Few indeed were those that eventually developed into baboons and then apes, which was considered by Caspakians the real beginning of evolution. From the egg, then, the individual developed slowly into a higher form, just as the frog’s egg develops through various stages from a fish with gills to a frog with lungs. With that thought in mind Bradley discovered that it was not difficult to believe in the possibility of such a scheme—there was nothing new in it.

From the ape the individual, if it survived, slowly developed into the lowest order of man—the Alu—and then by degrees to Bo-lu, Sto-lu, Band-lu, Kro-lu and finally Galu. And in each stage countless millions of other eggs were deposited in the warm pools of the various races and floated down to the great sea to go through a similar process of evolution outside the womb as develops our own young within; but in Caspak the scheme is much more inclusive, for it combines not only individual development but the evolution of species and genera. If an egg survives it goes through all the stages of development that man has passed through during the unthinkable eons since life first moved upon the earth’s face.

The final stage—that which the Galus have almost attained and for which all hope—is cos-ata-lu, which literally, means no-egg-man, or one who is born directly as are the young of the outer world of mammals. Some of the Galus produce cos-ata-lu and cos-ata-lo both; the Wieroos only cos-ata-lu—in other words all Wieroos are born male, and so they prey upon the Galus for their women and sometimes capture and torture the Galu men who are cos-ata-lu in an endeavor to learn the secret which they believe will give them unlimited power over all other denizens of Caspak.

No Wieroos come up from the beginning—all are born of the Wieroo fathers and Galu mothers who are cos-ata-lo, and there are very few of the latter owing to the long and precarious stages of development. Seven generations of the same ancestor must come up from the beginning before a cos-ata-lu child may be born; and when one considers the frightful dangers that surround the vital spark from the moment it leaves the warm pool where it has been deposited to float down to the sea amid the voracious creatures that swarm the surface and the deeps and the almost equally unthinkable trials of its effort to survive after it once becomes a land animal and starts northward through the horrors of the Caspakian jungles and forests, it is plainly a wonder that even a single babe has ever been born to a Galu woman.

Seven cycles it requires before the seventh Galu can complete the seventh danger-infested circle since its first Galu ancestor achieved the state of Galu. For ages before, the ancestors of this first Galu may have developed from a Band-lu or Bo-lu egg without ever once completing the whole circle—that is from a Galu egg, back to a fully developed Galu.

Bradley’s head was whirling before he even commenced to grasp the complexities of Caspakian evolution; but as the truth slowly filtered into his understanding—as gradually it became possible for him to visualize the scheme, it appeared simpler. In fact, it seemed even less difficult of comprehension than that with which he was familiar.

For several minutes after An-Tak ceased speaking, his voice having trailed off weakly into silence, neither spoke again. Then the Galu recommenced his, “Food! Food! There is a way out!” Bradley tossed him another bit of dried meat, waiting patiently until he had eaten it, this time more slowly.

“What do you mean by saying there is a way out?” he asked.

“He who died here just after I came, told me,” replied An-Tak. “He said there was a way out, that he had discovered it but was too weak to use his knowledge. He was trying to tell me how to find it when he died. Oh, Luata, if he had lived but a moment more!”

“They do not feed you here?” asked Bradley.

“No, they give me water once a day—that is all.”

“But how have you lived, then?”

“The lizards and the rats,” replied An-Tak. “The lizards are not so bad; but the rats are foul to taste. However, I must eat them or they would eat me, and they are better than nothing; but of late they do not come so often, and I have not had a lizard for a long time. I shall eat though,” he mumbled. “I shall eat now, for you cannot remain awake forever.” He laughed, a cackling, dry laugh. “When you sleep, An-Tak will eat.”

It was horrible. Bradley shuddered. For a long time each sat in silence. The Englishman could guess why the other made no sound—he awaited the moment that sleep should overcome his victim. In the long silence there was born upon Bradley’s ears a faint, monotonous sound as of running water. He listened intently. It seemed to come from far beneath the floor.

“What is that noise?” he asked. “That sounds like water running through a narrow channel.”

“It is the river,” replied An-Tak. “Why do you not go to sleep? It passes directly beneath the Blue Place of Seven Skulls. It runs through the temple grounds, beneath the temple and under the city. When we die, they will cut off our heads and throw our bodies into the river. At the mouth of the river await many large reptiles. Thus do they feed. The Wieroos do likewise with their own dead, keeping only the skulls and the wings. Come, let us sleep.”

“Do the reptiles come up the river into the city?” asked Bradley.

“The water is too cold—they never leave the warm water of the great pool,” replied An-Tak.

“Let us search for the way out,” suggested Bradley.

An-Tak shook his head. “I have searched for it all these moons,” he said. “If I could not find it, how would you?”

Bradley made no reply but commenced a diligent examination of the walls and floor of the room, pressing over each square foot and tapping with his knuckles. About six feet from the floor he discovered a sleeping-perch near one end of the apartment. He asked An-Tak about it, but the Galu said that no Weiroo had occupied the place since he had been incarcerated there. Again and again Bradley went over the floor and walls as high up as he could reach. Finally he swung himself to the perch, that he might examine at least one end of the room all the way to the ceiling.

In the center of the wall close to the top, an area about three feet square gave forth a hollow sound when he rapped upon it. Bradley felt over every square inch of that area with the tips of his fingers. Near the top he found a small round hole a trifle larger in diameter than his forefinger, which he immediately stuck into it. The panel, if such it was, seemed about an inch thick, and beyond it his finger encountered nothing. Bradley crooked his finger upon the opposite side of the panel and pulled toward him, steadily but with considerable force. Suddenly the panel flew inward, nearly precipitating the man to the floor. It was hinged at the bottom, and when lowered the outer edge rested upon the perch, making a little platform parallel with the floor of the room.

Beyond the opening was an utterly dark void. The Englishman leaned through it and reached his arm as far as possible into the blackness but touched nothing. Then he fumbled in his haversack for a match, a few of which remained to him. When he struck it, An-Tak gave a cry of terror. Bradley held the light far into the opening before him and in its flickering rays saw the top of a ladder descending into a black abyss below. How far down it extended he could not guess; but that he should soon know definitely he was positive.

“You have found it! You have found the way out!” screamed An-Tak. “Oh, Luata! And now I am too weak to go. Take me with you! Take me with you!”

“Shut up!” admonished Bradley. “You will have the whole flock of birds around our heads in a minute, and neither of us will escape. Be quiet, and I’ll go ahead. If I find a way out, I’ll come back and help you, if you’ll promise not to try to eat me up again.”

“I promise,” cried An-Tak. “Oh, Luata! How could you blame me? I am half crazed of hunger and long confinement and the horror of the lizards and the rats and the constant waiting for death.”

“I know,” said Bradley simply. “I’m sorry for you, old top. Keep a stiff upper lip.” And he slipped through the opening, found the ladder with his feet, closed the panel behind him, and started downward into the darkness.

Below him rose more and more distinctly the sound of running water. The air felt damp and cool. He could see nothing of his surroundings and felt nothing but the smooth, worn sides and rungs of the ladder down which he felt his way cautiously lest a broken rung or a misstep should hurl him downward.

As he descended thus slowly, the ladder seemed interminable and the pit bottomless, yet he realized when at last he reached the bottom that he could not have descended more than fifty feet. The bottom of the ladder rested on a narrow ledge paved with what felt like large round stones, but what he knew from experience to be human skulls. He could not but marvel as to where so many countless thousands of the things had come from, until he paused to consider that the infancy of Caspak dated doubtlessly back into remote ages, far beyond what the outer world considered the beginning of earthly time. For all these eons the Wieroos might have been collecting human skulls from their enemies and their own dead—enough to have built an entire city of them.

Feeling his way along the narrow ledge, Bradley came presently to a blank wall that stretched out over the water swirling beneath him, as far as he could reach. Stooping, he groped about with one hand, reaching down toward the surface of the water, and discovered that the bottom of the wall arched above the stream. How much space there was between the water and the arch he could not tell, nor how deep the former. There was only one way in which he might learn these things, and that was to lower himself into the stream. For only an instant he hesitated weighing his chances. Behind him lay almost certainly the horrid fate of An-Tak; before him nothing worse than a comparatively painless death by drowning. Holding his haversack above his head with one hand he lowered his feet slowly over the edge of the narrow platform. Almost immediately he felt the swirling of cold water about his ankles, and then with a silent prayer he let himself drop gently into the stream.

Great was Bradley’s relief when he found the water no more than waist deep and beneath his feet a firm, gravel bottom. Feeling his way cautiously he moved downward with the current, which was not so strong as he had imagined from the noise of the running water.

Beneath the first arch he made his way, following the winding curvatures of the right-hand wall. After a few yards of progress his hand came suddenly in contact with a slimy thing clinging to the wall—a thing that hissed and scuttled out of reach. What it was, the man could not know; but almost instantly there was a splash in the water just ahead of him and then another.

On he went, passing beneath other arches at varying distances, and always in utter darkness. Unseen denizens of this great sewer, disturbed by the intruder, splashed into the water ahead of him and wriggled away. Time and again his hand touched them and never for an instant could he be sure that at the next step some gruesome thing might not attack him. He had strapped his haversack about his neck, well above the surface of the water, and in his left hand he carried his knife. Other precautions there were none to take.

The monotony of the blind trail was increased by the fact that from the moment he had started from the foot of the ladder he had counted his every step. He had promised to return for An-Tak if it proved humanly possible to do so, and he knew that in the blackness of the tunnel he could locate the foot of the ladder in no other way.

He had taken two hundred and sixty-nine steps—afterward he knew that he should never forget that number—when something bumped gently against him from behind. Instantly he wheeled about and with knife ready to defend himself stretched forth his right hand to push away the object that now had lodged against his body. His fingers feeling through the darkness came in contact with something cold and clammy—they passed to and fro over the thing until Bradley knew that it was the face of a dead man floating upon the surface of the stream. With an oath he pushed his gruesome companion out into mid-stream to float on down toward the great pool and the awaiting scavengers of the deep.

At his four hundred and thirteenth step another corpse bumped against him—how many had passed him without touching he could not guess; but suddenly he experienced the sensation of being surrounded by dead faces floating along with him, all set in hideous grimaces, their dead eyes glaring at this profaning alien who dared intrude upon the waters of this river of the dead—a horrid escort, pregnant with dire forebodings and with menace.

Though he advanced very slowly, he tried always to take steps of about the same length; so that he knew that though considerable time had elapsed, yet he had really advanced no more than four hundred yards when ahead he saw a lessening of the pitch-darkness, and at the next turn of the stream his surroundings became vaguely discernible. Above him was an arched roof and on either hand walls pierced at intervals by apertures covered with wooden doors. Just ahead of him in the roof of the aqueduct was a round, black hole about thirty inches in diameter. His eyes still rested upon the opening when there shot downward from it to the water below the naked body of a human being which almost immediately rose to the surface again and floated off down the stream. In the dim light Bradley saw that it was a dead Wieroo from which the wings and head had been removed. A moment later another headless body floated past, recalling what An-Tak had told him of the skull-collecting customs of the Wieroo. Bradley wondered how it happened that the first corpse he had encountered in the stream had not been similarly mutilated.

The farther he advanced now, the lighter it became. The number of corpses was much smaller than he had imagined, only two more passing him before, at six hundred steps, or about five hundred yards, from the point he had taken to the stream, he came to the end of the tunnel and looked out upon sunlit water, running between grassy banks.

One of the last corpses to pass him was still clothed in the white robe of a Wieroo, blood-stained over the headless neck that it concealed.

Drawing closer to the opening leading into the bright daylight, Bradley surveyed what lay beyond. A short distance before him a large building stood in the center of several acres of grass and tree-covered ground, spanning the stream which disappeared through an opening in its foundation wall. From the large saucer-shaped roof and the vivid colorings of the various heterogeneous parts of the structure he recognized it as the temple past which he had been borne to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls.

To and fro flew Wieroos, going to and from the temple. Others passed on foot across the open grounds, assisting themselves with their great wings, so that they barely skimmed the earth. To leave the mouth of the tunnel would have been to court instant discovery and capture; but by what other avenue he might escape, Bradley could not guess, unless he retraced his steps up the stream and sought egress from the other end of the city. The thought of traversing that dark and horror-ridden tunnel for perhaps miles he could not entertain—there must be some other way. Perhaps after dark he could steal through the temple grounds and continue on downstream until he had come beyond the city; and so he stood and waited until his limbs became almost paralyzed with cold, and he knew that he must find some other plan for escape.

A half-formed decision to risk an attempt to swim under water to the temple was crystallizing in spite of the fact that any chance Wieroo flying above the stream might easily see him, when again a floating object bumped against him from behind and lodged across his back. Turning quickly he saw that the thing was what he had immediately guessed it to be—a headless and wingless Wieroo corpse. With a grunt of disgust he was about to push it from him when the white garment enshrouding it suggested a bold plan to his resourceful brain. Grasping the corpse by an arm he tore the garment from it and then let the body float downward toward the temple. With great care he draped the robe about him; the bloody blotch that had covered the severed neck he arranged about his own head. His haversack he rolled as tightly as possible and stuffed beneath his coat over his breast. Then he fell gently to the surface of the stream and lying upon his back floated downward with the current and out into the open sunlight.

Through the weave of the cloth he could distinguish large objects. He saw a Wieroo flap dismally above him; he saw the banks of the stream float slowly past; he heard a sudden wail upon the right-hand shore, and his heart stood still lest his ruse had been discovered; but never by a move of a muscle did he betray that aught but a cold lump of clay floated there upon the bosom of the water, and soon, though it seemed an eternity to him, the direct sunlight was blotted out, and he knew that he had entered beneath the temple.

Quickly he felt for bottom with his feet and as quickly stood erect, snatching the bloody, clammy cloth from his face. On both sides were blank walls and before him the river turned a sharp corner and disappeared. Feeling his way cautiously forward he approached the turn and looked around the corner. To his left was a low platform about a foot above the level of the stream, and onto this he lost no time in climbing, for he was soaked from head to foot, cold and almost exhausted.

As he lay resting on the skull-paved shelf, he saw in the center of the vault above the river another of those sinister round holes through which he momentarily expected to see a headless corpse shoot downward in its last plunge to a watery grave. A few feet along the platform a closed door broke the blankness of the wall. As he lay looking at it and wondering what lay behind, his mind filled with fragments of many wild schemes of escape, it opened and a white robed Wieroo stepped out upon the platform. The creature carried a large wooden basin filled with rubbish. Its eyes were not upon Bradley, who drew himself to a squatting position and crouched as far back in the corner of the niche in which the platform was set as he could force himself. The Wieroo stepped to the edge of the platform and dumped the rubbish into the stream. If it turned away from him as it started to retrace its steps to the doorway, there was a small chance that it might not see him; but if it turned toward him there was none at all. Bradley held his breath.

The Wieroo paused a moment, gazing down into the water, then it straightened up and turned toward the Englishman. Bradley did not move. The Wieroo stopped and stared intently at him. It approached him questioningly. Still Bradley remained as though carved of stone. The creature was directly in front of him. It stopped. There was no chance on earth that it would not discover what he was.

With the quickness of a cat, Bradley sprang to his feet and with all his great strength, backed by his heavy weight, struck the Wieroo upon the point of the chin. Without a sound the thing crumpled to the platform, while Bradley, acting almost instinctively to the urge of the first law of nature, rolled the inanimate body over the edge into the river.

Then he looked at the open doorway, crossed the platform and peered within the apartment beyond. What he saw was a large room, dimly lighted, and about the side rows of wooden vessels stacked one upon another. There was no Wieroo in sight, so the Englishman entered. At the far end of the room was another door, and as he crossed toward it, he glanced into some of the vessels, which he found were filled with dried fruits, vegetables and fish. Without more ado he stuffed his pockets and his haversack full, thinking of the poor creature awaiting his return in the gloom of the Place of Seven Skulls.

When night came, he would return and fetch An-Tak this far at least; but in the meantime it was his intention to reconnoiter in the hope that he might discover some easier way out of the city than that offered by the chill, black channel of the ghastly river of corpses.

Beyond the farther door stretched a long passageway from which closed doorways led into other parts of the cellars of the temple. A few yards from the storeroom a ladder rose from the corridor through an aperture in the ceiling. Bradley paused at the foot of it, debating the wisdom of further investigation against a return to the river; but strong within him was the spirit of exploration that has scattered his race to the four corners of the earth. What new mysteries lay hidden in the chambers above? The urge to know was strong upon him though his better judgment warned him that the safer course lay in retreat. For a moment he stood thus, running his fingers through his hair; then he cast discretion to the winds and began the ascent.

In conformity with such Wieroo architecture as he had already observed, the well through which the ladder rose continually canted at an angle from the perpendicular. At more or less regular stages it was pierced by apertures closed by doors, none of which he could open until he had climbed fully fifty feet from the river level. Here he discovered a door already ajar opening into a large, circular chamber, the walls and floors of which were covered with the skins of wild beasts and with rugs of many colors; but what interested him most was the occupants of the room—a Wieroo, and a girl of human proportions. She was standing with her back against a column which rose from the center of the apartment from floor to ceiling—a hollow column about forty inches in diameter in which he could see an opening some thirty inches across. The girl’s side was toward Bradley, and her face averted, for she was watching the Wieroo, who was now advancing slowly toward her, talking as he came.

Bradley could distinctly hear the words of the creature, who was urging the girl to accompany him to another Wieroo city. “Come with me,” he said, “and you shall have your life; remain here and He Who Speaks for Luata will claim you for his own; and when he is done with you, your skull will bleach at the top of a tall staff while your body feeds the reptiles at the mouth of the River of Death. Even though you bring into the world a female Wieroo, your fate will be the same if you do not escape him, while with me you shall have life and food and none shall harm you.”

He was quite close to the girl when she replied by striking him in the face with all her strength. “Until I am slain,” she cried, “I shall fight against you all.” From the throat of the Wieroo issued that dismal wail that Bradley had heard so often in the past—it was like a scream of pain smothered to a groan—and then the thing leaped upon the girl, its face working in hideous grimaces as it clawed and beat at her to force her to the floor.

The Englishman was upon the point of entering to defend her when a door at the opposite side of the chamber opened to admit a huge Wieroo clothed entirely in red. At sight of the two struggling upon the floor the newcomer raised his voice in a shriek of rage. Instantly the Wieroo who was attacking the girl leaped to his feet and faced the other.

“I heard,” screamed he who had just entered the room. “I heard, and when He Who Speaks for young, reproduction and kindred subjects shall have heard—” He paused and made a suggestive movement of a finger across his throat.

“He shall not hear,” returned the first Wieroo as, with a powerful motion of his great wings, he launched himself upon the red-robed figure. The latter dodged the first charge, drew a wicked-looking curved blade from beneath its red robe, spread its wings and dived for its antagonist. Beating their wings, wailing and groaning, the two hideous things sparred for position. The white-robed one being unarmed sought to grasp the other by the wrist of its knife-hand and by the throat, while the latter hopped around on its dainty white feet, seeking an opening for a mortal blow. Once it struck and missed, and then the other rushed in and clinched, at the same time securing both the holds it sought. Immediately the two commenced beating at each other’s heads with the joints of their wings, kicking with their soft, puny feet and biting, each at the other’s face.

In the meantime the girl moved about the room, keeping out of the way of the duelists, and as she did so, Bradley caught a glimpse of her full face and immediately recognized her as the girl of the place of the yellow door. He did not dare intervene now until one of the Wieroo had overcome the other, lest the two should turn upon him at once, when the chances were fair that he would be defeated in so unequal a battle as the curved blade of the red Wieroo would render it, and so he waited, watching the white-robed figure slowly choking the life from him of the red robe. The protruding tongue and the popping eyes proclaimed that the end was near and a moment later the red robe sank to the floor of the room, the curved blade slipping from nerveless fingers. For an instant longer the victor clung to the throat of his defeated antagonist and then he rose, dragging the body after him, and approached the central column. Here he raised the body and thrust it into the aperture where Bradley saw it drop suddenly from sight. Instantly there flashed into his memory the circular openings in the roof of the river vault and the corpses he had seen drop from them to the water beneath.

As the body disappeared, the Wieroo turned and cast about the room for the girl. For a moment he stood eying her. “You saw,” he muttered, “and if you tell them, He Who Speaks for Luata will have my wings severed while still I live and my head will be severed and I shall be cast into the River of Death, for thus it happens even to the highest who slay one of the red robe. You saw, and you must die!” he ended with a scream as he rushed upon the girl.

Bradley waited no longer. Leaping into the room he ran for the Wieroo, who had already seized the girl, and as he ran, he stooped and picked up the curved blade. The creature’s back was toward him as, with his left hand, he seized it by the neck. Like a flash the great wings beat backward as the creature turned, and Bradley was swept from his feet, though he still retained his hold upon the blade. Instantly the Wieroo was upon him. Bradley lay slightly raised upon his left elbow, his right arm free, and as the thing came close, he cut at the hideous face with all the strength that lay within him. The blade struck at the junction of the neck and torso and with such force as to completely decapitate the Wieroo, the hideous head dropping to the floor and the body falling forward upon the Englishman. Pushing it from him he rose to his feet and faced the wide-eyed girl.

“Luata!” she exclaimed. “How came you here?”

Bradley shrugged. “Here I am,” he said; “but the thing now is to get out of here—both of us.”

The girl shook her head. “It cannot be,” she stated sadly.

“That is what I thought when they dropped me into the Blue Place of Seven Skulls,” replied Bradley. “Can’t be done. I did it.—Here! You’re mussing up the floor something awful, you.” This last to the dead Wieroo as he stooped and dragged the corpse to the central shaft, where he raised it to the aperture and let it slip into the tube. Then he picked up the head and tossed it after the body. “Don’t be so glum,” he admonished the former as he carried it toward the well; “smile!”

“But how can he smile?” questioned the girl, a half-puzzled, half-frightened look upon her face. “He is dead.”

“That’s so,” admitted Bradley, “and I suppose he does feel a bit cut up about it.”

The girl shook her head and edged away from the man—toward the door.

“Come!” said the Englishman. “We’ve got to get out of here. If you don’t know a better way than the river, it’s the river then.”

The girl still eyed him askance. “But how could he smile when he was dead?”

Bradley laughed aloud. “I thought we English were supposed to have the least sense of humor of any people in the world,” he cried; “but now I’ve found one human being who hasn’t any. Of course you don’t know half I’m saying; but don’t worry, little girl; I’m not going to hurt you, and if I can get you out of here, I’ll do it.”

Even if she did not understand all he said, she at least read something in his smiling countenance—something which reassured her. “I do not fear you,” she said; “though I do not understand all that you say even though you speak my own tongue and use words that I know. But as for escaping”—she sighed—“alas, how can it be done?”

“I escaped from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls,” Bradley reminded her. “Come!” And he turned toward the shaft and the ladder that he had ascended from the river. “We cannot waste time here.”

The girl followed him; but at the doorway both drew back, for from below came the sound of some one ascending.

Bradley tiptoed to the door and peered cautiously into the well; then he stepped back beside the girl. “There are half a dozen of them coming up; but possibly they will pass this room.”

“No,” she said, “they will pass directly through this room—they are on their way to Him Who Speaks for Luata. We may be able to hide in the next room—there are skins there beneath which we may crawl. They will not stop in that room; but they may stop in this one for a short time—the other room is blue.”

“What’s that go to do with it?” demanded the Englishman.

“They fear blue,” she replied. “In every room where murder has been done you will find blue—a certain amount for each murder. When the room is all blue, they shun it. This room has much blue; but evidently they kill mostly in the next room, which is now all blue.”

“But there is blue on the outside of every house I have seen,” said Bradley.

“Yes,” assented the girl, “and there are blue rooms in each of those houses—when all the rooms are blue then the whole outside of the house will be blue as is the Blue Place of Seven Skulls. There are many such here.”

“And the skulls with blue upon them?” inquired Bradley. “Did they belong to murderers?”

“They were murdered—some of them; those with only a small amount of blue were murderers—known murderers. All Wieroos are murderers. When they have committed a certain number of murders without being caught at it, they confess to Him Who Speaks for Luata and are advanced, after which they wear robes with a slash of some color—I think yellow comes first. When they reach a point where the entire robe is of yellow, they discard it for a white robe with a red slash; and when one wins a complete red robe, he carries such a long, curved knife as you have in your hand; after that comes the blue slash on a white robe, and then, I suppose, an all blue robe. I have never seen such a one.”

As they talked in low tones they had moved from the room of the death shaft into an all blue room adjoining, where they sat down together in a corner with their backs against a wall and drew a pile of hides over themselves. A moment later they heard a number of Wieroos enter the chamber. They were talking together as they crossed the floor, or the two could not have heard them. Halfway across the chamber they halted as the door toward which they were advancing opened and a dozen others of their kind entered the apartment.

Bradley could guess all this by the increased volume of sound and the dismal greetings; but the sudden silence that almost immediately ensued he could not fathom, for he could not know that from beneath one of the hides that covered him protruded one of his heavy army shoes, or that some eighteen large Wieroos with robes either solid red or slashed with red or blue were standing gazing at it. Nor could he hear their stealthy approach.

The first intimation he had that he had been discovered was when his foot was suddenly seized, and he was yanked violently from beneath the hides to find himself surrounded by menacing blades. They would have slain him on the spot had not one clothed all in red held them back, saying that He Who Speaks for Luata desired to see this strange creature.

As they led Bradley away, he caught an opportunity to glance back toward the hides to see what had become of the girl, and, to his gratification, he discovered that she still lay concealed beneath the hides. He wondered if she would have the nerve to attempt the river trip alone and regretted that now he could not accompany her. He felt rather all in, himself, more so than he had at any time since he had been captured by the Wieroo, for there appeared not the slightest cause for hope in his present predicament. He had dropped the curved blade beneath the hides when he had been jerked so violently from their fancied security. It was almost in a spirit of resigned hopelessness that he quietly accompanied his captors through various chambers and corridors toward the heart of the temple.

CHAPTER 4

The farther the group progressed, the more barbaric and the more sumptuous became the decorations. Hides of leopard and tiger predominated, apparently because of their more beautiful markings, and decorative skulls became more and more numerous. Many of the latter were mounted in precious metals and set with colored stones and priceless gems, while thick upon the hides that covered the walls were golden ornaments similar to those worn by the girl and those which had filled the chests he had examined in the storeroom of Fosh-bal-soj, leading the Englishman to the conviction that all such were spoils of war or theft, since each piece seemed made for personal adornment, while in so far as he had seen, no Wieroo wore ornaments of any sort.

And also as they advanced the more numerous became the Wieroos moving hither and thither within the temple. Many now were the solid red robes and those that were slashed with blue—a veritable hive of murderers.

At last the party halted in a room in which were many Wieroos who gathered about Bradley questioning his captors and examining him and his apparel. One of the party accompanying the Englishman spoke to a Wieroo that stood beside a door leading from the room. “Tell Him Who Speaks for Luata,” he said, “that Fosh-bal-soj we could not find; but that in returning we found this creature within the temple, hiding. It must be the same that Fosh-bal-soj captured in the Sto-lu country during the last darkness. Doubtless He Who Speaks for Luata would wish to see and question this strange thing.”

The creature addressed turned and slipped through the doorway, closing the door after it, but first depositing its curved blade upon the floor without. Its post was immediately taken by another and Bradley now saw that at least twenty such guards loitered in the immediate vicinity. The doorkeeper was gone but for a moment, and when he returned, he signified that Bradley’s party was to enter the next chamber; but first each of the Wieroos removed his curved weapon and laid it upon the floor. The door was swung open, and the party, now reduced to Bradley and five Wieroos, was ushered across the threshold into a large, irregularly shaped room in which a single, giant Wieroo whose robe was solid blue sat upon a raised dais.

The creature’s face was white with the whiteness of a corpse, its dead eyes entirely expressionless, its cruel, thin lips tight-drawn against yellow teeth in a perpetual grimace. Upon either side of it lay an enormous, curved sword, similar to those with which some of the other Wieroos had been armed, but larger and heavier. Constantly its clawlike fingers played with one or the other of these weapons.

The walls of the chamber as well as the floor were entirely hidden by skins and woven fabrics. Blue predominated in all the colorations. Fastened against the hides were many pairs of Wieroo wings, mounted so that they resembled long, black shields. Upon the ceiling were painted in blue characters a bewildering series of hieroglyphics and upon pedestals set against the walls or standing out well within the room were many human skulls.

As the Wieroos approached the figure upon the dais, they leaned far forward, raising their wings above their heads and stretching their necks as though offering them to the sharp swords of the grim and hideous creature.

“O Thou Who Speakest for Luata!” exclaimed one of the party. “We bring you the strange creature that Fosh-bal-soj captured and brought thither at thy command.”

So this then was the godlike figure that spoke for divinity! This arch-murderer was the Caspakian representative of God on Earth! His blue robe announced him the one and the seeming humility of his minions the other. For a long minute he glared at Bradley. Then he began to question him—from whence he came and how, the name and description of his native country, and a hundred other queries.

“Are you cos-ata-lu?” the creature asked.

Bradley replied that he was and that all his kind were, as well as every living thing in his part of the world.

“Can you tell me the secret?” asked the creature.

Bradley hesitated and then, thinking to gain time, replied in the affirmative.

“What is it?” demanded the Wieroo, leaning far forward and exhibiting every evidence of excited interest.

Bradley leaned forward and whispered: “It is for your ears alone; I will not divulge it to others, and then only on condition that you carry me and the girl I saw in the place of the yellow door near to that of Fosh-bal-soj back to her own country.”

The thing rose in wrath, holding one of its swords above its head.

“Who are you to make terms for Him Who Speaks for Luata?” it shrilled. “Tell me the secret or die where you stand!”

“And if I die now, the secret goes with me,” Bradley reminded him. “Never again will you get the opportunity to question another of my kind who knows the secret.” Anything to gain time, to get the rest of the Wieroos from the room, that he might plan some scheme for escape and put it into effect.

The creature turned upon the leader of the party that had brought Bradley.

“Is the thing with weapons?” it asked.

“No,” was the response.

“Then go; but tell the guard to remain close by,” commanded the high one.

The Wieroos salaamed and withdrew, closing the door behind them. He Who Speaks for Luata grasped a sword nervously in his right hand. At his left side lay the second weapon. It was evident that he lived in constant dread of being assassinated. The fact that he permitted none with weapons within his presence and that he always kept two swords at his side pointed to this.

Bradley was racking his brain to find some suggestion of a plan whereby he might turn the situation to his own account. His eyes wandered past the weird figure before him; they played about the walls of the apartment as though hoping to draw inspiration from the dead skulls and the hides and the wings, and then they came back to the face of the Wieroo god, now working in anger.

“Quick!” screamed the thing. “The secret!”

“Will you give me and the girl our freedom?” insisted Bradley.

For an instant the thing hesitated, and then it grumbled “Yes.” At the same instant Bradley saw two hides upon the wall directly back of the dais separate and a face appear in the opening. No change of expression upon the Englishman’s countenance betrayed that he had seen aught to surprise him, though surprised he was for the face in the aperture was that of the girl he had but just left hidden beneath the hides in another chamber. A white and shapely arm now pushed past the face into the room, and in the hand, tightly clutched, was the curved blade, smeared with blood, that Bradley had dropped beneath the hides at the moment he had been discovered and drawn from his concealment.

“Listen, then,” said Bradley in a low voice to the Wieroo. “You shall know the secret of cos-ata-lu as well as do I; but none other may hear it. Lean close—I will whisper it into your ear.”

He moved forward and stepped upon the dais. The creature raised its sword ready to strike at the first indication of treachery, and Bradley stooped beneath the blade and put his ear close to the gruesome face. As he did so, he rested his weight upon his hands, one upon either side of the Wieroo’s body, his right hand upon the hilt of the spare sword lying at the left of Him Who Speaks for Luata.

“This then is the secret of both life and death,” he whispered, and at the same instant he grasped the Wieroo by the right wrist and with his own right hand swung the extra blade in a sudden vicious blow against the creature’s neck before the thing could give even a single cry of alarm; then without waiting an instant Bradley leaped past the dead god and vanished behind the hides that had hidden the girl.

Wide-eyed and panting the girl seized his arm. “Oh, what have you done?” she cried. “He Who Speaks for Luata will be avenged by Luata. Now indeed must you die. There is no escape, for even though we reached my own country Luata can find you out.”

“Bosh!” exclaimed Bradley, and then: “But you were going to knife him yourself.”

“Then I alone should have died,” she replied.

Bradley scratched his head. “Neither of us is going to die,” he said; “at least not at the hands of any god. If we don’t get out of here though, we’ll die right enough. Can you find your way back to the room where I first came upon you in the temple?”

“I know the way,” replied the girl; “but I doubt if we can go back without being seen. I came hither because I only met Wieroos who knew that I am supposed now to be in the temple; but you could go elsewhere without being discovered.”

Bradley’s ingenuity had come up against a stone wall. There seemed no possibility of escape. He looked about him. They were in a small room where lay a litter of rubbish—torn bits of cloth, old hides, pieces of fiber rope. In the center of the room was a cylindrical shaft with an opening in its face. Bradley knew it for what it was. Here the arch-fiend dragged his victims and cast their bodies into the river of death far below. The floor about the opening in the shaft and the sides of the shaft were clotted thick with a dried, dark brown substance that the Englishman knew had once been blood. The place had the appearance of having been a veritable shambles. An odor of decaying flesh permeated the air.

The Englishman crossed to the shaft and peered into the opening. All below was dark as pitch; but at the bottom he knew was the river. Suddenly an inspiration and a bold scheme leaped to his mind. Turning quickly he hunted about the room until he found what he sought—a quantity of the rope that lay strewn here and there. With rapid fingers he unsnarled the different lengths, the girl helping him, and then he tied the ends together until he had three ropes about seventy-five feet in length. He fastened these together at each end and without a word secured one of the ends about the girl’s body beneath her arms.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said at length, as he led her toward the opening in the shaft. “I’m going to lower you to the river, and then I’m coming down after you. When you are safe below, give two quick jerks upon the rope. If there is danger there and you want me to draw you up into the shaft, jerk once. Don’t be afraid—it is the only way.”

“I am not afraid,” replied the girl, rather haughtily Bradley thought, and herself climbed through the aperture and hung by her hands waiting for Bradley to lower her.

As rapidly as was consistent with safety, the man paid out the rope. When it was about half out, he heard loud cries and wails suddenly arise within the room they had just quitted. The slaying of their god had been discovered by the Wieroos. A search for the slayer would begin at once.

Lord! Would the girl never reach the river? At last, just as he was positive that searchers were already entering the room behind him, there came two quick tugs at the rope. Instantly Bradley made the rest of the strands fast about the shaft, slipped into the black tube and began a hurried descent toward the river. An instant later he stood waist deep in water beside the girl. Impulsively she reached toward him and grasped his arm. A strange thrill ran through him at the contact; but he only cut the rope from about her body and lifted her to the little shelf at the river’s side.

“How can we leave here?” she asked.

“By the river,” he replied; “but first I must go back to the Blue Place of Seven Skulls and get the poor devil I left there. I’ll have to wait until after dark, though, as I cannot pass through the open stretch of river in the temple gardens by day.”

“There is another way,” said the girl. “I have never seen it; but often I have heard them speak of it—a corridor that runs beside the river from one end of the city to the other. Through the gardens it is below ground. If we could find an entrance to it, we could leave here at once. It is not safe here, for they will search every inch of the temple and the grounds.”

“Come,” said Bradley. “We’ll have a look for it, anyway.” And so saying he approached one of the doors that opened onto the skull-paved shelf.

They found the corridor easily, for it paralleled the river, separated from it only by a single wall. It took them beneath the gardens and the city, always through inky darkness. After they had reached the other side of the gardens, Bradley counted his steps until he had retraced as many as he had taken coming down the stream; but though they had to grope their way along, it was a much more rapid trip than the former.

When he thought he was about opposite the point at which he had descended from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls, he sought and found a doorway leading out onto the river; and then, still in the blackest darkness, he lowered himself into the stream and felt up and down upon the opposite side for the little shelf and the ladder. Ten yards from where he had emerged he found them, while the girl waited upon the opposite side.

To ascend to the secret panel was the work of but a minute. Here he paused and listened lest a Wieroo might be visiting the prison in search of him or the other inmate; but no sound came from the gloomy interior. Bradley could not but muse upon the joy of the man on the opposite side when he should drop down to him with food and a new hope for escape. Then he opened the panel and looked into the room. The faint light from the grating above revealed the pile of rags in one corner; but the man lay beneath them, he made no response to Bradley’s low greeting.

The Englishman lowered himself to the floor of the room and approached the rags. Stooping he lifted a corner of them. Yes, there was the man asleep. Bradley shook him—there was no response. He stooped lower and in the dim light examined An-Tak; then he stood up with a sigh. A rat leaped from beneath the coverings and scurried away. “Poor devil!” muttered Bradley.

He crossed the room to swing himself to the perch preparatory to quitting the Blue Place of Seven Skulls forever. Beneath the perch he paused. “I’ll not give them the satisfaction,” he growled. “Let them believe that he escaped.”

Returning to the pile of rags he gathered the man into his arms. It was difficult work raising him to the high perch and dragging him through the small opening and thus down the ladder; but presently it was done, and Bradley had lowered the body into the river and cast it off. “Good-bye, old top!” he whispered.

A moment later he had rejoined the girl and hand in hand they were following the dark corridor upstream toward the farther end of the city. She told him that the Wieroos seldom frequented these lower passages, as the air here was too chill for them; but occasionally they came, and as they could see quite as well by night as by day, they would be sure to discover Bradley and the girl.

“If they come close enough,” she said, “we can see their eyes shining in the dark—they resemble dull splotches of light. They glow, but do not blaze like the eyes of the tiger or the lion.”

The man could not but note the very evident horror with which she mentioned the creatures. To him they were uncanny; but she had been used to them for a year almost, and probably all her life she had either seen or heard of them constantly.

“Why do you fear them so?” he asked. “It seems more than any ordinary fear of the harm they can do you.”

She tried to explain; but the nearest he could gather was that she looked upon the Wieroo almost as supernatural beings. “There is a legend current among my people that once the Wieroo were unlike us only in that they possessed rudimentary wings. They lived in villages in the Galu country, and while the two peoples often warred, they held no hatred for one another. In those days each race came up from the beginning and there was great rivalry as to which was the higher in the scale of evolution. The Wieroo developed the first cos-ata-lu but they were always male—never could they reproduce woman. Slowly they commenced to develop certain attributes of the mind which, they considered, placed them upon a still higher level and which gave them many advantages over us, seeing which they thought only of mental development—their minds became like stars and the rivers, moving always in the same manner, never varying. They called this tas-ad, which means doing everything the right way, or, in other words, the Wieroo way. If foe or friend, right or wrong, stood in the way of tas-ad, then it must be crushed.

“Soon the Galus and the lesser races of men came to hate and fear them. It was then that the Wieroos decided to carry tas-ad into every part of the world. They were very warlike and very numerous, although they had long since adopted the policy of slaying all those among them whose wings did not show advanced development.

“It took ages for all this to happen—very slowly came the different changes; but at last the Wieroos had wings they could use. But by reason of always making war upon their neighbors they were hated by every creature of Caspak, for no one wanted their tas-ad, and so they used their wings to fly to this island when the other races turned against them and threatened to kill them all. So cruel had they become and so bloodthirsty that they no longer had hearts that beat with love or sympathy; but their very cruelty and wickedness kept them from conquering the other races, since they were also cruel and wicked to one another, so that no Wieroo trusted another.

“Always were they slaying those above them that they might rise in power and possessions, until at last came the more powerful than the others with a tas-ad all his own. He gathered about him a few of the most terrible Wieroos, and among them they made laws which took from all but these few Wieroos every weapon they possessed.

“Now their tas-ad has reached a high plane among them. They make many wonderful things that we cannot make. They think great thoughts, no doubt, and still dream of greatness to come, but their thoughts and their acts are regulated by ages of custom—they are all alike—and they are most unhappy.”

As the girl talked, the two moved steadily along the dark passageway beside the river. They had advanced a considerable distance when there sounded faintly from far ahead the muffled roar of falling water, which increased in volume as they moved forward until at last it filled the corridor with a deafening sound. Then the corridor ended in a blank wall; but in a niche to the right was a ladder leading aloft, and to the left was a door opening onto the river. Bradley tried the latter first and as he opened it, felt a heavy spray against his face. The little shelf outside the doorway was wet and slippery, the roaring of the water tremendous. There could be but one explanation—they had reached a waterfall in the river, and if the corridor actually terminated here, their escape was effectually cut off, since it was quite evidently impossible to follow the bed of the river and ascend the falls.

As the ladder was the only alternative, the two turned toward it and, the man first, began the ascent, which was through a well similar to that which had led him to the upper floors of the temple. As he climbed, Bradley felt for openings in the sides of the shaft; but he discovered none below fifty feet. The first he came to was ajar, letting a faint light into the well. As he paused, the girl climbed to his side, and together they looked through the crack into a low-ceiled chamber in which were several Galu women and an equal number of hideous little replicas of the full-grown Wieroos with which Bradley was not quite familiar.

He could feel the body of the girl pressed close to his tremble as her eyes rested upon the inmates of the room, and involuntarily his arm encircled her shoulders as though to protect her from some danger which he sensed without recognizing.

“Poor things,” she whispered. “This is their horrible fate—to be imprisoned here beneath the surface of the city with their hideous offspring whom they hate as they hate their fathers. A Wieroo keeps his children thus hidden until they are full-grown lest they be murdered by their fellows. The lower rooms of the city are filled with many such as these.”

Several feet above was a second door beyond which they found a small room stored with food in wooden vessels. A grated window in one wall opened above an alley, and through it they could see that they were just below the roof of the building. Darkness was coming, and at Bradley’s suggestion they decided to remain hidden here until after dark and then to ascend to the roof and reconnoiter.

Shortly after they had settled themselves they heard something descending the ladder from above. They hoped that it would continue on down the well and fairly held their breath as the sound approached the door to the storeroom. Their hearts sank as they heard the door open and from between cracks in the vessels behind which they hid saw a yellow-slashed Wieroo enter the room. Each recognized him immediately, the girl indicating the fact of her own recognition by a sudden pressure of her fingers on Bradley’s arm. It was the Wieroo of the yellow slashing whose abode was the place of the yellow door in which Bradley had first seen the girl.

The creature carried a wooden bowl which it filled with dried food from several of the vessels; then it turned and quit the room. Bradley could see through the partially open doorway that it descended the ladder. The girl told him that it was taking the food to the women and the young below, and that while it might return immediately, the chances were that it would remain for some time.

“We are just below the place of the yellow door,” she said. “It is far from the edge of the city; so far that we may not hope to escape if we ascend to the roofs here.”

“I think,” replied the man, “that of all the places in Oo-oh this will be the easiest to escape from. Anyway, I want to return to the place of the yellow door and get my pistol if it is there.”

“It is still there,” replied, the girl. “I saw it placed in a chest where he keeps the things he takes from his prisoners and victims.”

“Good!” exclaimed Bradley. “Now come, quickly.” And the two crossed the room to the well and ascended the ladder a short distance to its top where they found another door that opened into a vacant room—the same in which Bradley had first met the girl. To find the pistol was a matter of but a moment’s search on the part of Bradley’s companion; and then, at the Englishman’s signal, she followed him to the yellow door.

It was quite dark without as the two entered the narrow passage between two buildings. A few steps brought them undiscovered to the doorway of the storeroom where lay the body of Fosh-bal-soj. In the distance, toward the temple, they could hear sounds as of a great gathering of Wieroos—the peculiar, uncanny wailing rising above the dismal flapping of countless wings.

“They have heard of the killing of Him Who Speaks for Luata,” whispered the girl. “Soon they will spread in all directions searching for us.”

“And will they find us?”

“As surely as Lua gives light by day,” she replied; “and when they find us, they will tear us to pieces, for only the Wieroos may murder—only they may practice tas-ad.”

“But they will not kill you,” said Bradley. “You did not slay him.”

“It will make no difference,” she insisted. “If they find us together they will slay us both.”

“Then they won’t find us together,” announced Bradley decisively. “You stay right here—you won’t be any worse off than before I came—and I’ll get as far as I can and account for as many of the beggars as possible before they get me. Good-bye! You’re a mighty decent little girl. I wish that I might have helped you.”

“No,” she cried. “Do not leave me. I would rather die. I had hoped and hoped to find some way to return to my own country. I wanted to go back to An-Tak, who must be very lonely without me; but I know that it can never be. It is difficult to kill hope, though mine is nearly dead. Do not leave me.”

“An-Tak!” Bradley repeated. “You loved a man called An-Tak?”

“Yes,” replied the girl. “An-Tak was away, hunting, when the Wieroo caught me. How he must have grieved for me! He also was cos-ata-lu, twelve moons older than I, and all our lives we have been together.”

Bradley remained silent. So she loved An-Tak. He hadn’t the heart to tell her that An-Tak had died, or how.

At the door of Fosh-bal-soj’s storeroom they halted to listen. No sound came from within, and gently Bradley pushed open the door. All was inky darkness as they entered; but presently their eyes became accustomed to the gloom that was partially relieved by the soft starlight without. The Englishman searched and found those things for which he had come—two robes, two pairs of dead wings and several lengths of fiber rope. One pair of the wings he adjusted to the girl’s shoulders by means of the rope. Then he draped the robe about her, carrying the cowl over her head.

He heard her gasp of astonishment when she realized the ingenuity and boldness of his plan; then he directed her to adjust the other pair of wings and the robe upon him. Working with strong, deft fingers she soon had the work completed, and the two stepped out upon the roof, to all intent and purpose genuine Wieroos. Besides his pistol Bradley carried the sword of the slain Wieroo prophet, while the girl was armed with the small blade of the red Wieroo.

Side by side they walked slowly across the roofs toward the north edge of the city. Wieroos flapped above them and several times they passed others walking or sitting upon the roofs. From the temple still rose the sounds of commotion, now pierced by occasional shrill screams.

“The murderers are abroad,” whispered the girl. “Thus will another become the tongue of Luata. It is well for us, since it keeps them too busy to give the time for searching for us. They think that we cannot escape the city, and they know that we cannot leave the island—and so do I.”

Bradley shook his head. “If there is any way, we will find it,” he said.

“There is no way,” replied the girl.

Bradley made no response, and in silence they continued until the outer edge of roofs was visible before them. “We are almost there,” he whispered.

The girl felt for his fingers and pressed them. He could feel hers trembling as he returned the pressure, nor did he relinquish her hand; and thus they came to the edge of the last roof.

Here they halted and looked about them. To be seen attempting to descend to the ground below would be to betray the fact that they were not Wieroos. Bradley wished that their wings were attached to their bodies by sinew and muscle rather than by ropes of fiber. A Wieroo was flapping far overhead. Two more stood near a door a few yards distant. Standing between these and one of the outer pedestals that supported one of the numerous skulls Bradley made one end of a piece of rope fast about the pedestal and dropped the other end to the ground outside the city. Then they waited.

It was an hour before the coast was entirely clear and then a moment came when no Wieroo was in sight. “Now!” whispered Bradley; and the girl grasped the rope and slid over the edge of the roof into the darkness below. A moment later Bradley felt two quick pulls upon the rope and immediately followed to the girl’s side.

Across a narrow clearing they made their way and into a wood beyond. All night they walked, following the river upward toward its source, and at dawn they took shelter in a thicket beside the stream. At no time did they hear the cry of a carnivore, and though many startled animals fled as they approached, they were not once menaced by a wild beast. When Bradley expressed surprise at the absence of the fiercest beasts that are so numerous upon the mainland of Caprona, the girl explained the reason that is contained in one of their ancient legends.

“When the Wieroos first developed wings upon which they could fly, they found this island devoid of any life other than a few reptiles that live either upon land or in the water and these only close to the coast. Requiring meat for food the Wieroos carried to the island such animals as they wished for that purpose. They still occasionally bring them, and this with the natural increase keeps them provided with flesh.”

“As it will us,” suggested Bradley.

The first day they remained in hiding, eating only the dried food that Bradley had brought with him from the temple storeroom, and the next night they set out again up the river, continuing steadily on until almost dawn, when they came to low hills where the river wound through a gorge—it was little more than rivulet now, the water clear and cold and filled with fish similar to brook trout though much larger. Not wishing to leave the stream the two waded along its bed to a spot where the gorge widened between perpendicular bluffs to a wooded acre of level land. Here they stopped, for here also the stream ended. They had reached its source—many cold springs bubbling up from the center of a little natural amphitheater in the hills and forming a clear and beautiful pool overshadowed by trees upon one side and bounded by a little clearing upon the other.

With the coming of the sun they saw they had stumbled upon a place where they might remain hidden from the Wieroos for a long time and also one that they could defend against these winged creatures, since the trees would shield them from an attack from above and also hamper the movements of the creatures should they attempt to follow them into the wood.

For three days they rested here before trying to explore the neighboring country. On the fourth, Bradley stated that he was going to scale the bluffs and learn what lay beyond. He told the girl that she should remain in hiding; but she refused to be left, saying that whatever fate was to be his, she intended to share it, so that he was at last forced to permit her to come with him. Through woods at the summit of the bluff they made their way toward the north and had gone but a short distance when the wood ended and before them they saw the waters of the inland sea and dimly in the distance the coveted shore.

The beach lay some two hundred yards from the foot of the hill on which they stood, nor was there a tree nor any other form of shelter between them and the water as far up and down the coast as they could see. Among other plans Bradley had thought of constructing a covered raft upon which they might drift to the mainland; but as such a contrivance would necessarily be of considerable weight, it must be built in the water of the sea, since they could not hope to move it even a short distance overland.

“If this wood was only at the edge of the water,” he sighed.

“But it is not,” the girl reminded him, and then: “Let us make the best of it. We have escaped from death for a time at least. We have food and good water and peace and each other. What more could we have upon the mainland?”

“But I thought you wanted to get back to your own country!” he exclaimed.

She cast her eyes upon the ground and half turned away. “I do,” she said, “yet I am happy here. I could be little happier there.”

Bradley stood in silent thought. “‘We have food and good water and peace and each other!’” he repeated to himself. He turned then and looked at the girl, and it was as though in the days that they had been together this was the first time that he had really seen her. The circumstances that had thrown them together, the dangers through which they had passed, all the weird and horrible surroundings that had formed the background of his knowledge of her had had their effect—she had been but the companion of an adventure; her self-reliance, her endurance, her loyalty, had been only what one man might expect of another, and he saw that he had unconsciously assumed an attitude toward her that he might have assumed toward a man. Yet there had been a difference—he recalled now the strange sensation of elation that had thrilled him upon the occasions when the girl had pressed his hand in hers, and the depression that had followed her announcement of her love for An-Tak.

He took a step toward her. A fierce yearning to seize her and crush her in his arms, swept over him, and then there flashed upon the screen of recollection the picture of a stately hall set amidst broad gardens and ancient trees and of a proud old man with beetling brows—an old man who held his head very high—and Bradley shook his head and turned away again.

They went back then to their little acre, and the days came and went, and the man fashioned spear and bow and arrows and hunted with them that they might have meat, and he made hooks of fishbone and caught fishes with wondrous flies of his own invention; and the girl gathered fruits and cooked the flesh and the fish and made beds of branches and soft grasses. She cured the hides of the animals he killed and made them soft by much pounding. She made sandals for herself and for the man and fashioned a hide after the manner of those worn by the warriors of her tribe and made the man wear it, for his own garments were in rags.

She was always the same—sweet and kind and helpful—but always there was about her manner and her expression just a trace of wistfulness, and often she sat and looked at the man when he did not know it, her brows puckered in thought as though she were trying to fathom and to understand him.

In the face of the cliff, Bradley scooped a cave from the rotted granite of which the hill was composed, making a shelter for them against the rains. He brought wood for their cook-fire which they used only in the middle of the day—a time when there was little likelihood of Wieroos being in the air so far from their city—and then he learned to bank it with earth in such a way that the embers held until the following noon without giving off smoke.

Always he was planning on reaching the mainland, and never a day passed that he did not go to the top of the hill and look out across the sea toward the dark, distant line that meant for him comparative freedom and possibly reunion with his comrades. The girl always went with him, standing at his side and watching the stern expression on his face with just a tinge of sadness on her own.

“You are not happy,” she said once.

“I should be over there with my men,” he replied. “I do not know what may have happened to them.”

“I want you to be happy,” she said quite simply; “but I should be very lonely if you went away and left me here.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “I would not do that, little girl,” he said gently. “If you cannot go with me, I shall not go. If either of us must go alone, it will be you.”

Her face lighted to a wondrous smile. “Then we shall not be separated,” she said, “for I shall never leave you as long as we both live.”

He looked down into her face for a moment and then: “Who was An-Tak?” he asked.

“My brother,” she replied. “Why?”

And then, even less than before, could he tell her. It was then that he did something he had never done before—he put his arms about her and stooping, kissed her forehead. “Until you find An-Tak,” he said, “I will be your brother.”

She drew away. “I already have a brother,” she said, “and I do not want another.”

CHAPTER 5

Days became weeks, and weeks became months, and the months followed one another in a lazy procession of hot, humid days and warm, humid nights. The fugitives saw never a Wieroo by day though often at night they heard the melancholy flapping of giant wings far above them.

Each day was much like its predecessor. Bradley splashed about for a few minutes in the cold pool early each morning and after a time the girl tried it and liked it. Toward the center it was deep enough for swimming, and so he taught her to swim—she was probably the first human being in all Caspak’s long ages who had done this thing. And then while she prepared breakfast, the man shaved—this he never neglected. At first it was a source of wonderment to the girl, for the Galu men are beardless.

When they needed meat, he hunted, otherwise he busied himself in improving their shelter, making new and better weapons, perfecting his knowledge of the girl’s language and teaching her to speak and to write English—anything that would keep them both occupied. He still sought new plans for escape, but with ever-lessening enthusiasm, since each new scheme presented some insurmountable obstacle.

And then one day as a bolt out of a clear sky came that which blasted the peace and security of their sanctuary forever. Bradley was just emerging from the water after his morning plunge when from overhead came the sound of flapping wings. Glancing quickly up the man saw a white-robed Wieroo circling slowly above him. That he had been discovered he could not doubt since the creature even dropped to a lower altitude as though to assure itself that what it saw was a man. Then it rose rapidly and winged away toward the city.

For two days Bradley and the girl lived in a constant state of apprehension, awaiting the moment when the hunters would come for them; but nothing happened until just after dawn of the third day, when the flapping of wings apprised them of the approach of Wieroos. Together they went to the edge of the wood and looked up to see five red-robed creatures dropping slowly in ever-lessening spirals toward their little amphitheater. With no attempt at concealment they came, sure of their ability to overwhelm these two fugitives, and with the fullest measure of self-confidence they landed in the clearing but a few yards from the man and the girl.

Following a plan already discussed Bradley and the girl retreated slowly into the woods. The Wieroos advanced, calling upon them to give themselves up; but the quarry made no reply. Farther and farther into the little wood Bradley led the hunters, permitting them to approach ever closer; then he circled back again toward the clearing, evidently to the great delight of the Wieroos, who now followed more leisurely, awaiting the moment when they should be beyond the trees and able to use their wings. They had opened into semicircular formation now with the evident intention of cutting the two off from returning into the wood. Each Wieroo advanced with his curved blade ready in his hand, each hideous face blank and expressionless.

It was then that Bradley opened fire with his pistol—three shots, aimed with careful deliberation, for it had been long since he had used the weapon, and he could not afford to chance wasting ammunition on misses. At each shot a Wieroo dropped; and then the remaining two sought escape by flight, screaming and wailing after the manner of their kind. When a Wieroo runs, his wings spread almost without any volition upon his part, since from time immemorial he has always used them to balance himself and accelerate his running speed so that in the open they appear to skim the surface of the ground when in the act of running. But here in the woods, among the close-set boles, the spreading of their wings proved their undoing—it hindered and stopped them and threw them to the ground, and then Bradley was upon them threatening them with instant death if they did not surrender—promising them their freedom if they did his bidding.

“As you have seen,” he cried, “I can kill you when I wish and at a distance. You cannot escape me. Your only hope of life lies in obedience. Quick, or I kill!”

The Wieroos stopped and faced him. “What do you want of us?” asked one.

“Throw aside your weapons,” Bradley commanded. After a moment’s hesitation they obeyed.

“Now approach!” A great plan—the only plan—had suddenly come to him like an inspiration.

The Wieroos came closer and halted at his command. Bradley turned to the girl. “There is rope in the shelter,” he said. “Fetch it!”

She did as he bid, and then he directed her to fasten one end of a fifty-foot length to the ankle of one of the Wieroos and the opposite end to the second. The creatures gave evidence of great fear, but they dared not attempt to prevent the act.

“Now go out into the clearing,” said Bradley, “and remember that I am walking close behind and that I will shoot the nearer one should either attempt to escape—that will hold the other until I can kill him as well.”

In the open he halted them. “The girl will get upon the back of the one in front,” announced the Englishman. “I will mount the other. She carries a sharp blade, and I carry this weapon that you know kills easily at a distance. If you disobey in the slightest, the instructions that I am about to give you, you shall both die. That we must die with you, will not deter us. If you obey, I promise to set you free without harming you.

“You will carry us due west, depositing us upon the shore of the mainland—that is all. It is the price of your lives. Do you agree?”

Sullenly the Wieroos acquiesced. Bradley examined the knots that held the rope to their ankles, and feeling them secure directed the girl to mount the back of the leading Wieroo, himself upon the other. Then he gave the signal for the two to rise together. With loud flapping of the powerful wings the creatures took to the air, circling once before they topped the trees upon the hill and then taking a course due west out over the waters of the sea.

Nowhere about them could Bradley see signs of other Wieroos, nor of those other menaces which he had feared might bring disaster to his plans for escape—the huge, winged reptilia that are so numerous above the southern areas of Caspak and which are often seen, though in lesser numbers, farther north.

Nearer and nearer loomed the mainland—a broad, parklike expanse stretching inland to the foot of a low plateau spread out before them. The little dots in the foreground became grazing herds of deer and antelope and bos; a huge woolly rhinoceros wallowed in a mudhole to the right, and beyond, a mighty mammoth culled the tender shoots from a tall tree. The roars and screams and growls of giant carnivora came faintly to their ears. Ah, this was Caspak. With all of its dangers and its primal savagery it brought a fullness to the throat of the Englishman as to one who sees and hears the familiar sights and sounds of home after a long absence. Then the Wieroos dropped swiftly downward to the flower-starred turf that grew almost to the water’s edge, the fugitives slipped from their backs, and Bradley told the red-robed creatures they were free to go.

When he had cut the ropes from their ankles they rose with that uncanny wailing upon their lips that always brought a shudder to the Englishman, and upon dismal wings they flapped away toward frightful Oo-oh.

When the creatures had gone, the girl turned toward Bradley. “Why did you have them bring us here?” she asked. “Now we are far from my country. We may never live to reach it, as we are among enemies who, while not so horrible will kill us just as surely as would the Wieroos should they capture us, and we have before us many marches through lands filled with savage beasts.”

“There were two reasons,” replied Bradley. “You told me that there are two Wieroo cities at the eastern end of the island. To have passed near either of them might have been to have brought about our heads hundreds of the creatures from whom we could not possibly have escaped. Again, my friends must be near this spot—it cannot be over two marches to the fort of which I have told you. It is my duty to return to them. If they still live we shall find a way to return you to your people.”

“And you?” asked the girl.

“I escaped from Oo-oh,” replied Bradley. “I have accomplished the impossible once, and so I shall accomplish it again—I shall escape from Caspak.”

He was not looking at her face as he answered her, and so he did not see the shadow of sorrow that crossed her countenance. When he raised his eyes again, she was smiling.

“What you wish, I wish,” said the girl.

Southward along the coast they made their way following the beach, where the walking was best, but always keeping close enough to trees to insure sanctuary from the beasts and reptiles that so often menaced them. It was late in the afternoon when the girl suddenly seized Bradley’s arm and pointed straight ahead along the shore. “What is that?” she whispered. “What strange reptile is it?”

Bradley looked in the direction her slim forefinger indicated. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, and then he seized her wrist and drew her quickly behind a clump of bushes.

“What is it?” she asked.

“It is the most frightful reptile that the waters of the world have ever known,” he replied. “It is a German U-boat!”

An expression of amazement and understanding lighted her features. “It is the thing of which you told me,” she exclaimed, “—the thing that swims under the water and carries men in its belly!”

“It is,” replied Bradley.

“Then why do you hide from it?” asked the girl. “You said that now it belonged to your friends.”

“Many months have passed since I knew what was going on among my friends,” he replied. “I cannot know what has befallen them. They should have been gone from here in this vessel long since, and so I cannot understand why it is still here. I am going to investigate first before I show myself. When I left, there were more Germans on the U-33 than there were men of my own party at the fort, and I have had sufficient experience of Germans to know that they will bear watching—if they have not been properly watched since I left.”

Making their way through a fringe of wood that grew a few yards inland the two crept unseen toward the U-boat which lay moored to the shore at a point which Bradley now recognized as being near the oil-pool north of Dinosaur. As close as possible to the vessel they halted, crouching low among the dense vegetation, and watched the boat for signs of human life about it. The hatches were closed—no one could be seen or heard. For five minutes Bradley watched, and then he determined to board the submarine and investigate. He had risen to carry his decision into effect when there suddenly broke upon his ear, uttered in loud and menacing tones, a volley of German oaths and expletives among which he heard Englische schweinhunde repeated several times. The voice did not come from the direction of the U-boat; but from inland. Creeping forward Bradley reached a spot where, through the creepers hanging from the trees, he could see a party of men coming down toward the shore.

He saw Baron Friedrich von Schoenvorts and six of his men—all armed—while marching in a little knot among them were Olson, Brady, Sinclair, Wilson, and Whitely.

Bradley knew nothing of the disappearance of Bowen Tyler and Miss La Rue, nor of the perfidy of the Germans in shelling the fort and attempting to escape in the U-33; but he was in no way surprised at what he saw before him.

The little party came slowly onward, the prisoners staggering beneath heavy cans of oil, while Schwartz, one of the German noncommissioned officers cursed and beat them with a stick of wood, impartially. Von Schoenvorts walked in the rear of the column, encouraging Schwartz and laughing at the discomfiture of the Britishers. Dietz, Heinz, and Klatz also seemed to enjoy the entertainment immensely; but two of the men—Plesser and Hindle—marched with eyes straight to the front and with scowling faces.

Bradley felt his blood boil at sight of the cowardly indignities being heaped upon his men, and in the brief span of time occupied by the column to come abreast of where he lay hidden he made his plans, foolhardy though he knew them. Then he drew the girl close to him. “Stay here,” he whispered. “I am going out to fight those beasts; but I shall be killed. Do not let them see you. Do not let them take you alive. They are more cruel, more cowardly, more bestial than the Wieroos.”

The girl pressed close to him, her face very white. “Go, if that is right,” she whispered; “but if you die, I shall die, for I cannot live without you.” He looked sharply into her eyes. “Oh!” he ejaculated. “What an idiot I have been! Nor could I live without you, little girl.” And he drew her very close and kissed her lips. “Good-bye.” He disengaged himself from her arms and looked again in time to see that the rear of the column had just passed him. Then he rose and leaped quickly and silently from the jungle.

Suddenly von Schoenvorts felt an arm thrown about his neck and his pistol jerked from its holster. He gave a cry of fright and warning, and his men turned to see a half-naked white man holding their leader securely from behind and aiming a pistol at them over his shoulder.

“Drop those guns!” came in short, sharp syllables and perfect German from the lips of the newcomer. “Drop them or I’ll put a bullet through the back of von Schoenvorts’ head.”

The Germans hesitated for a moment, looking first toward von Schoenvorts and then to Schwartz, who was evidently second in command, for orders.

“It’s the English pig, Bradley,” shouted the latter, “and he’s alone—go and get him!”

“Go yourself,” growled Plesser. Hindle moved close to the side of Plesser and whispered something to him. The latter nodded. Suddenly von Schoenvorts wheeled about and seized Bradley’s pistol arm with both hands, “Now!” he shouted. “Come and take him, quick!”

Schwartz and three others leaped forward; but Plesser and Hindle held back, looking questioningly toward the English prisoners. Then Plesser spoke. “Now is your chance, Englander,” he called in low tones. “Seize Hindle and me and take our guns from us—we will not fight hard.”

Olson and Brady were not long in acting upon the suggestion. They had seen enough of the brutal treatment von Schoenvorts accorded his men and the especially venomous attentions he had taken great enjoyment in according Plesser and Hindle to understand that these two might be sincere in a desire for revenge. In another moment the two Germans were unarmed and Olson and Brady were running to the support of Bradley; but already it seemed too late.

Von Schoenvorts had managed to drag the Englishman around so that his back was toward Schwartz and the other advancing Germans. Schwartz was almost upon Bradley with gun clubbed and ready to smash down upon the Englishman’s skull. Brady and Olson were charging the Germans in the rear with Wilson, Whitely, and Sinclair supporting them with bare fists. It seemed that Bradley was doomed when, apparently out of space, an arrow whizzed, striking Schwartz in the side, passing half-way through his body to crumple him to earth. With a shriek the man fell, and at the same time Olson and Brady saw the slim figure of a young girl standing at the edge of the jungle coolly fitting another arrow to her bow.

Bradley had now succeeded in wrestling his arm free from von Schoenvorts’ grip and in dropping the latter with a blow from the butt of his pistol. The rest of the English and Germans were engaged in a hand-to-hand encounter, Plesser and Hindle standing aside from the melee and urging their comrades to surrender and join with the English against the tyranny of von Schoenvorts. Heinz and Klatz, possibly influenced by their exhortation, were putting up but a half-hearted resistance; but Dietz, a huge, bearded, bull-necked Prussian, yelling like a maniac, sought to exterminate the Englische schweinhunde with his bayonet, fearing to fire his piece lest he kill some of his comrades.

It was Olson who engaged him, and though unused to the long German rifle and bayonet, he met the bull-rush of the Hun with the cold, cruel precision and science of English bayonet-fighting. There was no feinting, no retiring and no parrying that was not also an attack. Bayonet-fighting today is not a pretty thing to see—it is not an artistic fencing-match in which men give and take—it is slaughter inevitable and quickly over.

Dietz lunged once madly at Olson’s throat. A short point, with just a twist of the bayonet to the left sent the sharp blade over the Englishman’s left shoulder. Instantly he stepped close in, dropped his rifle through his hands and grasped it with both hands close below the muzzle and with a short, sharp jab sent his blade up beneath Dietz’s chin to the brain. So quickly was the thing done and so quick the withdrawal that Olson had wheeled to take on another adversary before the German’s corpse had toppled to the ground.

But there were no more adversaries to take on. Heinz and Klatz had thrown down their rifles and with hands above their heads were crying “Kamerad! Kamerad!” at the tops of their voices. Von Schoenvorts still lay where he had fallen. Plesser and Hindle were explaining to Bradley that they were glad of the outcome of the fight, as they could no longer endure the brutality of the U-boat commander.

The remainder of the men were looking at the girl who now advanced slowly, her bow ready, when Bradley turned toward her and held out his hand.

“Co-Tan,” he said, “unstring your bow—these are my friends, and yours.” And to the Englishmen: “This is Co-Tan. You who saw her save me from Schwartz know a part of what I owe her.”

The rough men gathered about the girl, and when she spoke to them in broken English, with a smile upon her lips enhancing the charm of her irresistible accent, each and every one of them promptly fell in love with her and constituted himself henceforth her guardian and her slave.

A moment later the attention of each was called to Plesser by a volley of invective. They turned in time to see the man running toward von Schoenvorts who was just rising from the ground. Plesser carried a rifle with bayonet fixed, that he had snatched from the side of Dietz’s corpse. Von Schoenvorts’ face was livid with fear, his jaws working as though he would call for help; but no sound came from his blue lips.

“You struck me,” shrieked Plesser. “Once, twice, three times, you struck me, pig. You murdered Schwerke—you drove him insane by your cruelty until he took his own life. You are only one of your kind—they are all like you from the Kaiser down. I wish that you were the Kaiser. Thus would I do!” And he lunged his bayonet through von Schoenvorts’ chest. Then he let his rifle fall with the dying man and wheeled toward Bradley. “Here I am,” he said. “Do with me as you like. All my life I have been kicked and cuffed by such as that, and yet always have I gone out when they commanded, singing, to give up my life if need be to keep them in power. Only lately have I come to know what a fool I have been. But now I am no longer a fool, and besides, I am avenged and Schwerke is avenged, so you can kill me if you wish. Here I am.”

“If I was after bein’ the king,” said Olson, “I’d pin the V.C. on your noble chist; but bein’ only an Irishman with a Swede name, for which God forgive me, the bist I can do is shake your hand.”

“You will not be punished,” said Bradley. “There are four of you left—if you four want to come along and work with us, we will take you; but you will come as prisoners.”

“It suits me,” said Plesser. “Now that the captain-lieutenant is dead you need not fear us. All our lives we have known nothing but to obey his class. If I had not killed him, I suppose I would be fool enough to obey him again; but he is dead. Now we will obey you—we must obey some one.”

“And you?” Bradley turned to the other survivors of the original crew of the U-33. Each promised obedience.

The two dead Germans were buried in a single grave, and then the party boarded the submarine and stowed away the oil.

Here Bradley told the men what had befallen him since the night of September 14th when he had disappeared so mysteriously from the camp upon the plateau. Now he learned for the first time that Bowen J. Tyler, Jr., and Miss La Rue had been missing even longer than he and that no faintest trace of them had been discovered.

Olson told him of how the Germans had returned and waited in ambush for them outside the fort, capturing them that they might be used to assist in the work of refining the oil and later in manning the U-33, and Plesser told briefly of the experiences of the German crew under von Schoenvorts since they had escaped from Caspak months before—of how they lost their bearings after having been shelled by ships they had attempted to sneak farther north and how at last with provisions gone and fuel almost exhausted they had sought and at last found, more by accident than design, the mysterious island they had once been so glad to leave behind.

“Now,” announced Bradley, “we’ll plan for the future. The boat has fuel, provisions and water for a month, I believe you said, Plesser; there are ten of us to man it. We have a last sad duty here—we must search for Miss La Rue and Mr. Tyler. I say a sad duty because we know that we shall not find them; but it is none the less our duty to comb the shoreline, firing signal shells at intervals, that we at least may leave at last with full knowledge that we have done all that men might do to locate them.”

None dissented from this conviction, nor was there a voice raised in protest against the plan to at least make assurance doubly sure before quitting Caspak forever.

And so they started, cruising slowly up the coast and firing an occasional shot from the gun. Often the vessel was brought to a stop, and always there were anxious eyes scanning the shore for an answering signal. Late in the afternoon they caught sight of a number of Band-lu warriors; but when the vessel approached the shore and the natives realized that human beings stood upon the back of the strange monster of the sea, they fled in terror before Bradley could come within hailing distance.

That night they dropped anchor at the mouth of a sluggish stream whose warm waters swarmed with millions of tiny tadpolelike organisms—minute human spawn starting on their precarious journey from some inland pool toward “the beginning”—a journey which one in millions, perhaps, might survive to complete. Already almost at the inception of life they were being greeted by thousands of voracious mouths as fish and reptiles of many kinds fought to devour them, the while other and larger creatures pursued the devourers, to be, in turn, preyed upon by some other of the countless forms that inhabit the deeps of Caprona’s frightful sea.

The second day was practically a repetition of the first. They moved very slowly with frequent stops and once they landed in the Kro-lu country to hunt. Here they were attacked by the bow-and-arrow men, whom they could not persuade to palaver with them. So belligerent were the natives that it became necessary to fire into them in order to escape their persistent and ferocious attentions.

“What chance,” asked Bradley, as they were returning to the boat with their game, “could Tyler and Miss La Rue have had among such as these?”

But they continued on their fruitless quest, and the third day, after cruising along the shore of a deep inlet, they passed a line of lofty cliffs that formed the southern shore of the inlet and rounded a sharp promontory about noon. Co-Tan and Bradley were on deck alone, and as the new shoreline appeared beyond the point, the girl gave an exclamation of joy and seized the man’s hand in hers.

“Oh, look!” she cried. “The Galu country! The Galu country! It is my country that I never thought to see again.”

“You are glad to come again, Co-Tan?” asked Bradley.

“Oh, so glad!” she cried. “And you will come with me to my people? We may live here among them, and you will be a great warrior—oh, when Jor dies you may even be chief, for there is none so mighty as my warrior. You will come?”

Bradley shook his head. “I cannot, little Co-Tan,” he answered. “My country needs me, and I must go back. Maybe someday I shall return. You will not forget me, Co-Tan?”

She looked at him in wide-eyed wonder. “You are going away from me?” she asked in a very small voice. “You are going away from Co-Tan?”

Bradley looked down upon the little bowed head. He felt the soft cheek against his bare arm; and he felt something else there too—hot drops of moisture that ran down to his very finger-tips and splashed, but each one wrung from a woman’s heart.

He bent low and raised the tear-stained face to his own. “No, Co-Tan,” he said, “I am not going away from you—for you are going with me. You are going back to my own country to be my wife. Tell me that you will, Co-Tan.” And he bent still lower yet from his height and kissed her lips. Nor did he need more than the wonderful new light in her eyes to tell him that she would go to the end of the world with him if he would but take her. And then the gun-crew came up from below again to fire a signal shot, and the two were brought down from the high heaven of their new happiness to the scarred and weather-beaten deck of the U-33.

An hour later the vessel was running close in by a shore of wondrous beauty beside a parklike meadow that stretched back a mile inland to the foot of a plateau when Whitely called attention to a score of figures clambering downward from the elevation to the lowland below. The engines were reversed and the boat brought to a stop while all hands gathered on deck to watch the little party coming toward them across the meadow.

“They are Galus,” cried Co-Tan; “they are my own people. Let me speak to them lest they think we come to fight them. Put me ashore, my man, and I will go meet them.”

The nose of the U-boat was run close in to the steep bank; but when Co-Tan would have run forward alone, Bradley seized her hand and held her back. “I will go with you, Co-Tan,” he said; and together they advanced to meet the oncoming party.

There were about twenty warriors moving forward in a thin line, as our infantry advance as skirmishers. Bradley could not but notice the marked difference between this formation and the moblike methods of the lower tribes he had come in contact with, and he commented upon it to Co-Tan.

“Galu warriors always advance into battle thus,” she said. “The lesser people remain in a huddled group where they can scarce use their weapons the while they present so big a mark to us that our spears and arrows cannot miss them; but when they hurl theirs at our warriors, if they miss the first man, there is no chance that they will kill some one behind him.

“Stand still now,” she cautioned, “and fold your arms. They will not harm us then.”

Bradley did as he was bid, and the two stood with arms folded as the line of warriors approached. When they had come within some fifty yards, they halted and one spoke. “Who are you and from whence do you come?” he asked; and then Co-Tan gave a little, glad cry and sprang forward with out-stretched arms.

“Oh, Tan!” she exclaimed. “Do you not know your little Co-Tan?”

The warrior stared, incredulous, for a moment, and then he, too, ran forward and when they met, took the girl in his arms. It was then that Bradley experienced to the full a sensation that was new to him—a sudden hatred for the strange warrior before him and a desire to kill without knowing why he would kill. He moved quickly to the girl’s side and grasped her wrist.

“Who is this man?” he demanded in cold tones.

Co-Tan turned a surprised face toward the Englishman and then of a sudden broke forth into a merry peal of laughter. “This is my father, Brad-lee,” she cried.

“And who is Brad-lee?” demanded the warrior.

“He is my man,” replied Co-Tan simply.

“By what right?” insisted Tan.

And then she told him briefly of all that she had passed through since the Wieroos had stolen her and of how Bradley had rescued her and sought to rescue An-Tak, her brother.

“You are satisfied with him?” asked Tan.

“Yes,” replied the girl proudly.

It was then that Bradley’s attention was attracted to the edge of the plateau by a movement there, and looking closely he saw a horse bearing two figures sliding down the steep declivity. Once at the bottom, the animal came charging across the meadowland at a rapid run. It was a magnificent animal—a great bay stallion with a white-blazed face and white forelegs to the knees, its barrel encircled by a broad surcingle of white; and as it came to a sudden stop beside Tan, the Englishman saw that it bore a man and a girl—a tall man and a girl as beautiful as Co-Tan. When the girl espied the latter, she slid from the horse and ran toward her, fairly screaming for joy.

The man dismounted and stood beside Tan. Like Bradley he was garbed after the fashion of the surrounding warriors; but there was a subtle difference between him and his companion. Possibly he detected a similar difference in Bradley, for his first question was, “From what country?” and though he spoke in Galu Bradley thought he detected an accent.

“England,” replied Bradley.

A broad smile lighted the newcomer’s face as he held out his hand. “I am Tom Billings of Santa Monica, California,” he said. “I know all about you, and I’m mighty glad to find you alive.”

“How did you get here?” asked Bradley. “I thought ours was the only party of men from the outer world ever to enter Caprona.”

“It was, until we came in search of Bowen J. Tyler, Jr.,” replied Billings. “We found him and sent him home with his bride; but I was kept a prisoner here.”

Bradley’s face darkened—then they were not among friends after all. “There are ten of us down there on a German sub with small-arms and a gun,” he said quickly in English. “It will be no trick to get away from these people.”

“You don’t know my jailer,” replied Billings, “or you’d not be so sure. Wait, I’ll introduce you.” And then turning to the girl who had accompanied him he called her by name. “Ajor,” he said, “permit me to introduce Lieutenant Bradley; Lieutenant, Mrs. Billings—my jailer!”

The Englishman laughed as he shook hands with the girl. “You are not as good a soldier as I,” he said to Billings. “Instead of being taken prisoner myself I have taken one—Mrs. Bradley, this is Mr. Billings.”

Ajor, quick to understand, turned toward Co-Tan. “You are going back with him to his country?” she asked. Co-Tan admitted it.

“You dare?” asked Ajor. “But your father will not permit it—Jor, my father, High Chief of the Galus, will not permit it, for like me you are cos-ata-lo. Oh, Co-Tan, if we but could! How I would love to see all the strange and wonderful things of which my Tom tells me!”

Bradley bent and whispered in her ear. “Say the word and you may both go with us.”

Billings heard and speaking in English, asked Ajor if she would go.

“Yes,” she answered, “If you wish it; but you know, my Tom, that if Jor captures us, both you and Co-Tan’s man will pay the penalty with your lives—not even his love for me nor his admiration for you can save you.”

Bradley noticed that she spoke in English—broken English like Co-Tan’s but equally appealing. “We can easily get you aboard the ship,” he said, “on some pretext or other, and then we can steam away. They can neither harm nor detain us, nor will we have to fire a shot at them.”

And so it was done, Bradley and Co-Tan taking Ajor and Billings aboard to “show” them the vessel, which almost immediately raised anchor and moved slowly out into the sea.

“I hate to do it,” said Billings. “They have been fine to me. Jor and Tan are splendid men and they will think me an ingrate; but I can’t waste my life here when there is so much to be done in the outer world.”

As they steamed down the inland sea past the island of Oo-oh, the stories of their adventures were retold, and Bradley learned that Bowen Tyler and his bride had left the Galu country but a fortnight before and that there was every reason to believe that the Toreador might still be lying in the Pacific not far off the subterranean mouth of the river which emitted Caprona’s heated waters into the ocean.

Late in the second day, after running through swarms of hideous reptiles, they submerged at the point where the river entered beneath the cliffs and shortly after rose to the sunlit surface of the Pacific; but nowhere as far as they could see was sign of another craft. Down the coast they steamed toward the beach where Billings had made his crossing in the hydro-aeroplane and just at dusk the lookout announced a light dead ahead. It proved to be aboard the Toreador, and a half-hour later there was such a reunion on the deck of the trig little yacht as no one there had ever dreamed might be possible. Of the Allies there were only Tippet and James to be mourned, and no one mourned any of the Germans dead nor Benson, the traitor, whose ugly story was first told in Bowen Tyler’s manuscript.

Tyler and the rescue party had but just reached the yacht that afternoon. They had heard, faintly, the signal shots fired by the U-33 but had been unable to locate their direction and so had assumed that they had come from the guns of the Toreador.

It was a happy party that sailed north toward sunny, southern California, the old U-33 trailing in the wake of the Toreador and flying with the latter the glorious Stars and Stripes beneath which she had been born in the shipyard at Santa Monica. Three newly married couples, their bonds now duly solemnized by the master of the ship, joyed in the peace and security of the untracked waters of the south Pacific and the unique honeymoon which, had it not been for stern duty ahead, they could have wished protracted till the end of time.

And so they came one day to dock at the shipyard which Bowen Tyler now controlled, and here the U-33 still lies while those who passed so many eventful days within and because of her, have gone their various ways.

UNDER THE ANDES, by Rex Stout [Part 1]

CHAPTER I

THE SWEETHEART OF A KING

The scene was not exactly new to me. Moved by the spirit of adventure, or by an access of ennui which overtakes me at times, I had several times visited the gaudy establishment of Mercer, on the fashionable side of Fifth Avenue in the Fifties. In either case I had found disappointment; where the stake is a matter of indifference there can be no excitement; and besides, I had been always in luck.

But on this occasion I had a real purpose before me, though not an important one, and I surrendered my hat and coat to the servant at the door with a feeling of satisfaction.

At the entrance to the main room I met Bob Garforth, leaving. There was a scowl on his face and his hand trembled as he held it forth to take mine.

“Harry is inside. What a rotten hole,” said he, and passed on. I smiled at his remark—it was being whispered about that Garforth had lost a quarter of a million at Mercer’s within the month—and passed inside.

Gaudy, I have said it was, and it needs no other word. Not in its elements, but in their arrangement.

The rugs and pictures and hangings testified to the taste of the man who had selected them; but they were abominably disposed, and there were too many of them.

The room, which was unusually large, held two or three leather divans, an English buffet, and many easy chairs. A smoking-table, covered, stood in one corner.

Groups of men were gathered about each of the three roulette wheels ranged along the farther side. Through a door to the left could be seen the poker tables, surrounded by grave or jocular faces. Above the low buzz of conversation there sounded the continual droning voices of the croupiers as they called the winning numbers, and an occasional exclamation from a “customer.”

I made my way to the center wheel and stood at the rear of the crowd surrounding it.

The ball rolled; there was a straining of necks amid an intense silence; then, as the little pellet wavered and finally came to a rest in the hole number twenty-four a fervent oath of disappointment came from some one in front of me.

The next moment, rising on tiptoe to look over the intervening shoulders, I found myself looking into the white face of my younger brother Harry.

“Paul!” he exclaimed, turning quickly away.

I pushed my way through and stood at his side. There was no sound from the group of onlookers; it is not to be wondered at if they hesitated to offend Paul Lamar.

“My dear boy,” said I, “I missed you at dinner. And though this may occupy your mind, it can scarcely fill your stomach. Haven’t you had enough?”

Harry looked at me. His face was horribly pale and his eyes bloodshot; they could not meet mine.

“For Heaven’s sake, Paul, let me alone,” he said, hardly above a whisper. “I have lost ninety thousand.”

In spite of myself I started. No wonder he was pale! And yet—

“That’s nothing,” I whispered back. “But you are making a show of yourself. Just now you were swearing like a sailor. See how your hand trembles! You were not made for this, Harry; it makes you forget that you’re a gentleman. They are laughing at you. Come.”

“But I say I have lost ninety thousand dollars,” said the boy, and there was wildness in his eye. “Let me alone, Paul.”

“I will repay you.”

“No. Let me alone!”

“Harry!”

“I say no!”

His mouth was drawn tight and his eyes glared sullenly as those of a stubborn child. Clearly it was impossible to get him away without making a scene, which was unthinkable. For a moment I was at a complete loss; then the croupier’s voice sounded suddenly in my ear:

“You are interrupting us, sir.”

I silenced him with a glance and turned to my brother, having decided in an instant on the only possible course.

“Here, let me have your chair. I will get it back for you. Come!”

He looked at me for a moment in hesitation, then rose without a word and I took his place.

The thing was tiresome enough, but how could I have avoided it? The blood that rushes to the head of the gambler is certainly not food for the intellect; and, besides, I was forced by circumstances into an heroic attitude—and nothing is more distasteful to a man of sense. But I had a task before me; if a man lays bricks he should lay them well; and I do not deny that there was a stirring of my pulse as I sat down.

Is it possible for a mind to directly influence the movements of a little ivory ball? I do not say yes, but will you say no? I watched the ball with the eye of an eagle, but without straining; I played with the precision of a man with an unerring system, though my selections were really made quite at random; and I handled my bets with the sureness and swift dexterity with which a chess-master places his pawn or piece in position to demoralize his opponent.

This told on the nerves of the croupier. Twice I corrected a miscalculation of his, and before I had played an hour his hand was trembling with agitation.

And I won.

The details would be tiresome, but I won; and when, after six hours of play without an instant’s rest, I rose exhausted from my chair and handed my brother the amount he had lost—I pocketed a few thousands for myself in addition. There were some who tried to detain me with congratulations and expressions of admiration, but I shook them off and led Harry outside to my car.

The chauffeur, poor devil, was completely stiff from the long wait, and I ordered him into the tonneau and took the wheel myself.

Partly was this due to pity for the driver, partly to a desire to leave Harry to his own thoughts, which I knew must be somewhat turbulent. He was silent during the drive, which was not long, and I smiled to myself in the darkness of the early morning as I heard, now and then, an uncontrollable sigh break through his dry lips. Of thankfulness, perhaps.

I preceded him up the stoop and into the hall of the old house on lower Fifth Avenue, near Tenth Street, that had been the home of our grandfather and our father before us. There, in the dim light, I halted and turned, while Evans approached from the inner rooms, rubbing eyes heavy with sleep.

Good old Evans! Yet the faithfulness of such a servant has its disadvantages.

“Well?” said Harry in a thin, high voice.

The boy’s nerves were stretched tightly; two words from me would have produced an explosion. So I clapped him on the shoulder and sent him off to bed. He went sulkily, without looking round, and his shoulders drooped like those of an old man; but I reflected that that would all be changed after a few hours of sleep.

“After all, he is a Lamar,” I said to myself as I ordered Evans to bring wine and sandwiches to the library.

It was the middle of the following afternoon before Harry appeared down-stairs. He had slept eleven hours. I was seated in the library when I heard his voice in the hall:

“Breakfast! Breakfast for five at once!”

I smiled. That was Harry’s style of wit.

After he had eaten his “breakfast for five” he came in to see me with the air of a man who was determined to have it out.

I myself was in no mood for talk; indeed, I scarcely ever am in such a mood, unless it be with a pretty woman or a great sinner. You may regard that sentence as tautological if you like; I sha’n’t quarrel about it.

What I mean to say is that it was with a real effort I set myself to the distasteful task before me, rendered necessary by the responsibility of my position as elder brother and head of the family.

Harry began by observing with assumed indifference: “Well, and now there’s the deuce to pay, I suppose.”

“As his representative I am not a hard creditor,” I smiled.

“I know, I know—” he began impetuously and stopped.

I continued:

“My boy, there is always the deuce to pay. If not for one thing, then for another. So your observation would serve for any other time as well as now. The point is this: you are ten years younger than I, and you are under my care; and much as I dislike to talk, we must reach an understanding.”

“Well?” said Harry, lighting a cigarette and seating himself on the arm of a chair.

“You have often thought,” I continued, “that I have been trying to interfere with your freedom. But you are mistaken; I have merely been trying to preserve it—and I have succeeded.”

“When our father and mother died you were fifteen years of age. You are now twenty-two; and I take some credit for the fact that those seven years have left no stain, however slight, on the name of Lamar.”

“Do I deserve that?” cried Harry. “What have I done?”

“Nothing irremediable, but you must admit that now and then I have been at no small pains to—er—assist you. But there, I don’t intend to speak of the past; and to tell the truth, I suspect that we are of one mind. You regard me as more or less of an encumbrance; you think your movements are hampered; you consider yourself to be treated as a child unjustly.

“Well, for my part, I find my duty—for such I consider it—grows more irksome every day. If I am in your way, you are no less in mine. To make it short, you are now twenty-two years old, you chafe at restraint, you think yourself abundantly able to manage your own affairs. Well—I have no objection.”

Harry stared at me.

“You mean—” he began.

“Exactly.”

“But, Paul—”

“There is no need to discuss it. For me, it is mostly selfishness.”

But he wanted to talk, and I humored him. For two hours we sat, running the scale from business to sentiment, and I must confess that I was more than once surprised by a flash from Harry. Clearly he was developing, and for the first time I indulged a hope that he might prove himself fit for self-government.

At least I had given him the rope; it remained for time to discover whether or not he would avoid getting tangled up in it. When we had finished we understood each other better, I think, than we ever had before; and we parted with the best of feeling.

Three days later I sailed for Europe, leaving Harry in New York. It was my first trip across in eighteen months, and I aimed at pleasure. I spent a week in London and Munich, then, disgusted with the actions of some of my fellow countrymen with whom I had the misfortune to be acquainted, I turned my face south for Madrid.

There I had a friend.

A woman not beautiful, but eminently satisfying; not loose, but liberal, with a character and a heart. In more ways than one she was remarkable; she had an affection for me; indeed, some years previously I had been in a way to play Albert Savaron to her Francesca Colonna, an arrangement prevented only by my constitutional dislike for any prolonged or sustained effort in a world the slave of vanity and folly.

It was from the lips of this friend that I first heard the name of Desiree Le Mire.

It was late in the afternoon on the fashionable drive. Long, broad, and shady, though scarcely cool, it was here that we took our daily carriage exercise; anything more strenuous is regarded with horror by the ladies of Spain.

There was a shout, and a sudden hush; all carriages were halted and their occupants uncovered, for royalty was passing. The coach, a magnificent though cumbersome affair, passed slowly and gravely by. On the rear seat were the princess and her little English cousin, while opposite them sat the great duke himself.

By his side was a young man of five and twenty with a white face and weak chin, and glassy, meaningless eyes. I turned to my companion and asked in a low tone who he was. Her whispered answer caused me to start with surprise, and I turned to her with a question.

“But why is he in Madrid?”

“Oh, as to that,” said my friend, smiling, “you must ask Desiree.”

“And who is Desiree?”

“What! You do not know Desiree! Impossible!” she exclaimed.

“My dear,” said I, “you must remember that for the past year and a half I have been buried in the land of pork and gold. The gossip there is neither of the poet nor the court. I am ignorant of everything.”

“You would not have been so much longer,” said my friend, “for Desiree is soon going to America. Who is she? No one knows. What is she? Well, she is all things to some men, and some things to all men. She is a courtesan among queens and a queen among courtesans.

“She dances and loves, and, I presume, eats and sleeps. For the past two years she has bewitched him”—she pointed down the drive to where the royal coach was disappearing in the distance—“and he has given her everything.

“It was for her that the Duke of Bellarmine built the magnificent chalet of which I was telling you on Lake Lucerne. You remember that Prince Dolansky shot himself ‘for political reasons’ in his Parisian palace? But for Desiree he would be alive to-day. She is a witch and a she-devil, and the most completely fascinating woman in the world.”

I smiled.

“What a reputation! And you say she is going to America?”

“Yes. It is to be supposed that she has heard that every American is a king, and it is no wonder if she is tired of only one royal lover at a time. And listen, Paul—”

“Well?”

“You—you must not meet her. Oh, but you do not know her power!”

I laughed and pressed her hand, assuring her that I had no intention of allowing myself to be bewitched by a she-devil; but as our carriage turned and started back down the long drive toward the hotel I found myself haunted by the white face and staring eyes of the young man in the royal coach.

I stayed two weeks longer in Madrid. At the end of that time, finding myself completely bored (for no woman can possibly be amusing for more than a month at a time), I bade my friend au revoir and departed for the East. But I found myself just too late for an archeological expedition into the heart of Egypt, and after a tiresome week or so in Cairo and Constantinople I again turned my face toward the west.

At Rome I met an old friend, one Pierre Janvour, in the French diplomatic service, and since I had nothing better to do I accepted his urgent invitation to join him on a vacation trip to Paris.

But the joys of Paris are absurd to a man of thirty-two who has seen the world and tasted it and judged it. Still I found some amusement; Janvour had a pretty wife and a daughter eight years old, daintily beautiful, and I allowed myself to become soaked in domestic sentiment.

I really found myself on the point of envying him; Mme. Janvour was a most excellent housekeeper and manager. Little Eugenie and I would often walk together in the public gardens, and now and then her mother would join us; and, as I say, I found myself on the point of envying my friend Janvour.

This diversion would have ended soon in any event; but it was brought to an abrupt termination by a cablegram from my New York lawyers, asking me to return to America at once. Some rascality it was, on the part of the agent of my estate, which had alarmed them; the cablegram was bare of detail. At any rate, I could not afford to disregard it, and arranged passage on a liner sailing from Cherbourg the following day.

My hostess gave me a farewell dinner, which heightened my regret at being forced to leave, and little Eugenie seemed really grieved at my departure. It is pleasant to leave a welcome behind you; that is really the only necessary axiom of the traveler.

Janvour took me to the railroad station, and even offered to accompany me to Cherbourg; but I refused to tear him away from his little paradise.

We stood on the platform arguing the matter, when I suddenly became aware of that indistinct flutter and bustle seen in public places at some unusual happening or the unexpected arrival of a great personage.

I turned and saw that which was worthy of the interest it had excited.

In the first place, the daintiest little electric brougham in the world, fragile and delicate as a toy—a fairy’s chariot. Then the fairy herself descended. She cannot be described in detail.

I caught a glimpse of glorious golden hair, softly massive; gray-blue eyes shot with lightning, restless, devouring, implacable, indescribably beautiful; a skin wondrously fine, with the purity of marble and the warmth of velvet; nose and mouth rather too large, but perfectly formed and breathing the fire and power of love. Really it was rather later that I saw all this; at the time there was but a confused impression of elegance and beauty and terrible power.

She passed from the brougham to her railway carriage supremely unconscious of the hundreds of eyes turned on her, and a general sigh of satisfaction and appreciation came from the throng as she disappeared within her compartment. I turned to Janvour.

“Who is she?”

“What?” he exclaimed in surprise. “But my dear Lamar, not to know her argues one a barbarian.”

“Nevertheless, I do not know her.”

“Well, you will have an opportunity. She is going to America, and, since she is on this train, she will, of course, take the same boat as yourself. But, my friend, beware!”

“But who is she?”

“Desiree Le Mire.”

CHAPTER II

BEGINNING THE DANCE

It developed, luckily for me, that my lawyers had allowed themselves to become unduly excited over a trifle. A discrepancy had been discovered in my agent’s accounts; it was clearly established that he had been speculating; but the fellow’s excessive modesty and moderation had saved me from any serious inconvenience or loss.

Some twenty thousand or so was the amount, and I did not even put myself to the trouble of recovering it. I placed a friend of mine, a plodder and one of those chaps who are honest on account of lack of imagination, in the position thus vacated and sighed with mild relief.

My experiment with Harry had proved a complete success. Left to the management of his own affairs, he had shown a wisdom and restraint none the less welcome because unexpected. He was glad to see me, and I was no less glad to see him.

There was little new in town.

Bob Garforth, having gambled away his entire patrimony, had shot and killed himself on the street; Mrs. Ludworth had publicly defied gossip and smiled with favor on young Driscoll; the new director of the Metropolitan Museum had announced himself an enemy to tradition and a friend of progress; and Desiree Le Mire had consented to a two weeks’ engagement at the Stuyvesant.

The French dancer was the favorite topic of discussion in all circles.

The newspapers were full of her and filled entire columns with lists of the kings, princes, and dukes who had been at her feet.

Bets were made on her nationality, the color of her eyes, the value of her pearls, the number of suicides she had caused—corresponding, in some sort, to the notches on the gun of a Western bad man. Gowns and hats were named for her by the enterprising department stores.

It was announced that her engagement at the Stuyvesant would open in ten days, and when the box-office opened for the advance sale every seat for every performance was sold within a few hours.

In the mean time the great Le Mire kept herself secluded in her hotel. She had appeared but once in the public dining-room, and on that occasion had nearly caused a riot, whereupon she had discreetly withdrawn. She remained unseen while the town shouted itself hoarse.

I had not mentioned her name to Harry, nor had I heard him speak of her, until one evening about two weeks after my return.

We were at dinner and had been discussing some commonplace subject, from which, by one of the freaks of association, the conversation veered and touched on classical dancing.

“The Russians are preeminent,” said I, “because they possess both the inspiration—the fire—and the training. In no other nation or school are the two so perfectly joined. In the Turkish dancers there is perfect grace and freedom, but no life. In Desiree Le Mire, for example, there is indeed life; but she has not had the necessary training.”

“What? Le Mire! Have you seen her?” cried Harry.

“Not on the stage,” I answered; “but I crossed on the same ship with her, and she was kind enough to give me a great deal of her time. She seems to understand perfectly her own artistic limitations, and I am taking her word for it.”

But Harry was no longer interested in the subject of dancing. I was besieged on the instant with a thousand questions.

Had I known Le Mire long? What was she like? Was it true that Prince Dolansky had shot himself in despair at losing her? Was she beautiful? How well did I know her? Would I take him to see her?

And within half an hour the last question was repeated so many times and with such insistence that I finally consented and left Harry delighted beyond words.

My own experience with Desiree Le Mire had been anything but exciting. The woman was interesting; there could be no doubt of that; but she possessed little attraction for me. Her charms, on close inspection, were really quite too evident.

I require subtlety in a woman, and so far as I could discover Le Mire knew not the meaning of the word. We had spent many hours during the trip across in pleasant companionship; she had done me the honor to tell me that she found my conversation amusing; and, after all, she was undeniably a pretty woman. She had invited me with evident sincerity to call on her in New York; but I had not as yet taken advantage of the invitation.

I did not then think, and I do not now believe, that I acted foolishly when I took Harry to see her. In any event, he would have seen her sooner or later, and since all temptations meet us at one time or another, it is best to have it out with them at as early a date as possible. At the time, indeed, I gave the subject no thought whatever; but if I had I should not have hesitated.

We took tea with her the following afternoon in her apartment, and I must confess that I myself was more than a little impressed when I entered. I realized then that on the ship nothing had been in her favor; she had been completely out of her element, and she was not a good sailor.

Here all was different. The stiffly ostentatious hotel rooms, by her own genius or that of her maid, had been transformed into something very nearly approaching perfection. I was amazed at the excellent taste displayed in her furniture and its arrangement, for it was clear that these were no hotel properties. Certainly a woman is at her best only when she is able to choose or create her own surroundings.

Harry was captivated, and I can scarcely blame him. But the poor lad betrayed himself so frankly! Though I suppose Le Mire was more or less accustomed to immediate surrender.

On that day, at least, she had reason to expect it. She satisfied the eye, which is saying a great deal and is the highest praise possible for a woman’s beauty, when you consider the full strength of the word.

She was radiant, adorable, irresistible; I had to own that my first impression of her had been far too weak.

We talked for an hour. Harry had little to say as he sat devouring Le Mire with his eyes, and whenever she turned to him for an answer to a question or confirmation of an opinion he stammered and kept his composure with difficulty. Never, I suppose, did woman have clearer evidence of her power, nor sweeter, for Harry was by no means a fool to be carried away by the first pretty face that came in his way.

She simply overwhelmed him, and I repeat that I do not wonder at it, for my own pulse was not exactly steady. She asked us to dine with her.

I pleaded an engagement at the club and signed to Harry to do likewise; but he was completely gone and paid no attention to me.

He accepted the invitation gratefully, with frank delight, and I left them together.

It was about ten o’clock when he came home that evening. I was seated in the library and, hearing him enter the hall, called to him.

What a face was his! His lips trembled with nervous feeling, his eyes glowed like the eyes of a madman. I half started from my chair in amazement.

“I have no time,” said he in answer to my invitation to join me with a bottle. “I have a letter or two to write, and—and I must get some sleep.”

“Did you just leave Le Mire?”

“Yes.”

I looked at my watch.

“What under the sun did you find to talk about?”

“Oh, anything—nothing. I say, she’s charming.”

His essay at indifference was amusing.

“You find her so?”

“Rather.”

“She seems to have taken a fancy to you.”

Harry actually grew red.

“Hardly,” he said; but there was hope in the word.

“She is hardly your kind, Harry. You know that. You aren’t going in for this sort of thing?”

“This sort—I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do, Hal. You know exactly what I mean. To put the thing plainly, Le Mire is a dangerous woman—none more so in all the world; and, Harry boy, be sure you keep your head and watch your step.”

He stood for a moment looking at me in silence with a half-angry frown, then opened his mouth as though to speak, and finally turned, without a word, and started for the door. There he turned again uncertainly, hesitating.

“I am to ride with Desiree in the morning,” said he, and the next moment was gone.

“Desiree!”

He called her Desiree!

I think I smiled for an hour over that; and, though my reflections were not free from apprehension, I really felt but little anxiety. Not that I underrated Le Mire’s fascination and power; to confess the truth, my ease of mind was the result of my own vanity. Le Mire had flattered me into the belief that she was my friend.

A week passed—a dull week, during which I saw little of Harry and Le Mire not at all. At the time, I remember, I was interested in some chemical experiments—I am a dabbler with the tubes—and went out but little. Then—this was on Friday—Harry sought me out in the laboratory to tell me he was going away. In answer to my question, “Where?” he said, “I don’t know.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Oh, a week—perhaps a month.”

I looked at him keenly, but said nothing. It would have done no good to force him into an equivocation by questions. Early the next morning he departed, with three trunks, and with no further word to me save a farewell. No sooner was he gone than I started for the telephone to call up Le Mire; but thought better of it and with a shrug of the shoulders returned to the laboratory.

It was the following Monday that was to see the first appearance of Le Mire at the Stuyvesant. I had not thought of going, but on Monday afternoon Billy Du Mont telephoned me that he had an extra ticket and would like to have me join him. I was really a little curious to see Le Mire perform and accepted.

We dined at the club and arrived at the theater rather late. The audience was brilliant; indeed, though I had been an ardent first-nighter for a year or two in my callow youth, I think I have never seen such a representation of fashion and genius in America, except at the opera.

Billy and I sat in the orchestra—about the twelfth row—and half the faces in sight were well known to me. Whether Le Mire could dance or not, she most assuredly was, or had, a good press-agent. We were soon to receive an exemplification of at least a portion of the reputation that had preceded her.

Many were the angry adjectives heaped on the head of the dancer on that memorable evening. Mrs. Frederick Marston, I remember, called her an insolent hussy; but then Mrs. Frederick Marston was never original. Others: rash, impudent, saucy, impertinent; in each instance accompanied by threats.

Indeed, it is little wonder if those people of fashion and wealth and position were indignant and sore. For they had dressed and dined hastily and come all the way down-town to see Le Mire; they waited for her for two hours and a half in stuffy theater seats, and Le Mire did not appear.

The announcement was finally made by the manager of the theater at a little before eleven-o’clock. He could not understand, he said—the poor fellow was on the point of wringing his hands with agitation and despair—he could not understand why the dancer did not arrive.

She had rehearsed in the theater on the previous Thursday afternoon, and had then seemed to have every intention of fulfilling her engagement. No one connected with the theater had seen her since that time, but everything had gone smoothly; they had had no reason to fear such a contretemps as her nonappearance.

They had sent to her hotel; she was gone, bag and baggage. She had departed on Friday, leaving no word as to her destination. They had asked the police, the hotels, the railroads, the steamship companies—and could find no trace of her.

The manager only hoped—he hoped with all his heart—that his frank and unreserved explanation would appease his kind patrons and prevent their resentment; that they would understand—

I made my way out of the theater as rapidly as possible, with Billy Du Mont at my side, and started north on Broadway.

My companion was laughing unrestrainedly.

“What a joke!” he exclaimed. “And gad, what a woman! She comes in and turns the town upside down and then leaves it standing on its head. What wouldn’t I give to know her!”

I nodded, but said nothing. At Forty-Second Street we turned east to Fifth Avenue, and a few minutes later were at the club. I took Du Mont to a secluded corner of the grill, and there, with a bottle of wine between us, I spoke.

“Billy,” said I, “there’s the deuce to pay. You’re an old friend of mine, and you possess a share of discretion, and you’ve got to help me. Le Mire is gone. I must find her.”

“Find Le Mire?” He stared at me in amazement. “What for?”

“Because my brother Harry is with her.”

Then I explained in as few words as possible, and I ended, I think, with something like this:

“You know, Billy, there are very few things in the world I consider of any value. She can have the lad’s money, and, if necessary, my own into the bargain. But the name of Lamar must remain clean; and I tell you there is more than a name in danger. Whoever that woman touches she kills. And Harry is only a boy.”

Billy helped me, as I knew he would; nor did he insist on unnecessary details. I didn’t need his assistance in the search, for I felt that I could accomplish that as well alone.

But it was certainly known that Harry had been calling on Le Mire at her hotel; conjectures were sure to be made, leading to the assertions of busy tongues; and it was the part of my friend to counteract and smother the inevitable gossip. This he promised to do; and I knew Billy. As for finding Harry, it was too late to do anything that night, and I went home and to bed.

The next morning I began by calling at her hotel. But though the manager of the theater had gotten no information from them, he had pumped them dry. They knew nothing.

I dared not go to the police, and probably they would have been unable to give me any assistance if I had sought it. The only other possible source of information I disliked to use; but after racking my brain for the better part of the day I decided that there was nothing else for it, and started on a round of the ticket offices of the railroads and steamship companies.

I had immediate success. My first call was at the office where Harry and I were accustomed to arrange our transportation. As I entered the head clerk—or whatever they call him—advanced to greet me with a smile.

“Yes,” said he in response to my question; “Mr. Lamar got his tickets from me. Let’s see—Thursday, wasn’t it? No, Friday. That’s right—Friday.”

“Tickets!” I muttered to myself. And in my preoccupation I really neglected to listen to him. Then aloud: “Where were the—tickets for?”

“Denver.”

“For Friday’s train?”

“Yes. The Western Express.”

That was all I wanted to know. I hurried home, procured a couple of hastily packed bags, and took the afternoon train for the West.

CHAPTER III

A MODERN MARANA

My journey westward was an eventful one; but this is not a “History of Tom Jones,” and I shall refrain from detail. Denver I reached at last, after a week’s stop-over in Kansas City. It was a delightful adventure—but it had nothing to do with the story.

I left the train at the Rocky Mountain city about the middle of the afternoon. And now, what to do? I think I am not a fool, but I certainly lack the training of a detective, and I felt perfectly rudderless and helpless as I ordered the taxi-driver to take me to the Alcazar Hotel.

I was by no means sure that Harry had come to Denver. He was traveling with a bundle of animated caprice, a creature who would have hauled him off the train at Rahway, New Jersey, if she had happened to take a fancy to the place. At the moment, I reflected, they might be driving along Michigan Boulevard, or attending a matinee at the Willis Wood, or sipping mint juleps at the Planters’.

Even if they were in Denver, how was I to find them? I keenly regretted the week I had lost. I was sure that Harry would avoid any chance of publicity and would probably shun the big hotels. And Denver is not a village.

It was the beauty of Le Mire that saved me. Indeed, I might have foreseen that; and I have but poorly portrayed the force of her unmatchable fascination unless you have realized that she was a woman who could pass nowhere without being seen; and, seen, remembered.

I made inquiries of the manager of the hotel, of course, but was brought up sharply when he asked me the names of my friends for whom I was asking. I got out of it somehow, some foolish evasion or other, and regarded my task as more difficult than ever.

That same evening I dined at the home of my cousin, Hovey Stafford, who had come West some years before on account of weak lungs, and stayed because he liked it. I met his wife that evening for the first time; she may be introduced with the observation that if she was his reason for remaining in the provinces, never did man have a better one.

We were on the veranda with our after-dinner cigars. I was congratulating Hovey on the felicity of his choice and jocularly sympathizing with his wife.

“Yes,” said my cousin, with a sigh, “I never regretted it till last week. It will never be the same again.”

Mrs. Hovey looked at him with supreme disdain.

“I suppose you mean Senora Ramal,” said she scornfully.

Her husband, feigning the utmost woe, nodded mournfully; whereupon she began humming the air of the Chanson du Colonel, and was stopped by a smothering kiss.

“And who is the Senora Ramal?” I asked.

“The most beautiful woman in the world,” said Mrs. Hovey.

This from a woman who was herself beautiful! Amazing! I suppose my face betrayed my thought.

“It isn’t charity,” she smiled. “Like John Holden, I have seen fire-balloons by the hundred, I have seen the moon, and—then I saw no more fire-balloons.”

“But who is she?”

Hovey explained. “She is the wife of Senor Ramal. They came here some ten days ago, with letters to one or two of the best families, and that’s all we know about them. The senora is an entrancing mixture of Cleopatra, Sappho, Helen of Troy, and the devil. She had the town by the ears in twenty-four hours, and you wouldn’t wonder at it if you saw her.”

Already I felt that I knew, but I wanted to make sure.

“Byron has described her,” I suggested, “in Childe Harold.”

“Hardly,” said Hovey. “No midnight beauty for hers, thank you. Her hair is the most perfect gold. Her eyes are green; her skin remarkably fair. What she may be is unknowable, but she certainly is not Spanish; and, odder still, the senor himself fits the name no better.”

But I thought it needless to ask for a description of Harry; for I had no doubt of the identity of Senor Ramal and his wife. I pondered over the name, and suddenly realized that it was merely “Lamar” spelled backward!

The discovery removed the last remaining shadow of doubt.

I asked in a tone of assumed indifference for their hotel, expressing a desire to meet them—and was informed by Hovey that they had left Denver two days previously, nor did he know where they had gone.

Thus did I face another obstacle. But I was on the track; and the perfume of a woman’s beauty is the strongest scent in the world as well as the sweetest. I thanked my cousin for a pleasant evening—though he did not know the extent of my debt to him—and declined his urgent invitation to have my luggage brought to his home.

On my way to the hotel I was struck by a sudden thought: Senor Ramal could not be my brother or my cousin would have recognized him! But I immediately reflected that the two had not seen each other for some ten years, at which time Harry had been a mere boy.

The following morning, with little difficulty, I ascertained the fact that the Ramals had departed—at least ostensibly—for Colorado Springs.

I followed. That same evening, when I registered at the Antlers Hotel, a few minutes before the dinner hour, I turned over two pages of the book, and there before me was the entry, “Senor and Senora Ramal, Paris.” It was in Harry’s handwriting.

After dinner—a most excellent dinner, with melons from La Junta and trout from the mountain streams—I descended on the hotel clerk with questions. He was most obliging—a sharp, pleasant fellow, with prominent ears and a Rocky Mountain twang.

“Senor and Senora Ramal? Most assuredly, sir. They have been here several days. No, they are not now in the hotel. They left this afternoon for Manitou, to take dinner there, and are going to make the night trip up the Peak.”

An idea immediately suggested itself to me. They would, of course, return to the hotel in the morning. All I had to do was to sit down and wait for them; but that would have been dull sport. My idea was better.

I sought out the hotel’s wardrobe—there is nothing the Antlers will not do for you—and clothed myself in khaki, leggings, and boots. Then I ordered a car and set out for Manitou, at the foot of the mountain.

By ten o’clock I was mounted on a donkey, headed for the top, after having been informed by a guide that “the man and the beautiful lady” had departed an hour previous.

Having made the ascent twice before, I needed no guide. So I decided; but I regretted the decision. Three times I lost the path; once I came perilously near descending on the village below—well, without hesitation. It was well after midnight when I passed the Half-way House, and I urged my donkey forward with a continual rat-a-tat-tat of well-directed kicks in the effort to make my goal.

You who have experienced the philosophical calm and superb indifference of the Pike’s Peak donkey may imagine the vocabulary I used on this occasion—I dare not print it. Nor did his speed increase.

I was, in fact, a quarter of an hour late. I was still several hundred yards from the summit when the sun’s first rays shot through the thin atmosphere, creating colorful riot among the clouds below, and I stopped, holding my breath in awe.

There is no art nor poetry in that wonderful sight; it is glorious war. The sun charges forth in a vast flame of inconceivable brilliance; you can almost hear the shout of victory. He who made the universe is no artist; too often He forgets restraint, and blinds us.

I turned, almost regretting that I had come, for I had been put out of tune with my task. Then I mounted the donkey and slowly traversed the few remaining yards to the Peak.

There, seated in the dazzling sunshine on the edge of a huge boulder near the eastern precipice, were the two I sought.

Le Mire’s head was turned from me as she sat gazing silently at the tumbling, gorgeous mass of clouds that seemed almost to be resting on her lap; Harry was looking at her. And such a look!

There was no rival even in nature that could conquer Le Mire; never, I believe, did woman achieve a more notable victory than hers of that morning. I watched them for several minutes before I moved or spoke; and never once did Harry’s eyes leave her face.

Then I advanced a step, calling his name; and they turned and caught sight of me.

“Paul!” cried Harry, leaping to his feet; then he stopped short and stared at me half defiantly, half curiously, moving close to Le Mire and placing his hand on her shoulder like a child clinging to a toy.

His companion had not moved, except to turn her head; but after the first swift shadow of surprise her face brightened with a smile of welcome, for all the world as though this were a morning call in her boudoir.

“Senor and Senora Ramal, I believe?” said I with a smile, crossing to them with an exaggerated bow.

I could see Harry cocking his ear to catch the tone of my first words, and when he heard their friendliness a grin overspread his face. He took his hand from Le Mire’s shoulder and held it out to me.

“How did you come here? How did you find us?”

“You forgot to provide Le Mire with a veil,” said I by way of answer.

Harry looked at me, then at his companion. “Of course,” he agreed—“of course. By Jove! that was stupid of us.”

Whereupon Le Mire laughed with such frank enjoyment of the boy’s simplicity that I couldn’t help but join her.

“And now,” said Harry, “I suppose you want to know—”

“I want to know nothing—at present,” I interrupted. “It’s nearly six o’clock, and since ten last night I’ve been on top of the most perfectly imbecile donkey ever devised by nature. I want breakfast.”

Velvet lids were upraised from Le Mire’s eyes. “Here?” she queried.

I pointed to the place—extreme charity might give it the title of inn—where smoke was rising from a tin chimney.

Soon we were seated inside with a pot of steaming black coffee before us. Harry was bubbling over with gaiety and good will, evidently occasioned by my unexpected friendliness, while Le Mire sat for the most part silent. It was easy to see that she was more than a little disturbed by my arrival, which surprised me.

I gazed at her with real wonder and increasing admiration. It was six in the morning; she had had no sleep, and had just finished a most fatiguing journey of some eight hours; but I had never seen her so beautiful.

Our host approached, and I turned to him:

“What have you?”

There was pity in his glance.

“Aigs,” said he, with an air of finality.

“Ah!” said Le Mire. “I want them—let’s see—au beurre noire, if you please.”

The man looked at her and uttered the single word: “Fried.”

“Fried?” said she doubtfully.

“Only fried,” was the inexorable answer. “How many?”

Le Mire turned to me, and I explained. Then she turned again to the surly host with a smile that must have caused him to regret his gruffness.

“Well, then, fr-r-ied!” said she, rolling the “r” deliciously. “And you may bring me five, if you please.”

It appeared that I was not the only hungry one. We ate leisurely and smoked more leisurely still, and started on our return journey a little before eight o’clock.

It was late in the afternoon when we arrived at the Antlers. The trip was accomplished without accident, but Le Mire was thoroughly exhausted and Harry was anything but fresh. That is the worst of mountain climbing: the exaltation at the summit hardly pays you for the reaction at the foot. We entered the broad portico with frank sighs of relief.

I said something about joining them at dinner and left for my own rooms.

At dinner that evening Harry was in high spirits and took great delight in everything that was said, both witty and dull, while Le Mire positively sparkled.

She made her impression; not a man in the well-filled room but sent his tribute of admiring glances as she sat seemingly unconscious of all but Harry and myself. That is always agreeable; a man owes something to the woman who carries a room for him.

I had intended to have a talk with Harry after dinner, but I postponed it; the morning would assuredly be better. There was dancing in the salon, but we were all too tired to take advantage of it; and after listening to one or two numbers, during which Le Mire was kept busy turning aside the importunities of would-be partners, we said good night and sought our beds.

It was late the next morning when the precious pair joined me in the garden, and when we went in for breakfast we found the dining-room quite empty. We did not enjoy it as on the morning previous; the cuisine was of the kind usually—and in this case justly—described as “superior,” but we did not have the same edge on our appetite.

We were not very talkative; I myself was almost taciturn, having before me the necessity of coming to an understanding with Harry, a task which I was far from relishing. But there were certain things I must know.

“What do you say to a ride down the valley?” said Harry. “They have excellent horses here; I tried one of ’em the other day.”

“I trust that they bear no resemblance to my donkey,” said I with feeling.

“Ugh!” said Le Mire with a shudder. “Never shall I forget that ride. Besides,” she added, turning to Harry, “this morning I would be in the way. Don’t you know that your brother has a thousand things to say to you? He wants to scold you; you must remember that you are a very bad boy.”

And she sent me a glance half defiant, half indifferent, which plainly said: “If I fight you, I shall win; but I really care very little about it one way or the other.”

After breakfast she went to her room—to have her hair dressed, she said—and I led Harry to a secluded corner of the magnificent grounds surrounding the hotel. During the walk we were both silent: Harry, I suppose, was wondering what I was going to say, while I was trying to make up my own mind.

“I suppose,” he began abruptly, “you are going to tell me I have acted like a fool. Go ahead; the sooner it’s over the better.”

“Nothing of the sort,” said I, glad that he had opened it.

He stopped short, demanding to know what I meant.

“Of course,” I continued, “Le Mire is a most amazing prize. Not exactly my style perhaps, but there are few men in the world who wouldn’t envy you. I congratulate you.

“But there were two things I feared for several reasons—Le Mire’s fascination, your own youth and impulsive recklessness, and the rather curious mode of your departure. I feared first and most that you would marry her; second, that you would achieve odium and publicity for our name.”

Harry was regarding me with a smile which had in it very little of amusement; it held a tinge of bitterness.

“And so,” he burst out suddenly, “you were afraid I would marry her! Well, I would. The last time I asked her”—again the smile—“was this morning.”

“And—”

“She won’t have me.”

“Bah!” I concealed my surprise, for I had really not thought it possible that the lad could be such a fool. “What’s her game, Harry?”

“Game the deuce! I tell you she won’t have me.”

“You have asked her?”

“A thousand times. I’ve begged her on my knees. Offered her—anything.”

“And she refuses?”

“Positively.”

“Refuses?”

“With thanks.”

I stared at him for a moment in silence. Then I said: “Go and get her and bring her here. I’ll find out what she wants,” and sat down on a bench to wait. Harry departed for the hotel without a word.

In a few minutes he returned with Le Mire. I rose and proffered her a seat on the bench, which she accepted with a smile, and Harry sat down at her side. I stood in front of them.

“Le Mire,” said I, and I believe I frowned, “my brother tells me that you have been offered the name of Lamar in marriage.”

“I have thanked him for it,” said she with a smile.

“And declined it.”

“And—declined it,” she agreed.

“Well,” said I, “I am not a man of half measures, as you will soon see, Le Mire. Besides, I appreciate your power. On the day,” I continued with slow precision—“on the day that you give me a contract to adhere to that refusal you may have my check for one million dollars.”

She surprised me; I admit it. I had expected a burst of anger, with a touch of assumed hauteur; the surrender to follow, for I had made the stake high. But as I stood looking down at her, waiting for the flash of her eye, I was greeted by a burst of laughter—the frank laughter of genuine mirth. Then she spoke:

“Oh, you Americans! You are so funny! A million dollars! It is impossible that I should be angry after such a compliment. Besides, you are so funny! Do you not know Le Mire? Am I not a princess if I desire it—tomorrow—today? Bah! There is the world—is it not mine? Mrs. Lamar? Ugh! Pardon me, my friend, but it is an ugly name.

“You know my ancestors? De L’Enclos, Montalais, Maintenon, La Marana! They were happy—in their way—and they were great. I must do nothing unworthy of them. Set your mind at rest, Mr. Lamar; but, really, you should have known better—you who have seen the world and Le Mire in Paris! And now our amusement is perhaps ended? Now we must return to that awful New York? Voila!”

Indeed I had not understood her. And how could I? There is only one such woman in a generation; sometimes none, for nature is sparing of her favorites. By pure luck she sat before me, this twentieth-century Marana, and I acknowledged her presence with a deep bow of apology and admiration.

“If you will forgive me, madame,” I said, “I will—not attempt to make reparation, for my words were not meant for you. Consider them unspoken. As for our amusement, why need it end? Surely, we can forget? I see plainly I am not a St. Evremond, but neither am I a fool. My brother pleases you—well, there he is. As for myself, I shall either stay to take care of you two children, or I shall return to New York, as you desire.”

Le Mire looked at me uncertainly for a moment, then turned to Harry and with a fluttering gesture took his hand in her own and patted it gaily. Then she laughed the happy laugh of a child as she said:

“Then it is well! And, monsieur, you are less an American than I thought. By all means, stay—we shall be so jolly! Will we not, my little friend?”

Harry nodded, smiling at her. But there was a troubled look in his face.

CHAPTER IV

ALLONS!

The events of the month that followed, though exciting enough, were of a similarity that would make their narration tedious, and I shall pass over them as speedily as possible.

We remained at Colorado Springs only two days after that morning in the garden. Le Mire, always in search of novelty, urged us away, and, since we really had nothing in view save the satisfaction of her whims, we consented. Salt Lake City was our next resting-place, but Le Mire tired of it in a day.

“I shall see the Pacific,” she said to Harry and me, and we immediately set out for San Francisco.

Is it necessary for me to explain my attitude? But surely it explains itself. For one thing, I was disinclined to leave Harry in a position where he was so abundantly unable to take care of himself. For another, I take amusement wherever it offers itself, and I was most certainly not bored.

The vagaries and caprices of a beautiful woman are always interesting, and when you are allowed to study them at close range without being under the necessity of acting the part of a faithful lover they become doubly so.

Le Mire managed Harry with wonderful tact and finesse; I sat back and laughed at the performance, now and then applying a check when her riotous imagination seemed likely to run away with us.

At San Francisco she achieved a triumph, notorious to the point of embarrassment. Paul Lamar, of New York, had introduced himself into the highest circle of society, and in turn had introduced his friends, Senor and Senora Ramal. The senora captured the town in a single night at a reception and ball on Telegraph Hill.

The day following there were several dozens of cards left for her at our hotel; invitations arrived by the score. She accepted two or three and made the fortune of two drawing-rooms; then suddenly tired of the sport and insulted a most estimable lady, our hostess, by certain remarks which inadvertently reached the ears of the lady’s husband.

“You have done for yourself, Le Mire,” I told her.

She answered me with a smile—straightway proceeded to issue invitations for an “entertainment” at our hotel. I had no idea what she meant to do; but gave the thing no thought, feeling certain that few, or none, of the invitations would be accepted—wherein I was badly mistaken, for not one was refused.

Well, Le Mire danced for them.

For myself it was barely interesting; I have passed the inner portals of the sacred temples of India, and the human body holds no surprises for me. But the good people of San Francisco were shocked, astonished, and entranced. Not a man in the room but was Le Mire’s slave; even the women were forced to applaud. She became at once a goddess and an outcast.

The newspapers of the following morning were full of it, running the scale of eulogy, admiration, and wonder. And one of the articles, evidently written by a man who had been considerably farther east than San Francisco, ended with the following paragraph:

In short, it was sublime, and with every movement and every gesture there was a something hidden, a suggestion of a personality and mysterious charm that we have always heretofore considered the exclusive property of just one woman in the world. But Desiree Le Mire is not in San Francisco; though we declare that the performance of last evening was more than enough to rouse certain suspicions, especially in view of Le Mire’s mysterious disappearance from New York.

I took the paper to Desiree in her room, and while she read the article stood gazing idly from a window. It was about eleven in the morning; Harry had gone for a walk, saying that he would return in half an hour to join us at breakfast.

“Well?” said Desiree when she had finished.

“But it is not well,” I retorted, turning to face her. “I do not reproach you; you are being amused, and so, I confess, am I. But your name—that is, Le Mire—has been mentioned, and discovery is sure to follow. We must leave San Francisco at once.”

“But I find it entertaining.”

“Nevertheless, we must leave.”

“But if I choose to stay?”

“No; for Harry would stay with you.”

“Well, then—I won’t go.”

“Le Mire, you will go?”

She sent me a flashing glance, and for a moment I half expected an explosion. Then, seeming to think better of it, she smiled:

“But where? We can’t go west without falling into the ocean, and I refuse to return. Where?”

“Then we’ll take the ocean.”

She looked up questioningly, and I continued:

“What would you say to a yacht—a hundred and twenty foot steamer, with a daredevil captain and the coziest little cabins in the world?”

“Bah!” Le Mire snapped her fingers to emphasize her incredulity. “It does not exist.”

“But it does. Afloat and in commission, to be had for the asking and the necessary check. Dazzling white, in perfect order, a second Antoine for a chef, rooms furnished as you would your own villa. What do you say?”

“Really?” asked Le Mire with sparkling eyes.

“Really.”

“Here—in San Francisco?”

“In the harbor. I saw her myself this morning.”

“Then I say—allons! Ah, my friend, you are perfection! I want to see it. Now! May I? Come!”

I laughed at her eager enthusiasm as she sprang up from her chair.

“Le Mire, you are positively a baby. Something new to play with! Well, you shall have it. But you haven’t had breakfast. We’ll go out to see her this afternoon; in fact, I have already made an appointment with the owner.”

“Ah! Indeed, you are perfection. And—how well you know me.” She paused and seemed to be searching for words; then she said abruptly: “M. Lamar, I wish you to do me a favor.”

“Anything, Le Mire, in or out of reason.”

Again she hesitated; then:

“Do not call me Le Mire.”

I laughed.

“But certainly, Senora Ramal. And what is the favor?”

“That.”

“That—”

“Do not call me Le Mire—nor Senora Ramal.”

“Well, but I must address you occasionally.”

“Call me Desiree.”

I looked at her with a smile.

“But I thought that that was reserved for your particular friends.”

“So it is.”

“Then, my dear senora, it would be impertinent of me.”

“But if I request it?”

“I have said—anything in or out of reason. And, of course, I am one of the family.”

“Is that the only reason?”

I began to understand her, and I answered her somewhat dryly: “My dear Desiree, there can be none other.”

“Are you so—cold?”

“When I choose.”

“Ah!” It was a sigh rather than an exclamation. “And yet, on the ship—do you remember? Look at me, M. Lamar. Am I not—am I so little worthy of a thought?”

Her lips were parted with tremulous feeling; her eyes glowed with a strange fire, and yet were tender. Indeed, she was “worthy of a thought”—dangerously so; I felt my pulse stir. It was necessary to assume a stoicism I was far from feeling, and I looked at her with a cynical smile and spoke in a voice as carefully deliberate as I could make it.

“Le Mire,” I said, “I could love you, but I won’t.” And I turned and left her without another word.

Why? I haven’t the slightest idea. It must have been my vanity. Some few men had conquered Le Mire; others had surrendered to her; certainly none had ever been able to resist her. There was a satisfaction in it. I walked about the lobby of the hotel till Harry returned, idiotically pleased with myself.

At the breakfast table I acquainted Harry with our plans for a cruise, and he was fully as eager about it as Le Mire had been. He wanted to weigh anchor that very afternoon. I explained that it was necessary to wait for funds from New York.

“How much?” said he. “I’m loaded.”

“I’ve sent for a hundred thousand,” said I.

“Are you going to buy her?” he demanded with astonishment.

Then we fell to a discussion of routes. Harry was for Hawaii; Le Mire for South America.

We tossed a coin.

“Heads,” said Desiree, and so it fell.

I requested Le Mire to keep to the hotel as closely as possible for the days during which it was necessary for us to remain in San Francisco. She did so, but with an apparent effort.

I have never seen a creature so full of nervous energy and fire; only by severe restraint could she force herself to even a small degree of composure. Harry was with her nearly every minute, though what they found to talk about was beyond my comprehension. Neither was exactly bubbling over with ideas, and one cannot say “I love you” for twenty-four hours a day.

It was a cool, sunny day in the latter part of October when we weighed anchor and passed through the Golden Gate. I had leased the yacht for a year, and had made alternative plans in case Le Mire should tire of the sport, which I thought extremely probable.

She and Harry were delighted with the yacht, which was not surprising, for she was as perfect a craft as I have seen. Sides white as sea-foam; everything above decks of shining brass, below mahogany, and as clean and shipshape as a Dutch kitchen. There were five rooms besides the captain’s, and a reception-room, dining-room, and library. We had provisioned her well, and had a jewel of a cook.

Our first port was Santa Catalina. We dropped anchor there at about five o’clock in the afternoon of such a day as only southern California can boast of, and the dinghy was lowered to take us ashore.

“What is there?” asked Le Mire, pointing to the shore as we stood leaning on the rail waiting for the crew to place the ladder.

I answered: “Tourists.”

Le Mire shrugged her shoulders. “Tourists? Bah! Merci, non. Allons!”

I laughed and went forward to the captain to tell him that madame did not approve of Santa Catalina. In another minute the dinghy was back on its davits, the anchor up, and we were under way. Poor captain! Within a week he became used to Le Mire’s sudden whims.

At San Diego we went ashore. Le Mire took a fancy to some Indian blankets, and Harry bought them for her; but when she expressed an intention to take an Indian girl—about sixteen or seventeen years old—aboard the yacht as a “companion,” I interposed a firm negative. And, after all, she nearly had her way.

For a month it was “just one port after another.” Mazatlan, San Bias, Manzanillo, San Salvador, Panama City—at each of these we touched, and visited sometimes an hour, sometimes two or three days. Le Mire was loading the yacht with all sorts of curious relics. Ugly or beautiful, useful or worthless, genuine or faked, it mattered not to her; if a thing suited her fancy she wanted it—and got it.

At Guayaquil occurred the first collision of wills. It was our second evening in port. We were dining on the deck of the yacht, with half a dozen South American generals and admirals as guests.

Toward the end of the dinner Le Mire suddenly became silent and remained for some minutes lost in thought; then, suddenly, she turned to the bundle of gold lace at her side with a question:

“Where is Guayaquil?”

He stared at her in amazement.

“It is there, senora,” he said finally, pointing to the shore lined with twinkling lights.

“I know, I know,” said Le Mire impatiently; “but where is it? In what country?”

The poor fellow, too surprised to be offended, stammered the name of his native land between gasps, while Harry and I had all we could do to keep from bursting into laughter.

“Ah,” said Desiree in the tone of one who has made an important discovery, “I thought so. Ecuador. Monsieur, Quito is in Ecuador.”

The general—or admiral, I forget which—acknowledged the correctness of her geography with a profound bow.

“But yes. I have often heard of Quito, monsieur. It is a very interesting place. I shall go to Quito.”

There ensued immediately a babel. Each of our guests insisted on the honor of accompanying us inland, and the thing would most assuredly have ended in a bloody quarrel on the captain’s polished deck, if I had not interposed in a firm tone:

“But, gentlemen, we are not going to Quito.”

Le Mire looked at me—and such a look! Then she said in a tone of the utmost finality:

“I am going to Quito.”

I shook my head, smiling at her, whereupon she became furious.

“M. Lamar,” she burst forth, “I tell you I am going to Quito! In spite of your smile! Yes! Do you hear? I shall go!”

Without a word I took a coin from my pocket and held it up. I had come to know Le Mire. She frowned for a moment in an evident attempt to maintain her anger, then an irresistible smile parted her lips and she clapped her hands gaily.

“Very well,” she cried, “toss, monsieur! Heads!”

The coin fell tails, and we did not go to Quito, much to the disappointment of our guests. Le Mire forgot all about it in ten minutes.

Five days later we dropped anchor at Callao.

This historic old port delighted Le Mire at once. I had told her something of its story: its successive bombardments by the liberators from Chile, the Spanish squadron, buccaneering expeditions from Europe and the Chilean invaders; not to mention earthquakes and tidal waves. We moored alongside the stone pier by the lighthouse; the old clock at its top pointed to the hour of eight in the morning.

But as soon as Le Mire found out that Lima was but a few miles away, Callao no longer held any interest for her. We took an afternoon train and arrived at the capital in time for dinner.

There it was, in picturesque old Lima, that Le Mire topped her career. On our first afternoon we betook ourselves to the fashionable paseo, for it was a band day, and all Lima was out.

In five minutes every eye in the gay and fashionable crowd was turned on Le Mire. Then, as luck would have it, I met, quite by chance, a friend of mine who had come to the University of San Marcos some years before as a professor of climatology. He introduced us, with an air of importance, to several of the groups of fashion, and finally to the president himself. That night we slept as guests under the roof of a luxurious and charming country house at Miraflores.

Le Mire took the capital by storm. Her style of beauty was peculiarly fitted for their appreciation, for pallor is considered a mark of beauty among Lima ladies. But that could scarcely account for her unparalleled triumph. I have often wondered—was it the effect of a premonition?

The president himself sat by her at the opera. There were two duels attributed to her within a week; though how the deuce that was possible is beyond me.

On society day at the bull-ring the cues were given by Le Mire; her hand flung the rose to the matador, while the eight thousand excited spectators seemed uncertain whether they were applauding her or him. Lima was hers, and never have I seen a fortnight so crowded with incidents.

But Le Mire soon tired of it, as was to be expected. She greeted me one morning at the breakfast table:

“My friend Paul, let us go to Cerro de Pasco. They have silver—thousands and thousands of tons—and what you call them? Ornaments.”

“And then the Andes?” I suggested.

“Why not?”

“But, my dear Desiree, what shall we do with the yacht?”

“Pooh! There is the captain. Come—shall I say please?”

So we went to Cerro de Pasco. I wrote to Captain Harris, telling him not to expect us for another month or so, and sending him sufficient funds to last till our return.

I verily believe that every one of note in Lima came to the railroad station to see us off.

Our compartment was a mass of flowers, which caused me to smile, for Le Mire, curiously enough, did not like them. When we had passed out of the city she threw them out of the window, laughing and making jokes at the expense of the donors. She was in the best of humor.

We arrived at Oroya late in the afternoon, and departed for Cerro de Pasco by rail on the following morning.

This ride of sixty-eight miles is unsurpassed in all the world. Snow-capped peaks, bottomless precipices, huge masses of boulders that seem ready to crush the train surround you on every side, and now and then are directly above or beneath you.

Le Mire was profoundly impressed; indeed, I had not supposed her to possess the sensibility she displayed; and as for me, I was most grateful to her for having suggested the trip. You who find yourselves too well-acquainted with the Rockies and the Alps and the Himalayas should try the Andes. There is a surprise waiting for you.

But for the story.

We found Cerro de Pasco, interesting as its situation is, far short of our expectations. It is a mining town, filled with laborers and speculators, noisy, dirty, and coarse. We had been there less than forty-eight hours when I declared to Harry and Le Mire my intention of returning at once.

“But the Andes!” said Le Mire. “Shall we not see them?”

“Well—there they are.”

I pointed through the window of the hotel.

“Bah! And you call yourself a traveler? Look! The snow! My friend Paul, must I ask twice for a favor?”

Once again we tossed a coin.

Ah, if Le Mire had only seen the future! And yet—I often wonder—would she have turned her back? For the woman craved novelty and adventure, and the gameness of centuries was in her blood—well, she had her experience, which was shared only in part by Harry and myself.

Those snow-capped peaks! Little did we guess what they held for us. We were laughing, I remember, as we left behind us the edge of civilization represented by Cerro de Pasco.

We found it impossible to procure a complete outfit in the mining town, and were forced to despatch a messenger to Lima. He returned in two days with mules, saddles, saddle-bags, boots, leather leggings, knickerbockers, woolen ponchos, and scores of other articles which he assured us were absolutely necessary for any degree of comfort. By the time we were ready to start we had a good-sized pack-train on our hands.

The proprietor of the hotel found us an arriero, whom he declared to be the most competent and trustworthy guide in all the Andes—a long, loose-jointed fellow with an air of complete indifference habitually resting on his yellow, rather sinister-looking face. Le Mire did not like him, but I certainly preferred the hotel proprietor’s experience and knowledge to her volatile fancy, and engaged the arriero on the spot.

Our outfit was complete, and everything in readiness, when Harry suddenly announced that he had decided not to go, nor to allow Le Mire to do so.

“I don’t like it,” he said in troubled tones. “I tell you, Paul, I don’t like it. I’ve been talking to some of the miners and arrieros, and the thing is foolhardy and dangerous.”

Then, seeing the expression on my face, he continued hastily: “Oh, not for myself. You know me; I’ll do anything that any one else will do, and more, if I can. But Desiree! I tell you, if anything happened to her I—well—”

I cut him short:

“My dear boy, the idea is Desiree’s own. And to talk of danger where she is concerned! She would laugh at you.”

“She has,” Harry confessed with a doubtful smile.

I clapped him roughly on the shoulder.

“Come, brace up! Our caravan awaits us—and see, the fairy, too. Are you ready, Desiree?”

She came toward us from the inner rooms of the hotel, smiling, radiant. I shall never forget the picture she presented. She wore white knickerbockers, a white jacket, tan-leather boots and leggings and a khaki hat.

Her golden hair, massed closely about her ears and upon her forehead, shimmered in the bright sun dazzlingly; her eyes sparkled; her little white teeth gleamed in a happy, joyous smile.

We lifted her to the back of her mule, then mounted our own. Suddenly a recollection shot through my brain with remarkable clearness, and I turned to Le Mire:

“Desiree, do you know the first time I ever saw you? It was in an electric brougham at the Gare du Nord. This is somewhat different, my lady.”

“And infinitely more interesting,” she answered. “Are you ready? See that stupid arriero! Ah! After all, he knew what he was about. Then, messieurs—allons!”

The arriero, receiving my nod uttered a peculiar whistle through his teeth. The mules pricked up their ears, then with one common movement started forward.

“Adios! Adios, senora! Adios, senores!”

With the cry of our late host sounding in our ears we passed down the narrow little street of Cerro de Pasco on our way to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes.

CHAPTER V

THE CAVE OF THE DEVIL

You may remember that I made some remark concerning the difficulty of the ascent of Pike’s Peak. Well, that is mere child’s play—a morning constitutional compared to the paths we found ourselves compelled to follow in the great Cordillera.

Nor was it permitted us to become gradually accustomed to the danger; we had not been two hours out of Cerro de Pasco before we found ourselves creeping along a ledge so narrow there was scarcely room for the mules to place their hoofs together, over a precipice three thousand feet in the air—straight. And, added to this was the discomfort, amounting at times to positive pain, caused by the soroche.

Hardly ever did we find ground sufficiently broad for a breathing space, save when our arriero led us, almost by magic it seemed, to a camping place for the night. We would ascend the side of a narrow valley; on one hand roared a torrent some hundreds of feet below; on the other rose an uncompromising wall of rock. So narrow would be the track that as I sat astride my mule my outside leg would be hanging over the abyss.

But the grandeur, the novelty, and the variety of the scenery repaid us; and Le Mire loved the danger for its own sake. Time and again she swayed far out of her saddle until her body was literally suspended in the air above some frightful chasm, while she turned her head to laugh gaily at Harry and myself, who brought up the rear.

“But Desiree! If the girth should break!”

“Oh, but it won’t.”

“But if it should?”

“Tra-la-la! Come, catch me!”

And she would try to urge her mule into a trot—a futile effort, since the beast had a much higher regard for his skin than she had for hers; and the mule of the arriero was but a few feet ahead.

Thus we continued day after day, I can’t say how many. There was a fascination about the thing that was irresistible. However high the peak we had ascended, another could be seen still higher, and that, too, must be scaled.

The infinite variety of the trail, its surprises, its new dangers, its apparent vanishings into thin air, only to be found, after an all but impossible curve, up the side of another cliff, coaxed us on and on; and when or where we would have been able to say, “thus far and no farther” is an undecided problem to this day.

About three o’clock one afternoon we camped in a small clearing at the end of a narrow valley. Our arriero, halting us at that early hour, had explained that there was no other camping ground within six hours’ march, and no hacienda or pueblo within fifty miles. We received his explanation with the indifference of those to whom one day is like every other day, and amused ourselves by inspecting our surroundings while he prepared the evening meal and arranged the camp beds.

Back of us lay the trail by which we had approached—a narrow, sinuous ribbon clinging to the side of the huge cliffs like a snake fastened to a rock. On the left side, immediately above us, was a precipice some thousand feet in height; on the right a series of massive boulders, of quartzite and granite, misshapen and lowering.

There were three, I remember, placed side by side like three giant brothers; then two or three smaller ones in a row, and beyond these many others ranged in a mass unevenly, sometimes so close together that they appeared to be jostling one another out of the way.

For several days we had been in the region of perpetual snow; and soon we gathered about the fire which the arriero had kindled for our camp. Its warmth was grateful, despite our native woolen garments and heavy ponchos.

The wind whistled ominously; a weird, senseless sound that smote the ear with madness. The white of the snow and the dull gray of the rocks were totally unrelieved by any touch of green or play of water; a spot lonely as the human soul and terrifying as death.

Harry had gone to examine the hoofs of his mule, which had limped slightly during the afternoon; Le Mire and I sat side by side near the fire, gazing at the play of the flames. For some minutes we had been silent.

“In Paris, perhaps—” she began suddenly, then stopped short and became again silent.

But I was fast dropping into melancholy and wanted to hear her voice, and I said:

“Well? In Paris—”

She looked at me, her eyes curiously somber, but did not speak. I insisted:

“You were saying, Desiree, in Paris—”

She made a quick movement and laughed unpleasantly.

“Yes, my friend—but it is useless. I was thinking of you. ‘Ah! A card! Mr. Paul Lamar. Show him in, Julie. But no, let him wait—I am not at home.’ That, my friend, would be in Paris.”

I stared at her.

“For Heaven’s sake, Desiree, what nonsense is this?”

She disregarded my question as she continued:

“Yes, that is how it would be. Why do I talk thus? The mountains hypnotize me. The snow, the solitude—for I am alone. Your brother, what is he? And you, Paul, are scarcely aware of my existence.

“I had my opportunity with you, and I laughed it away. And as for the future—look! Do you see that waste of snow and ice, glittering, cold, pitiless? Ha! Well, that is my grave.”

I tried to believe that she was merely amusing herself, but the glow in her eyes did not proceed from mirth. I followed her fixed gaze across the trackless waste and, shivering, demanded:

“What morbid fancy is this, Desiree? Come, it is scarcely pleasant.”

She rose and crossed the yard or so of ground between us to my side. I felt her eyes above me, and try as I would I could not look up to meet them. Then she spoke, in a voice low but curiously distinct:

“Paul, I love you.”

“My dear Desiree!”

“I love you.”

At once I was myself, calm and smiling. I was convinced that she was acting, and I dislike to spoil a good scene. So I merely said:

“I am flattered, senora.”

She sighed, placing her hand on my shoulder.

“You laugh at me. You are wrong. Have I chosen this place for a flirtation? Before, I could not speak; now you must know. There have been many men in my life, Paul; some fools, some not so, but none like you. I have never said, ‘I love you.’ I say it now. Once you held my hand—you have never kissed me.”

I rose to my feet, smiling, profoundly fatuous, and made as if to put my arm around her.

“A kiss? Is that all, Desiree? Well—”

But I had mistaken her tone and overreached. Not a muscle did she move, but I felt myself repulsed as by a barrier of steel. She remained standing perfectly still, searching me with a gaze that left me naked of levity and cynicism and the veneer of life; and finally she murmured in a voice sweet with pain:

“Must you kill me with words, Paul? I did not mean that—now. It is too late.”

Then she turned swiftly and called to Harry, who came running over to her only to meet with some trivial request, and a minute later the arriero announced dinner.

I suppose that the incident had passed with her, as it had with me; little did I know how deeply I had wounded her. And when I discovered my mistake, some time later and under very different circumstances, it very nearly cost me my life, and Harry’s into the bargain.

During the meal Le Mire was in the jolliest of moods apparently. She retold the tale of Balzac’s heroine who crossed the Andes in the guise of a Spanish officer, performing wondrous exploits with her sword and creating havoc among the hearts of the fair ladies who took the dashing captain’s sex for granted from his clothing.

The story was a source of intense amusement to Harry, who insisted on the recital of detail after detail, until Desiree allowed her memory to take a vacation and substitute pure imagination. Nor was the improvisation much inferior to the original.

It was still light when we finished dinner, a good three hours till bedtime. And since there was nothing better to do, I called to the arriero and asked him to conduct us on a tour of exploration among the mass of boulders, gray and stern, that loomed up on our right.

He nodded his head in his usual indifferent manner, and fifteen minutes later we started, on foot. The arriero led the way, with Harry at his heels, and Desiree and I brought up the rear.

Thrice I tried to enter into conversation with her; but each time she shook her head without turning round, and I gave it up. I was frankly puzzled by her words and conduct of an hour before; was it merely one of the trickeries of Le Mire or—

I was interested in the question as one is always interested in a riddle; but I tossed it from my mind, promising myself a solution on the morrow, and gave my attention to the vagaries of nature about me.

We were passing through a cleft between two massive rocks, some three or four hundred yards in length. Ahead of us, at the end of the passage, a like boulder fronted us.

Our footfalls echoed and reechoed from wall to wall; the only other sound was the eery moaning of the wind that reached our ears with a faintness which only served to increase its effect. Here and there were apertures large enough to admit the entrance of a horse and rider, and in many places the sides were crumbling.

I was reflecting, I remember, that the formation was undoubtedly one of limestone, with here and there a layer of quartzite, when I was aroused by a shout from Harry.

I approached. Harry and Desiree, with Felipe, the arriero, had halted and were gazing upward at the wall of rock which barred the exit from the passage. Following their eyes, I saw lines carved on the rock, evidently a rude and clumsy attempt to reproduce the form of some animal.

The thing was some forty feet or so above us and difficult to see clearly.

“I say it’s a llama,” Harry was saying as I stopped at his side.

“My dear boy,” returned Desiree, “don’t you think I know a horse when I see one?”

“When you see one, of course,” said Harry sarcastically. “But who ever saw a horse with a neck like that?”

As for me, I was really interested, and I turned to the arriero for information.

“Si, senor,” said Felipe, “Un caballo.”

“But who carved it?”

Felipe shrugged his shoulders.

“Is it new—Spanish?”

Another shrug. I became impatient.

“Have you no tongue?” I demanded. “Speak! If you don’t know the author of that piece of equine art say so.”

“I know, senor.”

“You know?”

“Si, senor.”

“Then, for Heaven’s sake, tell us.”

“His story?” pointing to the figure on the rock.

“Yes, idiot!”

Without a sign of interest, Felipe turned twice around, found a comfortable rock, sat down, rolled a cigarette, lighted it, and began. He spoke in Spanish dialect; I shall preserve the style as far as translation will permit.

“Many, many years ago, senor, Atahualpa, the Inca, son of Huayna-Capac, was imprisoned at Cajamarco. Four, five hundred years ago, it was. By the great Pizarro. And there was gold at Cuzco, to the south, and Atahualpa, for his ransom, ordered that this gold be brought to Pizarro.

“Messengers carried the order like the wind, so swift that in five days the priests of the sun carried their gold from the temples to save the life of Atahualpa.”

Felipe paused, puffing at his cigarette, glanced at his audience, and continued:

“But Hernando Pizarro, brother of the great Pizarro, suspected a delay in the carriers of gold. From Pachacamac he came with twenty horsemen, sowing terror in the mountains, carrying eighty loads of gold. Across the Juaja River and past Lake Chinchaycocha they came, till they arrived at the city of Huanuco.

“There were temples and gold and priests and soldiers. But when the soldiers of the Inca saw the horses of the Spaniards and heard the guns, they became frightened and ran away like little children, carrying their gold. Never before had they seen white men, or guns, or horses.

“With them came many priests and women, to the snow of the mountains. And after many days of suffering they came to a cave, wherein they disappeared and no more were seen, nor could Hernando Pizarro and his twenty horsemen find them to procure their gold.

“And before they entered the cave they scaled a rock near its entrance and carved thereon the likeness of a horse to warn their Inca brethren of the Spaniards who had driven them from Huanuco. That is his story, senor.”

“But who told you all this, Felipe?”

The arriero shrugged his shoulders and glanced about, as much as to say, “It is in the wind.”

“But the cave?” cried Desiree. “Where is the cave?”

“It is there, senora,” said Felipe, pointing through a passage to the right.

Then nothing would do for Desiree but to see the cave. The arriero informed her that it was difficult of access, but she turned the objection aside with contempt and commanded him to lead.

Harry, of course, was with her, and I followed somewhat unwillingly; for, though Felipe’s history was fairly accurate, I was inclined to regard his fable of the disappearing Incas as a wild tradition of the mountains.

He had spoken aright—the path to the cave was not an easy one. Here and there deep ravines caused us to make a wide detour or risk our necks on perilous steeps.

Finally we came to a small clearing, which resembled nothing so much as the bottom of a giant well, and in the center of one of the steep walls was an opening some thirty or forty feet square, black and rugged, and somehow terrifying.

It was the entrance to the cave.

There Felipe halted.

“Here, senor. Here entered the Incas of Huanuco with their gold.”

He shivered as he spoke, and I fancied that his face grew pale.

“We shall explore it!” cried Desiree, advancing.

“But no, senora!” The arriero was positively trembling. “No! Senor, do not let her go within! Many times have my countrymen entered in search of the gold, and americanos, too, and never did they return. It is a cave of the devil, senor. He hides in the blackness and none who enter may escape him.”

Desiree was laughing gaily.

“Then I shall visit the devil!” she exclaimed, and before either Harry or I could reach her she had sprung across the intervening space to the entrance and disappeared within.

With shouts of consternation from Felipe ringing in our ears, we leaped after her.

“Desiree!” cried Harry. “Come back, Desiree!”

There was no answer, but echoing back from the night before us came faint reverberations—could they be footsteps! What folly! For I had thought that she had merely intended to frighten poor Felipe, and now—

“Desiree!” Harry called again with all the strength of his lungs. “Desiree!”

Again there was no answer. Then we entered the cave together. I remember that as we passed within I turned and saw Felipe staring with white face and eyes filled with terror.

A hundred feet and we were encompassed by the most intense darkness. I muttered: “This is folly; let us get a light,” and tried to hold Harry back. But he pushed me aside and groped on, crying: “Desiree! Come back, Desiree!”

What could I do? I followed.

Suddenly a scream resounded through the cavern. Multiplied and echoed by the black walls, it was inhuman, shot with terror, profoundly horrible.

A tremor ran through me from head to foot; beside me I heard Harry gasp with a nameless fear. An instant later we dashed forward into the darkness.

How long we ran I could never tell; probably a few seconds, possibly as many minutes.

On we rushed, blindly, impelled not by reason, but by the memory of that terrible cry, side by side, gasping, fearful. And then—

A step into thin air—a mighty effort to recover a footing—a wild instant of despair and pawing helpless agony. Then blackness and oblivion.

CHAPTER VI

CAPTURED

The fall—was it ten feet or a thousand? I shall never know. Hurtling headlong through space, a man can scarcely be expected to keep his wits about him.

Actually, my only impression was of righteous indignation; my memory is that I cursed aloud, but Harry denies it.

But it could not have been for long, for when we struck the water at the bottom we were but slightly stunned by the impact. To this Harry has since agreed; he must have been as lucky as myself, for I took it headlong with a clean cleavage.

I rose to the top, sputtering, and flung out my arms in the attempt to swim—or, rather, to keep afloat—and was overjoyed to find my arms and legs answer to the call of the brain.

About me was blackest night and utter silence, save a low, unbroken murmur, unlike any other sound, hardly to be heard. It was in my effort to account for it that I first became aware of the fact that the water was a stream, and a moving one—moving with incredible swiftness, smooth and all but silent. As soon as I became convinced of this I gave up all attempt to swim, and satisfied myself with keeping my head above the surface and drifting with the current.

Then I thought of Harry, and called his name aloud many times. The reverberations throughout the cave were as the report of a thousand cannon; but there was no response.

The echoes became fainter and fainter and died away, and again all was silence and impenetrable night, while I battled with the strong suction of the unseen current, which was growing swifter and swifter, and felt my strength begin to leave me.

Terror, too, began to call to me as the long minutes passed endlessly by. I thought, “If I could only see!” and strained my eyes in the effort till I was forced to close them from the dizzy pain. The utter, complete darkness hid from me all knowledge of what I passed or what awaited me beyond.

The water, carrying me swiftly onward with its silent, remorseless sweep, was cold and black; it pressed with tremendous power against me; now and then I was forced beneath the surface and fought my way back, gasping and all but exhausted.

I forgot Desiree and Harry; I lost all consciousness of where I was and what I was doing; the silent fury of the stream and the awful blackness maddened me; I plunged and struggled desperately, blindly, sobbing with rage. This could not have lasted much longer; I was very near the end.

Suddenly, with a thrill of joy, I realized that the speed of the current was decreasing. Then a reaction of despair seized me; I tried to strangle hope and resign myself to the worst. But soon there was no longer any doubt; the water carried me slower and slower.

I floated with little difficulty, wondering—could it be an approach to a smaller outlet which acted as a dam? Or was it merely a lessening of the incline of the bed of the stream? I cursed the darkness for my helplessness.

Finally the water became absolutely still, as I judged by the absence of pressure on my body, and I turned sharply at a right angle and began to swim. My weariness left me as by magic, and I struck out with bold and sweeping strokes; and by that lack of caution all but destroyed myself when my head suddenly struck against a wall of stone, unseen in the darkness.

I was stunned completely and sank; but the ducking revived me; and when I returned to the surface I swam a few careful strokes, searching for the wall. It was not there, and I had no idea of its direction. But I had now learned caution; and by swimming a few feet first one way, then another, and taking care not to go far in any one direction, I finally discovered it.

My hand easily reached the top, and, grasping the slippery surface with a grip made firm by despair, and concentrating every ounce of strength in one final effort, I drew myself out of the water and fell completely exhausted on the ground.

Under such circumstances time has no place in a man’s calculations; he is satisfied to breathe. I believe that I lay barely conscious for several hours, but it may have been merely as many minutes. Then I felt life stir within me; I stretched my arms and legs and sat up. Gradually entered my mind the thought of Desiree and Harry and the Andes above and Felipe shuddering with terror as he flew from the cave of the devil.

First came Harry; but hope did not enter. It was inconceivable that he, too, should have escaped that fearful torrent; stupendous luck alone had saved me from being dashed senseless against the rocks and guided me to the ledge on which I rested.

Then he was gone! I had no thought of my own peril. I had gone through the world with but little regard for what it held; nothing had been sacred to me; no affection had been more than a day’s caprice; I had merely sucked amusement from its bitter fruit.

But I loved Harry; I realized it with something like astonishment. He was dear to me; a keen, intense pain contracted my chest at the thought of having lost him; tears filled my eyes; and I raised up my voice and sang out wildly:

“Harry! Harry, lad! Harry!”

The cavern resounded. The call went from wall to wall, then back again, floating through black space with a curious tremor, and finally died away in some dim, unseen corridor. And then—then came an answering call!

Owing to the conflicting echoes of the cavern, the tone could not be recognized. But the word was unmistakable; it was “Paul.”

I sprang to my feet with a shout, then stood listening. Out of the blackness surrounding me came the words, in Harry’s voice, much lower, but distinct:

“Paul! Paul, where are you?”

“Thank Heaven!” I breathed; and I answered:

“Here, Harry boy, here.”

“But where?”

“I don’t know. On a ledge of rock at the edge of the water. Where are you?”

“Same place. Which side are you on?”

“The right side,” I answered with heartfelt emphasis. “That is to say, the outside. If it weren’t for this infernal darkness—Listen! How far away does my voice sound?”

But the innumerable echoes of the cavern walls made it impossible to judge of distance by sound. We tried it over and over; sometimes it seemed that we were only a few feet apart, sometimes a mile or more.

Then Harry spoke in a whisper, and his voice appeared to be directly in my ear. Never have I seen a night so completely black as that cavern; we had had several hours, presumably, for our eyes to adjust themselves to the phenomenon; but when I held my hand but six inches in front of my face I could not get even the faintest suggestion of its outline.

“This is useless,” I declared finally. “We must experiment. Harry!”

“Yes.”

“Turn to your left and proceed carefully along the edge. I’ll turn to my right. Go easy, lad; feel your way.”

I crawled on my hands and knees, no faster than a snail, feeling every inch of the ground. The surface was wet and slippery, and in places sloped at an angle that made me hang on for dear life to keep from shooting off into space.

Meantime I kept calling to Harry and he to me; but, on account of our painfully slow progress, it was half an hour or more before we discovered that the distance between us was being increased instead of lessened.

He let fly an oath at this, and his tone was dangerous; no wonder if the lad was half crazed! I steadied him as well as I could with word of encouragement, and instructed him to turn about and proceed to the right of his original position. I, also, turned to the left.

Our hope of meeting lay in the probability that the ledge surrounded a circular body of water and was continuous. At some point, of course, was the entrance of the stream which had carried us, and at some other point there was almost certainly an outlet; but we trusted to luck to avoid these. Our chances were less than one in a thousand; but, failing that, some other means must be invented.

The simplest way would have been for me to take to the water and swim across to Harry, counting on his voice as a guide; but the conflicting echoes produced by the slightest sound rendered such an attempt dangerous.

I crept along that wet, slimy, treacherous surface, it seemed, for hours. I could see nothing—absolutely nothing; everything was black void; it was hard to appreciate reality in such a nightmare. On the one side, nameless dangers; on the other, the unseen, bottomless lake; enough, surely, to take a man’s nerve. My fear for Harry killed anxiety on my own account. We kept continually calling:

“Harry!”

“Yes.”

“Steady.”

“Yes. I’m coming along. I say, we’re closer, Paul.”

I hesitated to agree with him, but finally there was no longer any doubt of it. His voice began to reach me almost in natural tones, which meant that we were near enough for the vibrations to carry without interference from the walls.

Nearer still it came; it was now only a matter of a few feet; Harry gave a cry of joy, and immediately afterward I heard his low gasp of terror and the sound of his wild scrambling to regain a foothold. In his excitement he had forgotten caution and had slipped to the edge of the water.

I dared not try to go to his assistance; so I crouched perfectly still and called to him to throw himself flat on his face. How my eyes strained despairingly as I cursed the pitiless darkness! Then the scrambling ceased and the boy’s voice sounded:

“All right, Paul! All right! Gad, I nearly went!”

A minute later I held his hand in mine. At that point the incline was at a sharp angle, and we lay flat on our backs. For many minutes we lay silently gripping hands; Harry was trembling violently from nervous fatigue, and I myself was unable to speak.

What strength is there in companionship! Alone, either of us would probably have long before succumbed to the strain of our horrible situation; but we both took hope and courage from that hand-clasp.

Finally he spoke:

“In Heaven’s name, where are we, Paul?”

“You know as much as I do, Harry. This cursed darkness makes it impossible even to guess at anything. According to Felipe, we are being entertained by the devil.”

“But where are we? What happened? My head is dizzy—I don’t know—”

I gripped his hand.

“And no wonder. ’Tis hardly an every-day occurrence to ride an underground river several miles under the Andes. Above us a mountain four miles high, beneath us a bottomless lake, round us darkness. Not a very cheerful prospect, Hal; but, thank Heaven, we take it together! It is a grave—ours and hers. I guess Desiree knew what she was talking about.”

There came a cry from Harry’s lips—a cry of painful memory:

“Desiree! I had forgotten, Desiree!”

“She is probably better off than we are,” I assured him.

I felt his gaze—I could not see it—and I continued:

“We may as well meet the thing squarely like men. Pull yourself together, Harry; as for Desiree, let us hope that she is dead. It’s the best thing that could happen to her.”

“Then we are—no, it isn’t possible.”

“Harry boy, we’re buried alive! There! That’s the worst of it. Anything better than that is velvet.”

“But there must be a way out, Paul! And Desiree—Desiree—”

His voice faltered. I clapped him roughly on the shoulder.

“Keep your nerve. As for a way out—at the rate that stream descends it must have carried us thousands of feet beneath the mountain. There is probably a mile of solid rock between us and the sunshine. You felt the strength of that current; you might as well try to swim up Niagara.”

“But there must be an outlet at the other end.”

“Yes, and most probably forty or fifty miles away—that’s the distance to the western slope. Besides, how can we find it? And there may be none. The water is most probably gradually absorbed by the porous formation of the rocks, and that is what causes this lake.”

“But why isn’t it known? Felipe said that the cave had been explored. Why didn’t they discover the stream?”

Well, it was better to talk of that than nothing; at least, it kept Harry from his childish cries for Desiree. So I explained that the precipice over which we had fallen was presumably of recent origin.

Geologically the Andes are yet in a chaotic and formative condition; huge slides of Silurian slates and diorite are of frequent occurrence. A ridge of one of these softer stones had most probably been encased in the surrounding granite for many centuries; then, loosened by water or by time, had crumbled and slid into the stream below.

“And,” I finished, “we followed it.”

“Then we may find another,” said Harry hopefully.

I agreed that it was possible. Then he burst out:

“In the name of Heaven, don’t be so cool! We can’t get out till we try. Come! And who knows—we may find Desiree.”

Then I decided it was best to tell him. Evidently the thought had not entered his mind, and it was best for him to realize the worst. I gripped his hand tighter as I said:

“Nothing so pleasant, Harry. Because we’re going to starve to death.”

“Starve to death?” he exclaimed. Then he added simply, with an oddly pathetic tone: “I hadn’t thought of that.”

After that we lay silent for many minutes in that awful darkness. Thoughts and memories came and went in my brain with incredible swiftness; pictures long forgotten presented themselves; an endless, jumbled panorama. They say that a drowning man reviews his past life in the space of a few seconds; it took me a little more time, but the job was certainly a thorough one. Nor did I find it more interesting in retrospect than it had been in reality.

I closed my eyes to escape the darkness. It was maddening; easy enough then to comprehend the hysterics of the blind and sympathize with them. It finally reached a point where I was forced to grit my teeth to keep from breaking out into curses; I could lie still no longer, exhausted as I was, and Harry, too. I turned on him:

“Come on, Hal; let’s move.”

“Where?” he asked in a tone devoid of hope.

“Anywhere—away from this beastly water. We must dry out our clothing; no use dying like drowned rats. If I only had a match!”

We rose to our hands and knees and crawled painfully up the slippery incline. Soon we had reached dry ground and stood upright; then, struck by a sudden thought, I turned to Harry:

“Didn’t you drink any of that water?”

He answered: “No.”

“Well, let’s try it. It may be our last drink, Hal; make it a good one.”

We crept back down to the edge of the lake (I call it that in my ignorance of its real nature), and, settling myself as firmly as possible, I held Harry’s hand while he lowered himself carefully into the water. He was unable to reach its surface with his mouth without letting go of my hand, and I shook off my poncho and used it as a line.

“How does it taste?” I asked.

“Fine!” was the response. “It must be clear as a bell. Lord. I didn’t know I was so thirsty!”

I was not ignorant of the fact that there was an excellent chance of the water being unhealthful, possibly poisoned, what with the tertiary deposits of copper ores in the rock-basins; but the thought awakened hope rather than fear. There is a choice even in death.

But when I had pulled Harry up and descended myself I soon found that there was no danger—or chance. The water had a touch of alkali, but nothing more.

Then we crept back up the wet ledge, and once more stood on dry ground.

The surface was perfectly level, and we set off at a brisk pace, hand in hand, directly away from the lake. But when, about a hundred yards off, we suddenly bumped our heads against a solid wall of rock, we decided to proceed with more caution.

The darkness was intensified, if anything. We turned to the right and groped along the wall, which was smooth as glass and higher than my best reach. It seemed to the touch to be slightly convex, but that may have been delusion.

We had proceeded in this manner some hundred yards or more, advancing cautiously, when we came to a break in the wall. A few feet farther the wall began again.

“It’s a tunnel,” said Harry.

I nodded, forgetting he could not see me. “Shall we take it?”

“Anything on a chance,” he answered, and we entered the passage.

It was quite narrow—so narrow that we were forced to advance very slowly, feeling our way to avoid colliding with the walls. The ground was strewn with fragments of rock, and a hasty step meant an almost certain fall and a bruised shin. It was tedious work and incredibly fatiguing.

We had not rested a sufficient length of time to allow our bodies to recuperate from the struggle with the torrent; also, we began to feel the want of food. Harry was the first to falter, but I spurred him on. Then he stumbled and fell and lay still.

“Are you hurt?” I asked anxiously, bending over him.

“No,” was the answer. “But I’m tired—tired to death—and I want to sleep.”

I was tempted myself, but I brought him to his feet, from some impulse I know not what. For what was the use? One spot was as good as another. However, we struggled on.

Another hour and the passage broadened into a clearing. At least so it seemed; the walls abruptly parted to the right and left. And still the impenetrable, maddening darkness and awful silence!

We gave it up; we could go no farther. A few useless minutes we wasted, searching for a soft spot to lie on—moss, reeds, anything. We found none, of course; but even the hard, unyielding rock was grateful to our exhausted bodies. We lay side by side, using our ponchos for pillows; our clothing at least was dry.

I do not know how long I slept, but it seemed to me that I had barely dozed off when I was awakened by something—what?

There was no sound to my strained ears. I sat up, gazing intently into the darkness, shuddering without apparent reason. Then I reflected that nothing is dangerous to a man who faces death, and I laughed aloud—then trembled at the sound of my own voice. Harry was in sound sleep beside me; his regular breathing told of its depth.

Again I lay down, but I could not sleep. Some instinct, long forgotten, quivered within me, telling me that we were no longer alone. And soon my ear justified it.

At first it was not a sound, but the mere shadow of one. It was rhythmic, low, beating like a pulse. What could it be? Again I sat up, listening and peering into the darkness. And this time I was not mistaken—there was a sound, rustling, sibilant.

Little by little it increased, or rather approached, until it sounded but a few feet from me on every side, sinister and menacing. It was the silent, suppressed breathing of something living—whether animal or man—creeping ever nearer.

Then was the darkness doubly horrible. I sat paralyzed with my utter helplessness, though fear, thank Heaven, did not strike me! I could hear no footstep; no sound of any kind but that low, rushing breathing; but it now was certain that whatever the thing was, it was not alone.

From every side I heard it—closer, closer—until finally I felt the hot, fetid breath in my very face. My nerves quivered in disgust, not far from terror.

I sprang to my feet with a desperate cry to Harry and swung toward him.

There was no answering sound, no rush of feet, nothing; but I felt my throat gripped in monstrous, hairy fingers.

I tried to struggle, and immediately was crushed to the ground by the overpowering weight of a score of soft, ill-smelling bodies.

The grasp on my throat tightened; my arms relaxed, my brain reeled, and I knew no more.

CHAPTER VII

THE FIGHT IN THE DARK

I returned to consciousness with a sickening sensation of nausea and unreality. Only my brain was alive; my entire body was numb and as though paralyzed. Still darkness and silence, for all my senses told me I might have been still in the spot where I had fallen.

Then I tried to move my arms, and found that my hands and feet were firmly bound. I strained at the thongs, making some slight sound; and immediately I heard a whisper but a few feet away:

“Are you awake, Paul?”

I was still half dazed, but I recognized Harry’s voice, and I answered simply: “Yes. Where are we?”

“The Lord knows! They carried us. You have been unconscious for hours.”

“They carried us?”

“Yes. A thousand miles, I think, on their backs. What—what are they, Paul?”

“I don’t know. Did you see them?”

“No. Too dark. They are strong as gorillas and covered with hair; I felt that much. They didn’t make a sound all the time. No more than half as big as me, and yet one of them carried me as if I were a baby—and I weigh one hundred and seventy pounds.”

“What are we bound with?”

“Don’t know; it feels like leather; tough as rats. I’ve been working at it for two hours, but it won’t give.”

“Well, you know what that means. Dumb brutes don’t tie a man up.”

“But it’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible. But listen!”

There was a sound—the swift patter of feet; they were approaching. Then suddenly a form bent over me close; I could see nothing, but I felt a pressure against my body and an ill-smelling odor, indescribable, entered my nostrils. I felt a sawing movement at my wrists; the thongs pulled back and forth, and soon my hands were free. The form straightened away from me, there was a clatter on the ground near my head, and then silence.

There came an oath from Harry:

“Hang the brute! He’s cut my wrist. Are your hands free, Paul?”

“Yes.”

“Then bind this up; it’s bleeding badly. What was that for?”

“I have an idea,” I answered as I tore a strip from my shirt and bandaged the wound, which proved to be slight. Then I searched on the ground beside me, and found my surmise correct.

“Here you go, Hal! here’s some grub. But what the deuce is it? By Jove, it’s dried fish! Now, where in the name of—”

But we wasted no more time in talk, for we were half starved. The stuff was not bad; to us who had been fasting for something like thirty-six hours—for our idea of time was extremely hazy—it was a gorgeous banquet. And close by there was a basin full of water.

“Pretty decent sort of beggars, I say,” came Harry’s voice in the darkness. “But who are they?”

“Ask Felipe,” I answered, for by this time I was well convinced of the nature and identity of our captors. “As I said, dumb brutes don’t bind men with thongs, nor feed them on dried fish. Of course it’s incredible, but a man must be prepared to believe anything.”

“But, Paul! You mean—”

“Exactly. We are in the hands of the Incas of Huanuco—or rather their descendants.”

“But that was four hundred years ago!”

“Your history is perfect, like Desiree’s geography,” said I dryly. “But what then? They have merely chosen to live under the world instead of on it; a rather wise decision, a cynic might say—not to mention the small circumstance that they are prisoners.

“My dear Hal, never allow yourself to be surprised at anything; it is a weakness. Here we are in total darkness, buried in the Andes, surrounded by hairy, degenerate brutes that are probably allowing us to eat in order that we may be in condition to be eaten, with no possibility of ever again beholding the sunshine; and what is the thought that rises to the surface of my mind? Merely this: that I most earnestly desire and crave a Carbajal perfecto and a match.”

“Paul, you say—eat—”

“Most probably they are cannibals. The Lord knows they must have some sort of mild amusement in this fearful hole. Of course, the idea is distasteful; before they cut us up they’ll have to knock us down.”

“That’s a darned silly joke,” said Harry with some heat.

“But it’s sober truth, my boy. You know me; I never pose. There is nothing particularly revolting in the thought of being eaten; the disadvantage of it lies in the fact that one must die first. We all want to live; Heaven knows why. And we stand a chance.

“We know now that there is food to be had here and sufficient air. It is nearly certain that we won’t get out, but that can come later. And what an experience! I know a dozen anthropologists that would give their degrees for it. I can feel myself getting enthusiastic about it.”

“But what if they—they—”

“Say it. Eat us? We can fight. It will be strange if we can’t outwit these vermin. And now silence; I’m going to begin. Listen hard—hard! The brutes are noiseless, but if they are near we can hear their breathing.”

“But, Paul—”

“No more talk. Listen!”

We lay silent for many minutes, scarcely breathing. Not the slightest sound reached our ears through the profound darkness; utter, intense silence. Finally I reached over and touched Harry on the shoulder, and arose to my knees.

“Good enough! We’re alone. We’ll have to crawl for it. Keep close behind me; we don’t want to get separated. The first thing is to find a sharp stone to cut through these thongs. Feel on the ground with your hands as we go.”

It was not easy to rise at all, and still harder to make any progress, for our ankles were bound together most effectively; but we managed somehow to drag ourselves along. I was in front; suddenly I felt Harry pull at my coat, and turned.

“Just the thing, Paul. Sharp as a knife. Look!”

I groped for his hand in the darkness and took from it the object he held out to me—a small flat stone with a sharp-saw edge.

“All right; let me work on you first.”

I bent down to the thongs which bound his ankles. I was convinced that they were not of leather, but they were tough as the thickest hide. Twice my overeagerness caused the tool to slip and tear the skin from my hand; then I went about it more carefully with a muttered oath. Another quarter of an hour and Harry was free.

“Gad, that feels good!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet. “Here, Paul; where’s the stone?”

I handed it to him and he knelt down and began sawing away at my feet.

What followed happened so quickly that we were hardly aware that it had begun when it was already finished.

A quick, pattering rush of many feet warned us, but not in time. Hurtling, leaping bodies came at us headlong through the air and crushed us to the ground, buried beneath them, gasping for breath; there must have been scores of them. Resistance was impossible; we were overwhelmed.

I heard Harry give a despairing cry, and the scuffle followed; I myself was utterly helpless, for the thongs which bound my ankles had not been cut through. Not a sound came from our assailants save their heavy, labored breathing.

I remember that, even while they were sitting on my head and chest and body, I noted their silence with a sort of impersonal curiosity and wondered if they were, after all, human. Nor were they unnecessarily violent; they merely subdued us, rebound our wrists and ankles more tightly than before, and departed.

But—faugh! The unspeakable odor of their hairy bodies is in my nostrils yet.

“Are you hurt, Paul?”

“Not a bit, Harry lad. How do you like the perfume?”

“To the deuce with your perfume! But we’re done for. What’s the use? They’ve lived in this infernal hole so long they can see in the dark better than we can in the light.”

Of course he was right, and I was a fool not to have thought of it before and practised caution. The knowledge was decidedly unpleasant. No doubt our every movement was being watched by a hundred pairs of eyes, while we lay helpless in the darkness, bound even more tightly than before.

“Look here,” said Harry suddenly, “why can’t we see their eyes? Why don’t they shine.”

“My dear boy,” said I, “in this darkness you couldn’t see the Kohinoor diamond if it were hanging on your nose, drawing-room travelers to the contrary notwithstanding. We have one advantage—they can’t understand what we say, but they even up for it by not saying anything.”

There was a short silence, then Harry’s voice:

“Paul—”

“Well?”

“I wonder—do you think Desiree—” He hesitated, his voice faltering.

“I think the same as you do,” said I.

“But I don’t know—after all, there is a chance. Just a bare chance, isn’t there?”

“You know as well as I do, Harry. The chances are a million to one that Desiree—thank Heaven—has escaped all this! And isn’t that best! Would you have her here with us?”

“No—no. Only—”

“Lying here, bound hand and foot? She would make a dainty morsel for our friends.”

“For the Lord’s sake, Paul—”

“Well, let us forget her—for the present. Nor do we want to make a dainty morsel if we can help it. Come, brace up, Hal. It’s up to us to turn a trick.”

“Well?”

“I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. I guess we were both too dazed to have good sense. What have you got strapped to your belt?”

“A gun,” said Harry. “Of course I thought of that. But what good is it after that ducking? And I have only six cartridges.”

“Nothing else?”

I could almost feel his silent gaze; then suddenly he cried out:

“A knife!”

“At last!” said I sarcastically. “And so have I. A six-inch, double-edged knife, sharp as a razor and pointed like a needle. They didn’t have sense enough to search us, and we didn’t have sense enough to realize it. I can feel mine under me now against the ground.”

“But they’ll see us.”

“Not if we use a decent amount of caution. The trouble is, I can’t reach my knife with my wrists bound. There’s only one way. Lie perfectly still; let them think we’ve given it up. I’m going to try something.”

I drew up my knees, twisted over on the hard rock, and lay flat on my belly. Then I drew up my hands and let my face rest on them, like a dog with his head on his paws. And then, keeping my body perfectly still, and with as little movement of the jaws as possible, I sought the tough thongs with my teeth.

That was a tedious job and a distasteful one. For many minutes I gnawed away at those thick cords like a dog on a bone. It was considerably later that I discovered what those cords were made of; thank Heaven, I was ignorant of it at the time! All I knew was that they were, to use one of Harry’s phrases, “tough as rats.”

I did not dare pull with my wrists, for fear they would fly suddenly apart and betray me to the unseen watchers. It was necessary to cut clear through with my teeth, and more than once I was on the point of giving it up. There was a nauseating, rancid taste to the stuff, but I dared not even raise my head to expectorate.

Finally my teeth met; the cords were severed. I felt carefully about with my tongue to make sure there were no others; then, without moving my hands in the slightest degree, carefully raised my head.

It was then that I first noticed—not light, but a thinning out of the darkness. It was, of course, merely the adjustment of my eyes to the new conditions. I could make out no forms surrounding me, but, looking down, I could clearly distinguish the outline of my hands as they lay on the ground before me.

And, again looking up, I fancied that I could see, some twenty or thirty feet to the right, that the darkness again became suddenly dense and impenetrable.

“That must be a wall,” I muttered, straining my eyes toward it.

“What’s that?” asked Harry sharply.

Obedient to my instructions, the lad had lain perfectly motionless and silent for over an hour, for it must have taken me at least that long to gnaw through the cords.

“I said that must be a wall. Look, Harry, about thirty feet to the right. Doesn’t it appear to you that way?”

“By Jove,” he exclaimed after a moment of silence, “it’s getting light! Look!”

I explained that, instead of “it’s getting light,” his eyes were merely becoming accustomed to the darkness.

“But what do you think of that? Is it a wall?”

After a moment’s silence he answered: “Ye-es,” and then more positively: “Yes. But what good does that do us?”

“That’s what I am about to tell you. Listen! I’ve cut the cords on my wrists, and I’m going to get my knife—”

“How the deuce did you manage that?” Harry interrupted.

“With my teeth. I’ve been rather busy. I’m going to get my knife—cautiously, so they won’t suspect if they are watching us. We must lie close together on our sides, facing each other, so I can cut the thongs on your wrists without being seen. Then you are to get your knife—carefully. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

For the first time there was fight in Harry’s voice; the curious, barely perceptible tremor of the man of courage.

“All right. Go easy.”

We went about the thing slowly, turning but an inch at a time; a second mistake might prove fatal. We heard no sound of any kind, and ten minutes later we were lying flat on our backs side by side, keeping our hands hidden between our bodies, that the absence of the thongs might not be discovered. Each of us held in his right hand the hilt of a six inch knife. Cold steel is by no means the favorite weapon of an American, but there are times—

“Have you got your knife, Harry?”

“Yes.”

“Good! Now listen close and act quick. When I give the word reach down and grasp the cords round your ankles in your left hand, then cut them through with one stroke. Then to your feet; grasp my jacket, and together to the wall—that’s for our backs. And then—let ’em come!”

“All right, old man.”

“Don’t waste any time; they’ll probably start for us the instant we sit up. Be sure you get your feet free at the first stroke; feel them well with your left hand first. Are you ready?”

“Yes.” And his voice was now calm and perfectly steady.

“Then—one, two, three—go!”

We bent and cut and sprang to our feet, and dashed for the wall. There was a sound of rushing feet—our backs hugged the kindly rock—I heard Harry’s shout, “Here they come!”—dim, rushing forms—fingers clutching at my throat.

I felt the blade of my knife sink into soft and yielding flesh, and a warm, thick liquid flow over my hand and arm.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DANCE OF THE SUN

It seemed to me then in the minutes that followed that there were thousands of black demons in that black hole. At the first rushing impact I shouted to Harry: “Keep your back to the wall,” and for response I got a high, ringing laugh that breathed the joy of battle.

The thing was sickening. Harry is a natural fighting man; I am not. Without the wall at our backs we would have been overpowered in thirty seconds; as it was, we were forced to handle half a dozen of them at once, while the others surged in from behind. They had no weapons, but they had the advantage of being able to see us.

They clutched my throat, my arms, my legs, my body; there was no room to strike; I pushed the knife home. They fastened themselves to my legs and feet and tried to bring me down from beneath; once, in slashing at the head of one whose teeth were set in my calf, I cut myself on the knee. It was difficult to stand in the wet, slippery pool that formed at my feet.

Suddenly I heard a sound that I understood too well—the curious, rattling sound of a man who is trying to call out when he is being strangled.

“Harry!” I cried, and I fought like a wild man to get to him, with knife, feet, hands, teeth. I reached his coat, his arm; it was dangerous to strike so near him in the dark, but I felt him sinking to the ground.

Then I found the taut, straining fingers about his throat, and lunged forward with the knife—and the fingers relaxed.

Again we were fighting together side by side.

As their bodies fell in front of us we were pressed harder, for those behind climbed up on the corpses of their fellows and literally descended on our heads from the air. We could not have held out much longer; our breath was coming in quick, painful gasps; Harry stumbled on one of the prostrate brutes and fell; I tried to lift him and was unequal to the task.

It appeared to be the end.

Suddenly there rang throughout the cavern a sound as of a gigantic, deep-toned bell. The walls sent it back and forth with deafening echoes; it was as though the mountain had descended with one tremendous crash into its own bowels.

As though by magic, the assault ceased.

The effect was indescribable. We could see nothing; we merely became suddenly aware that there were no longer hands clutching at our throats or hairy bodies crushing us to the ground. It was as though the horde of unseen devils had melted into thin air. There were movements on the ground, for many of them had been wounded; a man cannot always reach the spot in the dark. This lasted for two or three minutes; they were evidently removing those who still had life in them, for the straining breath of men dragging or lifting burdens was plainly audible.

Gradually that, too, died away with the last reverberations of the mysterious sound that had saved us, and we found ourselves alone—or at least unmolested—for in the darkness we could see nothing, except the dim outlines of the prostrate forms at our feet.

The cavern was a shambles. The smell was that of a slaughter-house. I had had no idea of the desperateness of our defense until I essayed to scramble over the heap of bodies to dry ground; I shuddered and grew faint, and Harry was in no better case.

Worse, he had dropped his knife when we stumbled, and we were forced to grope round in that unspeakable mess for many minutes before we found it.

“Are you hurt, lad?” I asked when once we stood clear.

“Nothing bad, I think,” he answered. “My throat is stiff, and two or three of the brutes got their teeth in me. In the name of Heaven, Paul, what are they? And what was that bell?”

These were foolish questions, and I told him so. My leg was bleeding badly where I had slashed myself, and I, too, had felt their teeth. But, despite our utter weariness and our wounds, we wanted nothing—not even rest—so badly as we wanted to get away from that awful heap of flesh and blood and the odor of it.

Besides, we did not know at what moment they might return. So I spoke, and Harry agreed. I led the way; he followed.

But which way to turn? We wanted water, both for our dry and burning throats and for our wounds; and rest and food. We thought little of safety. One way seemed as likely as another, so we set out with our noses as guides.

A man encounters very few misfortunes in this world which, later in life, he finds himself unable to laugh at; well, for me that endless journey was one of the few.

Every step was torture. I had bandaged the cut on my leg as well as possible, but it continued to bleed. But it was imperative that we should find water, and we struggled on, traversing narrow passages and immense caverns, always in complete darkness, stumbling over unseen rocks and encountering sharp corners of cross passages.

It lasted I know not how many hours. Neither of us would have survived alone. Time and again Harry sank to the ground and refused to rise until I perforce lifted him; once we nearly came to blows. And I was guilty of the same weakness.

But the despair of one inspired the other with fresh strength and courage, and we struggled forward, slower and slower. It was soul-destroying work. I believe that in the last hour we made not more than half a mile. I know now that for the greater part of the time we were merely retracing our steps in a vicious circle!

It was well that it ended when it did, for we could not have held out much longer. Harry was leading the way, for I had found that that slight responsibility fortified him. We no longer walked, we barely went forward, staggering and reeling like drunken men.

Suddenly Harry stopped short, so suddenly that I ran against him; and at the same time I felt a queer sensation—for I was too far gone to recognize it—about my feet.

Then Harry stooped over quickly, half knocking me down as he did so, and dropped to his knees; and the next instant gave an unsteady cry of joy:

“Water! Man, it’s water!”

How we drank and wallowed, and wallowed and drank! That water might have contained all the poisons in the world and we would have neither known nor cared. But it was cool, fresh, living—and it saved our lives.

We bathed our wounds and bandaged them with strips from our shirts. Then we arranged our clothing for cushions and pillows as well as possible, took another drink, and lay down to sleep.

We must have slept a great many hours. There was no way to judge of time, but when we awoke our joints were as stiff as though they had gotten rusty with the years. I was brought to consciousness by the sound of Harry’s voice calling my name.

Somehow—for every movement was exquisite pain—we got to our feet and reached the water, having first removed our clothing. But we were now at that point where to drink merely aggravated our hunger. Harry was in a savage humor, and when I laughed at him he became furious.

“Have some sense. I tell you, I must eat! If it were not for your—”

“Go easy, Hal. Don’t say anything you’ll be sorry for. And I refuse to consider the sordid topic of food as one that may rightfully contain the elements of tragedy. We seem to be in the position of the king of vaudeville. If we had some ham we’d have some ham and eggs—if we had some eggs.”

“You may joke, but I am not made of iron!” he cried.

“And what can we do but die?” I demanded. “Do you think there is any chance of our getting out of this? Take it like a man. Is it right for a man who has laughed at the world to begin to whine when it becomes necessary to leave it?

“You know I’m with you; I’ll fight, and what I find I’ll take; in the mean time I prefer not to furnish amusement for the devil. There comes a time, I believe, when the stomach debases us against our wills. May I die before I see it.”

“But what are we to do?”

“That’s more like it. There’s only one hope. We must smell out the pantry that holds the dried fish.”

We talked no more, but set about bathing and dressing our wounds. Gad, how that cold water took them! I was forced to set my teeth deep into my lip to keep from crying out, and once or twice Harry gave an involuntary grunt of pain that would not be suppressed.

When we had finished we waded far to the right to take a last deep drink; then sought our clothing and prepared to start on our all but hopeless search. We had become fairly well limbered up by that time and set out with comparative ease.

We had gone perhaps a hundred yards, bearing off to the right, when Harry gave a sudden cry: “My knife is gone!” and stopped short. I clapped my hand to my own belt instinctively, and found it empty both of knife and gun! For a moment we stood in silence; then:

“Have you got yours?” he demanded.

When I told him no he let out an oath.

His gun was gone, also. We debated the matter, and decided that to attempt a search would be a useless waste of time; it was next to certain that the weapons had been lost in the water when we had first plunged in. And so, doubly handicapped by this new loss, we again set out.

There was but one encouragement allowed to us: we were no longer in total darkness. Gradually our eyes were becoming accustomed to the absence of light; and though we could by no means see clearly, nor even could properly be said to see at all, still we began to distinguish the outlines of walls several feet away; and, better than that, each of us could plainly mark the form and face of the other.

Once we stood close, less than a foot apart, for a test; and when Harry cried eagerly, “Thank Heaven, I can see your nose!” our strained feelings were relieved by a prolonged burst of genuine laughter.

There was little enough of it in the time that followed, for our sufferings now became a matter not of minutes or hours, but of days. The assault of time is the one that unnerves a man, especially when it is aided by gnawing pain and weariness and hunger; it saps the courage and destroys the heart and fires the brain.

We dragged ourselves somehow ever onward. We found water; the mountain was honeycombed with underground streams; but no food. More than once we were tempted to trust ourselves to one of those rushing torrents, but what reason we had left told us that our little remaining strength was unequal to the task of keeping our heads above the surface. And yet the thought was sweet—to allow ourselves to be peacefully swept into oblivion.

We lost all idea of time and direction, and finally hope itself deserted us. What force it was that propelled us forward must have been buried deep within the seat of animal instinct, for we lost all rational power. The thing became a nightmare, like the crazy wanderings of a lost soul.

Forward—forward—forward! It was a mania.

Then Harry was stricken with fever and became delirious. And I think it was that seeming misfortune that saved us, for it gave me a spring for action and endowed me with new life. As luck would have it, a stream of water was near, and I half carried and half dragged him to its edge.

I made a bed for him with my own clothing on the hard rock, and bathed him and made him drink, while all the time a string of delirious drivel poured forth from his hot, dry lips.

That lasted many hours, until finally he fell into a deep, calm sleep. But his body was without fuel, and I was convinced he would never awaken; yet I feared to touch him. Those were weary hours, squatting by his side with his hand gripped in my own, with the ever-increasing pangs of hunger and weariness turning my own body into a roaring furnace of pain.

Suddenly I felt a movement of his hand; and then came his voice, weak but perfectly distinct:

“Well, Paul, this is the end.”

“Not yet, Harry boy; not yet.”

I tried to put cheer and courage into my own voice, but with poor success.

“I—think—so. I say, Paul—I’ve just seen Desiree.”

“All right, Hal.”

“Oh, you don’t need to talk like that; I’m not delirious now. I guess it must have been a dream. Do you remember that morning on the mountain—in Colorado—when you came on us suddenly at sunrise? Well, I saw her there—only you were with her instead of me. So, of course, she must be dead.”

His logic was beyond me, but I pressed his hand to let him know that I understood.

“And now, old man, you might as well leave me. This is the end. You’ve been a good sport. We made a fight, didn’t we? If only Desiree—but there! To Hades with women, I say!”

“Not that—don’t be a poor loser, Hal. And you’re not gone yet. When a man has enough fight in him to beat out an attack of fever he’s very much alive.”

But he would not have it so. I let him talk, and he rambled on, with scarcely an idea of what he was saying. The old days possessed his mind, and, to tell the truth, the sentiment found a welcome in my own bosom. I said to myself, “This is death.”

And then, lifting my head to look down the dark passage that led away before us, I sprang to my feet with a shout and stood transfixed with astonishment. And the next instant there came a cry of wonder from Harry:

“A light! By all the gods, a light!”

So it was. The passage lay straight for perhaps three hundred yards. There it turned abruptly; and the corner thus formed was one blaze of flickering but brilliant light which flowed in from the hidden corridor.

It came and went, and played fitfully on the granite walls; still it remained. It was supernaturally brilliant; or so it seemed to us, who had lived in utter darkness for many days.

I turned to Harry, and the man who had just been ready to die was rising to his feet!

“Wait a minute—not so fast!” I said half angrily, springing to support him. “And, for Heaven’s sake, don’t make any noise! We’re in no condition to fight now, and you know what that light means.”

“But what is it?” demanded the boy excitedly. “Come on, man—let’s go!”

To tell the truth, I felt as eager as he. For the first time I understood clearly why the Bible and ancient mythology made such a fuss about the lighting up of the world. Modern civilization is too far away from its great natural benefits to appreciate them properly.

And here was a curious instance of the force of habit—or, rather, instinct—in man. So long as Harry and I had remained in the dark passage and byways of the cavern we had proceeded almost entirely without caution, with scarcely a thought of being discovered.

But the first sight of light made us wary and careful and silent; and yet we knew perfectly well that the denizens of this underworld could see as well in the darkness as in the light—perhaps even better. So difficult is it to guide ourselves by the human faculty of pure reason.

Harry was so weak he was barely able to stand, even in the strength of this new excitement and hope, and we were forced to go very slowly; I supported him as well as I was able, being myself anything but an engine of power. But the turn in the passage was not far away, and we reached it in a quarter of an hour or less.

Before we made the turn we halted. Harry was breathing heavily even from so slight an exertion, and I could scarcely suppress a cry of amazement when, for the first time in many days, the light afforded me a view of his face.

It was drawn and white and sunken; the eyes seemed set deep in his skull as they blinked painfully; and the hair on his chin and lip and cheeks had grown to a length incredible in so short a space of time. I soon had reason to know that I probably presented no better an appearance, for he was staring at me as though I were some strange monster.

“Good Heavens, man, you took like a ghost!” he whispered.

I nodded; my arm was round his shoulder.

“Now, let’s see what this light means. Be ready for anything, Harry—though Heaven knows we can find nothing worse than we’ve had. Here, put your arm on my shoulder. Take it easy.”

We advanced to the corner together within the patch of light and turned to the right, directly facing its source.

It is impossible to convey even a faint idea of the wild and hugely fantastic sight that met our gaze. With us it was a single, vivid flash to the astonished brain. These are the details:

Before us was an immense cavern, circular in shape, with a diameter of some half a mile. It seemed to me then much larger; from where we stood it appeared to be at least two miles to the opposite side. There was no roof to be seen; it merely ascended into darkness, though the light carried a great distance.

All round the vast circumference, on terraced seats of rock, squatted row after row of the most completely hideous beings within possibility.

They were men; I suppose they must have the name. They were about four feet tall, with long, hairy arms and legs, bodies of a curious, bloated appearance, and eyes—the remainder of the face was entirely concealed by thick hair—eyes dull and vacant, of an incredibly large size; they had the appearance of ghouls, apes, monsters—anything but human beings.

They sat, thousands of them, crouched silently on their stone seats, gazing, motionless as blocks of wood.

The center of the cavern was a lake, taking up something more than half of its area. The water was black as night, and curiously smooth and silent. Its banks sloped by degrees for a hundred feet or so, but at its edge there was a perpendicular bank of rock fifteen or twenty feet in height.

Near the middle of the lake, ranged at an equal distance from its center and from each other, were three—what shall I call them?—islands, or columns. They were six or eight feet across at their top, which rose high above the water.

On top of each of these columns was a huge vat or urn, and from each of the urns arose a steady, gigantic column of fire. These it was that gave the light, and it was little wonder we had thought it brilliant, since the flames rose to a height of thirty feet or more in the air.

But that which left us speechless with profound amazement was not the endless rows of silent, grinning dwarfs, nor the black, motionless lake, nor the leaping tongues of flame. We forgot these when we followed the gaze of that terrifying audience and saw a sight that printed itself on my brain with a vividness which time can never erase. Closing my eyes, I see it even now, and I shudder.

Exactly in the center of the lake, in the midst of the columns of fire, was a fourth column, built of some strangely lustrous rock. Prisms of a formation new to me—innumerable thousands of them—caused its sides to sparkle and glisten like an immense tower of whitest diamonds, blinding the eye.

The effect was indescribable. The huge cavern was lined and dotted with the rays shot forth from their brilliant angles. The height of this column was double that of the others; it rose straight toward the unseen dome of the cavern to the height of a hundred feet.

It was cylindrical in shape, not more than ten feet in diameter. And on its top, high above the surface of the lake, surrounded by the mounting tongues of flame, whirled and swayed and bent the figure of a woman.

Her limbs and body, which were covered only by long, flowing strands of golden hair, shone and glistened strangely in the lurid, weird light. And of all the ten thousand reflections that shot at us from the length of the column not one was so brilliant, so blinding, as the wild glow of her eyes.

Her arms, upraised above her head, kept time with and served as a key to every movement of her white, supple body. She glided across, back and forth, now this way, now that, to the very edge of the dizzy height, with wild abandon, or slow, measured grace, or the rushing sweep of a panther.

The thing was beauty incarnate—the very idea of beauty itself realized and perfected. It was staggering, overwhelming. Have you ever stood before a great painting or a beautiful statue and felt a thrill—the thrill of perception—run through your body to the very tips of your fingers?

Well, imagine that thrill multiplied a thousandfold and you will understand the sensation that overpowered me as I beheld, in the midst of that dazzling blaze of light, the matchless Dance of the Sun.

For I recognized it at once. I had never seen it, but it had been minutely described to me—described by a beautiful and famous woman as I sat on the deck of a yacht steaming into the harbor of Callao.

She had promised me then that she would dance it for me some day—

I looked at Harry, who had remained standing beside me, gazing as I had gazed. His eyes were opened wide, staring at the swaying figure on the column in the most profound astonishment.

He took his hand from my shoulder and stood erect, alone; and I saw the light of recognition and hope and deepest joy slowly fill his eyes and spread over his face. Then I realized the danger, and I endeavored once more to put my arm round his shoulder; but he shook me off with hot impatience. He leaped forward with the quickness of lightning, eluding my frantic grasp, and dashed straight into the circle of blazing light!

I followed, but too late. At the edge of the lake he stopped, and, stretching forth his arms toward the dancer on the column, he cried out in a voice that made the cavern ring:

“Desiree! Desiree! Desiree!”

CHAPTER IX

BEFORE THE COURT

I expected I know not what result from Harry’s hysterical rashness: confusion, pandemonium, instant death; but none of these followed.

I had reached his side and stood by him at the edge of the lake, where he had halted. Desiree Le Mire stopped short in the midst of the mad sweep of the Dance of the Sun.

For ten silent, tense seconds she looked down at us from the top of the lofty column, bending dangerously near its edge. Her form straightened and was stretched to its fullest height; her white, superb body was distinctly outlined against the black background of the upper cavern. Then she stepped backward slowly, without taking her eyes from us.

Suddenly as we gazed she appeared to sink within the column itself and in another instant disappeared from view.

We stood motionless, petrified; how long I know not. Then I turned and faced our own danger. It was time.

The Incas—for I was satisfied of the identity of the creatures—had left their seats of granite and advanced to the edge of the lake. Not a sound was heard—no command from voice or trumpet or reed; they moved as with one impulse and one brain.

We were utterly helpless, for they numbered thousands. And weak and starving as we were, a single pair of them would have been more than a match for us.

I looked at Harry; the reaction from his moment of superficial energy was already upon him. His body swayed slightly from side to side, and he would have fallen if I had not supported him with my arm. There we stood, waiting.

Then for the first time I saw the ruler of the scene. The Incas had stopped and stood motionless. Suddenly they dropped to their knees and extended their arms—I thought—toward us; but something in their attitude told me the truth. I wheeled sharply and saw the object of their adoration.

Built into the granite wall of the cavern, some thirty feet from the ground, was a deep alcove. At each side of the entrance was an urn resting on a ledge, similar to those on the columns, only smaller, from which issued a mounting flame.

On the floor of the alcove was a massive chair, or throne, which seemed to be itself of fire, so brilliant was the glow of the metal of which it was constructed. It could have been nothing but gold. And seated on this throne was an ugly, misshapen dwarf.

“God save the king!” I cried, with a hysterical laugh; and in the profound silence my voice rang from one side of the cavern to the other in racing echoes.

Immediately following my cry the figure on the throne arose; and as he did so the creatures round us fell flat on their faces on the ground. For several seconds the king surveyed them thus, without a sound or movement; then suddenly he stretched forth his hand in a gesture of dismissal. They rose as one man and with silent swiftness disappeared, seemingly melting away into the walls of rock. At the time the effect was amazing; later, when I discovered the innumerable lanes and passages which served as exits, it was not so difficult to understand.

We were apparently left alone, but not for long. From two stone stairways immediately in front of us, which evidently led to the alcove above, came forth a crowd of rushing forms. In an instant they were upon us; but if they expected resistance they were disappointed.

At the first impact we fell. And in another moment we had been raised in their long, hairy arms and were carried swiftly from the cavern. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed since we had first entered it.

They did not take us far. Down a broad passage directly away from the cavern, then a turn to the right, and again one to the left. There they dropped us, quite as though we were bundles of merchandise, without a word.

By this time I had fairly recovered my wits—small wonder if that amazing scene had stunned them—and I knew what I wanted. As the brute that had been carrying me turned to go I caught his arm. He hesitated, and I could feel his eyes on me, for we were again in darkness.

But he could see—I thanked Heaven for it—and I began a most expressive pantomime, stuffing my fingers in my mouth and gnawing at them energetically. This I alternated with the action of one drinking from a basin. I hadn’t the slightest idea whether he understood me; he turned and disappeared without a sign—at least, without an audible one.

But the creature possessed intelligence, for I had barely had time to turn to Harry and ascertain that he was at least alive, when the patter of returning footsteps was heard. They approached; there was the clatter of stone on the ground beside us.

I stood eagerly; a platter, heaped, and a vessel, full! I think I cried out with joy.

“Come, Harry lad; eat!”

He was too weak to move; but when I tore some of the dried fish into fragments and fed it to him he devoured it ravenously. Then he asked for water, and I held the basin to his lips.

We ate as little as it is possible for men to eat who have fasted for many days, for the stuff had a sharp, concentrated taste that recommended moderation. And, besides, we were not certain of getting more.

I wrapped the remainder carefully in my poncho, leaving the platter empty, and lay down to rest, using the poncho for a pillow. I had enough, assuredly, to keep me awake, but there are bounds beyond which nature cannot go. I slept close by Harry’s side, with my arm across his body, that any movement of his might awaken me.

When I awoke Harry was still asleep, and I did not disturb him. I myself must have slept many hours, for I felt considerably refreshed and very hungry. And thirsty; assuredly the provender of those hairy brutes would have been most excellent stuff for the free-lunch counter of a saloon.

I unwrapped the poncho; then, crawling on my hands and knees, searched about the ground. As I had expected, I found another full platter and basin. I had just set the latter down after taking a hearty drink when I heard Harry’s voice.

“Paul.”

“Here, lad.”

“I was afraid you had gone. I’ve just had the most devilish dream about Desiree. She was doing some crazy dance on top of a mountain or something, and there was fire, and—Paul! Paul, was it a dream?”

“No, Hal; I saw it myself. But come, we’ll talk later. Here’s some dried fish for breakfast.”

“Ah! That—that—now I remember! And she fell! I’m going—”

But I wanted no more fever or delirium, and I interrupted him sternly:

“Harry! Listen to me! Are you a baby or a man? Talk straight or shut up, and don’t whine like a fool. If you have any courage, use it.”

It was stiff medicine, but he needed it, and it worked. There was a silence, then his voice came, steady enough:

“You know me better than that, Paul. Only—if it were not for Desiree—but I’ll swallow it. I think I’ve been sick, haven’t I?”

Poor lad! I wanted to take his hand in mine and apologize. But that would have been bad for both of us, and I answered simply:

“Yes, a little fever. But you’re all right now. And now you must eat and drink. Not much of a variety, but it’s better than nothing.”

I carried the platter and basin over to him, and sat down by his side, and we fell to together.

But he would talk of Desiree, and I humored him. There was little enough to say, but he pressed my hand hopefully and gratefully when I expressed my belief that her disappearance had been a trick of some sort and no matter for apprehension.

“We must find her, Paul.”

“Yes.”

“At once.”

But there I objected.

“On the contrary, we must delay. Right now we are utterly helpless from our long fast. They would handle us like babies if it came to a fight. Try yourself; stand up.”

He rose to his hands and knees, then sank back to the ground.

“You see. To move now would be folly. And of course they are watching us at this minute—every minute. We must wait.”

His only answer was a groan of despair.

In some manner the weary hours passed by.

Harry lay silent, but not asleep; now and then he would ask me some question, but more to hear my voice than to get an answer. We heard or saw nothing of our captors, for all our senses told us we were quite alone, but our previous experience with them had taught us better than to believe it.

I found myself almost unconsciously reflecting on the character and nature of the tribe of dwarfs.

Was it possible that they were really the descendants of the Incas driven from Huanuco by Hernando Pizarro and his horsemen nearly four hundred years before? Even then I was satisfied of it, and I was soon to have that opinion confirmed by conclusive evidence.

Other questions presented themselves. Why did they not speak? What fuel could they have found in the bowels of the Andes for their vats of fire? And how did sufficient air for ten thousand pairs of lungs find its way miles underground? Why, in the centuries that had passed, had none of them found his way to the world outside?

Some of these questions I answered for myself, others remained unsolved for many months, until I had opportunity to avail myself of knowledge more profound than my own. Easy enough to guess that the hidden deposits of the mountain had yielded oil which needed only a spark from a piece of flint to fire it; and any one who knows anything of the geological formation of the Andes will not wonder at their supply of air.

Nature is not yet ready for man in those wild regions. Huge upheavals and convulsions are of continual occurrence; underground streams are known which rise in the eastern Cordillera and emerge on the side of the Pacific slope. And air circulates through these passages as well as water.

Their silence remains inexplicable; but it was probably the result of the nature of their surroundings. I have spoken before of the innumerable echoes and reverberations that followed every sound of the voice above a whisper. At times it was literally deafening; and time may have made it so in reality.

The natural effect through many generations of this inconvenience or danger would be the stoppage of speech, leading possibly to a complete loss of the faculty. I am satisfied that they were incapable of vocalization, for even the women did not talk! But that is ahead of the story.

I occupied myself with these reflections, and found amusement in them; but it was impossible to lead Harry into a discussion. His mind was anything but scientific, anyway; and he was completely obsessed by fear for the safety of Desiree. And I wasn’t sorry for it; it is better that a man should worry about some one else than about himself.

Our chance of rescuing her, or even of saving ourselves, appeared to me woefully slim. One fear at least was gone, for the descendants of Incas could scarcely be cannibals; but there are other fates equally final, if less distasteful. The fact that they had not even taken the trouble to bind us was an indication of the strictness of their watch.

The hours crept by. At regular intervals our food was replenished and we kept the platter empty, storing what we could not eat in our ponchos against a possible need.

It was always the same—dried fish of the consistency of leather and a most aggressive taste. I tried to convey to one of our captors the idea that a change of diet would be agreeable, but either he did not understand me or didn’t want to.

Gradually our strength returned, and with it hope. Harry began to be impatient, urging action. I was waiting for two things besides the return of strength; first, to lay in a supply of food that would be sufficient for many days in case we escaped, and second, to allow our eyes to accustom themselves better to the darkness.

Already we were able to see with a fair amount of clearness; we could easily distinguish the forms of those who came to bring us food and water when they were fifteen or twenty feet away. But the cavern in which we were confined must have been a large one, for we were unable to see a wall in any direction, and we did not venture to explore for fear our captors would be moved to bind us.

But Harry became so insistent that I finally consented to a scouting expedition. Caution seemed useless; if the darkness had eyes that beheld us, doubly so. We strapped our ponchos, heavy with their food, to our backs, and set out at random across the cavern.

We went slowly, straining our eyes ahead and from side to side. It was folly, of course, in the darkness—like trying to beat a gambler at his own game. But we moved on as noiselessly as possible.

Suddenly a wall loomed up before us not ten feet away. I gave a tug at Harry’s arm, and he nodded. We approached the wall, then turned to the right and proceeded parallel with it, watching for a break that would mean the way to freedom.

I noticed a dark line that extended along the base of the wall, reaching up its side to a height of about two feet and seemingly melting away into the ground. At first I took it for a separate strata of rock, darker than that above. But there was a strange brokenness about its appearance that made me consider it more carefully.

It appeared to be composed of curious knots and protuberances. I stopped short, and, advancing a step or two toward the wall, gazed intently. Then I saw that the dark line was not a part of the wall at all; and then—well, then I laughed aloud in spite of myself. The thing was too ludicrous.

For that “dark line” along the bottom of the wall was a row of squatting Incas! There they sat, silent, motionless; even when my laugh rang out through the cavern they gave not the slightest sign that they either heard or saw. Yet it was certain that they had watched our every move.

There was nothing for it but retreat. With our knives we might have fought our way through; but we were unarmed, and we had felt one or two proofs of their strength.

Harry took it with more philosophy than I had expected. As for me, I had not yet finished my laugh. We sought our former resting-place, recognizing it by the platter and basin which we had emptied before our famous and daring attempt to escape.

Soon Harry began:

“I’ll tell you what they are, Paul; they’re frogs. Nothing but frogs. Did you see ’em? The little black devils! And Lord, how they smell!”

“That,” I answered, “is the effect of—”

“To the deuce with your mineralogy or anthromorphism or whatever you call it. I don’t care what makes ’em smell. I only know they do—as Kipling says of the oonts—‘most awful vile.’ And there the beggars sit, and here we sit!”

“If we could only see—” I began.

“And what good would that do us? Could we fight? No. They’d smother us in a minute. Say, wasn’t there a king in that cave the other day?”

“Yes; on a golden throne. An ugly little devil—the ugliest of all.”

“Sure; that why he’s got the job. Did he say anything?”

“Not a word; merely stuck out his arm and out we went.”

“Why the deuce don’t they talk?”

I explained my theory at some length, with many and various scientific digressions. Harry listened politely.

“I don’t know what you mean,” said he when I had finished, “but I believe you. Anyway, it’s all a stupendous joke. In the first place, we shouldn’t be here at all. And, secondly, why should they want us to stay?”

“How should I know? Ask the king. And don’t bother me; I’m going to sleep.”

“You are not. I want to talk. Now, they must want us for something. They can’t intend to eat us, because there isn’t enough to go around. And there is Desiree. What the deuce was she doing up there without any clothes on? I say, Paul, we’ve got to find her.”

“With pleasure. But, first, how are we going to get out of this?”

“I mean, when we get out.”

Thus we rattled on, arriving nowhere. Harry’s loquacity I understood; the poor lad meant to show me that he had resolved not to “whine.” Yet his cheerfulness was but partly assumed, and it was most welcome. My own temper was getting sadly frayed about the edge.

We slept through another watch uneventfully, and when we woke found our platter of fish and basin of water beside us. I estimated that some seventy-two hours had then passed since we had been carried from the cavern; Harry said not less than a hundred.

However that may be, we had almost entirely recovered our strength. Indeed, Harry declared himself perfectly fit; but I still felt some discomfort, caused partly by the knife-wound on my knee, which had not entirely healed, and partly, I think, by the strangeness and monotony of our diet. Harry’s palate was less particular.

On awaking, and after breaking our fast, we were both filled with an odd contentment. I really believe that we had abandoned hope, and that the basis of our listlessness was despair; and surely not without reason. For what chance had we to escape from the Incas, handicapped as we were by the darkness, and our want of weapons, and their overwhelming numbers?

And beyond that—if by some lucky chance we did escape—what remained? To wander about in the endless caves of darkness and starve to death. At the time I don’t think I stated the case, even to myself, with such brutal frankness, but facts make their impression whether you invite them or not. But, as I say, we were filled with an odd contentment. Though despair may have possessed our hearts, it was certainly not allowed to infect our tongues.

Breakfast was hilarious. Harry sang an old drinking-song to the water-basin with touching sentiment; I gave him hearty applause and joined in the chorus. The cavern rang.

“The last time I sang that,” said Harry as the last echoes died away, “was at the Midlothian. Bunk Stafford was there, and Billy Du Mont, and Fred Marston—I say, do you remember Freddie? And his East Side crocodiles?

“My, but weren’t they daisies? And polo? They could play it in their sleep. And—what’s this? Paul! Something’s up! Here they come—Mr. and Mrs. Inca and all the children!”

I sprang hastily to my feet and stood by Harry’s side. He was right.

Through the half darkness they came, hundreds of them, and, as always, in utter silence. Dimly we could see their forms huddled together round us on every side, leaving us in the center of a small circle in their midst.

“Now, what the deuce do they want?” I muttered. “Can’t they let us eat in peace?”

Harry observed: “Wasn’t I right? ‘Most awful vile!’”

I think we both felt that we were joking in the face of death.

The forms surrounding us stood silent for perhaps ten seconds. Then four of their number stepped forward to us, and one made gestures with a hairy arm, pointing to our rear. We turned and saw a narrow lane lined on either side by our captors. Nothing was distinct; still we could see well enough to guess their meaning.

“It’s up to us to march,” said Harry.

I nodded.

“And step high, Hal; it may be our last one. If we only had our knives! But there are thousands of ’em.”

“But if it comes to the worst—”

“Then—I’m with you. Forward!”

We started, and as we did so one of the four who had approached darted from behind and led the way. Not a hand had touched us, and this appeared to me a good sign, without knowing exactly why.

“They seem to have forgotten their manners,” Harry observed. “The approved method is to knock us down and carry us. I shall speak to the king about it.”

We had just reached the wall of the cavern and entered a passage leading from it, when there came a sound, sonorous and ear-destroying, from the farther end. We had heard it once before; it was the same that had ended our desperate fight some days before. Then it had saved our lives; to what did it summon us now?

The passage was not a long one. At its end we turned to the right, following our guide. Once I looked back and saw behind us the crowd that had surrounded us in the cave. There was no way but obedience.

We had advanced perhaps a hundred, possibly two hundred yards along the second passage when our guide suddenly halted. We stood beside him.

He turned sharply to the left, and, beckoning to us to follow, began to descend a narrow stairway which led directly from the passage. It was steep, and the darkness allowed a glimpse only of black walls and the terrace immediately beneath our feet; so we went slowly. I counted the steps; there were ninety-six.

At the bottom we turned again to the right. Just as we turned I heard Harry’s voice, quite low:

“There are only a dozen following us, Paul. Now—”

But I shook my head. It would have been mere folly, for, even if we had succeeded in breaking through, we could never have made our way back up the steps. This I told Harry; he admitted reluctantly that I was right.

We now found ourselves in a lane so low and narrow that it was necessary for us to stoop and proceed in single file. Our progress was slow; the guide was continually turning to beckon us on with gestures of impatience.

At length he halted and stood facing us. The guard that followed gathered close in the rear, the guide made a curious upward movement with his arm, and when we stood motionless repeated it several times.

“I suppose he wants us to fly,” said Harry with so genuine a tone of sarcasm that I gave an involuntary smile.

The guide’s meaning was soon evident. It took some seconds for my eye to penetrate the darkness, and then I saw a spiral stair ascending perpendicularly, apparently carved from the solid rock. Harry must have perceived it at the same moment, for he turned to me with a short laugh:

“Going up? Not for me, thank you. The beggar means for us to go alone.”

For a moment I hesitated, glancing round uncertainly at the dusky forms that were ever pressing closer upon us. We were assuredly between the devil and the deep sea.

Then I said, shrugging my shoulders: “It’s no good pulling, Harry. Come on; take a chance. You said it—going up!”

I placed my foot on the first step of the spiral stair.

Harry followed without comment. Up we went together, but slowly. The stair was fearfully steep and narrow, and more than once I barely escaped a fall.

Suddenly I became aware that light was descending on us from above. With every step upward it became brighter, until finally it was as though a noonday sun shone in upon us.

There came an exclamation from Harry, and we ascended faster. I remember that I counted a hundred and sixty steps—and then, as a glimmering of the truth shot through my brain into certainty, I counted no more.

Harry was crowding me from below, and we took the last few steps almost at a run. Then the end, and we stumbled out into a blaze of light and surveyed the surrounding scene with stupefaction and wonder.

It was not new to us; we had seen it before, but from a different angle.

We were on the top of the column in the center of the lake; on the spot where Desiree had whirled in the dance of the sun.

CHAPTER X

THE VERDICT

For many seconds we stood bewildered, too dazed to speak or move. The light dazzled our eyes; we seemed surrounded by an impenetrable wall of flame. There was no sensation of heat, owing, no doubt, to the immense height of the cavern and our comparatively distant removal from the flames, which mounted upward in narrow tongues.

Then the details began to strike me.

I have said the scene was the same as that we had previously beheld. Round the walls of the immense circular cavern squatted innumerable rows of the Incas on terraced seats.

Below, at a dizzy distance, was the smooth surface of the lake, black and gloomy save where the reflections from the blazing urns pierced its depths. And directly facing us, set in the wall of the cavern, was the alcove containing the throne of gold.

And on the throne was seated—not the diminutive, misshapen king, but Desiree Le Mire!

She sat motionless, gazing directly at us. Her long gold hair streamed over her shoulders in magnificent waves; a stiffly flowing garment of some unknown texture covered her limbs and the lower part of her body; her shoulders and breasts and arms were bare, and shone with a dazzling whiteness.

Beside her was a smaller seat, also of gold, and on this crouched the form of an Inca—the king. About them, at a respectful distance, were ranged attendants and guards—a hundred or more, for the alcove was of an impressive size. The light from the four urns shone in upon it with such brightness that I could clearly distinguish the whites of Desiree’s eyes.

All this I saw in a single flash, and I turned to Harry:

“Not a word, on your life! This is Desiree’s game; trust her to play it.”

“But what the deuce is she doing there?”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“She seems to have found another king. You know her fondness for royalty.”

“Paul, for Heaven’s sake—”

“All right, Hal. But we’re safe enough, I think. Most probably our introduction to court. This is what they call ‘the dizzy heights of prominence.’ Now keep your eyes open—something is going to happen.”

There was a movement in the alcove. Four of the attendants came forward, carrying a curious framework apparently composed of reeds and leather, light and flexible, from the top bar of which hung suspended several rope-like ribbons, of various lengths and colors and tied in curious knots. They placed it on the ground before the double throne, at the feet of Desiree.

All doubt was then removed from my mind concerning the identity of our captors and their king. For these bundles of knotted cords of different sizes and colors I recognized at once.

They were the famous Inca quipos—the material for their remarkable mnemonic system of communication and historical record. At last we were to receive a message from the Child of the Sun.

But of what nature? Every cord and knot and color had its meaning—but what? I searched every avenue of memory to assist me; for I had latterly confined my studies exclusively to Eastern archeology, and what I had known of the two great autochthonous civilizations of the American Continent was packed in some dim and little used corner of my brain. But success came, with an extreme effort.

I recollected first the different disposition of the quipos for different purposes—historical, sacred, narrative, et cetera. Then the particulars came to me, and immediately I recognized the formula of the quipos before the throne. They were arranged for adjudication—for the rendering of a verdict.

Harry and I were prisoners before the bar of the quipos! I turned to him, but there was not time for talk. The king had risen and stretched out his hand.

Immediately the vast assemblage rose from their stone seats and fell flat on their faces. It was then that I noticed, for the first time, an oval or elliptical plate of shining gold set in the wall of the cavern just above the outer edge of the alcove.

This, of course, was the representation of Pachacamac, the “unknown god” in the Inca religion. Well, I would as soon worship a plate of gold as that little black dwarf.

For perhaps a minute the king stood with outstretched arm and the Incas remained motionless on their faces. Then he resumed his seat and they rose. And then the trial began.

The king turned on his throne and laid his hand on Desiree’s arm; we could see her draw away from his touch with an involuntary shudder. But this apparent antipathy bothered his kingship not at all; it was probably a most agreeable sensation to feel her soft, white flesh under his black, hairy hand, and he kept it there, while with the other arm he made a series of sweeping gestures which I understood at once, but which had no meaning for Desiree. By her hand he meant the quipos to speak.

We had a friend in court, but she was dumb, and I must give her voice. There was no time to be lost; I stepped to the edge of the column and spoke in a voice loud enough to carry across the cavern—which was not difficult in the universal silence.

“He means that you are to judge us by the quipos. The meaning is this—yellow, slavery, white, mercy; purple, reward; black, death. The lengths of the cords and the number of knots indicate the degree of punishment or reward. Attached to the frame you will find a knife. With that detach the cord of judgment and lay it at the feet of the king.”

Again silence; and not one of the vast throng, nor the king himself, appeared to pay the slightest attention to my voice. The king continued his gestures to Desiree.

She rose and walked to the frame of quipos and took in her hand the knife which she found there suspended by a cord. There she hesitated, with the knife poised in the air, while her eyes sought mine—and found them.

I felt a tug at my arm, but I had no time for Harry then. I was looking at Desiree, and what I saw caused a cold shudder to flutter through my body. Not of fear; it was the utter surprise of the thing—its incredible horror. To die by the hands of those hairy brutes was not hard, but Desiree to be the judge!

For she meant death for us; I read it in her eyes. One of the old stale proverbs of the stale old world was to have another justification. I repeat that I was astounded, taken completely by surprise; and yet I had known something of “the fury of a woman scorned.”

It was as though our eyes shot out to meet each other in an embrace of death. She saw that I understood and she smiled—what a smile! It was triumphant, and yet sad; a vengeance, and a farewell. She put forth her hand.

It wavered among the quipos as though uncertainly, then closed firmly on the black cord of death.

A thought flashed through my mind with the speed of lightning. I raised my voice and sang out:

“Desiree!”

She hesitated; the hand which held the knife fell to her side and again her eyes sought mine.

“What of Harry?” I called. “Take two—the white for him, the black for me.”

She shook her head and again raised the knife; and I played my last card.

“Bah! Who are you? For you are not Le Mire!” I weighted my voice with contempt. “Le Mire is a child of fortune, but not of hell!”

At last she spoke.

“I play a fair hand, monsieur!” she cried, and her voice trembled.

“With marked cards!” I exclaimed scornfully. “The advantage is yours, madame; may you find pleasure in it.”

There was a silence, while our eyes met. I thought I had lost. Le Mire stood motionless. Not a sound came from the audience. I felt Harry pulling at my arm, but shook myself free, without taking my eyes from Le Mire’s face.

Suddenly she spoke:

“You are right, my friend Paul. I take no advantage. Leave it to Fortune. Have you a coin?”

I had won my chance. That was all—a chance—but that was better than nothing. I took a silver peseta from my pocket—by luck it had not been lost—and held it in the air above my head.

“Heads!” cried Desiree.

I let the coin fall. It rolled half-way across the top of the column and stopped at the very edge. I crossed and stooped over it. It lay heads up!

Harry was behind me; as I straightened up I saw his white, set face and eyes of horror. He, too, had seen the verdict; but he was moved not by that, but by the thought of Desiree, for Harry was not a man to flinch at sight of death.

I stood straight, and my voice was calm. It cost me an effort to clear it of bitterness and reproach. I could not avoid the reflection that but for Desiree we would never have seen the cave of the devil and the Children of the Sun; but I said simply and clearly:

“You win, madame.”

Desiree stared at me in the most profound surprise. I understood her, and I laughed scornfully aloud, and held my head high; and I think a voice never held so complete a disdain as did mine as I called to her:

“I am one who plays fair, even with death, Le Mire. The coin fell heads—you win your black cord fairly.”

She made no sign that she had heard; she was raising the knife. Suddenly she stopped, again her hand fell, and she said:

“You say the purple for reward, Paul?”

I nodded—I could not speak. Her hand touched the white cord and passed on; the yellow, and again passed on. Then there was a flash of the knife—another—and she approached the king and laid at his feet the purple cord.

Then, without a glance toward us, she resumed her seat on the golden throne.

A lump rose to my throat and tears to my eyes. Which was very foolish, for the thing had been completely theatrical. It was merely a tribute from one of nature’s gamblers to the man who “played fair, even with death”; nevertheless, there was feeling in it, and the eternal mercy of woman.

For all that was visible to the eye the verdict made not the slightest impression on the rows of silent Incas. Not a movement was seen; they might have been carved from the stone on which they were seated.

Their black, hairy bodies, squat and thick, threw back the light from the flaming torches as though even those universal rays could not penetrate such grossness.

Suddenly they rose—the king had moved. He picked the purple cord from the ground, and, after passing his hand over it three times, handed it to an attendant who approached.

Then he stretched out his hand, and the Incas, who had remained standing, turned about and began to disappear. As before, the cavern was emptied in an incredibly short space of time; in two minutes we were alone with those in the alcove.

There was a sound behind us. We turned and saw a great slab of stone slowly slide to one side in the floor, leaving an aperture some three feet square. Evidently it had been closed behind us when we had ascended; we had had no time to notice it then. In this hole presently appeared the head and shoulders of our guide, who beckoned to us to follow and then disappeared below.

I started to obey, but turned to wait for Harry, who was gazing at Desiree. His back was toward me and I could not see his face; his eyes must have held an appeal, for I saw Desiree’s lips part in a smile and heard her call:

“You will see me!”

Then he joined me, and we began the descent together.

I found myself wondering how these half-civilized brutes had possibly managed to conceive the idea of the spiral stair. It was known to neither the Aztecs nor the Incas, in America; nor to any of the primitive European or Asiatic civilizations. But they had found a place where nothing else would do—and they made it. Another of the innumerable offspring of Mother Necessity.

I took time to note its construction. It was rude enough, but a good job for all that. It was not exactly circular; there were many angles, evidently following the softer strata in the rock; they had bowed to their material—the way of the artist.

Even the height of the steps was irregular; some were scarcely more than three inches, while others were twelve or fourteen. You may know we descended slowly and with care, especially when we had reached the point where no light came from above to aid us. We found our guide waiting for us at the bottom, alone.

We followed him down the low and narrow passage through which we had previously come. But when we reached the steps which led up to the passage above and to the cave where we had formerly been confined, he ignored them and turned to the right. We hesitated.

“He’s alone,” said Harry. “Shall we chuck the beggar?”

“We shall not, for that very reason,” I answered. “It means that we are guests instead of captives, and far be it from us to outrage the laws of hospitality. But seriously, the safest thing we can do is to follow him.”

The passage in which we now found ourselves was evidently no work of nature. Even in the semidarkness the mark of man’s hand was apparent. And the ceiling was low; another proof, for dwarfs do not build for the accommodation of giants. But I had some faint idea of the pitiful inadequacy of their tools, and I found myself reflecting on the stupendous courage of the men who had undertaken such a task, even allowing for the fact that four hundred years had been allowed them for its completion.

Soon we reached a veritable maze of these passages. We must have taken a dozen or more turns, first to the right, then to the left. I had been marking our way on my memory as well as possible, but I soon gave up the attempt as hopeless.

Several times our guide turned so quickly that we could scarcely follow him. When we signified by gestures our desire to go slower he seemed surprised; of course, he expected us to see in the dark as well as he.

Then a dim light appeared, growing brighter as we advanced. Soon I saw that it came through an opening in the wall to our left, which we were approaching. Before the opening the guide halted, motioning us to enter.

We did so, and found ourselves in an apartment no less than royal.

Several blazing urns attached to the walls furnished the light, wavering but brilliant. There were tables and rude seats, fashioned from the same prismatic stones which covered the column in the lake, and from their surfaces a thousand points of color shone dazzlingly.

At one side was a long slab of granite covered with the skins of some animal, dry, thick, and soft. The walls themselves were of the hardest granite, studded to a height of four or five feet with tiny, innumerable spots of gold.

Harry crossed to the middle of the apartment and stood gazing curiously about him. I turned to the door and looked down the outer passage in both directions—our guide had disappeared.

“We appear to be friends of the family,” said Harry with a grin.

“Thanks to Desiree, yes.”

“Thanks to the devil! What did she mean—what could she mean? Was it one of her jokes? For I can’t believe that she would—would—”

“Have sent us to death? Well—who knows? Yes, it may have been one of her jokes,” I lied.

For, of course, Harry knew nothing of the cause of Desiree’s desire for revenge on me, and it would have served no good purpose to tell him.

We talked for an hour or more, examining our apartment meanwhile with considerable curiosity.

The gold excited our wonder; had it come from Huanuco four hundred years ago, or had they found it here in the mountain?

I examined the little blocks of metal or gems with which the tables and seats were inlaid, but could make nothing of them. They resembled a carbon formation sometimes found in quartzite, but were many times more brilliant than anything I had ever seen, excepting precious stones.

The hides which covered the granite couch were also unknown to me; they were of an amazing thickness and incredibly soft.

We were amusing ourselves with an attempt to pry one of the bits of gold from the wall when we heard a sound behind us.

We turned and saw Desiree.

She stood in the entrance, smiling at us as though we had been caught in her boudoir examining the articles on her dressing-table. She was clothed as she had been on the throne; a rope girdle held her single garment, and her hair fell across her shoulders, reaching to her knees. Her arms and shoulders appeared marvelously white, but they may have been by way of contrast.

Harry sprang across to her with a single bound. In another moment his arms were round her; she barely submitted to the embrace, but she gave him her lips, then drew herself away and crossed to me, extending her hands in a sort of wavering doubt.

But that was no time for hostilities, and I took the hands in my own and bent over them till my lips touched the soft fingers.

“A visit from the queen!” I said with a smile. “This is an honor, your majesty.”

“A doubtful one,” said Desiree. “First of all, my friend, I want to congratulate you on your savoir faire. Par Bleu, that was the part of a man!”

“But you!” cried Harry. “What the deuce did you mean by pretending to play the black? I tell you, that was a shabby trick. Most unpleasant moment you gave us.”

Desiree sent me a quick glance; she was plainly surprised to find Harry in ignorance of what had passed between us that evening in the camp on the mountain. Wherein she was scarcely to be blamed, for her surprise came from a deep knowledge of the ways of men.

“I am beginning to know you, Paul,” she said, looking into my eyes.

“Now what’s up?” demanded Harry, looking from her to me and back again. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t talk riddles. What does that mean?”

But Desiree silenced him with a gesture, placing her fingers playfully on his lips. They were seated side by side on the granite couch; I stood in front of them, and there flitted across my memory a picture of that morning scene in the grounds of the Antlers at Colorado Springs, when Desiree and I had had our first battle.

We talked; or, rather, Harry and Desiree talked, and I listened. First he insisted on a recital of her experiences since her reckless dash into the “cave of the devil,” and she was most obliging, even eager, for she had had no one to talk to for many days, and she was a woman. She found in Harry a perfect audience.

Her experience had been much the same as our own. She, too, had fallen down the unseen precipice into the torrent beneath.

She asserted that she had been carried along by its force scarcely more than a quarter of an hour, and had been violently thrown upon a ledge of rock. It was evident that this must have been long before the stream reached the lake where Harry and I had found each other, for we had been in the water hardly short of an hour.

She had been found on the ledge by our hairy friends, who had carried her on their backs for many hours. I remembered the sensations of Harry and myself, who were men, and together, and gave a shudder of sympathy as Desiree described her own horror and fear, and her one attempt to escape.

Still the brutes had shown her no great violence, evidently recognizing the preciousness of their burden. They had carried her as gently as possible, but had absolutely refused to allow her to walk. At regular intervals they gave her an opportunity to rest, and food and water.

“Dried fish?” I asked hopefully.

Desiree nodded, with a most expressive grimace, and Harry burst into laughter.

Then of the elevation to her evident authority. Brought before the king, she had inspired the most profound wonder and curiosity. Easy, indeed, to understand how the whiteness of her skin and the beauty of her form and face had awakened the keenest admiration in the breast of that black and hairy monarch. He had shown her the most perfect respect; and she had played up to the role of goddess by displaying to the utmost her indifferent contempt for royalty and its favors.

Here her remarks grew general and evasive, and when pressed with questions she refused details. She declared that nothing had happened; she had been fed and fawned upon, nor been annoyed by any violence or unwelcome attentions.

“That is really too bad,” said I, with a smile. “I was, then, mistaken when I said ‘your majesty’?”

“Faugh!” said Desiree. “That is hardly witty. For a time I was amused, but I am becoming bored. And yet—”

“Well?”

“I—don’t—know. They are mine, if you know what I mean. Eh, bien, since you ask me—for I see the question in your eye, friend Paul—I am content. If the world is behind me forever, so be it. Yes, they are unattractive to the eye, but they have power. And they worship me.”

“Desiree!” cried Harry in astonishment; and I was myself a little startled.

“Why not?” she demanded. “They are men. And besides, it is impossible for us to return. With all your cleverness, M. Paul, can you find the sunlight? To remain is a necessity; we must make the best of it; and I repeat that I am satisfied.”

“That’s bally rot,” said Harry, turning on her hotly. “Satisfied? You are nothing of the sort. I’ll tell you one thing—Paul and I are going to find our way out of this, and you are coming with us.”

For reply Desiree laughed at him—a laugh that plainly said, “I am my own mind, and obey no other.” It is one of the most familiar cards of the woman of beauty, and the most effective. It conquered Harry.

He gazed at her for a long moment in silence, while his eyes filled with an expression which one man should never show to another man. It is the betrayal of the masculine sex and the triumph of the feminine.

Suddenly he threw himself on his knees before her and took her hands in his own. She attempted to withdraw them; he clasped her about the waist.

“Do you not love me, Desiree?” he cried, and his lips sought hers.

They met; Desiree ceased to struggle.

At that moment I heard a sound—the faintest sound—behind me.

I turned.

The king of the Incas was standing within the doorway, surveying the lovers with beadlike, sparkling eyes.

CHAPTER XI

A ROYAL VISITOR

If it had not been for the manifest danger, I could have laughed aloud at what I read in the eyes of the king. Was it not supremely ridiculous for Desiree Le Mire, who had been sought after by the great and the wealthy and the powerful of all Europe, to be regarded with desire by that ugly dwarf? And it was there, unmistakably.

I sang out a sharp warning, but it was unnecessary; Desiree had already caught sight of the royal visitor. She pushed Harry from her bodily. He sprang to his feet in angry surprise; then, enlightened by the confusion in her face, turned quickly and swore as he, too, saw the intruder.

How critical the situation was I did not know, despite Desiree’s assertions. His eyes were human and easily read; they held jealousy; and when power is jealous there is danger.

But Desiree proved herself equal to the occasion. She remained seated on the granite couch for a long minute without moving; confusion left her eyes as she gazed at us apparently with the utmost composure; but I who knew her could see that her brain was working with the rapidity of lightning. Then her glance passed to the figure at the doorway, and with a gesture commanding and truly royal in its simplicity, she held her hand forth, palm down, to the Inca king.

Like an obedient trained monkey he trotted across the intervening space, grasped her soft white hand in his monstrous paw, and touched his lips to her fingers.

That was all, but it spoke volumes to one who could divine the springs of action. I remember that at the time there shot through my mind a story I had heard concerning Desiree in Paris. The Duke of Bellarmine, then her protector, had one evening entered her splendid apartment on the Rue Jonteur—furnished, of course, by himself—and had found his divinity entertaining one Jules Chavot, a young and beautiful poet. Whereupon he had launched forth into the most bitter reproaches and scornful denunciations.

“Monsieur,” Desiree had said, with the look of a queen outraged, when he had finished, “you are annoying. Little Chavot amuses me. You are aware that I never refuse myself anything which I consider necessary to my amusement, and just now I find you very dull.”

And the noble duke, conquered by that glance of fire and those terrible words, had retired with humble apologies, after receiving a gracious permission to call on the following day!

In short, Desiree was irresistible; the subjection of the Inca king was but another of her triumphs, and not the most remarkable.

And then I looked at Harry, and was aware of a new danger. He was glaring at the Inca with eyes which told their own story of the fire within, and which were waiting only for suspicion to become certainty. I called to him:

“Harry! Hold fast!”

He glanced at me, gave a short laugh, and nodded.

Then came Desiree’s voice, in a low tone of warning:

“On your knees!”

Her meaning was clear; it was to us she spoke. The king had turned from her and was regarding us steadily with eyes so nearly closed that their meaning was impenetrable. Harry and I glanced at each other and remained standing. Then Desiree’s voice again:

“Harry! If you love me!”

It was the appeal to a child; but love is young. Immediately Harry dropped to his knees, facing the king; and I followed him, wondering at myself. To this day I do not know what the compelling force was that pulled me down. Was it another instance of the power of Desiree?

For perhaps a minute we remained motionless on our knees while the king stood gazing at us, it seemed to me with an air of doubt. Then slowly, and with a gait that smacked of majesty despite his ungainly appearance and diminutive stature, he stalked across to the doorway and disappeared in the corridor without.

Harry and I looked at each other, kneeling like two heathen idols, and burst into unrestrained laughter. But with it was mixed a portion of anger, and I turned to Desiree.

“In the name of Heaven, was that necessary?”

“You do it very prettily,” said she, with a smile.

“That is well, but I don’t care to repeat it. Harry, for the sake of my dignity, employ a little discretion. And what do you suppose the beggar will do about it?”

“Nothing,” said Desiree, shrugging her shoulders. “Only he must be pacified. I must go. I wonder if you know you are lodged in the royal apartments? His majesty’s room—he has but one—is in the corridor to the left of this.

“Mine is on the right—and he is probably stamping the place to pieces at this moment.” She left the granite couch and advanced half way to the door. “Au revoir, messieurs. Till later—I shall come to see you.”

The next moment she was gone.

Harry and I, left alone, had enough to think and talk about, but there was ten minutes of silence before we spoke. I sat on one of the stone seats, wondering what the result would be—if any—of the king’s visit and his discovery.

Harry paced up and down the length of the apartment with lowered head. Presently he spoke abruptly:

“Paul, I want to know exactly what you think of our chances for getting out of this.”

“Why—” I hesitated. “Harry, I don’t know.”

“But you’ve thought about it, and you know something about these things. What do you think?”

“Well, I think they are slim.”

“What are they?”

“Nothing less than miracles. There are just two. First—and I’ve spoken of this before—we might find an underground stream that would carry us to the western slope.”

“That is impossible—at least, for Desiree. And the second?”

“Nature herself. She plays queer tricks in the Andes. She might turn the mountain upside down, in which case we would find ourselves on top. Seriously, the formation here is such that almost anything is possible. Upheavals of vast masses of rock are of ordinary occurrence. A passage might be opened in that way to one of the lower peaks.

“We are surrounded by layers of limestone, granite, and quartzite, which are of marked difference both in the quality of hardness and in their ability to withstand the attacks of time. When one finds itself unable to support the other, something happens.”

“But it might not happen for a hundred years.”

“Or never,” I agreed.

Again silence. Harry stood gazing at one of the flaming urns, buried in thought—easy to guess of what nature. I did not think fit to disturb him, till presently he spoke again.

“What do you suppose that ugly devil will do about—what he saw in here?”

I smiled. “Nothing.”

“But if he should? We are helpless.”

“Trust Desiree. It’s true that she can’t even talk to him, but she’ll manage him somehow. You saw what happened just now.”

“But the creature is no better than a dumb brute. He is capable of anything. I tell you, we ought to get her away from here.”

“To starve?”

“And we’re none too safe ourselves. As for starving, we could carry enough of their darned fish to last a year. And one thing is sure: we won’t get back to New York lying round here waiting for something to turn up—even a mountain.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Clear out. Get Desiree away from that ugly brute. If we only had our knives!”

“Where would we go?”

In that question was the whole matter. To escape with Desiree was possible—but then what? We knew by experience what it meant to wander hopelessly about in the darkness of those desolate caverns, without food, and depending on Providence for water. Neither of us cared to repeat that trial, especially with the added difficulty of a woman to care for. But what to do?

We decided to wait for the future, and in the mean time lay in a supply of provisions, and, if possible, devise some sort of weapons.

It is worth remarking here that the Incas, so far as we had seen, used no weapons whatever. This was most probably the result of their total isolation and consequent freedom from foreign hostility.

In the matter of food we were soon to receive an agreeable surprise. It was about an hour after Desiree had left us that the royal steward—I give him the title on my own responsibility—arrived, with pots and pans on a huge tray.

In the first place, the pots and pans were of solid gold. Harry stared in amazement as they were placed in brilliant array on one of the stone tables; and when we essayed to lift the empty tray from another table on which it had been placed we understood why the steward had found it necessary to bring four assistants along as cup-bearers.

There was a king’s ransom on that table, in sober truth, for there could be no doubt but that this was part of the gold which had been carried from Huanuco when it had been demanded by Pizarro as payment for the life of Atahualpa.

But better even than the service was that which it contained. It may not have been such as would enhance the reputation of a French chef, but to us then it seemed that the culinary art could go no farther.

There was a large platter; Harry lifted its cover in an ecstasy of hope; but the next instant his face fell ludicrously.

“Our old friend, Mr. Dried Fish,” he announced sadly, and gave it up.

Then I tried my luck, and with better success.

First I uncovered a dish of stew, steaming hot! To be sure, it was fish, but it was hot. Then a curious, brittle kind of bread; I call it that, though on trial it appeared to be made from the roe of some kind of fish. Also there was some excellent fish-soup, also hot, and quite delicious.

Four hundred years of development had taught the royal chefs to prepare fish in so many different ways that we almost failed to recognize them as of the same family.

“Couldn’t be better,” said Harry, helping himself liberally to the stew. “We can eat this, and cache the dried stuff. We’ll have enough for an army in a week.”

“As for me, I saw before me the raw material for our weapons. When we had emptied the golden platter that held our bread,” I secreted it under the cover of the granite couch. When the serving-men called to remove the dishes they apparently did not notice its absence. So far, success.

Some hours later Desiree paid us a second call. She appeared to be in the gayest of spirits, and I eyed her curiously from a seat in the corner as she and Harry sat side by side, chatting for all the world as though they had been in her own Paris drawing-room.

Was it possible that she was really satisfied, as she had said? What imaginable food could these black dwarfs find to appease her tremendous vanity? Or was she merely living the motto of the French philosopher?

Harry was demanding that he be allowed to visit her apartment; this she refused, saying that if he were found there by the king nothing could avert a catastrophe. Harry’s brow grew black; I could see his effort to choke back his anger. Then Desiree led him away from the topic, and soon they were both again laughing merrily.

Some forty-eight hours passed; in that perpetual blackness there was no such thing as day. We saw no one save Desiree and the serving men. Once a messenger appeared carrying a bundle of quipos; I was able to decipher their meaning sufficiently to understand that we were invited to some religious ceremony in the great cavern. But I thought it injudicious to allow a meeting between Harry and the king, and returned a polite refusal.

It may be of interest to some to know the method, which was extremely simple, as in ordinary communications the quipos are easy to read. I removed two knots from the white cord—the sign of affirmative—and placed two additional ones on the black cord—the sign of negative. Then on the yellow cord—the sign of the Child of the Sun and submission to him—I tied two more knots to show that our refusal meant no lack of respect to their deity.

Which, by the way, was not a little curious.

Here were the descendants of the subjects of Manco-Capac, himself a son of the orb of day, still holding to their worship of the sun, though they had not seen its light for four centuries. Deserted by their god, they did not abandon him; an example from which the followers of another and more “civilized” religion might learn something of the potency of faith.

But to the story.

As I say, I was anxious to avoid a meeting between Harry and the king, and subsequent events proved my wisdom. Harry was acting in a manner quite amazing; it was impossible for me to mention the king even in jest without him flying into a violent temper.

As I look back now I am not surprised; for our harrowing experiences and the hopelessness of our situation and the wilfulness of Desiree were enough, Heaven knows, to jerk his nerves; but at the time I regarded his actions as those of a thoughtless fool, and told him so, thinking to divert his anger to myself. He took no notice of me.

We were left entirely to ourselves. At regular intervals our food was brought to us, and within a week we had accumulated a large supply of the dried fish against necessity, besides my collection of six golden platters, of which more later.

Once in about twenty-four hours two Incas, who appeared to be our personal attendants—for we were actually able to recognize them after half a dozen visits—arrived to perform the offices of chambermaid and valet. The floor of the apartment was scrubbed, the urns refilled with oil, and the skin cover of the granite couch was changed. It seemed that another belief—in cleanliness—had refused to be dislodged from the Inca breast.

When I managed, by dint of violent and expressive gestures, to convey to our valet the idea that we desired a bath, he led us down the corridor some two hundred feet to a stream of cool running water. We took advantage of the opportunity to scrub our clothing, which was sadly in need of the operation.

I had early made an examination of the urns which furnished our light. They were of gold and perfect in form, which convinced me that they had been brought by the fugitives from Huanuco, as, indeed, the quipos also, and several other articles we found, including our golden table service.

The urns were filled with an oil which I was unable to recognize. There was no wick, but round the rim or lip of each was set a broad ring carved of stone, which made the opening at the top only about two inches in diameter. Through this the flame arose to a height of about two feet.

Of smoke there was none, or very little, a circumstance which was inexplicable, as there seemed to be no possibility of the generation of gas within so small space. But the oil itself was strange to me, and its properties may be charged to nature.

As I say, I had collected six of the golden platters, one at a time. Together they weighed about twenty pounds—for they were small and rather thin—which was near the amount required for my purpose. I explained the thing to Harry, and we set to work.

We first procured a vessel of granite from the attendant on some pretext or other—this for melting the gold. Then we pried a slab of limestone from a corner of one of the seats; luckily for us it was very soft, having been selected by the Incas for the purpose of inserting in its face the crystal prisms. Then we procured a dozen or more of the prisms themselves, and, using them as chisels, and small blocks of granite as hammers, set to work at the block of limestone.

It was slow work, but we finally succeeded in hollowing out a groove in its surface about eighteen inches long and two inches deep. That was our mold.

Then to melt the golden platters. We took four of the urns, placing them in a group on the floor, and just at the tip of the flames placed the granite vessel, supported by four blocks of stone which we pried loose from one of the seats. In the vessel we placed the golden platters.

But we found, after several hours, that we did not have sufficient heat—or rather that the vessel was too thick to transmit it. And again we set to work with our improvised chisels and hammers, to shave off its sides and bottom. That was more difficult and required many hours for completion.

Finally, with the profane portion of our vocabularies completely exhausted and rendered meaningless by repetition, and with bruised and bleeding hands, we again arranged our furnace and sat down to wait. We had waited until the dishes from our dinner had been removed, and we were fairly certain to be alone for several hours.

Finally the gold was melted, stubbornly but surely. We took the thick hide cover from the couch and, one on each side, lifted the vessel of liquid metal and filled our mold. In an hour it was hardened into a bar the shape of a half-cylinder. We removed it and poured in the remainder of the gold.

It would appear that the gain was hardly worth the pains, and I admit it. But at the least I had kept Harry occupied with something besides his amatory troubles, and at the best we had two heavy, easily handled bars of metal that would prove most effective weapons against foes who had none whatever.

We had just removed the traces of our work as completely as possible and secreted the clubs of yellow metal in a corner of the apartment when the sound of pattering footsteps came from the corridor.

Harry gave me a quick glance; I moved between him and the door. But it was Desiree.

She entered the room hurriedly and crossed to the farther side, then turned to face the door. Her cheeks were glowing brightly, her eyes flashed fire, and her breast heaved with unwonted agitation. Before either she or I had time to speak Harry had sprung to her side and grasped her arm.

“What has he done now?” he demanded in a tone scarcely audible in its intensity.

“I—don’t—know,” said Desiree without removing her eyes from the door. “Let me go, Harry; let me sit down. Paul! Ah! I was afraid.”

“For us?” I asked.

“Yes—partly. The brute! But then, he is human, and that is his way. And you—I was right—you should have gone to the Cave of the Sun when he required your presence.”

“But it was merely an invitation. Cannot one refuse an invitation?” I protested.

“But, my dear Paul, the creature is royal—his invitations are commands.”

“Well, we were busy, and we’ve already seen the Cave of the Sun.”

“Still it was an error, and I think you will pay for it. There have been unusual preparations under way for many hours. The king has been in my apartment, and messengers and guards have been arriving constantly, each with his little bundle of quipos, as you call them.”

“Did you see the quipos?”

“Yes.”

“Did any of them contain a red cord, suspended alone, with a single knot at either end?”

“Yes, all of them,” said Desiree without an instant’s hesitation.

“That means Harry and me,” I observed. “But the message! Can you remember any of them?”

She tried, but without success. Which will not surprise any one who has ever seen the collection at the museum at Lima.

Then Harry broke in:

“Something else has happened, Desiree. No bunch of cords tied in silly knots ever made you look as you did just now. What was it?”

“Nothing—nothing, Harry.”

“I say yes! And I want to know! And if it’s what I think it is we’re going to clear out of here now!”

“As though we could!”

“We can! We have enough provisions to last for weeks. And see here,” he ran to the corner where he had hidden the golden clubs and returned with them in his hands, “with these we could make our way through them all. Tell me!”

There was a strange smile on Desiree’s lips.

“And so you would fight for me, Harry?” she said half-wistfully, half—I know not what. Then she continued in a tone low but quite distinct: “Well, it is too late. I am the king’s.”

She lied—I saw it in her eyes. Perhaps she meant to save Harry from his folly, to quiet him by the knowledge that he need not fight for what was no longer his own; but she was mistaken in her man.

Harry did not stop to read her eyes—he heard her words. He took two slow steps backward, then stood quite still, while his face grew deadly white and his eyes were fastened on hers with a look that made me turn my own away. His soul looked out from them—how he loved the woman—and I could not bear it!

Nor, after a moment, could Desiree. She took a step forward, extending her arms to him and cried out:

“Harry! No! It was a lie, Harry! Don’t—don’t!”

And they gazed at each other, and I at Desiree, and thus we were unaware that a fourth person had entered the room, until he had crossed its full length and stood before me. It was the Inca king.

I took no time for thought, but jumped straight for Harry and threw my arms round him, dragging him back half-way across the room. Taken completely by surprise, he did not struggle. I noticed that he still held in his hands the bars of gold he had shown to Desiree.

The king regarded us for a second with a scowl, then turned to her.

She stood erect, with flashing eyes. The king approached; she held out her hand to him with an indescribable gesture of dignity.

For a moment he looked at her, then his lips curled in an ugly snarl, and, dashing her hand aside, he leaped forward in swift fury and grasped her white throat with his fingers.

There was a strangled scream from Desiree, a frantic cry from Harry—and the next instant he had torn himself free from my arms, dropping the bars of gold at my feet.

A single bound and he was across the room; a single blow with his fist and the king of the Incas dropped senseless to the floor.

CHAPTER XII

AT THE DOOR

Desiree shrank back against the wall, covering her face with her hands. Harry stood above the prostrate figure of the king, panting and furious.

As for me, I gave no thought to what had been done—the imminent peril of the situation possessed my mind and stung my brain to action.

I ran to the figure on the floor and bent over him. There was no movement—his eyes were closed. Calling to Harry to watch the corridor without, I quickly tore my woolen jacket into strips—my fingers seemed to be made of steel—and bound the wrists and ankles of the Inca firmly, trussing him up behind.

Then with another strip I gagged him, thinking it best to err on the side of prudence. In another moment I had dragged him to the corner of the room behind the granite couch and covered him with its hide-cover.

Then I turned to Harry:

“Is the coast clear?”

“Yes,” he answered from the doorway.

“Then here—quick, man! Get the clubs and the grub. Desiree—come! There’s not a second to lose.”

“But, Paul—” she began; then, seeing the utter folly of any other course than instant flight, she sprang to Harry’s side to assist him with the bundles of provisions.

There was more than we could carry. Harry and I each took a bundle under our left arm, carrying the clubs in the other hand. Desiree attempted to take two bundles, but they were too heavy for her, and she was forced to drop one.

With a last hasty glance at the motionless heap in the corner we started, Harry leading and myself in the rear, with Desiree between us.

But it was not to be so easy. We were nearly to the door when there came a grating, rumbling sound from above, and a huge block of granite dropped squarely across the doorway with a crash that made the ground tremble beneath our feet.

Stupefied, we realized in a flash that the cunning of the Incas had proved too much for us. Harry and I ran forward, but only to invite despair; the doorway was completely covered by the massive rock, an impenetrable curtain of stone weighing many tons, and on neither side was there an opening more than an inch wide. We were imprisoned beyond all hope of escape.

We stood stunned; Desiree even made no sound, but gazed at the blocked doorway in a sort of stupid wonder. It was one of those sudden and overwhelming catastrophes that deprive us for a moment of all power to reason or even to realize.

Then Harry said quietly:

“Well, the game’s up.”

And Desiree turned to me with the calm observation:

“They must have been watching us. We were fools not to have known it.”

“Impossible!” Harry asserted; but I agreed with Desiree; and though I could see no opening or crevice of any sort in the walls or ceiling, I was convinced that even then the eyes of the Incas were upon us.

Our situation was indeed desperate. With our every movement spied upon, surrounded by four solid walls of stone, and beyond them ten thousand savage brutes waiting to tear us to pieces—what wildest fancy could indulge in hope?

Then, glancing up, my eye was arrested by the heap under the cover in the corner. There, in the person of the Inca king, lay our only advantage. But how could we use it?

Desiree’s voice came in the calm tones of despair:

“We are lost.”

Harry crossed to her and took her in his arms.

“I thank Heaven,” he said, “that you are with us.” Then he turned to me: “I believe it is for the best, Paul. There never was a chance for us; we may as well say it now. And it is better to die here, together, than—the other way.”

I smiled at his philosophy, knowing its source. It came not from his own head, but from Desiree’s arms. But it was truth.

We sat silent. The thing was beyond discussion; too elemental to need speech for its explanation or understanding. I believe it was not despair that kept back our words, but merely the dumb realization that where all hope is gone words are useless—worse, a mockery.

Finally I crossed the room and removed the cover from the body of the Child of the Sun. He had recovered consciousness; his little wicked eyes gleamed up at me with an expression that would have been terrifying in the intensity of its malignant hatred if he had not been utterly helpless. I turned to Harry:

“What are we going to do with him?”

“By Jove, I had forgotten!” exclaimed the lad. “Paul, perhaps if we could communicate with them—” He stopped, glancing at the closed doorway; then added: “But it’s impossible.”

“I believe it is possible,” I contradicted. “If the Incas were able to lower that stone at any moment you may be sure they are prepared to raise it. How, Heaven only knows; but the fact is certain. Do you think they would have condemned their precious king to starvation?”

“Then the king can save us!”

“And how?”

“Our lives for his. We’ll give him nothing to eat, and if, as you say, they have some way of watching us, they’ll be forced to negotiate. You can talk with the quipos, and tell them that unless they give us our freedom and let us go in safety they’ll have a dead king. From the way they seem to worship him they’d come through in a minute.”

“Oh, they’d promise, all right,” I agreed; “but how could we hold them to it?”

“Well, a promise is a promise. And it’s our only chance.”

“No, Harry; to trust them would be folly. The minute we stepped through that doorway they would be on us—the whole beggarly, smelly lot of them.”

“Then there is no chance—none whatever?” put in Desiree.

“None. We may as well admit the worst. And the worst is best for us now. Really, we are in luck; we die in our own way and at our own time. But there is one difficulty.”

Then, in answer to their glances of inquiry, I added significantly: “We have no weapons. We cannot allow ourselves to starve—the end must come before that, for as soon as they saw us weakening we would be at their mercy.”

There was comprehension and horror in Desiree’s eyes, but she looked at me with a brave attempt to smile as she took from her hair something which gleamed and shone in the light from the flaming urns. It was a tiny steel blade with a handle of pearl studded with diamonds.

I had seen it before many times—a present, Desiree had told me, from the young man I had seen in the royal coach on that day in Madrid when I had first heard the name of Le Mire.

“Will that do?” she asked calmly, holding it out to me with a firm hand.

Brave Le Mire! I took the dagger and placed it in my pocket, and, looking at Harry, exchanged with him a nod of understanding. No words were necessary.

“But I must confess I am a coward,” said Desiree. “When the time comes I—I could not bear to see—to wait—”

I looked at her and said simply: “You shall be first,” and she gave me a smile of thanks that spoke of a heart that would not fail when the final moment arrived. And in my admiration of her high courage I forgot the horror of the task that must be mine.

It was a relief to have admitted the worst and discussed it calmly; there is no torment like suspense, and ours was at an end. A load was lifted from our hearts, and a quiet sympathy created between us, sincere as death itself. And it was in our power to choose for ourselves the final moment—we were yet masters of our fates.

All action seems useless when hope is dead, but certain things needed to be done, and Harry and I bestirred ourselves. We extinguished the flame in all the urns but one to save the oil, not caring to depart in darkness.

Our supply of water, we found, was quite sufficient to last for several days, if used sparingly; for we intended to support life so long as we had the fuel. Then responsibility ceases; man has a right to hasten that which fortune has made inevitable.

The hours passed by.

We talked very little; at times Desiree and Harry conversed in subdued tones which I did not overhear; I was engaged with my own thoughts. And they were not unpleasant; if, looking death in the face, a man can preserve his philosophy unchanged, he has made the only success in life that is worth while.

We ate and drank, but gave neither water nor food to our fellow prisoner. Not because I really expected to force negotiations with the Incas—but the thing was possible and was worth a trial. I knew them well enough to appraise correctly the value of any safe-conduct they might give us.

I was a little surprised to find in Desiree no levity, the vulgar prop for courage based on ignorance. There was a tenderness in her manner, especially toward Harry, that spoke of something deeper and awoke in my own breast a deeper respect for her. The world had not known Desiree Le Mire—it had merely been fascinated and amused by her.

Many hours had passed in this tomblike apathy. Two or three times I had advised Desiree to lie down to rest and, if possible, to sleep. She had refused, but I became insistent, and Harry added his voice to my own. Then, to please us, she consented; we arranged the cover on the granite couch and made her as comfortable as possible.

In five minutes she was fast asleep. Harry stood a few feet away from the couch, looking down at her. I spoke to him, in a low tone:

“And you must rest too, Hal. One of us must remain on watch; I’ll take it first and call you when I feel drowsy. It may be a needless precaution, but I don’t care to wake up and find myself in the condition of our friend yonder.”

He wanted to take the first watch himself, but I insisted, and he arranged our ponchos on the ground, and soon he too was sleeping easily and profoundly. I looked from him to Desiree with a smile, and reflection that Socrates himself could not have met misfortune with more sublime composure.

It was possible that the stone curtain across the doorway could be raised noiselessly, and that made it necessary to keep my eyes fastened on it almost continuously. This became irksome; besides, twice I awoke to the fact that my thoughts had carried me so far away from my surroundings that the stone could have been raised to the roof and I would not have noticed it.

So, using my jacket for a cushion, I seated myself on the ground in the threshold, leaning my back against the stone, and gave myself up to meditation.

I had sat thus for three hours or more, and was thinking of calling Harry to relieve me, when I felt a movement at my back. I turned quickly and saw that the stone was moving upward.

Slowly it rose, by little frequent jerks, not more than an eighth of an inch at a time. In fifteen minutes it was only about four inches from the ground. There was no sound save a faint grating noise from above.

I stood several feet away, holding one of the golden clubs in my hand, thinking it unnecessary to rouse Harry until the space was wide enough to cause apprehension. Or rather, because I had no fear of an assault—I was convinced that our ruse had succeeded, and that they were about to communicate with us by means of the quipos.

The stone was raised a little over a foot, then became stationary. I waited, expecting to see a bundle of quipos thrust through the opening, but they did not appear.

Instead, five golden vessels were pushed across the ground until they were inside, clear of the stone; I could see the black, hairy hands and arms, which were immediately withdrawn.

Then the granite curtain fell with a crash that caused me to start with its suddenness and awakened both Harry and Desiree.

Two of the vessels contained water, two oil, and the other dried fish. Harry, who had sprung to his feet excitedly, grumbled in disgust.

“At least, they might have sent us some soup. But what’s their idea?”

“It means that Desiree was right,” I observed. “They have some way of watching us. And, seeing that we refused to provide their beloved monarch with provender, they have sent him an allowance from the pantry.”

Harry grinned.

“Will he get it?”

“Hardly,” said I with emphasis. “We’ll make ’em treat with us if it’s only to observe their diplomacy. There’ll be a message from them within twenty-four hours. You’ll see.”

“Anyway, we know now that they can raise that stone whenever they feel like it. But in the name of Archimedes, how?”

He advanced to the doorway and examined the block of granite curiously, but there was no clue to its weight or thickness from the inside. I explained that there were several ways by which the thing could be raised, but that the most probable one was by means of a rolling pulley, which required merely some rounded stones and a flat surface above, with ropes of hide for stays.

It had been several hours since we had last eaten, and we decided to at once convey to the spies without our intentions concerning our prisoner. So we regaled ourselves with dried fish and water, taking care not to approach the king, who had rolled over on his side and lay facing us, looking for all the world, in the dim light, like a black dog crouched on the floor.

Harry relieved me at my post against the door, and I lay down to sleep. Desiree had seated herself beside him, and the low tones of their voices came to me as I lay on the couch (which Desiree had insisted I should occupy) in an indistinct, musical murmur. This for perhaps ten minutes; then I slept.

That became our routine. During the many weary hours that followed there was never a moment when one of us was not seated with his back against the stone across the doorway; we dared not trust our eyes. Usually Harry and Desiree watched together, and, when I relieved them, slept side by side on the couch.

Sometimes, when we were all awake, Desiree was left on guard alone; but Harry and I were never both asleep at the same time.

An estimate of the time we spent thus would be the wildest guess, for time was heavy and passed on leaden feet. But I should say we had been imprisoned for something like four days, possibly five, when the monotony came to an abrupt end.

I had come off watch, and Harry and Desiree had taken my place. Before I lay down I had taken some water to the prisoner, for we had some time before admitted the necessity of giving him drink. But of food he had had none.

Harry told me afterward that I had slept for two or three hours, but it seemed to me rather as many minutes, when I was awakened by the sound of his voice calling my name. Glancing at the doorway, I sprang to my feet.

The stone was slowly rising from the floor; already there was a space of a foot or more. Desiree and Harry stood facing it in silence.

“You have seen nothing?” I asked, joining them.

“Nothing,” said Harry. “Here, take one of these clubs. Something’s up.”

“Of course—the stone,” I observed facetiously, yawning. “Probably nothing more important than a bundle of quipos. Lord, I’m sleepy!”

Still the stone moved upward, very slowly. It reached a height of two feet, yet did not halt.

“This is no quipos” said Harry, “or if it is, they must be going to send us in a whole library. Six inches would have been enough for that.”

I nodded, keeping my eyes on the ever-widening space at our feet.

“This means business, Hal. Stand ready with your club. Desiree, go to the further corner, behind that seat.”

She refused; I insisted; she stamped her foot in anger.

“Do you think I’m a child, to run and hide?” she demanded obstinately.

I wasted no time in argument.

“You will go,” I said sternly, “or I shall carry you and tie you. This is not play. We must have room and know that you are safe.”

To my surprise, she made no reply, but quietly obeyed. Then, struck by a sudden thought, I crossed to where she stood behind a stone seat in the corner.

“Here,” I said in a low tone, taking the little jeweled dagger from my pocket and holding it out to her, “in case—”

“I understand,” she said simply, and her hand closed over the hilt.

By that time the stone was half-way to the top of the doorway, leaving a space over three feet high, and was still rising. I stood on one side and Harry on the other, not caring to expose ourselves immediately in front.

Suddenly he left his post and ran to one of the stone seats and began prying at the blocks of granite. I saw at once his intention and our mistake; we should have long before barricaded the door on the inside. But it was too late now; I knew from experience the difficulty of loosening those firmly wedged blocks, and I called out:

“No good, Hal. We were fools not to have thought of it before, but there is no time for it now. Come back; I couldn’t stop ’em alone.”

Nevertheless, he continued his exertions, and succeeded in getting one of the blocks partially free; but by that time the doorway was almost completely uncovered, and he saw the folly of attempting further.

He resumed his post on the right of the door—I was on the left.

The stone appeared to be going faster. It reached the top—passed it—and quickly swung in toward the wall and disappeared, probably to rest on a ledge above.

We stood waiting, tense and alert. The open doorway gaped on the black, empty corridor, into which the light from our single urn shone dimly. We could see or hear nothing, no indication that any one was in the passage, but we dared not look out in that darkness. The suspense was trying enough; Harry ripped out an impatient oath and made a movement as though to step in the entrance, but I waved him back.

Then came the avalanche, with a suddenness and fury that nigh overwhelmed us.

Crouching, rushing forms filled the doorway from both directions and leaped savagely at us. After so many weary days of dull inaction and helpless, hopeless apathy, a mad joy fired my brain and thrilled my heart as I raised my club on high and struck a blow for freedom and life.

That blow crushed the skull of one whose fingers were at my throat, and he dropped like a log at my feet; but his place was already filled. Again I swung the club; another swayed, toppling against the doorway and leaning there with the blood streaming from his broken head, quite dead, but held erect by the pressure of his fellows from behind.

If the doorway had been but a foot wider we would have been overwhelmed almost instantly. As it was, but three or four could get to us at once, and they found the gold which their ancestors had carried from the temples of Huanuco waiting for them. My arm seemed to have the strength of a hundred arms; it swung the heavy club as though it had been a feather, and with deadly accuracy.

Harry fought like a demon. I think I did all that a man could do, but he did more, and withal more coolly. I brought down my club on heads, shoulders, chests, and rarely failed to get my man.

But the impact of Harry’s blows was like the popping of a Maxim. I saw him reach over and grasp the throat of one who had his teeth set in my shoulder, and, holding him straight before him with his arm extended, break his neck with one blow. Again, his club descended on one black skull with a glancing blow and shot off to the head of another with the force of a sledge-hammer.

At the time I did not know that I saw these things; it was all one writhing, struggling, bloody horror; but afterward the eyes of memory showed them to me.

Still they came. My arm rose and fell seemingly without order from the brain; I was not conscious that it moved. It seemed to me that ever since the beginning of time I had stood in that butcher’s doorway and brought down that bar of gold on thick, black skulls and distorted, grinning faces. But they would not disappear. One fell; another took his place; and another, and another, and another.

The bodies of those who fell were dragged away from underneath. I did not see it, but it must have been so, or soon we would have raised our own barricade for defense—a barricade of flesh. And there was none.

I began to weaken, and Harry saw it, for he gasped out: “Steady—Paul. Take it—easy. They can’t—last—forever.”

His blows were redoubled in fury as he moved closer to me, taking more than his share of the attack, so that I almost had time to breathe.

But we could not have held out much longer. My brain was whirling madly and a weight of a thousand tons seemed dragging me remorselessly, inevitably to the ground. I kept my feet through the force of some crazy instinct, for will and reason were gone.

And then, for an instant, Harry’s eyes met mine, and I read in them what neither of us could say, nor would. With the fury of despair we struck out together in one last effort.

Whether the Incas saw in that effort a renewed strength that spoke of immortality, or whether it happened just at that moment that the pressure from behind was removed, no longer forcing them to their death, I do not know. It may have been that, like some better men, they had merely had enough.

From whatever cause, the attack ceased almost with the suddenness with which it had begun; they fell back from the doorway; Harry lunged forward with raised club, and the forms melted away into the darkness of the corridor.

Harry turned and looked at me as I stood swaying from side to side in the doorway. Neither of us could speak. Together we staggered back across the room, but I had not gone more than half way when my legs bent under me and I sank to the floor. Dimly I saw Harry’s face above me, as though through a veil—then another face that came close to my own—and a voice:

“Paul! My love! They have killed him!”

Soft white arms were about my neck, and a velvet cheek was pressed against my own.

“Desiree!” I gasped. “Don’t! Harry! No, they have not killed me—”

Then Harry’s voice:

“That’s all right, old fellow. I know—I have known she loves you. This is no time to talk of that. Listen, Paul—what you were going to do for Desiree—if you can—they will be back at any moment—”

That thought kindled my brain; I raised myself onto my elbow.

“I haven’t the strength,” I said, hardly knowing how I spoke. “You must do it, Harry; you must. And quick, lad! The dagger! Desiree—the dagger!”

What followed came to me as in a dream; my eyes were dim with the exhaustion that had overcome my body. Desiree’s face disappeared from before my face—then a silence—then the sound of her voice as though from a distance:

“Harry—come! I can’t find it! I dropped it when I ran across—it must be here—on the floor—”

And then another sound came that I knew only too well—the sound of rushing, pattering feet.

I think I tried to rise to my own feet. I heard Harry’s voice crying in a frenzy: “Quick—here they come! Desiree, where is it?”

There was a ringing cry of despair from Desiree, a swinging oath from Harry, and the next instant I found myself pinned to the floor by the weight of a score of bodies.

UNDER THE ANDES, by Rex Stout [Part 2]

CHAPTER XIII

INTO THE WHIRLPOOL

I hardly know what happened after that. I was barely conscious that there was movement round me, and that my wrists and ankles were being tightly bound. Harry told me afterward that he made one last desperate stand, and was halted by a cry from Desiree, imploring him to employ the club in the intended office of the dagger.

He wheeled about and raised it to strike; then his arm dropped, unable to obey for the brutal horror of it. In another instant he and Desiree, too, had been overpowered and carried to the floor by the savage rush.

This he told me as we lay side by side in a dark cavern, whither we had been carried by the victorious Incas. I had expected instant death; the fact that our lives had been spared could have but one meaning, I thought: to the revenge of death was to be added the vindictiveness of torture.

We knew nothing of Desiree’s fate. Harry had not seen her since he had been crushed to the floor by that last assault. And instead of fearing for her life, we were convinced that a still more horrible doom was to be hers, and hoped only that she would find the means to avoid it by the only possible course.

I have said that we again found ourselves in darkness, but it was much less profound than it had been before. We could distinctly see the four walls of the cavern in which we lay; it was about twelve feet by twenty, and the ceiling was very low. The ground was damp and cold, and we had neither ponchos nor jackets to protect us.

A description of our state of mind as we lay exhausted, wounded, and bound so tightly that any movement was impossible, would seem to betray a weakness. Perhaps it was so; but we prayed for the end—Harry with curses and oaths, myself in silence. There is a time when misery becomes so acute that a man wants only deliverance and gives no thought to the means.

That was reaction, and gradually it lessened. And when, after we had lain unconscious for many hours (we can hardly be said to have slept) they came to bathe our wounds and bruises and bring us food and drink, the water was actually grateful to our hot, suffering flesh, and we ate almost with relish. But before they left they again bound our wrists firmly behind us, and tightened the cords on our ankles.

If they meditated punishment they certainly seemed to be in no hurry about it. The hours passed endlessly by. We were cared for as tenderly as though we had been wounded comrades instead of vanquished foes, and though we were allowed to remain on the damp, hard rock of the cavern, we gradually recovered from the effects of that gruesome struggle in the doorway, and our suffering bodies began to feel comparative comfort.

“What the deuce are they waiting for?” Harry growled, after one of their visits with food and water. “Why don’t they end it?”

“Most likely because a well man can appreciate torture better than a sick one,” I answered, not having seen fit to speak of it before. “You may be sure we’ll get all that’s coming to us.”

“But what will they do?”

“Heaven knows. They are capable of anything. We’ll get the worst.”

There was a silence; then Harry said slowly, hesitating:

“Paul—do you think—Desiree—”

“I don’t think—I dare not think about her,” I interrupted. “And it is our fault; we failed her. I should have put her beyond their reach, as I promised. I have reproached myself bitterly, Hal; you need add nothing.”

“Do you think I would? Only—there is something else. About what she said to you. I knew that, you know.”

I was silent; he continued:

“I knew it long ago. Do you think I am blind? And I want to say this while I have a chance—it was uncommon good of you. To take it the way you did, I mean.”

His simplicity made me uncomfortable, and I made no answer. Indeed, the thing was beyond discussion; it was merely a bare fact which, when once stated, left nothing to be said. So I refused to humor Harry’s evident desire to thrash out the topic, and abruptly changed the subject.

We must have lain bound in that cavern little short of a week. Our wounds and bruises were completely healed, save one gash on Harry’s side where he had been hurled against the sharp edge of one of the stone seats as he had been borne to the floor. But it was not painful, and was nearly closed. And we could feel the return of strength even through the stiffness caused by the inactivity of our muscles.

We had given up wondering at the delay by the time it came to an end. When they finally came and cut our bonds and led us from the cavern we felt nothing keener than a mere curiosity as to what awaited us at the end of our journey. For myself, there was a distinct sensation of thankfulness that uncertainty was to end.

They took no chances with us, but paid us the compliment of a truly royal escort—at least, in number. There could not have been less than two hundred of them in front, behind, and on either side, as we left the cavern and proceeded along a narrow, winding passage to the left.

Once, as we started, we stretched our arms high and stood on tiptoe to relieve the stiffness of our joints; and immediately found ourselves clutched on every side by a score of hands.

“Gad! We seem to have made an impression!” Harry grinned. On the way down the passage we marched with the Prussian goose-step, and felt the blood quickening to life in our legs and arms.

We had proceeded in this manner for some ten minutes when we rounded a corner which I recognized at once by the peculiar circular formation of the walls. We were on our way to the great cavern—the cavern where we had first seen Desiree, and where later she had won the toss for our lives and then preserved them.

Another minute and we had reached the steps leading to the tunnel under the lake. Here our guards seemed in doubt as to just what to do; those in front halted and stood hesitant, and it seemed to me that as they gazed below down the stone stair their eyes held a certain shrinking terror. Then one came up from behind and with a commanding gesture ordered them to descend, and they obeyed.

Harry and I still found ourselves surrounded by a full company; there were fifty or sixty ahead of us and at least twice that number behind. The idea of a successful struggle was so patently impossible that I believe it never entered our minds.

There was further delay at the bottom of the stairs, for, as I have said before, the tunnel was extremely narrow and it was barely possible to walk two abreast. None of them turned back, but Harry and I could scarcely restrain a laugh at the sight of those immediately in front of us treading on the toes of their fellows to keep out of our way. With all their savage brutality I believe they possessed little real bravery.

Five minutes more and we had reached the end of the tunnel and found ourselves at the foot of the spiral stairway. The passage was so blocked by those ahead that we were unable to approach it; they flattened their squatty bodies against the wall and we were forced to squeeze our way past them.

There we stood, barely able to make out their black forms against the blacker wall, when the one who appeared to be the leader approached and motioned to us to ascend. We hesitated, feeling instinctively that this was our last chance to make a stand, weighing our fate.

That was a dark moment, but though I did not know it, Providence was with us. For, happening to glance downward, beneath the spiral stair—for there was no ground immediately beneath it—I saw a faint glimmer and a movement as though of a dim light in the black, yawning space at my feet. (You must understand that we were now inside the base of the column in the center of the great cavern.)

Moved either by curiosity or a command of Providence, I stooped and peered intently downward, and saw that the movement was the almost imperceptible reflection of a stray ray of light from above on the surface of water. At the time I merely wondered idly if the water came from the same source as that in the lake outside, not thinking it sufficiently important to mention to Harry.

Then a question came from him:

“No good, Paul. They are a hundred to one, and we are empty-handed. Do we go?”

“There is nothing else to do,” I answered, and I placed my foot on the first step of the spiral stair.

Behind us came the guide, with a dozen others at his heels.

The ascent seemed even longer and more arduous than before, for then we had been propelled by keen curiosity. Twice I stumbled in the darkness, and would have fallen if it had not been for Harry’s supporting hand behind me. But finally we reached the top and stepped out into the glare of the great cavern. I saw the stone slab close to behind us, noiselessly, and wondered if I should ever see it open again.

We looked about us, and as our eyes sought the alcove in the wall opposite, we gave a simultaneous start of surprise, and from Harry’s lips came a cry, half of gladness, half of wonder. For, seated on the golden throne, exactly as before, was Desiree. By her side was seated the Inca king; round them, guards and attendants.

We gazed at her in astonishment, but she did not look at us; even at that distance we could see that her eyes were lowered to the ground. Harry called her name—there was no answer. Again he called, and I caught him by the arm.

“Don’t, Hal! She can’t possibly do us any good, and you may do her harm. If she doesn’t answer, it is because she has a reason.”

He was silent, but not convinced, and would probably have argued the matter if our attention had not been arrested by a movement in the alcove.

The king rose and extended an arm, and the Incas who filled the seats surrounding the cavern fell flat on their faces.

“We don’t seem to have thinned them out any,” I observed. “I believe there are actually more than before. Where do they all come from?”

“The Lord knows!”

“And, by the way, it is now apparent why they waited so long to attend to us. The king naturally wanted to be present at the entertainment, and he had to take time to recover from his little fasting operation. But now, what in the name of—my word, the thing is to be done in all propriety! Look!”

The king had dropped his arm, and the Incas were again sitting as Nature had intended they should sit, instead of on their noses. And four attendants had approached the throne, bearing a frame of quipos.

“So we are to have a fair trial,” Harry observed.

“With the king for judge.”

“And a hundred dead rats as evidence.”

“Right; they can’t get even with us, anyway; there are only two of us. And as far as the other is concerned, I have an idea.”

The king had left his throne and approached the outer edge of the alcove, until he stood almost directly under the oval plate of gold representing Pachacamac or the unknown god.

To this he knelt and made a succession of weird, uncouth gestures that suggested a lunatic or a traveling hypnotist. Evidently the good Pachacamac approved whatever suggestions the royal priest communicated, for he rose to his feet with a solemn grin and strutted majestically to the rear, facing the frame of quipos.

It was evident that he no longer had faith in Desiree’s interpretation of the divine will of the great Pachacamac. It is a royal privilege to be able to judge your own enemies.

The hand of the Child of the Sun passed slowly up and down the frame of quipos, betraying a commendable reluctance. It touched the yellow cord and passed on; grasped the white and dropped it.

“The old hypocrite!” exclaimed Harry in disgust. “Does he imagine he is playing with us?”

Then there was an imperceptible movement, rather felt than seen, throughout the vast assemblage, and Desiree sank back on her throne of gold with a shudder as the king severed with the knife the black cord of death and laid it on the ground at her feet.

I looked at Harry; his face became slightly pale, but his eyes met mine firmly, speaking of a fortitude unconquerable. Then we again riveted our gaze on the alcove opposite.

An attendant approached from the rear and stood before the golden throne, while the king motioned to Desiree to take up the black cord. For a moment she did not understand him, then she drew back, shaking her head firmly.

The king did not wait to argue the matter, but stooped himself and picked up the cord and handed it to the attendant, who received it with a great show of respect and retired to the rear, where a commotion was created by its appearance.

The judgment was passed, but what was to be the nature of the execution? That uncertainty and the weirdness of the scene gave to the thing an air of unreality that shut out the tragic and admitted only the grotesque.

I have many times in my life felt nearer to death than when I stood on the top of that lofty column, surrounded by the thousands of squatting dwarfs, whose black bodies reflected dully the mounting light from the flaming urns.

I cannot say what we expected, for we knew not what to expect. Many conjectures entered my mind, but none of them approached the fact. But, thinking that our guide might now return at any moment to lead us below, and not caring to be surprised by an attack from behind on that narrow precipice, I moved across to the rear, where I could keep my eyes on the alcove opposite, and at the same time watch the stone slab which closed the opening to the spiral stairway. A word to Harry and he joined me.

“Perhaps we can open it from above,” he suggested.

“Not likely,” I answered, “and, anyway, what’s the use?”

He knelt down and tugged at it, but there was no edge on which to obtain a purchase. The thing was immovable.

Five minutes passed, during which there was no movement, either in the audience on the stone seats or in the alcove. But there was an indefinable air of expectancy on the faces of the king and those surrounding him, and I kept a sharp eye on the stone slab.

Another five minutes and still nothing happened. Harry called across to Desiree, or rather began to call, for I stopped him with a jerk. It was impossible for her to aid us, and her situation was already sufficiently perilous.

Then, becoming impatient, I decided to try to move the stone slab myself. Kneeling down, I placed the palms of my hands firmly against its surface and pressed with all my weight.

And then I knew. Complete comprehension flashed through my brain on the instant. I sprang to my feet, and my thought must have shown on my face, for Harry looked at me in surprise, demanding:

“What is it? What is it, Paul?”

And I answered calmly:

“We’re caught, Hal. Like rats in a trap. Oh, the black devils! Listen! We have no time to lose. Bend over and touch the palm of your hand to the ground.”

He did so, plainly puzzled. Then he drew his hand hastily away, exclaiming: “It’s hot!”

“Yes.” I spoke quickly. “Our boots kept us from feeling it before, and the stone doesn’t throw out enough heat to feel it in the air. They’ve built a fire under us in the column. The stone is thick and heats slowly.”

“But what—that means—”

“It means one of two things. In a few minutes this floor will be baking hot. Then we either fry on their stone griddle or drown in the lake. You see the distance below—only a man crazed by suffering or one incredibly brave would take that leap. This is their little entertainment—they expect us to dance for them.”

“But the lake! If we could take it clean—”

I saw that the lake was our only chance, if there could be said to be any in so desperate a situation. To be sure, there seemed to be no possibility of escaping, even if we took the water without injury. On every side its bank was lined with the watching Incas, and the bank itself was so steep that to ascend it would have required wings.

The heat began to be felt even through the soles of our heavy boots; involuntarily I lifted one foot, then the other. I saw the Child of the Sun in the alcove lean forward with an appreciative grin. Another minute—

I jerked my wits together—never did my brain answer with better speed. And then I remembered that flash of water I had seen under the spiral stairway at the base of the column. I had thought at the time that it might be connected with the lake itself. If that were so—

I turned to Harry and conveyed my idea to him in as few words as possible as we walked up and down, side by side. It was impossible longer to stand still—the stone was so hot that the bare hand could not be held against it for an instant. I saw that he did not comprehend what I said about the water in the column, but he did understand my instructions, and that was all that was necessary.

We ran to the edge of the column nearest the alcove.

Removing our woolen knickerbockers—for better ease in the water—we placed them on the hot stone, and on top of them our boots, which we had also removed. Thus our feet were protected as we stood on the extreme edge of the column, taking a deep breath for strength and nerve.

I saw the thousands of black savages—who had been cheated of their dance—crane their necks forward eagerly.

I saw the king gesture excitedly to an attendant, who turned and flew from the alcove.

I saw Desiree spring up from the golden throne and run to the edge of the alcove, crying to us in a tone of despair. But I did not hear her words, for I myself was calling:

“Take it clean, Hal. Ready—go!”

The next instant we were flying headlong through the air toward the surface of the lake a hundred feet below.

Men have told me since that I never made that dive, or that I greatly overestimated the distance, and I admit that as I look back at it now it appears incredible. Well, they are welcome to their opinion, but I would not advise them to try to argue the matter with Harry.

The impact with the water all but completely stunned me; as I struck the surface it seemed that a thousand cannons had exploded in my ears. Down, down I went—lucky for us that the lake was apparently bottomless!

I seemed to have gone as far below the water as I had been above it before I was able to twist myself about and meet it with my belly. Then, striking out with every ounce of strength in me, I made for the surface as rapidly as possible. I had started with my lungs full of air, but that headlong plunge had emptied them.

I made the surface at last and looked round for Harry, calling his name. For perhaps thirty seconds I called in vain, then there came an unanswering shout off to the left. The urns were far above us now, and the light on the surface of the lake was very dim, but soon I made out Harry’s head. He was swimming easily toward me, apparently unhurt.

“All right, Hal?”

“Right. And you?”

“Sound as a whistle. Now make for the column.”

At the instant that we turned to swim toward the column I became aware of a strong current in the water carrying us off to the right. It was inexplicable, but there was no time then for speculation, and we struck out with bold, sweeping strokes.

The Incas had left the stone seats and advanced to the water’s edge. I could see their black, sinister faces, thousands of them, peering intently at us through the dim light, but they made no sound.

Once I cast a glance over my shoulder and saw Desiree standing at the edge of the alcove with her clenched fists pressed to her throat. Beside her stood the Child of the Sun. Harry, too, saw her and sent her a shout of farewell, but there was no answer.

We were now less than thirty feet from the column. Its jeweled sides sparkled and shone before us; looking up, our eyes were dazzled. Something struck the water near me. I glanced to the right and saw what moved me to hasten my stroke and call to Harry to do likewise.

The black devils were increasing the fun by hurling stones at us from the bank—apparently with the kind approval of Pachacamac.

As we neared the column the current which tended to carry us to the right became stronger, but still we seemed not to be approaching the bank. What could it mean? The struggle against it was fast taking our strength.

Looking up, I saw that we had swung round to the other side of the column—it was between us and the alcove. Then I understood. We were in a whirlpool, ever increasing in force, which was carrying us swiftly in a circle from left to right and approaching the column.

I called a swift warning to Harry, who was some ten feet to my left, and he answered that he understood. The stones from the bank were falling thick about us now; one struck me on the shoulder, turning me half round.

The current became swifter—so swift that we were almost helpless against it and were carried around and around the column, which was but a few feet away. And always complete silence.

Nearer and nearer we were carried, till, thrusting out my arm, the tips of my fingers brushed against the side of the column. The water whirled with the rapidity of a mill-stream; ten more seconds and our brains would have been dashed against the unyielding stone. It was now but half an arm’s length away. I kept thrusting out my arm in a wild endeavor to avoid it.

Suddenly my outstretched hand found a purchase in a break in the wall, but the force of the water tore it loose and swept me away. But when I reached the same spot again I thrust out both hands, and, finding the edge, held on desperately. The next instant Harry’s body was swept against mine, doubling the strain on my fingers.

“The column!” I gasped. “Inside—through the wall—opening—I am holding—”

He understood, and the next moment he, too, had grasped the edge. Together we pulled ourselves, little by little, toward the opening; for our strength was nearly spent, and the force of the maelstrom was nigh irresistible.

It was as I had thought. The base of the column consisted merely of two massive pillars, some twelve feet in length and circular in shape. The water rushed in through each of the two openings thus left, and inside of the column was the center of the whirlpool, sucking the water from both sides. The water I had seen; I had not counted on the whirlpool.

We had pulled ourselves round till our bodies rested against the edge of the opening, clinging to either side. Inside all was blackness, but we could judge of the fury of the maelstrom by the force of the current outside. Stones hurled by the Incas were striking against the sides of the column and in the water near us.

We were being hunted from life like dogs, and a hot, unreasoning anger surged through my brain—anger at the grinning savages on the bank, at the whirling black water, at Harry, at myself.

Whichever way we looked was death, and none worth choosing.

“I can’t hold—much longer,” Harry gasped. “What’s the use—old man—Paul—come—I’m going—”

He disappeared into the black, furious whirlpool with that word. The next instant my own fingers were torn from their hold by a sudden jerk of the water, and I followed.

CHAPTER XIV

A FISHING PARTY

Water, when whirling rapidly, has a keen distaste for any foreign object; but when once the surface breaks, that very repulsion seems to multiply the indescribable fury with which it endeavors to bury the object beneath its center.

Once in the whirlpool, I was carried in a swift circle round its surface for what seemed an age, and I think could not have been less than eight or ten seconds in reality. Then suddenly I was turned completely over, my limbs seemed to be torn from my body, there was a deafening roar in my ears, and a crushing weight pressed against me from every side.

Any effort of any kind was worse than useless, as well as impossible; indeed, I could hardly have been said to be conscious, except for the fact that I retained sufficient volition to avoid breathing or swallowing the water.

The pressure against my body was terrific; I wondered vaguely why life had not departed, since—as I supposed—there was not a whole bone left in my body. My head was bursting with dizziness and pain; my breast was a furnace of torture.

Suddenly the pressure lessened and the whirling movement gradually ceased, but still the current carried me on. I struck out wildly with both arms—in an effort, I suppose, to grasp the proverbial straw.

I found no straw, but something better—space. Instinct led the fight to reach it with my head to get air, but the swiftness of the current carried me again beneath the surface. My arms seemed powerless; I was unable to direct them.

I hardly know what happened after that. A feeling of most intense suffocation in my chest; a relaxation of all my muscles; a sensation of light in my smarting eyes; a gentle pressure from the water beneath, like the rising gait of a saddle-horse; and suddenly, without knowing why or when or how, I found myself lying on hard ground, gasping, choking, sputtering, not far from death, but nearer to life than I had thought ever to be again.

I lay for several minutes unable to move; then my brain awoke and called for life. I twisted over on my face, and moved my arms out and in with the motion of a swimmer; the most exquisite pains shot through my chest and abdomen. My head weighed tons.

Water ran from my nose and mouth in gurgling streams. The roaring, scarcely abated, pounded in my ears. I was telling myself over and over with a most intense earnestness: “But if I were really dead I shouldn’t be able to move.” It appears that the first sense to leave a drowning man, and the last to return, is the sense of humor.

In another ten minutes, having rid my lungs of the water that had filled them, I felt no pain and but little fatigue. My head was dizzy, and there was still a feeling of oppression on my chest; but otherwise I was little the worse for wear. I twisted carefully over on my side and took note of my surroundings.

I lay on a narrow ledge of rock at the entrance to a huge cavern. Not two feet below rushed the stream which had carried me; it came down through an opening in the wall at a sharp angle with tremendous velocity, and must have hurled me like a cork from its foaming surface. Below, it emptied into a lake which nearly filled the cavern, some hundreds of yards in diameter. Rough boulders and narrow ledges surrounded it on every side.

This I saw in time, but the first thing that caught my eye was no work of nature. Fastened to the wall on the opposite side of the cavern, casting a dim, flickering light throughout its vast space, were two golden, flaming urns.

It was not fear, but a sort of nausea, that assailed me as I realized that I was still in the domain of the Incas.

The ledge on which I lay was exposed to view from nearly every point of the cavern, and the sight of those urns caused me to make a swift decision to leave it without delay. It was wet and slippery and not over three feet in width; I rose to my feet cautiously, having no appetite for another ducking.

At a distance of several feet lay another ledge, broad and level, at the farther end of which rose a massive boulder. I cleared the gap with a leap, barely made my footing, and passed behind the boulder through a crevice just wide enough to admit my body.

Then through a narrow lane onto another ledge, and from that I found my way into a dark recess which gave assurance at least of temporary safety. The sides of the cavern were a veritable maze of boulders, sloping ledges, and narrow crevices. Nature here scarcely seemed to have known what to do with herself.

I seated myself on a bit of projecting limestone, still wet and shivering. I had no boots nor trousers; my feet were bruised and swollen, and my flannel shirt and woolen underwear were but scanty protection against the chill air, damp as they were. Also, I seemed to feel a cold draft circling about me, and was convinced of the fact by the flickering flames in the golden urns.

Desolate, indeed, for I gave Harry up as lost. The thought generated no particular feeling in me; death, by force of contrast, may even appear agreeable; and I told myself that Harry had been favored of the gods.

And there I sat in the half-darkness, shrinking from a danger of whose existence I was not certain, clinging miserably to the little that was left of what the world of sunshine had known as Paul Lamar, gentleman, scientist, and connoisseur of life; sans philosophy, sans hope, and—sans-culotte.

But the senses remain; and suddenly I became aware of a movement in the water of the lake. It was as though an immense trout had leaped and split the surface. This was repeated several times, and was followed by a rhythmic sound like the regular splash of many oars. Then silence.

I peered intently forth from my corner in the recess, but could see nothing, and finally gave it up.

As the minutes passed by my discomfort increased and stiffness began to take my joints. I realized the necessity of motion, but lacked the will, and sat in a sort of dumb, miserable apathy. This, I should say, for an hour; then I saw something that roused me.

I had before noticed that on the side of the cavern almost directly opposite me, under the flaming urns, there was a ledge some ten or twelve feet broad and easily a hundred in length. It met the surface of the lake at an easy, gradual slope. In the rear, exactly between the two urns, could be seen the dark mouth of a passage, evidently leading directly away from the cavern.

Out of this passage there suddenly appeared the forms of two Incas. In the hand of each was what appeared to be a long spear—I had evidently been mistaken in my presumption of their ignorance of weapons.

They walked to one end of the long ledge and dragged out into the light an object with a flat surface some six feet square. This they launched on the surface of the lake; then embarked on it, placing their spears by their sides and taking up, instead, two broad, short oars. With these they began to paddle their perilous craft toward the center of the lake with short, careful strokes.

About a hundred feet from the shore they ceased paddling and exchanged the oars for their spears, and stood motionless and silent, waiting, apparently, for nothing.

I, also, remained motionless, watching them in dull curiosity. There was little danger of being seen; for, aside from the darkness of my corner, which probably would have been no hindrance to them, a projecting ledge partly screened my body from view.

The wait was not a long one, and when it ended things happened with so startling a suddenness that I scarcely grasped the details.

There was a loud splash in the water like that I had heard before, a swift ripple on the surface of the lake, and simultaneously the two Indians lunged with their spears, which flew to their mark with deadly accuracy. I had not before noticed the thongs, one end of which was fastened to the shaft of the spear and the other about the waist of the savage.

There followed a battle royal. Whatever the thing was that had felt the spears, it certainly lost no time in showing its resentment. It thrashed the water into furious waves until I momentarily expected the raft to be swamped.

One Inca stood on the farther edge of the craft desperately plying an oar; the other tugged lustily at the spear-thongs. I could see a black, twisting form leap from the water directly toward the raft, and the oarsman barely drew from under before it fell. It struck the corner of the raft, which tipped perilously.

That appeared to have been a final effort, for there the battle ended. The oarsman made quickly for the shore, paddling with remarkable dexterity and swiftness, while the other stood braced, holding firmly to the spear-thongs. Another minute and they had leaped upon the ledge, drawing the raft after them, and, by tugging together on the lines, had landed their victim of the deep.

It appeared to be a large black fish of a shape I had never before seen. But it claimed little of my attention; my eye was on the two spears which had been drawn from the still quivering body and which now lay on the ground well away from the water’s edge, while the two Incas were dragging their catch toward the mouth of the passage leading from the cavern.

I wanted those spears. I did not stop to ask myself what I intended to do with them; if I had I would probably have been hard put to it for an answer. But I wanted them, and I sat in my dark corner gazing at them with greedy eyes.

The Incas had disappeared in the passage.

Finally I rose and began to search for an exit from the recess in which I had hidden myself. At first there appeared to be none, but at length I found a small crevice between two boulders in the rear. Into this I squeezed my body with some difficulty.

The rock pressed tightly against me on both sides, and the sharp corners bruised my body, but I wormed my way through for a distance of fifteen or twenty feet. Then the crevice opened abruptly, and I found myself on a broad ledge ending apparently in space. I advanced cautiously to its edge, but intervening boulders shut off the light, and I could see no ground below.

Throwing prudence to the winds, I let myself over the outermost corner, hung for a moment by my hands, and dropped. My feet touched ground almost instantly—the supposedly perilous fall amounted to something like twelve inches.

I turned round, feeling a little foolish, and saw that from where I stood the ledge and part of the lake were in full view. I could see the spears still lying where they had been thrown down.

But as I looked the two Incas emerged from the passage. They picked up the spears, walked to the raft, and again launched it and paddled toward the center of the lake.

I thought, “Here is my chance; I must make that ledge before they return,” and I started forward so precipitately that I ran head on into a massive boulder and got badly stunned for my pains. Half dazed, I went on, groping my way through the semidarkness.

The trail was one to try a llama. I climbed boulders and leaped across chasms and clung to narrow, slippery edges with my finger-nails. Several times I narrowly escaped dumping myself into the lake, and half the time I was in plain view of the Incas on the raft.

My hands and feet were bruised and bleeding, and I had bumped into walls and boulders so often that I was surprised when I took a step without getting a blow. I wanted those spears.

I found myself finally within a few yards of my destination. A narrow crevice led from where I stood directly to the ledge from which the Incas had embarked. It was now necessary to wait till they returned to the shore, and I drew back into the darkness of a near-by corner and stood motionless.

They were still on the raft in the middle of the lake, waiting, spear in hand. I watched them in furious impatience, on the border of mania.

Suddenly I saw a dark, crouching form outlined against a boulder not ten feet away from where I stood. The form was human, but in some way unlike the Incas I had seen. I could not see its face, but the alertness suggested by its attitude made me certain that I had been discovered.

Vaguely I felt myself surrounded on every side; I seemed to feel eyes gazing unseen from every direction, but I could not force myself to search the darkness; my heart rose to my throat and choked me, and I stood absolutely powerless to make a sound or movement, gazing in a sort of dumb fascination at that silent, crouching figure.

Suddenly it crouched lower still against the black background of the boulder.

“Another second and he will be at my throat,” I thought—but I stood still, unable to move.

But the figure did not spring. Instead, it suddenly straightened up to almost twice the height of an Inca, and I caught a glimpse of a white face and ragged, clinging garments.

“Harry!” I whispered. I wonder yet that it was not a shout.

“Thank God!” came his voice, also in a whisper; and in another moment he had reached my side.

A hurried word or two—there was no time for more—and I pointed to the Incas on the raft, saying: “We want those spears.”

“I was after them,” he grinned. “What shall we do?”

“There’s no use taking them while the Incas are away,” I replied, “because they would soon return and find them gone. Surely we can handle two of them.”

As I spoke there came a sound from the lake—a sudden loud splash followed by a commotion in the water. I looked around the corner of the boulder and saw that the spears again found their mark.

“Come,” I whispered, and began to pick my way toward the ledge.

Harry followed close at my heels. It was easier here, and we soon found ourselves close to the shore of the lake, with a smooth stretch of rock between us and the fisherman’s landing-place. The urns, whose light was quite sufficient here, were about fifty feet to the right and rear.

The Incas had made their kill and were paddling for the shore. As they came near, Harry and I sank back against the boulder, which extended to the boundary of the ledge. Soon the raft was beached and pulled well away from the water, and the fish—I was amazed at its size—followed.

They drew forth the spears and laid them on the ground, as they had done formerly; and, laying hold on the immense fish, still floundering ponderously about, began to drag it toward the mouth of the passage.

“Now,” whispered Harry, and as he stood close at my side I could feel his body draw together for the spring.

I laid a hand on his arm.

“Not yet. Others may be waiting for them in the passage. Wait till they return.”

In a few minutes they reappeared in the light of the flaming urns. I waited till they had advanced half-way to the water’s edge, some thirty feet away. Then I whispered to Harry: “You for the left, me for the right,” and released my hold on his arm, and the next instant we were bounding furiously across the ledge.

Taken by surprise, the Incas offered no resistance whatever. The momentum of our assault carried them to the ground; their heads struck the hard granite with fearful force and they lay stunned.

Harry, kneeling over them, looked up at me with a question in his eyes.

“The lake,” said I, for it was no time for squeamishness.

Our friend the king thought us dead, and we wanted no witnesses that we had returned to life. We laid hold of the unconscious bodies, dragged them to the edge of the lake, and pushed them in. The shock of the cold water brought one of them to life, and he started to swim, and we—well, we did what had to be done.

We had our spears. I examined them curiously.

The head appeared to be of copper and the shaft was a long, thin rod of the same material. But when I tried it against a stone and saw its hardness I found that it was much less soft, and consequently more effective, than copper would have been. That those underground savages had succeeded in combining metals was incredible, but there was the evidence; and, besides, it may have been a trick of nature herself.

The point was some six inches long and very sharp. It was set on the shaft in a wedge, and bound with thin, tough strips of hide. Altogether, a weapon not to be laughed at.

We carried the spears, the raft, and the oars behind a large boulder to the left of the ledge with considerable difficulty. The two latter not because we expected them to be of any service, but in order not to leave any trace of our presence, for if any searchers came and found nothing they could know nothing.

We expected them to arrive at any moment, and we waited for hours. We had about given up watching from our vantage point behind the boulder when two Incas appeared at the mouth of the passage. But they brought only oil to fill the urns, and after performing this duty departed, without a glance at the lake or any exhibition of surprise at the absence of their fellows.

Every now and then there was a commotion in some part of the lake, and we could occasionally see a black, glistening body leap into the air and fall again into the water.

“I’m hungry,” Harry announced suddenly. “I wonder if we couldn’t turn the trick on that raft ourselves?”

The same thought had occurred to me, but Harry’s impulsiveness had made me fearful of expressing it. I hesitated.

“We’ve got to do something,” he continued.

I suggested that it might be best to wait another hour or two.

“And why? Now is as good a time as any. If we intend to find Desiree—”

“In the name of Heaven, how can we?” I interrupted.

“You don’t mean to say you don’t intend to try?” he exclaimed.

“Hal, I don’t know. In the first place, it’s impossible. And where could we take her and what could we do—in short, what’s the use? Why the deuce should we prolong the thing any further?

“In the world I refused to struggle because nothing tempted me; in this infernal hole I have fought when there was nothing to fight for. If civilization held no prize worth an effort, why should I exert myself to preserve the life of a rat? Faugh! It’s sickening! I wondered why I wanted those spears. Now I know. I have an idea I’m going to be coward enough to use one—or enough of a philosopher.”

“Paul, that isn’t like you.”

“On the contrary, it is consistent with my whole life. I have never been overly keen about it. To end it in a hole like this—well, that isn’t exactly what I expected; but it is all one—after. Understand me, Hal; I don’t want to desert you; haven’t I stuck? And I would still if there were the slightest possible chance. Where can we go? What can we do?”

There was a long silence; then Harry’s voice came calmly:

“I can stay in the game. You call yourself a philosopher. I won’t quarrel about it, but the world would call you a quitter. Whichever it is, it’s not for me. I stay in the game. I’m going to find Desiree if I can, and, by the Lord, some day I’m going to cock my feet up on the fender at the Midlothian and make ’em open their mouths and call me a liar!”

“A worthy ambition.”

“My own. And, Paul, you can’t—you’re not a quitter.”

“Personally, yes. If I were here alone, Hal”—I picked up one of the spears and passed my palm over its sharp point—“I would quit cold. But not—not with you. I can’t share your enthusiasm, but I’ll go fifty-fifty on the rest of it, including the fender—when we see it.”

“That’s the talk, old man. I knew you would.”

“But understand me. I expect nothing. It’s all rot. If by any wild chance we should pull out in the end I’ll admit you were right. But I eat under compulsion, and I fight for you. You’re the leader unless you ask my advice.”

“And I begin right now,” said Harry with a grin. “First, to get Desiree. What about it?”

We discussed plans all the way from the impossible to the miraculous and arrived nowhere. One thing only we decided—that before we tried to find our way back to the great cavern and the royal apartments we would lay in a supply of food and cache it among the boulders and ledges where we then were. For if ever a place were designed for a successful defense by two men against thousands it was that one. And we had the spears.

Still no one had appeared in the cavern, and we decided to wait no longer. We carried the raft back to the ledge. It was fairly light, being made of hide stretched tightly across stringers of bone, but was exceedingly clumsy. Once Harry fell, and the thing nearly toppled over into the lake with him on top of it; but I caught his arm just in time.

Another trip for the oars and spears, and everything was ready. We launched the raft awkwardly, nearly shipping it beneath; but finally got it afloat with ourselves aboard. We had fastened the loose ends of the spear-thongs about our waists.

I think that raft was the craziest thing that ever touched water. It was a most excellent diver, but was in profound ignorance of the first principle of the art of floating.

After a quarter of an hour of experimentation we found that by standing exactly in a certain position, one on each side and paddling with one hand, it was possible to keep fairly level. If either of us shifted his foot a fraction of an inch the thing ducked like a stone.

We finally got out a hundred feet or so and ceased paddling. Then, exchanging our oars for the spears, we waited.

The surface of the lake was perfectly still, save for a barely perceptible ripple, caused no doubt by the undercurrent which was fed by the stream at the opposite side. The urns were so far away that the light was very dim; no better than half darkness. The silence was broken by the sound of the rushing stream.

Suddenly the raft swayed gently; there was a parting of the water not a foot away toward the front, and then—well, the ensuing events happened so quickly that their order is uncertain.

A black form arose from the water with a leap like lightning and landed squarely on the raft, which proceeded to perform its favorite dive. It would have done so with much less persuasion, for the fish was a monster—it appeared to me at that moment to be twenty feet long.

On the instant, as the raft capsized, Harry and I lunged with our spears, tumbling forward and landing on each other and on top of the fish. I felt my spear sinking into the soft fish almost without resistance.

The raft slipped from under, and we found ourselves floundering in the water.

I have said the spear-thongs were fastened about our waists. Otherwise, we would have let the fish go; but we could hardly allow him to take us along. That is, we didn’t want to allow it; but we soon found that we had nothing to say in the matter. Before we had time to set ourselves to stroke we were being towed as though we had been corks toward the opposite shore.

But it was soon over, handicapped as he was by four feet of spears in his body. We felt the pull lessen and twisted ourselves about, and in another minute had caught the water with a steady dog-stroke and were holding our own. Soon we made headway, but it was killing work.

“He weighs a thousand tons,” panted Harry, and I nodded.

Pulling and puffing side by side, we gradually neared the center of the lake, passed it, and approached the ledge. We were well-nigh exhausted when we finally touched bottom and were able to stand erect.

Hauling the fish onto the ledge, we no longer wondered at his strength. He could not have been an ounce under four hundred pounds, and was fully seven feet long. One of the spears ran through the gills; the other was in his middle, just below the backbone. We got them out with some difficulty and rolled him up high and dry.

We straightened to return for the spears which we had left at the edge of the water.

“He’s got a hide like an elephant,” said Harry. “What can we skin him with?”

But I did not answer.

I was gazing straight ahead at the mouth of the passage where stood two Incas, spear in hand, returning my gaze stolidly.

CHAPTER XV

THE RESCUE

I was quick to act, but the Incas were quicker still. I turned to run for our spears, and was halted by a cry of warning from Harry, who had wheeled like a flash at my quick movement. I turned barely in time to see the Incas draw back their powerful arms, then lunge forward, the spears shooting from their hands.

I leaped aside; something struck my leg; I stooped swiftly and grasped the spear-thong before there was time for the Inca to recover and jerk it out of my reach. The other end was fastened about his waist; I had him, and giving an instant for a glance at Harry, saw that he had adopted the same tactics as myself.

Seeing that escape was impossible, they dashed straight at us.

It wasn’t much of a fight. One came at me with his head lowered like a charging bull; I sidestepped easily and floored him with a single blow. He scrambled to his feet, but by that time I had recovered the spear and had it ready for him.

I waited until he was quite close, then let him have it full in the chest. The fool literally ran himself through, hurling himself on the sharp point in a brutal frenzy. He lay on his back, quite still, with the spear-head buried in his chest and the shaft sticking straight up in the air.

I turned to Harry, and in spite of myself smiled at what I saw. He stood with his right arm upraised, holding his spear ready. His left foot was placed well and gracefully forward, and his body bent to one side like the classic javelin-thrower. And ten feet in front of him the other Inca had fallen flat on his face on the ground with arms extended in mute supplication for quarter.

“What shall I do?” asked Harry. “Let him have it?”

“Can you?”

“The fact is, no. Look at the poor beggar—scared silly. But we can’t let him go.”

It was really a question. Mercy and murder were alike impossible. We finally compromised by binding his wrists and ankles and trussing him up behind, using a portion of one of the spear-thongs for the purpose, and gagging him. Then we carried him behind a large boulder some distance from the ledge and tucked him away in a dark corner.

“And when we get back—if we ever do—we can turn him loose,” said Harry.

“In that case I wouldn’t give much for his chances of a happy existence,” I observed.

We wasted no time after that, for we wanted no more interruptions. Some fifteen precious minutes we lost trying to withdraw the spear I had buried in the body of the Inca, but the thing had become wedged between two ribs and refused to come out. Finally we gave it up and threw the corpse in the lake.

We then removed the oars and spears and raft—which had floated so near to the ledge that we had no difficulty in recovering it—to our hiding-place, and last we tackled our fish.

It was a task for half a dozen men, but we dared not remain on the ledge to skin him and cut him up. After an hour of exertion and toil that left us completely exhausted, we managed to get him behind a large boulder to the left of the ledge, but it was impossible to carry him to the place we had selected, which could be reached only by passing through a narrow crevice.

The only knives we had were the points of the spears, but they served after a fashion, and in another hour we had him skinned and pretty well separated. He was meaty and sweet. We discovered that with the first opportunity, for we were hungry as wolves. Nor did we waste much time bewailing our lack of a fire, for we had lived so long on dried stuff that the opposite extreme was rather pleasant than otherwise.

We tore him into strips as neatly as possible, stowing them away beneath a ledge, a spot kept cool by the water but a foot below.

“That’ll be good for a month,” said Harry. “And there’s more where that came from. And now—”

I understood, and I answered simply: “I’m ready.”

We had but few preparations to make. The solidest parts of the fish which we had laid aside we now strapped together with one of the extra spear-thongs and slung them on our backs. We secreted the oars and raft and the extra spear as snugly as possible.

Then, having filled ourselves with raw fish and a last hearty drink from the lake, we each took a spear and started on a search wilder than any ever undertaken by Amadis of Gaul or Don Quixote himself. Even the Bachelor of Salamanca, in his saddest plight, did not present so outrageous an appearance to the eye as we. We wore more clothing than the Incas, which is the most that can be said for us.

We were unable to even guess at the direction we should take; but that was settled for us when we found that there were but two exits from the cavern. One led through the boulders and crevices to a passage full of twists and turns and strewn with rocks, almost impassable; the other was that through which the Incas had entered. We chose the latter.

Fifty feet from the cavern we found ourselves in darkness. I stopped short.

“Harry, this is impossible. We cannot mark our way.”

“But what can we do?”

“Carry one of those urns.”

“Likely! They’d spot us before we even got started.”

“Well—let them.”

“No. You’re in for the finish. I know that. I want to find Desiree. And we’ll find her. After that, if nothing else is left, I’ll be with you.”

“But I don’t want a thousand of those brutes falling on us in the dark. If they would end it I wouldn’t care.”

“Keep your spear ready.”

I had given him my promise, so I pushed on at his side. I had no stomach for it. In a fight I can avoid disgracing myself, because it is necessary; but why seek it when there is nothing to be gained? Thus I reflected, but I pushed on at Harry’s side.

As he had said, I was in for the finish. What I feared was to be taken again by the Incas unseen in the darkness. But that fear was soon removed when I found that we could see easily some thirty or forty feet ahead—enough for a warning in case of attack.

Our flannel shirts and woolen undergarments hung from us in rags and tatters. Our feet were bare and bruised and swollen. Our faces were covered with a thick, matted growth of hair. Placed side by side with the Incas it is a question which of us would have been judged the most terrifying spectacles by an impartial observer.

I don’t think either of us realized the extreme foolhardiness of that expedition. The passage was open and unobstructed, and since it appeared to be the only way to their fishing-ground, was certain to be well traveled. The alarm once given, there was no possible chance for us.

We sought the royal apartments. Those we knew to be on a level some forty or fifty feet below the surface of the great cavern, at the foot of the flight of steps which led to the tunnel to the base of the column. I had counted ninety-six of those steps, and allowing an average height of six inches, they represented a distance of forty-eight feet.

How far the whirlpool and the stream which it fed had carried us downward we did not know, but we estimated it at one hundred feet. That calculation left us still fifty feet below the level of the royal apartments.

But we soon found that in this we were mistaken. We had advanced for perhaps a quarter of an hour without incident when the passage came to an abrupt end. To the right was an irregular, twisting lane that disappeared around a corner almost before it started; to the left a wide and straight passage, sloping gently upward. We took the latter.

We had followed this for about a hundred yards when we saw a light ahead. Caution was useless; the passage was straight and unbroken and only luck could save us from discovery. We pushed on, and soon stood directly within the light which came from an apartment adjoining the passage. It was not that which we sought, however, and we gave it barely a glance before we turned to the right down a cross passage, finding ourselves again in darkness.

Soon another light appeared. We approached. It came from a doorway leading into an apartment some twenty feet square. It was empty, and we entered.

There were two flaming urns fastened to the wall above a granite couch. Stone seats were placed here and there about the room. The walls were studded with spots of gold to a height of four or five feet.

We stopped short, gazing about us.

“It looks like—” Harry whispered, and then exclaimed: “It is! See, here is where we took the blocks from this seat!”

So it was. We were in the room where we had imprisoned the Inca king and where we ourselves had been imprisoned with Desiree.

“She said her room was to the right of this,” whispered Harry excitedly. “What luck! If only—”

He left the sentence unfinished, but I understood his fear. And with me there was even no doubt; I had little hope of finding Desiree, and was sorry, for Harry’s sake, that we had been so far successful.

Again we sought the passage. A little farther on it was crossed by another, running at right angles in both directions. But to the right there was nothing but darkness, and we turned to the left, where, some distance ahead, we could see a light evidently proceeding from a doorway similar to the one we had just left.

We went rapidly, but our feet made scarcely any sound on the granite floor. Still we were incautious, and it was purely by luck that I glanced ahead and discovered that which made me jerk Harry violently back and flatten myself against the wall.

“What is it?” he whispered.

In silence I pointed with my finger to where two Incas stood in the passage ahead of us, just without the patch of light from the doorway, which they were facing. They made no movement; we were as yet undiscovered. They were about a hundred feet away from where we stood.

“Then she’s here!” whispered Harry. “They are on guard.”

I nodded; I had had the same thought.

There was no time to lose; at any moment that they should chance to glance in our direction they were certain to see us. I whispered hastily and briefly to Harry. He nodded.

The next instant we were advancing slowly and noiselessly, hugging the wall. We carried our spears ready, though we did not mean to use them, for a miss would have meant an alarm.

“If she is alone!” I was saying within myself, almost a prayer, when suddenly one of the Incas turned, facing us squarely, and gave a start of surprise. We leaped forward.

Half a dozen bounds and we were upon them, before they had had time to realize their danger or move to escape it. With a ferocity taught us by the Incas themselves we gripped their throats and bore them to the floor.

No time then for the decencies; we had work to do, and we crushed and pounded their lives out against the stone floor. There had not been a sound. They quivered and lay still; and then, looking up at some slight sound in the doorway, we saw Desiree.

She stood in the doorway, regarding us with an expression of terror that I did not at first understand; then suddenly I realized that, having seen us disappear beneath the surface of the take after our dive from the column, she had thought us dead.

“Bon Dieu!” she exclaimed in a hollow voice of horror. “This, too! Do you come, messieurs?”

“For you,” I answered. “We are flesh and bone, Desiree, though in ill repair. We have come for you.”

“Paul! Harry, is it really you?”

Belief crept into her eyes, but nothing more, and she stood gazing at us curiously. Harry had sprung to her side; she did not move as he embraced her.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Here, Harry—quick! Help me. Stand aside, Desiree.”

We carried the bodies of the two Incas within the room and deposited them in a corner. Then I ran and brought the spears, which we had dropped when we attacked the Incas. Desiree stood just within the doorway, seemingly half dazed.

“Come,” I said; “there is no time to be lost. Come!”

“Where?” She did not move.

“With us. Isn’t that enough? Do you want to stay here?”

She shuddered violently.

“You don’t know—what has happened. I want to die. Where are you going to take me?”

“Desiree,” Harry burst out, “for Heaven’s sake, come! Must we carry you?”

He grasped her arm.

Then she moved and appeared to acquiesce. I started ahead; Harry brought up the rear, with an arm round Desiree’s shoulders. She started once more to speak, but I wheeled sharply with a command for silence, and she obeyed.

We reached the turn in the corridor and passed to the right, moving as swiftly and noiselessly as possible. Ahead of us was the light from the doorway of the room in which we had formerly been imprisoned.

We had nearly reached it when I saw, some distance down the corridor, moving forms. The light was very dim, but there appeared to be a great many of them.

I turned, with a swift gesture to Harry and Desiree to follow, and dashed forward to the light and through the doorway into the room. Discovery was inevitable, I thought, in any event, but it was better to meet them at the door to the room than in the open passage. And we had our spears.

But by a rare stroke of luck we had not been seen. As we stood within the room on either side of the doorway, out of the line of view from the corridor, we heard the patter of many footsteps approaching.

They neared the doorway, and I glanced at Harry, pointing to his spear significantly. He gave me a nod of understanding. Let them come; we would not again fall into their hands alive.

The footsteps sounded just without the doorway; I stood tense and alert, with spear ready, expecting a rush momentarily. Then they passed, passed altogether, and receded down the corridor in the direction whence we had come. I wanted to glance out at their number, but dared not. We stood still till all was again perfectly silent.

Then Desiree spoke in a whisper:

“It is useless; we are lost. That was the king. He is going to my room. In ten seconds he will be there and find me gone.”

There was only one thing to do, and I wasted no time in discussing it. A swift command to Harry, and we dashed from the doorway and down the corridor to the left, each holding an arm of Desiree. But she needed little of our assistance; the presence of the Inca king seemed to have inspired her with a boundless terror, and she flew, rather than ran, between us.

We reached the bend in the passage, and just beyond it the light—the first one we had seen on our way in. I had our route marked on my memory with complete distinctness. Soon we found ourselves in the wide, sloping passage that carried us to the level below, and in another five seconds had reached its end and the beginning of the last stretch.

At the turn Harry stumbled and fell flat, dragging Desiree to her knees. I lifted her, and he sprang to his feet unhurt.

She was panting heavily. Harry had dropped his spear in the fall, and we wasted a precious minute searching for it in the darkness, finally finding it where it had slid, some twenty feet ahead. Again we dashed forward.

A light appeared ahead in the distance, dim but unmistakable—the light of the urns in the cavern for which we were headed. Suddenly Desiree faltered and would have fallen but for our supporting arms.

“Courage!” I breathed. “We are near the end.”

She stopped short and sank to the ground.

“It is useless,” she gasped. “I hurt my ankle when I fell. I can go no farther. Leave me!”

Harry and I with one impulse stooped over to pick her up, and as we did so she fainted away in our arms. We were then but a few hundred feet from our goal; the light from the urns could be plainly seen gleaming on the broad ledge by the lake.

Suddenly the sound of many footsteps came from behind. I turned quickly, but the passage was too dark. I could see nothing. The sound came closer and closer; there seemed to be many of them, advancing swiftly. I straightened and raised my spear.

Harry grasped my arm.

“Not yet!” he cried. “One more try; we can make it.”

He thrust his spear into my hand, and in another instant had thrown Desiree’s unconscious body over his shoulder and was staggering forward toward the cavern. I followed, while the sound of the footsteps behind grew louder and louder.

We neared the end of the passage; we reached it; we were on the ledge. Even with Desiree for a burden, Harry moved so swiftly that I found it difficult to keep up with him. The strength of a god was in him, which was but just, since he had his goddess in his arms.

On the ledge, near the edge of the water, stood two Incas. They turned at our approach and rushed at us. Unlucky for them, for Harry’s example had fired my brain and put the strength of a giant in me.

To this day I don’t know what followed—whether I used my spear or my fists or my head. I know only that I leaped at them in irresistible fury and left them stretched on the ground before they had reached Harry or halted him.

We crossed the ledge and made for the boulders to the left. The crevice which led to our hiding-place was too narrow for Harry and his burden. I sprang forward and grasped Desiree’s shoulders; he held her ankles, and we got her through to the ledge beyond.

Then I leaped back through the crevice, and barely in time. As I looked out a black, rushing horde emerged from the passage and dashed across the ledge toward us. I stood at the entrance to the narrow crevice, spear in hand.

They appeared to have no sense of the fact that my position was impregnable, but dashed blindly at me. The crevice in which I stood and which was the only way through to the ledge where Harry had taken Desiree, was not more than two feet wide. With unarmed savages for foes, one man could have held it against a million.

But they came and I met them. I stood within the crevice, some three or four feet from its end, and when one appeared in the opening I let him have the spear. Another rushed in and fell on top of the first.

As I say, they appeared to be deprived of the power to reason. In five minutes the mouth of the crevice was completely choked with bodies, some, who were merely wounded, struggling and squirming to extricate themselves from the bloody tangle.

I heard Harry’s voice at my back:

“How about it? Want some help?”

“Not unless they find some gunpowder,” I answered. “The idiots eat death as though it were candy. We’re safe; they can never break through here.”

“Are they still coming?”

“They can’t; they’ve blocked the way with their smelly black carcasses. How is Desiree?”

“Better; she’s awake. I’ve been bathing her ankle with cold water. She has a bad sprain; how the deuce she ever managed to hobble on it even two steps is beyond me.”

“A sprain? Are you sure?”

“I think so; it’s badly swollen. Maybe only a twist; a few hours will tell.”

I heard him return to the ledge back of me; I dared not turn my head.

Thinking I heard a sound above, I looked up; but there was nothing to fear in that direction. The boulders which formed the sides of the crevice extended straight up to the roof of the cavern. We appeared, in fact, to be fortified against any attack.

With one exception—hunger. But there would be plenty of time to think of that; for the present we had our fish, which was sufficient for the three of us for a month, if we could keep it fresh that long. And the water was at our very feet.

The bodies wedged in the mouth of the crevice began to disappear, allowing the light from the urns to filter through; they were removing their dead. I could see the black forms swaying and pulling not five feet away. But I stood motionless, saving my spear and my strength for any who might try to force an entrance.

Soon the crevice was clear, and from where I stood I commanded a view of something like three-quarters of the ledge. It was one mass of black forms, packed tightly together, gazing at our retreat.

They looked particularly silly and helpless to me then, rendered powerless as they were by a little bit of rock. Brute force was all they had; and nature, being the biggest brute of all, laughed at them.

But I soon found that they were not devoid of resource. For perhaps fifteen minutes the scene remained unchanged; not one ventured to approach the crevice. Then there was a sudden movement and shifting in the mass; it split suddenly in the middle; they pressed off to either side, leaving an open lane between them leading directly toward me.

Down this lane suddenly dashed a dozen or more of the savages, with spears aloft in their brawny arms. I was taken by surprise and barely had time to cut and run for the ledge within.

As it was I did not entirely escape; the spears came whistling through the crevice, and one of them lodged in my leg just below the thigh.

I jerked it out with an oath and turned to meet the attack. I was now clear of the crevice, standing on the ledge inside, near Harry and Desiree. I called to them to go to one side, out of the range of the spears that might come through. Harry took Desiree in his arms and carried her to safety.

As I expected, the Incas came rushing through the crevice—that narrow lane where a man could barely push through without squeezing. The first got my spear full in the face—a blow rather than a thrust, for I had once or twice had difficulty in retrieving it when I had buried it deep.

As he fell I struck at the one behind. He grasped the spear with his hand, but I jerked it free and brought it down on his head, crushing him to the ground. It was mere butchery; they hadn’t a chance in the world to get at me. Another fell, and the rest retreated. The crevice was again clear, save for the bodies of the three who had fallen.

I turned to where Harry and Desiree were seated on the further edge of the ledge. Her body rested against his; her head lay on his shoulder.

As I looked at them, smiling, her eyes suddenly opened wide and she sprang to her feet and started toward me.

“Paul! You are hurt! Harry, a bandage—quick; your shirt—anything!”

I looked down at the gash on my leg, which was bleeding somewhat freely.

“It’s nothing,” I declared; “a mere tear in the skin. But your ankle! I thought it was sprained?”

She had reached my side and bent over to examine my wound; but I raised her in my arms and held her before me.

“That,” I said, “is nothing. Believe me, it isn’t even painful. I shall bandage it myself; Harry will take my place here. But your foot?”

“That, too, is nothing,” she answered with a half-smile. “I merely twisted it; it is nearly well already. See!”

She placed her weight on the injured foot, but could not suppress a faint grimace of pain.

Calling to Harry to watch the crevice, I took Desiree in my arms and carried her back to her seat.

“Now sit still,” I commanded. “Soon we’ll have dinner; in the mean time allow me to say that you are the bravest woman in the world, and the best sport. And some day we’ll drink to that—from a bottle.”

But facts have no respect for sentiment and fine speeches. The last words were taken from my very mouth by a ringing cry from Harry:

“Paul! By gad, they’re coming at us from the water!”

CHAPTER XVI

THE ESCAPE

The ledge on which we rested was about forty feet square. Back of us was a confused mass of boulders and chasms, across which I had come when I first encircled the cavern and found Harry.

In front was the crevice, guarded by the two massive boulders. On the right the ledge met the solid wall of the cavern, and on the left was the lake itself, whose waters rippled gently at our very feet.

At sound of Harry’s warning cry I ran to the water’s edge and peered round the side of the boulder. He was right; but what I saw was not very alarming.

Two rafts had been launched from the enemy’s camp. Each raft held three Incas—more would have sunk them. Two were paddling, while the third balanced himself in the center, brandishing a spear aloft.

Turning to Desiree, I called to her to move behind a projecting bit of rock. Then, leaving Harry to guard the crevice in case of a double attack, I took three of our four spears—one of which had made the wound in my leg—and stood at the water’s edge awaiting the approach of the rafts.

They came slowly, and their appearance was certainly anything but terrifying.

“Not much of a navy,” I called to Harry; and he answered, with a laugh: “Lucky for us! Look at our coast defense!”

One of the rafts was considerably ahead of the other, and in another minute it had approached within fifty feet of the ledge. The Inca in the center stood with legs spread apart and his spear poised above his head; I made no movement, thinking that on such precarious footing he would have difficulty to hurl the thing at all. Wherein I underrated his skill, and it nearly cost me dear.

Suddenly, with hardly a movement of his body, his arm snapped forward. I ducked to one side instinctively and heard the spear whistle past my ear with the speed of a bullet, so close that the butt of the shaft struck the side of my head a glancing blow and toppled me over.

I sprang quickly to my feet, and barely in time, for I saw the Inca stoop over, pick up another spear from the raft, and draw it back above his head. At the same moment the second raft drew up alongside, and as I fell to the ground flat on my face I heard the two spears whistle shrewdly over me.

At that game they were my masters; it would have been folly to have tried conclusions with them with their own weapons. As the spears clattered on the ground thirty feet away I sprang to my feet and ran to the farther side of the ledge, where I had before noticed some loose stones in a corner.

With two or three of these in my hands I ran back to the water’s edge, meeting two more of the spears that came twisting at me through the air, one of which tore the skin from my left shoulder.

A quick glance at the crevice as I passed showed me Harry fighting at its entrance; they were at us there, too. I heard Desiree shout something at me, but didn’t catch the words.

My first stone found its goal. The two rafts, side by side not forty feet away, were a fair mark. The stone was nearly the size of a man’s head and very heavy; I had all I could do to get the distance.

It struck the raft on the right fairly; the thing turned turtle in a flash, precipitating its occupants onto the other raft. The added weight carried that, too, under the surface, and the six Incas were floundering about in the water.

I expected to see them turn and swim for the landing opposite; but, instead, they headed directly toward me!

The light from the urns was but faint, and it was not easy to distinguish their black heads against the black water; still, I could see their approach. Two of them held spears in their hands; I saw the copper heads flash on high.

I stood at the edge of the lake, wondering at their folly as I waited; they were now scarcely ten feet away. Another few strokes and the foremost stretched out his hand to grasp the slippery ledge; my spear came down crushingly on his head and he fell back into the water.

By that time another had crawled half onto the ledge, and another; a blow and a quick thrust, and they, too, slipped back beneath the surface, pawing in agony, not to rise again.

Just in time I saw that one of the remaining three had lifted himself in the water not five feet away, with his spear aimed at my breast. But the poor devil had no purchase for his feet and the thing went wide.

The next instant he had received a ten-pound stone full in the face and went down with a gurgle. At that the remaining two, seeming to acquire a glimmering of intelligence, turned and swam hastily away. I let them go.

Turning to Harry, I saw that the crevice also was clear. He had left his post and started toward me, but I waved him back.

“All right here, Hal: have they given it up?”

There was an expression of the most profound disgust on his face.

“Paul, it’s rank butchery. I’m wading in blood. Will this thing never stop?”

I looked at him and said merely: “Yes.”

No need to ask when; he understood me; he sent me the glance of a man who has become too familiar with death to fear it, and answered:

“Another hour of this, and—I’m ready.”

I told him to keep an eye on both points of attack and went across to where Desiree sat crouched on the ground. I hadn’t many words.

“How is your foot?”

“Oh, it is better; well. But your leg—”

“Never mind that. Could you sleep?”

“Bon Dieu—no!”

“We have only raw fish. Can you eat?”

“I’ll try,” she answered, with a grimace.

I went to the edge of the ledge where we had the fish stowed away near the water and took some of it both to her and Harry. We ate, but with little relish. The stuff did not seem very fresh.

I remained on guard at the mouth of the crevice while Harry went to the lake for a drink, having first helped Desiree to the water and back to her seat. Her foot gave her a great deal of pain, but instead of a sprain it appeared that there had been merely a straining of the ligaments. After bathing it in the cold water she was considerably relieved.

I remained on watch at the mouth of the crevice, from where I could also obtain a pretty fair view of the lake, and commanded Harry to rest. He demurred, but I insisted. Within two minutes he was sleeping like a log, completely exhausted.

Several hundred of the Incas remained huddled together on the ledge without, but they made no effort to attack us. I had been watching perhaps three hours when they began to melt away into the passage. Soon but a scant dozen or so remained. These squatted along the wall just under the lighted urns, evidently in the capacity of sentinels.

Soon I became drowsy—intolerably so; I was scarcely able to stand. I dozed off once or twice on my feet; and, realizing the danger, I called Harry to take my place.

Desiree also had been asleep, lying on the raft which Harry and I had concealed along with our fish. At sound of my voice she awoke and sat up, rubbing her eyes; then, as I assured her that all was quiet, she fell back again on her rude bed.

I have never understood the delay of the Incas at this juncture; possibly they took time to consult the great Pachacamac and found his advice difficult to understand. At the time I thought they had given up the attack and intended to starve us out, but they were incapable of a decision so sensible.

Many hours had passed, and we had alternated on four watches. We had plenty of rest and were really quite fit. The gash on my leg had proven a mere trifle; I was a little stiff, but there was no pain.

Desiree’s foot was almost entirely well; she was able to walk with ease, and had insisted on taking a turn at watch, making such a point of it that we had humored her.

Something had to happen, and I suppose it was as well that the Incas should start it. For we had met with a misfortune that made us see the beginning of the end. Our fish was no longer fit to eat, and we had been forced to throw the remainder of it in the lake.

Then we held a council of war. The words we uttered, standing together at the mouth of the crevice, come to me now as in a dream; if my memory of them were not so vivid I should doubt their reality. We discussed death with a calmness that spoke eloquently of our experience.

Desiree’s position may be given in a word—she was ready for the end, and invited it.

I was but little behind her, but advised waiting for one more watch—a sop to Harry. And there was one other circumstance that moved me to delay—the hope for a sight of the Inca king and a chance at him.

Desiree had refused to tell us her experiences between the time of our dive from the column and our rescue of her; but she had said enough to cause me to guess at its nature. There was a suppressed but ever present horror in her eyes that made me long to stand once more before the Child of the Sun; then to go, but not alone.

Harry advised retreat. I have mentioned that when he and I had started on our search for Desiree we had found two exits from the cavern—the one which we had taken and another which led through the maze of boulders and chasms back of us to a passage full of twists and turns and choked with massive rocks, almost impassable.

Through this he advised making our way to whatever might await us beyond.

The question was still undecided when our argument was brought to a halt and the decision was taken away from us. Through the crevice I saw a band of Incas emerge from the passage opposite and advance to the water’s edge. At their head was the Inca king.

Soon the landing was completely covered with them—probably three hundred or more—and others could be seen in the mouth of the passage. Each one carried a spear; their heads of copper, upraised in a veritable forest, shone dully in the light of the urns on the wall above.

Harry and Desiree stood close behind me, looking through at the fantastic sight. I turned to him:

“This time they mean business.”

He nodded.

“But what can they do? Except get knocked on the head, and I’m sick of it. If we had only left an hour ago!”

“For my part,” I retorted, “I’m glad we didn’t. Desiree, I’m going to put you in my debt, if fortune will only show me one last kindness and let me get within reach of him.”

I pointed to where the Inca king stood in the forefront, at the very edge of the lake.

She shuddered and grew pale.

“He is a monster,” she said in a voice so low that I scarcely heard, “and—I thank you, Paul.”

Harry seemed not to have heard.

“But what can they do?” he repeated.

They did not leave us long in doubt. As he spoke there was a sudden sharp movement in the ranks of the Incas. Those in front leaped in the water, and others after them, until, almost before we had time to realize their purpose, hundreds of the hairy brutes were swimming with long, powerful strokes directly toward the ledge on which we stood. Between his teeth each man carried his spear.

I left Harry to guard the crevice, and ran to repel the attack at the water. Desiree stood just behind me. I called to her to go back, but she did not move. I grasped her by the arm and led her forcibly to a break in the rock at our rear, and pointed out a narrow ascending lane in the direction of the other exit.

When I returned to the ledge of the water the foremost of the Incas were but a few feet away. But I looked in vain for the one face I wanted to see and could recognize; the king was not among them. A hasty glance across the landing opposite discovered him standing motionless with folded arms.

The entire surface of the lake before me was one mass of heads and arms and spears as far as I could see. There were hundreds of them. I saw at once that the thing was hopeless, but I grasped my spear firmly and stood ready.

The first two or three reached the ledge. At the same instant I heard Harry call:

“They’re coming through, Paul! It’s you alone!”

I did not turn my head, for I was busy. My spear was whirling about my head like a circle of flame. Black, dusky forms swam to the ledge and grasped its slippery surface, but they got no farther. The shaft of the spear bent in my hand; I picked up another, barely losing a second.

A wild and savage delight surged through me at the sight of those struggling, writhing, slipping forms. I swung the spear in vicious fury. Not one had found footing on the ledge.

Something suddenly struck me in the left arm and stuck there; I shook it loose impatiently and it felt as though my arm went with it.

I did not care to glance up even for an instant; they were pressing me closer and closer; but I knew that they had begun to hurl their spears at me from the water, and that the game was up. Another struck me on the leg; soon they were falling thick about me.

Calling to Harry to follow, I turned and ran for the opening in the rock to which I had led Desiree. In an instant he had joined me.

By that time scores of the Incas had scrambled out of the water onto the ledge and started toward us, and as many more came rushing through the crevice, finding their way no longer contested.

Harry carried three spears. I had four. We sprang up a lane encircling the rock to the rear and at its top found Desiree.

A projecting bit of rock gave us some protection from the spears that were being hurled at us from below, but they came uncomfortably close, and black forms began to appear in the lane through which we had come.

Harry shouted something which I didn’t hear, and, taking Desiree in his arms, sprang from the rock to another ledge some ten feet below.

I followed. At the bottom he stumbled and fell, but I helped him to his feet and then turned barely in time to beat back three or four of the Incas who had tumbled down almost on our very heads.

Immediately in front of us was a chasm several feet across. Harry cried to Desiree, “Can you make it?” and she shook her head, pointing to her injured foot.

“To me!” I shouted desperately; they were coming down from above despite my efforts to hold them back.

Then, in answer to a call from Harry, I turned and leaped across the chasm, throwing the spears ahead of me. Harry took Desiree in his arms and swung her far out; I braced myself for the shock and caught her on my feet.

I set her down unhurt, and a minute later Harry had joined us and we were scrambling up the face of a boulder nearly perpendicular, while the spears fell thick around us.

Desiree lost her footing and fell against Harry, who rolled to the bottom, pawing for a hold. I turned, but he shouted: “Go on; I’ll make it!” Soon he was again at my side, and in another minute we had gained the top of the boulder, quite flat and some twenty feet square. We commanded Desiree to lie flat on the ground to avoid the spears from below, and paused for a breath and a survey of the situation.

It can be described only with the word chaotic.

The light of the urns were now hidden from us, and we were in comparative darkness, though we could see with a fair amount of clearness. Nothing could be made of the mass of boulders, but we knew that somewhere beyond them was the passage from the cavern which we sought.

The Incas came leaping across the chasm to the foot of the rock. Several of them scrambled up the steep surface, but with our spears we pushed them back and they tumbled onto the heads of their fellows below.

But we were too exposed for a stand there, and I shouted to Harry to take Desiree down the other side of the rock while I stayed behind to hold them off. He left me, and in a moment later I heard his voice crying to me to follow. I did so, sliding down the face of the rock feet first.

Then began a wild and desperate scramble for safety, with the Incas ever at our heels. Without Desiree we would have made our goal with little difficulty, but half of the time we had to carry her.

Several times Harry hurled her bodily across a chasm or a crevice, while I received her on the other side.

Often I covered the retreat, holding the Incas at bay while Harry assisted Desiree up the steep face of a boulder or across a narrow ledge. There was less danger now from their spears, protected as we were by the maze of rocks, but I was already bleeding in a dozen places on my legs and arms and body, and Harry was in no better case.

Suddenly I saw ahead of us an opening which I thought I recognized. I pointed it out to Harry.

“The exit!” he cried out, and made for it with Desiree. But they were brought to a halt by a cliff at their very feet, no less than twenty feet high.

I started to join them, but hearing a clatter behind, turned just in time to see a score of Incas rush at us from the left, through a narrow lane that led to the edge of the cliff.

I sprang toward them, calling to Harry for assistance. He was at my side in an instant, and together we held them back.

In five minutes the mouth of the lane was choked with their bodies; some behind attempted to scramble over the pile to get at us, but we made them sick of their job. I saw that Harry could hold it alone then, and calling to him to stand firm till I called, I ran to Desiree.

I let myself over the edge of the cliff and hung by my hands, then dropped to the ground below. It was even further than I had thought; my legs doubled up under me and I toppled over, half fainting.

I gritted my teeth and struggled to my feet, calling to Desiree. She was already hanging to the edge of the cliff, many feet above me. But there was nothing else for it, and I shouted: “All right, come on!”

She came, and knocked me flat on my back. I had tried to catch her, and did succeed in breaking her fall, at no little cost to myself. I was one mass of bruises and wounds. But again I struggled to my feet and shouted at the top of my voice:

“Harry! Come!”

He did not come alone. I suppose the instant he left the lane unguarded the Incas poured in after him. They followed him over the edge of the cliff, tumbling on top of each other in an indistinguishable mass.

Some rose to their feet; their comrades, descending from above, promptly knocked them flat on their backs.

Harry and Desiree and I were making for the exit, which was not but a few feet away. As I have said, the thing was choked up till it was almost impassable. We squeezed in between two rocks, with Desiree between us. Harry was in front, and I brought up the rear.

Once through that lane and we might hold our own.

“In Heaven’s name, come on!” Harry shouted suddenly; for I had turned and halted, gazing back at the Incas tumbling over the cliff and rushing toward the mouth of the exit.

But I did not heed him, for, standing on the top of the cliff, waving his arms wildly at those below, I had seen the form of the Inca king. He was less than thirty feet away.

With cries from Harry and Desiree ringing in my ears, I braced my feet as firmly as possible on the uneven rock and poised my spear above my head. The Incas saw my purpose and stopped short.

The king must also have seen me, but he stood absolutely motionless. I lunged forward; the spear left my hand and flew straight for his breast.

But it failed to reach the mark. A shout of triumph was on my lips, but was suddenly cut short when an Inca standing near the king sprang forward and hurled himself in the path of the spear just as its point was ready to take our revenge. The Inca fell to the foot of the cliff with the spear buried deep in his side. The king stood as he had before, without moving.

Then there was a wild rush into the mouth of the exit, and I turned to follow Harry and Desiree. With extreme difficulty we scrambled forward over the rocks and around them.

Desiree’s breath was coming in painful gasps, and we had to support her on either side. The Incas approached closer at our rear; I felt one of them grasp me from behind, and in an excess of fury I shook him off and dashed him backward against the rocks. We were able to make little headway, or none; by taking to the exit we appeared to have set our own death-trap.

Harry went on with Desiree, and I stayed behind in the attempt to check the attack. They came at me from both sides. I was faint and bleeding, and barely able to wield my spear—my last one. I gave way by inches, retreating backward step by step, fighting with the very end of my strength.

Suddenly Harry’s voice came, shouting that they had reached the end of the passage. I turned then and sprang desperately from rock to rock after them, with the Incas crowding close after me.

I stumbled and nearly fell, but recovered my footing and staggered on. And suddenly the mass of rocks ended abruptly, and I fell forward onto flat, level ground by the side of Desiree and Harry.

“Your spear!” I gasped. “Quick—they are upon us!”

But they grasped my arms and dragged me away from the passage to one side. I was half fainting from exhaustion and loss of blood, and scarcely knew what they did. They laid me on the ground and bent over me.

“The Incas!” I gasped.

“They are gone,” Harry answered.

At that I struggled to rise and rested my body on my elbows, gazing at the mouth of the passage. It was so; the Incas were not to be seen! Not one had issued from the passage.

It was incomprehensible to us then; later we understood. And we had not long to wait.

Harry and Desiree were bending over me, attempting to stop the flow of blood from a cut on my shoulder.

“We must have water,” said Desiree. Harry straightened up to look about the cavern, which was so dark that we could barely see one another’s faces but a few feet away.

Suddenly an exclamation of wonder came from his lips.

Desiree and I followed the direction of his gaze, and saw the huge, black, indistinct form of some animal suddenly detach itself from the wall of the cavern and move slowly toward us through the darkness.

CHAPTER XVII

THE EYES IN THE DARK

The thing was at a considerable distance; we could barely see that it was there and that it was moving. It was of an immense size; so large that it appeared as though the very side of the cavern itself had moved noiselessly from its bed in the mountain.

At the same moment I became aware of a penetrating, disagreeable odor, nauseating and horrible. I had risen to my knees and remained so, while Harry and Desiree stood on either side of me.

The thing continued to move toward us, very slowly. There was not a sound. The strength of the odor increased until it was almost suffocating.

Still we did not move. I could not, and Harry and Desiree seemed rooted to the spot with wonder. The thing came closer, and we could see the outlines of its huge form looming up indistinctly against the black background of the cavern.

I saw, or thought I saw, a grotesque and monstrous slimy head stretched toward us from about the middle of its bulk.

That doubt became a certainty when suddenly, as though they had been lit by a fire from within, two luminous, glowing spots appeared about three feet apart. The creature’s eyes—if eyes they were—were turned full on us, growing more brilliant as the thing came closer. It was now less than fifty feet away. The massive form blocked our view of the entire cavern.

I pinched my nostrils to exclude the horrible odor which, like the fumes of some deadly poison, choked and smothered me. It came now in puffs, like a draft of a fetid wind, and I realized that it was the creature’s breath. I could feel it against my body, my neck and face, and knew that if I breathed it full into my lungs I should be overcome.

But still more terrifying were the eyes. There was something compelling, supernaturally compelling, about their steadfast and brilliant gaze. A mysterious power seemed to emanate from them; a power that hypnotized the mind and deadened the senses. I closed my eyes to avoid it, but was unable to keep them closed. They opened despite my extreme effort, and again I met that gaze of fire.

There was a movement at my side. I turned and saw that it came from Desiree. Her hands were raised to her face; she was holding them before her as though in a futile attempt to cover her eyes.

The thing came closer and closer; it was but a few feet away, and still we did not move, as though rooted to the spot by some power beyond our control.

Suddenly there came a cry from Desiree’s lips—a scream of terror and wild fear. Her entire form trembled violently.

She extended her arms toward the thing, now almost upon us, and took a step forward. Her feet dragged unwilling along the ground, as though she were being drawn forward by some irresistible force.

I tried to put out my hand to pull her back, but was absolutely unable to move. Harry stood like a man of rock, immovable.

She took another step forward, with arms outstretched in front of her. A low moan of terror and piteous appeal came from between her slightly parted lips.

Suddenly the eyes disappeared. The huge form ceased to advance and stood perfectly still. Then it began to recede, so slowly that I was barely conscious of the movement.

I was gasping and choking for air; my chest seemed swelling with the poisonous breath. Still slowly the thing receded into the dimness of the cavern; the eyes were no longer to be seen—merely the huge, formless bulk. Desiree had stopped short with one foot advanced, as though hesitating and struggling with the desire to go forward.

The thing now could barely be seen at a distance; it would have been impossible if we had not known it was there. Finally it disappeared, melting away into the semi-darkness; no slightest movement was discernible. I breathed more freely and stepped forward.

As I did so Desiree threw her hands gropingly above her head and fell fainting to the ground.

Harry sprang forward in time to keep her head from striking on the rock and knelt with his arms round her shoulders. We had nothing, not even water, with which to revive her; he called her name aloud appealingly. Soon her eyes opened; she raised her hand and passed it across her brow wonderingly.

“God help me!” she murmured in a low voice, eloquent of distress and pain.

Then she pushed Harry aside and rose slowly to her feet, refusing his assistance.

“In the name of Heaven, what is it?” Harry demanded, turning to me.

“We have found the devil at last,” I answered, with an attempt to laugh, which sounded hollow in my own ears.

Desiree could tell us nothing, except that she had felt herself drawn forward by some strange power that had seemed to come from the baneful, glittering eyes. She was bewildered and stunned and unable to talk coherently. We assisted her to the wall, and she sat there with her back propped against it, breathing heavily from the exhaustion of terror.

“We must find water,” I said, and Harry nodded, hesitating.

I understood him. Danger could not have stayed him nor fear, but the horror of the thing which roamed about the cavern, dark as darkness itself and possessed of some strange power that could not be withstood, was enough to make him pause. For myself it was impossible; I was barely able to stand. So Harry went off alone in search of water and I stayed with Desiree.

It was perhaps half an hour before he returned, and we were shaken with fear for him long before he appeared. When he did so it was with a white face and trembling limbs, in spite of his evident effort at steadiness.

“There is water over there,” said he, pointing across the cavern. “A stream runs across the corner and disappears beneath the wall. There is nothing to carry it in. You must come with me.”

“What has happened?” I asked, for even his voice was unsteady.

“I saw it,” he replied simply, but expressing enough in those three words to cause a shudder to run through me.

Then, speaking in a low tone that Desiree might not hear, he told me that the thing had confronted him suddenly as he was following the opposite wall, and that he, too, had been drawn forward, as it were, by a spell impossible to shake off. He had tried to cry aloud, but had been unable to utter a sound. And suddenly, as before, the eyes had disappeared, leaving him barely able to stand.

“No wonder the Incas wouldn’t follow us in here,” he finished. “We must get out of this. I’m not a coward, but I wouldn’t go through that again for my life.”

“You take Desiree,” said I. “I want that water.”

He led us around the wall several hundred feet. The ground was level and clear of obstruction; but we went slowly, for I could scarcely move. Harry kept his eyes strained intently on all sides; his experience had left him more profoundly impressed even than he had been willing to admit to me.

Soon we heard the low music of running water, and a minute later we reached the stream Harry had found.

The fact that there was something to be done seemed to infuse a new spirit into Desiree, and soon her deft fingers were bathing my wounds and bandaging them as well as her poor material would allow.

The cold water took the heat from my pumping veins and left me almost comfortable. Harry had come off much easier than I, since I had so often sent him ahead with Desiree, and myself brought up the rear and withstood the brunt of the attack.

As Harry had said, the stream cut across a corner of the cavern, disappearing beneath the opposite wall, forming a triangle bound by two sides of the cavern and the stream itself. I saw plainly that it would be impossible for me to move any distance for at least a few days, and that triangle appeared to offer the safest and most comfortable retreat.

I spoke to Harry, and he waded across the stream to try its depth. From the other side he called that the water was at no point more than waist-high, and Desiree and I started to cross; but about the middle I felt the current about to sweep me off my feet. Harry waded in and helped me ashore.

On that hard rock we lay for many weary hours. We had no food; but for that I would soon have been myself again, for, though my wounds were numerous, they were little more than scratches, with the exception of the gash on my shoulder. Weakened as I was by loss of blood, and lacking nourishment, I improved but slowly, and only the cold water kept the fever from me.

Twice Harry went out in search of food and of an exit from the cavern. The first time he was away for several hours, and returned exhausted and empty-handed and without having found any exit other than the one by which we had entered.

He had ventured through that far enough to see a group of Incas on watch at the other end. They had seen him and sprung after him, but he had returned without injury, and at the entrance into the cavern where we lay they had halted abruptly.

The second time he was gone out more than half an hour, and the instant I saw his face when he returned I knew what had happened.

But I was not in the best of humor; his terror appeared to me to be ridiculously childish, and I said so in no uncertain terms.

But he was too profoundly agitated to show any anger.

“You don’t know, you don’t know,” was all he said in answer to me; then he added; “I can’t stand this any longer. I tell you we’ve got to get out of here. You don’t know how awful—”

“Yes,” said Desiree, looking at me.

“But I can scarcely walk,” I objected.

“True,” said Harry. “I know. But we can help you. There must be another exit, and we’ll start now.”

“Very well,” I said quite calmly; and I picked up one of the spears which we had carried with us, and, rising to my knees, placed the butt of the shaft against the wall near which I lay.

But Harry saw my purpose, and was too quick for me. He sprang across and snatched the spear from my hand and threw it on the ground a dozen feet away.

“Are you crazy?” he shouted angrily.

“No,” I answered; “but I am little better, and I doubt if I shall be. Come—why not? I hinder you and become bored with myself.”

“You blame me,” he said bitterly; “but I tell you you don’t know. Very well—we stay. You must give me your promise not to act the fool.”

“In any event, you must go soon,” I answered, “or starve to death. Perhaps in another twenty-four hours I shall be stronger. Come, Desiree; will that satisfy you?”

She did not answer; her back was turned to us as she stood gazing across the stream into the depths of the cavern. There was a curious tenseness in her attitude that made me follow her gaze, and what I saw left me with no wonder at it—a huge, black, indistinct form that moved slowly toward us through the darkness.

Harry caught sight of it at the same moment as myself, and on the instant he turned about, covering his face with his hands, and called to Desiree and me to do likewise.

Desiree obeyed; I had risen to my knees and remained so, gazing straight ahead, ready for a combat if it were not a physical one. I will not say that a certain feeling of dread did not rise in my heart, but I intended to show Desiree and Harry the childishness of their terror.

Nothing could be seen but the uncertain outline of the immense bulk; but the same penetrating, sickening odor that had before all but suffocated me came faintly across the surface of the stream, growing stronger with each second that passed. Suddenly the eyes appeared—two glowing orbs of fire that caught my gaze and held it as with a chain.

I did not attempt to avoid it, but returned the gaze with another as steadfast. I was telling myself: “Let us see this trick and play one stronger.” My nerves centered throbbingly back of my eyes, and I gave them the whole force of my will.

The thing came closer and the eyes seemed to burn into my very brain. With a great effort I brought myself back to control, dropping to my hands and knees and gripping the ground for strength.

“This is nothing, this is nothing,” I kept saying to myself aloud—until I realized suddenly that my voice had risen almost to a scream, and I locked my teeth tight on my lip.

I no longer returned the gaze from my own power; it held me of itself. I felt my brain grow curiously numb and every muscle in my body contracted with a pain almost unbearable. Still the thing came closer and closer, and it seemed to me, half dazed as I was, that it advanced much faster than before.

Then suddenly I felt a sensation of cold and moisture on my arms and legs and a pressure against my body, and I realized, as in a dream, that I had entered the stream of water!

I was crawling toward the thing on my hands and knees, without having even been conscious that I had moved.

That brought despair and a last supreme struggle to resist whatever mysterious power it was that dragged me forward.

Cold beads of sweat rolled from my forehead. Beneath the surface of the water my hands gripped the rocks as in a vise. My teeth had sunk deep into my lower lip and covered my chin with blood, though I did not know that till afterward.

But I was pulled loose from my hold, and forward. I bent the whole force of my will to the effort not to move, but my hand left the rock and crept forward. I was fully conscious of what I was doing. I knew that if I could once draw my eyes away from that compelling gaze the spell would be broken, but the power to do so was not in me.

The thing had halted on the farther bank of the stream. Still I moved forward. The water now lapped against my chest; soon it was about my shoulders.

I was fully conscious of the fact that in another ten feet the surface would close over my head, and that I had not the strength to swim or fight the current; but still I went forward. I tried to cry out, but could force no sound through my lips.

Then suddenly the eyes began to disappear. But that at least was comprehensible, for I could distinctly see the black and heavy lids closing over them, like the curtain on a stage. They fell slowly.

The eyes became half moons, then narrowed to a thin slit. I rose, panting like a man exhausted with extreme and prolonged physical exertion.

The eyes were gone.

A mad impulse rushed into my brain to dash forward and touch the monster, to see if that dim, black form were really a thing of flesh and blood or some contrivance of the devil. I smile at that phrase as I write it now in my study, but I did not smile then. I was standing above my knees in the water, trembling from head to foot, divided between the impulse to go forward and the inclination to flee in terror.

I did neither; I stood still. I could see the thing with a fair amount of distinctness and forced my brain to take the record of my eyes. But I could make nothing of it.

I guessed at rather than saw a hideous head rolling from side to side at the end of a long and sinuous neck, and writhing, reptilian coils lashing the rock at the edge of the water, like the tentacles of an octopus, only many times larger. The body itself was larger than that of any animal I had ever seen, and blacker even than the darkness.

Suddenly the huge mass began to move slowly backward. The sharpness of the odor had ceased with the opening of the eyes, which did not reappear. I could dimly see its huge legs slowly rise and recede and again meet the ground. Soon the thing was barely discernible.

I took a step forward as though to follow; but the strength of the current warned me of the danger of proceeding farther, and, besides, I feared every moment to see the lids again raised from the terrible eyes. The thought attacked my brain with horror, and I turned and fled in a sudden panic to the rear, calling to Harry and Desiree.

They met me at the edge of the stream, and their eyes told me that they read in my face what had happened, though they had seen nothing.

“You—you saw it—” Harry stammered.

I nodded, scarcely able to speak.

“Then—perhaps now—”

“Yes,” I interposed. “Let’s get out of here. It’s horrible. And yet how can we go? I can hardly stand.”

But Harry was now the one who argued for delay, saying that our retreat was the safest place we could find, and that we should wait at least until I had had time to recover from the strain of the last half-hour. Realizing that in my weakened condition I would be a hindrance to them rather than a help, I consented. Besides, if the thing reappeared I could avoid it as Harry and Desiree had done.

“What is it?” Harry asked presently.

We were sitting side by side, well up against the wall. It was an abrupt question, with no apparent pertinence, but I understood.

“Heaven knows!” I answered shortly. I was none too pleased with myself.

“But it must be something. Is it an animal?”

“Do you remember,” I asked by way of answer, “a treatise of Aristotle concerning which we had a discussion one day? Its subject was the hypnotic power possessed by the eyes of certain reptiles. I laughed the idea to scorn; you maintained that it was possible. Well, I agree with you; and I’d like to have about a dozen of our modern skeptical scientists in this cave with me for about five minutes.”

“But what is it? A reptile!” Harry exclaimed. “The thing is as big as a house!”

“Well, and why not? I should guess that it is about thirty feet in height and forty or fifty in length. There have been species, now extinct, several times as large.”

“Then you think it is just—just an animal?” put in Desiree.

“What did you think it was?” I nearly smiled. “An infernal machine?”

“I don’t know. Only I have never before known what it was to fear.”

A discussion which led us nowhere, but at least gave us the sound of one another’s voices.

We passed many hours in that manner. Utterly blank and wearisome, and all but hopeless. I have often wondered at the strange tenacity with which we clung to life in conditions that made of it a burden almost insupportable; and with what chance of relief?

The instinct of self-preservation, it is called by the learned, but it needs a stronger name. It is more than an instinct. It is the very essence of life itself.

But soon we were impelled to action by something besides the desire to escape from the cavern: the pangs of hunger. It had been many hours since we had eaten; I think we had fasted not less than three or four days.

Desiree began to complain of a dizziness in her temples, and to weaken with every hour that passed. My own strength did not increase, and I saw that it would not unless I could obtain nourishment. Harry did not complain, but only because he would not.

“It is useless to wait longer,” I declared finally. “I grow weaker instead of stronger.”

We had little enough with which to burden ourselves. There were three spears, two of which Harry had brought, and myself the other. Harry and I wore only our woolen undergarments, so ragged and torn that they were but sorry covering.

Desiree’s single garment, made from some soft hide, was held about her waist by a girdle of the same material. The upper half of her body was bare. Her hair hung in a tangled mass over her shoulders and down her back. None of us had any covering for our feet.

We crossed the stream, using the spears as staffs; but instead of advancing across the middle of the cavern we turned to the left, hugging the wall. Harry urged us on, saying that he had already searched carefully for an exit on that side, but we went slowly, feeling for a break in the wall. It was absolutely smooth, which led me to believe that the cavern had at one time been filled with water.

We reached the farther wall and, turning to the right, were about to follow it.

“This is senseless,” said Harry impatiently. “I tell you I have examined this side, too; every inch of it.”

“And the one ahead of us, at right angles to this?” I asked.

“That too,” he answered.

“And the other—the one to the right of the stream?”

“No. I—I didn’t go there.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” I demanded.

“Because I didn’t want to,” he returned sullenly. “You can go there if you care to; I don’t. It was from there that—it came.”

I did not answer, but pushed forward, not, however, leaving the wall. Perhaps it was cowardly; you are welcome to the word if you care to use it. Myself, I know.

Another half-hour and we reached the end of the lane by which we had first entered the cavern. We stood gazing at it with eyes of desire, but we knew how little chance there was of the thing being unguarded at the farther end. We knew then, of course, and only too well, why the Incas had not followed us into the cavern.

“Perhaps they are gone,” said Harry. “They can’t stay there forever. I’m going to find out.”

He sprang on the edge of a boulder at the mouth of the passage and disappeared on the other side. In fifteen minutes he returned, and I saw by the expression on his face that there was no chance of escape in that direction.

“They’re at the other end,” he said gloomily; “a dozen of ’em. I looked from behind a rock; they didn’t see me. But we could never get through.”

We turned then, and proceeded to the third wall and followed it. But we really had no hope of finding an exit since Harry had said that he had previously explored it. We were possessed, I know, by the same thought: should we venture to follow the fourth wall? Alone, none of us would have dared; but the presence of the others lessened the fear of each.

Finally we reached it. The corner was a sharp right angle, and there were rifts and crevices in the rock.

“This is limestone,” I said, “and if we find an exit anywhere it will be here.”

I turned to the right and proceeded slowly along the wall, feeling its surface with my hand.

We had advanced in this manner several hundred yards when Desiree suddenly sprang forward to my side.

“See!” she cried, pointing ahead with her spear.

I followed the direction with my eye, and saw what appeared to be a sharp break in the wall.

It was some fifty feet away. We reached it in another moment, and I think none of us would have been able to express the immeasurable relief we felt when we saw before us a broad and clear passage leading directly away from the cavern. It was very dark, but we entered it almost at a run.

I think we had not known the extent of our fear of that thing in the cavern until we found the means of escape from it.

We had gone about a hundred feet when we came to a turn to the left. Harry stumbled against the corner, and we halted for an instant to wait for him.

Then we made the turn, side by side—and then we came to a sudden and abrupt stop, and a simultaneous gasp of terror burst from our lips.

Not three feet in front of us, blocking the passage completely, stood the thing we thought we had escaped!

The terrible, fiery eyes rolled from side to side as they stared straight into our own.

CHAPTER XVIII

A VICTORY AND A CONVERSATION

We stood for a long moment rooted to the spot, unable to move. Then, calling to Harry and grasping Desiree by the arm, I started to turn.

But too late. For Desiree, inspired by a boundless terror, suddenly raised her spear high above her head and hurled it straight at the glowing, flashing eyes.

The point struck squarely between them with such force that it must have sunk clear to the shaft. The head of the monster rolled for an instant from side to side, and then, before I was aware of what had happened, so rapid was the movement, a long, snakelike coil had reached out through the air and twisted itself about Desiree’s body.

As she felt the thing tighten about her waist and legs she gave a scream of terror and twisted her face round toward me. The next instant the snaky tentacle had dragged her along the ground and lifted her to the head of the monster, where her white body could be seen in sharp outline sprawling over its black form, between the terrible eyes.

Harry and I sprang forward.

As we did so the eyes closed and the reptile began to move backward with incredible swiftness, lashing about on the ground before us with other tentacles similar to the one that had captured Desiree.

I cried out to Harry to avoid them. He did not answer, but rushed blindly forward.

Desiree’s agonized shrieks rose to the pitch of madness.

The eyes were closed, leaving but a vague mark for our spears, and besides, there was the danger of striking Desiree. We were barely able to keep pace with the thing as it receded swiftly down the broad passage. Desiree had twisted her body half round, and her face was turned toward us, shadowy as a ghost. Then her head fell forward and hung loosely and her lips were silent. She had fainted.

The thing moved swifter than ever; we were barely able to keep up with it. Harry made a desperate leap forward.

I cried out a warning, but one of the writhing tentacles swept against him and knocked him to the ground. He was up again on the instant and came rushing up from behind.

Suddenly the passage broadened until the walls were no longer visible; we had entered another cavern. I heard the sound of running water somewhere ahead of us. The pace of the reptile had not slackened for an instant.

Harry had again caught up with us, and as he ran at my side I saw him raise his spear aloft; but I caught his arm and held it.

“Desiree!” I panted.

Her body covered the only part of the thing that presented a fair mark. Harry swore, but his arm fell.

“To the side!” he gasped. “We can’t get at it here!”

I saw his meaning and followed at his heels as he swerved suddenly to the right and sprang forward in an attempt to get past the reptile’s head.

But in our eagerness we forgot caution and went too close. I felt one of the snaky tentacles wrap itself round my legs and body, and raised my voice in a warning to Harry, but too late. He, too, was ensnared, and a moment later we had both been lifted bodily from the ground and swung through the air to the side of Desiree. She was still unconscious.

I writhed and twisted desperately, but that muscular coil held me firmly as a band of steel, tight against the huge and hideous head.

Harry was on the other side of Desiree, not three feet from me. I could see his muscles strain and pull in his violent efforts to tear himself free. I had given it up.

But suddenly, quite near my shoulder, I saw the lid suddenly begin to raise itself from one of the terrible eyes. I was almost on top of the thing and a little above it. I turned my head aside and called to Harry.

“The eye!” I gasped. “To your right! The spear! Are your arms free?”

Then as I saw he understood, I turned a quarter of the way round—as far as I could get—and raised my spear the full extent of my arm, and brought it down with every ounce of my strength into the very center of the glowing eye beneath me.

At the same moment I saw Harry’s arm descend and the flash of his spear. The point of my own had sunk until the copper head was completely buried.

I grasped the shaft and pulled and twisted it about until it finally was jerked forth. From the opening it had made there issued a black stream.

Suddenly the body of the reptile quivered convulsively. The head rolled from side to side. There was a quick tightening of the tentacle round my body until my bones felt as though they were being crushed into shapelessness; and as suddenly it loosened.

Other tentacles lashed and beat on the ground furiously. The reptile’s swift backward movement halted jerkily. I made a desperate effort to tear myself free. The tentacle quivered and throbbed violently, and suddenly flew apart like a released spring, and I fell to the ground.

In an instant Harry was at my side, and we both leaped forward with our spears, slashing at the tentacle which still held Desiree in its grasp. Others writhed on the ground about our feet, but feebly. There came a sudden cry from Harry, and his spear clattered on the ground as he opened his arms to receive Desiree’s unconscious body, which came tumbling down with the severed coil still wrapped about it.

But there was life in the reptile’s immense body. It staggered and swayed from side to side in drunken agony. Its monstrous head rolled about, sweeping the air in a prodigious circle. The poison of its breath came to us in great puffs. There was something supremely horrible about the thing in its very helplessness, and I was shuddering violently as I stooped to help Harry lift Desiree from the ground and carry her away.

We did not go far, for we were barely able to carry her. We laid her on the hard rock with her head in Harry’s lap. Her body was limp as a rag.

For many minutes we worked over her, rubbing her temples and wrists, and pressing the nerve centers at the back of the neck, but without effect.

“She is dead,” said Harry with a curious calm.

I shook my head.

“She has a pulse—see! But we must find that water. I think she isn’t injured; it is her weakened condition from the lack of food that keeps her so. Wait for me.”

I started out across the cavern in the direction from which the sound of the water appeared to come, bearing off to the right from the huge, quivering form of the monster whose gigantic body rose and fell on the ground with a force that seemed to shake the very walls of the cavern.

I found the stream with little difficulty, not far away, and returned to Harry. Together we carried Desiree to its edge. The blood was stubborn, and for a long time refused to move, but the cold water at length revived her; her eyes slowly opened, and she raised her hand to her head with a faltering gesture.

But she was extremely weak, and we saw that the end was near unless nourishment could be found for her.

I stayed by her side, with my arms round her shoulders, and Harry set out with one of the spears. He bore off to the left, toward the spot where the body of the immense reptile lay; I was too far away to see it in the darkness.

“It isn’t possible that the thing is fit to eat,” I had objected, and he had answered me with a look which I understood, and was silenced.

Soon a sound as of a scuffle on the rocks came through the darkness from the direction he had taken. I called out to ask if he needed me, but there was no answer. Ten minutes longer I waited, while the sound continued unabated. Once I heard the clatter of his spear on the rock.

I was just rising to my feet to run to the scene when suddenly he appeared in the semidarkness. He was coming slowly, and was dragging along the ground what appeared to be the form of some animal. Another minute and he stood at my side as I sat holding Desiree.

“A peccary!” I cried, bending over the body of the four-footed creature that lay at his feet. “How the deuce did it ever get down here?”

“Peccary—my aunt!” observed Harry, bending down to look at Desiree. “Do peccaries live in the water? Do they have snouts like catfish? This animal is my own invention. There’s about ten million more of ’em over there making a gorgeous banquet off our late lamented friend. And now, let’s see.”

He knelt down by the still warm body and with the point of his spear ripped it open from neck to rump. Desiree stirred about in my arms.

“Gad, that smells good!” cried Harry.

I shuddered.

He dragged the thing a few feet away, and I heard him slashing away at it with his spear. A minute later he came running over to us with his hands full of something.

That was not exactly a pretty meal. How Desiree, in her frightfully weakened condition, ever managed to get the stuff down and keep it there is beyond me. But she did, and I was not behind her. And, after all, it was fresh. Harry said it was “sweet.” Well, perhaps it was.

We bathed Desiree’s hands and face and gave her water to drink, and soon after she passed into a seemingly healthy sleep. There was about ten pounds of meat left. Harry washed it in the stream and stowed it away on a rock beneath the surface of the water. Then he announced his intention of going back for more.

“I’m going with you,” I declared. “Here—help me fix Desiree.”

“Hardly,” said Harry. “Didn’t I say there are millions of those things over there? Anyway, there are hundreds. If they should happen to scatter in this direction and find her, she wouldn’t stand a chance. You take the other spear and stay here.”

So I sat still, with Desiree’s body in my arms, and waited for him. My sensations were not unpleasant. I could actually feel the blood quicken in my veins.

Civilization places the temple of life in the soul or the heart, as she speaks through the mouth of the preacher or the poet; but let civilization go for four or five days without anything to eat and see what happens. The organ is vulgar, but its voice is loud. I need not name it.

In five minutes Harry returned, dragging two more of the creatures at his heels. In half an hour there were a dozen of them lying in a heap at the edge of the water.

“That’s all,” he announced, panting heavily from his exertions. “The rest have taken to the woods, which, I imagine, is quite a journey from here. You ought to see our friend—the one who couldn’t make his eyes behave. They’ve eaten him full of holes. He’s the most awful mess—sickening beast. He didn’t have a bone in him—all crumpled up like an accordion. Utterly spineless.”

“And who, in the name of goodness, do you think is going to eat all that?” I demanded, pointing to the heap of bodies.

Harry grinned.

“I don’t know. I was so excited at the very idea of a square meal that I didn’t know when to stop. I’d give five fingers for a fire and some salt. Just a nickel’s worth of salt. Now, you lie down and sleep while I cut these things up, and then I’ll take a turn at it myself?”

He brought me one of the hides for a pillow, and I lay back as gently as possible that I might not awaken Desiree. Her head and shoulders rested against my body as she lay peacefully sleeping.

I was awakened by Harry’s hand tugging at my arm. Rising on my elbows, I demanded to know how long I had slept.

“Six or seven hours,” said Harry. “I waited as long as I could. Keep a lookout.”

Desiree stirred uneasily, but seemed to be still asleep. I sat up, rubbing my eyes. The heap of bodies had disappeared; no wonder Harry was tired! I reproached myself for having slept so long.

Harry had arranged himself a bed that was really comfortable with the skins of his kill.

“That is great stuff,” I heard him murmur wearily; then all was still.

I sat motionless, stiff and numb, but afraid to move for fear of disturbing Desiree.

Presently she stirred again, and, bending over her, I saw her eyes slowly open. They met my own with a curious, steadfast gaze—she was still half asleep.

“Is that you, Paul?” she murmured.

“Yes.”

“I am glad. I seem to feel—what is it?”

“I don’t know, Desiree. What do you mean?”

“Nothing—nothing. Oh, it feels so good—good—to have you hold me like this.”

“Yes?” I smiled.

“But, yes. Where is Harry?”

“Asleep. Are you hungry?”

“Yes—no. Not now. I don’t know why. I want to talk. What has happened?”

I told her of everything that had occurred since she had swooned; she shuddered as memory returned, but forgot herself in my attempt at a humorous description of Harry’s valor as a hunter of food.

“You don’t need to turn up your nose,” I retorted to her expressive grimace; “you ate some of the stuff yourself.”

There was a silence; then suddenly Desiree’s voice came:

“Paul—” She hesitated and stopped.

“Yes.”

“What do you think of me?”

“Do you want a lengthy review?” I smiled.

What a woman she was! Under those circumstances, and amid those surroundings, she was still Desiree Le Mire.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said. “I want to know. I have never spoken of what I did that time in the cavern—you know what I mean. I am sorry now. I suppose you despise me.”

“But you did nothing,” I objected. “And you wouldn’t. You were merely amusing yourself.”

She turned on me quickly with a flash of her old fire.

“Don’t play with me!” she burst out. “My friend, you have never yet given me a serious word.”

“Nor any one else,” I answered. “My dear Desiree, do you not know that I am incapable of seriousness? Nothing in the world is worth it.”

“At least, you need not pretend,” she retorted. “I meant once for you to die. You know it. And since you pretend not to understand me, I ask you—these are strange words from my lips—will you forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive.”

“My friend, you are becoming dull. An evasive answer should always be a witty one. Must I ask you again?”

“That—depends,” I answered, hardly knowing what to say.

“On—”

“On whether or not you were serious, once upon a time, when you made a—shall we call it a confession? If you were, I offended you in my own conceit, but let us be frank. I thought you were acting, and I played my role. I do not yet believe that you were; I am not conceited enough to think it possible.”

“I do not say,” Desiree began; then she stopped and added hastily: “But that is past. I shall not tell you that again. Perhaps I forgot myself. Perhaps it was a pretty play. You have not answered me.”

I looked at her. Strange and terrible as her experiences and sufferings had been, she had lost little of her beauty. Her face was rendered only the more delicate by its pallor. Her white and perfect body, only half seen in the half-darkness, conveyed a sense of the purest beauty with no hint of immodesty.

But I was moved not by what I saw, but by what I knew. I had admired her always as Le Mire; but her bravery, her hardihood, her sympathy for others under circumstances when any other woman would have been thinking only of herself—had these awakened in my breast a feeling stronger than admiration?

I did not know. But my voice trembled a little as I said: “I need not answer you, Desiree. I repeat that there is nothing to forgive. You sought revenge, then sacrificed it; but still revenge is yours.”

She looked at me for a moment in silence, then said slowly: “I do not understand you.”

For reply I took her hand in my own from where it lay idly on my knee, and, carrying it to my lips, pressed a long kiss on the top of each of the slender white fingers. Then I held the hand tight between both of mine as I asked simply, looking into her eyes:

“Do you understand me now?”

Another silence.

“My revenge,” she breathed.

I nodded and again pressed her hand to my lips.

“Yes, Desiree. We are not children. I think we know what we mean. But you have not told me. Did you mean what you said that day on the mountain?”

“Ah, I thought that was a play!” she murmured.

“Tell me! Did you mean it?”

“I never confess the same sin twice, my friend.”

“Desiree, did you mean it?”

Then suddenly, with the rapidity of lightning, her manner changed. She bent toward me with parted lips and looked straight into my eyes. There was passion in the gaze; but when she spoke her voice was quite even and so low I scarcely heard.

“Paul,” she said, “I shall not again say I love you. Such words should not be wasted. Not now, perhaps; but that is because we are where we are. And if we should return?

“You have said that nothing is worth a serious word to you; and you are right. You are too cynical; things are bitter in your mouth, and doubly so when they leave it. Just now you are amusing yourself by pretending to care for me. Perhaps you do not know it, but you are. Search your heart, my friend, and tell me—do you want my love?”

Well, there was no need to search my heart, she had laid it open. I hated myself then; and I turned away, unable to meet her eyes, as I said:

“Bon Dieu!” she cried. “That is an ugly speech, monsieur!” And she laughed aloud.

“But we must not awaken Harry,” she continued with sudden softness. “What a boy he is—and what a man! Ah, he knows what it is to love!”

That topic suited me little better, but I followed her. We talked of Harry, Le Mire with an amount of enthusiasm that surprised me. Suddenly she stopped abruptly and announced that she was hungry.

I found Harry’s pantry after a few minutes’ search and took some of its contents to Desiree. Then I returned to the edge of the water and ate my portion alone. That meal was one scarcely calculated for the pleasures of companionship or conviviality.

It was several hours after that before Harry awoke, the greater part of which Desiree and I were silent.

I would have given something to have known her thoughts; my own were not very pleasant. It is always a disagreeable thing to discover that some one else knows you better than you know yourself. And Desiree had cut deep. At the time I thought her unjust; time alone could have told which of us was right. If she were here with me now—but she is not.

Finally Harry awoke. He was delighted to find Desiree awake and comparatively well, and demonstrated the fact with a degree of effusion that prompted me to leave them alone together. But I did not go far; a hundred paces made me sit down to rest before returning, so weak was I from wounds and fasting.

Harry’s spirits were high, for no apparent reason other than that we were still alive, for that was the best that could be said for us. So I told him; he retorted with a hearty clap on the back that sent me sprawling to the ground.

“What the deuce!” he exclaimed, stooping to help me up. “Are you as weak as that? Gad, I’m sorry!”

“That is the second fall he has had,” said Desiree, with a meaning smile.

Indeed, she was having her revenge!

But my strength was not long in returning. Over a long stretch our diet would hardly have been conducive to health, but it was exactly what I needed to put blood and strength in me. And Harry and Desiree, too, for that matter.

Again I had to withstand Harry’s eager demands for action. He began within two hours to insist on exploring the cave, and would hardly take a refusal.

“I won’t stir a foot until I am able to knock you down,” I declared finally and flatly. “Never again will I attempt to perform the feats of a Hercules when I am fit only for an invalid’s chair.” And he was forced to wait.

As I say, however, my strength was not long in returning, and when it started it came with a rush. My wounds were healing perfectly; only one remained open. Harry, with his usual phenomenal luck, had got nothing but the merest scratches.

Desiree improved very slowly. The strain of those four days in the cavern had been severe, and her nerves required more pleasant surroundings than a dark and damp cavern and more agreeable diet than raw meat, to adjust themselves.

Thus it was that when Harry and I found ourselves ready to start out to explore the cavern and, if possible, find an exit on the opposite side from the one where we had entered, we left Desiree behind, seated on a pile of skins, with a spear on the ground at her side.

“We’ll be back in an hour,” said Harry, stooping to kiss her; and the phrase, which might have come from the lips of a worthy Harlem husband leaving for a little sojourn with friends on the corner, brought a smile to my face.

We went first toward the spot where lay the remains of “our friend with the eyes,” as Harry called him, and we were guided straight by our noses, for the odor of the thing was beginning to be—to use another phrase of Harry’s—“most awful vile.”

There was little to see except a massive pile of crumpled hide and sinking flesh. As we approached, several hundred of the animals with which Harry had filled our larder scampered away toward the water.

“They’re not fighters,” I observed, turning to watch them disappear in the darkness.

“No,” Harry agreed. “See here,” he added suddenly, holding up a piece of the hide of the reptile; “this stuff is an inch thick and tough as rats. It ought to be good for something.”

But by that time I was pinching my nostrils with my fingers, and I pulled him away.

Several hundred yards farther on we came to the wall of the cavern. We followed it, turning to the right; but though it was uneven and marked by projecting boulders and deep crevices, we found no exit. We had gone at least half a mile, I think, when we came to the end. There it turned in a wide circle to the right, and we took the new direction, which was toward the spot where we had left Desiree, only considerably to the left.

Another five minutes found us at the edge of the stream, which at that point was much swifter than it was farther up. We waded in and discovered that the cause was its extreme narrowness.

“But where does the thing go to?” asked Harry, taking the words from my mouth.

We soon found out. Proceeding along the bank to the left, within fifty feet we came to the wall. There the stream entered and disappeared. But, unlike the others we had seen, above this there was a wide and high arch, which made it appear as though the stream were passing under a massive bridge. The current was swift but not turbulent, and there was something about the surface of that stream flowing straight through the mountain ahead of us—

Harry and I glanced at each other quickly, moved by the same thought. There was an electric thrill in that glance.

But we did not speak—then.

For suddenly, startlingly, a voice sounded throughout the cavern—Desiree’s voice, raised in a shrill cry of terror.

It was repeated twice before our startled senses found themselves; then we turned with one impulse and raced into the darkness toward her.

CHAPTER XIX

AFLOAT

As we ran swiftly, following the edge of the stream, the cries continued, filling the cavern with racing echoes. They could not quicken our step; we were already straining every muscle as we bounded over the rock. Luckily, the way was clear, for in the darkness we could see but a few feet ahead. Desiree’s voice was sufficient guide for us.

Finally we reached her. I don’t know what I expected to see, but certainly not that which met our eyes.

“Your spear!” cried Harry, dashing off to the right, away from the stream.

My spear was ready. I followed.

Desiree was standing exactly in the spot where we had left her, screaming at the top of her voice.

Around her, on every side, was a struggling, pushing mass of the animals we had frightened away from the carcass of the reptile. There were hundreds of them packed tightly together, crowding toward her, some leaping on the backs of others, some trampled to the ground beneath the feet of their fellows. They did not appear to be actually attacking her, but we could not see distinctly.

This we saw in a flash and an instant later had dashed forward into the mass with whirling spears. It was a farce, rather than a fight.

We brought our spears down on the swarm of heads and backs without even troubling to take aim. They pressed against our legs; we waded through as though it were a current of water. Those we hit either fell or ran; they waited for no second blow.

Desiree had ceased her cries.

“They won’t hurt you!” Harry had shouted. “Where’s your spear?”

“Gone. They came on me before I had time to get it.”

“Then kick ’em, push ’em—anything. They’re nothing but pigs.”

They had the senseless stubbornness of pigs, at least. They seemed absolutely unable to realize that their presence was not desired till they actually felt the spear—utterly devoid even of instinct.

“So this is what you captured for us at the risk of your life!” I shouted to Harry in disgust. “They haven’t even sense enough to squeal.”

We finally reached Desiree’s side and cleared a space round her. But it took us another fifteen minutes of pushing and thrusting and indiscriminate massacre before we routed the brutes. When they did decide to go they lost no time, but scampered away toward the water with a sliding, tumbling rush.

“Gad!” exclaimed Harry, resting on his spear. “And here’s a pretty job. Look at that! I wish they’d carry off the dead ones.”

“Ugh! The nasty brutes! I was never so frightened in my life,” said Desiree.

“You frightened us, all right,” Harry retorted. “Utterly fungoed. I never ran so fast in my life. And all you had to do was shake your spear at ’em and say boo! I thought it was the roommate of our friend with the eyes.”

“Have I been eating those things?” Desiree demanded.

Harry grinned.

“Yes, and that isn’t all. You’ll continue to eat ’em as long as I’m the cook. Come on, Paul; it’s a day’s work.”

We dragged the bodies down to the edge of the stream and tossed them into the current, saving three or four for the replenishment of the larder.

I then first tried my hand at the task of skinning and cleaning them, and by the time I had finished was thoroughly disgusted with it and myself. Harry had become hardened to it; he whistled over the job as though he had been born in a butcher’s shop.

“I’d rather go hungry,” I declared, washing my hands and arms in the cool water.

“Oh, sure,” said Harry; “my efforts are never appreciated. I’ve fed you up till you’ve finally graduated from the skeleton class, and you immediately begin to criticize the table. I know now what it means to run a boarding-house. Why don’t you change your hotel?”

By the time we had finished we were pretty well tired out, but Harry wouldn’t hear of rest. I was eager myself for another look at the exit of that stream. So, again taking up our spears, we set out across the cavern, this time with Desiree between us. She swallowed Harry’s ridicule of her fear and refused to stay behind.

Again we stood at the point where the stream left the cavern through the broad arch of a tunnel.

“There’s a chance there,” said Harry, turning to me. “It looks good.”

“Yes, if we had a boat,” I agreed. “But that’s a ten-mile current, and probably deep.”

I waded out some twenty feet and was nearly swept beneath the surface as the water circled about my shoulders.

“We couldn’t follow that on our feet,” I declared, returning to the shore. “But it does look promising. At ten miles an hour we’d reach the western slope in four hours. Four hours to sunshine—but it might as well be four hundred. It’s impossible.”

We turned then and retraced our steps to our camp, if I may give it so dignified a title. I hated to give up the idea of following the bed of the stream, for it was certain that somewhere it found the surface of the earth, and I revolved in my brain every conceivable means to do so. The same thought was in Harry’s mind, for he turned to me suddenly:

“If we only had something for stringers, I could make a raft that would carry us to the Pacific and across it. The hide of that thing over yonder would be just the stuff, and we could get a piece as big as we wanted.”

I shook my head.

“I thought of that. But we have absolutely nothing to hold it. There wasn’t a bone in his body; you know that.”

But the idea was peculiarly tempting, and we spent an hour discussing it. Desiree was asleep on her pile of skins. We sat side by side on the ground some distance away, talking in low tones.

Suddenly there was a loud splash in the stream, which was quite close to us.

“By gad!” exclaimed Harry, springing to his feet. “Did you hear that? It sounded like—remember the fish we pulled in from the Inca’s raft?”

“Which has nothing to do with this,” I answered. “It’s nothing but the water-pigs. I’ve heard ’em a thousand times in the last few days. And the Lord knows we have enough of them.”

But Harry protested that the splash was much too loud to have been caused by any water-pig and waded into the stream to investigate. I rose to my feet and followed him leisurely, for no reason in particular, but was suddenly startled by an excited cry from his lips:

“Paul—the spear! Quick! It’s a whale!”

I ran as swiftly as I could to the shore and returned with our spears, but when I reached Harry he greeted me with an oath of disappointment and the information that the “whale” had disappeared. He was greatly excited.

“I tell you he was twenty feet long! A big black devil, with a head like a cow.”

“You’re sure it wasn’t like a pig?” I asked skeptically.

Harry looked at me.

“I have drunk nothing but water for a month,” he said dryly. “It was a fish, and some fish.”

“Well, there’s probably more like him,” I observed. “But they can wait. Come on and get some sleep, and then—we’ll see.”

Some hours afterward, having filled ourselves with sleep and food (I had decided, after mature deliberation, not to change my hotel), we started out, armed with our spears. Desiree accompanied us. Harry told her bluntly that she would be in the way, but she refused to stay behind.

We turned upstream, thinking our chances better in that direction than toward the swifter current, and were surprised to find that the cavern was much larger than any we had before seen. In something over a mile we had not yet reached the farther wall, for we walked at a brisk pace for a quarter of an hour or more.

At this point the stream was considerably wider than it was below, and there was very little current. Desiree stood on the bank while Harry and I waded out above our waists.

There was a long and weary wait before anything occurred. The water was cold, and my limbs became stiff and numb; I called to Harry that it was useless to wait longer, and was turning toward the shore when there was a sudden commotion in the water not far from where he stood.

I turned and saw Harry plunge forward with his spear.

“I’ve got him!” he yelled. “Come on!”

I went. But I soon saw that Harry didn’t have him. He had Harry. They were all of ten yards away from me, and by the time I reached the spot there was nothing to be seen but flying water thrashed into foam and fury.

I caught a glimpse of Harry being jerked through the air; he was holding on for dear life with both hands to the shaft of his spear. The water was over my head there; I was swimming with all the strength I had.

“I’ve got him—through the belly,” Harry gasped as I fought my way through the spray to his side. “His head! Find his head!”

I finally succeeded in getting my hand on Harry’s spear-shaft near where it entered the body of the fish; but the next instant it was jerked from me, dragging me beneath the surface. I came up puffing and made another try, but missed it by several feet.

Harry kept shouting: “His head! Get him in the head!”

For that I was saving my spear. But I could make nothing of either head or tail as the immense fish leaped furiously about in the water, first this way, then that.

Once he came down exactly on top of me and carried me far under; I felt his slippery, smooth body glide over me, and the tail struck me a heavy blow in the face as it passed. Blinded and half choked, I fought my way back to the surface and saw that they had got fifty feet away.

I swam to them, breathing hard and nearly exhausted. The water foamed less furiously about them now. As I came near the fish leaped half out of the water and came down flat on his side; I saw his ugly black head pointed directly toward me.

“He’s about gone!” Harry gasped.

He was still clinging to the spear.

I set myself firmly against the water and waited. Soon it parted violently not ten feet in front of me, and again the head appeared; he was coming straight for me. I could see the dull beady eyes on either side, and I let him have the spear right between them.

There was little force to the blow, but the fish himself furnished that; he was coming like lightning. I hurled my body aside with a great effort and felt him sweep past me.

I turned to swim after them and heard Harry’s great shout: “You got him!”

By the time I reached him the fish had turned over on his back and was floating on the surface, motionless.

We had still to get him ashore, and, exhausted as we were, it was no easy task. But there was very little current, and after half an hour of pulling and shoving we got him into shallow water, where we could find the bottom with our feet. Then it was easier. Desiree waded out to us and lent a hand, and in another ten minutes we had him high and dry on the rock.

He was even larger than I had thought. No wonder Harry had called him—or one like him—a whale. It was all of fifteen feet from his snout to the tip of his tail. The skin was dead black on top and mottled irregularly on the belly.

As we sat sharpening the points of our spears on the rock, preparatory to skinning him, Desiree stood regarding the fish with unqualified approval. She turned to us:

“Well, I’d rather eat that than those other nasty things.”

“Oh, that isn’t what we want him for,” said Harry, rubbing his finger against the edge of his spear-point. “He’s probably not fit to eat.”

“Then why all this trouble?” asked Desiree.

“Dear lady, we expect to ride him home,” said Harry, rising to his feet.

Then he explained our purpose, and you may believe that Desiree was the most excited of the lot as we ripped down the body of the fish from tail to snout and began to peel off the tough skin.

“If you succeed you may choose the new hangings for my boudoir,” she said, with an attempt at lightness not altogether successful.

“As for me,” I declared, “I shall eat fish every day of my life out of pure gratitude.”

“You’ll do it out of pure necessity,” Harry put in, “if you don’t get busy.”

It took us three hours of whacking and slashing and tearing to pull the fish to pieces, but we worked with a purpose and a will. When we had finished, this is what we had to show: A long strip of bone, four inches thick and twelve feet long, and tough as hickory, from either side of which the smaller bones projected at right angles. They were about an inch in thickness and two inches apart. The lower end of the backbone, near the tail, we had broken off.

We examined it and lifted it and bent it half double.

“Absolutely perfect!” Harry cried in jubilation. “Three more like this and we’ll sail down the coast to Callao.”

“If we can get ’em,” I observed. “But two would do. We could make it a triangle.”

Harry looked at me.

“Paul, you’re an absolute genius. But would it be big enough to hold us?”

We discussed that question on our way back to camp, whither we carried the backbone of our fish, together with some of the meat. Then, after a hearty meal, we slept. After seven hours of the hardest kind of work we were ready for it.

That was our program for the time that followed—time that stretched into many weary hours, for, once started, we worked feverishly, so impatient had we become by dint of that faint glimmer of hope. We were going to try to build a raft, on which we were going to try to embark on the stream, by which we were going to try to find our way out of the mountain. The prospect made us positively hilarious, so slender is the thread by which hope jerks us about.

The first part of our task was the most strenuous. We waited and waded round many hours before another fish appeared, and then he got away from us. Another attempt was crowned with success after a hard fight. The second one was even larger than the first.

The next two were too small to be of use in the raft, but we saved them for another purpose. Then, after another long search, lasting many hours, we ran into half a dozen of them at once.

By that time we were fairly expert with our spears, besides having discovered their vulnerable spot—the throat, just forward from the gills. To this day I don’t know whether or not they were man-eaters. Their jaws were roomy and strong as those of any shark; but they never closed on us.

Thus we had four of the large backbones and two smaller ones. Next we wanted a covering, and for that purpose we visited the remains of the reptile which had first led us into the cavern.

Its hide was half an inch thick and tough as the toughest leather. There was no difficulty in loosening it, for by that time the flesh was so decayed and sunken that it literally fell off. That job was the worst of all.

Time and again, after cutting away with the points of our spears—our only tools—until we could stand it no longer, we staggered off to the stream like drunken men, sick and faint with the sight and smell of the mess.

But that, too, came to an end, and finally we marched off to the camp, which we had removed a half-mile upstream, dragging after us a piece of the hide about thirty feet long and half as wide. It was not as heavy as we had thought, which made it all the better for our purpose.

The remainder of our task, though tedious, was not unpleasant.

We first made the larger bones, which were to serve as the beams of our raft, exactly the same length by filing off the ends of the longer ones with rough bits of granite. I have said it was tedious. Then we filed off each of the smaller bones projecting from the neural arch until they were of equal length.

They extended on either side about ten inches, which, allowing four inches for the width of the larger bone and one inch for the covering, would make our raft slightly over a foot in depth.

To make the cylindrical column rigid, we bound each of the vertebrae to the one in direct juxtaposition on either side firmly with strips of hide, several hundred feet of which we had prepared.

This gave us four beams held straight and true, without any play in either direction, with only a slight flexibility resulting from the cartilages within the center cord.

With these four beams we formed a square, placing them on their edges, end to end. At each corner of the square we lashed the ends together firmly with strips of hide. It was both firm and flexible after we had lashed the corners over and over with the strips, that there might be no play under the strain of the current.

Over this framework we stretched the large piece of hide so that the ends met on top, near the middle. The bottom was thus absolutely watertight. We folded the corners in and caught them up with strips over the top. Then, with longer strips, we fastened up the sides, passing the strips back and forth across the top, from side to side, having first similarly secured the two ends. As a final precaution, we passed broader strips around both top and bottom, lashing them together in the center of the top. And there was our raft, twelve feet square, over a foot deep, water-tight as a town drunkard, and weighing not more than a hundred pounds. It has taken me two minutes to tell it; it took us two weeks to do it.

But we discovered immediately that the four beams on the sides and ends were not enough, for Desiree’s weight alone caused the skin to sag clear through in the center, though we had stretched it as tightly as possible. We were forced to unlash all the strips running from side to side and insert supports, made of smaller bones, across the middle each way. These we reinforced on their ends with the thickest hide we could find, that they might not puncture the bottom. After that it was fairly firm; though its sea-worthiness was not improved, it was much easier to navigate than it would have been before.

For oars we took the lower ends of the backbones of the two smaller fish and covered them with hide. They were about five feet long and quite heavy; but we intended to use them more for the purpose of steering than for propulsion. The current of the stream would attend to that for us.

Near the center of the raft we arranged a pile of the skins of the water-pigs for Desiree; a seat by no means uncomfortable. The strips which ran back and forth across the top afforded a hold as security against the tossing of the craft; but for her feet we arranged two other strips to pass over her ankles what time she rested. This was an extreme precaution, for we did not expect the journey to be a long one.

Finally we loaded on our provisions—about thirty pounds of the meat of the fish and water-pigs, wrapping it securely in two or three of the skins and strapping them firmly to the top.

“And now,” said I, testing the strips on the corners for the last time, “all we need is a name for her and a bottle of wine.”

“And a homeward-bound pennant,” put in Harry.

“The name is easy enough,” said Desiree. “I hereby christen her Clarte du Soleil.”

“Which means?” asked Harry, whose French came only in spots.

“Sunshine,” I told him. “Presumably after the glorious King of the Incas, who calls himself the Child of the Sun. But it’s a good name. May Heaven grant that it takes us there!”

“I think we ought to take more grub,” said Harry—an observation which he had made not less than fifty times in the preceding fifty minutes. He received no support and grumbled to himself something about the horrible waste of leaving so much behind.

Why it was I don’t know, but we were fully persuaded that we were about to say good-by forever to this underground world and its dangers. Somehow, we had coaxed ourselves into the belief that success was certain; it was as though we had seen the sunlight streaming in from the farther end of the arched tunnel into which the stream disappeared. There was an assurance about the words of each that strengthened this feeling in the others, and hope had shut out all thought of failure as we prepared to launch our craft.

It took us some time to get it to the edge of the water, though it was close by, for we handled it with extreme care, that it might not be torn on the rocks. Altogether, with the provisions, it weighed close to one hundred and fifty pounds.

We were by no means sure that the thing would carry us, and when once we had reached the water we forgot caution in our haste to try it. We held it at the edge while Desiree arranged herself on the pile of skins. The spears lay across at her feet, strapped down for security.

Harry stepped across to the farther edge of the raft.

“Ready!” he called, and I shoved off, wading behind. When the water was up to my knees I climbed aboard and picked up my oar.

“By all the nine gods, look at her!” cried Harry in huge delight. “She takes about three inches! Man, she’d carry an army!”

“Allons!” cried Desiree, with gay laughter. “C’est Perfection!”

“Couldn’t be better,” I agreed; “but watch yourself, Hal. When we get into the current things are going to begin to happen. If it weren’t for the beastly darkness ’twould be easy enough. As it is, one little rock the size of your head could send us to the bottom.”

We were still near the bank, working our way out slowly. Harry and I had to maintain positions equidistant from the center in order to keep the raft balanced; hence I had to push her out alone.

Considering her bulk, she answered to the oar very well.

Another five minutes and we were near the middle of the stream. At that point there was but little current and we drifted slowly. Harry went to the bow, while I took up a position on the stern—if I may use such terms for such a craft—directly behind Desiree. We figured that we were then about a mile from the Point where the stream left the cavern.

Gradually, as the stream narrowed, the strength of the current increased. Still it was smooth, and the raft sailed along without a tremor. Once or twice, caught by some trick of the current, she turned half round, poking her nose ahead, but she soon righted herself.

The water began to curl up on the sides as we were carried more and more swiftly onward, with a low murmur that was music to us. The stream became so narrow that we could see the bank on either side, though dimly, and I knew we were approaching the exit.

I called to Harry: “Keep her off to the right as we make the turn!” and he answered: “Aye, aye, sir!” with a wave of the hand. This, at least, was action with a purpose.

Another minute and we saw the arch directly ahead of us, round a bend in the stream. The strength of the current carried us toward the off bank, but we plied our oars desperately and well, and managed to keep fairly well in to the end of the curve.

We missed the wall of the tunnel—black, grim rock that would have dashed out our brains—by about ten feet, and were swept forward under the arch, on our way—so we thought—to the land of sunshine.

CHAPTER XX

AN INCA SPEAR

Here I might most appropriately insert a paragraph on the vanity of human wishes and endeavor. But events, they say, speak for themselves; and still, for my own part, I prefer the philosopher to the historian. Mental digestion is a wearisome task; you are welcome to it.

To the story. As I have said, we missed the wall of the tunnel by a scant ten feet, and we kept on missing it. Once under the arch, our raft developed a most stubborn inclination to bump up against the rocky banks instead of staying properly in the middle of the current, as it should.

First to one side, then to the other, it swung, while Harry and I kept it off with our oars, often missing a collision by inches. But at least the banks were smooth and level, and as long as the stream itself remained clear of obstruction there was but little real danger.

The current was not nearly so swift as I had expected it would be. In the semidarkness it was difficult to calculate our rate of speed, but I judged that we were moving at about six or seven miles an hour.

We had gone perhaps three miles when we came to a sharp bend in the stream, to the left, almost at a right angle. Harry, at the bow, was supposed to be on the lookout, but he failed to see it until we were already caught in its whirl.

Then he gave a cry of alarm, and together we swung the raft to the left, avoiding the right bank of the curve by less than a foot. Once safely past, I sent Harry to the stern and took the bow myself, which brought down upon him a deal of keen banter from Desiree.

There the tunnel widened, and the raft began to glide easily onward, without any of its sudden dashes to right or left. I rested on my oar, gazing intently ahead; at the best I could make out the walls a hundred yards ahead, and but dimly. All was silence, save the gentle swish of the water against the sides of the raft and the patter of Harry’s oar dipping idly on one side or the other.

Suddenly Desiree’s voice came through the silence, soft and very low:

“Pendant une anne’ toute entiere,

Le regiment na Pas r’paru.

Au Ministere de la Guerre

On le r’porta comme perdu.

“On se r’noncait a r’trouver sa trace,

Quand un matin subitement,

On le vit r’paraitre sur la place

L’Colonel toujours en avant.”

I waited until the last note had died away in the darkness.

“Are those your thoughts?” I asked then, half turning.

“No,” said Desiree, “but I want to kill my thoughts. As for them—”

She hesitated, and after a short pause her voice again broke into melody:

“Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail

That brings our friends up from the underworld;

Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.”

Her voice, subdued and low, breathed a sweetness that seemed almost to be of another world. My ear quivered with the vibrations, and long after she was silent the last mellow note floated through my brain.

Suddenly I became conscious of another sound, scarcely less musical. It, too, was low; so low and faint that at first I thought my ear deceived me, or that some distant echo was returning Desiree’s song down the dark tunnel.

Gradually, very gradually, it became louder and clearer, until at length I recognized it. It was the rush of water, unbroken, still low and at a great distance. I turned to remark on it to Harry, but Desiree took the words from my mouth.

“I seem to hear something—like the surf,” she said. “That isn’t possible, is it?”

I could have smiled but for the deep note of hope in her voice.

“Hardly,” I answered. “I have heard it for several minutes. It is probably some shallows. We must look sharp.”

Another fifteen minutes, and I began to notice that the speed of the current was increasing. The sound of the rushing water, too, was quite distinct. Still the raft moved more and more swiftly, till I began to feel alarmed. I turned to Harry:

“That begins to sound like rapids. See that the spears are fastened securely, and stand ready with your oar. Sit tight, Desiree.”

One thing was certain: there was nothing to do but go ahead. On both sides the walls of the tunnel rose straight up from the surface of the water; there was nowhere room for a landing-place—not even a foot for a purchase to stay our flight. To go back was impossible; at the rate the current was now carrying us we could not have held the raft even for a moment without oars.

Soon we were gliding forward so swiftly that the raft trembled under us; from the darkness ahead came the sound of the rapids, now increased to a roar that filled the tunnel and deafened us. I heard Harry shouting something, but could not make out the words; we were shooting forward with the speed of an express train and the air about us was full of flying water.

The roar of the rapids became louder and louder. I turned for an instant, shouting at the top of my voice: “Flat on your faces, and hold on for dear life!” Then I dropped down with my oar under me, passing my feet under two of the straps and clinging to two others with my hands.

Another few seconds passed that seemed an hour. The raft was swaying and lurching with the mad force of the current. I called out again to Harry and Desiree, but my words were completely drowned by the deafening, stunning roar of the water. All was darkness and confusion. I kept asking myself: “Why doesn’t it come?” It seemed an age since I had thrown myself on my face.

Suddenly the raft leaped up under me and away. It seemed as though some giant hand had grasped it from beneath and jerked it down with tremendous force. The air was filled with water, lashing my face and body furiously. The raft whirled about like a cork. I gripped the straps with all the strength that was in me. Down, down we went into the darkness; my breath was gone and my brain whirled dizzily.

There was a sudden sharp lurch, a jerk upward, and I felt the surface of the water close over me. Blinded and dazed, I clung to my hold desperately, struggling with the instinct to free myself. For several seconds the roar of the cataract sounded in my ears with a furious faintness, as though it were at a great distance; then I felt the air again and a sudden cessation of motion.

I opened my eyes, choking and sputtering. For a time I could see nothing; then I made out Desiree’s form, and Harry’s, stretched behind me on the raft. At the same instant Harry’s voice came:

“Paul! Ah, Desiree!”

In another moment we were at her side. Her hands held to the straps on each side with a grip as of death; we had to pry off each of her fingers separately to loosen them. Then we bent her over Harry’s knee and worked her arms up and down, and soon her chest heaved convulsively and her lungs freed themselves of the water they had taken. Presently she turned about; her eyes opened and she pressed her hands to her head.

“Don’t say ‘Where am I?’” said Harry, “because we don’t know. How do you feel?”

“I don’t know,” she answered, still gasping for breath. “What was it? What did we do?”

I left them then, turning to survey the extent of our damage. There was absolutely none; we were as intact as when we started. The provisions and spears remained under their straps; my oar lay where I had fallen on it. The raft appeared to be floating easily as before, without a scratch.

The water about us was churned into foam, though we had already been carried so far from the cataract that it was lost behind us in the darkness; only its roar reached our ears. To this day I haven’t the faintest idea of its height; it may have been ten feet or two hundred. Harry says a thousand.

We were moving slowly along on the surface of what appeared to be a lake, still carried forward by the force of the falls behind us. For my part, I found its roar bewildering and confusing, and I picked up my oar and commenced to paddle away from it; at least, so I judged.

Harry’s voice came from behind:

“In the name of goodness, where did you get that oar?”

I turned.

“Young man, a good sailor never loses an oar. How do you feel, Desiree?”

“Like a drowned rat,” she answered, but with a laugh in her voice. “I’m faint and sick and wet, and my throat is ready to burst, but I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. It was glorious! I’d like to do it again.”

“Yes, you would,” said Harry skeptically. “You’re welcome, thank you. But what I want to know is, where did that oar come from?”

I explained that I had taken the precaution to fall on it.

“Do you never lose your head?” asked Desiree.

“No, merely my heart.”

“Oh, as for that,” she retorted, with a lightness that still had a sting, “my good friend, you never had any.”

Whereupon I returned to my paddling in haste.

Soon I discovered that though, as I have said, we appeared to be in a lake—for I could see no bank on either side—there was still a current. We drifted slowly, but our movement was plainly perceptible, and I rested on my oar.

Presently a wall loomed up ahead of us and I saw that the stream again narrowed down as it entered the tunnel, much lower than the one above the cataract. The current became swifter as we were carried toward its mouth, and I called to Harry to get his spear to keep us off from the walls if it should prove necessary. But we entered exactly in the center and were swept forward with a rush.

The ceiling of the tunnel was so low that we could not stand upright on the raft, and the stream was not more than forty feet wide. That was anything but promising; if the stream really ran through to the western slope, its volume of water should have been increasing instead of diminishing. I said nothing of that to Harry or Desiree.

We had sailed along thus without incident for upward of half an hour, when my carelessness, or the darkness, nearly brought us to grief. Suddenly, without warning, there was a violent jar and the raft rebounded with a force that all but threw us into the water. Coming to a bend in the stream, the current had dashed us against the other bank.

But, owing to the flexibility of its sides, the raft escaped damage. I had my oar against the wall instantly, shoving off, and we swung round and caught the current again round the curve.

But that bend was to the left, as the other had been, which meant that we were now going in exactly the opposite direction of that in which we had started! Which, in turn, meant the death of hope; we were merely winding in and out in a circle and getting nowhere. Harry and Desiree had apparently not noticed the fact, and I said nothing of it. Time enough when they should find out for themselves; and besides, there was still a chance, though a slim one.

Soon the bed of the stream became nearly level, for we barely moved. The roof of the tunnel was very low—but a scant foot above our heads as we sat or crouched on the raft. It was necessary to keep a sharp lookout ahead; a rock projecting from above would have swept us into the water.

The air, too, was close and foul; our breath became labored and difficult; and Desiree, half stifled and drowsy, passed into a fitful and broken sleep, stirring restlessly and panting for air. Harry had taken the bow and I lay across the stern. Suddenly his voice came, announcing that we had left the tunnel.

I sat up quickly and looked round. The walls were no longer to be seen; we had evidently entered a cavern similar to the one in which we had embarked.

“Shall we lay off?” I asked, stepping across to Harry’s side.

He assented, and I took the oar and worked the raft over to the left. There was but little current and she went well in. In a few minutes we were in shallow water, and Harry and I jumped off and shoved her to the bank.

Desiree sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“Where are we?” she asked.

Harry explained while we beached the raft. Then we broke out our provisions and partook of them.

“But why do we stop?” asked Desiree.

The words “Because we are not getting anywhere” rose to my lips, but I kept them back.

“For a rest and some air,” I answered.

Desiree exclaimed: “But I want to go on!”

So as soon as we had eaten our fill we loaded the stuff again and prepared to shove off. By that time I think Harry, too, had realized the hopelessness of our expedition, for he had lost all his enthusiasm; but he said nothing, nor did I. We secured Desiree on her pile of skins and again pushed out into the current.

The cavern was not large, for we had been under way but a few minutes when its wall loomed up ahead and the stream again entered a tunnel, so low and narrow that I hesitated about entering at all. I consulted Harry.

“Take a chance,” he advised. “Why not? As well that as anything.”

We slipped through the entrance.

The current was extremely sluggish, and we barely seemed to move. Still we went forward.

“If we only had a little speed we could stand it,” Harry grumbled.

Which shows that a man does not always appreciate a blessing. It was not long before we were offering up thanks that our speed had been so slight.

To be exact, about an hour, as well as I could measure time, which passed slowly; for not only were the minutes tedious, but the foulness of the air made them also extremely uncomfortable. Desiree was again lying down, half-unconscious but not asleep, for now and then she spoke drowsily. Harry complained of a dizziness in the head, and my own seemed ready to burst through my temples. The soroche of the mountains was agreeable compared to that.

Suddenly the swiftness of the current increased appreciably on the instant; there was a swift jerk as we were carried forward. I rose to my knees—the tunnel was too low to permit of standing—and gazed intently ahead. I could see nothing save that the stream had narrowed to half its former width, and was still becoming narrower.

We went faster and faster, and the stream narrowed until the bank was but a few feet away on either side.

“Watch the stern!” I called to Harry. “Keep her off with your spear!”

Then a wall loomed up directly ahead. I thought it meant another bend in the stream, and I strained my eyes intently in the effort to discover its direction, but I could see nothing save the black wall. We approached closer; I shouted to Harry and Desiree to brace themselves for a shock, praying that the raft would meet the rock squarely and not on a corner.

I had barely had time to set myself and grasp the straps behind when we struck with terrific force. The raft rebounded several feet, trembling and shaking violently. The water was rushing past us with noisy impetuosity.

There was a cry from Desiree, and from Harry, “All right!” I crawled to the bow. Along the top the hide covering had been split open for several feet, but the water did not quite reach the opening.

And we had reached the end of our ambitious journey. For that black wall marked the finish of the tunnel; the stream entered it through a narrow hole, which accounted for the sudden, swift rush of the current. Above the upper rim of the hole the surface of the water whirled about in a widening circle; to this had we been led by the stream that was to have carried us to the land of sunshine.

When I told Desiree she stared at me in silence! I had not realized before the strength of her hope. Speechless with disappointment, she merely sat and stared straight ahead at the black, unyielding rock. Harry knelt beside her with his arm across her shoulders.

I roused him with a jerk of the arm.

“Come—get busy! A few hours in this hole and we’d suffocate. Do you realize that we’ve got to pull this raft back against the current?”

First it was necessary to repair the rent in the hide covering. This we did with strips of hide; and barely in time, for it was becoming wider every minute, and the water was beginning to creep in over the edge. But we soon had the ends sewed firmly together and turned our hands to the main task.

It appeared to be not only difficult, but actually impossible to force the raft back up-stream against the swift current. We were jammed against the rock with all the force of many tons of water. The oar was useless.

Getting a purchase on the wall with our hands, we shoved the raft to one side; but as soon as we got to the wall on the left the whirling stream turned us around again, and we found ourselves back in our original position, only with a different side of the raft against the rock. That happened three times.

Then we tried working to the right instead of the left, but with no better success. The force of the current, coming with all its speed against the unwieldy raft, was irresistible. Time and again we shoved round and started upstream, after incredible labor, only to be dashed back again against the rock.

We tried our spears, but their shafts were so slender that they were useless. We took the oar and, placing its end against the wall, shoved with all our strength. The oar snapped in two and we fell forward against the wall. We tore off some of the strips of hide from the raft and tried to fasten them to the wall on either side, but there was no protuberance that would hold them. Nothing remained to be done.

Harry and I held a consultation then and agreed on the only possible means of escape. I turned to Desiree:

“Can you swim?”

“Parfaitement,” she replied. “But against that”—pointing to the whirling water—“I do not know. I can try.”

I, who remember the black fury of that stream as it swept past us, can appreciate the courage of her.

We lost no time, for the foulness of the air was weakening us with every breath we took. Our preparations were few.

The two spears and about half of the provisions we strapped to our backs—an inconsiderable load which would hamper us but little. We discarded all our clothing, which was very little. I took the heavy skin which Desiree had worn and began to strap it also on top of my bundle, but she refused to allow it.

“I will not permit you to be handicapped with my modesty,” she observed.

Then, with Desiree between us, we stepped to the edge of the raft and dived off together.

Driven as we were by necessity, we would have hesitated longer if we had known the full force of the undercurrent that seized us from beneath. Desiree would have disappeared without a struggle if it had not been for the support which Harry and I rendered her on either side.

But we kept on top—most of the time—and fought our way forward by inches. The black walls frowning at us from either side appeared to me to remain exactly the same, stationary, after a long and desperate struggle; but when I gave a quick glance behind I saw that we had pulled so far away from the raft that it was no longer in sight. That gave me renewed strength, and, shouting assurance to Harry and Desiree, I redoubled my efforts. Desiree was by now almost able to hold her own, but we still supported her.

Every stroke made the next one easier, carrying us away from the whirlpool, and soon we swam smoothly. Less and less strong became the resistance of the current, until finally it was possible to float easily on our backs and rest.

“How far is it to the cavern?” Harry panted.

“Somewhere between one and ten miles,” was my answer. “How the deuce should I know? But we’ll make it now, I think. Can you hold out, Desiree?”

“Easily,” she answered. “If only I could get some air! Just one good, long breath.”

There was the danger, and on that account no time was to be lost. Again we struck out into the blackness ahead. I felt myself no longer fresh, and began to doubt seriously if we should reach our goal.

But we reached it. No need to recount our struggles, which toward the end were inspired by suffering amounting to agony as we choked and gasped for sufficient air to keep us up.

Another hundred yards would have been too much for us; but it is enough that finally we staggered onto the bank at the entrance to the cavern in which we had previously rested, panting, dizzy, and completely exhausted.

But an hour in the cavern, with its supply of air, revived us; and then we sat up and asked ourselves: “What for?”

“And all that brings us—to this,” said Harry, with a sweeping gesture round the cavern.

“At least, it is a better tomb,” I retorted. “And it was a good fight. We still have something in us. Desiree, a good man was lost in you.”

Harry rose to his feet.

“I’m going to look round,” he announced. “We’ve got to do something. Gad, and it took us a month to build that raft!”

“The vanity of human endeavor,” said I, loosening the strap round my shoulders and dropping my bundle to the ground. “Wait a minute; I’m going with you. Are you coming, Desiree?”

But she was too tired to rise to her feet, and we left her behind, arranging what few skins we had as well as possible to protect her from the hard rock.

“Rest your weary bones,” said Harry, stooping to kiss her. “There’s meat here if you want it. We’ll be back soon.”

So we left her, with her white body stretched out at its full length on the rude mat.

Bearing off to the left, we soon discovered that we would have no difficulty to leave the cavern; we had only to choose our way. There was scarcely any wall at all, so broken was it by lanes and passages leading in all directions.

We followed some of them for a distance, but found none that gave any particular promise. Most of them were choked with rocks and boulders through which it was difficult to force a passage. We spent an hour or more in these futile explorations, then followed the wall some distance to the right.

Gradually the exits became less numerous. High on a boulder near the entrance of one we saw the head of some animal peering down at us. We hurled our spears at it, but missed; then were forced to climb up the steep side of the boulder to recover our weapons.

“We’d better go back to Desiree,” said Harry when we reached the ground again. “She’ll wonder what’s become of us. We’ve been gone nearly two hours.”

After fifteen minutes’ search we found the stream, and followed it to the left. We had gone farther than we thought, and we were looking for the end, where we had left Desiree, long before we reached it. Several times we called her name, but there was no answer.

“She’s probably asleep,” said Harry. And a minute later: “There’s the wall at last! But where is she?”

My foot struck something on the ground, and I stooped over to examine it.

It was the pile of skins on which Desiree had lain!

I called to Harry, and at the same instant heard his shout of consternation as he came running toward me, holding something in his hand.

“They’ve got her! Look! Look at this! I found it on the ground over there.”

He held the thing in his hand out before me.

It was an Inca spear.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MIDST OF THE ENEMY

Harry and I stood gazing at each other blankly in the semidarkness of the cavern.

“But it isn’t possible,” I objected finally to my own thoughts. “She would have cried out and we would have heard her. The spear may have been there before.”

Then I raised my voice, calling her name many times at the top of my lungs. There was no answer.

“They’ve got her,” said Harry, “and that’s all there is to it. The cursed brutes crept up on her in the dark—much chance she had of crying out when they got their hands on her. I know it. Why did we leave her?”

“Where did you find the spear?” I asked.

Harry pointed toward the wall, away from the stream.

“On the ground?”

“Yes.”

“Is there an exit from the cavern on that side?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, that’s our only chance. Come on!”

We found the exit, and another, and a third. Which to take? They were very similar to one another, except that the one in the middle sloped upward at a gentle incline, while the others were level.

“One is as good as another,” I observed, and entered the one on the left.

Once started, we advanced with a rush. The passage was straight and narrow, clear of obstruction, and we kept at a steady run.

“They may have an hour’s start of us,” came Harry’s voice at my side.

“Or five minutes,” I returned. “We have no way of knowing. But I’m afraid we’re on the wrong trail.”

Still as I had said, one chance was as good as another, and we did not slacken our pace. The passage went straight forward, without a bend. The roof was low, just allowing us to pass without stooping, and the walls were rough and rugged.

It was not long before we found that we had taken the wrong chance, having covered, I think, some two or three miles when a wall loomed up directly in our path.

“At last, a turn!” panted Harry.

But it was not a turn. It was the end of the passage. We had been following a blind alley.

Harry let out a string of oaths, and I seconded him. Twenty minutes wasted, and another twenty to return!

There was nothing else for it. We shouldered our spears and started to retrace our steps.

“No use running now,” I declared. “We can’t keep it up forever, and we may as well save our strength. We’ll never catch up with ’em, but we may find ’em.”

Harry, striding ahead two or three paces in front, did not answer.

Finally we reached the cavern from which we had started.

“And now what?” asked Harry in a tone of the most utter dejection.

I pointed to the exit in the middle. “That! We should have taken it in the first place. On the raft we probably descended altogether something like five hundred feet from the level where we started—possibly twice that distance. And this passage which slopes upward will probably take us back.”

“At least, it’s as good as the other,” Harry agreed; and we entered it.

We had not proceeded far before we found ourselves in difficulties. The gentle slope became a steep incline. Great rocks loomed up in our path.

In spots the passage was so narrow that two men could hardly have walked abreast through it, and its walls were rough and irregular, with sharp points projecting unexpectedly into our very faces.

Still we went forward and upward, scrambling over, under, round, between. At one point, when Harry was a few yards in front of me, he suddenly disappeared from sight as though swallowed by the mountain.

Rushing forward, I saw him scrambling to his feet at the bottom of a chasm some ten feet below. Luckily he had escaped serious injury, and climbed up on the other side, while I leaped across—a distance of about six feet.

“They could never have brought her through this,” he declared, rubbing a bruised knee.

“Do you want to go back?” I asked.

But he said that would be useless, and I agreed with him. So we struggled onward, painfully and laboriously. The sharp corners of the rocks cut our feet and hands, and I had an ugly bruise on my left shoulder, besides many lesser ones. Harry’s injured knee caused him to limp and thus further retarded our progress.

At times the passage broadened out until the wall on either side was barely visible, only to narrow down again till it was scarcely more than a crevice between the giant boulders. The variation of the incline was no less, being at times very nearly level, and at others mounting upward at an angle whose ascent was all but impossible. Somehow we crawled up, like flies on a wall.

When we came to a stream of water rushing directly across our path at the foot of a towering rock Harry gave a cry of joy and ran forward. I had not known until then how badly his knee was hurt, and when I came up to where he was bathing it in the stream and saw how black and swollen it was, I insisted that he give it a rest. But he absolutely refused, and after we had quenched our thirst and gotten an easy breath or two we struggled to our feet and on.

After another hour of scrambling and failing and hanging on by our finger nails, the way began to be easier. We came to level, clear stretches with only an occasional boulder or ravine, and the rock became less cruel to our bleeding feet. The relief came almost too late, for by that time every movement was painful, and we made but slow progress.

Soon we faced another difficulty when we came to a point where a split in the passage showed a lane on either side. One led straight ahead; the other branched off to the right. They were very similar, but somehow the one on the right looked more promising to us, and we took it.

We had followed this but a short distance when it broadened out to such an extent that the walls on either side could be seen but dimly. It still sloped upward, but at a very slight angle, and we had little difficulty in making our way. Another half-hour and it narrowed down again to a mere lane.

We were proceeding at a fairly rapid gait, keeping our eyes strained ahead, when there appeared an opening in the right wall at a distance of a hundred feet or so. Not having seen or heard anything to recommend caution, we advanced without slackening our pace until we had reached it.

I said aloud to Harry, “Probably a cross-passage,” and then jerked him back quickly against the opposite wall as I saw the real nature of the opening.

It led to a small room, with a low ceiling and rough walls, dark as the passage in which we stood, for it contained no light.

We could see its interior dimly, but well enough to discover the form of an Inca standing just within the doorway. His back was toward us, and he appeared to be fastening something to the ceiling with strips of hide.

It was evident that we had not been seen, and I started to move on, grasping Harry’s arm. It was then that I became aware of the fact that the wall leading away in front of us—that is, the one on the right—was marked as far as the eye could reach with a succession of similar openings.

They were quite close together; from where we stood I could see thirty or forty of them. I guessed that they, too, led to rooms similar to the one in front of us, probably likewise occupied; but it was necessary to go on in spite of the danger, and I pulled again at Harry’s arm.

Then, seeing by his face that something had happened, I turned my eyes again on the Inca in the room. He had turned about, squarely facing us. As we stood motionless he took a hasty step forward; we had been discovered.

There was but one thing to do, and we didn’t hesitate about doing it. We leaped forward together, crossing the intervening space in a single bound, and bore the Inca to the floor under us.

My fingers were round his throat, Harry sat on him. In a trice we had him securely bound and gagged, using some strips of hide which we found suspended from the ceiling.

“By gad!” exclaimed Harry in a whisper. “Look at him! He’s a woman!”

It was quite evident—disgustingly so. Her eyes, dull and sunken, appeared as two large, black holes set back in her skull. Her hair, matted about her forehead and shoulders, was thick and coarse, and blacker than night. Her body was innocent of any attempt at covering.

Altogether, not a very pleasant sight; and we bundled her into a corner and proceeded to look round the room, being careful to remain out of the range of view from the corridor as far as possible.

The room was not luxuriously furnished. There were two seats of stone, and a couch of the same material covered with thick hides. In one corner was a pile of copper vessels; in another two or three of stone, rudely carved. Some torn hides lay in a heap near the center of the room. From the ceiling were suspended other hides and some strips of dried fish.

Some of the latter we cut down with the points of our spears and retired with it to a corner.

“Ought we to ask our hostess to join us?” Harry grinned.

“This tastes good, after the other,” I remarked.

Hungry as we were, we made sad havoc with the lady’s pantry. Then we found some water in a basin in the corner and drank—not without misgivings. But we were too thirsty to be particular.

Then Harry became impatient to go on, and though I had no liking for the appearance of that long row of open doorways, I did not demur. Taking up our spears, we stepped out into the corridor and turned to the right.

We found ourselves running a gantlet wherein discovery seemed certain. The right wall was one unbroken series of open doorways, and in each of the rooms, whose interiors we could plainly see, were one or more of the Inca Women; and sometimes children rolled about on the stony floor.

In one of them a man stood; I could have sworn that he was gazing straight at us, and I gathered myself together for a spring; but he made no movement of any kind and we passed swiftly by.

Once a little black ball of flesh—a boy it was, perhaps five or six years old—tumbled out into the corridor under our very feet. We strode over him and went swiftly on.

We had passed about a hundred of the open doorways, and were beginning to entertain the hope that we might, after all, get through without being discovered, when Harry suddenly stopped short, pulling at my arm. At the same instant I saw, far down the corridor, a crowd of black forms moving toward us.

Even at that distance something about their appearance and gait told us that they were not women. Their number was so great that as they advanced they filled the passage from wall to wall.

There was but one way to escape certain discovery; and distasteful as it was, we did not hesitate to employ it. In a glance I saw that we were directly opposite an open doorway; with a whispered word to Harry I sprang across the corridor and within the room. He followed.

Inside were a woman and two children. As we entered they looked up, startled, and stood gazing at us in terror. For an instant we held back, but there was nothing else for it; and in another minute we had overpowered and bound and gagged them and carried them to a corner.

The children were ugly little devils and the woman very little above a brute; still we handled them as tenderly as possible. Then we crouched against the wall where we could not be seen from the corridor, and waited.

Soon the patter of many footsteps reached our ears. They passed; others came, and still others. For many minutes the sound continued steadily, unbroken, while we sat huddled up against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe.

Immediately in front of me lay the forms of the woman and the children; I could see their dull eyes, unblinking, looking up at me in abject terror. Still the patter of footsteps sounded from without, with now and then an interval of quiet.

Struck by a sudden thought, I signaled to Harry; and when he had moved further back into his corner I sprang across the room in one bound to his side. A word or two of whispering, and he nodded to show that he understood. We crouched together flat against the wall.

My thought had come just in time, for scarcely another minute had passed when there suddenly appeared in the doorway the form of an Inca. He moved a step inside, and I saw that there was another behind him. I had not counted on two of them! In the arms of each was a great copper vessel, evidently very heavy, for their effort was apparent as they stooped to place the vessels on the ground just within the doorway.

As they straightened up and saw that the room before them was empty, their faces filled with surprise. At the same moment a movement came from the woman in the corner; the two men glanced at them with a start of wonder; and as I had foreseen, they ran across and bent over the prostrate forms.

The next instant they, too, were prone on the floor, with Harry and me on top of them. They did not succumb without a struggle, and the one I had chosen proved nearly too much for me.

The great muscles of his chest and legs strained under me with a power that made me doubtful for a moment of the outcome; but the Incas themselves had taught us how to conquer a man when you attack him from behind, and I grasped his throat with all the strength there was in my fingers.

With a desperate effort he got to his knees and grasped my wrists in his powerful black hands and tore my own grip loose. He was half-way to his feet, and far more powerful than I; I changed my tactics. Wrenching myself loose, I fell back a step; then, as he twisted round to get at me, I lunged forward and let him have my fist squarely between the eyes.

The blow nearly broke my hand, but he dropped to the floor. The next instant I was joined by Harry, who had overcome the other Inca with little difficulty, and in a trice we had them both bound and gagged along with the remainder of the family in the corner.

Owing to my strategy in withholding our attack until the Incas had got well within the room and to one side, we had not been seen by those constantly passing up and down in the corridor without; at least, none of them had entered. We seemed by this stroke to have assured our safety so long as we remained in the room.

But it was still necessary to remain against the wall, for the soft patter of footsteps could still be heard in the corridor.

They now came at irregular intervals, and there were not many of them. Otherwise the silence was unbroken.

“What does it all mean?” Harry whispered.

“The Incas are coming home to their women,” I guessed. “Though, after seeing the women, it is little wonder if they spend most of their time away from them. He is welcome to his repose in the bosom of his family.”

There passed an uneventful hour. Long before it ended the sound of footsteps had entirely ceased; but we thought it best to take no chances, and waited for the last minute our impatience would allow us. Then, uncomfortable and stiff from the long period of immobility and silence, we rose to our feet and made ready to start.

Harry was for appropriating some of the strips of dried fish we saw suspended from the ceiling, but I objected that our danger lay in any direction other than that of hunger, and we set out with only our spears.

The corridor was deserted. One quick glance in either direction assured us of that; then we turned to the right and set out at a rapid pace, down the long passage past a succession of rooms exactly similar to the one we had just left—scores, hundreds of them.

Each one was occupied by from one to ten of the Incas lying on the couch which each contained, or stretched on hides on the floor. No one was stirring. Everywhere was silence save the patter of our own feet, which we let fall as noiselessly as possible.

“Will it never end?” whispered Harry at length, after we had traversed upward of a mile without any sign of a cross-passage or a termination.

“Forward, and silence!” I breathed for a reply.

The end—at least, of the silence—came sooner than we had expected. Hardly were the last words out of my mouth when a whirring noise sounded behind us. We glanced over our shoulders as we ran, and at the same instant an Inca spear flew by not two inches from my head and struck the ground in front.

Not a hundred feet to the rear we saw a group of Incas rushing along the passage toward us. Harry wheeled about, raising his spear, but I grasped him by the arm, crying, “Run; it’s our only chance!” The next moment we were leaping forward side by side down the passage.

It would have fared ill with any who appeared to block our way in that mad dash; but it remained clear. The corridor led straight ahead, with never a turn. We were running as we had never run before; the black walls flashed past us an indistinguishable blur, and the open doorways were blended into one.

Glancing back over my shoulder, I saw that the small group of Incas was no longer small. Away to the rear the corridor was filled with rushing black forms. But I saw plainly that we were gaining on them; the distance that separated us was twice as great as when we had first started to run.

“How about it?” I panted. “Can you hold out?”

“If it weren’t for this knee,” Harry returned between breaths and through clenched teeth. “But—I’m with you.” He was limping painfully, and I slackened my pace a little, but he urged me forward with an oath, and himself sprang to the front. His knee must have been causing him the keenest agony; his face was white as death.

Then I uttered a cry of joy as I saw a bend in the passage ahead. We reached it, and wheeled to the right. There was solid wall on either side; the series of doors was ended.

“We’ll shake ’em off now,” I panted.

Harry nodded.

A short distance ahead we came to another cross-passage, and turned to the left. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that our pursuers had not yet reached the first turn. Harry kept in the lead, and was giving me all I could do to keep up with him.

We found ourselves now in a veritable maze of lanes and cross-passages, and we turned to one side or the other at every opportunity. At length I grasped Harry by the arm and stopped him. We stood for two full minutes listening intently. There was absolutely no sound of any kind.

“Thank Heaven!” Harry breathed, and would have fallen to the ground if I had not supported him.

We started out then in search of water, moving slowly and cautiously. But we found none, and soon Harry declared that he could go no further. We sat down with our backs against the wall of the passage, still breathing heavily and all but exhausted.

In that darkness and silence the minutes passed into hours. We talked but little, and then only in whispers. Finally Harry fell into a restless sleep, if it may be called that, and several times I dozed off and was awakened by my head nodding against the stone wall.

At length, finding Harry awake, I urged him to his feet. His knee barely supported his weight, but he gritted his teeth and told me to lead on.

“We can wait—” I began; but he broke in savagely:

“No! I want to find her, that’s all—and end it. Just one more chance!”

We searched for an hour before we found the stream of water we sought. After Harry had bathed his knee and drunk his fill he felt more fit, and we pushed on more rapidly, but still quite at random.

We turned first one way, then another, in the never-ending labyrinth, always in darkness and silence. We seemed to get nowhere; and I for one was about to give up the disheartening task when suddenly a sound smote our ears that caused us first to start violently, then stop and gaze at each other in comprehension and eager surprise.

“The bell!” cried Harry. “They are being summoned to the great cavern!”

It was the same sound we had heard twice before; a sound as of a great, deep-toned bell ringing sonorously throughout the passages and caverns with a roar that was deafening. And it seemed to be close—quite close.

“It came from the left,” said Harry; but I disagreed with him and was so sure of myself that we started off to the right. The echoes of the bell were still floating from wall to wall as we went rapidly forward. I do not know what we expected to find, and the Lord knows what we intended to do after we found it.

A short distance ahead we came to another passage, crossing at right angles, broad and straight, and somehow familiar. As with one impulse we took it, turning to the left, and then flattened ourselves back against the wall as we saw a group of Incas passing at its farther end, some two hundred yards away.

There we stood, motionless and scarcely breathing, while group after group of the savages passed in the corridor ahead. Their number swelled to a continuous stream, which in turn gradually became thinner and thinner until only a few stragglers were seen trotting behind. Finally they, too, ceased to appear; the corridor was deserted.

We waited a while longer, then as no more appeared we started forward and soon had reached the corridor down which they had passed. We followed in the direction they had taken, turning to the right.

We had no sooner turned than we saw that which caused us to glance quickly at each other and hasten our step, while I smothered the ejaculation that rose to my lips. The corridor in which we now found ourselves stretched straight ahead for a distance, then turned to one side; and the corner thus formed was flooded with a brilliant blaze of light!

There was no longer any doubt of it: we were on our way to the great cavern. For a moment I hesitated, asking myself for what purpose we hastened on thus into the very arms of our enemies; then, propelled by instinct or premonition—I know not what—I took a firmer grasp on my spear and followed Harry without word, throwing caution to the winds.

Yet we avoided foolhardiness, for as we approached the last turn we proceeded slowly, keeping an eye on the rear. But all the Incas appeared to have assembled within, for the corridor remained deserted.

We crept silently to the corner, avoiding the circle of light as far as possible, and, crouching side by side on the rock, looked out together on a scene none the less striking because we had seen it twice before.

It was the great cavern. We saw it from a different viewpoint than before; the alcove which held the golden throne was far off to our left, nearly half-way round the vast circumference. On the throne was seated the king, surrounded by guards and attendants.

As before, the stone seats which surrounded the amphitheater on every side were filled with the Incas, crouching motionless and silent. The flames in the massive urns mounted in steady tongues, casting their blinding glare in every direction.

All this I saw in a flash, when suddenly Harry’s fingers sank into the flesh of my arm with such force that I all but cried out in actual pain. And then, glancing at him and following the direction of his gaze, I saw Desiree.

She was standing on the top of the lofty column in the center of the lake.

Her white body, uncovered, was outlined sharply against the black background of the cavern above.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

Neither Harry nor I spoke; our eyes were concentrated on the scene before us, trying to comprehend its meaning.

It was something indefinable in Desiree’s attitude that told me the truth—what, I cannot tell. Her profile was toward us; it could not have been her eyes or any expression of her face; but there was a tenseness about her pose, a stiffening of the muscles of her body, an air of lofty scorn and supreme triumph coming somehow from every line of her motionless figure, that flashed certainty into my brain.

And on the instant I turned to Harry.

“Follow me,” I whispered; and he must have read the force of my knowledge in my eyes, for he obeyed without a word. Back down the passage we ran, halting at its end. Harry opened his lips to speak, but I took the words from his mouth; seconds were precious.

“They have fired the column—you remember. Follow me; keep your spear ready; not a sound, if you love her.”

I saw that he understood, and saw too, by the expression that shot into his face, that it would go ill with any Incas who tried to stop us then.

We rushed forward side by side, guessing at our way, seeking the entrance to the tunnel that led to the foot of the column. A prayer was on my lips that we might not be too late; Harry’s lips were compressed together tightly as a vise. Death we did not fear, even for Desiree; but we remembered the horror of our own experience on the top of that column, and shuddered as we ran.

As I have said, we had entered the great cavern at a point almost directly opposite the alcove, and therefore at a distance from the entrance we sought. It was necessary to half encircle the cavern, and the passages were so often crossed by other passages that many times we had to guess at the proper road.

But not for an instant did we hesitate; we flew rather than ran. I felt within me the strength and resolve of ten men, and I knew then that there was something I must do and would do before I died, though a thousand devils stood in my way.

I do not know what led us; whether a remorseful Providence, who suddenly decided that we had been played with long enough, or the mere animal instinct of direction, or blind luck. But so fast did we go that it seemed to me we had left the great cavern scarcely a minute behind us when I suddenly saw the steps of a steep stairway leading down from an opening on our right.

How my heart leaped then! Harry uttered a hoarse cry of exultation. The next instant we were dashing headlong down the steps, avoiding a fall by I know not what miracle. And there before us was the entrance to the tunnel.

I held Harry back, almost shouting: “You stay here; guard the entrance. I’ll get her.”

“No,” he cried, pushing forward. “I can’t stay.”

“Fool!” I cried, dashing him back. “We would be caught like rats in a trap. Defend that entrance—with your life!”

I saw him hesitate, and, knowing that he would obey, I dashed forward into the tunnel. When nearly to its end I made a misstep on the uneven ground and precipitated myself against the wall. A sharp pain shot through my left shoulder, but at the time I was scarcely conscious of it as I picked myself up and leaped forward. The end was in sight.

Just as I reached the foot of the spiral stairway I saw a black form descending from it. That Inca never knew what hit him. I did not use my spear; time was too precious. He disappeared in the whirlpool beneath the base of the column through which Harry and I had once miraculously escaped.

But despair filled my heart as, with my feet on the first step of the spiral stairway, I cast a quick glance upward. The upper half of the inside of the column was a raging furnace of fire. How or from what it came I did not stop to inquire; I bounded up the stairway in desperate fury.

I did not know then that the stone steps were baking and blistering my feet; I did not know, as I came level with the base of the flames, that every hair was being singed from my head and body—I only knew that I must reach the top of the column.

Then I saw the source of the flames as I reached them. Huge vats of oil—six, a dozen, twenty—I know not how many—were ranged in a circle on a ledge of stone encircling the column, and from their tops the fire leaped upward to a great height. I saw what must be done; how I did it God only knows; I shut my eyes now as I remember it.

Hooking the rim of the vat nearest me with the point of my spear, I sent it tumbling down the length of the column into the whirlpool, many feet below. Then another, and another, and another, until the ledge was empty.

Some of the burning oil, flying from the overturned vats, alighted on the stairway, casting weird patches of light up and down the whole length of the column. Some of it landed on my body, my face, my hands. It was a very hell of heat; my lungs, all the inside of me, was on fire.

My brain sang and whirled. My eyes felt as though they were being burned from their sockets with red-hot irons. I bounded upward.

A few more steps—I could not see, I could hardly feel—and my head bumped against the stone at the top of the column. I put out my hand, groping around half crazily, and by some wild chance it came in contact with the slide that moved the stone stab. I pushed, hardly knowing what I did, and the stone flew to one side. I stuck my head through the opening and saw Desiree.

Her back was toward me. As I emerged from the opening the Incas seated round the vast amphitheater and the king, seated on the golden throne in the alcove, rose involuntarily from their seats in astonished wonder.

Desiree saw the movement and, turning, caught sight of me. A sudden cry of amazement burst from her lips; she made a hasty step forward and fell fainting into my arms.

I shook her violently, but she remained unconscious, and this added catastrophe all but unnerved me. For a moment I stood on the upper step with the upper half of my body, swaying from side to side, extending beyond the top of the column; then I turned and began to descend with Desiree in my arms.

Every step of that descent was unspeakable agony. Feeling was hardly in me; my whole body was an engine of pain. Somehow, I staggered and stumbled downward; at every step I expected to fall headlong to the bottom with my burden. Desiree’s form remained limp and lifeless in my arms.

I reached the ledge on which the vats had been placed and passed it; air entered my burning lungs like a breeze from the mountains. Every step now made the next one easier. I began to think that I might, after all, reach the bottom in safety. Another twenty steps and I could see the beginning of the tunnel below.

Desiree’s form stirred slightly in my arms. A glance showed me her eyes looking up into mine as her head lay back on my shoulder.

“Why?” she moaned. “In the name of Heaven above us, why?” I had no time for answer; my lips were locked tightly together as I sought the step below with a foot that had no feeling even for the stone. We were nearly to the bottom; we reached it.

I placed Desiree on her feet.

“Can you stand?” I gasped; and the words were torn from my throat with a great effort.

“But you!” she cried, and I saw that her eyes were filled with horror. No doubt I was a pitiful thing to look at.

But there was no time to be lost, and, seeing that her feet supported her, I grasped her arm and started down the tunnel just as Harry’s voice, raised in a great shout, came to us from its farther end.

“No!” cried Desiree, shrinking back in terror. “Paul—” I dragged her forward.

Then, as Harry’s cry was repeated, she seemed to understand and sprang forward beside me.

Another second wasted and we would have been too late. Just as we reached Harry’s side, at the end of the tunnel, the Incas, warned by my appearance at the top of the column, appeared above on the stairway, at the foot of which Harry had made his stand.

At the sight of Desiree Harry uttered a cry of joy, then gazed in astonishment as I appeared behind her.

“Run for your lives!” he shouted, pointing down the passage leading to the apartments beyond. As he spoke a shower of spears descended from above, rattling on the steps and on the ground beside us. I stooped to pick up two of them, and as Desiree and I darted forward into the passage, with Harry bringing up the rear, the Incas dashed down the stairway after us.

We found ourselves at once in the maze of lanes and passages leading to the royal apartments. That, I thought, was as good a goal as any; and, besides, the way led to the cavern where we had once before successfully withstood our enemies. But the way was not so easy to find.

Turn and twist about as we would, we could not shake off our pursuers. Harry kept urging me forward, but I was using every ounce of strength that was left to me. Desiree, too, was becoming weaker at every step, and I could hear Harry’s cry of despair as she perceptibly faltered and slackened her pace.

I soon realized that we were no longer in the passage or group of passages that led to the royal apartments and the cavern beyond. But there was no time to seek our way; well enough if we went forward. We found ourselves in a narrow lane, strewn with rocks, crooked and winding.

Desiree stumbled and would have fallen but for my outstretched arm. A spear from behind whistled past my ear as we again bounded forward. Harry was shouting to us that the Incas were upon us.

I caught Desiree’s arm and pulled her on with a last great effort. The lane became narrower still; we brushed the wall on either side, and I pushed Desiree ahead of me and followed behind. Suddenly she stopped short, turning to face me so suddenly that I was thrown against her, nearly knocking her down.

“Your spear!” she cried desperately. “I can go no farther,” and she sank to the ground.

At the same moment there came a cry from Harry in the rear—a cry that held joy and wonder—and I turned to see him standing some distance away, gazing down the lane through which we had come.

“They’ve given up!” he called. “They’re gone!”

And I saw that it was true. No sound came, and no Inca was to be seen.

Then, seeing Desiree on the ground, Harry ran to us and sprang to her side. “Desiree!” he cried, lifting her in his arms. She opened her eyes and smiled at him, and he kissed her many times—her hair, her lips, her eyes. Then he placed her gently on her feet, and, supporting her with his arm, moved forward slowly. I led the way.

The lane ahead of us was scarcely more than a crevice between the rocks; I squeezed my way through with difficulty. Then the walls ended abruptly, just when I had begun to think we could go no farther, and we found ourselves at the entrance to a cavern so large that no wall was to be seen on any side save the one behind us.

On the instant I guessed at the reason why the Incas had ceased their pursuit so abruptly, and I turned to Harry:

“I’m afraid we’ve jumped from the frying-pan into the fire. If this cavern holds anything like that other—you remember—”

“If it does, we shall see,” he replied.

Supporting Desiree on either side, we struck out directly across the cavern, halting every few steps to listen for a sound, either of the Incas, which we feared, or of running water, which we desired. We heard neither. All was blackness and the most complete silence.

Then I became aware, for the first time, of intolerable pains shooting up through my legs into my body. The danger past, reason returned and feeling. I could not suppress a low cry, wrung inexorably from my chest, and I halted, leaning my whole weight on Desiree’s shoulder.

“What is it?” she cried, and for answer—though I strained every atom of my will and strength to prevent it—I toppled to the ground, dragging her with me.

What followed came to me as in a dream, though I was not wholly unconscious. I was aware that Harry and Desiree were bending over me; then I felt my head and shoulders being lifted from the ground, and a soft, warm arm supporting me.

A minute passed, or an hour—I did not know—and I felt hot drops of moisture fall on my cheek. I struggled to open my eyes, and saw Desiree’s face quite near my own; my head was resting on her shoulder. She was weeping silently, and great tears rolled down her cheeks unrestrained.

To have seen the sun or stars shining down upon me would not have astonished me more. I gazed at her a long moment in silence; she saw that I did so, but made no effort to turn her head or avoid my gaze. Finally I found my tongue.

“Where is Harry?” I asked.

“He is gone to look for water,” she replied; and, curiously enough, her voice was quite steady.

I smiled.

“It is useless. I am done for!”

“That isn’t true,” she denied, in a voice almost of anger. “You will get well. You are—injured badly—” After a short pause she added, “for me.”

There was a long silence—I thought it hardly worth while to contradict her—and then I said simply, “Why are you crying, Desiree?”

She looked at me as though she had not heard; then, after another silence, her voice came, so low that it barely reached my ears:

“For this—and for what might have been, my friend.”

“But you have said—”

“I know! Would you make me doubt again? Do not! Ah”—she passed her hand gently over my forehead and touched the tips of her fingers to my burning eyes—“you must have cared for me in that other world. I will not doubt it; unless you speak, and you must not. Nothing would have been too high for us. We could have opened any door—even the door to happiness.”

“But you said once—forgive me if I remind you of it now—you said that you are—you called yourself ‘La Marana.’”

She shrank back, exclaiming: “Paul! Indeed, I need to forgive you!”

“Still, it is true,” I persisted, turning to look at her. The movement caused me to halt, closing my eyes, while a great wave of pain swept over me from head to foot. Then I went on: “Could you expect to confine your heart? You say we could have opened any door—well, tell me, what could we have done, you and I?”

“But that is what I do not think of!” cried Desiree impatiently. “I would perhaps have placed my hand on your heart, as I do now; you would perhaps have fought for me, as you have done. I might even—” She hesitated, while the ghost of a smile that had died before it reached the light appeared on her lips, as her head was lowered close, quite close, to mine.

A long moment, and then, “Must I ask for it?” I breathed.

She jerked her head up sharply.

“You do not want it,” she said dryly.

I raised my hand, groping for her fingers, but could not find them. She saw, and slowly, very slowly, her hand crept to mine and was caught and held there.

“Desiree—I want it,” I said half fiercely, and I forgot my pain and our danger—forgot everything but her white face in dim outline above me, and her eyes, glowing and tender against her wish, and her hand that nestled in my hand. “Be merciful to me—I want it as I have never wanted anything in my life. Desiree, I love you.”

At that I felt her hand move quickly, as for freedom, but I held it fast. And then slowly her head was lowered. I waited breathlessly. I felt her quick breath on my face, and the next moment her lips had found my lips, hot and dry, and remained there.

Then she raised her head, saying tremulously:

“That was my soul, and it is the first time it has ever escaped me.”

At the same instant we were startled by the sound of Harry’s voice in the darkness:

“Desiree! Where are you?”

I waited for her to answer, but she was silent, and I called out to him our direction. A moment later his form appeared at a distance, and soon he had joined us.

“How about it, old man?” he asked, bending over me.

Then he told us that he had found no water. He had explored two sides of the cavern, one at a distance of half a mile or more, and was crossing to find the third when he had called to us.

“But there is little use,” he finished gloomily. “The place is silent as the grave. If there were water we would hear it. I can’t even find an exit except the crevice that let us in.”

Desiree’s hand was still in mine.

“It may be—perhaps I can go with you,” I suggested. But he would not hear of it, and set out again alone in the opposite direction to that which he had taken previously.

In a few minutes he returned, reporting no better success than before. On that side, he said, the wall of the cavern was quite close. There was no sign anywhere of water; but to the left there were several narrow lanes leading at angles whose sides were nearly parallel to each other, and some distance to the right there was a broad and clear passage sloping downward directly away from the cavern.

“Is the passage straight?” I asked, struck with a sudden idea. “Could you see far within?”

“A hundred feet or so,” was the answer. “Why? Shall we follow it? Can you walk?”

“I think so,” I answered. “At any rate, I must find some water soon or quit the game. But that isn’t why I asked. Perhaps it explains the sudden disappearance of the Incas. They knew they couldn’t follow us through that narrow crevice; what if they have made for the passage?”

Harry grumbled that we had enough trouble without trying to borrow more.

We decided to wait a little longer before starting out from the cavern; Harry helped me to my feet to give them a trial, and though I was able to stand it was only by a tremendous effort and exertion of the will.

“Not yet,” I murmured between clenched teeth, and again Desiree sat on the hard rock and supported my head and shoulders in her arms, despite my earnest remonstrances. Harry stood before us, leaning on his spear.

Soon he left us again, departing in the direction of the crevice by which we had entered; I detected his uneasiness in the tone with which he directed us to keep a lookout around in every direction.

“We could move to the wall,” I had suggested; but he shook his head, saying that where we were we at least had room to turn.

When he had gone Desiree and I sat silent for many minutes. Then I tried to rise, insisting that she must be exhausted with the long strain she had undergone, but she denied it vehemently, and refused to allow me to move.

“It is little enough,” she said; and though I but half understood her, I made no answer.

I myself was convinced that we were at last near the end. It was certain that the Incas had merely delayed, not abandoned, the pursuit, and our powers and means of resistance had been worn to nothing.

Our curious apathy and half indifference spoke for itself; it was as though we had at length recognized the hand of fate and seen the futility of further struggle. For, weak and injured as I was, I still had strength in me; it was a listlessness of the brain and hopelessness of the heart that made me content to lie and wait for whatever might come.

The state of my feelings toward Desiree were even then elusive; they are more so now. I had told her I loved her; well, I had told many women that. But Desiree had moved me; with her it was not the same—that I felt. I had never so admired a woman, and the thrill of that kiss is in me yet; I can recall it and tremble under its power by merely closing my eyes.

Her warm hand, pressed tightly in my own, seemed to send an electric communication to every nerve in my body and eased my suffering and stilled my pain. That, I know, is not love; and perhaps I was mistaken when I imagined that it was there.

“Are you asleep?” she asked presently, after I had lain perfectly quiet for many minutes. Her voice was so low that it entered my ear as the faintest breath.

“Hardly,” I answered. “To tell the truth, I expect never to sleep again—I suppose you understand me. I can’t say why—I feel it.”

Desiree nodded.

“Do you remember, Paul, what I said that evening on the mountain?” Then—I suppose my face must have betrayed my thought—she added quickly: “Oh, I didn’t mean that—other thing. I said this mountain would be my grave, do you remember? You see, I knew.”

I started to reply, but was interrupted by Harry, calling to ask where we were. I answered, and soon he had joined us and seated himself beside Desiree on the ground.

“I found nothing,” was all he said, wearily, and he lay back and closed his eyes, resting his head on his hands.

The minutes passed slowly. Desiree and I talked in low tones; Harry moved about uneasily on his hard bed, saying nothing. Finally, despite Desiree’s energetic protests, I rose to my knees and insisted that she rest herself. We seemed none of us to be scarcely aware of what we were doing; our movements had a curious purposelessness about them that gave the thing an appearance of unreality—I know not what; it comes to my memory as some indistinct and haunting nightmare.

Suddenly, as I sat gazing dully into the semidarkness of the cavern, I saw that which drove the apathy from my brain with a sudden shock, at the same time paralyzing my senses. I strained my eyes ahead; there could be no doubt of it; that black, slowly moving line was a band of Incas creeping toward us silently, on their knees, through the darkness. Glancing to either side I saw that the line extended completely around us, to the right and left.

The sight seemed to paralyze me. I tried to call to Harry—no sound came from my eager lips. I tried to put out my hand to rouse him and to pick up my spear; my arms remained motionless at my side.

Desiree lay close beside me; I could not even turn my head to see if she, too, saw, but kept my eyes, as though fascinated, on that silent black line approaching through the darkness.

“Will they leap now—now—now?” I asked myself with every beat of my pulse.

It could not be much longer—they were now so close that each black, tense form was in clear outline not fifty feet away.

CHAPTER XXIII

WE ARE TWO

Whether I would have been able to rouse myself to action before the shock of the assault was actually upon us, I shall never know.

It was not fear that held me, for I felt none; I think that dimly and half unconsciously I saw in that black line, silently creeping upon us, the final and inexorable approach of the remorseless fate that had pursued us ever since we had dashed after Desiree into the cave of the devil, rendering our every effort futile, our most desperate struggles the laughing-stock of the gods.

I was not even conscious of danger. I sat as in a stupor.

But action came, though not from me, so suddenly that I scarcely knew what had happened. There was a cry from Desiree. Harry sprang to his feet. The Incas leaped forward.

I felt myself jerked violently from the ground, and a spear was thrust into my hand. Harry’s form flashed past me, shouting to me to follow. Desiree was at his heels; but I saw her halt and turn to me, and I, too, sprang forward.

Harry’s spear whirled about his head, leaving a gap in the black line that was now upon us. Through it we plunged. The Incas turned and came at us from behind; one whose hands were upon Desiree got my spear in his throat and sank to the ground.

“Cross to the left!” Harry yelled. He was fighting them off from every direction at once.

I turned, calling to Desiree to follow, and dashed across the cavern. We saw the wall just ahead, broken and rugged. Again turning I called to Harry, but could not see him for the black forms on every side, and I was starting to his rescue when I saw him plunge toward us, cutting his way through the solid mass of Incas as though they had been stalks of corn. He was not a man, but a demon possessed.

“Go on,” he shouted. “I’ll make it!”

Then I turned and ran with Desiree to the wall. We followed it a short distance before we reached one of the lanes of which Harry had spoken; at its entrance he joined us, still bidding us to leave him to cover our retreat.

Once within the narrow lane his task was easier. Boulders and projecting rocks obstructed our progress, but they were even greater obstacles to those who pursued us. Still they rushed forward, only to be hurled back by the point of Harry’s spear. Once, turning, I saw him pick one of them up bodily and toss him whirling through the air into the very faces of his comrades.

I had all I could do with Desiree and myself. Many times I scrambled up the steep face of some boulder and, after pulling her up safely after me, let her down again on the other side. Then I returned to see that Harry got over safely, and often he made it barely by inches, while flying spears struck the rock on every side.

It is a wonder to me now that I was able even to stand, after my experience on the spiral stairway in the column. The soles of my feet and the palms of my hands were baked black as the Incas themselves. Blisters covered my body from head to foot, swelling, indescribably painful.

Every step I took made me clench my teeth to keep from sinking in a faint to the ground; I expected always that the next would be my last—but somehow I struggled onward. It was the thought of Desiree, I think, that held me up, and Harry.

Suddenly a shout came from Harry that the Incas had abandoned the pursuit. It struck me almost as a matter of indifference; nor was I affected when almost immediately afterward he called that he had been mistaken and that they had rushed forward with renewed fury and in greater numbers.

“It is only a matter of time now,” I said to Desiree, and she nodded.

Still we went forward. The land had carried us straight away from the cavern, without a turn. Its walls were the roughest I had seen, and often a boulder which lay across our path presented a serrated face that looked as though it had but just been broken from the wall above. Still the stone was comparatively soft—time had not yet worked its leveling finger on the surfaces that surrounded us.

We were standing on one of these boulders when Harry came running toward us.

“They’re stopped,” he cried gleefully, “at least for a little. A piece of rock as big as a house gently slid from above onto their precious heads. It may have blocked them off completely.”

We hurried forward then; Harry helped Desiree, while I painfully brought up the rear. At every few steps they were forced to halt and wait for me, though I did my utmost to keep up with them. Harry had taken my spear that I might have both hands to help me over the rocks.

Climbing, sliding, jumping, we left the Incas behind; no sound came from the rear. I began to think that they had really been completely shut off, and several times opened my mouth to call to Harry to ask him if it would not be safe to halt; for every movement I made was torture. But each time I choked back the cry; he thought it was necessary to go on and I followed.

This lasted I know not how long; I was staggering and reeling forward like a drunken man, so little aware of what I was doing that when Harry and Desiree finally stopped at the beginning of a level, unbroken stretch in the lane, I stumbled directly against them before I knew they had halted.

“Go on!” I gasped, struggling to my feet in a mania.

Harry stooped over to assist me and set me with my back resting against the wall. Desiree supported herself near by, scarcely able to stand.

“We can go no farther,” said Harry. “If they come—”

As he spoke I became aware of a curious movement in the wall opposite—a movement as of the wall itself. At first I thought it a delusion produced by my disordered brain, but when I saw Desiree’s astonished gaze following mine, and heard Harry’s cry of wonder as he turned and saw it also, I knew the thing was real.

A great portion of the wall, the entire side of the passage for a length of a hundred feet or more, was sliding slowly downward. Glancing above I saw a space of several feet where the rock had departed from its bed. The only noise audible was a low, grating sound like the slow grinding of a gigantic millstone.

None of us moved—if there were danger we would seem to have welcomed it. Suddenly the great mass of rock appeared to halt in its downward movement and hang as though suspended; then with a sudden jerk it seemed to free itself, swaying ponderously toward us; and the next moment it had fallen straight down into some abyss below, thundering, tumbling, sliding with terrific velocity.

There was a deafening roar under our feet, the ground rocked as from an earthquake, and it seemed as though the wall against which we stood was about to fall in upon us. Dust and fragments of rock filled the air on every side, and one huge boulder, detached from the roof above, came tumbling at our feet, missing us by inches.

We were completely stunned by the cataclysm, but in a moment Harry had recovered and run to the edge of the chasm opposite thus suddenly formed. Desiree and I followed.

There was nothing to be seen save the blackness of space. Immediately before us was an apparently bottomless abyss, black and terrifying; the side descended straight down from our feet. Looking across we could see dimly a wall some distance away, smooth and with a faint whiteness. On either side of us other walls extended to meet the farther wall, smooth and polished as glass.

“The Incas didn’t do that, I hope,” said Harry, turning to me.

“Hardly,” I answered; and in my absorbing interest in the phenomenon before me I half forgot my pain.

I moved to the edge of one of the walls extending at right angles to the passage, but there was little to be made of it. It was of soft limestone, and most probably the portion that had disappeared was granite, carried away by the force of its own weight.

“We are like to be buried,” I observed, returning to Harry and Desiree. “Though for that matter, even that can hardly frighten us now.”

“For my part,” said Harry, with a curious gravity beneath the apparent lightness of his words, “I have always admired the death of Porthos. Let it come, and welcome.”

“Are we to go further?” put in Desiree.

Just as Harry opened his mouth to reply a more decisive answer came from another source. The rock that had fallen, obstructing the path of the Incas, must have left an opening that Harry had missed; or they had removed it—what matter?

In some way they had forced a passage, for as Desiree spoke a dozen spears whistled through the air past our heads and we looked up to see a swarm of Incas climbing and tumbling down the face of a boulder over which we had passed to reach our resting-place.

I have said that we had halted in a level, unbroken stretch that still led some distance ahead of us. At its farther end could be seen a group of rocks and boulders completely choking the lane, Beyond, other rocks arose to a still greater height—the way appeared to be impassable.

But there was no time for deliberation or the weighing of chances, and we turned and made for the pile of rocks, with the Incas rushing after us.

There Desiree and I halted in despair, but with a great oath Harry brushed us aside and leaped upon a rock higher than his head with incredible agility. Then, lying flat on his face and extending his arms downward over the edge, he pulled first Desiree, then myself, up after him. The whole performance had occupied a scant two seconds, and, waiting only to pick up the three spears he had thrown up the sloping surface of the rock to another yet higher and steeper.

“Why don’t we hold them here?” I demanded. “They could never come up that rock with us on top.”

Harry looked at me.

“Spears,” he said briefly; and, of course, he was right. They would have picked us off like birds on a limb.

We scaled the second rock with extreme difficulty, Harry assisting both Desiree and me; and as we stood upright on its top I saw the Incas scrambling over the edge of the one below. Two or three of them had already started to cross; many more were coming up from behind; and one, as he made the top and arose to his feet, braced himself on the sloping rock and raised a spear high above his head.

At sight of him I started, crying to Harry and Desiree. They turned.

“The king!” I shouted; and I saw a shudder of terror run over Desiree’s face as she, too, recognized the black form below. At the same instant the spear darted forward from the hand of the Child of the Sun, but it landed harmlessly against the rock several feet away.

The next moment the Inca king had bounded across the rock toward us, followed by a score of others.

I was minded to try my luck with his own weapon, but we had no spears to waste, and Harry was dragging Desiree forward and shouting to me to follow. I turned and ran after them, and just as we let ourselves down into a narrow crevice below the Incas appeared over the edge of the rock behind.

Somehow we scrambled forward, with the Incas at our heels. Sharp corners of projecting rocks bruised our faces and bodies; once my leg bent double under me as I fell from a ledge onto a boulder below, and I thought it was broken; but Harry jerked me to my feet and I struggled on.

Harry seemed possessed of the strength of ten men and the heart of a thousand. He pulled Desiree and me up and over boulders and rocks as though we had been feathers; the Lord knows how he got there himself! Half of the time he carried Desiree; the other half he supported me. His energy and exertions were titanic; even in the desperate excitement of our retreat I found time to marvel at it.

We did not gain an inch; our pursuers kept close behind us; but we held our own. Now and then a stray spear came hurtling through the air or struck the rock near us, but they were infrequent and we were not hit.

One, flying past my head, stuck in a crevice of the rock and I grasped the shaft to pull it out, but abandoned my effort when I heard Harry shouting to me from the front to come to his aid.

He and Desiree were standing on the rim of a ledge that stood high above the ground of the passage. At its foot began a level stretch leading straight ahead as far as we could see.

“We must lift her down,” Harry was saying.

He let himself over the ledge, hung by his hands, and dropped. “All right!” he called from below; and I lay flat on the rock while Desiree scrambled over the edge, holding to my hands. For a moment I held her suspended in my outstretched arms; then, at a word from Harry, I let her drop. Another moment and I was over myself, knocking Harry to the ground and tumbling on top of him as he stood beneath to break my fall.

By then the Incas had reached the top of the ledge above us, and we turned and raced down the long stretch ahead. I was in front; Harry came behind with Desiree.

Suddenly, as I ran, I felt a curious trembling of the ground beneath my feet, similar to the vibrations of a bridge at the passing of a heavy load.

Then the ground actually swayed beneath me; and, realizing the danger, I sent a desperate shout to Harry over my shoulder and bounded forward. He was at my side on the instant, with Desiree in his arms.

The ground rocked beneath our feet like a ship in a storm; and, just as I thought we were gone, my foot touched firm rock as I passed a yawning crevice a foot wide under me.

One more leap to safety, and we turned just in time to see the floor of the passage which we had traversed disappear into some abyss beneath with a shattering roar.

We stood at the very edge of the chasm thus suddenly formed, gazing at each other in silent wonder and awe.

“The beggars are stopped now,” said Harry finally. “That break in the game is ours.”

Looking back across the chasm, we saw the Incas tumbling by twos and threes over the boulder on the other side. As they saw the yawning abyss that separated them from their prey they stopped short and gazed across in profound astonishment.

Others came to join them, until there were several hundred of the black, ugly forms huddled together on the opposite rim of the chasm, a hundred feet away.

I ran over the group with a keen eye, seeking the figure of the Inca king, and soon my search was successful. He stood a step in front of the others, a little to the right. I pointed him out to Harry and Desiree.

“It’s up to him to walk right out again,” said Harry.

Desiree shivered, and proceeded to send her last invitation to the devil.

Turning suddenly, she grasped Harry’s spear and tore it from his hand. Before we realized her purpose, she stepped forward until her foot rested on the very edge of the chasm, and had hurled the spear across straight at the Inca king.

It missed him, but struck another Inca standing near full in the breast. Quick as lightning the king turned, grasped the shaft of the spear, and pulled it forth, and with his white teeth gleaming in a snarl of furious hate, sent it whistling through the air straight at Desiree.

Harry and I sprang forward with a shout of warning; Desiree stood motionless as a statue. We grasped her frantically and pulled her back, but too late.

She came, but only to fall lifeless into our arms with the spear buried deep in her white throat.

We laid her on the ground and knelt beside her for a moment, then Harry arose to his feet with a face white as death; and I uttered a silent and vengeful prayer as I saw him level a spear at the Inca king across the chasm. But it went wide of its mark, striking the ground at his feet.

“There was another!” cried Harry, and soon he had found it where it lay on the ground and sent it, too, hurtling across.

This time he missed by inches. The spear flew just past the shoulder of the king and caught one who stood behind him full in the face. The stricken savage threw his arms spasmodically above his head, reeling forward against the king.

There was a startled movement along the black line; hands were outstretched in a vain effort at rescue; a savage cry burst from Harry’s lips, and the next instant the king had toppled over the edge of the chasm and fallen into the bottomless pit below.

Harry turned, quivering from head to foot.

“Little enough,” he said between his teeth, and again he knelt beside the body of Desiree and took her in his arms.

But her fate spoke eloquently of our own danger, and I roused him to action. Together we picked up the form of our dead comrade and carried it to the rear. I hesitated to pull forth the barbed head of the spear, and instead broke off the shaft, leaving the point buried in the soft throat, from which a crimson line extended over the white shoulder.

A short distance ahead we came to a projecting boulder, and behind that we gently laid her on the hard rock. Neither of us had spoken a word. Harry’s lips were locked tightly together; a lump rose in my throat, choking all utterance and filling my eyes with tears.

Harry knelt beside the white form and, gathering it gently in his arms, held it against his breast. I stood at his side, gazing down at him in mute sympathy and sorrow.

For a long minute there was silence—a most intense silence throughout the cavern, during which the painful throbbing of my heart was plainly audible; then Harry murmured, in a voice of the utmost tenderness: “Desiree!” And again, “Desiree! Desiree!” until I half expected the very strength and sweetness of his emotion to bring our comrade back to life.

Suddenly, with a quick, impulsive movement, he raised his head to glance at me.

“She loved you,” he said; and though there was neither jealousy nor anger in his voice, somehow I could not meet his gaze.

“She loved you,” he repeated in a tone half of wonder. “And you—you—”

I answered his eyes.

“She was yours,” I said, with a touch of bitterness that persuaded him of the truth. “All her beauty, all her loveliness, all her charm, to be buried—Ah! God help us—”

My voice broke, and I knelt on the ground beside Harry and pressed my lips to the white forehead and golden hair of what had been Le Mire.

Thus we remained for a long time.

It was hard to believe that death had in reality taken possession of the still form stretched as in repose before us. Her body, still warm, seemed quivering with the instinct of life; but the eyes were not the eyes of Desiree. I closed them, and arranged the tangled mass of hair as well as possible over her shoulders. As I did so the air, set in motion by my hand, caused some of the golden strands to tremble gently across her lips; and Harry bent forward with a painful eagerness, thinking that she had breathed.

“Dearest,” he murmured, “dearest, speak to me!”

His hand sought her swelling bosom gropingly; and his eyes, as they looked pleadingly even into mine, shot into my heart and unnerved me.

I rose to my feet, scarcely able to stand, and moved away.

But the fate that had finally intervened for us—too late, alas! for one—did not leave us long with our dead. Even now I do not know what happened; at the time I knew even less. Harry told me afterward that the first shock came at the instant he had taken Desiree in his arms and pressed his lips to hers.

I had crossed to the other side of the passage and was gazing back toward the chasm at the Incas on the other side, when again I felt the ground, absolutely without warning, tremble violently under my feet. At the same moment there was a low, curious rumble as of the thundering of distant cannon.

I sprang toward Harry with a cry of alarm, and had crossed about to the middle of the passage, when a deafening roar smote my ear, and the entire wall of the cavern appeared to be failing in upon us. At the same time the ground seemed to sink directly away beneath my feet with an easy, rocking motion as of a wave of the ocean. Then I felt myself plunging downward with a velocity that stunned my senses and took away my breath; and then all was confusion and chaos—and oblivion.

When I awoke I was lying flat on my back, and Harry was kneeling at my side. I opened my eyes, and felt that it would be impossible to make a greater exertion.

“Paul!” cried Harry. “Speak to me! Not you, too—I shall go mad!”

He told me afterward that I had lain unconscious for many hours, but that appeared to be all that he knew. How far we had fallen, or how he had found me, or how he himself had escaped being crushed to pieces by the falling rock, he was unable to say; and I concluded that he, too, had been rendered unconscious by the fall, and for some time dazed and bewildered by the shock.

Well! We were alive—that was all.

For we were weak and faint from hunger and fatigue, and one mass of bruises and blisters from head to foot. And we had had no water for something like twenty-four hours. Heaven only knows where we found the energy to rise and go in search of it; it is incredible that any creatures in such a pitiable and miserable condition as we were could have been propelled by hope, unless it is indeed immortal.

Half walking, half crawling, we went forward.

The place where we had found ourselves was a jumbled mass of boulders and broken rock, but we soon discovered a passage, level and straight as any tunnel built by man.

Down this we made our way. Every few feet we stopped to rest. Neither of us spoke a word. I really had no sense of any purpose in our progress; I crept on exactly as some animals, wounded to death, move on and on until there is no longer strength for another step, when they lie down for the final breath.

We saw no water nor promise of any; nothing save the long stretch of dim vista ahead and the grim, black walls on either side. That, I think, for hours; it seemed to me then for years.

I dragged one leg after the other with infinite effort and pain; Harry was ahead, and sometimes, glancing back over his shoulder to find me at some distance behind, he would turn over and lie on his back till I approached. Then again to his knees and again forward. Neither of us spoke.

Suddenly, at a great distance down the passage, much further than I had been able to see before, I saw what appeared to be a white wall extending directly across our path.

I called to Harry and pointed it out to him. He nodded vaguely, as though in wonder that I should have troubled him about so slight an object of interest, and crawled on.

But the white wall became whiter still, and soon I saw that it was not a wall. A wild hope surged through me; I felt the blood mount dizzily to my head, and I stilled the clamor that beat at my temples by an extreme effort of the will. “It can’t be,” I said to myself aloud, over and over; “it can’t be, it can’t be.”

Harry turned, and his face was as white as when he had knelt by the body of Desiree, and his eye was wild.

“You fool,” he roared, “it is!”

We went faster then. Another hundred yards, and the thing was certain; there it was before us. We scrambled to our feet and tried to run; I reeled and fell, then picked myself up again and followed Harry, who had not even halted as I had fallen. The mouth of the passage was now but a few feet away; I reached Harry’s side, blinking and stunned with amazement and the incredible wonder of it.

I tried to shout, to cry aloud to the heavens, but a great lump in my throat choked me and my head was singing dizzily.

Harry, at my side, was crying like a child, with great tears streaming down his face, as together we staggered forth from the mouth of the passage into the bright and dazzling sunshine of the Andes.

CHAPTER XXIV

CONCLUSION

Never, I believe, were misery and joy so curiously mingled in the human breast as when Harry and I stood—barely able to stand—gazing speechlessly at the world that had so long been hidden from us.

We had found the light, but had lost Desiree. We were alive, but so near to death that our first breath of the mountain air was like to be our last.

The details of our painful journey down the mountain, over the rocks and crags, and through rushing torrents that more than once swept us from our feet, cannot be written, for I do not know them.

The memory of the thing is but an indistinct nightmare of suffering. But the blind luck that seemed to have fallen over our shoulders as a protecting mantle at the death of Desiree stayed with us; and after endless hours of incredible toil and labor, we came to a narrow pass leading at right angles to our course.

Night was ready to fall over the bleak and barren mountain as we entered it. Darkness had long since overtaken us, when we saw at a distance a large clearing, in the middle of which lights shone from the windows of a large house whose dim and shadowy outline appeared to us surrounded by a halo of peace.

But we were nearly forced to fight for it. The proprietor of the hacienda himself answered our none too gentle knock at the door, and he had no sooner caught sight of us than he let out a yell as though he had seen the devil in person, and slammed the door violently in our faces. Indeed, we were hardly recognizable as men.

Naked, black, bruised, and bleeding, covered with hair on our faces and parts of our bodies—mine, of recent growth, stubby and stiff—our appearance would have justified almost any suspicion.

But we hammered again on the door, and I set forth our pedigree and plight in as few words as possible. Reassured, perhaps, by my excellent Spanish—which could not, of course, be the tongue of the devil—and convinced by our pitiable condition of our inability to do him any harm, he at length reopened the door and gave us admittance.

When we had succeeded in allaying his suspicions concerning our identity—though I was careful not to alarm his superstitions by mentioning the cave of the devil, which, I thought, was probably well known to him—he lost no time in displaying his humanity.

Calling in some hombres from the rear of the hacienda, he gave them ample instructions, with medicine and food, and an hour later Harry and I were lying side by side in his own bed—a rude affair, but infinitely better than granite—refreshed, bandaged, and as comfortable as their kindly ministrations could make us.

The old Spaniard was a direct descendant of the good Samaritan—despite the slight difference in nationality. For many weeks he nursed us and fed us and coaxed back the spark of life in our exhausted and wounded bodies.

Our last ounce of strength seemed to have been used up in our desperate struggle down the side of the mountain; for many days we lay on our backs absolutely unable to move a muscle and barely conscious of life.

But the spark revived and fluttered. The day came when we could hobble, with his assistance, to the door of the hacienda and sit for hours in the invigorating sunshine; and thenceforward our convalescence proceeded rapidly. Color came to our cheeks and light to our eyes; and one sunny afternoon it was decided that we should set out for Cerro de Pasco on the following day.

Harry proposed a postponement of our departure for two days, saying that he wished to make an excursion up the mountain. I understood him at once.

“It would be useless,” I declared. “You would find nothing.”

“But she was with us when we fell,” he persisted, not bothering to pretend that he did not understand me. “She came—it must be near where we landed.”

“That isn’t it,” I explained. “Have you forgotten that we have been here for over a month? You would find nothing.” As he grasped my thought his face went white and he was silent. So on the following morning we departed.

Our host furnished us with food, clothing, mules, and an arriero, not to mention a sorrowful farewell and a hearty blessing. From the door of the hacienda he waved his sombrero as we disappeared around a bend in the mountain-pass; we had, perhaps, been a welcome interruption in the monotony of his lonely existence.

We were led upward for many miles until we found ourselves again in the region of perpetual snow. There we set our faces to the south. From the arriero we tried to learn how far we then were from the cave of the devil, but to our surprise were informed that he had never heard of the thing.

We could see that the question made him more than a little suspicious of us; often, when he thought himself unobserved, I caught him eyeing us askance with something nearly approaching terror.

We journeyed southward for eleven days; on the morning of the twelfth we saw below us our goal. Six hours later we had entered the same street of Cerro de Pasco through which we had passed formerly with light hearts; and the heart which had been gayest of all we had left behind us, stilled forever, somewhere beneath the mountain of stone which she had herself chosen for her tomb.

Almost the first person we saw was none other than Felipe, the arriero. He sat on the steps of the hotel portico as we rode up on our mules. Dismounting, I caught sight of his white face and staring eyes as he rose slowly to his feet, gazing at us as though fascinated.

I opened my mouth to call to him, but before the words left my lips he had let out an ear-splitting yell of terror and bounded down the steps and past us, with arms flying in every direction, running like one possessed. Nor did he return during the few hours that we remained at the hotel.

Two days later found us boarding the yacht at Callao. When I had discovered, to my profound astonishment, at the hacienda, that another year had taken us as far as the tenth day of March, I had greatly doubted if we should find Captain Harris still waiting for us. But there he was; and he had not even put himself to the trouble of becoming uneasy about us.

As he himself put it that night in the cabin, over a bottle of wine, he “didn’t know but what the senora had decided to take the Andes home for a mantel ornament, and was engaged in the little matter of transportation.”

But when I informed him that “the senora” was no more, his face grew sober with genuine regret and sorrow. He had many good things to say of her then; it appeared that she had really touched his salty old heart.

“She was a gentle lady,” said the worthy captain; and I smiled to think how Desiree herself would have smiled at such a characterization of the great Le Mire.

We at once made for San Francisco. There, at a loss, I disposed of the remainder of the term of the lease on the yacht, and we took the first train for the East.

Four days later we were in New York, after a journey saddened by thoughts of the one who had left us to return alone.

It was, in fact, many months before the shadow of Desiree ceased to hover about the dark old mansion on lower Fifth Avenue, incongruous enough among the ancient halls and portraits of Lamars dead and gone in a day when La Marana herself had darted like a meteor into the hearts of their contemporaries.

That is, I suppose, properly the end of the story; but I cannot refrain from the opportunity to record a curious incident that has just befallen me. Some twenty minutes ago, as I was writing the last paragraph—I am seated in the library before a massive mahogany table, close to a window through which the September sun sends its golden rays—twenty minutes ago, as I say, Harry sauntered into the room and threw himself lazily into a large armchair on the other side of the table.

I looked up with a nod of greeting, while he sat and eyed me impatiently for some seconds.

“Aren’t you coming with me down to Southampton?” he asked finally.

“What time do you leave?” I inquired, without looking up.

“Eleven-thirty.”

“What’s on?”

“Freddie Marston’s Crocodiles and the Blues. It’s going to be some polo.”

I considered a moment. “Why, I guess I’ll run down with you. I’m about through here.”

“Good enough!” Harry arose to his feet and began idly fingering some of the sheets on the table before me. “What is all this silly rot, anyway?”

“My dear boy,” I smiled, “you’ll be sorry you called it silly rot when I tell you that it is a plain and honest tale of our own experiences.”

“Must be deuced interesting,” he observed. “More silly rot than ever.”

“Others may not think so,” I retorted, a little exasperated by his manner. “It surely will be sufficiently exciting to read of how we were buried with Desiree Le Mire under the Andes, and our encounters with the Incas, and our final escape, and—”

“Desiree what?” Harry interrupted.

“Desiree Le Mire,” I replied very distinctly. “The great French dancer.”

“Never heard of her,” said Harry, looking at me as if he doubted my sanity.

“Never heard of Desiree, the woman you loved?” I almost shouted at him.

“The woman I—piffle! I say I never heard of her.”

I gazed at him, trembling with high indignation. “I suppose,” I observed with infinite sarcasm, “that you will tell me next that you have never been in Peru?”

“Guilty,” said Harry. “I never have.”

“And that you never climbed Pike’s Peak to see the sunrise?”

“Rahway, New Jersey, is my farthest west.”

“And that you never dived with me from the top of a column one hundred feet high?”

“Not I. I retain a smattering of common sense.”

“And that you did not avenge the death of Desiree by causing that of the Inca king?”

“So far as that Desiree woman is concerned,” said Harry, and his tone began to show impatience, “I can only repeat that I have never heard of the creature. And”—he continued—“if you’re trying to bamboozle a gullible world by concocting a tale as silly as your remarks to me would seem to indicate, I will say that as a cheap author you are taking undue liberties with your family, meaning myself. And what is more, if you dare to print the stuff I’ll let the world know it’s a rank fake.”

This threat, delivered with the most awful resolution and sincerity, unnerved me completely, and I fell back in my chair in a swoon.

When I recovered Harry had gone to his polo game, leaving me behind, whereupon I seized my pen and hastened to set down in black and white that most remarkable conversation, that the reader may judge for himself between us.

For my part, I do swear that the story is true, on my word of honor as a cynic and a philosopher.

THE MAN WHO MEASURED THE WIND, by Harold Lamb

CHAPTER I

A Gala Night

It was a gala night in Fen Shi’s place under the wall of Kashgar. In the first moon of the New Year all Chinese pay their debts, and, having paid, hold the festival of a clear conscience. And a clear conscience, even to an old rascal like Fen Shi, is more to be esteemed than silver, which they desire more than gold.

Fen Shi’s house, like its owner, is two faced. That is, on the alley side, it is a curio shop where Kashgar’s few white tourists can buy old coins, old weapons and old manuscripts, dug out of the Gobi desert by Fen Shi; behind the curio shop and separated from it by a screening mat is the rum shop. Here Afghan chieftains can buy wine, forbidden to Moslems; derelict Russians can procure vodka, also illicit; those who desire can taste hashish or opium, toasted by one of the several girl slaves of Fen Shi.

That night there was a fight at Fen Shi’s, and a man died.

This had happened before, many times. Kashgar lies in the center of the heart of Asia, on the far side of the Gobi desert from China, and beyond the Himalayas; it stands on one of the oldest caravan routes known to men, from China to India. So Kashgar is still a meeting place for the drifters of Asia, and Fen Shi’s is a rendezvous of the flotsam of Kashgar.

An ex-Cossack sotnik, that night of the feast, lay drunk on the sand of the floor. The Arab storekeeper puffed at a hubble-bubble, a water pipe that added its odor to the taint of cooking and the stench of sheepskins. Black Gordon, the American, stretched his legs under a sandalwood tabouret and leaned back against the wall, frowning.

For several moments he had been aware that Fen Shi was watching him. From a dark corner by the entrance mat, a tall Chinese in coolie dress, although Gordon knew him to be one of the innkeepers knife men, tong men, in fact, also had him under scrutiny.

Black Gordon seldom came to Fen Shi’s. He was a hunter of the desert, who had found the Gobi very like the desert plains of Arizona. On the trail of big game that no longer lived in the West, he had come to the Gobi, where he camped as he willed in the immeasurable spaces of bleak sand or snow-crowned mountains. He sold, when the need arose, deers’ horns and bears’ paws to the Chinese merchants—or rarer pelts to Shebatsky and Robaire, the chief leather merchants of Kashgar. The few white men in Kashgar called him Kara, or Black Gordon, because the skin of his hands and face was burned to a leather hue.

Although the yellow hair that fell to his shoulders was streaked with white, his blue eyes were quick, and he still stood six feet two in his boots. The Chinese called him jen i t’so fen, which means something like Man-Whom-It-Is-Well-To-Pass-By.

The covert scrutiny of the tong man and his master did not disturb Gordon, but it puzzled him. He sensed expectancy in the air, which meant danger. And on the edge of the Gobi it is not well to be napping when weapons are drawn.

He satisfied himself that Fen Shi was playing an ordinary game of dominoes with a drunken Lascar who was losing copper pieces hand over fist. Fen Shi sat facing Gordon, a long pipe in one hand, the other placidly sorting out the dominoes.

Gordon turned his eyes away, toward the dark corner, where the tong man sat, but he still watched Fen Shi, and he knew that the old Chinese laid down his pipe and crooked a long-nailed forefinger in the direction of the corner.

In the darkness by the mat Black Gordon was aware that something stirred, although the knife man had not moved. His quick ears caught a muffled cough. He saw Fen Shi gather up the last coins of the Lascar and smile, with contempt.

Then the Lascar peered around, as if to make certain that no one was observing him except the smiling old man a yard away. The right hand of the Lascar went down to his girdle and came up with a curved dagger. He struck swiftly as a snow leopard leaps; but before it reached the neck of Fen Shi, the dagger slipped from his fingers and clinked on the table.

Fen Shi had shaken his sleeve, and the thin knife that dropped from the sleeve into the waiting fingers of his hand was in the heart of the Lascar.

Almost at once the smoking blade was withdrawn, before the Lascar so much as grunted. At the summons of Fen Shi’s beckoning figure, a white man walked from the shadows beside the alertly watching tong man. Fen Shi took the right hand of the newcomer, thrust the hilt of the bloodied knife into his fingers and cried in a loud voice.

“Ai—one has been slain!”

The throng in the rum shop, hitherto intent on their own affairs, turned to look into the half-screened corner where Fen Shi sat passively. They saw the dagger of the Lascar drop to the table; they saw the body of the dying man slump forward, thumping down on the dominoes; they saw the long forefinger of Fen Shi pointing at the man who had been invisible until now, and who stood, frowning vaguely, the darkened knife in his right hand.

“Ai!” repeated Fen Shi. “The Man-Who-Measured-the-Wind has slain the Lascar.” And he looked at Black Gordon challengingly.

But the hunter did not understand Chinese, and just then he was listening to the stranger who seemed half asleep, with the knife still propped in his fingers. He began to laugh, as if at a good jest, and laughed until he coughed.

It was a strange thing for a man to do, when of all the assemblage in the rum shop only Black Gordon and the watchful tong man knew that he had not killed the drunken native.

“He who sows the wind,” the man with the knife chuckled, “shall reap the whirlwind.” He spoke excellent English.

Black Gordon emptied his glass and whistled softly as he heard the chiming of rusty camel bells and the hoa-hoa of drivers, urging on their beasts in the alley. A caravan was entering the Chinese quarter of Kashgar.

Gordon pulled his hat over his eyes. He wanted to think. Fen Shi had suspected that the native who had lost at dominoes would draw a knife; Gordon himself had looked for it. Fen Shi had summoned the white man, whom the natives of Kashgar called Man-Who-Measured-the-Wind, and placed the knife in his hand.

It could not be that Fen Shi wished to establish his own innocence of the death; no one would trouble him about that. The old keeper of the curio shop must have desired to place guilt upon the white man. Why?

And the stranger laughed. He was not drunk; Gordon knew that he was not mad. Yet he came and took the knife and laughed, saying something about a whirlwind. He seemed dazed.

Now Gordon had come to Fen Shi’s place to seek out this white man, and when the hunter appeared in the rum shop Fen Shi had very cleverly taken measures to prevent the American from meeting the Man-Who-Measured-the-Wind henceforth save in the Chinese jail. Why?

To know the answer, it was necessary to reason out what was going on in the mind of old Fen Shi, and this was not easily done. For the first time the blue eyes of the hunter met squarely the slitted black eyes of the Chinese. So Black Gordon took up the challenge of the Oriental. The Man-Who-Measured-the-Wind was his friend, and so he would not step aside, now that the other was in trouble.

* * * *

It was six months before that Gordon had first met the stranger, when he was riding up from the desert, along the highway that leads into Kashgar from the East. Several miles out—Gordon counted the wooden mile posts—he saw a white man working in the sand dunes. A curious kind of work, and Gordon stopped to watch, making pretense of lighting his pipe.

The stranger was moving along a fine of symmetrically arranged stakes, out in the sand, measuring each one with a steel tape. When he came to the end of the line, he began taping off the distance from the crest of the nearest dune. Other posts were in the offing and the worker visited each one, noting down results in a memorandum book.

Very seldom did Gordon ask questions about anything. The stakes, however, touched a very familiar memory spot. “Marking off a claim, son?”

For all a stubble of beard, the other was a youth in his twenties, thin, with over bright eyes. He looked up and Gordon noticed that he seemed about done up. There was in Kashgar a district tradition that the precious metals were to be had in the foothills of the mountains in which the city stood, at the edge of the great basin of the Gobi. Once there had been mines, along the Kashgar River that ran beside the highway.

“I’m timing the sand dunes,” said the stranger.

Gordon chuckled, thinking that he had laid himself open to such an answer. It was a good one. “How fast do they travel? Mile a minute?”

The other wound up his tape, considering. “It’s worth fifty dollars, your money, the answer to that question.”

“Sure.” Gordon could appreciate a jest. “Fifty dollars for a mining claim on the caravan track to Kashgar. They call it a highway.”

“The Highway of the King. That’s its real name, seven hundred years old. And it doesn’t run to Kashgar; it goes out of Kashgar. D’ye know where it ends?”

The hunter nodded. The Highway of the King—the Chinese name for it—ended nowhere. That is, it ran out into the sands some fifty miles and came to an end.

“No place,” he responded.

“Every road always,” objected the boy, “goes to some place.” He laughed a little, and coughed. Gordon had heard that kind of dry cough before, from consumptives who came to Arizona to stretch their span of life as much as possible. The stranger refused a ride in on Gordon’s spare horse.

Jogging along in to Kashgar that day Gordon wondered a bit at the familiar potais, the mile posts of massive wood and sun-baked clay, and the wide sweep of the gravel highway. As the youngster said, such a road ought to go somewhere. Other men had puzzled over the Highway of the King, which ran down in a flawless line until it lost itself in the shifting sands. Who had built it? Why had it been built?

Certainly the present-day Chinese officials of Kashgar could not have constructed the highway, and the British agency knew nothing about it, except once a year the people of the city, at New Year’s, gathered to watch several nondescript soldiers carry the effigy of the emperor—a sadly battered effigy—through the town and out a short distance along the highway. They fired off some firecrackers to frighten any devils that might be present and turned back. It was a very old custom, and there was no reason for it. It had been, so it was. To the Chinese, an excellent reason indeed.

Several days later, on a chance visit to the spot, Gordon was a little surprised to see Fen Shi hard at work tearing down the stranger’s stakes.

He took the trouble to inquire about the man whom, because of his labor with the steel tape, the Chinese called the “Man-Who-Measured-the-Wind.” His real name was Michael Lanahan, and he had drifted over the Himalayan passes from India, and put up with a servant at the Continental House, Kashgar’s solitary hotel. After making futile inquiries about the mining business—which had ceased a dozen generations ago—he dismissed his servant, moved to Fen Shi’s cheaper hostelry and—set up his stakes.

For several days thereafter Gordon noticed Lanahan sitting on the bench outside Fen Shi’s place, rolling cigarettes. Usually the Chinese seller of curios sat beside him, making hideous wailings from the one string of a fiddle. They talked together a good deal, as if driving a bargain. Lanahan never was seen in any other clothing than his faded duck suit. Before long Gordon saw that he no longer rolled cigarettes.

This, to the hunter, meant only one thing. Michael Lanahan was out of tobacco, with no money for more. Gordon ventured to ask him to have dinner with him one evening, but Lanahan looked at him coldly.

“You can dine with me,” he said stiffly. “My credit is good—with Fen Shi.” So they took possession of one of the tabourets and gave orders.

“Then you were staking out a claim, yonder in the sand,” Gordon chuckled. “But, didn’t somebody jump your claim?”

“Not right by half, Gordon,” Lanahan emptied his glass and coughed. “A—geological experiment. Wanted to determine the drift of the sand. When I heard there was no prospect of opening up a mine here I knew I’d played my trump and lost when I climbed over the hills. No sense in going—back. It—suited me.”

Gordon filled his glass with the rum that was the best thing Fen Shi sold.

“This accursed basin, Gordon, was once clear of sand. Kashgar was not built then, but another city stood a hundred miles or so to the east. Time of Genghis Khan and the Mongol freebooters, that was. Ah, they had gold then, and the spoils of the world! There were silver mines then along the Kashgar Daria—this river. Prevailing winds in this region are easterly and east-by-northeast. Sand driven along before the wind—like waves, coming nearer to Kashgar. You can watch it move, if you keep track. I did, for a while, then somebody busted in and rubbed out my sticks.”

“Treasure?” asked Gordon, and grinned.

“Sure, why not? I noticed old Fen Shi and others were digging old objects out of the sands—genuine ones, too. Driving quite a trade. The Russian scientists knew of the ancient city near Kashgar—Bolazan they call it. Came the ocean of sand and buried it after a century or so. Some day someone will dig it up and write his will for a hundred thousand pounds.”

Gordon considered, and shook his head. “If there’s any silver or gold cached within a thousand miles Shebatsky and Robaire would have smelled it out before now.”

Shebatsky and Robaire were merchants who handled the Indian end of the caravan trade out of Kashgar. Since they owned the marketing facilities for everything, from jade to leather, they established the prices at which the natives sold to them; their own margin of profit ran anywhere from fifty to a thousand per cent., depending on how badly the seller needed money. Fen Shi and others competed with them in a small way, but pockmarked Shebatsky had a weasel’s nose for a victim.

“I’m not saying they haven’t got wind of Bolazan,” acknowledged the other. “Lots of chaps have—still, they can’t have enough info to act on. It’s not so easy, hitting on the site of Bolazan.” He dipped his forefinger into the sand on the floor and with it traced two words in the grease of the table top.

“Bolazan—see that, Gordon? Now look at this—Bala-shan. Same thing, isn’t it? Well, Balashan means City of the King in old Chinese.”

Now Lanahan, what with his wandering over the face of the earth, had the gift of tongues. There was a glint in his gray, bloodshot eyes, and Black Gordon listened, attentive, yet doubtful.

“Maybe there was a city out in the desert, one time,” he conceded. “You said yourself it was buried deep under sand; how you going to know where to dig? You got to know, pretty close, I figure.”

“Right you are. That’s where my geological experiment comes in. When Balashan was a living city, in the time of Genghis Khan, seven centuries ago, the sand hadn’t come over it yet. That’s reasonable. Now the sand dunes, these infernal sand waves, are close to the Kashgar wall. Very well. We know the time the sand’s been moving west—seven centuries. And we know the position of Kashgar. If we knew the rate of travel of the sand, we’d have a simple problem in arithmetic, like this: rate sand moves, multiplied by seven hundred years, equals number of miles Balashan lies from Kashgar, due east, along the river.”

“How do you figure on guessing the travel of the sand dunes?” asked Gordon mildly.

“Don’t need to guess, old man. I know. The prevailing winds over the Gobi are steady as the trades; the dunes move always in the same direction, year by year, century by century. Sand doesn’t pile up, like dead leaves, under the pressure of the wind; it moves in ridges—you call ’em dunes—and each ridge has a crest. The wind forces the loose sand up the east side of the ridge and down the west; consequently, the crest always travels west.”

That was quite true. Gordon nodded.

“Very well,” Lanahan smiled wryly. “I set up stakes a known distance apart, in the dunes, driving ’em deep in the clay bottom. By measuring the distance of each crest from the stakes, every week for six months, I determined the speed with which the sand moves; and by averaging the measurements of a dozen stakes, I came pretty close to the truth. Of course I allowed for seasonal variation in the winds. Simple, isn’t it? So simple that no one has hit on it before, or perhaps no one has had the patience to do it.”

Gordon chewed at his mustache, reflecting upon the many times that he had heard similar tales from down-at-the-heel drifters in the States—tales of vanished mother lodes.

“Fen Shi,” Lanahan went on, “thought enough of my work to pull up my stakes—after they had served my purpose. He knows that I know where Balashan lies, under the sand—if it’s there. Once I believed it was there; that was when the old rascal rubbed out my experiment. I started out to find the bally place.”

“Meaning, you headed out into the desert, without a horse?”

“Right you are.” Lanahan lifted his glass and laughed. “You see the first half was an easy trek along the highway. And—it was my last card, you know. The second half was not so good, as far as I went. No, I’ll not try it again. I missed my way, after the river ended.”

Into the eyes of the man there crept a fixed stare, as if a curtain had been drawn from something in his soul. He had been afraid, out there where the Highway of the King ended, and Michael Lanahan was not a man to give way easily to fear.

Gordon wondered what he had seen in the desert. The hunter, in common with the rest of Kashgar, always kept to the northern foothills when he ventured east. Lanahan alone had ventured down into the shimmering waste of the gray basin where there was no human life.

“You lost the river?” Gordon was surprised.

“The river lost me,” said Lanahan, quite seriously. “That was after the sand covered up the mile posts of the highways. You can’t keep direction in that waste.”

“No sun to go by?” Gordon was incredulous.

“You don’t have to believe me,” Lanahan laughed a little. “But there was no sun, I assure you. That goes for the stars, too; unless the stars come down to earth in pairs and make a ring around you, every night, beyond the light of your fire.”

“If you were lost, how did you find your way back to the river?”

“I came across the tracks left by a man, Gordon. No, I hadn’t circled on my own trail, because those were not my tracks. They were different—one foot planted right beside the other, as if the other man had progressed by a series of standing jumps.”

“A four foot critter’ll leave tracks like that, maybe, but a two legged man can’t gallop,” Gordon grumbled.

Lanahan shrugged. “The tracks were made by leather boots, moving abreast, as I said, and one deeper than the other—the left foot made a lighter imprint in the sand. Anyway, I followed my two-legged galloper back to the Highway. There the tracks were lost, after a while. You can call me a liar if you want to, but that’s what happened.”

At this Gordon glanced keenly at the man across the table, and took out his pipe, filling it slowly. After a while he chuckled.

“Lanahan, there’s lots of things a man won’t believe because he don’t know any better. I’ve seen pairs of eyes like you said, ringing around my fire of nights. They were wolves, and they sure kept me company right close in the Gobi.”

“And what about my galloping boots?” The other leaned forward curiously.

“It was a man. I’ve been watching old Fen Shi moving around, with his game leg. When a man limps, he pulls one foot up beside the other, then steps out with his good leg. The game leg leaves a fainter mark, I’d reckon.”

The hunter grinned. “Maybe it was Fen Shi that followed you out a piece, and turned back. Maybe he wanted to see where you were headed, and turned around when he knew you were lost, or when he noticed the wolves. They are big fellows, those wolves, and mostly half-starved—got away with a pony of mine once. Lanahan, suppose there was a mite of truth in that idea of yours?”

He was thinking of the New Year’s feast, when the lacquer image of the emperor had been carried out of the alleys of Kashgar to the wind-swept highway. The highway was named the King’s Highway, and Balashan the King’s Town. Perhaps seven hundred years ago there had been gold and silver in Balashan, and—Fen Shi limped.

Suddenly Lanahan laughed aloud, throwing back his, head, his beard bristling around his cracked lips. A sweep of his hand obliterated the two words he had written in the grease.

“Believe it? No! I’ll sell what I know to the next curio hunting tripper that comes over from India—I’ve been waiting months for one to come. Ten pounds is my price, ten quid, fifty American dollars. That’ll be about enough.”

His laugh ended in a choking hitch. “Devil of it is,” he whispered, “Fen Shi’s offered me five—five pounds, in credit. That won’t buy enough vodka—” He broke off quickly. “Time to turn in.”

Lanahan would not go to Gordon’s tent, but sought out his rag-covered space in the serai, where he wiped his lips and stared up at the big American defiantly. Then Gordon broke his silence.

“This country won’t help your lungs, Lanahan. What you need is the mountains, where you came from. Down in this dust, and rain—”

“It’s what I want,” said Michael Lanahan.

The hunter shook his head. He had seen tuberculosis before, and he judged that Lanahan had not much longer to live, if he stayed in Kashgar. The trip out into the desert had left its mark on the youngster. He had heard there were sanitariums at Simla and other places on the southern slope of the Himalayas.

“Fifty dollars won’t get you into India, and get you a doctor,” he mused slowly. “I’ve got about seventy, maybe, now, and in six months I can get a couple of hundred more, selling some skins I know about. You take care of yourself for six months, Lanahan—”

“Will you kindly go to the devil!”

The boy flushed and a new fit of coughing came on him, until he was stretched unconscious on his sheepskin. Gordon struck a match, noticing as he did so that something bright had fallen from the sick man’s shirt and lay on the earth. It was a silver locket, hung upon a cord. The hunter took the thing in his hand and saw that the fall had opened it, so that a folded square of paper was revealed.

On the paper Gordon saw his own name written in Lanahan’s hand. He opened the folded sheet, found it to be a letter from a girl to Lanahan. Striking a second match he read it through carefully, seeing at the bottom the words scribbled by the boy, “Want you to know this, if anything happens.”

That night he made up his packs and left Kashgar. For months he hunted the bare slopes of the Tibetan foothills. He had time to think over the letter that cleared up his last doubt of his companion.

Lanahan had a girl, back home in England. They were to have been married, after his return from France, where he had been a captain in the engineers—but the white plague came on the boy. Both of them were poor, and Lanahan arranged to be transferred to India, to one of the northern posts. There he was invalided out of the service; lacking money to remain in the sanitariums, he had staked everything on the chance of a strike in Kashgar.

The man had pluck and nerve, but now he had played his last card. Fifty dollars would buy him enough vodka and liquors to hasten the end, and this was what he sought, asking no favors of anyone.

When the bleak winter of the Tibetan highlands came down on the hunter he turned back, with the skins he had taken, and sought Kashgar. Shebatsky or Robaire would be there about now, and he could sell his trophies. He would be able to give Lanahan nearly five hundred dollars, and that would take the boy back to India, to a sanitarium, and, in time, back to the girl who had written that letter and was waiting for Captain Mike Lanahan to cross the ocean and marry her.

Only, Gordon hoped that Lanahan had not made the deal with Fen Shi—sold the Chinese the information Fen Shi wanted badly, it seemed.

And now, before he had had time to speak to his friend, Fen Shi had placed, very cleverly, the guilt of a man’s death upon Lanahan, and the engineer had laughed.

CHAPTER II

Share And Share Alike

“What the hell is this?” Henri Robaire, partner of the firm of Shebatsky and Robaire, let the mat fall behind him and stood—six feet in his fur boots, and broad in proportion in his sable coat. He was flushed from the bite of the wind in the higher altitudes, and his caravan had arrived in the alley the moment the native was knifed.

“White devil killum Lascar, you bet!” chattered Fen Shi, pointing to the stained knife that lay on the table. “Stop along guard house velly long time. Maybe stop along grave!”

The cold eyes of the big merchant watched the dying spasm of the native, traveled indifferently over the smiling Lanahan, and came to rest on Gordon.

“Ah, United States? Heard you were here. Out of a job, eh? That’s good. I have some business for you. Shebatsky’s frosted to his vitals with this wind.”

“Sit down,” offered Gordon, without moving. The merchant did so, promptly ordering a hot cordial from one of Fen Shi’s girl servitors, and throwing back his overcoat, disclosing a holstered automatic. Knowing his man, the hunter came to the point at once. He had some good skins, he said, three bull yaks, a pair of snow leopards and others, worth in all about four hundred dollars. Robaire could see them, at the Swede’s—the missionary’s.

“I’ll take your word for the pelts,” grunted the merchant, who knew the ingrained honesty of Black Gordon. “But the market’s poor. Besides, snow’s in the passes now; we were the last caravan through from India, and we’ll be shut off, north and south, for six months.”

This was true. Gordon would have liked to know why Shebatsky had come with Robaire to hibernate in Kashgar for six months.

“What d’ye want with eighty pounds, in Kashgar?” demanded Robaire, curiously.

“Grubstake,” explained Gordon laconically. This, also, was true; but the stake was for Lanahan.

“I’ll give you twenty-four pounds, silver or check on India,” said the merchant after a second cordial. “Mind, you don’t tell Shebatsky. He’d have my hide off for buying leather at this season.”

Gordon opened and shut his scarred fingers. A hundred and twenty dollars for half a year’s hardship and solitude! The native saddlers and leather makers of the bazaar would give as much—provided Robaire did not make it known that he had refused the American’s pelts. No, Robaire had the market in his hands.

“It’s the best I can do,” shrugged Robaire impatiently. “Anyway, that’s a native’s game—skin gathering. Why don’t you take a white man’s job, at good wages?”

“I’ll sell you the skins, at your price, if you’ll put in a word with the governor for that man.” Gordon nodded at Lanahan, who still stood by; the table, his unnatural fit of mirth ended, his lean face pale.

“Who in damnation is he, and what’s he done?”

Explaining the circumstances of the Lascar’s death, Gordon added that Lanahan was a former army officer, down with tuberculosis. Robaire shook his head restlessly. He had more influence, because he had passed over more bribe money in the way of presents, in the governor’s house than any other white man in Kashgar.

“What is that blighter to you? I’ve heard, Gordon, that one of Fen Shi’s slave girls disappeared seven months ago, and probably Fen Shi suspects that chap—wants to even up the score. Either Lanahan’s balmy or he’s drunk with vodka; either way, he’s capable of doing anything for money, I hear.”

“No, he is not mad, and I don’t think he’s drunk. Looks as if he had been doped. Smoke of hashish makes men laugh like that. I want to get him out of Fen Shi’s hands.”

“Nothing will be done tonight during the festival,” Robaire summed up irritably. “In the morning that swine of a Fen Shi will bring his case before the governor with a dozen witnesses to swear to what he says. The only thing for you to do is to get Lanahan out of Kashgar.”

He dismissed the matter with a shrug. “I won’t be in Kashgar to talk the governor into forgetting a murder case. Look here, Gordon, I’m planning something out of the ordinary, something in your line.”

It was characteristic of Robaire that he thought of nothing but his own affairs. “You’ve heard of the wild camels down in the Gobi, by the Kashgar River? Well, I’m after some of the white skins, and I need another white man to go along, to back me up. You know the country, and you can do fancy shooting. I’ll pay well. How about it?”

“How much is it worth, to me?”

“Fifteen pounds a month, and found.”

“Nearly four times as much as you gave me for more valuable skins than you could run across, down in the sands. Something wrong somewhere. I like to see the cards on the table. If you want to talk right out, plain, I’ll listen. Otherwise, no.”

“Sit down,” said the merchant harshly. “What’s the odds, about what I’m after? That’s my affair. You’ll have your money in hand, any way the dice fall. Are you afraid?”

“You heard what I said. I’ll play those cards as they lie.”

The hunter rose, putting down a piece of silver on the table. Muttering under his breath, Robaire studied him, as if to learn why any man in Kashgar could be disinclined to jump at a connection with Henri Robaire, master of the caravan routes and richest man except one in the space of an empire—or what had once been an empire. Then he caught the other’s sleeve.

“Come along to Shebatsky, at the Continental House. If you expect more palaver than this, he’ll have to do the talking. It’s his idea, after all.”

Emptying his glass, Robaire buttoned his coat and waited impatiently, while Gordon went over to Lanahan. Fen Shi sidled forward at once, protesting. Lanahan, he proclaimed loudly, must remain where he was until the coming of the soldiers who would take him to jail.

In his anxiety to win his point, the Chinese put himself in their way and clutched Robaire by the arm. The merchant snarled, and, jerking free, slapped Fen Shi across the face. He weighed all of two hundred pounds, while the old Oriental was light as a bird. The blow sent him whirling among his tables, catching vainly at the air, until he collapsed on the floor. Someone laughed, and fell silent as Fen Shi turned, one side of his face purple, and stared at the white men with eyes that were dark with rage.

Knowing Fen Shi’s knack with a knife, Robaire kept his hand close to his belt until they had left the inn.

“The yellow devil—put his claw on me!” He laughed with appreciation of his own act. “Did you see his face? That’s the way to handle a dog like that.”

Gordon was not so sure, but Lanahan went with them—that was all he could think of for the moment.

* * * *

In a room of the one hotel in Kashgar, the door and window closed tight, hugging a tarnished brass stove, Shebatsky smoked a long Turkish cigarette, and pondered, pulling the collar of his fur coat about his ears. After he had weighed matters in his mind, he spoke.

“Balashan.”

In his broken English, he went on to explain what he and Robaire planned under pretense of the camel hunt. They had come across a map of Balashan, the City of the King. It was genuine, no doubt of that, because Shebatsky had bought it at the sale of the belongings of a Russian Scientist.

The chart itself, he pointed out, was made by the Chinese in the time of the elder civilization and was more accurate than modern maps, because it gave distances with minute care. The present day li of the Chinese might be—as travelers could testify—anything from a quarter-mile to two miles. This chart gave the distance from the site of Kashgar to Balashan.

Balashan, Shebatsky went on, was buried now, under sand; but all they had to do was to follow the course of the Kashgar Daria, the Kashgar River, for the distance given in the map and they would hit upon it.

“And what then?” asked Black Gordon, wondering how much Shebatsky was minded to tell him.

The Russian shrugged and glanced at Robaire.

“We’re going to uncover as much of it as we can, Gordon,” the big merchant said promptly. “We’ll get curios enough to put Fen Shi out of business and—why, we’ll make a year’s profits out of the discovery, selling what we find to museums and collectors.”

“Then you haven’t heard any stories about gold or silver being in these Balashan ruins? The Kashgar part of the Gobi used to be a fine silver mine, I’m told—along the river.”

Robaire pulled at his mustache, and Shebatsky threw his cigarette butt into the open door of the stove viciously. “Schliemann, he don’ find gold in Troy! He make his fortune, yes. You go with Robaire, hein?”

It was Gordon’s turn to think things over. He judged that Shebatsky had been telling the truth, part of the truth. They knew more than they were telling him, of course. It was reasonably certain, moreover, that something of value was to be found in Balashan. Otherwise Shebatsky and Robaire would not bury themselves for a winter in Kashgar, and Fen Shi would not tramp for a week and kill a man for the sake of getting information from Lanahan.

Wishing to clinch the matter, Robaire added that already he had a good caravan under hire, supplies in their depot, and enough men to serve their needs. They had decided that Shebatsky would be of more assistance, in Kashgar, if anything should go wrong, than if they all bunched together.

“At that,” said Gordon thoughtfully, “it’s a job for three white men, not two. And you need an engineer.” Shebatsky, a miser to the core, would not pay out so much money, unless fighting were more than a possibility.

“I’ll go, on two conditions.” He must be his own master, not under orders from Robaire, and Lanahan must go also.

“We pay no more—we pay not a penny more!” cried the Russian in sudden alarm.

“I’m coming to that. Lanahan,” Gordon chose his words with care, “is worth his salt. He’s an army officer, and an engineer; he’s worth more to you than I am. You two are partners. So are we. I’ll go, and bring Captain Lanahan, without extra compensation for our services.”

Facing the two squarely, he let this point sink home. While Shebatsky brightened, Robaire half sneered.

“We’ll take our pay in this way, Robaire. Ordinarily, you two would half any profits from the venture. Right?” One after the other, they nodded silently. “Anything we get out of Balashan will be split three ways, share and share alike, you Robaire, taking one, you, Shebatsky taking another, and Lanahan the third. If one drops out by the way, the other two own the profits. I’ll settle up with Lanahan afterward. He needs a grubstake mighty bad just now. How about it?”

Sheer surprise kept the merchants voiceless a moment. Then Robaire swore roundly.

“What you think!” snarled the Russian “I will not—”

“If we get nothing out of Balashan, then Lanahan and I will take nothing from you.”

From cursing, Robaire fell into a sullen quiet. A reckless man, acting on impulse, he paused seldom to think things out. Now it struck him that Gordon, the taciturn American who was at home in this country, must have learned more about the ruins of the Chinese city than he had thought possible. If so, Gordon must be handled with some care. He glanced fleetingly at the sleeping Lanahan, at the thin face, worn by hardships. The man might die. Gordon had said if one dropped out by the way—

In any event he would have no trouble in making Lanahan take the small end of a settlement, he reasoned. Gordon would stick to his word, he knew.

“I sign nothing like that,” Shebatsky was muttering, out of a new dread—of losing gains he had already counted.

Gordon checked a smile; he had found out they needed him badly.

“We’ll ask you to sign nothing,” he said calmly. “I’ll take your word that you and Robaire will keep your part of the bargain.”

The two concealed their surprise well enough but exchanged a curious look. A spoken agreement! And Lanahan not even cognizant of what was being said. The word of one man against two, there was no harm in that.

“We agree,” said Robaire, and Shebatsky gave his assent.

“That,” added the hunter in his turn, “will fix Lanahan up, I reckon. It means he and I can start out along the Highway tomorrow morning before the governor wakes up and Fen Shi begins to make trouble talk.”

“Why not?” Henri Robaire threw back his head, and his massive throat shook with laughter. “By God, why not? I’m ready, and no man ever heard me snoring when work’s cut out. I’m damned if I don’t like your style, Gordon.”

CHAPTER III

The Wolf

Far behind them slept the city of Kashgar, the clang of gongs from the citadel marking the passing of the hours, and dawn heralded by the tiny note of the bell in the Swede’s chapel, sounding its note of protest against the wailing summons of the muezzin in the slender minarets that stood against the deeper shadows of the overhanging mountains.

Kashgar, with its filth and smells, its incessant chatter of polyglot voices behind the shop mats, the harem screen and the courtyard wall—voices bargaining, quarrelling and plotting—knew that they were gone. Even in the hours of sleep the voices were not still, and men moved in the windy alleys, bending their heads against the dust, and old Fen Shi, sitting with his ear against the mat of his shop, made melody on the one string of his fiddle.

Guided by the pyramid-like potais on either side the highway, the caravan had been dropping down into the hollow of the Gobi, losing sight gradually of the distant snow summits. As they went forward they were aware of a haze in the air, where the dust of the red clay and sand particles rose in the atmosphere.

Day by day the haze thickened, until the sun became a vague sphere of light, like a murky lantern hung up somewhere overhead—a lantern that cast no shadows. According to Lanahan, Gordon reflected, they would lose, presently, the aid of the sun as a guide. So long as the highway and the river served them this was a matter of no importance.

And then the highway ended. For the last day, the wooden pillars of the potais alone had showed above the drifting dimes, the clay bases of the mile posts being covered. The roadway, too, was no longer hard beaten red clay and gravel, but sand through which the camels swung along indifferently. Toward sunset the ground fell away sharply and they lost the posts entirely.

“’Tis the half-way mark,” explained Lanahan. “The more fools we, for going on to a place our betters have had the decency and the common sense to leave be, these seven hundred years.”

They were sitting with their pipes over a small fire of tamarisk branches that the hunter had kindled at the opening of his tent.

It was almost the first time he and Gordon had been left alone by Robaire, who was restless and liked someone to talk to. Just now he was berating Sam, the Chinese cook boy, over by the commissariat boxes, stacked beside his wall tent. Yussuf Beg, the caravanbash or overseer, was squatting down in the best place among the caravaneers by the cook fire, his hubble-bubble pipe beside him, his cloak drawn over his shoulders on the windward side.

Beyond the fact that the Moslem was capable and kept his own counsel, and that Robaire refrained from swearing at him, Gordon knew nothing of the man. The four other followers were Chinese and mixed bloods, scarecrows to the eye, but lean and tough as the camels themselves. Gordon was a little puzzled that Robaire should start with so few men, but put it down to the hurry of their departure and the fact that, if necessary, the merchant could send for more natives from Kashgar. It was probable, too, that Robaire desired to attract as little attention to their caravan as possible.

Ostensibly, they were out after wild camels, as Shebatsky had been at some pains to explain to the agency and the governor.

“That is all very well,” conceded Lanahan, finishing his pipe, “but I remember”—he looked away and bit his lip—“two of the four caravan boys are sweepings of Fen Shi’s place. One did some butcher’s work for the cook of the inn, and the other was handy with his knife, too.”

Good food, and perhaps a horse between his knees for the first time in a year, had eased some of the fatigue out of Mike Lanahan’s thin face. Gordon had not told him where they were headed until after they had started, and Lanahan had taken it silently. He had listened attentively to Gordon’s account of the interview with the merchants, saying only that the hunter, if he wished to get anything out of Shebatsky, should have had papers drawn and signed before the British Resident.

“Not that we’ll come upon anything—in the way of loot—in Balashan,” he added moodily.

“Son,” Gordon had responded, “I’ve had some dealings with hombres, and mostly I’ve had to take the short end of the deal. But I’ve learned one thing. It doesn’t help you any to have the other man sign papers, if he’s minded to short change you.”

Now, as he studied the embers of the fire, he was pleased with results. Mike Lanahan was out of the clutches of Fen Shi and already the boy looked better. He had noticed that, although Robaire had spirits along, the young engineer passed them up.

“Why,” asked Lanahan in a strained voice, “did you take the trouble to get me out of that mess in Kashgar, and nominate me in your bargain with Shebatsky?”

Gordon looked up at the close buttoned neck of the boy’s coat—an old corduroy suit out of the hunter’s small kit—and wondered if the locket and the girl’s letter were still in Lanahan’s keeping.

“I need a partner to work this claim,” he said after a while.

“What’s the matter with Robaire? He’s a dingo—a hard shell, you Americans would say.”

As Gordon was silent, the boy passed his hand over his forehead restlessly. “I was hoping you’d show up in Kashgar about now, Gordon. I—didn’t thank you for your offer, six months ago, to—help me out. The money Fen Shi gave me didn’t quite last; and the smoke of the brazier he issued New Year’s Day to heat my room made me sick, somehow. It sounds queer, Gordon, but I never saw you come in. Don’t remember anything, before waking up in your tent the morning we started the trek.”

He leaned forward, self-conscious, to poke the fire. “That’s how I got in that mess at Fen Shi’s. Great Scott, the old blighter must have been rather sick of having me around, to wish a murder on me.”

“How did you get a stake from Fen Shi?”

“Sold him all the information I had about Balashan. Worked him up to paying seven pounds—”

“You let Fen Shi know your calculations!” Gordon whistled, and thought this over. Fen Shi, when he knew Shebatsky and Robaire were coming to Kashgar, thought enough of the information Lanahan had given him to try to have the youngster put in the Chinese jail, out of sight and hearing of the merchants. “Judging by your antics, son, he must have filled you chuck full of hashish smoke that day.”

“He’s dangerous, in a way,” conceded the victim of Fen Shi’s machinations. “Look here, Gordon, why don’t you drop this? The bed of the Gobi, where we’re going is not—pleasant.” For a moment the boy was quiet, the shadow of an old dread lying in his eyes. “I heard Shebatsky—they don’t know I understand French—say that Robaire had paid you eighty pounds for your skins, four hundred dollars. At that, they robbed you, by the way. I know something of the value of yak leather and snow leopard pelts in upper India; your skins were worth an even thousand dollars. Why not keep what you have and winter in Kashgar? What’s the row?”

Reassured, Gordon swore roundly, then chuckled. “Nothing, except you’ve reminded me I generally get the short end of the deal in this country. Robaire lied to his partner about the price he paid for my furs. No matter, I’ll talk to them about that some day.” He fell serious. “You’ve been out here before, Lanahan. It got on your nerves. Are you game to tackle it again? Mind you, I know very little, but I’ve a hunch it will pay us.”

The boy took his time about answering. “I’ll stick it out, with you.”

Gordon was pleased, and warned Lanahan to tell Robaire nothing about his former trip, or his knowledge of Balashan.

“That hombre won’t take our advice anyway,” he pointed out. “And don’t fret yourself about my naming you beneficiary in what we get, instead of me. If I’d nominated myself, Shebatsky would have shied off from making the bargain.” He held out his hand. “Are we partners?”

Lanahan gripped the outstretched hand. “As long as I’m above the ground, Gordon—however long that will be.”

At the same moment the two men missed the sound of Robaire’s bull voice. The merchant was standing with his back to the fire, and at first they thought he was watching them. Gordon touched his friend’s shoulder, and pointed silently to where, within arm’s reach of Robaire’s massive back, Sam, the cook, was sharpening a thin, supple knife, as long as a man’s forearm, upon a whetstone. Above the crackle of the fire, they could hear the slick, slick of the steel on the stone, and Robaire, too, must have heard it. Yet the merchant moved neither his body nor his head, although a moment before he had been cursing Sam’s soul, his father and all his ancestors before him—which is an uncommonly good way of getting a Chinaman angry. For all the interest Robaire showed, Sam and his knife might not exist. Young Lanahan reached out toward the hunter’s rifle, lying on a blanket between them; then laughed in frank acknowledgment.

“That chap’s a dingo, with all the nerve Shebatsky lacks. The Russian hugs the stove when there’s dirty work in the air. Hulloa—” he chuckled. “The side show’s begun.”

Now Gordon saw what Robaire was looking at, an uneven line of lights, or what seemed to be lights, always in pairs, beyond the circle of the fire.

“Wolves,” he decided. The animals seemed bold enough, and it could not have been pleasant for a man alone, without weapons, to have their company of nights. He wondered what measures Robaire would take against them, and noted that the merchant gave orders to secure the horses so they could not break loose, also to post a guard, and to keep the main fire going through the night. This done, they turned in, to their blankets, all but Lanahan, who slept little and that badly.

Gordon, fast giving way to drowsiness, could see the black shadow of the boy’s form against the tent, and presently heard Lanahan’s fine voice humming the words of a familiar song.

* * * *

A hideous yelping brought the hunter rolling out of his blankets, and to his feet outside the tent, rifle in hand. Somewhere behind the gray pall that hung over them the sun had woken from the shadows on the horizon. The cook fire, the pile of stores, the lines of frantic animals, were quite deserted. Not a caravaneer was to be seen.

Lanahan crawled from the tent, grimacing as he listened to the demoniac outcry from beyond the ridges of sand. Together they moved forward to explore.

Presently they came upon the men of the caravan, squatted on one of the dunes, watching with appreciation the task Robaire was engaged upon. Sitting a sweat streaked pony easily in spite of the animal’s rearing, the merchant held a long, bamboo pole. To the far end of the pole a rope was attached, terminating in a loop, drawn taut about the neck of a beast resembling nothing Lanahan had seen before.

As they watched, Sam and his helper rose from the prisoned animal, casting off the cords that bound it as they did so. Both held long knives that dripped blood. As the thing at the end of Robaire’s lassoo leaped to its feet with a fresh clamor, its hide seemed to slide off it to the sand.

“By the great gosh almighty!” muttered Gordon, understanding. “Skinning a wolf alive.”

Robaire, grinning, held his horse with shortened rein and spurs while he worked the rope of the lassoo clear of the wolf’s head. The bleeding mass of flesh and blue veins that was still a living animal staggered and slumped into the sand. Yelping in agony, it sprang into the air and went off on a blind circle.

“We gave it a round-up at dawn,” explained the merchant, eyeing the disappearing form with relish. “Headed it off from the desert and roped it. With that thing loose, I rather think its mates will steer wide of us for a while. By the devil and his dam, what d’ye mean by that?”

The wolf had gone about two hundred paces when Gordon lifted his rifle and brought it down with a shot—through the head, it must have been, because the beast did not move after it fell. As the hunter made no response, Robaire reined his horse forward, heading him off from the fire and swung the bamboo pole high behind his head.

Gordon did not give ground and the two faced each other, while the natives rose, their eyes gleaming. It was Lanahan who caught Robaire’s arm, and said a few calm words, ending up with a suggestion that it was time to breakfast, not to fight over a dead wolf.

The interruption gave Robaire a chance to vent his anger in words, and he directed his remarks at Lanahan.

“I’ll handle any wolf I catch any way I want to,” he muttered, “and if a mangy pup puts a hand to my game I’ll slit his skin. Get back, you floater; you haven’t any of Fen Shi’s opium in you now, to think you’re good enough to stand up to a man and tell him what.”

The next morning, as if sullenly determined to make good, his words, he stalked another of the beasts, delaying the caravan for hours while he did it, and once more Sam and his helper were called on to repeat their grisly work. Gordon did not trouble to go out where the torment was being inflicted.

“It’s bad luck, to my thinking,” he remarked.

CHAPTER IV

The Road Under the Earth

As if to disprove the saying that all rivers wind somewhere to the sea, the Kashgar Daria ended nowhere at all. That is, it ceased to be. For the last two days the current had become sluggish; reeds lined the swampy shores and spread over the wide clay beds. The water stood stagnant and heavy, the ponies splashed among the reed beds, while the camels uttered dolorous protests at every step.

Presently they were moving over salt streaked clay, and when the reeds ended there was no sign of the Kashgar Daria.

“I turned back about here,” Lanahan informed his friend, “where the river stopped. It was no use for me to go on. Back in Kashgar, I’d not figured on one thing. The sands have been invading the country for hundreds of years; it is inevitable that this drift should have changed the course of the river. Filled it up, you know—pushed it back, or more possibly south.”

However, Robaire pressed on, over the salt desert, taking his course carefully by compass. Lanahan eyed the lie of the land with some interest.

“There are rocks here, worn smooth, probably by water, and the soil is packed hard, salt crusted,” he pointed out. “I should say we might be following the old bed of the Daria, and if so, Robaire must have some first-chop information to point by.”

Day by day they had come through a series of barriers to a land that was like nothing else on earth. It was, Gordon thought, a dead land. Crows rose silently at their coming, and once he saw one of the black birds settle down on a camel’s rump, tearing at the flesh where the mangy hide of the beast had fallen away. No one took notice of the crow, or relieved the camel of its parasite.

The natives grew moody. Gordon had the feeling that they were intruding in a region hostile to human life. Even the wolves were not to be seen, although Robaire took this as proof of the success of his skinning.

“It’s as if a chap were going down all the time, somehow,” said Lanahan seriously. “I can’t put it in words, but the feeling’s there.”

Gordon nodded, but thought that it must be due to depression, on descending from the higher altitudes of Kashgar or—he believed in premonition.

“These trees, for instance,” went on Lanahan, the next day. “Robaire seems tickled by their being here. They aren’t the right kind of trees to be growing anywhere—poplars, but dead for hundreds of years, by their looks.”

The caravan was winding through a forest of dead trunks—for the most part the limbs had fallen off, to be buried in the encroaching sands that had covered the poplars midway to their tops. There was no bark on the bleached stems, grayish-white in color.

But, as Lanahan said, Robaire seemed pleased. The merchant worked over his compass and a paper he drew from his pocket from time to time, and when they came to the further edge of the dead forest, he halted.

“We are at Balashan, gentlemen,” he cried, his black eyes gleaming. “Or, rather, I should say, over it. The map told the truth, to the last word.”

“And what was that?” asked Lanahan, moved in spite of himself.

“This wood.” The merchant jerked his thumb at the gray stalks behind them. “According to the Chinese chart, Balashan stood at the edge of a forest, by a lake. The lake was seen by some of the early explorers in the Gobi—priests on their way to Cathay and what not. The sands filled it up in time, and the drying up of the soil killed the trees. But they gave us our landmark. The trees are the only thing that could stand and point the way to us for seven hundred years.”

“Judging by the height of the sand,” cried the engineer, interested, “against the trunks, the old soil, the level of the city, could not be more than twenty feet or so under us.”

“Quite so, my boy,” agreed the merchant, “and we’ll soon prove it. Now we’ll camp, and dine well, in honor of the find. Ho, Sam—get busy!”

He searched the line, of beasts and men. “Ho, Sam!”

But Sam, the cook, was no longer with the caravan.

* * * *

It was inconvenient, to say the least, to have their chief cook disappear without permission. The other caravaneers, when questioned, said that the Chinese habitually brought up the rear of the line; he was accustomed to walking alone beside the camels bearing the commissariat boxes, to see that no one filched anything from the stores. Yussuf Beg had seen Sam trailing behind the camels when they entered the forest.

Robaire, in a grim mood, checked over the supplies roughly, but was unable to say whether Sam had taken anything or not. Certainly, it was hardly the place that a native would choose to forsake the caravan. Since none of the animals were missing, Sam must be on foot, and it was a week’s hike back to the nearest habitations, at Kashgar.

There was only one reasonable explanation for the man’s disappearance. Sam had fallen sick or met with some mishap when he lagged behind the line. Night was falling, so Robaire mounted Yussuf Beg on a fresh pony, gave him a lantern and ordered him to go back, to search the trail of the caravan as far as the spot where he had seen the cook last. The overseer showed no great eagerness to undertake the mission.

“Tura,” he said respectfully, “this is not a good place, that one man should ride alone. In the morning I will go.”

“You’ll go now,” said Robaire coldly.

So Yussuf Beg went back, and the others made an indifferent meal of the substitute’s cooking. There was no moon, of course, and the desert around the camp was dark as the bottom of a well; the wind, too, had failed. Gordon sat up, to wait for the Mohammedan’s return, and Robaire came over to talk.

“We’ll look over the ground after breakfast,” he proclaimed, “and start digging before dark.”

Then he looked at his companion appraisingly, and drew out a sheet of note paper. “Never saw that before, did you? It’s a few things copied from one of the books of the R. A. S.—Royal Asiatic Society, you know. Thousands of chaps have read it, but Shebatsky copied it down and passed it on to me. Read it.”

The quotation was from the journal of one of the earliest voyagers to the East, from Hakluyt’s collection. It related that the author, a priest, in the year 1240 had passed through the city of Balashan, on his route from India to the court of the great Khan of Cathay. The inhabitants of Balashan had abundance of the precious metals, and said, when questioned as to where they obtained the gold and silver, that it came from under the earth. The priest was told that he could not go down the road under the earth.

He added that the inhabitants must have been speaking of a mine, and the road under the earth meant the opening of the mine.

Gordon handed back the quotation. “Does your map, the map Shebatsky bought, show the location of this mine?”

“No, but there is a tradition in Kashgar, handed down among the natives, that the road under the earth leads down from the center of Balashan, and that it was in former times a sacred place. It was guarded by priests.” He laughed, pulling at his mustache. “Well, we’ll soon see.” He pocketed the paper. “That is, if Lanahan doesn’t lose what little nerve he has and the rest of our boys don’t—vanish.”

He slapped his coat cheerfully. “Curious, ain’t it, the way we Europeans get to know more about the secrets of old Asia than the present day scum of natives? We know that there is a treasure of some kind, covered up within pistol shot of here. All the Chinese and Mohammedans in Kashgar know is that they are afraid of the place. Even Yussuf Beg goes around like a cat walking in a pool of water. And he’s not easily scared. Wonder where the blighter is?”

To Gordon it seemed that Robaire wanted to drill fear into Lanahan. Now the legends of the Gobi held no terrors for the man who had camped and hunted alone over its surface, but Lanahan was high-strung, and still clinging to the side of the grave, as it were. Gordon had learned that black horror was to be met in this waste but always a horror created by living men.

“Suppose there was something hidden under Balashan, by the priests,” he observed, after a while, “precious stones, jade, gold, or some such thing. Why do you figure it was left here while the sand filled up the city and drove the people away?”

Robaire’s white teeth flashed. “Perhaps it was something they were afraid to move. Yussuf Beg can add to the Jesuit’s tale, however, and he will answer your question properly. Where in blazes can the chap be?”

They waited until the chill of early morning struck into the camp before the caravanbash rode up and dismounted stiffly. He was alone.

“Where is the Chinese?” asked Robaire.

“Tura, who knows?”

“Were you hiding, out of sight until now, fearing the darkness?”

“Not so; I went as I was bidden.” Yussuf Beg had retraced his steps as far as the western edge of the wood without finding a sign of Sam. By aid of his lantern he had scanned both sides of the trail made by the caravan; no one had left the track, nor had man or beast crossed the trail. All traces in the sand were plainly to be seen, because there was no wind.

“Very well,” said Robaire, “after the dawn prayer you will take a fresh horse and some cartridges from the stores. You will go back until you find Sam; bring him to me alive, or cut off his ears. The Chinese must be on his way back to Kashgar, following in the track of the caravan. But before you go, tell this unbeliever the tale that you know, of Balashan.”

For a moment the black eyes of the Mohammedan snapped angrily and he muttered into his beard. In the end Robaire had his way, as always, and Yussuf Beg signified by a gesture that he would undertake the mission although he liked it not. “For what is ordained is written, and what is written will come to pass.”

Without asking permission he brought out his hubble-bubble and set it up near the two men. After smoking for a while he began, and Robaire translated so that Gordon could understand.

“Tura, it is said in the bazaars that the City of the King was once wealthy and prosperous, standing as it did on an ancient trade route. Because of this there grew up in it an overlordship of priests, who took to themselves the precious metals and made images. So it came to pass that the wrath of God sent upon the city a doom. And this was the manner of the doom.”

Yussuf Beg puffed at his water pipe and eyed the ridges of sand.

“Sand came upon Balashan, out of the air, a tempest of sand that buried the city and all in it, none escaping save a holy man who told the tale, and gave warning of the curse that is upon Balashan. And, lo, the doom is still upon the place. Now, tura, the sun rises, although we cannot see the sun, and it is time for me to mount and go, if such is your will.”

* * * *

Four days passed and the overseer did not return. Robaire and his men settled down to the work of digging; Gordon took the merchant’s shotgun and bagged some of the wild geese that passed daily overhead, flying in the line from Siberia to the warmer sun of India. These geese were the only thing that Balashan offered in the way of game for the pot.

Four days, he reasoned, should have given Yussuf Beg ample time to overtake the cook and return, for Sam had only twelve hours’ start, and the caravanbash was a hard rider. Since Yussuf Beg did not show up, he must have kept on to Kashgar, or have met with an accident.

He watched Robaire and saw that, for all his unconcern on the surface, the merchant would scan the mass of dead poplar trunks into which Yussuf Beg had vanished, as if expecting his henchmen to reappear.

Other things, however, drew the attention of the searchers. Their first attempt at excavation, with the shovels taken from the camel packs, was a success, because it disclosed some teak posts standing in the clay bottom under the sand. The posts, obviously, had once been part of a building. Moreover teak was not a wood used in modern construction in Kashgar.

But it made them realize the immensity of their task, if they were to lay bare the skeleton of the whole city. Lanahan, who had spent the four days in wandering over the surrounding country, had a suggestion.

“You’re working blindly, Robaire,” he said, after supper that night. “Unless, of course, you are going on information you have not passed on to us. I don’t want to horn in, you understand. Do you want to show us that Chinese map?”

“No.”

“Very well. What I’ve worked out is this. You haven’t noticed that outcropping of granite, a half-mile out from the poplars? I’ve been looking it over, and casting about for more. There are more, you know.”

While the merchant watched restlessly, Michael Lanahan drew out papers and tobacco and rolled himself a cigarette. Then he traced with his finger a long, irregular circle in the sand.

“I can’t find any rocks in the ring made by these granite pillars, so it’s pretty safe to say that the lake lay inside this circle—here.” He nodded down at the sand. “There was a lake, you said. If so, it must have been at the end of the Daria, the river. Judging by its shape, the lake was narrow—long and deep. Here are the poplars.” He prodded the sand on the side of the circle nearest him, midway in its length. “You’ve located one of the houses of Balashan—as you say. I don’t grant that it was a house; those posts look to me like a gate, and the remains of a gate in a city wall. We can assume it is the end of the city nearest Kashgar. We’ll have to assume a lot, if we’re to get anywhere, with four boys only, and the wind storms coming on in two months. We can’t hope to excavate the ruins en masse.”

“You’re getting the wind up,” snapped Robaire, “after seeing those wolf tracks circling the camp today.”

Lanahan stifled a cough, and grinned. “You can’t worry a man with one foot in the grave; that’s where you’re mistaken, my boy.

“To resume,” went on the engineer. “We now know about where the central point of Balashan is, or was. Naturally, it would be midway between the lake shore and the edge of the poplars. Roughly, it comes to about where we have pitched our tents. Now you believe that the old natives, the Balashan chaps, cached some treasure, or whatever you have your eye on, under the earth in the center of the city. Priests, they were. That means a temple, I take it. Now where would the Balashanians be most likely to pitch a temple—Gordon?”

“You’re guessing wide and handsome,” acknowledged the hunter, “so keep right on. I pass. Where?”

“Robaire?” asked Lanahan quizzically “Does your map help us any?”

“No, and I’ll thank you to leave it alone.”

For some reason any mention of the chart seemed to anger the merchant and Gordon rather wondered why he was reluctant to show it. No harm could be done, if they were to be present at the excavation. It was a curious thing, that map.

“Right!” grinned Lanahan. “Since Balashan was a Chinese city, it is most likely that the temple or sacred treasury, was at the edge of the city proper, where most Chinese Buddhist shrines are. The legend that it stood in the center we can interpret by the midway point, since the city was, necessarily, long and narrow. That leaves us two likely spots, the poplars behind us, and the approximate shore of the lake in front of us. Which is it to be?”

“It’s near the water,” cried Robaire suddenly.

“I noticed your first hole was about at the edge of the lake,” nodded Gordon, “but I thought you said your map didn’t give any pointer?”

“You’re doing a lot of thinking, you and Lanahan.” Robaire hesitated, then explained that the tree trunks stood too thickly and irregularly to permit of buildings among them.

“It’s what we’re here for,” smiled the engineer. “I cast my vote for the lake, so that makes it two out of three. Perhaps if Gordon has any—”

“Not a card,” growled the hunter. “You two are the partners, and you do the deciding.”

This reminder did not seem to please Robaire, who, however, agreed with Lanahan’s reasoning. It was a long chance, but they had to take chances. The next morning they resumed work on the new site.

Yussuf Beg did not put in appearance, and, as if to make the work of the excavators difficult, the wind sprang up, sweeping the surface sand down into the holes. The Chinese complained that the grit choked them and half blinded them, which was true; but it was unusual for them to complain. Work went on slowly, because half a day’s labor was undone by the wind the next morning.

Nevertheless, the excavation was about a dozen feet deep and as many yards square, when the tallest of the desert rats laid down his shovel and spoke to Robaire.

“Tura,” he said, “our labor is of no avail. The evil spirit that is in this place does not desire us to dig. I have seen the signs. If we go on with our task, some of us will die.”

He said it not insolently, but determinedly, as if pointing out a fact that should be obvious to Robaire. The merchant thrust out his chin and leaped down from the side of the excavation. Approaching the speaker he drew back a heavy fist, measured his distance and knocked the man down, jerking out his revolver at the same time.

“The lazy beggars need a lesson,” he growled up at Lanahan. “They’ll work the better for it.”

As the prostrate Chinese made no attempt to rise, Robaire began to kick him, in the ribs and about the head. The man threw himself face down, his arms gathered around his ears; Robaire smiled, and used his boots on the victim’s kidneys until the Chinese turned over, at last, with a stifled moan.

Then Robaire set to work on his face, using the heel of his boot whenever opportunity offered, but keeping his eye on the other three—who watched passively—the while. He took his time about it, and did not desist until he had broken the coolie’s nose and front teeth and injured one of his eyes.

“Now, get back to work,” he snarled. The man did so, as well as he was able. Lanahan was conscious of someone looking on behind him and turning, beheld the butcher’s helper. His black eyes were expressionless as ever, yet Lanahan thought that, in a queer way, he seemed contented with what he had just seen.

“If,” Lanahan observed to Gordon that night, “I didn’t know Henri Robaire, I’d say the blighter was getting the wind up, rather badly. The way he’s bullying the men.”

“The wind’s up, all right,” chuckled the hunter. “Listen to it.”

The blasts from out on the desert floor, came sweeping against the tents as regularly as blows delivered from an invisible fist in the sky. The canvas bellied and quivered, in spite of the stones with which Gordon had weighted down its lower edge.

“Out of season,” nodded the hunter thoughtfully. “That must be what’s scaring the men, who are superstitious as the rest of their breed. Look here, Mike, don’t get to quarreling with Robaire now—here. I’ve a hunch he’d like to see you pass in your checks before he turns back to Kashgar. Steer clear of him and keep your temper.”

The next day, scanning the futile progress made by the workers in the morning, Lanahan reminded Robaire that the merchant had dynamite among the stores, with batteries and wires.

“Dynamite sand!”

“I’d like to try it,” responded the engineer mildly. “Because there’s clay and stone under the sand, you know. If I’m right about the substratum of the city, we’ll have to work through the clay. The sooner we begin the sooner we’ll end.”

Irritated by the long delays, Robaire agreed, proclaiming that the idea was his own—had not he brought the dynamite? The coolies were thrown into excitement by the innovation, and, after chattering among themselves, withdrew hastily far into the poplar stems.

Lanahan himself dug a place for a half-dozen sticks and connected up the two strands of wire. He used all the wire Robaire had brought, saying that Balashan might have been buried under a deluge of sand from the sky, but he had no intention of adding himself to the cemetery. After lunch he prepared the connections leisurely, and, when everything was arranged to his satisfaction, brought the ends of the wires together.

The earth vibrated under their feet with the shock, and a gray cloud of sand rose over the excavation, interspersed with clots of red clay and fragments of rock. When the debris had settled, the three white men ran forward and gazed over the edge of the hole.

Beneath their feet a cone-shaped crater extended down, its bottom far below the previous level of the excavation. What caused Gordon and Robaire to stare in astonishment was a black hole in the center of the crater, a hole about the size of a barrel head, into which the loose sand was still seeping down.

“Those runlets of sand,” remarked the hunter, “are considerable, but they don’t fill up the hole any. Looks like we’ve tapped somebody’s cellar.”

Lanahan went back to the camp and requisitioned a rope from the packs. “I’ll have a look at the cellar, unless,” he grinned at Robaire, “you want to be first down?”

Instead of answering, the merchant pointed to the sky. From every point of the compass wide-winged birds were in evidence, crows, vultures. They circled round the hole in the sand, swooping low and then rising as if disappointed for the moment.

So it was the engineer who took the rope and scrambled down the crater’s side while Gordon and Robaire held the end. Coming to the pit, the boy checked his descent and knelt down, flashing a pocket electric torch into the hole. Then, to their surprise, he cast away the rope and leaped in bodily.

“Slide down, you chaps,” they heard him call, “there’s no water here.” Before Robaire made the descent, he insisted on carrying, with Gordon’s aid, the largest of the empty packing boxes to the edge of the crater.

“No reason for letting the Chinese see what we’ve unearthed,” he explained. “If I know the cowardly skulkers, they’ll stay well away from the pit until they see us all come out again. Then we may need this cover, for the hole.”

Gordon followed Lanahan’s cheery advice and slid down the crater, letting himself drop through the opening: He fell some distance, but landed on all fours in a pile of sand. Scrambling to one side to make room for Robaire, he found himself sliding down again and grasped at the loose sand, only to roll over, in another second, on a hard clay floor. He heard Lanahan chuckle, but could see nothing in the obscurity until his eyes became accustomed to it.

Darkness, on every hand, except that overhead the circle of light fell upon a heap of sand, as high as a man, beside which he sat. In this circle presently appeared Robaire’s bullet head. When the merchant jumped down he observed curtly that they were fools to go ahead without making sure of a way to get back. Robaire said that he had left the rope beside the hole; the other end being secured to the packing box that he wedged in place by some of the rocks cast up by the explosion.

They glanced around as Lanahan flashed his torch into toe darkness.

“It’s a cellar of some kind,” Gordon repeated. They were in a subterranean chamber, the walls of which were of clay, irregularly molded, the floor of round stones, set with strips of clay, and the stones were curiously smooth and flat.

“No,” objected Robaire, “a passageway. The wall’s only on two sides.”

“Three,” put in Lanahan. “I went a short distance on the side toward the lake—where the lake was, rather. It’s filled up with sand and clay. But Robaire’s nearly right. It’s a corridor, but it was made by the river.”

He pointed down at the floor of the cavern. “See those stones—worn down by water, or I’m a liar. Once the river must have cut through the clay here, and eaten under the city. You chaps have seen caves on the ocean shore, eaten out of solid rock by the action of the water. I expected, if we dug far enough, we’d tap one of these corridors.”

With an exclamation, Robaire caught the torch from the boy and strode toward the open side of the cavern, casting the beam before him. They entered a long passageway, resembling a great sewer, the roof about a yard over their heads. Here the clay disappeared by degrees, until they were walking on soft rock, worn, smooth, the sides set with columns of white sandstone, but nowhere was a square projection or a sharp edge to be seen.

As Lanahan said, this must have been made by the water of the lake; centuries ago, perhaps—the engineer suggested—the lake had had an outlet, running under the earth. Robaire halted, with the light trained on the floor ahead of him.

“Pfagh! The place stinks.”

“No reason why it shouldn’t,” agreed Lanahan, “after being shut up for seven hundred years. Hold on—what’s that?”

The ray of the torch had picked out a skeleton of gray bones lying in one of the recesses that appeared from time to time in either wall of the main corridor. This particular recess, however, had the aspect of a long gallery, because the electric light disclosed no end to it.

The skeleton was that of a dog or wolf, Gordon decided, and it was apparent that it had formed the nucleus of a meal for other beasts—not many days ago. Bits of dried flesh still clung to the joints, and here and there where a limb had been snapped off by powerful teeth, the marrow still showed moist. The rock under the skeleton was dark with dried blood.

So mangled were the bones that Gordon had some trouble in identifying the original animal. He took the torch from Robaire and peered at the floor of the gallery and even the space on every side. Finally he rose with a grunt. The two men looked a silent question.

“Talk of chickens coming home to roost,” muttered the hunter. “This here was one of the wolves Robaire skinned a while back. It’s been chewed up by a lot of other wolves that left their tracks in places. But there’s not a mite of hair left. Now even a wolf pack couldn’t make a meal like this without leaving some hair around. They just naturally couldn’t swallow all that hide and hair.”

“Nonsense,” sneered the merchant. “Wolves don’t drag a kill into a hole, to eat. They gulp it down where they make the kill. Do you want us to think one of the Gobi wolf packs dug down through the sand and ate this particular one, then jumped up to the desert level and filled in the hole again?”

Now Gordon believed no such thing. He knew that he was right—that the wolf had been one of those mutilated by Robaire, had crawled away into a hole to die, had been traced by a pack, and eaten. It meant that there was at least one other opening into the galleries. Robaire’s tone angered him, however, and he made no response except to hand back the torch. The merchant’s fingers fumbled for it, and he flashed the ray over the skeleton a last time, as if uncertain what to believe.

CHAPTER V

Robaire Makes a Promise

It was Gordon who first heard the footsteps in the corridor. He had been walking, along behind Robaire, thinking of the wolf and wondering if the wolf pack were driven by sand storms to take refuge in such a place as the caverns under Balashan, when he grasped Lanahan’s arm and whispered to the merchant to stand still and put out the light.

In the dark the other men heard the sound that had attracted the hunter’s attention, a light pad, pad, coming from the rear. For a moment it paused, then it came on, and Gordon saw that the sides and roof of the cavern were tinged with a red glow.

From around the last bend in the corridor, the glow neared them, until they could see each other’s faces, tense and watchful. The pad, pad, did not sound like the step of a man. It shuffled along monotonously until the red illumination rounded the bend, and they saw Fen Shi limping toward them, a torch of twisted tamarisk branches in his hand. Behind Fen Shi appeared the lean form of Sam, the cook, and behind Sam the four other Chinese.

Gordon saw Fen Shi’s eyes widen, as he sighted the three white men. Sam’s ugly face was inscrutable as ever, but uglier with a welt across his brown cheek.

“Stop where you are, Fen Shi,” the hunter commanded, half raising his rifle. “What do you want?”

The old Chinese halted obediently and blinked at the rifle and the revolver poised in Robaire’s fist, his keen eyes almost invisible between half closed lids.

“You come my place,” he said plaintively in pidgin English. “I come, see what you do, plitty soon, you bet.”

“Your place!” snarled Robaire. “That’s a lie.”

“Not lie,” persisted Fen Shi, pointing vaguely over his head. “Many time me come this place, catch plenty number one culio: sellum tura”

By which he meant that he had come often to the Gobi near Balashan to replenish his stock of curios and sell them to tourists. Robaire stared at him angrily. The Chinese were, or rather seemed, unarmed. They were not offensive; they had as much right to be there as he.

“Speak up,” he muttered, “what are you after? No lies, or by the devil’s dam, I’ll drill you!”

Fen Shi leaned forward. “You want hear? You listen me?”

“Yes, but drop the pidgin. Speak your lingo, I know it.”

What Robaire did not know was that Lanahan had mastered a good bit of Kashgarian Chinese, and the engineer afterward explained to Gordon the gist of what Fen Shi said.

“Honorable sir,” he said, “for a lifetime I found bits of old things along the highway, where my father sent me, and sold them, as my father did. From my father, who heard the tale from his father, I knew of Balashan, the City of the King. I knew there was something of great price buried here by the sand. It lies in the sacred place of the elder people, in the center of the city, by the shore of the lake that existed before the coming of the sand.”

He pointed up the corridor behind the white men but they did not turn to look.

“Once,” he went on, “I tried to dig through the sand into this place, not abiding the warning of my father. A wind came up, although it was not the time of the winds, so I was aware that the demons of the place were angry, and I went back, thus regaining my virtue. All this the people of my household knew. When the young sir,” he nodded at Lanahan, “tried to measure the wind, I took away his sticks. I did this so that no ill fortune should come on my house, where he was living, and because I did not want him to learn the secret that would bring him before the face of death. Later, in the last moon, I gave him hashish, so that he should forget. He did not forget.”

Robaire glanced sharply at Lanahan, who smiled blankly as if he understood no word of what passed.

“Then, honorable sir,” the voice of Fen Shi took on a hissing note, “you know that I would have put the young tura in jail, to keep him from talking with you, about the secret that was not yours. After you left with your caravan for the desert, I gave one of the men wine who had come with you from India, but had not gone to the desert. When he was drunk, he said that the young woman who went from my household twelve moons ago had gone with your caravan to India.”

“A lie!” cried Robaire.

“This young woman,” Fen Shi continued blandly, “was a slave of my household, who served my unworthy refreshments to my friends. You had learned from her that she knew something of this thing of value that was in the desert. When you had her in your hands she would not speak more. So you tortured her, helped by the tura Shebatsky, and by a red-hot knife blade thrust under her finger nails. So you learned from her that what you sought was near the dead forest, at the edge of the dry lake. You put her in a white man’s jail, in India, and came back but said no word to me. This insignificant person you call Sam went with you to the wood, and, knowing that you had found the City of the King, came back to Kashgar to tell me. Riding quickly, we arrived here, and these four others have come with me to see that you deal not dishonorably by me.”

“Did you meet Yussuf Beg?”

Fen Shi said he did not know Yussuf Beg. It turned out afterward that the Moslem had beaten Sam in to Kashgar, the cook avoiding him in the reeds of the Daria. Shebatsky, afraid to act himself, but perturbed, sent Yussuf Beg to Fen Shi’s place to browbeat the Chinese—a task welcome enough to the caravanbash. There was a fight, and—the Beg did not return to report to his master. Sam’s face was scarred by a bullet crease, and Yussuf Beg must have evened the score of the Chinese slave.

What Fen Shi did not mention was the matter of the blow Robaire dealt him in the tavern, and, since he did not allude to it, this was a score as yet unsettled.

“Harken, Fen Shi,” Robaire stated his terms. “The tale my man told was a lie.” His eyes shifted as he said it. “But that counts for nothing now. You know that whatever we find belongs to me, because you feared to come by yourself. Since you have a claim, I will give you half.”

For a moment the black eyes of the Chinese pondered. “Half of all that is found?”

“Yes. You have my promise.”

Fen Shi nodded. “Good. Then I and my men will not harm you; and you must not harm us. Is that in the promise, too?”

“Yes. But you must lead the way, with the torch.”

This was not to the liking of the old Chinese, but Robaire was stubborn. So long as several yards separated the three white men from the natives, the balance of power lay with the revolver and the rifle. Once they were within arm’s reach, the odds would be with the six men, against the three. He saw no weapons on the Chinese, but he never knew Fen Shi or Sam to be without a weapon of some kind.

He warned Gordon and Lanahan to draw back into one of the recesses while the six men passed by to take the lead, explaining that he had made a bargain with Fen Shi, to give him a share in the venture; but that Fen Shi intended treachery. They must be on their guard.

Gordon thought grimly that it was for this he had been brought along.

They went forward again, Fen Shi, curiously enough, as fearful of what might lie ahead of them as of the guns of the white men behind him. His men were rather more scared, but all drawn onward by the magnet of curiosity.

Presently Fen Shi halted and, lighting a fresh torch from the old one, pointed to one of the walls. A couple of feet above the floor a walk, made of granite blocks, extended beside them. In the soft stone above this path words were carved—words that not Fen Shi, nor Robaire, nor Lanahan could read.

“The script must be older than the Tartar alphabet of the Chinese,” observed the engineer. “Look here, though, half a dozen words are repeated, over and over. It must be a prayer of some kind, and that points to priests.”

The evidence of the handiwork of men caused Robaire to flush with excitement. “Go on,” he ordered Fen Shi.

At the next turn in the corridor the Chinese halted to a man. They stared ahead, craning their necks, then fell on their knees, Fen Shi almost letting the torch fall as he did so.

“What is it?” demanded Robaire, but received no answer.

“Either,” grinned Lanahan, “they expect to be scoughed or beatified. Let’s look for ourselves.”

The black heads of the Chinese began to bob up and down as they moved forward on their knees. It was strangely like a well executed drill, although no command had been uttered. Robaire was the first to look around the bend in the wall; Lanahan and Gordon joined him, with half an eye for the antics of the natives.

Around the turn the corridor ended in a small, square chamber. The walls and the floor here were not rock but plated with what seemed to be black lacquer. The far end of the compartment contained a dais, and, over this a pedestal.

On the pedestal was a black, lacquer figure, the most hideous Buddha Gordon had ever seen. It was a large god, stretching up eight feet or more to the ceiling, the slant eyes bland and meaningless, one finger of an upraised hand pointing skyward.

“An uncommonly fine Buddha,” meditated Lanahan aloud. “All very well for Fen Shi, but how about us? It looks as if we were sold.”

Robaire had been glowering at the shrine. After a moment he whipped out the electric torch and flashed it against a spot on one of the side walls. “Got a gun rag about you, Gordon, a dirty one? Thanks.”

With the oily patch of cloth he rubbed hard on the wall, and the dark metal changed color appreciably. It was not lacquer; it was certainly not jade, or marble; nor was it gold. The merchant drew in his breath sharply and held the light closer. The Chinese, stealing furtive glances at the impassive god, kept on with their head bobbing, paying no heed to the white men.

“Silver,” cried Robaire softly, rapping the great plate that covered the wall. “Solid too. Must be an inch thick. Hundreds of pounds of it.” He scanned the walls, the floor and the dais feverishly, measuring roughly the amount of the precious metal.

“Thousands of pounds, sterling, my man,” corrected Lanahan calmly, although his sunken eyes glowed, “if the plates are an inch thick, and they look that, at the edge. Silver has always been the most valued metal in China; that explains why the old beggars lined their vault with it.”

It was difficult to calculate the true worth of the silver plates, but Gordon knew that Lanahan and Robaire and Shebatsky could count on a hundred thousand dollars, every one, at the least.

The electric torch flashed out, and at the same instant Robaire’s revolver roared, reverberating in the confined space. Twice more it flashed and bellowed, filling the place with swirling smoke. A groan arose from the floor, and the tamarisk torch was cast from Fen Shi’s hand against the silver wall, where it fell apart, into flickering twigs. The cavern was a dark murk.

Again the merchant’s weapon began to bark, and by the flashes from the muzzle, Gordon caught glimpses of writhing limbs and the whites of staring eyes. Something clanged against the wall, whither he had retired prudently; a form darted past him. He heard Lanahan’s exclamation of pain, followed by a steady coughing. His revolver emptied, Robaire’s nook against the wall was quiet, while he filled the chambers with fresh cartridges.

Gordon held his rifle in front of him, and ventured to poke about with the muzzle. From down the corridor shuffling footsteps trailed away into silence. For a moment the groaning from the floor went on; then only the engineer’s cough was to be heard.

“Switch on the light,” the hunter ordered Robaire. “By the great gosh almighty what started you off?”

The beam shot out, piercing the white swirls of powder smoke. It bent downward, picked out a prostrate figure, and traveled to a bullet hole in the base of the coolie’s neck. Then it searched and found a second body and pointed out a similar wound—a wound fatal at once, Gordon knew.

A third Chinese sat propped against the wall, half of his face blown away, his brown forehead wrinkled, and blood dripping from his tunic over his chest.

“Lanahan,” called the hunter. “Where—”

“Here,” muttered the boy, choking. “One of the beggars knifed me a bit in passing. Not much, but this smoke—”

“Come out into the gallery. You, too, Robaire,” advised Gordon.

Before moving, the merchant flashed his light around the shrine. It revealed only the calm face of the age-old Buddha, and the lacquer hand uplifted as if in warning. The three other Chinese had escaped, Fen Shi among them, because the gallery was empty as far as the light carried.

At Gordon’s feet was a long knife, the blade broken in half. Evidently one of the natives had cast it at him, and the steel had snapped against the wall at his ear. Quickly he examined Lanahan, finding that the boy had been slashed across the upper arm and the side wall of the chest. The heavy corduroy and leather coat prevented serious injury, and no arteries were severed. He tore off the bottom of his own shirt to bind the cut on the arm, and to make a rough sling. Lanahan had something to say.

“You cursed rotter!” he cried at Robaire. “You gave your word to Fen Shi, promised he wouldn’t be harmed. Then you shot these men down in cold blood.”

Gordon had the torch, working at the bandage. He turned it on Robaire’s face. The merchant’s jaw was set and his lips were drawn back under the beard in the smile Gordon had seen when the wolves were being tortured.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Lanahan,” he responded coldly. “Those devils were working themselves up to do away with us. We were standing in among them, and their knives would have slit us up—”

“They were not thinking of us. Robaire, you gave your word, and they trusted you.”

“Oh, well! I tell you Fen Shi wouldn’t have let us get back to Kashgar on our feet, once he saw the silver. He had his knife loose in his sleeve—”

“You were looking at the wall; how could you see Fen Shi? You’ve lied about everything, Robaire. There was no map. You tortured one of Fen Shi’s girls until she told you about this place—the old beggar practically made you admit it, back in the passage. I followed what you said there.”

“Listening in, eh? D’ye know I’ve saved your life? If that’s the tone you choose to take, I’ll settle with you now.”

Gordon turned the light down on the merchant’s right hand, and kept it there while he spoke, swiftly, for him, but formally, as if talking to a stranger.

“Mr. Robaire, if what Mike says is true, you’ll have a lot to answer for. I’d like to hear, likewise, why you broke loose, shooting like that from behind the boy. He was unarmed, and it’s luck that he wasn’t killed. I came near stopping a knife.” He knelt and picked up the broken haft, showing it to Robaire. “This thing will be settled, right and fair, but not now. You’ve turned loose three devils, who’ll just naturally set themselves to lift our scalps. Until we’ve done with them, we three white men will have to stick together. First thing, we’ve got to climb out of this hole and make sure of the horses and stores—and we’ve got to move quick!”

Having the light, Gordon hoped they would be able to overtake the Chinese at the point where they had entered the cavern. Taking the lead, he broke into a run, rounding corners recklessly, his rifle swinging in his left hand. There was no time to reconnoiter hiding places in the recesses or the smaller corridors that led off to each side.

Realizing that Gordon spoke the truth, Robaire thumped along at his heels. If the Chinese should gain the horses and camels, and drive them off with the stock of rations, the plight of the three white men would be bad enough, without the danger from Fen Shi and his companions mounted on horses and stirred to deadly rage.

Coming to the last bend, where the skeleton of the wolf lay, Gordon slowed up, seeing the faint light from the hole ahead, and warned by instinct against rounding the turn of the gallery without scouting a bit. He snatched off his wide hat, and tossed it out into the main cavern.

At once the gallery resounded, and a hail of steel spattered against the rock by the gallery entrance.

“Hell!” cried Robaire. “They’ve got that shotgun, the automatic.”

Without wasting breath in reproaching the merchant for leaving the weapon where their enemies could get it, Gordon threw himself on all fours and began to edge forward toward the edge of the screening rock. Hardly had he done so, however, when the daylight faded out swiftly, leaving them in total darkness.

They heard a curious thumping sound from overhead.

“Shucks!” muttered Gordon. “The Chinks have got up through the hole and hauled the packing case over it. Come on, Robaire.”

Planting the big merchant on the top of the sand heap, Gordon scrambled to his shoulders and felt overhead. As he expected, the packing case was jammed over the hole, shutting out all but particles of daylight. Thrusting up with his rifle butt, Gordon found that it was solid; he could move it a trifle, but its weight seemed to increase, while the thumping and thudding went on. Finally Robaire slid down, in the unstable sand, under the weight of the hunter.

Gordon picked himself up and began brushing the sand out of the breech of his weapon.

“Shoot up through the box!” shouted the merchant unsteadily. “Pull down the clay roof alongside it! The devils are shutting us down, burying us alive!” He listened, with strained ears and racing pulse. “Hell, they’re loading rocks and sand into the box and around it. They’ve shut out all the light now. Get up, Gordon, or we’ll be too late.”

“Stow it!” interrupted the low voice of Lanahan. “Fen Shi may be listening. If Gordon could have pried up the box, he’d have done it. But suppose we could, will you be the first to shove your head up through the hole while a crazed Chinese lets loose at you with an automatic shotgun?”

Robaire was silent. They listened while the piling up of the rocks and earth went on.

“For God’s sake,” urged Robaire hoarsely, “call up to him and make terms.”

“A little while ago,” pointed out Lanahan coldly, “you were the one that said the Chinese would do us in before we reached Kashgar. Then you go and blast out the lives of three of ’em and whimper for peace, as if we wanted to hand up our weapons and let them knife us a little more to their liking.”

“What are we going to do?”

Of the three, Lanahan was the coolest. A man with one foot in the grave acquires, if he has courage, a kind of iron fatalism; he can smile at the lashings of fortune. Moreover, if he has been injured, circumstances cannot draw his attention from the throbbing pain of severed ligaments. Michael Lanahan’s hurt was more serious than he would admit.

“First,” he said, to Black Gordon, “we might withdraw from under the man-hole. Fen Shi is not above opening up the roof of our dugout a trifle and dropping in some of that dynamite.”

At once Robaire flashed the ray of the torch overhead. The clay top of the cavern was pitted and cracked by the explosion, but seemed solid enough—too solid, Lanahan suspected, for any possibility of digging through, near the hole, from below. He chuckled.

“I’d do just that, if I were Fen Shi, and sleep with a clear conscience. But granting that the Chinese are afraid of touching the dynamic, I’ll wager even odds that old Fen Shi has fixed up a listening post at the hole. See where the sunlight shoots in, here and there? After we’ve drawn back to the wolf gallery, the next thing will be for Black Gordon to get us out of these caverns.”

* * * *

The hunter, however, had little to say, while the engineer made himself comfortable on the rock floor of the side gallery, and rolled a cigarette with one hand. Borrowing a match from Gordon, he struck a light, and his brown face showed tense and drawn. Gordon, sitting beside him, grunted, and reached for the match, holding it in his fingers until it went out, watching the flickering of the flame instead of lighting the pipe he had filled.

“Notice anything, about that match?” he murmured, after a puff or two.

“It went out.”

“Yes, that’s it. It didn’t burn out.”

“Well,” Lanahan’s voice was restless, “the smell here is enough to put an end to anything. Robaire, if you’re wise, you’ll stop flashing that torch at me and the wolf bones. Neither of us will move away, you know, and—the battery in that torch may give out any time now.”

When the merchant ceased striding up and down, the low voice behind the glowing cigarette went on.

“Since the representative from the States is silent, I’ll sum up our position. We are trapped in this cavern, with enough silver to make us all wealthy. On ‘topside’ as he would say, Fen Shi has two men, presumably unwounded, with knives; he has the shotgun with plenty of ammunition. He has dynamite, which we will grant he does not care to use.”

“Oh, stow all that!” snarled Robaire.

“Furthermore,” resumed Lanahan impassively, “Fen Shi has provisions enough to last three men two months, with horses and pack animals. We can assume that he has kept some opening, by which he can hear us if we attempt any operations near the man-hole. Lastly, he is able to open up the man-hole, while we are not. All of which merely goes to show that the initiative lies with Fen Shi, not with us.”

“We have the silver,” objected Robaire.

“Have, is misleading. The silver is down here, true; but we can’t make away with it, or hide it where he can’t find it, or destroy it. Provided Fen Shi can kill us off, the silver is his. Unfortunately Robaire tried to kill him, and his men —butcher them—to get them out of the way.”

This time the merchant made no attempt to deny the motive for his action. He said that Fen Shi would not dare kill him—Henri Robaire.

“Try him,” spoke up Black Gordon dryly. “Recollect that punch you gave him, with half Kashgar looking on?”

“I can pay him. He’ll let us up if I offer him enough.”

Lanahan laughed mirthlessly. “Can you pay him, cash, as much as that silver’s worth? And he’s likely to trust your word again—oh, very! No, you chaps, I can’t crawl to Fen Shi now—beg for our lives. It would be no use, anyway.

“That brings us to Fen Shi again,” the engineer summed up. “The initiative rests with him. What do you chaps think he’ll do? Robaire?”

“Sooner or later, he’s bound to come in, to get at the silver.”

“I don’t know about that. The old heathen found the Buddha, and seemed scared to his toes; in any event, he’ll be a long time in coming to the cavern. Gordon, what do you think?”

“Fen Shi won’t do anything,” explained the hunter slowly. “He’ll keep the cards he holds, because he doesn’t need any more. He’ll camp over our heads until he’s almighty certain we’re starved and dead.”

Realizing the truth of this, the other two were silent. Finally Robaire groaned. “What can we do?”

Knocking out his pipe, Gordon rose and felt for his rifle “We can get out the same way the wolves came in to make a meal off this maverick, here.”

Lanahan whistled softly, and slapped his puttee with his good hand. “I knew the old buzzard would find a way out! Gordon, we appoint you a committee of one to find the wolf hole and notify us.”

“Steady, Mike,” urged Gordon. “You have a bit of fever. We’ll go together. You noticed how a draught of air blew out the match I was holding a while ago? Maybe there’s a good, big opening we can find. I’ll take the torch, Robaire.”

“No, thanks, I’ll hang on to it.” For the first time the merchant sat down, against the wall of the gallery. “And I’ll stay here. D’ye think you can get out by a hole this animal crawled in through?”

“I don’t think at all,” responded the hunter. “I’m figuring on finding out. That electric light would help a whole lot.” He hesitated, waiting for an assent from the merchant. “Well, we can do without it. I’m telling you, Robaire, you’d better hike along with us.”

“And find ourselves caught in a burrow if the Chinks come down?” The merchant fairly snarled. As the two started to move away, he added quickly, “You come back to me, if you find an opening.”

So Henri Robaire sat by the mess of bones while his companions edged their way, foot by foot, into the tunnel behind him. Once Lanahan called back for him to join them; a laugh was the answer, and a mutter to the effect that they would not get the torch, if he knew it.

“Pleasant sort of chap, isn’t he?” Lanahan grunted. “He’s staying back to keep an eye on the silver vault, and to palaver with Fen Shi, when we’re out of hearing. Knows jolly well if we find a proper hole you’ll crawl back to fetch him out. Gordon, we can’t go on like this. We might step over a precipice.”

The splutter of a match answered him, and he saw the rugged features of the hunter, peering ahead. Gordon had half a box of matches, and from then on they made more rapid progress.

CHAPTER VI

Fen Shi Listens

After an hour Lanahan began to lose his cheerfulness. His head was throbbing, and his arm and shoulder burned when he moved. For the latter part of the distance he was content to follow Gordon, where the hunter wound in and out among a series of galleries and fissures in the soft, white sandstone. At times they had to climb over heaps of debris, at others, they slid down narrow tunnels that seemed destined to precipitate the two men into chasms in the earth.

The hunter took the wrong turning more than once, but went back to where the scratches of claws on the soft stone showed that animals had passed that way. The rock gave place to red clay, and here the marks were plainer. He pressed ahead rapidly, until Lanahan, panting, reluctantly called a halt.

“Done up, Gordon, old man,” he whispered. “You carry on, and I’ll wait here for the news.”

“Nothing like that. You hang onto my belt and we’ll go slower. All matches used up except three, anyway. We’ll need to keep those.”

The gallery had narrowed so that he could feel the side with his hand. But he could no longer watch for scratches on the floor. Once, sure that they had turned aside, he used up a match, and found that they were still on the trail of the wolves. Of a sudden he realized that it would be almost impossible to find his way back through the rock tunnels to where Robaire sat, without a light. Lanahan tugged at him heavily, and he bumped his head against the top of the gallery.

From then on he was forced to stoop, and finally to crawl on hands and knees. He was aware of a stale, strong odor that reminded him of coyotes, and his hopes rose. But at this point the tunnel dwindled to an opening scarce a foot and a half, square, as he could feel.

“What, ho?” murmured the boy. “Why the halt?”

Gordon decided to strike a match. He had to see what lay ahead. What he saw in the brief life of the flame, was a round tunnel about twice the length of a man ending in a black void. A breath of chill air caused the light to quiver dangerously.

“A few feet and we’re out,” he said. “It must be night. I’d forgotten that.”

“Right you are. The old tunnel slopes up, and the clay is almost gone. Sand will be easier digging, but watch out for cave-ins. Sorry I can’t bear a hand—”

The voice of the boy trailed away, while Gordon set to work; widening the opening with the broken knife that he had picked up in the Buddha shrine. When he had loosened a fair amount of sandy clay, he shoved it back, into the wider gallery, and edged forward. Lanahan began to hum a song of the trenches.

* * * *

Gordon worked for many hours. It was harder than he had thought possible and his shoulders ached. It was a temptation to strike his last match and see how much progress had been made.

By degrees he was aware that the hole in front of him was no longer dark. A greenish glow penetrated to his eyes, as if someone had lighted a colored lantern around the edge of the opening. As the radiance strengthened, Gordon could make out white pillars rising from the level of the hole and disappearing upward. He worked away steadily, and finally pushed his shoulders through the last of the earth.

He rose to his feet, trembling from fatigue, and looked around. Behind him, cloaking him in shadow, was the small, clay butte into which the tunnel of the wolves ran. On all sides were the white stems of the dead poplar forest. Striding forward a pace he looked up into a clear, star strewn sky, and saw the full moon over the treetops. It was the first time that the murk had lifted from the basin of the Gobi, and Gordon felt that luck was coming his way.

He called to Lanahan. Receiving no answer he crawled back into the tunnel and discovered that the boy had fainted. When the hunter had pulled him out into the moonlight he found that fresh blood streaked the engineer’s coat, and his face was white as the sand. Efforts to revive him only brought a little flush to the boy cheeks. He was breathing naturally—in fact heavy sleep had claimed him.

“Done up,” muttered the hunter. “Hurt worse than I thought.”

With a glance at the moon, he fell to cleaning the sand out of the working parts of the rifle, that had suffered in the crawl through the tunnel. Gordon worked thoroughly, taking down the breech parts and cleaning them carefully. He squinted through the barrel, in the faint light, and shook his head.

It had been his purpose to leave Lanahan at the mouth of the tunnel and try to work back to Robaire. But he could not leave the boy lying unconscious in the sand, with the wolves about. Even while he worked over the rifle he heard a familiar, high-pitched howl from the distance.

So he decided to carry Lanahan and to head toward the camp. The last thing the Chinese would expect was an attack from the rear, as it were, and the hunter’s good sense of direction made him reasonably certain where to look for the camp. Slipping the gun sling over one shoulder, he pulled Lanahan up on his back and started off through the dead poplar trunks.

It was not long before a red glimmer ahead of him and a little to one side showed where the men of Fen Shi had their fire. Gordon kept to the thick of the trees until he climbed a ridge that overlooked the camp. From this vantage point he could make out the horses and camels, and the tents. The beasts were on their feet, their heads turned in one direction—the dead forest—-while they moved restlessly. He could see it all very dearly because the Chinese had started three roaring fires, using up all the wood and dried dung recklessly.

No men were to be seen. The site of the crater, beyond the camp, was outlined in the moonlight. But the reason for the large fires was apparent in the shadows that slipped here and there in the dunes—shadows that turned green eyes toward the frightened pack animals. The wolves were closer than ever to the camp of the men.

Gordon decided to rest, while he watched the tents. He did not believe the Chinese were sleeping. Then, as he was about to let Lanahan’s limp body slide to the sand behind the ridge of the dime, he lifted his head, listening intently.

Behind him arose a hideous howling. Gordon knew the cry of one of the great wolf packs of the Gobi. It was not a half mile away, and it moved swiftly as he waited. He took a step toward the nearest large tree trunk, and halted.

In the clear moonlight, he could not climb to the top of the poplar without being seen, from the camp. He could not climb, burdened by Lanahan, and keep his rifle. Treed by the pack, if it came his way, he would be at the mercy of the Chinese with the shotgun.

Gordon set his teeth, and, shifting Lanahan’s body higher on his shoulders, took the rifle in his right hand and went over the ridge, running down the farther side toward the fires. His feet sank into the sand and he was panting before he had gone a hundred paces. The outcry of the famished animals behind him ceased, but Gordon urged his exhausted limbs to greater speed, aware of the danger the silence betokened.

Sweat trickled down into his eyes, so that the shadows of the tents that he was watching danced about strangely. Sharp eyes must be watching him by now. He entered the circle of firelight, throwing himself forward as he did so, letting Lanahan roll clear.

From the dark side of Robaire’s wall tent came a flash, and steel whistled through the air over his head.

“Thought so,” grunted the hunter. He had gone down with his rifle thrust out ahead of him, and his answering shot cracked through the roaring of the automatic. Bullets threshed the sand around him, one searing his back, another stinging the calf of his leg.

With the third shot from his rifle, the shotgun ceased functioning, although it still had shells in the magazine. Gordon had kept count.

“Jammed or—the Chink behind it is dead. Now, what—?”

Hearing a shuffling in the sand beside him, Gordon rolled over, lifting the rifle with him. Sam, the cook, had been running in from the flank, his long knife out. As he turned over, the hunter glimpsed his enemy leaping at the prostrate Lanahan.

Gordon’s first shot caught the tong man low in the body, and checked him in midair. The second steel jacketed bullet, almost at the muzzle of the rifle knocked Sam back on his knees. The man swayed forward, and stabbed downward clumsily, the knife burying itself in the sand a foot from Lanahan.

Sam’s lips drew back from his pointed teeth in a snarl and he tugged weakly at the knife hilt, only to fall over it and lie prone.

“Good work!” The voice was Lanahan’s. “I must have missed something, but I know you dropped me and that brought me ’round. Think you’ve done for the beggar by the tent, or he’d pay us some more attention.”

“Fen Shi, probably,” assented Gordon. “Look out for the butcher’s helper, in that case. Those tong men can throw knives.”

Cautiously they moved forward, Gordon limping a little. In the space by the tent wall they found not Fen Shi, but Sam’s assistant, curled up over the warm shotgun and stone dead. Gordon retrieved the weapon, examined it and handed it to Lanahan.

“Three shells left, son,” he remarked. “Now we’ll locate Fen Shi before we let Robaire up.”

They searched the merchant’s tent, one covering the other. It was empty; their tent was equally deserted. In fact Fen Shi was not in the camp. While they made certain of this the glow of the fires died in the greater glow of the gray dawn. The moon paled overhead as if its light had been extinguished by an invisible hand.

In the east, red streaks spread along the horizon and presently the tops of the ridges were tinged with fire. They heard the flapping of wings over the dead forest, but the wolves had slipped away.

The camels ceased their groaning and the horses stood quiet, watching the men. Lanahan counted the animals. “All present,” he announced. “Let’s have a look at the crater. Fen Shi must have taken wing when the shooting began.”

They walked down to the excavation, keeping a close watch on the nearby dunes. The absence of the old Chinese was puzzling, but Fen Shi’s movements were never easy to foretell, and Robaire might have some information for them.

“Son,” observed Black Gordon, laying his hand on the other’s shoulder, “I sure hate to let that hombre, Robaire, up so quick. He did pretty near everything to get you killed off by the Chinks. Give him time, and he’ll find a way to do you out of your share of the silver. Soon as we’re in Kashgar, he’ll cook up some story to have you jailed for killing the tong men. Now you need a grubstake worse’n any man I ever knew. I—” he hesitated, “I read that letter you carry around, once, not meaning to pry into things, none. It sort of fell out of the locket.”

Lanahan looked down, and then smiled. “Yes, there’s a girl waiting to hear that I’m alive and kicking, and it’s you I’ll be telling her to thank, the first mail that goes to India from Kashgar. With my share of silver—”

“You’ll give Kashgar a wide berth, Mike, and go back to that Simla place and hire the doctors to fix you up, gilt-edged. You’ll have a good stake, and maybe some to take back to your home town.”

“But first,” said Lanahan quietly, “I’m going to settle accounts with Henri Robaire, for the things he’s done. I’ll be after asking you to stand aside, my friend.”

Gordon shook his head. Some instinct in the hunter warned him of danger in the caverns under their feet. At the edge of the crater the two men halted, lifting their rifles.

Fen Shi sat in the bottom of the crater, leaning against the packing box filled with rocks. He was puffing at his pipe. His eyes gleamed shrewdly from the wrinkled skin of his old face.

“Good morning, tura” he announced. “No have got knife. No can do.” He lifted two lank arms, flapping empty sleeves as proof of his words.

“The only place,” remarked Gordon dryly, “you no can do is in your coffin, Fen Shi. You sabe coffin—all same dead, Fen Shi?”

The old Chinese considered, and nodded gravely. After Gordon handed the rifle to Lanahan with instructions to cover Fen Shi, the hunter scrambled down the crater and ordered the Chinese to help him lift out the rocks and remove the crate. Notwithstanding the rifle, Fen Shi refused point blank, and even withdrew several paces up the slope of sand. He pointed out toward the desert.

“You shoot me velly far place, tura. No belly me here. Devil here—you savvy devil.”

Working alone, Gordon cleared the hole and stepped back prudently, not wishing to be a target for a shot from the man below, who might shoot before he looked. “Come out, Robaire! It’s Gordon. Fen Shi’s men are dead and he’s taken prisoner.”

Receiving no response, Gordon glanced inquiringly at the captive, who was watching the hole speculatively. Without waiting for more the hunter jumped down into the cavern.

The two in the crater heard him moving about, and heard his muffled exclamation of surprise. Lanahan slipped down to the edge of the hole, staring into the black void. Presently he saw the white blur of a face looking up at him.

“Toss down the end of the rope, Mike,” said Black Gordon. “It will be hard work getting Robaire up. The wolves got in to him.”

* * * *

When they had removed what remained of the merchant, and given it burial in the sand, Gordon sat down and fumbled with an empty pipe. Steady as his nerves were, his fingers were quivering.

“That wolf pack I heard back in the poplars,” he said slowly, “must have scented the blood where you lay a while at the tunnel mouth. Or they were heading for the tunnel—I don’t know. Perhaps they winded the dead coolies. Robaire’s gun was small good to him in the dark. He only fired one shot.”

From where he was listening nearby, Fen Shi spoke up, in his own tongue, having discovered that Lanahan understood him.

“Not wolves, honorable sir; they were devils who killed the white man, as I said—the devils of the passages under the earth. I heard them, as I listened at an opening. I heard the white man screaming—screaming. Then I knew that the demons had come. Did he not break open the place of the gods, sealed against men?”

Sheer contentment played across the faded countenance. “I heard him die, the life that I meant to take passing from him. Then I heard your guns and I knew that you were free and had overcome my men. So I waited here, for you. Why should I run? No man can outrun his allotted years, and I am lame. But, O One-Who-Measured-the-Wind, do not bury me here, for this is an evil place, and no longer have I a wish to visit it.”

* * * *

Two months later Shebatsky opened the door of his room in the Continental House with alacrity and bowed low. He had been looking from the window.

“Ah, Monsieur Gordon, you are late.” In truth Shebatsky, senior partner of the former firm of Shebatsky and Robaire, was nearly exhausted with impatience. Since six weeks ago, Fen Shi, the innkeeper, had returned from the Gobi, without a word of explanation for his absence. Nor did Shebatsky dare to question him too closely.

Then, a week ago, silver, in bars, was brought in by Black Gordon to the house of a reputable Punjabi banker. Rumors arising from the bazaars, carried Shebatsky the tidings, also various guesses as to the amount of the silver. Shebatsky called on the banker and learned that Gordon had taken in payment a draft made out in the name of Captain Michael Lanahan. The Indian would not mention the size of the draft, and Shebatsky began to lose sleep. No one knew where Gordon came from, or whither he went.

The day before Gordon brought in all of Shebatsky’s animals that had gone forth in Robaire’s caravan and left them in the courtyard of the Continental House, to the abusive anger of the proprietor, who did not relish the smell of camels. Shebatsky ran out as usual, but Gordon was not to be found.

The Russian thought of running to the Punjabi, making a clean breast of the Gobi expedition and claiming the silver. Then he remembered he had nothing in writing to show, to verify his wild tale—no contract, or agreement. Rumor came anew from the bazaars, and Shebatsky learned that Gordon had bought several good camels, and hired two servants.

This was too much. Shebatsky was hurrying to Fen Shi’s, to try to buy information from the Chinese before Gordon could leave Kashgar for good. On the threshold, however, he remembered that several months ago he had sent Yussuf Beg to Fen Shi’s house to kill one of his men. So the Russian did a creditable about face and scurried to his room, cursing Gordon, wondering why Fen Shi should be back and Robaire absent, and Lanahan rich. And then Kara Gordon came to his door.

“Robaire’s dead, killed by wolves,” said the hunter bluntly. “Here’s his watch, and pistol and three rings. Was he married? Any relations you know of?”

Shebatsky’s wits worked quickly. “Ah, no. Not one. Whatever he leaves should be mine.”

Gordon’s face cleared. “I’m glad of that. Well, good-by, Mr. Shebatsky.”

“But the silver, the fortune in silver!” Shebatsky caught at the other’s coat “Wait; I tell you. Two thirds of all you found in the Gobi is mine, you understand—yes? You gave your word. Ah, what you think?”

“I think half is Lanahan’s. The agreement was if one of you three men fell by the way, the other two shared alike. You remember?”

Now Shebatsky remembered quite well. He wanted to threaten, to claim that two thirds was owing the partnership, in any event. But he realized that Gordon could withhold his half if he made an enemy of the hunter. So he veiled his thoughts, or believed he did, and bowed. “As you wish. Poor Henri trusted you. Now where is Lanahan, that he should come and have a reckoning? How much money did he take from the banker, eh?”

“Enough,” said Gordon slowly, “to give him a good grubstake, and then some.”

“Eh—eh?”

“And he’s left Kashgar yesterday, with servants, on good camels. As soon as the passes are open he’ll be over in India, in the hospital.” Gordon smiled reminiscently. Mike Lanahan had been a good partner. But Shebatsky thought he saw a flaw in the hunter’s statement.

“You let your partner go—with half the money?” He threw up his hands. “What you have, for your share? No—I do not believe.”

Gordon’s smile vanished in a trice. “You don’t, eh? Well, I had to tell the boy I’d go back after the other half of the silver—we’d been weeks in getting his part out of the cavern under Balashan, melting it down into bars and patching him up. He had fever bad, after the work was done. But I’m not taking cards in this game. I’m letting you have the rest of the silver, worth ten years’ profits of your thieving trade. If you want it, that is.”

It was Shebatsky’s turn to smile, even to rub his hands. “Yes, that is good. You are, what you say—a man of your word eh? I take the silver. You put it in the bank? No? Ah, in your camp?”

“Your half of the silver,” said Gordon slowly, “is still in Balashan, in the road under the earth.”

It was impossible for the Russian to understand, for a moment. Then his eyes widened, and he tore at his beard. Fear overspread his thin, pocked face.

“If you want it,” added Gordon, “you’ll have to go after it alone, understand? The natives won’t go near the place—now.” He went to the door. “Fen Shi knows where the place is. We let him go, Shebatsky; after all, he had more right than anyone else to be there.”

Until he reached the courtyard of the hotel he could hear Shebatsky wailing, in high-pitched blasphemy, above his head.

Mounting his waiting pony, Gordon made sure that his saddle bags were secure. Passing through the old city on his way to the caravan gate and new hunting grounds, he came abreast of the house of Fen Shi. The aged proprietor was sitting outside the matting, invoking hideous harmony from the one string of his fiddle.

A glance passed between the two, a glance measuring, challenging, warning, and—in a fashion—admiring. The Chinese laid down his fiddle.

“Tura” said he, “you go far, maybe?”

“Far,” nodded Black Gordon.

Fen Shi stood up, folded his arms, and ducked his head several times. Having saluted in this, to him, fitting manner the white man who kept his word, Fen Shi sat down. Gordon rode on, not looking around, because he could hear behind him the sorrowful note of the one string of the fiddle that no one who was not Chinese could understand

DWELLERS OF THE DEEP, by Don Wilcox

Bill Pierce was hurrying up to the deck to keep a date when the alarm sounded.

“Girl overboard! Girl overboard!”

The whistles blew, the big liner churned waters, and began to circle. It would take several minutes for it to stop. Meanwhile everybody scampered to the rail to look for the girl who had gone over.

“It’s your gal friend, Pierce,” some fellow-passenger yelled.

Bill Pierce tore off his coat, kicked off his shoes, leaped to rail.

The girl was a full hundred and fifty yards away. Her arms were fighting the water frantically. Strange behavior for Beatrice Riley, swimming champion.

Bill dived. In a moment he was skimming through the waves with a powerful stroke.

“Hold on, Bea!”

His cry was probably lost in the clamor. Ringing in his ears were the cynical words of some passenger. “Publicity stunt!”

Bill Pierce didn’t believe it. The diving team of Pierce and Riley didn’t need publicity, and Bea Riley wasn’t one to pull a cheap hoax.

Bill caught sight of her. He was less than fifty feet away. He saw her eyes widened as if in pain. Her arms jerked upward helplessly, she sank down.

With all his championship speed Bill Pierce was too late. Or was he?

“That’s the spot!” someone yelled at him from an approaching boat.

He surface dived, combed the waters as far as his keen eyesight would reach.

Moments later he came up. But there was no sign of Beatrice Riley.

Sailors dived from the life boat, now, and Bill Pierce, catching half a breath, went down for another search.

He spiraled, downward, so deep now that green tropical waters grew black against his wide-open eyes. The hammering pressure of the water pounded at his brain. He was baffled by the strangeness of this occurrence.

Now and again he would catch sight of some vague form sliding past, deep beneath him, only to dart away at his approach.

He bounded to the surface gasping for breath.

“Muff said he saw her,” one of the sailors yelled. “He said some fish had her. They were pullin’ her—”

“That sounds like Muff,” another sailor growled. “He’d lie to you if your life depended—”

“Which way did he see her?” Pierce snapped.

Someone pointed, and Bill Pierce shot down again.

But when he was forced up he had failed once more.

“Who was it saw her?” he demanded.

“Just some o’ Windy Muff’s talk,” said a sailor deprecatingly.

“But I did!” a red-headed sailor declared hotly. “I saw a bunch o’ fish clap a glass barrel over her—”

The sailors roared him down. This was no time for any of his wild lies.

“But I saw it!” Windy Muff blazed. “Just like I said, the fish had a barrel.”

Pop! Someone slapped him across the mouth, muttering “Can’t you see this fellow’s cut up over her? Save your damn’ jokin’ for another time.”

“But I’m not jokin’—”

They cut him off, and one of the sailors explained to Bill Pierce that anything the red-haired Windy Muff said seriously could be taken as a lie right out of thin air.

A whistle from the liner called them back. No more time could be spared on a lost cause. Thirty minutes had been lost.

Pierce tried to plunge again, but the sailors grabbed him, hauled him into the lifeboat…

Back in his stateroom again, as the liner’s engines rumbled into full speed ahead, Bill Pierce went through the routine of changing into dry clothes. He moved numbly. The sudden inexplicable tragedy had dulled his senses.

A knock sounded at his door. It was a steward.

“The captain wishes to see you in his office, sir.”

“The captain?”

“Can you make it right away, sir?”

“Yes. But first—get a wireless off for me.” Bill scribbled a brief message, addressed it to George Vinson in Honolulu. “My friend Vin will find this hard to believe. I can hardly realize it myself.”

A moment later Bill Pierce entered the office, dropped into the chair across from the captain’s desk, agreed to answer a few questions to the best of his ability.

“I’ve learned that the girl was pulled overboard,” said the captain. “Do you have any explanation?”

“Pulled?” Pierce tried to shake the dizziness from his brain. The heavy weight of grief was on him.

“They tell me that a rope—or something resembling a rope—was looped around her” arms and waist, and the other end led down to the water.”

Bill Pierce gave a bitter snort. “That red-haired sailor is a swift liar, isn’t he? Out in the lifeboat he was seeing fish run away with her in a transparent tub.”

“Anything that Windy Muff says can be taken with barrels of salt,” said the captain. “We’ve heard too many of his stories. But this rope—well, three passengers saw it.”

“Oh, they must be mistaken,” Pierce clipped his words with temper. “If they’re trying to cook up a suicide—”

“Not so fast, Mr. Pierce,” the captain cut in with a heavy scowl. “Nobody’s trying to cook up anything. We’re after the facts. What kind of rope do you think Miss Riley might have used?”

Pierce narrowed his eyes. “Begging your pardon, but I think you’re off your nut.”

The captain’s scowl tightened.

“Maybe I am, Pierce, but I can’t ignore the evidence. Three passengers substantially agreed on their stories. Miss Riley was standing at the rail, they said, when they suddenly noticed a cord stretching up from the surface of the water. They saw the loop jerk tight around her shoulders and pull her over the rail into the ocean.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Pierce paced the floor, snapping his fingers.

“By the time the alarm sounded her arms had evidently fought free of the rope—”

“That proves it was no suicide.”

“But the cord evidently caught her feet and the weight pulled her to the bottom.”

“What weight?” Pierce was angry.

“Did anyone see a weight…? Did anyone see her pull the loop around her arms…? Well, what’s the answer?”

“We’re obscure on those points, Pierce. I’ve got my men searching for anything that might have been used for a drop-weight.”

“Drop-weight, hell. How, in broad daylight, could Beatrice Riley or anyone else drop some object into the ocean without anyone seeing it fall?”

The captain had no ready answer. But he faced Pierce with an accusing look. His suspicions were running rampant.

“Answer me carefully, Pierce,” he said. “Did you and Beatrice Riley quarrel last night?”

“Well, I’ll be damn—your honor, what’s the sense of that question?”

“Calm down, Pierce,” said the captain. “What you say is being recorded by my secretary in the next room. I won’t pry into your personal affairs any deeper than necessary. But if—as a few passengers have testified, you and Beatrice Riley were arguing—”

“It was nothing serious—just a discussion—”

“You’ll be doing yourself a service,” said the captain, “if you’ll relate to me what you can recall of that discussion. That’s the simplest way to clear yourself of any suspicion of murder.”

For a moment Bill Pierce was white with rage, tensing his muscles to hold himself in check.

Then he saw his reflection in a panel mirror, and the fury in his cold eyes rebuked him. An outburst of temper was no way to ward off the captain’s suspicions.

Pierce drew a deep breath, sat down, after a moment managed to speak calmly.

“Okay, captain. I’ll tell you what we talked about. I might as well. I’d be thinking about it anyhow, now that she’s gone… Last night when I met her on the deck I told her I’d just received a radiogram…”

CHAPTER II

That previous evening when Bill Pierce had received a radiogram he had hurried around the deck to find Beatrice.

She wasn’t going to like this, he was sure. The telegram was from his friend George Vinson. Beatrice had no use for Vinson. She held an unaccountable dislike for him.

“Just my luck,” Bill Pierce had said to himself.

Bill was madly in love with Beatrice Her mysterious nature always held him at a distance. But he was determined to slip a ring on her finger before they reached Honolulu.

Now with the Hawaiian Islands less than two days off, this had to happen.

George Vinson had radiographed from Hawaii. He would be there to meet them. Moreover, he wanted to take them on to South America on his yacht.

Bill Pierce knew Bea would never hear to it.

Now Bill came upon Beatrice lounging in a deck chair. She was dressed in her sporty blue and white, looking as beautiful as Bill Pierce had ever seen her—and that was saying a lot.

“A surprise radiogram for us, Bea.”

“Not from George Vinson?” she asked apprehensively.

“Good old Vin,” Bill smiled. “Are you in the mood? There, there, don’t frown so. It spoils your pretty face.”

He handed her the radiogram, watched her expression as she read it.

The mystery in Beatrice Riley’s face was ever present. It was something Bill would dream about at night and read about in the Sunday sports reviews. It was something that everyone remarked about.

Beatrice Riley was a mystery. She was one of those rare persons who never talk about themselves. She had blossomed into a celebrity after a brief round of bathing beauty contests. The reporters, inquiring where she came from, discovered that no one knew—and the girl positively refused to talk about her past.

Before Bill met her he was skeptical of the stories of her sensational diving. Some smart promoter must be hoaxing the public, he thought. A man might risk his life in a few of those daredevil dives—himself, for example. But he was tops, or darned near it. But no woman would dare—

Then came the momentous sports show that he and Bea Riley were asked to appear in together. And that changed everything. Bill Pierce saw for himself.

Yes, and he came so near to being outclassed that it wasn’t funny. Bea Riley could have walked off with the show. But she didn’t. She shared honors with him.

That was the beginning of the team of Pierce and Riley, headed straight for international fame. For Bea was everything the reporters had claimed and more.

From the west coast they had flown the Pacific to appear in expositions in the Philippines and Australia. Now they were sailing back to the States. New York was already building them up for a summer season appearance, only three months away.…

Beatrice reread the radiogram three or four times, then passed it back to Bill without a word. She looked out over the waters pensively.

“You see, Bea,” Bill said in the hearty manner of a salesman with a bill of goods to sell, “good old Vinson has worked up some engagements for us down in South America. You know Vin—always looking out for us. He’s got business contacts down there, and they’re pulling for us—”

“Bill, you’re not considering going?”

“Well, it must be a good thing or he wouldn’t suggest it. He’s going to meet us at Honolulu and take us on to Argentina in his big sea-going yacht.”

Bill saw the disapproval cloud Beatrice’s face.

“Did you tell him we’d do it?” she asked.

“Certainly not. I always talk these things over with you.”

“And then you do what George Vinson wants you to.”

Bill’s hot temper wasn’t good for moments like these, and knew it. He saw red whenever his path was crossed. And counting to ten didn’t help.

“Just remember something,” he snapped. “Wait for me.”

He struck off around the deck. He had to work off steam somehow. Maybe by the time he came back Bea would be reasonable.

But no, she was never reasonable when George Vinson was concerned. Bill couldn’t understand it. She was such a swell, fair person to work with in every other way.

Only six months ago Bill had introduced Bea Riley to Vinson. And what a feud he’d started! All the fine things he’d ever said for his old friend had been wasted. ‘Bea Riley had shunned George Vinson like poison.

Vinson had simply thrust his white-gloved fingers through his mane of fine black hair and walked away, ignoring the insulting treatment.

“What in thunder went wrong between those two?” Bill had asked himself after that meeting of six months ago. Then he had tried to apologize to Vinson. Bea Riley, he said, musn’t be misjudged for her seeming coolness. She was a mystery to everyone.

Bill had also apologized to Bea for his old friends manners. The important little man couldn’t help his extreme dignity. His wealth, together with his penchant for profound thought, gave him an air of exaggerated importance.

As for Vinson’s strange habit of always wearing white gloves, indoors as well as out—well, he must possess scarred and unsightly hands. That was what Bill concluded. And after knowing him for six years Bill took the white gloves to be as much a part of Vin as his face or his pompadour of fine black hair.…

Bill returned to Beatrice and she looked up at him with a quick smile.

“What about it, Bea?” he said.

“Whatever you want to do, we’ll do,” said Beatrice.

“Gee, honey,” he caught her in his arms, kissed her. “You know me. What I want is a honeymoon. In Canada, if you say so.”

He looked at her steadily. Her eyelids lowered.

“Are you taking me to South America, Bill?” she asked.

“No. I’ll wire George Vinson it’s off. From this minute on we’re independent. How’s that?”

Beatrice searched his eyes. “I hope you mean it, Bill.”

“I’ll send him a radiogram yet tonight.”

“Think it over till morning,” said Beatrice. “I want to be sure you don’t change your mind… Let me know at lunch…”

CHAPTER III

Now, near mid-afternoon of the day that was to have brought Bill Pierce and Beatrice Riley to a moment of decision, the diving champion sat before the desk of the captain, reciting his story of the previous evening.

“That’s about all,” Bill said in a low voice. He touched his handkerchief to the corners of his eyes.

“Thank you, Pierce,” said the captain.

“If that’s all, I’ll go,” said Bill. “I want to talk with Windy Muff.”

The captain sat silently, frowning.

“Pierce,” he said, “that girl was the most remarkable swimmer and diver I ever saw. I watched the slow motion movie of her novel waterfall dive from two hundred feet. I saw her start at the top, dive down fifty feet to the first elevated pool, shoot over the edge with the cascade and down another fifty to the second pool, and so on. Four successive dives in one—all in the midst of that roaring artificial waterfall. When I think of that, Pierce, and the long underwater swim she did—”

Bill Pierce slapped his hand on the table. “You’re seeing it my way now, Captain. There’s a chance she’s not drowned. She could fight water for hours. How far off were those volcanic islands when she went over?”

“About eight miles.”

“Let me go back, Captain. Give me your launch. And a compass—”

“Could you keep on a course?”

“Let me take a sailor along. Windy Muff. I’ll start at once.”

“You’re taking a big risk. How’ll you get back?”

“I’ve got a friend in Honolulu—George Vinson. He’s got a big yacht—”

“Better send him a radiogram at once,” said the captain. “If he puts to sea this afternoon he should overtake you by morning. I’ll round up Windy Muff for you and check the log…”

* * * *

There was not a minute to lose. Miles of waters were piling up for the backtrack cruise.

Bill shot his radiogram off to Vinson. Meanwhile a note came to him from the captain stating that Windy Muff was seen entering Stateroom Number 90, occupied by one Jean Maribeau.

Bill dashed down the corridor, knocked at number 90. He was admitted by a sturdy immaculate little man with a bristling black mustache and a square jaw.

“Pardon me,” said Bill. “Is there a sailor here by the name of—”

“Ah, it is the famous Mr. Pierce. We are honored.” Jean Maribeau might have been greeting a long lost brother. “Have a chair, Mr. Pierce. Mr. Muff and I have something interesting—”

“I want a quick word with Windy Muff,” Bill said bluntly. “I’m starting back in a launch to try to find the girl that fell overboard.”

The red-haired sailor looked up from the desk where he had been preoccupied with some pencil sketches. “Not a half bad idea.”

“Has Mr. Pierce heard of your remarkable observation, Mr. Muff?” Maribeau asked.

“Uh-huh,” said Muff shrugging. “I didn’t reckon he was interested.”

Bill Pierce was momentarily distracted by walls full of pictures. They reminded him of the physiology charts in a doctor’s office; diagrams of circulatory systems, exposed muscles, skeletons. But the subjects were animals rather than men. Odd, nameless animals, as far as Bill could guess. Obviously this Frenchman was a zoologist and a man of learning.

“Mr. Muff has told me,” Maribeau volunteered, touching the points of his black mustache, “that he saw some strange fish capture Miss Riley in a sort of glass tub.”

“I’ve got no time to listen,” said Bill. “I’m on my way back. Muff, do you want to come?”

Windy Muff turned to Maribeau.

“How about it, Doc?”

“I would give ten years of my life,” said the scientist, “to possess one single specimen of those unique sea creatures. Could I go too, Mr. Pierce?”

CHAPTER IV

A few minutes later the three men got into the twin-motored launch and were lowered into the open sea.

While the liner plowed on toward Hawaii, they roared away on the endless back-track course into the southwestern sun.

Windy Muff held the craft on a dead line.

“Now, Maribeau,” said Bill, “what were you saying about Windy’s fish story?”

The scientist opened his packet of books and papers.

“Would you like to see a sketch of their footprints, Mr. Pierce?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Bill.

“Would you like to see the footprints of the fish that got her?” Maribeau repeated. “I’ve made a drawing from the marks that Mr. Muff and I discovered on the side of the ship.”

“Footprints of a fish?” Bill stammered.

“Fish isn’t the proper term, of course,” said Maribeau. “Amphibian would be more appropriate—or anuran—though I must confess this creature is difficult to classify, especially upon the meager evidence of a few footprints.”

Bill bent over the pencil sketch.

“Maribeau and I spotted it right beneath the rail where she went over,” said Windy. “My gollies, if this ain’t one for Ripley.”

Bill gaped at the bold outline of a webbed foot.

“Name it and you can have it, Pierce,” said Windy Muff.

“I’d call it a mud splatter,” Bill grunted, “though it might be taken for the footprint of an oversized duck—or better, a frog—”

“Now you’re getting warm,” said Maribeau, cocking his head. “As near as I can place it, it’s a huge Surinam toad, a species of water and mud creatures found only in Dutch Guiana. They’re quite rare, and strange to say they have no tongues. But this fellow is no regular. He’s too large. And too far from Guiana. And too much at home in deep water.”

The sketch of the foot, Bill noted, fairly filled the sheet of typing paper.

“He climbed the side of the ship,” said Windy Muff with the air of having witnessed it.

“With a rope, apparently,” the scientist amended. “We found the mark of a wet seaweed rope and a small hook that he had used to pull himself up to the deck where Miss Riley stood.”

“It don’t make sense, but Maribeau claims he musta crawled up and lassoed her, the slimy devil,” said Windy Muff.

“That’s our strange verdict,” said Maribeau confidently. “And that argues we’re on the trail of some monstrosity with intelligence. I never saw anything like it.”

Bill Pierce was frowning, trying to digest these bizarre evidences.

“Maribeau,” he said sharply. “What do you make of all this? Do you think such creatures could actually imprison a person with ropes and—and tubs?”

“I’ve no right to theorize on the basis of these footprints,” said Maribeau, “but I’ll go as far as anyone to find out…

* * * *

Dawn found Bill and his two companions nearing the area of the volcanic islands. A clear night and a glass-smooth ocean had facilitated their backtracking excursion.

Now Windy Muff stood in the prow sighting the low mountaintops. He passed his field glasses to his companions.

“When those two peaks line up with us,” he said, “we’ll be right on a dead shot for the spot where she went over. Then it’ll be a matter of farther or closer, the devil knows which.”

“We’ll have to pull closer,” said Bill. “I remember seeing a bit of cliff along the water-line.”

“And a heavy black line on the water—at low tide,” Windy Muff added. “Ain’t I right, Maribeau?”

The French scientist was lost in his books. With the first gray of the morning he had resumed his ardent studies.

“Don’t bother him,” said Bill.

“It beats me,” said Windy Muff, “how a scientist can take an animal’s footprint and tell you what the darned thing looks like.”

“Did his description agree with what you saw?”

“The truth is,” said Windy Muff, “about all I saw was some green blurs. There wasn’t time—Ahoy! Look what’s comin’.”

Bill turned to see the speck of ship on the northeastern horizon.

“That’s George Vinson, or I’m a frog’s uncle!” Bill leaped up, stripped off his shirt, began waving it. “Right to us over the blue. He’s made speed believe me.”

Maribeau was aroused by Bill’s excited talk, and in a moment he and Windy Muff were following Bill’s example, waving banners to the distant yacht.

In less than an hour the trim white craft nosed up within hailing distance of the launch.

Bill looked up at the yacht’s prow where the familiar figure of George Vinson stood like a statue against the sky. It was a curious fact, thought Bill, that a man of George Vinson’s diminutive stature somehow always gave the impression of being a large powerful person.

Part of it was Vinson’s masterful manner. His superior air at this moment, for example, as he unfolded his arms and raised both of them in a sign of greeting, would have nettled Beatrice Riley if she bad been here.

As usual, Vinson was bareheaded, and his long black hair blew like a horse’s mane in the breeze. As usual, he wore immaculate white from head to foot, including white shoes and white gloves.

“How does it go, my friend?” came the hale greeting of George Vinson.

“Vin, are we ever glad to see you!” Bill shouted.

“Come on up!”

Bill caught the rope that one of Vinson’s crew tossed out and tied the launch up against the yacht’s gleaming side. He climbed up, scrambling to his feet. George Vinson’s hearty handshake was waiting for him.

“It’s been many months,” said Vinson, smiling majestically. For minutes the two men chatted warmly. Then the smile went out of Vinson’s dark gleaming eyes. “Tell me about this—this unaccountable happening. Your message was hard to believe. At first I thought—well, never mind—”

“What?”

“No offense, Bill,” said Vinson gazing across the waters reflectively, “but my first thought was, Bill and Beatrice are playing a practical joke on me, just to bring me out to meet them. They’re anxious to see me, so they’ve hatched up this hoax—”

“I only wish that were it, Vin,” said Bill. “But nothing could be farther from the truth.”

“Are you sure she didn’t just strike out and swim to yonder island?” George Vinson suggested.

“Hell, no, Vin! You’re all wet,” Bill snapped. This confident calmness of Vin’s could be annoying. It was a trait that tended to give the older man a mastery of any situation. It made Bill feel like a hot-headed youth. “Let me explain. She didn’t swim away.”

“No?” Vinson passed a white glove over his fine flowing black hair.

“She was pulled overboard—there was a rope—and some sort of green sea creature—”

George Vinson’s gloved hand froze on the back of his neck. He stared at Bill, then his mystical eyes peered into the sea. The white slits of scars on either side of his neck reddened. He turned sharply to his sailors.

“Bring out the diving suits.”

While Bill and one of Vin’s sailors changed into the diving outfits, there was a general recounting of all details of Bea’s strange departure. Windy Muff and Maribeau climbed aboard the yacht to add their share of the account. Maribeau sketched a webbed foot. Windy stuck to his story that the creatures were green blurs kicking through the water.

And all the while George Vinson stood with hands on hips and head high, like something carved of granite.

“We’re a full ten miles from the islands,” he said finally. “We’ll scout along a trifle closer. Everyone keep a sharp watch on the waters close about.”

Bill climbed back into the launch, and Windy and the scientist followed. They swung the launch around to follow in the wake of the yacht. They could see the Napoleon-like figure of Vinson measuring his steps along the deck, and Bill pulled up within voice range. But the only interchange of conversation was a warning from Vinson to keep the diving helmet ready and keep a sharp lookout. Then—

“Look out!” “Watch it, there!” George Vinson and a sailor both shouted at once.

Bill whirled in time to see it happen. A loop of lithe seaweed rope spun out of the water’s surface within ten feet of the launch. The loop fell over the head and shoulders of the scientist. The rope tightened with a jerk.

For a split second Maribeau was almost overboard and gone. The rope went taut like an irresistible steel cable and started off with him.

But the scientist’s hands and knees hooked the side of the launch, and in the same instant Bill dived to catch his feet. The rope snapped off an arms length beyond the edge of the boat.

Maribeau shrank back, muttering profanity in a foreign tongue. He jerked the tightly corded seaweed off his shoulders, flung it to the bottom of the boat, wiped his slime-covered hands on a handkerchief.

“I saw the critters,” Bill gasped. “Just as you caught yourself and the rope went tight.”

Maribeau’s white face nodded. He had evidently seen them too, but just now he was too scared to say so.

“I seen three,” said Windy Muff. “But there musta been more, the way they was pullin’. And if that rope hadn’t broke—” Windy stopped to scratch his head. “What the devil were those things ? They had arms like monkeys, and prickly spines like big lizards—”

“I’d give ten years of my life,” Maribeau uttered in a scared whisper, “for just one specimen.”

“Wonder what they’d pay for one of us,” Windy grunted.

Bill closed the diving helmet down over his shoulders and all talk dimmed and melted together like tunnel sounds. The air-tight suit was a flimsy affair, unsuitable for extreme depths, and the oxygen supply was meager. But Bill was eager for a look under the surface.

Bill waved a signal to Vinson that he was ready to go over. But again Vinson was shouting something.

Then the sound of a heavy splash seeped into the bell-jar headpiece, Bill turned, saw the agonized fright in Maribeau’s face. Windy Muff was gone!

Or rather, he was going. A seaweed rope was dragging him down. Bill hastily checked the fastenings of his air-tight suit and dived.

The force of gravity was with him on his first plunge for depth. He cut down through the water with a powerful stroke. The retreating figure of Windy Muff was a shadowy blur straight ahead of him. Those two fleeting spots of light were Windy’s bare feet.

And Bill was almost on them. If the fellow would just stop his senseless kicking—

For an instant Bill had the sailor by the toe. But the green creatures must have felt the tug. They suddenly jerked Windy Muff away with frantic speed. Bill couldn’t match it—not in a bulky diving suit. The shadowy forms pulled out of his reach and were gone.

That would be the last of Windy Muff, thought Bill. By this time the poor fellow must have taken in a lung-full of water. Bill started to climb.

But at that moment he caught sight of a dim yellow circle of light somewhere farther beyond—and below. He plowed toward it. It had all the look of an artificial light. This was incredible.

He was down deep now. In spite of the inflated suit, the water crushed hard against his sides. Gravity was against him, too, and he had to fight water to keep from being buoyed up.

The circle of yellow was expanding into half a globe that streaked the waters with zig-zagging spangles. There was activity somewhere in that vicinity Now the shreds of light were half clouded with a shower of white sand. So this was near the bottom. They must be imprisoning Windy in one of those transparent tubs. But it was all too black for Bill to see. He crept closer.

By this time the dome of light was on a level higher than his eyes. Suddenly he saw the sharp-toothed outlines of a green sea creature, then a second, and a third. They were passing like sentinels around the top of what appeared to be a cylindrical tank. Its vertical walls were solid black, but the light that fountained out of the transparent top gave it form.

A quick movement from one of the green sea creatures warned Bill. They were on the alert. One of them crossed over the light and he caught a perfect picture of it. Its beady little magenta-ringed eyes were darting about, on sharp watch for trouble. The spines over its back were bristling.

What effect, he wondered, would those spines have on a flimsy diving suit like his? Those were fighting spines. A row of them armored the back of each leg, too. They were like elongated fins, or they might have been rows of thin knife-blades connected by webs.

It was hard to tell, under the distorting water, how large these creatures were. But Bill’s best guess was that they were three or four feet long. He was certainly not prepared for an encounter with one of them, much less a band that knew how to work together.

He shrank back. His oxygen would soon be gone. If he could retreat undiscovered, enough would be accomplished for the moment. For by this time, he knew, Windy Muff was either drowned or else imprisoned in an upright tank of compressed air. That left Bill free to follow either of two lines of action.

He could swim back to the yacht for a rope to attach to this undersea cylinder. All hands on deck might be able to lift it, and Windy Muff with it.

Or Bill could come back with a fresh supply of oxygen and wait to see what the creatures might do with their prisoner. That would be his cue as to what had happened to Bea.

One of the other of these plans—but he had better have, a quick talk with George Vinson first. He started up.

Then as his eyes came on a level with the dome of light he caught sight of the prisoner. It was not Windy Muff. It was Beatrice Riley.

CHAPTER V

On the instant all of Bill’s neatly built plans toppled into confusion. The waters about him became a chaos of flashing prisms as he automatically fought to stop his upward climb.

The light must have flooded over his helmeted face, for now Bea was looking up at him. There was a flick of smile with her recognition, cut short by an expression of shock.

Under less perilous circumstances Bill would have interpreted that shocked look as embarrassment. Bea could have been no less scantily clothed if she had been in her diving costume. Obviously her fight against being captured had cost her her outer garments.

But her shock was plainly one of fear. Her lips were uttering anguished warnings.

“Bill! Be careful!”

In a glance Bill saw five or six of the green sea creatures were drawing back into a group. Their beady little eyes were staring at him. The bright red lines around their mouths seemed to draw tight, as if in cynical smiles. They were hovering in readiness to attack.

Bill’s glance flashed back at Bea. She was trying to shake her head at him. But her actions were obstructed by instruments which Bill had hardly noticed at first. They appeared to be two large electrodes, one fastened to each side of her head.

There was no time to wonder what all of this strange paraphernalia might mean. Already the sea creatures were coming toward him.

They bounced over the light in V formation—five of them. Their necks bowed like the necks of chariot horses. In fact, there was a strange resemblance between their heads and the heads of horses. Their monkey-like arms pawed the water, they reared their spiny backs and plowed straight for Bill’s midsection.

Bill flung himself in a quick somersault. The heavy transparent headgear was the least vulnerable part of his costume. He was barely quick enough to take the blow of their attack on his head. Their spines clicked past like a course-toothed saw scraping his diving helmet.

His instincts told him to descend. There was darkness below. The light from overhead would play an advantage to whoever was nearest the bottom.

The green water-horses were right after him. He kicked a spray of white sand at them, then made a hard curved plunge around the base of the upright cylinder.

But they were in their element, swishing through these dark waters. At once they were coming at him from both directions. With savage fury they shot over his arms shearing the sleeves of his diving suit. The waters beat in upon his arms like sledge-hammers.

Back the green devils came from all directions. Their spines were steel sharp. He felt one long sweep of sawtooth points rip the full length of his spine.

That was the last of his diving suit. Its protection was gone. Only the shreds of it clung to his wrists and feet. He kicked out of it.

The pressure flung water up into his face like a blast from a fire hose, and then his helmet bounded off. He was at the mercy of the deep. His eardrums were near to bursting. He was holding half a breath. But it would never last him till he climbed to the surface. He was too nearly done in with exhaustion. The pain from the gashes and scrapings of spines was like fire. He was losing blood. A faintness was sweeping in on him.

Bill tensed his muscles into steel armor to fight the crushing weight of water. Could he chance the climb to the surface?

The five savage horse-faced creatures were obviously waiting for him to come up into the light again. To rip his body wide open? He could make out their distorted silhouettes at the upper edge of the lighted dome. Their lithe arms were paddling restlessly. They seemed about to plunge again—four of them. But the fifth.…

Bill was uncertain whether to trust his eyes. The fifth of the creatures—the large one with yellow Z-shaped streaks on each side of its green sides—seemed to be holding the other four back. A few bold waggles of the creature’s head caused the other four to slide back into the darkness. The last Bill could see of them they were swimming away.

Bill’s lungs were near to bursting. He saw a leap of the big “Yellow-Z” toward the upper edge of the cylinder.

At once a square of light appeared at Bill’s feet. It was a welcome sight—a door at the base of the cylinder. It had slid open, inviting him. Inside there would be compressed air.

Bill would have entered if the place had been a fiery furnace.

He plowed through the foot-square aperture, rose through a series of valves that drew him up automatically. Suddenly the hammering water was gone. Air struck his face.

Air! His breathless gasp resounded in the cylinder like the intake of a gas engine. Air!

A floor pushed up solid and dry against his feet. Now he could feel the sting of air against his gashed arms and the stripe along his back. It was a welcome sensation, in spite of the light trickles of blood.

Blackness was sweeping in on him. He was vaguely aware that he was groping at the smooth paneled cylinder walls, that Bea Riley was beside him, that her arms were supporting him.

But the mad exertion had cost him his consciousness. His fainty head lopped against Bea’s side, and everything went black.

CHAPTER VI

Bill scraped his wrists across his face and rubbed an eye open. Colors swam before him in a bleary fog.

He took a long breath. His lips were dry and swollen. He dimly realized he’d been thirsting for more oxygen. The air was stifling. He was still in the big upright cylinder with Beatrice.

Such nightmares! He’d dreamed he was inside an iron lung that had shrunk into a silvered radio tube, Bea was there too, trying to keep him from falling.

The dream made her a part of the electrical instrument. Spasms of electricity had been shocking her, so the dream went, until finally her arms had weakened and dropped him. He’d fallen to the floor of the tube, lain there. His blood had seeped away. And Bea was powerless to help him. She was only a part of the radio tube.

The misery of the dream came back to him as he lay coiled on the floor of the tube. But the dream was partly true, he knew.

His back was no longer bleeding, however, and he knew that the scraping he had suffered from the sea creature’s fins had not hurt him seriously.

His elbow was pressing against Beatrice’s feet. It was a comfort to know she was still there, though she looked very pale and tired.

Again Bill slipped off into troubled sleep, and the same weird nightmare went round and round.

Then a sudden jolting and rocking of his prison floor brought him back to consciousness. The dream vanished. Bea was still there, with the electrical instruments fastened to the sides of her head.

A panic of terror struck Bill anew. What were those strange electrical instruments? What were they doing to her?

Her eyes were closed. In the ghastly yellow glow she looked deathly.

“Bea! What’s happening?” Bill whispered.

Her eyes opened, she reached a hand down to him, helped him to his feet.

“I’m all right, Bill,” she said. “Just dozing.”

“They’re not electrocuting you or anything?”

“Hardly.” Beatrice gave him a mysterious little smile.

“I was a sap to faint away,” Bill muttered. “We must be nearly out of oxygen. We’ve got to get out of there before, it’s too late.”

The uprights cylinder gave another lurch. Bill’s weight struck the wall and the cylinder tottered precariously.

“Where the hell are they taking us?”

“We’d better get down,” said Bea. “We’re so top-heavy we almost crashed.”

“That’d be all right with me—if we could climb past those devilish things.”

“Horse-fish,” said Bea.

“Whatever you want to call them,” Bill growled. He went down stiffly on his knees. The cylinder coasted along a little more smoothly. And when Beatrice succeed in unfastening the electrical instruments so she could crouch closer to the floor, the strange undersea prison rolled along as steadily as something on rubber tires.

“We’re learning,” said Beatrice. “It’s better to cooperate with them.”

“Cooperate!” Bill barked. “The thing for us to do is get out.”

“They’d pounce on us again, Bill, just like before. They’re smart.”

Bill searched her eyes. Her tone of voice had carried a strong hint of respect for what she had called the “horse-fish.” Did she know anything about these wily creatures?

“We’ve got to make a break,” Bill snapped, rising again with hands braced against the walls. “Get your breath. Let’s take our chances—”

“Against the open sea, Bill?”

“There’s a yacht up above. He’s waiting for us.”

“Not Vinson?” Bea cried.

His affirmative nod terrorized her. She sprang up and clutched his arms. Then the vertical walls swayed and fell.

The water valves groaned and one of them sprang slightly open. A fiat blade of water dashed in.

“Come on, Bea!” Bill gasped, scrambling to his hands and knees—for the lurch of the tank had thrown the two of them into a heap. “Now’s our chance. We’re trapped here unless—”

“No, Bill—”

“Don’t be afraid. What’s the matter?”

“Does Vinson know I’m down here?”

“Why?”

“Does he?” Beatrice was almost screaming.

“He knows the horse-fish pulled you off the ship. He’s got to know we’re still alive. He has some divers—”

“Look!” Beatrice breathed with relief. “They’re setting us upright. We’re still safe here.”

“I tell you we’re getting out of here!” Bill snapped hotly.

“Go back to Vinson if you want to,” she said in a chill voice. “But don’t tell him I’m here, I’d rather die.”

“Bea!”

It was all that Bill could manage to say at the moment. He let his head fall back against the wall. This was more than he could fathom. How could she hold such an abhorrence for George Vinson? Even now in the face of death her mysterious single hatred overshadowed everything else.

Now the righted tank was again riding along the sandy sea bottom taking them to some unknown destination.

“Bea,” Bill pleaded, “can’t you tell me what it is?”

She nodded slowly, looked into Bill’s eyes with confidence.

“You’ve always said Vinson was a right fellow, Bill. You’ve called him good—and sincere—and honest—”

“Well?”

“He is” she said quietly. “He’s all those things and more. I knew him before you did.”

“Bea!”

“He’s true blue, Bill. That’s why I can’t face him. I’m not!”

“What are you talking about?” Bill swept his hand across his forehead dizzily. “You’re true blue, honey. I’d swear it. Hell, what’s this all about? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Don’t try to understand, Bill. Just listen to me. I’m not crazy. I know this part of the sea. I even know what these horse-fish are up to. It was just a chance that they took me off the boat instead of someone else. I was horrified when it happened, naturally—on your account. But I can take my chances—”

“You’re talking wild—”

The valves slid open and a gust of pure fresh air filled the cylinder.

“There’s no time to tell you more,” Beatrice whispered. “Take my word for it. If you love me, Bill, don’t ask questions now—”

“Do I take you back with me or don’t I?”

“You—if you can—but not Vin!”

Bill was breathing heavily. He was scarcely aware that the cylinder was gliding along with a low grinding noise like a metal cart over sands. He only knew he was breathing air again, his mind was clearing, he was thinking fast. And his fighting spirit was about to bound out of hand.

“So you’ve known Vin before.” Bill could feel his cheeks redden. “Has he been in love with you…? Is he now?”

Beatrice glanced sharply toward the cylinder floor as the valves clanked. She whispered, “They’re coming after you.”

“If I had a knife I’d slit their bellies,” he hissed.

“No!” There was more than terror in her whisper. “We’re at their mercy—both of us. Watch them, Bill… Study them”

“While they rip my back to shreds?”

“When the time is right I’ll send you word. Until then—Wait! That’s all I can tell you.”

Through the wide-open valves Bill saw the horse-fish beckoning him to come. Only his faith in Beatrice made him obey.

The last of the rectangular doors closed behind him. He was outside the cylinder, breathing the free air of an immense cavern. And in the half-light that sifted down from a lofty ceiling and towering rock walls he glimpsed the strangest city he had ever seen.

CHAPTER VII

There was so much movement close about him that he had no time to take in the details of this immense underground world.

He glanced back at the cylinder from which he had just emerged. The twenty-eight or thirty horse-fish surrounding it paid no attention to him. They evidently meant to keep Beatrice imprisoned, for she had not emerged. Now they were pressing levers to lock the valves.

Their cunning hands grappled with the ropes hooked to its sides. It rolled back down the wet tracks with a crunching of metal wheels over wet gravel. Bill drew back out of the way, watched the big instrument move along, silhouetted against the wide cobweb of artificial lights on the nearest wall.

The horse-fish worked together better than any team of circus animals. They worked with intelligence. Every horse-fish knew what he was about. Together they pulled the upright “iron-lung” down the roadway into the water.

This was the path by which it had come in from the sea. The tracks proved that. So did Bill’s sharp sense of direction. That big circular steel door half under water must be one of a series of locks that shut out the sea.

For Bill knew that this place was below sea level. He had never ascended, since his dive; moreover the very air pressure on his eardrums argued that this cavern floor was deep.

Beatrice, still imprisoned, was quickly carted away. As she was passing through the circular opening a gush of imprisoned sea water rushed into the narrow channel, sloshing past the cylinder’s transparent dome.

Bea looked back to Bill. The intent expression, the slight shake of the head, seemed to say, “Don’t forget!”

Then in his final glimpse of her Bill saw that two horse-fish had climbed up into the cylinder to replace the electrical clamps on her head.

Now she was gone. The swarm of horse-fish kicking along at the sides of the cylinder passed into darkness. The circular steel door closed.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Bill said aloud.

“It’s got me goin’ too, pal,” said a voice back of him. It was Windy Muff, sauntering up and planting a lazy elbow on Bill’s shoulder.

“I can’t figure—” Bill stopped with a gulp. “Windy! Where the dickens did you come from?”

“I went to sea in a tub,” said Windy with a dry cackle. “They just now took me out of one of those undersea go-carts—only they had to pull me out with ropes.”

“I thought you’d be drowned—”

“They pumped life into me—then scared it outa me again. I can’t look ’em in the face without turnin’ ten shades of white.”

“Windy, I’m darned glad you’re alive!” Bill smiled grimly. “But you know you’ve fallen into a devil of a mess down here.”

“It’d be a heap easier on the nerves to be dead. Was that the gal?”

Bill nodded. “Looks like they’re taking her back to sea. This strip of water is the slippery slide to the outside world, if my directions are straight.”

The dark waters surged at the channel wails and proceeded to drain away through the circular door. Somewhere pumps were working.

“I think you’re right,” said Windy. “That’s the way we came through.”

“We?”

“The critters got in my go-cart with me to shake the water out of my lungs,” Windy explained. “Then they crawled out again to help pull me through the locks. There was a spell of blackness, and when it lifted I was here.”

“Here!” Bill echoed glumly. He gazed around. “My great guns, what a cave! A whole underground city.”

“Ain’t it!” Windy Muff sounded a forlorn note. “If I ever get back to tell about this, they’ll never believe me.”

“Don’t worry about ever getting back,” said Bill, nudging his companion.

Several horse-fish were watching the two of them from the not-too-friendly distance of fifteen or twenty yards.

As a matter of fact, the creatures appeared to be listening—though Bill had no way of knowing whether this were possible.

One of the six or eight more attentive horse-fish had a familiar look. His green sides were marked with yellow zig-zag stripes resembling the letter Z.

“That fellow,” Bill whispered to Windy, “came near to ripping my backbone out. We clashed somewhere out there beyond the wall.”

“They’ve got damned dangerous looking spines,” Windy muttered. “Hell, he did tear up your back a bit, fellow. You oughta unroll a yard of tape and pull yourself together. Feel bad?

“Not now,” said Bill. “Seems like it clotted and began healing as soon as I got out of the water. Strange… Look, they’re gathering in on us.”

Like so many loafers and stragglers stopping at a street corner to look at a pair of out-of-town elephants, the horse-fish came closer. From numerous ponds and rivulets and branching caves of the immediate neighborhood they came. Some seemed reluctant to leave the water, perhaps because of inertia. They were obviously adapted to land. Once out of water they came striding on their hind legs.

Some came timidly, like so many bashful schoolgirls. Some strutted, like wise old frogs out of a fairy legend, weighted down with burdens of too much knowledge. Some tossed their horse-fish heads high in an attitude of snobbery and sauntered along with their webbed hands on their trim green hips.

But the most business-like specimens marched up boldly, twirling their lithe seaweed ropes.

These brisk marchers were creatures of responsibility, there was no doubt about that. Bill thought he detected a superior sharpness in their glassy spines.

“We’re in for it,” Muff whispered, turning ten shades of white.

“Don’t start anything, Windy,” Bill mumbled. “I’ve had a tip.”

“Hasn’t she got you in enough trouble?”

“S-s-sh. They’re listening… That ‘Yellow-Z’ is watching me like a hawk.”

Two of the horse-fish advanced boldly, placed slip-knotted ropes around the wrists of each man, led them across the wet gravel beach. Bill thought it best to humor them. He offered no resistance.

“See all that pinkish light way up yonder?” Windy whispered as they plodded along.

“What about it?” Bill asked guardedly.

“Could be daylight,” said Windy. “If we’d jerk loose and make a run for it—”

“That’s a good two miles away,” said Bill, “and we don’t know these underground paths. If these horse-fish can run like they can swim we wouldn’t get far.”

“They’re built to swim like fish,” Windy whispered.

“And run like horses. Take it easy, Windy.”

“Easy! Ugh!” Windy became less guarded in his talk. “My instinct says fight. Tear into ’em with rocks—”

A sharp jerk of the rope on Windy’s wrist silenced him. He rolled his eyes toward Bill and whispered cautiously, “Did you see that?”

Bill nodded. “They heard you—and understood, by George.”

“It’s uncanny. I don’t believe it. It just happened. I’ll prove it.” Windy ceased his whispering and said in a normal voice. “Bill, in about a minute I’m gonna slice the hearts out of a couple of these green-bellied—”

Jerk! The rope pulled so sharply it snapped. For a moment Windy; had the wild eye of a bull calf that breaks out of its halter.

Windy might have had a hot inspiration to take flight, but Bill saw the notion cool. The way the spines suddenly bristled over those horse-fish was enough to make anyone think twice. Windy stood calmly while his guardian horse-fish slipped another loop over his wrist, and the party moved on.

“Now what do you say?” Bill whispered.

“Nothing out loud,” Windy retorted. “Devilishly odd, though… They musta been disturbed by my tone of voice. They didn’t understand the words, do you reckon?”

Bill started to answer, but he saw the eyes of one of his captors roll at him curiously. They were listening. Bill was sure of it.

“If they hear, it’s damned funny they don’t talk,” Windy said under his breath. “I haven’t heard a squeak out of any of ’em.”

“I’ll swear I heard some voices in the distance when they first brought me out into the cavern.”

“What kind of voices, Bill? Frog croaks—or horse whinneys?”

“Sort of human voices, I thought,” said Bill, trying to recapture the fleeting impressions of a few minutes before. “Hard to tell, though, with all the echoes floating around through these caverns.”

The party followed a crooked trail along the natural rock wall. They came to a stop at a circular steel door with a white X painted across it.

Two horse-fish opened the door and silently motioned Bill and Windy in. It was a cavern chamber. Low artificial lights were burning. Bill walked in, Windy followed, and the door closed after them.

The room was unoccupied, and that fact was enough to make it inviting. Bill dropped down on the sand floor and sighed, “Home. Don’t wake me till breakfast.”

“Jail,” said Windy. “Don’t wake me till the execution… At least we won’t have to face those damnable green devils as long as this lasts.”

“No?” said Bill. “Take a look at our ocean view.”

The room was partly natural cavern formations, partly artificial walls. But across to the right there was a large glass window. Choppy little waves of gray-green water sloshed against the lower half of it. No skies or horizons were visible. This patch of sea was imprisoned within what appeared to be an endless adjoining cavern. Only the plate glass kept it from pouring into Bill’s and Windy’s rocky cell.

A horse-fish was padding gently along the surface of the water—Yellow Z. He came up to the window, pressed his nose against it.

Windy Muff took one look and burst into profanity. He’d never eat or sleep, he declared, if those blinkety-blank critters kept staring at him.

“As long as you haven’t any bed or food,” Bill chuckled, “you’re not losing anything.” He rose, sauntered over to the window, gazed out at Yellow-Z. “The fellow’s as friendly as a pet dog.”

“Yeah?” Windy snorted. “Well, get him to lead us outa here… Ain’t he the same one that sliced you down the back?”

“Right… And then protected me from another attack. I can’t understand it.”

“Sounds screwy, but if you say— Bill! Look at these foot tracks!”

Windy pointed to a confusion of marks in the sand. Bill bent over them. They were human foot tracks. The chamber floor was full of them.

“So we aren’t the first to drop into this,” Bill muttered. “They’re old tracks, though. Maybe years old.”

“Maybe we’ll be old before we get out,” Windy rejoined.

Nothing more was said for some time. Bill explored the cavern chamber. His thoughts were in a whirl. Undoubtedly all these mysteries had their meanings. Here in one corner, for instance, was one of those miniature street lights—a pink globe mounted on a pair of ebony legs. He had noticed several such lights on his way to this jail. The underground city he had glimpsed had been dotted with them.

Pink street lights that stood not more than four feet high… A window opening into another vast cavern half-filled with sea… Human foot tracks all over this prison floor… And somewhere out in the deep waters Beatrice Riley encased in a metal cylinder with an electrical apparatus clamped to her head… And all through the caverns and out in the sea, myriads of horse-fish—strange hybrid creatures that worked like men—and listened to men’s talk—but never spoke.

What could it all mean?

* * * *

Bill paced until he was dripping with perspiration. His confusions only deepened. Windy Muff had fallen asleep by this time, and somehow that seemed the sensible thing to do.

In one of the natural rock alcoves Bill found a spring of fresh water. He drank his fill, bathed himself. He spliced the scanty shreds of diving suit that clung to his body, managed to convert the torn strips into fairly comfortable trunks. The air was so warm that he felt no need for any more clothing.

Then he nestled down in a bed of fine sand and treated himself to a sleep.

A clank of the chamber door awakened him. He sprang up with a start. His dreams had been beset by dangers, and this sudden intrusion found him alert for an attack.

“Windy, they’re coming in! Wake—” But Windy was no longer sleeping. Bill’s glance swept the room to catch the sailor calmly kneeling beside the ebony legs of the pink light globe. He turned to Bill with a confident wink.

“They’re bringing us dinner,” said Windy. “Needn’t get excited.”

“Dinner? How do you know?”

The circular door had opened and now four horse-fish marched in, each bearing a corner of a tray of food. They set the tray down on a flat shelf of rock, turned and went out. In a moment the circular door clanked closed.

Windy Muff sauntered over to the tray, picked up a nicely browned fish and began to eat.

Bill simply glared. “Well, I’ll be damned. Are you in cahoots with this gang of green bellied monsters too?…or have they hypnotized you…? Don’t eat it, you fool. You’ll be poisoned.”

Windy Muff grinned and went on munching. “Tastes good to me. Better try some.”

Bill looked across to the window. Yellow Z was still loafing out there in the water, his red ringed eyes keeping watch.

“You said you wouldn’t eat as long as the critters watched you,” Bill mocked. “Look at Yellow Z. He’s got the same stupid grin on his face that you’ve got.

“Maybe he’s had a good dinner too,” said Windy. “Join me?”

“No,” said Bill. “I’m too smart to take poison.”

Then he caught a second whiff of the delicious fried fish. He edged closer, nibbled a sample. It was irresistible. He sat down beside the tray and ate like a horse.

Windy leaned back against a rock, locking his freckled fingers back of his head for a pillow.

“I’ve discovered something, Bill. Kinda made me feel different toward these beasts.”

“Well?”

“Remember what Maribeau said about those foot tracks? They looked like overgrown Surinam toads—”

“But this was the wrong ocean for animals from Dutch Guiana—”

“Remember he mentioned that those toads don’t have any tongues…? Well, maybe these critters don’t have much in common with the specimens he was talking about, except for their webbed feet and their spiny backs. But I’ve got it figured out that they also don’t have tongues.”

“Because they don’t talk? said Bill skeptically.

“Because they do talk in a different way.”

Windy rose and walked over to the pink light globe. He knelt beside it, thrust his head between the two ebony posts so that one of his ears rested against each.

“Come try this, Bill, if you ain’t afraid of gettin’ electrocuted.”

Windy drew back to watch Bill with glowing eyes.

The ebony posts were cool against Bill’s cheekbones as he wedged his head between them. Whatever the material was, it had enough elasticity to fit snugly against his ears. He listened. At first he heard nothing. Then, a weird flow of communication…thought-waves.…

“Have you finished dinner yet…? We’ll come for the tray as soon as you’re through… You’re prisoners… Don’t try to get out… We can be severe if necessary.…”

The challenge sent a flare of hot temper through Bill’s swimming brain.

“…No use to fly off the handle… That won’t get you anywhere… You wouldn’t be the first upper-world man we’ve ripped to shreds… We turn loose on upper-world men as quick as we do on spiny-men… So my words have you guessing, have they…? You haven’t heard of spiny-men…? Take a look across the river to the other city… But don’t get too many ideas about exploring around… You’re staying right here as long as we need you…”

Bill jerked his head out of the weird telephone. He was breathing hard, his fingers were quivering.

“Didja hear voices?” Windy asked eagerly.

Bill nodded uncertainly. “I got a message, all right—a long, rambling one. But I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Different, ain’t it?” Windy’s grin froze in an expression of puzzlement. “The first time I listened in I wanted to tear those poles out by the roots and beat myself over the head. I thought I was goin’ nuts, hearin’ things that couldn’t be heard. Then I thought how godawful hungry I was, and they picked it up.”

“How’d you happen to try in the first place?”

“Saw some horse-fish doin’ it. Back along our inside wall I found a little barred window that gives a squint of the city. Or rather, both cities—one in each side of the cavern.”

“My message,” said Bill, “mentioned the other city. And there was a lot of talk about spiny-men. What the devil are they?”

“Never heard of them,” Windy said in denial.

“The uncanny thing, though,” said Bill, eyeing the pink light globe suspiciously, “was the way that voice—only it wasn’t a voice—kept answering me. The instant I thought a question, it answered.”

Windy waved his hands helplessly. “Don’t be askin’ me how.”

Bill began pacing again.

Windy chuckled mirthlessly. “Now I know what made the foot-tracks all over this place. Whoever was penned up in this joint last went nuts tryin’ to dope out that noiseless phone.”

“Listen, Windy,” said Bill sharply. “You watched me while I was getting that message a moment ago. Did I ever talk any—out loud, I mean?”

“Not a word,” said Windy.

“Then how the devil could that horse-fish chop me off with an answer every time I thought a question?”

“And how could he talk back to you without a tongue?” Windy shrugged. “Didn’t I tell you they’ve got a different way of talkin’? This is it. Come back to the barred window and you can see ’em headin’ into phone booths all over town.”

But at that instant a flash of green outside the big glass window stopped bill in his tracks. Yellow Z had suddenly fled the waters.

“Musta forgot an appointment,” Windy cracked.

Then came wild splashing over the water’s surface. It was a chase. A bronze body swam past so close that his elbow bumped the plate glass. Bill caught sight of the coarse-featured masculine face. The man shot on, swimming fast.

Close on his heels came five horse-fish. Their little red-lined faces were blazing with fury. Their red slits of gills were working hard. Their steely spines bristled with readiness to slice flesh and bones.

Water splashed to the top of the window, blurred Bill’s vision. As the glass cleared he saw the chase turn into a deadly fight.

The bronzed man whirled with the alacrity of a fish, his long black hair slapped over his shoulder, his wide flat hands jerked a short thin knife out of his belt. His back lurched up out of the water just before he struck.

In that instant Bill caught sight of the row of sharp points—a dozen or more of them—that lined the fellow’s back bone.

“If we could bust that window,” Windy yelled, “we might save that man’s life.”

“No.” Bill’s jaw was set hard. “It’s their battle. Besides, he’s not a man. He’s a spiny-man.”

CHAPTER VIII

“Whatever he is,” Windy gasped, “he’s committin’ suicide, swimmin’ in amongst those damned green-bellied rippers.”

“Maybe so. I don’t know—” Bill’s unconscious words gave way to breathless silence. He and Windy both pressed their faces against the plate glass.

That knife in the webbed fingers of the spiny-man was cutting arcs into the water like a windmill wheel with one blade. A splash of red leaped up from the waves. One of the horse-fish plowed off from the rest of the party, kicking around in a circle of its own, dragging a black mass of spilling entrails behind it.

Then, ceasing to kick, the knifed horse-fish hung limply in the waves, only five or six feet beyond the window. The waters around it grew discolored, and the red shroud hid it from view.

“Goodbye, spiny-man!” Windy barked, pointing back to the fight.

Bill saw. The largest of the attacking horse-fish—a creature with a ring of black circling the white dot on his side—leaped clear of the water, clear of the spiny-man’s head. Simultaneously he whirled belly-up, caught the spiny-man between the shoulders as he shot back to the water. In that split second the horse-fish spines did their damage. They scraped an ugly red line straight down the spiny-man’s horny backbone.

“A question of who’s the toughest,” Windy muttered. “Only there’s no question about it. That gash’ll lay the fellow low. All they’ve got to do now is rip his guts out.”

“Watch, Windy!” Bill fairly, shrieked. “There’s the thing I was telling you—”

The fight was suddenly over. The big horse-fish that had taken the back-to-back slide stopped it. He gave an imperious waggle with his head and the three remaining horse-fish shrank back. When one of them threatened to attack again he darted challengingly. All three of his companions were bluffed out. It was obvious, Bill noted, that these horse-fish held a healthy respect for each other’s spines, no matter how much they disagreed on their motives.

“I don’t get it,” said Windy Muff blankly, as he watched the hard-faced spiny-man swim off to safety. “That big fellow with the bull’s-eye markings on his sides turned into a friend awful sudden-like.”

“That’s the very way Yellow Z did when he was fighting me,” said Bill. “At the very moment he had me down and could have killed me, he went softhearted and called the gang off.”

“I don’t get it,” Windy repeated.

“I don’t either,” Bill admitted. He lingered at the window until “Bull’s-eye” and the other horse-fish swam away. “What about that barred window you were going to show me?”

They followed the wall of their private chamber along the side opposite the sea window. The artificial wall was a patchwork of masonry that filled in between pillars of natural stone. Back in a narrow alcove that reminded Bill of a street car vestibule, bars of light from the larger cavern world seeped in between bars of steel.

“You’ll need these,” said Windy, unfastening a pair of binoculars from his belt. “Get a focus on that peach-colored haze way to your right and you’ll see the other city. I’ll take myself back to the telephone…”

* * * *

For the next two hours Bill stayed at the window studying the lay of the land.

The binoculars brought him a miniature world—or was it two worlds? There were two kinds of creatures in it—very different creatures—and yet they had certain pronounced points of resemblance.

The spiny-men (including the spiny-women and spiny-children) lived among the uplands on the farther side of the river. That was the east side, if Bill’s sense of direction served him. And what he chose to call uplands were, of course, actually beneath the level of the sea. But the main cavern was so vast and its ceiling so lofty that there was room for little hills and valleys, lakes, waterfalls, innumerable ramifying caves, and one river as broad as a boulevard.

This river appeared to divide the low arched mud huts of the horse-fish, on the west, from the statelier brick and mud homes of the spiny-men, on the east.

The river widened into a lake at what might be called its mouth. It couldn’t be seen to flow into the sea, for at this depth nothing less than a system of artificial water gates could empty a river into the sea without allowing the sea to backwater into the whole cavern.

The cavern itself, Bill guessed, had been hollowed out by water during long ages past. Later some caprice of nature, perhaps an overflow of lava from some volcano up above, had spilled the gigantic icicles of rock across the mouth of the cavern. The skyscraper-sized icicles had melted together in a fortress against the sea. And somehow the creatures who had chosen to dwell here had managed to force out the impounded water.

But the horse-fish, at least, were still water-dwellers. Bill, turning the binoculars on the west bank of the river and its numerous inlets, observed that most of the gray mounds of the horse-fish city had no visible doors. The entrances were under water.

One matter was continually confusing, however. There were some houses that he could not classify. Worse, there were some creatures he could not classify. For farther up the stream, he noted, there ceased to be any clear-cut division between the city of the horse-fish and that of the spiny-men. The two appeared to be hopelessly merged. And from this distance he could not tell whether those little creatures molding pottery far up the river were horse-fish or spiny-men.

This was disturbing.

Bill’s attention returned to the matter of sunlight. The hazy peach-colored light that had sifted through the ceiling far to the right, perhaps two miles distant, had turned to the amber of sunset, and now it melted into twilight gray.

So this undersea pocket had an outlet to the upper world, thought Bill. The city of the spiny-men had at least a limited daily taste of sunshine, blue sky, clouds.

* * * *

As the last of daylight faded, the lines of artificial lights along the distant wall brought into view a zigzagging trail to the upper world.

A party of spiny-men was ascending that trail, carrying lanterns. Occasionally Bill thought he could see them waving their arms. Now and again he heard the rolling echoes of high voices that might have been laughter and shouting.

Then he caught sight of two figures descending the trail from the upper world, slowly moving down the incline toward the party with the lanterns. At once Bill guessed what was happening.

He chased back to the front of the chamber where Windy was still listening in at the silent phone.

“Let me have it, Windy!”

“Sure. Say—there’s a lotta talk about a guy named Vin-Vin. Would that be your pal?”

“Sure as shootin’! Let me hear!”

“He’s surprisin’ ’em by droppin’ in unexpected. The phones are full of it.”

Windy accepted the binoculars, trudged off to see what Bill had seen.

Bill adjusted the ebony posts to his head. In a moment the talk began to come in. It was confused, as if dozens of parties were talking—or rather thinking—to each other over the same connections.

But the outstanding news was the same throughout: Vin-Vin had returned for his “annual visit” much earlier than expected. There must be some reason. What could it be?

“Did Vin-Vin bring any converts with him?” many would ask.

“There’s one guest,” the answer would come.

Occasionally, however, the messages would vary. There was one other exciting bit of gossip: The horse-fish had acquired some new prisoners.

“As soon as Vin-Vin is welcomed,” some were saying, “he must be informed that the horse-fish have some upper-world prisoners.”

The excitement was tremendous. The impact of these events obviously made big talk throughout the spiny-man community. And perhaps the horse-fish community as well. Bill picked up some startling implications.

For one thing, it was a strange fact that the horse-fish and the spiny-men employed a single interwoven system of communication. The horse-fish had access to the conversations of the spiny-men, and vice versa.

Another striking fact was that George Vinson was evidently a big man in this underground world. The way his return was being heralded, Bill wondered if he might be the ruler.

At any rate these were Vinson’s home people. That was a certainty—a very disturbing one. After all the years Bill had known Vin and been allowed to wonder over Vin’s peculiarities—his inevitable gloves—his mane of fine hair that flowed over the back of his neck—at last Bill was seeing the man’s roots for the first time.

* * * *

It may have been midnight or later when a silent phone message came to Bill.

He had almost dozed away, listening to the profuse speeches of welcome, hearing the flowery address by Thork, first assistant to the spiny-man ruler.

But soon after the whole underground world had seemingly tucked itself away for the night, a crystal-clear thought-wave came over the wires.

“Bill Pierce… I’m calling Bill Pierce… He may be here as a prisoner—oh, you’re there, Bill! You made it! That’s remarkable. I was horribly worried.”

“I’m all right, Vin,” Bill spoke the words aloud in his enthusiasm. “Everything’s okay, I guess.”

“You sound nervous. Sick or anything?”

“No—that is, my backbone’s healing up all right.”

“Oh—too bad, fellow. So a horse-fish got you, eh? I was afraid of it. Those things can be fatal, you know. But if luck’s with you, you come through with a friend. You know what I mean?”

“I guess so,” said Bill. “Yellow Z—”

“I’ll get in touch with you just as soon as I can make it. I’ll be tied up with more or less ceremony through tomorrow. It’s inescapable. You’ll understand, Bill, after I’ve had a chance to explain.”

Bill made no answer. He felt that his limping conversation was widening into a social chasm between them.

“Don’t be downhearted, fellow.” Vinson mustered a hearty manner. “You know what I think?”

“What?”

“I think we’ll find Bea Riley alive. I think the horse-fish took her by chance and got away with her. If they did they’ll put her to work somewhere near these caverns. So don’t lose hope—er—”

Vin broke off abruptly.

Bill struggled to suppress what leaped to the surface of his mind. Vinson, at the other end of the thought-wave telephone, must have sensed his confusion.

“You haven’t seen her, have you, Bill… Oh, you have…! Alive?”

“Yes.”

“You talked with her?”

“A little,” Bill admitted.

“M-m-m.” Vin was slightly defensive. “Then she told you—er—about me”

“She said she’d known you before. She mentioned you were a right guy—but she’s always said that.”

“We’ve got to save her, Bill. It’s more than simply saving a life. She’s a potential contributor to the race. My race. The future generations need her.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Bill retorted bluntly. “But I need her.”

“I’ve got to see you, Bill. Where are you?”

Bill described the prison chamber. He mentioned that Windy Muff had found his way into the same jail.

“Have you seen anyone, other than horse-fish?” Vinson asked. “Any spiny-men, I mean?”

“Only one at close range,” said Bill, and he described the fight that had taken place outside his window.

“That spiny-man was Thork, the king’s lieutenant,” said Vinson, and the mood of his thought-waves tightened with a self-enforced tolerance.

In a more eager humor he returned to the subject of Beatrice Riley.

“You don’t happen to know,” Vin’s thoughts asked, “what they did with Bea—which way they took her—whether she was on foot or in a cylinder-cart—whether they put her to work on a batch of horse-fish eggs, or—”

“Eggs!”

Bill echoed the word with such amazement that Windy bounced up wondering what was the matter.

“If you’re orderin’ breakfasts,” Windy hissed, “make mine—”

Bill waved him away. But Windy’s intrusion, he knew was his own good fortune. It enabled him to suppress some answers that might otherwise have leaped over the phone from his mind to Vin’s.

That mustn’t happen. Bea Riley had made it plain that Bill’s good friend Vin wasn’t to cross her path.

“I’ll talk with you later,” Bill managed to say.

“I’ll see you soon,” Vin concluded as heartily as ever.

Bill, perspiring, moved away from the pink-globed phone, made for the fresh water spring. He needed a cool bath. That conversation had been an ordeal. For all he knew he might have revealed the very thoughts he meant to suppress.

CHAPTER IX

A slush-slush-slush of a distant waterfall beat on Bill’s ears. Other than this low intermittent roaring the night was silent. All lights had been dimmed throughout the cavern.

Slush-slush-slush—as rhythmic as the ticking of a grandfather clock.

From the barred window Bill could make out the narrow ribbon of water that plunged down a series of falls. The falls were beyond the spiny-men’s city, in a high crevice-like branch of the cavern. Earlier in the evening, Bill knew, these falls hadn’t been visible. They must have come with the high tides, he reasoned, they would go silent when the waters receded.

Slush-slush-slush. Bill went to work with a chunk of stone, synchronized his strokes to the rhythmic roar, chopped at the wall around the steel-barred window. Probably there were no guards to listen; at any rate the sounds of his battering would be submerged.

Windy roused up from sleep and took his turn at stone-cutting while Bill rested.

“You’re a bear for work,” he said, as Bill went back to the task. Slowly the stubborn stone wore thin.

One steel bar had just begun to give when the lights of morning began to turn on.

Soon shafts of pink sunlight pressed through the vast ceiling over the eastern section of the big cavern. Meanwhile the wall grew brighter, voices of spiny-children began to echo from across the river. Nearer at hand the brilliant green heads of horse-fish nosed across ponds and inlets. Horse-fish padded across yards of wet sand, gathered in groups, gestured to each other in their own language of signs.

“See if there’s anything on the phone, Windy,” Bill ordered. “The day’s beginning.”

Windy groaned out of his sleep, yanked at his tousled red hair as if trying to remember where he was. Then he came up with a start.

“Didja get through, Bill?”

“Not quite.”

“Damn it, I shouldn’t have slept. Why’d you let me do it?”

“You were all in, Windy. Anyway one bar’s beginning to loosen. But we’ll have to slack up now… Oh-oh, they’re at the door.”

Bill kicked some dust to hide the stone chips at his feet, brushed sand over his ripped and bleeding hands. By the time the circular steel door opened he was lying in the sand, pretending to be half asleep.

The visitors were the four servant horse-fish bringing a tray of breakfast—more fried sea foods on plates of shell. The horse-fish looked around, satisfied themselves that all was well, and went on their way.

* * * *

Bill and Windy breakfasted and listened at the telephone by turns, but no messages of consequence came through.

Meanwhile the horse-fish with the yellow Z on his sides paddled up to the sea-window to begin his day of watching.

“He makes me nervous,” Windy muttered, casting sidewise glances at the sea cavern.

“I wish I could get him on the phone once and see what’s eating on him,” said Bill. “He’s going to cramp our style. Especially if he tells on us.”

“He can’t see our escape window from his post,” said Windy. “We could go ahead—”

“Risky,” said Bill. “The tide’s going down and the waterfall has nearly stopped. We’d be heard. But we may have to take a chance—”

Bill broke off with a low whistle. He brushed his breakfast aside and sprang to the sea window. A cylinder was floating past.

“That’s your gal friend again, ain’t it?” said Windy.

Bill scarcely heard, he was too busy pounding on the window and beckoning. The upper third of the upright cylinder was floating above the surface of the water. Through the transparent domed lid he could see Beatrice. The same instrument was clamped to her head. Her eyes were closed. She looked pale. She was sleeping. Or was she ill—or even—

Sharp chills pierced through Bill’s arms down to his fingertips.

But no, she was not dead. She was breathing slowly. He could see her plainly. The cylinder was wafted along by sluggish currents. Passing within twenty feet of the big window it caught light from the prison chamber.

Bill watched, motionless, half hypnotized by the sight. Bea’s pallid face revealed such a resigned calmness and patience. As ever, there was that deep, mysterious beauty—

Bill caught his breath.

The cylinder was floating past, now, turning so he could no longer see her.

A strange terror seized him.’ He drew back from the window clenching his fists. His dread of the unknown suddenly welled up into a nameless horror.

“I don’t know what’s happening. Watch her, Windy, till I—”

His feet were ahead of his words. He dashed back to the other end of the chamber and into the little stone-walled vestibule with the barred window. He rattled the loosened bar.

Then he heard Windy calling him to come back.

“Look, Bill. What’s Yellow Z up to?”

Bill returned on the run. In the preceding moments he had ignored the curious blinking eyes of the horse-fish. But now he saw what the creature was doing. Yellow Z was pushing the cylinder back toward the window, turning it so that the girl’s face was toward them.

“How’d he know I wanted her to come back?” Bill uttered nervously.

“Damned if he ain’t on our side!” Windy chuckled.

“Either that or he’s scheming… What the hell!”

The yellow-marked horse-fish whirled the cylinder with astonishing suddenness, grabbed it by a choice hand-hold and went swimming off with it as hard as he could go.

Bill smacked his head against the glass in his eagerness to see where the cylinder was going. That end of the underground lake was too dark to see far. Bill watched until the object diminished to shadowy bubble. It cut an arc through the dark waters and disappeared from sight.

Bill stepped down from the window with the air of a caged lion.

“That durned horse-fish,” Windy muttered, “has got a screw loose. He’s the most inconsistent critter—”

“I’m gonna get out of here!” Bill yelled, kicking at the sand.

“Didn’t he fight you one minute and save you the next…? Huh…? Look, Bill! There’s some more comin’. Yellow Z musta seen ’em.”

Bill whirled back to the window in time to see a black-haired spiny-man swim into view. It was the same stony-featured spiny-man who had fought here the day before. Thork was the name, Bill recalled. This fellow, according to the telephone messages, was the lieutenant to the king.

The swimmer stopped directly before the window, turned to beckon to someone back of him. Over the silver-tinted waters to the east a few other swimming creatures were following in his wake.

Thork waited, watching them approach. Once he turned his head toward the prison window, and his first half-minute stare at Bill and Windy brought a sour scowl to his face. He did not appear to be particularly surprised—and Bill guessed that he had probably heard rumors of their capture. He shrugged and looked away.

Now the rest of the party swam into view; three horse-fish and one more spiny-man. It was not a chase this time. It was more nearly a council. Thork had evidently led the others to this spot to explain what had happened in yesterday’s fight, for he began talking and pointing with great animation. A faint rumble of his low voice echoed through the glass, though Bill could understand nothing.

But obviously the three horse-fish were listening critically. They punctuated Thork’s rapid-fire story with gestures, occasionally forcing him to change his claims.

Then, for the first time, the face of the second spiny-man came into view. It might have struck Bill as being a handsome face for a human creature whose backbone was lined with little horn-like spines, and whose fingers were connected with webs. But this face was more than handsome—it was intelligent, honest—and definitely familiar. This was George Vinson.

Bill should have been prepared for the shock. But somehow he was not. He had never seen Vin before except as a neat little man dressed in white, and never without white gloves. Never without his artistic head of hair flowing loosely to the back of his neck.

In the heat of the conference with Thork and the three horse-fish, George Vinson’s bright beady eyes shot a look at Bill. It was a look that said, “I know you’re there, friend. I’ll get to you when this job’s over. One trouble at a time. I’m a busy man down in this world.”

It was startling how much genuine importance there was about Vinson, even when stripped of his fine clothes and swimming about in bathing trunks. Even when arguing with a fellow spiny-man and three horse-fish. When Vin spoke, his words counted.

And they were counting now. He was reeling off his opinions, wasting no words. The horse-fish nodded their agreement. Thork appeared to be swallowing a bitter pill, but he finally nodded too.

Vin gave a wave that seemed to indicate everything was settled.

Then Thork did some more pointing, this time in the direction that Yellow Z had swum away with the cylinder.

“Thork’s changed the subject,” Windy observed shrewdly. “He lost his argument about the fight, so he’s tryin’ to start somethin’ else.”

Bill breathed uneasily. “Do you suppose he saw Bea?”

“What if he did?” said Windy. “Would that be bad?”

“Plenty. She doesn’t want to be seen by these spiny-men. She’s got some mysterious connections down here. She’ll blow up if they find her. Rather than face them, she’d—” Bill’s agitation broke loose in a violent snarl. “I’ve got to get out of this trap!”

He caught himself, stopped his nervous pacing. The whole group outside the window were watching him. Expressions of curiosity were on their faces.

“They’re talkin’ about her, all right, an’ us too,” Windy whispered. “They’ll be in here quizzin’ us next. If they do, I won’t know whether I’m comin’ or goin’, that’s the devil’s truth… There they go.”

Bill saw Vin disperse the party with a wave of his webbed hand. But the creatures did not all swim away in the same direction. The stony-faced Thork, shooting another cold glance into the prison chamber, sped off in the direction Yellow Z had taken the cylinder.

The instant the sea-window was cleared of spiny-men and horse-fish, Bill strode back to the other corner of the chamber. He grabbed a rock, went to work battering the steel bar like a mad man.

Windy spelled him off. In a matter of minutes they succeeded in jerking the first bar out of its sockets. But Bill jammed it back and he and Windy both ducked—none too soon. A gang of horse-fish led by “Bull’s-Eye” had trailed into view. Bill could hear them padding along the sandy trail.

Presently they were out of hearing. But other footsteps were approaching. A knock sounded at the circular metal door.

“It’s Vin, Bill,” came the voice from the other side of the door. “I had to come back the long way around. Are you all right in there? Plenty of food and water?”

“We’re okay,” said Bill.

“Then I’ll settle up this murder mess of Thork’s before I come back to get you out,” Vin called. “These horse-fish have their rights, you know, and it pays to handle them with gloves. You won’t worry if it’s two or three hours?”

“We won’t worry,” said Bill.

There was a moment of silence. Bill realized his answers had been terse, far from cordial. He added, “Take your time, Vin.”

“That’s the spirit, Bill.” Vin’s heartiness was quick to respond. “I’ll have this door open before noon. And you must be ready to tell me what you know about Bea.”

Another silence.

“Did you hear what I said, Bill? You’ll have to help me with Bea.”

“I heard.”

“Good. We’ll have to work some tall strategy on the horse-fish to get her. They’re killers, you know, under certain conditions. It’s a constant job to hold down the number of fights with them. And we’re having to bargain with them, just now, for too many favors. Do you understand the source of their treachery, Bill?”

“Not altogether.” Bill was kneeling at the keyhole of the circular door, listening eagerly.

“Then I’d better tip you off right now,” came Vinson’s voice. “They can be your best friends—or your worst enemies. They’re our cousins, in a sense, and they’ve got a streak of intelligence you won’t find a match for anywhere in the upper world. But their emotions are unstable. You understand?”

“Yes,” said Bill.

“Their prickly spines may not look like blotters, but that’s exactly what they are. Blotters. They absorb the emotions and desires and sentiments of other creatures. If one of them tears along your backbone while he’s fighting you, he picks up a whole set of feelings from you”

“So that’s it!” Bill gasped. “That’s why Yellow Z let me off easy after that first gash.”

“Right. Your feelings became his feelings. That’s why they’re treacherous, Bill. You may think you’ve got a horse-fish friend—one that’ll stall off all possible trouble—but if he scrapes the back of your enemy and picks up a new set of feelings—look out.”

“I get it,” said Bill.

“Now you see what we’ve got to work with,” Vinson concluded. “The sooner we can get Beatrice out of their clutches, without upsetting the applecart, the better for everyone. And believe me, Bill, the city of spiny-men will have one tall celebration when they learn that Bea-Bea has come back to them. So long, Bill.”

“Wait Are you still there?” Bill called at the keyhole.

“Yes?”

“What was this business you mentioned over the thought-phone? Something about eggs?”

“Oh, that. I’ll tell you when I come back.”

Bill and Windy listened until the footsteps retreated out of hearing. Then they slipped back to the window.

“Any last minute instructions, Bill?” Windy asked.

“Keep your ears to the phone, Windy. If the horse-fish miss me tell ’em I buried myself under the sand for a nap. Or tell ’em nothing.”

With that Bill hoisted himself to the window, wormed through. He turned back to Windy for a last word.

“If you don’t hear from me within twenty-four hours, you’ll know Bea and I have sneaked through to the surface. Then you can tell Vin thanks, but we couldn’t use his help.”

CHAPTER X

Bill moved with the stealth of a leopard. He picked his course from shadow to shadow.

He knew the cavern lake could be reached only by a round-about trail. There was hardly a chance he could reach Bea ahead of Thork. He’d hung back like a docile prisoner too long.

But his blood was boiling now. He cursed himself with every leap and bound for letting Bea stay in the cylinder. Now she’d be grabbed by the spiny-men—the very thing she feared most.

Why did she abhor them so?

Bill wasn’t sure. But he had a dozen vague guesses—all of them too horrible to face. He was blind to everything, now, except getting her out of this weird hole.

Every time Bill dashed past a pink-lighted pole he felt like stopping to see what new talk was flying through the cave. Thork had probably found her—perhaps the whole spiny-man city knew by now.

And would that city prepare a welcome for her, as Vin had predicted? What was the spiny-men’s city to Bea? The hot blood of an almost insane anguish pounded through Bill’s arteries.

Bea must belong here!

But how could she? Her body was the perfect body of a human being. In the thousands of public appearances she had made in her abbreviated diving costume, her splendid physique had never failed to charm the audience. In the graceful lines of her back there wasn’t a hint of spiny-men features. Nor were there any signs of webs between her fingers or toes.

She couldn’t be a spiny-woman! And yet—

Bill couldn’t throw the thought out of his mind. Pictures flooded upon him—the views he had caught while studying the spiny-men’s city through the binoculars.

Yes, he had seen all varieties of spiny-folk. Some had merged indistinguishably with the horse-fish. On the other hand some had looked so much like upper-world men, from his distance, that it had left him wondering about it.

Now Bill was nearly a mile east of his starting point. The river’s waters, piled deep against the artificial doorways to the sea, were not far ahead. He had followed the trails along the base of the south wall to keep his distance from scattered groups of horse-fish going about their work.

Bill stopped, slipped into a rocky crevice. A party of horse-fish were approaching. He crowded against the rock.

The ten or twelve female horse-fish passed without seeing him. They had evidently just returned from the open sea, for they were lugging armloads of fresh seaweed. Bill must be on the right trail.

He raced on. Wherever scraps of seaweed had dropped he grabbed them up on the run, slapped them over his shoulders for camouflage.

At last, taking a chance on being seen from the houses on either side of the river, he slipped up a steep pathway to an opening in the vast curtain of lava rock. Dripping seaweeds had been dragged through the narrow A-shaped pass. Ahead was darkness.

Then his eyes adjusted, he saw the silver edged waters at his feet. This had to be the cavern lake.

Shaking off the cloak of seaweeds, he plunged in and swam back to the west. He knew the speed he could hold for distance swimming. The unlighted cavern might have been an entrance to the end of the world. The black waters were devoid of dimensions, to Bill’s eyes. Only the dim outlines of mammoth stone icicles, wet from seepage, gave the cavern any form whatsoever.

Then Bill began to pass big lighted windows. Here again were those ubiquitous signs of the mechanical civilization of upper-world men.

Here was a series of pumping stations. Both spiny-men and horse-fish were working the big crude waterpower machines.

Farther on Bill swam past the pink-lighted windows of prison chambers. The rock-walled rooms, though they contained glowing telephones, were empty, for their circular doors stood open. Near the sea-window of one cell an old dry human skull grinned out at Bill—or was it a spiny-man skull?

In either case, it testified to a tragedy of years ago, perhaps starvation, or a battle to death, or an insane suicide.

Now Bill swam past the cell he recognized. He caught a brief sight of Windy Muff with his head at the telephone, his eyes blinking up at the walls. Windy was a statue of bewilderment. Whether the thought-phone was alive with strange messages or whether Windy was day dreaming of the stories he would tell if he ever got back, Bill could only wonder.

Without slackening his strokes Bill sped on.

Then something was swimming toward him. He surface dived. He put many yards back of him before he crawled back to the surface.

The swimming form was back of him now, following in his wake.

Four times he surface-dived, to cut along under the waters at high speed. Then a streak of light cut the race short. The swimming form was Yellow Z.

Still a friend? With an odd sensation of self-consciousness Bill spoke aloud,

“If you’re on my side, fellow, take me to that floating cylinder.”

He hung back as the horse-fish cut ahead of him.

Yellow Z swam in a wide arc to the right, Bill in his wake. The cavern lake was narrowing. Slits of light through the ceiling hundreds of feet overhead restored Bill’s sense of direction. But those narrow vertical gashes offered no hope of escape.

Suddenly Yellow Z grabbed Bill by the hand and jerked him into the shadowed waters. Yellow Z crawled up on a ledge of dry rock and peeked over cautiously. Bill followed his example.

Sounds of splashing and paddling echoed through the lake-filled canyon. At the bend the rush of swimming figures came into view.

“Thork, again!” Bill muttered under his breath. “And Bull’s-Eye.”

But those two weren’t all. A gang of horse-fish were on their trail. Thork had got himself into another mess with the horse-fish!

This time, Bill saw, Thork was avoiding a fight. Or more accurately, Bull’s-Eye was preventing it. The white-dotted horse-fish was darting back and forth, keeping the rest of the gang at bay while Thork swam full speed ahead.

His course was back toward the cities—over the same waters Bill had just come. And now Bill saw, with immense relief, that the glass-domed cylinder was in full view almost directly below him.

It was still floating upright, still lighted, still occupied.

Bea’s up-tilted face was chalk-white, her eyes were closed. She was half-reclining, and the slow rhythmic rise and fall of her breasts told that she was sleeping easily. The instruments at her head had not been moved since he last saw her being towed away from the prison window.

This, then, was where Yellow Z had brought her for safe hiding. And here the lieutenant of the spiny-men had followed.

But Thork’s visit had just now been foiled by the savage horse-fish. The splashing echoes of that chase were fading. This moment was Bill’s chance.

“Here goes, Yellow Z!” he said aloud. “We’re going to crack this safe before you can wink your little red eyes.”

The hand of Yellow Z slapped over Bill’s wrist as Bill was lowering himself over the ledge. But Bill was in no mood to be restrained. He jerked free, slipped into the water, swam once around the cylinder, and began jerking all the valve levers furiously.

He paid no attention when Yellow Z caught him by the shoulder. He shook the webbed hand off. For now the valves opened and he knew the way in.

He caught half a breath, dived into the water-filled aperture at the cylinder’s base. Once he had to kick off Yellow Z’s troublesome grab at his ankle. Then he was free to rise through the valves toward the upper floor.

“Bea! Bea!” he called, as he climbed upward. “You’ve got to get out of here, Bea. Wake up! The spiny-men know you’re here. They’re laying for you!”

As he swung up to the level where Bea’s feet rested he was aware that something more than water had drenched his body during his ascent through the series of floors. A syrupy liquid spilled over his shoulders, and with it came a hundred tickling and scratching sensations. As if he’d broken through a wall of eggs.

The light from the dome of the cylinder blazed down on his dripping body and he saw.

The mess was broken eggs—dozens of them. Their brittle white shells had crushed at his touch, and spilled their contents.

Bill couldn’t be bothered. He gave his gooey hands a swipe against the cylinder walls, all the while shouting at Beatrice. He slapped her feet. Then rising to stand beside her, he jerked the instruments off her head.

Her eyelids lifted heavily, then fell closed.

“It’s me!” Bill uttered. “You’ve got to wake up, Bea!”

He slapped her cheeks briskly. Her head dropped forward, her eyes were trying to open. Still, her arms hung so limply that Bill knew this was more than the stupor of sleep. It was exhaustion.

“Bill,” she whispered faintly. “It’s you?”

“Bea, you know it is! Come on. Snap out of it.”

He tried to take her up in his arms. It was difficult to help her when her body was so limp.

“Where are we, Bill?”

“Getting out of here,” Bill puffed as he dragged her down through the mess of broken shells, down into the water-filled valves. “Hold your breath, Bea. Here we go.”

Then they were out in the cool waters. Bea was swimming listlessly on her back.

“Hurry, honey,” Bill kept urging.

“I’m trying,” she said. “But I’m so weak—hungry—”

“Poor kid—you might have died in that cylinder.”

“Cylinder… Oh!” she gasped.

In the diminishing light Bill saw her eyes widen. She changed to a breast stroke, quickening her speed.

He glanced back. Yellow Z hadn’t followed. Instead the friendly horse-fish had again mounted the ledge, and there he sat as motionless as a moody gargoyle on a cathedral wall.

* * * *

For the next twenty minutes Bea swam hard, and Bill knew she had no energy for talking.

But when they approached the pink lights of the prison windows, she slackened her pace.

“We’d better cut around,” she said. “If the natives find out I’ve come back—”

“They already know, Bea,” said Bill.

“That’s why—”

“Who knows?”

“Thork, the king’s lieutenant. He followed to the cylinder, but the horse-fish drove him off.”

“Oh!”

Her faint tone conveyed a secret hurt that was too deep for words. Then as if bristling spines were suddenly plunged into her flesh she cried.

“Bill! How did you get me out?”

“Through the valves.”

“I mean, how—without breaking the eggs?” Her voice was wild with terror. “You didn’t—”

“I busted ’em all over myself,” said Bill. “I didn’t know they were in there. Why?”

“Oh, Bill!” she was sobbing bitterly. She caught a muffled breath, let her face drop under the surface, and swam on so fast that Bill was left more than a length behind.

CHAPTER XI

When they reached the A-shaped pass to the main cavern, Bea dropped on the bank utterly exhausted. Bill lifted her up into his arms and carried her.

But the webs of light along the vast cavern wall opened her languorous eyes.

“Bill,” she breathed. “We’ve got to hide—quick.”

“Just from the spiny-men—or the horse-fish too?”

“Oh, you poor idiot!” she cried angrily. “The maddest spiny-man would never hope to live twenty-four hours if he had crushed a horse-fish’s eggs. It’s fatal.”

Bill felt the weight of tragedy hovering, about to descend. Every minute of his return swim he’d suspected this was coming, and yet he’d kidded himself with the silly hope it wouldn’t be so serious.

“Then they’ll all be set for a capture—”

“Bill, frankly it would have been a lot easier if you’d just taken poison—and given a dose to me.”

“To you!” Bill cried. “You didn’t commit the blunder. I was the one. If they think they can catch me and kill me for it, let ’em try. But I’ll clear you, if it’s the last thing I—”

“Bill, you can’t. I’m the guiltiest, in their eyes,” she whispered hoarsely. “I was charged with giving my thoughts to those embryo horse-fish. I pledged I’d do it. That was my job… Don’t look at me so, Bill.”

“You’re not serious!”

“You can’t appreciate it,” Bea moaned, “until you’ve lived down here. But there’s a streak of something different in these green sea creatures—an uncanny streak of wisdom that’s not matched anywhere in nature. Not even the smartest upper-world people we know can store up knowledge the way these horse-fish can. The spiny-folk sometimes have a little of it—but not much.”

“What are you talking about? Is this some ungodly superstition?”

“It’s a quirk of nature, Bill. These savage horse-fish can inherit men’s thoughts. They’re like sponges or blotters. Even before they hatch out of eggs, they begin to take on their patterns of thought. It’s very strange to you, I suppose—”

“It’s remarkable—but what kind of thoughts could you possibly transfer to un-hatched eggs, cooped up in that cylinder?”

“Any thoughts that happened to pass through my mind. I just lay there daydreaming and sleeping. Whether I happened to dream about diving exhibitions or sailing back to the States or reading books there were sure to be plenty of elementary ideas mixed in.”

“Such as?”

“Well, habits of walking and talking, with ability to read the manners of getting along peaceably with other creatures, the feelings of loyalty to your own friends—there are hundreds of such things involved in any situations you happen to think about. When upper-world babies are born they don’t know about these things. They don’t even know they’re going to have to learn a language. But these baby horse-fish come into the world with a fair knowledge of English.”

Bill frowned darkly. He felt a twinge of something like jealousy or hatred.

After what he’d seen he couldn’t doubt these weird facts. But he didn’t welcome them. To think that these silent, cruel little water beasts could snap up men’s thought waves with no effort—at no cost—for no good!

“Why haven’t the spiny-men wiped them out?” he asked. “I can’t, see a thing good about them. They’re more treacherous than poison snakes—”

“And friendlier than any human beings, and more helpful—after they’ve absorbed the right thought-waves,” said Bea. “These thought-wave phones all through the cavern help keep them friendly. And still, they and the spiny-men are forever clashing.”

Her eyelids closed. Her voice trailed away.

“You’ve got to have some food and rest before we can chance a dash out of this place,” Bill whispered. “We’ve got to pick the right moment—”

“As if it mattered,” she breathed. “We’ll never get past them.”

He had carried her along a perilous shelf of rock high above the river. There were no foot tracks up here. The beams from the nearest wall lights rarely reached up to this level.

“I used to climb this trail when I was a little girl,” Bea said. “I would come up here and spy on both cities. I saw so much trouble between the two sides of the river that I grew to hate it all.”

“We’ll soon be out of here—for good,” said Bill. “Here’s a shadowed spot. You’ve got to lie down and rest before we go on.”

“Bill, we’ll never make it,” she sobbed quietly, lying down on the warm rock and folding her arm under her head for a pillow. “There’s not a chance in a thousand that the horse-fish will let us live, after what’s happened. You see, that’s why they took me off the boat in the first place—to care for those eggs.” Bill sat down near her, folded his arms.

“Did they know it was you—a native?” he asked.

“Not at first. They’d simply swum out to capture any upper-world female.”

“Then they go in for kidnapping as a regular sport,” Bill muttered.

“They only steal a new upper-world person when they have a need. Usually their captive mothers don’t live many years. Sometimes only a few months.”

“Bea! You knew this…and yet you submitted—”

“They recognized me as soon as I got down here,” she looked up at Bill guiltily. “They remembered me as a spiny-girl from across the river. You knew, of course, that I am—”

“I guessed,” said Bill quietly, avoiding her eyes.

“They recognized me,” she went on, “as a native who had been away for a few years. So I confided in them—and made a bargain.”

“Yes?”

“I admitted I was a runaway. I couldn’t endure living down here. But if they would promise me my freedom afterward, and yours, I would go ahead and be the ‘thought-mother’ to this one batch of eggs. In a few days it would have been over.”

Bill understood. At first he was not clear as to why the horse-fish had followed their theft of Bea with a similar kidnapping of Windy Muff. But Beatrice explained that that, too, was customary. The horse-fish always tried to furnish their captured females with mates. In this case, Bill understood, they had failed to pull Maribeau the scientist overboard, but had succeeded in getting Windy Muff.

Bill shuddered as he turned these bizarre customs over in his mind. But practical considerations shook him into action.

“I know where I can get some food,” he said, “without being seen… And if there’s a chance to listen in at a phone—”

“Just food,” said Beatrice. “You won’t want to hear what they’re saying by now.”

CHAPTER XII

Bill backtracked over his old trail to the barred window of his prison cell. He called in a whisper. Windy Muff’s voice answered him.

“Darned if I didn’t think you were hissin’ over the phone,” said Windy. “Why don’t you come around to the door an’ walk in? It’s wide open.”

“How come?”

“Vinson’s been here ’n’ gone. He came to turn us loose an’ give us a free tour of the city. But he found you gone, an’ I told him I wouldn’t budge from this spot till you came back.”

While Bill entered by the door and gathered up the food Windy had saved for him, the latter poured forth the exciting news as fast as he could jabber.

Vin’s eyes had blazed cold fire, Windy said, to learn that Bill had broken out and gone to find Bea. Vin had said it was a deadly thing to do, and bad judgment.

“So you told him everything,” said Bill heatedly.

“Yep. I’ve always said my reputation for bein’ a liar wasn’t deserved. Well, he went on his way, sayin’ we should both report to him as soon as possible.”

“Go and report to him,” said Bill sharply. “But tell him not to look for me.”

Bill started off, but Windy blocked his path at the door. “Vin was right, was he? You ran into trouble?”

“Plenty of it,” Bill admitted. In a few words he related what had happened at the west end of the sea cavern. He concluded by stating his doubts whether Yellow Z was still a friend, after what he’d done. “Anyway, they’ll be after me—and Bea too—and she’s got to pick up a bit of strength before we can make a break for the top.… So long, Windy.”

“Good luck, Bill.”

Back along the shadowed wall trail Bill sprinted. By now the protective shadows were familiar. In a few moments he was crawling the high narrow ridge that arched above the river out of reach of the lights.

Bea was not sleeping, he had hoped. She had crawled several yards beyond the sheltered spot where he had left her. She was crowding close to the overhanging edge, listening.

Her eyes flicked at Bill as he approached, inviting him to come join her. She was listening to the clattering voices rising from the excited spiny-man city.

“The tension’s drum-head tight already, Bill,” she whispered. “They’re stirred up on both sides of the river. And have you seen the ascent?”

She pointed to the zig-zag trail to the upper-world. Bill could see groups of spiny-men stationed near the top. Still further up was a cluster of horse-fish.

“We’re not going to get out, Bill. They’ll see to that.”

“By this time they all know what happened to the eggs, I suppose?”

“Yes. Yellow Z and some others dragged the cylinder back into the horse-fish city only a few minutes ago.”

“How’d the horse-fish take it?”

“It’s a good thing they can’t cry out loud,” said Bea. “Look. Those columns swimming in figures and circles at the west side of the river are expressing their anguish and grief.”

“Some are crossing the river,” Bill observed.

“And there have been minor fights with spiny-men. It’s times like these that bring up all old animosities. All my life down here I’ve watched it. These two cities live forever on the verge of war.”

Bea ate and slept while Bill kept vigil.

Toward night a great mass meeting came together on the east bank of the river. It was formally opened by the ruler of the spiny-men himself. Bea gasped to see the aged, sharp backed old creature totter down the path from the triple-domed mud palace.

“That’s a rare sight,” Bea said. “They don’t see him except on the most important occasions.”

“What are they going to do?”

“I don’t know. I never saw the horse-fish and spiny-men mass together before.”

“Do the horse-fish have a king too?”

Bea shook her head. That was one great reason for the constant trouble with the green sea-creatures. They weren’t emotionally stable. One of their number might be in favor as a leader for a time—but if he chanced to stab his spine into the back of a spiny-man—or a native islander of the upper-world—he’d absorb a new temperament.

“You can’t have rulers or followers among folks that are always changing their natures,” Bea said. “So there’s just the one king—that old white-haired spiny-man.”

Bill listened. In a quaking voice that spoke the tongue of an aged English sea captain the spiny-man king called the mass meeting to order. The hundreds of horse-fish, ranged along the river’s edge, were listening attentively. Closer around the mud dais were the clusters of spiny-men, women, and children.

The king, thought Bill, was little more than a figure-head. He recited a remarkable legend from memory—a fanciful tale of the shipwreck of centuries ago, and the ravages of a volcano and a tidal wave that left a band of English explorers imprisoned here.

Then his archaic sing-song recitation hinted that there was an amazing fusion of two kinds of animal life—man and horse-fish—the strange nature of which only the gods might explain. But the ancient English explorers need not be ashamed of that amazing fusion, for nothing less could have won the victory of survival.

This brought the king’s recitation down to the present century when the new and wonderful race of spiny-men emerged. It was the triumphant blend of the best qualities of men and horse-fish.

And at last, so the king’s story went, trade and commerce had been established with the upper-world, so that sea-locks and pumps and electrical miracles had been procured.

Then with a stereotyped promise that the spiny-men were destined to become the great earth-dwelling race of the future, the king bowed low, turned, and tottered back to his tripled-domed mud palace at the foot of the ascent.

Now Thork, the hard-bitten lieutenant, took charge. The real business of the day began.

“No one denies that the horse-fish have their rights,” he began, and with his opening gun the spines of the horse-fish began to bristle. “Many’s the time the spiny-men have been too liberal with the rights of you horse-fish. You are asking me for examples? Don’t be absurd…

Bill saw the implication. The horse-fish who were wearing the portable telephones were asking questions, no doubt. For the phones made their thoughts transport to Thork, who was likewise wearing a phone. As fast as he spoke he was picking up their mental reactions. He came back at them angrily.

“Whenever some upper-world innocent blunders into one of your sacred cylinders, and messes up some eggs just before hatching season, what do you do? You horse-fish kill him. And we spiny-men don’t raise a hand, because we’ve got in a habit of pampering you and your rights…

Bill whispered, “Is that bird getting ready to take our sides?”

Bea doubted it. “I never knew him to champion any outsider,” she said, never taking her eyes off the crowd below her.

Thork’s challenge continued. “This time it happens you’ve dragged a spiny-girl into your egg-training business. And you’ve had a disaster. Well, let me warn you. This side of the river is waiting to welcome that girl. We’ve been waiting a long time for her to come back.”

Some of the horse-fish were removing their headphones by this time, and that, Bill knew, meant they didn’t want their thoughts to be conveyed.

“In fact,” Thork went on, “this spiny-girl is someone I’ve been particularly waiting for, ever since we let her go away to be educated… And if she’s within earshot of my voice, I want her to know that she’s not going to pay for the broken eggs. She’s our own. There’ll be war in camp if you horse-fish make one move to harm a hair of her head!”

The challenge ended on the harsh note of “Knock a chip off my shoulder if you dare!”

Suddenly the whole riverbank of green seemed to fold in slowly toward the spiny-men. Not with a rush. Just a slow turtle-paced movement. The green bags some were carrying, Bea whispered, contained deadly scorpion-fish, their favorite weapons.

“Stand where you are, horse-fish!” The full-voiced command rang from the throat of George Vinson. He sprang to the dais. “Thork isn’t the only voice in this city. Listen to me, horse-fish!”

The wave of slowly advancing horse-fish stopped. The ranks of the spiny-men, bristling for trouble, suddenly quieted. It was plain that the black-haired little mediator was respected by both sides of the underground world. At once he launched a feverish plea for peace and harmony.

The girl was also his friend, he said; and so was the man who had broken jail and gone to find her. But there were stouter reasons than these for keeping peace. There was the vision of great destiny which the spiny-men held.

“And this vision, as I have told you so many times,” George Vinson pleaded, “must have the cooperation of the most highly developed upper-world men and the most highly developed horse-fish. The biological contributions of both are indispensable.”

Bill gasped, “Biological!” He looked to Bea for an answer.

“That’s George Vinson’s big idea,” she whispered. She drew closer to Bill and answered his questions.

Yes, she had expected to marry an upper-world man—that expectation had been the terror of her childhood. But a mixing of spiny-folk with upper-world folk, she had been taught, was the only way this superior underground race would breed out the damning marks which their crossing with horse-fish had left on them—webbed hands and feet, and a row of more or less conspicuous spines over the backbone. So, as a child Bea had been doomed to marry one of the upper-world guests.

Yes, there were many such guests—perhaps two or three a year. It was George Vinson’s difficult task to go to the upper-world and spread the gospel of a finer race and to bring converts back with him. The finest corals and pearls from the nearby seas were spent to make him a wealthy and respected missionary. Many of his converts now lived here; others died through misfortunate dealings with the horse-fish; and some fled.

“You say you were to have married an upper-world man?” Bill asked.

“They decreed otherwise as soon as they saw I was becoming a young woman—without spines or webs. Then they decided I should go to the upper-world for an education,” Bea sighed, “because I would not be conspicuous. When I came back a suitable match would be made for me here.”

Bill scowled. “When had you intended coming back?”

“Never,” said Bea. “I loved the upper-world. I hated all this—even Vin with his fine theories. That’s why I’ve almost hated myself. Because at heart I know I’m a traitor.”

Bill slipped his arm around her, patting her shoulder gently. She was trembling. That, he knew, was what Thork’s speech had done for her; for the lieutenant’s hint of marriage had had the twang of a threat.

“I’m going to see that you marry an upper-world man as soon as I can get you out of here.” Bill looked down into her clear eyes. He whispered hoarsely, “I don’t know about these spiny-men theories! And all this vision business that Vin used to try to pound into my head—it went right over me. But I’ve got my own vision, Bea. It begins right here, with me telling you I love you—and you telling me the same.… Say it, won’t you, Bea?”

“You make it sound so easy, Bill,” she whispered. Her face lifted slightly toward his. He crushed her lips in the warmth of his kisses.

The speeches continued to well up from somewhere below the ledge, but Bill ceased to hear them. The ocean’s high tide began to spill down through the cavern in rhythmic gushes. But Bill was oblivious to roaring waterfalls. He heard nothing but the pounding of Bea’s heart, and his own, and the enchanting whispers from the lips he loved to kiss.

“You’ve got to promise you’ll marry me, Bea. If you will, all spiny-men and horse-fish together couldn’t keep us down here.… Say it, won’t you?”

“I do love you, Bill,” she breathed. “I can’t deny it.… But I’ll never marry you. Don’t look so crushed, Bill. Can’t you see—it wouldn’t be fair to you—or to our children—because—because I’m a spiny-woman—and you—you belong to the wonderful world up there!”

CHAPTER XIII

Vibrant words were still ringing from the river’s bank below them. Bill, breathing heavily, began to hear them in spite of himself. Dazed and shattered, his attention returned to the weird meeting.

“Have you a chance to become the masters of the world?”

It was the scientist, Jean Maribeau, wrapping the heterogeneous audience into a magic spell. George Vinson had called upon him, as an authority from the outside world, to express the opinions he had formed in his recent hours of observation.

“That’s Vin’s supreme strategy for keeping peace,” Bea said in a low voice, straining at the cliff’s edge to catch every word. “Vin must have given this man a curtain lecture…nevertheless—”

Bill glanced sharply at her, surprised to see how her interest had quickened. The words of an upper-world scientist might strike a new responsive chord—

“As a scientist I say that no creatures ever lived who have a better chance to inherit the earth than you spiny-men.… I do not overlook the contributions from both of your lines of ancestors. This instantaneous absorption of knowledge—an ability that is being bred into your race through your kinship with the horse-fish—is destined to make the earth’s new man superior to the old.”

Many horse-fish were nodding their agreement, holding their heads proudly.

“In addition,” Maribeau went on, “it goes without saying that the vast stores of knowledge from the upper-world men will become your birthright.… But I must be brutally frank. There are not enough of you—spiny-men and horse-fish combined—to so much as conquer the island village over your heads.

“What does this mean? It means that you, the spiny-men, cannot afford to lose one potential father or mother. If Vin is able to convert upper-world men to this cause, their biological contributions will bend the race toward the ultimate triumph. But let me be frank again, at the risk of being brutal. You creatures, you horse-fish—”

The scientist hesitated, as if catching warnings from the ranks of the speechless green creatures.

“You horse-fish must not seek to increase your numbers. Your contributions to the spiny-men have been made. Your flashy intellect has taken root among them. They now have the handicaps of partial spines and webs. But they must not have the handicap of speechlessness. That would be fatal to their progress. So—”

Horse-fish began to hoist their heads belligerently.

“So—you sea creatures who have no tongues—and that goes for every purebred horse-fish I’ve observed—you should cease to reproduce! I advise you to destroy your own eggs, and to commit racial suicide!”

The horse-fish rose up on their hind legs. Dozens of them waved their arms. Some reached into their green bags and seized their deadly scorpion-fish. Still, something held them back. To Bill it seemed that a single battle-cry would have galvanized them into an army plunging forward to attack. But without that battle-cry they were only so many separate clusters of individuals.

Yet their bluff forced the speaker to a quick conclusion. He ended by reminding them of the immortality that awaited all of them if they could inherit the earth. Evolution, he said, was sympodial. It left many races out on a dead limb. But now it could become a conscious process, an instrument in their own hands. And the present upper-world man would pass out of existence because it had become over-specialized.

“Don’t forget that human life came forth from the sea,” Maribeau shouted, swinging his fists dramatically. “If a new man evolves, he must receive his fresh impetus from that cradle of all life—the sea.”

These words were almost more than Bill could digest. It was hard to believe that the horse-fish could catch their significance so readily. But along with their alertness, their emotions were up and down like a thermometer. One moment they were enraged to be told they should commit race suicide. The next they were inflated by thoughts of their wonderful contributions to their descendants.

Once more they had stopped in their tracks, the whole body of nervous horse-fish, listening, considering.

“Gad, what a narrow one,” Bill whispered to Bea. “He’s got ’em coming his way again. If they can take it, it puts them and the spiny-men back on an even keel.”

Bea, her eyes intent upon the scene below, made a surprising answer. “I can take it… For the first time I’m getting a glimmer of the big, wonderful thing Vin’s been preaching all these years… Do you suppose—”

“What, Bea?”

“Do you suppose it would work…? Have I been blind?” She was rising slowly, as if in a dream, and the light from below showed an almost fanatical fervor coming into her mysterious eyes. “Would I get rid of this guilty traitor feeling if I’d see it his way?”

“Who’s way?”

“Vin’s. If I’d do what he wants me to do—marry him—cast my lot with him and the rest of my people—”

Bill nodded slowly. A new understanding was soaking into his dizzy brain. Vin…his friend…the swellest guy that ever lived.…

“So that—that’s it, is it, Bea?” All the spirit was gone out of Bill.

“I believe that’s it—”

Bill’s arm reached impulsively, tried to draw her back into the shadows. “Wait. Don’t you want to think it over?”

“I’m going to dive down to the river, Bill, and swim over to them, tell them I’ve come to stay. They need me. Vin deserves—”

“No, Bea!” Bill leaped up. “For God’s sake, not in that spirit!”

She ran along the edge of the ledge, stopped directly above the center of the river. For an instant she was the statue of the perfect woman, poised to dive.

But the sharp voice of Thork rang through the air. The meeting took a weird turn back to violence. In one brief, harsh pronouncement the ugly lieutenant threw overboard all of Vin’s and the scientist’s hard-won gains.

“I repeat, you horse-fish still have your rights. We’ll leave the girl out of this, because she’s a spiny-girl. And I’ll swear to her innocence. But you are entitled to a life in exchange for those broken eggs.”

The horse-fish waved their webbed hands like banners.

“Yes,” Thork shouted, “I maintain you are entitled to kill the upper-world man who committed the crime!”

Bill caught only half a glimpse of the pandemonium. He saw George Vinson try to reach the speaker’s platform. Windy Muff was helping him. And the scientist, like the other two, was shouting to the green sea-creatures to hold their places and listen.

But Vin and his party were hurled back by a gang of horse-fish waving poison scorpion-fish in their faces. Bull’s-Eye, the friend of the lieutenant, was leading the gang.

At the same moment other groups of horse-fish started chasing off in a dozen different directions.

The spiny-men themselves jumped on the bandwagon that Thork had set in motion. Their shouts filled the air. “Bring him in!” “What can we lose!” “The horse-fish still have some rights!” “Anything to keep peace!” “Bring him in!”

Bill caught his breath. Like arms of an explosion these creatures were shooting out in all directions. The frenzy of violence was on them. They were after him.

At that instant Bea’s footsteps pounded past him, her hand swished across his shoulder.

“Follow me, Bill!” she hissed.

Together they bounded over the arched ledge to the eastward. They leaped a narrow gap. Bill had the dizzy sensation of flying over a hundred-foot drop, with bright light glowing up against his silhouetted bare feet and legs.

Bea, only three paces ahead of him, was racing with confidence. She must have remembered these trails from childhood. The toss of her dark tresses showed that she was keeping an eye on the zig-zag trails. They were hardly a quarter of a mile away.

But suddenly she stopped, flinging a hand back at Bill.

The ledge ahead was blocked off. New seepage had cut off the trail since Bea, as a child, had traversed this narrow path.

“Back!” she panted, bounding ahead of him. “Keep in the shadow!”

But this time when they leaped over the narrow gap they heard an explosive outcry from somewhere below. The light had caught them.

They ran like wildfire now. It was a race to the west end of the passage. There, Bill remembered, they’d be able to duck through the A-shaped entrance to the dark sea cavern.

But as they chased down the incline toward the western end of the narrow ledge, they saw a cluster of webbed hands rise in their pathway. Six or seven horse-fish were scrambling up the narrow arched path carrying their poison weapons.

“Back again!” Bea shouted. And as Bill tried to jerk a stone loose from the frozen wall, she cried, “No! Come on!”

Then he was running at her side, heedless of the light. She gasped between breaths, “The fourth mound on the left, Bill.… Can you make it…under water? Come on.… Stay right with me!”

They glanced back when they reached the point above the center of the river. The horse-fish were hurling their weapons like hand-grenades. A poisonous lion-fish rolled in the stone dust near Bill’s bare feet, and its orange and black fins stiffened for action.

“Together!” Bea panted.

They dived. On the descent Bill gathered the confusion of sounds into his ears, aware that he was plunging from one danger to another. Gangs of horse-fish would see and rush back to the river. From the distance the slush-slush of the waterfall was growing stronger.

Together they plunged under for the long under-water swim. Bea cut deep, and Bill followed. For two minutes they shot straight up the central channel.

Now their ears caught the plunging of other divers. Bea forced a swifter pace. Then she suddenly plowed along an inclined channel bottom and rose. Bill followed her up through the darkness. He came up into air.

The surrounding blackness of the mud mound was relieved only by a few narrow peepholes of light. Bill caught his breath and followed Bea down again.

For five swift breathless underwater swims the chase went on. Each time they came up in the horse-fish houses for a breath they could see that their pursuers were gaining ground. They could see the panting gills, the blazing little magenta eyes and savage mouths skimming beneath the surface. Here and there they caught glimpses of webbed hands clutching specimens of poisonous sea-life.

In the fifth empty mud hut they entered, Bea choked, “It’s over!”

Bill heard a rush of water in the black entrance through which they had risen. The horse-fish would catch them this time. There would be no room to dart past a horse-fish in that under-water passage.

But Bill sprang up, struck his husky shoulders against the baked-mud roof. It strained, cracked. The gash of light showed the noses of horse-fish scrambling up out of the inky liquid. Bill crashed the roof again and it crumbled in a mass of debris. But he and Bea were out and on the run.

“Quick head-work!” Bea’s smile flashed at him from her dirt-smeared face. It was a grim smile, aware of the nearness of death, but there was courage in it.

In the mad foot-race that followed, Bill and Bea gained over the horse-fish. They rounded the upper end of the merged cities, leaping inlets, dodging pools of imprisoned scorpion fish, passing small parties of creatures that were neither horse-fish nor spiny-men but something of both.

At nearly every turn a new surprise party was awaiting them. Horse-fish were trying to close in from all directions.

But not spiny-men. Somehow their explosive violence had become disorganized and they were doing more shouting than chasing. Bill understood. They were willing to catch him; but their discovery that their own Bea-Bea was helping him race to freedom had thrown them into confusion.

Now Bea ran straight over the triple domes of the king’s mud palace and jumped to the edge of the zig-zagging ascent. Bill felt the mud roof break under his feet and he bounded after her. Then they were running side-by-side up the trail. Somewhere high above there was a patch of open sky. But nearer at hand there were parties of guards from both cities.

Two hundred feet up they came to a dead stop. A semicircle of hardened guardsmen with strong human faces, slightly webbed hands, and spiny bare backs bobbed up out of the stone-wall barrier, marched forth to cut off the trail from both directions.

The leader of the guards stepped over to a pink globe and inserted his head in the phone. Then he emerged and barked his orders.

“Thork says we’re to hold Bea-Bea. As for the man, we’re to let the horse-fish guards have their own way with him.” The leader whistled a signal and twenty horse-fish, stationed a little farther up the trail, came bounding down over the rocks swinging loops of sea-weed rope.

CHAPTER XIV

Bill and Bea stood on the point of a hairpin turn, watching the semicircle of guards close their ranks. An opening was left for the horse-fish to gallop through, like a band of weird cowpunchers on a rampage.

“Stay with me!”

Once again Bea’s courageous whisper gave Bill his cue. Bea sprang over the edge of the trail and caught herself on a ledge twenty feet below. Then she was off again, on what seemed to be an uncharted road to sudden death. Bill followed on her heels.

He followed without looking back, though the sea-weed ropes were swishing right back of him. Once a loop caught on his forehead and he barely ducked in time. If it had settled over his neck he’d have gone tumbling down the steep rocky wall, perhaps to hang himself.

This was no marked trail. Bea was fighting to catch the least perilous handholds. In places the wall was like the face of a skyscraper.

But every step brought them nearer to the bounding two-hundred foot waterfall. And now Bill guessed her strategy.

“It’s our old dive, Bill!” Her eyes flashed at him. “This is where I learned it. Four swift death-leaps in succession.”

Bill felt the spray of water on his bare chest and legs. Then he felt the snap of rope over his arm. The loop suddenly tightened on his wrist.

He had an instant’s glimpse of the three horse-fish jerking the other end of the rope. They must have been mad to take such chances, standing on a four foot shelf.

As they jerked, Bill dropped into the big rock basin where the vast fall of water was roaring in and out. One hand found a hold. The other was tending the rope. It gave, and he saw the three horse-fish fly out into space. Two of them slipped off and fell down—down—

No one would hear them crush to pulp. The roar of the falls would drown that sound. But the hosts of creatures below would see. Their little faces were staring up—

Jerk! The weight of the third horse-fish couldn’t have pulled the rope that hard. Bill struggled to free his wrist. Momentarily he released his handhold.

“Careful, Bill!” Bea screamed. The horse-fish that had held on had swung, pendulum style, to wedge himself safely in a crevice. There he applied the leverage of his arms to the rope, and pulled Bill over.

Bill saw too late. He skidded over the slippery edge of the basin and shot down with the fall.

* * * *

On the descent he barely succeeded in freeing himself of the rope. He straightened out with the falling water, fought toward what appeared to be the deepest point of the approaching pool. He struck it for a shallow dive—and was off again for the next waterfall descent.

Then another—and a fourth.

And before he had had time to catch his breath he was looking up from the boiling surface of the river to see Beatrice, with all her grace and beauty, plunge down the same succession of falls.

She bobbed up beside him. They looked back at the mountainous wall where several horse-fish guards were perched. The little green figures showed no inclination to duplicate the series of dives. Then Bill and Bea turned to face the hosts of spiny-men on the riverbank. The crowds were cheering…

“That’s for you,” Bill said. “Why don’t you go back to them and stay clear of my fate?”

“Because I want to share your fate, Bill,” Bea swam close to him, reached out to grip his hand. “I knew as soon as they started after you that I was wrong—about trying to stay here and be loyal, I mean. I’d rather die with you—”

The clamoring voices from the riverbank were demanding that they come. And though it was puzzling, the voices carried no tone of menace. The shouts were welcoming them, hailing them for their valiant escape, heaping honors upon them.

Bill and Bea obeyed. But it was several minutes before they could understand the strange turn of events. They were made to sit down on comfortable mats and relax. And Bill found it impossible to relax with throngs of spiny-men and horse-fish crowding around.

At first everyone talked at once, but soon the talking was left to Vin, with interpolations from Windy Muff.

“I started it,” Windy said. “I figured it was time for me to do a little lyin’ to get you outa trouble. So I told the bunch that you wasn’t the one that busted into the eggs. It was Thork. I said I’d seen him with my own eyes, an’ you only went in afterwards to make sure he hadn’t got up in the top of the cylinder to bother Bea.”

“And as we soon discovered,” said Vinson, “Windy’s guess was right. Yellow-Z discovered Thork’s foot-tracks in the egg-compartment. There was nothing for Thork to do but admit it.”

“What happened to Thork?” Bill asked anxiously, catching the flicker of worry in Bea’s eyes.

“We fought,” said Vin. “We’ve always been enemies—and rivals. When he found himself caught, he turned on me. Bull’s-Eye tried to help him, but it was a mistake, because Yellow-Z jumped in on my side.”

Vinson paused to glance at the bruised fist of his webbed left hand.

“That’s when you popped him,” said Windy.

“Yes, I gave it to Thork and he took an unfortunate spill.”

“Unfortunate?” said Bea.

“He fell,” said Vin, “against the scorpion fish that Bull’s-Eye was trying to use on me. It got him. I think he’ll die before morning, in spate of the care they’re giving him.”

There was a cool silence. Bill wondered what the horse-fish were thinking, after all the trouble Thork had made for them, and after all he had pretended to be the champion of their rights.

“That ain’t all,” said Windy. “Here comes Yellow-Z and the king now.”

While the aged white-haired old spiny-man approached, the throngs rose and waited respectfully.

“You got a surprise comin’, Bea,” Windy whispered. “You see, when Thork fell an’ Bull’s-Eye was crouchin’ in the way, darned if the horse-fish’s stabbers didn’t stick the old boy right along the backbone.”

“We saw it happen,” said Vin, “and it gave us an idea: If Thork’s inner sentiments were transferred to Bull’s-Eye, we could put the horse-fish into a thought-phone and pick up Thork’s dying thoughts. So we did.”

“An’ guess what—”

But the king was entering the circle now, and everyone was silent. Maribeau, the scientist, crowded close to miss no detail of this impromptu ceremony. Windy’s eyes ran rings around the breathless audience. Bea’s shoulder trembled against Bill’s arm.

“I have been asked to approve the revelation,” said the king in a low rumbling voice, “which one of the horse-fish has made of Thork’s dying sentiments. Those sentiments, as quoted to me are, ‘They mustn’t know that Bea-Bea is not a spiny-girl. They mustn’t know that I stole her from an English family visiting above—’”

“Did Thork say that?” Bea fairly floated to her feet in astonishment.

“That, as caught by Bull’s-Eye,” said the king, “was Thork’s secret thought immediately after the mortal wound struck him. And I must add—”

Bill could hear Bea’s heart pounding.

“…that the lieutenant confided this secret to me many years ago,” the king said calmly. “It happened after the drowning of one of our babies…so I assure you, Bea, that you are not a spiny-girl.”

Bea reeled, nearly fainting, as Bill helped her gently to her seat. The strangest of fires lighted her eyes, and with burning amazement she looked from Bill to Vin and back to Bill. A curious smile touched the corners of her lips, as if she were laughing inside.

“But perhaps,” the king added, after he had turned to go, “we should insist that you are a spiny-girl, since we’ve raised you. That, however, I shall leave with our mediator and new lieutenant, Vin-Vin.”

The white haired king hobbled away.

Vin turned to Bea and Bill, smiling. “Friends, my yacht and sailors are up there—at your service. Will you come back sometime?”

“Will we!” Bill said it enthusiastically. Then he turned to Bea. “Will we?”

“We’ll think it over, Vin,” Bea smiled. “After all that you and the scientist have told us, we may want to come—to live—for the benefit of our descendants.”

VRIL, THE POWER OF THE COMING RACE, by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton

Originally published in 1871.

Chapter I.

I am a native of _____, in the United States of America. My ancestors migrated from England in the reign of Charles II.; and my grandfather was not undistinguished in the War of Independence. My family, therefore, enjoyed a somewhat high social position in right of birth; and being also opulent, they were considered disqualified for the public service. My father once ran for Congress, but was signally defeated by his tailor. After that event he interfered little in politics, and lived much in his library. I was the eldest of three sons, and sent at the age of sixteen to the old country, partly to complete my literary education, partly to commence my commercial training in a mercantile firm at Liverpool. My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.

In the year 18__, happening to be in _____, I was invited by a professional engineer, with whom I had made acquaintance, to visit the recesses of the ________ mine, upon which he was employed.

The reader will understand, ere he close this narrative, my reason for concealing all clue to the district of which I write, and will perhaps thank me for refraining from any description that may tend to its discovery.

Let me say, then, as briefly as possible, that I accompanied the engineer into the interior of the mine, and became so strangely fascinated by its gloomy wonders, and so interested in my friend’s explorations, that I prolonged my stay in the neighborhood, and descended daily, for some weeks, into the vaults and galleries hollowed by nature and art beneath the surface of the earth. The engineer was persuaded that far richer deposits of mineral wealth than had yet been detected, would be found in a new shaft that had been commenced under his operations. In piercing this shaft we came one day upon a chasm jagged and seemingly charred at the sides, as if burst asunder at some distant period by volcanic fires. Down this chasm my friend caused himself to be lowered in a ‘cage,’ having first tested the atmosphere by the safety-lamp. He remained nearly an hour in the abyss. When he returned he was very pale, and with an anxious, thoughtful expression of face, very different from its ordinary character, which was open, cheerful, and fearless.

He said briefly that the descent appeared to him unsafe, and leading to no result; and, suspending further operations in the shaft, we returned to the more familiar parts of the mine.

All the rest of that day the engineer seemed preoccupied by some absorbing thought. He was unusually taciturn, and there was a scared, bewildered look in his eyes, as that of a man who has seen a ghost. At night, as we two were sitting alone in the lodging we shared together near the mouth of the mine, I said to my friend,—

“Tell me frankly what you saw in that chasm: I am sure it was something strange and terrible. Whatever it be, it has left your mind in a state of doubt. In such a case two heads are better than one. Confide in me.”

The engineer long endeavored to evade my inquiries; but as, while he spoke, he helped himself unconsciously out of the brandy-flask to a degree to which he was wholly unaccustomed, for he was a very temperate man, his reserve gradually melted away. He who would keep himself to himself should imitate the dumb animals, and drink water. At last he said, “I will tell you all. When the cage stopped, I found myself on a ridge of rock; and below me, the chasm, taking a slanting direction, shot down to a considerable depth, the darkness of which my lamp could not have penetrated. But through it, to my infinite surprise, streamed upward a steady brilliant light. Could it be any volcanic fire? In that case, surely I should have felt the heat. Still, if on this there was doubt, it was of the utmost importance to our common safety to clear it up. I examined the sides of the descent, and found that I could venture to trust myself to the irregular projection of ledges, at least for some way. I left the cage and clambered down. As I drew nearer and nearer to the light, the chasm became wider, and at last I saw, to my unspeakable amaze, a broad level road at the bottom of the abyss, illumined as far as the eye could reach by what seemed artificial gas-lamps placed at regular intervals, as in the thoroughfare of a great city; and I heard confusedly at a distance a hum as of human voices. I know, of course, that no rival miners are at work in this district. Whose could be those voices? What human hands could have leveled that road and marshaled those lamps?

“The superstitious belief, common to miners, that gnomes or fiends dwell within the bowels of the earth, began to seize me. I shuddered at the thought of descending further and braving the inhabitants of this nether valley. Nor indeed could I have done so without ropes, as from the spot I had reached to the bottom of the chasm the sides of the rock sank down abrupt, smooth, and sheer. I retraced my steps with some difficulty. Now I have told you all.”

“You will descend again?”

“I ought, yet I feel as if I durst not.”

“A trusty companion halves the journey and doubles the courage. I will go with you. We will provide ourselves with ropes of suitable length and strength—and—pardon me—you must not drink more tonight, our hands and feet must be steady and firm tomorrow.”

Chapter II.

With the morning my friend’s nerves were re-braced, and he was not less excited by curiosity than myself. Perhaps more; for he evidently believed in his own story, and I felt considerable doubt of it; not that he would have willfully told an untruth, but that I thought he must have been under one of those hallucinations which seize on our fancy or our nerves in solitary, unaccustomed places, and in which we give shape to the formless and sound to the dumb.

We selected six veteran miners to watch our descent; and as the cage held only one at a time, the engineer descended first; and when he had gained the ledge at which he had before halted, the cage re-arose for me. I soon gained his side. We had provided ourselves with a strong coil of rope.

The light struck on my sight as it had done the day before on my friend’s. The hollow through which it came sloped diagonally: it seemed to me a diffused atmospheric light, not like that from fire, but soft and silvery, as from a northern star. Quitting the cage, we descended, one after the other, easily enough, owing to the juts in the side, till we reached the place at which my friend had previously halted, and which was a projection just spacious enough to allow us to stand abreast. From this spot the chasm widened rapidly like the lower end of a vast funnel, and I saw distinctly the valley, the road, the lamps which my companion had described. He had exaggerated nothing. I heard the sounds he had heard—a mingled indescribable hum as of voices and a dull tramp as of feet. Straining my eye farther down, I clearly beheld at a distance the outline of some large building. It could not be mere natural rock, it was too symmetrical, with huge heavy Egyptian-like columns, and the whole lighted as from within. I had about me a small pocket-telescope, and by the aid of this, I could distinguish, near the building I mention, two forms which seemed human, though I could not be sure. At least they were living, for they moved, and both vanished within the building. We now proceeded to attach the end of the rope we had brought with us to the ledge on which we stood, by the aid of clamps and grappling hooks, with which, as well as with necessary tools, we were provided.

We were almost silent in our work. We toiled like men afraid to speak to each other. One end of the rope being thus apparently made firm to the ledge, the other, to which we fastened a fragment of the rock, rested on the ground below, a distance of some fifty feet. I was a younger man and a more active man than my companion, and having served on board ship in my boyhood, this mode of transit was more familiar to me than to him. In a whisper I claimed the precedence, so that when I gained the ground I might serve to hold the rope more steady for his descent. I got safely to the ground beneath, and the engineer now began to lower himself. But he had scarcely accomplished ten feet of the descent, when the fastenings, which we had fancied so secure, gave way, or rather the rock itself proved treacherous and crumbled beneath the strain; and the unhappy man was precipitated to the bottom, falling just at my feet, and bringing down with his fall splinters of the rock, one of which, fortunately but a small one, struck and for the time stunned me. When I recovered my senses I saw my companion an inanimate mass beside me, life utterly extinct. While I was bending over his corpse in grief and horror, I heard close at hand a strange sound between a snort and a hiss; and turning instinctively to the quarter from which it came, I saw emerging from a dark fissure in the rock a vast and terrible head, with open jaws and dull, ghastly, hungry eyes—the head of a monstrous reptile resembling that of the crocodile or alligator, but infinitely larger than the largest creature of that kind I had ever beheld in my travels. I started to my feet and fled down the valley at my utmost speed. I stopped at last, ashamed of my panic and my flight, and returned to the spot on which I had left the body of my friend. It was gone; doubtless the monster had already drawn it into its den and devoured it. The rope and the grappling-hooks still lay where they had fallen, but they afforded me no chance of return; it was impossible to re-attach them to the rock above, and the sides of the rock were too sheer and smooth for human steps to clamber. I was alone in this strange world, amidst the bowels of the earth.

Chapter III.

Slowly and cautiously I went my solitary way down the lamplit road and towards the large building I have described. The road itself seemed like a great Alpine pass, skirting rocky mountains of which the one through whose chasm I had descended formed a link. Deep below to the left lay a vast valley, which presented to my astonished eye the unmistakable evidences of art and culture. There were fields covered with a strange vegetation, similar to none I have seen above the earth; the color of it not green, but rather of a dull and leaden hue or of a golden red.

There were lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been curved into artificial banks; some of pure water, others that shone like pools of naphtha. At my right hand, ravines and defiles opened amidst the rocks, with passes between, evidently constructed by art, and bordered by trees resembling, for the most part, gigantic ferns, with exquisite varieties of feathery foliage, and stems like those of the palm-tree. Others were more like the cane-plant, but taller, bearing large clusters of flowers. Others, again, had the form of enormous fungi, with short thick stems supporting a wide dome-like roof, from which either rose or drooped long slender branches. The whole scene behind, before, and beside me far as the eye could reach, was brilliant with innumerable lamps. The world without a sun was bright and warm as an Italian landscape at noon, but the air less oppressive, the heat softer. Nor was the scene before me void of signs of habitation. I could distinguish at a distance, whether on the banks of the lake or rivulet, or half-way upon eminences, embedded amidst the vegetation, buildings that must surely be the homes of men. I could even discover, though far off, forms that appeared to me human moving amidst the landscape. As I paused to gaze, I saw to the right, gliding quickly through the air, what appeared a small boat, impelled by sails shaped like wings. It soon passed out of sight, descending amidst the shades of a forest. Right above me there was no sky, but only a cavernous roof. This roof grew higher and higher at the distance of the landscapes beyond, till it became imperceptible, as an atmosphere of haze formed itself beneath.

Continuing my walk, I started,—from a bush that resembled a great tangle of sea-weeds, interspersed with fern-like shrubs and plants of large leafage shaped like that of the aloe or prickly-pear,—a curious animal about the size and shape of a deer. But as, after bounding away a few paces, it turned round and gazed at me inquisitively, I perceived that it was not like any species of deer now extant above the earth, but it brought instantly to my recollection a plaster cast I had seen in some museum of a variety of the elk stag, said to have existed before the Deluge. The creature seemed tame enough, and, after inspecting me a moment or two, began to graze on the singular herbage around undismayed and careless.

Chapter IV.

I now came in full sight of the building. Yes, it had been made by hands, and hollowed partly out of a great rock. I should have supposed it at the first glance to have been of the earliest form of Egyptian architecture. It was fronted by huge columns, tapering upward from massive plinths, and with capitals that, as I came nearer, I perceived to be more ornamental and more fantastically graceful that Egyptian architecture allows. As the Corinthian capital mimics the leaf of the acanthus, so the capitals of these columns imitated the foliage of the vegetation neighboring them, some aloe-like, some fern-like. And now there came out of this building a form—human;—was it human? It stood on the broad way and looked around, beheld me and approached. It came within a few yards of me, and at the sight and presence of it an indescribable awe and tremor seized me, rooting my feet to the ground. It reminded me of symbolical images of Genius or Demon that are seen on Etruscan vases or limned on the walls of Eastern sepulchers—images that borrow the outlines of man, and are yet of another race. It was tall, not gigantic, but tall as the tallest man below the height of giants.

Its chief covering seemed to me to be composed of large wings folded over its breast and reaching to its knees; the rest of its attire was composed of an under tunic and leggings of some thin fibrous material. It wore on its head a kind of tiara that shone with jewels, and carried in its right hand a slender staff of bright metal like polished steel. But the face! it was that which inspired my awe and my terror. It was the face of man, but yet of a type of man distinct from our known extant races. The nearest approach to it in outline and expression is the face of the sculptured sphinx—so regular in its calm, intellectual, mysterious beauty. Its color was peculiar, more like that of the red man than any other variety of our species, and yet different from it—a richer and a softer hue, with large black eyes, deep and brilliant, and brows arched as a semicircle. The face was beardless; but a nameless something in the aspect, tranquil though the expression, and beauteous though the features, roused that instinct of danger which the sight of a tiger or serpent arouses. I felt that this manlike image was endowed with forces inimical to man. As it drew near, a cold shudder came over me. I fell on my knees and covered my face with my hands.

Chapter V.

A voice accosted me—a very quiet and very musical key of voice—in a language of which I could not understand a word, but it served to dispel my fear. I uncovered my face and looked up. The stranger (I could scarcely bring myself to call him man) surveyed me with an eye that seemed to read to the very depths of my heart. He then placed his left hand on my forehead, and with the staff in his right, gently touched my shoulder. The effect of this double contact was magical. In place of my former terror there passed into me a sense of contentment, of joy, of confidence in myself and in the being before me. I rose and spoke in my own language. He listened to me with apparent attention, but with a slight surprise in his looks; and shook his head, as if to signify that I was not understood. He then took me by the hand and led me in silence to the building. The entrance was open—indeed there was no door to it. We entered an immense hall, lighted by the same kind of luster as in the scene without, but diffusing a fragrant odor. The floor was in large tessellated blocks of precious metals, and partly covered with a sort of matlike carpeting. A strain of low music, above and around, undulated as if from invisible instruments, seeming to belong naturally to the place, just as the sound of murmuring waters belongs to a rocky landscape, or the warble of birds to vernal groves.

A figure in a simpler garb than that of my guide, but of similar fashion, was standing motionless near the threshold. My guide touched it twice with his staff, and it put itself into a rapid and gliding movement, skimming noiselessly over the floor. Gazing on it, I then saw that it was no living form, but a mechanical automaton. It might be two minutes after it vanished through a doorless opening, half screened by curtains at the other end of the hall, when through the same opening advanced a boy of about twelve years old, with features closely resembling those of my guide, so that they seemed to me evidently son and father. On seeing me the child uttered a cry, and lifted a staff like that borne by my guide, as if in menace. At a word from the elder he dropped it. The two then conversed for some moments, examining me while they spoke. The child touched my garments, and stroked my face with evident curiosity, uttering a sound like a laugh, but with an hilarity more subdued that the mirth of our laughter. Presently the roof of the hall opened, and a platform descended, seemingly constructed on the same principle as the ‘lifts’ used in hotels and warehouses for mounting from one story to another.

The stranger placed himself and the child on the platform, and motioned to me to do the same, which I did. We ascended quickly and safely, and alighted in the midst of a corridor with doorways on either side.

Through one of these doorways I was conducted into a chamber fitted up with an oriental splendor; the walls were tessellated with spars, and metals, and uncut jewels; cushions and divans abounded; apertures as for windows but unglazed, were made in the chamber opening to the floor; and as I passed along I observed that these openings led into spacious balconies, and commanded views of the illumined landscape without. In cages suspended from the ceiling there were birds of strange form and bright plumage, which at our entrance set up a chorus of song, modulated into tune as is that of our piping bullfinches. A delicious fragrance, from censers of gold elaborately sculptured, filled the air. Several automata, like the one I had seen, stood dumb and motionless by the walls. The stranger placed me beside him on a divan and again spoke to me, and again I spoke, but without the least advance towards understanding each other.

But now I began to feel the effects of the blow I had received from the splinters of the falling rock more acutely that I had done at first.

There came over me a sense of sickly faintness, accompanied with acute, lancinating pains in the head and neck. I sank back on the seat and strove in vain to stifle a groan. On this the child, who had hitherto seemed to eye me with distrust or dislike, knelt by my side to support me; taking one of my hands in both his own, he approached his lips to my forehead, breathing on it softly. In a few moments my pain ceased; a drowsy, heavy calm crept over me; I fell asleep.

How long I remained in this state I know not, but when I woke I felt perfectly restored. My eyes opened upon a group of silent forms, seated around me in the gravity and quietude of Orientals—all more or less like the first stranger; the same mantling wings, the same fashion of garment, the same sphinx-like faces, with the deep dark eyes and red man’s color; above all, the same type of race—race akin to man’s, but infinitely stronger of form and grandeur of aspect—and inspiring the same unutterable feeling of dread. Yet each countenance was mild and tranquil, and even kindly in expression. And, strangely enough, it seemed to me that in this very calm and benignity consisted the secret of the dread which the countenances inspired. They seemed as void of the lines and shadows which care and sorrow, and passion and sin, leave upon the faces of men, as are the faces of sculptured gods, or as, in the eyes of Christian mourners, seem the peaceful brows of the dead.

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder; it was the child’s. In his eyes there was a sort of lofty pity and tenderness, such as that with which we may gaze on some suffering bird or butterfly. I shrank from that touch—I shrank from that eye. I was vaguely impressed with a belief that, had he so pleased, that child could have killed me as easily as a man can kill a bird or a butterfly. The child seemed pained at my repugnance, quitted me, and placed himself beside one of the windows. The others continued to converse with each other in a low tone, and by their glances towards me I could perceive that I was the object of their conversation. One in especial seemed to be urging some proposal affecting me on the being whom I had first met, and this last by his gesture seemed about to assent to it, when the child suddenly quitted his post by the window, placed himself between me and the other forms, as if in protection, and spoke quickly and eagerly. By some intuition or instinct I felt that the child I had before so dreaded was pleading in my behalf. Ere he had ceased another stranger entered the room. He appeared older than the rest, though not old; his countenance less smoothly serene than theirs, though equally regular in its features, seemed to me to have more the touch of a humanity akin to my own. He listened quietly to the words addressed to him, first by my guide, next by two others of the group, and lastly by the child; then turned towards myself, and addressed me, not by words, but by signs and gestures. These I fancied that I perfectly understood, and I was not mistaken. I comprehended that he inquired whence I came. I extended my arm, and pointed towards the road which had led me from the chasm in the rock; then an idea seized me. I drew forth my pocket-book, and sketched on one of its blank leaves a rough design of the ledge of the rock, the rope, myself clinging to it; then of the cavernous rock below, the head of the reptile, the lifeless form of my friend. I gave this primitive kind of hieroglyph to my interrogator, who, after inspecting it gravely, handed it to his next neighbor, and it thus passed round the group. The being I had at first encountered then said a few words, and the child, who approached and looked at my drawing, nodded as if he comprehended its purport, and, returning to the window, expanded the wings attached to his form, shook them once or twice, and then launched himself into space without. I started up in amaze and hastened to the window. The child was already in the air, buoyed on his wings, which he did not flap to and fro as a bird does, but which were elevated over his head, and seemed to bear him steadily aloft without effort of his own. His flight seemed as swift as an eagle’s; and I observed that it was towards the rock whence I had descended, of which the outline loomed visible in the brilliant atmosphere. In a very few minutes he returned, skimming through the opening from which he had gone, and dropping on the floor the rope and grappling-hooks I had left at the descent from the chasm. Some words in a low tone passed between the being present; one of the group touched an automaton, which started forward and glided from the room; then the last comer, who had addressed me by gestures, rose, took me by the hand, and led me into the corridor. There the platform by which I had mounted awaited us; we placed ourselves on it and were lowered into the hall below. My new companion, still holding me by the hand, conducted me from the building into a street (so to speak) that stretched beyond it, with buildings on either side, separated from each other by gardens bright with rich-colored vegetation and strange flowers. Interspersed amidst these gardens, which were divided from each other by low walls, or walking slowly along the road, were many forms similar to those I had already seen. Some of the passers-by, on observing me, approached my guide, evidently by their tones, looks, and gestures addressing to him inquiries about myself. In a few moments a crowd collected around us, examining me with great interest, as if I were some rare wild animal. Yet even in gratifying their curiosity they preserved a grave and courteous demeanor; and after a few words from my guide, who seemed to me to deprecate obstruction in our road, they fell back with a stately inclination of head, and resumed their own way with tranquil indifference. Midway in this thoroughfare we stopped at a building that differed from those we had hitherto passed, inasmuch as it formed three sides of a vast court, at the angles of which were lofty pyramidal towers; in the open space between the sides was a circular fountain of colossal dimensions, and throwing up a dazzling spray of what seemed to me fire. We entered the building through an open doorway and came into an enormous hall, in which were several groups of children, all apparently employed in work as at some great factory. There was a huge engine in the wall which was in full play, with wheels and cylinders resembling our own steam-engines, except that it was richly ornamented with precious stones and metals, and appeared to emanate a pale phosphorescent atmosphere of shifting light. Many of the children were at some mysterious work on this machinery, others were seated before tables. I was not allowed to linger long enough to examine into the nature of their employment. Not one young voice was heard—not one young face turned to gaze on us. They were all still and indifferent as may be ghosts, through the midst of which pass unnoticed the forms of the living.

Quitting this hall, my guide led me through a gallery richly painted in compartments, with a barbaric mixture of gold in the colors, like pictures by Louis Cranach. The subjects described on these walls appeared to my glance as intended to illustrate events in the history of the race amidst which I was admitted. In all there were figures, most of them like the manlike creatures I had seen, but not all in the same fashion of garb, nor all with wings. There were also the effigies of various animals and birds, wholly strange to me, with backgrounds depicting landscapes or buildings. So far as my imperfect knowledge of the pictorial art would allow me to form an opinion, these paintings seemed very accurate in design and very rich in coloring, showing a perfect knowledge of perspective, but their details not arranged according to the rules of composition acknowledged by our artists—wanting, as it were, a centre; so that the effect was vague, scattered, confused, bewildering—they were like heterogeneous fragments of a dream of art.

We now came into a room of moderate size, in which was assembled what I afterwards knew to be the family of my guide, seated at a table spread as for repast. The forms thus grouped were those of my guide’s wife, his daughter, and two sons. I recognized at once the difference between the two sexes, though the two females were of taller stature and ampler proportions than the males; and their countenances, if still more symmetrical in outline and contour, were devoid of the softness and timidity of expression which give charm to the face of woman as seen on the earth above. The wife wore no wings, the daughter wore wings longer than those of the males.

My guide uttered a few words, on which all the persons seated rose, and with that peculiar mildness of look and manner which I have before noticed, and which is, in truth, the common attribute of this formidable race, they saluted me according to their fashion, which consists in laying the right hand very gently on the head and uttering a soft sibilant monosyllable—S.Si, equivalent to “Welcome.”

The mistress of the house then seated me beside her, and heaped a golden platter before me from one of the dishes.

While I ate (and though the viands were new to me, I marveled more at the delicacy than the strangeness of their flavor), my companions conversed quietly, and, so far as I could detect, with polite avoidance of any direct reference to myself, or any obtrusive scrutiny of my appearance. Yet I was the first creature of that variety of the human race to which I belong that they had ever beheld, and was consequently regarded by them as a most curious and abnormal phenomenon. But all rudeness is unknown to this people, and the youngest child is taught to despise any vehement emotional demonstration. When the meal was ended, my guide again took me by the hand, and, re-entering the gallery, touched a metallic plate inscribed with strange figures, and which I rightly conjectured to be of the nature of our telegraphs. A platform descended, but this time we mounted to a much greater height than in the former building, and found ourselves in a room of moderate dimensions, and which in its general character had much that might be familiar to the associations of a visitor from the upper world. There were shelves on the wall containing what appeared to be books, and indeed were so; mostly very small, like our diamond duodecimos, shaped in the fashion of our volumes, and bound in sheets of fine metal. There were several curious-looking pieces of mechanism scattered about, apparently models, such as might be seen in the study of any professional mechanician. Four automata (mechanical contrivances which, with these people, answer the ordinary purposes of domestic service) stood phantom-like at each angle in the wall. In a recess was a low couch, or bed with pillows. A window, with curtains of some fibrous material drawn aside, opened upon a large balcony. My host stepped out into the balcony; I followed him. We were on the uppermost story of one of the angular pyramids; the view beyond was of a wild and solemn beauty impossible to describe:—the vast ranges of precipitous rock which formed the distant background, the intermediate valleys of mystic many-colored herbage, the flash of waters, many of them like streams of roseate flame, the serene luster diffused over all by myriads of lamps, combined to form a whole of which no words of mine can convey adequate description; so splendid was it, yet so somber; so lovely, yet so awful.

But my attention was soon diverted from these nether landscapes. Suddenly there arose, as from the streets below, a burst of joyous music; then a winged form soared into the space; another as if in chase of the first, another and another; others after others, till the crowd grew thick and the number countless. But how describe the fantastic grace of these forms in their undulating movements! They appeared engaged in some sport or amusement; now forming into opposite squadrons; now scattering; now each group threading the other, soaring, descending, interweaving, severing; all in measured time to the music below, as if in the dance of the fabled Peri.

I turned my gaze on my host in a feverish wonder. I ventured to place my hand on the large wings that lay folded on his breast, and in doing so a slight shock as of electricity passed through me. I recoiled in fear; my host smiled, and as if courteously to gratify my curiosity, slowly expanded his pinions. I observed that his garment beneath them became dilated as a bladder that fills with air. The arms seemed to slide into the wings, and in another moment he had launched himself into the luminous atmosphere, and hovered there, still, and with outspread wings, as an eagle that basks in the sun. Then, rapidly as an eagle swoops, he rushed downwards into the midst of one of the groups, skimming through the midst, and as suddenly again soaring aloft. Thereon, three forms, in one of which I thought to recognize my host’s daughter, detached themselves from the rest, and followed him as a bird sportively follows a bird. My eyes, dazzled with the lights and bewildered by the throngs, ceased to distinguish the gyrations and evolutions of these winged playmates, till presently my host re-emerged from the crowd and alighted at my side.

The strangeness of all I had seen began now to operate fast on my senses; my mind itself began to wander. Though not inclined to be superstitious, nor hitherto believing that man could be brought into bodily communication with demons, I felt the terror and the wild excitement with which, in the Gothic ages, a traveler might have persuaded himself that he witnessed a ‘sabbat’ of fiends and witches. I have a vague recollection of having attempted with vehement gesticulation, and forms of exorcism, and loud incoherent words, to repel my courteous and indulgent host; of his mild endeavors to calm and soothe me; of his intelligent conjecture that my fright and bewilderment were occasioned by the difference of form and movement between us which the wings that had excited my marveling curiosity had, in exercise, made still more strongly perceptible; of the gentle smile with which he had sought to dispel my alarm by dropping the wings to the ground and endeavoring to show me that they were but a mechanical contrivance. That sudden transformation did but increase my horror, and as extreme fright often shows itself by extreme daring, I sprang at his throat like a wild beast. On an instant I was felled to the ground as by an electric shock, and the last confused images floating before my sight ere I became wholly insensible, were the form of my host kneeling beside me with one hand on my forehead, and the beautiful calm face of his daughter, with large, deep, inscrutable eyes intently fixed upon my own.

Chapter VI.

I remained in this unconscious state, as I afterwards learned, for many days, even for some weeks according to our computation of time. When I recovered I was in a strange room, my host and all his family were gathered round me, and to my utter amaze my host’s daughter accosted me in my own language with a slightly foreign accent.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

It was some moments before I could overcome my surprise enough to falter out, “You know my language? How? Who and what are you?”

My host smiled and motioned to one of his sons, who then took from a table a number of thin metallic sheets on which were traced drawings of various figures—a house, a tree, a bird, a man, &c.

In these designs I recognized my own style of drawing. Under each figure was written the name of it in my language, and in my writing; and in another handwriting a word strange to me beneath it.

Said the host, “Thus we began; and my daughter Zee, who belongs to the College of Sages, has been your instructress and ours too.”

Zee then placed before me other metallic sheets, on which, in my writing, words first, and then sentences, were inscribed. Under each word and each sentence strange characters in another hand. Rallying my senses, I comprehended that thus a rude dictionary had been effected. Had it been done while I was dreaming? “That is enough now,” said Zee, in a tone of command. “Repose and take food.”

Chapter VII.

A room to myself was assigned to me in this vast edifice. It was prettily and fantastically arranged, but without any of the splendor of metal-work or gems which was displayed in the more public apartments. The walls were hung with a variegated matting made from the stalks and fibers of plants, and the floor carpeted with the same.

The bed was without curtains, its supports of iron resting on balls of crystal; the coverings, of a thin white substance resembling cotton. There were sundry shelves containing books. A curtained recess communicated with an aviary filled with singing—birds, of which I did not recognize one resembling those I have seen on earth, except a beautiful species of dove, though this was distinguished from our doves by a tall crest of bluish plumes. All these birds had been trained to sing in artful tunes, and greatly exceeded the skill of our piping bullfinches, which can rarely achieve more than two tunes, and cannot, I believe, sing those in concert. One might have supposed one’s self at an opera in listening to the voices in my aviary. There were duets and trios, and quartets and choruses, all arranged as in one piece of music. Did I want silence from the birds? I had but to draw a curtain over the aviary, and their song hushed as they found themselves left in the dark. Another opening formed a window, not glazed, but on touching a spring, a shutter ascended from the floor, formed of some substance less transparent than glass, but still sufficiently pellucid to allow a softened view of the scene without. To this window was attached a balcony, or rather hanging garden, wherein grew many graceful plants and brilliant flowers. The apartment and its appurtenances had thus a character, if strange in detail, still familiar, as a whole, to modern notions of luxury, and would have excited admiration if found attached to the apartments of an English duchess or a fashionable French author. Before I arrived this was Zee’s chamber; she had hospitably assigned it to me.

Some hours after the waking up which is described in my last chapter, I was lying alone on my couch trying to fix my thoughts on conjecture as to the nature and genus of the people amongst whom I was thrown, when my host and his daughter Zee entered the room. My host, still speaking my native language, inquired with much politeness, whether it would be agreeable to me to converse, or if I preferred solitude. I replied, that I should feel much honored and obliged by the opportunity offered me to express my gratitude for the hospitality and civilities I had received in a country to which I was a stranger, and to learn enough of its customs and manners not to offend through ignorance.

As I spoke, I had of course risen from my couch: but Zee, much to my confusion, curtly ordered me to lie down again, and there was something in her voice and eye, gentle as both were, that compelled my obedience. She then seated herself unconcernedly at the foot of my bed, while her father took his place on a divan a few feet distant.

“But what part of the world do you come from?” asked my host, “that we should appear so strange to you and you to us? I have seen individual specimens of nearly all the races differing from our own, except the primeval savages who dwell in the most desolate and remote recesses of uncultivated nature, unacquainted with other light than that they obtain from volcanic fires, and contented to grope their way in the dark, as do many creeping, crawling and flying things. But certainly you cannot be a member of those barbarous tribes, nor, on the other hand, do you seem to belong to any civilized people.”

I was somewhat nettled at this last observation, and replied that I had the honor to belong to one of the most civilized nations of the earth; and that, so far as light was concerned, while I admired the ingenuity and disregard of expense with which my host and his fellow-citizens had contrived to illumine the regions unpenetrated by the rays of the sun, yet I could not conceive how any who had once beheld the orbs of heaven could compare to their luster the artificial lights invented by the necessities of man. But my host said he had seen specimens of most of the races differing from his own, save the wretched barbarians he had mentioned. Now, was it possible that he had never been on the surface of the earth, or could he only be referring to communities buried within its entrails?

My host was for some moments silent; his countenance showed a degree of surprise which the people of that race very rarely manifest under any circumstances, howsoever extraordinary. But Zee was more intelligent, and exclaimed, “So you see, my father, that there is truth in the old tradition; there always is truth in every tradition commonly believed in all times and by all tribes.”

“Zee,” said my host mildly, “you belong to the College of Sages, and ought to be wiser than I am; but, as chief of the Light-preserving Council, it is my duty to take nothing for granted till it is proved to the evidence of my own senses.” Then, turning to me, he asked me several questions about the surface of the earth and the heavenly bodies; upon which, though I answered him to the best of my knowledge, my answers seemed not to satisfy nor convince him. He shook his head quietly, and, changing the subject rather abruptly, asked how I had come down from what he was pleased to call one world to the other. I answered, that under the surface of the earth there were mines containing minerals, or metals, essential to our wants and our progress in all arts and industries; and I then briefly explained the manner in which, while exploring one of those mines, I and my ill-fated friend had obtained a glimpse of the regions into which we had descended, and how the descent had cost him his life; appealing to the rope and grappling-hooks that the child had brought to the house in which I had been at first received, as a witness of the truthfulness of my story.

My host then proceeded to question me as to the habits and modes of life among the races on the upper earth, more especially among those considered to be the most advanced in that civilization which he was pleased to define “the art of diffusing throughout a community the tranquil happiness which belongs to a virtuous and well-ordered household.” Naturally desiring to represent in the most favorable colors the world from which I came, I touched but slightly, though indulgently, on the antiquated and decaying institutions of Europe, in order to expatiate on the present grandeur and prospective pre-eminence of that glorious American Republic, in which Europe enviously seeks its model and tremblingly foresees its doom. Selecting for an example of the social life of the United States that city in which progress advances at the fastest rate, I indulged in an animated description of the moral habits of New York. Mortified to see, by the faces of my listeners, that I did not make the favorable impression I had anticipated, I elevated my theme; dwelling on the excellence of democratic institutions, their promotion of tranquil happiness by the government of party, and the mode in which they diffused such happiness throughout the community by preferring, for the exercise of power and the acquisition of honors, the lowliest citizens in point of property, education, and character. Fortunately recollecting the peroration of a speech, on the purifying influences of American democracy and their destined spread over the world, made by a certain eloquent senator (for whose vote in the Senate a Railway Company, to which my two brothers belonged, had just paid 20,000 dollars), I wound up by repeating its glowing predictions of the magnificent future that smiled upon mankind—when the flag of freedom should float over an entire continent, and two hundred millions of intelligent citizens, accustomed from infancy to the daily use of revolvers, should apply to a cowering universe the doctrine of the Patriot Monroe.

When I had concluded, my host gently shook his head, and fell into a musing study, making a sign to me and his daughter to remain silent while he reflected. And after a time he said, in a very earnest and solemn tone, “If you think as you say, that you, though a stranger, have received kindness at the hands of me and mine, I adjure you to reveal nothing to any other of our people respecting the world from which you came, unless, on consideration, I give you permission to do so. Do you consent to this request?”

“Of course I pledge my word, to it,” said I, somewhat amazed; and I extended my right hand to grasp his. But he placed my hand gently on his forehead and his own right hand on my breast, which is the custom amongst this race in all matters of promise or verbal obligations. Then turning to his daughter, he said, “And you, Zee, will not repeat to any one what the stranger has said, or may say, to me or to you, of a world other than our own.” Zee rose and kissed her father on the temples, saying, with a smile, “A Gy’s tongue is wanton, but love can fetter it fast. And if, my father, you fear lest a chance word from me or yourself could expose our community to danger, by a desire to explore a world beyond us, will not a wave of the ‘vril,’ properly impelled, wash even the memory of what we have heard the stranger say out of the tablets of the brain?”

“What is the vril?” I asked.

Therewith Zee began to enter into an explanation of which I understood very little, for there is no word in any language I know which is an exact synonym for vril. I should call it electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which, in our scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they have arrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has been conjectured by many philosophers above ground, and which Faraday thus intimates under the more cautious term of correlation:—

“I have long held an opinion,” says that illustrious experimentalist, “almost amounting to a conviction, in common, I believe, with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest, have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent that they are convertible, as it were into one another, and possess equivalents of power in their action. These subterranean philosophers assert that by one operation of vril, which Faraday would perhaps call ‘atmospheric magnetism,’ they can influence the variations of temperature—in plain words, the weather; that by operations, akin to those ascribed to mesmerism, electro-biology, odic force, &c., but applied scientifically, through vril conductors, they can exercise influence over minds, and bodies animal and vegetable, to an extent not surpassed in the romances of our mystics. To all such agencies they give the common name of vril.”

Zee asked me if, in my world, it was not known that all the faculties of the mind could be quickened to a degree unknown in the waking state, by trance or vision, in which the thoughts of one brain could be transmitted to another, and knowledge be thus rapidly interchanged. I replied, that there were amongst us stories told of such trance or vision, and that I had heard much and seen something in mesmeric clairvoyance; but that these practices had fallen much into disuse or contempt, partly because of the gross impostures to which they had been made subservient, and partly because, even where the effects upon certain abnormal constitutions were genuinely produced, the effects when fairly examined and analyzed, were very unsatisfactory—not to be relied upon for any systematic truthfulness or any practical purpose, and rendered very mischievous to credulous persons by the superstitions they tended to produce. Zee received my answers with much benignant attention, and said that similar instances of abuse and credulity had been familiar to their own scientific experience in the infancy of their knowledge, and while the properties of vril were misapprehended, but that she reserved further discussion on this subject till I was more fitted to enter into it. She contented herself with adding, that it was through the agency of vril, while I had been placed in the state of trance, that I had been made acquainted with the rudiments of their language; and that she and her father, who alone of the family, took the pains to watch the experiment, had acquired a greater proportionate knowledge of my language than I of their own; partly because my language was much simpler than theirs, comprising far less of complex ideas; and partly because their organization was, by hereditary culture, much more ductile and more readily capable of acquiring knowledge than mine. At this I secretly demurred; and having had in the course of a practical life, to sharpen my wits, whether at home or in travel, I could not allow that my cerebral organization could possibly be duller than that of people who had lived all their lives by lamplight. However, while I was thus thinking, Zee quietly pointed her forefinger at my forehead, and sent me to sleep.

Chapter VIII.

When I once more awoke I saw by my bed-side the child who had brought the rope and grappling-hooks to the house in which I had been first received, and which, as I afterwards learned, was the residence of the chief magistrate of the tribe. The child, whose name was Taee (pronounced Tar-ee), was the magistrate’s eldest son. I found that during my last sleep or trance I had made still greater advance in the language of the country, and could converse with comparative ease and fluency.

This child was singularly handsome, even for the beautiful race to which he belonged, with a countenance very manly in aspect for his years, and with a more vivacious and energetic expression than I had hitherto seen in the serene and passionless faces of the men. He brought me the tablet on which I had drawn the mode of my descent, and had also sketched the head of the horrible reptile that had scared me from my friend’s corpse. Pointing to that part of the drawing, Taee put to me a few questions respecting the size and form of the monster, and the cave or chasm from which it had emerged. His interest in my answers seemed so grave as to divert him for a while from any curiosity as to myself or my antecedents. But to my great embarrassment, seeing how I was pledged to my host, he was just beginning to ask me where I came from, when Zee, fortunately entered, and, overhearing him, said, “Taee, give to our guest any information he may desire, but ask none from him in return. To question him who he is, whence he comes, or wherefore he is here, would be a breach of the law which my father has laid down in this house.”

“So be it,” said Taee, pressing his hand to his breast; and from that moment, till the one in which I saw him last, this child, with whom I became very intimate, never once put to me any of the questions thus interdicted.

Chapter IX.

It was not for some time, and until, by repeated trances, if they are to be so called, my mind became better prepared to interchange ideas with my entertainers, and more fully to comprehend differences of manners and customs, at first too strange to my experience to be seized by my reason, that I was enabled to gather the following details respecting the origin and history of the subterranean population, as portion of one great family race called the Ana.

According to the earliest traditions, the remote progenitors of the race had once tenanted a world above the surface of that in which their descendants dwelt. Myths of that world were still preserved in their archives, and in those myths were legends of a vaulted dome in which the lamps were lighted by no human hand. But such legends were considered by most commentators as allegorical fables. According to these traditions the earth itself, at the date to which the traditions ascend, was not indeed in its infancy, but in the throes and travail of transition from one form of development to another, and subject to many violent revolutions of nature. By one of such revolutions, that portion of the upper world inhabited by the ancestors of this race had been subjected to inundations, not rapid, but gradual and uncontrollable, in which all, save a scanty remnant, were submerged and perished. Whether this be a record of our historical and sacred Deluge, or of some earlier one contended for by geologists, I do not pretend to conjecture; though, according to the chronology of this people as compared with that of Newton, it must have been many thousands of years before the time of Noah. On the other hand, the account of these writers does not harmonize with the opinions most in vogue among geological authorities, inasmuch as it places the existence of a human race upon earth at dates long anterior to that assigned to the terrestrial formation adapted to the introduction of mammalia. A band of the ill-fated race, thus invaded by the Flood, had, during the march of the waters, taken refuge in caverns amidst the loftier rocks, and, wandering through these hollows, they lost sight of the upper world forever. Indeed, the whole face of the earth had been changed by this great revulsion; land had been turned into sea—sea into land. In the bowels of the inner earth, even now, I was informed as a positive fact, might be discovered the remains of human habitation—habitation not in huts and caverns, but in vast cities whose ruins attest the civilization of races which flourished before the age of Noah, and are not to be classified with those genera to which philosophy ascribes the use of flint and the ignorance of iron.

The fugitives had carried with them the knowledge of the arts they had practiced above ground—arts of culture and civilization. Their earliest want must have been that of supplying below the earth the light they had lost above it; and at no time, even in the traditional period, do the races, of which the one I now sojourned with formed a tribe, seem to have been unacquainted with the art of extracting light from gases, or manganese, or petroleum. They had been accustomed in their former state to contend with the rude forces of nature; and indeed the lengthened battle they had fought with their conqueror Ocean, which had taken centuries in its spread, had quickened their skill in curbing waters into dikes and channels. To this skill they owed their preservation in their new abode. “For many generations,” said my host, with a sort of contempt and horror, “these primitive forefathers are said to have degraded their rank and shortened their lives by eating the flesh of animals, many varieties of which had, like themselves, escaped the Deluge, and sought shelter in the hollows of the earth; other animals, supposed to be unknown to the upper world, those hollows themselves produced.”

When what we should term the historical age emerged from the twilight of tradition, the Ana were already established in different communities, and had attained to a degree of civilization very analogous to that which the more advanced nations above the earth now enjoy. They were familiar with most of our mechanical inventions, including the application of steam as well as gas. The communities were in fierce competition with each other. They had their rich and their poor; they had orators and conquerors; they made war either for a domain or an idea. Though the various states acknowledged various forms of government, free institutions were beginning to preponderate; popular assemblies increased in power; republics soon became general; the democracy to which the most enlightened European politicians look forward as the extreme goal of political advancement, and which still prevailed among other subterranean races, whom they despised as barbarians, the loftier family of Ana, to which belonged the tribe I was visiting, looked back to as one of the crude and ignorant experiments which belong to the infancy of political science. It was the age of envy and hate, of fierce passions, of constant social changes more or less violent, of strife between classes, of war between state and state. This phase of society lasted, however, for some ages, and was finally brought to a close, at least among the nobler and more intellectual populations, by the gradual discovery of the latent powers stored in the all-permeating fluid which they denominate Vril.

According to the account I received from Zee, who, as an erudite professor of the College of Sages, had studied such matters more diligently than any other member of my host’s family, this fluid is capable of being raised and disciplined into the mightiest agency over all forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It can destroy like the flash of lightning; yet, differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate life, heal, and preserve, and on it they chiefly rely for the cure of disease, or rather for enabling the physical organization to re-establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and thereby to cure itself. By this agency they rend way through the most solid substances, and open valleys for culture through the rocks of their subterranean wilderness. From it they extract the light which supplies their lamps, finding it steadier, softer, and healthier than the other inflammable materials they had formerly used.

But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to direct the more terrible force of vril were chiefly remarkable in their influence upon social polity. As these effects became familiarly known and skillfully administered, war between the vril-discoverers ceased, for they brought the art of destruction to such perfection as to annul all superiority in numbers, discipline, or military skill. The fire lodged in the hollow of a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter the strongest fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an embattled host. If army met army, and both had command of this agency, it could be but to the annihilation of each. The age of war was therefore gone, but with the cessation of war other effects bearing upon the social state soon became apparent. Man was so completely at the mercy of man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing, to slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by force gradually vanished from political systems and forms of law. It is only by force that vast communities, dispersed through great distances of space, can be kept together; but now there was no longer either the necessity of self-preservation or the pride of aggrandizement to make one state desire to preponderate in population over another.

The Vril-discoverers thus, in the course of a few generations, peacefully split into communities of moderate size. The tribe amongst which I had fallen was limited to 12,000 families. Each tribe occupied a territory sufficient for all its wants, and at stated periods the surplus population departed to seek a realm of its own. There appeared no necessity for any arbitrary selection of these emigrants; there was always a sufficient number who volunteered to depart.

These subdivided states, petty if we regard either territory or population,—all appertained to one vast general family. They spoke the same language, though the dialects might slightly differ. They intermarried; They maintained the same general laws and customs; and so important a bond between these several communities was the knowledge of vril and the practice of its agencies, that the word A-Vril was synonymous with civilization; and Vril-ya, signifying “The Civilized Nations,” was the common name by which the communities employing the uses of vril distinguished themselves from such of the Ana as were yet in a state of barbarism.

The government of the tribe of Vril-ya I am treating of was apparently very complicated, really very simple. It was based upon a principle recognized in theory, though little carried out in practice, above ground—viz., that the object of all systems of philosophical thought tends to the attainment of unity, or the ascent through all intervening labyrinths to the simplicity of a single first cause or principle. Thus in politics, even republican writers have agreed that a benevolent autocracy would insure the best administration, if there were any guarantees for its continuance, or against its gradual abuse of the powers accorded to it. This singular community elected therefore a single supreme magistrate styled Turn; he held his office nominally for life, but he could seldom be induced to retain it after the first approach of old age. There was indeed in this society nothing to induce any of its members to covet the cares of office. No honors, no insignia of higher rank, were assigned to it. The supreme magistrate was not distinguished from the rest by superior habitation or revenue. On the other hand, the duties awarded to him were marvelously light and easy, requiring no preponderant degree of energy or intelligence. There being no apprehensions of war, there were no armies to maintain; there being no government of force, there was no police to appoint and direct. What we call crime was utterly unknown to the Vril-ya; and there were no courts of criminal justice. The rare instances of civil disputes were referred for arbitration to friends chosen by either party, or decided by the Council of Sages, which will be described later. There were no professional lawyers; and indeed their laws were but amicable conventions, for there was no power to enforce laws against an offender who carried in his staff the power to destroy his judges. There were customs and regulations to compliance with which, for several ages, the people had tacitly habituated themselves; or if in any instance an individual felt such compliance hard, he quitted the community and went elsewhere. There was, in fact, quietly established amid this state, much the same compact that is found in our private families, in which we virtually say to any independent grown-up member of the family whom we receive to entertain, “Stay or go, according as our habits and regulations suit or displease you.” But though there were no laws such as we call laws, no race above ground is so law-observing. Obedience to the rule adopted by the community has become as much an instinct as if it were implanted by nature. Even in every household the head of it makes a regulation for its guidance, which is never resisted nor even caviled at by those who belong to the family. They have a proverb, the pithiness of which is much lost in this paraphrase, “No happiness without order, no order without authority, no authority without unity.” The mildness of all government among them, civil or domestic, may be signalized by their idiomatic expressions for such terms as illegal or forbidden—viz., “It is requested not to do so and so.” Poverty among the Ana is as unknown as crime; not that property is held in common, or that all are equals in the extent of their possessions or the size and luxury of their habitations: but there being no difference of rank or position between the grades of wealth or the choice of occupations, each pursues his own inclinations without creating envy or vying; some like a modest, some a more splendid kind of life; each makes himself happy in his own way. Owing to this absence of competition, and the limit placed on the population, it is difficult for a family to fall into distress; there are no hazardous speculations, no emulators striving for superior wealth and rank. No doubt, in each settlement all originally had the same proportions of land dealt out to them; but some, more adventurous than others, had extended their possessions farther into the bordering wilds, or had improved into richer fertility the produce of their fields, or entered into commerce or trade. Thus, necessarily, some had grown richer than others, but none had become absolutely poor, or wanting anything which their tastes desired. If they did so, it was always in their power to migrate, or at the worst to apply, without shame and with certainty of aid, to the rich, for all the members of the community considered themselves as brothers of one affectionate and united family. More upon this head will be treated of incidentally as my narrative proceeds.

The chief care of the supreme magistrate was to communicate with certain active departments charged with the administration of special details. The most important and essential of such details was that connected with the due provision of light. Of this department my host, Aph-Lin, was the chief. Another department, which might be called the foreign, communicated with the neighboring kindred states, principally for the purpose of ascertaining all new inventions; and to a third department all such inventions and improvements in machinery were committed for trial. Connected with this department was the College of Sages—a college especially favored by such of the Ana as were widowed and childless, and by the young unmarried females, amongst whom Zee was the most active, and, if what we call renown or distinction was a thing acknowledged by this people (which I shall later show it is not), among the more renowned or distinguished. It is by the female Professors of this College that those studies which are deemed of least use in practical life—as purely speculative philosophy, the history of remote periods, and such sciences as entomology, conchology, &c.—are the more diligently cultivated. Zee, whose mind, active as Aristotle’s, equally embraced the largest domains and the minutest details of thought, had written two volumes on the parasite insect that dwells amid the hairs of a tiger’s paw, which work was considered the best authority on that interesting subject.

The animal here referred to has many points of difference from the tiger of the upper world. It is larger, and with a broader paw, and still more receding frontal. It haunts the side of lakes and pools, and feeds principally on fishes, though it does not object to any terrestrial animal of inferior strength that comes in its way. It is becoming very scarce even in the wild districts, where it is devoured by gigantic reptiles. I apprehended that it clearly belongs to the tiger species, since the parasite animalcule found in its paw, like that in the Asiatic tiger, is a miniature image of itself.

But the researches of the sages are not confined to such subtle or elegant studies. They comprise various others more important, and especially the properties of vril, to the perception of which their finer nervous organization renders the female Professors eminently keen. It is out of this college that the Turn, or chief magistrate, selects Councilors, limited to three, in the rare instances in which novelty of event or circumstance perplexes his own judgment.

There are a few other departments of minor consequence, but all are carried on so noiselessly, and quietly that the evidence of a government seems to vanish altogether, and social order to be as regular and unobtrusive as if it were a law of nature. Machinery is employed to an inconceivable extent in all the operations of labor within and without doors, and it is the unceasing object of the department charged with its administration to extend its efficiency. There is no class of laborers or servants, but all who are required to assist or control the machinery are found in the children, from the time they leave the care of their mothers to the marriageable age, which they place at sixteen for the Gy-ei (the females), twenty for the Ana (the males). These children are formed into bands and sections under their own chiefs, each following the pursuits in which he is most pleased, or for which he feels himself most fitted. Some take to handicrafts, some to agriculture, some to household work, and some to the only services of danger to which the population is exposed; for the sole perils that threaten this tribe are, first, from those occasional convulsions within the earth, to foresee and guard against which tasks their utmost ingenuity—irruptions of fire and water, the storms of subterranean winds and escaping gases. At the borders of the domain, and at all places where such peril might be apprehended, vigilant inspectors are stationed with telegraphic communications to the hall in which chosen sages take it by turns to hold perpetual sittings. These inspectors are always selected from the elder boys approaching the age of puberty, and on the principle that at that age observation is more acute and the physical forces more alert than at any other. The second service of danger, less grave, is in the destruction of all creatures hostile to the life, or the culture, or even the comfort, of the Ana. Of these the most formidable are the vast reptiles, of some of which antediluvian relics are preserved in our museums, and certain gigantic winged creatures, half bird, half reptile. These, together with lesser wild animals, corresponding to our tigers or venomous serpents, it is left to the younger children to hunt and destroy; because, according to the Ana, here ruthlessness is wanted, and the younger the child the more ruthlessly he will destroy. There is another class of animals in the destruction of which discrimination is to be used, and against which children of intermediate age are appointed-animals that do not threaten the life of man, but ravage the produce of his labor, varieties of the elk and deer species, and a smaller creature much akin to our rabbit, though infinitely more destructive to crops, and much more cunning in its mode of depredation. It is the first object of these appointed infants, to tame the more intelligent of such animals into respect for enclosures signalized by conspicuous landmarks, as dogs are taught to respect a larder, or even to guard the master’s property. It is only where such creatures are found untamable to this extent that they are destroyed. Life is never taken away for food or for sport, and never spared where untamably inimical to the Ana. Concomitantly with these bodily services and tasks, the mental education of the children goes on till boyhood ceases. It is the general custom, then, to pass though a course of instruction at the College of Sages, in which, besides more general studies, the pupil receives special lessons in such vocation or direction of intellect as he himself selects. Some, however, prefer to pass this period of probation in travel, or to emigrate, or to settle down at once into rural or commercial pursuits. No force is put upon individual inclination.

Chapter X.

The word Ana (pronounced broadly ‘Arna’) corresponds with our plural ‘men;’ An (pronounced ‘Arn’), the singular, with ‘man.’ The word for woman is Gy (pronounced hard, as in Guy); it forms itself into Gy-ei for the plural, but the G becomes soft in the plural like Jy-ei. They have a proverb to the effect that this difference in pronunciation is symbolical, for that the female sex is soft in the concrete, but hard to deal with in the individual. The Gy-ei are in the fullest enjoyment of all the rights of equality with males, for which certain philosophers above ground contend.

In childhood they perform the offices of work and labor impartially with the boys, and, indeed, in the earlier age appropriated to the destruction of animals irreclaimably hostile, the girls are frequently preferred, as being by constitution more ruthless under the influence of fear or hate. In the interval between infancy and the marriageable age familiar intercourse between the sexes is suspended. At the marriageable age it is renewed, never with worse consequences than those which attend upon marriage. All arts and vocations allotted to the one sex are open to the other, and the Gy-ei arrogate to themselves a superiority in all those abstruse and mystical branches of reasoning, for which they say the Ana are unfitted by a duller sobriety of understanding, or the routine of their matter-of-fact occupations, just as young ladies in our own world constitute themselves authorities in the subtlest points of theological doctrine, for which few men, actively engaged in worldly business have sufficient learning or refinement of intellect. Whether owing to early training in gymnastic exercises, or to their constitutional organization, the Gy-ei are usually superior to the Ana in physical strength (an important element in the consideration and maintenance of female rights). They attain to loftier stature, and amid their rounder proportions are imbedded sinews and muscles as hardy as those of the other sex. Indeed they assert that, according to the original laws of nature, females were intended to be larger than males, and maintain this dogma by reference to the earliest formations of life in insects, and in the most ancient family of the vertebrata—viz., fishes—in both of which the females are generally large enough to make a meal of their consorts if they so desire. Above all, the Gy-ei have a readier and more concentrated power over that mysterious fluid or agency which contains the element of destruction, with a larger portion of that sagacity which comprehends dissimulation. Thus they cannot only defend themselves against all aggressions from the males, but could, at any moment when he least expected his danger, terminate the existence of an offending spouse. To the credit of the Gy-ei no instance of their abuse of this awful superiority in the art of destruction is on record for several ages. The last that occurred in the community I speak of appears (according to their chronology) to have been about two thousand years ago. A Gy, then, in a fit of jealousy, slew her husband; and this abominable act inspired such terror among the males that they emigrated in a body and left all the Gy-ei to themselves. The history runs that the widowed Gy-ei, thus reduced to despair, fell upon the murderess when in her sleep (and therefore unarmed), and killed her, and then entered into a solemn obligation amongst themselves to abrogate forever the exercise of their extreme conjugal powers, and to inculcate the same obligation for ever and ever on their female children. By this conciliatory process, a deputation dispatched to the fugitive consorts succeeded in persuading many to return, but those who did return were mostly the elder ones. The younger, either from too craven a doubt of their consorts, or too high an estimate of their own merits, rejected all overtures, and, remaining in other communities, were caught up there by other mates, with whom perhaps they were no better off. But the loss of so large a portion of the male youth operated as a salutary warning on the Gy-ei, and confirmed them in the pious resolution to which they pledged themselves. Indeed it is now popularly considered that, by long hereditary disuse, the Gy-ei have lost both the aggressive and defensive superiority over the Ana which they once possessed, just as in the inferior animals above the earth many peculiarities in their original formation, intended by nature for their protection, gradually fade or become inoperative when not needed under altered circumstances. I should be sorry, however, for any An who induced a Gy to make the experiment whether he or she were the stronger.

From the incident I have narrated, the Ana date certain alterations in the marriage customs, tending, perhaps, somewhat to the advantage of the male. They now bind themselves in wedlock only for three years; at the end of each third year either male or female can divorce the other and is free to marry again. At the end of ten years the An has the privilege of taking a second wife, allowing the first to retire if she so please. These regulations are for the most part a dead letter; divorces and polygamy are extremely rare, and the marriage state now seems singularly happy and serene among this astonishing people;—the Gy-ei, notwithstanding their boastful superiority in physical strength and intellectual abilities, being much curbed into gentle manners by the dread of separation or of a second wife, and the Ana being very much the creatures of custom, and not, except under great aggravation, likely to exchange for hazardous novelties faces and manners to which they are reconciled by habit. But there is one privilege the Gy-ei carefully retain, and the desire for which perhaps forms the secret motive of most lady asserters of woman rights above ground. They claim the privilege, here usurped by men, of proclaiming their love and urging their suit; in other words, of being the wooing party rather than the wooed. Such a phenomenon as an old maid does not exist among the Gy-ei. Indeed it is very seldom that a Gy does not secure any An upon whom she sets her heart, if his affections be not strongly engaged elsewhere. However coy, reluctant, and prudish, the male she courts may prove at first, yet her perseverance, her ardor, her persuasive powers, her command over the mystic agencies of vril, are pretty sure to run down his neck into what we call “the fatal noose.” Their argument for the reversal of that relationship of the sexes which the blind tyranny of man has established on the surface of the earth, appears cogent, and is advanced with a frankness which might well be commended to impartial consideration. They say, that of the two the female is by nature of a more loving disposition than the male—that love occupies a larger space in her thoughts, and is more essential to her happiness, and that therefore she ought to be the wooing party; that otherwise the male is a shy and dubitant creature—that he has often a selfish predilection for the single state—that he often pretends to misunderstand tender glances and delicate hints—that, in short, he must be resolutely pursued and captured. They add, moreover, that unless the Gy can secure the An of her choice, and one whom she would not select out of the whole world becomes her mate, she is not only less happy than she otherwise would be, but she is not so good a being, that her qualities of heart are not sufficiently developed; whereas the An is a creature that less lastingly concentrates his affections on one object; that if he cannot get the Gy whom he prefers he easily reconciles himself to another Gy; and, finally, that at the worst, if he is loved and taken care of, it is less necessary to the welfare of his existence that he should love as well as be loved; he grows contented with his creature comforts, and the many occupations of thought which he creates for himself.

Whatever may be said as to this reasoning, the system works well for the male; for being thus sure that he is truly and ardently loved, and that the more coy and reluctant he shows himself, the more determination to secure him increases, he generally contrives to make his consent dependent on such conditions as he thinks the best calculated to insure, if not a blissful, at least a peaceful life. Each individual An has his own hobbies, his own ways, his own predilections, and, whatever they may be, he demands a promise of full and unrestrained concession to them. This, in the pursuit of her object, the Gy readily promises; and as the characteristic of this extraordinary people is an implicit veneration for truth, and her word once given is never broken even by the giddiest Gy, the conditions stipulated for are religiously observed. In fact, notwithstanding all their abstract rights and powers, the Gy-ei are the most amiable, conciliatory, and submissive wives I have ever seen even in the happiest households above ground. It is an aphorism among them, that “where a Gy loves it is her pleasure to obey.” It will be observed that in the relationship of the sexes I have spoken only of marriage, for such is the moral perfection to which this community has attained, that any illicit connection is as little possible amongst them as it would be to a couple of linnets during the time they agree to live in pairs.

Chapter XI.

Nothing had more perplexed me in seeking to reconcile my sense to the existence of regions extending below the surface of the earth, and habitable by beings, if dissimilar from, still, in all material points of organism, akin to those in the upper world, than the contradiction thus presented to the doctrine in which, I believe, most geologists and philosophers concur—viz., that though with us the sun is the great source of heat, yet the deeper we go beneath the crust of the earth, the greater is the increasing heat, being, it is said, found in the ratio of a degree for every foot, commencing from fifty feet below the surface. But though the domains of the tribe I speak of were, on the higher ground, so comparatively near to the surface, that I could account for a temperature, therein, suitable to organic life, yet even the ravines and valleys of that realm were much less hot than philosophers would deem possible at such a depth—certainly not warmer than the south of France, or at least of Italy. And according to all the accounts I received, vast tracts immeasurably deeper beneath the surface, and in which one might have thought only salamanders could exist, were inhabited by innumerable races organized like ourselves, I cannot pretend in any way to account for a fact which is so at variance with the recognized laws of science, nor could Zee much help me towards a solution of it. She did but conjecture that sufficient allowance had not been made by our philosophers for the extreme porousness of the interior earth—the vastness of its cavities and irregularities, which served to create free currents of air and frequent winds—and for the various modes in which heat is evaporated and thrown off. She allowed, however, that there was a depth at which the heat was deemed to be intolerable to such organized life as was known to the experience of the Vril-ya, though their philosophers believed that even in such places life of some kind, life sentient, life intellectual, would be found abundant and thriving, could the philosophers penetrate to it. “Wherever the All-Good builds,” said she, “there, be sure, He places inhabitants. He loves not empty dwellings.” She added, however, that many changes in temperature and climate had been effected by the skill of the Vril-ya, and that the agency of vril had been successfully employed in such changes. She described a subtle and life-giving medium called Lai, which I suspect to be identical with the ethereal oxygen of Dr. Lewins, wherein work all the correlative forces united under the name of vril; and contended that wherever this medium could be expanded, as it were, sufficiently for the various agencies of vril to have ample play, a temperature congenial to the highest forms of life could be secured. She said also, that it was the belief of their naturalists that flowers and vegetation had been produced originally (whether developed from seeds borne from the surface of the earth in the earlier convulsions of nature, or imported by the tribes that first sought refuge in cavernous hollows) through the operations of the light constantly brought to bear on them, and the gradual improvement in culture. She said also, that since the vril light had superseded all other light-giving bodies, the colors of flower and foliage had become more brilliant, and vegetation had acquired larger growth.

Leaving these matters to the consideration of those better competent to deal with them, I must now devote a few pages to the very interesting questions connected with the language of the Vril-ya.

Chapter XII.

The language of the Vril-ya is peculiarly interesting, because it seems to me to exhibit with great clearness the traces of the three main transitions through which language passes in attaining to perfection of form.

One of the most illustrious of recent philologists, Max Muller, in arguing for the analogy between the strata of language and the strata of the earth, lays down this absolute dogma: “No language can, by any possibility, be inflectional without having passed through the agglutinative and isolating stratum. No language can be agglutinative without clinging with its roots to the underlying stratum of isolation.” (‘On the Stratification of Language,’ p. 20.)

Taking then the Chinese language as the best existing type of the original isolating stratum, “as the faithful photograph of man in his leading-strings trying the muscles of his mind, groping his way, and so delighted with his first successful grasps that he repeats them again and again,” (Max Muller, p. 3)—we have, in the language of the Vril-ya, still “clinging with its roots to the underlying stratum,” the evidences of the original isolation. It abounds in monosyllables, which are the foundations of the language. The transition into the agglutinative form marks an epoch that must have gradually extended through ages, the written literature of which has only survived in a few fragments of symbolical mythology and certain pithy sentences which have passed into popular proverbs. With the extant literature of the Vril-ya the inflectional stratum commences. No doubt at that time there must have operated concurrent causes, in the fusion of races by some dominant people, and the rise of some great literary phenomena by which the form of language became arrested and fixed. As the inflectional stage prevailed over the agglutinative, it is surprising to see how much more boldly the original roots of the language project from the surface that conceals them. In the old fragments and proverbs of the preceding stage the monosyllables which compose those roots vanish amidst words of enormous length, comprehending whole sentences from which no one part can be disentangled from the other and employed separately. But when the inflectional form of language became so far advanced as to have its scholars and grammarians, they seem to have united in extirpating all such polysynthetical or polysyllabic monsters, as devouring invaders of the aboriginal forms. Words beyond three syllables became proscribed as barbarous and in proportion as the language grew thus simplified it increased in strength, in dignity, and in sweetness. Though now very compressed in sound, it gains in clearness by that compression. By a single letter, according to its position, they contrive to express all that with civilized nations in our upper world it takes the waste, sometimes of syllables, sometimes of sentences, to express. Let me here cite one or two instances: An (which I will translate man), Ana (men); the letter ‘s’ is with them a letter implying multitude, according to where it is placed; Sana means mankind; Ansa, a multitude of men. The prefix of certain letters in their alphabet invariably denotes compound significations. For instance, Gl (which with them is a single letter, as ‘th’ is a single letter with the Greeks) at the commencement of a word infers an assemblage or union of things, sometimes kindred, sometimes dissimilar—as Oon, a house; Gloon, a town (i.e., an assemblage of houses). Ata is sorrow; Glata, a public calamity. Aur-an is the health or wellbeing of a man; Glauran, the wellbeing of the state, the good of the community; and a word constantly in their mouths is A-glauran, which denotes their political creed—viz., that “the first principle of a community is the good of all.” Aub is invention; Sila, a tone in music. Glaubsila, as uniting the ideas of invention and of musical intonation, is the classical word for poetry—abbreviated, in ordinary conversation, to Glaubs. Na, which with them is, like Gl, but a single letter, always, when an initial, implies something antagonistic to life or joy or comfort, resembling in this the Aryan root Nak, expressive of perishing or destruction. Nax is darkness; Narl, death; Naria, sin or evil. Nas—an uttermost condition of sin and evil—corruption. In writing, they deem it irreverent to express the Supreme Being by any special name. He is symbolized by what may be termed the hieroglyphic of a pyramid, /\. In prayer they address Him by a name which they deem too sacred to confide to a stranger, and I know it not. In conversation they generally use a periphrastic epithet, such as the All-Good. The letter V, symbolical of the inverted pyramid, where it is an initial, nearly always denotes excellence of power; as Vril, of which I have said so much; Veed, an immortal spirit; Veed-ya, immortality; Koom, pronounced like the Welsh Cwm, denotes something of hollowness. Koom itself is a cave; Koom-in, a hole; Zi-koom, a valley; Koom-zi, vacancy or void; Bodh-koom, ignorance (literally, knowledge-void). Koom-posh is their name for the government of the many, or the ascendancy of the most ignorant or hollow. Posh is an almost untranslatable idiom, implying, as the reader will see later, contempt. The closest rendering I can give to it is our slang term, “bosh;” and this Koom-Posh may be loosely rendered “Hollow-Bosh.” But when Democracy or Koom-Posh degenerates from popular ignorance into that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as (to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the French Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Roman Republic preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that state of things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife—Glek, the universal strife. Nas, as I before said, is corruption or rot; thus, Glek-Nas may be construed, “the universal strife-rot.” Their compounds are very expressive; thus, Bodh being knowledge, and Too a participle that implies the action of cautiously approaching,—Too-bodh is their word for Philosophy; Pah is a contemptuous exclamation analogous to our idiom, “stuff and nonsense;” Pah-bodh (literally stuff and nonsense-knowledge) is their term for futile and false philosophy, and applied to a species of metaphysical or speculative ratiocination formerly in vogue, which consisted in making inquiries that could not be answered, and were not worth making; such, for instance, as “Why does an An have five toes to his feet instead of four or six? Did the first An, created by the All-Good, have the same number of toes as his descendants? In the form by which an An will be recognized by his friends in the future state of being, will he retain any toes at all, and, if so, will they be material toes or spiritual toes?” I take these illustrations of Pahbodh, not in irony or jest, but because the very inquiries I name formed the subject of controversy by the latest cultivators of that ‘science,’—4000 years ago.

In the declension of nouns I was informed that anciently there were eight cases (one more than in the Sanskrit Grammar); but the effect of time has been to reduce these cases, and multiply, instead of these varying terminations, explanatory propositions. At present, in the Grammar submitted to my study, there were four cases to nouns, three having varying terminations, and the fourth a differing prefix.

SINGULAR.

Nom. An, Man,

Dat. Ano, to Man,

Ac. Anan, Man,

Voc. Hil-an, O Man

PLURAL.

Nom. Ana, Men.

Dat. Anoi, to Men

Ac. Ananda, Men.

Voc. Hil-Ananda, O Men.

In the elder inflectional literature the dual form existed—it has long been obsolete.

The genitive case with them is also obsolete; the dative supplies its place: they say the House ‘to’ a Man, instead of the House ‘of’ a Man. When used (sometimes in poetry), the genitive in the termination is the same as the nominative; so is the ablative, the preposition that marks it being a prefix or suffix at option, and generally decided by ear, according to the sound of the noun. It will be observed that the prefix Hil marks the vocative case. It is always retained in addressing another, except in the most intimate domestic relations; its omission would be considered rude: just as in our of forms of speech in addressing a king it would have been deemed disrespectful to say “King,” and reverential to say “O King.” In fact, as they have no titles of honor, the vocative adjuration supplies the place of a title, and is given impartially to all. The prefix Hil enters into the composition of words that imply distant communications, as Hil-ya, to travel.

In the conjugation of their verbs, which is much too lengthy a subject to enter on here, the auxiliary verb Ya, “to go,” which plays so considerable part in the Sanskrit, appears and performs a kindred office, as if it were a radical in some language from which both had descended. But another auxiliary or opposite signification also accompanies it and shares its labors—viz., Zi, to stay or repose. Thus Ya enters into the future tense, and Zi in the preterite of all verbs requiring auxiliaries. Yam, I shall go—Yiam, I may go—Yani-ya, I shall go (literally, I go to go), Zam-poo-yan, I have gone (literally, I rest from gone). Ya, as a termination, implies by analogy, progress, movement, efflorescence. Zi, as a terminal, denotes fixity, sometimes in a good sense, sometimes in a bad, according to the word with which it is coupled. Iva-zi, eternal goodness; Nan-zi, eternal evil. Poo (from) enters as a prefix to words that denote repugnance, or things from which we ought to be averse. Poo-pra, disgust; Poo-naria, falsehood, the vilest kind of evil. Poosh or Posh I have already confessed to be untranslatable literally. It is an expression of contempt not unmixed with pity. This radical seems to have originated from inherent sympathy between the labial effort and the sentiment that impelled it, Poo being an utterance in which the breath is exploded from the lips with more or less vehemence. On the other hand, Z, when an initial, is with them a sound in which the breath is sucked inward, and thus Zu, pronounced Zoo (which in their language is one letter), is the ordinary prefix to words that signify something that attracts, pleases, touches the heart—as Zummer, lover; Zutze, love; Zuzulia, delight. This indrawn sound of Z seems indeed naturally appropriate to fondness. Thus, even in our language, mothers say to their babies, in defiance of grammar, “Zoo darling;” and I have heard a learned professor at Boston call his wife (he had been only married a month) “Zoo little pet.”

I cannot quit this subject, however, without observing by what slight changes in the dialects favored by different tribes of the same race, the original signification and beauty of sounds may become confused and deformed. Zee told me with much indignation that Zummer (lover) which in the way she uttered it, seemed slowly taken down to the very depths of her heart, was, in some not very distant communities of the Vril-ya, vitiated into the half-hissing, half-nasal, wholly disagreeable, sound of Subber. I thought to myself it only wanted the introduction of ‘n’ before ‘u’ to render it into an English word significant of the last quality an amorous Gy would desire in her Zummer.

I will but mention another peculiarity in this language which gives equal force and brevity to its forms of expressions.

A is with them, as with us, the first letter of the alphabet, and is often used as a prefix word by itself to convey a complex idea of sovereignty or chiefdom, or presiding principle. For instance, Iva is goodness; Diva, goodness and happiness united; A-Diva is unerring and absolute truth. I have already noticed the value of A in A-glauran, so, in vril (to whose properties they trace their present state of civilization), A-vril, denotes, as I have said, civilization itself.

The philologist will have seen from the above how much the language of the Vril-ya is akin to the Aryan or Indo-Germanic; but, like all languages, it contains words and forms in which transfers from very opposite sources of speech have been taken. The very title of Turn, which they give to their supreme magistrate, indicates theft from a tongue akin to the Turanian. They say themselves that this is a foreign word borrowed from a title which their historical records show to have been borne by the chief of a nation with whom the ancestors of the Vril-ya were, in very remote periods, on friendly terms, but which has long become extinct, and they say that when, after the discovery of vril, they remodeled their political institutions, they expressly adopted a title taken from an extinct race and a dead language for that of their chief magistrate, in order to avoid all titles for that office with which they had previous associations.

Should life be spared to me, I may collect into systematic form such knowledge as I acquired of this language during my sojourn amongst the Vril-ya. But what I have already said will perhaps suffice to show to genuine philological students that a language which, preserving so many of the roots in the aboriginal form, and clearing from the immediate, but transitory, polysynthetical stage so many rude encumbrances, has attained to such a union of simplicity and compass in its final inflectional forms, must have been the gradual work of countless ages and many varieties of mind ; that it contains the evidence of fusion between congenial races, and necessitated, in arriving at the shape of which I have given examples, the continuous culture of a highly thoughtful people.

That, nevertheless, the literature which belongs to this language is a literature of the past; that the present felicitous state of society at which the Ana have attained forbids the progressive cultivation of literature, especially in the two main divisions of fiction and history,—I shall have occasion to show.

Chapter XIII.

This people have a religion, and, whatever may be said against it, at least it has these strange peculiarities: firstly, that all believe in the creed they profess; secondly, that they all practice the precepts which the creed inculcates. They unite in the worship of one divine Creator and Sustainer of the universe. They believe that it is one of the properties of the all-permeating agency of vril, to transmit to the well-spring of life and intelligence every thought that a living creature can conceive; and though they do not contend that the idea of a Deity is innate, yet they say that the An (man) is the only creature, so far as their observation of nature extends, to whom ‘the capacity of conceiving that idea,’ with all the trains of thought which open out from it, is vouchsafed. They hold that this capacity is a privilege that cannot have been given in vain, and hence that prayer and thanksgiving are acceptable to the divine Creator, and necessary to the complete development of the human creature. They offer their devotions both in private and public. Not being considered one of their species, I was not admitted into the building or temple in which the public worship is rendered; but I am informed that the service is exceedingly short, and unattended with any pomp of ceremony. It is a doctrine with the Vril-ya, that earnest devotion or complete abstraction from the actual world cannot, with benefit to itself, be maintained long at a stretch by the human mind, especially in public, and that all attempts to do so either lead to fanaticism or to hypocrisy. When they pray in private, it is when they are alone or with their young children.

They say that in ancient times there was a great number of books written upon speculations as to the nature of the Deity, and upon the forms of belief or worship supposed to be most agreeable to Him. But these were found to lead to such heated and angry disputations as not only to shake the peace of the community and divide families before the most united, but in the course of discussing the attributes of the Deity, the existence of the Deity Himself became argued away, or, what was worse, became invested with the passions and infirmities of the human disputants. “For,” said my host, “since a finite being like an An cannot possibly define the Infinite, so, when he endeavors to realize an idea of the Divinity, he only reduces the Divinity into an An like himself.” During the later ages, therefore, all theological speculations, though not forbidden, have been so discouraged as to have fallen utterly into disuse. The Vril-ya unite in a conviction of a future state, more felicitous and more perfect than the present. If they have very vague notions of the doctrine of rewards and punishments, it is perhaps because they have no systems of rewards and punishments among themselves, for there are no crimes to punish, and their moral standard is so even that no An among them is, upon the whole, considered more virtuous than another. If one excels, perhaps in one virtue, another equally excels in some other virtue; If one has his prevalent fault or infirmity, so also another has his. In fact, in their extraordinary mode of life. There are so few temptations to wrong, that they are good (according to their notions of goodness) merely because they live. They have some fanciful notions upon the continuance of life, when once bestowed, even in the vegetable world, as the reader will see in the next chapter.

Chapter XIV.

Though, as I have said, the Vril-ya discourage all speculations on the nature of the Supreme Being, they appear to concur in a belief by which they think to solve that great problem of the existence of evil which has so perplexed the philosophy of the upper world. They hold that wherever He has once given life, with the perceptions of that life, however faint it be, as in a plant, the life is never destroyed; it passes into new and improved forms, though not in this planet (differing therein from the ordinary doctrine of metempsychosis), and that the living thing retains the sense of identity, so that it connects its past life with its future, and is ‘conscious’ of its progressive improvement in the scale of joy. For they say that, without this assumption, they cannot, according to the lights of human reason vouchsafed to them, discover the perfect justice which must be a constituent quality of the All-Wise and the All-Good. Injustice, they say, can only emanate from three causes: want of wisdom to perceive what is just, want of benevolence to desire, want of power to fulfill it; and that each of these three wants is incompatible in the All-Wise, the All-Good, the All-Powerful. But that, while even in this life, the wisdom, the benevolence, and the power of the Supreme Being are sufficiently apparent to compel our recognition, the justice necessarily resulting from those attributes, absolutely requires another life, not for man only, but for every living thing of the inferior orders. That, alike in the animal and the vegetable world, we see one individual rendered, by circumstances beyond its control, exceedingly wretched compared to its neighbors—one only exists as the prey of another—even a plant suffers from disease till it perishes prematurely, while the plant next to it rejoices in its vitality and lives out its happy life free from a pang. That it is an erroneous analogy from human infirmities to reply by saying that the Supreme Being only acts by general laws, thereby making his own secondary causes so potent as to mar the essential kindness of the First Cause; and a still meaner and more ignorant conception of the All-Good, to dismiss with a brief contempt all consideration of justice for the myriad forms into which He has infused life, and assume that justice is only due to the single product of the An. There is no small and no great in the eyes of the divine Life-Giver. But once grant that nothing, however humble, which feels that it lives and suffers, can perish through the series of ages, that all its suffering here, if continuous from the moment of its birth to that of its transfer to another form of being, would be more brief compared with eternity than the cry of the new-born is compared to the whole life of a man; and once suppose that this living thing retains its sense of identity when so transformed (for without that sense it could be aware of no future being), and though, indeed, the fulfillment of divine justice is removed from the scope of our ken, yet we have a right to assume it to be uniform and universal, and not varying and partial, as it would be if acting only upon general and secondary laws; because such perfect justice flows of necessity from perfectness of knowledge to conceive, perfectness of love to will, and perfectness of power to complete it.

However fantastic this belief of the Vril-ya may be, it tends perhaps to confirm politically the systems of government which, admitting different degrees of wealth, yet establishes perfect equality in rank, exquisite mildness in all relations and intercourse, and tenderness to all created things which the good of the community does not require them to destroy. And though their notion of compensation to a tortured insect or a cankered flower may seem to some of us a very wild crotchet, yet, at least, is not a mischievous one; and it may furnish matter for no unpleasing reflection to think that within the abysses of earth, never lit by a ray from the material heavens, there should have penetrated so luminous a conviction of the ineffable goodness of the Creator—so fixed an idea that the general laws by which He acts cannot admit of any partial injustice or evil, and therefore cannot be comprehended without reference to their action over all space and throughout all time. And since, as I shall have occasion to observe later, the intellectual conditions and social systems of this subterranean race comprise and harmonize great, and apparently antagonistic, varieties in philosophical doctrine and speculation which have from time to time been started, discussed, dismissed, and have re-appeared amongst thinkers or dreamers in the upper world,—so I may perhaps appropriately conclude this reference to the belief of the Vril-ya, that self-conscious or sentient life once given is indestructible among inferior creatures as well as in man, by an eloquent passage from the work of that eminent zoologist, Louis Agassiz, which I have only just met with, many years after I had committed to paper these recollections of the life of the Vril-ya which I now reduce into something like arrangement and form: “The relations which individual animals bear to one another are of such a character that they ought long ago to have been considered as sufficient proof that no organized being could ever have been called into existence by other agency than by the direct intervention of a reflective mind. This argues strongly in favor of the existence in every animal of an immaterial principle similar to that which by its excellence and superior endowments places man so much above the animals; yet the principle unquestionably exists, and whether it be called sense, reason, or instinct, it presents in the whole range of organized beings a series of phenomena closely linked together, and upon it are based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific differences which characterize every organism. Most of the arguments in favor of the immortality of man apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other living beings. May I not add that a future life in which man would be deprived of that great source of enjoyment and intellectual and moral improvement which results from the contemplation of the harmonies of an organic world would involve a lamentable loss? And may we not look to a spiritual concert of the combined worlds and ALL their inhabitants in the presence of their Creator as the highest conception of paradise?” (‘Essay on Classification,’ sect. xvii. p. 97-99.)

Chapter XV.

Kind to me as I found all in this household, the young daughter of my host was the most considerate and thoughtful in her kindness. At her suggestion I laid aside the habiliments in which I had descended from the upper earth, and adopted the dress of the Vril-ya, with the exception of the artful wings which served them, when on foot, as a graceful mantle. But as many of the Vril-ya, when occupied in urban pursuits, did not wear these wings, this exception created no marked difference between myself and the race among whom I sojourned, and I was thus enabled to visit the town without exciting unpleasant curiosity. Out of the household no one suspected that I had come from the upper world, and I was but regarded as one of some inferior and barbarous tribe whom Aph-Lin entertained as a guest.

The city was large in proportion to the territory round it, which was of no greater extent than many an English or Hungarian nobleman’s estate; but the whole if it, to the verge of the rocks which constituted its boundary, was cultivated to the nicest degree, except where certain allotments of mountain and pasture were humanely left free to the sustenance of the harmless animals they had tamed, though not for domestic use. So great is their kindness towards these humbler creatures, that a sum is devoted from the public treasury for the purpose of deporting them to other Vril-ya communities willing to receive them (chiefly new colonies), whenever they become too numerous for the pastures allotted to them in their native place. They do not, however, multiply to an extent comparable to the ratio at which, with us, animals bred for slaughter, increase. It seems a law of nature that animals not useful to man gradually recede from the domains he occupies, or even become extinct. It is an old custom of the various sovereign states amidst which the race of the Vril-ya are distributed, to leave between each state a neutral and uncultivated border-land. In the instance of the community I speak of, this tract, being a ridge of savage rocks, was impassable by foot, but was easily surmounted, whether by the wings of the inhabitants or the air-boats, of which I shall speak hereafter. Roads through it were also cut for the transit of vehicles impelled by vril. These intercommunicating tracts were always kept lighted, and the expense thereof defrayed by a special tax, to which all the communities comprehended in the denomination of Vril-ya contribute in settled proportions. By these means a considerable commercial traffic with other states, both near and distant, was carried on. The surplus wealth on this special community was chiefly agricultural. The community was also eminent for skill in constructing implements connected with the arts of husbandry. In exchange for such merchandise it obtained articles more of luxury than necessity. There were few things imported on which they set a higher price than birds taught to pipe artful tunes in concert. These were brought from a great distance, and were marvelous for beauty of song and plumage. I understand that extraordinary care was taken by their breeders and teachers in selection, and that the species had wonderfully improved during the last few years. I saw no other pet animals among this community except some very amusing and sportive creatures of the Batrachian species, resembling frogs, but with very intelligent countenances, which the children were fond of, and kept in their private gardens. They appear to have no animals akin to our dogs or horses, though that learned naturalist, Zee, informed me that such creatures had once existed in those parts, and might now be found in regions inhabited by other races than the Vril-ya. She said that they had gradually disappeared from the more civilized world since the discovery of vril, and the results attending that discovery had dispensed with their uses. Machinery and the invention of wings had superseded the horse as a beast of burden; and the dog was no longer wanted either for protection or the chase, as it had been when the ancestors of the Vril-ya feared the aggressions of their own kind, or hunted the lesser animals for food. Indeed, however, so far as the horse was concerned, this region was so rocky that a horse could have been, there, of little use either for pastime or burden. The only creature they use for the latter purpose is a kind of large goat which is much employed on farms. The nature of the surrounding soil in these districts may be said to have first suggested the invention of wings and air-boats. The largeness of space in proportion to the space occupied by the city, was occasioned by the custom of surrounding every house with a separate garden. The broad main street, in which Aph-Lin dwelt, expanded into a vast square, in which were placed the College of Sages and all the public offices; a magnificent fountain of the luminous fluid which I call naptha (I am ignorant of its real nature) in the centre. All these public edifices have a uniform character of massiveness and solidity. They reminded me of the architectural pictures of Martin. Along the upper stories of each ran a balcony, or rather a terraced garden, supported by columns, filled with flowering plants, and tenanted by many kinds of tame birds.

From the square branched several streets, all broad and brilliantly lighted, and ascending up the eminence on either side. In my excursions in the town I was never allowed to go alone; Aph-Lin or his daughter was my habitual companion. In this community the adult Gy is seen walking with any young An as familiarly as if there were no difference of sex.

The retail shops are not very numerous; the persons who attend on a customer are all children of various ages, and exceedingly intelligent and courteous, but without the least touch of importunity or cringing. The shopkeeper himself might or might not be visible; when visible, he seemed rarely employed on any matter connected with his professional business; and yet he had taken to that business from special liking for it, and quite independently of his general sources of fortune.

The Ana of the community are, on the whole, an indolent set of beings after the active age of childhood. Whether by temperament or philosophy, they rank repose among the chief blessings of life. Indeed, when you take away from a human being the incentives to action which are found in cupidity or ambition, it seems to me no wonder that he rests quiet.

In their ordinary movements they prefer the use of their feet to that of their wings. But for their sports or (to indulge in a bold misuse of terms) their public ‘promenades,’ they employ the latter, also for the aerial dances I have described, as well as for visiting their country places, which are mostly placed on lofty heights; and, when still young, they prefer their wings for travel into the other regions of the Ana, to vehicular conveyances.

Those who accustom themselves to flight can fly, if less rapidly than some birds, yet from twenty-five to thirty miles an hour, and keep up that rate for five or six hours at a stretch. But the Ana generally, on reaching middle age, are not fond of rapid movements requiring violent exercise. Perhaps for this reason, as they hold a doctrine which our own physicians will doubtless approve—viz., that regular transpiration through the pores of the skin is essential to health, they habitually use the sweating-baths to which we give the name Turkish or Roman, succeeded by douches of perfumed waters. They have great faith in the salubrious virtue of certain perfumes.

It is their custom also, at stated but rare periods, perhaps four times a-year when in health, to use a bath charged with vril.

I once tried the effect of the vril bath. It was very similar in its invigorating powers to that of the baths at Gastein, the virtues of which are ascribed by many physicians to electricity; but though similar, the effect of the vril bath was more lasting.

They consider that this fluid, sparingly used, is a great sustainer of life; but used in excess, when in the normal state of health, rather tends to reaction and exhausted vitality. For nearly all their diseases, however, they resort to it as the chief assistant to nature in throwing off their complaint.

In their own way they are the most luxurious of people, but all their luxuries are innocent. They may be said to dwell in an atmosphere of music and fragrance. Every room has its mechanical contrivances for melodious sounds, usually tuned down to soft-murmured notes, which seem like sweet whispers from invisible spirits. They are too accustomed to these gentle sounds to find them a hindrance to conversation, nor, when alone, to reflection. But they have a notion that to breathe an air filled with continuous melody and perfume has necessarily an effect at once soothing and elevating upon the formation of character and the habits of thought. Though so temperate, and with total abstinence from other animal food than milk, and from all intoxicating drinks, they are delicate and dainty to an extreme in food and beverage; and in all their sports even the old exhibit a childlike gaiety. Happiness is the end at which they aim, not as the excitement of a moment, but as the prevailing condition of the entire existence; and regard for the happiness of each other is evinced by the exquisite amenity of their manners.

Their conformation of skull has marked differences from that of any known races in the upper world, though I cannot help thinking it a development, in the course of countless ages of the Brachycephalic type of the Age of Stone in Lyell’s ‘Elements of Geology,’ C. X., p. 113, as compared with the Dolichocephalic type of the beginning of the Age of Iron, correspondent with that now so prevalent amongst us, and called the Celtic type. It has the same comparative massiveness of forehead, not receding like the Celtic—the same even roundness in the frontal organs; but it is far loftier in the apex, and far less pronounced in the hinder cranial hemisphere where phrenologists place the animal organs. To speak as a phrenologist, the cranium common to the Vril-ya has the organs of weight, number, tune, form, order, causality, very largely developed; that of construction much more pronounced than that of ideality. Those which are called the moral organs, such as conscientiousness and benevolence, are amazingly full; amativeness and combativeness are both small; adhesiveness large; the organ of destructiveness (i.e., of determined clearance of intervening obstacles) immense, but less than that of benevolence; and their philoprogenitiveness takes rather the character of compassion and tenderness to things that need aid or protection than of the animal love of offspring. I never met with one person deformed or misshapen. The beauty of their countenances is not only in symmetry of feature, but in a smoothness of surface, which continues without line or wrinkle to the extreme of old age, and a serene sweetness of expression, combined with that majesty which seems to come from consciousness of power and the freedom of all terror, physical or moral. It is that very sweetness, combined with that majesty, which inspired in a beholder like myself, accustomed to strive with the passions of mankind, a sentiment of humiliation, of awe, of dread. It is such an expression as a painter might give to a demi-god, a genius, an angel. The males of the Vril-ya are entirely beardless; the Gy-ei sometimes, in old age, develop a small moustache.

I was surprised to find that the color of their skin was not uniformly that which I had remarked in those individuals whom I had first encountered,—some being much fairer, and even with blue eyes, and hair of a deep golden auburn, though still of complexions warmer or richer in tone than persons in the north of Europe.

I was told that this admixture of coloring arose from intermarriage with other and more distant tribes of the Vril-ya, who, whether by the accident of climate or early distinction of race, were of fairer hues than the tribes of which this community formed one. It was considered that the dark-red skin showed the most ancient family of Ana; but they attached no sentiment of pride to that antiquity, and, on the contrary, believed their present excellence of breed came from frequent crossing with other families differing, yet akin; and they encourage such intermarriages, always provided that it be with the Vril-ya nations. Nations which, not conforming their manners and institutions to those of the Vril-ya, nor indeed held capable of acquiring the powers over the vril agencies which it had taken them generations to attain and transmit, were regarded with more disdain than the citizens of New York regard the negroes.

I learned from Zee, who had more lore in all matters than any male with whom I was brought into familiar converse, that the superiority of the Vril-ya was supposed to have originated in the intensity of their earlier struggles against obstacles in nature amidst the localities in which they had first settled. “Wherever,” said Zee, moralizing, “wherever goes on that early process in the history of civilization, by which life is made a struggle, in which the individual has to put forth all his powers to compete with his fellow, we invariably find this result—viz., since in the competition a vast number must perish, nature selects for preservation only the strongest specimens. With our race, therefore, even before the discovery of vril, only the highest organizations were preserved; and there is among our ancient books a legend, once popularly believed, that we were driven from a region that seems to denote the world you come from, in order to perfect our condition and attain to the purest elimination of our species by the severity of the struggles our forefathers underwent; and that, when our education shall become finally completed, we are destined to return to the upper world, and supplant all the inferior races now existing therein.”

Aph-Lin and Zee often conversed with me in private upon the political and social conditions of that upper world, in which Zee so philosophically assumed that the inhabitants were to be exterminated one day or other by the advent of the Vril-ya. They found in my accounts,—in which I continued to do all I could (without launching into falsehoods so positive that they would have been easily detected by the shrewdness of my listeners) to present our powers and ourselves in the most flattering point of view,—perpetual subjects of comparison between our most civilized populations and the meaner subterranean races which they considered hopelessly plunged in barbarism, and doomed to gradual if certain extinction. But they both agreed in desiring to conceal from their community all premature opening into the regions lighted by the sun; both were humane, and shrunk from the thought of annihilating so many millions of creatures; and the pictures I drew of our life, highly colored as they were, saddened them. In vain I boasted of our great men—poets, philosophers, orators, generals—and defied the Vril-ya to produce their equals. “Alas,” said Zee, “this predominance of the few over the many is the surest and most fatal sign of a race incorrigibly savage. See you not that the primary condition of mortal happiness consists in the extinction of that strife and competition between individuals, which, no matter what forms of government they adopt, render the many subordinate to the few, destroy real liberty to the individual, whatever may be the nominal liberty of the state, and annul that calm of existence, without which, felicity, mental or bodily, cannot be attained? Our notion is, that the more we can assimilate life to the existence which our noblest ideas can conceive to be that of spirits on the other side of the grave, why, the more we approximate to a divine happiness here, and the more easily we glide into the conditions of being hereafter. For, surely, all we can imagine of the life of gods, or of blessed immortals, supposes the absence of self-made cares and contentious passions, such as avarice and ambition. It seems to us that it must be a life of serene tranquility, not indeed without active occupations to the intellectual or spiritual powers, but occupations, of whatsoever nature they be, congenial to the idiosyncrasies of each, not forced and repugnant—a life gladdened by the untrammeled interchange of gentle affections, in which the moral atmosphere utterly kills hate and vengeance, and strife and rivalry. Such is the political state to which all the tribes and families of the Vril-ya seek to attain, and towards that goal all our theories of government are shaped. You see how utterly opposed is such a progress to that of the uncivilized nations from which you come, and which aim at a systematic perpetuity of troubles, and cares, and warring passions aggravated more and more as their progress storms its way onward. The most powerful of all the races in our world, beyond the pale of the Vril-ya, esteems itself the best governed of all political societies, and to have reached in that respect the extreme end at which political wisdom can arrive, so that the other nations should tend more or less to copy it. It has established, on its broadest base, the Koom-Posh—viz., the government of the ignorant upon the principle of being the most numerous. It has placed the supreme bliss in the vying with each other in all things, so that the evil passions are never in repose—vying for power, for wealth, for eminence of some kind; and in this rivalry it is horrible to hear the vituperation, the slanders, and calumnies which even the best and mildest among them heap on each other without remorse or shame.”

“Some years ago,” said Aph-Lin, “I visited this people, and their misery and degradation were the more appalling because they were always boasting of their felicity and grandeur as compared with the rest of their species. And there is no hope that this people, which evidently resembles your own, can improve, because all their notions tend to further deterioration. They desire to enlarge their dominion more and more, in direct antagonism to the truth that, beyond a very limited range, it is impossible to secure to a community the happiness which belongs to a well-ordered family; and the more they mature a system by which a few individuals are heated and swollen to a size above the standard slenderness of the millions, the more they chuckle and exact, and cry out, ‘See by what great exceptions to the common littleness of our race we prove the magnificent results of our system!’”

“In fact,” resumed Zee, “if the wisdom of human life be to approximate to the serene equality of immortals, there can be no more direct flying off into the opposite direction than a system which aims at carrying to the utmost the inequalities and turbulences of mortals. Nor do I see how, by any forms of religious belief, mortals, so acting, could fit themselves even to appreciate the joys of immortals to which they still expect to be transferred by the mere act of dying. On the contrary, minds accustomed to place happiness in things so much the reverse of godlike, would find the happiness of gods exceedingly dull, and would long to get back to a world in which they could quarrel with each other.”

Chapter XVI.

I have spoken so much of the Vril Staff that my reader may expect me to describe it. This I cannot do accurately, for I was never allowed to handle it for fear of some terrible accident occasioned by my ignorance of its use; and I have no doubt that it requires much skill and practice in the exercise of its various powers. It is hollow, and has in the handle several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be altered, modified, or directed—so that by one process it destroys, by another it heals—by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the vapor—by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain influence over minds. It is usually carried in the convenient size of a walking-staff, but it has slides by which it can be lengthened or shortened at will. When used for special purposes, the upper part rests in the hollow of the palm with the fore and middle fingers protruded. I was assured, however, that its power was not equal in all, but proportioned to the amount of certain vril properties in the wearer in affinity, or ‘rapport’ with the purposes to be effected. Some were more potent to destroy, others to heal, &c.; much also depended on the calm and steadiness of volition in the manipulator. They assert that the full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by the constitutional temperament—i.e., by hereditarily transmitted organization—and that a female infant of four years old belonging to the Vril-ya races can accomplish feats which a life spent in its practice would not enable the strongest and most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the Vril-ya to achieve. All these wands are not equally complicated; those entrusted to children are much simpler than those borne by sages of either sex, and constructed with a view to the special object on which the children are employed; which as I have before said, is among the youngest children the most destructive. In the wands of wives and mothers the correlative destroying force is usually abstracted, the healing power fully charged. I wish I could say more in detail of this singular conductor of the vril fluid, but its machinery is as exquisite as its effects are marvelous.

I should say, however, that this people have invented certain tubes by which the vril fluid can be conducted towards the object it is meant to destroy, throughout a distance almost indefinite; at least I put it modestly when I say from 500 to 1000 miles. And their mathematical science as applied to such purpose is so nicely accurate, that on the report of some observer in an air-boat, any member of the vril department can estimate unerringly the nature of intervening obstacles, the height to which the projectile instrument should be raised, and the extent to which it should be charged, so as to reduce to ashes within a space of time too short for me to venture to specify it, a capital twice as vast as London.

Certainly these Ana are wonderful mathematicians—wonderful for the adaptation of the inventive faculty to practical uses.

I went with my host and his daughter Zee over the great public museum, which occupies a wing in the College of Sages, and in which are hoarded, as curious specimens of the ignorant and blundering experiments of ancient times, many contrivances on which we pride ourselves as recent achievements. In one department, carelessly thrown aside as obsolete lumber, are tubes for destroying life by metallic balls and an inflammable powder, on the principle of our cannons and catapults, and even still more murderous than our latest improvements.

My host spoke of these with a smile of contempt, such as an artillery officer might bestow on the bows and arrows of the Chinese. In another department there were models of vehicles and vessels worked by steam, and of an air-balloon which might have been constructed by Montgolfier. “Such,” said Zee, with an air of meditative wisdom—“such were the feeble triflings with nature of our savage forefathers, ere they had even a glimmering perception of the properties of vril!”

This young Gy was a magnificent specimen of the muscular force to which the females of her country attain. Her features were beautiful, like those of all her race: never in the upper world have I seen a face so grand and so faultless, but her devotion to the severer studies had given to her countenance an expression of abstract thought which rendered it somewhat stern when in repose; and such a sternness became formidable when observed in connection with her ample shoulders and lofty stature. She was tall even for a Gy, and I saw her lift up a cannon as easily as I could lift a pocket-pistol. Zee inspired me with a profound terror—a terror which increased when we came into a department of the museum appropriated to models of contrivances worked by the agency of vril; for here, merely by a certain play of her vril staff, she herself standing at a distance, she put into movement large and weighty substances. She seemed to endow them with intelligence, and to make them comprehend and obey her command. She set complicated pieces of machinery into movement, arrested the movement or continued it, until, within an incredibly short time, various kinds of raw material were reproduced as symmetrical works of art, complete and perfect. Whatever effect mesmerism or electro-biology produces over the nerves and muscles of animated objects, this young Gy produced by the motions of her slender rod over the springs and wheels of lifeless mechanism.

When I mentioned to my companions my astonishment at this influence over inanimate matter—while owning that, in our world, I had witnessed phenomena which showed that over certain living organizations certain other living organizations could establish an influence genuine in itself, but often exaggerated by credulity or craft—Zee, who was more interested in such subjects than her father, bade me stretch forth my hand, and then, placing it beside her own, she called my attention to certain distinctions of type and character. In the first place, the thumb of the Gy (and, as I afterwards noticed, of all that race, male or female) was much larger, at once longer and more massive, than is found with our species above ground. There is almost, in this, as great a difference as there is between the thumb of a man and that of a gorilla. Secondly, the palm is proportionally thicker than ours—the texture of the skin infinitely finer and softer—its average warmth is greater. More remarkable than all this, is a visible nerve, perceptible under the skin, which starts from the wrist skirting the ball of the thumb, and branching, fork-like, at the roots of the fore and middle fingers. “With your slight formation of thumb,” said the philosophical young Gy, “and with the absence of the nerve which you find more or less developed in the hands of our race, you can never achieve other than imperfect and feeble power over the agency of vril; but so far as the nerve is concerned, that is not found in the hands of our earliest progenitors, nor in those of the ruder tribes without the pale of the Vril-ya. It has been slowly developed in the course of generations, commencing in the early achievements, and increasing with the continuous exercise, of the vril power; therefore, in the course of one or two thousand years, such a nerve may possibly be engendered in those higher beings of your race, who devote themselves to that paramount science through which is attained command over all the subtler forces of nature permeated by vril. But when you talk of matter as something in itself inert and motionless, your parents or tutors surely cannot have left you so ignorant as not to know that no form of matter is motionless and inert: every particle is constantly in motion and constantly acted upon by agencies, of which heat is the most apparent and rapid, but vril the most subtle, and, when skillfully wielded, the most powerful. So that, in fact, the current launched by my hand and guided by my will does but render quicker and more potent the action which is eternally at work upon every particle of matter, however inert and stubborn it may seem. If a heap of metal be not capable of originating a thought of its own, yet, through its internal susceptibility to movement, it obtains the power to receive the thought of the intellectual agent at work on it; by which, when conveyed with a sufficient force of the vril power, it is as much compelled to obey as if it were displaced by a visible bodily force. It is animated for the time being by the soul thus infused into it, so that one may almost say that it lives and reasons. Without this we could not make our automata supply the place of servants.”

I was too much in awe of the thews and the learning of the young Gy to hazard the risk of arguing with her. I had read somewhere in my schoolboy days that a wise man, disputing with a Roman Emperor, suddenly drew in his horns; and when the emperor asked him whether he had nothing further to say on his side of the question, replied, “Nay, Caesar, there is no arguing against a reasoner who commands ten legions.”

Though I had a secret persuasion that, whatever the real effects of vril upon matter, Mr. Faraday could have proved her a very shallow philosopher as to its extent or its causes, I had no doubt that Zee could have brained all the Fellows of the Royal Society, one after the other, with a blow of her fist. Every sensible man knows that it is useless to argue with any ordinary female upon matters he comprehends; but to argue with a Gy seven feet high upon the mysteries of vril,—as well argue in a desert, and with a simoon!

Amid the various departments to which the vast building of the College of Sages was appropriated, that which interested me most was devoted to the archaeology of the Vril-ya, and comprised a very ancient collection of portraits. In these the pigments and groundwork employed were of so durable a nature that even pictures said to be executed at dates as remote as those in the earliest annals of the Chinese, retained much freshness of color. In examining this collection, two things especially struck me:—first, that the pictures said to be between 6000 and 7000 years old were of a much higher degree of art than any produced within the last 3000 or 4000 years; and, second, that the portraits within the former period much more resembled our own upper world and European types of countenance. Some of them, indeed reminded me of the Italian heads which look out from the canvases of Titian—speaking of ambition or craft, of care or of grief, with furrows in which the passions have passed with iron ploughshare. These were the countenances of men who had lived in struggle and conflict before the discovery of the latent forces of vril had changed the character of society—men who had fought with each other for power or fame as we in the upper world fight.

The type of face began to evince a marked change about a thousand years after the vril revolution, becoming then, with each generation, more serene, and in that serenity more terribly distinct from the faces of laboring and sinful men; while in proportion as the beauty and the grandeur of the countenance itself became more fully developed, the art of the painter became more tame and monotonous.

But the greatest curiosity in the collection was that of three portraits belonging to the pre-historical age, and, according to mythical tradition, taken by the orders of a philosopher, whose origin and attributes were as much mixed up with symbolical fable as those of an Indian Bud or a Greek Prometheus.

From this mysterious personage, at once a sage and a hero, all the principal sections of the Vril-ya race pretend to trace a common origin.

The portraits are of the philosopher himself, of his grandfather, and great-grandfather. They are all at full length. The philosopher is attired in a long tunic which seems to form a loose suit of scaly armor, borrowed, perhaps, from some fish or reptile, but the feet and hands are exposed: the digits in both are wonderfully long, and webbed. He has little or no perceptible throat, and a low receding forehead, not at all the ideal of a sage’s. He has bright brown prominent eyes, a very wide mouth and high cheekbones, and a muddy complexion. According to tradition, this philosopher had lived to a patriarchal age, extending over many centuries, and he remembered distinctly in middle life his grandfather as surviving, and in childhood his great-grandfather; the portrait of the first he had taken, or caused to be taken, while yet alive—that of the latter was taken from his effigies in mummy. The portrait of his grandfather had the features and aspect of the philosopher, only much more exaggerated: he was not dressed, and the color of his body was singular; the breast and stomach yellow, the shoulders and legs of a dull bronze hue: the great-grandfather was a magnificent specimen of the Batrachian genus, a Giant Frog, ‘pur et simple.’

Among the pithy sayings which, according to tradition, the philosopher bequeathed to posterity in rhythmical form and sententious brevity, this is notably recorded: “Humble yourselves, my descendants; the father of your race was a ‘twat’ (tadpole): exalt yourselves, my descendants, for it was the same Divine Thought which created your father that develops itself in exalting you.”

Aph-Lin told me this fable while I gazed on the three Batrachian portraits. I said in reply: “You make a jest of my supposed ignorance and credulity as an uneducated Tish, but though these horrible daubs may be of great antiquity, and were intended, perhaps, for some rude caricature, I presume that none of your race even in the less enlightened ages, ever believed that the great-grandson of a Frog became a sententious philosopher; or that any section, I will not say of the lofty Vril-ya, but of the meanest varieties of the human race, had its origin in a Tadpole.”

“Pardon me,” answered Aph-Lin: “in what we call the Wrangling or Philosophical Period of History, which was at its height about seven thousand years ago, there was a very distinguished naturalist, who proved to the satisfaction of numerous disciples such analogical and anatomical agreements in structure between an An and a Frog, as to show that out of the one must have developed the other. They had some diseases in common; they were both subject to the same parasitical worms in the intestines; and, strange to say, the An has, in his structure, a swimming-bladder, no longer of any use to him, but which is a rudiment that clearly proves his descent from a Frog. Nor is there any argument against this theory to be found in the relative difference of size, for there are still existent in our world Frogs of a size and stature not inferior to our own, and many thousand years ago they appear to have been still larger.”

“I understand that,” said I, “because Frogs this enormous are, according to our eminent geologists, who perhaps saw them in dreams, said to have been distinguished inhabitants of the upper world before the Deluge; and such Frogs are exactly the creatures likely to have flourished in the lakes and morasses of your subterranean regions. But pray, proceed.”

“In the Wrangling Period of History, whatever one sage asserted another sage was sure to contradict. In fact, it was a maxim in that age, that the human reason could only be sustained aloft by being tossed to and fro in the perpetual motion of contradiction; and therefore another sect of philosophers maintained the doctrine that the An was not the descendant of the Frog, but that the Frog was clearly the improved development of the An. The shape of the Frog, taken generally, was much more symmetrical than that of the An; beside the beautiful conformation of its lower limbs, its flanks and shoulders the majority of the Ana in that day were almost deformed, and certainly ill-shaped. Again, the Frog had the power to live alike on land and in water—a mighty privilege, partaking of a spiritual essence denied to the An, since the disuse of his swimming-bladder clearly proves his degeneration from a higher development of species. Again, the earlier races of the Ana seem to have been covered with hair, and, even to a comparatively recent date, hirsute bushes deformed the very faces of our ancestors, spreading wild over their cheeks and chins, as similar bushes, my poor Tish, spread wild over yours. But the object of the higher races of the Ana through countless generations has been to erase all vestige of connection with hairy vertebrata, and they have gradually eliminated that debasing capillary excrement by the law of sexual selection; the Gy-ei naturally preferring youth or the beauty of smooth faces. But the degree of the Frog in the scale of the vertebrata is shown in this, that he has no hair at all, not even on his head. He was born to that hairless perfection which the most beautiful of the Ana, despite the culture of incalculable ages, have not yet attained. The wonderful complication and delicacy of a Frog’s nervous system and arterial circulation were shown by this school to be more susceptible of enjoyment than our inferior, or at least simpler, physical frame allows us to be. The examination of a Frog’s hand, if I may use that expression, accounted for its keener susceptibility to love, and to social life in general. In fact, gregarious and amatory as are the Ana, Frogs are still more so. In short, these two schools raged against each other; one asserting the An to be the perfected type of the Frog; the other that the Frog was the highest development of the An. The moralists were divided in opinion with the naturalists, but the bulk of them sided with the Frog-preference school. They said, with much plausibility, that in moral conduct (viz., in the adherence to rules best adapted to the health and welfare of the individual and the community) there could be no doubt of the vast superiority of the Frog. All history showed the wholesale immorality of the human race, the complete disregard, even by the most renowned amongst them, of the laws which they acknowledged to be essential to their own and the general happiness and wellbeing. But the severest critic of the Frog race could not detect in their manners a single aberration from the moral law tacitly recognized by themselves. And what, after all, can be the profit of civilization if superiority in moral conduct be not the aim for which it strives, and the test by which its progress should be judged?

“In fine, the adherents of this theory presumed that in some remote period the Frog race had been the improved development of the Human; but that, from some causes which defied rational conjecture, they had not maintained their original position in the scale of nature; while the Ana, though of inferior organization, had, by dint less of their virtues than their vices, such as ferocity and cunning, gradually acquired ascendancy, much as among the human race itself tribes utterly barbarous have, by superiority in similar vices, utterly destroyed or reduced into insignificance tribes originally excelling them in mental gifts and culture. Unhappily these disputes became involved with the religious notions of that age; and as society was then administered under the government of the Koom-Posh, who, being the most ignorant, were of course the most inflammable class—the multitude took the whole question out of the hands of the philosophers; political chiefs saw that the Frog dispute, so taken up by the populace, could become a most valuable instrument of their ambition; and for not less than one thousand years war and massacre prevailed, during which period the philosophers on both sides were butchered, and the government of Koom-Posh itself was happily brought to an end by the ascendancy of a family that clearly established its descent from the aboriginal tadpole, and furnished despotic rulers to the various nations of the Ana. These despots finally disappeared, at least from our communities, as the discovery of vril led to the tranquil institutions under which flourish all the races of the Vril-ya.”

“And do no wranglers or philosophers now exist to revive the dispute; or do they all recognize the origin of your race in the tadpole?”

“Nay, such disputes,” said Zee, with a lofty smile, “belong to the Pah-bodh of the dark ages, and now only serve for the amusement of infants. When we know the elements out of which our bodies are composed, elements in common to the humblest vegetable plants, can it signify whether the All-Wise combined those elements out of one form more than another, in order to create that in which He has placed the capacity to receive the idea of Himself, and all the varied grandeurs of intellect to which that idea gives birth? The An in reality commenced to exist as An with the donation of that capacity, and, with that capacity, the sense to acknowledge that, however through the countless ages his race may improve in wisdom, it can never combine the elements at its command into the form of a tadpole.”

“You speak well, Zee,” said Aph-Lin; “and it is enough for us short-lived mortals to feel a reasonable assurance that whether the origin of the An was a tadpole or not, he is no more likely to become a tadpole again than the institutions of the Vril-ya are likely to relapse into the heaving quagmire and certain strife-rot of a Koom-Posh.”

Chapter XVII.

The Vril-ya, being excluded from all sight of the heavenly bodies, and having no other difference between night and day than that which they deem it convenient to make for themselves,—do not, of course, arrive at their divisions of time by the same process that we do; but I found it easy by the aid of my watch, which I luckily had about me, to compute their time with great nicety. I reserve for a future work on the science and literature of the Vril-ya, should I live to complete it, all details as to the manner in which they arrive at their rotation of time; and content myself here with saying, that in point of duration, their year differs very slightly from ours, but that the divisions of their year are by no means the same. Their day, (including what we call night) consists of twenty hours of our time, instead of twenty-four, and of course their year comprises the correspondent increase in the number of days by which it is summed up. They subdivide the twenty hours of their day thus—eight hours, called the “Silent Hours,” for repose; eight hours, called the “Earnest Time,” for the pursuits and occupations of life; and four hours called the “Easy Time” (with which what I may term their day closes), allotted to festivities, sport, recreation, or family converse, according to their several tastes and inclinations.

For the sake of convenience, I adopt the word hours, days, years, &c., in any general reference to subdivisions of time among the Vril-ya; those terms but loosely corresponding, however, with such subdivisions.

But, in truth, out of doors there is no night. They maintain, both in the streets and in the surrounding country, to the limits of their territory, the same degree of light at all hours. Only, within doors, they lower it to a soft twilight during the Silent Hours. They have a great horror of perfect darkness, and their lights are never wholly extinguished. On occasions of festivity they continue the duration of full light, but equally keep note of the distinction between night and day, by mechanical contrivances which answer the purpose of our clocks and watches. They are very fond of music; and it is by music that these chronometers strike the principal division of time. At every one of their hours, during their day, the sounds coming from all the time-pieces in their public buildings, and caught up, as it were, by those of houses or hamlets scattered amidst the landscapes without the city, have an effect singularly sweet, and yet singularly solemn. But during the Silent Hours these sounds are so subdued as to be only faintly heard by a waking ear. They have no change of seasons, and, at least on the territory of this tribe, the atmosphere seemed to me very equable, warm as that of an Italian summer, and humid rather than dry; in the forenoon usually very still, but at times invaded by strong blasts from the rocks that made the borders of their domain. But time is the same to them for sowing or reaping as in the Golden Isles of the ancient poets. At the same moment you see the younger plants in blade or bud, the older in ear or fruit. All fruit-bearing plants, however, after fruitage, either shed or change the color of their leaves. But that which interested me most in reckoning up their divisions of time was the ascertainment of the average duration of life amongst them. I found on minute inquiry that this very considerably exceeded the term allotted to us on the upper earth. What seventy years are to us, one hundred years are to them. Nor is this the only advantage they have over us in longevity, for as few among us attain to the age of seventy, so, on the contrary, few among them die before the age of one hundred; and they enjoy a general degree of health and vigor which makes life itself a blessing even to the last. Various causes contribute to this result: the absence of all alcoholic stimulants; temperance in food; more especially, perhaps, a serenity of mind undisturbed by anxious occupations and eager passions. They are not tormented by our avarice or our ambition; they appear perfectly indifferent even to the desire of fame; they are capable of great affection, but their love shows itself in a tender and cheerful complaisance, and, while forming their happiness, seems rarely, if ever, to constitute their woe. As the Gy is sure only to marry where she herself fixes her choice, and as here, not less than above ground, it is the female on whom the happiness of home depends; so the Gy, having chosen the mate she prefers to all others, is lenient to his faults, consults his humors, and does her best to secure his attachment. The death of a beloved one is of course with them, as with us, a cause for sorrow; but not only is death with them so much more rare before that age in which it becomes a release, but when it does occur the survivor takes much more consolation than, I am afraid, the generality of us do, in the certainty of reunion in another and yet happier life.

All these causes, then, concur to their healthful and enjoyable longevity, though, no doubt, much also must be owing to hereditary organization. According to their records, however, in those earlier stages of their society when they lived in communities resembling ours, agitated by fierce competition, their lives were considerably shorter, and their maladies more numerous and grave. They themselves say that the duration of life, too, has increased, and is still on the increase, since their discovery of the invigorating and medicinal properties of vril, applied for remedial purposes. They have few professional and regular practitioners of medicine, and these are chiefly Gy-ei, who, especially if widowed and childless, find great delight in the healing art, and even undertake surgical operations in those cases required by accident, or, more rarely, by disease.

They have their diversions and entertainments, and, during the Easy Time of their day, they are wont to assemble in great numbers for those winged sports in the air which I have already described. They have also public halls for music, and even theatres, at which are performed pieces that appeared to me somewhat to resemble the plays of the Chinese—dramas that are thrown back into distant times for their events and personages, in which all classic unities are outrageously violated, and the hero, in once scene a child, in the next is an old man, and so forth. These plays are of very ancient composition, and their stories cast in remote times. They appeared to me very dull, on the whole, but were relieved by startling mechanical contrivances, and a kind of farcical broad humor, and detached passages of great vigor and power expressed in language highly poetical, but somewhat overcharged with metaphor and trope. In fine, they seemed to me very much what the plays of Shakespeare seemed to a Parisian in the time of Louis XV., or perhaps to an Englishman in the reign of Charles II.

The audience, of which the Gy-ei constituted the chief portion, appeared to enjoy greatly the representation of these dramas, which, for so sedate and majestic a race of females, surprised me, till I observed that all the performers were under the age of adolescence, and conjectured truly that the mothers and sisters came to please their children and brothers.

I have said that these dramas are of great antiquity. No new plays, indeed no imaginative works sufficiently important to survive their immediate day, appear to have been composed for several generations. In fact, though there is no lack of new publications, and they have even what may be called newspapers, these are chiefly devoted to mechanical science, reports of new inventions, announcements respecting various details of business—in short, to practical matters. Sometimes a child writes a little tale of adventure, or a young Gy vents her amorous hopes or fears in a poem; but these effusions are of very little merit, and are seldom read except by children and maiden Gy-ei. The most interesting works of a purely literary character are those of explorations and travels into other regions of this nether world, which are generally written by young emigrants, and are read with great avidity by the relations and friends they have left behind.

I could not help expressing to Aph-Lin my surprise that a community in which mechanical science had made so marvelous a progress, and in which intellectual civilization had exhibited itself in realizing those objects for the happiness of the people, which the political philosophers above ground had, after ages of struggle, pretty generally agreed to consider unattainable visions, should, nevertheless, be so wholly without a contemporaneous literature, despite the excellence to which culture had brought a language at once so rich and simple, vigorous and musical.

My host replied—“Do you not perceive that a literature such as you mean would be wholly incompatible with that perfection of social or political felicity at which you do us the honor to think we have arrived? We have at last, after centuries of struggle, settled into a form of government with which we are content, and in which, as we allow no differences of rank, and no honors are paid to administrators distinguishing them from others, there is no stimulus given to individual ambition. No one would read works advocating theories that involved any political or social change, and therefore no one writes them. If now and then an An feels himself dissatisfied with our tranquil mode of life, he does not attack it; he goes away. Thus all that part of literature (and to judge by the ancient books in our public libraries, it was once a very large part), which relates to speculative theories on society is become utterly extinct. Again, formerly there was a vast deal written respecting the attributes and essence of the All-Good, and the arguments for and against a future state; but now we all recognize two facts, that there IS a Divine Being, and there IS a future state, and we all equally agree that if we wrote our fingers to the bone, we could not throw any light upon the nature and conditions of that future state, or quicken our apprehensions of the attributes and essence of that Divine Being. Thus another part of literature has become also extinct, happily for our race; for in the time when so much was written on subjects which no one could determine, people seemed to live in a perpetual state of quarrel and contention. So, too, a vast part of our ancient literature consists of historical records of wars an revolutions during the times when the Ana lived in large and turbulent societies, each seeking aggrandizement at the expense of the other. You see our serene mode of life now; such it has been for ages. We have no events to chronicle. What more of us can be said than that, ‘they were born, they were happy, they died?’ Coming next to that part of literature which is more under the control of the imagination, such as what we call Glaubsila, or colloquially ‘Glaubs,’ and you call poetry, the reasons for its decline amongst us are abundantly obvious.

“We find, by referring to the great masterpieces in that department of literature which we all still read with pleasure, but of which none would tolerate imitations, that they consist in the portraiture of passions which we no longer experience—ambition, vengeance, unhallowed love, the thirst for warlike renown, and suchlike. The old poets lived in an atmosphere impregnated with these passions, and felt vividly what they expressed glowingly. No one can express such passions now, for no one can feel them, or meet with any sympathy in his readers if he did. Again, the old poetry has a main element in its dissection of those complex mysteries of human character which conduce to abnormal vices and crimes, or lead to signal and extraordinary virtues. But our society, having got rid of temptations to any prominent vices and crimes, has necessarily rendered the moral average so equal, that there are no very salient virtues. Without its ancient food of strong passions, vast crimes, heroic excellences, poetry therefore is, if not actually starved to death, reduced to a very meager diet. There is still the poetry of description—description of rocks, and trees, and waters, and common household life; and our young Gy-ei weave much of this insipid kind of composition into their love verses.”

“Such poetry,” said I, “might surely be made very charming; and we have critics amongst us who consider it a higher kind than that which depicts the crimes, or analyses the passions, of man. At all events, poetry of the inspired kind you mention is a poetry that nowadays commands more readers than any other among the people I have left above ground.”

“Possibly; but then I suppose the writers take great pains with the language they employ, and devote themselves to the culture and polish of words and rhythms of an art?”

“Certainly they do: all great poets do that. Though the gift of poetry may be inborn, the gift requires as much care to make it available as a block of metal does to be made into one of your engines.”

“And doubtless your poets have some incentive to bestow all those pains upon such verbal prettinesses?”

“Well, I presume their instinct of song would make them sing as the bird does; but to cultivate the song into verbal or artificial prettiness, probably does need an inducement from without, and our poets find it in the love of fame—perhaps, now and then, in the want of money.”

“Precisely so. But in our society we attach fame to nothing which man, in that moment of his duration which is called ‘life,’ can perform. We should soon lose that equality which constitutes the felicitous essence of our commonwealth if we selected any individual for pre-eminent praise: pre-eminent praise would confer pre-eminent power, and the moment it were given, evil passions, now dormant, would awake: other men would immediately covet praise, then would arise envy, and with envy hate, and with hate calumny and persecution. Our history tells us that most of the poets and most of the writers who, in the old time, were favored with the greatest praise, were also assailed by the greatest vituperation, and even, on the whole, rendered very unhappy, partly by the attacks of jealous rivals, partly by the diseased mental constitution which an acquired sensitiveness to praise and to blame tends to engender. As for the stimulus of want; in the first place, no man in our community knows the goad of poverty; and, secondly, if he did, almost every occupation would be more lucrative than writing.

“Our public libraries contain all the books of the past which time has preserved; those books, for the reasons above stated, are infinitely better than any can write nowadays, and they are open to all to read without cost. We are not such fools as to pay for reading inferior books, when we can read superior books for nothing.”

“With us, novelty has an attraction; and a new book, if bad, is read when an old book, though good, is neglected.”

“Novelty, to barbarous states of society struggling in despair for something better, has no doubt an attraction, denied to us, who see nothing to gain in novelties; but after all, it is observed by one of our great authors four thousand years ago, that ‘he who studies old books will always find in them something new, and he who reads new books will always find in them something old.’ But to return to the question you have raised, there being then amongst us no stimulus to painstaking labor, whether in desire of fame or in pressure of want, such as have the poetic temperament, no doubt vent it in song, as you say the bird sings; but for lack of elaborate culture it fails of an audience, and, failing of an audience, dies out, of itself, amidst the ordinary avocations of life.”

“But how is it that these discouragements to the cultivation of literature do not operate against that of science?”

“Your question amazes me. The motive to science is the love of truth apart from all consideration of fame, and science with us too is devoted almost solely to practical uses, essential to our social conversation and the comforts of our daily life. No fame is asked by the inventor, and none is given to him; he enjoys an occupation congenial to his tastes, and needing no wear and tear of the passions. Man must have exercise for his mind as well as body; and continuous exercise, rather than violent, is best for both. Our most ingenious cultivators of science are, as a general rule, the longest lived and the most free from disease. Painting is an amusement to many, but the art is not what it was in former times, when the great painters in our various communities vied with each other for the prize of a golden crown, which gave them a social rank equal to that of the kings under whom they lived. You will thus doubtless have observed in our archaeological department how superior in point of art the pictures were several thousand years ago. Perhaps it is because music is, in reality, more allied to science than it is to poetry, that, of all the pleasurable arts, music is that which flourishes the most amongst us. Still, even in music the absence of stimulus in praise or fame has served to prevent any great superiority of one individual over another; and we rather excel in choral music, with the aid of our vast mechanical instruments, in which we make great use of the agency of water, than in single performers.”

This may remind the student of Nero’s invention of a musical machine, by which water was made to perform the part of an orchestra, and on which he was employed when the conspiracy against him broke out.

“We have had scarcely any original composer for some ages. Our favorite airs are very ancient in substance, but have admitted many complicated variations by inferior, though ingenious, musicians.”

“Are there no political societies among the Ana which are animated by those passions, subjected to those crimes, and admitting those disparities in condition, in intellect, and in morality, which the state of your tribe, or indeed of the Vril-ya generally, has left behind in its progress to perfection? If so, among such societies perhaps Poetry and her sister arts still continue to be honored and to improve?”

“There are such societies in remote regions, but we do not admit them within the pale of civilized communities; we scarcely even give them the name of Ana, and certainly not that of Vril-ya. They are savages, living chiefly in that low stage of being, Koom-Posh, tending necessarily to its own hideous dissolution in Glek-Nas. Their wretched existence is passed in perpetual contest and perpetual change. When they do not fight with their neighbors, they fight among themselves. They are divided into sections, which abuse, plunder, and sometimes murder each other, and on the most frivolous points of difference that would be unintelligible to us if we had not read history, and seen that we too have passed through the same early state of ignorance and barbarism. Any trifle is sufficient to set them together by the ears. They pretend to be all equals, and the more they have struggled to be so, by removing old distinctions, and starting afresh, the more glaring and intolerable the disparity becomes, because nothing in hereditary affections and associations is left to soften the one naked distinction between the many who have nothing and the few who have much. Of course the many hate the few, but without the few they could not live. The many are always assailing the few; sometimes they exterminate the few; but as soon as they have done so, a new few starts out of the many, and is harder to deal with than the old few. For where societies are large, and competition to have something is the predominant fever, there must be always many losers and few gainers. In short, they are savages groping their way in the dark towards some gleam of light, and would demand our commiseration for their infirmities, if, like all savages, they did not provoke their own destruction by their arrogance and cruelty. Can you imagine that creatures of this kind, armed only with such miserable weapons as you may see in our museum of antiquities, clumsy iron tubes charged with saltpeter, have more than once threatened with destruction a tribe of the Vril-ya, which dwells nearest to them, because they say they have thirty millions of population—and that tribe may have fifty thousand—if the latter do not accept their notions of Soc-Sec (money getting) on some trading principles which they have the impudence to call ‘a law of civilization’?”

“But thirty millions of population are formidable odds against fifty thousand!”

My host stared at me astonished. “Stranger,” said he, “you could not have heard me say that this threatened tribe belongs to the Vril-ya; and it only waits for these savages to declare war, in order to commission some half-a-dozen small children to sweep away their whole population.”

At these words I felt a thrill of horror, recognizing much more affinity with “the savages” than I did with the Vril-ya, and remembering all I had said in praise of the glorious American institutions, which Aph-Lin stigmatized as Koom-Posh. Recovering my self-possession, I asked if there were modes of transit by which I could safely visit this temerarious and remote people.

“You can travel with safety, by vril agency, either along the ground or amid the air, throughout all the range of the communities with which we are allied and akin; but I cannot vouch for your safety in barbarous nations governed by different laws from ours; nations, indeed, so benighted, that there are among them large numbers who actually live by stealing from each other, and one could not with safety in the Silent Hours even leave the doors of one’s own house open.”

Here our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Taee, who came to inform us that he, having been deputed to discover and destroy the enormous reptile which I had seen on my first arrival, had been on the watch for it ever since his visit to me, and had began to suspect that my eyes had deceived me, or that the creature had made its way through the cavities within the rocks to the wild regions in which dwelt its kindred race,—when it gave evidences of its whereabouts by a great devastation of the herbage bordering one of the lakes. “And,” said Taee, “I feel sure that within that lake it is now hiding. So,” (turning to me) “I thought it might amuse you to accompany me to see the way we destroy such unpleasant visitors.” As I looked at the face of the young child, and called to mind the enormous size of the creature he proposed to exterminate, I felt myself shudder with fear for him, and perhaps fear for myself, if I accompanied him in such a chase. But my curiosity to witness the destructive effects of the boasted vril, and my unwillingness to lower myself in the eyes of an infant by betraying apprehensions of personal safety, prevailed over my first impulse. Accordingly, I thanked Taee for his courteous consideration for my amusement, and professed my willingness to set out with him on so diverting an enterprise.

Chapter XVIII.

As Taee and myself, on quitting the town, and leaving to the left the main road which led to it, struck into the fields, the strange and solemn beauty of the landscape, lighted up, by numberless lamps, to the verge of the horizon, fascinated my eyes, and rendered me for some time an inattentive listener to the talk of my companion.

Along our way various operations of agriculture were being carried on by machinery, the forms of which were new to me, and for the most part very graceful; for among these people art being so cultivated for the sake of mere utility, exhibits itself in adorning or refining the shapes of useful objects. Precious metals and gems are so profuse among them, that they are lavished on things devoted to purposes the most commonplace; and their love of utility leads them to beautify its tools, and quickens their imagination in a way unknown to themselves.

In all service, whether in or out of doors, they make great use of automaton figures, which are so ingenious, and so pliant to the operations of vril, that they actually seem gifted with reason. It was scarcely possible to distinguish the figures I beheld, apparently guiding or superintending the rapid movements of vast engines, from human forms endowed with thought.

By degrees, as we continued to walk on, my attention became roused by the lively and acute remarks of my companion. The intelligence of the children among this race is marvelously precocious, perhaps from the habit of having entrusted to them, at so early an age, the toils and responsibilities of middle age. Indeed, in conversing with Taee, I felt as if talking with some superior and observant man of my own years. I asked him if he could form any estimate of the number of communities into which the race of the Vril-ya is subdivided.

“Not exactly,” he said, “because they multiply, of course, every year as the surplus of each community is drafted off. But I heard my father say that, according to the last report, there were a million and a half of communities speaking our language, and adopting our institutions and forms of life and government; but, I believe, with some differences, about which you had better ask Zee. She knows more than most of the Ana do. An An cares less for things that do not concern him than a Gy does; the Gy-ei are inquisitive creatures.”

“Does each community restrict itself to the same number of families or amount of population that you do?”

“No; some have much smaller populations, some have larger—varying according to the extent of the country they appropriate, or to the degree of excellence to which they have brought their machinery. Each community sets its own limit according to circumstances, taking care always that there shall never arise any class of poor by the pressure of population upon the productive powers of the domain; and that no state shall be too large for a government resembling that of a single well-ordered family. I imagine that no vril community exceeds thirty-thousand households. But, as a general rule, the smaller the community, provided there be hands enough to do justice to the capacities of the territory it occupies, the richer each individual is, and the larger the sum contributed to the general treasury,—above all, the happier and the more tranquil is the whole political body, and the more perfect the products of its industry. The state which all tribes of the Vril-ya acknowledge to be the highest in civilization, and which has brought the vril force to its fullest development, is perhaps the smallest. It limits itself to four thousand families; but every inch of its territory is cultivated to the utmost perfection of garden ground; its machinery excels that of every other tribe, and there is no product of its industry in any department which is not sought for, at extraordinary prices, by each community of our race. All our tribes make this state their model, considering that we should reach the highest state of civilization allowed to mortals if we could unite the greatest degree of happiness with the highest degree of intellectual achievement; and it is clear that the smaller the society the less difficult that will be. Ours is too large for it.”

This reply set me thinking. I reminded myself of that little state of Athens, with only twenty thousand free citizens, and which to this day our mightiest nations regard as the supreme guide and model in all departments of intellect. But then Athens permitted fierce rivalry and perpetual change, and was certainly not happy. Rousing myself from the reverie into which these reflections had plunged me, I brought back our talk to the subjects connected with emigration.

“But,” said I, “when, I suppose yearly, a certain number among you agree to quit home and found a new community elsewhere, they must necessarily be very few, and scarcely sufficient, even with the help of the machines they take with them, to clear the ground, and build towns, and form a civilized state with the comforts and luxuries in which they had been reared.”

“You mistake. All the tribes of the Vril-ya are in constant communication with each other, and settle amongst themselves each year what proportion of one community will unite with the emigrants of another, so as to form a state of sufficient size; and the place for emigration is agreed upon at least a year before, and pioneers sent from each state to level rocks, and embank waters, and construct houses; so that when the emigrants at last go, they find a city already made, and a country around it at least partially cleared. Our hardy life as children make us take cheerfully to travel and adventure. I mean to emigrate myself when of age.”

“Do the emigrants always select places hitherto uninhabited and barren?”

“As yet generally, because it is our rule never to destroy except when necessary to our well-being. Of course, we cannot settle in lands already occupied by the Vril-ya; and if we take the cultivated lands of the other races of Ana, we must utterly destroy the previous inhabitants. Sometimes, as it is, we take waste spots, and find that a troublesome, quarrelsome race of Ana, especially if under the administration of Koom-Posh or Glek-Nas, resents our vicinity, and picks a quarrel with us; then, of course, as menacing our welfare, we destroy it: there is no coming to terms of peace with a race so idiotic that it is always changing the form of government which represents it. Koom-Posh,” said the child, emphatically, “is bad enough, still it has brains, though at the back of its head, and is not without a heart; but in Glek-Nas the brain and heart of the creatures disappear, and they become all jaws, claws, and belly.”

“You express yourself strongly. Allow me to inform you that I myself, and I am proud to say it, am the citizen of a Koom-Posh.”

“I no longer,” answered Taee, “wonder to see you here so far from your home. What was the condition of your native community before it became a Koom-Posh?”

“A settlement of emigrants—like those settlements which your tribe sends forth—but so far unlike your settlements, that it was dependent on the state from which it came. It shook off that yoke, and, crowned with eternal glory, became a Koom-Posh.”

“Eternal glory! How long has the Koom-Posh lasted?”

“About 100 years.”

“The length of an An’s life—a very young community. In much less than another 100 years your Koom-Posh will be a Glek-Nas.”

“Nay, the oldest states in the world I come from, have such faith in its duration, that they are all gradually shaping their institutions so as to melt into ours, and their most thoughtful politicians say that, whether they like it or not, the inevitable tendency of these old states is towards Koom-Posh-erie.”

“The old states?”

“Yes, the old states.”

“With populations very small in proportion to the area of productive land?”

“On the contrary, with populations very large in proportion to that area.”

“I see! old states indeed!—so old as to become driveling if they don’t pack off that surplus population as we do ours—very old states!—very, very old! Pray, Tish, do you think it wise for very old men to try to turn head-over-heels as very young children do? And if you ask them why they attempted such antics, should you not laugh if they answered that by imitating very young children they could become very young children themselves? Ancient history abounds with instances of this sort a great many thousand years ago—and in every instance a very old state that played at Koom-Posh soon tumbled into Glek-Nas. Then, in horror of its own self, it cried out for a master, as an old man in his dotage cries out for a nurse; and after a succession of masters or nurses, more or less long, that very old state died out of history. A very old state attempting Koom-Posh-erie is like a very old man who pulls down the house to which he has been accustomed, but he has so exhausted his vigor in pulling down, that all he can do in the way of rebuilding is to run up a crazy hut, in which himself and his successors whine out, ‘How the wind blows! How the walls shake!’”

“My dear Taee, I make all excuse for your unenlightened prejudices, which every schoolboy educated in a Koom-Posh could easily controvert, though he might not be so precociously learned in ancient history as you appear to be.”

“I learned! not a bit of it. But would a schoolboy, educated in your Koom-Posh, ask his great-great-grandfather or great-great-grandmother to stand on his or her head with the feet uppermost? And if the poor old folks hesitated—say, ‘What do you fear?—see how I do it!’”

“Taee, I disdain to argue with a child of your age. I repeat, I make allowances for your want of that culture which a Koom-Posh alone can bestow.”

“I, in my turn,” answered Taee, with an air of the suave but lofty good breeding which characterizes his race, “not only make allowances for you as not educated among the Vril-ya, but I entreat you to vouchsafe me your pardon for the insufficient respect to the habits and opinions of so amiable a Tish!”

I ought before to have observed that I was commonly called Tish by my host and his family, as being a polite and indeed a pet name, literally signifying a small barbarian; the children apply it endearingly to the tame species of Frog which they keep in their gardens.

We had now reached the banks of a lake, and Taee here paused to point out to me the ravages made in fields skirting it. “The enemy certainly lies within these waters,” said Taee. “Observe what shoals of fish are crowded together at the margin. Even the great fishes with the small ones, who are their habitual prey and who generally shun them, all forget their instincts in the presence of a common destroyer. This reptile certainly must belong to the class of Krek-a, which are more devouring than any other, and are said to be among the few surviving species of the world’s dreadest inhabitants before the Ana were created. The appetite of a Krek is insatiable—it feeds alike upon vegetable and animal life; but for the swift-footed creatures of the elk species it is too slow in its movements. Its favorite dainty is an An when it can catch him unawares; and hence the Ana destroy it relentlessly whenever it enters their dominion. I have heard that when our forefathers first cleared this country, these monsters, and others like them, abounded, and, vril being then undiscovered, many of our race were devoured. It was impossible to exterminate them wholly till that discovery which constitutes the power and sustains the civilization of our race. But after the uses of vril became familiar to us, all creatures inimical to us were soon annihilated. Still, once a-year or so, one of these enormous creatures wanders from the unreclaimed and savage districts beyond, and within my memory one has seized upon a young Gy who was bathing in this very lake. Had she been on land and armed with her staff, it would not have dared even to show itself; for, like all savage creatures, the reptile has a marvelous instinct, which warns it against the bearer of the vril wand. How they teach their young to avoid him, though seen for the first time, is one of those mysteries which you may ask Zee to explain, for I cannot. The reptile in this instinct does but resemble our wild birds and animals, which will not come in reach of a man armed with a gun. When the electric wires were first put up, partridges struck against them in their flight, and fell down wounded. No younger generations of partridges meet with a similar accident. So long as I stand here, the monster will not stir from its lurking-place; but we must now decoy it forth.”

“Will that not be difficult?”

“Not at all. Seat yourself yonder on that crag (about one hundred yards from the bank), while I retire to a distance. In a short time the reptile will catch sight or scent of you, and perceiving that you are no vril-bearer, will come forth to devour you. As soon as it is fairly out of the water, it becomes my prey.”

“Do you mean to tell me that I am to be the decoy to that horrible monster which could engulf me within its jaws in a second! I beg to decline.”

The child laughed. “Fear nothing,” said he; “only sit still.”

Instead of obeying the command, I made a bound, and was about to take fairly to my heels, when Taee touched me slightly on the shoulder, and, fixing his eyes steadily on mine, I was rooted to the spot. All power of volition left me. Submissive to the infant’s gesture, I followed him to the crag he had indicated, and seated myself there in silence. Most readers have seen something of the effects of electro-biology, whether genuine or spurious. No professor of that doubtful craft had ever been able to influence a thought or a movement of mine, but I was a mere machine at the will of this terrible child. Meanwhile he expanded his wings, soared aloft, and alighted amidst a copse at the brow of a hill at some distance.

I was alone; and turning my eyes with an indescribable sensation of horror towards the lake, I kept them fixed on its water, spell-bound. It might be ten or fifteen minutes, to me it seemed ages, before the still surface, gleaming under the lamplight, began to be agitated towards the centre. At the same time the shoals of fish near the margin evinced their sense of the enemy’s approach by splash and leap and bubbling circle. I could detect their hurried flight hither and thither, some even casting themselves ashore. A long, dark, undulous furrow came moving along the waters, nearer and nearer, till the vast head of the reptile emerged—its jaws bristling with fangs, and its dull eyes fixing themselves hungrily on the spot where I sat motionless. And now its fore feet were on the strand—now its enormous breast, scaled on either side as in armor, in the centre showing its corrugated skin of a dull venomous yellow; and now its whole length was on the land, a hundred feet or more from the jaw to the tail. Another stride of those ghastly feet would have brought it to the spot where I sat. There was but a moment between me and this grim form of death, when what seemed a flash of lightning shot through the air, smote, and, for a space of time briefer than that in which a man can draw his breath, enveloped the monster; and then, as the flash vanished, there lay before me a blackened, charred, smoldering mass, a something gigantic, but of which even the outlines of form were burned away, and rapidly crumbling into dust and ashes. I remained still seated, still speechless, ice-cold with a new sensation of dread; what had been horror was now awe.

I felt the child’s hand on my head—fear left me—the spell was broken—I rose up. “You see with what ease the Vril-ya destroy their enemies,” said Taee; and then, moving towards the bank, he contemplated the smoldering relics of the monster, and said quietly, “I have destroyed larger creatures, but none with so much pleasure. Yes, it IS a Krek; what suffering it must have inflicted while it lived!” Then he took up the poor fishes that had flung themselves ashore, and restored them mercifully to their native element.

Chapter XIX.

As we walked back to the town, Taee took a new and circuitous way, in order to show me what, to use a familiar term, I will call the ‘Station,’ from which emigrants or travelers to other communities commence their journeys. I had, on a former occasion, expressed a wish to see their vehicles. These I found to be of two kinds, one for land journeys, one for aerial voyages: the former were of all sizes and forms, some not larger than an ordinary carriage, some movable houses of one story and containing several rooms, furnished according to the ideas of comfort or luxury which are entertained by the Vril-ya. The aerial vehicles were of light substances, not the least resembling our balloons, but rather our boats and pleasure-vessels, with helm and rudder, with large wings or paddles, and a central machine worked by vril. All the vehicles both for land or air were indeed worked by that potent and mysterious agency.

I saw a convoy set out on its journey, but it had few passengers, containing chiefly articles of merchandise, and was bound to a neighboring community; for among all the tribes of the Vril-ya there is considerable commercial interchange. I may here observe, that their money currency does not consist of the precious metals, which are too common among them for that purpose. The smaller coins in ordinary use are manufactured from a peculiar fossil shell, the comparatively scarce remnant of some very early deluge, or other convulsion of nature, by which a species has become extinct. It is minute, and flat as an oyster, and takes a jewel-like polish. This coinage circulates among all the tribes of the Vril-ya. Their larger transactions are carried on much like ours, by bills of exchange, and thin metallic plates which answer the purpose of our bank-notes.

Let me take this occasion of adding that the taxation among the tribe I became acquainted with was very considerable, compared with the amount of population. But I never heard that any one grumbled at it, for it was devoted to purposes of universal utility, and indeed necessary to the civilization of the tribe. The cost of lighting so large a range of country, of providing for emigration, of maintaining the public buildings at which the various operations of national intellect were carried on, from the first education of an infant to the departments in which the College of Sages were perpetually trying new experiments in mechanical science; all these involved the necessity for considerable state funds. To these I must add an item that struck me as very singular. I have said that all the human labor required by the state is carried on by children up to the marriageable age. For this labor the state pays, and at a rate immeasurably higher than our own remuneration to labor even in the United States. According to their theory, every child, male or female, on attaining the marriageable age, and there terminating the period of labor, should have acquired enough for an independent competence during life. As, no matter what the disparity of fortune in the parents, all the children must equally serve, so all are equally paid according to their several ages or the nature of their work. Where the parents or friends choose to retain a child in their own service, they must pay into the public fund in the same ratio as the state pays to the children it employs; and this sum is handed over to the child when the period of service expires. This practice serves, no doubt, to render the notion of social equality familiar and agreeable; and if it may be said that all the children form a democracy, no less truly it may be said that all the adults form an aristocracy. The exquisite politeness and refinement of manners among the Vril-ya, the generosity of their sentiments, the absolute leisure they enjoy for following out their own private pursuits, the amenities of their domestic intercourse, in which they seem as members of one noble order that can have no distrust of each other’s word or deed, all combine to make the Vril-ya the most perfect nobility which a political disciple of Plato or Sidney could conceive for the ideal of an aristocratic republic.

Chapter XX.

From the date of the expedition with Taee which I have just narrated, the child paid me frequent visits. He had taken a liking to me, which I cordially returned. Indeed, as he was not yet twelve years old, and had not commenced the course of scientific studies with which childhood closes in that country, my intellect was less inferior to his than to that of the elder members of his race, especially of the Gy-ei, and most especially of the accomplished Zee. The children of the Vril-ya, having upon their minds the weight of so many active duties and grave responsibilities, are not generally mirthful; but Taee, with all his wisdom, had much of the playful good-humor one often finds the characteristic of elderly men of genius. He felt that sort of pleasure in my society which a boy of a similar age in the upper world has in the company of a pet dog or monkey. It amused him to try and teach me the ways of his people, as it amuses a nephew of mine to make his poodle walk on his hind legs or jump through a hoop. I willingly lent myself to such experiments, but I never achieved the success of the poodle. I was very much interested at first in the attempt to ply the wings which the youngest of the Vril-ya use as nimbly and easily as ours do their legs and arms; but my efforts were attended with contusions serious enough to make me abandon them in despair.

These wings, as I before said, are very large, reaching to the knee, and in repose thrown back so as to form a very graceful mantle. They are composed from the feathers of a gigantic bird that abounds in the rocky heights of the country—the color mostly white, but sometimes with reddish streaks. They are fastened round the shoulders with light but strong springs of steel; and, when expanded, the arms slide through loops for that purpose, forming, as it were, a stout central membrane. As the arms are raised, a tubular lining beneath the vest or tunic becomes, by mechanical contrivance inflated with air, increased or diminished at will by the movement of the arms, and serving to buoy the whole form as on bladders. The wings and the balloon-like apparatus are highly charged with vril; and when the body is thus wafted upward, it seems to become singularly lightened of its weight. I found it easy enough to soar from the ground; indeed, when the wings were spread it was scarcely possible not to soar, but then came the difficulty and the danger. I utterly failed in the power to use and direct the pinions, though I am considered among my own race unusually alert and ready in bodily exercises, and am a very practiced swimmer. I could only make the most confused and blundering efforts at flight. I was the servant of the wings; the wings were not my servants—they were beyond my control; and when by a violent strain of muscle, and, I must fairly own, in that abnormal strength which is given by excessive fright, I curbed their gyrations and brought them near to the body, it seemed as if I lost the sustaining power stored in them and the connecting bladders, as when the air is let out of a balloon, and found myself precipitated again to the earth; saved, indeed, by some spasmodic flutterings, from being dashed to pieces, but not saved from the bruises and the stun of a heavy fall. I would, however, have persevered in my attempts, but for the advice or the commands of the scientific Zee, who had benevolently accompanied my flutterings, and, indeed, on the last occasion, flying just under me, received my form as it fell on her own expanded wings, and preserved me from breaking my head on the roof of the pyramid from which we had ascended.

“I see,” she said, “that your trials are in vain, not from the fault of the wings and their appurtenances, nor from any imperfectness and malformation of your own corpuscular system, but from irremediable, because organic, defect in your power of volition. Learn that the connection between the will and the agencies of that fluid which has been subjected to the control of the Vril-ya was never established by the first discoverers, never achieved by a single generation; it has gone on increasing, like other properties of race, in proportion as it has been uniformly transmitted from parent to child, so that, at last, it has become an instinct; and an infant An of our race wills to fly as intuitively and unconsciously as he wills to walk. He thus plies his invented or artificial wings with as much safety as a bird plies those with which it is born. I did not think sufficiently of this when I allowed you to try an experiment which allured me, for I have longed to have in you a companion. I shall abandon the experiment now. Your life is becoming dear to me.” Herewith the Gy’s voice and face softened, and I felt more seriously alarmed than I had been in my previous flights.

Now that I am on the subject of wings, I ought not to omit mention of a custom among the Gy-ei which seems to me very pretty and tender in the sentiment it implies. A Gy wears wings habitually when yet a virgin—she joins the Ana in their aerial sports—she adventures alone and afar into the wilder regions of the sunless world: in the boldness and height of her soarings, not less than in the grace of her movements, she excels the opposite sex. But, from the day of her marriage she wears wings no more, she suspends them with her own willing hand over the nuptial couch, never to be resumed unless the marriage tie be severed by divorce or death.

Now when Zee’s voice and eyes thus softened—and at that softening I prophetically recoiled and shuddered—Taee, who had accompanied us in our flights, but who, child-like, had been much more amused with my awkwardness, than sympathizing in my fears or aware of my danger, hovered over us, poised amidst spread wings, and hearing the endearing words of the young Gy, laughed aloud. Said he, “If the Tish cannot learn the use of wings, you may still be his companion, Zee, for you can suspend your own.”

Chapter XXI.

I had for some time observed in my host’s highly informed and powerfully proportioned daughter that kindly and protective sentiment which, whether above the earth or below it, an all-wise Providence has bestowed upon the feminine division of the human race. But until very lately I had ascribed it to that affection for ‘pets’ which a human female at every age shares with a human child. I now became painfully aware that the feeling with which Zee deigned to regard me was different from that which I had inspired in Taee. But this conviction gave me none of that complacent gratification which the vanity of man ordinarily conceives from a flattering appreciation of his personal merits on the part of the fair sex; on the contrary, it inspired me with fear. Yet of all the Gy-ei in the community, if Zee were perhaps the wisest and the strongest, she was, by common repute, the gentlest, and she was certainly the most popularly beloved. The desire to aid, to succor, to protect, to comfort, to bless, seemed to pervade her whole being. Though the complicated miseries that originate in penury and guilt are unknown to the social system of the Vril-ya, still, no sage had yet discovered in vril an agency which could banish sorrow from life; and wherever amongst her people sorrow found its way, there Zee followed in the mission of comforter. Did some sister Gy fail to secure the love she sighed for? Zee sought her out, and brought all the resources of her lore, and all the consolations of her sympathy, to bear upon a grief that so needs the solace of a confidant. In the rare cases, when grave illness seized upon childhood or youth, and the cases, less rare, when, in the hardy and adventurous probation of infants, some accident, attended with pain and injury occurred, Zee forsook her studies and her sports, and became the healer and nurse. Her favorite flights were towards the extreme boundaries of the domain where children were stationed on guard against outbreaks of warring forces in nature, or the invasions of devouring animals, so that she might warn them of any peril which her knowledge detected or foresaw, or be at hand if any harm had befallen. Nay, even in the exercise of her scientific acquirements there was a concurrent benevolence of purpose and will. Did she learn any novelty in invention that would be useful to the practitioner of some special art or craft? she hastened to communicate and explain it. Was some veteran sage of the College perplexed and wearied with the toil of an abstruse study? she would patiently devote herself to his aid, work out details for him, sustain his spirits with her hopeful smile, quicken his wit with her luminous suggestion, be to him, as it were, his own good genius made visible as the strengthener and inspirer. The same tenderness she exhibited to the inferior creatures. I have often known her bring home some sick and wounded animal, and tend and cherish it as a mother would tend and cherish her stricken child. Many a time when I sat in the balcony, or hanging garden, on which my window opened, I have watched her rising in the air on her radiant wings, and in a few moments groups of infants below, catching sight of her, would soar upward with joyous sounds of greeting; clustering and sporting around her, so that she seemed a very centre of innocent delight. When I have walked with her amidst the rocks and valleys without the city, the elk-deer would scent or see her from afar, come bounding up, eager for the caress of her hand, or follow her footsteps, till dismissed by some musical whisper that the creature had learned to comprehend. It is the fashion among the virgin Gy-ei to wear on their foreheads a circlet, or coronet, with gems resembling opals, arranged in four points or rays like stars. These are lusterless in ordinary use, but if touched by the vril wand they take a clear lambent flame, which illuminates, yet not burns. This serves as an ornament in their festivities, and as a lamp, if, in their wanderings beyond their artificial lights, they have to traverse the dark. There are times, when I have seen Zee’s thoughtful majesty of face lighted up by this crowning halo, that I could scarcely believe her to be a creature of mortal birth, and bent my head before her as the vision of a being among the celestial orders. But never once did my heart feel for this lofty type of the noblest womanhood a sentiment of human love. Is it that, among the race I belong to, man’s pride so far influences his passions that woman loses to him her special charm of woman if he feels her to be in all things eminently superior to himself? But by what strange infatuation could this peerless daughter of a race which, in the supremacy of its powers and the felicity of its conditions, ranked all other races in the category of barbarians, have deigned to honor me with her preference? In personal qualifications, though I passed for good-looking amongst the people I came from, the handsomest of my countrymen might have seemed insignificant and homely beside the grand and serene type of beauty which characterized the aspect of the Vril-ya.

That novelty, the very difference between myself and those to whom Zee was accustomed, might serve to bias her fancy was probable enough, and as the reader will see later, such a cause might suffice to account for the predilection with which I was distinguished by a young Gy scarcely out of her childhood, and very inferior in all respects to Zee. But whoever will consider those tender characteristics which I have just ascribed to the daughter of Aph-Lin, may readily conceive that the main cause of my attraction to her was in her instinctive desire to cherish, to comfort, to protect, and, in protecting, to sustain and to exalt. Thus, when I look back, I account for the only weakness unworthy of her lofty nature, which bowed the daughter of the Vril-ya to a woman’s affection for one so inferior to herself as was her father’s guest. But be the cause what it may, the consciousness that I had inspired such affection thrilled me with awe—a moral awe of her very imperfections, of her mysterious powers, of the inseparable distinctions between her race and my own; and with that awe, I must confess to my shame, there combined the more material and ignoble dread of the perils to which her preference would expose me.

Under these anxious circumstances, fortunately, my conscience and sense of honor were free from reproach. It became clearly my duty, if Zee’s preference continued manifest, to intimate it to my host, with, of course, all the delicacy which is ever to be preserved by a well-bred man in confiding to another any degree of favor by which one of the fair sex may condescend to distinguish him. Thus, at all events, I should be freed from responsibility or suspicion of voluntary participation in the sentiments of Zee; and the superior wisdom of my host might probably suggest some sage extrication from my perilous dilemma. In this resolve I obeyed the ordinary instinct of civilized and moral man, who, erring though he be, still generally prefers the right course in those cases where it is obviously against his inclinations, his interests, and his safety to elect the wrong one.

Chapter XXII.

As the reader has seen, Aph-Lin had not favored my general and unrestricted intercourse with his countrywomen. Though relying on my promise to abstain from giving any information as to the world I had left, and still more on the promise of those to whom had been put the same request, not to question me, which Zee had exacted from Taee, yet he did not feel sure that, if I were allowed to mix with the strangers whose curiosity the sight of me had aroused, I could sufficiently guard myself against their inquiries. When I went out, therefore, it was never alone; I was always accompanied either by one of my host’s family, or my child-friend Taee. Bra, Aph-Lin’s wife, seldom stirred beyond the gardens which surrounded the house, and was fond of reading the ancient literature, which contained something of romance and adventure not to be found in the writings of recent ages, and presented pictures of a life unfamiliar to her experience and interesting to her imagination; pictures, indeed, of a life more resembling that which we lead every day above ground, colored by our sorrows, sins, passions, and much to her what the tales of the Genii or the Arabian Nights are to us. But her love of reading did not prevent Bra from the discharge of her duties as mistress of the largest household in the city. She went daily the round of the chambers, and saw that the automata and other mechanical contrivances were in order, that the numerous children employed by Aph-Lin, whether in his private or public capacity, were carefully tended. Bra also inspected the accounts of the whole estate, and it was her great delight to assist her husband in the business connected with his office as chief administrator of the Lighting Department, so that her avocations necessarily kept her much within doors. The two sons were both completing their education at the College of Sages; and the elder, who had a strong passion for mechanics, and especially for works connected with the machinery of timepieces and automata, had decided on devoting himself to these pursuits, and was now occupied in constructing a shop or warehouse, at which his inventions could be exhibited and sold. The younger son preferred farming and rural occupations; and when not attending the College, at which he chiefly studied the theories of agriculture, was much absorbed by his practical application of that science to his father’s lands. It will be seen by this how completely equality of ranks is established among this people—a shopkeeper being of exactly the same grade in estimation as the large landed proprietor. Aph-Lin was the wealthiest member of the community, and his eldest son preferred keeping a shop to any other avocation; nor was this choice thought to show any want of elevated notions on his part.

This young man had been much interested in examining my watch, the works of which were new to him, and was greatly pleased when I made him a present of it. Shortly after, he returned the gift with interest, by a watch of his own construction, marking both the time as in my watch and the time as kept among the Vril-ya. I have that watch still, and it has been much admired by many among the most eminent watchmakers of London and Paris. It is of gold, with diamond hands and figures, and it plays a favorite tune among the Vril-ya in striking the hours: it only requires to be wound up once in ten months, and has never gone wrong since I had it. These young brothers being thus occupied, my usual companions in that family, when I went abroad, were my host or his daughter. Now, agreeably with the honorable conclusions I had come to, I began to excuse myself from Zee’s invitations to go out alone with her, and seized an occasion when that learned Gy was delivering a lecture at the College of Sages to ask Aph-Lin to show me his country-seat. As this was at some little distance, and as Aph-Lin was not fond of walking, while I had discreetly relinquished all attempts at flying, we proceeded to our destination in one of the aerial boats belonging to my host. A child of eight years old, in his employ, was our conductor. My host and myself reclined on cushions, and I found the movement very easy and luxurious. “Aph-Lin,” said I, “you will not, I trust, be displeased with me, if I ask your permission to travel for a short time, and visit other tribes or communities of your illustrious race. I have also a strong desire to see those nations which do not adopt your institutions, and which you consider as savages. It would interest me greatly to notice what are the distinctions between them and the races whom we consider civilized in the world I have left.”

“It is utterly impossible that you should go hence alone,” said Aph-Lin. “Even among the Vril-ya you would be exposed to great dangers. Certain peculiarities of formation and color, and the extraordinary phenomenon of hirsute bushes upon your cheeks and chin, denoting in you a species of An distinct alike from our own race and any known race of barbarians yet extant, would attract, of course, the special attention of the College of Sages in whatever community of Vril-ya you visited, and it would depend upon the individual temper of some individual sage whether you would be received, as you have been here, hospitably, or whether you would not be at once dissected for scientific purposes. Know that when the Turn first took you to his house, and while you were there put to sleep by Taee in order to recover from your previous pain or fatigue, the sages summoned by the Turn were divided in opinion whether you were a harmless or an obnoxious animal. During your unconscious state your teeth were examined, and they clearly showed that you were not only graminivorous but carnivorous. Carnivorous animals of your size are always destroyed, as being of savage and dangerous nature. Our teeth, as you have doubtless observed, are not those of the creatures who devour flesh.”

I never had observed it; and, if I had, am not physiologist enough to have distinguished the difference.

“It is, indeed, maintained by Zee and other philosophers, that as, in remote ages, the Ana did prey upon living beings of the brute species, their teeth must have been fitted for that purpose. But, even if so, they have been modified by hereditary transmission, and suited to the food on which we now exist; nor are even the barbarians, who adopt the turbulent and ferocious institutions of Glek-Nas, devourers of flesh like beasts of prey.

“In the course of this dispute it was proposed to dissect you; but Taee begged you off, and the Turn being, by office, averse to all novel experiments at variance with our custom of sparing life, except where it is clearly proved to be for the good of the community to take it, sent to me, whose business it is, as the richest man of the state, to afford hospitality to strangers from a distance. It was at my option to decide whether or not you were a stranger whom I could safely admit. Had I declined to receive you, you would have been handed over to the College of Sages, and what might there have befallen you I do not like to conjecture. Apart from this danger, you might chance to encounter some child of four years old, just put in possession of his vril staff; and who, in alarm at your strange appearance, and in the impulse of the moment, might reduce you to a cinder. Taee himself was about to do so when he first saw you, had his father not checked his hand. Therefore I say you cannot travel alone, but with Zee you would be safe; and I have no doubt that she would accompany you on a tour round the neighboring communities of Vril-ya (to the savage states, No!): I will ask her.”

Now, as my main object in proposing to travel was to escape from Zee, I hastily exclaimed, “Nay, pray do not! I relinquish my design. You have said enough as to its dangers to deter me from it; and I can scarcely think it right that a young Gy of the personal attractions of your lovely daughter should travel into other regions without a better protector than a Tish of my insignificant strength and stature.”

Aph-Lin emitted the soft sibilant sound which is the nearest approach to laughter that a full-grown An permits to himself, ere he replied: “Pardon my discourteous but momentary indulgence of mirth at any observation seriously made by my guest. I could not but be amused at the idea of Zee, who is so fond of protecting others that children call her ‘THE GUARDIAN,’ needing a protector herself against any dangers arising from the audacious admiration of males. Know that our Gy-ei, while unmarried, are accustomed to travel alone among other tribes, to see if they find there some An who may please them more than the Ana they find at home. Zee has already made three such journeys, but hitherto her heart has been untouched.”

Here the opportunity which I sought was afforded to me, and I said, looking down, and with faltering voice, “Will you, my kind host, promise to pardon me, if what I am about to say gives offence?”

“Say only the truth, and I cannot be offended; or, could I be so, it would not be for me, but for you to pardon.”

“Well, then, assist me to quit you, and, much as I should have like to witness more of the wonders, and enjoy more of the felicity, which belong to your people, let me return to my own.”

“I fear there are reasons why I cannot do that; at all events, not without permission of the Turn, and he, probably, would not grant it. You are not destitute of intelligence; you may (though I do not think so) have concealed the degree of destructive powers possessed by your people; you might, in short, bring upon us some danger; and if the Turn entertains that idea, it would clearly be his duty, either to put an end to you, or enclose you in a cage for the rest of your existence. But why should you wish to leave a state of society which you so politely allow to be more felicitous than your own?”

“Oh, Aph-Lin! My answer is plain. Lest in naught, and unwittingly, I should betray your hospitality; lest, in the caprice of will which in our world is proverbial among the other sex, and from which even a Gy is not free, your adorable daughter should deign to regard me, though a Tish, as if I were a civilized An, and—and—and—-”

“Court you as her spouse,” put in Aph-Lin, gravely, and without any visible sign of surprise or displeasure.

“You have said it.”

“That would be a misfortune,” resumed my host, after a pause, “and I feel you have acted as you ought in warning me. It is, as you imply, not uncommon for an unwedded Gy to conceive tastes as to the object she covets which appear whimsical to others; but there is no power to compel a young Gy to any course opposed to that which she chooses to pursue. All we can to is to reason with her, and experience tells us that the whole College of Sages would find it vain to reason with a Gy in a matter that concerns her choice in love. I grieve for you, because such a marriage would be against the A-glauran, or good of the community, for the children of such a marriage would adulterate the race: they might even come into the world with the teeth of carnivorous animals; this could not be allowed: Zee, as a Gy, cannot be controlled; but you, as a Tish, can be destroyed. I advise you, then, to resist her addresses; to tell her plainly that you can never return her love. This happens constantly. Many an An, however, ardently wooed by one Gy, rejects her, and puts an end to her persecution by wedding another. The same course is open to you.”

“No; for I cannot wed another Gy without equally injuring the community, and exposing it to the chance of rearing carnivorous children.”

“That is true. All I can say, and I say it with the tenderness due to a Tish, and the respect due to a guest, is frankly this—if you yield, you will become a cinder. I must leave it to you to take the best way you can to defend yourself. Perhaps you had better tell Zee that she is ugly. That assurance on the lips of him she woos generally suffices to chill the most ardent Gy. Here we are at my country-house.”

Chapter XXIII.

I confess that my conversation with Aph-Lin, and the extreme coolness with which he stated his inability to control the dangerous caprice of his daughter, and treated the idea of the reduction into a cinder to which her amorous flame might expose my too seductive person, took away the pleasure I should otherwise have had in the contemplation of my host’s country-seat, and the astonishing perfection of the machinery by which his farming operations were conducted. The house differed in appearance from the massive and somber building which Aph-Lin inhabited in the city, and which seemed akin to the rocks out of which the city itself had been hewn into shape. The walls of the country-seat were composed by trees placed a few feet apart from each other, the interstices being filled in with the transparent metallic substance which serves the purpose of glass among the Ana. These trees were all in flower, and the effect was very pleasing, if not in the best taste. We were received at the porch by life-like automata, who conducted us into a chamber, the like to which I never saw before, but have often on summer days dreamily imagined. It was a bower—half room, half garden. The walls were one mass of climbing flowers. The open spaces, which we call windows, and in which, here, the metallic surfaces were slid back, commanded various views; some, of the wide landscape with its lakes and rocks; some, of small limited expanses answering to our conservatories, filled with tiers of flowers. Along the sides of the room were flower-beds, interspersed with cushions for repose. In the centre of the floor was a cistern and a fountain of that liquid light which I have presumed to be naphtha. It was luminous and of a roseate hue; it sufficed without lamps to light up the room with a subdued radiance. All around the fountain was carpeted with a soft deep lichen, not green (I have never seen that color in the vegetation of this country), but a quiet brown, on which the eye reposes with the same sense of relief as that with which in the upper world it reposes on green. In the outlets upon flowers (which I have compared to our conservatories) there were singing birds innumerable, which, while we remained in the room, sang in those harmonies of tune to which they are, in these parts, so wonderfully trained. The roof was open. The whole scene had charms for every sense—music form the birds, fragrance from the flowers, and varied beauty to the eye at every aspect. About all was a voluptuous repose. What a place, methought, for a honeymoon, if a Gy bride were a little less formidably armed not only with the rights of woman, but with the powers of man! But when one thinks of a Gy, so learned, so tall, so stately, so much above the standard of the creature we call woman as was Zee, no! even if I had felt no fear of being reduced to a cinder, it is not of her I should have dreamed in that bower so constructed for dreams of poetic love.

The automata reappeared, serving one of those delicious liquids which form the innocent wines of the Vril-ya.

“Truly,” said I, “this is a charming residence, and I can scarcely conceive why you do not settle yourself here instead of amid the gloomier abodes of the city.”

“As responsible to the community for the administration of light, I am compelled to reside chiefly in the city, and can only come hither for short intervals.”

“But since I understand from you that no honors are attached to your office, and it involves some trouble, why do you accept it?”

“Each of us obeys without question the command of the Tur. He said, ‘Be it requested that Aph-Lin shall be the Commissioner of Light,’ so I had no choice; but having held the office now for a long time, the cares, which were at first unwelcome, have become, if not pleasing, at least endurable. We are all formed by custom—even the difference of our race from the savage is but the transmitted continuance of custom, which becomes, through hereditary descent, part and parcel of our nature. You see there are Ana who even reconcile themselves to the responsibilities of chief magistrate, but no one would do so if his duties had not been rendered so light, or if there were any questions as to compliance with his requests.”

“Not even if you thought the requests unwise or unjust?”

“We do not allow ourselves to think so, and, indeed, everything goes on as if each and all governed themselves according to immemorial custom.”

“When the chief magistrate dies or retires, how do you provide for his successor?”

“The An who has discharged the duties of chief magistrate for many years is the best person to choose one by whom those duties may be understood, and he generally names his successor.”

“His son, perhaps?”

“Seldom that; for it is not an office any one desires or seeks, and a father naturally hesitates to constrain his son. But if the Turn himself decline to make a choice, for fear it might be supposed that he owed some grudge to the person on whom his choice would settle, then there are three of the College of Sages who draw lots among themselves which shall have the power to elect the chief. We consider that the judgment of one An of ordinary capacity is better than the judgment of three or more, however wise they may be; for among three there would probably be disputes, and where there are disputes, passion clouds judgment. The worst choice made by one who has no motive in choosing wrong, is better than the best choice made by many who have many motives for not choosing right.”

“You reverse in your policy the maxims adopted in my country.”

“Are you all, in your country, satisfied with your governors?”

“All! Certainly not; the governors that most please some are sure to be those most displeasing to others.”

“Then our system is better than yours.”

“For you it may be; but according to our system a Tish could not be reduced to a cinder if a female compelled him to marry her; and as a Tish I sigh to return to my native world.”

“Take courage, my dear little guest; Zee can’t compel you to marry her. She can only entice you to do so. Don’t be enticed. Come and look round my domain.”

We went forth into a close, bordered with sheds; for though the Ana keep no stock for food, there are some animals which they rear for milking and others for shearing. The former have no resemblance to our cows, nor the latter to our sheep, nor do I believe such species exist amongst them. They use the milk of three varieties of animal: one resembles the antelope, but is much larger, being as tall as a camel; the other two are smaller, and, though differing somewhat from each other, resemble no creature I ever saw on earth. They are very sleek and of rounded proportions; their color that of the dappled deer, with very mild countenances and beautiful dark eyes. The milk of these three creatures differs in richness and taste. It is usually diluted with water, and flavored with the juice of a peculiar and perfumed fruit, and in itself is very nutritious and palatable. The animal whose fleece serves them for clothing and many other purposes, is more like the Italian she-goat than any other creature, but is considerably larger, has no horns, and is free from the displeasing odor of our goats. Its fleece is not thick, but very long and fine; it varies in color, but is never white, more generally of a slate-like or lavender hue. For clothing it is usually worn dyed to suit the taste of the wearer. These animals were exceedingly tame, and were treated with extraordinary care and affection by the children (chiefly female) who tended them.

We then went through vast storehouses filled with grains and fruits. I may here observe that the main staple of food among these people consists—firstly, of a kind of corn much larger in ear than our wheat, and which by culture is perpetually being brought into new varieties of flavor; and, secondly, of a fruit of about the size of a small orange, which, when gathered, is hard and bitter. It is stowed away for many months in their warehouses, and then becomes succulent and tender. Its juice, which is of dark-red color, enters into most of their sauces. They have many kinds of fruit of the nature of the olive, from which delicious oils are extracted. They have a plant somewhat resembling the sugar-cane, but its juices are less sweet and of a delicate perfume. They have no bees nor honey-making insects, but they make much use of a sweet gum that oozes from a coniferous plant, not unlike the araucaria. Their soil teems also with esculent roots and vegetables, which it is the aim of their culture to improve and vary to the utmost. And I never remember any meal among this people, however it might be confined to the family household, in which some delicate novelty in such articles of food was not introduced. In fine, as I before observed, their cookery is exquisite, so diversified and nutritious that one does not miss animal food; and their own physical forms suffice to show that with them, at least, meat is not required for superior production of muscular fiber. They have no grapes—the drinks extracted from their fruits are innocent and refreshing. Their staple beverage, however, is water, in the choice of which they are very fastidious, distinguishing at once the slightest impurity.

“My younger son takes great pleasure in augmenting our produce,” said Aph-Lin as we passed through the storehouses, “and therefore will inherit these lands, which constitute the chief part of my wealth. To my elder son such inheritance would be a great trouble and affliction.”

“Are there many sons among you who think the inheritance of vast wealth would be a great trouble and affliction?”

“Certainly; there are indeed very few of the Vril-ya who do not consider that a fortune much above the average is a heavy burden. We are rather a lazy people after the age of childhood, and do not like undergoing more cares than we can help, and great wealth does give its owner many cares. For instance, it marks us out for public offices, which none of us like and none of us can refuse. It necessitates our taking a continued interest in the affairs of any of our poorer countrymen, so that we may anticipate their wants and see that none fall into poverty. There is an old proverb amongst us which says, ‘The poor man’s need is the rich man’s shame—-’”

“Pardon me, if I interrupt you for a moment. You allow that some, even of the Vril-ya, know want, and need relief.”

“If by want you mean the destitution that prevails in a Koom-Posh, that is impossible with us, unless an An has, by some extraordinary process, got rid of all his means, cannot or will not emigrate, and has either tired out the affectionate aid of this relations or personal friends, or refuses to accept it.”

“Well, then, does he not supply the place of an infant or automaton, and become a laborer—a servant?”

“No; then we regard him as an unfortunate person of unsound reason, and place him, at the expense of the State, in a public building, where every comfort and every luxury that can mitigate his affliction are lavished upon him. But an An does not like to be considered out of his mind, and therefore such cases occur so seldom that the public building I speak of is now a deserted ruin, and the last inmate of it was an An whom I recollect to have seen in my childhood. He did not seem conscious of loss of reason, and wrote glaubs (poetry). When I spoke of wants, I meant such wants as an An with desires larger than his means sometimes entertains—for expensive singing-birds, or bigger houses, or country-gardens; and the obvious way to satisfy such wants is to buy of him something that he sells. Hence Ana like myself, who are very rich, are obliged to buy a great many things they do not require, and live on a very large scale where they might prefer to live on a small one. For instance, the great size of my house in the town is a source of much trouble to my wife, and even to myself; but I am compelled to have it thus incommodiously large, because, as the richest An of the community, I am appointed to entertain the strangers from the other communities when they visit us, which they do in great crowds twice-a-year, when certain periodical entertainments are held, and when relations scattered throughout all the realms of the Vril-ya joyfully reunite for a time. This hospitality, on a scale so extensive, is not to my taste, and therefore I should have been happier had I been less rich. But we must all bear the lot assigned to us in this short passage through time that we call life. After all, what are a hundred years, more or less, to the ages through which we must pass hereafter? Luckily, I have one son who likes great wealth. It is a rare exception to the general rule, and I own I cannot myself understand it.”

After this conversation I sought to return to the subject which continued to weigh on my heart—viz., the chances of escape from Zee. But my host politely declined to renew that topic, and summoned our air-boat. On our way back we were met by Zee, who, having found us gone, on her return from the College of Sages, had unfurled her wings and flown in search of us.

Her grand, but to me unalluring, countenance brightened as she beheld me, and, poising herself beside the boat on her large outspread plumes, she said reproachfully to Aph-Lin—“Oh, father, was it right in you to hazard the life of your guest in a vehicle to which he is so unaccustomed? He might, by an incautious movement, fall over the side; and alas; he is not like us, he has no wings. It were death to him to fall. Dear one!” (she added, accosting my shrinking self in a softer voice), “have you no thought of me, that you should thus hazard a life which has become almost a part of mine? Never again be thus rash, unless I am thy companion. What terror thou hast stricken into me!”

I glanced furtively at Aph-Lin, expecting, at least, that he would indignantly reprove his daughter for expressions of anxiety and affection, which, under all the circumstances, would, in the world above ground, be considered immodest in the lips of a young female, addressed to a male not affianced to her, even if of the same rank as herself.

But so confirmed are the rights of females in that region, and so absolutely foremost among those rights do females claim the privilege of courtship, that Aph-Lin would no more have thought of reproving his virgin daughter than he would have thought of disobeying the orders of the Tur. In that country, custom, as he implied, is all in all.

He answered mildly, “Zee, the Tish is in no danger and it is my belief the he can take very good care of himself.”

“I would rather that he let me charge myself with his care. Oh, heart of my heart, it was in the thought of thy danger that I first felt how much I loved thee!”

Never did man feel in such a false position as I did. These words were spoken loud in the hearing of Zee’s father—in the hearing of the child who steered. I blushed with shame for them, and for her, and could not help replying angrily: “Zee, either you mock me, which, as your father’s guest, misbecomes you, or the words you utter are improper for a maiden Gy to address even to an An of her own race, if he has not wooed her with the consent of her parents. How much more improper to address them to a Tish, who has never presumed to solicit your affections, and who can never regard you with other sentiments than those of reverence and awe!”

Aph-Lin made me a covert sing of approbation, but said nothing. “Be not so cruel!” exclaimed Zee, still in sonorous accents. “Can love command itself where it is truly felt? Do you suppose that a maiden Gy will conceal a sentiment that it elevates her to feel? What a country you must have come from!”

Here Aph-Lin gently interposed, saying, “Among the Tish-a the rights of your sex do not appear to be established, and at all events my guest may converse with you more freely if unchecked by the presence of others.”

To this remark Zee made no reply, but, darting on me a tender reproachful glance, agitated her wings and fled homeward.

“I had counted, at least, on some aid from my host,” I said bitterly, “in the perils to which his own daughter exposes me.”

“I gave you the best aid I could. To contradict a Gy in her love affairs is to confirm her purpose. She allows no counsel to come between her and her affections.”

Chapter XXIV.

On alighting from the air-boat, a child accosted Aph-Lin in the hall with a request that he would be present at the funeral obsequies of a relation who had recently departed from that nether world.

Now, I had never seen a burial-place or cemetery amongst this people, and, glad to seize even so melancholy an occasion to defer an encounter with Zee, I asked Aph-Lin if I might be permitted to witness with him the interment of his relation; unless, indeed, it were regarded as one of those sacred ceremonies to which a stranger to their race might not be admitted.

“The departure of an An to a happier world,” answered my host, “when, as in the case of my kinsman, he has lived so long in this as to have lost pleasure in it, is rather a cheerful though quiet festival than a sacred ceremony, and you may accompany me if you will.”

Preceded by the child-messenger, we walked up the main street to a house at some little distance, and, entering the hall, were conducted to a room on the ground floor, where we found several persons assembled round a couch on which was laid the deceased. It was an old man, who had, as I was told, lived beyond his 130th year. To judge by the calm smile on his countenance, he had passed away without suffering. One of the sons, who was now the head of the family, and who seemed in vigorous middle life, though he was considerably more than seventy, stepped forward with a cheerful face and told Aph-Lin “that the day before he died his father had seen in a dream his departed Gy, and was eager to be reunited to her, and restored to youth beneath the nearer smile of the All-Good.”

While these two were talking, my attention was drawn to a dark metallic substance at the farther end of the room. It was about twenty feet in length, narrow in proportion, and all closed round, save, near the roof, there were small round holes through which might be seen a red light. From the interior emanated a rich and sweet perfume; and while I was conjecturing what purpose this machine was to serve, all the time-pieces in the town struck the hour with their solemn musical chime; and as that sound ceased, music of a more joyous character, but still of a joy subdued and tranquil, rang throughout the chamber, and from the walls beyond, in a choral peal. Symphonious with the melody, those in the room lifted their voices in chant. The words of this hymn were simple. They expressed no regret, no farewell, but rather a greeting to the new world whither the deceased had preceded the living. Indeed, in their language, the funeral hymn is called the ‘Birth Song.’ Then the corpse, covered by a long cerement, was tenderly lifted up by six of the nearest kinfolk and borne towards the dark thing I have described. I pressed forward to see what happened. A sliding door or panel at one end was lifted up—the body deposited within, on a shelf—the door reclosed—a spring a the side touched—a sudden ‘whishing,’ sighing sound heard from within; and lo! at the other end of the machine the lid fell down, and a small handful of smoldering dust dropped into a ‘patera’ placed to receive it. The son took up the ‘patera’ and said (in what I understood afterwards was the usual form of words), “Behold how great is the Maker! To this little dust He gave form and life and soul. It needs not this little dust for Him to renew form and life and soul to the beloved one we shall soon see again.”

Each present bowed his head and pressed his hand to his heart. Then a young female child opened a small door within the wall, and I perceived, in the recess, shelves on which were placed many ‘paterae’ like that which the son held, save that they all had covers. With such a cover a Gy now approached the son, and placed it over the cup, on which it closed with a spring. On the lid were engraven the name of the deceased, and these words:—“Lent to us” (here the date of birth). “Recalled from us” (here the date of death).

The closed door shut with a musical sound, and all was over.

Chapter XXV.

“And this,” said I, with my mind full of what I had witnessed—“this, I presume, is your usual form of burial?”

“Our invariable form,” answered Aph-Lin. “What is it amongst your people?”

“We inter the body whole within the earth.”

“What! To degrade the form you have loved and honored, the wife on whose breast you have slept, to the loathsomeness of corruption?”

“But if the soul lives again, can it matter whether the body waste within the earth or is reduced by that awful mechanism, worked, no doubt by the agency of vril, into a pinch of dust?”

“You answer well,” said my host, “and there is no arguing on a matter of feeling; but to me your custom is horrible and repulsive, and would serve to invest death with gloomy and hideous associations. It is something, too, to my mind, to be able to preserve the token of what has been our kinsman or friend within the abode in which we live. We thus feel more sensibly that he still lives, though not visibly so to us. But our sentiments in this, as in all things, are created by custom. Custom is not to be changed by a wise An, any more than it is changed by a wise Community, without the greatest deliberation, followed by the most earnest conviction. It is only thus that change ceases to be changeability, and once made is made for good.”

When we regained the house, Aph-Lin summoned some of the children in his service and sent them round to several of his friends, requesting their attendance that day, during the Easy Hours, to a festival in honor of his kinsman’s recall to the All-Good. This was the largest and gayest assembly I ever witnessed during my stay among the Ana, and was prolonged far into the Silent Hours.

The banquet was spread in a vast chamber reserved especially for grand occasions. This differed from our entertainments, and was not without a certain resemblance to those we read of in the luxurious age of the Roman empire. There was not one great table set out, but numerous small tables, each appropriated to eight guests. It is considered that beyond that number conversation languishes and friendship cools. The Ana never laugh loud, as I have before observed, but the cheerful ring of their voices at the various tables betokened gaiety of intercourse. As they have no stimulant drinks, and are temperate in food, though so choice and dainty, the banquet itself did not last long. The tables sank through the floor, and then came musical entertainments for those who liked them. Many, however, wandered away:—some of the younger ascended in their wings, for the hall was roofless, forming aerial dances; others strolled through the various apartments, examining the curiosities with which they were stored, or formed themselves into groups for various games, the favorite of which is a complicated kind of chess played by eight persons. I mixed with the crowd, but was prevented joining in the conversation by the constant companionship of one or the other of my host’s sons, appointed to keep me from obtrusive questionings. The guests, however, noticed me but slightly; they had grown accustomed to my appearance, seeing me so often in the streets, and I had ceased to excite much curiosity.

To my great delight Zee avoided me, and evidently sought to excite my jealousy by marked attentions to a very handsome young An, who (though, as is the modest custom of the males when addressed by females, he answered with downcast eyes and blushing cheeks, and was demure and shy as young ladies new to the world are in most civilized countries, except England and America) was evidently much charmed by the tall Gy, and ready to falter a bashful “Yes” if she had actually proposed. Fervently hoping that she would, and more and more averse to the idea of reduction to a cinder after I had seen the rapidity with which a human body can be hurried into a pinch of dust, I amused myself by watching the manners of the other young people. I had the satisfaction of observing that Zee was no singular assertor of a female’s most valued rights. Wherever I turned my eyes, or lent my ears, it seemed to me that the Gy was the wooing party, and the An the coy and reluctant one. The pretty innocent airs which an An gave himself on being thus courted, the dexterity with which he evaded direct answers to professions of attachment, or turned into jest the flattering compliments addressed to him, would have done honor to the most accomplished coquette. Both my male chaperons were subjected greatly to these seductive influences, and both acquitted themselves with wonderful honor to their tact and self-control.

I said to the elder son, who preferred mechanical employments to the management of a great property, and who was of an eminently philosophical temperament,—“I find it difficult to conceive how at your age, and with all the intoxicating effects on the senses, of music and lights and perfumes, you can be so cold to that impassioned young Gy who has just left you with tears in her eyes at your cruelty.”

The young An replied with a sigh, “Gentle Tish, the greatest misfortune in life is to marry one Gy if you are in love with another.”

“Oh! You are in love with another?”

“Alas! Yes.”

“And she does not return your love?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes a look, a tone, makes me hope so; but she has never plainly told me that she loves me.”

“Have you not whispered in her own ear that you love her?”

“Fie! What are you thinking of? What world do you come from? Could I so betray the dignity of my sex? Could I be so un-Anly—so lost to shame, as to own love to a Gy who has not first owned hers to me?”

“Pardon: I was not quite aware that you pushed the modesty of your sex so far. But does no An ever say to a Gy, ‘I love you,’ till she says it first to him?”

“I can’t say that no An has ever done so, but if he ever does, he is disgraced in the eyes of the Ana, and secretly despised by the Gy-ei. No Gy, well brought up, would listen to him; she would consider that he audaciously infringed on the rights of her sex, while outraging the modesty which dignifies his own. It is very provoking,” continued the An, “for she whom I love has certainly courted no one else, and I cannot but think she likes me. Sometimes I suspect that she does not court me because she fears I would ask some unreasonable settlement as to the surrender of her rights. But if so, she cannot really love me, for where a Gy really loves she forgoes all rights.”

“Is this young Gy present?”

“Oh yes. She sits yonder talking to my mother.”

I looked in the direction to which my eyes were thus guided, and saw a Gy dressed in robes of bright red, which among this people is a sign that a Gy as yet prefers a single state. She wears gray, a neutral tint, to indicate that she is looking about for a spouse; dark purple if she wishes to intimate that she has made a choice; purple and orange when she is betrothed or married; light blue when she is divorced or a widow, and would marry again. Light blue is of course seldom seen.

Among a people where all are of so high a type of beauty, it is difficult to single out one as peculiarly handsome. My young friend’s choice seemed to me to possess the average of good looks; but there was an expression in her face that pleased me more than did the faces of the young Gy-ei generally, because it looked less bold—less conscious of female rights. I observed that, while she talked to Bra, she glanced, from time to time, sidelong at my young friend.

“Courage,” said I, “that young Gy loves you.”

“Ay, but if she shall not say so, how am I the better for her love?”

“Your mother is aware of your attachment?”

“Perhaps so. I never owned it to her. It would be un-Anly to confide such weakness to a mother. I have told my father; he may have told it again to his wife.”

“Will you permit me to quit you for a moment and glide behind your mother and your beloved? I am sure they are talking about you. Do not hesitate. I promise that I will not allow myself to be questioned till I rejoin you.”

The young An pressed his hand on his heart, touched me lightly on the head, and allowed me to quit his side. I stole unobserved behind his mother and his beloved. I overheard their talk. Bra was speaking; said she, “There can be no doubt of this: either my son, who is of marriageable age, will be decoyed into marriage with one of his many suitors, or he will join those who emigrate to a distance and we shall see him no more. If you really care for him, my dear Lo, you should propose.”

“I do care for him, Bra; but I doubt if I could really ever win his affections. He is fond of his inventions and timepieces; and I am not like Zee, but so dull that I fear I could not enter into his favorite pursuits, and then he would get tired of me, and at the end of three years divorce me, and I could never marry another—never.”

“It is not necessary to know about timepieces to know how to be so necessary to the happiness of an An, who cares for timepieces, that he would rather give up the timepieces than divorce his Gy. You see, my dear Lo,” continued Bra, “that precisely because we are the stronger sex, we rule the other provided we never show our strength. If you were superior to my son in making timepieces and automata, you should, as his wife, always let him suppose you thought him superior in that art to yourself. The An tacitly allows the pre-eminence of the Gy in all except his own special pursuit. But if she either excels him in that, or affects not to admire him for his proficiency in it, he will not love her very long; perhaps he may even divorce her. But where a Gy really loves, she soon learns to love all that the An does.”

The young Gy made no answer to this address. She looked down musingly, then a smile crept over her lips, and she rose, still silent, and went through the crowd till she paused by the young An who loved her. I followed her steps, but discreetly stood at a little distance while I watched them. Somewhat to my surprise, till I recollected the coy tactics among the Ana, the lover seemed to receive her advances with an air of indifference. He even moved away, but she pursued his steps, and, a little time after, both spread their wings and vanished amid the luminous space above.

Just then I was accosted by the chief magistrate, who mingled with the crowd distinguished by no signs of deference or homage. It so happened that I had not seen this great dignitary since the day I had entered his dominions, and recalling Aph-Lin’s words as to his terrible doubt whether or not I should be dissected, a shudder crept over me at the sight of his tranquil countenance.

“I hear much of you, stranger, from my son Taee,” said the Turn, laying his hand politely on my bended head. “He is very fond of your society, and I trust you are not displeased with the customs of our people.”

I muttered some unintelligible answer, which I intended to be an assurance of my gratitude for the kindness I had received from the Turn, and my admiration of his countrymen, but the dissecting-knife gleamed before my mind’s eye and choked my utterance. A softer voice said, “My brother’s friend must be dear to me.” And looking up I saw a young Gy, who might be sixteen years old, standing beside the magistrate and gazing at me with a very benignant countenance. She had not come to her full growth, and was scarcely taller than myself (viz., about feet 10 inches), and, thanks to that comparatively diminutive stature, I thought her the loveliest Gy I had hitherto seen. I suppose something in my eyes revealed that impression, for her countenance grew yet more benignant. “Taee tells me,” she said, “that you have not yet learned to accustom yourself to wings. That grieves me, for I should have liked to fly with you.”

“Alas!” I replied, “I can never hope to enjoy that happiness. I am assured by Zee that the safe use of wings is a hereditary gift, and it would take generations before one of my race could poise himself in the air like a bird.”

“Let not that thought vex you too much,” replied this amiable Princess, “for, after all, there must come a day when Zee and myself must resign our wings forever. Perhaps when that day comes we might be glad if the An we chose was also without wings.”

The Turn had left us, and was lost amongst the crowd. I began to feel at ease with Taee’s charming sister, and rather startled her by the boldness of my compliment in replying, “that no An she could choose would ever use his wings to fly away from her.” It is so against custom for an An to say such civil things to a Gy till she has declared her passion for him, and been accepted as his betrothed, that the young maiden stood quite dumbfounded for a few moments. Nevertheless she did not seem displeased. At last recovering herself, she invited me to accompany her into one of the less crowded rooms and listen to the songs of the birds. I followed her steps as she glided before me, and she led me into a chamber almost deserted. A fountain of naphtha was playing in the centre of the room; round it were ranged soft divans, and the walls of the room were open on one side to an aviary in which the birds were chanting their artful chorus. The Gy seated herself on one of the divans, and I placed myself at her side. “Taee tells me,” she said, “that Aph-Lin has made it the law of his house that you are not to be questioned as to the country you come from or the reason why you visit us. Is it so?”

Literally “has said, In this house be it requested.” Words synonymous with law, as implying forcible obligation, are avoided by this singular people. Even had it been decreed by the Turn that his College of Sages should dissect me, the decree would have ran blandly thus,—“Be it requested that, for the good of the community, the carnivorous Tish be requested to submit himself to dissection.”

“It is.”

“May I, at least, without sinning against that law, ask at least if the Gy-ei in your country are of the same pale color as yourself, and no taller?”

“I do not think, O beautiful Gy, that I infringe the law of Aph-Lin, which is more binding on myself than any one, if I answer questions so innocent. The Gy-ei in my country are much fairer of hue than I am, and their average height is at least a head shorter than mine.”

“They cannot then be so strong as the Ana amongst you? But I suppose their superior vril force makes up for such extraordinary disadvantage of size?”

“They do not profess the vril force as you know it. But still they are very powerful in my country, and an An has small chance of a happy life if he be not more or less governed by his Gy.”

“You speak feelingly,” said Taee’s sister, in a tone of voice half sad, half petulant. “You are married, of course.”

“No—certainly not.”

“Nor betrothed?”

“Nor betrothed.”

“Is it possible that no Gy has proposed to you?”

“In my country the Gy does not propose; the An speaks first.”

“What a strange reversal of the laws of nature!” said the maiden, “and what want of modesty in your sex! But have you never proposed, never loved one Gy more than another?”

I felt embarrassed by these ingenious questionings, and said, “Pardon me, but I think we are beginning to infringe upon Aph-Lin’s injunction. This much only will I answer, and then, I implore you, ask no more. I did once feel the preference you speak of; I did propose, and the Gy would willingly have accepted me, but her parents refused their consent.”

“Parents! Do you mean seriously to tell me that parents can interfere with the choice of their daughters?”

“Indeed they can, and do very often.”

“I should not like to live in that country,” said the Gy simply; “but I hope you will never go back to it.”

I bowed my head in silence. The Gy gently raised my face with her right hand, and looked into it tenderly. “Stay with us,” she said; “stay with us, and be loved.” What I might have answered, what dangers of becoming a cinder I might have encountered, I still trouble to think, when the light of the naphtha fountain was obscured by the shadow of wings; and Zee, flying though the open roof, alighted beside us. She said not a word, but, taking my arm with her mighty hand, she drew me away, as a mother draws a naughty child, and led me through the apartments to one of the corridors, on which, by the mechanism they generally prefer to stairs, we ascended to my own room. This gained, Zee breathed on my forehead, touched my breast with her staff, and I was instantly plunged into a profound sleep.

When I awoke some hours later, and heard the songs of the birds in the adjoining aviary, the remembrance of Taee’s sister, her gentle looks and caressing words, vividly returned to me; and so impossible is it for one born and reared in our upper world’s state of society to divest himself of ideas dictated by vanity and ambition, that I found myself instinctively building proud castles in the air.

“Tish though I be,” thus ran my meditations—“Tish though I be, it is then clear that Zee is not the only Gy whom my appearance can captivate. Evidently I am loved by A PRINCESS, the first maiden of this land, the daughter of the absolute Monarch whose autocracy they so idly seek to disguise by the republican title of chief magistrate. But for the sudden swoop of that horrible Zee, this Royal Lady would have formally proposed to me; and though it may be very well for Aph-Lin, who is only a subordinate minister, a mere Commissioner of Light, to threaten me with destruction if I accept his daughter’s hand, yet a Sovereign, whose word is law, could compel the community to abrogate any custom that forbids intermarriage with one of a strange race, and which in itself is a contradiction to their boasted equality of ranks.

“It is not to be supposed that his daughter, who spoke with such incredulous scorn of the interference of parents, would not have sufficient influence with her Royal Father to save me from the combustion to which Aph-Lin would condemn my form. And if I were exalted by such an alliance, who knows but what the Monarch might elect me as his successor? Why not? Few among this indolent race of philosophers like the burden of such greatness. All might be pleased to see the supreme power lodged in the hands of an accomplished stranger who has experience of other and livelier forms of existence; and once chosen, what reforms I would institute! What additions to the really pleasant but too monotonous life of this realm my familiarity with the civilized nations above ground would effect! I am fond of the sports of the field. Next to war, is not the chase a king’s pastime? In what varieties of strange game does this nether world abound? How interesting to strike down creatures that were known above ground before the Deluge! But how? By that terrible vril, in which, from want of hereditary transmission, I could never be a proficient? No, but by a civilized handy breech-loader, which these ingenious mechanicians could not only make, but no doubt improve; nay, surely I saw one in the Museum. Indeed, as absolute king, I should discountenance vril altogether, except in cases of war. Apropos of war, it is perfectly absurd to stint a people so intelligent, so rich, so well armed, to a petty limit of territory sufficing for 10,000 or 12,000 families. Is not this restriction a mere philosophical crotchet, at variance with the aspiring element in human nature, such as has been partially, and with complete failure, tried in the upper world by the late Mr. Robert Owen? Of course one would not go to war with the neighboring nations as well armed as one’s own subjects; but then, what of those regions inhabited by races unacquainted with vril, and apparently resembling, in their democratic institutions, my American countrymen? One might invade them without offence to the vril nations, our allies, appropriate their territories, extending, perhaps, to the most distant regions of the nether earth, and thus rule over an empire in which the sun never sets. (I forgot, in my enthusiasm, that over those regions there was no sun to set). As for the fantastical notion against conceding fame or renown to an eminent individual, because, forsooth, bestowal of honors insures contest in the pursuit of them, stimulates angry passions, and mars the felicity of peace—it is opposed to the very elements, not only of the human, but of the brute creation, which are all, if tamable, participators in the sentiment of praise and emulation. What renown would be given to a king who thus extended his empire! I should be deemed a demigod.” Thinking of that, the other fanatical notion of regulating this life by reference to one which, no doubt, we Christians firmly believe in, but never take into consideration, I resolved that enlightened philosophy compelled me to abolish a heathen religion so superstitiously at variance with modern thought and practical action. Musing over these various projects, I felt how much I should have liked at that moment to brighten my wits by a good glass of whiskey-and-water. Not that I am habitually a spirit-drinker, but certainly there are times when a little stimulant of alcoholic nature, taken with a cigar, enlivens the imagination. Yes; certainly among these herbs and fruits there would be a liquid from which one could extract a pleasant vinous alcohol; and with a steak cut off one of those elks (ah! what offence to science to reject the animal food which our first medical men agree in recommending to the gastric juices of mankind!) one would certainly pass a more exhilarating hour of repast. Then, too, instead of those antiquated dramas performed by childish amateurs, certainly, when I am king, I will introduce our modern opera and a ‘corps de ballet,’ for which one might find, among the nations I shall conquer, young females of less formidable height and thews than the Gy-ei—not armed with vril, and not insisting upon one’s marrying them.

I was so completely rapt in these and similar reforms, political, social, and moral, calculated to bestow on the people of the nether world the blessings of a civilization known to the races of the upper, that I did not perceive that Zee had entered the chamber till I heard a deep sigh, and, raising my eyes, beheld her standing by my couch.

I need not say that, according to the manners of this people, a Gy can, without indecorum, visit an An in his chamber, although an An would be considered forward and immodest to the last degree if he entered the chamber of a Gy without previously obtaining her permission to do so. Fortunately I was in the full habiliments I had worn when Zee had deposited me on the couch. Nevertheless I felt much irritated, as well as shocked, by her visit, and asked in a rude tone what she wanted.

“Speak gently, beloved one, I entreat you,” said she, “for I am very unhappy. I have not slept since we parted.”

“A due sense of your shameful conduct to me as your father’s guest might well suffice to banish sleep from your eyelids. Where was the affection you pretend to have for me, where was even that politeness on which the Vril-ya pride themselves, when, taking advantage alike of that physical strength in which your sex, in this extraordinary region, excels our own, and of those detestable and unhallowed powers which the agencies of vril invest in your eyes and finger-ends, you exposed me to humiliation before your assembled visitors, before Her Royal Highness—I mean, the daughter of your own chief magistrate,—carrying me off to bed like a naughty infant, and plunging me into sleep, without asking my consent?”

“Ungrateful! Do you reproach me for the evidences of my love? Can you think that, even if unstung by the jealousy which attends upon love till it fades away in blissful trust when we know that the heart we have wooed is won, I could be indifferent to the perils to which the audacious overtures of that silly little child might expose you?”

“Hold! Since you introduce the subject of perils, it perhaps does not misbecome me to say that my most imminent perils come from yourself, or at least would come if I believed in your love and accepted your addresses. Your father has told me plainly that in that case I should be consumed into a cinder with as little compunction as if I were the reptile whom Taee blasted into ashes with the flash of his wand.”

“Do not let that fear chill your heart to me,” exclaimed Zee, dropping on her knees and absorbing my right hand in the space of her ample palm. “It is true, indeed, that we two cannot wed as those of the same race wed; true that the love between us must be pure as that which, in our belief, exists between lovers who reunite in the new life beyond that boundary at which the old life ends. But is it not happiness enough to be together, wedded in mind and in heart? Listen: I have just left my father. He consents to our union on those terms. I have sufficient influence with the College of Sages to insure their request to the Turn not to interfere with the free choice of a Gy; provided that her wedding with one of another race be but the wedding of souls. Oh, think you that true love needs ignoble union? It is not that I yearn only to be by your side in this life, to be part and parcel of your joys and sorrows here: I ask here for a tie which will bind us for ever and for ever in the world of immortals. Do you reject me?”

As she spoke, she knelt, and the whole character of her face was changed; nothing of sternness left to its grandeur; a divine light, as that of an immortal, shining out from its human beauty. But she rather awed me as an angel than moved me as a woman, and after an embarrassed pause, I faltered forth evasive expressions of gratitude, and sought, as delicately as I could, to point out how humiliating would be my position amongst her race in the light of a husband who might never be permitted the name of father.

“But,” said Zee, “this community does not constitute the whole world. No; nor do all the populations comprised in the league of the Vril-ya. For thy sake I will renounce my country and my people. We will fly together to some region where thou shalt be safe. I am strong enough to bear thee on my wings across the deserts that intervene. I am skilled enough to cleave open, amidst the rocks, valleys in which to build our home. Solitude and a hut with thee would be to me society and the universe. Or wouldst thou return to thine own world, above the surface of this, exposed to the uncertain seasons, and lit but by the changeful orbs which constitute by thy description the fickle character of those savage regions? I so, speak the word, and I will force the way for thy return, so that I am thy companion there, though, there as here, but partner of thy soul, and fellow traveler with thee to the world in which there is no parting and no death.”

I could not but be deeply affected by the tenderness, at once so pure and so impassioned, with which these words were uttered, and in a voice that would have rendered musical the roughest sounds in the rudest tongue. And for a moment it did occur to me that I might avail myself of Zee’s agency to effect a safe and speedy return to the upper world. But a very brief space for reflection sufficed to show me how dishonorable and base a return for such devotion it would be to allure thus away, from her own people and a home in which I had been so hospitably treated, a creature to whom our world would be so abhorrent, and for whose barren, if spiritual love, I could not reconcile myself to renounce the more human affection of mates less exalted above my erring self. With this sentiment of duty towards the Gy combined another of duty towards the whole race I belonged to. Could I venture to introduce into the upper world a being so formidably gifted—a being that with a movement of her staff could in less than an hour reduce New York and its glorious Koom-Posh into a pinch of snuff? Rob her of her staff, with her science she could easily construct another; and with the deadly lightnings that armed the slender engine her whole frame was charged. If thus dangerous to the cities and populations of the whole upper earth, could she be a safe companion to myself in case her affection should be subjected to change or embittered by jealousy? These thoughts, which it takes so many words to express, passed rapidly through my brain and decided my answer.

“Zee,” I said, in the softest tones I could command and pressing respectful lips on the hand into whose clasp mine vanished—“Zee, I can find no words to say how deeply I am touched, and how highly I am honored, by a love so disinterested and self-immolating. My best return to it is perfect frankness. Each nation has its customs. The customs of yours do not allow you to wed me; the customs of mine are equally opposed to such a union between those of races so widely differing. On the other hand, though not deficient in courage among my own people, or amid dangers with which I am familiar, I cannot, without a shudder of horror, think of constructing a bridal home in the heart of some dismal chaos, with all the elements of nature, fire and water, and mephitic gases, at war with each other, and with the probability that at some moment, while you were busied in cleaving rocks or conveying vril into lamps, I should be devoured by a krek which your operations disturbed from its hiding-place. I, a mere Tish, do not deserve the love of a Gy, so brilliant, so learned, so potent as yourself. Yes, I do not deserve that love, for I cannot return it.”

Zee released my hand, rose to her feet, and turned her face away to hide her emotions; then she glided noiselessly along the room, and paused at the threshold. Suddenly, impelled as by a new thought, she returned to my side and said, in a whispered tone,—

“You told me you would speak with perfect frankness. With perfect frankness, then, answer me this question. If you cannot love me, do you love another?”

“Certainly, I do not.”

“You do not love Taee’s sister?”

“I never saw her before last night.”

“That is no answer. Love is swifter than vril. You hesitate to tell me. Do not think it is only jealousy that prompts me to caution you. If the Tur’s daughter should declare love to you—if in her ignorance she confides to her father any preference that may justify his belief that she will woo you, he will have no option but to request your immediate destruction, as he is specially charged with the duty of consulting the good of the community, which could not allow the daughter of the Vril-ya to wed a son of the Tish-a, in that sense of marriage which does not confine itself to union of the souls. Alas! there would then be for you no escape. She has no strength of wing to uphold you through the air; she has no science wherewith to make a home in the wilderness. Believe that here my friendship speaks, and that my jealousy is silent.”

With these words Zee left me. And recalling those words, I thought no more of succeeding to the throne of the Vril-ya, or of the political, social, and moral reforms I should institute in the capacity of Absolute Sovereign.

Chapter XXVI.

After the conversation with Zee just recorded, I fell into a profound melancholy. The curious interest with which I had hitherto examined the life and habits of this marvelous community was at an end. I could not banish from my mind the consciousness that I was among a people who, however kind and courteous, could destroy me at any moment without scruple or compunction. The virtuous and peaceful life of the people which, while new to me, had seemed so holy a contrast to the contentions, the passions, the vices of the upper world, now began to oppress me with a sense of dullness and monotony. Even the serene tranquility of the lustrous air preyed on my spirits. I longed for a change, even to winter, or storm, or darkness. I began to feel that, whatever our dreams of perfectibility, our restless aspirations towards a better, and higher, and calmer, sphere of being, we, the mortals of the upper world, are not trained or fitted to enjoy for long the very happiness of which we dream or to which we aspire.

Now, in this social state of the Vril-ya, it was singular to mark how it contrived to unite and to harmonize into one system nearly all the objects which the various philosophers of the upper world have placed before human hopes as the ideals of a Utopian future. It was a state in which war, with all its calamities, was deemed impossible,—a state in which the freedom of all and each was secured to the uttermost degree, without one of those animosities which make freedom in the upper world depend on the perpetual strife of hostile parties. Here the corruption which debases democracies was as unknown as the discontents which undermine the thrones of monarchies. Equality here was not a name; it was a reality. Riches were not persecuted, because they were not envied. Here those problems connected with the labors of a working class, hitherto insoluble above ground, and above ground conducing to such bitterness between classes, were solved by a process the simplest,—a distinct and separate working class was dispensed with altogether. Mechanical inventions, constructed on the principles that baffled my research to ascertain, worked by an agency infinitely more powerful and infinitely more easy of management than aught we have yet extracted from electricity or steam, with the aid of children whose strength was never overtasked, but who loved their employment as sport and pastime, sufficed to create a Public-wealth so devoted to the general use that not a grumbler was ever heard of. The vices that rot our cities here had no footing. Amusements abounded, but they were all innocent. No merry-makings conduced to intoxication, to riot, to disease. Love existed, and was ardent in pursuit, but its object, once secured, was faithful. The adulterer, the profligate, the harlot, were phenomena so unknown in this commonwealth, that even to find the words by which they were designated one would have had to search throughout an obsolete literature composed thousands of years before. They who have been students of theoretical philosophies above ground, know that all these strange departures from civilized life do but realize ideas which have been broached, canvassed, ridiculed, contested for; sometimes partially tried, and still put forth in fantastic books, but have never come to practical result. Nor were these all the steps towards theoretical perfectibility which this community had made. It had been the sober belief of Descartes that the life of man could be prolonged, not, indeed, on this earth, to eternal duration, but to what he called the age of the patriarchs, and modestly defined to be from 100 to 150 years average length. Well, even this dream of sages was here fulfilled—nay, more than fulfilled; for the vigor of middle life was preserved even after the term of a century was passed. With this longevity was combined a greater blessing than itself—that of continuous health. Such diseases as befell the race were removed with ease by scientific applications of that agency—life-giving as life-destroying—which is inherent in vril. Even this idea is not unknown above ground, though it has generally been confined to enthusiasts or charlatans, and emanates from confused notions about mesmerism, odic force, &c. Passing by such trivial contrivances as wings, which every schoolboy knows has been tried and found wanting, from the mythical or pre-historical period, I proceed to that very delicate question, urged of late as essential to the perfect happiness of our human species by the two most disturbing and potential influences on upper-ground society,—Womankind and Philosophy. I mean, the Rights of Women.

Now, it is allowed by jurisprudists that it is idle to talk of rights where there are not corresponding powers to enforce them; and above ground, for some reason or other, man, in his physical force, in the use of weapons offensive and defensive, when it come to positive personal contest, can, as a rule of general application, master women. But among this people there can be no doubt about the rights of women, because, as I have before said, the Gy, physically speaking, is bigger and stronger than the An; and her will being also more resolute than his, and will being essential to the direction of the vril force, she can bring to bear upon him, more potently than he on herself, the mystical agency which art can extract from the occult properties of nature. Therefore all that our female philosophers above ground contend for as to rights of women, is conceded as a matter of course in this happy commonwealth. Besides such physical powers, the Gy-ei have (at least in youth) a keen desire for accomplishments and learning which exceeds that of the male; and thus they are the scholars, the professors—the learned portion, in short, of the community.

Of course, in this state of society the female establishes, as I have shown, her most valued privilege, that of choosing and courting her wedding partner. Without that privilege she would despise all the others. Now, above ground, we should not unreasonably apprehend that a female, thus potent and thus privileged, when she had fairly hunted us down and married us, would be very imperious and tyrannical. Not so with the Gy-ei: once married, the wings once suspended, and more amiable, complacent, docile mates, more sympathetic, more sinking their loftier capacities into the study of their husbands’ comparatively frivolous tastes and whims, no poet could conceive in his visions of conjugal bliss. Lastly, among the more important characteristics of the Vril-ya, as distinguished from our mankind—lastly, and most important on the bearings of their life and the peace of their commonwealths, is their universal agreement in the existence of a merciful beneficent Deity, and of a future world to the duration of which a century or two are moments too brief to waste upon thoughts of fame and power and avarice; while with that agreement is combined another—viz., since they can know nothing as to the nature of that Deity beyond the fact of His supreme goodness, nor of that future world beyond the fact of its felicitous existence, so their reason forbids all angry disputes on insoluble questions. Thus they secure for that state in the bowels of the earth what no community ever secured under the light of the stars—all the blessings and consolations of a religion without any of the evils and calamities which are engendered by strife between one religion and another.

It would be, then, utterly impossible to deny that the state of existence among the Vril-ya is thus, as a whole, immeasurably more felicitous than that of super-terrestrial races, and, realizing the dreams of our most sanguine philanthropists, almost approaches to a poet’s conception of some angelical order. And yet, if you would take a thousand of the best and most philosophical of human beings you could find in London, Paris, Berlin, New York, or even Boston, and place them as citizens in the beatified community, my belief is, that in less than a year they would either die of ennui, or attempt some revolution by which they would militate against the good of the community, and be burnt into cinders at the request of the Tur.

Certainly I have no desire to insinuate, through the medium of this narrative, any ignorant disparagement of the race to which I belong. I have, on the contrary, endeavored to make it clear that the principles which regulate the social system of the Vril-ya forbid them to produce those individual examples of human greatness which adorn the annals of the upper world. Where there are no wars there can be no Hannibal, no Washington, no Jackson, no Sheridan;—where states are so happy that they fear no danger and desire no change, they cannot give birth to a Demosthenes, a Webster, a Sumner, a Wendell Holmes, or a Butler; and where a society attains to a moral standard, in which there are no crimes and no sorrows from which tragedy can extract its aliment of pity and sorrow, no salient vices or follies on which comedy can lavish its mirthful satire, it has lost the chance of producing a Shakespeare, or a Moliere, or a Mrs. Beecher-Stowe. But if I have no desire to disparage my fellow-men above ground in showing how much the motives that impel the energies and ambition of individuals in a society of contest and struggle—become dormant or annulled in a society which aims at securing for the aggregate the calm and innocent felicity which we presume to be the lot of beatified immortals; neither, on the other hand, have I the wish to represent the commonwealths of the Vril-ya as an ideal form of political society, to the attainment of which our own efforts of reform should be directed. On the contrary, it is because we have so combined, throughout the series of ages, the elements which compose human character, that it would be utterly impossible for us to adopt the modes of life, or to reconcile our passions to the modes of thought among the Vril-ya,—that I arrived at the conviction that this people—though originally not only of our human race, but, as seems to me clear by the roots of their language, descended from the same ancestors as the Great Aryan family, from which in varied streams has flowed the dominant civilization of the world; and having, according to their myths and their history, passed through phases of society familiar to ourselves,—had yet now developed into a distinct species with which it was impossible that any community in the upper world could amalgamate: and that if they ever emerged from these nether recesses into the light of day, they would, according to their own traditional persuasions of their ultimate destiny, destroy and replace our existent varieties of man.

It may, indeed, be said, since more than one Gy could be found to conceive a partiality for so ordinary a type of our super-terrestrial race as myself, that even if the Vril-ya did appear above ground, we might be saved from extermination by intermixture of race. But this is too sanguine a belief. Instances of such ‘mesalliance’ would be as rare as those of intermarriage between the Anglo-Saxon emigrants and the Red Indians. Nor would time be allowed for the operation of familiar intercourse. The Vril-ya, on emerging, induced by the charm of a sunlit heaven to form their settlements above ground, would commence at once the work of destruction, seize upon the territories already cultivated, and clear off, without scruple, all the inhabitants who resisted that invasion. And considering their contempt for the institutions of Koom-Posh or Popular Government, and the pugnacious valor of my beloved countrymen, I believe that if the Vril-ya first appeared in free America—as, being the choicest portion of the habitable earth, they would doubtless be induced to do—and said, “This quarter of the globe we take; Citizens of a Koom-Posh, make way for the development of species in the Vril-ya,” my brave compatriots would show fight, and not a soul of them would be left in this life, to rally round the Stars and Stripes, at the end of a week.

I now saw but little of Zee, save at meals, when the family assembled, and she was then reserved and silent. My apprehensions of danger from an affection I had so little encouraged or deserved, therefore, now faded away, but my dejection continued to increase. I pined for escape to the upper world, but I racked my brains in vain for any means to effect it. I was never permitted to wander forth alone, so that I could not even visit the spot on which I had alighted, and see if it were possible to re-ascend to the mine. Nor even in the Silent Hours, when the household was locked in sleep, could I have let myself down from the lofty floor in which my apartment was placed. I knew not how to command the automata who stood mockingly at my beck beside the wall, nor could I ascertain the springs by which were set in movement the platforms that supplied the place of stairs. The knowledge how to avail myself of these contrivances had been purposely withheld from me. Oh, that I could but have learned the use of wings, so freely here at the service of every infant, then I might have escaped from the casement, regained the rocks, and buoyed myself aloft through the chasm of which the perpendicular sides forbade place for human footing!

Chapter XXVII.

One day, as I sat alone and brooding in my chamber, Taee flew in at the open window and alighted on the couch beside me. I was always pleased with the visits of a child, in whose society, if humbled, I was less eclipsed than in that of Ana who had completed their education and matured their understanding. And as I was permitted to wander forth with him for my companion, and as I longed to revisit the spot in which I had descended into the nether world, I hastened to ask him if he were at leisure for a stroll beyond the streets of the city. His countenance seemed to me graver than usual as he replied, “I came hither on purpose to invite you forth.”

We soon found ourselves in the street, and had not got far from the house when we encountered five or six young Gy-ei, who were returning from the fields with baskets full of flowers, and chanting a song in chorus as they walked. A young Gy sings more often than she talks. They stopped on seeing us, accosting Taee with familiar kindness, and me with the courteous gallantry which distinguishes the Gy-ei in their manner towards our weaker sex.

And here I may observe that, though a virgin Gy is so frank in her courtship to the individual she favors, there is nothing that approaches to that general breadth and loudness of manner which those young ladies of the Anglo-Saxon race, to whom the distinguished epithet of ‘fast’ is accorded, exhibit towards young gentlemen whom they do not profess to love. No; the bearing of the Gy-ei towards males in ordinary is very much that of high-bred men in the gallant societies of the upper world towards ladies whom they respect but do not woo; deferential, complimentary, exquisitely polished—what we should call ‘chivalrous.’

Certainly I was a little put out by the number of civil things addressed to my ‘amour propre,’ which were said to me by those courteous young Gy-ei. In the world I came from, a man would have thought himself aggrieved, treated with irony, ‘chaffed’ (if so vulgar a slang word may be allowed on the authority of the popular novelists who use it so freely), when one fair Gy complimented me on the freshness of my complexion, another on the choice of colors in my dress, a third, with a sly smile, on the conquests I had made at Aph-Lin’s entertainment. But I knew already that all such language was what the French call ‘banal,’ and did but express in the female mouth, below earth, that sort of desire to pass for amiable with the opposite sex which, above earth, arbitrary custom and hereditary transmission demonstrate by the mouth of the male. And just as a high-bred young lady, above earth, habituated to such compliments, feels that she cannot, without impropriety, return them, nor evince any great satisfaction at receiving them; so I who had learned polite manners at the house of so wealthy and dignified a Minister of that nation, could but smile and try to look pretty in bashfully disclaiming the compliments showered upon me. While we were thus talking, Taee’s sister, it seems, had seen us from the upper rooms of the Royal Palace at the entrance of the town, and, precipitating herself on her wings, alighted in the midst of the group.

Singling me out, she said, though still with the inimitable deference of manner which I have called ‘chivalrous,’ yet not without a certain abruptness of tone which, as addressed to the weaker sex, Sir Philip Sydney might have termed ‘rustic,’ “Why do you never come to see us?” While I was deliberating on the right answer to give to this unlooked-for question, Taee said quickly and sternly, “Sister, you forget—the stranger is of my sex. It is not for persons of my sex, having due regard for reputation and modesty, to lower themselves by running after the society of yours.”

This speech was received with evident approval by the young Gy-ei in general; but Taee’s sister looked greatly abashed. Poor thing!—and a PRINCESS too!

Just at this moment a shadow fell on the space between me and the group; and, turning round, I beheld the chief magistrate coming close upon us, with the silent and stately pace peculiar to the Vril-ya. At the sight of his countenance, the same terror which had seized me when I first beheld it returned. On that brow, in those eyes, there was that same indefinable something which marked the being of a race fatal to our own—that strange expression of serene exemption from our common cares and passions, of conscious superior power, compassionate and inflexible as that of a judge who pronounces doom. I shivered, and, inclining low, pressed the arm of my child-friend, and drew him onward silently. The Turn placed himself before our path, regarded me for a moment without speaking, then turned his eye quietly on his daughter’s face, and, with a grave salutation to her and the other Gy-ei, went through the midst of the group,—still without a word.

Chapter XXVIII.

When Taee and I found ourselves alone on the broad road that lay between the city and the chasm through which I had descended into this region beneath the light of the stars and sun, I said under my breath, “Child and friend, there is a look in your father’s face which appalls me. I feel as if, in its awful tranquility, I gazed upon death.”

Taee did not immediately reply. He seemed agitated, and as if debating with himself by what words to soften some unwelcome intelligence. At last he said, “None of the Vril-ya fear death: do you?”

“The dread of death is implanted in the breasts of the race to which I belong. We can conquer it at the call of duty, of honor, of love. We can die for a truth, for a native land, for those who are dearer to us than ourselves. But if death do really threaten me now and here, where are such counteractions to the natural instinct which invests with awe and terror the contemplation of severance between soul and body?”

Taee looked surprised, but there was great tenderness in his voice as he replied, “I will tell my father what you say. I will entreat him to spare your life.”

“He has, then, already decreed to destroy it?”

“’Tis my sister’s fault or folly,” said Taee, with some petulance. “But she spoke this morning to my father; and, after she had spoken, he summoned me, as a chief among the children who are commissioned to destroy such lives as threaten the community, and he said to me, ‘Take thy vril staff, and seek the stranger who has made himself dear to thee. Be his end painless and prompt.’”

“And,” I faltered, recoiling from the child—“and it is, then, for my murder that thus treacherously thou hast invited me forth? No, I cannot believe it. I cannot think thee guilty of such a crime.”

“It is no crime to slay those who threaten the good of the community; it would be a crime to slay the smallest insect that cannot harm us.”

“If you mean that I threaten the good of the community because your sister honors me with the sort of preference which a child may feel for a strange plaything, it is not necessary to kill me. Let me return to the people I have left, and by the chasm through which I descended. With a slight help from you I might do so now. You, by the aid of your wings, could fasten to the rocky ledge within the chasm the cord that you found, and have no doubt preserved. Do but that; assist me but to the spot from which I alighted, and I vanish from your world for ever, and as surely as if I were among the dead.”

“The chasm through which you descended! Look round; we stand now on the very place where it yawned. What see you? Only solid rock. The chasm was closed, by the orders of Aph-Lin, as soon as communication between him and yourself was established in your trance, and he learned from your own lips the nature of the world from which you came. Do you not remember when Zee bade me not question you as to yourself or your race? On quitting you that day, Aph-Lin accosted me, and said, ‘No path between the stranger’s home and ours should be left unclosed, or the sorrow and evil of his home may descend to ours. Take with thee the children of thy band, smite the sides of the cavern with your vril staves till the fall of their fragments fills up every chink through which a gleam of our lamps could force its way.’”

As the child spoke, I stared aghast at the blind rocks before me. Huge and irregular, the granite masses, showing by charred discoloration where they had been shattered, rose from footing to roof-top; not a cranny!

“All hope, then, is gone,” I murmured, sinking down on the craggy wayside, “and I shall nevermore see the sun.” I covered my face with my hands, and prayed to Him whose presence I had so often forgotten when the heavens had declared His handiwork. I felt His presence in the depths of the nether earth, and amidst the world of the grave. I looked up, taking comfort and courage from my prayers, and, gazing with a quiet smile into the face of the child, said, “Now, if thou must slay me, strike.”

Taee shook his head gently. “Nay,” he said, “my father’s request is not so formally made as to leave me no choice. I will speak with him, and may prevail to save thee. Strange that thou shouldst have that fear of death which we thought was only the instinct of the inferior creatures, to whom the convictions of another life has not been vouchsafed. With us, not an infant knows such a fear. Tell me, my dear Tish,” he continued after a little pause, “would it reconcile thee more to departure from this form of life to that form which lies on the other side of the moment called ‘death,’ did I share thy journey? If so, I will ask my father whether it be allowable for me to go with thee. I am one of our generation destined to emigrate, when of age for it, to some regions unknown within this world. I would just as soon emigrate now to regions unknown, in another world. The All-Good is no less there than here. Where is he not?”

“Child,” said I, seeing by Taee’s countenance that he spoke in serious earnest, “it is crime in thee to slay me; it were a crime not less in me to say, ‘Slay thyself.’ The All-Good chooses His own time to give us life, and his own time to take it away. Let us go back. If, on speaking with thy father, he decides on my death, give me the longest warning in thy power, so that I may pass the interval in self-preparation.”

Chapter XXIX.

In the midst of those hours set apart for sleep and constituting the night of the Vril-ya, I was awakened from the disturbed slumber into which I had not long fallen, by a hand on my shoulder. I started and beheld Zee standing beside me. “Hush,” she said in a whisper; “let no one hear us. Dost thou think that I have ceased to watch over thy safety because I could not win thy love? I have seen Taee. He has not prevailed with his father, who had meanwhile conferred with the three sages who, in doubtful matters, he takes into council, and by their advice he has ordained thee to perish when the world re-awakens to life. I will save thee. Rise and dress.”

Zee pointed to a table by the couch on which I saw the clothes I had worn on quitting the upper world, and which I had exchanged subsequently for the more picturesque garments of the Vril-ya. The young Gy then moved towards the casement and stepped into the balcony, while hastily and wonderingly I donned my own habiliments. When I joined her on the balcony, her face was pale and rigid. Taking me by the hand, she said softly, “See how brightly the art of the Vril-ya has lighted up the world in which they dwell. Tomorrow the world will be dark to me.” She drew me back into the room without waiting for my answer, thence into the corridor, from which we descended into the hall. We passed into the deserted streets and along the broad upward road which wound beneath the rocks. Here, where there is neither day nor night, the Silent Hours are unutterably solemn—the vast space illumined by mortal skill is so wholly without the sight and stir of mortal life. Soft as were our footsteps, their sounds vexed the ear, as out of harmony with the universal repose. I was aware in my own mind, though Zee said it not, that she had decided to assist my return to the upper world, and that we were bound towards the place from which I had descended. Her silence infected me and commanded mine. And now we approached the chasm. It had been re-opened; not presenting, indeed, the same aspect as when I had emerged from it, but through that closed wall of rock before which I had last stood with Taee, a new cleft had been riven, and along its blackened sides still glimmered sparks and smoldered embers. My upward gaze could not, however, penetrate more than a few feet into the darkness of the hollow void, and I stood dismayed, and wondering how that grim ascent was to be made.

Zee divined my doubt. “Fear not,” said she, with a faint smile; “your return is assured. I began this work when the Silent Hours commenced, and all else were asleep; believe that I did not paused till the path back into thy world was clear. I shall be with thee a little while yet. We do not part until thou sayest, ‘Go, for I need thee no more.’”

My heart smote me with remorse at these words. “Ah!” I exclaimed, “would that thou wert of my race or I of thine, then I should never say, ‘I need thee no more.’”

“I bless thee for those words, and I shall remember them when thou art gone,” answered the Gy, tenderly.

During this brief interchange of words, Zee had turned away from me, her form bent and her head bowed over her breast. Now, she rose to the full height of her grand stature, and stood fronting me. While she had been thus averted from my gaze, she had lighted up the circlet that she wore round her brow, so that it blazed as if it were a crown of stars. Not only her face and her form, but the atmosphere around, were illumined by the effulgence of the diadem.

“Now,” said she, “put thine arm around me for the first and last time. Nay, thus; courage, and cling firm.”

As she spoke her form dilated, the vast wings expanded. Clinging to her, I was borne aloft through the terrible chasm. The starry light from her forehead shot around and before us through the darkness. Brightly and steadfastly, and swiftly as an angel may soar heavenward with the soul it rescues from the grave, went the flight of the Gy, till I heard in the distance the hum of human voices, the sounds of human toil. We halted on the flooring of one of the galleries of the mine, and beyond, in the vista, burned the dim, feeble lamps of the miners. Then I released my hold. The Gy kissed me on my forehead, passionately, but as with a mother’s passion, and said, as the tears gushed from her eyes, “Farewell for ever. Thou wilt not let me go into thy world—thou canst never return to mine. Ere our household shake off slumber, the rocks will have again closed over the chasm not to be re-opened by me, nor perhaps by others, for ages yet unguessed. Think of me sometimes, and with kindness. When I reach the life that lies beyond this speck in time, I shall look round for thee. Even there, the world consigned to thyself and thy people may have rocks and gulfs which divide it from that in which I rejoin those of my race that have gone before, and I may be powerless to cleave way to regain thee as I have cloven way to lose.”

Her voice ceased. I heard the swan-like sough of her wings, and saw the rays of her starry diadem receding far and farther through the gloom.

I sate myself down for some time, musing sorrowfully; then I rose and took my way with slow footsteps towards the place in which I heard the sounds of men. The miners I encountered were strange to me, of another nation than my own. They turned to look at me with some surprise, but finding that I could not answer their brief questions in their own language, they returned to their work and suffered me to pass on unmolested. In fine, I regained the mouth of the mine, little troubled by other interrogatories;—save those of a friendly official to whom I was known, and luckily he was too busy to talk much with me. I took care not to return to my former lodging, but hastened that very day to quit a neighborhood where I could not long have escaped inquiries to which I could have given no satisfactory answers. I regained in safety my own country, in which I have been long peacefully settled, and engaged in practical business, till I retired on a competent fortune, three years ago. I have been little invited and little tempted to talk of the rovings and adventures of my youth. Somewhat disappointed, as most men are, in matters connected with household love and domestic life, I often think of the young Gy as I sit alone at night, and wonder how I could have rejected such a love, no matter what dangers attended it, or by what conditions it was restricted. Only, the more I think of a people calmly developing, in regions excluded from our sight and deemed uninhabitable by our sages, powers surpassing our most disciplined modes of force, and virtues to which our life, social and political, becomes antagonistic in proportion as our civilization advances,—the more devoutly I pray that ages may yet elapse before there emerge into sunlight our inevitable destroyers. Being, however, frankly told by my physician that I am afflicted by a complaint which, though it gives little pain and no perceptible notice of its encroachments, may at any moment be fatal, I have thought it my duty to my fellow-men to place on record these forewarnings of The Coming Race.

SYMZONIA: VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY, by Adam Seaborn

Originally published in 1820.

CHAPTER I.

The Author’s reasons for undertaking a voyage of discovery.—He builds a vessel for his purpose upon a new plan.—His departure from the United States.

In the year 1817, I projected a voyage of discovery, in the hope of finding a passage to a new and untried world. I flattered myself that I should open the way to new fields for the enterprise of my fellow-citizens, supply new sources of wealth, fresh food for curiosity, and additional means of enjoyment; objects of vast importance, since the resources of the known world have been exhausted by research, its wealth monopolized, its wonders of curiosity explored, its every thing investigated and understood!

The state of the civilized world, and the growing evidences of the perfectibility of the human mind, seemed to indicate the necessity of a more extended sphere of action. Discontent and uneasiness were every where apparent. The faculties of man had begun to dwindle for want of scope, and the happiness of society required new and more copious contributions.

I reasoned with myself as follows: A bountiful Providence provides food for the appetite which it creates; therefore the desire of mankind for a greater world to bustle in, manifested by their dissatisfaction with the one which they possess, is sufficient evidence that the means of gratification are provided. And who can doubt but that this is the time to find the means of satisfying so general a desire?

A great obstacle presented itself at the outset. The aid of steam in the navigation of my ship was necessary to render my enterprise safe and expeditious against the adverse circumstances which I was sure to meet. But steam vessels were adapted only to smooth water. Every attempt to employ them upon the ocean had been unsuccessful. I foresaw that I must have a vessel capable of encountering severe gales in a dense atmosphere, of being rapidly impelled against strong currents, both of wind and water, and of surmounting, without harm, the impetuous tides, and resisting the violent winds to be expected in the polar seas. Moreover, she must be of such strength as to sustain the shock of floating ice, or of taking the ground; and of such capacity as to contain fuel and provisions for at least fifty men for three years, with apartments from which the external air could be excluded, and which might be artificially warmed during the rigours of a polar winter.

But he whose soul is fired with the true spirit of discovery is not to be dismayed. I saw the end, and instantly began to use the means of attaining it. I caused a steam vessel of 400 tons to be constructed with double frames; the timbers being inclined from a perpendicular about 45 degrees; so that the outer set crossed the others at right angles. The timbers were let into each other to the depth of three inches, and were secured by powerful bolts. This structure of massive grating was incalculably firmer than the frame of a ship could possibly be made upon the ordinary plan.

The bottom was covered with four inch plank, over which, after they were fastened and caulked, a layer of three inch plank was put on; and the whole was sheathed with copper of unusual thickness.

I remembered the misfortune of the discoverer Sinbad, whose ship, when he approached the magnetic mountain, fell to pieces, in consequence of the iron being all drawn out of it. To guard against a similar disaster, I fastened my vessel first with tree-nails, and then throughout with copper bolts firmly rivetted and clenched. To obviate the dangers of exposed and upright paddles, I built her with double top-sides for a space of thirty feet. Within this space the inner frames sloped in from the bends, on an angle of 45 degrees, and were covered and finished, in all respects, like the sides of a common ship. The outer work was carried up in the usual manner, so that the aperture was not apparent to external observation. Through this outer side a longitudinal port was cut, 30 feet long and 3 feet wide, for the paddles to play through obliquely, like the fins of a seal. The nave of the wheel was two feet within the sill of the port, between the double walls, and supported by both of them. The blades of the paddles, made of the best ash timber, and firmly coaked and rivetted together, were fitted into sockets in the nave; whence they could be easily unshipped for the purpose of closing the ports in bad weather, and rendering the vessel perfectly secure, with the paddles inboard. The shaft by which the power of steam was communicated to the paddles, passed through the inner side of the ship only, so that water could not be forced into the ship, even in the roughest weather, when the ports were closed. The inconvenience caused by the rolling of a vessel with upright wheels, was avoided by the obliquity of my paddles; the ship never rolling so much as to bring them to a perpendicular, or dip the nave to which they were fastened. To avoid accidents from fire, I built beneath and on the sides of the furnace and boiler of the engine, two narrow cisterns, perfectly tight, and of incombustible materials. These were kept constantly filled with the waste water of the engine, which was allowed to escape only by a spout at the top. No fire was permitted out of this enclosure. The economy of fuel, which was necessary from the length of the voyage, and from the emergencies which might happen, obliged me to adopt all the means of motion in my power. I therefore rigged my vessel as a ketch, with one large mast, and a long sliding topmast, which could be easily launched or sent up by the assistance of the engine; and a small mast abaft fitted to be struck at pleasure.

Having thus constructed a vessel which possessed the qualities most essential to my purpose, I finished the interior in such manner as I judged best calculated to render myself and people comfortable during the voyage. I took care to have one apartment large enough to contain all my crew. This was situated next to the furnace chamber, and had communication with it, by means of a tight covered passage. By a tube from the furnace, heated air could be conveyed to this apartment, and steam from the boiler by another tube, should the state of the air at any time require it.

Confident that, with this vessel, I could reach any place to which there was a passage by water, whether on the external or internal world, I named her the Explorer.

I furnished her with abundant stores for three years; among which were large supplies of dried and preserved vegetables and fruits, pickles, acids, and other anti-scorbutics. The room not occupied by water and provisions, was filled with coal. Thinking I might meet with regions where none but salt water could be had, from land, sea, or clouds, I took on board one of Youle’s cambouses for converting salt into fresh water. Besides the best of cables, both of iron and hemp, and an extra supply of common and ice anchors, I failed not to provide one launch, as large as could be carried on deck, and four whale boats.

My next care was to select my officers and crew from among the most skilful, temperate, and orderly mariners I could find; whom I shipped for a sealing voyage in the South Seas, having a clause in the articles authorizing me to cruise and seek for seal wherever I might judge proper, for the term of three years. The crew consisted of 4 mates, 1 boatswain, 1 boatswain’s mate, 3 engineers, 4 carpenters, 3 blacksmiths, 2 coopers, and 32 seamen; in all, 50 men, besides myself. In addition to a portable forge, and materials for repairing any damage which might happen to the engine, I took, on the suggestion of the chief blacksmith, duplicates of such parts of the engine as were most liable to fail. Of nautical instruments, chronometers, and books treating upon matters in any way connected with my object, I provided liberally. Least of all, did I omit Symmes’s Memoirs, and printed Lectures. Finally, having completed my arrangements, and settled all my affairs, I took leave of my wife and children, whom, as I had no particular friends, I left to the humanity and kindness of the world, and set sail on the 1st day of August, 1817.

CHAPTER II.

The Author arrives at the Falkland Islands—Describes West Point Island, and States harbour—Visits the city of the Gentoo Penguins on the Grand Jason—Gives some account of the polity and habits of those civilized amphibia—Sails for South Georgia.

I soon had cause to congratulate myself on my ingenuity. My fin paddles worked to admiration. When the wind failed, I could, by setting the engine in motion, propel my vessel at the rate of 12 knots per hour; and with a favourable wind, and under a press both of canvass and steam, found it easy to drive her at the rate of 16 knots.

With such advantages, there was no necessity of going the roundabout passage to gain the trade wind. I therefore stood straight for Cape St. Roque. Whether I did or did not see a flying fish, catch a dolphin, or observe a black whirling cloud called a water-spout, is of very little importance to the world. On the sixteenth day after leaving port, we saw the land of Cape St. Roque, in South America, and on the twenty-fourth, anchored in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, having experienced the usual changes of wind and weather, and discovered that air and water are much the same elements, and are governed by much the same laws, at sea as on shore.

I entered this harbour under sail, with the paddle ports closed, that no suspicion might be excited; my object in calling at this place being only to provide myself with live stock and fruits. I took on board. two fine horses, four mules, two cows, with calves, a parcel of pigs, sheep, and goats, with a quantity of fruit and vegetables; and, on the 26th of August, sailed again.

On the 4th of September, we entered the harbour of West Point, Falkland Islands. Here I had determined to pass a month for the benefit of my health, which a short passage by water had not completely restored, from the debility occasioned by the vexations and anxieties of business in those retrograde times, and the pernicious habits of living, common among civilized men, upon food rendered palatable by a skilful admixture of poisons. These Islands being incontestably in the healthiest region of the globe, I believed that, by a short stay amongst them, I should regain the firm health so necessary to a man who undertakes great things; and at the same time, by employing my people in sealing, learn them how to manage the boats, to land through a surf, and to execute all the difficult and dangerous operations, incident to the occupation of explorers of unknown shores. At the same time, I should be pursuing the ostensible object of my voyage; a matter very necessary to be kept in view, for my people were engaged on shares of what should be obtained by their industry.

The first day was devoted partly to preparations fin. a sealing excursion to the Jason Islands, and partly to recreation. West Point Island abounds with hogs and goats, the hunting of which is both pleasant for exercise, and profitable by supplying excellent food. Here are no tangled forests to embarrass the sportsman, nor bushes or briars to annoy his clothes or his flesh. Neither are there mats, moschetos, sand-flies, snakes, scorpions, or other reptiles, to render every step dangerous or painful. Near the shore, which is fringed with granite rocks, a border of tussock extends around the island, like a belt, of from one-eighth to a quarter of a mile in width. The tussock flag grows from the top of a bog formed apparently by the roots of the plants which had flourished and decayed on the spot for many successive years. The bogs are, usually, three to five feet in height, and one to three feet in diameter The substance of them resembles cork, though it is less compact. They stand irregularly one to two feet asunder, so as to afford convenient room for a passage between them, in every direction, over a foundation of much the same substance as the bogs themselves, which is usually quite dry. The dry white tussock grass of preceding years hangs round the top of the bog like a broad frill; while the fresh green growth, which waves over the top like a tuft of lofty feathers, gives the whole, when viewed from a distance, the aspect of an extensive field of indian corn. The root of the fresh tussock is pleasant to the palate, being much like the meat of a chestnut, and it affords an abundance of excellent feed to the hogs, that enjoy an elysium here. Within this border of tussock, and from it to the steep ascent of the mountains, a region of grass intervenes, which has the appearance of a rich upland meadow. It grows about knee high, and extends as far as the rise of the land is moderate. Beyond it, short mountain grass and a few heath plants are found contending with fragments of granite, and with the polar blasts to which the lofty summit of the mountain is exposed. It was delightful, after a confinement on ship-board, to ramble over this sequestered and pleasant scene; to chase the wild hogs from their tussock covert to the rising grounds, where they were sure victims of the spear or the bullet; and to invade from above the retreats of the gigantic albatross, in the cliffs of perpendicular rocks, a thousand feet above the sea.

On the second day we landed a sealing party of thirty men, under the command of Mr. Boneto, chief mate, on the Jason Islands, which are similar in their formation to those I have described. Intending to join this party myself with the launch, and being apprehensive that if I left the Explorer in West Point harbour, with but a few men on board, some Patriot pirate might look into that much frequented place, and, tempted by the value of my vessel and her defenceless situation, deem it patriotic. to take her away to aid the cause of liberty, and leave me to explore my way home in my boats, I proceeded with her to the deep and intricate inlet of the sea, called States harbour. This spacious, convenient, and secure harbour, second to none on the face of the globe, is one of the indications that Providence formed this group of Islands for the abode of an enlightened and maritime people. Front a spacious and deep bay, in which the whole navy of Britain might moor in safety, a cove jets into the land on the left; and on one side of the cove there is an opening through the land like a dock-gate, with perpendicular sides of solid rock, against which a ship of the line might lie with safety, as against a pier. Passing through this opening, a harbour is found, extending at right angles with the passage nearly two miles in length, and about one-eighth of a mile in width. At one end of this interior basin, a large stream of fresh water empties into it; at the mouth of which fine fish in great quantities are easily taken in the spring, and on its banks, as also on those of numerous smaller streams, celery of an excellent kind grows spontaneously. The shores of this basin rise with a very gentle ascent. They are not exposed to the winds of the open ocean, and are not much encumbered with tussock. There is no high land near. Thousands of acres, well watered and covered with grass fit for hay, exhibit the prospect of a succession of well-cultivated meadows. There are plenty of hogs on the island which forms this harbour. Geese, as good as our wild geese, are very abundant. We caught them with ease, and in great plenty.

What a delightful situation these islands offer, for a virtuous, enlightened, and industrious community! Nearly four hundred islands, one of which is some hundred of miles in extent, situated in the most temperate climate of the globe, where the air is always salubrious, heat never oppressive, cold never severe, the ground never frozen, and the heaviest snow of no more than two or three days duration on the ground; with a soil capable of affording, by cultivation, all the useful products of the temperate zone; a location convenient for the prosecution of the whale, seal, and other fisheries; with innumerable harbours for the accommodation of shipping; with every thing calculated to make them the most desirable residence for man, these islands remain uninhabited, and lonely deserts.

The fine health which those who stop here for a season invariably enjoy, the appetite they acquire, the activity with which they exert themselves, these are the evidences of an invigorating and salubrious climate. Here are no debilitating heats to enervate, nor frosts to benumb the faculties, and make it half the business of life to keep the body comfortable. A people born and educated in such a country might be expected to partake its characteristics; to have minds solid and profound, like the granite frame of their mountains, and clear as the ocean which surrounds them; vigorous, yet temperate like the climate; sufficient in all things, and without extremes.

Having seen my vessel safely moored, I left her in charge of Mr. Albicore, the second mate, with strict orders not to permit either fire or candle to be used on board in my absence. I caused a cook house to be erected on shore, and left five men with Mr. Albicore, to fill up the water-casks, catch and cure fish, make the necessary repairs to the rigging, and put the vessel in perfect order against my return. With the remainder of the officers and men, in the launch and one whale boat, I made a harbour at West Point Island early the first day, and at the close of the second joined the party under Mr. Boneto, on the Grand Jason. I found that Boneto had made good use of his time, having cleared this island and all the neighbouring keys and shores to which he could prudently go with open whale boats, of the few seal which could be found. There was but here and there a seal to be seen, excepting on some points of land, which on account of the surf were nearly inaccessible. The frequent visits of sealers from the United States had either destroyed or frightened most of them away. This gave me no uneasiness, for I expected it when I planned my voyage. I concurred in the opinion published by Capt. Symmes, that seals, whales, and mackerel, come from the internal world through the openings at the poles; and was aware of the fact, that the nearer we approach those openings, the more abundant do we find seals and whaled. I felt perfectly satisfied that I had only to find an opening in the “icy hoop,” through which I could dash with my vessel, to discover a region where seals could be taken as fast as they could be stripped and cured. I therefore employed myself chiefly in procuring comforts for my people, and in studying the habits and propensities of those amphibious animals which might be supposed to have communication with the internal world, whither I was ambitious to find my way.

A colony of Gentoo Penguins, on the borders of the south-east cove of Grand Jason, first attracted my attention. Their city stands on a beautiful level spot, a short distance from the water. Every pair of Penguins has a separate establishment built of earth, stones, and sticks, of about two feet elevation, and eighteen inches diameter; on the top of which is their nest. There are some thousands of these stands arranged in regular order, with an open square in the centre, regular streets between the ranges of nests, and a broad avenue leading from the square towards the places of landing and diving. This avenue, a short distance from the settlement, divides into two broad paths; one leading to the diving place, which is a perpendicular rock in deep water, and the other to the landing place, which is a sloping rock of easy access from the sea.

It being the egg season, which soon passes away, I determined to make it hold out, if practicable, until the lime of our departure, that we might have a stock of fresh eggs to take with us. Remembering that our barn-yard fowls continue to deposit eggs as long as but one is daily left in the nest, I adopted that plan with the Penguins, and stationed Jack Whiffle, boatswains-mate, with three assistants, to remove the eggs daily, and stack them; keeping an account of the several stacks, that we might take our supply from those lest gathered. This was no trifling job. The nests were so numerous that it was a hard morning’s work for four men to visit them all, and take an egg from each in defiance of the lawful proprietor, who always defended his property to the best of his ability, and never forsook the stand, through fear, but maintained possession until pushed off. The plan answered my expectations: the Penguins continued to supply eggs in place of those that were removed, until our departure, when we took with us barrels of them packed in salt.

These Gentoo Penguins are amphibious birds, nearly two feet high when standing erect. Their bodies are somewhat larger than those of geese, and well proportioned throughout; their necks being just long enough to look well. In place of wings they have fins for swimming, and their feet are equally well adapted to the land and water. Their covering is very short feathers, closely and firmly set in a thick skin. Their backs, fins, feet, and legs, are black;. the rest of their bodies pure white; they walk bolt upright, with a firm step like a grenadier, and have the appearance, when formed in squadrons, of soldiers, in a uniform of black coats, white underdress, and black gaiters. From the attentive observations of Jack Whiffle, I obtained the following particulars of their habits and polity:

At the time of full sea, one half of the Penguins assemble in the centre-square, where they parade in regular order. They then march off, two abreast, and in close order, preceded by a leader, to the diving-place. They dive into the sea in succession, as they arrive, and swim off to feed on kelp, rock-weed, small fish, and other marine productions. During their absence, the other half remain stationary upon their stands, keeping watch; occasional short visits by some few of them to their nearest neighbours, being the only deviation from strict duty in this particular, that is allowed. If any one strays far from his station, or shows a disposition to go out to feed, he is pecked and driven back by the others. At the turn of the tide, those that are out collect about the landing-place; some sporting in the water, leaping and diving with great dexterity; others lounging upon the shore, apparently admiring themselves and each other, like our fashionable belles and dandies in Broadway. When the leader lands, they form in regular order, march to the square, in the same manner as they left it, divide into squadrons, and file off to their respective stations to relieve guard. As soon as those returned from feeding mount the stands, the others leap off and repair to the square. When collected, they form, and march off to the diving place in the manner before described, to take their tide of feeding and recreation. Thus they occupy the day; each having the benefit of a full tide, and each doing his share of domestic duties.

At night all are assembled in the city, and each stand is crowned with two of these exemplary birds.

The contemplation of these orderly, discreet, and beautiful amphibia, afforded me much pleasure, and gave rise to many delightful anticipations. It appeared certain to me that they, in common with seals, whales, and mackerel, were visitors from the internal world through the southern opening, which they were admirably formed to pass and repass; for they moved with great facility, in the water, and could exist under it as well as fish. On land they walked with as much ease as men, and in the same erect posture. It occurred to me that a world, in which the brute creation were so neatly formed, so polished in their manners, so social in their habits, and so quiet and well behaved, must, if men existed in it, be the abode of a race perfect in their kind. I had no apprehension of the air being unhealthy in the internal world, as suggested by Capt. Symmes, because the climate in which these visitors are found in the greatest numbers is the healthiest of the external world, which indicates that they are accustomed to good air, or they would not effect this salubrious region.

Again, I had observed all these amphibia to be of a remarkably gentle and harmless disposition. The sea-lion, sea-elephant, and common seal, together with the king-penguin, the Gentoo, macaroni, and jackass-penguin, all of different habits, yet obviously of the same origin, accommodated themselves on the same island, fed in the same sea, and on the same food; without interfering with, and without ever being observed to offer violence to each other; from which I inferred that the inhabitants of the internal world, influenced by the same causes, must be of a remarkably pacific, and gentle disposition.

October had arrived, and I grew impatient of further delay. The sun was already pouring its rays of light and heat a constant stream upon the south pole. The season for active research in that region was come, and would soon he past. I directed Mr. Boneto to collect the skins which had been taken, at a convenient place on Grand Jason, and returned to the Explorer. I found every thing at States harbour as it should be. Mr. Albicore was an excellent officer. He took care to understand my orders, and to obey them implicitly. The launch was immediately hoisted in, and at dawn of day the following morning we sailed from that port, took in Boneto’s party, with near two thousand seal skins, and bore up for South Georgia.

CHAPTER III.

The author passes South Georgia, and proceeds in search of Sandwich land—States to his officers and men his reasons for believing in the existence of great bodies of land within the Antarctic circle, and for the opinion that the polar region is subject to great heat in summer.—Crew mutiny at the instigation of Mr. Slim, third mate—Happy discovery of a southern continent, which, at the unanimous and earnest solicitation of his officers and men, he names Seaborn’s land.

On the 10th of October we approached the principal harbour of South Georgia, which I had no intention to enter unless there was an appearance of an unusual abundance of seal on the coast. When near the harbour we discovered two ships lying there with their topmasts struck. This was evidence that there was no chance for us in that quarter. I now told my officers and people that I thought it useless to contend with those already in possession of the island for the few seal it could afford, and thought it most advisable to proceed in search of Sandwich land; where, no doubt, we could speedily obtain a full cargo of skins, if we could find it, of which I expressed great confidence. I strengthened their hopes by assuring them that there was no doubt in my mind of the existence of extensive bodies of land within the Antarctic circle, which quarter had scarcely been looked into by Christian navigators, and that my opinion was founded upon the fact that Cook, and other navigators, had seen large bodies of ice in latitude 70° to 71° south. This fact, I said, indicated the existence of land, because ice could not form in a deep salt sea uninterrupted by land, and agitated by the violent winds and currents of the polar region. I urged that we had but to persevere in our researches in high southern latitudes, to make sure of finding laud, which would yield us ample fortunes, for all southern islands, when first discovered, were found to abound in seal. Mr. Slim, the third mate, expressed some apprehension, that great danger might be encountered in high southern latitudes; that if we found land, the ice might close upon us and prevent our return to our country, as it once served a colony in Greenland. I was not much pleased with this. I have no patience with an officer who suggests doubts and difficulties when I have a grand project in view. I marked him, but at the same time pretended to listen to his observations, as objections of great weight, and then proceeded to remove them from the minds of the officers and people, by advancing the following reasons for my belief that the supposition of extreme cold at the pole was altogether gratuitous.

1st. We know that the rays of the sun, uninfluenced by the atmosphere, would rest upon the pole for six successive months.

2d. That a dense medium refracts, or bends the rays of the sun.

3d. That the amount of that refraction depends upon the extent of the dense medium through which it has to pass.

4th. That at the pole, the rays of the sun coming to it in a very oblique direction, must necessarily pass through our atmosphere a greater distance than on any other part of this globe, and consequently must there be refracted in a greater degree than elsewhere. Hence I inferred, that in consequence of this refraction, and of its increase in proportion to the obliquity of the direction of the rays, the sun when in the plane of the equator, must appear to an observer at the poles to be some degrees above the horizon, and that the sun must recede to the north of the equator at least live or six degrees of declination, before it would become invisible at the south pole: therefore, as it takes fifteen days to increase the sun’s declination five degrees, it must be visible at the poles one month longer, on account of the refraction, than it would be without it. This conclusion is corroborated by the testimony of Barentz, a Dutchman, who wintered in Nova Zembla. He found the sun to rise, in latitude 76°, fifteen days sooner than was expected by astronomical calculations. This will give the polar region seven months constant sunshine; think of that, my shipmates, said I, seven months constant day, with a continual stream of light and heat pouring upon the same spot, without any interval of night to cool the earth and air. I think if we can but find our way to the polar region, we shall be in much more danger of being roasted alive, than of being frozen to death. But, my lads, what Yankee sailor would hesitate to expose himself to be roasted or frozen alive to accomplish that which the British tars have endeavoured in vain to do? Three hearty cheers put an end to the debate. We bore up for Sandwich land, not that I had any belief in the existence of any such land, for I had always been of opinion, that the English placed this supposed land on their charts as an English discovery, stretching it along from the polar seas to latitude 57° south, that they might, whenever any land should be discovered in that unexplored quarter, have a pretence for laying claim to it as a British discovery.

We had a fine gale from the S. W., and made rapid progress to the S. E. under canvass. Although the most perfect satisfaction with the course I had determined on appeared to prevail throughout the ship’s company, Mr. Slim came to me in my cabin, when relieved from his watch on deck, and told me, that, however satisfactory my account of the matter might have been to the other officers and the crew, it was not satisfactory to his mind; and he should be glad to be informed how I accounted for the vast bodies of ice which had invariably stopped the progress of navigators in high latitudes, if my notions of great heat at the poles were correct? “Take a chair, Mr. Slim, and we will talk about it. In the first place, we have no account of any navigator having sailed to a higher southern latitude than 71°, and 82° appears, from the most authentic accounts, to be the highest northern latitude that has been visited. Navigators to these high latitudes have always found ice between the parallels of 70° and 80°, which space that profound philosopher, John Cleve Symmes, denominates the ‘icy hoop.’ It is true he has not taken the trouble to explain to the world, in a satisfactory manner, why and wherefore this narrow strip of ice should exist in that region; which omission, I judge, must have arisen from the circumstance of its being obvious to his capacious mind, that such a ‘hoop’ must necessarily exist, ‘according to the laws of matter and motion.’ The causes of it appearing to him perfectly simple, he could not suppose it necessary to state them to ‘the most enlightened people on the face of the globe.’ Now, sir, I will explain the matter to you. At the pole, that is, ninety degrees from the equator, there is seven months summer, without any interval of night, as I stated on deck; and when the sun has twenty-three and a half degrees of south declination, its rays must strike the pole, allowing but three degrees for the effect of refraction, on an angle of 26½° with the plane of the horizon, and must appear nearly as high as in Scotland in the months of March and September. It is true it does not continue at this extreme declination for any great length of time. On the other hand, it does not recede so far as to withdraw its rays from the pole for a single hour during seven months of the year. This we know; and you can imagine, from the effect of a March sun, which in your country, Mr. Slim, loosens the icy fetters of winter, although withdrawn one half of the time, what must be its effect when exerting its influence for months without any interruption? Now in latitude 70°, with the exception of a few days, there is an interval of night the year round. In the winter months the climate cannot differ much from that of the pole. The cold is then no doubt severe, and forms ice in both those positions. In the early part of summer, that is, September, October, and November, there is at the pole a steady blaze of heat and light, which must melt the ice accumulated in winter, by causing a constant thaw. This sunshine continues at the pole till the 1st of April, and prevents the forming of ice until that time. But at 70°, there is, through most of these months, a short period of night, sufficient for the atmosphere to cool. This will be more obvious, if we consider the powerful influence of the ice, during this absence of the sun’s rays, and remember the great change of temperature which occurs in our climate immediately after sunset at the close of a sunny day in February or March. This interval of night in latitude 70°, counteracts most of the effects of the sun’s heat in the day time. Nearly as much ice forms in the night as is thawed during the day. This accounts for the ‘icy hoop.’ There is not summer enough to dissipate the ice of winter; while at the pole there is summer enough to dissolve a globe of ice.”

“But, sir,” rejoined Mr. Slim, “if this ‘icy hoop’ exists, how do you expect to pass it? Or, if it is impassable, what use is there in encountering the risk of navigating unknown and dangerous seas, in a high and boisterous latitude?”

“I mean, sir, to ascertain whether it be passable or not. I think it probable that the influence of the summer heat may so far weaken it as to admit of broad openings being formed by the pressure of wind or currents, and if I can find an opening of but a mile wide, I shall dash through it, at all hazards.”

“And a pretty condition we shall be in, Capt. Seaborn, if the ice closes the passage after we have dashed through it!” replied Mr. Slim. “We shipped with you, sir, for a sealing voyage; not for a voyage of discovery.”

“You will please to remember, Mr. Slim, that I am expressly authorized by the articles, to cruise and seek for seals wheresoever I may judge expedient and proper, and that any opposition to my authority will involve the forfeiture of your share—recollect that, Mr. Slim.”

“I do recollect that, sir; but at the same time I know, Capt. Seaborn, that you have no right to hazard all our lives, by running into dangers, greater than were ever encountered by human beings, to gratify your mad passion for discovery, instead of pursuing the interest of all concerned, by endeavouring to find seals in the usual manner. How will you justify yourself to the world, to our families, or to your own conscience, if we should, after effecting a passage through this ‘icy hoop’ you speak of; find it closed against our return, and be thus for ever lost to our wives, our children, and society? We must in such a case all perish, and our blood would be upon your head.” A plague upon your lean carcass, thought I, how am I to answer so many impertinent questions. I could not tell him of my belief of open poles, affording a practicable passage to the internal world, and of my confident expectations of finding comfortable winter quarters inside; for he would take that as evidence of my being insane, and by means of it persuade the crew to dispossess me of my command, and confine me to my cabin for the remainder of the voyage. After knitting my brows a short time, I replied, “Mr. Slim, you are a sufficiently capable officer, and can get through with your duty well enough when you choose to do it, but you don’t know every thing; your mind is too dense to admit the rays of intelligence. I would have you to know, Sir, that I command this ship, and am not to be thwarted or dictated to by any man. I have noticed your rebellious spirit; now mark me, Sir, so sure as I have any more of your opposition to my will, or hear any more of your murmuring; the moment I detect you in uttering one discouraging word in the hearing of any of my officers or men—I will confine you, and carry you home in irons, to take your trial for conspiring to make a revolt in the ship, which is death by the law; remember that, and go to your duty, Sir.”

Slim had some prudence, and was a great lover of pelf; he did not relish the idea of forfeiting his share; he kept his tongue between his teeth; but his lank, expressive features spoke horrible things. This comes of taking more officers than there is duty for, thought I, as he left the cabin; that fellow will give me trouble enough before I get rid of him; there is nothing like constant hard work to keep men out of mischief. But I had not much time for reflection, for Will Mackerel, my fourth mate, whose birth adjoined my cabin, had overheard all that passed in my interview with Slim, and as soon as he was out of the way bolted into my cabin, without much ceremony. Will was a hearty, frank, thorough bred sailor; doffing his hat to his commander was the only point of etiquette he was acquainted with, and he thought it degrading to perform that ceremony to any other person. Will reverenced his commander when he found him to be a good sailor, a skilful navigator, and a kind hearted man. He commenced with, “Captain Seaborn, that fellow’s insolence is unsufferable; he has spoken more mutiny to your face, in your own cabin, in ten minutes, than all the rest of the ship’s company would dare to think of, in the forecastle, the whole voyage. I would not give a rope yarn for a sailor who would not go wherever the captain had courage to lead the way. I would not put up with it; there is but one Slim in the ship, and we’ll heave him overboard, if you say the word; at least, I’d clap the ruffles on him, and keep him out of harm’s way the rest of the voyage.”

Whether it was honest indignation that prompted Will’s advice, or whether some little desire for Slim’s birth, to which he would be promoted of course if Slim were cashiered, had its influence, I did not stop to ascertain. I told Will, to be quiet, to say nothing of what had passed between me and Mr. Slim, but to observe him closely, and let me know if he detected him in endeavours to corrupt the crew.

We made rapid progress, and were soon in the latitude of Sandwich land, as laid down in the charts, where we met with nothing but clear blue ocean. I hauled up S. S. E., true course, and stood on as far as 68° South, making the best use of my time by daylight, and drifting back upon my track during the short interval of night. On the 2d Nov. in lat. 68½, we met with ice in detached fields; and had strong gales from S. W. with raw, drizzly weather. I edged away to the eastward, intending to keep near the ice, and hauled to the southward, when a clear sea would permit. The first day, we kept the ‘blink of the ice’ in sight, and found it to trend nearly East and West. Made no southing this day. The second, we were enabled to haul up S. E. and by E. and continued this course without nearing the ice. The following day, hauled up S. E., set the engine in motion, and made rapid way; we observed this day at noon, in 75° 22´ S. I was elated with the prospect of reaching a much higher southern latitude than any former navigator had been able to gain, and pushed on as fast as canvas and steam could drive my vessel.

We had no interval of night in this high latitude, the sun’s declination being 15° S. After running on this course 24 hours, we lost sight of the ice entirely, and thinking it most prudent to keep close under the lee of the ice to windward, that in case of a hard gale we might have smooth water, I steered due South. We observed this day, 5th Nov. in 78° 10´, with cold, raw, disagreeable weather.

I had observed Slim moving about the ship, like an uneasy spirit compelled to revisit this troubled world, often whispering to the men, and frequently visiting the forecastle. When I came on deck after dinner, the whole ship’s company came aft, with Slim at their head, who in their behalf told me, that the crew had determined to go no further with me into this region of ice. Will Mackerel, who was on the quarter deck, spoke up with great passion, and asked Slim if he meant to head a mutiny? adding, that if such was the case, he would let him see that he was a man to stand by his commander. He then called upon those who were of his mettle, to come over to the starboard side; which some few did, while some took their stand amidships, that they might go either way, as circumstances should dictate. The greater number, however, remained with Slim. There was a sad uproar for a short time, every one having something to say, and to enforce with an oath. Even the man on the lookout at the mast head came down from his station to take a part in the affair.

While this war of words was going on, Mr. Boneto, who was below, hearing high words on deck, came up with his hanger and pistols; and the steward brought me mine, but I ordered him to put them up again, saying, if the men will not listen to reason, we will give up the voyage. The truth was, I felt sensible that had I been possessed of my pistols at the outset, I should certainly have shot Mr. Slim; but at this time the irritation of the first impulse had subsided a little. I had had time to cool. Mr. Albicore was standing by my side, as mute as a fish, waiting for orders. The boatswain, Jack Whiffle his mate, and a number of the best men, had joined Will Mackerel’s party; while those who adhered to Slim were the poorest seamen, and most timid men in the ship, though at the same time the most noisy.

How the matter would have terminated but for a lucky occurrence is doubtful. The vessel was running on her course during this contest, with no one on the look out: a splash in the water, close aboard to windward, drew my attention that way; it was a seal. At the same moment I observed the water to be discoloured, and instantly ordered the engine to be stopped, and a cast of the lead to be made. Some of the faithful hastened to execute this order under the direction of Albicore and Will Mackerel: but Slim and his malcontents kept up their vociferation, Slim telling them that it was only a maneuver of mine to divert them from their purpose.

While this was going on, I swept the horizon with my spy glass, and soon discovered in the S. W. directly to windward, a low range of broken land. The moment I fixed my glass upon it, every eye was turned in that direction: some sprang into the rigging, some ran to the mast head, and the joyful cry of ‘land ho! land!’ dispelled the mutinous disposition of the crew.

Sixty-five fathoms, soft ooze, was the report of soundings; a delightful indication of an extensive body of land, with large rivers depositing their sediment on the bottom of the deep. We soon approached, and observed the coast to range about S. E. and N. W. as far as the eye could reach from the mast head. I called the attention of my officers to this circumstance, and observed to them that the broad opening which we had found in the ‘icy hoop,’ could now be easily accounted for. We had noticed that the prevailing wind was from the S. W. with strong gales, the influence of which was continually forcing the ice to the eastward; but this body of land, ranging from the S. E. to the N. W. stopped the ice to the westward of it, while that to the eastward was driven away, leaving a clear passage to leeward of the land. From the westerly winds prevailing all the year round, this must always be the case, unless the ‘immutable laws of matter and Motion,’ and the relation between ‘cause and effect’ should be changed.

Mr. Slim, who had been leaning over the rail with his back towards me during my discourse, now turned upon me, with “well said, Captain, that is the best reasoning I have heard from you yet—I understand that.” The truth was, we were now well in with the land, and the appearance of vast numbers of seal in the water and upon the shore; gave a prospect of a splendid voyage, and excited Slim’s cupidity, and his apprehension, for the safety of his share, which he was aware he had jeopardized by his conduct.

I was in excellent good humour, and told Slim I would overlook what had passed; I could do no less, at a moment when a kind providence was favouring my enterprise beyond my hopes, notwithstanding, my numerous transgressions, without evincing an ungrateful and malicious spirit. The utmost joy prevailed throughout the ship’s company; even Slim’s livid countenance was distorted with an unusual grin. Slim, was not without shrewdness, and occasionally he pretended to be very religious; but he had a double allowance of native selfishness, and worshipped with heartfelt devotion no other god but gold. With his misconduct forgiven, and a prospect of gain which surpassed his most sanguine expectations, he felt emotions as much like those of happiness, as such a compound of evil passions could be supposed to feel.

When near the land, I observed it to be in general very low; there was scarcely any appearance of elevated spots, and no high hills or mountains could be seen. From the rugged appearance of the coast, I judged that there were deep indentations, affording numerous and convenient harbours, but in this I was mistaken. What we had taken for the coast, proved to be a succession of islands, with a broad sound between them and the main land, which latter had a straight, unbroken shore. Deep water, and a very rapid current or tide, rendered it unsafe to anchor amongst the islands; we therefore continued to coast along the main shore in search of a harbour for several hours. The shore in this place was not elevated more than 30 to 40 feet above the level of the sea. It was skirted with tussock, which, from the very gradual rise of the land, hid all the interior from our view, except a few moderate elevations far distant.

At 6 P.M. the appearance of a wide bay induced me to send off the boat to examine for anchorage. At 10 they returned, with the information that the bay afforded good shelter with soft ground, but was rather objectionable as a harbour, in so high a latitude, on account of its being full four miles wide, and very deep. I determined to run in and anchor, until a more secure port could be found; and having dispatched two boats ahead to report the soundings by signal, stood into the bay, and at 12 o’clock P. M. anchored in 10 fathoms, soft mud, the two capes of the bay in one S. S. E. about one league, the western shore one mile distant. Although it was midnight according to our reckoning, we had a bright sunshine, the sun appearing ten degrees above the horizon.

This land having been first seen by myself, my officers and men united in calling it after my name, and expressed their wish that I would permit it to be so denominated; it was accordingly recorded in the ship’s log book by the name of Seaborn’s Land.

I had much need of rest, having been almost constantly on deck for five days; and after ordering the deck watch to get the boats out, and prepare every thing for an excursion, I retired to my cabin, and was soon fast asleep.

CHAPTER IV.

The Author in great peril, from the vast rise and fall of the tide in the polar sea—Brief account of his observations at Seaborn’s Land—He takes formal possession of the country, in the manner usual in such cases, in the name and on behalf of the United States—Leaves a sealing party on one of the islands near the coast, and proceeds to the south, to extend his discoveries.

I had slept some hours, when I was awakened by Mr. Boneto’s order, and informed that the land appeared to rise very much. I went immediately on deck, and was astonished to see the land appear more than three times as high as when we came to anchor. I at first attempted to account for it by supposing some change in the atmosphere which caused the land to loom; but was soon undeceived. One of the seamen called out that there was a shoal even with the water close by. The lead was immediately cast to see if the ship was driving, and but two fathoms water were found alongside. In half an hour more we were high and dry. Such was the astonishing rise and fall of the tide in this high latitude! The bay, which had twenty fathoms water in the centre at full sea, and ten fathoms a mile from the shore, was almost entirely emptied; a small channel in the middle, not more than half a mile wide, being all that was not left quite hare. There was no immediate inconvenience to be apprehended from this circumstance; but I was aware, that a tide that fell 70 or 80 feet perpendicular, must return in a bore with prodigious violence, and was under more apprehension of the consequences, than at any other period of my voyage. I however concealed my fears from my officers and people, who were much amused with the circumstance, and my apparent vexation at finding my vessel high and dry on a mud bank, near the south pole. My greatest fear was that the tide might come in in a bore thirty or forty feet high, and, striking the vessel as she lay aground, tumble her over and dash her to pieces, no frame of timber being sufficient to withstand such a shock. Happily, the stream of the ebb tide had left us exactly stern to the flood. I ordered the boats to be hoisted in and secured, and the anchors to be taken up, fastened in the dead lights, put every thing below that was moveable, directed the men to provide themselves with strong lashings, and ordered the engineer to raise a head of steam, and have the engine in readiness for instant motion. Thus prepared, I awaited the return of the tide. It came in dun time; and now my officers and men, who had been so merry at my expense, evinced great consternation. The muscles of Slim’s face were actually convulsed with terror at the sight of a wall of water, stretching quite across the bay, apparently 30 or 40 feet high, rolling towards us like a tremendous breaker, and with a roaring noise like thunder. To all appearance, it would break over our mast head, and consign us to one common grave. In mercy to the trembling Slim, I desired him to step below and bring me my pea jacket, well knowing he would not come up again until the danger was over. I then ordered the companion-way and the hatches to be secured, directed my people to lash themselves fast, and quietly wait the result. Here, I must confess, I put up a silent prayer to Heaven, after a sailor’s fashion, for preservation from the impending danger.

I have always found the fears and anticipation of danger to exceed the reality. When the bore approached us, the bottom came rather faster than the top, and its face was not quite perpendicular. The vessel was fairly afloat on the foot of the wave, before the main body of it struck her; and taking it square astern, she split and rose over it in the most beautiful manner, without sustaining the slightest injury. By backing with the paddles, we kept clear of the shore, on which the impetus of the wave would have driven us, and soon after anchored again in the middle of the bay in twenty fathoms water.

And here I would recommend to all navigators of the polar seas, to avoid anchoring in less than twenty fathoms, until they have accurately ascertained the rise and fall of the tides, at the full and change of the moon.

When the companion-way was unbarred, Slim came up with my pea jacket, and coolly observed, he was glad there was no damage done, adding, “I was really afraid it might break our paddles.” In consequence of this occurrence, I named this bay Take-in harbour.

We were occupied until noon, in returning things to their places, getting the boats out, and preparing for an excursion on chore. At noon I observed the altitude of the sun, and, after making accurate allowance for the refraction, found Take-in harbour to be in latitude 83° 3´ south. This was much further south than the distance run by log would make us, which I attributed to a strong current setting us rapidly in that direction; but this I soon found to be an error, and that the difference between the latitude by observation and dead reckoning, arose from the oblate form of the globe at the poles, lessening the degrees of latitude.

After dinner, I landed with a strong party, leaving the vessel in charge of Mr. Boneto. I took the horses and mules on shore, with provisions for a week, intending to march to the highest land we could find, to gain at once an extensive view of the coast and country. We landed on the south side of the bay, and shaped our course for a moderately elevated spot, which appeared to be the highest land, due south about ten miles distant. We found the shore much like that of the Falkland Islands, the only difference being that this was much more level, and had greater extent of tussock. After passing through a border of tussock about three miles wide, we reached an open prairie country, with grass about four inches high. We were three hours in gaining the elevated spot, from which we were enabled to see the coast for a great distance on our left, and the sea along its border, studded with islands. On the right, we could see nothing but boundless prairie, with here and there a ridge like the one we were upon. To the south, in the horizon, appeared something like a hill, and to that I determined to go. Having taken some refreshments, we took up the line of march. Slim, who was with me, as I did not think it prudent to leave him on board, had been very docile until now: on finding me determined to push into the interior so great a distance, he became evidently uneasy. He dared not express his fears to me, but took care that I should overhear him say to one of the men, “I hope the captain won’t waste so much time in exploring this desert, that we shall be obliged to go away without a full cargo of skins, or run the risk of being obliged to winter here, so near the pole, where we should certainly all freeze to death, in spite of every thing we could do.” As this was a reasonable apprehension in the mind of an ignorant man, I endeavoured to remove his fears by calling his attention to the tussock grass and other plants, and asked him how they survived the winter, if the cold was so intense as he supposed? And advanced the opinion that wherever plants can sustain the cold of winter, and retain their vitality, man can exist, with the aid of good clothing and artificial heat.

A fatiguing march of 15 miles brought us to the hill, which we found to be the highest part of a ridge of moderate elevation running from the coast in a S. S. W. direction into the interior. We were amply compensated for our trouble in wading through the grass, as this eminence afforded an extensive view of the country in every direction. The S. E. side of this ridge broke off very abruptly, in some places perpendicularly and at its foot was a large and beautiful river, full a mile in width, flowing from the S. S. W. Beyond it was a prairie country, gently waving and rising into sloping hills in the distant horizon. Far up the river I could descry with my glass a few trees, towards which I felt a strong inclination to proceed; but being excessively fatigued, thought best to devote a few hours to refreshment. After a comfortable meal, and a sound nap of four hours, I descended the precipice to ascertain whether the river was an arm of the sea, or a fresh water stream. It proved to be pure potable water, and the existence of a continent near the south pole, was thus fully established.

I had not been long on the bank of this river, before I found cause to doubt the prudence of venturing thus far by land into an unknown country, in the appearance of fresh tracks of some huge land animal, which were larger than the bottom of a water bucket. Whether they were those of a white polar bear as big as an elephant, of a mammoth, or of some other enormous nondescript animal, I could not guess. I re-ascended the hill with all practicable expedition, collected my men, and hastened towards the ship as fast as possible.

We reached the ship after six hours constant marching, all completely tired out, our horses and mules being too feeble to travel, from long confinement on shipboard.

The discoveries I had already made were so far from satisfying my ambition, that my desire to push on and explore the internal world was more intense than ever. I was now convinced of the correctness of Capt. Symmes’s theory, and of the practicability of sailing into the globe at the south pole, and of returning home by way of the north pole, if no land intervened to obstruct the passage. My first thought was to enter the river I had seen, and ascend to its source, which must necessarily be in the internal world; for if the poles were open, there was not room enough for a sufficient body of land to the south of 84 degrees, to maintain so mighty a river. But f abandoned this idea, on reflecting that by confining myself to this river, I should at best enter the internal world but a few hundred miles, while by entering on the open ocean, I should be able to visit every accessible part of it.

My first business was to make such arrangements as would satisfy my crew, and to ascertain the condition of the country in the immediate vicinity.

I therefore landed a sealing party of thirty men, under Mr. Boneto, assisted by Mr. Slim, on one of the islands, and proceeded with the Explorer to the mouth of the great river: We found the access to the river easy and safe; the chain of islands off’ the mouth of it broke the swell of the sea. Having ascertained its mouth to be in 83° 47´ south latitude, by observation, I proceeded up with two boats ahead, taking care to move only with the flood tide, and to anchor in deep water.

The banks for the first 30 miles were fringed with tussock. Above that some trees appeared; and at the distance of 40 miles, the banks were skirted with a strip of dense forest, of moderately sized trees. We proceeded 10 miles further up, when the country appeared to be chiefly covered with large trees, wide apart, with no undergrowth between them, excepting on some low spots near the river, with here and there a spot of open prairie.

Having anchored the Explorer in a safe situation, I landed with a boat’s crew at one of the open spaces, to examine the productions of the land, and see if I could discover any indications of inhabitants. I found the timber to be mostly different from that which I was acquainted with, excepting a species of fir resembling our spruce. I was much pleased to see wood of this description, and immediately ordered the launch on shore, with the axes and all our disposable force. We were busily engaged for three days in filling the Explorer with wood for fuel, and, after stowing her quite full, piled as much on deck as I thought she would bear, including timber for constructing winter quarters for the sealing party,

All fears of the consequences of wintering in this region were now done away. Where trees could live, I could live. I determined to erect a secure establishment for my sealing party, and pursue my discoveries as far as practicable. While the wood-cutting was going on, I did not venture far from the river—I had not forgotten the big tracks. I was always on shore with the party, to be ready for events, taking the people all on board with me when I wanted a four hours’ nap.

I employed myself in searching for curiosities, collecting geological, mineralogical, and ornithological specimens, sea fowl and land birds being very numerous in this country, and in gathering plants to enrich my hortus siccus, for the benefit of the learned when I should return home. My researches were rewarded by the discovery of some enormous bones, possibly of a whale, which being, according to very high authority, no fish, might at some former period have got on shore in this high latitude, after the fashion of the other visitants from the internal world. As they were very large, I called them mammoth bones of course, had them all carefully taken on board, and packed in boxes, as an invaluable acquisition to the scientific world.

On the third day a cry of terror called my attention. I saw the men all running for the boats, and thought it best to follow their example. We had all got into the boats, and shoved off into deep water, before I could ascertain the cause of the alarm, when the appearance of an enormous animal on the ground we had left answered my inquiries. The huge beast walked to the edge of the water at a moderate pace, and stopped to survey us newcomers with great composure. I ordered Jack Whiffle, who was an excellent marksman, to give him a shot from a three-pounder, mounted in the bow of the launch, and at the same time gave him a volley of musketry. Whether the shot took effect or not, could not be discovered. He returned to the woods without haste or fright, and thus deprived me of the pleasure of securing his skin and skeleton, for the examination of the learned, and the benefit of Scudder’s Museum.

There was nothing to be gained by a longer continuance in this river, and I felt no disposition to penetrate into forests, frequented by animals large enough to be called mammoth, a name which appears to be applicable to all big things. At this place, fifty miles from its mouth, the river was full a mile in width, and twenty fathoms deep at low tide. Taking into consideration its unusual magnitude and depth, and the large animal seen upon its bank, I named it Mammoth River.

We arrived at Take-in harbour next day. Mr. Boneto’s party had been actively employed, and had already secured seven thousand seal skins. I collected all my officers on board, and acquainted them with such of my plans as I thought it prudent to disclose. The first was to land thirty of the crew at a group of islands which formed a snug harbour near the mouth of Mammoth River; to erect on one of the islands sufficient buildings to protect them from the severity of the winter, in case it should become necessary to remain there until another season, and large enough to contain a fair share of all the stores on board, in proportion to their numbers, so that they might fare as well as those who remained in the ship. I told them that I should proceed to the S. E. along the coast, to ascertain where was the best sealing ground to remove to when these Islands should be cleared of seals, and to discover whether the land extended a sufficient distance on the other side of the pole to open a passage for us to sail over the pole, and thus proceed to Canton by steering due north, which would save a great deal of time. This was all according to their notions of things; but I was well aware that when they would suppose we were sailing northward on the other side of the globe, we should in fact be sailing directly into it through the opening. No objections were made to this plan, as it all seemed feasible enough. But I was at a loss as to the officers I should leave with this party. In exploring the internal regions, I should want all my best officers; and although Slim was an excellent sealer, it would not do to leave him with the command of the party, for I should be sure to find the men all ripe for mutiny on my return. I at last determined to give Mr. Boneto the charge of the establishment, with the boatswain to assist him; to keep Albicore, Slim, and Mackerel in the ship, and give Jack Whiffle the birth of acting boatswain.

We were a week briskly engaged in carrying these arrangements into effect. Extensive buildings were erected of stone and wood, having a centre room, to which no external air could gain access, without passing through the flue of a stove. The store rooms were detached from the dwelling, that the stores might he saved in case of fire. A covered way quite around all the buildings, as well as from one to the other, was constructed, and the whole covered four feet thick on the sides and roof with the bog of the tussock, timber and stone being placed on it to keep it from being forced off by high winds.

Having thus prepared for the safety and comfort of my people, I gave Mr. Boneto written instructions how to proceed in all imaginable cases, but especially cautioned him against going on to the main land, lest he should be destroyed by the mammoth animal.

Aware that there was a possibility that I might miscarry, and never get back to this place, I devoted a day to the performance of a necessary duty to my country, namely, taking possession of the country I had discovered, in the name and on behalf of the people of the United States of America. I first drew up a manifesto, setting forth, that I, Adam Seaborn, mariner, a citizen of the United States of America, did, on the 5th day of November, Anno Domini one thousand eight hundred and seventeen, first see and discover this southern continent, a part of which was between 78° and 84° south latitude, and stretching to the N. W., S. E., and S. W., beyond my knowledge; which land having never before been seen by any civilized people, and having been occupied for the full term of eighteen days by citizens of the said United States, whether it should prove to be in possession of any other people or not, provided they were not Christians, was and of right ought to be the sole property of the said people of the United States, by right of discovery and occupancy, according to the usages of Christian nations.

Having completed this important paper, which I composed with great care, knowing that many wars had been waged for a less cause than a right to so valuable a continent, I had it engraved on a plate of sheathing copper, with a spread eagle at the top, and at the bottom a bank, with 100 dollar bills tumbling out of the doors and windows, to denote the amazing quantity and solidity of the wealth of my country. When it was completed by the blacksmith, who was something of a proficient in the fine arts, I went on shore with all the officers and men that could be spared from the ship, taking my music, two pieces of cannon, some wine for my officers, and plenty of grog for the men. We marched up the shore with great pomp, the music playing and colours flying, to a convenient spot, where I buried the copper plate, and rolled upon it as large a stone as the whole ship’s company could move, and ordered the blacksmith to engrave upon it, in large deep letters, “Seaborn’s Land. A. D. 1817.”

A liberty pole was then erected on the spot, and the standard of the United States displayed upon it; all of which being accomplished, I ordered a salute to be fired of one gun for every State. “How many will that be, sir?” asked Mr. Boneto, adding, that they came so fast be could not keep the run of them. Slim said it was twenty-one. I objected to that number, as being the royal salute of Great-Britain, and settled the matter by telling them to fire away till they were tired of it, and finish off with a few squibs for the half-made States. We completed the ceremony with a plenty of grog, and reiterated huzzas, as usual, and thus established the title of the United States to this newly discovered country, in the most incontestible manner, and strictly according to rule.

CHAPTER V.

The Author discovers the south extremity of Seaborn’s Land, which he names Cape Worldsend.—The compass becomes useless.—He states the manner in which he obviated the difficulty occasioned thereby.—He enters the internal world: describes the phenomena which occur.—Discovers Token Island.—Occurrences at that Island.

I proceeded along the coast to the S. S. E. November 21st, 1817, the sun’s altitude corrected for refraction placed us in a more northern latitude than we had left, which my officers considered as evidence of our having passed the pole and made some progress northward, and they accordingly congratulated me on the occasion. I knew better, and was perfectly aware that if the poles were open, of which I had no doubt, we must necessarily change our apparent latitude by observation very fast; and on turning the edge of the opening have a vertical sun, an equal division of day and night, and all the phenomena of the equator.

To be prepared for this untried region, I calculated all the changes of the apparent altitude of the sun in all degrees of declination, as they must necessarily occur, assuming the form of the earth to be at the openings as stated by Capt. Symmes in his sublime theory; and formed tables that I might be able at any time to ascertain the ship’s place without difficulty or delay.

We had thus far found the land to trend S. S. E. and S. Soon after noon this day we reached a cape, from which the land turned short round to the W. N. W. and continued in that direction as far as could be seen from the mast head. This being apparently the most extreme southern land of the external world, I named it Worlds-end Cape. I felt no disposition to follow the coast to the N. W. although it might be found to turn again to the south. The most prudent course appeared to be to keep sight of the land, that we might certainly find our way back again to Mr. Boneto’s station. But a round about way to the internal world was not in accordance with my impatient feelings; and yet the indulgence of my desire required that I should manage with great circumspection.

The compass was now of no manner of use; the card turned round and round on the slightest agitation of the box, and the needle pointed sometimes one way and sometimes another, changing its position every five minutes. I had frequently heard Slim muttering his apprehensions, and even Albicore said to me, ‘I hope we shall not have any bad weather, or lose sight of the land.’ My best seamen appeared confounded at the loss of the compass, and a degree of alarm pervaded the whole ship’s company. I had foreseen the difficulty that might take place when I proposed to leave the land, and to avoid it had placed Slim on the larboard watch with Albicore, by which arrangement the charge of my watch (the starboard) when I was off deck, devolved on Will Mackerel, assisted by Jack Whiffle. This was mortifying to Slim, but he was aware that he deserved it.

I kept near Cape Worldsend, taking its bearings in a variety of positions, for the ostensible purpose of ascertaining its exact position, until four o’clock, when the larboard watch went below. I saw that both Albicore and Slim turned in to get some sleep, and immediately ordered Mackerel to keep the vessel on a course corresponding to south, and to press with both steam and canvass to the utmost. The wind was about N. W., fresh and very steady, which served as a guide, the helmsman being directed to keep the wind four points on the quarter. We ran at the rate of 16 knots. I gave strict orders that Albicore and Slim should not be disturbed at the usual hour of calling the dog watch; and when they came on deck at 10 P. M. there was no land in sight. The sun to their astonishment was just setting in the bosom of the ocean: they stared at one another, and looked at me, but said nothing. They were perfectly bewildered; they knew not which way was north, south, east or west. Had they now undertaken to direct the course of the vessel, they would have been more likely to run from the land than towards it. Mackerel was delighted to see the sun set once more; it seemed like old times; and the weather had been for some days so hot that a little night was very desirable.

I told them all to be perfectly at ease, for that I knew what I was about; that I could calculate every point of the compass, as well as if that instrument performed its office; that we would heave to for the night, the occurrence of which was no more than I had calculated on; and finally, to give them confidence in my skill, told them, that if we did not find the sun directly over head at noon, within two days, provided no land impeded our progress, I would give up the command to Albicore, and show him the way back to Seaborn’s Land.

Albicore and Slim both earnestly entreated that I would instruct them how to calculate the points of the compass, if I possessed that important knowledge, so that they might be enabled to find their way back again in case any accident should befall me. I begged to be excused, choosing to keep the staff in my own hands.

The truth was, having three excellent chronometers, one set to the time at Washington, one to that of Greenwich, and the other to that of Rio de Janeiro, and also an excellent watch daily regulated, which gave me the ship’s diurnal time accurately, I could easily calculate my longitude, and the point on which the sun ought to hear every hour in the 24. With these calculations before me, I had but to look at my watch and the sun to determine my course. Thus in the longitude of Greenwich, when the chronometer set to Greenwich time stood at 12 o’clock noon, wherever the sun was, was north; and when that chronometer stood at midnight, wherever the sun was, was south—on the external southern hemisphere, south of the degree of the sun’s declination.

The re-appearance of the stars and the refreshing coolness of the night air delighted my people. At daylight we made sail, and set the paddles in motion. At noon we had the sun nearly overhead, and the declination being 20° 5´ S. Slim was positive that we were in latitude 28° S. and wondered why the compass would not traverse. The next day we had a vertical sun, as I had predicted, and the weather as warm as I had ever known it at sea, with a fine breeze. No one knew which way we were steering but myself; and Slim’s opinion confidently expressed that we were near the equator, and must soon make the continent of Asia, Africa, America, or the Asiatic islands, served to quiet the apprehensions of the men for their own safety, and at the same time to awaken their solicitude for the situation of Mr. Boneto’s party, whom they said I had barbarously left to perish by the frosts of a polar winter, on Seaborn’s Land.

The next day we observed the sun to the south of us, and nearly over head, and the compass began to traverse imperfectly. We had a regular recurrence of day and night, though the latter was very short, which I knew was occasioned by the rays of the sun being obstructed by the rim of the earth, when the external side of the part we were on turned towards the sun. The nights were not dark, when no clouds intervened to obstruct the rays of the sun, reflected from the opposite rim, and from a large luminous body northward, in the internal heavens, which reflected the sun as our moon does, and which I judged to be the second concentric sphere, according to Capt. Symmes. This gave us very pleasant nights, but not quite clear enough to render sailing through untried seas entirely safe.

We continued running due north, interned, three days, when the compass became pretty regular; but instead of the N. and S. points corresponding to the N. and S. points on the external world, as Capt. Symmes supposed it would do, the needle turned fairly end for end; the south end pointing directly into the globe towards the north pole, with some variation from the true north. But of this matter, I shall say very little, for sundry important reasons, and especially because intend to publish my theory of longitude in due season, and give the courses and bearings, corrected to true north and south, as understood by the externals.

On the 28th of November, 1817, we discovered land, just at sunset, and immediately hove to, to keep a good offing until day-light. I walked the deck all night, and was very impatient for the morning of that day which was to disclose to me the wonders of the internal world, and probably to decide the question whether it was or was not inhabited by rational beings.

Happily, day soon appeared, and we ran in with the land, keeping a good look-out, and the leads constantly going. On nearing the coast, we found the shore to be low and sandy. The body of the land, however, was high, with one towering peak far inland. Near the sea it appeared to be extremely barren, but some miles hack, scattered clumps of trees, and some appearances of verdure, afforded a more cheering prospect. We explored the coast of this island, for such it proved to be, for two days, before we found anchorage, or a safe landing place. A very heavy surf rolled on shore, and broke high on the shoals, which were frequent, and in some places three miles off the coast, so as to make it dangerous to approach. At length we found a safe road, sheltered by a sand bank above water, about two miles long, and lying parallel with the shore, half a league from it. There was a fair passage in, with 15 fathoms water, and good holding ground. Here we moored to the great joy of all on board, who, seeing firm land with living things of some kind moving about upon it, felt satisfied that they were still in the sublunary world, and complained of nothing but the excessive heat. It was near night when we came to anchor; all further research was therefore deferred until the next day.

On the 1st December, I landed for the first time on terra firma of the internal world, but was greatly disappointed, I must confess, to find no indications of any other inhabitants than turtles, terrapins of a monstrous size, some few seals, penguins, and numerous sea fowl. The great number of turtles was satisfactory evidence to my mind, that there were no human beings on the island; and, after a short walk on the burning sand, I returned on board, quite dejected.

The day was passed in fishing, and in collecting turtles and terrapins, for sea stock. In the evening, Mr. Slim, who was wide awake to his interest, suggested to me that we might obtain a good quantity of tortoise shell from this island, as the turtles brought on board were of the hawksbill kind, the shell of which sells for a high price. I gave him permission to land the following day, with ten men, and see what he could do in that way.

The next morning I was quite sick, in consequence of the heat, and of my disappointment in not finding an inhabited country, after encountering so many hazards, and exerting so much enterprise and perseverance. Being thus compelled to remain on board, I permitted Albicore to land with four men, to ramble along shore, and see if he could make any discoveries. In the evening Slim reported that he had not been able to effect much, owing to the excessive heat, which compelled him, with his party, to take refuge under an awning, formed with the boats’ sails, for full half the day. Albicore stated that he had been eight or ten miles along the shore, but had seen nothing strange.

The following morning, when I had given orders to prepare for getting under weigh, having determined to remain no longer in a place where there was great danger of the yellow fever making its appearance amongst my people, without intercourse with vessels from the West Indies, Albicore mentioned incidentally as we sat at breakfast, and as a matter of no sort of moment, that he had seen, during his walk on the beach, about five miles from where we lay, something which looked like part of a wreck of some outlandish vessel. The worthy man, who considered nothing that did not pertain to the strict line of his duty as deserving a thought, was astonished to see me spring up from my seat at table, order the boats manned, and make ready for an immediate expedition. It never occurred to his mind that if there were ships in those seas, there must also be men to build and sail them. To me the information he had given was both food and medicine: it revived my hopes, and fired my curiosity. I felt no desire to complete my repast. I was restored to health and good spirits, and was soon marching over the sand, with Albicore for my guide.

After two hours we reached the place which Mr. Albicore had spoken of, where I found part of the frame of a vessel of some sort, of about one hundred tons burthen, the form of which satisfied me that it was no drift from the external world. The stern raked inwards, instead of out, as we construct them, giving the forward part of the vessel the form of a double ploughshare; while the broad bulging sides were admirably adapted to make the vessel sit firm on the water, and prevent her oversetting. But the most singular part was a piece of planking, which remained attached to the frame, and which was actually sewed on with a white elastic wire, resembling in appearance platina, more than any metal known to us. I extracted some small pieces of this singular metal, and with it fired the imagination of my people, by representing to them the enormous wealth we should acquire, could we obtain a cargo of it to carry to our country, where it would be more valuable than silver; and that the use to which it was applied was sufficient evidence of its being abundant where this vessel was built.

I named this island, which was in 81° 20´ internal south latitude, Token Island, considering its discovery as a token or premonition of some great things to come.

CHAPTER VI.

The Author departs from Token Island, in search of an internal continent.—Wind, weather, and other phenomena of the internal seas.—Great alarm of the crew.—Discovery of an inhabited country.

We were soon under weigh again, and steered due north, as well to seek for a new region of land, as to get into a more temperate climate; it being obvious that the internal equator must correspond in phenomena to the external pole, and consequently the more we approached the former, and receded from the latter, the cooler we should find the weather.

Soon after leaving the island, the weather became exceedingly unpleasant; the atmosphere was loaded with dense black clouds, and we were annoyed with torrents of rain, together with very vivid lightning and heavy thunder. We lay to the greater part of three days, thinking it imprudent to run into unexplored seas in dark weather. The fourth day it brightened up a little, when we pushed on to the northward.

After two days of unsettled weather, we were favoured with a fine westerly wind, blowing steady and pleasant like a trade wind, which continued during the remainder of this passage. For three days more we continued steering to the northward, when we found the weather delightfully pleasant. We had the direct rays of the sun nearly one fourth part of the time, and its reflected light the remainder. This last was the most pleasant, being something between sunshine and bright moonlight, without the glare of the one or the indistinctness of the other. Satisfied with the climate, I determined to keep in it, and run before the wind due east, until I discovered land, or circumnavigated this part of the globe.

I found the latitude this day, carefully computed from the sun’s altitude, with due allowance for refraction, to be 65° 17´ south internal. We ran on very pleasantly for seven days, but saw nothing. It was now the 17th December. The sun had nearly attained its most southern declination, and would soon be receding to the north.

The curious fact, that we could see the sun directly but for a short part of the day, at this season of the year, in a high southern latitude, astonished and alarmed my officers and people. It was a matter of continual debate amongst them on the forecastle, where Slim and even Albicore sometimes took a part in those grave and learned disquisitions. In one of their conferences, Slim advanced the opinion, that, as the sun was now near its extreme southern declination, and we could see it but a small part of the time, we must be in some great hole in the earth; and that when the sun returned to the north, which would soon take place, we should for a certainty be involved in total darkness, and never be able to find our way out again. This idea struck the whole ship’s company with horror. Even Albicore was infected with the panic. Will Mackerel and Jack Whiffle were the only ones among them who expressed a ready determination to stand by their commander, wheresoever he might lead them. Numerous propositions were advanced and rejected by this council on the forecastle; but it was finally concluded that they would go aft in a body, and insist upon my immediately returning to Seaborn’s Land, or they would heave me overboard, without further delay.

I was accordingly called from my cabin to hear this wise determination of my people. After hearing what they had to say, I asked them very coolly, how they intended to proceed when they had thrown me overboard? There was no one of them who could determine the ship’s place, who had a sufficient knowledge of astronomy and natural philosophy, to account for the extraordinary phenomena that constantly occurred, or who had skill enough to ascertain any one point of the compass. How then were they to find their way home without my aid? Perceiving that this made a deep impression on their minds, I proceeded to dispel their fears, by assuring them that I felt no more disposition to perish in a sea of utter darkness than they did, but that so far from my having any apprehension of such an event, it appeared to me that we should find the winter in that region much more pleasant than at Seaborn’s Land, if we could but discover land and a harbour, where we could moor in safety; that I had never been in a climate so perfectly agreeable to my feelings; that the air was so soft, so elastic, and temperate, it was a luxury to sit still and inhale the sweet breath of heaven; that so far from being in haste to get out of so salubrious a climate, I should be glad to pass my days in it; and, at all events, the sun would be no further north after the expiration of a month, than at the time of our departure from Boneto’s station. Finally, I told them that, should I not make any discovery by the 1st of January, I would then return to Seaborn’s Land, where, in the quarters erected for Mr. Boneto’s party, we could all winter very comfortably; but, on the other hand, should they persist in their mutinous course, I would break my instruments, throw my books overboard and leave them to help themselves as they could.

They all knew my determined and inflexible disposition, and that their best way was not to provoke it. The men went forward without reply. Albicore was the only one who opened his lips, and that was only to express his astonishment that he could have permitted himself to he led away from his duty for a moment, by any circumstance. It was all owing, he said, to that evil spirit, Slim, whose suggestion of total and perpetual darkness had frightened him.

We ran on for five days more, when “a sail ho!” rang through the ship. The stranger vessel was standing obliquely athwart our course, and we were soon near enough to see her distinctly from the deck. She had five masts, with narrow sails attached to each. When we were within three miles of the stranger, she tacked and stood from us to the southward, wind S. W. Feeling confident that the speed of my vessel was superior to that of any thing on the face of the globe, inside or out, I gave chase, in expectation of bringing her to, in a short time.

But here I experienced a mortifying instance of the vanity of human pretensions, however well they may appear to be founded. The stranger, although she did not appear to have half as much sail in proportion to her hull as the Explorer, went within four points of the wind so rapidly, that in two hours she could not be seen from the mast head. I was now at a loss how to proceed. The strange sail was standing about N. W. when first seen, but she might be outward bound, and in that case, by steering that course we should miss the desired land; on the other hand, the course we had been steering might carry us to the northward of our object, and pursuing the vessel in the direction in which she was last seen might lead to an equally unfortunate result. Will Mackerel was of opinion, that the Internals, on seeing so strange a looking vessel as ours, would run for the nearest land, and that we ought to follow her. I resolved at last to steer S. E. for two days, and if not successful, to return to the same place, and steer two days to the N. W. There proved to be no occasion for so much trouble; for at the moment I had decided what to do, the lookout at the mast head called out ‘land ho!’

The sun was now just setting, which immediately brought on the darkest period of the night; and some heavy black clouds occasioned by the vicinity of the land, threatened stormy weather. We therefore stood back upon our track, to wait the return of bright light, that I might approach the inhabited country of the Internal World for the first time under favour of the brightest smile of heaven.

After a few hours the clouds dispersed, and the reflected light became sufficiently strong to enable us to see dangers several miles, but not to admit of a clear distant view. We therefore drew slowly in with the land, to be ready to run in to the nearest harbour during the next interval of sunshine. When near the shore, we again hove to with the ship’s head off shore. With my night glass I could discern buildings and moving objects on the land, which assured me that the country was inhabited.

I walked the deck with impatient yet pleasing anxiety. I was about to reach the goal of all my wishes; to open an intercourse with a new world and with an unknown people; to unfold to the vain mortals of the external world new causes for admiration at the infinite diversity and excellence of the works of an inscrutable Deity; to give to them fresh motives for adoration, and hopes of continued advancement in discovering the infinite works of God.

My imagination became fired with enthusiasm, and my heart elated with pride. I was about to secure to my name a conspicuous and imperishable place on the tablets of History, and a niche of the first order in the temple of Fame. I moved like one who trod on air; for whose achievements had equalled mine? The voyage of Columbus was but an excursion on a fish pond, and his discoveries, compared with mine, were but trifles; a summer sea and a strip of land, where common sense must have convinced any man of ordinary capacity that there must be land, unless Providence were in that one instance more wasteful of its works than in all its other doings. His was the discovery of a continent, mine of a new World!

My mind flew on the wings of thought to my native country; I compared my doings and my sensations with those of that swarm of sordid beings who waste their lives in Wall-street, or in the purlieus of the courts intent on gain, and scrambling for the wrecks of the property of their unfortunate fellow beings, or hiring out the efforts of their minds to perform such loathsome work as their employers would pay them for; men who feel themselves ennobled by their wealth, or by their technical knowledge; who think themselves superior to the useful classes of society; from whom I had often heard the scornful observation, ‘he is nothing but a shipmaster;’ as if those men who live and thrive but by the infirmities and vices of society were enobled by their profession, and the hardy and adventurous mariner, whose occupation leads him to every climate and through every sea, to gather like the bee the useful and the delicious for the comfort and gratification of the native hive, should be degraded by his calling.

CHAPTER VII.

Description of the first view of the coast.—The Author names the discovered country Symzonia.—Enters the harbour.—His first interview with the Symzonians.—Sketch of their appearance.—He commences the study of the Symzonian language.—Wonderful powers of mind displayed by the natives.—Account of an aerial vessel.

The mild oblique rays of the morning sun gilded to our view “A scene surpassing Fancy’s vision.” Gently rolling hills within an easy sloping shore, covered with verdure, chequered with groves of trees and shrubbery, studded with numerous white buildings, and animated with groups of men and cattle, all standing in relief near the foot of a lofty mountain, which in the distance reared its majestic head above the clouds, offered to mariners long confined to a wide waste of water the highest reward for their enterprise and perseverance; the heartfelt satisfaction, that it was to their courage and skill that their fellow citizens would be indebted for the contemplation of so much loveliness. Here there was nothing wanting to a perfect landscape. Plain, hill, and dell sometimes rising with an easy slope, at others, broken, abrupt, or craggy; with an ocean in front, and a mountain in the rear, it was complete.

When the bright light of the sun first presented distant objects distinctly to our view, there were great numbers of vessels and boats in sight, mostly near the shore. We had repeatedly seen them during the night flitting past us like the shades of departed mortals. Immediately on observing our extraordinary appearance, they all retired towards an opening in the land to the northward, whither we followed them, and soon found that the apparent opening in the shore was occasioned by an island a short distance from the coast, having a roadstead within it, in which were several vessels at anchor. After hoisting out our boats, and seeing our guns in order, I stood in to the roadstead, with my boats ahead. As we approached the anchorage, the vessels all retired into the mouth of a river which they ascended until quite out of sight.

At noon, on the 24th of December, we anchored in 14 fathoms water, on a fine sandy bottom. This land, out of gratitude to Capt. Spumes for his sublime theory, I immediately named Symzonia. The coast lay about S. S. W. and N. N. E. In the roadstead we were sheltered from all winds except those which blew directly along shore. These were not much to be feared, for we had found the prevailing W. S. W. winds to blow as steady as a trade wind for several days without any gales or stormy weather.

I passed an hour in surveying the enchanting scene by which I was surrounded; and in making preparations for a visit to the inhabitants of this internal world. I shaved my beard as smooth as I could, put` on my best go-ashore clothes, and swung my hanger by my side, to make my appearance as imposing as possible. Here a difficulty occurred. I wanted an officer to leave in charge of the boat, on whose firmness and discretion I could rely in case of difficulty with the natives. I could not take Albicore, without leaving Slim in command of the Explorer, which was not to be thought of. I would not take Slim with me, for he would be more likely to contrive some way to get my throat cut out of sheer malice, than to use prudent measures for my safety. Will Mackerel was so hasty, that he would probably shoot the natives like pigeons, should he fancy them to be offering any offence or insult to his commander. I therefore determined to take Jack Whiffle, ostensibly to act as cockswain, with six of my best men, furnished with a musket, a pair of pistols, and a sabre each.

Thus equipped, and with the stripes and stars waving over the stern of the boat, I proceeded to the shore, having first instructed Albicore to offer no offence to any people who might approach the ship in my absence, unless it became necessary in actual self defence, or to prevent them from taking possession of the vessel; and to inform me by signal should any superior force appear in the offing, or any danger be apprehended.

There were a number of buildings on the island, one of which from its magnitude and superior appearance to the others, I judged to be a public edifice of some sort. This structure was two stories high, while all the others were but one. In the front, a large open portico with an extensive platform, appeared to be a place of business, great numbers of people being collected upon it. In front of this building, a jettee into the water afforded convenient landing, and l directed the boat to be placed alongside of it. As I approached, all the people retired, and no sooner had I stepped upon the jettee than those in front of the large building moved into it.

Being determined to open an immediate communication with this people, who from the comforts with which they were surrounded could not be savages, I took off my sword, and gave it to Whiffle, and ordered him to lay off with the boat a half pistol shot from the shore, and not to fire a shot, nor to show his arms, unless he saw me run, or heard me fire a pistol; in which cases he must pull into the most convenient place to take me off, and to defend me.

I then walked slowly up the jettee. When I reached the head of it, I took off my hat and made a low bow towards the building, to show the Internals that I had some sense of politeness. No one appeared. I walked slowly up the sloping lawn, stopped, looked about me, and bowed, but still no one appeared to return my civilities. I walked on, and had arrived within one hundred yards of the portico, when I recollected, that when Captain Ross was impeded in his progress northward by the northern ‘icy hoop,’ he met with some men on the ice who told him they came from the north, where there was land and an open sea. These men were swarthy, which Capt. Symmes attributes to their being inhabitants of the hot regions within the internal polar circle; in which opinion he was no doubt correct. I had frequently reflected on this circumstance, and had settled the matter in my mind that they were stragglers from the extreme north part of the internal regions; and could not but consider Capt. Ross as a very unfit person for an exploring expedition, or he would not have returned without ascertaining where those men came from, or how a great sea could exist to the northward of the ‘icy hoop,’ through fear of wintering in a climate where he saw men in existence who had passed all their lives there.

I remembered that these men so seen by Capt. Ross, saluted him by pulling their noses; and surely it is not surprising that men, inhabiting such different positions on this earth as the inside and outside of it, should differ so much as to consider that a compliment in the one place, which is deemed an insult in the other. Indeed it seemed to me a small thing, when I considered how widely the most enlightened of the externals differ in opinion upon the most simple propositions of religion, politics, and political economy.

I was full in the faith that those men of Ross had been internals, and that their mode of salutation was much more likely to be in accordance with the manners of the Symzonians, than the rude fashion of us externals. I therefore pulled my nose very gracefully, without uncovering my head.

This was a happy thought. It arose from my having read much, seen a great deal of the world, and observed with tolerable accuracy, for a shipmaster, the important ceremonies and sublime rules of etiquette, by which the distinguished and the noble, the enlightened and the great, are implicitly governed; they being considered matters of more consequence than religious forms, or mere regulations of convenience.

I remembered that, on being honoured with an audience of a sublime sovereign of the Mussulman empire, it was particularly enjoined upon me by the vizier, not to take my hat off; nor to sit cross-legged, the etiquette of the court forbidding any one to do so in the presence of the sovereign; and showing the top of the head or bottom of the feet being considered an insult to that exalted personage. Happily I recalled to my mind all those weighty matters; and now, that I might not be guilty of insult to this newfound people, I stood bolt upright, kept my hat on, and pulled my nose stoutly.

This had the desired effect. Several persons from within the building assembled on the platform of the portico. They stared much at me, which convinced me they were people of high fashion; conversed eagerly with one another, and seemed undetermined how to act. More than one hundred men collected, before any one showed any disposition to advance even to the front of the portico; and on the other hand, I dared not advance towards them, lest I should again put them all to flight, being already sensible that it was my dark and hideous appearance that created so much distrust amongst these beautiful natives. I therefore kept my position, occasionally pulling my nose out of politeness.

Full twenty minutes passed in this suspence; when one of the group, a man near five feet high, came to the threshold of the platform, and, raising his hand to his forehead, he brought it down to the point of his nose, and waved it gracefully in salutation, with a slight inclination of the body, but without actually pulling the nose as I had done, At the same time he spoke to me, in a soft, shrill, musical voice. His language was as unintelligible to me as the notes of a singing bird;. but his mode of salutation was not. I caught it with the aptness of a monkey, returned his courtesy after his own fashion, and answered him in English, with as soft a whine as I could affect, that my rude voice might not offend his ears.

Seeing him still in doubt whether it was a mortal or a goblin that stood before him, I bethought me to show him that I had some sense of a Supreme Being. I therefore fell on my knees, with my hands and eyes upraised to heaven, in the attitude of prayer. This was distinctly understood. It produced a shout of joy, which was followed by the immediate prostration of the whole party, who seemed absorbed in devotion for a few minutes. They then rose, and the one who had first advanced came towards me. I stood still to receive him, and as he walked close up to me, I extended my hand to ascertain if a thing so fair were tangible. He put out his hand, and seized mine with a grip that made me start; but instantly let it go again, and gazed upon me.

We spoke to each other in vain: he walked round, and surveyed my person with eager curiosity. I did ‘the like by him, and had abundant cause; for the sootiest African does not differ more from us in darkness of skin and grossness of features, than this man did from me in fairness of complexion and delicacy of form. His arms were bare; his body was covered with a white garment, fitted to his shape, and hanging down to his knees. Upon his head he wore a tuft of feathers, curiously woven with his hair, which afforded shade to his forehead, and was a guard for his head against the rain. There was no appearance of any weapon about either him or any of the others.

Having both satisfied our eyes, I again endeavoured to make myself intelligible to him; and, by the aid of signs, succeeded so far as to convince him that I came in peace, and meant no harm to any one. He pointed to the building, which I took as an invitation to go in, and walked towards the portico, with the Internal by my side.

The fair skinned people by whom I was now surrounded, kept at a respectful distance from me. They formed a circle, and sat down upon their feet, with their bodies perfectly upright, and invited me to do the same. I admired the firmness of knee and strength of muscle which enabled them to make such a posture easy and pleasant, but took my seat on the floor cross-legged, like a Turk. Several of the principal men of the party seated themselves near me, and moved nearer and further off, as occasion required, with great facility, and without changing their sitting posture.

An amusing scene now occurred, while we endeavoured to communicate our thoughts and wishes to one another. I shoved up the sleeve of my coat, to show them, by the inside of my arm, (which was always excluded from the sun,) that I was a white man. I am considered fair for an American, and my skin was always in my own country thought to be one of the finest and whitest. But when one of the internals placed his arm, always exposed to the weather, by the side of mine, the difference was truly mortifying. I was not a white man, compared with him.

I gave them to understand that I wanted food and drink, and immediately some delicious fruits, and a large bowl of excellent milk, were placed before me, which I ate with much satisfaction and an eager appetite, to the great amusement of the spectators, who seemed astonished at the enormous quantity I took. I afterwards learnt, that what they set before me was sufficient for ten of these temperate beings.

The result of this interview was an understanding between us, that learning each others languages would be the first essential step towards an intercourse between us; and for that purpose two persons were promptly singled out from the crowd, who took their seats by my side, with a writing apparatus, composed of some very delicate white leaves, more like sheets of very white ivory than like paper, and pencils which made a deep green mark.

We had scarcely entered on this important preliminary, when it was disagreeably and painfully interrupted by the firing of a gun on board the Explorer. The roar of a twelve-pounder, which jarred the building, struck a panic through the whole circle, and the volume of smoke which floated on the water alarmed them much.

With my pocket spyglass I observed that the signal for a fleet in the offing was flying, and it was to call my attention to this signal that Albicore had fired the gun. It was no easy matter to pacify the internals, and make them understand that the terrific noise, fire and smoke, were quite harmless. After many useless efforts, I made them comprehend that it was but the voice of the vessel, telling me it was time to return on hoard.

My spyglass attracted their notice. I gave it to one of the internals, and directed it to the ship, showing him how to find the focus. An exclamation of surprise showed me that this discovery in optics was unknown to them. This little incident was of great service to me. It showed the internals that some useful knowledge might be obtained from the hideous strangers, and excited their curiosity to know more about us.

I now made signs to the two persons appointed to instruct me in the language, to accompany me on board, which after a few minutes they did, together with two others, ordered for the same purpose, and to make observations on our vessel and manners. I was the more willing to render this interview a short one, because I saw that no progress could be made until we had arranged some mode of communicating our ideas.

Soon after our arrival on board, a boat came off from the shore with a large supply of fruits and milk, which were most joyfully received; and in return, I sent a spyglass, a looking-glass, and several articles of glass ware.

The vessels which had been signalled by Albicore, entered the bay and passed into the river, without coming any nearer to us than the land compelled them to. After having shown my visitors about my ship, every part of which they examined with scrutinizing attention, I conducted them to my cabin, and sat down to the study of their language. Two devoted themselves to this object; the other two wrote an account of all they had observed, and sent it by the boat which brought the fruits and milk.

I had not been long at my study of language, when Mr. Albicore sent me word that a bird as big as the ship was coming towards us. I went on deck, and immediately saw that Albicore’s bird was no other than an aerial vessel, with a number of men on board. It came directly over the ship, and descended so low that the people in it spoke with the internals who were with me; but I was not yet qualified to understand a word of what passed. I observed its appearance to be that of a ship’s barge, with an inflated windsail, in the form of a cylinder, suspended longitudinally over it, leaving a space in which were the people. It had a rudder like a fishes tail, and fins or oars, which appeared to be moved by the people within. On the whole, it was not a matter of great surprise to me. I only inferred from it, that the internals understood aerostatics much better than the externals.

I afterwards learned, that the air vessel over the boat was charged with an elastic gas, which was readily made by putting a small quantity of a very dense substance into some fluid, which disengaged a vast quantity of this light gas. By this means, the specific gravity of the vessel was diminished, in the same manner as that of a fish is by its sound. I also learned that this vessel had been dispatched by the government of the country to make observations upon the stranger who had entered their waters.

The following day I made preparations for another visit on shore, when I was made to understand by my instructors that I must not land again until I could speak the language of the country. I was not much pleased with this, not liking a confinement of two or three months, which, even with my faculty of learning languages, was the least term within which I could expect to qualify myself to speak one so new and difficult. My instructors, however, appeared very earnest on this point, and I thought it best to comply, and gave my undivided attention to the necessary study.

At the end of the first week, I was astonished and delighted to find my instructors addressing me in very good English. I could not help arguing, from their wonderful quickness of intellect, and faithfulness of memory, that I should find them intelligent and refined, beyond the conception of external mortals. In this I was not disappointed. My greatest misfortune was a want of capacity to comprehend intelligence so far beyond my powers of mind. They never forgot any thing, and it was only necessary to name a thing once to fix it on their memories. The alphabet once read, and sounds pronounced, they had it perfectly, and expressed the greatest astonishment that I should require them to repeat the same names of things over five or six times, to fix them in my mind.

Having qualified themselves to act as interpreters, they acquainted me that permission had been given for me to visit the place of assembly, where the Best Man and the council of worthies were in session; but that my vessel must remain where she was, and none of the people be permitted to go out of her.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Author leaves the ship to visit the seat of government.—Description of the country.—Account of the polity of the Symzonians, as stated by his conductor.—Comparison of the industry, its objects and ends in the two worlds, and of the necessities and habits of the internals and externals.—Expulsion of the unworthy from Symzonia, to a place of exile near the north pole.—External world supposed to have been peopled by the outcasts.

It was the 2d of January, 1818, that I set out on this delightful visit. A native boat came alongside to convey me, into which I stepped with no more sense of fear than might be excited on going among the spirits of the blessed; so perfectly did the appearance, manners, conduct, and expression of countenance of this people accord with my ideas of purity and goodness.

On the way to the place of assembly, which was about one hundred miles by water from the harbour where the ship lay, much occurred to gratify my senses, instruct my mind, and delight my heart. We ascended the river, the banks of which, and all the country near them, appeared like one beautiful and highly cultivated garden, with neat low buildings scattered throughout the scene. No crowded cities, the haunts of vice and misery, hung like wens upon the lovely face of nature. An appearance of equality in the condition and enjoyments of the people pervaded the country. The buildings were all of them large enough for comfort and convenience, but none of them so large, or so charged with ornament, as to appear to have been erected as monuments of the pride and folly of the proprietor.

Great numbers of small cattle and other domestic animals enriched the view, and a profusion of flowers, tastefully arranged in the vicinity of every house, filled the air with perfume, and charmed the eye with their variegated beauties. No fogs or vapours obscured the charming prospect, nor formed in wainrows to ornament the scene, the mild influence of the sun not being sufficient to produce rapid exhalations, nor the nights cold enough to condense them into vapour. Nature’s fairest landscape requires no mantle to obscure its beauties, or to heighten their effect.

The active inhabitants all seemed engaged in something useful. Some were tending their cattle; some cultivating vegetables, fruits, and flowers, while others practised the mechanic arts.

As we passed on through this enchanting country, Surui, the eldest of my conductors, instructed me in the civil polity, customs, manners, and habits of this people. From him I learned that in Symzonia all power emanated from the people; that the affairs of the nation were directed by:

1. A chief, who was honoured with the title of Best Man, and who held his situation for life, unless impeached of crime; but whose issue was considered ineligible to the same office for one generation after his decease.

2. An ordinary council of one hundred worthies, who assembled twice in each year, and oftener when circumstances made it necessary, to give advice to the Best Man.

3. A grand council of worthies, who assembled once in tour years, to admit members to their body, collect the sense of the nation on all public affairs, and aid the Best Man with their judgment in the appointment of Efficients to discharge the executive duties of the state.

The Best Man could only be elected by an unanimous vote of the grand council.

The Worthies are of three orders—the Good, the Wise, and the Useful.

The first, who have the title of Good, are such as have, by active benevolence, exemplary conduct, and constant efforts to promote the happiness of their fellow beings, obtained an expression of the public voice, that they are superior to the generality of men. W hen any such spontaneous testimony is given in favour of a man, it becomes the duty of the worthies of the district to which he belongs, to make the fact known to the grand council. The council examine minutely into the grounds of the popular opinion, and if they find it well founded, and that the man is truly good, benevolent, and virtuous, they admit him a member by the title of Good.

The second class of worthies, are such as have in like manner been ascertained to have promoted the interests of society by improvements in science, and the advancement of useful knowledge. Such men, if free from vice, although not distinguished by benevolence, or the highest class of virtues, are admitted to the order of worthies by the title of Wise. This class corresponds to that of the philosophers of the external world.

The third, are all such as have manifested superior skill and diligence in their respective callings, with evident and constant good will towards their fellow men; such as have introduced useful inventions and improvements in the arts, set good examples to their neighbours, and are free from vicious propensities: these, on being found justly entitled to such characters, are admitted to the order of worthies by the title of Useful.

The executive department is managed by Efficients, who are appointed by the Best Man, assisted by the Grand Council; and, in the interval of their session, if vacancies occur, by the ordinary council of One Hundred.

It is the duty of the worthies to notice the conduct of the people in their respective districts, to aid the feeble and distressed, if any such be found, to encourage the wavering, and reward the meritorious. Whenever any one of them discovers a man of retired but useful life, active but unobtrusive benevolence, extensive usefulness, with that modest shunning of the public exhibition of his doings which is necessary to possess the public in his favour, it becomes the duty of the Worthy to name him to the Grand Council, as a man of modest and exemplary merit; and if his character is, on investigation, found to be agreeable to the representation, he is admitted accordingly.

Amongst the standing rules of this body, Surui mentioned the following:

1st. Any man setting forth pretensions to superior merit, with a view to obtain a place among the worthies, is to be recorded as a vain man, and to be for ever debarred the privilege of membership.

2d. Any man convicted of taking measures to gain a false reputation for merit, or of secretly influencing any person or persons to exert themselves to forward his nomination to the Grand Council, is to be recorded as a deceitful man, and to be thereby for ever disqualified.

3d. Any man known to have been guilty of unjust or oppressive conduct towards any of those within his sphere of influence, or to have persecuted any who have been placed within the control of his power, to be recorded as a tyrannical man, and considered as wholly unfit to have any agency in the government of his fellow beings.

4th. Any man known to have affected a servile devotion to men of influence and power, or to have courted popularity by flattering the prejudices or passions of the people, to be recorded as a hypocritical man, and to be considered for ever unworthy of admission to the distinguished orders.

5th. All persons guilty of crimes, all who infringe the rules of virtue and morality, all who lead irregular lives, or who set a bad example in society, are for ever excluded from a place among the worthies. The last clause of this rule is understood to include old batchelors.

All the Efficients are appointed from the order of Worthies; no man being considered eligible to a place of trust who has not by his exemplary conduct, usefulness, and undeviating rectitude, acquired the notice and confidence of the public.

The Grand Council being very numerous, transacts business by a committee of three members from each district, to whom the other members communicate such information and advice as they may deem necessary. The recommendations to office are made by this body, to whom the cause of each nomination, and the qualifications of the persons nominated, are set forth in writing. The names of three individuals are always sent up to the Best Man, with a description of their qualifications and merits, for each office, of whom he selects and appoints the one who is, in his opinion, most deserving of it.

The exercise of intrigue and backstair influence being a bar to office, the offices of government are filled with the most intelligent, upright, and valuable men in the country, selected with the sole view of promoting the best interests of the nation.

I could not refrain from expressing my admiration of a system so wisely calculated to give the state the benefit of all the talents, information, and tried integrity of the nation. Surui asked with apparent surprise, if we the Externals did not select men to fill the places of honour, power, and trust, with the same scrupulous attention to their character, purity of life, usefulness in society, and goodness of heart. I was ashamed to acknowledge the truth, and gave him a specimen of the veracity of an External by replying, “Yes, much the same, at least in the State of New-York, where I am best acquainted.”

I inquired whether the order of Worthies was a numerous body, and was informed that it embraced a majority of the men of mature age; all of whom were called in turn according to the order of their admission, to fill a place in the ordinary council of the Best Man. This council consists of one hundred; fifty-five of whom must be of the Good, forty of the Useful, and five of the Wise. Such persons, however, as had failed to maintain the character which obtained their admission to the order, might be excluded from a participation in the government; and the Best Man had the power to pass their names when summoning his ordinary council, provided he did not at any time pass more than one-tenth of the names on the list: for that proportion was deemed the utmost that could possibly deviate from the paths of rectitude.

It appeared to me to be a very troublesome form of government, which required the assemblage once in four years of more than half the men of the nation. But l found this to be a great mistake. Surui assured me, that the labour necessary to procure all the essential comforts and rational embellishments of life, in this fruitful country, and with the temperate habits of the people, required but a small proportion of the labour which could be performed; that there was abundant leisure for an annual assemblage of all the people, without any detriment to the business of society; and that every member of it enjoyed an abundance of the comforts of life, without excessive or constant labour. So far was the quadrennial assembly of the worthies from being regarded as an evil, that the arrival of the time of its occurrence was hailed as a season of great enjoyment, instruction, and usefulness.

The numerous inlets of the sea, which intersected this beautiful country in every direction, rendered travelling very easy and expeditions; so that not only the Worthies, but also such of their families as were of sufficient age to mingle with society, repaired to the district of the assembly, in which none but the Good, the Wise, and the Useful, were permitted to reside. In the vessels in which they are conveyed, they take a sufficient quantity of substantial provisions for their own consumption, or to exchange for such as they may prefer during their visit. They also carry tents, in which such as cannot be accommodated in the houses of their friends reside, during their stay.

None but Worthies are permitted to enter the district of the assembly during the sitting. The first month of the assembly is passed in devotional exercises, and the interchange of visits and civilities, all vying with one another in endeavours to advance the happiness of those about them, and in conversing on matters important or useful to the commonweal. After comparing ideas with one another for a month, they appoint a committee from their number to sit in grand council one month, and no longer. All but the committee then return home, unless business, or a desire to offer their advice on some subject to the particular notice of the committee, induces them to remain.

Surui described the enjoyments of the season of the grand assemblage with the most enthusiastic expressions of delight. None but the Good, the Wise, the Useful, none but the virtuous and benevolent, are then within the circuit of the district. The rarest gratifications of which the human mind is susceptible in intellectual intercourse, were then enjoyed without a sense of evil.

To me, who had been accustomed to see a great proportion of mankind constantly devoted to hard labour, or incessantly applying to business, to obtain a precarious subsistence; to see them, not content with the efforts which might be made by day, wearing out their health and lives in toil by the midnight lamp, and scarcely obtaining what are considered the necessaries of life—it was difficult to comprehend how a great proportion of this people could leave their business and their homes, to pass months in a non-productive state, without oppressing the remainder of the people with intolerable burdens. But I was told that the Worthies received nothing for their services, and were able to provide without difficulty for themselves: all the revenue of the country was devoted to the maintenance of the Efficients, (who were paid for the time actually devoted to public affairs,) and to works of public utility.

This state of things appeared to me at first to be beyond the limits of possibility in the external world. My mind was for some time occupied by reflecting upon the extraordinary difference in the natural condition of the internals aid externals; and I commenced a comparison of the varieties and objects of industry in the two worlds, and of those necessities and habits which demanded the products of labour. This brought me to a clear view of the matter. I perceived that the greater part of the labour of the externals was devoted to the production of things useless or pernicious; and that of the things produced or acquired, the distribution, through defects in our social organization, was so unequal, that some few destroyed, without any increase of happiness to themselves, the products of the toil of multitudes. Instead of devoting our time to useful purposes, and living temperately on the wholesome gifts of Providence, like the blest internals, so as to preserve our health and strengthen our minds, thousands of us are employed in producing inebriating liquors, by the destruction of wholesome articles of food, to poison the bodies, enervate the minds, and corrupt the hearts, of our fellow beings. Other thousands waste their strength to procure stimulating weeds and narcotic substances from the extreme parts of the earth, for the purpose of exciting diseased appetites, whereby, in the case of those who possess good things, the ability to enjoy them is destroyed. Still greater numbers give their industry and their lives to the acquisition of mere matters of ornament, for the gratification of pride, an insatiable passion, which is only stimulated to increase its demands by every new indulgence. I saw that the internals owed their happiness to their rationality, to a conformity with the laws of nature and religion; and that the externals were miserable, from the indulgence of inordinate passions, and subjection to vicious propensities.

I inquired of Surui how I should know the distinguished orders? What badge or outward sign was worn by them? To which he replied, “They are known by their undeviating rectitude of conduct the good by their benevolence, the wise by their knowledge, the useful by their works.” In answer to my inquiries as to the condition of those who were not of the order of Worthies, I was informed that it was very various, according to their conduct. Most of the people, seeing the happy condition of the Worthies, and being extremely desirous to partake of the refined enjoyments of the grand assemblage, strove earnestly to become deserving of a place among them; but some, giving way to their carnal appetites and passions, fell into intemperate indulgences, whereby they produced disease to their bodies, and a necessity for much labour to supply their unreasonable consumption, and at the same time an aversion to the performance of the labour which is necessary to the preservation of health; that the constant exhortations and efforts of the Worthy were found insufficient to restrain some of the youth from forming such pernicious habits, so that before they were sufficiently taught by experience and the examples before them, that to be good is to be happy, they degenerated into vice. This too often led to crime. To support their wastefulness, they infringed the rights of others. When such men became, in the opinions of the select worthies, incorrigible and dangerous to society, they were transported to a land far distant to the north, the extreme limit of the world, where a part of the year the heat is intense. There they continue in their vicious course, pursuing the gratification of their sensual appetites, and are punished with diseases of body which enervate their faculties, inordinate passions which torture their minds, and fierce desires which are incapable of being satisfied. The influence of their gross appetites and of the climate, causes them to lose their fairness of complexion and beauty of form and feature. They become dark coloured, ill favoured, and mis-shapen men, not much superior to the brute creation. They retain, indeed, said Surui, some of the customs and manners of Symzonia; and the ceremony of pulling the nose in salutation by those who had strayed to the “icy hoop,” and were seen by Captain Ross, of whom I had spoken, was no doubt a corruption of the graceful mode of salutation practised where I then was. On my first appearance, they had apprehended that I was of that outcast race; for it had been observed by those who had conveyed delinquents to the place of exile, that the descendants of the outcasts were enlarged in stature and size, owing to the grossness of their habits, and at the same time that they had lost their strength and activity. One of the pure race, it was believed, was able to lift three times as much as any one of the degenerates, or to leap three times as high. Their suspicions of my being of the outcast tribe, were allayed by the testimony of reverence to the Supreme Being which I had given, by falling on my knees, and imploring the aid of heaven in my embarrassed situation; whereby they knew that I could not be unworthy of their regard.

I felt not a little humbled by this account of the origin of the northern internal people, and, cautiously avoided my observation that might discover, to my intelligent conductor, the suspicion which darted through my mind, that we the externals were indeed descendants of this exiled race; some of whom, penetrating the “icy hoop” near the continent of Asia or America, might have peopled the external world. The gross sensuality, intemperate passions, and beastly habits of the externals, all testified against us.

I inquired of Surui where this place of exile was situated. He said it was at the extreme northern part of the earth, as near the fountain of light and heat as mortals could go, without danger of perishing by fire: that they could only visit it in the temperate season, because during the rest of the year, the sun was seen directly over head, when the heat was so great as to render existence extremely painful. By this account I knew that the place of exile must be situated somewhere on the verge of the rim of the north polar opening, as there, and there only, could the sun be seen directly over head, without going to the external tropic.

CHAPTER IX.

The Author arrives at the seat of government.—Description of the Auditory.—Symzonian manner of assembling for devotion and public business.—Etiquette of the Symzonian Court.—He is admitted to an audience by the Best Man.—Account of the interview, and of his unfortunate efforts to exalt the character of the externals, by describing some of their splendid follies.

We were three days in passing from the ship to the place of assembly. Surui uniformly ordered a halt, when the light was so faint as not to permit me to have a distinct view of the country. Wherever we stopped, we were visited by great numbers of people, many of whom, to my extreme mortification, looked upon me with evident pity, if not with disgust. Yet they were very kind, and brought a profusion of the choicest fruits, vegetables, milk, and honey and great quantities of beautiful flowers. The face of the country became more and more beautiful as we approached the place of assemblage, which is in the most perfect part of this delightful region. The most elegant specimens of ornamental gardening on the external world, give but a faint idea of the appearance of this whole district.

The principal object that attracted my notice on arriving at the seat of government, was the Auditory, which towered above all surrounding objects, and struck me with awe and admiration. I could not conceive how so stupendous an edifice could have been reared by such a people. I had indeed observed, that notwithstanding their inferiority in size, they were much stronger, and more active than the Externals. The tallest men were about five feet high, but they leaped twenty or thirty feet at a bound without much apparent exertion, and easily lifted burthens which three of our men would find it difficult to move; still the vast fabric before me appeared out of all proportion to the ability even of mortals as highly gifted as these. It was a single dome of one arch, supported by a peristyle of huge columns, and covering at least eight acres of ground. The extreme elevation of the centre was seven hundred and fifty feet. The whole was formed of stone, in massy blocks, cemented with a paste of the same material, so as to appear to be all of one solid piece.

Surui said that when the people determined to erect a temple, in which they might assemble for devotional exercises and expressions of gratitude to the Divine Being, they regarded the object as one towards which the whole nation ought to be allowed to contribute. They determined to construct a building in which the greatest multitude ever collected in that district might worship God; and which would also serve for the deliberations of the Grand Council, that they might always be considered to be in the presence of the Supreme Ruler, and discharge their high trust with a due sense of their responsibility to Him who seeth the heart. They had therefore built this Auditory by the surplus labour of the nation: each man having devoted so much of his time to the work as his private affairs would permit, and for no other reward than that of his own feelings and the good opinion of his fellow men.

The dome, which appeared so immense and so impracticable, was formed on a high conical hill, by which the site was originally occupied. In the sides of this hill shafts were sunk to the intended level of the foundation, in which the columns were reared. The top of the hill was then shaped for the reception of the stone of the arch, which was thus easily constructed upon the solid earth. When the whole was completed, the earth both within and without the structure was removed, leaving the edifice as it now appeared upon the plain. Within the columns, the earth was formed into a concavity, with graduated steps to the centre, so that an individual in any part of the immense area could see every person within the circumference of the dome.

In the centre, on a large convex platform, the Best Man has a seat, fixed upon a pivot, which permits him to turn with ease to every part of the Auditory. Over this platform an orchestra supported on pillars accommodates five hundred musicians, whose melody, reverberated by the vaulted roof, fills this tremendous and unbroken space.

In this edifice all the Worthies assemble once a day, for religious services, during the preparation month. The exercises are always commenced with music, to dispose the soul to heavenly contemplation. After the music, they all kneel and pray in silence. Speakers designated by the Best Man then ascend the platform by turns and deliver their sentiments on subjects worthy the attention of so enlightened and devout an assembly. The whole is closed with music, that all may depart in harmony of thought and feeling.

Three hours are thus devoted every day for a month, that the hearts and minds of the members may be improved, and that they may be prepared to deliberate upon the affairs of state in perfect fellowship and good will.

When the committee of the Grand Council, or the ordinary council of the Best Man, meet for the despatch of business, they take their seats in compact order upon one side of the platform, leaving the area below for spectators; and as the most important matters are fully discussed in conversation during the preparation month, and as all the Worthies have good sense enough to know that their own happiness will be most certainly promoted by a faithful and pure devotion to the true interests of their fellow-men, the Best Man is not subjected to the inconvenience of listening for six hours together to a speech, calculated only to render a clear subject obscure and doubtful; nor is he who offers the fruits of his experience, or of his studies, insulted by the spectacle of an audience writing letters, reading newspapers, or sealing packets, to mark their contempt for his opinions.

I found a convenient and delightful lodge prepared for my reception. It was small, but sufficient for comfort. There were no servants attached to it, nor was there need of any. All necessary food, vegetables, fruits, milk, honey, &c. were sent daily, and placed where I could conveniently help myself. I soon learned that these supplies were voluntary contributions, and that the people took their turns in the privilege of administering to the wants of the stranger in their land.

Surui was accommodated in a similar manner, close by my dwelling. He passed a great part of the time with me; acting as linguist, and continuing to teach me the language of the country, in which I was still very imperfect.

The day after my arrival, I was honoured with an audience by the Best Man of this admirable people. I inquired of Surui as to the etiquette to be observed on going to court—whether I must uncover my head as in Europe, or my feet after the manner of the Asiatics? whether I must bow my head to the ground, making a right angle of my body, and walk backwards on retiring, as in the court of Great Britain, or flounder in flat on my belly, after the fashion of the Siamese? Whether I was to stand or sit? If to sit, whether on the ground, or cross-legged, or on my haunches like a monkey?

Surui could not, or would not, understand me, and I concluded he wished the Best Man to see what the manners of an external would be, untaught in the customs of the country. I therefore determined to give them a specimen of the deportment of a republican freeman, and conduct myself with the easy respectful politeness of a gentleman and citizen of the world.

On approaching the dwelling of the Best Man, I was charmed to find that it differed in no respect from the ordinary dwellings of the people, except that it was of greater extent, owing to his numerous family, and a superior neatness and regularity was apparent in the grounds, which were stocked with a variety of the most beautiful and fragrant flowers and shrubbery. The house was literally in a bower of sweets.

The Best Man put me entirely at my ease in point of etiquette, by meeting me in the open air, in the garden, and without either the stiffness of affected pomp, or the austere visage of assumed sanctity. He received me with that frank, affectionate manner, which constitutes true politeness, the offspring of benevolence.

By the aid of Surui, we entered immediately into conversation. The first inquiries of the Best Man were, as to whence I came, and my motives for leaving my country. By means of a globe, which I had brought from the ship, and which I now caused to be produced, I explained to him the situation of my country, and the phenomena attending the external region, of which, till now, he had no conception, except from some supposed ravings of a Wise man, who was thought to be mad. The frightful glare of the sun, and the great extremes of heat, as his imagination pictured them in such an external region, were horrible to his apprehension.

My motive I stated to be, a desire to gain a more extended knowledge of the works of nature; adding, that I had undertaken this perilous voyage only to ascertain whether the body of this huge globe were an useless waste of sand and stones, contrary to the economy usually displayed in the works of Providence, or, according to the sublime conceptions of one of our Wise men, a series of concentric spheres, like a nest of boxes, inhabitable within and without, on every side, so as to accommodate the greatest possible number of intelligent beings.

I was already too well acquainted with the sentiments of this people, not to know that it would be extremely imprudent to suffer any expression to escape me which should discover that a desire of wealth; or of the means of sensual gratification, was among the motives which actuate the externals; such a disclosure being calculated only to excite their aversion and contempt.

The Best Man indulged me with a long interview; and it was a happy circumstance that I had with me a globe, charts, maps, books, and drawings, to illustrate and corroborate my statements; for otherwise I might have caused him to suspect that I was a most desperate liar, so strange and absurd did many of my representations appear to him. Happily, Surui was already able to read English books; and when I observed an appearance of doubt on the part of the Best Man, I sought out some passage in a printed work to corroborate my statement, which Surui translated into the language of the country.

I spoke of the danger I had encountered from ice. This was incomprehensible to him. He assured me that water never congealed in the internal world; that the innate warmth of the earth was sufficient to prevent it, and he could not understand how so great a degree of cold could exist in. the external world, so much more exposed to the direct influence of the fountain of light and heat. I endeavoured to account for this by explaining to him the generation of cold by evaporation and absorption, and promised to send to the ship for my air pump, to show him ice artificially produced by absorption in an exhausted receiver. I then proceeded to account fir the equable heat in the internal world, and the extreme cold at the icy hoop, upon principles which appeared to me to be very obvious.

In the first place, the sun’s direct influence is exerted on an equal portion of the globe at all times; which influence is felt, on the external surface, only where it is directly exerted. In such places it is felt intensely, but from the free action of the external atmosphere, so soon as that influence is withdrawn the heat escapes and flies off rapidly, generating cold in its passage, or by evaporation as we express it. Those parts of the external world from which the influence of the sun is withdrawn for the greatest length of time thus become intensely cold, excepting in the immediate vicinity of the polar openings, where the issue of warm air, from the internal cavity, tempers the atmosphere: but at a short distance from the verge of the opening the very influence of this warm air generates cold, by parting rapidly with its latent heat and condensing into snow and hail, which causes the circle of ice between the 70th and 80th degrees of latitude, called the “icy hoop.” This escape of heat from the warm air which issues from the internal world, is so great as to irradiate the atmosphere near the polar openings; and in the extreme cold of winter, during the absence of the sun, this irradiation is so vivid as to be visible fifty degrees towards the equator, where the inhabitants, being fond of simple names, call it Aurora Borealis.

On the other hand, as an equal portion of the globe is at all times acted upon directly by the sun’s rays, the internal contents of that globe must be always subject to the same degree of heat, excepting such variations as may be occasionally produced by the direct rays of the sun admitted through the polar openings. Of this fact we had evidence on the external world, where, in the most intense cold weather, we had but to penetrate a short distance into the earth to escape its influence. The temperature of mines, dug a short distance into the earth, was always above the freezing point; and the degree of heat at a given distance below the general surface of the earth, was found to be nearly the same in all latitudes, and at all seasons.

Hence what he called the innate warmth of the earth, was nothing more than the collected heat of the sun absorbed and retained by the globe from the continued action of that luminary upon an equal proportion of it, at all times, in the same manner as a glass globe full of water, when set before a fire, will absorb and diffuse heat throughout the contents of the vessel equally, although but one side is exposed to the direct influence of the fire, while that part of the external surface of the vessel which is not exposed to the fire, but is subject to the influence of the cold air of the room, will obtain no other heat than may be communicated by the fluid within.

My printed books were subjects of great interest. The art of printing was unknown, although that of engraving was practised. I explained the process of making and using types, and promised the Best Man to instruct such persons as he might be pleased to direct, in the art, in return for the hospitality and civilities I had received.

He expressed a desire to be made acquainted with the form of government the religion, habits, sentiments and practices of the people of the external world, particularly as to our acquirements in useful knowledge: on all which subjects I was extremely disinclined to converse, being aware that if I spoke the truth I should fill him with disgust, and if I endeavoured to disguise the truth, and to reply to his inquiries from my own imagination, I might be detected in falsehood, and deservedly turned with contempt out of the country.

To his inquiries respecting government,. I replied by describing briefly the principles of the American constitution, taking care to say nothing about the qualifications for office, nor of the means resorted to to obtain preferment. He thought the scheme well calculated for a very virtuous and enlightened people, but liable to many abuses through the want of a probationary course of qualification for places of trust and power.

On the subject of religion, I frankly confessed that every man was permitted to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience, and that our government did not recognize one form of worship in preference to another. With this he appeared to be satisfied, but when I inadvertently added, that one of our wise men, who had filled the chair of “Best Man” of the nation, had expressed the opinion that it was of no importance whether the people worshipped one God or twenty, he started with horror, and expressed the greatest astonishment that an enlightened people should permit wise men to obtain controlling influence in a country; for, however useful and valuable they might be found to be within their proper sphere of action, like all powerful agents they were dangerous to the happiness of mankind if not restrained by powerful checks and controlling influences, to prevent their running into impracticable measures: wherefore, not more than five wise men were permitted to sit in his council of one hundred.

On the subject of our habits, I was as brief as he would permit me to be, and took especial care to speak only of the habits of the most virtuous, enlightened and truly refined people of our external world; but in spite of my caution, he extracted much from me which filled him with disgust and pity. That the most pure of our people should be afflicted with disease, was evidence to his mind that we were a contaminated race, descendants of a degenerated people. Having discovered from my remarks, that we ate the flesh of warm blooded animals, prepared in many forms with condiments and sauces to give it a higher relish, and, instead of confining ourselves to the pure fluid provided by nature to quench our thirst, that we indulged in fermented and distilled liquors even to inebriation, he was not at a loss for the cause of disease and misery, and was only surprised that such things were permitted, or, being permitted, that the race did not become extinct. Great inequality in the condition of our people, he inferred as a necessary consequence upon the indulgence in vice; because, while a virtuous man will perform so much of useful labour, or business of equal utility to society, as a matter of duty, as shall amount to his full share of consumption of the common stock of value, and if his labours be blessed with abundance, will not expend the surplus above his wants in things useless and pernicious or in the gratification of his passions, but bestow it upon the meritorious needy, to support the unfortunate, or in useful public works, the vicious man is rendered averse to the performance of his duty, and becomes wasteful of the products of the industry of others, without regarding the means, whether just or unjust, by which he may possess himself of them. Therefore, men feeding upon animal food and costly drinks, and given to the indulgence of inordinate passions, must of necessity become very unequal in their condition, depraved in their appetites, and miserable in proportion to their aberrations from the strictest temperance, virtue, and piety.

Finding that the longer we conversed on the ha hits, manners, and sentiments of the externals, the lower they would sink in the estimation of this truly enlightened man, I endeavoured to turn the discourse to our acquisitions in useful knowledge, in full confidence that on this subject I should have a decided advantage, and be able to raise the people of the external world to a high place in his consideration. I spoke of the perfection to which we had arrived in the manufacture of apparel; of muslins wrought so fine as not to obstruct the sight; and worth per square yard, the value of two months labour of an able-bodied man; of the shawls of Cashmere, so exquisitely made, as to be valued at two years labour of an industrious farmer or mechanic; of laces to ornament the dresses of our wives and daughters, one pound weight of which would amount to a sum sufficient to purchase the labour of four men for life; of splendid cut glass, and ornamental wares, dazzling to the eye of the beholder; of works of silver and of gold, so beautifully wrought, and so much valued, as to be objects of adoration to many of our people. The Best Man could hear me no further on this subject; he pronounced these things to be useless baubles, the creation of vanity, pernicious in their influence upon the foolish, who might be so weak as to place their affections on them, and the production of them a most preposterous perversion of the faculties bestowed upon us by a beneficent Creator for useful purposes. What possible use could there be for a garment, which would neither retain warmth to the body, nor protect it from external evils, or from the observation of others? And what apology could be found for wasting the labour of four men for life, which, properly directed, would supply the wants of twenty human beings, to provide ornaments for those who, if not arrayed in the white robes of purity and virtue, must be odious, although bedizened with all the finery which human ingenuity can devise.

I spoke of our skill in arms, in hopes to excite his admiration; of the invention of gunpowder; of fleets of ships for the transportation of armies to invade the countries of our enemies, and contend in naval fight for the right of navigating the ocean. This was the most unhappy subject I had yet touched upon. Instead of exciting his admiration, I found it difficult to convince him that my account was true, for he could not conceive it possible that beings in outward form so much like himself, could be so entirely under the influence of base and diabolical passions, as to make a science of worrying and destroying each other, like the most detestable reptiles.

I felt a strong desire to draw directly from the fountain head of knowledge in this country, immediate information on a variety of subjects relating to the condition, sentiments, and knowledge of this remarkable people, but did not think it decorous to question so exalted a character in this my first interview. I therefore limited myself to a demand to be permitted to moor my vessel in a secure place in the river, and remain until the return of the next summer’s sun should render my return to the external world perfectly practicable.

I had but to explain the danger to which we should all be exposed, of perishing by cold on the passage, if I attempted to make it so late in the season, to obtain from the benevolent Best Man the desired permission to winter there; and orders were accordingly given to admit the Explorer into a river, and moor her in a place assigned for that purpose, but under an express stipulation that no person should land, or leave any communication with the people, unless officially authorized by the Best Man’s orders, under the strict inspection of confidential Efficients. Enough had been already discovered of our sentiments and habits, to convince the Best Mari that a free communication with my people would endanger the morals and happiness of his.

To save myself the mortification of further conversation on the useful knowledge of the Externals, I promised to put all my books into the hands of Surui, to be translated into the language of the country; and having heard the Best Man’s orders that every attention should be paid to my wants and those of my people, and that information on all subjects interesting to me, except the construction of their engine of defence, should be freely communicated to me, and the records of the assembly opened to my examination, I took my leave. The Best Man kindly ordered Surui to bring me often to his house, to converse on matters relating to the External World, and to the promotion of the happiness of our fellow beings.

CHAPTER X.

Containing some account of the strange rationality of the Symzonians.—Their simplicity of dress.—Manner of making cloth.—Circulating medium.—Taxes.

The friendly reception which had been given to me by the Best Man, and his commands that information should be freely communicated to the stranger, were a sufficient introduction for me to the notice and kind offices of this benevolent people. They required no other evidence that my rank was sufficiently elevated to render me a fit associate for them, than the fact that the Best Man had found my conversation so interesting as to induce him to pass several hours in my company. I was visited by all classes of the community, and gave scope to my eager desire to possess myself of all the useful knowledge and science possessed by the most intelligent of the people.

I gave my attention in the first instance almost exclusively to the Wise, in expectation of finding their conversation most instructive; but I soon found that like our philosophers they were more given to abstract theories than to practical knowledge, and would contend for hours to establish some fanciful hypothesis, to the neglect of plain and practical subjects of inquiry. I therefore turned my attention to the Good and the Useful, who never spoke on subjects they did not understand, and whose information, though not so abstruse as that of the Wise, extended to all matters of established utility. Moreover they could be implicitly relied on; for having no favourite hypotheses to maintain, and no selfish ends to answer, they explained every thing to me frankly and in an intelligible manner.

In this way, and by frequent interviews with the Best Man, as also by actual observation, I ascertained the following, among numberless other interesting facts:

That the fatal sin cupidity, which drove our first parents out of Paradise, is almost wholly unknown to the pure and uncontaminated Internals. They view the gifts of a bountiful Providence as an abundant supply of good things for the benefit of all, and sufficient to gratify all the rational wants of all the creatures for whom they are provided. They admire and adore the beneficence which could find pleasure in creating intelligent beings, and in providing for all their wants; and are emulous to approximate towards the spirit of love and goodness to which they are indebted for all their blessings. They are continually striving to improve themselves in this respect, by unceasing efforts to render one another, and all creatures within the sphere of their influence, happier and better; instead of exerting all their faculties, like the Externals, to gain advantages over their fellow men, to acquire the means of gratifying the worst passions of their nature, or to advance their own pleasures by rendering others miserable.

All the real wants of men in society are provided for in the most simple and natural manner. Usefulness is the test of value. That artificial wealth which exists amongst the Externals, and depends for its support upon their capricious passions, has no place with the Symzonians; our whole list of fancy articles, all our ornaments, every description of things which are only calculated to gratify pride or vanity, are considered by them as worse than useless. They wear garments because they defend the body, and are necessary to decency; but it never occurred to their simple minds, that the fairest work of an Infinite Being could be unproved by trinkets and fripperies of man’s device. Their judgments are not so much perverted, nor their tastes so much depraved. Therefore, having ascertained a mode of providing necessary raiment in the most convenient manner, they one and all adopted it, and, by dressing alike, they maintain a perfect equality in their wants in that respect.

Their cloth is a beautiful substance, manufactured in a peculiar manner, by a process resembling that employed by the natives of the South Sea Islands, and not unlike our mode of making paper.

The material is found in caves and amongst the rocks of the mountains, where a species of insects, larger than our spider, produce it in great abundance. They form webs somewhat like those of spiders, but of a firmer texture, and more compactly woven. These webs have the properties of asbestos, owing probably to the insects subsisting upon that or some similar substance. The inhabitants collect them with great care, and lay them in a mould of the dimensions of the piece of cloth to be made, placing so many of them one upon another as the intended thickness of the cloth requires. This done, a fluid preparation which hardens by the influence of fire, without losing its elasticity, is poured over it. It is then pressed firmly together, and passed over a heated cylinder, which completes the operation.

This cloth is extremely convenient. Being incombustible, like asbestos, it is only necessary to pass a garment through the fire to purify it perfectly. It is also very durable; and being exquisitely white, it corresponds admirably with the delicate complexions of the people, and the mild light of the region they inhabit.

All the divisions of labour necessary to the convenience and welfare of society, are here perfectly understood. The community is not bewildered by a voluminous and complex system of political economy, consisting of abstract principles, buried in abstract and unintelligible words, and rendered too intricate to be understood by those who have common sense, or too inapplicable to civilized society to be adopted by those who have any sort of sense—invented by the Wise men of one country to mislead the politicians of another, and to depress the Good and the Useful.

Their circulating medium consists of tokens for every variety of things, and every description of services. These tokens are originally issued by the government, for services performed and articles supplied for the national benefit. One description represents one day’s labour; a second, a standard measure of grain; a third, a small measure of pulse; a fourth, a given quantity of a particular fruit; a fifth, a measure of cloth, and so forth. There being a sufficient variety to represent all the articles which are in common use, they have all the advantages of exchange, without the trouble of delivery when the things are not wanted for actual consumption.

When, by any circumstances, the supply of any particular article in any district falls short of the demand to such a degree, that the tokens will not command what they represent, it is the business of the government to draw from the more fruitful districts a sufficiency to equalize the value, either by direct purchase, or by requiring the contributions of the fruitful districts in kind, and sending the articles to the place of scarcity, or by receiving the contributions of the district in which scarcity prevails, in tokens, and thus raising their value, or by both these operations in extreme cases.

Commerce is practised only for the common convenience of society. The accumulation of wealth, and indulgence in luxury, being disreputable, and a bar to admission to the distinguished orders, an overreaching and avaricious spirit is not generated by traffic, as in the external world, but every operation of trade and transfer is performed on the most reasonable terms, which will enable him who performs it to live upon an equality with his fellow-men.

All contributions are required directly from the people, that every one may know the full extent of his proportion of the expense of government. Every man under the age of one hundred years, is rated at the same amount, unless he have young children; in which case the tax is reduced in proportion to the number of such children, according to a graduated scale. This tax is so light that nothing but a criminal want of industry or frugality can hinder any one from paying it.

The whole revenue of government requires no more than one or two days labour of each man per annum; and as the government exists for the sole purpose of preserving the freedom of the citizens, in the pursuit of happiness, and in the enjoyment of all those privileges and immunities which are compatible with the well-being of society, all are equally indebted for its benefits. Property being altogether a matter of secondary consideration, is not considered a proper object of taxation. In case of an accumulation of good things in the hands of an individual, beyond his wants, the surplus is in general voluntarily devoted by him to the use and benefit of his fellow-beings, in some shape or other, for the promotion of his own happiness. Doing good is here considered as the highest of earthly gratifications. When a man is more than one hundred years of age he is considered to have performed his full share of public service, and to be entitled to exemption for the remainder of his days.

CHAPTER XI.

Containing some account of the Symzonian engine of defence.—Story of a very ancient war with an internal nation called Belzubians, which caused the invention of this engine.—Opposition of the Good men to its being used.—Fultria the inventor’s speech in defence of it.—Deliberations of the Council.—Termination of the war.—Sentiments of the people on the subject.

The prohibition by the Best Man of any information being given to me of their engines of defence, excited my curiosity. I was anxious to discover what those engines were, and why a people so good, so benevolent, and so harmless, could have any occasion for them. I dared not ask for airy direct account of their nature, as I knew that an attempt to induce any one to break through the Best Man’s injunctions, would be considered as the greatest of offences, and cause my immediate expulsion from the favoured district.

All my efforts to obtain the desired information indirectly, fell short of my object. I however gathered from casual observation, and from some manuscripts which fell into my hands, that in times long past, the people of Symzonia maintained a commercial intercourse with a nation on the opposite side of the internal world, beyond the equator, called in their ancient manuscripts Belzubians. This intercourse was kept up for many years; for the Wise men contended that it was beneficial, by enabling the people of Symzonia to obtain many things cheaper than they could themselves produce them. But in process of time, the Good men discovered that the people became poorer, more addicted to idleness, and given to the indulgence of many inordinate desires and extravagant vanities. At length the unworthy became so numerous, as to endanger the morality and virtue of the whole community, and it was necessary to banish them to a place of exile. in the hot regions near the extreme limit of the world at the north.

This was the origin of the system of casting out the corrupted members of society. At the time of its adoption, the government endeavoured to remove the cause of the evil by prohibiting, as they had a clear right to do, all further intercourse, for purposes of trade, with the Belzubians: but the latter had become so depraved and sordid, by their addiction to traffic, and were so puffed up with the idea that they were the most powerful nation of the two, that they resolved to maintain a commerce with the Symzonians by force, in defiance of the regulations of the government.

The Good men were thus placed in a most painful dilemma. They could not prevent this forced intercourse entirely, without shedding the blood of their fellow beings, to which they felt an insurmountable aversion. For a time they contented themselves with endeavours to reclaim the people. They exhorted them to abstain from the use of the things brought by the Belzubians; and finally succeeded so far as to diminish the advantages which their enemies had before derived from the trade, so as to make it no longer worth pursuing. The Belzubians then sent armed men in their ships to take possession of Symzonia, and compel the Good men and the people to submit to the contaminating intercourse demanded by their cupidity.

The most frightful distress now pervaded the land. The enemy having to do with a people who had no arms, and who were in the highest degree averse to the shedding of blood, easily conquered a large portion of the country. Those who had been corrupted by intercourse with them, joined the standard of the Belzubians, and forwarded their views.

The total subjection of the country, and the destruction of its virtues and happiness, would have ensued, but for the timely appearance amongst them of a man of singular ingenuity. This man, named Fultria, invented the air vessels, one of which I have before spoken of. He also invented the engine of defence, the description of which was prohibited. The knowledge of its construction, and the manner of using it, was confined to a few select Good men, who were bound to secrecy by the most solemn obligations. I could obtain no other idea of it, than that it was a vast machine moved upon wheels, and rendered of but little specific gravity, by means of the apparatus employed in their air vessels, by the help of which it could, on an emergency, be raised into the air for a short time, to cross rivers or broken ground.

It was propelled by means of a great number of tubes, projecting very obliquely through the bottom near the ground, through which air was forced with such prodigious violence, that the resistance of the earth and atmosphere impelled the machine forwards: in this way it was moved with astonishing velocity. From all sides of this engine a great number of double tubes projected, through which two kinds of gas were caused to issue. These gases uniting at the extremities, produced a flame of intense heat, like that of our compound blow-pipe on a large scale, which flame, according to tradition, was ejected with such force, as to consume every thing for half a mile in every direction. The interior of the machine was sufficiently capacious to admit men enough to direct its motions and prepare the gases, and also the materials and apparatus necessary to their production.

When this terrific engine was completed, Fultria proposed to exterminate the enemy at once; whereupon all the Good and many of the Wise men objected to so barbarous a proceeding. They contended that it would be contrary to the practice of civilized nations, and taking an unjustifiable advantage of the enemy, by using means of warfare not resorted to by civilized men, and not much better than poisoning them secretly. They could not consent to such unheard of barbarity; at best it was justifying the means by the end, and doing evil that good might come; but it was better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

Fultria, on hearing these objections to the use of the means of emancipation which he had provided with so much labour and ingenuity, ascended the platform, and addressed the Best Man in Council in defence of his engine and his views. I found his speech on record, it having been carefully preserved, notwithstanding the lapse of many centuries. I translated it with the aid of Surui,, but our language is not sufficiently nervous to convey the sentiments of this enlightened man with the energy and conciseness of the original language. I endeavoured to put down the substance of it in English, but it cannot be expected that a sailor should do such justice to a fine specimen of Symzonian eloquence as might be done by some of our professed belles lettres scholars, who pass their lives in studying the arrangement of words and in admiring the elegance and dignity of their compositions.

FULTRIA’S SPEECH.

“Best Man of our race! you have been told that it would be barbarous in us to exterminate the corrupt and contaminating invaders—should we not be more barbarous to submit to depravement and degradation?

“You have been told that by using the engine I have invented, you would take an unjustifiable advantage of our foes—do they not take unjustifiable advantage by employing their superior skill in the diabolical arts of physical warfare and moral turpitude, to prostrate the strength and destroy the virtue of our people?

“You have heard it urged, that the practices of civilized men do not justify the use of such means of warfare, and that the adoption of them would be the extreme of inhumanity. What then shall we do? Shall we permit the wicked to gratify their cupidity by plundering the feeble and devastating the defenceless, with little danger of hardship to themselves, and many allurements of advantage from success, and thus perpetuate war by rendering the pursuit of it safe and attractive?

“No, Sir; it is most humane to cut off the instigators and performers of inhuman deeds.

“I would show my abhorrence of war by rendering it too horrible to be encountered.

“I would abolish war by ensuring inevitable destruction to all who engaged in it.

“I would utterly destroy the invaders that none may hereafter dare to draw the sword for invasion.

“Let all who take the sword perish by the sword, and war will be known no more.”

The Council deliberated upon the measures recommended by Fultria, and upon the miserable situation of the country. They had no support but their confidence in the Sovereign Ruler of the world, and no hope of relief but from the favour of his Providence. They feared that a majority of the people had now become so degenerate in their minds, and so exasperated by their circumstances, that they would be eager to second the views of Fultria, and engage in the work of destruction. But, for themselves, with a few exceptions, they remained steadfast in their virtuous principles and feelings, and could by no means consent to do what every dictate of reason and religion forbade. They were accountable for their own acts, not for the acts of others, or their consequences. They knew that to do right, and that alone, was safe. If they acted, that must be their rule. The end could not justify the means.

At last it was thought that the exhibition of this terrible machine, with all its engines in operation, in sight of the Belzubians and their adherents, would impress them with such dread and horror, as to drive them immediately from the country, and effectually deter them from ever returning. This expedient was therefore tried, and it was completely successful. The enemy fled with as much precipitancy and haste as did the Midianites at the sight of the lamps and the noise of the broken pitchers of Gideon. The land was presently cleared of the Belzubians and their apostate followers; all intercourse with their country was prohibited; and since that time war had not been known.

Three or four thousand years had now passed away, and doubts were entertained whether this were matter of genuine history, or an ingenious allegory, intended to present to the people a glowing picture of the evils which might follow a gross departure from purity of life and rectitude of principle. There were very few who could conceive it possible that human nature had ever sunk to such extreme depravity, and that so great a proportion of mankind had been enslaved by evil passions, as to render the wicked the most numerous. In general, therefore, it was supposed that Fultria, willing to exhibit a magnificent specimen of his genius, and being somewhat under the influence of vanity, as Wise men often are, fancied it possible for such a deplorable state of corruption and violence to happen in a long course of ages, and stated an imaginary case, as an excuse for constructing his tremendous engine.

I did not express my opinions on this subject, for I thought it most discreet to conceal the fact that such a state of things actually existed in the external world. My silence, however, did not avail; for, having put my books, among which were Ree’s Cyclopediæ, Shakspeare’s works, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and many volumes of modern history, poetry, and novels, into the hands of Surui, I was soon called upon for explanations as to what was true, and what fictitious.

CHAPTER XII.

Wonderful faculties of the Symzonians.—Translation of my books into their language.—Proposition of a Wise man to make slaves of the Author and his people.—The Author’s remonstrance.—The Wise man disgraced.

The extraordinary strength and vigour of the faculties of this people enabled them to effect, in a short time, what would occupy the most intelligent of the externals for years. I can convey an idea of them only, by calling to the recollection of the reader the talent at computation manifested by Zera Colburn, who, at the age of 10 years, calculated the sum of any given number of figures in the twinkling of an eye, as though he arrived at the result by intuition.

The faculties of the Symzonians all seemed to be nearly perfect. They are obviously as much superior to ours, as Colburn’s powers of calculation were greater than those of other untaught boys; which, no doubt, results from their strict conformity to the law of their nature.

With such powers of mind, it need not be matter of surprise that all my books were very soon translated into their language, and numerous copies of them printed, and distributed amongst the most learned and discreet, with instructions to report as to their fitness for general circulation.

This examination and report brought me into serious difficulty. A certain Wise man presented a memorial to the Best Man, in council, in which he attempted to prove, from the books which I had put into his hands, my large size, dingy complexion, carnivorous appetite, and my own account of the sensual habits and propensities of my race, that we were actually the offspring of the wicked who had been expelled from Symzonia for their vices, and that we ought to be subjected to the penalty denounced by their laws in such cases.

On inquiry, I found the penalty alluded to in the Wise man’s memorial, was nothing less than the delivering of such persons to the most severe of the Useful class, to be kept at hard work, poorly fed, and debarred from intercourse with the pure—in the hope that, in process or time, their gross appetites might be scourged out of them.

All the horrors of a rice swamp, with but a peck of corn a week for subsistence, sprang up in my affrighted imagination. I immediately set about an elaborate petition to the Best Man, in which I endeavoured to refute the arguments advanced by the Wise man, and to show that my dingy complexion was owing to my seafaring life on the external world, whereby I was much sunburnt; and that the Wise man had been led into error by mistaking a work of imagination, for real history.

I admitted that there was a race on the external world, inhabitants of some islands far to the north, who, from their vicinity to the place of exile, might be the descendants of the outcasts, but who, in my opinion, were more probably the descendants of the Belzubians, being a restless, turbulent people, much given to depredations upon the rights and property of others, of insatiable ambition, inordinate avarice, and excessive vanity: who made war their chief occupation, maintaining vast fleets and armies; who plundered the feeble, enslaved the unwary, and levied contributions by force or fraud upon the whole human race:

That these islanders were a distinct people, who were regardless of the rights of others, being governed by cupidity, whereby they had become detestable to all the rest of the externals, and to my nation in particular, to so great a degree, that our Wise men (who have the control in the government, the Good and Useful being held in but little estimation by the wise and the useless in my country) had repeatedly ordained a non-intercourse, in the vain hope of bringing these supposed descendants of the Belzubians to a sense of justice; and that we were at this time only secure from their attacks, by an invention for blowing them into the air, if they ventured to assail our shores; that the book which had misled the Wise man was written by one of this people, and had no reference to my country.

Before I had completed my work to my satisfaction, I received the agreeable intelligence, that the Best Man, supported by all the Good and most of the Useful of his council, had ordered the name of the Wise man who made the proposition, to be erased from the list of Worthies, as a cruel monster, for seriously proposing the infliction, upon strangers who had voluntarily thrown themselves upon the hospitality of the country, of penalties enacted only to render the consequences of the return of the outcasts too frightful to be encountered by them.

This was the only unpleasant occurrence during my stay. The days flew on with astonishing rapidity, so agreeably were they passed. The Symzonians slept but about three hours in the four-and-twenty, and considered me a very gross and sluggish being because I could not do without six hours sleep. With the exception of this short interval, every moment was occupied in conversation, study, observation, or amusement. Statistics, geography, botany, aerology, geology, mineralogy, zoology, ornithology, ichthiology, conchology, and entomology, in turn demanded and received my attention.

CHAPTER XIII.

Recreations of the Symzonians.—Wonderful provision of nature for supplying the internal world with light.—Character and employments of the women of Symzonia.

I visited the place of recreation, a neat plain rotunda, in the centre of an extensive flower garden, where the young people, the middle aged, and the old occasionally convened, to extend their knowledge of one another, interchange their thoughts by conversation, listen to the most exquisite music, and practise a variety of graceful and elegant exercises. Being all very fond of music, they all join in that, by turns, as in other performances. Sometimes an hundred instruments, and many hundreds of the most exquisite voices, filled the whole place with the most enchanting sounds.

The exquisite beauty of the women, the graceful dignity of the men, the chaste decorum and sincere politeness of all, charmed the mind, and delighted the heart. Here there were no temptations to vice by offers of seducing cordials, wines, agreeable decoctions, or other intoxicating drinks, as in our places of resort for recreation. The enjoyments of this refined people were intellectual and pure—not the debasing gratifications of animal passions and sensual appetites.

The soft reflected light of the sun, which was now no longer directly visible, gave a pleasing mellowness to the scene that was inexpressibly agreeable, being about midway between a bright moonlight and clear sunshine. I had great cause to admire the wonderful provision of nature, by which the internal world enjoyed almost perpetual light, without being subject at any time to the scorching heats which oppress the bodies and irritate the passions of the inhabitants of the external surface.

When the sun has great southern declination, it is seen directly through the opening at the south pole, a little above the horizon—this gives an interval of bright light; and as the rays of heat are more refrangible than those of light, a sufficient degree of heat is experienced to ripen the most delicate fruits.

At this season, during night, the rays of the sun are reflected from the opposite rim of the polar opening, and afford so much light as to render the stars invisible. The full moon is never seen at this period; for while the sun is in south declination, the moon fulls to the north of the equator, to give light to the north polar region, and the northern internal hemisphere.

March and September are the darkest months. Both the sun and full moon are then in the equator, and shine very obliquely by refraction, into both polar openings. Yet, by reflection from side to side, they afford a faint light quite to the internal equator, where two reflected suns and moons are dimly seen at the same time. This circumstance had led the internals to suppose that there were actually duplicates of those luminaries. Their situation, it should be considered, did not admit of such observations of the celestial bodies, as were necessary to correct that error.

During this season, the planets and stars of the southern hemisphere are visible, some directly, and others by reflection. This occasions great mistakes in their astronomical calculations, which they ascribe to the aberrations of the heavenly bodies. It never occurred to them that their field of vision was a limited internal concave sphere, and a great part of their firmament nothing but a reflection of the external heavens.

When the sun is in north declination, it is not seen at all to the south; but as it then shines into the north polar opening, its influence is felt at Symzonia by a repeated reflection, and being aided both by the powerful light of the moon, (which always fulls in high south declination, when the sun is near the northern tropic, and shines directly into the southern opening,) and by the direct and reflected light of the planets and stars of the southern hemisphere, gives light enough for all necessary purposes.

The women of Symzonia are not regarded as inferior in intellectual capacity, or moral worth, to the other sex. The female character is there respected, for the qualities of the female mind are developed and employed. Their personal beauty exceeds my powers of description. I can liken their complexion to nothing but alabaster slightly tinged with rose. Compared with them the fairest of our fair are dingy. This may not be readily credited by some of our beauties but they have only to place themselves near the alabaster ornaments in their drawing rooms to realize the fact.

The domestic duties of the Symzonian women are very simple, pleasing, and easily performed. To prepare the frugal family meal requires no roasting heat, nor black array of pots, kettles, spits, and gridirons. The little culinary preparation which vegetables and fruits require; is neatly and conveniently done in silver vessels; for silver is abundant, and well adapted for utensils for household use. To arrange their basins of milk and honey, and set out their baskets of fruit for a family united in esteem and love, is a pleasurable exercise.

The preparation of clothing for a people of such simple habits requires comparatively little labour. The garden occupies a portion of their time, but the greater part is devoted to the instruction of their children, the improvement of their own minds, religion, and social intercourse.

Their parterres are not designed for the idle gratification of the eye, but to support innumerable swarms of honey making insects; the Symzonians being as fond of the sweet which nature has provided as the Externals are of that which is wrung from the bloody sweat of slavery.

Symmetry in form, and elegance in arrangement, are much attended to by this people; they do not attempt to surpass nature in the creation of beauties, but endeavour to heighten the enjoyment of what is placed before them, and make a right use of whatever they possess.

Vessels of gold for domestic purposes are sometimes used by those who cannot easily procure silver. Gold is abundant in the beds of rivers near the mountains, but it is not esteemed, because of its softness and great weight. It is chiefly employed in the fastening of their vessels, in place of iron, which is very rare, and much valued for its strength, and fitness for all the purposes of agriculture and mechanics.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Author examines the records of the Assembly.—Grounds of proposal for admittance to the order of Worthies—Shell fish of Symzonia.—Great quantities of Pearls, and the use to which they are applied.

I was allowed free access to the records of the Assembly: and, having made such proficiency in the Symzonian language as to read it with facility, I derived much amusement and instruction from the various recommendations for admittance to the distinguished orders which had been stated to the Grand Council and placed on record during a long course of ages. These records were much too voluminous to admit of my reading them in course. I therefore contented myself with opening them at hazard, and reading whatever chanced to present itself.

One man was proposed to be admitted to the order of Worthies by the title “Wise,” because he had given evidence of superior imagination and ingenuity; he having fancied that he had discovered by studying the laws of matter and motion, that the Internals were inhabitants of the concave side of a hollow sphere; and, reasoning from analogy, that the convex or outer side of that sphere must be inhabited by a people enjoying a wider range of action, and more extended views of objects floating in unlimited space: that the suns, moons and stars, which they saw imperfectly by refraction and reflection, were only visible through a dense atmosphere in their world, but must of necessity be directly visible to the inhabitants of the External World in all their effulgence. He had written a book to explain his ingenious theory of an External World, in which he had endeavoured to show by various calculations, that his extravagant hypothesis was not absolutely beyond the limit of possibility.

This man was not proposed as one designated by the popular voice, but was named by a certain Wise man as one of retired habits and uncommon genius. The council unanimously rejected the application, and passed a vote of censure on him for troubling them with the dreams of a maniac or an enthusiast. The members of the council were generally of opinion that to suppose the outside of such a world to be inhabited was as absurd as to suppose men to dwell on the outside of their houses.

Another man was proposed as Wise, for devising a scheme to relieve the government from the trouble of superintending the distribution of things useful, in order to preserve equality in the comforts of the people throughout the land; and from constant attention to the emission and withdrawal of tokens, to maintain their regular value, and insure their proper effect. His plan was to substitute in place of the tokens a system of promissory obligations, to be issued by an association of individuals who should be always bound to redeem them. This plan, he contended, would greatly facilitate exchanges, and contribute to the convenience of government.

His scheme was promptly condemned, as a device to cheat the people, by causing perpetual fluctuations in the nominal price of things; and he was recorded as a designing man, unfit to be of the order of Worthies.

Another was proposed for admission as Wise, for composing a code of written laws, and writing a book to prove that the adoption of his project of numerous and particular laws in writing would conduce to the welfare of society, by enabling every one to know, with technical precision, what he might and what he might not do.

This man’s scheme, and the proposition founded upon it were both rejected. The council said, that as to all the matters embraced in this proposed system, public opinion, the established principles and habits of the people, the prevalent sense of rectitude and benevolence, had been and still was sufficient. Laws, if in accordance with these principles, could add nothing to their efficacy; and if inconsistent with them, they could not be enforced. The whole subject was at present plain; technical phrases would but darken and perplex it. Language was imperfect; words had different meanings; those who violated the spirit of these laws would contrive to evade the letter; the people would disagree in their judgments; the influence of public opinion would be destroyed; bad passions would be generated; more laws would be required; contest, disorder, and innumerable evils would be the consequence. The education and discipline to which the people were accustomed, the examples of the Good, the dictates of enlightened consciences, the sense of accountability to God, the simplicity, temperance, and practical piety of the people—these formed the basis of good conduct, and upon these dependence might be safely placed.

The most frequent grounds of recommendation for the distinguished orders were regular and useful industry, temperate and exemplary lives, and constant endeavours to improve themselves and others.

Many were admitted for discoveries in botany, whereby the people were enabled to derive increased enjoyment from the vegetable world; many also became Worthies by advancing the knowledge of entomology, and finding how to guard against the ravages of insects, and how to turn the efforts of the myriads of almost invisible beings to harmless or useful ends.

I observed nothing of the nature of animals in use amongst this people as food, except oysters and other testaceous creatures, which have so little visible animation as to be considered by the Symzonians on an equality with vegetables, and to be provided like them for the nourishment of a higher order of life. They were probably led to this conclusion, by the vast profusion of shell-fish which abound in their waters. They are caught in astonishing quantities. The shells are employed in building, and to promote vegetation.

The pearls, which they afford in great abundance, and of large size, are used to glaze the walls of their apartments, being dissolved in a liquid, and laid on like paint. This process gives a smooth and elegant surface, like the inside of the pearl oyster-shell, which is inexpressibly delicate and agreeable in the soft light of this country, and at the same time renders the walls more durable.

I visited a maker of this pearl wash. My cupidity, I must confess, was greatly excited by the sight of large heaps of pearls, which would be of incalculable value in the external world. Even in the atmosphere of this pure region, I could not prevent my imagination from figuring the splendid palace, dashing equipage, and choice wines I should enjoy, and the unbounded respect and obsequious attention which would be paid to me by the great men of Gotham, on my return there with the enormous wealth which a cargo of these pearls would produce. I asked the workman for a specimen of the pearls, and he gave me a handful that were as large as peas, which I put in my pocket, intending to show them to the Best Man, as a sample of the article with which I should be glad to load my ship.

CHAPTER XV.

The Author is ordered to depart from Symzonia.—The Best Man’s reasons for sending him away.—His ineffectual efforts to obtain a place of rendezvous for purposes of trade.

It was on my return from this visit to the pearl wash maker, that I received notice to wait upon the Best Man. I immediately repaired to his dwelling, with a light heart, in expectation of my usual intellectual feast from his conversation, little suspecting that this interview was to be the last. He received me with a mild solemnity of manner, which warned me that the interview was for some purpose of importance. He did not keep me in suspense, but in a kind and benevolent manner informed me that the Wise men, to whom the copies of my books had been given, had all made their reports, which, together with the accounts of those who had observed the habits of myself and people, and been in the most favourable situation to ascertain my sentiments, had been submitted to him in council; that he had taken full time to reflect on the subject, before he determined on the painful measure which his duty to his people imposed upon him:

That, from the evidence before him, it appeared that we were of a race who had either wholly fallen from virtue, or were at least very much under the influence of the worst passions of our nature; that a great proportion of the race were governed by an inveterate selfishness, that canker of the soul, which is wholly incompatible with ingenuous and affectionate good-will towards our fellow-beings; that we were given to the practice of injustice, violence, and oppression, even to such a degree as to maintain bodies of armed men, trained to destroy their fellow-creatures; that we were guilty of enslaving our fellow-men for the purpose of procuring the means of gratifying our sensual appetites; that we were inordinately addicted to traffic, and sent out our people to the extreme parts of the external world to procure, by exchange, or fraud, or force, things pernicious to the health and morals of those who receive them, and that this practice was carried so far as to be supported with armed ships, a thing unheard of, except from some very ancient manuscript accounts of the Belzubians, which had been considered by the Good men of Symzonia, for ages, as nothing more than fables.

After stating these and many other charges against the externals, he added, that many of his council seriously apprehended that it was only our inordinate thirst for gain, that had induced me and my people to hazard our lives in an unknown region, and that it had not escaped their notice, that my vessel was provided with terrific engines of destruction, no doubt to enforce our will where our purposes required it: Wherefore he, the Best Man, in council, had come to a resolution, that the safety and happiness of his people would be endangered by permitting any further intercourse with so corrupt and depraved a race. He therefore required that I should repair forthwith to my vessel. and there remain until the season of bright light was sufficiently advanced to enable me to return to my country in safety; and ordered that all necessary supplies of food, and whatever was wanted to refit my vessel, should be furnished at the expense of the state; but that I should not be permitted to take away any of the products of the country which I esteemed valuable for traffic, lest the cupidity of my countrymen should lead them to send an armed force to obtain such things.

They were fully aware, he said, of the articles which were most coveted by the externals; for my books had described them, and the purposes to which they were applied; and Efficients would therefore be appointed to examine my vessel, and see that I took away none of those articles. He felt confident that they had additional security for a strict compliance with this prohibitory order, in my integrity, of which he had formed a favourable estimate, notwithstanding the corruption of my nature, and did not apprehend that I would break through his injunctions, after partaking so largely of the hospitality of the country.

I was petrified with confusion and shame, on hearing my race thus described as pestiferous beings, spreading moral disease and contamination by their intercourse, and by thus seeing all my hopes of unbounded wealth at once laid prostrate; and I did not recover from the despondency which overwhelmed me, till I recollected that Mr. Boneto would no doubt have a full cargo of seal skins ready against my return to Seaborn’s Land, which would ensure me a handsome fortune.

Any attempt to dissuade the Best Man from his purpose, or to obtain a revocation of the decree, I knew would be altogether vain. I therefore endeavoured to soften the judgment he had formed of the externals, by representing the books, from which the Wise men and himself had drawn their opinions, to be the works of the islanders whom I had described to him as the supposed descendants of the Belzubians, and that they were only re-printed in my country as they had been in his; that we professed to be much more enlightened than those islanders, and styled ourselves emphatically the most enlightened people on the face of the earth, by which we meant no disrespect to the Symzonians, the face of the earth being the outside of it only, and we were not sufficiently enlightened, when the declaration was made, to know that there existed any such people; and that there were many people amongst us who would eagerly emulate the purity and goodness of the Symzonians, could they but have the benefit of their example, and behold the happiness which attended their course of life. I specified one numerous class in particular, who were remarkable for simplicity of habits, active benevolence, and good will towards mankind.

I admitted that the permission of a free intercourse with the externals, might be productive of great mischief to his people, by introducing vice and disease, which had been observed to spring up amongst the South Sea islanders, and other unsophisticated nations, soon after their discovery by Europeans and Americans; but urged that a limited intercourse, under strict regulations, might be productive of much good; and that the Symzonians would, in that case, enjoy the sweet reflection, that they had contributed to the reformation of many of the externals, by the beauty and loveliness of their example, and at the same time have the benefit of more expanded views of the works of a beneficent Creator, through the information which they might derive from the externals.

To effect this very desirable end, I proposed, that Token Island should be established as a place of meeting and intercourse, where the externals might erect places of abode, and remain through the winter, and have communication with such of the Symzonians as the Best Man, in council, might be pleased to license for that purpose; and that the useful metal iron, which was not to be found in Symzonia in sufficient quantities to supply the wants of the people, was very abundant in the external world, and would be brought and exchanged for articles which the Symzonians considered useless, or nearly so.

The Best Man objected to this scheme. He had not forgotten the evils related to have followed the ancient commerce with the Belzubians. He also urged that Token Island was situated in the worst region of the earth, where the extreme heat and great humidity of the air would generate violent diseases amongst those who should have the temerity to remain there in the presence of the sun.

Unhappily, in my eagerness to carry my point, I assured him that this would be no objection to the externals; that in the pursuit of gain, they defied plague, pestilence, and famine; that the rich merchants who sent out adventurers, never took the climate of a country into consideration, viewing it as of no concern to them how many of the lives of shipmasters and mariners might be sacrificed, nor how many widows and orphans were thus created, provided they could make money by their business; that the externals would come to Token Island so long as there was any thing to be gained by it, even if one half of their number should perish annually; and that the Symzonians could visit them in the temperate season, when they would be quite safe.

The Best Man heard me out, and then told me I had said enough. It would be much less dangerous to his people, he believed, to visit Token Island in the hottest season, than to hold intercourse with such a depraved, covetous, and sordid people at any time of the year. The plan was inadmissible—I must prepare for my departure—the decree would be rigidly enforced.

I expressed my reluctant acquiescence, and begged to be fully informed of his will and pleasure, that I might not in any respect deviate from the course I was desired to pursue. I closed by expressing a hope, that the numerous manuscripts which the Wise and the Good had bestowed upon me, might not be taken away, but that I might be permitted to carry them to my country, to instruct the externals in the wisdom they contained. After a moment’s hesitation he replied, that good books could not do harm in any world, and I might retain them. This was joyful to my ears. I felt sure of instructive and profitable employment for life in translating these productions for the benefit of my fellow externals, and took my leave of the Best Man, with the comfortable reflection that I had not discovered a new world wholly in vain.

On my return to my lodge, I found it deserted of the usual visitors, Surui and other Efficients, appointed to provide for my wants, being the only persons who approached or held conversation with me. All other persons, from this time until my departure from Symzonia, avoided me in a manner as little calculated to hurt my feelings as possible.

My books were all returned to me; but, to mark my acquiescence in the justice and propriety of the measures adopted by the Best Man, I sent to him by Surui my best telescope, a solar microscope, an excellent sextant, a pair of globes, and a set of charts and maps of the external world. The instruments being superior to any thing possessed by the Symzonians, and all these articles being calculated to extend their views of creation, I knew they would be highly esteemed. All these articles were cordially received as a tribute of gratitude on my part; and I was even given to understand, that the Best Man derived more satisfaction from this indication of my heart, than from the possession of the very useful and desirable things I had presented to him.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Author returns to the Explorer—Holds a council of officers—Determines to return to Seaborn’s Land—Takes leave of Surui—Sails from Symzonia—Touches at Token Island—Arrives at Boneto’s station.

I returned to my ship, with sensations very different from those which delighted my heart on my passage from it. I felt like a culprit exiled to Botany Bay for his crimes: so strong was the contrast between the peaceful, intelligent, and virtuous people, from amongst whom I was driven, and the turbulent, rude, and corrupt externals, with whom I was doomed to pass the remainder of my days. My chief consolation was derived from that contemptible passion, vanity, a certain evidence that I was a true external. I could not avoid being elated, and indulging some pleasant emotions, when I thought of the great curiosity my arrival from the internal world would excite amongst the externals, the celebrity I should acquire, the prodigious importance which would be ascribed to my discoveries, and the unbounded encomiums which would be lavished on me for my wonderful capacity of mind, displayed in the contrivance of my voyage, and the incomparable bravery, skill, and perseverance displayed in the execution of it. All this, with the anticipation of the many public dinners which would be eaten in honour of the discoverer, the flattering toasts which would be drank all over the United States, and perhaps in Europe, together with the pleasure I should enjoy in relating my apparently tough stories, helped to keep up my spirits.

We were but ten hours in travelling to the ship; and it being the season of faint light, I could not make any new observations on the country. Surui and his companions were very reserved on the way. The little conversation which took place, turned wholly on the beauty of holiness and purity of life, and the evidences of a blessed hereafter to all who are truly good.

I reached the ship on the 28th of July, 1818, and found my people all very comfortable. Their chief complaint was that they had nothing fresh but oysters, which, in their opinion, were meagre food for civilized men, but which Mr. Albicore, to save our salt provisions, had given them very often. They found much fault also, that they were not permitted to go on shore. A profusion of the best of vegetables and fruits, with a full supply of the delicacies of the country, and with but little work to do, made them, as the like circumstances always make sailors, discontented and restless.

Surui having furnished me with a good chart of the internal seas, as far as Token Island, I determined to put to sea immediately, and proceed to that island, where I could employ my people in collecting tortoise-shell, until the sun should attain sufficient south declination to light our way back to Seaborn’s Land. I accordingly called a council of officers, and laid before them the state of affairs, as far as I saw fit to disclose them, and the alternatives which were open to our selection.

In the first place, we might be able to find Belzubia, if we went in search of it, and if the people of that country retained their ancient habits, there would be no difficulty in opening a trade with them. On the other hand, if they continued to be a warlike and unjust people, they might have power and inclination to bale our vessel, and subject us all to slavery.

In the second place, Mr. Boneto’s party would undoubtedly have a full cargo of seal skins ready for us against our return to Seaborn’s Land, which would give us all money enough to make us comfortable at home; and it must not be forgotten that if we should go in search of Belzubia and be lost, Boneto and all his party must perish, and be lost to their country.

On the whole, I was willing to consider the discoveries I had made sufficient for one voyage, and to leave Belzubia for a subsequent expedition.

Slim’s eyes glistened when I described the heaps of pearls I had seen, and he immediately proposed that we should possess ourselves of them by force, having no doubt that, with our fire arms, we should be able to contend with any number of these delicate little beings, and thinking it of no manner of importance how many of them we might destroy, provided we got the pearls. But when I described to him their engines of defence, before which an army would disappear like a nest of caterpillars subjected to the flames of burning straw, his eyeballs swelled with fright, and he was anxious to put to sea with all practicable haste.

Albicore endeavoured to account for the circumstance of the oysters sent on board having all been opened, and the soft part taken off by the Symzonians, by supposing that they did it to preserve the pearls for their own use; but it appeared to me to have been done because the impure part is not considered by them fit for food.

On the 13th of August, we put to sea. Surui accompanied us until we were quite out of sight of land, with a vessel in company to take him hack. On parting with this excellent Symzonian, I presented him with a handsome gold watch, and a number of instruments and useful articles. He exhorted me to improve the instruction I had received while in his country, and to endeavour to imitate the morals and habits of the internals, as the only course by which I could advance my own happiness, and render myself better, and more capable of promoting the real welfare of my fellow-mortals. He also earnestly entreated me to warn my countrymen not to approach the coasts of Symzonia in expectation of being allowed any intercourse or traffic, whilst they remained besotted in vice and iniquity, the Best Man in council having decided, out of regard to the purity of the nation, that the engines of defence should be used to prevent such contamination.

We found no difficulty in making our passage to Token Island in twenty-one days, Surui having given me a particular account of the prevailing winds and currents, and the course to take to reach that island with the greatest expedition.

Here it may be well to explain the cause of the astonishing velocity of the Symzonian vessels, which enabled the one we had seen on approaching the coast to avoid us so easily. It appears that the Symzonians, in ancient times, apprehensive that the Belzubians might send armed ships to the coast to capture their vessels and carry away their people, devised a plan for accelerating their motion, by means of a number of tubes which perforated the after part of the vessel under water, through which air was forced with extreme violence by the agency of a curious engine, of which I could not obtain a particular description. This rush of air against the water forces the vessel forward with amazing rapidity. Every vessel going far from the coast must be furnished with one of these engines, but they are used only on emergencies.

The wreck of the vessel I had seen on Token Island was not of Symzonian construction, and the metal with which it was fastened was unknown in that country. It was the opinion of the Wise men that it must have been of Belzubian origin, for that people sometimes extended their voyages to Token Island to obtain turtles, which they eat.

On the passage to Token Island I had very interesting employment in examining my Symzonian literary treasures, and in extracting and translating some of the most remarkable articles. The volumes which I had been permitted to bring away comprised a full account of all the science and useful knowledge of Symzonia; and in consequence of having this copious fountain to draw from, at pleasure, I had less occasion to depend on my written memoranda of the many curious and interesting facts and circumstances which fell under my observation whilst on shore.

These manuscripts were the only articles that I brought away from Symzonia, except the handful of pearls given to me by the pearl-wash maker, which, being concealed in my breeches pocket, and the fact of my possessing them being known only to the workman, I thought I might venture to smuggle, notwithstanding the Pest Man’s confidential reliance on my integrity. This deviation from what was expected of me, will, I trust, be excused by my external friends, when they remember that I have been much addicted to commerce, and consider the force of habit, and the security with which the operation could be performed.

Soon after our arrival at Token Island, the sun was visible for a short interval at noon, nearly over head. The remainder of the twenty-four hours we had a very bright light from the reflection of the sun and moon from the rim of the polar opening. Both those luminaries being now in the equator, their rays fell perpendicularly upon the rim of the opening, and being bent in by refraction, were visible at Token Island at noon. This direct and constant influence of the sun, the reflected rays being very powerful, rendered it very hot, early as it was in the season. Therefore, as I was eager and impatient to rejoin Mr. Boneto and his party, and to ascertain what success he had had in sealing, as well as to have several months of light, that my whole crew might, if necessary, be employed to complete a lading for the ship, we stayed but twenty days at Token Island. In this time we procured a considerable quantity of tortoise shell, and then proceeded direct for Seaborn’s Land.

It was so early in the season that the temperature of the air changed rapidly, as we issued from the internal cavity, and approached the polar region of the external world. On the first of October, we experienced cold disagreeable weather, with slight falls of sleet and snow; but the sun was constantly above the horizon, and we pursued our course without delay. October 2d, we saw World’s-end Cape, to the great joy of all on board, and especially of Mr. Slim, who could scarcely express his ecstacies. The following day we anchored in the harbour off Mr. Boneto’s station, which, out of compliment to him, I named Boneto’s Harbour.

We found the buildings, stores, and a large quantity of seal-skins carefully stacked, all in good condition, but no person on the island. I was immediately denominated a murderer, my men being certain that the whole party had been frozen to death, or that the mammoth animals had crossed on the ice during winter, and destroyed them all, so ready are seamen to put the worst construction on every thing, and to censure their commander. Slim was “nothing loth” to forward this idea, a sight of the great quantity of valuable furs in which he was to share in no degree softening his malignity.

As there were no dead bodies, bones, or boats, to be seen, I was not alarmed for the safety of the men, and had no doubt but they were absent on a sealing excursion. The appearance of the boats under sail soon confirmed my opinion. We were presently joined by Mr. Boneto, who, with his party, had passed the winter very comfortably.

They had taken eighty thousand sealskins during our absence, most of which were preserved in salt, for the winter did not admit of their being cured by drying. We had, therefore, abundant work before us to dry those skins, and to take a sufficient number in addition to complete our lading.

The joy of my officers and people, at this re-union, was without bounds. Sailors, on long voyages, become very much attached to one another, and consider every shipmate as a brother. I devoted three days to recreation, in consideration of the many perils we had encountered, and the great success which had thus far attended my enterprise.

CHAPTER XVII.

The Author loads the Explorer with seal skins, and sails from Seaborn’s Land—Discovers Albicore’s Islands.—Transactions at those islands.—He determines to conceal his discoveries from the world.—His reasons for this determination, and measures to effect it.—Sails for Canton.

We continued on the coast of Seaborn’s Land until February 18th, when, having taken on board one hundred thousand seal skins, which were as many as we could stow without taking down our machinery, and that I did not think it prudent to do on that side of the icy hoop, we took our departure from Boneto’s station, leaving all the animals that remained alive on one of the largest islands, to stock it for the benefit of future adventurers. We steered due north, and soon lost sight of the coast.

On the second day we fell in with extensive fields of ice, which compelled us to haul up, first N. W., then W. N. W., and at one time due west. This was somewhat alarming; but ultimately we realized the correctness of my supposition, that the range of land must keep an open passage to leeward of it; and on the 1st of March, 1819, I had the satisfaction to observe in latitude 69° 15´ south, with a clear open sea.

I now hauled up due east, to run down my longitude with the greater despatch in this high latitude, where the degrees of longitude are small. This was fortunate: for by running on this parallel we discovered on the third day a group of small islands, forming a fine harbour, and well stocked with seal. Here we anchored. The islands were high broken rocks of granite and whinstone, apparently dislocated from their primitive bed, and thrown up by some volcanic eruption, or by the efforts of elastic gases generated in the ‘mid-plane cavity,’ to escape through this outer crust of the earth.

Some scanty tussock, and a few mountain plants and mosses in the most favoured spots, formed the only evidence of vegetation observable in these dreary islands. I named them Albicore’s Islands, they having been first discovered by that vigilant officer; and determined to avail myself of the discovery to extend the profits of my voyage, by adding as many seal skins to my cargo as could be stowed in the space occupied by the steam engine and boiler, which I took to pieces, and placed in the bottom of the ship for ballast and dunnage. By caulking in the paddle ports I also gained the place between the double sides, and rendered the ship to outward observation like an ordinary vessel, ketch rigged.

We remained at Albicore’s Islands six weeks, in which time we obtained seventeen thousand skins. Having taken these on board, and performed the important ceremony of taking possession of the islands for the United States, by hoisting the stripes and stars upon them in the usual manner, I was ready to depart for Canton.

Being now about to visit a place where I should meet many of my countrymen and persons full of curiosity from every part of the world, who would be very inquisitive as to the discoveries I had made, I was led to reflect maturely on the consequences which might result from a disclosure of them; and the advantages which might be derived to myself, my friends, and my officers and people, by withholding all knowledge of them from the world.

At length, having made up my own mind on the subject, I called my officers and people together, and stated to them that if we should on our return to the United States, or at Canton, declare the discoveries we had made, we should in the first place expose ourselves to the charge of being impostors and outrageous falsifiers; in the second place, our countrymen, and even the Europeans, who would give us no credit for our bravery and enterprise, would avail themselves of all the information we might communicate, to fit out expeditions to Seaborn’s Land, and possibly to Belzubia, and thus reap the harvest of our planting; but, worse than all, after thus appropriating to themselves the benefits of our skill and perseverance, they would assert that they had made all those discoveries, call all those places by new names, and affirm that we had never been there at all.

On the other hand, by concealing the knowledge of these discoveries in our own breasts, we could derive extensive benefits therefrom during the remainder of our lives. To effect this, they had only to bind themselves to me by oath, to keep this matter a. profound secret, and when they had been a sufficient time on shore, or had spent most of their money, I would fit out the Explorer, or another and better vessel, under the command of Mr. Boneto or Mr. Albicore, in which all should share according to their present standing on my books, and for which I should have money enough out of my profits from the present voyage. This would give us all a certain resource for the good things of this life; whereas if we made our adventures public, the business would be overdone in a year or two, and we should then have to look to the moon or some of the planets for room for further discoveries.

All assented to my proposal except Mr. Slim, who objected that an extra judicial oath would not be binding, that it would be a dereliction of duty on my part to withhold from mankind the knowledge of the most valuable part of the world, and finally, that he was principled against taking oaths. Slim was not open to persuasion. There was no moving him. He had gloated his imagination with the figure he should cut when, in consequence of having been an officer with me on this voyage, he should get command of a ship for a voyage to the sea of wealth, have the merchants crowding round him to obtain the benefit of the valuable information he possessed, and hear the delightful sound of ‘Captain Slim.’

All my other officers and men took the prescribed obligation, whereby they bound themselves not to disclose by word, deed, writing, or sign, any of the discoveries or occurrences of this voyage, after our departure from off South Georgia, without my consent and approbation first obtained in writing. Slim’s conduct was thought by all to be very unreasonable, and many of the men would willingly have thrown him overboard: but, with some difficulty, I pacified them, and persuaded them that Slim would think better of the matter before we reached Canton, if not, I would, while there, confine him to his state-room, and prevent his doing mischief in the hope that he would become more rational on the homeward passage. This important matter settled, we bore up for Canton.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Author arrives at Canton.—Transactions in China,—Sails fur the United States.—Loss of manuscripts.—Difficulties with Mr. Slim.

We had a pleasant run to Macao Roads, with all the usual varieties of wind and weather. Having a full cargo of furs from the South Seas, a chop to proceed to Whampoa, the place where foreign ships unlade and lade their cargoes, was readily obtained. The Chinese regulations provide for the prompt admission of vessels actually laden with useful merchandise, but exclude all such as have no cargoes, which compels vessels that have nothing but ballast and specie to report their stores as cargo.

I received abundant civilities on my arrival at Canton. A shipmaster, with a cargo of three or four hundred thousand dollars at his disposal, is exposed to the most assiduous attentions. Upon this occasion my thanks were particularly merited by Mr. W. and Mr. C., both of whom very kindly proffered me all the services in their power for a moderate commission but in this, as in other instances, I preferred dealing directly with the natives, from the belief that they were quite as well versed in the business of their country as any foreigners could be.

Chien-loo, a native, obtained handsome offers for my cargo very promptly, and I soon sold the whole of my skins, large and small together, at two dollars and three quarters each. These, with the tortoise shell, produced the handsome sum of three hundred and thirty thousand dollars, clear of charges. I lost no time in selecting a cargo of teas, nankeens, and silks, and as much china ware as was necessary for dunnage.

Of the three hundred and thirty thousand dollars, one-third belonged to tiny officers and people, payable on their arrival in the United States, and two-thirds to myself as owner and master. Being rich, I now spent money freely, and advanced my officers and men as much as they wished to lay out; and after defraying port charges and other expenses, found I had a cargo of only three hundred and ten thousand dollars invoice; but, as the profits on this cargo were all to be my own, I reasonably calculated that on receiving them, I should be able to pay the balance due to the crew, and have a clear three hundred thousand dollars.

To make room for this cargo, I stowed the boxes containing the large bones, and my botanical, geological, mineralogical, zoological, ornithological, icthyological, conchological, and entomological specimens, which were very extensive and valuable, in one of the paddle spaces between the double sides, and, to save a little room which remained, stowed a cable on top of them.

We touched at Angier Point, in the Island of Java, to fill up our water, and regale ourselves with the delicious mangusteens, which are there to be had in great perfection and abundance. That fruit is considered the most delicate and best flavoured of any on the external world. Formerly it had given me great satisfaction; but now, after having enjoyed the exquisite fruits of Symzonia, it seemed quite insipid.

The day after leaving Angier Point, we were in the open ocean, with a stiff gale from S. E., driving us rapidly towards our homes, our wives and children. It is a delightful sensation which the mariner experiences on clearing port for his homeward passage, after a long and toilsome voyage. His home, his family, his little prattlers, and all the delightful associations of a happy fireside, crowd upon his imagination, which is cleared by long absence of all the asperities and disagreeables of real life. He flatters himself that he shall soon fold to his heart the wife of his bosom and the children of his love, improved in beauty, virtue, and affection; fancies a thousand enjoyments which the gains of his voyage will enable him to procure, and forgets the numberless vexations attendant upon business, and upon the duties of man in civilized society, encumbered with useless ceremonies and pernicious customs.

Mr. Slim had been confined to his stateroom whilst we lay at Whampoa; and no more intercourse was allowed between our people and their countrymen, than was necessary to keep up appearances. Our men were particularly cautioned not to drink grog whilst out of the ship, lest it should make them too talkative. They kept this injunction tolerably well for sailors; but one of them had nearly betrayed the whole secret, after drinking a second can of grog on board a Boston ship, where the Yankees seemed determined to get it all out of him. Happily one of his shipmates forced him away, but not until enough had escaped him to produce an hundred absurd stories amongst the shipping in the river.

Being now at sea, Mr. Slim was permitted to go at large as usual. But alas! I had melancholy cause to regret this lenity. Having one day spread my Symzonian manuscripts on the after lockers, to dry away the mould which, from the humid atmosphere of the external world, had accumulated on them, I took a walk on the quarter-deck. On my return to my cabin, I was overwhelmed with consternation and alarm at the disappearance of my books and papers, which were all gone except my journal and volumes of extracts and translations. I immediately summoned the steward, but he could give no account of them. He had not been in my cabin during my absence. The cabin and stateroom were searched in vain. The manuscripts were gone! A man who had been working aloft, declared that he saw them going astern soon after I came on deck and Will Mackerel, who was asleep in his birth, was positive that he saw the shadow of Slim passing from the direction of my cabin towards his state-room. There was great cause to suspect that Slim had been into my cabin, and thrown them all out of the windows to gratify his inveterate malice: but there was no help for it—there was no proof. A monkey, which, out of a foolish partiality to Jack Whiffle, I had permitted him to bring on board, and which visited every part of the ship, and was very mischievous, might have done it. They were irrevocably lost; and though I deplored them more than I should the loss of the mainmast, I was not without consolation. I had read most of them attentively, and being favoured with a very retentive memory, I had treasured up their contents.

After this, I excluded Slim from my cabin, and kept a sharp eye upon him. Various modes were suggested by my officers and men, to obviate the difficulty which his refusal to accede to my measures threatened to produce. That which appeared most feasible, was, to confine him in irons, carry him home as a madman, and trust to the effect of his stories about the internal world, for a corroboration of his insanity. I however did not altogether like to trust to this maneuver, lest some of my people should prove treacherous, and, by joining their testimony to that of Slim, defeat all my projects.

My mind was suddenly diverted from this subject, which had long weighed heavily upon it, by the occurrence of real and immediate danger.

CHAPTER XIX.

Hurricane off the Isle of France.—Its consequences.—Death of Mr. Slim.

We were now to windward off the Isles of France and Bourbon, and nearly up with the land. This tract of ocean is the scene of the most violent hurricanes which are experienced on the external world, and it was our lot to encounter one of the most terrific.

A sudden change of the wind from S. E. to N. W. warned me of the coming storm. The ship was promptly secured for a gale; as much of the water which had been stowed on deck, was secured below, as the consumption of provisions had grade room for; the top gallant yards and masts were struck; booms sent down from the yards, dead-lights secured, and every precaution taken to weather out the gale without damage. I never experienced a more awful tempest. The wind blew for some time with such violence as to make the face of the sea quite level, the pressure of the atmosphere, combined with its rapid motion, being so great as to prevent the swell from rising. The ship, under bare poles, drove broadside to the wind, nearly on her beam ends. When the violence of the first onset abated, the sea rose with a swell of full twenty feet perpendicular elevation. Having a strong vessel, although she was very deeply laden, I did not mind this much; but when the wind chopped round to the S. W., a heavy gale, bringing with it a large sea across the swell which the Northwester had produced, our situation was not devoid of danger. The tops of the waves, blown off by the wind, flew like the spray of a waterfall, and filled the air with water as high as the mast head while the waves, curled and lashed into foam by the whistling blast, gave the whole face of the ocean the appearance of one immense cataract. The vessel, assailed by the crossing sea from two points at once, laboured excessively, and was fairly drowned with water. She frequently plunged the bowsprit quite out of sight beneath the wave, and had it not been of unusually firm construction, it must have gone to pieces.

Night set in without any abatement of the hurricane, and served but to heighten the terror of its effects. The water in this part of the world, being charged with animalculæ or phosphoric matter, assumed in the darkness of the night, the appearance of a sea of liquid are, boiling and whirling with ceaseless agitation. A poet would not need a better type from which to describe the infernal lake provided for the wicked.

Happily we rode out the storm until nearly day-light, when the gale having abated, and there being every indication of more moderate weather, I went to my cabin to put on dry clothes, and left the deck in charge of Mr. Boneto, to whose watch Mr. Slim was now attached. I had not been long below when a violent shock, like that of a ship striking her side against a floating wreck, induced me to hasten back. I found my people in the greatest alarm, and the repeated blows, which made every timber in the ship tremble, were indeed sufficient cause of apprehension. I soon discovered the difficulty. The lashings of the starboard paddle port had given way; the port was open, and the shutter was swinging at liberty.

The gale had left a prodigious sea, which rolled the ship so much that at times she appeared to be going quite over. This caused the heavy port shutter, which was thirty feet long by three feet wide, to fly quite open, and then return against the side with frightful violence. It appeared that the lashings had been chafed in consequence of the boxes being badly stowed; and that the weight of the boxes in which were the large bones and all my scientific collections, together with the weight of the cable stowed upon the top of them, had burst open the port, through which the big bones, all my curiosities and zoological treasures, as well as the cable, had launched into the sea!

To secure the port, which struck the ship with such force as to threaten to start the plink or fastenings, was an object of deep solicitude to every one. Mr. Slim, for once, was very active and forward. He was evidently filled with apprehension of losing his life, or, what was not less dear to him, his share of the cargo; for, instead of looking deliberately about him to see what remedy was practicable, he seized a rope, and sprang into the space between the double sides, probably with the intention of fastening the shutter to the ring bolt, when it should swing to; but, losing his footing on the wet and slippery floor of the inner side, he launched half way out of the port, and as the ship rolled to windward, the slam of the shutter instantly killed him.

There was a sense of grief expressed in every countenance, on this melancholy occasion. Seamen invariably exhibit feeling for the sufferings and misfortunes of their comrades; however vicious and disagreeable they may have been.

The paddle port was, with great difficulty, secured; but without any other essential damage. Fine weather soon returned, and we pursued our course pleasantly towards home.

The remainder of the voyage was marked by no uncommon circumstance. When we approached the coast of America, I called my officers and men together; and endeavoured to impress their minds with a strong sense of the importance of profound secrecy in relation to the subject of our voyage, and particularly enjoined upon them the necessity of refraining from liquor, which always makes sailors thoughtless and loquacious.

CHAPTER XX.

The Author arrives in the United States—Consigns his cargo to Mr. Slippery—Is reduced to poverty by the failure of Mr. Slippery.—His great distress.—Inducement to publish this brief account of his discoveries.—Conclusion.

On my arrival in port, I felt the importance which an ample fortune gives a man in this external world. The arrival of a South Sea ship from Canton, with a valuable China cargo, was no unusual occurrence, and excited no extraordinary interest; but it was speedily rumoured that the Explorer had made a splendid voyage, and that Capt. Seaborn was as rich as a nabob. Abundant civilities were proffered to me, and numberless invitations to dinner were politely given.

I had now to select some merchant to assist in disposing of my cargo, my long absence, and consequent ignorance of dealers, rendering it imprudent for me to transact my own business; besides which, I found that, notwithstanding the whole of my merchandise was as much the product of American industry, as though I and my people had dug it out of the soil, (for instead of obtaining it with specie, we had procured it by our own manual labour,) I was required to pay or secure the enormous sum of one hundred and ninety thousand dollars duties to government. A strange thing surely, that the same tax should be levied on the privilege of bringing the fruits of our own industry into the country, as on cargoes bought with silver dollars, the carrying away of which impoverishes the nation. This did not seem altogether right either for individuals or the country; but there was no use in reasoning about it—it was required by law.

My own bonds for these duties could not be received, because I was not a permanent resident. In this exigency my friend, Mr. Worthy, occurred to my mind as a very fit man to act as my factor. He was an old acquaintance, a well informed merchant, and a man of strict integrity; but, unhappily, at this time, rather low in credit, in consequence of having lost a great part of his capital by endorsing for his friends. It was doubtful whether his bonds would be thought sufficient at the Custom-house, and I was assured that he could not raise cash enough to answer the heavy demands which would be immediately made upon me by my crew, and my own expenses. Moreover, as I was now very rich, and had daughters nearly grown up, it was proper that I should gain a place in genteel society, whereas my friend Worthy, being a plain frugal citizen, did not mix with the haut ton, and could give me no assistance in that particular. All my friends (and they were now very numerous) protested against so foolish a step as that of putting all my affairs into his hands, for the sake of giving an honest man a commission of ten or twelve thousand dollars, when there were so many great merchants who would readily manage my concerns for a moderate percentage, and introduce me to stylish society into the bargain.

I confess that the Symzonian doctrines had left so much impression on my mind, as to cause me some compunction at the thought of neglecting an opportunity to render my friend Worthy’s family comfortable, by giving him my business, instead of bestowing the advantages of it upon a merchant rolling in wealth, who, after being roundly paid, would consider me under obligations for his services. My external habits and sentiments, however, got the better of my sympathies for my old friend, and, by the advice of my new friends, I addressed myself to Mr. Slippery.

Mr. Slippery was undoubtedly a great merchant. He lived in a spacious house in Broadway, rode in a splendid coach, walked like a man of consequence in Wall-street, was a bank director, and had the handsomest carpeted compting room in the city, and I know not how many clerks writing in the next room. I knew him by sight, and did not altogether like to apply to him, because of his haughty manners. I remembered that when, some years before, I called at his compting room to offer myself as a master for one of his ships, he kept me standing half an hour, with my hat in my hand, before he condescended to notice me, and was no ways pleased that I took the liberty to draw a chair to seat myself until he might be at leisure. But he was certainly a great merchant, and to him I went.

I was delighted on entering his room, to observe a visible improvement in his deportment and manners. Instead of the distant, haughty reserve I had expected, he met me halfway, with both hands extended, and gave me a hearty welcome to my country after so long an absence; inquired after my wife and children in the most touching manner; was rejoiced to hear that I had made a great voyage, and should be extremely happy to render me any service in his power. He finished his preliminary address with, “I am a great admirer, Captain Seaborn, of you men of enterprise, who draw riches from the great deep to the benefit of the revenue, the extension of trade and all that sort of thing: you understand me, Sir?”

A hearty invitation to dinner, and a request to be permitted to introduce me to his friends, followed in a breath. I was charmed with him, poor fool that I was, little dreaming that it was the prospect of handling the half million of dollars, which my cargo would produce, that excited his cupidity.

There was no difficulty in settling terms. Mr. Slippery agreed to take charge of my business for half a commission, a simple two and an half per centum. He was aware, he said, that after a long voyage, I must be disposed to devote my time to my family and my friends, and he would take all the trouble of business off my hands. I had only to endorse over my bills of lading, and direct Mr. Boneto to deliver the cargo to his order; and, as for money, I might draw for what sums I pleased, taking care, when I should draw for large amount.; to make my bills at four or six months, as the goods must be sold on credit, and it would be a long time before be should be in funds from the actual proceeds.

A few months flew on delightfully; I had no cares, no perplexities. Mr. Slippery recommended that the goods should be sold at auction, to make sure of the best of endorsed paper, and I consented. He paid my officers and men their shares, as I desired; and although the auction sales did not produce for the goods, clear of charges, auction expenses, and Mr. Slippery’s commission and guarantee, the actual cost in Canton, I flattered myself that I should still be rich enough, and at all events, I could send the Explorer on another voyage, whenever I should want more wealth. I purchased a handsome house for thirty thousand dollars, paid fifteen thousand dollars cash, and gave a mortgage for fifteen thousand; relieved the wants of all my poor relations; assisted many old acquaintances, who had been unfortunate; and still felt myself perfectly secure of all the good things of this world for the remainder of my days.

But, alas! We are short-sighted creatures. I was soon called to lament the loss of my vessel, the partner of my adventures. Mr. Boneto not being satisfied with a life of idleness on shore, and having a wish to visit Europe, I permitted him to take the Explorer, without her machinery, for a voyage to New-Orleans, and thence to Europe. He took his money with him to purchase a cargo. On his way, he knocked that charming vessel to pieces on the Bahama Banks, for want of Blunt’s chart, improved by recent surveys, to warn him of all the dangers.

This misfortune grieved me not only for my own loss, but for Boneto’s, who was plundered by the Providence wreckers of every dollar. Yet it was but the beginning of affliction. A few days after, I was thunderstruck by a rumour that my friend the great merchant, Mr. Slippery, had stopped payment. But there was some comfort—I was assured that it was no failure, nothing but a suspension. For some time I was kept at bay by promises and plausible statements. The whole truth, however, burst upon me at the appearance of Mr. Slippery’s name in the Gazette, as an applicant for the benefit of the insolvent act.

My situation could no longer be concealed even from myself. I was utterly ruined. Many of my drafts on Mr. Slippery remained unpaid, and came back upon me. I was sued, and called a rascal for not paying my debts. No one would believe that the Nabob was actually poor. I pressed Mr. Slippery for assistance, but got no other comfort than a cool recommendation to take the benefit of the act, as the most judicious course I could pursue.

I went to my family in a state bordering upon distraction. The troubles, mortifications, and miseries which followed, I forbear to dwell on. I endeavoured to sell my house, but was told that property had depreciated so much, it was worth no more than the mortgage, for which the holder kindly took it off my hands. At length I was constrained to take Mr. Slippery’s advice, and apply for the benefit of the act abolishing imprisonment for debt.

I was now reduced to great straits, being confined to the Liberties, as they are called—for the enjoyment of which restrained liberty I found great difficulty in obtaining sufficient bail, my friends having entirely disappeared. Fortunately I met with an old school-fellow, who, on hearing of my distress, proffered his bail, notwithstanding that the forfeiture of it would utterly ruin him.

At this period, when I frequently rose in the morning, without knowing how I should provide food for my children through the day, I found it difficult to feel and believe that it was all for the best. With neither the means of subsistence for my family, nor liberty to go in pursuit of them, my misfortunes and privations often weighed down my spirits, and became almost insupportable. When I thought of my situation, I felt no longer like a man. But the remembrance of the pious resignation, the humility, the contentment, the peacefulness and happiness of the Symzonians, recalled me to a conviction of the truth, that with a temper of calm and cordial submission to the will of Providence, a man may be happy under any circumstances, but without it must be wretched.

At this period of pecuniary distress, Will Mackerel accidentally heard of the misfortunes of his old commander, and hastened to see me. He could not comprehend why my being possessed of the Liberties should prevent me from going to sea, to acquire the means of subsistence for my family. The worthy fellow was wholly incompetent to understand the policy of depriving a man of liberty, preventing him from supplying the wants of those dependant on him, and compelling him to cast them as paupers upon the community, because he had, through misfortune, lost all his property.

Will had spent most of the money obtained by his voyage with me; but after hearing my story, and an account of the embarrassments under which I laboured, he threw every dollar that remained to him upon the table, and declared he would never touch a shilling of it whilst his old commander was in distress, but would go to sea to render me further aid. I accepted this generous bounty with the frankness with which it was offered, and recorded Will in my heart as a true-hearted sailor. It was but little that he had left to bestow upon me, but it preserved me from the extremity of want for some time.

I was cheering myself with the prospect of obtaining my real liberty, and of persuading some man of capital to equip a suitable vessel for a second voyage to Seaborn’s land, on terms which would give me a fair share of the advantages of the undertaking, when I was informed that Mr. Slippery had neither paid nor provided for the duties on the Explorer’s cargo; that the bonds which he had given, owing to the long credits on China goods, were not yet due; and that, as I was the importer, I was responsible for the whole amount, and should be required to pay the uttermost farthing, or lie in jail during the pleasure of government, no insolvent act being considered of sufficient force to impair that prerogative of government, by which citizens were deprived of their liberty when misfortune had deprived them of every thing else.

I had now no chance of freedom left, unless an opportunity should offer to fly the country before the bonds became due, for even should government relinquish the duties, the costs of suit, which amount in most cases to a large proportion of the debt, would not be relinquished till doomsday. To avail myself, however, of this only expedient, seemed impracticable. Even the shawls and trinkets which I had bestowed upon my wife in the days of our prosperity, were already sold, and the proceeds expended for bread. I was a fortnight in arrears to my landlady, and had not a friend on earth from whom I could obtain a dollar. How then could I get away with nothing to pay my expenses, or those of my wife and children in my absence?

At this moment of difficulty I heard that Captain Riley had obtained some pecuniary relief, by publishing a book of Travels, containing accounts not much more marvellous than those which I could relate of Symzonia. I therefore determined to make a brief extract from my journal for publication, to raise the wind, reserving most of the details of minute circumstances for my personal narrative, and my scientific researches in statistics, geography, botany, aerology, geology, mineralogy, zoology, ornithology, ichthyology, conchology, entomology, horticulture, agriculture, &c. &c. &c. to be digested hereafter under appropriate titles. The authenticity and genuineness of these researches, since all the autographs and specimens collected to corroborate them were lost by the bursting open of the ship’s paddle port, must rest upon the authority of my extracts, translations, journal, and memory. Should they even be questioned and disputed about by the Scavans of the external world, the generality of readers will probably trouble their heads very little on that score.

And now, kind reader, having transcribed thus much of my journal, in a manner which, I hope, will not be thought derogatory to the importance and dignity of the subject, I submit it to your inspection, with an intimation, that I am ready to undertake a second voyage to Seaborn’s land, or a voyage to Belzubia and the place of exile, by the northern route, or another visit to Symzonia, and an aerial excursion thence to the inner spheres, as soon as I am furnished with the funds necessary to my escape from my present uncomfortable situation on the Liberties, in the garret of a lofty house, where, it being about the middle of dog-days, the sun exerts its utmost power upon the roof, within eighteen inches of my head.

A STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER, by James De Mille [Part 1]

CHAPTER I

THE FINDING OF THE COPPER CYLINDER

It occurred as far back as February 15, 1850. It happened on that day that the yacht Falcon lay becalmed upon the ocean between the Canaries and the Madeira Islands. This yacht Falcon was the property of Lord Featherstone, who, being weary of life in England, had taken a few congenial friends for a winter’s cruise in these southern latitudes. They had visited the Azores, the Canaries, and the Madeira Islands, and were now on their way to the Mediterranean.

The wind had failed, a deep calm had succeeded, and everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, the water was smooth and glassy. The yacht rose and fell at the impulse of the long ocean undulations, and the creaking of the spars sounded out a lazy accompaniment to the motion of the vessel. All around was a watery horizon, except in the one place only, toward the south, where far in the distance the Peak of Teneriffe rose into the air.

The profound calm, the warm atmosphere, the slow pitching of the yacht, and the dull creaking of the spars all combined to lull into a state of indolent repose the people on board. Forward were the crew; some asleep, others smoking, others playing cards. At the stern were Oxenden, the intimate friend of Featherstone, and Dr. Congreve, who had come in the double capacity of friend and medical attendant. These two, like the crew, were in a state of dull and languid repose. Suspended between the two masts, in an Indian hammock, lay Featherstone, with a cigar in his mouth and a novel in his hand, which he was pretending to read. The fourth member of the party, Melick, was seated near the mainmast, folding some papers in a peculiar way. His occupation at length attracted the roving eyes of Featherstone, who poked forth his head from his hammock, and said in a sleepy voice:

“I say, Melick, you’re the most energetic fellah I ever saw. By Jove! you’re the only one aboard that’s busy. What are you doing?”

“Paper boats,” said Melick, in a business-like tone.

“Paper boats! By Jove!” said Featherstone. “What for?”

“I’m going to have a regatta,” said Melick. “Anything to kill time, you know.”

“By Jove!” exclaimed Featherstone again, raising himself higher in his hammock, “that’s not a bad idea. A wegatta! By Jove! glowious! glowious! I say, Oxenden, did you hear that?”

“What do you mean by a regatta?” asked Oxenden, lazily.

“Oh, I mean a race with these paper boats. We can bet on them, you know.”

At this Featherstone sat upright, with his legs dangling out of the hammock.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed again. “Betting! So we can. Do you know, Melick, old chap, I think that’s a wegular piece of inspiration. A wegatta! and we can bet on the best boat.”

“But there isn’t any wind,” said Oxenden.

“Well, you know, that’s the fun of it,” said Melick, who went solemnly on as he spoke, folding his paper boats; “that’s the fun of it. For you see if there was a wind we should be going on ourselves, and the regatta couldn’t come off; but, as it is, the water is just right. You pick out your boat, and lay your bet on her to race to some given point.”

“A given point? But how can we find any?”

“Oh, easily enough; something or anything—a bubble’ll do, or we can pitch out a bit of wood.”

Upon this Featherstone descended from his perch, and came near to examine the proceedings, while the other two, eager to take advantage of the new excitement, soon joined him. By this time Melick had finished his paper boats. There were four of them, and they were made of different colors, namely, red, green, yellow, and white.

“I’ll put these in the water,” said Melick, “and then we can lay our bets on them as we choose. But first let us see if there is anything that can be taken as a point of arrival. If there isn’t anything, I can pitch out a bit of wood, in any direction which may seem best.”

Saying this, he went to the side, followed by the others, and all looked out carefully over the water.

“There’s a black speck out there,” said Oxenden.

“So there is,” said Featherstone. “That’ll do. I wonder what it is?”

“Oh, a bit of timber,” said Melick. “Probably the spar of some ship.”

“It don’t look like a spar,” said the doctor; “it’s only a round spot, like the float of some net.”

“Oh, it’s a spar,” said Melick. “It’s one end of it, the rest is under water.”

The spot thus chosen was a dark, circular object, about a hundred yards away, and certainly did look very much like the extremity of some spar, the rest of which was under water. Whatever it was, however, it served well enough for their present purpose, and no one took any further interest in it, except as the point toward which the paper boats should run in their eventful race.

Melick now let himself down over the side, and placed the paper boats on the water as carefully as possible. After this the four stood watching the little fleet in silence. The water was perfectly still, and there was no perceptible wind, but there were draughts of air caused by the rise and fall of the yacht, and these affected the tiny boats. Gradually they drew apart, the green one drifting astern, the yellow one remaining under the vessel, while the red and the white were carried out in the direction where they were expected to go, with about a foot of space between them.

“Two to one on the red!” cried Featherstone, betting on the one which had gained the lead.

“Done,” said Melick, promptly taking his offer.

Oxenden made the same bet, which was taken by Melick and the doctor.

Other bets were now made as to the direction which they would take, as to the distance by which the red would beat the white, as to the time which would be occupied by the race, and as to fifty other things which need not be mentioned. All took part in this; the excitement rose high and the betting went on merrily. At length it was noticed that the white was overhauling the red. The excitement grew intense; the betting changed its form, but was still kept up, until at last the two paper boats seemed blended together in one dim spot which gradually faded out of sight.

It was now necessary to determine the state of the race, so Featherstone ordered out the boat. The four were soon embarked, and the men rowed out toward the point which had been chosen as the end of the race. On coming near they found the paper boats stuck together, saturated with water, and floating limp on the surface. An animated discussion arose about this. Some of the bets were off, but others remained an open question, and each side insisted upon a different view of the case. In the midst of this, Featherstone’s attention was drawn to the dark spot already mentioned as the goal of the race.

“That’s a queer-looking thing,” said he, suddenly. “Pull up, lads, a little; let’s see what it is. It doesn’t look to me like a spar.”

The others, always on the lookout for some new object of interest, were attracted by these words, and looked closely at the thing in question. The men pulled. The boat drew nearer.

“It’s some sort of floating vessel,” said Oxenden.

“It’s not a spar,” said Melick, who was at the bow.

And as he said this he reached out and grasped at it. He failed to get it, and did no more than touch it. It moved easily and sank, but soon came up again. A second time he grasped at it, and with both hands. This time he caught it, and then lifted it out of the water into the boat. These proceedings had been watched with the deepest interest; and now, as this curious floating thing made its appearance among them, they all crowded around it in eager excitement.

“It looks like a can of preserved meat,” said the doctor.

“It certainly is a can,” said Melick, “for it’s made of metal; but as to preserved meat, I have my doubts.”

The article in question was made of metal and was cylindrical in shape. It was soldered tight and evidently contained something. It was about eighteen inches long and eight wide. The nature of the metal was not easily perceptible, for it was coated with slime, and covered over about half its surface with barnacles and sea-weed. It was not heavy, and would have floated higher out of the water had it not been for these encumbrances.

“It’s some kind of preserved meat,” said the doctor. “Perhaps something good—game, I dare say—yes, Yorkshire game-pie. They pot all sorts of things now.”

“If it’s game,” said Oxenden, “it’ll be rather high by this time. Man alive! look at those weeds and shells. It must have been floating for ages.”

“It’s my belief,” said Featherstone, “that it’s part of the provisions laid in by Noah for his long voyage in the ark. So come, let’s open it, and see what sort of diet the antediluvians had.”

“It may be liquor,” said Oxenden.

Melick shook his head.

“No,” said he; “there’s something inside, but whatever it is, it isn’t liquor. It’s odd, too. The thing is of foreign make, evidently. I never saw anything like it before. It may be Chinese.”

“By Jove!” cried Featherstone, “this is getting exciting. Let’s go back to the yacht and open it.”

The men rowed back to the yacht.

“It’s meat of some sort,” continued the doctor. “I’m certain of that. It has come in good time. We can have it for dinner.”

“You may have my share, then,” said Oxenden. “I hereby give and bequeath to you all my right, title, and interest in and to anything in the shape of meat that may be inside.”

“Meat cans,” said Melick, “are never so large as that.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” said the doctor, “they make up pretty large packages of pemmican for the arctic expeditions.”

“But they never pack up pemmican in copper cylinders,” said Melick, who had been using his knife to scrape off the crust from the vessel.

“Copper!” exclaimed Oxenden. “Is it copper?”

“Look for yourselves,” said Melick, quietly.

They all looked, and could see, where the knife had cut into the vessel, that it was as he said. It was copper.

“It’s foreign work,” said Melick. “In England we make tin cans for everything. It may be something that’s drifted out from Mogadore or some port in Morocco.”

“In that case,” said Oxenden, “it may contain the mangled remains of one of the wives of some Moorish pasha.”

By this time they had reached the yacht and hurried aboard. All were eager to satisfy their curiosity. Search was made for a cold-chisel, but to no purpose. Then Featherstone produced a knife which was used to open sardine boxes, but after a faithful trial this proved useless. At length Melick, who had gone off in search of something more effective, made his appearance armed with an axe. With this he attacked the copper cylinder, and by means of a few dexterous blows succeeded in cutting it open. Then he looked in.

“What do you see?” asked Featherstone.

“Something,” said Melick, “but I can’t quite make it out.”

“If you can’t make it out, then shake it out,” said Oxenden.

Upon this Melick took the cylinder, turned it upside down, shook it smartly, and then lifted it and pounded it against the deck. This served to loosen the contents, which seemed tightly packed, but came gradually down until at length they could be seen and drawn forth. Melick drew them forth, and the contents of the mysterious copper cylinder resolved themselves into two packages.

The sight of these packages only served to intensify their curiosity. If it had been some species of food it would at once have revealed itself, but these packages suggested something more important. What could they be? Were there treasures inside—jewels, or golden ornaments from some Moorish seraglio, or strange coin from far Cathay?

One of the packages was very much larger than the other. It was enclosed in wrappers made of some coarse kind of felt, bound tight with strong cords. The other was much smaller, and, was folded in the same material without being bound. This Melick seized and began to open.

“Wait a minute,” said Featherstone. “Let’s make a bet on it. Five guineas that it’s some sort of jewels!”

“Done,” said Oxenden.

Melick opened the package, and it was seen that Featherstone had lost. There were no jewels, but one or two sheets of something that looked like paper. It was not paper, however, but some vegetable product which was used for the same purpose. The surface was smooth, but the color was dingy, and the lines of the vegetable fibers were plainly discernible. These sheets were covered with writing.

“Halloa!” cried Melick. “Why, this is English!”

At this the others crowded around to look on, and Featherstone in his excitement forgot that he had lost his bet. There were three sheets, all covered with writing—one in English, another in French, and a third in German. It was the same message, written in these three different languages. But at that moment they scarcely noticed this. All that they saw was the message itself, with its mysterious meaning.

It was as follows:

“To the finder of this:

“Sir,—I am an Englishman, and have been carried by a series of incredible events to a land from which escape is as impossible as from the grave. I have written this and committed it to the sea, in the hope that the ocean currents may bear it within the reach of civilized man. Oh, unknown friend! whoever you are. I entreat you to let this message be made known in some way to my father, Henry More, Keswick, Cumberland, England, so that he may learn the fate of his son. The MS. accompanying this contains an account of my adventures, which I should like to have forwarded to him. Do this for the sake of that mercy which you may one day wish to have shown to yourself.

“ADAM MORE.”

“By Jove!” cried Featherstone, as he read the above, “this is really getting to be something tremendous.”

“This other package must be the manuscript,” said Oxenden, “and it’ll tell all about it.”

“Such a manuscript’ll be better than meat,” said the doctor, sententiously.

Melick said nothing, but, opening his knife, he cut the cords and unfolded the wrapper. He saw a great collection of leaves, just like those of the letter, of some vegetable substance, smooth as paper, and covered with writing.

“It looks like Egyptian papyrus,” said the doctor. “That was the common paper of antiquity.”

“Never mind the Egyptian papyrus,” said Featherstone, in feverish curiosity. “Let’s have the contents of the manuscript. You, Melick, read; you’re the most energetic of the lot, and when you’re tired the rest of us will take turns.”

“Read? Why, it’ll take a month to read all this,” said Melick.

“All the better,” said Featherstone; “this calm will probably last a month, and we shall have nothing to interest us.”

Melick made no further objection. He was as excited as the rest, and so he began the reading of the manuscript.

CHAPTER II

ADRIFT IN THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN

My name is Adam More. I am the son of Henry More, apothecary, Keswick, Cumberland. I was mate of the ship Trevelyan (Bennet, master), which was chartered by the British Government to convey convicts to Van Dieman’s Land. This was in 1843. We made our voyage without any casualty, landed our convicts in Hobart Town, and then set forth on our return home. It was the 17th of December when we left. From the first adverse winds prevailed, and in order to make any progress we were obliged to keep well to the south. At length, on the 6th of January, we sighted Desolation Island. We found it, indeed, a desolate spot. In its vicinity we saw a multitude of smaller islands, perhaps a thousand in number, which made navigation difficult, and forced us to hurry away as fast as possible. But the aspect of this dreary spot was of itself enough to repel us. There were no trees, and the multitude of islands seemed like moss-covered rocks; while the temperature, though in the middle of the Antarctic summer, was from 38 to 58 degrees Fahr.

In order to get rid of these dangerous islands we stood south and west, and at length found ourselves in south latitude 65 degrees, longitude 60 degrees east. We were fortunate enough not to find any ice, although we were within fifteen hundred miles of the South Pole, and far within that impenetrable icy barrier which, in 1773, had arrested the progress of Captain Cook. Here the wind failed us, and we lay becalmed and drifting. The sea was open all around us, except to the southeast, where there was a low line along the horizon terminating in a lofty promontory; but though it looked like land we took it for ice. All around us whales and grampuses were gamboling and spouting in vast numbers. The weather was remarkably fine and clear.

* * * *

For two or three days the calm continued, and we drifted along helplessly, until at length we found ourselves within a few miles of the promontory above mentioned. It looked like land, and seemed to be a rocky island rising from the depths of the sea. It was, however, all covered with ice and snow, and from this there extended eastward as far as the eye could reach an interminable line of ice, but toward the southwest the sea seemed open to navigation. The promontory was very singular in shape, rising up to a peak which was at least a thousand feet in height, and forming a striking object, easily discovered and readily identified by any future explorer. We named it, after our ship, Trevelyan Peak, and then felt anxious to lose sight of it forever. But the calm continued, and at length we drifted in close enough to see immense flocks of seals dotting the ice at the foot of the peak.

Upon this I proposed to Agnew, the second mate, that we should go ashore, shoot some seals, and bring them back. This was partly for the excitement of the hunt, and partly for the honor of landing in a place never before trodden by the foot of man. Captain Bennet made some objections, but he was old and cautious, and we were young and venturesome, so we laughed away his scruples and set forth. We did not take any of the crew, owing to the captain’s objections. He said that if we chose to throw away our own lives he could not help it, but that he would positively refuse to allow a single man to go with us. We thought this refusal an excess of caution amounting to positive cowardice, but were unable to change his mind. The distance was not great, the adventure was attractive, and so the captain’s gig was lowered, and in this Agnew and I rowed ashore. We took with us a double-barreled rifle apiece, and also a pistol. Agnew took a glass.

We rowed for about three miles, and reached the edge of the ice, which extended far out from the promontory. Here we landed, and secured the boat by means of a small grappling-iron, which we thrust into the ice. We then walked toward the promontory for about a mile, and here we found a multitude of seals. These animals were so fearless that they made not the slightest movement as we came up, but stared at us in an indifferent way. We killed two or three, and then debated whether to go to the promontory or not. Agnew was eager to go, so as to touch the actual rock; but I was satisfied with what we had done, and was now desirous of returning. In the midst of this I felt a flake of snow on my cheek. I started and looked up. To my great surprise I saw that the sky had changed since I had last noticed it. When we left the ship it was clear and blue, but now it was overspread with dark, leaden-colored clouds, and the snow-flakes that had fallen were ominous of evil. A snow-storm here, in the vicinity of the ice, was too serious a thing to be disregarded. But one course now remained, and that was an immediate return to the ship.

Each of us seized a seal and dragged it after us to the boat. We reached it and flung them in. Just at that moment a gun sounded over the water. It was from the ship—the signal of alarm—the summons from the captain for our return. We saw now that she had been drifting since we left her, and had moved southwest several miles. The row back promised to be far harder than the pull ashore, and, what was worse, the wind was coming up, the sea was rising, and the snow was thickening. Neither of us said a word. We saw that our situation was very serious, and that we had been very foolhardy; but the words were useless now. The only thing to be done was to pull for the ship with all our strength, and that was what we did.

So we pushed off, and rowed as we had never rowed before. Our progress was difficult. The sea grew steadily rougher; the wind increased; the snow thickened; and, worst of all, the day was drawing to a close. We had miscalculated both as to distance and time. Even if it had continued calm we should have had to row back in the dark; but now the sun was setting, and with the darkness we had to encounter the gathering storm and the blinding snow. We rowed in silence. At every stroke our situation grew more serious. The wind was from the south, and therefore favored us to some extent, and also made less of a sea than would have been produced by a wind from any other quarter; but then this south wind brought dangers of its own, which we were soon to feel—new dangers and worse ones. For this south wind drove the ship farther from us, and at the same time broke up the vast fields of ice and impelled the fractured masses northward. But this was a danger which we did not know just then. At that time we were rowing for the ship, and amid the darkness and the blinding snow and the dashing waves we heard from time to time the report of signal-guns fired from the ship to guide us back. These were our only guide, for the darkness and the snow had drawn the ship from our sight, and we had to be guided by our hearing only.

We were rowing for our lives, and we knew it; but every moment our situation grew more desperate. Each new report of the gun seemed to sound farther away. We seemed always to be rowing in the wrong direction. At each report we had to shift the boat’s course somewhat, and pull toward the last point from which the gun seemed to sound. With all this the wind was increasing rapidly to a gale, the sea was rising and breaking over the boat, the snow was blinding us with its ever-thickening sleet. The darkness deepened and at length had grown so intense that nothing whatever could be seen—neither sea nor sky, not even the boat itself—yet we dared not stop; we had to row. Our lives depended on our efforts. We had to row, guided by the sound of the ship’s gun, which the ever-varying wind incessantly changed, till our minds grew all confused, and we rowed blindly and mechanically.

So we labored for hours at the oars, and the storm continually increased, and the sea continually rose, while the snow fell thicker and the darkness grew intenser. The reports of the gun now grew fainter; what was worse, they were heard at longer intervals, and this showed us that Captain Bennet was losing heart; that he was giving us up; that he despaired of finding us, and was now firing only an occasional gun out of a mournful sense of duty. This thought reduced us to despair. It seemed as if all our efforts had only served to take us farther away from the ship, and deprived us of all motive for rowing any harder than was barely necessary to keep the boat steady. After a time Agnew dropped his oar and began to bail out the boat—a work which was needed; for, in spite of our care, she had shipped many seas, and was one third full of water. He worked away at this while I managed the boat, and then we took turns at bailing. In this way we passed the dreary night.

Morning came at last. The wind was not so violent, but the snow was so thick that we could only see for a little distance around us. The ship was nowhere visible, nor were there any signs of her. The last gun had been fired during the night. All that we could see was the outline of a gaunt iceberg—an ominous spectacle. Not knowing what else to do we rowed on as before, keeping in what seemed our best course, though this was mere conjecture, and we knew all the time that we might be going wrong. There was no compass in the boat, nor could we tell the sun’s position through the thick snow. We rowed with the wind, thinking that it was blowing toward the north, and would carry us in that direction. We still hoped to come within sound of the ship’s gun, and kept straining our ears incessantly to hear the wished-for report. But no such sound ever came again, and we heard nothing except the plash of the waves and the crash of breaking ice. Thus all that day we rowed along, resting at intervals when exhausted, and then resuming our labors, until at length night came; and again to the snow and ice and waves was added the horror of great darkness. We passed that night in deep misery. We had eaten nothing since we left the ship, but though exhausted by long fasting and severe labor, the despair of our hearts took away all desire for food. We were worn out with hard work, yet the cold was too great to allow us to take rest, and we were compelled to row so as to keep ourselves from perishing. But fatigue and drowsiness overcame us, and we often sank into sleep even while rowing; and then after a brief slumber we would awake with benumbed limbs to wrestle again with the oars. In this way we passed that night.

Another morning came, and we found to our great joy that the snow had ceased. We looked eagerly around to see if there were any signs of the ship. Nothing could be seen of her. Far away on one side rose a peak, which looked like the place where we had landed. Judging from the wind, which we still supposed to be southerly, the peak lay toward the northeast; in which case we had been carried steadily, in spite of all our efforts, toward the south. About a mile on one side of us the ice began, and extended far away; while on the other side, at the distance of some ten miles, there was another line of ice. We seemed to have been carried in a southwesterly direction along a broad strait that ran into the vast ice-fields. This discovery showed how utterly useless our labors had been; for in spite of all, even with the wind in our favor, we had been drawn steadily in an opposite direction. It was evident that there was some current here, stronger than all our strength, which had brought us to this place.

We now determined to land on the ice, and try to cook a portion of our seals. On approaching it we noticed that there was a current which tended to draw us past the ice in what I supposed to be a southwesterly direction. This confirmed my worst fears. But now the labor of landing and building a fire on the ice served to interest us for a time and divert our thoughts. We brushed away the snow, and then broke up a box which was in the boat, and also the stern seats. This we used very sparingly, reserving the rest for another occasion. Then we cut portions from one of the seals, and laid them in thin strips on the flames. The cooking was but slight, for the meat was merely singed; but we were ravenous, and the contact of the fire was enough to give it an attractive flavor. With this food we were greatly refreshed; and as for drink, we had all around us an endless extent of ice and snow. Then, taking our precious fragments of cooked meat, we returned to the boat and put off. We could scarcely tell what to do next, and while debating on this point we fell asleep. We slept far into the night, then awoke benumbed with cold; then took to the oars till we were weary; then fell asleep again, to be again awakened by the cold and again to pull at the oars. So the night passed, and another day came.

The snow still held off, but the sky was overcast with dark, leaden-colored clouds, and looked threatening. Ice was all around us as before; and the open water had diminished now from ten miles to five miles of width. The ice on one side was low, but on the opposite side it arose to the height of one hundred feet. We saw here, as we watched the shore, that the current which had already borne us thus far was now stronger than ever, and was carrying us along at a rate which made all efforts of ours against it utterly useless. And now a debate arose between us as to the direction of this current. Agnew suddenly declared his belief that it was running north, while I was firm in the conviction that it ran south.

“There’s no use rowing any more,” said Agnew. “If it runs south we can’t resist it. It’s too strong. But I always like to look on the bright side, and so I believe it runs north. In that case there is no use rowing, for it will carry us along fast enough.”

Then I proposed that we should go ashore on the ice. To this Agnew objected, but afterward consented, at my earnest request. So we tried to get ashore, but this time found it impossible; for the ice consisted of a vast sheet of floating lumps, which looked like the ruin of bergs that had been broken up in some storm. After this I had nothing to say, nor was there anything left for us but to drift wherever the current might carry us.

So we drifted for some days, Agnew all the time maintaining that we were going north, while I was sure that we were going south. The sky remained as cloudy as ever, the wind varied incessantly, and there was nothing by which we could conjecture the points of the compass. We lived on our seal, and for drink we chewed ice and snow. One thing was certain—the climate was no colder. Agnew laid great stress on this.

“You see,” said he, “we must be going north. If we were going south we should be frozen stiff by this time.”

“Yes; but if we were going north,” said I, “we ought to find it growing warmer.”

“No,” said he, “not with all this ice around us. It’s the ice that keeps the temperature in this cold state.”

Argument could do no good, and so we each remained true to our belief—his leading him to hope, and mine dragging me down to despair. At length we finished the last fragment of the seal that we had cooked, and, finding ourselves near some firm ice, we went ashore and cooked all that was left, using the remainder of our wood for fuel, and all that we dared to remove from the boat. Re-embarking with this, we drifted on as before.

Several more days passed. At last one night I was roused by Agnew. He pointed far away to the distant horizon, where I saw a deep red glow as of fire. We were both filled with wonder at the sight, and were utterly unable to account for it. We knew that it could not be caused by the sun or the moon, for it was midnight, and the cause lay on the earth and not in the skies. It was a deep, lurid glow, extending along the horizon, and seemed to be caused by some vast conflagration.

CHAPTER III

A WORLD OF FIRE AND DESOLATION

At the sight of that deep-red glow various feelings arose within us: in me there was new dejection; in Agnew there was stronger hope. I could not think but that it was our ship that was on fire, and was burning before our eyes. Agnew thought that it was some burning forest, and that it showed our approach to some habitable and inhabited land. For hour after hour we watched, and all the time the current drew us nearer, and the glow grew brighter and more intense. At last we were too weak to watch any longer, and we fell asleep.

On waking our first thoughts were about the fire, and we looked eagerly around. It was day, but the sky was as gloomy as ever, and the fire was there before our eyes, bright and terrible. We could now see it plainly, and discern the cause also. The fire came from two points, at some distance apart—two peaks rising above the horizon, from which there burst forth flames and smoke with incessant explosions. All was now manifest. It was no burning ship, no blazing forest, no land inhabited by man: those blazing peaks were two volcanoes in a state of active eruption, and at that sight I knew the worst.

“I know where we are now,” I said, despairingly.

“Where?” asked Agnew.

“That,” said I, “is the Antarctic continent.”

“The Antarctic fiddlestick,” said he, contemptuously. “It is far more likely to be some volcanic island in the South Sea. There’s a tremendous volcano in the Sandwich Islands, and these are something like it.”

“I believe,” said I, “that these are the very volcanoes that Sir James Ross discovered last year.”

“Do you happen to know where he found them?” Agnew asked.

“I do not,” I answered.

“Well, I do,” said he, “and they’re thousands of miles away from this. They are south latitude 77 degrees, east longitude 167 degrees; while we, as I guess, are about south latitude 40 degrees, east longitude 60 degrees.”

“At any rate,” said I, “we’re drifting straight toward them.”

“So I see,” said Agnew, dryly. “At any rate, the current will take us somewhere. We shall find ourselves carried past these volcanic islands, or through them, and then west to the Cape of Good Hope. Besides, even here we may find land with animals and vegetation; who knows?”

“What! amid all this ice?” I cried. “Are you mad?”

“Mad?” said he; “I should certainly go mad if I hadn’t hope.”

“Hope!” I repeated; “I have long since given up hope.”

“Oh, well,” said he, “enjoy your despair, and don’t try to deprive me of my consolation. My hope sustains me, and helps me to cheer you up. It would never do, old fellow, for both of us to knock under.”

I said nothing more, nor did Agnew. We drifted on, and all our thoughts were taken up with the two volcanoes, toward which we were every moment drawing nearer. As we approached they grew larger and larger, towering up to a tremendous height. I had seen Vesuvius and Stromboli and Aetna and Cotopaxi; but these appeared far larger than any of them, not excepting the last. They rose, like the Peak of Teneriffe, abruptly from the sea, with no intervening hills to dwarf or diminish their proportions. They were ten or twelve miles apart, and the channel of water in which we were drifting flowed between them.

Here the ice and snow ended. We thus came at last to land; but it was a land that seemed more terrible than even the bleak expanse of ice and snow that lay behind, for nothing could be seen except a vast and drear accumulation of lava-blocks of every imaginable shape, without a trace of vegetation—uninhabited, uninhabitable, and unpassable to man. But just where the ice ended and the rocks began there was a long, low reef, which projected for more than a quarter of a mile into the water, affording the only possible landing-place within sight. Here we decided to land, so as to rest and consider what was best to be done.

Here we landed, and walked up to where rugged lava-blocks prevented any further progress. But at this spot our attention was suddenly arrested by a sight of horror. It was a human figure lying prostrate, face downward.

At this sight there came over us a terrible sensation. Even Agnew’s buoyant soul shrank back, and we stared at each other with quivering lips. It was some time before we could recover ourselves; then we went to the figure, and stooped down to examine it.

The clothes were those of a European and a sailor; the frame was emaciated and dried up, till it looked like a skeleton; the face was blackened and all withered, and the bony hands were clinched tight. It was evidently some sailor who had suffered shipwreck in these frightful solitudes, and had drifted here to starve to death in this appalling wilderness. It was a sight which seemed ominous of our own fate, and Agnew’s boasted hope, which had so long upheld him, now sank down into a despair as deep as my own. What room was there now for hope, or how could we expect any other fate than this?

At length I began to search the pockets of the deceased.

“What are you doing?” asked Agnew, in a hoarse voice.

“I’m trying to find out who he is,” I said. “Perhaps there may be papers.”

As I said this I felt something in the breast-pocket of his jacket, and drew it forth. It was a leather pocket-book, moldy and rotten like the clothing. On opening it, it fell to pieces. There was nothing in it but a piece of paper, also moldy and rotten. This I unfolded with great care, and saw writing there, which, though faded, was still legible. It was a letter, and there were still signs of long and frequent perusals, and marks, too, which looked as though made by tears—tears, perhaps of the writer, perhaps of the reader: who can tell? I have preserved this letter ever since, and I now fasten it here upon this sheet of my manuscript.

THE LETTER.

“Bristol April 20. 1820.

“my darling tom

“i writ you these few lines in hast i don like youar gon a walen an in the south sea dont go darlin tom or mebbe ill never se you agin for ave bad drems of you darlin tom an im afraid so don go my darlin tom but come back an take anoth ship for America baby i as wel as ever but mises is pa an as got a new tooth an i think yo otnt go a walen o darlin tom sea as the wages was i in New York an better go thar an id like to go ther for good for they gives good wages in America. O come back my Darlin tom and take me to America an the baby an weel all live an love an di together

“Your loving wife Polley Reed.”

I began to read this, but there came a lump in my throat, and I had to stop. Agnew leaned on my shoulder, and we both read it in silence. He rubbed the back of his hand over his eyes and drew a long breath. Then he walked away for a little distance, and I put the letter carefully away in my own pocket-book. After a little while Agnew came back.

“More,” said he, “do you remember any of the burial-service?”

I understood his meaning at once.

“Yes,” I said, “some of it—a good deal of it, I think.”

“That’s good,” said he. “Let’s put the poor fellow under ground.”

“It would be hard to do that,” I said; “we’ll have to bury him in the snow.”

At this Agnew went off for a little distance and clambered over the rocks. He was not gone long. When he returned he said, “I’ve found some crumbled pumice-stone; we can scoop a grave for him there.”

We then raised the body and carried it to the place which Agnew had found. So emaciated was the poor dead sailor that his remains were no heavier than a small boy. On reaching the spot, we found the crumbled pumice-stone. We placed the body in a crevice among the lava rocks, and then I said what I could remember of the burial-service. After this we carried in our hands the crumbled pumice-stone until we had covered the body, and thus gave the poor fellow a Christian burial.

We then returned to the shore.

“More, old fellow,” said Agnew, “I feel the better for this; the service has done me good.”

“And me too,” said I. “It has reminded me of what I had forgotten. This world is only a part of life. We may lose it and yet live on. There is another world; and if we can only keep that in our minds we sha’n’t be so ready to sink into despair—that is, I sha’n’t. Despair is my weakness; you are more hopeful.”

“Yes,” said Agnew, solemnly; “but my hope thus far has referred only to the safety of my skin. After this I shall try to think of my soul, and cultivate, not the hope of escape, but the hope full of immortality. Yes, More, after all we shall live, if not in England, then, let us hope, in heaven.”

There was a long silence after this—that kind of silence which one may preserve who is at the point of death.

“I wonder how he got here?” said Agnew, at last. “The letter mentions a whaler. No doubt the ship has been driven too far south; it has foundered; he has escaped in a boat, either alone or with others; he has been carried along this channel, and has landed here, afraid to go any farther.”

“But his boat, what has become of that?”

“His boat! That must have gone long ago. The letter was written in 1820. At any rate, let’s look around.”

We did so. After some search we found fragments of a rotted rope attached to a piece of rock.

“That,” said Agnew, “must have been fastened to the boat; and as for the boat herself, she has long ago been swept away from this.”

“What shall we do now?” I said, after a long silence.

“There’s only one thing,” said Agnew. “We must go on.”

“Go on?” I asked, in wonder.

“Certainly,” said he, confidently. “Will you stay here? No. Will you go back? You can’t. We must, therefore, go on. That is our only hope.”

“Hope!” I cried. “Do you still talk of hope?”

“Hope?” said Agnew; “of course. Why not? There are no limits to hope, are there? One can hope anything anywhere. It is better to die while struggling like a man, full of hope and energy than to perish in inaction and despair. It is better to die in the storm and furious waters than to waste away in this awful place. So come along. Let’s drift as before. Let’s see where this channel will take us. It will certainly take us somewhere. Such a stream as this must have some outlet.”

“This stream,” said I, “will take us to death, and death only. The current grows swifter every hour. I’ve heard some old yarn of a vast opening at each of the poles, or one of them, into which the waters of the ocean pour. They fall into one, and some say they go through and come out at the other.”

Agnew laughed.

“That,” said he, “is a madman’s dream. In the first place, I don’t believe that we are approaching the south, but the north. The warmth of the climate here shows that. Yes, we are drawing north. We shall soon emerge into warm waters and bright skies. So come along, and let us lose no more time.”

I made no further objection. There was nothing else to be done, and at the very worst we could not be in greater danger while drifting on than in remaining behind. Soon, therefore, we were again in the boat, and the current swept us on as before.

The channel now was about four miles wide. On either side arose the lofty volcanoes vomiting forth flames and smoke with furious explosions; vast stones were hurled up into the air from the craters; streams of molten lava rolled down, and at intervals there fell great showers of ashes. The shores on either side were precipitous and rugged beyond all description, looking like fiery lava streams which had been arrested by the flood, and cooled into gloomy, overhanging cliffs. The lava rock was of a deep, dull slate-color, which at a distance looked black; and the blackness which thus succeeded to the whiteness of the snow behind us seemed like the funeral pall of nature. Through scenes like these we drifted on, and the volcanoes on either side of the channel towered on high with their fiery floods of lava, their incessant explosions, their fierce outbursts of flames, and overhead there rolled a dense black canopy of smoke—altogether forming a terrific approach to that unknown and awful pathway upon which we were going. So we passed this dread portal, and then there lay before us—what? Was it a land of life or a land of death? Who could say?

It was evening when we passed through. Night came on, and the darkness was illuminated by the fiery glow of the volcanic flames. Worn out with fatigue, we fell asleep. So the night passed, and the current bore us on until, at length, the morning came. We awoke, and now, for the first time in many days, we saw the face of the sun. The clouds had at last broken, the sky was clear, and behind us the sun was shining. That sight told us all. It showed us where we were going.

I pointed to the sun.

“Look there,” said I. “There is the sun in the northern sky—behind us. We have been drifting steadily toward the south.”

At this Agnew was silent, and sat looking back for a long time. There we could still see the glow of the volcanic fires, though they were now many miles away; while the sun, but lately risen, was lying on a course closer to the horizon than we had ever seen it before.

“We are going south,” said I—“to the South Pole. This swift current can have but one ending—there may be an opening at the South Pole, or a whirlpool like the Maelstrom.”

Agnew looked around with a smile.

“All these notions,” said he, “are dreams, or theories, or guesses. There is no evidence to prove them. Why trouble yourself about a guess? You and I can guess, and with better reason; for we have now, it seems, come farther south than any human being who has ever lived. Do not imagine that the surface of the earth is different at the poles from what it is anywhere else. If we get to the South Pole we shall see there what we have always seen—the open view of land or water, and the boundary of the horizon. As for this current, it seems to me like the Gulf Stream, and it evidently does an important work in the movement of the ocean waters. It pours on through vast fields of ice on its way to other oceans, where it will probably become united with new currents. Theories about openings at the poles, or whirlpools, must be given up. Since the Maelstrom has been found to be a fiction, no one need believe in any other whirlpool. For my own part, I now believe that this current will bear us on, due south, over the pole, and then still onward, until at last we shall find ourselves in the South Pacific Ocean. So cheer up—don’t be downhearted; there’s still hope. We have left the ice and snow behind, and already the air is warmer. Cheer up; we may find our luck turn at any moment.”

To this I had no reply to make. Agnew’s confidence seemed to me to be assumed, and certainly did not alleviate my own deep gloom, nor was the scene around calculated to rouse me in the slightest degree out of my despair. The channel had now lessened to a width of not more than two miles; the shores on either side were precipitous cliffs, broken by occasional declivities, but all of solid rock, so dark as to be almost black, and evidently of volcanic origin. At times there arose rugged eminences, scarred and riven, indescribably dismal and appalling. There was not only an utter absence of life here in these abhorrent regions, but an actual impossibility of life which was enough to make the stoutest heart quail. The rocks looked like iron. It seemed a land of iron penetrated by this ocean stream which had made for itself a channel, and now bore us onward to a destination which was beyond all conjecture.

Through such scenes we drifted all that day. Night came, and in the skies overhead there arose a brilliant display of the aurora australis, while toward the north the volcanic fires glowed with intense luster. That night we slept. On awakening we noticed a change in the scene. The shores, though still black and forbidding, were no longer precipitous, but sloped down gradually to the water; the climate was sensibly milder, and far away before us there arose a line of giant mountains, whose summits were covered with ice and snow that gleamed white and purple in the rays of the sun.

Suddenly Agnew gave a cry, and pointed to the opposite shore.

“Look!” he cried—“do you see? They are men!”

I looked, and there I saw plainly some moving figures that were, beyond a doubt, human beings.

CHAPTER IV

THE SIGHT OF HUMAN BEINGS

The sight of human beings, thus unexpectedly found, filled us with strange feelings—feelings which I cannot explain. The country was still iron-bound and dark and forbidding, and the stream ran on in a strong current, deep, black as ink, and resistless as fate; the sky behind was lighted up by the volcanic glare which still shone from afar; and in front the view was bounded by the icy heights of a mountain chain. Here was, indeed, a strange country for a human habitation; and strange, indeed, were the human beings whom we saw.

“Shall we land?” said Agnew.

“Oh no,” said I. “Don’t be hasty. The elements are sometimes kinder than men, and I feel safer here, even in this river of death, than ashore with such creatures as those.”

Agnew made no reply. We watched the figures on the shore. We saw them coming down, staring and gesticulating. We drew on nearer to them till we were able to see them better. A nearer view did not improve them. They were human beings, certainly, but of such an appalling aspect that they could only be likened to animated mummies. They were small, thin, shriveled, black, with long matted hair and hideous faces. They all had long spears, and wore about the waist short skirts that seemed to be made of the skin of some sea-fowl.

We could not imagine how these creatures lived, or where. There were no signs of vegetation of any kind—not a tree or a shrub. There were no animals; but there were great flocks of birds, some of which seemed different from anything that we had ever seen before. The long spears which the natives carried might possibly be used for catching these, or for fishing purposes. This thought made them seem less formidable, since they would thus be instruments of food rather than weapons of war. Meanwhile we drifted on as before, and the natives watched us, running along the shore abreast of us, so as to keep up with the boat. There seemed over a hundred of them. We could see no signs of any habitations—no huts, however humble; but we concluded that their abodes were farther inland. As for the natives themselves, the longer we looked at them the more abhorrent they grew. Even the wretched aborigines of Van Dieman’s Land, who have been classed lowest in the scale of humanity, were pleasing and congenial when compared with these, and the land looked worse than Tierra del Fuego. It looked like a land of iron, and its inhabitants like fiends.

Agnew again proposed to land, but I refused.

“No,” I said; “I’d rather starve for a week, and live on hope. Let us drift on. If we go on we may have hope if we choose, but if we land here we shall lose even that. Can we hope for anything from such things as these? Even if they prove friendly, can we live among them? To stay here is worse than death; our only hope is to go on.”

Agnew made no reply, and we drifted on for two hours, still followed by the natives. They made no hostile demonstrations. They merely watched us, apparently from motives of curiosity. All this time we were drawing steadily nearer to the line of lofty mountains, which with their icy crests rose before us like an inaccessible and impassable barrier, apparently closing up all farther progress; nor was there any indication of any pass or any opening, however narrow, through which the great stream might run. Nothing was there but one unbroken wall of iron cliffs and icy summits. At last we saw that the sloping shores grew steeper, until, about a mile or two before us, they changed to towering cliffs that rose up on each side for about a thousand feet above the water; here the stream ran, and became lost to view as completely as though swallowed up by the earth.

“We can go no farther,” said Agnew. “See—this stream seems to make a plunge there into the mountains. There must be some deep canyon there with cataracts. To go on is certain death. We must stop here, if only to deliberate. Say, shall we risk it among these natives? After all, there is not, perhaps, any danger among them. They are little creatures and seem harmless. They are certainly not very good-looking; but then, you know, appearances often deceive, and the devil’s not so black as he’s painted. What do you say?”

“I suppose we can do nothing else,” said I.

In fact, I could see that we had reached a crisis in our fate. To go on seemed certain death. To stop was our only alternative; and as we were armed we should not be altogether at the mercy of these creatures. Having made this decision we acted upon it at once, for in such a current there was no time for delay; and so, seizing the oars, we soon brought the boat ashore.

As we approached, the crowd of natives stood awaiting us, and looked more repulsive than ever. We could see the emaciation of their bony frames; their toes and fingers were like birds’ claws; their eyes were small and dull and weak, and sunken in cavernous hollows, from which they looked at us like corpses—a horrible sight. They stood quietly, however, and without any hostile demonstration, holding their spears carelessly resting upon the ground.

“I don’t like the looks of them,” said I. “I think I had better fire a gun.”

“Why?” cried Agnew. “For Heaven’s sake, man, don’t hurt any of them!”

“Oh no,” said I; “I only mean to inspire a little wholesome respect.”

Saying this I fired in the air. The report rang out with long echoes, and as the smoke swept away it showed us all the natives on the ground. They had seated themselves with their hands crossed on their laps, and there they sat looking at us as before, but with no manifestation of fear or even surprise. I had expected to see them run, but there was nothing of the kind. This puzzled us. Still, there was no time now for any further hesitation. The current was sweeping us toward the chasm between the cliffs, and we had to land without delay. This we did, and as I had another barrel still loaded and a pistol, I felt that with these arms and those of Agnew we should be able to defend ourselves. It was in this state of mind that we landed, and secured the boat by means of the grappling-iron.

The natives now all crowded around us, making many strange gestures, which we did not understand. Some of them bowed low, others prostrated themselves; on the whole these seemed like marks of respect, and it occurred to me that they regarded us as superior beings of some sort. It was evident that there was nothing like hostility in their minds. At the same time, the closer survey which I now made of them filled me with renewed horror; their meager frames, small, watery, lack-luster eyes, hollow, cavernous sockets, sunken cheeks, protruding teeth, claw-like fingers, and withered skins, all made them look more than ever like animated mummies, and I shrank from them involuntarily, as one shrinks from contact with a corpse.

Agnew, however, was very different, and it was evident that he felt no repugnance whatever. He bowed and smiled at them, and shook hands with half a dozen of them in succession. The hand-shaking was a new thing to them, but they accepted it in a proper spirit, and renewed their bows and prostrations. After this they all offered us their lances. This certainly seemed like an act of peace and good-will. I shook my head and declined to touch them; but Agnew accepted one of them, and offered his rifle in return. The one to whom he offered it refused to take it. He seemed immensely gratified because Agnew had taken his lance, and the others seemed disappointed at his refusal to take theirs. But I felt my heart quake as I saw him offer his rifle, and still more when he offered it to one or two others, and only regained my composure as I perceived that his offer was refused by all.

They now made motions to us to follow, and we all set forth together.

“My dear More,” said Agnew, cheerily, “they’re not a bad lot. They mean well. They can’t help their looks. You’re too suspicious and reserved. Let’s make friends with them, and get them to help us. Do as I do.”

I tried to, but found it impossible, for my repugnance was immovable. It was like the horror which one feels toward rats, cockroaches, earwigs, or serpents. It was something that defied reason. These creatures seemed like human vermin.

We marched inland for about half a mile, crossed a ridge, and came to a valley, or rather a kind of hollow, at the other side of which we found a cave with a smoldering fire in front. The fire was made of coal, which must exist here somewhere. It was highly bituminous, and burned with a great blaze.

The day was now drawing to a close; far away I could see the lurid glow of the volcanoes, which grew brighter as the day declined: above, the skies twinkled with innumerable stars, and the air was filled with the moan of rushing waters.

We entered the cave. As we did so the natives heaped coal upon the fire, and the flames arose, lighting up the interior. We found here a number of women and children, who looked at us without either fear or curiosity. The children looked like little dwarfs; the women were hags, hideous beyond description. One old woman in particular, who seemed to be in authority, was actually terrible in her awful and repulsive ugliness. A nightmare dream never furnished forth a more frightful object. This nightmare hag prostrated herself before each of us with such an air of self-immolation that she looked as though she wished us to kill her at once. The rough cave, the red light of the fire, all made the scene more awful; and a wild thought came to me that we had actually reached, while yet living, the infernal world, and that this was the abode of devils. Yet their actions, it must be confessed, were far from devilish. Everyone seemed eager to serve us. Some spread out couches formed of the skins of birds for us to sit on; others attended to the fire; others offered us gifts of large and beautiful feathers, together with numerous trinkets of rare and curious workmanship. This kind attention on their part was a great puzzle to me, and I could not help suspecting that beneath all this there must be some sinister design. Resolving to be prepared for the worst, I quietly reloaded the empty barrel of my rifle and watched with the utmost vigilance. As for Agnew, he took it all in the most unsuspicious manner. He made signs to them, shook hands with them, accepted their gifts, and even tried to do the agreeable to the formidable hags and the child-fiends around him. He soon attracted the chief attention, and while all looked admiringly upon him, I was left to languish in comparative neglect.

At length a savory odor came through the cave, and a repast was spread before us. It consisted of some large fowl that looked like a goose, but was twice as large as the largest turkey that I had ever seen. The taste was like that of a wild-goose, but rather fishy. Still to us it seemed delicious, for our prolonged diet of raw seal had made us ready to welcome any other food whatever; and this fowl, whatever it was, would not have been unwelcome to any hungry man. It was evident that these people lived on the flesh of birds of various sorts. All around us we saw the skins of birds dried with the feathers on, and used for clothing, for mats, and for ornaments.

The repast being finished, we both felt greatly strengthened and refreshed. Agnew continued to cultivate his new acquaintances, and seeing me holding back, he said,

“More, old fellow, these good people give me to understand that there is another place better than this, and want me to go with them. Will you go?”

At this a great fear seized me.

“Don’t go!” I cried—“don’t go! We are close by the boat here, and if anything happens we can easily get to it.”

Agnew laughed in my face.

“Why, you don’t mean to tell me,” said he, “that you are still suspicious, and after that dinner? Why, man, if they wanted to harm us, would they feast us in this style? Nonsense, man! Drop your suspicions and come along.”

I shook my head obstinately.

“Well,” said he, “if I thought there was anything in your suspicions I would stay by you; but I’m confident they mean nothing but kindness, so I’m going off to see the place.”

“You’ll be back again?” said I.

“Oh yes,” said he, “of course I’ll come back, and sleep here.”

With these words he left, and nearly all the people accompanied him. I was left behind with the women and children and about a dozen men. These men busied themselves with some work over bird-skins; the women were occupied with some other work over feathers. No one took any notice of me. There did not seem to be any restraint upon me, nor was I watched in any way. Once the nightmare hag came and offered me a small roasted fowl, about the size of a woodcock. I declined it, but at the same time this delicate attention certainly surprised me.

I was now beginning to struggle with some success against my feelings of abhorrence, when suddenly I caught sight of something which chased away every other thought, and made my blood turn cold in my veins. It was something outside. At the mouth of the cave—by the fire which was still blazing bright, and lighting up the scene—I saw four men who had just come to the cave: they were carrying something which I at first supposed to be a sick or wounded companion. On reaching the fire they put it down, and I saw, with a thrill of dismay, that their burden was neither sick nor wounded, but dead, for the corpse lay rigid as they had placed it. Then I saw the nightmare hag approach it with a knife. An awful thought came to me—the crowning horror! The thought soon proved to be but too well founded. The nightmare hag began to cut, and in an instant had detached the arm of the corpse, which she thrust among the coals in the very place where lately she had cooked the fowl. Then she went back for more.

For a moment my brain reeled, and I gasped for breath. Then I rose and staggered out, I know not how. No one tried to stop me, nor did anyone follow me; and, for my part, I was ready to blow out the brains of the first who dared to approach me. In this way I reached the open air, and passed by the hag and the four men as they were busy at their awful work. But at this point I was observed and followed. A number of men and women came after me, jabbering their uncouth language and gesticulating. I warned them off, angrily. They persisted, and though none of them were armed, yet I saw that they were unwilling to have me leave the cave, and I supposed that they would try to prevent me by force.

The absence of Agnew made my position a difficult one. Had it not been for this I would have burst through them and fled to the boat; but as long as he was away I felt bound to wait; and though I longed to fly, I could not for his sake. The boat seemed to be a haven of rest. I longed to be in her once more, and drift away, even if it should be to my death. Nature was here less terrible than man; and it seemed better to drown in the waters, to perish amid rocks and whirlpools, than to linger here amid such horrors as these. These people were not like human beings. The vilest and lowest savages that I had ever seen were not so odious as these. A herd of monkeys would be far more congenial, a flock of wolves less abhorrent. They had the caricature of the human form; they were the lowest of humanity; their speech was a mockery of language; their faces devilish, their kindness a cunning pretence; and most hideous of all was the nightmare hag that prepared the cannibal repast.

I could not begin hostilities, for I had to wait for Agnew; so I stood and looked, and then walked away for a little distance. They followed me closely, with eager words and gesticulations, though as yet no one touched me or threatened me. Their tone seemed rather one of persuasion. After a few paces I stood still, with all of them around me. The horrible repast showed plainly all that was in store for us. They received us kindly and fed us well only to devote us to the most abhorrent of deaths. Agnew, in his mad confidence, was only insuring his own doom. He was putting himself completely in the power of devils, who were incapable of pity and strangers to humanity. To make friends with such fiends was impossible, and I felt sure that our only plan was to rule by terror—to seize, to slay, to conquer. But still I had to wait for him, and did not dare to resort to violence while he was absent; so I waited, while the savages gathered round me, contenting themselves with guarding me, and neither touching me nor threatening me. And all this time the hag went on, intent on her preparation of the horrible repast.

While standing there looking, listening, waiting for Agnew, I noticed many things. Far away the volcanoes blazed, and the northern sky was red with a lurid light. There, too, higher up, the moon was shining overhead, the sky was gleaming with stars; and all over the heavens there shone the luster of the aurora australis, brighter than any I had ever seen—surpassing the moon and illuminating all. It lighted up the haggard faces of the devils around me, and it again seemed to me as though I had died and gone to the land of woe—an iron land, a land of despair, with lurid fires all aglow and faces of fear.

Suddenly, there burst upon my ears the report of a gun, which sounded like a thunder-peal, and echoed in long reverberations. At once I understood it. My fears had proved true. These savages had enticed Agnew away to destroy him. In an instant I burst through the crowd around me, and ran wildly in the direction of that sound, calling his name, as I ran, at the top of my voice.

I heard a loud cry; then another report. I hurried on, shouting his name in a kind of frenzy. The strange courage of these savages had already impressed me deeply. They did not fear our guns. They were all attacking him, and he was alone, fighting for his life.

Then there was another report; it was his pistol. I still ran on, and still shouted to him.

At last I received an answer. He had perhaps heard me, and was answering, or, at any rate, he was warning me.

“More,” he cried, “fly, fly, fly to the boat! Save yourself!”

“Where are you?” I cried, as I still rushed on.

“Fly, More, fly! Save yourself! You can’t save me. I’m lost. Fly for your life!”

Judging from his cries, he did not seem far away. I hurried on. I could see nothing of him. All the time the savages followed me. None were armed; but it seemed to me that they were preparing to fling themselves upon me and overpower me with their numbers. They would capture me alive, I thought, bind me, and carry me back, reserving me for a future time!

I turned and waved them back. They took no notice of my gesture. Then I ran on once more. They followed. They could not run so fast as I did, and so I gained on them rapidly, still shouting to Agnew. But there was no response. I ran backward and forward, crossing and recrossing, doubling and turning, pursued all the time by the savages. At last, in rage and despair, I fired upon them, and one of them fell. But, to my dismay, the others did not seem to care one whit; they did not stop for one moment, but pursued as before.

My situation was now plain in all its truth. They had enticed Agnew away; they had attacked him. He had fought, and had been overpowered. He had tried to give me warning. His last words had been for me to fly—to fly: yes, for he well knew that it was better far for me to go to death through the raging torrent than to meet the fate which had fallen upon himself. For him there was now no more hope. That he was lost was plain. If he were still alive he would call to me; but his voice had been silenced for some time. All was over, and that noble heart that had withstood so bravely and cheerily the rigors of the storm, and the horrors of our desperate voyage, had been stilled in death by the vilest of miscreants.

I paused for a moment. Even though Agnew was dead, I could not bear to leave him, but felt as though I ought to share his fate. The savages came nearer. At their approach I hesitated no longer. That fate was too terrible: I must fly.

But before I fled I turned in fury to wreak vengeance upon them for their crimes. Full of rage and despair, I discharged my remaining rifle-barrel into the midst of the crowd. Then I fled toward the boat. On the way I had a frightful thought that she might have been sent adrift; but, on approaching the place, I found her there just as I had left her. The savages, with their usual fearlessness, still pursued. For a moment I stood on the shore, with the grapple in my hand and the boat close by, and as they came near I discharged my pistol into the midst of them. Then I sprang into the boat; the swift current bore me away, and in a few minutes the crowd of pursuing demons disappeared from view.

CHAPTER V

THE TORRENT SWEEPING UNDER THE MOUNTAINS

The boat drifted on. The light given by the aurora and the low moon seemed to grow fainter; and as I looked behind I saw that the distant glow from the volcanic fires had become more brilliant in the increasing darkness. The sides of the channel grew steeper, until at last they became rocky precipices, rising to an unknown height. The channel itself grew narrower, till from a width of two miles it had contracted to a tenth of those dimensions; but with this lessening width the waters seemed to rush far more swiftly. Here I drifted helplessly, and saw the gloomy, rocky cliffs sweep past me as I was hurled onward on the breast of the tremendous flood. I was in despair. The fate of Agnew had prepared me for my own, and I was only thankful that my fate, since it was inevitable, would be less appalling. Death seemed certain, and my chief thought now was as to the moment when it would come. I was prepared. I felt that I could meet it calmly, sternly, even thankfully; far better was a death here amid the roar of waters than at the hands of those abhorrent beings by whose treachery my friend had fallen.

As I went on, the precipices rose higher and seemed to overhang, the channel grew narrower, the light grew fainter, until at last all around me grew dark. I was floating at the bottom of a vast chasm, where the sides seemed to rise precipitously for thousands of feet, where neither watery flood nor rocky wall was visible, and where, far above, I could see the line of sky between the summits of the cliffs, and watch the glowing stars. And as I watched them there came to me the thought that this was my last sight on earth, and I could only hope that the life which was so swiftly approaching its end might live again somewhere among those glittering orbs. So I thought; and with these thoughts I drifted on, I cannot tell how long, until at length there appeared a vast black mass, where the open sky above me terminated, and where the luster of the stars and the light of the heavens were all swallowed up in utter darkness.

This, then, I thought, is the end. Here, amid this darkness, I must make the awful plunge and find my death I fell upon my knees in the bottom of the boat and prayed. As I knelt there the boat drew nearer, the black mass grew blacker. The current swept me on. There were no breakers; there was no phosphorescent sparkle of seething waters, and no whiteness of foam. I thought that I was on the brink of some tremendous cataract a thousand times deeper than Niagara; some fall where the waters plunged into the depths of the earth; and where, gathering for the terrific descent, all other movements—all dashings and writhings and twistings—were obliterated and lost in the one overwhelming onward rush. Suddenly all grew dark—dark beyond all expression; the sky above was in a moment snatched from view; I had been flung into some tremendous cavern; and there, on my knees, with terror in my heart, I waited for death.

The moments passed, and death delayed to come. The awful plunge was still put off; and though I remained on my knees and waited long, still the end came not. The waters seemed still, the boat motionless. It was borne upon the surface of a vast stream as smooth as glass; but who could tell how deep that stream was, or how wide? At length I rose from my knees and sank down upon the seat of the boat, and tried to peer through the gloom. In vain. Nothing was visible. It was the very blackness of darkness. I listened, but heard nothing save a deep, dull, droning sound, which seemed to fill all the air and make it all tremulous with its vibrations. I tried to collect my thoughts. I recalled that old theory which had been in my mind before this, and which I had mentioned to Agnew. This was the notion that at each pole there is a vast opening; that into one of them all the waters of the ocean pour themselves, and, after passing through the earth, come out at the other pole, to pass about its surface in innumerable streams. It was a wild fancy, which I had laughed at under other circumstances, but which now occurred to me once more, when I was overwhelmed with despair, and my mind was weakened by the horrors which I had experienced; and I had a vague fear that I had been drawn into the very channel through which the ocean waters flowed in their course to that terrific, that unparalleled abyss. Still, there was as yet no sign whatever of anything like a descent, for the boat was on even keel, and perfectly level as before, and it was impossible for me to tell whether I was moving swiftly or slowly, or standing perfectly still; for in that darkness there were no visible objects by which I could find out the rate of my progress; and as those who go up in balloons are utterly insensible of motion, so was I on those calm but swift waters.

At length there came into view something which arrested my attention and engrossed all my thoughts. It was faint glow that at first caught my gaze; and, on turning to see it better, I saw a round red spot glowing like fire. I had not seen this before. It looked like the moon when it rises from behind clouds, and glows red and lurid from the horizon; and so this glowed, but not with the steady light of the moon, for the light was fitful, and sometimes flashed into a baleful brightness, which soon subsided into a dimmer luster. New alarm arose within me, for this new sight suggested something more terrible than anything that I had thus far thought of. This, then, I thought, was to be the end of my voyage; this was my goal—a pit of fire, into which I should be hurled! Would it be well, I thought, to wait for such a fate, and experience such a death-agony? Would it not be better for me to take my own life before I should know the worst? I took my pistol and loaded it, so as to be prepared, but hesitated to use it until my fate should be more apparent. So I sat, holding my pistol, prepared to use it, watching the light, and awaiting the time when the glowing fires should make all further hope impossible. But time passed, and the light grew no brighter; on the contrary, it seemed to grow fainter. There was also another change. Instead of shining before me, it appeared more on my left. From this it went on changing its position until at length it was astern. All the time it continued to grow fainter, and it seemed certain that I was moving away from it rather than toward it. In the midst of this there occurred a new thought, which seemed to account for this light—this was, that it arose from these same volcanoes which had illuminated the northern sky when I was ashore, and followed me still with their glare. I had been carried into this darkness, through some vast opening which now lay behind me, disclosing the red volcano glow, and this it was that caused that roundness and resemblance to the moon. I saw that I was still moving on away from that light as before, and that its changing position was due to the turning of the boat as the water drifted it along, now stern foremost, now sidewise, and again bow foremost. From this it seemed plainly evident that the waters had borne me into some vast cavern of unknown extent, which went under the mountains—a subterranean channel, whose issue I could not conjecture. Was this the beginning of that course which should ultimately become a plunge deep down into some unutterable abyss? or might I ever hope to emerge again into the light of day—perhaps in some other ocean—some land of ice and frost and eternal night? But the old theory of the flow of water through the earth had taken hold of me and could not be shaken off. I knew some scientific men held the opinion that the earth’s interior is a mass of molten rock and pent-up fire, and that the earth itself had once been a burning orb, which had cooled down at the surface; yet, after all, this was only a theory, and there were other theories which were totally different. As a boy I had read wild works of fiction about lands in the interior of the earth, with a sun at the centre, which gave them the light of a perpetual day. These, I knew, were only the creations of fiction; yet, after all, it seemed possible that the earth might contain vast hollow spaces in its interior—realms of eternal darkness, caverns in comparison with which the hugest caves on the surface were but the tiniest cells. I was now being borne on to these. In that case there might be no sudden plunge, after all. The stream might run on for many thousand miles through this terrific cavern gloom, in accordance with natural laws; and I might thus live, and drift on in this darkness, until I should die a lingering death of horror and despair.

There was no possible way of forming any estimate as to speed. All was dark, and even the glow behind was fading away; nor could I make any conjecture whatever as to the size of the channel. At the opening it had been contracted and narrow; but here it might have expanded itself to miles, and its vaulted top might reach almost to the summit of the lofty mountains. While sight thus failed me, sound was equally unavailing, for it was always the same—a sustained and unintermittent roar, a low, droning sound, deep and terrible, with no variations of dashing breakers or rushing rapids or falling cataracts. Vague thoughts of final escape came and went; but in such a situation hope could not be sustained. The thick darkness oppressed the soul; and at length even the glow of the distant volcanoes, which had been gradually diminishing, grew dimmer and fainter, and finally faded out altogether. That seemed to me to be my last sight of earthly things. After this nothing was left. There was no longer for me such a thing as sight; there was nothing but darkness—perpetual and eternal night. I was buried in a cavern of rushing waters, to which there would be no end, where I should be borne onward helplessly by the resistless tide to a mysterious and an appalling doom.

The darkness grew so intolerable that I longed for something to dispel it, if only for a moment. I struck a match. The air was still, and the flame flashed out, lighting up the boat and showing the black water around me. This made me eager to see more. I loaded both barrels of the rifle, keeping my pistol for another purpose, and then fired one of them. There was a tremendous report, that rang in my ears like a hundred thunder-volleys, and rolled and reverberated far along, and died away in endless echoes. The flash lighted up the scene for an instant, and for an instant only; like the sudden lightning, it revealed all around. I saw a wide expanse of water, black as ink—a Stygian pool; but no rocks were visible, and it seemed as though I had been carried into a subterranean sea.

I loaded the empty barrel and waited. The flash of light had revealed nothing, yet it had distracted my thoughts, and the work of reloading was an additional distraction. Anything was better than inaction. I did not wish to waste my ammunition, yet I thought that an occasional shot might serve some good purpose, if it was only to afford me some relief from despair.

And now, as I sat with the rifle in my hands, I was aware of a sound—new, exciting, different altogether from the murmur of innumerable waters that filled my ears, and in sharp contrast with the droning echoes of the rushing flood. It was a sound that spoke of life. I heard quick, heavy pantings, as of some great living thing; and with this there came the noise of regular movements in the water, and the foaming and gurgling of waves. It was as though some living, breathing creature were here, not far away, moving through these midnight waters; and with this discovery there came a new fear—the fear of pursuit. I thought that some sea-monster had scented me in my boat, and had started to attack me. This new fear aroused me to action. It was a danger quite unlike any other which I had ever known; yet the fear which it inspired was a feeling that roused me to action, and prompted me, even though the coming danger might be as sure as death, to rise against it and resist to the last. So I stood up with my rifle and listened, with all my soul in my sense of hearing. The sounds arose more plainly. They had come nearer. They were immediately in front. I raised my rifle and took aim. Then in quick succession two reports thundered out with tremendous uproar and interminable echoes, but the long reverberations were unheeded in the blaze of sudden light and the vision that was revealed. For there full before me I saw, though but for an instant, a tremendous sight. It was a vast monster, moving in the waters against the stream and toward the boat. Its head was raised high, its eyes were inflamed with a baleful light, its jaws, opened wide, bristled with sharp teeth, and it had a long neck joined to a body of enormous bulk, with a tail that lashed all the water into foam. It was but for an instant that I saw it, and then with a sudden plunge the monster dived, while at the same moment all was as dark as before.

Full of terror and excitement, I loaded my rifle again and waited, listening for a renewal of the noise. I felt sure that the monster, balked of his prey, would return with redoubled fury, and that I should have to renew the conflict. I felt that the dangers of the subterranean passage and of the rushing waters had passed away, and that a new peril had arisen from the assault of this monster of the deep. Nor was it this one alone that was to be dreaded. Where one was, others were sure to be; and if this one should pass me by it would only leave me to be assailed by monsters of the same kind, and these would probably increase in number as I advanced farther into this realm of darkness. And yet, in spite of these grisly thoughts, I felt less of horror than before, for the fear which I had was now associated with action; and as I stood waiting for the onset and listening for the approach of the enemy, the excitement that ensued was a positive relief from the dull despair into which I had sunk but a moment before.

Yet, though I waited for a new attack, I waited in vain. The monster did not come back. Either the flash and the noise had terrified him, or the bullets had hit him, or else in his vastness he had been indifferent to so feeble a creature as myself; but whatever may have been the cause, he did not emerge again out of the darkness and silence into which he had sunk. For a long time I stood waiting; then I sat down, still watchful, still listening, but without any result, until at length I began to think that there was no chance of any new attack. Indeed, it seemed now as though there had been no attack at all, but that the monster had been swimming at random without any thought of me, in which case my rifle-flashes had terrified him more than his fearful form had terrified me. On the whole this incident had greatly benefited me. It had roused me from my despair. I grew reckless, and felt a disposition to acquiesce in whatever fate might have in store for me.

And now, worn out with fatigue and exhausted from long watchfulness and anxiety, I sank down in the bottom of the boat and fell into a deep sleep.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW WORLD

How long I slept I do not know. My sleep was profound, yet disturbed by troubled dreams, in which I lived over again all the eventful scenes of the past; and these were all intermingled in the wildest confusion. The cannibals beckoned to us from the peak, and we landed between the two volcanoes. There the body of the dead sailor received us, and afterward chased us to the boat. Then came snow and volcanic eruptions, and we drifted amid icebergs and molten lava until we entered an iron portal and plunged into darkness. Here there were vast swimming monsters and burning orbs of fire and thunderous cataracts falling from inconceivable heights, and the sweep of immeasurable tides and the circling of infinite whirlpools; while in my ears there rang the never-ending roar of remorseless waters that came after us, with all their waves and billows rolling upon us. It was a dream in which all the material terrors of the past were renewed; but these were all as nothing when compared with a certain deep underlying feeling that possessed my soul—a sense of loss irretrievable, an expectation of impending doom, a drear and immitigable despair.

In the midst of this I awoke. It was with a sudden start, and I looked all around in speechless bewilderment. The first thing of which I was conscious was a great blaze of light—light so lately lost, and supposed to be lost forever, but now filling all the universe—bright, brilliant, glowing bringing hope and joy and gladness, with all the splendor of deep blue skies and the multitudinous laughter of ocean waves that danced and sparkled in the sun. I flung up my arms and laughed aloud. Then I burst into tears, and falling on my knees, I thanked the Almighty Ruler of the skies for this marvelous deliverance.

Rising from my knees I looked around, and once more amazement overwhelmed me. I saw a long line of mountains towering up to immeasurable heights, their summits covered with eternal ice and snow. There the sun blazed low in the sky, elevated but a few degrees above the mountain crests, which gleamed in gold and purple under its fiery rays. The sun seemed enlarged to unusual dimensions, and the mountains ran away on every side like the segment of some infinite circle. At the base of the mountains lay a land all green with vegetation, where cultivated fields were visible, and vineyards and orchards and groves, together with forests of palm and all manner of trees of every variety of hue, which ran up the sides of the mountains till they reached the limits of vegetation and the regions of snow and ice.

Here in all directions there were unmistakable signs of human life—the outlines of populous cities and busy towns and hamlets; roads winding far away along the plain or up the mountain-sides, and mighty works of industry in the shape of massive structures, terraced slopes, long rows of arches, ponderous pyramids, and battlemented walls.

From the land I turned to the sea. I saw before me an expanse of water intensely blue—an extent so vast that never before in all my ocean voyages had anything appeared at all comparable with it. Out at sea, wherever I had been, the water had always limited the view; the horizon had never seemed far away; ships soon sank below it, and the visible surface of the earth was thus always contracted; but here, to my bewilderment, the horizon appeared to be removed to an immeasurable distance and raised high in the air, while the waters were prolonged endlessly. Starting from where I was, they went away to inconceivable distances, and the view before me seemed like a watery declivity reaching for a thousand miles, till it approached the horizon far up in the sky. Nor was it any delusion of the senses that caused this unparalleled spectacle. I was familiar with the phenomena of the mirage, and knew well that there was nothing of that kind here; for the mirage always shows great surfaces of stillness, or a regular vibration—glassy tides and indistinct distances; but here everything was sharply defined in the clear atmosphere: the sky overhung a deep blue vault; the waves danced and sparkled in the sun; the waters rolled and foamed on every side; and the fresh breeze, as it blew over the ocean, brought with it such exhilarating influences that it acted upon me like some reviving cordial.

From the works of nature I turned to those of man. These were visible everywhere: on the land, in cities and cultivated fields and mighty constructions; on the sea, in floating craft, which appeared wherever I turned my eyes—boats like those of fishermen, ships long and low, some like galleys, propelled by a hundred oars, others provided with one huge square-sail, which enabled them to run before the wind. They were unlike any ships which I had ever seen; for neither in the Mediterranean nor in Chinese waters were there any craft like these, and they reminded me rather of those ancient galleys which I had seen in pictures.

I was lost in wonder as to where I was, and what land this could be to which I had been brought. I had not plunged into the interior of the earth, but I had been carried under the mountains, and had emerged again into the glad light of the sun. Could it be possible, I thought, that Agnew’s hope had been realized, and that I had been carried into the warm regions of the South Pacific Ocean? Yet in the South Pacific there could be no place like this—no immeasurable expanse of waters, no horizon raised mountain high. It seemed like a vast basin-shaped world, for all around me the surface appeared to rise, and I was in what looked like a depression; yet I knew that the basin and the depression were an illusion, and that this appearance was due to the immense extent of level surface with the environment of lofty mountains. I had crossed the Antarctic circle; I had been borne onward for an immense distance. Over all the known surface of the earth no one had ever seen anything like this; there were but two places where such an immeasurable plain was possible, and those were at the flattened poles. Where I was I now knew well. I had reached the Antarctic pole. Here the earth was flat—an immense level with no roundness to lessen the reach of the horizon but an almost even surface that gave an unimpeded view for hundreds of miles.

The subterranean channel had rushed through the mountains and had carried me here. Here came all the waters of the Northern ocean pouring into this vast polar sea, perhaps to issue forth from it by some similar passage. Here, then, was the South Pole—a world by itself: and how different from that terrible, that iron land on the other side of the mountains!—not a world of ice and frost, but one of beauty and light, with a climate that was almost tropical in its warmth, and lands that were covered with the rank luxuriance of a teeming vegetable life. I had passed from that outer world to this inner one, and the passage was from death unto life, from agony and despair to sunlight and splendor and joy. Above all, in all around me that which most impressed me now was the rich and superabundant life, and a warmth of air which made me think of India. It was an amazing and an unaccountable thing, and I could only attribute it to the flattening of the poles, which brought the surface nearer to the supposed central fires of the earth, and therefore created a heat as great as that of the equatorial regions. Here I found a tropical climate—a land warmed not by the sun, but from the earth itself. Or another cause might be found in the warm ocean currents. Whatever the true one might be, I was utterly unable to form a conjecture.

But I had no time for such speculations as these. After the first emotions of wonder and admiration had somewhat subsided, I began to experience other sensations. I began to remember that I had eaten nothing for a length of time that I had no means of calculating, and to look around to see if there was any way of satisfying my hunger. The question arose now, What was to be done? After my recent terrible experience I naturally shrank from again committing myself to the tender mercies of strange tribes; yet further thought and examination showed me that the people of this strange land must be very different from those frightful savages on the other side of the mountains. Everywhere I beheld the manifest signs of cultivation and civilization. Still, I knew that even civilized people would not necessarily be any kinder than savages, and that I might be seized and flung into hopeless imprisonment or slavery.

So I hesitated, yet what could I do? My hunger was beginning to be insupportable. I had reached a place where I had to choose between starvation on the one hand, or a venture among these people on the other. To go back was impossible. Who could breast those waters in the tremendous subterranean channel, or force his way back through such appalling dangers? Or, if that were possible, who could ever hope to breast those mighty currents beyond, or work his way amid everlasting ice and immeasurable seas? No; return was impossible. I had been flung into this world of wonders, and here would be my home for the remainder of my days; though I could not now imagine whether those days would be passed in peace or in bitter slavery and sorrow. Yet the decision must be made and the risk must be run. It must be so. I must land here, venture among these people, and trust in that Providence which had hitherto sustained me.

Having thus resolved at all hazards to try my fate, I rowed in toward the shore. Thus far I had seen galleys passing and small boats, but they had taken no notice of me, for the reason that they were too far away to perceive anything about me that differed from any other boat; but now, as I rowed, I noticed a galley coming down toward me. She seemed to be going in toward the shore at the very point at which I was aiming, and her course and mine must soon meet if I continued to row. After some hesitation I concluded to make signals to her, so as to attract attention; for, now that I had resolved to venture among the people here, I was anxious to end my suspense as soon as possible. So I continued rowing, and gradually drew nearer. The galley was propelled by oars, of which there were fifty on either side. The stem was raised, and covered in like a cabin. At length I ceased rowing, and sat watching her. I soon saw that I was noticed, but this did not occur till the galley was close by me—so close, indeed, that I thought they would pass without perceiving me. I raised my hands, waved them, and gave a cry. The galley at once stopped, a boat was lowered, and some men descended and rowed toward me.

They were men of strange appearance—very small in stature and slender in frame. Their hair was black and straight, their features were quite regular, and their general expression was one of great gentleness. I was surprised to notice that they kept their eyes almost closed, as though they were weak and troubled by the glare of the sun. With their half-closed eyes they blinked at me, and then one who appeared to be their chief spoke to me. I understood not a word; and then I answered him in English, which, of course, was equally unintelligible to him. I then made signs, pointing to the mountains and endeavoring to make known to him that I had come from beyond them—that I had suffered shipwreck, that I had drifted here, and that I needed assistance. Of all this it was quite evident that they understood nothing except the fact that I needed help. The moment that they comprehended this they took me in tow and rowed back to the galley.

I found the galley to be about one hundred and fifty feet in length. For about two thirds of this length forward it was open and filled with seats, where there were about a hundred rowers, who all looked like those that I had first seen, all being of small stature, slender frames, and, moreover, all being apparently distressed by the sunlight. There was in all of them the same mild and gentle expression. In complexion and general outline of features they were not unlike Arabs, but they were entirely destitute of that hardness and austerity which the latter have. They all had beards, which were dressed in a peculiar way in plaits. Their costume varied. The rowers wore a coarse tunic, with a girdle of rope. The officers wore tunics of fine cloth and very elegant mantles, richly embroidered, and with borders of down. They all wore broad-brimmed hats, and the one who seemed to be chief had on his some golden ornaments.

Here once more I tried to explain to them who I was. They looked at me, examining me all over, inspecting my gun, pistol, coat, trousers, boots, and hat, and talking all the time among themselves. They did not touch me, but merely showed the natural curiosity which is felt at the sight of a foreigner who has appeared unexpectedly. There was a scrupulous delicacy and a careful and even ceremonious politeness in their attitude toward me which was at once amazing and delightful. All fear and anxiety had now left me; in the gentle manners and amiable faces of these people I saw enough to assure me of kind treatment; and in my deep joy and gratitude for this even my hunger was for a time forgotten.

At length the chief motioned to me to follow him. He led the way to the cabin, where, opening the door, he entered, and I followed, after which the others came in also and then the door was shut. At first I could see nothing. There were no windows whatever, and only one or two slight crevices through which the light came. After a time my eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, and I could see that the cabin was a spacious compartment, adorned with rich hangings of some unknown material. There was a large table and seats. Taking me by the hand, the chief led me to this, where I seated myself, while the others remained standing. Then some of them went away, and soon returned with food and drink. The food was of different kinds—some tasting like goose, others like turkey, others like partridge. It was all the flesh of fowls, though, judging from the slices before me, they must have been of great size. I wondered much at the behavior of the officers of the ship, who all, and the chief himself more than all, stood and waited upon me; but it was a new world, and I supposed that this must be the fashion; so I made no objections, but accepted the situation and ate with a thankful heart.

As the first keenness of my appetite was satisfied I had more leisure to make observations. I noticed that the eyes of my new friends no longer blinked; they were wide open; and, so far as I could make them out, their faces were much improved. Weakness of eyes seemed common among these people, and therefore the officers had their cabin darkened, while the unfortunate rowers had to labor in the blazing sun. Such was my conclusion, and the fact reminded me of the miserable fellahin of Egypt, who have ophthalmia from the blazing sun and burning sand.

After the repast they brought me water in a basin, and all stood around me. One held the basin, another a towel, another a flask, another took a sponge and proceeded to wash my face and hands. This was all strange to me, yet there was nothing left for me but submission. Then the chief, who had stood looking on with a smile on his face took off his rich furred mantle and handed it to me. I was half inclined to refuse it, but was afraid of giving offence, so I accepted it, and he himself fastened it around my shoulders. The others seemed actually to envy the chief, as though he had gained some uncommon good-fortune. Then they offered me various drinks, of which I tasted several kinds. Some were sweet waters of different flavors, others tasted like mild wine, one was a fermented drink, light, sweet, and very agreeable to the palate. I now wished to show my generous entertainers that I was grateful; so I raised my cup, bowed to all of them, particularly the chief, and drank their health. They all watched this ceremony with very sober faces, and I could not quite make out whether they took my meaning or not. They certainly did not look pleased, and it seemed to me as though they felt hurt at any expression of gratitude, so I concluded for the future to abstain from all such demonstrations.

Yet with every moment the manners of these people grew more bewildering. It was strange, indeed, for me to find myself so suddenly the centre of interest and of generous intentions. For a moment the thought occurred to me that they regarded me as some wonderful being with superior powers, and were trying to propitiate me by these services; yet I soon saw that these services were not at all acts of propitiation; they looked rather like those loving and profuse attentions which a family showers down upon some dear one long absent and at last returned, and with this my wonder grew greater than ever.

The galley had long since resumed her progress. I heard the steady beat of the oars as they all moved in time, and at length the motion ceased. The chief then signed to me and went out. I followed, and the rest came after. And now as I emerged from the gloom of the cabin, I found myself once more in the glorious light of day, and saw that we had reached the land. The galley was hauled up alongside a stone quay, and on the shore there were buildings and walls and trees and people. The chief went ashore at once and I accompanied him. We walked for some distance along a road with stone walls on either side, from behind which there arose trees that from a distance had looked like palms. I now found them to be giant ferns, arching overhead with their broad fanlike leaves and branches in dense masses, making the roadway quite dark in the shadow. Astonished as I was at the sight of these trees, I soon forgot them in a still more astonishing sight, for after going onward about a hundred paces I stopped, and found myself in a wide space where four cross-roads met. Here there were three birds of gigantic stature. They had vast bodies, short legs, short necks, and seemed as large as an ordinary-sized ox. Their wings were short, and evidently could not be used for flight; their beaks were like that of a sea-gull; each one had a man on his back, and was harnessed to a car. The chief motioned to me to enter one of these cars. I did so. He followed, and thereupon the driver started the bird, which set forth with long, rapid strides, at a pace fast as that of a trotting horse. So astonished was I that for some time I did not notice anything else; but at length, when my first feeling had subsided, I began to regard other objects. All the way the dense fern foliage arched overhead, throwing down deep shadows. They grew on either side in dense rows, but between their stalks I could see the country beyond, which lay all bright in the sunlight.

Here were broad fields, all green with verdure; farther away arose clumps of tree-ferns; at every step of the way new vistas opened; amid the verdure and the foliage were the roofs of structures that looked like pavilions, and more massive edifices with pyramidal roofs. Our road constantly ascended, and at length we came to a crossing. This was a wide terrace at the slope of the mountain; on the lower side was a row of massive stone edifices with pyramidal roofs, while on the upper there were portals which seemed to open into excavated caverns. Here, too, on either side arose the giant ferns, overarching and darkening the terrace with their deep shadow. From this point I looked back, and through the trunks of the tree-ferns I could see fields and pavilions and the pyramidal roofs of massive edifices, and broad, verdant slopes, while in the distance there were peeps of the boundless sea. We continued on our way without stopping, and passed several successive terraces like the first, with the same caverns on the upper side and massive edifices on the lower, until at last the ascent ended at the fifth terrace, and here we turned to the left. Now the view became more varied. The tree-ferns arose on either side, arching overhead; on my right were the portals that opened into caverns, on my left solid and massive houses, built of great blocks of stone, with pyramidal roofs. As far as I could judge, I was in a city built on the slope of a mountain, with its streets formed thus of successive terraces and their connecting cross-ways, one half its habitations consisting of caverns, while the other half were pavilions and massive stone structures. Few people, however, were to be seen. Occasionally I saw one or two groping along with their eyes half shut, seeking the darkest shadows; and it seemed to me that this extraordinary race of men had some natural and universal peculiarity of eyesight which made them shun the sunlight, and seek the darkness of caves and of dense, overshadowing foliage.

At length we came to a place where the terrace ran back till it formed a semicircle against the mountain slope, when several vast portals appeared. Here there was a large space, where the tree-ferns grew in long lines crossing each other, and making a denser shade than usual. On the lower side were several stone edifices of immense size; and in the middle of the place there arose a singular structure, shaped like a half pyramid, with three sides sloping, and the fourth perpendicular, flat on the top, which was approached by a flight of steps. We now went on until we reached the central portal of the range of caverns, and here we stopped. The chief got out and beckoned to me. I followed. He then led the way into the cavern, while I, full of wonder, walked behind him.

CHAPTER VII

SCIENTIFIC THEORIES AND SKEPTICISM

Thus far Melick had been reading the manuscript, but at this point he was interrupted by the announcement that dinner was ready. Upon this he stopped abruptly; for on board the Falcon dinner was the great event of the day, and in its presence even the manuscript had to be laid aside. Before long they were all seated around the dining-table in the sumptuous cabin, prepared to discuss the repast which had been served up by the genius of the French chef whom Lord Featherstone had brought with him.

Let us pause here for a moment to take a minuter survey of these four friends. In the first place, there was Lord Featherstone himself, young, handsome, languid, good-natured to a fault, with plenty of muscle if he chose to exert it, and plenty of brain if he chose to make use of it—a man who had become weary of the monotony of high life, and, like many of his order, was fond of seeking relief from the ennui of prosperity amid the excitements of the sea. Next to him was Dr. Congreve, a middle-aged man, with iron-gray hair, short beard and mustache, short nose, gray eyes, with spectacles, and stoutish body. Next came Noel Oxenden, late of Trinity College, Cambridge, a college friend of Featherstone’s—a tall man, with a refined and intellectual face and reserved manner. Finally, there was Otto Melick, a litterateur from London, about thirty years of age, with a wiry and muscular frame, and the restless manner of one who lives in a perpetual fidget.

For some time nothing was said; they partook of the repast in silence; but at length it became evident that they were thinking of the mysterious manuscript. Featherstone was the first to speak.

“A deuced queer sort of thing this, too,” said he, “this manuscript. I can’t quite make it out. Who ever dreamed of people living at the South Pole—and in a warm climate, too? Then it seems deuced odd, too, that we should pick up this copper cylinder with the manuscript. I hardly know what to think about it.”

Melick smiled. “Why, it isn’t much to see through,” said he.

“See through what?” said the doctor, hastily, pricking up his ears at this, and peering keenly at Melick through his spectacles.

“Why, the manuscript, of course.”

“Well,” said the doctor, “what is it that you see? What do you make out of it?”

“Why, anyone can see,” said Melick, “that it’s a transparent hoax, that’s all. You don’t mean to say, I hope, that you really regard it in any other light?”

“A transparent hoax!” repeated the doctor. “Will you please state why you regard it in that light?”

“Certainly,” said Melick. “Some fellow wanted to get up a sensation novel and introduce it to the world with a great flourish of trumpets, and so he has taken this way of going about it. You see, he has counted on its being picked up, and perhaps published. After this he would come forward and own the authorship.”

“And what good would that do?” asked the doctor, mildly. “He couldn’t prove the authorship, and he couldn’t get the copyright.”

“Oh, of course not; but he would gain notoriety, and that would give him a great sale for his next effort.”

The doctor smiled. “See here, Melick,” said he, “you’ve a very vivid imagination, my dear fellow; but come, let us discuss this for a little while in a common-sense way. Now how long should you suppose that this manuscript has been afloat?”

“Oh, a few months or so,” said Melick.

“A few months!” said the doctor. “A few years you mean. Why, man, there are successive layers of barnacles on that copper cylinder which show a submersion of at least three years, perhaps more.”

“By Jove! yes,” remarked Featherstone. “Your sensation novelist must have been a lunatic if he chose that way of publishing a book.”

“Then, again,” continued the doctor, “how did it get here?”

“Oh, easily enough,” answered Melick. “The ocean currents brought it.”

“The ocean currents!” repeated the doctor. “That’s a very vague expression. What do you mean? Of course it has been brought here by the ocean currents.”

“Why, if it were thrown off the coast of England it would be carried away, in the ordinary course of things, and might make the tour of the world.”

“The ocean currents,” said the doctor, “have undoubtedly brought this to us. Of that I shall have more to say presently—but just now, in reference to your notion of a sensation novelist, and an English origin, let me ask your opinion of the material on which it is written. Did you ever see anything like it before? Is it paper?”

“No,” said Melick; “it is evidently some vegetable substance. No doubt the writer has had it prepared for this very purpose, so as to make it look natural.”

“Do you know what it is?” asked the doctor.

“No.”

“Then I’ll tell you; it’s papyrus.”

“Papyrus?”

“Yes, actual papyrus. You can find but little of that in existence at the present day. It is only to be found here and there in museums. I know it perfectly well, however, and saw what it was at the first glance. Now, I hold that a sensation novelist would never have thought of papyrus. If he didn’t wish to use paper, he could have found a dozen other things. I don’t see how he could have found anyone able to prepare such a substance as this for writing. It must have come from a country where it is actually in use. Now, mark you, the papyrus-plant may still be found growing wild on the banks of the upper Nile, and also in Sicily, and it is made use of for ropes and other things of that sort. But as to making writing material out of it, that is hardly possible for the art is lost. The ancient process was very elaborate and this manuscript is written on leaves which resembled in a marvelous manner those of the Egyptian papyrus books. There are two rolls at Marseilles which I have seen and examined, and they are identical with this. Now these papyrus leaves indicate much mechanical skill, and have a professional look. They seem like the work of an experienced manufacturer.”

“I don’t see,” said Melick, obstinately, “why one shouldn’t get papyrus now and have it made up into writing material.”

“Oh, that’s out of the question,” said the doctor. “How could it ever enter into anyone’s head? How could your mere sensation-monger procure the raw material? That of itself would be a work of immense difficulty. How could he get it made up? That would be impossible. But, apart from this, just consider the strong internal evidence that there is as to the authenticity of the manuscript. Now, in the first place, there is the description of Desolation Island, which is perfectly accurate. But it is on his narrative beyond this that I lay chief stress. I can prove that the statements here are corroborated by those of Captain Ross in his account of that great voyage from which he returned not very long ago.”

The doctor, who had been talking with much enthusiasm, paused here to take breath, and then went on:

“I happen to know all about that voyage, for I read a full report of it just before we started, and you can see for yourselves whether this manuscript is credible or not.

“Captain James Clarke Ross was sent forth on his expedition in 1839. On January 1, 1841, he passed the Antarctic circle in 178 degrees east longitude. On the 11th he discovered land in 70 degrees 41’ south latitude, 172 degrees 36’ east longitude. He found that the land was a continuous coast, trending southward, and rising to peaks of ten thousand feet in height, all covered with ice and snow. On the 12th he landed and took possession in the name of the Queen. After this he continued his course as far as 78 degrees 4’ south latitude, tracing a coast-line of six hundred miles. Observe, now how all this coincides with More’s narrative. Well, I now come to the crowning statement. In 77 degrees 32’ south latitude, 167 degrees east longitude, he came in sight of two enormous volcanoes over twelve thousand feet in height. One of these was in an active state of eruption. To this he gave the name of Mount Erebus. The other was quiet; it was of somewhat less height, and he gave it the name of Mount Terror. Mark, now, how wonderfully this resembles More’s account. Well, just here his progress was arrested by a barrier which presented a perpendicular wall of over a hundred and fifty feet in height, along which he coasted for some distance. On the following year he penetrated six miles farther south, namely, 78 degrees 11’ south latitude, 161 degrees 27’ west longitude. At this point he was again stopped by the impassable cliffs, which arose here like an eternal barrier, while beyond them he saw a long line of lofty mountains covered with ice and snow.”

“Did you hear the result of the American expedition?” asked Melick.

“Yes,” replied the doctor. “Wilkes pretends to have found a continent, but his account of it makes it quite evident to my mind that he saw nothing but ice. I believe that Wilkes’s Antarctic continent will some day be penetrated by ships, which will sail for hundreds of miles farther south. All that is wanted is a favorable season. But mark the coincidence between Ross’s report and More’s manuscript. This must have been written at least three years ago, and the writer could not have known anything about Ross’s discoveries. Above all, he could not have thought of those two volcanoes unless he had seen them.”

“But these volcanoes mentioned by More are not the Erebus and Terror, are they?” said Lord Featherstone.

“Of course not; they are on the other side of the world.”

“The whole story,” said Melick, “may have been written by one of Ross’s men and thrown overboard. If I’d been on that expedition I should probably have written it to beguile the time.”

“Oh yes,” said the doctor; “and you would also have manufactured the papyrus and the copper cylinder on board to beguile the time.”

“I dare say the writer picked up that papyrus and the copper cylinder in China or Japan, and made use of it in this way.”

“Where do you make out the position of More’s volcanoes?” asked Featherstone.

“It is difficult to make it out accurately,” said the doctor. “More gives no data. In fact he had none to give. He couldn’t take any observations.”

“The fact is,” said Melick, “it’s not a sailor’s yarn at all. No sailor would ever express himself in that way. That’s what struck me from the first. It has the ring of a confounded sensation-monger all through.”

The doctor elevated his eyebrows, but took no notice of this.

“You see,” he continued, addressing himself to the others, “Desolation Island is in 50 degrees south latitude and 70 degrees east longitude. As I make out, More’s course led him over about ten degrees of longitude in a southwest course. That course depended altogether upon the ocean currents. Now there is a great Antarctic drift-current, which flows round the Cape of Good Hope and divides there, one half flowing past the east coast of Africa and the other setting across the Indian Ocean. Then it unites with a current which flows round the south of Van Dieman’s Land, which also divides, and the southernmost current is supposed to cross the Pacific until it strikes Cape Horn, around which it flows, dividing as before. Now my theory is, that south of Desolation Island—I don’t know how far—there is a great current setting toward the South Pole, and running southwest through degrees of longitude 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, east of Greenwich; and finally sweeping on, it would reach More’s volcanoes at a point which I should judge to be about 80 degrees south latitude and 10 degrees west longitude. There it passes between the volcanoes and bursts through the vast mountain barrier by a subterranean way, which has been formed for it in past ages by some primeval convulsion of nature. After this it probably sweeps around the great South Polar ocean, and emerges at the opposite side, not far from the volcanoes Erebus and Terror.”

Here the doctor paused, and looked around with some self-complacency.

“Oh,” said Melick, “if you take that tone, you have us all at your mercy. I know no more about the geography of the Antarctic circle than I do of the moon. I simply criticize from a literary point of view, and I don’t like his underground cavern with the stream running through it. It sounds like one of the voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. Nor do I like his description; he evidently is writing for effect. Besides, his style is vicious; it is too stilted. Finally, he has recourse to the stale device of a sea-serpent.”

“A sea-serpent!” repeated the doctor. “Well, for my part I feel by no means inclined to sneer at a sea-serpent. Its existence cannot be proved, yet it cannot be pooh-poohed. Every schoolboy knows that the waters of the sea were once filled with monsters more tremendous than the greatest sea-serpent that has ever been imagined. The plesiosaurus, with its snakelike head, if it existed now, would be called a sea-serpent. Some of these so-called fossil animals may have their representatives still living in the remoter parts of the world. Think of the recently discovered ornithorhynchus of Australia!”

“If you please, I’d really much rather not,” said Melick with a gesture of despair. “I haven’t the honor of the gentleman’s acquaintance.”

“Well, what do you think of his notice of the sun, and the long light, and his low position on the horizon?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Melick. “Anyone who chose to get up this thing would of course read up about the polar day, and all that. Everyone knows that at the poles there is a six-months’ day, followed by a six-months’ night.”

“You are a determined skeptic,” said the doctor.

“How is it about the polar day?” asked Featherstone.

“Well,” said the doctor, “at the poles themselves there is one day of six months, during which the sun never sets, and one night of six months, during which he never rises. In the spaces between the polar circles the quantities of the continuous day and continuous night vary in accordance with the distance from the pole. At the north point of Nova Zembla, 75 degrees north latitude, there is uninterrupted light from May 1st to August 12th, and uninterrupted darkness from November 8th to February 9th. At the arctic circle at the summer solstice the day is twenty-four hours long. At the Antarctic circle at the same time the night is twenty-four hours long.”

Upon this Melick filled the doctor’s wine-glass with a great deal of ceremony.

“After all those statistics,” he said, “you must feel rather dry. You should take a drink before venturing any further.”

The doctor made no reply, but raised the glass to his lips and swallowed the wine in an abstracted way.

“The thing that struck me most,” said Oxenden, “in all that has been read thus far, is the flatness of the South Pole, and the peculiar effect which this produces on the landscape.”

“I must say,” added Melick, “that the writer has got hold of a very good idea there, and has taken care to put it forward in a very prominent fashion.”

“What is the difference,” asked Oxenden, “between the two diameters of the earth, the polar and the equatorial? Is it known?”

“By Jove!” said Featherstone, “that’s the very question I was going to ask. I’ve always heard that the earth is flattened at the poles, but never knew how much. Is there any way by which people can find out?”

The doctor drew a long breath, and beamed upon the company with a benevolent smile.

“Oh yes,” said he; “I can answer that question, if you care to know and won’t feel bored.”

“Answer it, then, my dear fellow, by all means,” said Featherstone, in his most languid tone.

“There are two ways,” said the doctor, “by which the polar compression of the earth has been found out. One is by the measurement of arcs on the earth’s surface; the other is by experiments with pendulums or weights with regard to the earth’s gravity at different places. The former of these methods is, perhaps, the more satisfactory. Measurements of arcs have been made on a very extensive scale in different parts of the world—in England, France, Lapland, Peru, and India. Mr. Ivory, who devoted himself for years to an exhaustive examination of the subject, has deduced that the equatorial radius of the earth is over 3962 miles, and the polar radius over 3949 miles. This makes the depression at either pole upward of thirteen miles. A depression of over thirteen miles, as you must plainly see, should produce strange results in the scenery at the poles. Of course, if there are mountains, no difference would be noticed between this and any other part of the earth’s surface; but if there is water, why, we ought to expect some such state of things as More describes. The gravitation test has also been tried, with very nearly the same result. The surface of the earth at the equator, being farthest from the centre of gravity, indicates the least weight in bodies; but at the poles, where the surface is nearest the centre of gravity, there must be the greatest weight. It is found, in fact, that the weight of bodies increases in passing from the equator to the poles. By experiments made in this way the polar compression is ascertained to be the same as I have mentioned.”

“What effect would this have on the climate at the poles?” asked Oxenden.

“That’s a complicated question,” said the doctor. “In answer to that we must leave ascertained facts and trust to theories, unless, indeed, we accept as valid the statements of this remarkable manuscript. For my own part, I see no reason why it should not be as More says. Remember, this polar world is thirteen miles nearer to the centre of the earth. Whether this should affect the climate or not, depends upon the nature of the earth’s interior. That interior, according to the popular theory of the present day is a mass of fire. This theory affirms that the earth was once a red-hot mass, which has cooled down; but the cooling process has only taken place on the surface, leaving the interior still a molten mass of matter in a state of intense heat and combustion. At the poles the surface is thus thirteen miles nearer to these tremendous fires. Of course it may be supposed that the earth’s crust is of about equal thickness on all parts; yet still, even if this be so, thirteen miles ought to make some difference. Now at the North Pole there seem to be causes at work to counterbalance the effect of the internal heat, chiefly in the enormous accumulation of polar ice which probably hems it in on every side; and though many believe in an open polar sea of warm water at the North Pole, yet still the effect of vast ice-masses and of cold submarine currents must be to render the climate severe. But at the South Pole it is different. The observations of Ross and of More show us that there is a chain of mountains of immense height, which seem to encircle the pole. If this be so, and I see no reason to disbelieve it, then the ice of the outer seas must be kept away altogether from that strange inner sea of which More speaks. Ross saw the volcanoes Erebus and Terror; More saw two others. How many more there may be it is impossible to say; but all this shows that the effect of the earth’s internal fires is very manifest in that region, and More has penetrated to a secluded world, which lies apart by itself, free from the influence of ice-masses, left to feel the effect of the internal fires, and possessing what is virtually a tropical climate.”

“Well,” said Melick, “there is no theory however wild and fantastic, which some man of science will not be ready to support and to fortify by endless arguments, all of the most plausible kind. For my own part, I still believe More and his south polar world to be no more authentic than Sinbad the Sailor.”

But the others evidently sympathized with the doctor’s view, and regarded Melick as carrying his skepticism to an absurd excess.

“How large do you suppose this south polar ocean to be?” asked Featherstone.

“It is impossible to answer that question exactly,” said the doctor. “It may be, as More hints, a thousand miles in extent, or only five hundred, or two hundred. For my own part, however, I feel like taking More’s statements at their utmost value; and the idea that I have gathered from his narrative is that of a vast sea like the Mediterranean, surrounded by impassable mountains, by great and fertile countries, peopled with an immense variety of animals, with a fauna and flora quite unlike those of the rest of the world; and, above all, with great nations possessing a rare and unique civilization, and belonging to a race altogether different from any of the known races of men.”

“Well,” said Melick, “that at least is the idea which the writer of the manuscript tries to convey.”

By this time they had finished dinner.

“And now,” said Featherstone, “let’s have some more of the manuscript. Melick is tired of it, I dare say. I would relieve him, but I’m an infernally bad reader. Doctor, what do you say? Will you read the next installment!”

“With all my heart,” said the doctor, briskly.

“Very well, then,” said Featherstone; “we will all be your attentive hearers.”

And now the doctor took up the manuscript and began to read.

CHAPTER VIII

THE CAVE-DWELLERS

The cavern into which the chief led me was very spacious, but had no light except that which entered through the portal. It was with difficulty that I could see anything, but I found that there were many people here moving about, all as intent upon their own pursuits as those which one encounters in the streets of our cities. As we went on farther the darkness increased, until at last I lost sight of the chief altogether, and he had to come back and lead me. After going a little farther we came to a long, broad passage-way like a subterranean street, about twenty feet in width, and as many in height. Here there were discernible a few twinkling lamps, which served to make the darkness less intense and enabled me to see the shadowy figures around. These were numerous, and all seemed busy, though what their occupation might be I could not guess. I was amazed at the extent of these caverns, and at the multitude of the people. I saw also that from the nature of their eyes the sunlight distressed them, and in this cavern gloom they found their most congenial dwelling-place. From what I had thus far seen, this extraordinary people shrank from the sunlight; and when they had to move abroad they passed over roads which were darkened as much as possible by the deep shadows of mighty ferns, while for the most part they remained in dark caverns, in which they lived and moved and had their being. It was a puzzle to me whether the weakness of their eyes had caused this dislike of light, or the habit of cave-dwelling had caused this weakness of eyes. Here, in this darkness, where there was but a faint twinkle from the feeble lamps, their eyes seemed to serve them as well as mine did in the outer light of day; and the chief, who outside had moved with an uncertain step, and had blinked painfully at objects with his eyes almost closed, now appeared to be in his proper element; and while I hesitated like a blind man and groped along with a faltering step, he guided me, and seemed to see everything with perfect vision.

At length we stopped, and the chief raised up a thick, heavy mat which hung like an unwieldy curtain in front of a doorway. This the chief lifted. At once a blaze of light burst forth, gleaming into the dark, and appearing to blind him. His eyes closed. He held up the veil for me to pass through. I did so. He followed, and then groped his way slowly along, while I accompanied and assisted him.

I now found myself in a large grotto with an arched roof, from which was suspended an enormous lamp, either golden or gilded. All around were numerous lamps. The walls were adorned with rich hangings; couches were here, with soft cushions, and divans and ottomans; soft mats were on the floor, and everything gave indications of luxury and wealth. Other doors, covered with overhanging mats, seemed to lead out of this grotto. To one of these the chief walked, and raising the mat he led the way into another grotto like the last, with the same bright lights and the same adornments, but of smaller size. Here I saw someone who at once took up all my attention.

It was a young maiden. Her face and form, but especially her eyes, showed her to be of quite a different race from these others. To me she was of medium height, yet she was taller than any of the people here that I had hitherto seen. Her complexion was much lighter; her hair was dark, luxuriant, and wavy, and arranged in a coiffure secured with a golden band. Her features were of a different cast from those of the people here, for they were regular in outline and of exquisite beauty; her nose was straight; she had a short upper lip, arched eyebrows finely penciled, thin lips, and well-rounded chin. But the chief contrast was in her eyes. These were large, dark, liquid, with long lashes, and with a splendid glow in their lustrous depths. She stood looking at me with her face full of amazement; and as I caught the gaze of her glorious eyes I rejoiced that I had at last found one who lived in the light and loved it—one who did not blink like a bat, but looked me full in the face, and allowed me to see all her soul revealed. The chief, who still was pained by the glare of light, kept his eyes covered, and said a few hasty words to the maiden. After this he hurried away, leaving me there.

The maiden stood for a moment looking at me. As the chief spoke to her a change came over her face. She looked at me in silence, with an expression of sad and mournful interest, which seemed to increase every moment. At length she approached and said something in the same strange language which the chief had used. I shook my head and replied in English, whereupon she shook her head with a look of perplexity. Then, anxious to conciliate her, I held out my hand. She looked at it in some surprise. Upon this I took her hand, and pressed it to my lips, feeling, however, somewhat doubtful as to the way in which she might receive such an advance. To my great delight she accepted it in a friendly spirit, and seemed to consider it my foreign fashion of showing friendship and respect. She smiled and nodded, and pointed to my gun, which thus far I had carried in my hand. I smiled and laid it down. Then she pointed to a seat. I sat down, and then she seated herself close by me, and we looked at each other in mutual wonder and mutual inquiry.

I was full of amazement at thus meeting with so exquisite a being, and lost myself in conjectures as to her race, her office, and her position here. Who was she, or what? She was unlike the others, and reminded me of those Oriental beauties whose portraits I had seen in annuals and illustrated books. Her costume was in keeping with such a character. She wore a long tunic that reached from the neck to the ground, secured at the waist with a golden girdle; the sleeves were long and loose; over this she had a long mantle; on her feet were light slippers, white and glistening. All about her, in her room and in her costume, spoke of light and splendor and luxury. To these others who shrank so from the light she could not be related in any way. The respect with which she was treated by the chief, the peculiar splendor of her apartments, seemed to indicate some high rank. Was she, then, the queen of the land? Was she a princess? I could not tell. At any rate, whatever she was, she seemed anxious to show me the utmost attention. Her manner was full of dignity and sweet graciousness, and she appeared particularly anxious to make herself understood. At first she spoke in a language that sounded like that of the chief, and was full of gutturals and broad vowels; afterward she spoke in another that was far more euphonious. I, on the other hand spoke in English and in French; but of course I was as unintelligible to her as she was to me.

Language was, therefore, of no use. It was necessary to go back to first principles and make use of signs, or try to gain the most elementary words of her language; so first of all I pointed to her, and tried to indicate that I wanted to know her name. She caught my meaning at once, and, pointing to herself, she looked fixedly at me and said, “Almah, Almah!”

I repeated these words after her, saying, “Almah, Almah!” She smiled and nodded, and then pointed to me with a look of inquiry that plainly asked for my name. I said “Adam More.” She repeated this, and it sounded like “A-tam-or.” But as she spoke this slowly her smile died away. She looked anxious and troubled, and once more that expression of wondering sadness came over her face. She repeated my name over and over in this way with a mournful intonation that thrilled through me, and excited forebodings of evil. “Atamor, Atamor!” And always after that she called me “Atamor.”

But now she sat for some time, looking at me with a face full of pity and distress. At this I was greatly astonished; for but a moment before she had been full of smiles, and it was as though something in my name had excited sorrowful thoughts. Yet how could that be, since she could never by any possibility have heard my name before? The beautiful Almah seemed to be not altogether happy, or why should she be so quick to sadness? There was a mystery about all this which was quite unaccountable.

It was a singular situation, and one which excited within me feelings of unutterable delight. This light and splendor, this warmth and peace—what a contrast it offered to the scenes through which I had but lately passed! Those scenes of horror, of ice and snow, of storm and tempest, of cold and hunger, of riven cliff and furious ocean stream, and, above all, that crowning agony in the bleak iron-land of the cannibals—from all these I had escaped. I had been drawn down under the earth to experience the terrors of that unspeakable passage, and had at last emerged to light and life, to joy and hope. In this grotto I had found the culmination of all happiness. It was like a fairy realm; and here was one whose very look was enough to inspire the most despairing soul with hope and peace and happiness. The only thing that was now left to trouble me was this mournful face of Almah. Why did she look at me with such sad interest and such melancholy meaning? Did she know of any evil fate in store for me? Yet how could there be any evil fate to be feared from people who had received me with such unparalleled generosity? No, it could not be; so I resolved to try to bring back again the smile that had faded out of her face.

I pointed to her, and said, “Almah.”

She said, “Atam-or.”

And the smile did not come back, but the sadness remained in her face.

My eager desire now was to learn her language, and I resolved at once to acquire as many words and phrases as possible. I began by asking the names of things, such as “seat,” “table,” “mat,” “coat,” “hat,” “shoe,” “lamp,” “floor,” “wall,” and all the common objects around. She gave all the names, and soon became so deeply interested that her sadness departed, and the smile came back once more. For my own part, I was always rather quick at learning languages. I had a correct ear and a retentive memory; in my wanderings round the world I had picked up a smattering of many languages, such as French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, German, Hindustani, and a few others. The words which I learned from Almah had a remote resemblance to Arabic; and, in fact, my knowledge of Arabic was actually of some assistance, though how it was that these people should have a language with that resemblance was certainly a mystery, and I did not try to solve it. The beautiful Almah soon grew immensely interested in my efforts to learn, and also in the English words which I gave when I pointed to any object.

Thus I pointed to myself, and said “Man,” then pointing to her, I said, “Woman.” She laughed, and pointing to me said “Iz,” and pointing to herself said, “Izza.” Then I pointed to the row of lights, and said “Light;” she did the same, and said, “Or.” Then her face grew mournful, and she pointed to me, saying “Atam-or.” It struck me then that there was some chance resemblance between “or,” the word meaning “light,” and one of the syllables of my name as she pronounced it, and that this might cause her sadness; but as I could make out nothing of this, I dismissed the thought, and went on with my questions. This took up the time, until at length someone appeared who looked like a servant. He said something, whereupon Almah arose and beckoned to me to follow. I did so, and we went to a neighboring apartment, where there was spread a bounteous repast. Here we sat and ate, and Almah told me the names of all the dishes. After dinner we returned to the room.

It was a singular and a delightful position. I was left alone with the beautiful Almah, who herself showed the utmost graciousness and the kindest interest in me. I could not understand it, nor did I try to; it was enough that I had such a happy lot. For hours we thus were together, and I learned many words. To insure remembrance, I wrote them down in my memorandum-book with a pencil and both of these were regarded by Almah with greatest curiosity. She felt the paper, inspected it, touched it with her tongue, and seemed to admire it greatly; but the pencil excited still greater admiration. I signed to her to write in the book. She did so, but the characters were quite unlike anything that I had ever seen. They were not joined like our writing and like Arabic letters, but were separate like our printed type, and were formed in an irregular manner. She then showed me a book made of a strange substance. It was filled with characters like those which she had just written. The leaves were not at all like paper, but seemed like some vegetable product, such as the leaves of a plant or the bark of a tree. They were very thin, very smooth, all cut into regular size, and fastened together by means of rings. This manuscript is written upon the same material. I afterward found that it was universally used here, and was made of a reed that grows in marshes.

Here in these vast caverns there was no way by which I could tell the progress of time, but Almah had her own way of finding out when the hours of wakeful life were over. She arose and said, “Salonla.” This I afterward found out to be common salutation of the country. I said it after her. She then left me. Shortly afterward a servant appeared, who took me to a room, which I understood to be mine. Here I found everything that I could wish, either for comfort or luxury; and as I felt fatigue, I flung myself upon the soft bed of down, and soon was sound asleep.

I slept for a long time. When I awoke I heard sounds in the distance, and knew that people were moving. Here in these caverns there was no difference between day and night, but, by modes of which I was ignorant, a regular succession was observed of waking times and sleeping times.

CHAPTER IX

THE CAVERN OF THE DEAD

On going forth into the outer grotto I saw the table spread with a sumptuous repast, and the apartment in a blaze of light. Almah was not here; and though some servants made signs for me to eat, yet I could not until I should see whether she was coming or not. I had to wait for a long time, however; and while I was waiting the chief entered, shading his eyes with his hand from the painful light. He bowed low with the most profound courtesy, saying, “Salonla,” to which I responded in the same way. He seemed much pleased at this, and made a few remarks, which I did not understand; whereupon, anxious to lose no time in learning the language, I repeated to him all the words I knew, and asked after others. I pointed to him and asked his name. He said, “Kohen.” This, however, I afterward found was not a name, but a title. The “Kohen” did not remain long, for the light was painful. After his departure I was alone for some time, and at length Almah made her appearance. I sprang to meet her, full of joy, and took her hand in both of mine and pressed it warmly. She smiled, and appeared quite free from the melancholy of the previous day.

We ate our breakfast together, after which we went out into the world of light, groping our way along through the dark passages amid the busy crowd. Almah could see better than I in the darkness; but she was far from seeing well, and did not move with that easy step and perfect certainty which all the others showed. Like me, she was a child of light, and the darkness was distressing to her. As we went on we were seen by all, but were apparently not considered prisoners. On the contrary, all looked at us with the deepest respect, and bowed low or moved aside, and occasionally made little offerings of fruit or flowers to one or the other of us. It seemed to me that we were treated with equal distinction; and if Almah was their queen, I, their guest, was regarded with equal honor. Whatever her rank might be, however, she was to all appearance the most absolute mistress of her own actions, and moved about among all these people with the independence and dignity of some person of exalted rank.

At length we emerged into the open air. Here the contrast to the cavern gloom inside gave to the outer world unusual brightness and splendor, so that even under the heavy overarching tree-ferns, which had seemed so dark when I was here before, it now appeared light and cheerful. Almah turned to the right, and we walked along the terrace. But few people were visible. They shrank from the light, and kept themselves in the caverns. Then after a few steps we came to the base of a tall half-pyramid, the summit of which was above the tops of the trees. I pointed to this, as though I wished to go up. Almah hesitated for a moment, and seemed to shrink back, but at length, overcoming her reluctance, began the ascent. A flight of stony steps led up. On reaching the top, I found it about thirty feet long by fifteen wide, with a high stone table in the middle. At that moment, however, I scarce noticed the pyramid summit, and I only describe it now because I was fated before long to see it with different feelings. What I then noticed was the vast and wondrous display of all the glories of nature that burst at once upon my view. There was that same boundless sea, rising up high toward the horizon, as I had seen it before, and suggesting infinite extent. There were the blue waters breaking into foam, the ships traversing the deep, the far-encircling shores green in vegetation, the high rampart of ice-bound mountains that shut in the land, making it a world by itself. There was the sun, low on the horizon, which it traversed on its long orbit, lighting up all these scenes till the six-months day should end and the six-months night begin.

For a long time I stood feasting my eyes upon all this splendor, and at length turned to see whether Almah shared my feelings. One look was enough. She stood absorbed in the scene, as though she were drinking in deep draughts of all this matchless beauty. I felt amazed at this; I saw how different she seemed from the others, and could not account for it. But as yet I knew too little of the language to question her, and could only hope for a future explanation when I had learned more.

We descended at length and walked about the terrace and up and down the side streets. All were the same as I had noticed before—terraced streets, with caverns on one side and massive stone structures on the other. I saw deep channels, which were used as drains to carry down mountain torrents. I did not see all at this first walk, but I inspected the whole city in many subsequent walks until its outlines were all familiar. I found it about a mile long and about half a mile wide, constructed in a series of terraces, which rose one above another in a hollow of the mountains round a harbor of the sea. On my walks I met with but few people on the streets, and they all seemed troubled with the light. I saw also occasionally some more of those great birds, the name of which I learned from Almah; it was “opkuk.”

For some time my life went on most delightfully. I found myself surrounded with every comfort and luxury. Almah was my constant associate, and all around regarded us with the profoundest respect. The people were the mildest, most gentle, and most generous that I had ever seen. The Kohen seemed to pass most of his time in making new contrivances for my happiness. This strange people, in their dealings with me and with one another, seemed animated by a universal desire to do kindly acts; and the only possible objection against them was their singular love of darkness.

My freedom was absolute. No one watched me. Almah and I could go where we chose. So far as I could perceive, we were quite at liberty, if we wished, to take a boat and escape over the sea. It seemed also quite likely that if we had ordered out a galley and a gang of oarsmen, we should have been supplied with all that we might want in the most cheerful manner. Such a thought, however, was absurd. Flight! Why should I think of flying?

I had long ago lost all idea of time; and here, where it was for the present perpetual day, I was more at a loss than ever. I supposed that it was somewhere in the month of March, but whether at the beginning or the end I could not tell. The people had a regular system of wake-time and sleep-time, by which they ordered their lives; but whether these respective times were longer or shorter than the days and nights at home I could not tell at that time, though I afterward learned all about it. On the whole, I was perfectly content—nay, more, perfectly happy; more so, indeed, than ever in my life, and quite willing to forget home and friends and everything in the society of Almah. While in her company there was always one purpose upon which I was most intent, and that was to master the language. I made rapid progress, and while she was absent I sought out others, especially the Kohen, with whom to practice. The Kohen was always most eager to aid me in every conceivable way or to any conceivable thing; and he had such a gentle manner and showed such generous qualities that I soon learned to regard him with positive affection.

Almah was always absent for several hours after I rose in the morning, and when she made her appearance it was with the face and manner of one who had returned from some unpleasant task. It always took some time for her to regain that cheerfulness which she usually showed. I soon felt a deep curiosity to learn the nature of her employment and office here, and as my knowledge of the language increased I began to question her. My first attempts were vain. She looked at me with indescribable mournfulness and shook her head. This, however, only confirmed me in my suspicions that her duties, whatever they might be, were of a painful nature; so I urged her to tell me, and asked her as well as I could if I might not share them or help her in some way. To all this, however, she only returned sighs and mournful looks for an answer. It seemed to me, from her manner and from the general behavior of the people, that there was no express prohibition on my learning anything, doing anything, or going anywhere; and so, after this, I besought her to let me accompany her some time. But this too she refused. My requests were often made, and as I learned more and more of the language I was able to make them with more earnestness and effect, until at length I succeeded in overcoming her objections.

“It is for your own sake,” said she, “that I have refused, Atam-or. I do not wish to lessen your happiness. But you must know all soon; and so, if you wish to come with me and see what I have to do, why, you may come the next jom.”

This meant the next day, jom being the division of time corresponding with our day. At this promise I was so full of gratitude that I forgot all about the dark suggestiveness of her words. The next jom I arose sooner than usual and went forth. I found Almah waiting for me. She looked troubled, and greeted me with a mournful smile.

“You will find pain in this,” said she; “but you wish it, and if you still wish it, why, I will take you with me.”

At this I only persisted the more, and so we set forth. We went through the cavern passages. Few people were there; all seemed asleep. Then we went out-of-doors and came into the full blaze of that day which here knew no night, but prolonged itself into months. For a while Almah stood looking forth between the trees to where the bright sunlight sparkled on the sea, and then with a sigh she turned to the left. I followed. On coming to the next portal she went in. I followed, and found myself in a rough cavern, dark and forbidding. Traversing this we came to an inner doorway, closed with a heavy mat. This she raised, and passed through, while I went in after her.

I found myself in a vast cavern, full of dim, sparkling lights, which served not to illuminate it, but merely to indicate its enormous extent. Far above rose the vaulted roof, to a height of apparently a hundred feet. Under this there was a lofty half-pyramid with stone steps. All around, as far as I could see in the obscure light, there were niches in the walls, each one containing a figure with a light burning at its feet. I took them for statues. Almah pointed in silence to one of these which was nearest, and I went up close so as to see it.

The first glance that I took made me recoil with horror. It was no statue that I saw in that niche, but a shriveled human form—a hideous sight. It was dark and dried; it was fixed in a sitting posture, with its hands resting on its knees, and its hollow eyes looking forward. On its head was the mockery of a wreath of flowers, while from its heart there projected the handle and half of the blade of a knife which had been thrust there. What was the meaning of this knife? It seemed to tell of a violent death. Yet the flowers must surely be a mark of honor. A violent death with honor, and the embalmed remains—these things suggested nothing else than the horrid thought of a human sacrifice. I looked away with eager and terrible curiosity. I saw all the niches, hundreds upon hundreds, all filled with these fearful occupants. I turned again with a sinking heart to Almah. Her face was full of anguish.

“This is my duty,” said she. “Every jom I must come here and crown these victims with fresh flowers.”

A feeling of sickening horror overwhelmed me. Almah had spoken these words and stood looking at me with a face of woe. This, then, was that daily task from which she was wont to return in such sadness—an abhorrent task to her, and one to which familiarity had never reconciled her. What was she doing here? What dark fate was it that thus bound this child of light to these children of darkness? or why was she thus compelled to perform a service from which all her nature revolted? I read in her face at this moment a horror equal to my own; and at the sight of her distress my own was lessened, and there arose within me a profound sympathy and a strong desire to do something to alleviate her misery.

“This is no place for you,” continued Almah. “Go, and I will soon join you.”

“No,” said I, using her language after my own broken fashion—“no, I will not go—I will stay, I will help, if you will permit.”

She looked at me earnestly, and seemed to see that my resolution was firmly fixed, and that I was not to be dissuaded from it.

“Very well,” said she; “if you do stay and help me, it will be a great relief.”

With these simple words she proceeded to carry out her work. At the foot of the pyramid there was a heap of wreaths made out of fresh flowers, and these were to be placed by her on the heads of the embalmed corpses.

“This work,” said she, “is considered here the highest and most honorable that can be performed. It is given to me out of kindness, and they cannot understand that I can have any other feelings in the performance than those of joy and exultation—here among the dead and in the dark.”

I said nothing, but followed and watched her, carrying the wreaths and supplying her. She went to each niche in succession, and after taking the wreath off each corpse she placed a fresh one on, saying a brief formula at each act. By keeping her supplied with wreaths I was able to lighten her task, so much so that, whereas it usually occupied her more than two hours, on the present occasion it was finished in less than half an hour. She informed me that those which she crowned were the corpses of men who had been sacrificed during the present season—by season meaning the six months of light; and that though many more were here, yet they wore crowns of gold. At the end of ten years they were removed to public sepulchers. The number of those which had to be crowned by her was about a hundred. Her work was only to crown them, the labor of collecting the flowers and weaving the wreaths and attending to the lamps being performed by others.

I left this place with Almah, sad and depressed. She had not told me why these victims had been sacrificed, nor did I feel inclined to ask. A dark suspicion had come to me that these people, underneath all their amiable ways, concealed thoughts, habits, and motives of a frightful kind; and that beyond all my present brightness and happiness there might be a fate awaiting me too horrible for thought. Yet I did not wish to borrow trouble. What I had seen and heard was quite enough for one occasion. I was anxious, rather, to forget it all. Nor did Almah’s words or manner in any way reassure me. She was silent and sad and preoccupied. It was as though she knew the worst, and knowing it, dared not speak; as though there was something more horrible which she dared not reveal. For my part, I feared it so that I dared not ask. It was enough for me just then to know that my mild and self-denying and generous entertainers were addicted to the abhorrent custom of human sacrifices.

CHAPTER X

THE SACRED HUNT

On that very jom the Kohen informed me that they were about to set forth on the “sacred hunt,” an event which always occurred toward the end of the season, and he kindly invited me to go. I, eager to find any relief from the horrible thoughts that had taken possession of me, and full of longing for active exertion, at once accepted the invitation. I was delighted to hear Almah say that she too was going; and I learned at the same time that in this strange land the women were as fond of hunting as the men, and that on such occasions their presence was expected.

The sacred hunt was certainly a strange one. I saw that it was to take place on the water; for a great crowd, numbering over a hundred, went down to the harbor and embarked on board a galley, on which there were a hundred others, who served as rowers. The hunters were all armed with long, light javelins and short swords. Some of these were offered to me, for as yet no one supposed that my rifle and pistol were instruments of destruction, or anything else than ornaments. My refusal to accept their weapons created some surprise, but with their usual civility they did not press their offers further. It was evident that this hunting expedition was only made in obedience to some hallowed custom; for the light of the sun pained their eyes, and all their movements were made with uncertainty and hesitation. With these a hunt by sunlight is the same as a hunt by night would be with us. There was the same confusion and awkwardness.

The Kohen was in command. At his word the galley started, and the rowers pulled out to sea with long, regular strokes. I was anxious to know what the expedition was aimed at, and what were the animals that we expected to get; but I could not make out Almah’s explanations. Her words suggested something of vague terror, vast proportions, and indescribable ferocity; but my ignorance of the language prevented me from learning anything more.

We went along the coast for a few miles, and then came to the mouth of a great river, which seemed to flow from among the mountains. The current was exceedingly swift, and as I looked back it seemed to me that it must be the very stream which had borne me here into this remote world. I afterward found out that this was so—that this stream emerges from among the mountains, flowing from an unknown source. It was over this that I had been borne in my sleep, after I had emerged from the subterranean darkness, and it was by this current that I had been carried into the open sea. As we crossed the estuary of this river I saw that the shores on either side were low, and covered with the rankest vegetation; giant trees of fern, vast reeds and grasses, all arose here in a dense growth impassable to man. Upon the shallow shores the surf was breaking; and here in the tide I saw objects which I at first supposed to be rocks, but afterward found out to be living things. They looked like alligators, but were far larger than the largest alligators known to us, besides being of far more terrific aspect. Toward these the galley was directed, and I now saw with surprise that these were the objects of the sacred hunt.

Suddenly, as the galley was moving along at half-speed, there arose out of the water a thing that looked like the folds of a giant hairy serpent, which, however, proved to be the long neck of an incredible monster, whose immense body soon afterward appeared above the water. With huge fins he propelled himself toward us; and his head, twenty feet in the air, was poised as though about to attack. The head was like that of an alligator, the open jaws showed a fearful array of sharp teeth, the eyes were fiercely glowing, the long neck was covered with a coarse, shaggy mane, while the top of the body, which was out of the water, was incased in an impenetrable cuirass of bone. Such a monster as this seemed unassailable, especially by men who had no missile weapons, and whose eyes were so dim and weak. I therefore expected that the galley would turn and fly from the attack, for the monster itself seemed as large as our vessel; but there was not the slightest thought of flight. On the contrary, every man was on the alert; some sprang to the bow and stood there, awaiting the first shock; others, amidships, stood waiting for the orders of the Kohen. Meanwhile the monster approached, and at length, with a sweep of his long neck, came down upon the dense crowd at the bows. A dozen frail lances were broken against his horny head, a half-dozen wretches were seized and terribly torn by those remorseless jaws. Still none fled. All rushed forward, and with lances, axes, knives, and ropes they sought to destroy the enemy. Numbers of them strove to seize his long neck. In the ardor of the fight the rowers dropped their oars and hurried to the scene, to take part in the struggle. The slaughter was sickening, but not a man quailed. Never had I dreamed of such blind and desperate courage as was now displayed before my horror-stricken eyes. Each sought to outdo the other. They had managed to throw ropes around the monster’s neck, by which he was held close to the galley. His fierce movements seemed likely to drag us all down under the water; and his long neck, free from restraint, writhed and twisted among the struggling crowd of fighting men, in the midst of whom was the Kohen, as desperate and as fearless as any.

All this had taken place in a very short space of time, and I had scarce been able to comprehend the full meaning of it all. As for Almah, she stood pale and trembling, with a face of horror. At last it seemed to me that every man of them would be destroyed, and that they were all throwing their lives away to no purpose whatever. Above all, my heart was wrung for the Kohen, who was there in the midst of his people, lifting his frail and puny arm against the monster. I could endure inaction no longer. I had brought my arms with me, as usual; and now, as the monster raised his head, I took aim at his eye and fired. The report rang out in thunder. Almah gave a shriek, and amid the smoke I saw the long, snake-like neck of the monster sweeping about madly among the men. In the water his vast tail was lashing the surface of the sea, and churning it into foam. Here I once more took aim immediately under the fore-fin, where there was no scaly covering. Once more I fired. This time it was with fatal effect; and after one or two convulsive movements the monster, with a low, deep bellow, let his head fall and gasped out his life.

I hurried forward. There lay the frightful head, with its long neck and shaggy mane, while all around was a hideous spectacle. The destruction of life had been awful. Nineteen were dead, and twenty-eight were wounded, writhing in every gradation of agony, some horribly mangled. The rest stood staring at me in astonishment, not understanding those peals of thunder that had laid the monster low. There was no terror or awe, however—nothing more than surprise; and the Kohen, whose clothes were torn into shreds and covered with blood, looked at me in bewilderment. I said to him, out of my small stock of words, that the wounded ought at once to be cared for. At this he turned away and made some remarks to his men.

I now stood ready to lend my own services, if needful. I expected to take a part in the tender attentions which were the due of these gallant souls, who had exhibited such matchless valor; these men who thought nothing of life, but flung it away at the command of their chief without dreaming of flight or of hesitation. Thus I stood looking on in an expectant attitude, when there came a moment in which I was simply petrified with horror; for the Kohen drew his knife, stooped over the wounded man nearest him, and then stabbed him to the heart with a mortal wound. The others all proceeded to do the same, and they did it in the coolest and most business-like manner, without any passion, without any feeling of any kind, and, indeed, with a certain air of gratification, as though they were performing some peculiarly high and sacred duty. The mildness and benevolence of their faces seemed actually heightened, and the perpetration of this unutterable atrocity seemed to affect these people in the same way in which the performance of acts of humanity might affect us.

For my own part, I stood for a few moments actually motionless from perplexity and horror; then, with a shriek, I rushed forward as if to prevent it; but I was too late. The unutterable deed was done, and the unfortunate wounded, without an exception, lay dead beside their slain companions. As for myself, I was only regarded with fresh wonder, and they all stood blinking at me with their half-closed eyes. Suddenly the Kohen fell prostrate on his knees before me, and bowing his head handed me his bloody knife.

“Atam-or,” said he, “give me also the blessing of darkness and death!”

At these strange words, following such actions, I could say nothing. I was more bewildered than ever, and horror and bewilderment made me dumb. I turned away and went aft to Almah, who had seen it all. She looked at me with an anxious gaze, as if to learn what the effect of all this had been on me. I could not speak a word, but with a vague sense of the necessity of self-preservation, I loaded my rifle, and tried in vain to make out what might be the meaning of this union of gentleness and kindness with atrocious cruelty. Meanwhile, the men all went to work upon various tasks. Some secured lines about the monster so as to tow it astern; others busied themselves with the corpses, collecting them and arranging them in rows. At length we returned, towing the monster astern.

I could not speak until I was back again in the lighted rooms and alone with Almah; then I told her, as well as I could, the horror that I felt.

“It was honor to those brave men,” said she.

“Honor!” said I. “What! to kill them?”

“Yes,” said she; “it is so with these people; with them death is the highest blessing. They all love death and seek after it. To die for another is immortal glory. To kill the wounded was to show that they had died for others. The wounded wished it themselves. You saw how they all sought after death. These people were too generous and kind-hearted to refuse to kill them after they had received wounds.”

At this my perplexity grew deeper than ever, for such an explanation as this only served to make the mystery greater.

“Here,” said she, “no one understands what it is to fear death. They all love it and long for it; but everyone wishes above all to die for others. This is their highest blessing. To die a natural death in bed is avoided if possible.”

All this was incomprehensible.

“Tell me, Almah,” I said—“you hate darkness as I do—do you not fear death?”

“I fear it above all things,” said Almah. “To me it is the horror of life; it is the chief of terrors.”

“So it is with me,” said I. “In my country we call death the King of Terrors.”

“Here,” said Almah, “they call death the Lord of Joy.”

Not long after, the Kohen came in, looking as quiet, as gentle, and as amiable as ever. He showed some curiosity about my rifle, which he called a sepet-ram, or “rod of thunder.” Almah also showed curiosity. I did not care to explain the process of loading it to the Kohen, though Almah had seen me load it in the galley, and I left him to suppose that it was used in some mysterious way. I cautioned him not to handle it carelessly, but found that this caution only made him the more eager to handle it, since the prospect of an accident found an irresistible attraction. I would not let it go out of my own hands, however; and the Kohen, whose self-denial was always most wonderful to me, at once checked his curiosity.

CHAPTER XI

THE SWAMP MONSTER

A few joms after, I was informed by the Kohen that there was to be another sacred hunt. At first I felt inclined to refuse, but on learning that Almah was going, I resolved to go also; for Almah, though generally mistress of her actions, had nevertheless certain duties to perform, and among these was the necessity of accompanying hunting-parties. I did not yet understand her position here, nor had I heard from her yet how it was that she was so different from the rest of them. That was all to be learned at a future time. For the present I had to be satisfied with knowing that she belonged to a different nation, who spoke a different language, and that all her thoughts and feelings were totally different from those of the people among whom she was living. She loved the light, she feared death, and she had never been able in the slightest degree to reconcile herself to the habits of these people. This I could readily understand, for to me it seemed as though they lived in opposition to nature itself.

We went out into the daylight, and then I saw a sight which filled me with amazement. I saw a flock of birds larger than even the opkuks. They were called “opmahera.” They seemed as tall as giraffes, and their long legs indicated great powers of running. Their wings were very short, and not adapted for flight. They were very tractable, and were harnessed for riding in a peculiar way; lines like reins were fastened to the wings, and the driver, who sat close by the neck, guided the bird in this way. Each bird carried two men, but for Almah and me there was a bird apiece. An iron prod was also taken by each driver as a spur. I did not find out until afterward how to drive. At that time the prospect of so novel a ride was such an exciting one that I forgot everything else. The birds seemed quiet and docile. I took it for granted that mine was well trained, and would go with the others of his own accord. We all mounted by means of a stone platform which stood by the pyramid, and soon were on our way.

The speed was amazing; the fastest race-horse at home is slow compared with this. It was as swift as an ordinary railway train, if not more so. For some minutes the novelty of my situation took away all other thoughts, and I held the reins in my hands without knowing how to use them. But this mattered not, for the well-trained bird kept on after the others, while Almah on her bird was close behind me. The pace, as I said, was tremendous, yet no easier motion can be imagined. The bird bounded along with immense leaps, with wings outstretched, but its feet touched the ground so lightly that the motion seemed almost equal to flying. We did not confine ourselves to the roads, for the birds were capable of going over any kind of country in a straight line. On this occasion we passed over wide fields and rocky mountain ridges and deep swamps and sand wastes at the same speed, until at length we reached a vast forest of dense tree-ferns, where the whole band stopped for a short time, after which we took up a new direction, moving on more slowly. The forest grew up out of a swamp, which extended as far as the eye could reach from the sea to the mountains. Along the edge of this forest we went for some time, until at length there came a rushing, crackling sound, as of something moving there among the trees, crushing down everything in its progress. We halted, and did not have to wait long; for soon, not far away, there emerged from the thick forest a figure of incredible size and most hideous aspect.

It looked like one of those fabled dragons such as may be seen in pictures, but without wings. It was nearly a hundred feet in length, with a stout body and a long tail, covered all over with impenetrable scales. It hind-legs were rather longer than its fore-legs, and it moved its huge body with ease and rapidity. Its feet were armed with formidable claws. But its head was most terrific. It was a vast mass of bone, with enormous eyes that glared like fire; its jaws opened to the width of six or eight feet, and were furnished with rows of sharp teeth, while at the extremity of its nose there was a tusk several feet long, like the horn of a rhinoceros, curving backward. All this I took in at the first glance, and the next instant the whole band of hunters, with their usual recklessness, flung themselves upon the monster.

For a short time all was the wildest confusion—an intermingling of birds and men, with the writhing and roaring beast. With his huge claws and his curved horn and his wide jaws he dealt death and destruction all around; yet still the assailants kept at their work. Many leaped down to the ground and rushed close up to the monster, thrusting their lances into the softer and more unprotected parts of his body; while others, guiding their birds with marvelous dexterity, assailed him on all sides. The birds, too, were kept well to their work; nor did they exhibit any fear. It was not until they were wounded that they sought to fly. Still, the contest seemed too unequal. The sacrifice of life was horrible. I saw men and birds literally torn to pieces before my eyes. Nevertheless, the utter fearlessness of the assailants confounded me. In spite of the slaughter, fresh crowds rushed on. They clambered over his back, and strove to drive their lances under his bony cuirass. In the midst of them I saw the Kohen. By some means he had reached the animal’s back, and was crawling along, holding by the coarse shaggy mane. At length he stopped, and with a sudden effort thrust his lance into the monster’s eye. The vast beast gave a low and terrible howl; his immense tail went flying all about; in his pain he rolled over and over, crushing underneath him in his awful struggles all who were nearest. I could no longer be inactive. I raised my rifle, and as the beast in his writhings exposed his belly I took aim at the soft flesh just inside his left fore-leg, and fired both barrels.

At that instant my bird gave a wild, shrill scream and a vast bound into the air, and then away it went like the wind—away, I know not where. That first bound had nearly jerked me off; but I managed to avoid this and now instinctively clung with all my might to the bird’s neck, still holding my rifle. The speed of the bird was twice as great as it had been before—as the speed of a runaway horse surpasses that of the same horse when trotting at his ordinary rate and under control. I could scarcely make out where I was going. Rocks, hills, swamps, fields, trees, sand, and sea all seemed to flash past in one confused assemblage, and the only thought in my mind was that I was being carried to some remote wilderness, to be flung there bruised and maimed among the rocks, to perish helplessly. Every moment I expected to be thrown, for the progress of the bird was not only inconceivably swift, but it also gave immense leaps into the air; and it was only its easy mode of lighting on the ground after each leap that saved me from being hurled off. As it was, however, I clung instinctively to the bird’s neck, until at last it came to a stop so suddenly that my hands slipped, and I fell to the ground.

I was senseless for I know not how long. When at last I revived I found myself propped up against a bank, and Almah bathing my head with cold water. Fortunately, I had received no hurt. In falling I had struck on my head, but it was against the soft turf, and though I was stunned, yet on regaining my senses no further inconvenience was experienced. The presence of Almah was soon explained. The report of the rifle had startled her bird also, which had bounded away in terror like mine; but Almah understood how to guide him, and managed to keep him after me, so as to be of assistance in case of need. She had been close behind all the time, and had stopped when I fell, and come to my assistance.

The place was a slope looking out upon an arm of the sea, and apparently remote from human abode. The scenery was exquisitely beautiful. A little distance off we saw the edge of the forest; the open country was dotted with clumps of trees; on the other side of the arm of the sea was an easy declivity covered with trees of luxuriant foliage and vast dimensions; farther away on one side rose the icy summits of impassable mountains; on the other side there extended the blue expanse of the boundless sea. The spot where I lay was over-shadowed by the dense foliage of a tree which was unlike anything that I had ever seen, and seemed like some exaggerated grass; at our feet a brook ran murmuring to the shore; in the air and all around were innumerable birds.

The situation in which I found myself seemed inexpressibly sweet, and all the more so from the gentle face of Almah. Would it not be well, I thought, to remain here? Why should Almah go back to her repulsive duties? Why should we return to those children of blood, who loved death and darkness? Here we might pass our days together unmolested. The genial climate would afford us warmth; we needed no shelter except the trees, and as for food, there were the birds of the air in innumerable flocks.

I proposed this to her; she smiled sadly. “You forget,” said she, “this season of light will not last much longer. In a few more joms the dark season will begin, and then we should perish in a place like this.”

“Are there no caverns here?”

“Oh no. This country has no inhabitants. It is full of fierce wild beasts. We should be destroyed before one jom.”

“But must we go back?” said I. “You have a country. Where is it? See, here are these birds. They are swift. They can carry us anywhere. Come, let us fly, and you can return to your own country.”

Almah shook her head. “These birds,” said she, “cannot go over the sea, or through these endless forests. My country can only be reached by sea.”

“Can we not hurry back, seize a boat, and go? I know how to sail over the water without oars.”

“We certainly might leave the country; but there is another difficulty. The dark season is coming, and we should never be able to find our way. Besides, the sea is full of monsters, and you and I would perish.”

“At any rate, let us try. I have my sepet-ram.”

“We could never find our way.”

“Only tell me,” said I, “where it lies, and I will go by the stars.”

“The trouble is,” said she, “that even if we did succeed in reaching my land, I should be sent back again; for I was sent here as a sacred hostage, and I have been here four seasons.”

But in the midst of this conversation a sound arrested our attention—heavy, puffing, snorting sound, as of some living thing. Hastily I started up, rifle in hand, and looked; and as I looked I felt my nerves thrill with horror. There, close by the shore, I saw a vast form—a living thing—full sixty feet in length. It had a body like that of an elephant, the head of a crocodile, and enormous glaring eyes. Its immense body was covered with impenetrable armor, and was supported on legs long enough to allow it to run with great speed. It differed in many respects from the monster of the swamp—the legs being longer, the tail shorter and thinner, and its head and jaws larger and longer. I shrank back, thinking of seizing Almah and hiding. But I saw that she had already taken the alarm, and with more presence of mind than I had she had hurried to the birds, who were standing near, and had made them lie down. As I turned, she beckoned to me without a word. I hurried to her. She told me to mount. I did so at once; she did the same. Scarce had we mounted than the monster perceived us, and with a terrible bellow came rushing toward us. Almah drove her goad deep into her bird, which at once rose and went off like the wind, and mine started to follow. The vast monster came on. His roar sounded close behind, and I heard the clash of his tremendous jaws; but the swift bird with a bound snatched me from his grasp, and bore me far away out of his reach. Away I went like the wind. Almah was ahead, looking back from time to time, and waving her hand joyously. So we went on, returning on our course at a speed almost as great as that with which we had come. By this time the novelty had in part worn away, and the easy motion gave me confidence. I noticed that we were travelling a wild, uninhabited, and rocky district by the sea-side. Before me the country spread far away, interspersed with groves, terminating in forests, and bounded in the far distance by mountains. The country here was so rough that it seemed as if nothing could pass over it except such creatures as these—the opmaheras.

At length we arrived at the spot which we had left—the scene of the hunt. We could see it from afar, for the opmaheras stood quietly around, and the men were busy elsewhere. As we drew nearer I saw the vast body of the monster. They had succeeded in killing it, yet—oh heavens, at what a cost! One half of all the party lay dead. The rest were unharmed, and among these was the Kohen. He greeted me with a melancholy smile. That melancholy smile, however, was not caused by the sad fate of his brave companions, but, as I afterward learned, simply and solely because he himself had not gained his death. When I saw that there were no wounded, a dark suspicion came over me that the wounded had again been put to death. I did not care to ask. The truth was too terrible to hear, and I felt glad that accident had drawn me away. It was all a dark and dreadful mystery. These people were the most gentle, the most self-sacrificing, and the most generous in the world; yet their strange and unnatural love of death made them capable of endless atrocities. Life and light seemed to them as actual evils, and death and darkness the only things worthy of regard.

Almah told me that they were going to bring the monster home, and had sent for opkuks to drag it along. The dead were also to be fetched back. There was no further necessity for us to remain, and so we returned at once.

On the way, Almah said, “Do not use the sepet-ram again. You can do no good with it. You must not make it common. Keep it. The time may come when you will need it: you are not fond of death.”

I shuddered.

“Never forget,” she said, “that here death is considered the chief blessing. It is useless for you to interfere in their ways. You cannot change them.”

Some more joms passed. The bodies were embalmed, and Almah had more victims to crown with garlands in the horrible cheder nebilin.

CHAPTER XII

THE BALEFUL SACRIFICE

I resolved to go on no more sacred hunts. I was sickened at the horrible cruelty, the needless slaughter, the mad self-sacrifice which distinguished them. I was overwhelmed with horror at the merciless destruction of brave comrades, whose wounds, so gallantly received, should have been enough to inspire pity even in a heart of stone. The gentleness, the incessant kindness, the matchless generosity of these people seemed all a mockery. What availed it all when the same hand that heaped favors upon me, the guest, could deal death without compunction upon friends and relatives? It seemed quite possible for the Kohen to kill his own child, or cut the throat of his wife, if the humor seized him. And how long could I hope to be spared among a people who had this insane thirst for blood?

Some more joms had passed, and the light season had almost ended. The sun had been sinking lower and lower. The time had at last come when only a portion of his disk would be visible for a little while above the hills, and then he would be seen no more for six months of our time. This was the dark season, and, as I had already learned, its advent was always hailed with joy and celebrated with solemn services, for the dark season freed them from their long confinement, permitted them to go abroad, to travel by sea and land, to carry on their great works, to indulge in all their most important labors and favorite amusements. The Kohen asked me to be present at the great festival, and I gladly consented. There seemed to be nothing in this that could be repellent. As I was anxious to witness some of their purely religious ceremonies, I wished to go. When I told Almah, she looked sad, but said nothing. I wondered at this, and asked her if she was going. She informed me that she would have to go, whereupon I assured her that this was an additional reason why I should go.

I went with Almah. The Kohen attended us with his usual kind and gracious consideration. It seemed almost as though he was our servant. He took us to a place where we could be seated, although all the others were standing. Almah wished to refuse, but I prevailed upon her to sit down, and she did so.

The scene was upon the semicircular terrace in front of the cavern, and we were seated upon a stone platform beside the chief portal. A vast crowd was gathered in front. Before us arose the half-pyramid of which I have already spoken. The light was faint. It came from the disk of the sun, which was partly visible over the icy crest of the distant mountains. Far away the sea was visible, rising high over the tops of the trees, while overhead the brighter stars were plainly discernible.

The Kohen ascended the pyramid, and others followed. At the base there was a crowd of men, with emaciated forms and faces, and coarse, squalid attire, who looked like the most abject paupers, and seemed the lowest in the land. As the Kohen reached the summit there arose a strange sound—a mournful, plaintive chant, which seemed to be sung chiefly by the paupers at the base of the pyramid. The words of this chant I could not make out, but the melancholy strain affected me in spite of myself. There was no particular tune, and nothing like harmony; but the effect of so many voices uniting in this strain was very powerful and altogether indescribable. In the midst of this I saw the crowd parting asunder so as to make way for something; and through the passage thus formed I saw a number of youths in long robes, who advanced to the pyramid, singing as they went. Then they ascended the steps, two by two, still singing, and at length reached the summit, where they arranged themselves in order. There were thirty of them and they arranged themselves in three rows of ten each, and as they stood they never ceased to sing, while the paupers below joined in the strain.

And now the sun was almost hidden, and there was only the faintest line from the upper edge of his disk perceptible over the icy mountain-tops. The light was a softened twilight glow. It was to be the last sight of the sun for six months, and this was the spectacle upon which he threw his parting beam. So the sun passed away, and then there came the beginning of the long dark season. At first, however, there was rather twilight than darkness, and this twilight continued long. All this only served to heighten the effect of this striking scene; and as the light faded away, I looked with increasing curiosity upon the group at the top of the pyramid. Almah was silent. I half turned, and said something to her about the beauty of the view. She said nothing, but looked at me with such an expression that I was filled with amazement. I saw in her face something like a dreadful anticipation—something that spoke of coming evil. The feeling was communicated to me, and I turned my eyes back to the group on the pyramid with vague fears in my soul.

Those fears were but too well founded, for now the dread ceremony began. The Kohen drew his knife, and placed himself at the head of the stone table. One of the youths came forward, stepped upon it, and lay down on his back with his head toward the Kohen. The mournful chant still went on. Then the Kohen raised his knife and plunged it into the heart of the youth. I sat for a moment rooted to the spot; then a groan burst from me in spite of myself. Almah caught my hands in hers, which were as cold as ice.

“Be firm,” she said, “or we are both lost. Be firm, Atam-or!”

“I must go,” said I, and I tried to rise.

“Don’t move,” she said, “for your life! We are lost if you move. Keep still—restrain yourself—shut your eyes.”

I tried to do so, but could not. There was a horrible fascination about the scene which forced me to look and see all. The Kohen took the victim, and drawing it from the altar, threw it over the precipice to the ground beneath. Then a loud shout burst forth from the great crowd. “Sibgu Sibgin! Ranenu! Hodu lecosck!” which means, “Sacrifice the victims! Rejoice! Give thanks to darkness!”

Then another of the youths went forward amid the singing, and laid himself down to meet the same fate; and again the corpse was flung from the top of the pyramid, and again the shout arose. All the others came forward in the same manner. Oh, horrible, horrible, thrice horrible spectacle! I do not remember how I endured it. I sat there with Almah, trying to restrain myself as she had entreated me, more for her sake than for my own, a prey to every feeling of horror, anguish, and despair. How it all ended I do not know, nor do I know how I got away from the place; for I only remember coming back to my senses in the lighted grotto, with Almah bending anxiously over me.

After this there remained a dark mystery and an ever-present horror. I found myself among a people who were at once the gentlest of the human race and the most blood-thirsty—the kindest and the most cruel. This mild, amiable, and self-sacrificing Kohen, how was it possible that he should transform himself to a fiend incarnate? And for me and for Almah, what possible hope could there be? What fate might they have in reserve for us? Of what avail was all this profound respect, this incessant desire to please, this attention to our slightest wish, this comfort and luxury and splendor, this freedom of speech and action? Was it anything better than a mockery? Might it not be the shallow kindness of the priest to the victim reserved for the sacrifice? Was it, after all, in any degree better than the kindness of the cannibal savages on those drear outer shores who received us with such hospitality, but only that they might destroy us at last? Might they not all belong to the same race, dwelling as they did in caverns, shunning the sunlight, and blending kindness with cruelty? It was an awful thought!

Yet I had one consolation. Almah was with me, and so long as she was spared to me I could endure this life. I tried for her sake to resist the feelings that were coming over me. I saw that she too was a prey to ever-deepening sadness. She felt as I did, and this despair of soul might wreck her young life if there were no alleviation. And so I sought to alleviate her distress and to banish her sadness. The songs of these people had much impressed me; and one day, as I talked about this with Almah, she brought forth a musical instrument of peculiar shape, which was not unlike a guitar, though the shape was square and there were a dozen strings. Upon this she played, singing at the same time some songs of a plaintive character. An idea now occurred to me to have an instrument made according to my own plans, which should be nothing less than a violin. Almah was delighted at the proposal, and at once found a very clever workman, who under my direction succeeded in producing one which served my purpose well. I was a good violinist, and in this I was able to find solace for myself and for Almah for many a long hour.

The first time that I played was memorable. As the tones floated through the air they caught the ears of those outside, and soon great numbers came into the apartment, listening in amazement and in rapt attention. Even the painful light was disregarded in the pleasure of this most novel sensation, and I perceived that if the sense of sight was deficient among them, that of hearing was sufficiently acute. I played many times, and sometimes sang from among the songs of different nations; but those which these people liked best were the Irish and Scottish melodies—those matchless strains created by the genius of the Celtic race, and handed down from immemorial ages through long generations. In these there was nothing artificial, nothing transient. They were the utterance of the human heart, and in them there was that touch of nature which makes all men kin. These were the immortal passions which shall never cease to affect the soul of man, and which had power even here; the strains of love, of sadness, and of pathos were sweet and enticing to this gentle race; for in their mild manners and their outburst of cruelty they seemed to be not unlike the very race which had created this music, since the Celt is at once gentle and blood-thirsty.

I played “Tara,” “Bonnie Doon,” “The Last Rose of Summer,” “The Land of the Leal,” “Auld Lang Syne,” “Lochaber.” They stood entranced, listening with all their souls. They seemed to hunger and thirst after this music, and the strains of the inspired Celtic race seemed to come to them like the revelation of the glory of heaven. Then I played more lively airs. Some I played a second time, singing the words. They seemed eager to have the same one played often. At last a grisly thought came to me: it was that they would learn these sweet strains, and put their own words to them so as to use them at the awful sacrifices. After that I would play no more.

It is a land of tender love and remorseless cruelty. Music is all-powerful to awaken the one, but powerless to abate the other; and the eyes that weep over the pathetic strains of “Lochaber” can gaze without a tear upon the death-agonies of a slaughtered friend.

CHAPTER XIII

THE AWFUL “MISTA KOSEK”

The terrible sacrifice marked the end of the light season. The dark season had now begun, which would last for half the coming year. No more sunlight would now be visible, save at first for a few joms, when at certain times the glare would be seen shooting up above the icy crests of the mountains. Now the people all moved out of the caverns into the stone houses on the opposite side of the terraces, and the busy throng transferred themselves and their occupations to the open air. This with them was the season of activity, when all their most important affairs were undertaken and carried out; the season, too, of enjoyment, when all the chief sports and festivals took place. Then the outer world all awoke to life; the streets were thronged, fleets of galleys came forth from their moorings, and the sounds of labor and of pleasure, of toil and revelry, arose into the darkened skies. Then the city was a city of the living, no longer silent, but full of bustle, and the caverns were frequented but little. This cavern life was only tolerable during the light season, when the sun-glare was over the land; but now, when the beneficent and grateful darkness pervaded all things, the outer world was infinitely more agreeable.

To me, however, the arrival of the dark season brought only additional gloom. I could not get rid of the thought that I was reserved for some horrible fate, in which Almah might also be involved. We were both aliens here, in a nation of kind-hearted and amiable miscreants—of generous, refined, and most self-denying fiends; of men who were highly civilized, yet utterly wrong-headed and irreclaimable in their blood-thirsty cruelty. The stain of blood-guiltiness was over all the land. What was I, that I could hope to be spared? The hope was madness, and I did not pretend to indulge it.

The only consolation was Almah. The manners of these people were such that we were still left as unconstrained as ever in our movements, and always, wherever we went, we encountered nothing but amiable smiles and courteous offices. Everyone was always eager to do anything for us—to give, to go, to act, to speak, as though we were the most honored of guests, the pride of the city. The Kohen was untiring in his efforts to please. He was in the habit of making presents every time he came to see me, and on each occasion the present was of a different kind; at one time it was a new robe of curiously wrought feathers, at another some beautiful gem, at another some rare fruit. He also made incessant efforts to render my situation pleasant, and was delighted at my rapid progress in acquiring the language.

On the jom following the sacrifice I accompanied Almah as she went to her daily task, and after it was over I asked when the new victims would be placed here. “How long does it take to embalm them?” I added.

Almah looked at me earnestly. “They will not bring them here; they will not embalm them,” said she.

“Why not?” I asked; “what will they do with them?”

“Do not ask,” said she. “It will pain you to know.”

In spite of repeated solicitation she refused to give me any satisfaction. I felt deeply moved at her words and her looks. What was it, I wondered, that could give me pain? or what could there still be that could excite fear in me, who had learned and seen so much? I could not imagine. It was evidently some disposal of the bodies of the victims—that was plain. Turning this over in my mind, with vague conjectures as to Almah’s meaning, I left her and walked along the terrace until I came to the next cavern. This had never been open before, and I now entered through curiosity to see what it might be. I saw a vast cavern, quite as large as the cheder nebilin, full of people, who seemed to be engaged in decorating it. Hundreds were at work, and they had brought immense tree-ferns, which were placed on either side in long rows, with their branches meeting and interlacing at the top. It looked like the interior of some great Gothic cathedral at night, and the few twinkling lights that were scattered here and there made the shadowy outline just visible to me.

I asked one of the bystanders what this might be, and he told me that it was the Mista Kosek, which means the “Feast of Darkness,” from which I gathered that they were about to celebrate the advent of the dark season with a feast. From what I knew of their character this seemed quite intelligible, and there was much beauty and taste in the arrangements. All were industrious and orderly, and each one seemed most eager to assist his neighbor. Indeed, there seemed to be a friendly rivalry in this which at times amounted to positive violence; for more than once when a man was seen carrying too large a burden, someone else would insist on taking it from him. At first these altercations seemed exactly like the quarrels of workmen at home, but a closer inspection showed that it was merely the persistent effort of one to help another.

I learned that the feast was to take place as soon as the hall was decorated, and that it would be attended by a great multitude. I felt a great interest in it. There seemed something of poetic beauty in this mode of welcoming the advent of a welcome season, and it served to mitigate the horrible remembrance of that other celebration, upon which I could not think without a shudder. I thought that it would be pleasant to join with them here, and resolved to ask Almah to come with me, so that she might explain the meaning of the ceremonies. Full of this thought, I went to her and told her my wish. She looked at me with a face full of amazement and misery. In great surprise I questioned her eagerly.

“Ask me nothing,” said she. “I will answer nothing; but do not think of it. Do not go near it. Stay in your room till the fearful repast is over.”

“Fearful? How is it fearful?” I asked.

“Everything here is fearful,” said Almah, with a sigh. “Every season it grows worse, and I shall grow at length to hate life and love death as these people do. They can never understand us, and we can never understand them. Oh, if I could but once more stand in my own dear native land but for one moment—to see once more the scenes and the faces that I love so well! Oh, how different is this land from mine! Here all is dark, all is terrible. There the people love the light and rejoice in the glorious sun, and when the dark season comes they wait, and have no other desire than long day. There we live under the sky, in the eye of the sun. We build our houses, and when the dark season comes we fill them with lamps that make a blaze like the sun itself.”

“We must try to escape,” I said, in a low voice.

“Escape!” said she. “That is easy enough. We might go now; but where?”

“Back,” said I, “to your own country. See, the sky is dotted with stars: I can find my way by them.”

“Yes,” said she, “if I could only tell you where to go; but I cannot. My country lies somewhere over the sea, but where, I know not. Over the sea there are many lands, and we might reach one even worse than this.”

“Perhaps,” said I, “the Kohen might allow us to go away to your country, and send us there. He is most generous and most amiable. He seems to spend most of his time in efforts to make us happy. There must be many seamen in this nation who know the way. It would be worth trying.”

Almah shook her head. “You do not understand these people,” said she. “Their ruling passion is the hatred of self, and therefore they are eager to confer benefits on others. The only hope of life that I have for you and for myself is in this, that if they kill us they will lose their most agreeable occupation. They value us most highly, because we take everything that is given us. You and I now possess as our own property all this city and all its buildings, and all the people have made themselves our slaves.”

At this I was utterly bewildered.

“I don’t understand,” said I.

“I suppose not,” said Almah; “but you will understand better after you have been here longer. At any rate, you can see for yourself that the ruling passion here is self-denial and the good of others. Everyone is intent upon this, from the Kohen up to the most squalid pauper.”

“_Up_ to the most squalid pauper?” said I. “I do not understand you. You mean _down_ to the most squalid pauper.”

“No,” said Almah; “I mean what I say. In this country the paupers form the most honored and envied class.”

“This is beyond my comprehension,” said I. “But if this is really so, and if these people pretend to be our slaves, why may we not order out a galley and go?”

“Oh, well, with you in your land, if a master were to order his slaves to cut his throat and poison his children and burn his house, would the slaves obey?”

“Certainly not.”

“Well, our slaves here would not—in fact could not—obey a command that would be shocking to their natures. They think that we are in the best of all lands, and my request to be sent home would be utterly monstrous.”

“I suppose,” said I, “they would kill us if we asked them to do so?”

“Yes,” said Almah; “for they think death the greatest blessing.”

“And if at the point of death we should beg for life, would they spare us?”

“Certainly not,” said Almah. “Would you kill a man who asked for death? No more would these people spare a man who asked for life.”

All this was so utterly incomprehensible that I could pursue the subject no further. I saw, however, that Almah was wretched, dejected, and suffering greatly from home-sickness. Gladly would I have taken her and started off on a desperate flight by sea or land—gladly would I have dared every peril, although I well knew what tremendous perils there were; but she would not consent, and believed the attempt to be useless. I could only wait, therefore, and indulge the hope that at last a chance of escape might one day come, of which she would be willing to avail herself.

Almah utterly refused to go to the feast, and entreated me not to go; but this only served to increase my curiosity, and I determined to see it for myself, whatever it was. She had seen it, and why should not I? Whatever it might be, my nerves could surely stand the shock as well as hers. Besides, I was anxious to know the very worst; and if there was anything that could surpass in atrocity what I had already witnessed, it were better that I should not remain in ignorance of it.

So at length, leaving Almah, I returned to the hall of the feast. I found there a vast multitude, which seemed to comprise the whole city—men, women, children, all were there. Long tables were laid out. The people were all standing an waiting. A choir was singing plaintive strains that sounded like the chant of the sacrifice. Those nearest me regarded me with their usual amiable smiles, and wished to conduct me to some place of honor; but I did not care about taking part in this feast. I wished to be a mere spectator, nothing more. I walked past and came to the next cavern. This seemed to be quite as large as the other. There was a crowd of people here also, and at one end there blazed an enormous fire. It was a furnace that seemed to be used for cooking the food of this banquet, and there was a thick steam rising from an immense cauldron, while the air was filled with an odor like that of a kitchen.

All this I took in at a glance, and at the same instant I saw something else. There were several very long tables, which stood at the sides of the cavern and in the middle, and upon each of these I saw lying certain things covered over with cloths. The shape of these was more than suggestive—it told me all. It was a sight of horror—awful, tremendous, unspeakable! For a moment I stood motionless staring; then all the cavern seemed to swim around me. I reeled, I fell, and sank into nothingness.

When I revived I was in the lighted grotto, lying on a couch, with Almah bending over me. Her face was full of tenderest anxiety, yet there was also apparent a certain solemn gloom that well accorded with my own feelings. As I looked at her she drew a long breath, and buried her face in her hands.

After a time my recollection returned, and all came back to me. I rose to a sitting posture.

“Do not rise yet,” said Almah, anxiously; “you are weak.”

“No,” said I; “I am as strong as ever; but I’m afraid that you are weaker.”

Almah shuddered.

“If you had told me exactly what it was, I would not have gone.”

“I could not tell you,” said she. “It is too terrible to name. Even the thought is intolerable. I told you not to go. Why did you go?”

She spoke in accents of tender reproach, and there were tears in her eyes.

“I did not think of anything so hideous as that,” said I. “I thought that there might be a sacrifice, but nothing worse.”

I now learned that when I fainted I had been raised most tenderly, and the Kohen himself came with me as I was carried back, and he thought that Almah would be my most agreeable nurse. The Kohen was most kind and sympathetic, and all the people vied with one another in their efforts to assist me—so much so that there was the greatest confusion. It was only by Almah’s express entreaty that they retired and left me with her.

Here was a new phase in the character of this mysterious people. Could I ever hope to understand them? Where other people are cruel to strangers, or at best indifferent, these are eager in their acts of kindness; they exhibit the most unbounded hospitality, the most lavish generosity, the most self-denying care and attention; where others would be offended at the intrusion of a stranger, and enraged at his unconquerable disgust, these people had no feeling save pity, sympathy, and a desire to alleviate his distress. And yet—oh, and yet!—oh, thought of horror!—what was this that I had seen? The abhorrent savages in the outer wilderness were surely of the same race as these. They too received us kindly, they too lavished upon us their hospitality, and yet there followed the horror of that frightful repast. Here there had been kindness and generosity and affectionate attention, to be succeeded by deeds without a name. Ah me! what an hour that was! And yet it was as nothing compared to what lay before me in the future.

But the subject was one of which I dared not speak—one from which I had to force my thoughts away. I took the violin and played “Lochaber” till Almah wept, and I had to put it away. Then I begged her to play or sing. She brought an instrument like a lute, and upon this she played some melancholy strains. At length the Kohen came in. His mild, benevolent face never exhibited more gentle and affectionate sympathy than now. He seated himself, and with eyes half closed, as usual, talked much; and yet, with a native delicacy which always distinguished this extraordinary man, he made no allusion to the awful Mista Kosek. For my own part, I could not speak. I was absent-minded, overwhelmed with gloom and despair, and at the same time full of aversion toward him and all his race. One question, however, I had to put.

“Who were the victims of the Mista Kosek?”

“They?” said he, with an agreeable smile. “Oh, they were the victims of the sacrifice.”

I sank back in my seat, and said no more. The Kohen then took Almah’s lute, played and sang in a very sweet voice, and at length, with his usual consideration, seeing that I looked weary, he retired.

CHAPTER XIV

I LEARN MY DOOM

Horror is a feeling that cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it. Sadness, whether from bereavement, or disappointment, or misfortune of any kind, may linger on through life. In my case, however, the milder and more enduring feeling of sadness had no sufficient cause for existence. The sights which I had seen inspired horror, and horror only. But when the first rush of this feeling had passed there came a reaction. Calmness followed, and then all the circumstances of my life here conspired to perpetuate that calm. For here all on the surface was pleasant and beautiful; all the people were amiable and courteous and most generous. I had light and luxury and amusements. Around me there were thousands of faces, all greeting me with cordial affection, and thousands of hands all ready to perform my slightest wish. Above all, there was Almah. Everything combined to make her most dear to me. My life had been such that I never before had seen anyone whom I loved; and here Almah was the one congenial associate in a whole world of aliens: she was beautiful and gentle and sympathetic, and I loved her dearly, even before I understood what my feelings were. One day I learned all, and found that she was more precious to me than all the world.

It was one jom when she did not make her appearance as usual. On asking after her I learned that she was ill. At this intelligence there came over me a feeling of sickening anxiety and fear. Almah ill! What if it should prove serious? Could I endure life here without her sweet companionship? Of what value was life without her? And as I asked myself these questions I learned that Almah had become dearer to me than life itself, and that in her was all the sunshine of my existence. While she was absent, life was nothing; all its value, all its light, its flavor, its beauty, were gone. I felt utterly crushed. I forgot all else save her illness, and all that I had endured seemed as nothing when compared with this.

In the midst of my own anxiety I was surprised to find that the whole community was most profoundly agitated. Among all classes there seemed to be but one thought—her illness. I could overhear them talking I could see them wait outside to hear about her. It seemed to be the one subject of interest, beside which all others were forgotten. The Kohen was absorbed in her case; all the physicians of the city were more or less engaged in her behalf; and there came forward as volunteers every woman in the place who had any knowledge of sick-duties. I was somewhat perplexed, however, at their manner. They were certainly agitated and intensely interested, yet not exactly sad. Indeed, from what I heard it seemed as though this strange people regarded sickness as rather a blessing than otherwise. This, however, did not interfere in the slightest degree with the most intense interest in her, and the most assiduous attention. The Kohen in particular was devoted to her. He was absent-minded, silent, and full of care. On the whole, I felt more than ever puzzled, and less able than ever to understand these people. I loved them, yet loathed them; for the Kohen I had at once affection and horror. He looked like an anxious father, full of tenderest love for a sick child—full also of delicate sympathy with me; and yet I knew all the time that he was quite capable of plunging the sacrificial knife in Almah’s heart and of eating her afterward.

But my own thoughts were all of Almah. I learned how dear she was. With her the brightness of life had passed; without her existence would be intolerable. Her sweet voice, her tender and gracious manner, her soft touch, her tender, affectionate smile, her mournful yet trustful look—oh, heavens! would all these be mine no more? I could not endure the thought. At first I wandered about, seeking rest and finding none; and at length I sat in my own room, and passed the time in listening, in questioning the attendants, in wondering what I should do if she should be taken from me.

At length on one blessed jom, the Kohen came to me with a bright smile.

“Our darling Almah is better,” said he. “Eat, I beseech you. She is very dear to all of us, and we have all felt for her and for you. But now all danger is past. The physicians say that she will soon be well.” There were tears in his eyes as he spoke. It may have been caused by the bright light, but I attributed this to his loving heart, and I forgot that he was a cannibal. I took his hands in mine and pressed them in deep emotion. He looked at me with a sweet and gentle smile.

“I see it all,” said he, in a low voice—“you love her, Atam-or.”

I pressed his hands harder, but said nothing. Indeed, I could not trust myself to speak.

“I knew it,” said he; “it is but natural. You are both of a different race from us; you are both much alike, and in full sympathy with one another. This draws you together. When I first saw you I thought that you would be a fit companion for her here—that you would lessen her gloom, and that she would be pleasant to you. I found out soon that I was right, and I felt glad, for you at once showed the fullest sympathy with one another. Never till you came was Almah happy with us; but since you have come she has been a different being, and there has been a joyousness in her manner that I never saw before. You have made her forget how to weep; and as for yourself, I hope she has made your life in this strange land seem less painful, Atam-or.”

At all this I was so full of amazement that I could not say one word.

“Pardon me,” continued he, “if I have said anything that may seem like an intrusion upon your secret and most sacred feelings. I could not have said it had it not been for the deep affection I feel for Almah and for you, and for the reason that I am just now more moved than usual, and have less control over my feelings.”

Saying this, he pressed my hand and left me. It was not the custom here to shake hands, but with his usual amiability he had adopted my custom, and used it as naturally as though he had been to the manner born.

I was encouraged now. The mild Kohen came often to cheer me. He talked much about Almah—about her sweet and gracious disposition, the love that all felt for her, the deep and intense interest which her illness had aroused. In all this he seemed more like a man of my own race than before, and in his eager desire for her recovery he failed to exhibit that love for death which was his nature. So it seemed: yet this desire for her recovery did not arise out of any lack of love for death; its true cause I was to learn afterward; and I was to know that if he desired Almah’s recovery now, it was only that she might live long enough to encounter death in a more terrific form. But just then all this was unknown, and I judged him by myself.

At last I learned that she was much better, and would be out on the following jom. This intelligence filled me with a fever of eager anticipation, so great that I could think of nothing else. Sleep was impossible. I could only wait, and try as best I might to quell my impatience. At last the time came. I sat waiting. The curtain was drawn aside. I sprang up, and, hurrying toward her, I caught her in my arms and wept for joy. Ah me, how pale she looked! She bore still the marks of her illness. She seemed deeply embarrassed and agitated at the fervor of my greeting; while I, instead of apologizing or trying to excuse myself, only grew more agitated still.

“Oh, Almah,” I cried. “I should have died if you had not come back to me! Oh, Almah, I love you better than life and I never knew how dearly I loved you till I thought that I had lost you! Oh, forgive me, but I must tell you—and don’t weep, darling.”

She was weeping as I spoke. She said nothing, but twined her arms around my neck and wept on my breast. After this we had much to say that we had never mentioned before. I cannot tell the sweet words that she said to me; but I now learned that she had loved me from the first—when I came to her in her loneliness, when she was homesick and heartsick; and I came, a kindred nature, of a race more like her own; and she saw in me the only one of all around her whom it was possible not to detest, and therefore she loved me.

We had many things to say to one another, and long exchanges of confidence to make. She now for the first time told me all the sorrow that she had endured in her captivity—sorrow which she had kept silent and shut up deep within her breast. At first her life here had been so terrible that it had brought her down nearly to death. After this she had sunk into dull despair; she had grown familiar with horrors and lived in a state of unnatural calm. From this my arrival had roused her. The display of feeling on my part had brought back all her old self, and roused anew all those feelings which in her had become dormant. The darkness, the bloodshed, the sacrifices, all these affected me as they had once affected her. I had the same fear of death which she had. When I had gone with her to the cheder nebilin, when I had used my sepet-ram to save life, she had perceived in me feelings and impulses to which all her own nature responded. Finally, when I asked about the Mista Kosek, she warned me not to go. When I did go she was with me in thought and suffered all that I felt, until the moment when I was brought back and laid senseless at her feet.

“Then,” said Almah, “I felt the full meaning of all that lies before us.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked, anxiously. “You speak as though there were something yet—worse than what has already been; yet nothing can possibly be worse. We have seen the worst; let us now try to shake off these grisly thoughts, and be happy with one another. Your strength will soon be back, and while we have one another we can be happy even in this gloom.”

“Ah me,” said Almah, “it would be better now to die. I could die happy now, since I know that you love me.”

“Death!” said I; “do not talk of it—do not mention that word. It is more abhorrent than ever. No, Almah, let us live and love—let us hope—let us fly.”

“Impossible!” said she, in a mournful voice. “We cannot fly. There is no hope. We must face the future, and make up our minds to bear our fate.”

“Fate!” I repeated, looking at her in wonder and in deep concern. “What do you mean by our fate? Is there anything more which you know and which I have not heard?”

“You have heard nothing,” said she, slowly; “and all that you have seen and heard is as nothing compared with what lies before us. For you and for me there is a fate—inconceivable, abhorrent, tremendous!—a fate of which I dare not speak or even think, and from which there is no escape whatever.”

As Almah said this she looked at me with an expression in which terror and anguish were striving with love. Her cheeks, which shortly before had flushed rosy red in sweet confusion, were now pallid, her lips ashen; her eyes were full of a wild despair. I looked at her in wonder, and could not say a word.

“Oh, Atam-or,” said she, “I am afraid of death!”

“Almah,” said I, “why will you speak of death? What is this fate which you fear so much?”

“It is this,” said she hurriedly and with a shudder, “you and I are singled out. I have been reserved for years until one should be found who might be joined with me. You came. I saw it all at once. I have known it—dreaded it—tried to fight against it. But it was of no use. Oh, Atam-or, our love means death; for the very fact that you love me and I love you seals our doom!”

“Our doom? What doom?”

“The sacrifice!” exclaimed Almah, with another shudder. In her voice and look there was a terrible meaning, which I could not fail to take. I understood it now, and my blood curdled in my veins. Almah clung to me despairingly.

“Do not leave me!” she cried—“do not leave me! I have no one but you. The sacrifice, the sacrifice! It is our doom the great sacrifice—at the end of the dark season. It is at the amir. We must go there to meet our doom.”

“The amir?” I asked; “what is that?”

“It is the metropolis,” said she.

I was utterly overwhelmed, yet still I tried to console her; but the attempt was vain.

“Oh!” she cried, “you will not understand. The sacrifice is but a part—it is but the beginning. Death is terrible; yet it may be endured—if there is only death. But oh!—oh think!—think of that which comes after—the Mista Kosek!”

Now the full meaning flashed upon me, and I saw it all. In an instant there arose in my mind the awful sacrifice on the pyramid and the unutterable horror of the Mista Kosek. Oh, horror, horror, horror! Oh, hideous abomination and deed without a name! I could not speak. I caught her in my arms, and we both wept passionately.

The happiness of our love was now darkened by this tremendous cloud that lowered before us. The shock of this discovery was overpowering, and some time elapsed before I could rally from it. Though Almah’s love was sweet beyond expression, and though as the time passed I saw that every jom she regained more and more of her former health and strength, still I could not forget what had been revealed. We were happy with one another, yet our happiness was clouded, and amid the brightness of our love there was ever present the dread specter of our appalling doom.

These feelings, however, grew fainter. Hope is ever ready to arise; and I began to think that these people, though given to evil ways, were after all kind-hearted, and might listen to entreaty. Above all, there was the Kohen, so benevolent, so self-denying, so amiable, so sympathetic. I could not forget all that he had said during Almah’s illness, and it seemed more than probable that an appeal to his better nature might not be without effect. I said as much to Almah.

“The Kohen,” said she; “why, he can do nothing.”

“Why not? He is the chief man here, and ought to have great influence.”

“You don’t understand,” said she, with a sigh. “The Kohen is the lowest and least influential man in the city.”

“Why, who are influential if he is not?” I asked.

“The paupers,” said Almah.

“The paupers!” I exclaimed, in amazement.

“Yes,” said Almah. “Here among these people the paupers form the most honored, influential, and envied portion of the community.”

This was incomprehensible. Almah tried to explain, but to no purpose, and I determined to talk to the Kohen.

CHAPTER XV

THE KOHEN IS INEXORABLE

I determined to talk to the Kohen, and try for myself whether he might not be accessible to pity. This greatest of cannibals might, indeed, have his little peculiarities, I thought, and who has not?—yet at bottom he seemed full of tender and benevolent feeling; and as he evidently spent his whole time in the endeavor to make us happy, it seemed not unlikely that he might do something for our happiness in a case where our very existence was at stake.

The Kohen listened with deep attention as I stated my case. I did this fully and frankly. I talked of my love for Almah and of Almah’s love for me; our hope that we might be united so as to live happily in reciprocal affection; and I was going on to speak of the dread that was in my heart when he interrupted me:

“You speak of being united,” said he. “You talk strangely. Of course you mean that you wish to be separated.”

“Separated!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean? Of course we wish to be united.”

The Kohen stared at me as I said this with the look of one who was quite puzzled; and I then went on to speak of the fate that was before us, and to entreat his sympathy and his aid that we might be saved from so hideous a doom. To all these words the Kohen listened with an air of amazement, as though I were saying incomprehensible things.

“You have a gentle and an affectionate nature,” I said—“a nature full of sympathy with others, and noble self-denial.”

“Of course,” said the Kohen, quickly, as though glad to get hold of something which he could understand, “of course we are all so, for we are so made. It is our nature. Who is there who is not self-denying? No one can help that.”

This sounded strange indeed; but I did not care to criticize it. I came to my purpose direct and said,

“Save us from our fate.”

“Your fate?”

“Yes, from death—that death of horror.”

“Death?—horror? What do you mean by horror?” said the Kohen, in an amazement that was sincere and unfeigned. “I cannot comprehend your meaning. It seems as though you actually dislike death; but that is not conceivable. It cannot be possible that you fear death.”

“Fear death!” I exclaimed, “I do—I do. Who is there that does not fear it?”

The Kohen stared.

“I do not understand you,” he said.

“Do you not understand,” said I, “that death is abhorrent to humanity?”

“Abhorrent!” said the Kohen; “that is impossible. Is it not the highest blessing? Who is there that does not long for death? Death is the greatest blessing, the chief desire of man—the highest aim. And you—are you not to be envied in having your felicity so near? above all, in having such a death as that which is appointed for you—so noble, so sublime? You must be mad; your happiness has turned your head.”

All this seemed like hideous mockery, and I stared at the Kohen with a gaze that probably strengthened his opinion of my madness.

“Do you love death?” I asked at length, in amazement.

“Love death? What a question! Of course I love death—all men do; who does not? Is it not human nature? Do we not instinctively fly to meet it whenever we can? Do we not rush into the jaws of sea-monsters, or throw ourselves within their grasp? Who does not feel within him this intense longing after death as the strongest passion of his heart?”

“I don’t know—I don’t know,” said I. “You are of a different race; I do not understand what you say. But I belong to a race that fears death. I fear death and love life; and I entreat you, I implore you to help me now in my distress, and assist me so that I may save my life and that of Almah.”

“I—I help you!” said the Kohen, in new amazement. “Why do you come to me—to me, of all men? Why, I am nothing here. And help you to live—to live! Who ever heard of such a thing?”

And the Kohen looked at me with the same astonishment which I should evince if a man should ask me to help him to die.

Still, I persisted in my entreaty for his help.

“Such a request,” said he, “is revolting; you must be mad. Such a request outrages all the instincts of humanity. And even if I could do such violence to my own nature as to help you to such a thing, how do you think I could face my fellow-men, or how could I endure the terrible punishment which would fall upon me?”

“Punishment!” said I. “What! would you be punished?”

“Punished!” said the Kohen. “That, of course, would be inevitable. I should be esteemed an unnatural monster and the chief of criminals. My lot in life now is painful enough; but in this case my punishment would involve me in evils without end. Riches would be poured upon me; I should be raised to the rank of Kohen Gadol; I should be removed farther away than ever from the pauper class—so far, indeed, that all hope in life would be over. I should be made the first and noblest and richest in all the land.”

He spoke these words just as if he had said, “the lowest, meanest, poorest, and most infamous.” It sounded like fresh mockery, and I could not believe but that he was amusing himself at my expense.

“This is cruel,” said I. “You are mocking me.”

“Cruel?—cruel?” said he; “what is cruel? You mean that such a fate would be cruel for me.”

“No, no,” said I; “but alas! I see we cannot understand one another.”

“No,” said the Kohen, musingly, as he looked at me. “No, it seems not; but tell me, Atam-or, is it possible that you really fear death—that you really love life?”

“Fear death!—love life!” I cried. “Who does not? Who can help it? Why do you ask me that?”

The Kohen clasped his hands in amazement.

“If you really fear death,” said he, “what possible thing is there left to love or to hope for? What, then, do you think the highest blessing of man?”

“Long life,” said I, “and riches and requited love.”

At this the Kohen started back, and stared at me as though I were a raving madman.

“Oh, holy shades of night!” he exclaimed. “What is that you say? What do you mean?”

“We can never understand one another, I fear,” said I. “The love of life must necessarily be the strongest passion of man. We are so made. We give up everything for life. A long life is everywhere considered as the highest blessing; and there is no one who is willing to die, no matter what his suffering may be. Riches also are desired by all, for poverty is the direst curse that can embitter life; and as to requited love, surely that is the sweetest, purest, and most divine joy that the human heart may know.”

At this the Kohen burst forth in a strain of high excitement:

“Oh, sacred cavern gloom! Oh, divine darkness! Oh, impenetrable abysses of night! What, oh, what is this! Oh, Atam-or, are you mad? Alas! it must be so. Joy has turned your brain; you are quite demented. You call good evil, and evil good; our light is your darkness, and our darkness your light. Yet surely you cannot be altogether insane. Come, come, let us look further. How is it! Try now to recall your reason. A long life—a life, and a long one! Surely there can be no human being in a healthy state of nature who wishes to prolong his life; and as to riches, it is possible that anyone exists who really and honestly desires riches? Impossible! And requited love! Oh, Atam-or, you are mad today! You are always strange, but now you have quite taken leave of your senses. I cannot but love you, and yet I can never understand you. Tell me, and tell me truly, what is it that you consider evils, if these things that you have mentioned are not the very worst?”

He seemed deeply in earnest and much moved. I could not understand him, but could only answer his questions with simple conciseness.

“Poverty, sickness, and death,” said I, “are evils; but the worst of all evils is unrequited love.”

At these words the Kohen made a gesture of despair.

“It is impossible to understand this,” said he. “You talk calmly; you have not the air of a madman. If your fellow-countrymen are all like you, then your race is an incomprehensible one. Why, death is the greatest blessing. We all long for it; it is the end of our being. As for riches, they are a curse, abhorred by all. Above all, as to love, we shrink from the thought of requital. Death is our chief blessing, poverty our greatest happiness, and unrequited love the sweetest lot of man.”

All this sounded like the ravings of a lunatic, yet the Kohen was not mad. It seemed also like the mockery of some teasing demon; but the gentle and self-denying Kohen was no teasing demon, and mockery with him was impossible. I was therefore more bewildered than ever at this reiteration of sentiments that were so utterly incomprehensible. He, on the other hand, seemed as astonished at my sentiments and as bewildered, and we could find no common ground on which to meet.

“I remember now,” said the Kohen, in a musing tone, “having heard of some strange folk at the Amir, who profess to feel as you say you feel, but no one believes that they are in earnest; for although they may even bring themselves to think that they are in earnest in their professions, yet after all everyone thinks that they are self-deceived. For you see, in the first place, these feelings which you profess are utterly unnatural. We are so made that we cannot help loving death; it is a sort of instinct. We are also created in such a way that we cannot help longing after poverty. The pauper must always, among all men, be the most envied of mortals. Nature, too, has made us such that the passion of love, when it arises, is so vehement, so all-consuming that it must always struggle to avoid requital. This is the reason why, when two people find that they love each other, they always separate and avoid one another for the rest of their lives. This is human nature. We cannot help it; and it is this that distinguishes us from the animals. Why, if men were to feel as you say you feel, they would be mere animals. Animals fear death; animals love to accumulate such things as they prize; animals, when they love, go in pairs, and remain with one another. But man, with his intellect, would not be man if he loved life and desired riches and sought for requited love.”

I sank back in despair. “You cannot mean all this,” I said.

He threw at me a piteous glance. “What else can you believe or feel?” said he.

“The very opposite. We are so made that we hate and fear death; to us he is the King of Terrors. Poverty is terrible also, since it is associated with want and woe; it is, therefore, natural to man to strive after riches. As to the passion of love, that is so vehement that the first and only thought is requital. Unrequited love is anguish beyond expression—anguish so severe that the heart will often break under it.”

The Kohen clasped his hands in new bewilderment.

“I cannot understand,” said he. “A madman might imagine that he loved life and desired riches; but as to love, why even a madman could not think of requital, for the very nature of the passion of love is the most utter self-surrender, and a shrinking from all requital; wherefore, the feeling that leads one to desire requital cannot be love. I do not know what it can be—indeed, I never heard of such a thing before, and the annals of the human race make no mention of such a feeling. For what is love? It is the ardent outflow of the whole being—the yearning of one human heart to lavish all its treasures upon another. Love is more than self-denial; it is self-surrender and utter self-abnegation. Love gives all away, and cannot possibly receive anything in return. A requital of love would mean selfishness, which would be self-contradiction. The more one loves, the more he must shrink from requital.”

“What!” cried I, “among you do lovers never marry?”

“Lovers marry? Never!”

“Do married people never love one another?”

The Kohen shook his head.

“It unfortunately sometimes happens so,” said he, “and then the result is, of course, distressing. For the children’s sake the parents will often remain with one another, but in many cases they separate. No one can tell the misery that ensues where a husband and wife love one another.”

The conversation grew insupportable. I could not follow the Kohen in what seemed the wildest and maddest flights of fancy that ever were known; so I began to talk of other things, and gradually the Kohen was drawn to speak of his own life. The account which he gave of himself was not one whit less strange than his previous remarks, and for this reason I add it here.

“I was born,” said he, “in the most enviable of positions. My father and mother were among the poorest in the land. Both died when I was a child, and I never saw them. I grew up in the open fields and public caverns, along with the most esteemed paupers. But, unfortunately for me, there was something wanting in my natural disposition. I loved death, of course, and poverty, too, very strongly; but I did not have that eager and energetic passion which is so desirable, nor was I watchful enough over my blessed estate of poverty. Surrounded as I was by those who were only too ready to take advantage of my ignorance or want of vigilance, I soon fell into evil ways, and gradually, in spite of myself, I found wealth pouring in upon me. Designing men succeeded in winning my consent to receive their possessions; and so I gradually fell away from that lofty position in which I was born. I grew richer and richer. My friends warned me, but in vain. I was too weak to resist; in fact, I lacked moral fiber, and had never learned how to say ‘No.’ So I went on, descending lower and lower in the scale of being. I became a capitalist, an Athon, a general officer, and finally Kohen.

“At length, on one eventful day, I learned that one of my associates had by a long course of reckless folly become the richest man in all the country. He had become Athon, Melek, and at last Kohen Gadol. It was a terrible shock, but I trust a salutary one. I at once resolved to reform. That resolution I have steadily kept, and have at least saved myself from descending any lower. It is true, I can hardly hope to become what I once was. It is only too easy to grow rich; and, you know, poverty once forfeited can never return except in rare instances. I have, however, succeeded in getting rid of most of my wealth, chiefly through the fortunate advent of Almah and afterward of yourself. This, I confess, has been my salvation. Neither of you had any scruples about accepting what was bestowed, and so I did not feel as though I was doing you any wrong in giving you all I had in the world. Most of the people of this city have taken advantage of your extraordinary indifference to wealth, and have made themselves paupers at your expense. I had already become your slave, and had received the promise of being elevated to the rank of scullion in the cavern of the Mista Kosek. But now, since this event of your love for Almah, I hope to gain far more. I am almost certain of being made a pauper, and I think I can almost venture to hope some day for the honor of a public death.”

To such a story I had nothing to say. It was sheer madness; yet it was terribly suggestive, and showed how utterly hopeless was my effort to secure the assistance of such a man toward my escape from death.

“A public death!” I said, grimly. “That will be very fortunate! And do you think that you will gain the dignity of being eaten up afterward?”

The Kohen shook his head in all seriousness.

“Oh no,” said he; “that would be far beyond my deserts. That is an honor which is only bestowed upon the most distinguished.”

CHAPTER XVI

THE KOSEKIN

These people call themselves the Kosekin. Their chief characteristic, or, at least, their most prominent one, is their love of darkness, which perhaps is due to their habit of dwelling in caves. Another feeling, equally strong and perhaps connected with this, is their love of death and dislike of life. This is visible in many ways, and affects all their character. It leads to a passionate self-denial, an incessant effort to benefit others at their own expense. Each one hates life and longs for death. He, therefore, hates riches, and all things that are associated with life.

Among the Kosekin everyone makes perpetual efforts to serve others, which, however, are perpetually baffled by the unselfishness of these others. People thus spend years in trying to overreach one another, so as to make others richer than themselves. In a race each one tries to keep behind; but as this leads to confusion, there is then a universal effort for each one to be first, so as to put his neighbor in the honorable position of the rear. It is the same way in a hunt. Each one presses forward, so as to honor his companion by leaving him behind. Instead of injuring, everyone tries to benefit his neighbor. When one has been benefited by another, he is filled with a passion which may be called Kosekin revenge—namely, a sleepless and vehement desire to bestow some adequate and corresponding benefit on the other. Feuds are thus kept up among families and wars among nations. For no one is willing to accept from another any kindness, any gift, or any honor, and all are continually on the watch to prevent themselves from being overreached in this way. Those who are less watchful than others are overwhelmed with gifts by designing men, who wish to attain to the pauper class. The position of Almah and myself illustrates this. Our ignorance of the blessings and honors of poverty led us to receive whatever was offered us. Taking advantage of our innocence and ignorance, the whole city thereupon proceeded to bestow their property upon us, and all became paupers through our fortunate arrival.

No one ever injures another unless by accident, and when this occurs it affords the highest joy to the injured party. He has now a claim on the injurer; he gets him into his power, is able to confer benefits on him and force upon him all that he wishes. The unhappy injurer, thus punished by the reception of wealth, finds himself helpless; and where the injury is great, the injured man may bestow upon the other all his wealth and attain to the envied condition of a pauper.

Among the Kosekin the sick are objects of the highest regard. All classes vie with one another in their attentions. The rich send their luxuries; the paupers, however, not having anything to give, go themselves and wait on them and nurse them. For this there is no help, and the rich grumble, but can do nothing. The sick are thus sought out incessantly, and most carefully tended. When they die there is great rejoicing, since death is a blessing; but the nurses labor hard to preserve them in life, so as to prolong the enjoyment of the high privilege of nursing. Of all sick the incurable are most honored, since they require nursing always. Children also are highly honored and esteemed, and the aged too, since both classes require the care of others and must be the recipients of favors which all are anxious to bestow. Those who suffer from contagious diseases are more sought after than any other class, for in waiting on these there is the chance of gaining the blessing of death; indeed, in these cases much trouble is usually experienced from the rush of those who insist on offering their services.

For it must never be forgotten that the Kosekin love death as we love life; and this accounts for all those ceremonies which to me were so abhorrent, especially the scenes of the Mista Kosek. To them a dead human body is no more than the dead body of a bird: there is no awe felt, no sense of sanctity, of superstitious horror; and so I learned, with a shudder, that the hate of life is a far worse thing than the fear of death. This desire for death is, then, a master-passion, and is the key to all their words and acts. They rejoice over the death of friends, since those friends have gained the greatest of blessings; they rejoice also at the birth of children, since those who are born will one day gain the bliss of death.

For a couple to fall in love is the signal for mutual self-surrender. Each insists on giving up the loved one; and the more passionate the love is, the more eager is the desire to have the loved one married to someone else. Lovers have died broken-hearted from being compelled to marry one another. Poets here among the Kosekin celebrate unhappy love which has met with this end. These poets also celebrate defeats instead of victories, since it is considered glorious for one nation to sacrifice itself to another; but to this there are important limitations, as we shall see. Poets also celebrate street-sweepers, scavengers, lamp-lighters, laborers, and above all, paupers, and pass by as unworthy of notice the authors, Meleks, and Kohens of the land.

The paupers here form the most honorable class. Next to these are the laborers. These have strikes as with us; but it is always for harder work, longer hours, or smaller pay. The contest between capital and labor rages, but the conditions are reversed; for the grumbling capitalist complains that the laborer will not take as much pay as he ought to while the laborer thinks the capitalist too persistent in his efforts to force money upon him.

Here among the Kosekin the wealthy class forms the mass of the people, while the aristocratic few consist of the paupers. These are greatly envied by the others, and have many advantages. The cares and burdens of wealth, as well as wealth itself, are here considered a curse, and from all these the paupers are exempt. There is a perpetual effort on the part of the wealthy to induce the paupers to accept gifts, just as among us the poor try to rob the rich. Among the wealthy there is a great and incessant murmur at the obstinacy of the paupers. Secret movements are sometimes set on foot which aim at a redistribution of property and a leveling of all classes, so as to reduce the haughty paupers to the same condition as the mass of the nation. More than once there has been a violent attempt at a revolution, so as to force wealth on the paupers; but as a general thing these movements have been put down and their leaders severely punished. The paupers have shown no mercy in their hour of triumph; they have not conceded one jot to the public demand, and the unhappy conspirators have been condemned to increased wealth and luxury, while the leaders have been made Meleks and Kohens. Thus there are among the Kosekin the unfortunate many who are cursed with wealth, and the fortunate few who are blessed with poverty. These walk while the others ride, and from their squalid huts look proudly and contemptuously upon the palaces of their unfortunate fellow-countrymen.

The love of death leads to perpetual efforts on the part of each to lay down his life for another. This is a grave difficulty in hunts and battles. Confined prisoners dare not fly, for in such an event the guards kill themselves. This leads to fresh rigors in the captivity of the prisoners in case of their recapture, for they are overwhelmed with fresh luxuries and increased splendors. Finally, if a prisoner persist and is recaptured, he is solemnly put to death, not, as with us, by way of severity, but as the last and greatest honor. Here extremes meet; and death, whether for honor or dishonor, is all the same—death—and is reserved for desperate cases. But among the Kosekin this lofty destiny is somewhat embittered by the agonizing thought on the part of the prisoner, who thus gains it, that his wretched family must be doomed, not, as with us, to poverty and want, but, on the contrary, to boundless wealth and splendor.

Among so strange a people it seemed singular to me what offences could possibly be committed which could be regarded and punished as crimes. These, however, I soon found out. Instead of robbers, the Kosekin punished the secret bestowers of their wealth on others. This is regarded as a very grave offence. Analogous to our crime of piracy is the forcible arrest of ships at sea and the transfer to them of valuables. Sometimes the Kosekin pirates give themselves up as slaves. Kidnapping, assault, highway robbery, and crimes of violence have their parallel here in cases where a strong man, meeting a weaker, forces himself upon him as his slave or compels him to take his purse. If the weaker refuse, the assailant threatens to kill himself, which act would lay the other under obligations to receive punishment from the state in the shape of gifts and honors, or at least subject him to unpleasant inquiries. Murder has its counterpart among the Kosekin in cases where one man meets another, forces money on him, and kills himself. Forgery occurs where one uses another’s name so as to confer money on him.

There are many other crimes, all of which are severely punished. The worse the offence is, the better is the offender treated. Among the Kosekin capital punishment is imprisonment amid the greatest splendor, where the prisoner is treated like a king, and has many palaces and great retinues; for that which we consider the highest they regard as the lowest, and with them the chief post of honor is what we would call the lowest menial office. Of course, among such a people, any suffering from want is unknown, except when it is voluntary. The pauper class, with all their great privileges, have this restriction, that they are forced to receive enough for food and clothing. Some, indeed, manage by living in out-of-the-way places to deprive themselves of these, and have been known to die of starvation; but this is regarded as dishonorable, as taking an undue advantage of a great position, and where it can be proved, the children and relatives of the offender are severely punished according to the Kosekin fashion.

State politics here move, like individual affairs, upon the great principle of contempt for earthly things. The state is willing to destroy itself for the good of other states; but as other states are in the same position, nothing can result. In times of war the object of each army is to honor the other and benefit it by giving it the glory of defeat. The contest is thus most fierce. The Kosekin, through their passionate love of death, are terrible in battle; and when they are also animated by the desire to confer glory on their enemies by defeating them, they generally succeed in their aim. This makes them almost always victorious, and when they are not so not a soul returns alive. Their state of mind is peculiar. If they are defeated they rejoice, since defeat is their chief glory; but if they are victorious they rejoice still more in the benevolent thought that they have conferred upon the enemy the joy, the glory, and the honor of defeat.

Here all shrink from governing others. The highest wish of each is to serve. The Meleks and Kohens, whom I at first considered the highest, are really the lowest orders; next to these come the authors, then the merchants, then farmers, then artisans, then laborers, and, finally, the highest rank is reached in the paupers. Happy the aristocratic, the haughty, the envied paupers! The same thing is seen in their armies. The privates here are highest in rank, and the officers come next in different graduations. These officers, however, have the command and the charge of affairs as with us; yet this is consistent with their position, for here to obey is considered nobler than to command. In the fleet the rowers are the highest class; next come the fighting-men; and lowest of all are the officers. War arises from motives as peculiar as those which give rise to private feuds; as, for instance, where one nation tries to force a province upon another; where they try to make each other greater; where they try to benefit unduly each other’s commerce; where one may have a smaller fleet or army than has been agreed on, or where an ambassador has been presented with gifts, or received too great honor or attention.

In such a country as this, where riches are disliked and despised, I could not imagine how people could be induced to engage in trade. This, however, was soon explained. The laborers and artisans have to perform their daily work, so as to enable the community to live and move and have its being. Their impelling motive is the high one of benefiting others most directly. They refuse anything but the very smallest pay, and insist on giving for this the utmost possible labor. Tradesmen also have to supply the community with articles of all sorts; merchants have to sail their ships to the same end—all being animated by the desire of effecting the good of others. Each one tries not to make money, but to lose it; but as the competition is sharp and universal, this is difficult, and the larger portion are unsuccessful. The purchasers are eager to pay as much as possible, and the merchants and traders grow rich in spite of their utmost endeavors. The wealthy classes go into business so as to lose money, but in this they seldom succeed. It has been calculated that only two per cent in every community succeed in reaching the pauper class. The tendency is for all the labors of the working-class to be ultimately turned upon the unfortunate wealthy class. The workmen being the creators of wealth, and refusing to take adequate pay, cause a final accumulation of the wealth of the community in the hands of the mass of the non-producers, who thus are fixed in their unhappy position, and can hope for no escape except by death. The farmers till the ground, the fishermen fish, the laborers toil, and the wealth thus created is pushed from these incessantly till it all falls upon the lowest class—namely, the rich, including Athons, Meleks, and Kohens. It is a burden that is often too heavy to be borne; but there is no help for it, and the better-minded seek to cultivate resignation.

Women and men are in every respect absolutely equal, holding precisely the same offices and doing the same work. In general, however, it is observed that women are a little less fond of death than men, and a little less unwilling to receive gifts. For this reason they are very numerous among the wealthy class, and abound in the offices of administration. Women serve in the army and navy as well as men, and from their lack of ambition or energetic perseverance they are usually relegated to the lower ranks, such as officers and generals. To my mind it seemed as though the women were in all the offices of honor and dignity, but in reality it was the very opposite. The same is true in the family. The husbands insist on giving everything to the wives and doing everything for them. The wives are therefore universally the rulers of the household while the husbands have an apparently subordinate, but, to the Kosekin, a more honorable position.

As to the religion of the Kosekin, I could make nothing of it. They believe that after death they go to what they call the world of darkness. The death they long for leads to the darkness that they love; and the death and the darkness are eternal. Still, they persist in saying that the death and the darkness together form a state of bliss. They are eloquent about the happiness that awaits them there in the sunless land—the world of darkness; but for my own part, it always seemed to me a state of nothingness.

A STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER, by James De Mille [Part 2]

CHAPTER XVII

BELIEF AND UNBELIEF

The doctor was here interrupted by Featherstone, who, with a yawn, informed him that it was eleven o’clock, and that human endurance had its limits. Upon this the doctor rolled up the manuscript and put it aside for the night, after which supper was ordered.

“Well,” said Featherstone, “what do you think of this last?”

“It contains some very remarkable statements,” said the doctor.

“There are certainly monsters enough in it,” said Melick—

“‘Gorgons, and hydras, and chimeras dire.’”

“Well, why not?” said the doctor.

“It seems to me,” said Melick, “that the writer of this has peopled his world with creatures that resemble the fossil animals more than anything else.”

“The so-called fossil animals,” said the doctor, “may not be extinct. There are fossil specimens of animals that still have living representatives. There is no reason why many of those supposed to be extinct may not be alive now. It is well known that many very remarkable animals have become extinct within a comparatively recent period. These great birds, of which More speaks, seem to me to belong to these classes. The dodo was in existence fifty years ago, the moa about a hundred years ago. These great birds, together with others, such as the epiornis and palapteryx, have disappeared, not through the ordinary course of nature, but by the hand of man. Even in our hemisphere they may yet be found. Who can tell but that the moa or the dodo may yet be lurking somewhere here in the interior of Madagascar, of Borneo, or of Papua?”

“Can you make out anything about those great birds?” asked Featherstone. “Do they resemble anything that exists now, or has ever existed?”

“Well, yes, I think so,” said the doctor. “Unfortunately, More is not at all close or accurate in his descriptions; he has a decidedly unscientific mind, and so one cannot feel sure; yet from his general statements I think I can decide pretty nearly upon the nature and the scientific name of each one of his birds and animals. It is quite evident to me that most of these animals belong to races that no longer exist among us, and that this world at the South Pole has many characteristics which are like those of what is known as the Coal Period. I allude in particular to the vast forests of fern, of gigantic grasses and reeds. At the same time the general climate and the atmosphere seem like what we may find in the tropics at present. It is evident that in More’s world various epochs are represented, and that animals of different ages are living side by side.”

“What do you think of the opkuk?” asked Featherstone, with a yawn.

“Well, I hardly know.”

“Why, it must be a dodo, of course,” said Melick, “only magnified.”

“That,” said the doctor, gravely, “is a thought that naturally suggests itself; but then the opkuk is certainly far larger than the dodo.”

“Oh, More put on his magnifying-glasses just then.”

“The dodo,” continued the doctor, taking no notice of this, “in other respects corresponds with More’s description of the opkuk. Clusius and Bontius give good descriptions and there is a well-known picture of one in the British Museum. It is a massive, clumsy bird, ungraceful in its form with heavy movements, wings too short for flight, little or no tail, and down rather than feathers. The body, according to Bontius, is as big as that of the African ostrich, but the legs are very short. It has a large head, great black eyes, long bluish-white bill, ending in a beak like that of a vulture, yellow legs, thick and short, four toes on each foot solid, long, and armed with sharp black claws. The flesh particularly on the breast, is fat and esculent. Now, all this corresponds with More’s account, except as to the size of the two, for the opkuks are as large as oxen.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Melick; “I’m determined to stand up for the dodo.” With this he burst forth singing—

“Oh, the dodo once lived, but he doesn’t live now;

Yet why should a cloud overshadow our brow?

The loss of that bird ne’er should trouble our brains,

For though he is gone, still our claret remains.

Sing do-do—jolly do-do!

Hurrah! in his name let our cups overflow.”

“As for your definition, doctor,” continued Melick, “I’ll give you one worth a dozen of yours:

“’Twas a mighty bird; those strong, short legs were never known to fail,

And he felt a glory of pride while thinking of that little tail,

And his beak was marked with vigor, curving like a wondrous hook;

Thick and ugly was his body—such a form as made one look!”

“Melick,” said Featherstone, “you’re a volatile youth. You mustn’t mind him, doctor. He’s a professional cynic, skeptic, and scoffer. Oxenden and I, however, are open to conviction, and want to know more about those birds and beasts. Can you make anything out of the opmahera?”

The doctor swallowed a glass of wine, and replied:

“Oh yes; there are many birds, each of which may be the opmahera. There’s the fossil bird of Massachusetts, of which nothing is left but the footprints; but some of these are eighteen inches in length, and show a stride of two yards. The bird belonged to the order of the Grallae, and may have been ten or twelve feet in height. Then there is the Gastornis parisiensis, which was as tall as an ostrich, as big as an ox, and belongs to the same order as the other. Then there is the Palapteryx, of which remains have been found in New Zealand, which was seven or eight feet in height. But the one which to my mind is the real counterpart of the opmahera is the Dinornis gigantea, whose remains are also found in New Zealand. It is the largest bird known, with long legs, a long neck, and short wings, useless for flight. One specimen that has been found is upward of thirteen feet in height. There is no reason why some should not have been much taller. More compares its height to that of a giraffe. The Maoris call this bird the Moa, and their legends and traditions are full of mention of it. When they first came to the island, six or seven hundred years ago, they found these vast birds everywhere, and hunted them for food. To my mind the dinornis is the opmahera of More. As to riding on them, that is likely enough; for ostriches are used for this purpose, and the dinornis must have been far stronger and fleeter than the ostrich. It is possible that some of these birds may still be living in the remoter parts of our hemisphere.”

“What about those monsters,” asked Featherstone, “that More speaks of in the sacred hunt?”

“I think,” said the doctor, “that I understand pretty well what they were, and can identify them all. As the galley passed the estuary of that great river, you remember that he mentions seeing them on the shore. One may have been the Ichthyosaurus. This, as the name implies, is a fish-lizard. It has the head of a lizard, the snout of a dolphin, the teeth of an alligator, enormous eyes, whose membrane is strengthened by a bony frame, the vertebrae of fishes, sternum and shoulder-bones like those of the lizard, and the fins of a whale. Bayle calls it the whale of the saurians. Another may have been the Cheirotherium. On account of the hand-shaped marks made by its paws, Owen thinks that it was akin to the frogs; but it was a formidable monster, with head and jaws of a crocodile. Another may have been the Teleosaurus, which resembled our alligators. It was thirty-five feet in length. Then there was the Hylaeosaurus, a monster twenty-five feet in length, with a cuirass of bony plates.”

“But none of these correspond with More’s description of the monster that fought with the galley.”

“No,” said the doctor, “I am coming to that now. That monster could have been no other than the Plesiosaurus, one of the most wonderful animals that has ever existed. Imagine a thing with the head of a lizard, the teeth of a crocodile, the neck of a swan, the trunk and tail of a quadruped, and the fins of a whale. Imagine a whale with its head and neck consisting of a serpent, with the strength of the former and the malignant fury of the latter, and then you will have the plesiosaurus. It was an aquatic animal, yet it had to remain near or on the surface of the water, while its long, serpent-like neck enabled it to reach its prey above or below with swift, far-reaching darts. Yet it had no armor, and could not have been at all a match for the ichthyosaurus. More’s account shows, however, that it was a fearful enemy for man to encounter.”

“He seems to have been less formidable than that beast which they encountered in the swamp. Have you any idea what that was?”

“I think it can have been no other than the Iguanodon,” said the doctor. “The remains of this animal show that it must have been the most gigantic of all primeval saurians. Judging from existing remains its length was not less than sixty feet, and larger ones may have existed. It stood high on its legs; the hind ones were larger than the fore. The feet were massive and armed with tremendous claws. It lived on the land and fed on herbage. It had a horny, spiky ridge all along its back. Its tail was nearly as long as its body. Its head was short, its jaws enormous, furnished with teeth of a very elaborate structure, and on its muzzle it carried a curved horn. Such a beast as this might well have caused all that destruction of life on the part of his desperate assailants of which More speaks.

“Then there was another animal,” continued the doctor, who was evidently discoursing upon a favorite topic. “It was the one that came suddenly upon More while he was resting with Almah after his flight with the run-away bird. That I take to be the Megalosaurus. This animal was a monster of tremendous size and strength. Cuvier thought that it might have been seventy feet in length. It was carnivorous, and therefore more ferocious than the iguanodon, and more ready to attack. Its head was like that of a crocodile, its body massive like that of an elephant, yet larger; its tail was small, and it stood high on its legs, so that it could run with great speed. It was not covered with bony armor, but had probably a hide thick enough to serve the purpose of shell or bone. Its teeth were constructed so as to cut with their edges, and the movement of the jaws produced the combined effect of knife and saw, while their inward curve rendered impossible the escape of prey that had once been caught. It probably frequented the river banks, where it fed upon reptiles of smaller size which inhabited the same places.

“More,” continued the doctor, “is too general in his descriptions. He has not a scientific mind, and he gives but few data; yet I can bring before myself very easily all the scenes which he describes, particularly that one in which the megalosaurus approaches, and he rushes to mount the dinoris so as to escape. I see that river, with its trees and shrubs, all unknown now except in museums—the vegetation of the Coal Period—the lepidodendron, the lepidostrobus, the pecopteris, the neuropteris, the lonchopteris, the odontopteris, the sphenopteris, the cyclopteris, the sigellaria veniformis, the sphenophyllium, the calamites—”

Melick started to his feet.

“There, there!” he cried, “hold hard, doctor. Talking of calamities, what greater calamity can there be than such a torrent of unknown words? Talk English, doctor, and we shall be able to appreciate you; but to make your jokes, your conundrums, and your brilliant witticisms in a foreign language isn’t fair to us, and does no credit either to your head or your heart.”

The doctor elevated his eyebrows, and took no notice of Melick’s ill-timed levity.

“All these stories of strange animals,” said Oxenden, “may be very interesting, doctor, but I must say that I am far more struck by the account of the people themselves. I wonder whether they are an aboriginal race, or descendants of the same stock from which we came?”

“I should say,” remarked the doctor, confidently, “that they are, beyond a doubt, an aboriginal and autochthonous race.”

“I differ from you altogether,” said Oxenden, calmly.

“Oh,” said the doctor, “there can be no doubt about it. Their complexion, small stature, and peculiar eyes—their love of darkness, their singular characteristics, both physical and moral, all go to show that they can have no connection with the races in our part of the earth.”

“Their peculiar eyes,” said Oxenden, “are no doubt produced by dwelling in caves for many generations.”

“On the contrary,” said the doctor, “it is their peculiarity of eye that makes them dwell in caves.”

“You are mistaking the cause for the effect, doctor.”

“Not at all; it is you who are making that mistake.”

“It’s the old debate,” said Melick. “As the poet has it:

“‘Which was first, the egg or the hen?

Tell me, I pray, ye learned men!’”

“There are the eyeless fishes of the great cave of Kentucky,” said Oxenden, “whose eyes have become extinct from living in the dark.”

“No,” cried the doctor; “the fish that have arisen in that lake have never needed eyes, and have never had them.”

Oxenden laughed.

“Well,” said he, “I’ll discuss the question with you on different grounds altogether, and I will show clearly that these men, these bearded men, must belong to a stock that is nearly related to our own, or, at least, that they belong to a race of men with whom we are all very familiar.”

“I should like very much to have you try it,” said the doctor.

“Very well,” said Oxenden. “In the first place, I take their language.”

“Their language!”

“Yes. More has given us very many words in their language. Now he himself says that these words had an Arabic sound. He was slightly acquainted with that language. What will you say if I tell you that these words are still more like Hebrew?”

“Hebrew!” exclaimed the doctor, in amazement.

“Yes, Hebrew,” said Oxenden. “They are all very much like Hebrew words, and the difference is not greater than that which exists between the words of any two languages of the Aryan family.”

“Oh, if you come to philology I’ll throw up the sponge,” said the doctor. “Yet I should like to hear what you have to say on that point.”

“The languages of the Aryan family,” said Oxenden, “have the same general characteristics, and in all of them the differences that exist in their most common words are subject to the action of a regular law. The action of the law is best seen in the changes which take place in the mutes. These changes are indicated in a summary and comprehensive way by means of what is called ‘Grimm’s Law.’ Take Latin and English, for instance. ‘Grimm’s Law’ tells us, among other things, that in Latin and in that part of English which is of Teutonic origin, a large number of words are essentially the same, and differ merely in certain phonetic changes. Take the word ‘father.’ In Latin, as also in Greek, it is ‘pater.’ Now the Latin ‘p’ in English becomes ‘f;’ that is, the thin mute becomes the aspirated mute. The same change may be seen in the Latin ‘piscis,’ which in English is ‘fish,’ and the Greek which in English is ‘fire.’ Again, if the Latin or Greek word begins with an aspirate, the English word begins with a medial; thus the Latin ‘f’ is found responsive to the English ‘b,’ as in Latin ‘fagus,’ English ‘beech,’ Latin ‘fero,’ English ‘bear.’ Again, if the Latin or Greek has the medial, the English has the thin, as in Latin ‘duo,’ English ‘two,’ Latin ‘genu,’ English ‘knee.’ Now, I find that in many of the words which More mentions this same ‘Grimm’s Law’ will apply; and I am inclined to think that if they were spelled with perfect accuracy they would show the same relation between the Kosekin language and the Hebrew that there is between the Saxon English and the Latin.”

The doctor gave a heavy sigh.

“You’re out of my depth, Oxenden,” said he. “I’m nothing of a philologist.”

“By Jove!” said Featherstone, “I like this. This is equal to your list of the plants of the Coal Period, doctor. But I say, Oxenden, while you are about it, why don’t you give us a little dose of Anglo-Saxon and Sanscrit? By Jove! the fellow has Bopp by heart, and yet he expects us to argue with him.”

“I have it!” cried Melick. “The Kosekin are the lost Ten Tribes. Oxenden is feeling his way to that. He is going to make them out to be all Hebrew; and then, of course, the only conclusion will be that they are the Ten Tribes, who after a life of strange vicissitudes have pulled up at the South Pole. It’s a wonder More didn’t think of that—or the writer of this yarn, whoever he may be. Well, for my part, I always took a deep interest in the lost Ten Tribes, and thought them a fine body of men.”

“Don’t think they’ve got much of the Jew about them,” said Featherstone, languidly. “They hate riches and all that, you know. Break a Jew’s heart to hear of all that property wasted, and money going a-begging. Not a bad idea, though, that of theirs about money. Too much money’s a howwid baw, by Jove!”

“Well,” continued Oxenden, calmly resuming, and taking no notice of these interruptions, “I can give you word after word that More has mentioned which corresponds to a kindred Hebrew word in accordance with ‘Grimm’s Law.’ For instance, Kosekin ‘Op,’ Hebrew ‘Oph;’ Kosekin ‘Athon,’ Hebrew ‘Adon;’ Kosekin ‘Salon,’ Hebrew ‘Shalom.’ They are more like Hebrew than Arabic, just as Anglo-Saxon words are more like Latin or Greek than Sanscrit.”

“Hurrah!” cried Melick, “we’ve got him to Sanscrit at last! Now, Oxenden, my boy, trot out the ‘Hitopadesa,’ the ‘Megha Dhuta,’ the ‘Rig Veda.’ Quote ‘Beowulf’ and Caedmon. Gives us a little Zeno, and wind up with ‘Lalla Rookh’ in modern Persian.”

“So I conclude,” said Oxenden, calmly, ignoring Melick, “that the Kosekin are a Semitic people. Their complexion and their beards show them to be akin to the Caucasian race, and their language proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that they belong to the Semitic branch of that race. It is impossible for an autochthonous people to have such a language.”

“But how,” cried the doctor—“how in the name of wonder did they get to the South Pole?”

“Easily enough,” interrupted Melick—“Shem landed there from Noah’s ark, and left some of his children to colonize the country. That’s as plain as a pikestaff. I think, on the whole, that this idea is better than the other one about the Ten Tribes. At any rate they are both mine, and I warn all present to keep their hands off them, for on my return I intend to take out a copyright.”

“There’s another thing,” continued Oxenden, “which is of immense importance, and that is their habit of cave-dwelling. I am inclined to think that they resorted to cave-dwelling at first from some hereditary instinct or other, and that their eyes and their whole morals have become affected by this mode of life. Now, as to ornamented caverns, we have many examples—caverns adorned with a splendor fully equal to anything among the Kosekin. There are in India the great Behar caves, the splendid Karli temple with its magnificent sculptures and imposing architecture, and the cavern-temples of Elephanta; there are the subterranean works in Egypt, the temple of Dendera in particular; in Petra we have the case of an entire city excavated from the rocky mountains; yet, after all, these do not bear upon the point in question, for they are isolated cases; and even Petra, though it contained a city, did not contain a nation. But there is a case, and one which is well known, that bears directly upon this question, and gives us the connecting link between the Kosekin and their Semitic brethren in the northern hemisphere.”

“What is that?” asked the doctor.

“The Troglodytes,” said Oxenden, with impressive solemnity.

“Well, and what do you make out of the Troglodytes?”

“I will explain,” said Oxenden. “The name Troglodytes is given to various tribes of men, but those best known and celebrated under this name once inhabited the shores of the Red Sea, both on the Arabian and the Egyptian side. They belonged to the Arabian race, and were consequently a Semitic people. Mark that, for it is a point of the utmost importance. Now, these Troglodytes all lived in caverns, which were formed partly by art and partly by nature, although art must have had most to do with the construction of such vast subterranean works. They lived in great communities in caverns, and they had long tunnels passing from one community to another. Here also they kept their cattle. Some of these people have survived even to our own age; for Bruce, the Abyssinian traveler, saw them in Nubia.

“The earliest writer who mentions the Troglodytes was Agatharcides, of Cnidos. According to him they were chiefly herdsmen. Their food was the flesh of cattle, and their drink a mixture of milk and blood. They dressed in the skins of cattle; they tattooed their bodies. They were very swift of foot, and were able to run down wild beasts in the hunt. They were also greatly given to robbery, and caravans passing to and fro had to guard against them.

“One feature in their character has to my mind a strange significance, and that is their feelings with regard to death. It was not the Kosekin love of death, yet it was something which must certainly be considered as approximating to it. For Agatharcides says that in their burials they were accustomed to fasten the corpse to a stake, and then gathering round, to pelt it with stones amid shouts of laughter and wild merriment. They also used to strangle the old and infirm, so as to deliver them from the evils of life. These Troglodytes, then, were a nation of cave-dwellers, loving the dark—not exactly loving death, yet at any rate regarding it with merriment and pleasure; and so I cannot help seeing a connection between them and the Kosekin.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “but how did they get to the South Pole?”

“That,” said Oxenden, “is a question which I do not feel bound to answer.”

“Oh, it is easy enough to answer that,” said Melick. “They, of course, dug through the earth.”

Oxenden gave a groan.

“I think I’ll turn in for the night,” said he, rising. Upon this the others rose also and followed his example.

On the following morning the calm still continued. None of the party rose until very late, and then over the breakfast-table they discussed the manuscript once more, each from his own point of view, Melick still asserting a contemptuous skepticism—Oxenden and the doctor giving reasons for their faith, and Featherstone listening without saying much on either side.

At length it was proposed to resume the reading of the manuscript, which task would now devolve upon Oxenden. They adjourned to the deck, where all disposed themselves in easy attitudes to listen to the continuation of More’s narrative.

CHAPTER XVIII

A VOYAGE OVER THE POLE

The discovery of our love had brought a crisis in our fate for me and Almah. The Kohen hailed it with joy, for now was the time when he would be able to present us to the Kohen Gadol. Our doom was certain and inevitable. We were to be taken to the amir; we were to be kept until the end of the dark season, and then we were both to be publicly sacrificed. After this our bodies were to be set apart for the hideous rites of the Mista Kosek. Such was the fate that lay before us.

The Kohen was now anxious to take us to the amir. I might possibly have persuaded him to postpone our departure, but I saw no use in that. It seemed better to go, for it was possible that amid new scenes and among new people there might be hope. This, too, seemed probable to Almah, who was quite anxious to go. The Kohen pressed forward the preparations, and at length a galley was ready for us.

This galley was about three hundred feet in length and fifty in width, but not more than six feet in depth. It was like a long raft. The rowers, two hundred in number, sat on a level with the water, one hundred on each side. The oars were small, being not more than twelve feet in length, but made of very light, tough material, with very broad blades. The galley was steered with broad-bladed paddles at both ends. There was no mast or sail. Astern was a light poop, surrounded by a pavilion, and forward there was another. At the bow there was a projecting platform, used chiefly in fighting the thannin, or sea-monsters, and also in war. There were no masts or flags or gay streamers; no brilliant colors; all was intensely black, and the ornaments were of the same hue.

We were now treated with greater reverence than ever, for we were looked upon as the recipients of the highest honor that could fall to any of the Kosekin—namely, the envied dignity of a public death. As we embarked the whole city lined the public ways, and watched us from the quays, from boats, and from other galleys. Songs were sung by a chosen choir of paupers, and to the sound of this plaintive strain we moved out to sea.

“This will be a great journey for me,” said the Kohen, as we left the port. “I hope to be made a pauper at least, and perhaps gain the honor of a public death. I have known people who have gained death for less. There was an Athon last year who attacked a pehmet with forty men and one hundred and twenty rowers. All were killed or drowned except himself. In reward for this he gained the mudecheb, or death recompense. In addition to this he was set apart for the Mista Kosek.”

“Then, with you, when a man procures the death of others he is honored?”

“Why, yes; how could it be otherwise?” said the Kohen. “Is it not the same with you? Have you not told me incredible things about your people, among which there were a few that seemed natural and intelligible? Among these was your system of honoring above all men those who procure the death of the largest number. You, with your pretended fear of death, wish to meet it in battle as eagerly as we do, and your most renowned men are those who have sent most to death.”

To this strange remark I had no answer to make.

The air out at sea now grew chillier. The Kohen noticed it also, and offered me his cloak, which I refused. He seemed surprised, and smiled.

“You are growing like one of us,” said he. “You will soon learn that the greatest happiness in life is to do good to others and sacrifice yourself. You already show this in part. When you are with Almah you act like one of the Kosekin. You watch her to see and anticipate her slightest wish; you are eager to give her everything. She, on the other hand, is equally eager to give up all to you. Each one of you is willing to lay down life for the other. You would gladly rush upon death to save her from harm, much as you pretend to fear death; and so I see that with Almah you will soon learn how sweet a thing death may be.”

“To live without her,” said I, “would be so bitter that death with her would indeed be sweet. If I could save her life by laying down my own, death would be sweeter still; and not one of you Kosekin would meet it so gladly.”

The Kosekin smiled joyously.

“Oh, almighty and wondrous power of Love!” he exclaimed, “how thou hast transformed this foreigner! Oh, Atam-or! you will soon be one of us altogether. For see, how is it now? You pretend to love riches and life, and yet you are ready to give up everything for Almah.”

“Gladly, gladly!” I exclaimed.

“Yes,” he said, “all that you have—you would gladly lavish on her, and would rejoice to make yourself a pauper for her sweet sake. You also would rejoice equally to give up life for her. Is it not so?”

“It is,” said I.

“Then I see by this that Almah has awakened within you your true human nature. Thus far it has lain dormant; it has been concealed under a thousand false and unnatural habits, arising from your strange native customs. You have been brought up under some frightful system, where nature is violated. Here among us your true humanity is unfolded, and with Almah you are like the Kosekin. Soon you will learn new lessons, and will find out that there is a new and a final self-abnegation in perfect love; and your love will never rest till you have separated yourself from Almah, so that love can have its perfect work.”

The sea now opened wide before us, rising up high as if half-way to the zenith, giving the impression of a vast ascent to endless distances. Around the shores spread themselves, with the shadowy outlines of the mountains; above was the sky, all clear, with faint aurora-flashes and gleaming stars. Hand-in-hand with Almah I stood and pointed out the constellations as we marked them while she told me of the different divisions known among the Kosekin as well as her own people. There, high in the zenith, was the southern polar-star, not exactly at the pole, nor yet of very great brightness, but still sufficiently noticeable.

Looking back, we saw, low down, parts of the Phoenix and the Crane; higher up, the Toucan, Hydrus, and Pavo. On our right, low down, was the beautiful Altar; higher up, the Triangle; while on the left were the Sword-fish and the Flying-fish. Turning to look forward, we beheld a more splendid display. Then, over the bow of the vessel, between the Centaur, which lay low, and Musca Indica, which rose high, there blazed the bright stars of the Southern Cross—a constellation, if not the brightest, at least the most conspicuous and attractive in all the heavens. All around there burned other stars, separated widely. Then, over the stern, gleamed the splendid luster of Achernar, on the left the brilliant glow of Alpha Robur and Canopus, and low down before us the bright light of Argo. It was a scene full of splendor and fascination. After a time a change came over the sky: the aurora-flashes, at first faint, gradually increased in brilliancy till the stars grew dim, and all the sky, wherever the eye might turn from the horizon to the zenith, seemed filled with lustrous flames of every conceivable hue. Colossal beams radiated from the pole toward the horizon till the central light was dissipated, and there remained encircling us an infinite colonnade of flaming pillars that towered to the stars. These were all in motion, running upon one another, incessantly shifting and changing; new scenes forever succeeded to old; pillars were transformed to pyramids, pyramids to fiery bars; these in their turn were transformed to other shapes, and all the while one tint of innumerable hues overspread the entire circle of the sky.

Our voyage occupied several joms; but our progress was continuous, for different sets of rowers relieved one another at regular intervals. On the second jom a storm broke out. The sky had been gathering clouds during sleeping-time, and when we awoke we found the sea all lashed to fury, while all around the darkness was intense. The storm grew steadily worse; the lightning flashed, the thunder pealed, and at length the sea was so heavy that rowing was impossible. Upon this the oars were all taken in, and the galley lay tossing upon the furious sea, amid waves that continually beat upon her.

And now a scene ensued that filled me with amazement, and took away all my thoughts from the storm. It seemed impossible that so frail a bark could stand the fury of the waves. Destruction was inevitable, and I was expecting to see the usual signs of grief and despair—wondering, too, how these rowers would preserve their subordination. But I had forgotten in my excitement the strange nature of the Kosekin. Instead of terror there was joy, instead of wild despair there was peace and serene delight.

The lightning-flashes revealed a wonderful scene. There were all the rowers, each one upon his seat, and from them all there came forth a chant which was full of triumph, like a song of public welcome to some great national hero, or a song of joy over victory. The officers embraced one another and exchanged words of delight. The Kohen, after embracing all the others, turned to me, and, forgetting my foreign ways, exclaimed, in a tone of enthusiastic delight,

“We are destroyed! Death is near! Rejoice!”

Accustomed as I was to the perils of the sea, I had learned to face death without flinching. Almah, too, was calm, for to her this death seemed preferable to that darker fate which awaited us; but the words of the Kohen jarred upon my feelings.

“Do you not intend to do anything to save the ship?” I asked.

He laughed joyously.

“There’s no occasion,” said he. “When the oars are taken in we always begin to rejoice. And why not? Death is near—it is almost certain. Why should we do anything to distract our minds and mar our joy? For oh, dear friend, the glorious time has come when we can give up life—life, with all its toils, its burdens, its endless bitterness, its perpetual evils. Now we shall have no more suffering from vexatious and oppressive riches, from troublesome honors, from a surplus of food, from luxuries and delicacies, and all the ills of life.”

“But what is the use of being born at all?” I asked, in a wonder that never ceased to rise at every fresh display of Kosekin feeling.

“The use?” said the Kohen. “Why, if we were not born, how could we know the bliss of dying, or enjoy the sweetness of death? Death is the end of being—the one sweet hope and crown and glory of life, the one desire and hope of every living man. The blessing is denied to none. Rejoice with me, oh Atam-or! you will soon know its blessedness as well as I.”

He turned away. I held Almah in my arms, and we watched the storm by the lightning-flashes and waited for the end. But the end came not. The galley was light, broad, and buoyant as a life-boat; at the same time it was so strongly constructed that there was scarcely any twist or contortion in the sinewy fabric. So we floated buoyantly and safely upon the summit of vast waves, and a storm that would have destroyed a ship of the European fashion scarcely injured this in the slightest degree. It was an indestructible as a raft and as buoyant as a bubble; so we rode out the gale, and the death which the Kosekin invoked did not come at all.

The storm was but short-lived; the clouds dispersed, and soon went scudding over the sky; the sea went down. The rowers had to take their oars once more, and the reaction that followed upon their recent rejoicing was visible in universal gloom and dejection. As the clouds dispersed the aurora lights came out more splendid than ever, and showed nothing but melancholy faces. The rowers pulled with no life or animation; the officers stood about sighing and lamenting; Almah and I were the only ones that rejoiced over this escape from death.

Joms passed. We saw other sights; we met with galleys and saw many ships about the sea. Some were moved by sails only; these were merchant ships, but they had only square sails, and could not sail in any other way than before the wind. Once or twice I caught glimpses of vast shadowy objects in the air. I was startled and terrified; for, great as were the wonders of this strange region, I had not yet suspected that the air itself might have denizens as tremendous as the land or the sea. Yet so it was, and afterward during the voyage I saw them often. One in particular was so near that I observed it with ease. It came flying along in the same course with us, at a height of about fifty feet from the water. It was a frightful monster, with a long body and vast wings like those a bat. Its progress was swift, and it soon passed out of sight. To Almah the monster created no surprise; she was familiar with them, and told me that they were very abundant here, but that they never were known to attack ships. She informed me that they were capable of being tamed if caught when young, though in her country they were never made use of. The name given by the Kosekin to these monsters is athaleb.

At length we drew near to our destination. We reached a large harbor at the end of a vast bay: here the mountains extended around, and before us there arose terrace after terrace of twinkling lights running away to immense distances. It looked like a city of a million inhabitants, though it may have contained far less than that. By the brilliant aurora light I could see that it was in general shape and form precisely like the city that we had left, though far larger and more populous. The harbor was full of ships and boats of all sorts, some lying at the stone quays, others leaving port, others entering. Galleys passed and repassed, and merchant ships with their clumsy sails, and small fishing-boats. From afar arose the deep hum of a vast multitude and the low roar that always ascends from a popular city.

The galley hauled alongside her wharf, and we found ourselves at length in the mighty amir of the Kosekin. The Kohen alone landed; the rest remained on board, and Almah and I with them.

Other galleys were here. On the wharf workmen were moving about. Just beyond were caverns that looked like warehouses. Above these was a terraced street, where a vast multitude moved to and fro—a living tide as crowded and as busy as that in Cheapside.

After what seemed a long time the Kohen returned. This time he came with a number of people, all of whom were in cars drawn by opkuks. Half were men and half women. These came aboard, and it seemed as though we were to be separated; for the women took Almah, while the men took me. Upon this I entreated the Kohen not to separate us. I informed him that we were both of a different race from his, that we did not understand their ways; we should be miserable if separated.

I spoke long and with all the entreaty possible to one with my limited acquaintance with the language. My words evidently impressed them: some of them even wept.

“You make us sad,” said the Kohen. “Willingly would we do everything that you bid, for we are your slaves; but the state law prevents. Still, in your case, the law will be modified; for you are in such honor here that you may be considered as beyond the laws. For the present, at least, we cannot separate you.”

These words brought much consolation. After this we landed, and Almah and I were still together.

CHAPTER XIX

THE WONDERS OF THE “AMIR”

We were drawn on cars up to the first terraced street, and here we found the vast multitude which we had seen from a distance. Crossing this street, we ascended and came to another precisely like it; then, still going on, we came to a third. Here there was an immense space, not overgrown with trees like the streets, but perfectly open. In the midst arose a lofty pyramid, and as I looked at it I could not refrain from shuddering; for it looked like the public altar, upon which in due time I should be compelled to make my appearance, and be offered up as a victim to the terrific superstitions of the Kosekin.

Crossing this great square, we came to a vast portal, which opened into a cavern with twinkling lights. The city itself extended above this, for we could see the terraced streets rising above our heads; but here our progress ended at the great cavern in the chief square, opposite the pyramid.

On entering the cavern we traversed an antechamber, and then passing on we reached a vast dome, of dimensions so great that I could perceive no end in that gloom. The twinkling lights served only to disclose the darkness and to indicate the immensity of the cavern. In the midst there arose two enormous columns, which were lost in the gloom above.

It was only by passing through this that we learned its great extent. We at length came to the other end, and here we saw numerous passages leading away. The Kohen led us through one of these, and after passing through several other domes of smaller dimensions we at length reached an apartment where we stopped. This place was furnished with couches and hangings, and lighted with flaming lamps. The light was distressing to those who had accompanied us, and many of them left, while the few who remained had to cover their eyes. Here we found that all preparations had been made. The apartments were all illuminated, though our love of light never ceased to be a matter of amazement to the Kosekin, and a bounteous repast was spread for us. But the Kohen and the others found the light intolerable, and soon left us to ourselves.

After the repast some women appeared to take Almah to her chamber, and, with the usual kindness of the Kosekin, they assured her that she would not be expected to obey the law of separation, but that she was to remain here, where she would be always within reach of me.

After her departure there came to visit me the lowest man in all the land of the Kosekin, though, according to our view, he would be esteemed the highest. This was the Kohen Gadol. His history had already been told me. I had learned that through lack of Kosekin virtue he had gradually sunk to this position, and now was compelled to hold in his hands more wealth, power, and display than any other man in the nation.

He was a man of singular appearance. The light was not so troublesome to him as to the others—he merely kept his eyes shaded; but he regarded me with a keen look of inquiry that was suggestive of shrewdness and cunning. I confess it was with a feeling of relief that I made this discovery; for I longed to find someone among this singular people who was selfish, who feared death, who loved life, who loved riches, and had something in common with me. This I thought I perceived in the shrewd, cunning face of the Kohen Gadol, and I was glad; for I saw that while he could not possibly be more dangerous to me than those self-sacrificing, self-denying cannibals whom I had thus far known, he might prove of some assistance, and might help me to devise means of escape. If I could only find someone who was a coward, and selfish and avaricious—if this Kohen Gadol could but be he—how much brighter my life would be! And so there happened to me an incredible thing, that my highest wish was now to find in the Kohen Gadol cowardice, avarice, and selfishness.

The Kohen was accompanied by a young female, richly attired, who, I afterward learned, was his daughter. Her name was Layelah, and she filled the office of Malca, which signifies queen; and though honorable with us above all, is among the Kosekin the lowest in the land. Layelah was so beautiful that I looked at her in amazement. She was very tall for one of the Kosekin, which made her stature equal to that of an ordinary girl with us; her hair was rich, dark and luxuriant, gathered about her head in great masses and bound by a golden band. Her features were delicate and perfect in their outline; her expression was noble and commanding. Her eyes were utterly unlike those of the other Kosekin; the upper lids had a slight droop, but that was all, and that was the nearest approach to the national blink. Her first entrance into the room seemed to dazzle her, and she shaded her eyes for a few moments, but after that she looked at me fixedly, and seemed to suffer no more inconvenience than I did. The perfect liberty of women among the Kosekin made this visit from her quite as natural as that of her father; and though she said but little on this occasion, she was an attentive listener and close observer.

Their visit was long, for they were evidently full of curiosity. They had heard much about me and wished to see more. It was the first time that I had found among the Kosekin the slightest desire to know where I had come from. Hitherto all had been content with the knowledge that I was a foreigner. Now, however, I found in the Kohen Gadol and Layelah a curiosity that was most eager and intense. They questioned me about my country, about the great world beyond the mountains, about the way in which I had come here, about the manners and customs of my countrymen. They were eager to know about those great nations of which I spoke, who loved light and life; about men who loved themselves better than others; of that world where men feared death and loved life, and sought after riches and lived in the light.

The sleeping-time came and passed, and my visitors were still full of eager questionings. It was Layelah who at last thought of the lateness of the hour. At a word from her the Kohen Gadol rose, with many apologies, and prepared to go. But before he left he said:

“When I was a child I was shipwrecked, and was taken up a ship which conveyed me to a nation beyond the sea. There I grew up to manhood. I learned their language and manners and customs, and when I returned home I found myself an alien here: I do not love darkness or death, I do not hate riches, and the result is that I am what I am. If I were like the rest of my countrymen, my lot would make me miserable; but as it is I prefer it to any other, and consider myself not the lowest but the greatest in the land. My daughter is like me, and instead of being ashamed of her station she is proud of it, and would not give it up even to become a pauper. I will see you again. I have much to say.”

With these words the Kohen Gadol retired, followed by Layelah, leaving me more hopeful than I had been for a long time.

For many joms following I received visits from the Kohen Gadol and from Layelah. Almah was with me until sleeping-time, and then these other visitors would come. In this, at least, they resembled the other Kosekin, that they never dreamed of interfering with Almah when she might wish to be with me. Their visits were always long, and we had much to say; but what I lost of sleep I always made up on the following jom. The Kohen Gadol, with his keen, shrewd face, interested me greatly; but Layelah, with her proud face and air of command, was a positive wonder.

I soon learned that the Kohen Gadol was what we term “a man of advanced views,” or perhaps a “Reformer,” or a “Philosophic Radical,” it matters not which; suffice it to say that his ideas and feelings differed from those of his nation, and if carried out would be equal to a revolution in politics and morals.

The Kohen Gadol advocated selfishness as the true law of life, without which no state can prosper. There were a few of similar views, but they were all regarded with great contempt by the multitude, and had to suffer the utmost rigor of the law; for they were all endowed with vast wealth, compelled to live in the utmost splendor and luxury, to have enormous retinues, and to wield the chief power in politics and in religion. Even this, however, had not changed the sentiments of the condemned, and I learned that they were laboring incessantly, notwithstanding their severe punishment, to disseminate their peculiar doctrines. These were formulated as follows:

1. A man should not love others better than himself.

2. Life is not an evil to be got rid of.

3. Other things are to be preferred to death.

4. Poverty is not the best state for man.

5. Unrequited love is not the greatest happiness.

6. Lovers may sometimes marry.

7. To serve is not more honorable than to command.

8. Defeat is not more glorious than victory.

9. To save a life should not be regarded as a criminal offence.

10. The paupers should be forced to take a certain amount of wealth, to relieve the necessities of the rich.

These articles were considered both by the Kohen Gadol and by Layelah to be remarkable for their audacity, and were altogether too advanced for mention by any except the chosen few. With the multitude he had to deal differently, and had to work his way by concealing his opinions. He had made a great conspiracy, in which he was still engaged, and had gained immense numbers of adherents by allowing them to give him their whole wealth. Through his assistance many Athons and Kohens and Meleks had become artisans laborers, and even paupers; but all were bound by him to the strictest secrecy. If anyone should divulge the secret, it would be ruin to him and to many others; for they would at once be punished by the bestowal of the extremest wealth, by degradation to the rank of rulers and commanders, and by the severest rigors of luxury, power, splendor, and magnificence known among the Kosekin. Overwhelmed thus with the cares of government, crushed under the weight of authority and autocratic rule, surrounded by countless slaves all ready to die for them, their lives would be embittered and their punishment would be more than they could bear. But the philosophic Kohen Gadol dared all these punishments, and pursued his way calmly and pertinaciously.

Nothing surprised the Kohen Gadol so much as the manner in which I received his confidences. He half expected to startle me by his boldness, but was himself confounded by my words. I told him that in my country self was the chief consideration, self-preservation the law of nature; death the King of Terrors; wealth the object of universal search, poverty the worst of evils; unrequited love nothing less than anguish and despair; to command others the highest glory; victory, honor; defeat, intolerable shame; and other things of the same sort, all of which sounded in his ears, as he said, with such tremendous force that they were like peals of thunder. He shook his head despondently; he could not believe that such views as mine could ever be attained to among the Kosekin. But Layelah was bolder, and with all a woman’s impetuosity grasped at my fullest meaning and held it firm.

“He is right,” said Layelah—“the heaven-born Atam-or. He shall be our teacher. The rich shall be esteemed, the poor shall be down-trodden; to rule over others shall be glorious, to serve shall be base; victory shall be an honor, defeat a shame; selfishness, self-seeking, luxury, and indulgence shall be virtues; poverty, want, and squalor shall be things of abhorrence and contempt.”

The face of Layelah glowed with enthusiasm as she said these words, and I saw in her a daring, intrepid, and high-hearted woman, full of a woman’s headlong impetuosity and disregard of consequences. In me she saw one who seemed to her like a prophet and teacher of a new order of things, and her whole soul responded to the principles which I announced. It required immense strength of mind and firmness of soul to separate herself from the prevalent sentiment of her nation; and though nature had done much for her in giving her a larger portion of original selfishness than was common to her people, still she was a child of the Kosekin, and her daring was all the more remarkable. And so she went further than her father, and adopted my extreme views when he shrank back, and dared more unflinchingly the extremest rigors of the national law, and all that the Kosekin could inflict in the way of wealth, luxury, supreme command, palatial abodes, vast retinues of slaves, and the immense degradation of the queenly office.

I spoke to her in a warning voice about her rashness.

“Oh,” said she, “I have counted the cost, and am ready to accept all that they can inflict. I embrace the good cause, and will not give it up—no, not even if they could increase my wealth a thousand-fold, and sentence me to live a hundred seasons. I can bear their utmost inflictions of wealth, power, magnificence; I could even bear being condemned to live forever in the light. Oh, my friend, it is the conviction of right and the support of conscience that strengthens one to bear the greatest evils that man can inflict.”

From these words it was evident to me that Layelah was a true child of the Kosekin; for though she was of advanced sentiments she still used the language of her people, and spoke of the punishments of the law as though they were punishments in reality. Now, to me and to Almah these so-called punishments seemed rewards.

It was impossible for me to avoid feeling a very strong regard for this enthusiastic and beautiful girl; all the more, indeed, because she evinced such an undisguised admiration for me. She evidently considered me some superior being, from some superior race; and although my broken and faulty way of speaking the language was something of a trial, still she seemed to consider every word I uttered as a maxim of the highest wisdom. The tritest of truths, the commonest of platitudes, the most familiar of proverbs or old saws current among us were eagerly seized by Layelah, and accepted as truths almost divine—as new doctrines for the guidance of the human race. These she would discuss with me; she would put them into better and more striking language, and ask for my opinion. Then she would write them down.

For the Kosekin knew the art of writing. They had an alphabet of their own, which was at once simple and very scientific. There were no vowels, but only consonant sounds, the vowels being supplied in reading, just as if one should write the words fthr or dghtr, and read them father and daughter. Their letters were as follows: P, K, T, B, G, D, F, Ch, Th, M, L, N, S, H, R. There were also three others, which have no equivalents in English.

It soon became evident to me that Layelah had a complete ascendancy over her father; that she was not only the Malca of the amir, but the presiding spirit and the chief administrative genius of the whole nation of the Kosekin. She seemed to be a new Semiramis—one who might revolutionize an empire and introduce a new order of things. Such, indeed, was her high ambition, and she plainly avowed it to me; but what was more, she frankly informed me that she regarded me as a Heaven-sent teacher—as one who in this darkness could tell her of the nations of light—who could instruct her in the wisdom of other and greater races, and help her to accomplish her grand designs.

As for Almah, she seemed quite beneath the notice of the aspiring Layelah. She never noticed her, she never spoke of her, and she always made her visits to me after Almah had gone.

CHAPTER XX

THE DARK MAIDEN LAYELAH

Layelah at length began to make pointed remarks about Almah.

“She loves you,” said she, “and you love her. How is it that you do not give each other up?”

“I would die rather than give up Almah,” said I.

Layelah smiled. “That sounds strange to the Kosekin,” said she, “for here to give up your love and to die are both esteemed the greatest possible blessings. But Almah should give you up. It is the women with us who make the beginning. Women generally fall in love first, and it is expected that they will tell their love first. The delicacy of a woman’s feelings makes this natural, for if a man tells his love to a woman who does not love him, it shocks her modesty; while if a woman tells a man, he has no modesty to shock.”

“That is strange,” said I; “but suppose the man does not love the woman?”

“Why, no woman wants to be loved; she only wants to love.”

At this I felt somewhat bewildered.

“That,” said Layelah, “is unrequited love, which is the chief blessing here, though for my part I am a philosopher, and would wish when I love to be loved in return.”

“And then,” said I, “if so, would you give up your lover, in accordance with the custom of your country?”

Layelah’s dark eyes rested on me for a moment with a glance of intense earnestness and profound meaning. She drew a long breath, and then said, in a low, tremulous voice,

“Never!”

Layelah was constantly with me, and at length used to come at an earlier time, when Almah was present. Her manner toward Almah was full of the usual Kosekin courtesy and gracious cordiality. She was still intent upon learning from me the manners, customs, and principles of action of the race to which I belonged. She had an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and her curiosity extended to all of those great inventions which are the wonder of Christendom. Locomotives and steamboats were described to her under the names of “horses of fire” and “ships of fire”; printing was “letters of power”; the electric telegraph, “messages of lightning”; the organ, “lute of giants,” and so on. Yet, in spite of the eagerness with which she made her inquiries, and the diligence with which she noted all down, I could see that there was in her mind something lying beneath it all—a far more earnest purpose, and a far more personal one, than the pursuit of useful knowledge.

Layelah was watchful of Almah; she seemed studying her to see how far this woman of another race differed from the Kosekin. She would often turn from me and talk with Almah for a long time, questioning her about her people and their ways. Almah’s manner was somewhat reserved, and it was rendered somewhat more so from the fact that her mind was always full of the prospect of our impending doom. Each jom as it came and went brought us nearer to that awful time, and the hour was surely coming when we should be taken to the outer square and to the top of the pyramid of sacrifice.

Once Layelah sat for some time silent and involved in thought. At length she began to speak to me.

“Almah,” said she, “is very different from us. She loves you and you love her. She ought to give you up. Almah, you ought to give up Atam-or, since you love him.”

Almah looked confused, and made some reply to the effect that she belonged to a different race with different customs.

“But you should follow our customs. You are one of us now. You can easily find another who will take him.”

Almah threw a piteous glance at me and said nothing.

“I,” said Layelah, “will take him.”

She spoke these words with an air of magnanimity, as though putting it in the light of a favor to Almah; but Almah did not make any reply, and after some silence Layelah spoke of something else.

Not long after we were alone together, and Layelah returned to the subject. She referred to Almah’s want of sympathy with the manners of the Kosekin, and asserted that she ought to aim after a separation.

“I love her,” said I, with great warmth, “and will never give her up.”

“But she must give you up; it is the woman’s place to take the first step. I should be willing to take you.”

As Layelah said this she looked at me very earnestly, as if anxious to see how I accepted this offer. It was for me a most embarrassing moment. I loved Almah, but Layelah also was most agreeable, and I liked her very much; indeed, so much so that I could not bear to say anything that might hurt her feelings. Among all the Kosekin there was not one who was not infinitely inferior to her in my eyes. Still, I loved Almah, and I told her so again, thinking that in this way I might repel her without giving offence.

But Layelah was quite ready with her reply.

“If you love Almah,” said she, “that is the very reason why you should marry me.”

This made me feel more embarrassed than ever.

I stammered something about my own feelings—the manners and customs of my race—and the fear that I had of acting against my own principles. “Besides,” I added, “I’m afraid it would make you unhappy.”

“Oh no,” said Layelah, briskly; “on the contrary, it would make me very happy indeed.”

I began to be more and more aghast at this tremendous frankness, and was utterly at a loss what to say.

“My father,” continued Layelah, “is different from the other Kosekin, and so am I. I seek requital for love, and do not think it an evil.”

A sudden thought now suggested itself, and I caught at it as a last resort.

“You have,” said I, “some lover among the Kosekin. Why do you not marry him?”

Layelah smiled.

“I have no lover that I love,” said she, “among the Kosekin.”

My feeble effort was thus a miserable failure. I was about saying something concerning the Kosekin alphabet or something else of an equally appropriate nature, when she prevented me.

“Atam-or,” said she, in a low voice.

“Layelah,” said I, with my mind full of confusion.

“I love you!”

She sat looking at me with her beautiful face all aglow her dark eyes fixed on mine with an intense and eager gaze. I looked at her and said not one single word. Layelah was the first to break the awkward silence.

“You love Almah, Atam-or; but say, do you not love me? You smile at me, you meet me always when I come with warm greetings, and you seem to enjoy yourself in my society. Say, Atam-or, do you not love me?”

This was a perilous and a tremendous moment. The fact is, I did like Layelah very much indeed, and I wanted to tell her so; but my ignorance of the language did not allow me to observe those nice distinctions of meaning which exist between the words “like” and “love.” I knew no other word than the one Kosekin word meaning “love,” and could not think of any meaning “like.” It was, therefore, a very trying position for me.

“Dear Layelah,” said I, floundering and stammering in my confusion, “I love you; I—”

But here I was interrupted without waiting for any further words; the beautiful creature flung her arms around me and clung to me with a fond embrace. As for me, I was utterly confounded, bewildered, and desperate. I thought of my darling Almah, whom alone I loved. It seemed at that moment as though I was not only false to her, but as if I was even endangering her life. My only thought now was to clear up my meaning.

“Dear Layelah,” said I, as I sat with her arms around me, and with my own around her slender waist, “I do not want to hurt your feelings.”

“Oh, Atam-or! oh, my love! never, never did I know such bliss as this.”

Here again I was overwhelmed, but I still persisted in my effort.

“Dear Layelah,” said I, “I love Almah most dearly and most tenderly.”

“Oh, Atam-or, why speak of that? I know it well. And so by our Kosekin law you give her up; among us, lovers never marry. So you take me, your own Layelah, and you will have me for your bride; and my love for you is ten thousand times stronger than that of the cold and melancholy Almah. She may marry my papa.”

This suggestion filled me with dismay.

“Oh no,” said I. “Never, never will I give up Almah!”

“Certainly not,” said Layelah; “you do not give her up—she gives you up.”

“She never will,” said I.

“Oh yes,” said Layelah; “I will tell her that you wish it.”

“I do not wish it,” said I. “I love her, and will never give her up.”

“It’s all the same,” said Layelah. “You cannot marry her at all. No one will marry you. You and Almah are victims and the State has given you the matchless honor of death. Common people who love one another may marry if they choose, and take the punishment which the law assigns but illustrious victims who love cannot marry, and so, my Atam-or, you have only me.”

I need not say that all this was excessively embarrassing I was certainly fond of Layelah, and liked her too much to hurt her feelings. Had I been one of the Kosekin I might perhaps have managed better; but being a European, a man of the Aryan race—being such, and sitting there with the beautiful Layelah lavishing all her affections upon me—why, it stands to reason that I could not have the heart to wound her feelings in any way. I was taken at an utter disadvantage. Never in my life had I heard of women taking the initiative. Layelah had proposed to me, she would not listen to refusal, and I had not the heart to wound her. I had made all the fight I could by persisting in asserting my love for Almah, but all my assertions were brushed lightly aside as trivial things.

Let any gentleman put himself in my situation, and ask himself what he would do. What would he do if such a thing could happen to him at home? But there such a thing could not happen, and so there is no use in supposing an impossible case. At any rate I think I deserve sympathy. Who could keep his presence of mind under such circumstances? With us a young lady who loves one man can easily repel another suitor; but here it was very different, for how could I repel Layelah? Could I turn upon her and say “Unhand me”? Could I say “Away! I am another’s”? Of course I couldn’t; and what’s worse, if I had said such things Layelah would have smiled me down into silence. The fact is, it doesn’t do for women to take the initiative—it’s not fair. I had stood a good deal among the Kosekin. Their love of darkness, their passion for death, their contempt of riches, their yearning after unrequited love, their human sacrifices, their cannibalism, all had more or less become familiar to me, and I had learned to acquiesce in silence; but now when it came to this—that a woman should propose to a man—it really was more than a fellow could stand. I felt this at that moment very forcibly; but then the worst of it was that Layelah was so confoundedly pretty, and had such a nice way with her, that hang me if I knew what to say.

Meanwhile Layelah was not silent; she had all her wits about her.

“Dear papa,” said she, “would make such a nice husband for Almah. He is a widower, you know. I could easily persuade him to marry her. He always does whatever I ask him to do.”

“But victims cannot marry, you said.”

“No,” said Layelah, sweetly, “they cannot marry one another, but Almah may marry dear papa, and then you and I can be married, and it will be all very nice indeed.”

At this I started away.

“No,” said I, indignantly, “it won’t be nice. I’m engaged to be married to Almah, and I’m not going to give her up.”

“Oh, but she gives you up, you know,” said Layelah, quietly.

“Well, but I’m not going to be given up.”

“Why, how unreasonable you are, you foolish boy!” said Layelah, in her most caressing manner. “You have nothing at all to do with it.”

At this I was in fresh despair, and then a new thought came, which I seized upon.

“See here,” said I, “why can’t I marry both of you? I’m engaged to Almah, and I love her better than all the world. Let me marry her and you too.”

At this Layelah laughed long and merrily. Peal after peal of laughter, musical and most merry, burst from her. It was contagious; I could not help joining in, and so we both sat laughing. It was a long time before we regained our self-control.

“Why, that’s downright bigamy!” exclaimed Layelah with fresh laughter. “Why, Atam-or, you’re mad!” and so she went off again in fresh peals of laughter. It was evident that my proposal was not at all shocking, but simply comical, ridiculous, and inconceivable in its absurdity. It was to her what the remark of some despairing beauty would be among us who, when pressed by two lovers should express a confused willingness to marry both. It was evident that Layelah accepted it as a ludicrous jest.

Laughter was all very well, of course; but I was serious and felt that I ought not to part with Layelah without some better understanding, and so I once more made an effort.

“All this,” said I, in a mournful tone, “is a mere mockery. What have I to say about love and marriage? If you loved me as you say, you would not laugh, but weep. You forget what I am. What am I? A victim, and doomed—doomed to a hideous fate—a fate of horror unutterable. You cannot even begin to imagine the anguish with which I look forward to that fate which impends over me and Almah. Marriage—idle word! What have I to do with marriage? What has Almah? There is only one marriage before us—the dread marriage with death! Why talk of love to the dying? The tremendous ordeal, the sacrifice, is before us and after that there remains the hideous Mista Kosek!”

At this Layelah sprang up, with her whole face and attitude full of life and energy.

“I know, I know,” said she, quickly; “I have arranged for all. Your life shall be saved. Do you think that I have consented to your death? Never! You are mine. I will save you. I will show you what we can do. You shall escape.”

“Can you really save me?” I cried.

“I can.”

“What! in spite of the whole nation?”

Layelah laughed scornfully.

“I can save you,” said she. “We can fly. There are other nations beside ours. We can find some land among the Gojin where we can live in peace. The Gojin are not like us.”

“But Almah?” said I.

The face of Layelah clouded.

“I can only save you,” said she.

“Then I will stay and die with Almah,” said I, obstinately.

“What!” said Layelah, “do you not fear death?”

“Of course I do,” said I; “but I’d rather die than lose Almah.”

“But it’s impossible to save both of you.”

“Then leave me and save Almah,” said I.

“What! would you give up your life for Almah?”

“Yes, and a thousand lives,” said I.

“Why,” said Layelah, “now you talk just like the Kosekin. You might as well be one of us. You love death for the sake of Almah. Why not be more like the Kosekin, and seek after a separation from Almah?”

Layelah was not at all offended at my declaration of love for Almah. She uttered these words in a lively tone, and then said that it was time for her to go.

CHAPTER XXI

THE FLYING MONSTER

I retired to bed, but could not sleep. The offer of escape filled me with excited thoughts. These made sleep impossible, and as I lay awake I thought that perhaps it would be well to know what might be Layelah’s plan of escape, for I might then make use of it to save Almah. I determined to find out all about it on the following jom—to question her as to the lands of the Gojin, to learn all her purpose. It might be that I could make use of that very plan to save Almah; but if not, why then I was resolved to remain and meet my fate with her. If Layelah could be induced to take both of us, I was of course resolved to go, trusting to chance as to the claims of Layelah upon me, and determined at all hazards to be faithful to Almah; but if she should positively refuse to save Almah, then I thought it possible that I might be able to find in Layelah’s plan of escape something of which I might avail myself. I could not imagine what it was, but it seemed to me that it might be something quite feasible, especially for a desperate man. The only thought I had was of escape by means of some boat over the seas. In a boat I would be at home. I could make use of a sail so as to elude pursuit, and could guide myself by the stars. The only thing that I wanted to know was the situation of the lands of the Gojin.

On the following jom the Kohen Gadol and Layelah came quite early and spent much time. I was surprised to see the Kohen Gadol devoting himself in an absurd fashion to Almah. It at once occurred to me that Layelah had obtained her father’s co-operation in her scheme, and that the old villain actually imagined that he could win the hand of Almah. To Almah herself I had said nothing whatever about the proposal of Layelah, so that she was quite ignorant of the intentions of her companion; but it was excessively annoying to me to see such proceedings going on under my own eyes. At the same time I felt that it would be both unwise and uncivil to interfere; and I was also quite sure that Almah’s affections were not to be diverted from me by anyone, much less by such an elderly party as the Kohen Gadol. It was very trying, however, and, in spite of my confidence in Almah, my jealousy was excited, and I began to think that the party of philosophical Radicals were not so agreeable as the orthodox cannibals whom I first met. As for Layelah, she seemed quite unconscious of any disturbance in my mind. She was as amiable, as sprightly, as inquisitive, and as affectionate as ever. She even outdid herself, and devoted herself to me with an abandon that was quite irresistible.

After Almah had left me, Layelah came again, and this time she was alone.

“I have come,” said she, “to show you the way in which we can escape, whenever you decide to do so.”

It was the thing above all others which I wished to know, and therefore I questioned her eagerly about it; but to all of my questions she only replied that she would show me, and I might judge for myself.

Layelah led the way, and I followed her. We traversed long galleries and vast halls, all of which were quite empty. It was the sleeping-time, and only those were visible who had some duties which kept them up later than usual. Faint, twinkling lights but feebly illuminated the general gloom. At length we came to an immense cavern, which was darker than ever, and without any lamps at all. Through a vast portal, which was closed with a barred gateway, the beams of the brilliant aurora penetrated and disclosed something of the interior.

Here Layelah stopped and peered through the gloom while I stood waiting by her side, wondering what means of escape could be found in this cavern. As I stood I heard through the still air the sound as of living things. For a time I saw nothing, but at length I descried a vast, shadowy form moving forward toward the portal, where the darkness was less. It was a form of portentous size and fearful shape, and I could not make out at first the nature of it. It surpassed all that I had ever seen. Its head was large and its jaws long, armed with rows of terrible teeth like those of a crocodile. Its body was of great size. It walked on its hind-legs, so as to maintain itself in an upright attitude, and in that position its height was over twelve feet. But the most amazing thing about this monster has yet to be told. As it walked its forearms waved and fluttered, and I saw descending from them what seemed like vast folded leathern wings, which shook and swayed in the air at every step. Its pace was about as fast as that of a man, and it moved with ease and lightness. It seemed like some enormous bat, or rather like a winged crocodile, or yet again like one of those monstrous dragons of which I had read, but in whose actual existence I had never believed. Yet here I saw one living and moving before me—an actual dragon, with the exception of a tail; for that appendage, which plays so great a part in all the pictures of dragons, had no place here. This beast had but a short caudal appendage, and all its terrors lay in its jaws and in its wings.

For a moment I stood almost lifeless with terror and surprise. Then I shrank back, but Layelah laid her hand on my arm.

“Don’t be afraid,” said she; “it’s only an athaleb.”

“But won’t it—won’t it bite?” I asked, with a shudder.

“Oh no,” said Layelah; “it swallows its victuals whole.”

At this I shrank away still farther.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Layelah again. “Its jaws are muzzled, and, besides, it’s a tame athaleb. Its jaws are unmuzzled only at feeding-time. But this one is very tame. There are three or four others in here, and all as tame as I am. They all know me. Come up nearer; don’t be afraid. These athalebs are easily tamed.”

“How can such tremendous monsters be tamed?” I asked, in an incredulous tone.

“Oh, man can tame anything. The athalebs are very docile when they are taken young. They are very long lived. This one has been in service here for a hundred seasons and more.”

At this I began to regain my confidence, and as Layelah moved nearer to the athaleb I accompanied her. A nearer view, however, was by no means reassuring. The dragon look of the athaleb was stronger than ever, for I could see that all its body was covered with scales. On its neck and back was a long ridge of coarse hair, and the sweep of its vast arms was enormous. It was with a quaking heart that I stood near; but the coolness of Layelah reassured me, for she went close up, as a boy would go up to a tame elephant, and she stroked his enormous back, and the monster bent down his terrible head and seemed pleased.

“This,” said Layelah, “is the way we have of escaping.”

“This!” I exclaimed, doubtfully.

“Yes,” said she. “He is trained to the service. We can mount on his back, and he will fly with us wherever I choose to guide him.”

“What!” I exclaimed, as I shrank back—“fly! Do you mean to say that you will mount this hideous monster, and trust yourself to him?”

“Certainly,” said Layelah, quietly. “He is very docile. There is harness here with which we can guide him. Should you like to see him harnessed?”

“Very much indeed,” said I.

Upon this Layelah walked up to the monster and stroked his breast. The huge athaleb at once lay down upon his belly. Then she brought two long straps like reins, and fastened each to the tip of a projecting tip of each wing. Then she fastened a collar around his neck, to which there was attached a grappling-iron.

“We seat ourselves on his back,” said Layelah. “I guide with these reins. When we land anywhere I fasten him with the grapple. He looks dull now, but if I were to open the gate and remove his muzzle he would be off like the wind.”

“But can he carry both of us?” I asked.

“Easily,” said Layelah. “He can carry three persons without fatigue.”

“Could you mount on his back now, and show me how you sit?”

Layelah readily assented, and mounted with the greatest ease, seating herself on the broadest part of the back between the wings.

“Here,” said she, “is room for you. Will you not come?”

For an instant I hesitated; but then the sight of her, seated there as coolly as though she were on a chair reassured me, and I climbed up also, though not without a shudder. The touch of the fearful monster was abhorrent but I conquered my disgust and seated myself close behind Layelah. Here she sat, holding the reins in her hands, with the grapple just in front of her; and, seated in this position, she went on to explain the whole process by which the mighty monster was guided through the air.

No sooner had I found myself actually on the back of the athaleb than all fear left me. I perceived fully how completely tame he was, and how docile. The reins attached to his wings could be pulled with the greatest ease, Just as one would pull the tiller-ropes of a boat. “Familiarity breeds contempt;” and now, since the first terror had passed away, I felt perfect confidence, and under the encouragement of Layelah I had become like some rustic in a menagerie, who at first is terrified by the sight of the elephant, but soon gains courage enough to mount upon his back. With my new-found courage and presence of mind I listened most attentively to all of Layelah’s explanations, and watched most closely the construction and fastening of the harness; for the thought had occurred to me that this athaleb might be of avail in another way—that if I did not fly with Layelah, I might fly with Almah. This thought was only of a vague and shadowy character—a dim suggestion, the carrying out of which I scarce dared to think possible; still, it was in my mind, and had sufficient power over me to make me very curious as to the plans of Layelah. I determined to find out where she proposed to go, and how far; to ask her about the dangers of the way and the means of sustenance. It seemed, I confess, rather unfair to Layelah to find out her plans and use them for another purpose; but then that other purpose was Almah, and to me at that time every device which was for her safety seemed fair and honorable.

“Here,” said Layelah—“here, Atam-or, you see the way of escape. The athaleb can carry us both far away to a land where you need never fear that they will put you to death—a land where the people love light and life. Whenever you are ready to go, tell me; if you are ready to go now, say so, and at once I will open the door, and we shall soon be far away.”

She laid her hand on mine and looked at me earnestly; but I was not to be beguiled into any hasty committal of myself, and so I turned her proposal away with a question:

“How far is it,” I asked, “to that land?”

“It is too far for one flight,” said Layelah. “We go first over the sea till we come to a great island, which is called Magones, where there are mountains of fire; there we must rest, and feed the athaleb on fish, which are to be found on the shore. The athaleb knows his way there well, for he goes there once every season for a certain sacred ceremony. He has done this for fifty or sixty seasons, and knows his way there and back perfectly well. The difficulty will be, when we leave Magones, in reaching the land of the Orin.”

“The Orin?” I repeated. “Who are they?”

“They are a people among the Gojin who love life and light. It is their land that I wish to reach, if possible.”

“Where is it?” I asked, eagerly.

“I cannot explain,” said Layelah. “I can only trust to my own skill, and hope to find the place. We may have to pass over different lands of the Gojin, and if so we may be in danger.”

“What is the reason why the athaleb goes to Magones every season?” I asked.

“To take there the chief pauper of the season, who has won the prize of death by starvation. It is one of the greatest honors among the Kosekin.”

“Is Magones barren?”

“It is an island of fire, without anything on it but craggy mountains and wild rocks and flowing rivers of fire. It stands almost in the middle of the sea.”

“How can we get away from here?” I asked, after some silence.

“From here?—why, I open the gates, and the athaleb flies away; that is all.”

“But shall we not be prevented?”

“Oh no. No one here ever prevents anyone from doing anything. Everyone is eager to help his neighbor.”

“But if they saw me deliberately mounting the athaleb and preparing for flight, would they not stop me?”

“No.”

I was amazed at this.

“But,” said I, “am I not a victim—preserved for the great sacrifice?”

“You are; but you are free to go where you like, and do what you like. Your character of victim makes you most distinguished. It is the highest honor and dignity. All believe that you rejoice in your high dignity, and no one dreams that you are anxious to escape.”

“But if I did escape, would they not pursue me?”

“Certainly not.”

“What would they do for a victim?”

“They would wonder at your unaccountable flight, and then choose some distinguished pauper.”

“But if I were to stay here, would they not save me from death at my entreaty?”

“Oh, certainly not; they would never understand such an entreaty. That’s a question of death, the supreme blessing. No one is capable of such a base act as saving his fellow-man from death. All are eager to help each other to such a fate.”

“But if I were to fly they would not prevent me, and they would not pursue me?”

“Oh no.”

“Are there any in the land who are exempt from the sacrifice?”

“Oh yes; the Athons, Meleks, and Kohens—these are not worthy of the honor. The artisans and tradesmen are sometimes permitted to attain to this honor; the laborers in greater numbers; but it is the paupers who are chiefly favored. And this is a matter of complaint among the rich and powerful, that they cannot be sacrificed.”

“Well, why couldn’t I be made an Athon or a Kohen, and be exempted in that way?”

“Oh, that would be too great a dishonor; it would be impossible. On the contrary, the whole people are anxious to honor you to the very uttermost, and to bestow upon you the greatest privileges and blessings which can possibly be given. Oh no, it would be impossible for them to allow you to become an Athon or a Kohen. As for me, I am Malca, and therefore the lowest in the land—pitied and commiserated by the haughty pauper class, who shake their heads at the thought of one like me. All the people shower upon me incessantly new gifts and new offices. If my present love of light and life were generally known, they would punish me by giving me new contributions of wealth and new offices and powers, which I do not want.”

“But you love riches, do you not? and you must want them still?”

“No,” said Layelah, “I do not want them now.”

“Why, what do you want?” I asked.

“You!” said she, with a sweet smile.

I said nothing, but tried desperately to think of something that might divert the conversation.

Layelah was silent for a few moments, and then went on in a musing tone:

“As I was saying, I love you, Atam-or, and I hate Almah because you love her. I think Almah is the only human being in all the world that I ever really hated; and yet, though I hate her, still, strange to say, I feel as though I should like to give her the immense blessing of death, and that is a very strange feeling, indeed, for one of the Kosekin. Do you understand, Atam-or, what such can possibly be?”

I did not answer, but turned away the conversation by a violent effort.

“Are there any other athalebs here?”

“Oh yes.”

“How many?”

“Four.”

“Are they all as tame as this?”

“Oh yes, all quite as tame; there is no difference whatever.”

Upon this I left the back of the athaleb, and Layelah also descended, after which she proceeded to show me the other monsters. At length she unharnessed the athaleb and we left the cavern.

CHAPTER XXII

ESCAPE

On the following jom I told everything to Almah. I told her that Layelah was urging me to fly with her, and that I had found out all about her plans. I described the athalebs, informed her about the direction which we were to take, the island of fire, and the country of the Orin. At this intelligence Almah was filled with delight, and for the first time since we had come to the amir there were smiles of joy upon her face. She needed no persuasion. She was ready to set forth whenever it was fitting, and to risk everything upon this enterprise. She felt as I did, and thought that the wildest attempt was better than this dull inaction.

Death was before us here, and every jom as it passed only brought it nearer. True, we were treated with the utmost kindness, we lived in royal splendor, we had enormous retinues; but all this was a miserable mockery, since it all served as the prelude to our inevitable doom. For that doom it was hard indeed to wait. Anything was better. Far better would it be to risk all the dangers of this unusual and amazing flight, to brave the terrors of that drear isle of fire, Magones; better to perish there of starvation, or to be killed by the hands of hostile Gojin, than to wait here and be destroyed at last by the sacrificial knife of these smiling, generous, kind-hearted, self-sacrificing fiends; to be killed—ay, and afterward borne to the tremendous Mista Kosek.

There was a difficulty with Layelah that had to be guarded against: in the first place that she might not suspect, and again that we might choose our time of escape when she would not be at all likely to find us out. We resolved to make our attempt without any further delay. Layelah was with us for the greater part of that jom, and the Kohen Gadol also gave us much of his company. Layelah did not seem to have any suspicions whatever of my secret purpose; for she was as bright, as amiable, and as devoted to me as ever, while the Kohen Gadol sought as before to make himself agreeable to Almah. I did not think fit to tell her about Layelah’s proposal, and therefore she was quite ignorant of the secret plans of the Kohen Gadol, evidently attributing his attention to the unfailing amiability of the Kosekin.

Layelah came again after Almah had retired, and spent the time in trying to persuade me to fly with her. The beautiful girl was certainly never more engaging, nor was she ever more tender. Had it not been for Almah it would have been impossible to resist such sweet persuasions; but as it was I did resist. Layelah, however, was not at all discouraged, nor did she lose any of her amiability; but when she took leave it was with a smile and sweet words of forgiveness on her lips for what she called my cruelty. After she left I remained for a time with a painful sense of helplessness. The fact is my European training did not fit me for encountering such a state of things as existed among the Kosekin. It’s very easy to be faithful to one’s own true-love in England, when other fair ladies hold aloof and wait to be sought; but here among the Kosekin, women have as much liberty in making love as men, and there is no law or custom about it. If a woman chooses she can pay the most desperate attentions, and play the part of a distracted lover to her heart’s content. In most cases the women actually take the initiative, as they are more impressible and impulsive than men; and so it was that Layelah made me the object of her persistent assault—acting all the time, too, in accordance with the custom of the country, and thus having no thought whatever of indelicacy, since, according to the Kosekin, she was acting simply in accordance with the rights of every woman. Now, where a woman is urged by one ardent lover to dismiss her other lover, she may sometimes find it difficult to play her part satisfactorily; but in my case I did not play my part satisfactorily at all; the ordeal was too hard, and I was utterly unable to show to Layelah that firmness and decision of character which the occasion demanded.

Yet, after all, the ordeal at last ended. Layelah left, as I have said, with sweet words of forgiveness on her lips, and I after a time succeeded in regaining my presence of mind.

Almah was waiting, and she soon joined me. We gathered a few articles for the journey, the chief of which were my rifle and pistol, which I had not used here, and then we set forth. Leaving our apartments we traversed the long passages, and at length came to the cavern of the athalebs. We met several people on the way, who looked at us with smiles, but made no other sign. It was evident that they had no commission to watch us, and that thus far Layelah’s information was correct.

Upon entering the cavern of the athalebs my first feeling was one of helplessness; for I had no confidence whatever in my own powers of managing these awful monsters, nor did I feel sure that I could harness them; but the emergency was a pressing one, and there was no help for it. I had seen where Layelah had left the harness, and now my chief desire was to secure one of the athalebs. The faint light served to disclose nothing but gloom; and I waited for a while, hoping that one of them would come forward as before. But waiting did no good, for no movement was made, and I had to try what I could do myself to rouse them. So I walked farther in toward the back part of the cavern, peering through the gloom, while Almah remained near the entrance.

As I advanced I heard a slight noise, as of someone moving. I thought it was one of the athalebs, and walked on farther, peering through the gloom, when suddenly I came full upon a man who was busy at some work which I could not make out. For a moment I stood in amazement and despair, for it seemed as though all was lost, and as if this man would at once divine my intent. While I stood thus he turned and gave me a very courteous greeting, after which, in the usual manner of the Kosekin, he asked me with much amiability what he could do for me. I muttered something about seeing the athalebs, upon which he informed me that he would show them to me with pleasure.

He went on to say that he had recently been raised from the low position of Athon to that of Feeder of the Athalebs, a post involving duties like those of ostlers or grooms among us, but which here indicated high rank and honor. He was proud of his title of “Epet,” which means servant, and more than usually obliging. I at once took advantage of his complaisance, and requested him to show me the athalebs. Upon this he led the way farther on, where I could see through the gloom the shadowy outlines of four monsters, all of which were resting in an upright posture against the wall, with their claws fixed on a shelf of rock. They looked more than ever like dragons, or rather like enormous bats, for their wings were disclosed hanging in loose leathern folds.

“Can they be roused,” I asked, “and made to move?”

“Oh yes,” said the Epet, and without waiting for any further request he proceeded to pull at the loose fan-like wing of the nearest one. The monster drew himself together, gave a flutter with his wings, and then moved back from the wall.

“Make him walk,” said I, eagerly.

The Epet at this pulled upon his wing once more, and the athaleb moved forward.

“Bring him to the portal, so that I may see him,” said I.

The Epet, still holding the athaleb’s wing, pulled at him, and thus guided him toward the portal. I was amazed at the docility of this terrific monster; yet, after all, I thought that it was no more astonishing than the docility of the elephant, which in like manner allows itself to be guided by the slightest pressure. A child may lead a vast elephant with ease, and here with equal ease the Epet led the athaleb. He led him up near to the portal, where the aurora light beamed through far brighter than the brightest moon, and disclosed all the vast proportions of the monster. I stood and looked on for some time in silence, quite at a loss what to do next.

And now Layelah’s words occurred to me as to the perfect willingness of the Kosekin to do anything which one might wish. She had insisted on it that they would not prevent our flight, and had given me to understand that they would even assist me if I should ask them. This is what now occurred to me, and I determined to make a trial. So I said:

“I should like to fly in the air on the athaleb. Will you harness him?”

I confess it was with some trepidation that I said this, but the feeling was soon dissipated. The Epet heard my words with perfect coolness, as though they conveyed the most natural request in the world, and then proceeded to obey me, just as at home a servant might hear and obey his master, who might say, “I should like to take a ride; will you harness the bay mare?”

So the Epet proceeded to harness the athaleb, and I watched him in silence; but it was the silence of deep suspense, and my heart throbbed painfully. There was yet much to be risked. The gates had to be opened. Others might interfere. Layelah might come. All these thoughts occurred to me as I watched the Epet; and though the labor of harnessing the athaleb was simple and soon performed, still the time seemed long. So the collar was secured around the neck of the athaleb, with the grapple attached, and the lines were fastened to the wings, and then Almah and I mounted.

The Epet now stood waiting for further orders.

“Open the gates,” said I.

The Epet did so.

Almah was seated on the back of the athaleb before me, holding on to the coarse mane; I, just behind, held the reins in my hand. The gates were opened wide. A few people outside, roused by the noise of the opening gates, stood and looked on. They had evidently no other feeling but curiosity.

All was now ready and the way was open, but there was an unexpected difficulty—the athaleb would not start, and I did not know how to make him. I had once more to apply for help to the Epet.

“How am I to make him start?” I asked.

“Pull at the collar to make him start, and pull at both reins to make him stop,” said the Epet.

Upon this I pulled at the collar.

The athaleb obeyed at once. He rose almost erect, and moved out through the gate. It was difficult to hold on, but we did so. On reaching the terrace outside, the athaleb expanded his vast wings, which spread out over a space of full fifty feet, and then with vigorous motions raised himself in the air.

It was a moment full of terror to both of us; the strange sensation of rising in the air, the quivering muscles of the athaleb at the working of the enormous pinions, the tremendous display of strength, all combined to overwhelm me with a sense of utter helplessness. With one hand I clung to the stiff mane of the monster; with the other I held Almah, who was also grasping the athaleb’s hair; and thus for some time all thought was taken up in the one purpose of holding on. But at length the athaleb lay in the air in a perfectly horizontal position; the beat of the wings grew more slow and even, the muscular exertion more steady and sustained. We both began to regain some degree of confidence, and at length I raised myself up and looked around.

It did not seem long since we had left; but already the city was far behind, rising with its long, crescent terraces, sparkling and twinkling with innumerable lights. We had passed beyond the bay; the harbor was behind us, the open sea before us, the deep water beneath. The athaleb flew low, not more than a hundred feet above the water, and maintained that distance all the time. It seemed, indeed, as if he might drop into the water at any time; but this was only fancy, for he was perfect master of all his movement and his flight was swift and well sustained.

Overhead the sky was filled with the glory of the aurora beams, which spread everywhere, flashing out from the zenith and illuminating the earth with a glow brighter than that of the brightest moon; beneath, the dark waters of the sea extended, with the waves breaking into foam, and traversed by galleys, by merchant-ships, and by the navies of the Kosekin. Far away the surface of the sea spread, with that marvelous appearance of an endless ascent, as though for a thousand miles, rising thus until it terminated half-way up the sky; and so it rose up on every side, so that I seemed to be at the bottom of a basin-shaped world—an immense and immeasurable hollow—a world unparalleled and unintelligible. Far away, at almost infinite distances, arose the long lines of mountains, which, crowned with ice, gleamed in the aurora light, and seemed like a barrier that made forever impossible all ingress and egress.

On and on we sped. At length we grew perfectly accustomed to the situation, the motion was so easy and our seats were so secure. There were no obstacles in our way, no roughness along our path; for that pathway was the smooth air, and in such a path there could be no interruption, no jerk or jar. After the first terror had passed there remained no longer any necessity for holding on—we could sit and look around with perfect freedom; and at length I rose to my feet, and Almah stood beside me, and thus we stood for a long time, with all our souls kindled into glowing enthusiasm by the excitement of that adventurous flight, and the splendors of that unequalled scene.

At length the aurora light grew dim. Then came forth the stars, glowing and burning in the black sky. Beneath there was nothing visible but the darkness of the water, spotted with phosphorescent points, while all around a wall of gloom arose which shut out from view the distant shores.

Suddenly I was aware of a noise like the beat of vast wings, and these wings were not those of our athaleb. At first I thought it was the fluttering of a sail, but it was too regular and too long continued for that. At length I saw through the gloom a vast shadowy form in the air behind us, and at once the knowledge of the truth flashed upon me. It was another monster flying in pursuit!

Were we pursued? Were there men on his back? Should I resist? I held my rifle poised, and was resolved to resist at all hazards. Almah saw it all, and said nothing. She perceived the danger, and in her eyes I saw that she, like me, would prefer death to surrender. The monster came nearer and nearer, until at last I could see that he was alone, and that none were on his back. But now another fear arose. He might attack our athaleb, and in that way endanger us. He must be prevented from coming nearer; yet to fire the rifle was a serious matter. I had once before I learned the danger of firing under such circumstances, when my opmahera had fled in terror at the report, and did not wish to experience the danger which might arise from a panic-stricken athaleb; and so as I stood there I waved my arms and gesticulated violently. The pursuing athaleb seemed frightened at such an unusual occurrence, for he veered off, and soon was lost in the darkness.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE ISLAND OF FIRE

At last there appeared before us what seemed like a long line of dull-red fires, and as we looked we could see bursts of flame at fitful intervals, which shone out for a few moments and then died away. Upon this now our whole attention was fixed; for it seemed as though we were approaching our destination, and that this place was the Island of Fire—a name which, from present appearances, was fully justified. As we went on and drew steadily nearer, the mass of glowing fire grew larger and brighter, and what at first had seemed a line was broken up into different parts, one of which far surpassed the others. This was higher in the air, and its shape was that of a long, thin, sloping line, with a burning, glowing globule at each end. It seemed like lava running down from the crater of a volcano, and this appearance was made certainty on a nearer approach; for we saw at the upper point, which seemed the crater, an outburst of flame, followed by a new flow of the fiery stream. In other places there were similar fires, but they were less bright, either because they were smaller or more remote.

At length we heard beneath us the roar of breakers, and saw long white lines of surf beating upon the shore. Our athaleb now descended and alighted; we clambered to the ground, and I, taking the grapple, fixed it securely between two sharp rocks. We were at last on Magones, the Island of Fire.

The brightness of the aurora light had left us, but it needed not this to show us the dismal nature of the land to which we had come. It was a land of horror, where there was nothing but the abomination of desolation—a land overstrewn with blasted fragments of fractured lava-blocks, intermixed with sand, from which there arose black precipices and giant mountains that poured forth rivers of fire and showers of ashes and sheets of flame. A tremendous peak arose before us, with a crest of fire and sides streaked with red torrents of molten lava; between us and it there spread away a vast expanse of impassable rocks—a scene of ruin and savage wildness which cannot be described, and all around was the same drear and appalling prospect. Here in the night-season—the season of darkness and of awful gloom—we stood in this land of woe; and not one single sign appeared of life save the life that we had brought with us. As for food, it was vain to think of it. To search after it would be useless. It seemed, indeed, impossible to move from the spot where we were. Every moment presented some new discovery which added to the horror of Magones.

But Almah was weary, for our flight had been long, and she wished to rest. So I found a place for her where there was some sand between two rocks, and here she lay down and went to sleep. I sat at a little distance off on a shelf of the rock, with my back against it, and here, after a little time, I also went to sleep.

At length we awoke. But what a waking! There was no morning dawn, no blessed returning light to greet our eyes. We opened our eyes to the same scenes upon which we had closed them, and the darkness was still deep and dense around us. Over us both there was a sense of utter depression, and I was so deeply plunged into it that I found it impossible to rouse myself, even for the sake of saying words of cheer to Almah. I had brought a few fragments of food, and upon these we made our breakfast; but there was the athaleb to feed, and for him I found nothing, nor could I think of anything—unless he could feed upon rocks and sand. Yet food for him was a matter of the highest consequence, for he was all our support and stay and hope; and if the monster were deprived of food he might turn upon us and satisfy upon us his ravenous appetite. These thoughts were painful indeed, and added to my despondency.

Suddenly I heard the sound of running water. I started away toward the place from which the sound came, and found, only a little distance off, a small brook trickling along on its way to the shore. I called Almah, and we both drank and were refreshed.

This showed an easy way to get to the shore, and I determined to go there to see if there were any fish to be found. Shell-fish might be there, or the carcasses of dead fish thrown up by the sea, upon which the athaleb might feed. I left my pistol with Almah, telling her to fire it if she heard me fire, for I was afraid of losing my way, and therefore took this precaution. I left it lying on the rock full-cocked, and directed her to point it in the air and pull the trigger. It was necessary to take these precautions, as of course she was quite ignorant of its nature. After this I left her and tried to follow the torrent.

This, however, I soon found to be impossible, for the brook on reaching a huge rock plunged underneath it and became lost to view. I then went toward the shore as well as I could—now climbing over sharp rocks, now going round them, until at length after immense labor I succeeded in reaching the water. Here the scene was almost as wild as the one I had left. There was no beach whatever—nothing but a vast extent of wild fragments of fractured lava-blocks, which were evidently the result of some comparatively recent convulsion of nature, for their edges were still sharp, and the water had not worn even those which were within its grasp to anything like roundness, or to anything else than the jagged and shattered outlines which had originally belonged to them. All the shore thus consisted of vast rocky blocks, over which the sea beat in foam.

Eager to find something, I toiled along this rocky shore for a long distance, but without seeing any change. I was unwilling to go back baffled, yet I was at length compelled to do so. But the necessity of feeding the athaleb was pressing, and I saw that our only course now would be to mount him again, leave this place, and seek some other. But where could we go? That I could not imagine, and could only conclude to trust altogether to the instinct of the athaleb, which might guide him to places where he might obtain food. Such a course would involve great risk for we might be carried into the midst of vast flocks of these monsters; yet there was nothing else to be done.

I now retraced my steps, and went for a long time near the sea. At length I found a place where the walking was somewhat easier, and went in this way up into the island and away from the sea. It seemed to lead in the direction where I wished to go. At length it seemed as if I had walked far enough, yet I could see no signs of Almah. I shouted, but there was no answer. I shouted again and again, but with the like result. Then I fired my rifle and listened. In response there came the report of the pistol far away behind me. It was evident that in coming back along the shore I had passed by the place where Almah was. There was nothing now left but to retrace my steps and this I accordingly did. I went back to the shore, and returned on my steps, shouting all the time, until at length I was rejoiced to hear the answering shout of Almah. After this it was easy to reach her.

We now took up the grapple and once more mounted. The athaleb, eager to be off, raised himself quickly in the air, and soon our late resting-place was far behind. His flight was now different from what it was before. Then he stood off in one straight line for a certain fixed destination, as though under some guidance; for though I did not direct him, still his long training had taught him to fly to Magones. But now training and guidance were both wanting, and the athaleb was left to the impulse of his hunger and the guidance of his instinct; so he flew no longer in one undeviating straight line, but rose high, and bent his head down low, and flew and soared in vast circles, even as I have seen a vulture or a condor sweep about while searching for food. All the while we were drawing farther and farther away from the spot which we had left.

We passed the lofty volcano; we saw more plainly the rivers of molten lava; we passed vast cliffs and bleak mountains, all of which were more terrific than all that we had left behind. Now the darkness lessened, for the aurora was brightening in the sky, and gathering up swiftly and gloriously all its innumerable beams, and flashing forth its lustrous glow upon the world. To us this was equal to the return of day; it was like a blessed dawn. Light had come, and we rejoiced and were exceeding glad.

Now we saw before us, far beyond the black precipices, a broad bay with sloping shores, and a wide beach which seemed like a beach of sand. The surf broke here, but beyond the surf was the gentle sandy declivity, and beyond this there appeared the shores, still rocky and barren and desolate, but far preferable to what we had left behind. Far away in the interior arose lofty mountains and volcanoes, while behind us flamed the burning peak which we had passed.

Here the athaleb wheeled in long, circuitous flights, which grew lower and lower, until at length he descended upon the sandy beach, where I saw a vast sea-monster lying dead. It had evidently been thrown up here by the sea. It was like one of those monsters which I had seen from the galley of the Kohen at the time of the sacred hunt. By this the athaleb descended, and at once began to devour it, tearing out vast masses of flesh, and exhibiting such voracity and strength of jaw that I could scarcely bear to look upon the sight. I fastened the grapple securely to the head of the dead monster, and leaving the athaleb to feed upon it, Almah and I went up the beach.

On our way we found rocks covered with sea-weed, and here we sought after shell-fish. Our search was at length rewarded, for suddenly I stumbled upon a place where I found some lobsters. I grasped two of these, but the others escaped. Here at last I had found signs of life, but they were of the sea rather than of the shore. Delighted with my prey, I hastened to Almah to show them to her. She recognized them at once, and I saw that they were familiar to her. I then spoke of eating them, but at this proposal she recoiled in horror. She could not give any reason for her repugnance, but merely said that among her people they were regarded as something equivalent to vermin, and I found that she would no more think of eating one than I would think of eating a rat. Upon this I had to throw them away, and we once more resumed our search.

At last we came to a place where numbers of dead fish lay on the sand. Nearer the water they were more fresh, and not at all objectionable. I picked up a few which looked like our common smelt, and found that Almah had no objection to these. But now the question arose how to cook them; neither of us could eat them raw. A fire was necessary, yet a fire was impossible; for on the whole island there was probably not one single combustible thing. Our discovery, therefore, seemed to have done us but little good, and we seemed destined to starvation, when fortunately a happy thought suggested itself. In walking along I saw far away the glow of some lava which had flowed to the shore at the end of the sandy beach, and was probably cooling down at the water’s edge. Here, then, was a natural fire, which might serve us better than any contrivance of our own, and toward this we at once proceeded. It was about two miles away; but the beach was smooth, and we reached the place without any difficulty.

Here we found the edge of that lava flood which seemed eternally descending from the crater beyond. The edge which was nearest the water was black; and the liquid fire, as it rolled down, curled over this in a fantastic shape, cooling and hardening into the form which it thus assumed. Here, after some search, I found a crevice where I could approach the fire, and I laid the fish upon a crimson rock, which was cooling and hardening into the shape of a vast ledge of lava. In this way, by the aid of nature, the fish were broiled, and we made our repast.

There was nothing here to invite a longer stay, and we soon returned to the athaleb. We found the monster, gorged with food, asleep, resting upon his hind legs, with his breast supported against the vast carcass. Almah called it a jantannin. It was about sixty feet in length and twenty in thickness, with a vast horny head, ponderous jaws, and back covered with scales. Its eyes were of prodigious size, and it had the appearance of a crocodile, with the vast size of a whale. It was unlike a crocodile, however; for it had fins rather than paws, and must have been as clumsy on the land as a seal or a walrus. It lay on its side, and the athaleb had fed itself from the uncovered flesh of its belly.

There was nothing here to induce us to stay, and so we wandered along the beach in the other direction. On our right was the bay; on our left the rocky shore, which, beginning at the beach, ran back into the country, a waste of impassable rocks, where not a tree or plant or blade of grass relieved the appalling desolation. Once or twice we made an attempt to penetrate into the country, where openings appeared. These openings seemed like the beds of dried-up torrents. We were able to walk but a few paces for invariably we would come to some immense blocks of rock, which barred all farther progress. In this way we explored the beach for miles, until it terminated in a savage promontory that rose abruptly from the sea against which the huge billows broke in thunder.

Then we retraced our steps, and again reached the spot where the athaleb was asleep by the jantannin. Almah was now too weary to walk any farther, nor was it desirable to do so; for, indeed, we had traversed all that could be visited. On one side of the beach was the sea, on the other the impassable rocks; at one end the promontory, at the other the lava fires. There was nothing more for us to do but to wait here until the athaleb should awake, and then our actions would depend upon what we might now decide.

This was the question that was now before us, and this we began to consider. We both felt the most unspeakable aversion for the island, and to remain here any longer was impossible. We would once more have to mount the athaleb, and proceed to some other shore. But where? Ah! there was the question! Not on the island, for it did not seem possible that in all its extent there could be one single spot capable of affording a resting-place. Layelah’s information with regard to Magones had made that much plain. I had not taken in her full meaning, but now mine eyes had seen it. Yet where else could we go? Almah could not tell where under the sky lay that land which she loved; I could not guess where to go to find the land of the Orin. Even if I did know, I did not feel able to guide the course of the athaleb; and I felt sure that if we were to mount again, the mighty monster would wing his flight back to the very place from which we had escaped—the amir. These thoughts weighed down our spirits. We felt that we had gained nothing by our flight, and that our future was dark indeed. The only hope left us was that we might be able to guide the course of the athaleb in some different direction altogether, so that we should not be carried back to the Kosekin.

And now, worn out by the long fatigues of this jom, we thought of sleep. Almah lay down upon the sand, and I seated myself, leaning against a rock, a little distance off, having first reloaded my rifle and pistol.

CHAPTER XXIV

RECAPTURE

How long I slept I do not know; but in the midst of my sleep there sounded voices, which at first intermingled themselves with my dreams, but gradually became separate and sounded from without, rousing me from my slumbers. I opened my eyes drowsily, but the sight that I saw was so amazing that in an instant all sleep left me. I started to my feet, and gazed in utter bewilderment upon the scene before me.

The aurora light was shining with unusual brilliancy, and disclosed everything—the sea, the shore, the athaleb, the jantannin, the promontory, all—more plainly and more luminously than before; but it was not any of these things that now excited my attention and rendered me dumb. I saw Almah standing there at a little distance, with despairing face, surrounded by a band of armed Kosekin; while immediately before me, regarding me with a keen glance and an air of triumph, was Layelah.

“Ataesmzori alonla,” said she, with a sweet smile, giving me the usual salutation of the Kosekin.

I was too bewildered to say a word, and stood mute as before, looking first at her and then at Almah.

The sight of Almah a prisoner once more, surrounded by the Kosekin, excited me to madness. I seized my rifle, and raised it as if to take aim; but Almah, who understood the movement, cried to me:

“Put down your sepet-ram, Atam-or! you can do nothing for me. The Kosekin are too numerous.”

“Sepet-ram!” said Layelah; “what do you mean by that? If your sepet-ram has any power, do not try to use it, Atam-or, or else I shall have to order my followers to give to Almah the blessing of death.”

At this my rifle was lowered: the whole truth flashed upon me, and I saw, too, the madness of resistance. I might kill one or two, but the rest would do as Layelah said, and I should speedily be disarmed. Well I knew how powerless were the thunders of my fire-arms to terrify these Kosekin; for the prospect of death would only rouse them to a mad enthusiasm, and they would all rush upon me as they would rush upon a jantannin—to slay and be slain. The odds were too great. A crowd of Europeans could be held in check far more easily than these death-loving Kosekin. The whole truth was thus plain: we were prisoners, and were at their mercy.

Layelah showed no excitement or anger whatever. She looked and spoke in her usual gracious and amiable fashion, with a sweet smile on her face.

“We knew,” said she, “that you would be in distress in this desolate place, and that you would not know where to go from Magones; and so we have come, full of the most eager desire to relieve your wants. We have brought with us food and drink, and are ready to do everything for you that you may desire. We have had great trouble in finding you, and have coursed over the shores for vast distances, and far over the interior, but our athalebs found you at last by their scent. And we rejoice to have found you in time, and that you are both so well, for we have been afraid that you had been suffering. Nay, Atam-or, do not thank us; thanks are distasteful to the Kosekin: these brave followers of mine will all be amply rewarded for this, for they will all be made paupers; but as for myself, I want no higher reward than the delightful thought that I have saved you from suffering.”

The beautiful, smiling Layelah, who addressed me in this way with her sweet voice, was certainly not to be treated as an enemy. Against her a rifle could not be leveled; she would have looked at me with the same sweet smile, and that smile would have melted all my resolution. Nor could I even persist in my determination to remain. Remain! For what? For utter despair! And yet where else could we go?

“You do not know where lie the lands of the Orin,” said Layelah. “The athaleb does not know. You could not guide him if you did know. You are helpless on his back. The art of driving an athaleb is difficult, and cannot be learned without long and severe practice. My fear was that the athaleb might break away from you and return, leaving you to perish here. Had you tried to leave this place he would have brought you back to the amir.”

To this I said nothing—partly because it was so true that I had no answer to make, and partly also out of deep mortification and dejection. My pride was wounded at being thus so easily baffled by a girl like Layelah, and all my grief was stirred by the sadness of Almah. In her eyes there seemed even now the look of one who sees death inevitable, and the glance she gave to me was like an eternal farewell.

Almah now spoke, addressing herself to Layelah.

“Death,” said she, in a voice of indescribable mournfulness, “is better here than with you. We would rather die here than go back. Let us, I pray you, receive the blessing of death here. Let us be paupers and exiles, and die on Magones.”

Layelah heard this, and stood for a moment in deep thought.

“No one but a stranger,” said she at length, “would ask such a favor as that. Do you not know that what you ask is among the very highest honors of the Kosekin? Who am I that I can venture to grant such a request as that? Ask for anything in my power, and I will be glad to grant it. I have already arranged that you shall be separated from Atam-or; and that, surely, is a high privilege. I might consent to bind you hand and foot, after the manner of the more distinguished Asirin; you may also be blindfolded if you wish it. I might even promise, after we return to the amir, to keep you confined in utter darkness, with barely sufficient food to keep you alive until the time of the sacrifice; in short, there is no blessing known among the Kosekin that I will not give so long as it is in my power. And so, beloved Almah,” continued Layelah, “you have every reason for happiness; you have all the highest blessings known among the Kosekin: separation from your lover, poverty, want, darkness; and, finally, the prospect of inevitable death ever before you as the crowning glory of your lot.”

These words seemed to the Kosekin the very excess of magnanimity, and involuntary murmurs of admiration escaped them; although it is just possible that they murmured at the greatness of the favor that was offered. But to me it sounded like fiendish mockery, and to Almah it sounded the same; for a groan escaped her, her fortitude gave way, she sank on her knees, buried her head in her hands, and wept.

“Almah,” cried I, in a fury, “we will not go back—we will not be separated! I will destroy all the athalebs, and we shall all perish here together. At least, you and I will not be separated.”

At this Almah started up.

“No, no,” said she—“no; let us go back. Here we have nothing but death.”

“But we have death also at the amir, and a more terrible one,” said I.

“If you kill the athalebs,” said Layelah, “I will give Almah the blessing of death.”

At this I recoiled in horror, and my resolution again gave way.

“You have some mysterious power of conferring death,” continued Layelah, “with what Almah calls your sepet-ram; but do not kill the athalebs, for it will do you no good. Almah would then receive the blessing of death. My followers, these noble Kosekin, would rejoice in thus gaining exile and death on Magones. As for myself, it would be my highest happiness to be here alone with you. With you I should live for a few sweet joms, and with you I should die; so go on—kill the athalebs if you wish.”

“Do not!” cried Almah—“do not! There is no hope. We are their prisoners, and our only hope is in submission.”

Upon this all further thought of resistance left me, and I stood in silence, stolidly waiting for their action. As I looked around I noticed a movement near the jantannin, and saw several athalebs there, which were devouring its flesh. I now went over to Almah and spoke with her. We were both full of despair. It seemed as though we might never meet again. We were to be separated now; but who could say whether we should be permitted to see each other after leaving this place? We had but little to say. I held her in my arms, regardless of the presence of others; and these, seeing our emotion, at once moved away, with the usual delicacy of the Kosekin, and followed Layelah to the jantannin to see about the athalebs.

At last our interview was terminated. Layelah came and informed us that all was ready for our departure. We walked sadly to the place, and found the athalebs crouched to receive their riders. There were four beside ours. Layelah informed me that I was to go with her, and Almah was to go on another athaleb. I entreated her to let Almah go with me; but she declined, saying that our athaleb could only carry two, as he seemed fatigued, and it would not be safe to overload him for so long a flight. I told her that Almah and I could go together on the same athaleb; but she objected on the ground of my ignorance of driving. And so, remonstrances and objections being alike useless, I was compelled to yield to the arrangements that had been made. Almah mounted on another athaleb. I mounted with Layelah, and then the great monsters expanded their mighty wings, rose into the air, and soon were speeding over the waters.

We went on in silence for some time. I was too despondent to say a word, and all my thoughts turned toward Almah, who was now separated from me—perhaps forever. The other athalebs went ahead, at long intervals apart, flying in a straight line, while ours was last. Layelah said nothing. She sat in front of me; her back was turned toward me; she held in her hands the reins, which hung quite loose at first, but after a while she drew them up, and seemed to be directing our course. For some time I did not notice anything in particular, for my eyes were fixed upon the athaleb immediately before us, upon which was seated the loved form of Almah, which I could easily recognize. But our athaleb flew slowly, and I noticed that we were falling behind. I said this to Layelah, but she only remarked that it was fatigued with its long journey. To this I objected that the others had made as long a journey, and insisted that she should draw nearer. This she at first refused to do; but at length, as I grew persistent, she complied, or pretended to do so. In spite of this, however, we again fell behind, and I noticed that this always happened when the reins were drawn tight. On making this discovery I suddenly seized both reins and let them trail loose, whereupon the athaleb at once showed a perceptible increase of speed, which proved that there was no fatigue in him whatever. This I said to Layelah.

She acquiesced with a sweet smile, and taking the reins again, she sat around so as to face me, and said:

“You are very quick. It is no use to try to deceive you, Atam-or: I wish to fall behind.”

“Why?”

“To save you.”

“To save me?”

“Yes. I can take you to the land of the Orin. Now is the time to escape from death. If you go back you must surely die; but now, if you will be guided by me, I can take you to the land of the Orin. There they all hate death, they love life, they live in the light. There you will find those who are like yourself; there you can love and be happy.”

“But what of Almah?” I asked.

Layelah made a pretty gesture of despair.

“You are always talking of Almah,” said she. “What is Almah to you? She is cold, dull, sad! She never will speak. Let her go.”

“Never!” said I. “Almah is worth more than all the world to me.”

Layelah sighed.

“I can never, never, never,” said she, “get from you the least little bit of a kind word—even after all that I have done for you, and when you know that I would lie down and let you trample me under your feet if it gave you any pleasure.”

“Oh, that is not the question at all,” said I. “You are asking me to leave Almah—to be false to her—and I cannot.”

“Among the Kosekin,” said Layelah, “it is the highest happiness for lovers to give one another up.”

“I am not one of the Kosekin,” said I. “I cannot let her go away—I cannot let her go back to the amir—to meet death alone. If she dies she shall see me by her side, ready to die with her.”

At this Layelah laughed merrily.

“Is it possible,” said she, “that you believe that? Do you not know that if Almah goes back alone she will not die?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, she can only die when you are in her company. She has lived for years among us, and we have waited for someone to appear whom she might love, so that we might give them both the blessing of death. If that one should leave her, Almah could not receive the blessing. She would be compelled to live longer, until some other lover should appear. Now, by going with me to the land of the Orin, you will save Almah’s life—and as for Almah, why, she will be happy—and dear papa is quite willing to marry her. You must see, therefore, dear Atam-or, that my plan is the very best that can be thought of for all of us, and above all for Almah.”

This, however, was intolerable; and I could not consent to desert Almah, even if by doing so I should save her life. My own nature revolted from it. Still it was not a thing which I could dismiss on the instant. The safety of Almah’s life, indeed, required consideration; but then the thought came of her wonder at my desertion. Would she not think me false? Would not the thought of my falsity be worse than death?

“No,” said I, “I will not leave her—not even to save her life. Even among us there are things worse than death. Almah would rather die by the sacrificial knife than linger on with a broken heart.”

“Oh no,” said Layelah, sweetly; “she will rejoice that you are safe. Do you not see that while you are together death is inevitable, but if you separate you may both live and be happy?”

“But she will think me dead,” said I, as a new idea occurred. “She will think that some accident has befallen me.”

“Oh no, she won’t,” said Layelah; “she will think that you have gone off with me.”

“Then that will be worse, and I would rather die, and have her die with me, than live and have her think me false.”

“You are very, very obstinate,” said Layelah, sweetly.

I made no reply. During this conversation I had been too intent upon Layelah’s words to notice the athalebs before me; but now as I looked up I saw that we had fallen far behind, and that Layelah had headed our athaleb in a new direction. Upon this I once more snatched the reins from her, and tried to return to our former course. This, however, I was utterly unable to do.

Layelah laughed.

“You will have to let me guide our course,” said she. “You can do nothing. The athaleb will now go in a straight line to the land of the Orin.”

Upon this I started up in wild excitement.

“Never, never, never!” I cried, in a fury. “I will not; I will destroy this athaleb and perish in the water!”

As I said this I raised my rifle.

“What are you going to do?” cried Layelah, in accents of fear.

“Turn back,” I cried, “or I will kill this athaleb!”

Upon this Layelah dropped the reins, stood up, and looked at me with a smile.

“Oh, Atam-or,” said she, “what a thing to ask! How can I go back now, when we have started for the land of the Orin?”

“We shall never reach the land of the Orin,” I cried; “we shall perish in the sea!”

“Oh no,” said Layelah; “you cannot kill the athaleb. You are no more than an insect; your rod is a weak thing, and will break on his iron frame.”

It was evident that Layelah had not the slightest idea of the powers of my rifle. There was no hesitation on my part. I took aim with the rifle. At that moment I was desperate. I thought of nothing but the swift flight of the athaleb, which was bearing me away forever from Almah. I could not endure that thought, and still less could I endure the thought that she should believe me false. It was therefore in a wild passion of rage and despair that I leveled my rifle, taking aim as well as I could at what seemed a vital part under the wing. The motion of the wing rendered this difficult, however, and I hesitated a moment, so as to make sure. All this time Layelah stood looking at me with a smile on her rosy lips and a merry twinkle in her eyes—evidently regarding my words as empty threats and my act as a vain pretence, and utterly unprepared for what was to follow.

Suddenly I fired both barrels in quick succession. The reports rang out in thunder over the sea. The athaleb gave a wild, appalling shriek, and fell straight down into the water, fluttering vainly with one wing, while the other hung down useless. A shriek of horror burst from Layelah. She started back, and fell from her standing-place into the waves beneath. The next instant we were all in the water together—the athaleb writhing and lashing the water into foam, while I involuntarily clung to his coarse mane, and expected death every moment.

But death did not come; for the athaleb did not sink, but floated with his back out of the water, the right pinion being sunk underneath and useless, and the left struggling vainly with the sea. But after a time he folded up the left wing and drew it close in to his side, and propelled himself with his long hind-legs. His right wing was broken, but he did not seem to have suffered any other injury.

Suddenly I heard a cry behind me:

“Atam-or! oh, Atam-or!”

I looked around and saw Layelah. She was swimming in the water, and seemed exhausted. In the agitation of the past few moments I had lost sight of her, and had thought that she was drowned; but now the sight of her roused me from my stupor and brought me back to myself. She was swimming, yet her strokes were weak and her face was full of despair. In an instant I had flung off my coat, rolled up the rifle and pistol in its folds, and sprung into the water. A few strokes brought me to Layelah. A moment more and I should have been too late. I held her head out of water, told her not to struggle, and then struck out to go back. It would have been impossible for me to do this, encumbered with such a load, had I not fortunately perceived the floating wing of the athaleb close beside me. This I seized, and by means of it drew myself with Layelah alongside; after which I succeeded in putting her on the back of the animal, and soon followed myself.

The terror of the rifle had overwhelmed her, and the suddenness of the catastrophe had almost killed her. She had struggled in the water for a long time, and had called to me in vain. Now she was quite exhausted, and lay in my arms trembling and sobbing. I spoke to her encouragingly, and wrapped her in my coat, and rubbed her hands and feet, until at last she began to recover. Then she wept quietly for a long time; then the weeping fit passed away. She looked up with a smile, and in her face there was unutterable gratitude.

“Atam-or,” said she, “I never loved death like the rest of the Kosekin; but now—but now—I feel that death with you would be sweet.”

Then tears came to her eyes, and I found tears coming to my own, so that I had to stoop down and kiss away the tears of Layelah. As I did so she twined both her arms around my neck, held me close to her, and sighed.

“Oh, Atam-or, death with you is sweet! And now you cannot reproach me— You have done this yourself, with your terrible power; and you have saved my life to let me die with you. You do not hate me, then, Atam-or, do you? Just speak once to a poor little girl, and say that you do not hate her!”

All this was very pitiable. What man that had a heart in his breast could listen unmoved to words like these, or look without emotion upon one so beautiful, so gentle, and so tender? It was no longer Layelah in triumph with whom I had to do, but Layelah in distress: the light banter, the teasing, mocking smile, the kindling eye, the ready laugh—all were gone. There was nothing now but mournful tenderness—the timid appeal of one who dreaded a repulse, the glance of deep affection, the abandonment of love.

I held Layelah in my arms, and I thought of nothing now but words of consolation for her. Life seemed over; death seemed inevitable; and there, on the back of the athaleb, we floated on the waters and waited for our doom.

CHAPTER XXV

FALLING, LIKE ICARUS, INTO THE SEA

The aurora light, which had flamed brightly, was now extinct, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, where we floated on the back of the monster. He swam, forcing himself onward with his hind-legs, with one broad wing folded up close. Had both been folded up the athaleb could have swum rapidly; but the broken wing lay expanded over the water, tossing with the waves, so that our progress was but slight. Had it not been for this, the athaleb’s own instinct might have served to guide him toward some shore which we might have hoped to reach before life was extinct; but as it was, all thought of reaching any shore was out of the question, and there arose before us only the prospect of death—a death, too, which must be lingering and painful and cruel. Thus amid the darkness we floated, and the waves dashed around us, and the athaleb never ceased to struggle in the water, trying to force his way onward. It seemed sweet at that moment to have Layelah with me, for what could have been more horrible than loneliness amid those black waters? and Layelah’s mind was made up to meet death with joy, so that her mood conveyed itself to me. And I thought that since death was inevitable it were better to meet it thus, and in this way end my life—not amid the horrors of the sacrifice and the Mista Kosek, but in a way which seemed natural to a seafaring man like myself, and with which I had long familiarized my thoughts. For I had fallen upon a world and among people which were all alien and unintelligible to me; and to live on would only open the way to new and worse calamities. There was peace also in the thought that my death would snatch the prospect of death from Almah. She would now be safe. It was only when we were together as lovers that death threatened her; but now since I was removed she could resume her former life, and she might remember me only as an episode in that life. That she would remember me I felt sure, and that she would weep for me and mourn after me was undeniable; but time as it passed would surely alleviate that grief, and Almah would live and be happy. Perhaps she might yet regain her native land and rejoin her loved kindred, whom she would tell of the stranger from an unknown shore who had loved her, and through whose death she had gained her life. Such were the thoughts that filled my mind as I floated over the black water with darkness all around, as I held Layelah in my arms, with my coat wrapped around her, and murmured in her ear tender words of consolation and sympathy.

A long, long time had passed—but how long I know not—when suddenly Layelah gave a cry, and started up on her knees, with her head bent forward listening intently. I too listened, and I could distinctly hear the sound of breakers.

It was evident that we were approaching some shore; and, from what I remembered of the shore of Magones, such a shore meant death, and death alone. We stood up and tried to peer through the gloom. At length we saw a whole line of breakers, and beyond all was black. We waited anxiously in that position, and drew steadily nearer. It was evident that the athaleb was desirous of reaching that shore, and we could do nothing but await the result.

But the athaleb had his wits about him, and swam along on a line with the breakers for some distance, until at length an opening appeared, into which he directed his course. Passing through this we reached still water, which seemed like a lagoon surrounded by a coral reef. The athaleb swam on farther, and at length we saw before us an island with a broad, sandy beach, beyond which was the shadowy outline of a forest. Here the monster landed, and dragged himself wearily upon the sand, where he spread his vast bulk out, and lay panting heavily. We dismounted—I first, so as to assist Layelah; and then it seemed as if death were postponed for a time, since we had reached this place where the rich and rank vegetation spoke of nothing but vigorous life.

Fortune had indeed dealt strangely with me. I had fled with Almah, and with her had reached one desolate shore, and now I found myself with Layelah upon another shore, desolate also, but not a savage wilderness. This lonely island, ringed with the black ocean waters, was the abode of a life of its own, and there was nothing here to crush the soul into a horror of despair like that which was caused by the tremendous scenes on Magones.

In an instant Layelah revived from her gloom. She looked around, clapped her little hands, laughed aloud, and danced for joy.

“Oh, Atam-or,” she cried, “see—see the trees, see the grass, the bushes! This is a land of wonder. As for food, you can call it down from the sky with your sepet-ram, or we can find it on the rocks. Oh, Atam-or! life is better than death, and we can live here, and we can be happy. This shall be better to us than the lands of the Orin, for we shall be alone, and we shall be all in all to one another.”

I could not help laughing, and I said:

“Layelah, this is not the language of the Kosekin. You should at once go to the other side of this island, and sit down and wait for death.”

“Never,” said Layelah; “you are mine, Atam-or, and I never will leave you. If you wish me to die for you, I will gladly lay down my life; but I will not leave you. I love you, Atam-or; and now, whether it be life or death, it is all the same so long as I have you.”

Our submersion in the sea and our long exposure afterward had chilled both of us, but Layelah felt it most. She was shivering in her wet clothes in spite of my coat which I insisted on her wearing, and I determined, if possible, to kindle a fire. Fortunately my powder was dry, for I had thrown off my flask with my coat before jumping into the sea, and thus I had the means of creating fire. I rubbed wet powder over my handkerchief, and then gathered some dried sticks and moss. After this I found some dead trees, the boughs of which were dry and brittle, and in the exercise I soon grew warm, and had the satisfaction of seeing a great heap of fagots accumulating. I fired my pistol into the handkerchief, which, being saturated with powder, caught the fire, and this I blew into a flame among the dried moss. A bright fire now sprang up and blazed high in the air; while I, in order to have an ample supply of fuel, continued to gather it for a long time. At length, as I came back, I saw Layelah lying on the sand in front of the fire, sound asleep. I was glad of this, for she was weary, and had seemed so weak and tremulous that I had felt anxious; so now I arranged my coat over her carefully, and then sat down for a time to think over this new turn which my fortune had taken.

This island was certainly very unlike Magones, yet I had no surety but that it might be equally destitute of food. This was the first question, and I could not think of sleep until I had found out more about the place. The aurora light, which constantly brightens and lessens in this strange world, was now shining gloriously, and I set forth to explore the island. The beach was of fine sand all the way. The water was smooth, and shut in on every side by an outer reef against which the sea-waves broke incessantly. As I walked I soon perceived what the island was; for I had often seen such places before in the South Pacific. It was, in fact, a coral islet, with a reef of rocks encircling it on every side. The vegetation, however, was unlike anything in the world beyond; for it consisted of many varieties of tree-ferns, that looked like palms, and giant grasses, and bamboo. The island was but small, and the entire circuit was not over a mile. I saw nothing that looked like food, nor did it seem likely that in so small a place there could be enough sustenance for us. Our only hope would be from the sea, yet even here I could see no signs of any sort of shell-fish. On the whole the prospect was discouraging, and I returned to the starting-point with a feeling of dejection; but this feeling did not trouble me much at that time: my chief thought was of rest, and I flung myself down on the sand and fell asleep.

I was awakened by a cry from Layelah. Starting up, I saw her standing and looking into the sky. She was intensely excited. As soon as she saw me she rushed toward me and burst into tears, while I, full of wonder, could only stare upward.

“Oh!” cried Layelah, “they’ve turned back—they’ve found us! We shall have to leave our dear, lovely island. Oh, Atam-or, I shall lose you now; for never, never, never again will you have one thought of love for your poor Layelah!”

With these words she clung sobbing to me. For my part I do not remember what I said to soothe her, for the sight above was so amazing that it took up all my attention. The aurora shone bright, and in the sky I saw two vast objects wheeling and circling, as if about to descend. I recognized them at once as athalebs; but as their backs were hid from view by their immense wings, I could not make out whether they were wanderers about to alight of their own accord, or guided here by riders—perhaps by the Kosekin from whom we had been parted.

This much at least I remember. I said to Layelah that these athalebs were wild ones, which had come here because they saw or scented our wounded one; but Layelah shook her head with mournful meaning.

“Oh no,” said she; “Almah has come back for you. This fire-light has guided them. If you had not made the fire they never, never, never could have found us; but now all is lost.”

There was no time for conversation or discussion. The athalebs drew swiftly nearer and nearer, descending in long circuits, until at length they touched the ground not far away on the wide sandy beach. Then we saw people on their backs, and among them was Almah. We hurried toward them, and Almah rushed into my arms, to the great disgust of Layelah, for she was close beside me and saw it all. She gave an exclamation of grief and despair, and hurried away.

From Almah I learned that our disappearance had caused alarm; that two of the athalebs had come back in search of us; that they had been to Magones, and had searched over the seas, and were just about giving us up as lost, when the fire-light had attracted their attention and drawn them here.

I said nothing at that time about the cause of our disappearance, but merely remarked that the athaleb had fallen into the sea and swam here. This was sufficient. They had to remain here for some time longer to rest their athalebs. At length we prepared to depart. Our wounded athaleb was left behind to take care of himself. I was taken with Almah, and Layelah went on the other. We were thus separated; and so we set forth upon our return, and at length arrived at the amir.

CHAPTER XXVI

GRIMM’S LAW AGAIN

Dinner was now announced, and Oxenden laid the manuscript aside; whereupon they adjourned to the cabin, where they proceeded to discuss both the repast and the manuscript.

“Well,” said Featherstone, “More’s story seems to be approaching a crisis. What do you think of it now, Melick? Do you still think it a sensational novel?”

“Partly so,” said Melick; “but it would be nearer the mark to call it a satirical romance.”

“Why not a scientific romance?”

“Because there’s precious little science in it, but a good deal of quiet satire.”

“Satire on what?” asked Featherstone. “I’ll be hanged if I can see it.”

“Oh, well,” said Melick, “on things in general. The satire is directed against the restlessness of humanity; its impulses, feelings, hopes, and fears—all that men do and feel and suffer. It mocks us by exhibiting a new race of men, animated by passions and impulses which are directly the opposite of ours, and yet no nearer happiness than we are. It shows us a world where our evil is made a good, and our good an evil; there all that we consider a blessing is had in abundance—prolonged and perpetual sunlight, riches, power, fame—and yet these things are despised, and the people, turning away from them, imagine that they can find happiness in poverty, darkness, death, and unrequited love. The writer thus mocks at all our dearest passions and strongest desires; and his general aim is to show that the mere search for happiness per se is a vulgar thing, and must always result in utter nothingness. The writer also teaches the great lesson that the happiness of man consists not in external surroundings, but in the internal feelings, and that heaven itself is not a place, but a state. It is the old lesson which Milton extorted from Satan:

“‘What matter where, if I be still the same—’

“Or again:

“‘The mind is its own place, and of itself

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven—’”

“That’s good too,” cried Oxenden. “That reminds me of the German commentators who find in the Agamemnon of Aeschylus or the Oedipus of Sophocles or the Hamlet of Shakespeare motives and purposes of which the authors could never have dreamed, and give us a metaphysical, beer-and-tobacco, High-Dutch Clytemnestra or Antigone or Lady Macbeth. No, my boy, More was a simple sailor, and had no idea of satirizing anything.”

“How, then, do you account for the perpetual undercurrent of meaning and innuendo that may be found in every line?”

“I deny that there is anything of the sort,” said Oxenden. “It is a plain narrative of facts; but the facts are themselves such that they give a new coloring to the facts of our own life. They are in such profound antithesis to European ways that we consider them as being written merely to indicate that difference. It is like the Germania of Tacitus, which many critics still hold to be a satire on Roman ways, while as a matter of fact it is simply a narrative of German manners and customs.”

“I hope,” cried Melick, “that you do not mean to compare this awful rot and rubbish to the Germania of Tacitus?”

“By no means,” said Oxenden; “I merely asserted that in one respect they were analogous. You forced on the allusion to the Germania by calling this ‘rot and rubbish’ a satirical romance.”

“Oh, well,” said Melick, “I only referred to the intention of the writer. His plan is one thing and his execution quite another. His plan is not bad, but he fails utterly in his execution. The style is detestable. If he had written in the style of a plain seaman, and told a simple unvarnished tale, it would have been all right. In order to carry out properly such a plan as this the writer should take Defoe as his model, or, still better, Dean Swift. Gulliver’s Travels and Robinson Crusoe show what can be done in this way, and form a standard by which all other attempts must be judged. But this writer is tawdry; he has the worst vices of the sensational school—he shows everywhere marks of haste, gross carelessness, and universal feebleness. When he gets hold of a good fancy, he lacks the patience that is necessary in order to work it up in an effective way. He is a gross plagiarist, and over and over again violates in the most glaring manner all the ordinary proprieties of style. What can be more absurd, for instance, than the language which he puts into the mouth of Layelah? Not content with making her talk like a sentimental boarding-school, bread-and-butter English miss, he actually forgets himself so far as to put in her mouth a threadbare joke, which everyone has heard since childhood.”

“What is that?”

“Oh, that silly speech about the athaleb swallowing its victuals whole.”

“What’s the matter with that?” asked Oxenden. “It’s merely a chance resemblance. In translating her words into English they fell by accident into that shape. No one but you would find fault with them. Would it have been better if he had translated her words into the scientific phraseology which the doctor made use of with regard to the ichthyosaurus? He might have made it this way: ‘Does it bite?’ ‘No; it swallows its food without mastication.’ Would that have been better? Besides, it’s all very well to talk of imitating Defoe and Swift; but suppose he couldn’t do it?”

“Then he shouldn’t have written the book.”

“In that case how could his father have heard about his adventures?”

“His father!” exclaimed Melick. “Do you mean to say that you still accept all this as bona fide?”

“Do you mean to say,” retorted Oxenden, “that you still have any doubt about the authenticity of this remarkable manuscript?”

At this each looked at the other; Melick elevated his eyebrows, and Oxenden shrugged his shoulders, but each seemed unable to find words to express his amazement at the other’s stupidity, and so they took refuge in silence.

“What do you understand by this athaleb, doctor?” asked Featherstone.

“The athaleb?” said the doctor. “Why, it is clearly the pterodactyl.”

“By-the-bye,” interrupted Oxenden, “do please take notice of that name. It affords another exemplification of ‘Grimm’s Law.’ The Hebrew word is ‘ataleph,’ and means bat. The Kosekin word is ‘athaleb.’ Here you see the thin letter of Hebrew represented by the aspirated letter of the Kosekin language, while the aspirated Hebrew is represented by the Kosekin medial.”

“Too true,” exclaimed Melick, in a tone of deep conviction; “and now, Oxenden, won’t you sing us a song?”

“Nonsense,” said Featherstone; “let the doctor tell us about the athaleb.”

“Well,” resumed the doctor, “as I was saying, it must be undoubtedly the pterodactyl. It is a most extraordinary animal, and is a species of flying lizard, although differing from the lizard in many respects. It has the head and neck of a bird, the trunk and tail of an ordinary mammal, the jaws and teeth of a reptile, and the wings of a bat. Owen describes one whose sweep of wings exceeded twenty feet, and many have been found of every gradation of size down to that of a bat. There is no reason why they should not be as large as More says; and I for my part do not suspect him of exaggeration. Some have supposed that a late, lingering individual may have suggested the idea of the fabulous dragon—an idea which seems to be in the minds of nearly all the human race, for in the early records of many nations we find the destruction of dragons assigned to their gods and heroes. The figure of the pterodactyl represents pretty closely that which is given to the dragons. It is not impossible that they may have existed into the period which we call prehistoric, and that monsters far larger than any which we have yet discovered may have lingered until the time when man began to increase upon the earth, to spread over its surface, and to carve upon wood and stone representations of the most striking objects around him. When the living pterodactyls had disappeared the memory of them was preserved; some new features were added, and the imagination went so far as to endow them with the power of belching forth smoke and flames. Thus the dragon idea pervaded the minds of men, and instead of a natural animal it became a fabulous one.

“The fingers of the forelegs were of the ordinary dimensions, and terminated with crooked nails, and these were probably used to suspend themselves from trees. When in repose it rested on its hind legs like a bird, and held its neck curving behind, so that its enormous head should not disturb its equilibrium. The size and form of the feet, of the leg, and of the thigh prove that they could hold themselves erect with firmness, their wings folded, and move about in this way like birds, just as More describes them as doing. Like birds they could also perch on trees, and could crawl like bats and lizards along the rocks and cliffs.

“Some think that they were covered with scales, but I am of the opinion that they had a horny hide, with a ridge of hair running down their backs—in which opinion I am sustained by More’s account. The smaller kinds were undoubtedly insectivorous, but the larger ones must have been carnivorous, and probably fed largely on fish.”

“Well, at any rate,” said Melick, gravely, “this athaleb solves the difficult question as to how the Troglodytes emigrated to the South Pole.”

“How?” asked the doctor.

“Why, they must have gone there on athalebs! Your friends the pterodactyls probably lingered longest among the Troglodytes, who, seeing that they were rapidly dying out, concluded to depart to another and a better world. One beauty of this theory is that it cannot possibly be disproved; another is that it satisfies all the requirements of the case; a third is that it accounts for the disappearance of the pterodactyls in our world, and their appearance at the South Pole; and there are forty or fifty other facts, all included in this theory, which I have not time just now to enumerate, but will try to do so after we have finished reading the manuscript. I will only add that the athaleb must be regarded as another link which binds the Kosekin to the Semitic race.”

“Another link?” said Oxenden. “That I already have; and it is one that carries conviction with it.”

“All your arguments invariably do, my dear fellow.”

“What is it?” asked the doctor.

“The Kosekin alphabet,” said Oxenden.

“I can’t see how you can make anything out of that,” said the doctor.

“Very well, I can easily explain,” replied Oxenden. “In the first place we must take the old Hebrew alphabet. I will write down the letters in their order first.”

Saying this he hastily jotted down some letters on a piece of paper, and showed to the doctor the following:

Vowels: A, E, I, O U

Labials: B, F, Liquids, L, P.

Palatals: C (or G), Ch (or H), M, K

Linguals: D, Dh (or Th), N, T

“That,” said he, “is substantially the order of the old Hebrew alphabet.”

“But,” said the doctor, “the Kosekin alphabet differs in its order altogether from that.”

“That very difference can be shown to be all the stronger proof of a connection between them,” said Oxenden.

“I should like to know how.”

“The fact is,” said Oxenden, “these letters are represented differently in the two languages in exact accordance with Grimm’s Law.”

“By Jove!” cried Featherstone, “Grimm’s Law again!”

“According to that law,” continued Oxenden, “the letters of the alphabet ought to change their order. Now let us leave out the vowels and linguals, and deal only with the mutes. First, we have in the Hebrew alphabet the medials B, G, and D. Very well; in the Kosekin we have standing first the thin letters, or tenues, according to Grimm’s Law, namely, P, K, T. Next we have in the Hebrew the aspirates F, Ch, Dh. In the Kosekin alphabet we have corresponding to them the medials B, G, D. Next we have in the Hebrew the tenues, or thin letters P, K, T. In the Kosekin we have the corresponding aspirates F, Ch, Th. The vowels, liquids, and sibilants need not be regarded just here, for the proof from the mutes is sufficient to satisfy any reasonable man.”

“Well,” said Melick, “I for one am thoroughly satisfied, and don’t need another single word. The fact is, I never knew before the all-sufficient nature of Grimm’s Law. Why, it can unlock any mystery! When I get home I must buy one—a tame one, if possible—and keep him with me always. It is more useful to a literary man than to any other. It is said that with a knowledge of Grimm’s Law a man may wander through the world from Iceland to Ceylon, and converse pleasantly in all the Indo-European languages. More must have had Grimm’s Law stowed away somewhere about him; and that’s the reason why he escaped the icebergs, the volcanoes, the cannibals, the subterranean channel monster, and arrived at last safe and sound in the land of the Kosekin. What I want is Grimm’s Law—a nice tidy one, well trained, in good working order, and kind in harness; and the moment I get one I intend to go to the land of the Kosekin myself.”

CHAPTER XXVII

OXENDEN PREACHES A SERMON

“Magones,” said the doctor, “is clearly a volcanic island, and, taken in connection with the other volcanoes around, shows how active must be the subterranean fires at the South Pole. It seems probable to me that the numerous caves of the Kosekin were originally fissures in the mountains, formed by convulsions of nature; and also that the places excavated by man must consist of soft volcanic rock, such as pumice-stone, or rather tufa, easily worked, and remaining permanently in any shape into which it may be fashioned. As to Magones, it seems another Iceland; for there are the same wild and hideous desolation, the same impassable wildernesses, and the same universal scenes of ruin, lighted up by the baleful and tremendous volcanic fires.”

“But what of that little island on which they landed?” asked Featherstone. “That, surely, was not volcanic.”

“No,” said the doctor; “that must have been a coral island.”

“By-the-bye, is it really true,” asked Featherstone, “that these coral islands are the work of little insects?”

“Well, they may be called insects,” replied the doctor; “they are living zoophytes of most minute dimensions, which, however, compensate for their smallness of size by their inconceivable numbers. Small as these are they have accomplished infinitely more than all that ever was done by the ichthyosaurus, the plesiosaurus, the pterodactyl, and the whole tribe of monsters that once filled the earth. Immense districts and whole mountains have been built up by these minute creatures. They have been at work for ages, and are still at work. It is principally in the South Seas that their labors are carried on. Near the Maldive Islands they have formed a mass whose volume is equal to the Alps. Around New Caledonia they have built a barrier of reefs four hundred miles in length, and another along the northeast coast of Australia a thousand miles in length. In the Pacific Ocean, islands, reefs, and islets innumerable have been constructed by them, which extend for an immense distance.

“The coral islands are called ‘atolls.’ They are nearly always circular, with a depression in the centre. They are originally made ring-shaped, but the action of the ocean serves to throw fragments of rock into the inner depression, which thus fills up; firm land appears; the rock crumbles into soil; the winds and birds and currents bring seeds here, and soon the new island is covered with verdure. These little creatures have played a part in the past quite as important as in the present. All Germany rests upon a bank of coral; and they seem to have been most active during the Oolitic Period.”

“How do the creatures act?” asked Featherstone.

“Nobody knows,” replied the doctor.

A silence now followed, which was at last broken by Oxenden.

“After all,” said he, “these monsters and marvels of nature form the least interesting feature in the land of the Kosekin. To me the people themselves are the chief subject of interest. Where did they get that strange, all-pervading love of death, which is as strong in them as love of life is in us?”

“Why, they got it from the imagination of the writer of the manuscript,” interrupted Melick.

“Yes, it’s easy to answer it from your point of view; yet from my point of view it is more difficult. I sometimes think that it may be the strong spirituality of the Semitic race, carried out under exceptionally favorable circumstances to the ultimate results; for the Semitic race more than all others thought little of this life, and turned their affections to the life that lives beyond this. The Kosekin may thus have had a spiritual development of their own, which ended in this.

“Yet there may be another reason for it, and I sometimes think that the Kosekin may be nearer to the truth than we are. We have by nature a strong love of life—it is our dominant feeling—but yet there is in the minds of all men a deep underlying conviction of the vanity of life, and the worthlessness. In all ages and among all races the best, the purest, and the wisest have taught this truth—that human life is not a blessing; that the evil predominates over the good; and that our best hope is to gain a spirit of acquiescence with its inevitable ills. All philosophy and all religions teach us this one solemn truth, that in this life the evil surpasses the good. It has always been so. Suffering has been the lot of all living things, from the giant of the primeval swamps down to the smallest zoophyte. It is far more so with man. Some favored classes in every age may furnish forth a few individuals who may perhaps lead lives of self-indulgence and luxury; but to the mass of mankind life has ever been, and must ever be, a prolonged scene of labor intermingled with suffering. The great Indian religions, whether Brahmanic or Buddhistic, teach as their cardinal doctrine that life is an evil. Buddhism is more pronounced in this, for it teaches more emphatically than even the Kosekin that the chief end of man is to get rid of the curse of life and gain the bliss of Nirvana, or annihilation. True, it does not take so practical a form as among the Kosekin, yet it is believed by one-third of the human race as the foundation of the religion in which they live and die. We need not go to the Kosekin, however, for such maxims as these. The intelligent Hindus, the Chinese, the Japanese, with many other nations, all cling firmly to this belief. Sakyamoum Gautama Buddha, the son and heir of a mighty monarch, penetrated with the conviction of the misery of life, left his throne, embraced a life of voluntary poverty, want, and misery, so that he might find his way to a better state—the end before him being this, that he might ultimately escape from the curse of existence. He lived till old age, gained innumerable followers, and left to them as a solemn legacy the maxim that not to exist is better than to exist; that death is better than life. Since his day millions of his followers have upheld his principles and lived his life. Even among the joyous Greeks we find this feeling at times bursting forth it comes when we least expect it, and not even a Kosekin poet could express this view more forcibly than Sophocles in the Oedipus at Colonus:

“‘Not to be born surpasses every lot;

And the next best lot by far, when one is born

Is to go back whence he came as soon as possible;

For while youth is present bringing vain follies,

What woes does it not have, what ills does it not bear—

Murders, factions, strife, war, envy,

But the extreme of misery is attained by loathsome old age—

Old age, strengthless, unsociable, friendless,

Where all evils upon evils dwell together.’”

“I’ll give you the words of a later poet,” said Melick, “who takes a different view of the case. I think I’ll sing them, with your permission.”

Melick swallowed a glass of wine and then sang the following:

“‘They may rail at this life: from the hour I began it

I found it a life full of kindness and bliss,

And until they can show me some happier planet,

More social and bright, I’ll content me with this.

As long as the world has such lips and such eyes

As before me this moment enraptured I see,

They may say what they will of their orbs in the skies,

But this earth is the planet for you, love, and me.’

“What a pity it is,” continued Melick, “that the writer of this manuscript had not the philological, theological, sociological, geological, palaeological, ontological, ornithological, and all the other logical attainments of yourself and the doctor! He could then have given us a complete view of the nature of the Kosekin, morally and physically; he could have treated of the geology of the soil, the ethnology of the people, and could have unfolded before us a full and comprehensive view of their philosophy and religion, and could have crammed his manuscript with statistics. I wonder why he didn’t do it even as it was. It must have been a strong temptation.”

“More,” said Oxenden, with deep impressiveness, “was a simple-minded though somewhat emotional sailor, and merely wrote in the hope that his story might one day meet the eyes of his father. I certainly should like to find some more accurate statements about the science, philosophy, and religion of the Kosekin; yet, after all, such things could not be expected.”

“Why not?” said Melick; “it was easy enough for him.”

“How?” asked Oxenden.

“Why, he had only to step into the British Museum, and in a couple of hours he could have crammed up on all those points in science, philosophy, ethnology, and theology, about which you are so anxious to know.”

“Well,” said Featherstone, “suppose we continue our reading? I believe it is my turn now. I sha’n’t be able to hold out so long as you did, Oxenden, but I’ll do what I can.”

Saying this, Featherstone took the manuscript and went on to read.

CHAPTER XXVIII

IN PRISON

It was with hearts full of the gloomiest forebodings that we returned to the amir, and these we soon found to be fully justified. The athalebs descended at that point from which they had risen—namely, on the terrace immediately in front of the cavern where they had been confined. We then dismounted, and Layelah with the Kosekin guards accompanied us to our former chambers. There she left us, saying that a communication would be sent to us.

We were now left to our own conjectures.

“I wonder what they will do to us?” said I.

“It is impossible to tell,” said Almah.

“I suppose,” said I, “they will punish us in some way; but then punishment among the Kosekin is what seems honor and reward to me. Perhaps they will spare our lives, for that in their eyes ought to be the severest punishment and the deepest disgrace imaginable.”

Almah sighed.

“The Kosekin do not always act in this matter as one would suppose,” said she. “It is quite likely that they may dread our escaping, and may conclude to sacrifice us at once.”

On the next jom I had a visit from the Kohen Gadol. He informed me that the paupers had held a Council of State, in which they had made a special examination of our late flight. He and Layelah had both been examined, as well as the Kosekin who had gone after us; but Layelah’s testimony was by far the most important.

The Council of State gathered from Layelah’s report that we had fled to Magones for the especial purpose of gaining the most blessed of deaths; that she pursued us in the interest of the state; and that we on her arrival had generously surrendered our own selfish desires, and had at once returned.

We learned that much gratification was felt by the council, and also expressed, at Layelah’s account and at our action.

First, at our eager love of death, which was so natural in their eyes; secondly, at the skill which we had shown in selecting Magones; and finally, at our generosity in giving up so readily the blessed prospect of exile and want and death, so as to come back to the amir. Had we been Kosekin our acts would have been natural enough; but, being foreigners, it was considered more admirable in us, and it seemed to show that we were equal to the Kosekin themselves. It was felt, however, that in our eager rush after death we had been somewhat selfish; but as this probably arose from our ignorance of the law, it might be overlooked. On the whole it was decided that we ought to be rewarded, and that, too, with the greatest benefits that the Kosekin could bestow. What these benefits were the Kohen Gadol could not say; and thus we were left, as before, in the greatest possible anxiety. We still dreaded the worst. The highest honors of these men might well awaken apprehension; for they thought that the chief blessings were poverty and darkness and death.

Layelah next came to see me. She was as amiable as ever, and showed no resentment at all. She gave me an account of what had happened at the Council of State, which was the same as what I had heard from the Kohen Gadol.

I asked her why she had made such a report of us.

“To conciliate their good-will,” said Layelah. “For if they thought that you had really fled from death from a love of life, they would have felt such contempt for you that serious harm might have happened.”

“Yes,” said I; “but among the Kosekin what you call harm would probably have been just what I want. I should like to be viewed with contempt, and considered unworthy of death and the Mista Kosek, and other such honors.”

“Oh yes,” said Layelah; “but that doesn’t follow; for you see the paupers love death so intensely that they long to bestow it on all; and if they knew that you were afraid of it, they would be tempted to bestow it upon you immediately, just to show you how delightful a thing it is. And that was the very thing that I was trying to guard against.”

“Well,” said I, “and what is the result? Do you know what their decision is?”

“Yes,” said Layelah.

“What is it?” I asked, eagerly.

Layelah hesitated.

“What is it?” I cried again, full of impatience.

“I’m afraid it will not sound very pleasant to you,” said Layelah, “but at any rate your life is spared for the present. They have decided to give you what they call the greatest possible honors and distinctions.”

Layelah paused, and looked at me earnestly. For my part these words sounded ominous, and were full of the darkest meaning.

“Tell me all,” I said; “don’t keep me in suspense.”

“Well,” said Layelah, “I’m afraid you will think it hard; but I must tell you. I will tell it, therefore, as briefly and formally as possible.

“First, then, they have decreed the blessing of separation. You and Almah must now be parted, since this is regarded as the highest bliss of lovers.

“Secondly, they have decreed the blessing of poverty. All these luxuries will be taken away, and you will be raised to an equality in this respect with the great paupers.

“Thirdly, you are to have the blessing of darkness. You are to be removed from this troublesome and vexatious light, which here is regarded as a curse, and henceforth live without it.

“Fourthly, the next decree is the high reward of imprisonment. You are to be delivered from the evils of liberty, and shut up in a dark cavern, from which it will be impossible to escape or to communicate with anyone outside.

“Fifthly, you are to associate with the greatest of the paupers, the class that is the most honored and influential. You will be present at all their highest councils, and will have the privilege of perpetual intercourse with those reverend men. They will tell you of the joys of poverty, the happiness of darkness, and the bliss of death.”

Layelah paused, and looked at me earnestly.

“Is there anything more?” I gasped.

“No,” said she. “Is not that enough? Some were in favor of bestowing immediate death, but they were outvoted by the others. You surely cannot regret that.”

Layelah’s words sounded like the words of a mocking demon. Yet she did not wish to distress me; she had merely stated my sentence in formal language, without any attempt to soften its tremendous import. As for me, I was overwhelmed with despair. There was but one thought in my mind—it was not of myself, but of Almah.

“And Almah?” I cried.

“Almah,” said Layelah—“she will have the same; you are both included in the same sentence.”

At this a groan burst from me. Horror overwhelmed me. I threw myself down upon the floor and covered my face with my hands. All was lost! Our fate—Almah’s fate—was darkness, imprisonment, and death. Could anything be imagined that might mitigate such woes as these? Could anything be conceived of as more horrible? Yes; there remained something more, and this was announced by Layelah.

“Finally,” said she, “it has been decreed that you shall not only have the blessing of death, but that you shall have the rare honor of belonging to the chosen few who are reserved for the Mista Kosek. Thus far this had not been granted. It was esteemed too high an honor for strangers; but now, by an exercise of unparalleled liberality, the Grand Council of Paupers have added this, as the last and best, to the high honors and rewards which they have decreed for you and Almah.”

To this I had nothing to say; I was stupefied with horror. To such words what answer could be made? At that moment I could think of nothing but this tremendous sentence—this infliction of appalling woes under the miserable name of blessings! I could not think of Layelah; nor did I try to conjecture what her motives might be in thus coming to me as the messenger of evil. I could not find space amid my despair for speculations as to her own part in this, or stop to consider whether she was acting the part of a mere messenger, or was influenced by resentment or revenge. All this was far away from my thoughts; for all my mind was filled with the dread sentence of the Council of Paupers and the baleful prospect of the woes that awaited us.

On the next jom I saw Almah. She had already learned the awful tidings. She met me with a face of despair; for there was no longer any hope, and all that remained for us was a last farewell. After this we parted, and each of us was taken to our respective prison.

I was taken along dark passages until I came to a cavern with a low, dark portal. Upon entering I found the darkness deeper than usual, and there was only one solitary lamp, which diffused but a feeble ray through the gloom. The size of the place could not be made out. I saw here a group of human beings, and by the feeble ray of the lamp I perceived that they were wan and thin and emaciated, with scant clothing, all in rags, squalor, misery, and dirt; with coarse hair matted together, and long nails and shaggy beards. They reminded me in their personal appearance of the cannibals of the outer shore. These hideous beings all gathered around me, blinking at me with their bleary eyes and grinning with their abominable faces, and then each one embraced me. The filth, squalor, and unutterable foulness of these wretches all combined to fill my soul with loathing, and the inconceivable horror of that embrace well-nigh overwhelmed me. Yet, after all, it was surpassed by the horror of the thought that Almah might be at that very moment undergoing the same experience; and for her such a thing must be worse than for me.

I retreated as far as possible from them, deep into the thick darkness, and sat down. No convicted felon at the last hour of life, no prisoner in the dungeons of the Inquisition, ever could have suffered more mental agony than I did at that moment. The blessings, the awful blessings of the Kosekin were descending upon my miserable head—separation from Almah, squalor and dirt, imprisonment, the society of these filthy creatures, darkness, the shadow of death, and beyond all the tremendous horrors of the Mista Kosek!

I do not know how the time passed, for at first I was almost stupefied with despair; nor could I ever grow reconciled to the society of these wretches, scarce human, who were with me. Some food was offered me—filthy stuff, which I refused. My refusal excited warm commendation; but I was warned against starving myself, as that was against the law. In my despair I thought of my pistol and rifle, which I still kept with me—of using these against my jailors, and bursting forth; but this wild impulse soon passed away, for its utter hopelessness was manifest. My only hope, if hope it was, lay in waiting, and it was not impossible that I might see Almah again, if only once.

Joms passed away, I know not how. The Chief Pauper, who is the greatest man in the land of the Kosekin, made several attempts to converse with me, and was evidently very condescending and magnanimous in his own eyes; but I did not meet his advances graciously—he was too abhorrent. He was a hideous wretch, with eyes nearly closed and bleary, thick, matted hair, and fiendish expression—in short, a devil incarnate in rags and squalor.

But as the joms passed I found it difficult to repel my associates. They were always inflicting their society upon me, and thrusting on me nasty little acts of kindness. The Chief Pauper was more persistent than all, with his chatter and his disgusting civilities. He was evidently glad to get hold of a fresh subject for his talkative genius; he was a very garrulous cannibal, and perhaps my being a foreigner made me more interesting in his eyes.

The chief topic of his discourse was death. He hated life, loved death, longed for it in all its forms, whether arising from disease or from violence. He was an amateur in corpses, and had a larger experience in dead bodies than any other man in the nation.

I could not help asking him once why he did not kill himself, and be done with it.

“That,” said he, “is not allowed. The temptation to kill one’s self is one of the strongest that human nature can experience, but it is one that we must struggle against, of course, for it is against all law. The greatest blessing must not be seized. It must be given by nature or man. Those who violate the blessed mystery of death are infamous.”

He assured me that he had all his life cultivated the loftiest feelings of love to others. His greatest happiness consisted in doing good to others, especially in killing them. The blessing of death, being the greatest of all blessings, was the one which he loved best to bestow upon others; and the more he loved his fellow-creatures the more he wished to give them this blessing. “You,” said he, “are particularly dear to me, and I should rather give to you the blessing of death than to any other human being. I love you, Atam-or, and I long to kill you at this moment.”

“You had better not try it,” said I, grimly.

He shook his head despondingly.

“Oh no,” said he; “it is against the law. I must not do it till the time comes.”

“Do you kill many?” I asked.

“It is my pleasing and glorious office,” he replied, “to kill more than any other; for, you must know, I am the Sar Tabakin” (chief of the executioners).

The Chief Pauper’s love of death had grown to be an all-absorbing passion. He longed to give death to all. As with us there are certain philanthropists who have a mania for doing good, so here the pauper class had a mania for doing what they considered good in this way. The Chief Pauper was a sort of Kosekin Howard or Peabody, and was regarded by all with boundless reverence. To me, however, he was an object of never-ending hate, abhorrence, and loathing; and, added to this, was the thought that there might be here some equally hideous female—someone like the nightmare hag of the outer sea—a torment and a horror to Almah.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CEREMONY OF SEPARATION

Separated from Almah, surrounded by foul fiends, in darkness and the shadow of death, with the baleful prospect of the Mista Kosek, it was mine to endure the bitterest anguish and despair; and in me these feelings were all the worse from the thought that Almah was in a similar state, and was enduring equal woes. All that I suffered in my present condition she too was suffering—and from this there was no possibility of escape. Perhaps her surroundings were even worse, and her sufferings keener; for who could tell what these people might inflict in their strange and perverted impulses?

Many joms passed, and there was only one thing that sustained me—the hope of seeing Almah yet again, though it were but for a moment. That hope, however, was but faint. There was no escape. The gate was barred without and within. I was surrounded by miscreants, who formed the chief class in the state and the ruling order. The Chief Pauper was the highest magistrate in the land, from whose opinion there was no appeal, and the other paupers here formed the Kosekin senate. Here, in imprisonment and darkness, they formed a secret tribunal and controlled everything. They were objects of envy to all. All looked forward to this position as the highest object of human ambition, and the friends and relatives of those here rejoiced in their honor. Their powers were not executive, but deliberative. To the Meleks and Athons was left the exercise of authority, but their acts were always in subordination to the will of the paupers.

“I have everything that heart can wish,” said the Chief Pauper to me once. “Look at me, Atam-or, and see me as I stand here: I have poverty, squalor, cold, perpetual darkness, the privilege of killing others, the near prospect of death, and the certainty of the Mista Kosek—all these I have, and yet, Atam-or, after all, I am not happy.”

To this strange speech I had nothing to say.

“Yes,” continued the Chief Pauper, in a pensive tone, “for twenty seasons I have reigned as chief of the Kosekin in this place. My cavern is the coldest, squalidest, and darkest in the land. My raiment is the coarsest rags. I have separated from all my friends. I have had much sickness. I have the closest captivity. Death, darkness, poverty, want, all that men most live and long for, are mine to satiety; and yet, as I look back and count the joms of my life to see in how many I have known happiness, I find that in all they amount to just seven! Oh, Atam-or, what a comment is this on the vanity of human life!”

To this I had no answer ready; but by way of saying something, I offered to kill him on the spot.

“Nay, nay, Atam-or,” said he, with a melancholy smile, “do not tempt me. Leave me to struggle with temptations by myself, and do not seek to make me falter in my duty. Yes, Atam-or, you behold in me a melancholy example of the folly of ambition; for I often think, as I look down from my lofty eminence, that after all it is as well to remain content in the humble sphere in which we are placed at birth; for perhaps, if the truth were known, there is quite as much real happiness among the rich and splendid—among the Athons and Meleks.”

On this occasion I took advantage of the Chief Pauper’s softer mood to pour forth an earnest entreaty for him to save Almah’s life, or at least to mitigate her miseries. Alas! he was inexorable. It was like an appeal of some mad prisoner to some gentle-hearted governor in Christendom, entreating him to put some fellow-prisoner to death, or at least to make his confinement more severe.

The Chief Pauper stared at me in horror.

“You are a strange being, Atam-or,” said he, gently. “Sometimes I think you mad. I can only say that such a request is horrible to me beyond all words. Such degradation and cruelty to the gentle and virtuous Almah is outrageous and forever impossible; no, we will not deprive her of a single one of those blessings which she now enjoys.”

I turned away in despair.

At length one jom the Chief Pauper came to me with a smile and said,

“Atam-or, let me congratulate you on this joyous occasion.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You are to have your ceremony of separation.”

“Separation!” I repeated.

“Yes,” said he. “Almah has given notice to us. She has announced her intention of giving you up, and separating from you. With us the woman always gives the announcement in such cases. We have fixed the ceremony for the third jom from this, and I hope you will not think it too soon.”

This strange intelligence moved me greatly. I did not like the idea of a ceremony of separation; but behind this there rose the prospect of seeing Almah, and I felt convinced that she had devised this as a mode of holding communication with me, or at least of seeing me again. The thought of Layelah was the only thing that interfered with this belief, for it might be her doings after all; yet the fact remained that I was to see Almah, and in this I rejoiced with exceeding great joy.

The appointed jom came. A procession was formed of the paupers. The chief did not go, as he never left the cavern except on the great sacrifices and Mista Koseks. The door was opened, and I accompanied the procession. On our way all was dark, and after traversing many passages we came at length to the door of a cavern as gloomy as the one I had left. On entering this I found all dark and drear; and a little distance before me there was a light burning, around which was gathered a group of hags hideous beyond all expression. But these I scarcely noticed; for there amid them, all pale and wan, with her face now lighted up with joyous and eager expectation, I saw my darling—my Almah! I caught her in my arms, and for a few moments neither of us spoke a word. She sobbed upon my breast, but I knew that the tears which she shed were tears of joy. Nor was our joy checked by the thought that it was to be so short-lived. It was enough at that moment that we saw one another—enough that we were in one another’s arms; and so we mingled our tears, and shared one common rapture. And sweet it was—sweet beyond all expression—the sweetest moment in all my life; for it had come in the midst of the drear desolation of my heart and the black despair. It was like a flash of lightning in the intense darkness, short and sudden indeed, yet still intense while it lasted, and in an instant filling all with its glow.

“I did this,” murmured Almah, “to see you and to save you.”

“Save me!” I repeated.

“Yes,” said she. “I have seen Layelah. She told me that there is this chance and this one only to save you. I determined to try it. I cannot bear to think of you at the sacrifice—and for love of me meeting your death—for I would die to save you, Atam-or.”

I pressed her closer in my arms.

“Oh, Almah,” said I, “I would die to save you! and if this ceremony will save you I will go through with it, and accept my fate whatever it may be.”

We were now interrupted.

The women—the hags of horror—the shriek-like ones, as I may call them, or the fiend-like, the female fiends, the foul ones—they were all around us; and one there was who looked so exactly like the nightmare hag of the outer sea that I felt sure she must be the same, who by some strange chance had come here. Such, indeed, is quite likely, for there may have been a pass over the mountains to the land of the Kosekin; and those savage cannibals may all have been honored Kosekin exiles, dwelling in poverty, want, woe, and darkness, all of which may have been allotted to them as a reward for eminent virtues. And so here she was, the nightmare hag, and I saw that she recognized me.

A circle was now formed around us, and the light stood in the middle. The nightmare hag also stood within the circle on the other side of the light opposite us. The beams of the lamp flickered through the darkness, faintly illuminating the faces of the horrible creatures around, who, foul and repulsive as harpies, seemed like unclean beasts, ready to make us their prey. Their glances seemed to menace death; their blear eyes rested upon us with a horrid eager hunger. My worst fears at that moment seemed realized; for I saw that Almah’s associates were worse than mine, and her fate had been more bitter. And I wondered how it had been possible for her to live among such associates; or, even though she had lived thus far, whether it would be possible for her to endure it longer.

And now there arose a melancholy chant from the old hags around—a dreadful strain, that sounded like a funeral dirge, sung in shrill, discordant voices, led by the nightmare hag, who as she sang waved in her hand a kind of club. All the time I held Almah in my arms, regardless of those around us, thinking only of her from whom I must soon again be separated, and whom I must leave in this drear abode to meet her fearful fate alone. The chant continued for some time, and as long as it continued it was sweet to me; for it prolonged the meeting with Almah, and postponed by so much our separation.

At length the chant ceased. The nightmare hag looked fixedly at us, and spoke these words:

“You have embraced for the last time. Henceforth there is no more sorrow in your love. You may be happy now in being forever disunited, and in knowing the bliss of eternal separation. As darkness is better than light, as death is better than life, so may you find separation better than union.”

She now gave a blow with her club at the lamp, which broke it to atoms and extinguished the flame. She continued:

“As the baleful light is succeeded by the blessed darkness, so may you find the light of union followed by the blessed darkness of separation.”

And now in the deep darkness we stood clasped in one another’s arms; while around us, from the horrible circle of hags, there arose another chant as harsh and discordant as the previous one, but which, nevertheless, like that, served at least to keep us together a little longer. For this reason it sounded sweeter than the sweetest music; and therefore, when at last the hideous noise ended, I felt a pang of grief, for I knew that I must now give up Almah forever.

I was right. The ceremony was over. We had to part, and we parted with tears of despair. I was led away, and as I went I heard Almah’s sobs. I broke away, and tried to return for one more embrace; but in the darkness I could not find her, and could only hear her sobs at a greater distance, which showed that she too was being led away. I called after her,

“Farewell, Almah!”

Her reply came back broken with sobs.

“Farewell forever, Atam-or!”

I was once more led away, and again traversed the dark passages, and again came back to my den, which now seemed dark with the blackness of despair.

On my return I was formally and solemnly congratulated by all the paupers. I should not have received their congratulations had I not expected that there would be something more. I expected that something would be said about the result of this act of separation; for Almah had believed that it would be the means of saving my life, and I believed that it would be the means of saving her life, and for this reason each of us had performed our part; although, of course, the joy of meeting with one another would of itself have been sufficient, and more than sufficient, to make that ceremony an object of desire. I thought, therefore, that some statement might now be made to the effect that by means of this ceremony my status among the Kosekin would be changed, and that both I and Almah, being no longer lovers, would be no longer fit for the sacrifice. To my intense disappointment, however, nothing whatever was said that had the remotest reference to this.

On the following jom I determined to ask the Chief Pauper himself directly; and accordingly, after a brief preamble, I put the question point-blank:

“Will our ceremony of separation make any difference as to our sacrifice?”

“What?” he asked, with a puzzled expression.

I repeated the question.

“I don’t understand,” said he, still looking puzzled.

Upon this I once more repeated it.

“How can that be?” said he at length; “how can the ceremony of separation have any effect upon your sacrifice? The ceremony of separation stands by itself as the sign and symbol of an additional blessing. This new happiness of separation is a great favor, and will make you the object of new envy and admiration; for few have been so fortunate as you in all the history of the Kosekin. But you are the favorite of the Kosekin now, and there is nothing that they will not do for you.”

“But we were separate before,” said I, indignantly.

“That is true,” said he, “in point of fact; but this ceremony makes your separation a legal thing, and gives it the solemn sanction of law and of religion. Among the Kosekin one cannot be considered as a separate man until the ceremony of separation has been publicly performed.”

“I understood,” said I, “that we were chosen to suffer the sacrifice together because we were lovers, and now since you do not any longer regard us as lovers, why do you sacrifice us?”

At this question the Chief Pauper looked at me with one of those hungry glances of his, which showed how he thirsted for my blood, and he smiled the smile of an evil fiend.

“Why do we sacrifice you, Atam-or?” he replied. “Why, because we honor you both, and love you both so dearly that we are eager to give you the greatest of all blessings, and to deny you nothing that is in our power to bestow.”

“Do you mean to sacrifice both of us?” I gasped.

“Of course.”

“What! Almah too?”

“Certainly. Why should we be so cruel to the dear child as to deprive her of so great a boon?”

At this I groaned aloud and turned away in despair.

Many joms now passed away. I grew more and more melancholy and desperate. I thought sometimes of fighting my way out. My fire-arms were now my chief consolation; for I had fully made up my mind not to die quietly like a slaughtered calf, but to strike a blow for life, and meet my death amid slain enemies. In this prospect I found some satisfaction, and death was robbed of some of its terrors.

CHAPTER XXX

THE DAY OF SACRIFICE

At last the time came.

It was the end of the dark season. Then, as the sun rises for its permanent course around the heavens, when the long day of six months begins, all in the land of the Kosekin is sorrow, and the last of the loved darkness is mourned over amid the most solemn ceremonies, and celebrated with the most imposing sacrifices. Then the most honored in all the land are publicly presented with the blessing of death, and allowed to depart this hated life, and go to the realms of that eternal darkness which they love so well. It is the greatest of sacrifices, and is followed by the greatest of feasts. Thus the busy season—the loved season of darkness—ends, and the long, hateful season of light begins, when the Kosekin lurk in caverns, and live in this way in the presence of what may be called artificial darkness.

It was for us—for me and for Almah—the day of doom. Since the ceremony of separation I had not seen her; but my heart had been always with her. I did not even know whether she was alive or not, but believed that she must be; for I thought that if she had died I should have heard of it, as the Kosekin would have rejoiced greatly over such an event. For every death is to them an occasion of joy, and the death of one so distinguished and so beloved as Almah would have given rise to nothing less than a national festival.

Of time I had but a poor reckoning; but, from the way in which the paupers kept account of their joms, I judged that about three months had elapsed since the ceremony of separation.

The paupers were now all joyous with a hideous joy. The Chief Pauper was more abhorrent than ever. He had the blood-thirst strong upon him. He was on that jom to perform his horrible office of Sar Tabakin, and as he accosted me he smiled the smile of a demon, and congratulated me on my coming escape from life. To this I had no word of answer to make; but my hands held my rifle and pistol, and these I clutched with a firmer grasp as my last hour approached.

The time of departure at length arrived. Soldiers of the Kosekin came, following the paupers, who went first, while the guards came after me. Thus we all emerged into the open air. There the broad terrace already mentioned spread out before my eyes, filled with thousands upon thousands of human beings. It seemed as though the entire population of the city was there, and so densely packed was this great crowd that it was only with great difficulty that a way was laid open for our passage.

Above was the sky, where the stars were twinkling faintly. There was no longer the light of the aurora australis; the constellations glimmered but dimly, the moon was shining with but a feeble ray; for there far away over the icy crests of the lofty mountains I saw a long line of splendid effulgence, all golden and red—the light of the new dawn—the dawn of that long day which was now approaching. The sight of that dawning light gave me new life. It was like a sight of home—the blessed dawn, the sunlight of a bright day, the glorious daybreak lost for so long a time, but now at last returning. I feasted my eyes on the spectacle, I burst into tears of joy, and I felt as though I could gaze at it forever. But the sun as it travelled was rapidly coming into view; soon the dazzling glory of its rim would appear above the mountain crest, and the season of darkness would end. There was no time to wait, and the guards hurried me on.

There in the midst of the square rose the pyramid. It was fully a hundred feet in height, with a broad flat top. At the base I saw a great crowd of paupers. Through these we passed, and as we did so a horrible death-chant arose. We now went up the steps and reached the top. It was about sixty feet square, and upon it there was a quadrangle of stones set about three feet apart, about sixty in number, while in the midst was a larger stone. All of these were evidently intended for sacrificial purposes.

Scarcely had I reached the top when I saw a procession ascend from the other side. First came some paupers, then some hags, and then, followed by other hags, I saw Almah. I was transfixed at the sight. A thrill passed through every nerve, and a wild impulse came to me to burst through the crowd, join her, and battle with them all for her life. But the crowd was too dense. I could only stand and look at her, and mark the paleness of her face and her mute despair. She saw me, waved her hand sadly, and gave a mournful smile. There we stood separated by the crowd, with our eyes fastened on each other, and all our hearts filled with one deep, intense yearning to fly to one another’s side.

And now there came up from below, louder and deeper, the awful death-chant. Time was pressing. The preparations were made. The Chief Pauper took his station by the central stone, and in his right hand he held a long, keen knife. Toward this stone I was led. The Chief Pauper then looked with his blear and blinking eyes to where the dawn was glowing over the mountain crest, and every moment increasing in brightness; and then, after a brief survey, he turned and whetted his knife on the sacrificial stone. After this he turned to me with his evil face, with the glare of a horrid death-hunger in his ravenous eyes, and pointed to the stone.

I stood without motion.

He repeated the gesture and said, “Lie down here.”

“I will not,” said I.

“But it is on this stone,” said he, “that you are to get the blessing of death.”

“I’ll die first!” said I, fiercely, and I raised my rifle.

The Chief Pauper was puzzled at this. The others looked on quietly, thinking it probably a debate about some punctilio. Suddenly he seemed struck with an idea.

“Yes, yes,” said he. “The woman first. It is better so.”

Saying this he walked toward Almah, and said something to the hags.

At this the chief of them—namely, the nightmare hag—led Almah to the nearest stone, and motioned to her to lie down. Almah prepared to obey, but paused a moment to throw at me one last glance and wave her hand as a last farewell. Then without a word she laid herself down upon the stone. At this a thrill of fury rushed through all my being, rousing me from my stupor, impelling me to action, filling my brain with madness. The nightmare hag had already raised her long keen knife in the air. Another moment and the blow would have fallen. But my rifle was at my shoulder; my aim was deadly. The report rang out like thunder. A wild, piercing yell followed, and when the smoke cleared away the nightmare hag lay dead at the foot of the altar. I was already there, having burst through the astonished crowd, and Almah was in my arms; and holding her thus for a moment, I put myself in front of her and stood at bay, with my only thought that of defending her to the last and selling my life as dearly as possible.

The result was amazing.

After the report there was for some moments a deep silence, which was followed by a wild, abrupt outcry from half a million people—the roar of indistinguishable words bursting forth from the lips of all that throng, whose accumulated volume arose in one vast thunder-clap of sound, pealing forth, echoing along the terraced streets, and rolling on far away in endless reverberations. It was like the roar of mighty cataracts, like the sound of many waters; and at the voice of that vast multitude I shrank back for a moment. As I did so I looked down, and beheld a scene as appalling as the sound that had overawed me. In all that countless throng of human beings there was not one who was not in motion; and all were pressing forward toward the pyramid as to a common centre. On every side there was a multitudinous sea of upturned faces, extending as far as the eye could reach. All were in violent agitation, as though all were possessed by one common impulse which forced them toward me. At such a sight I thought of nothing else than that I was the object of their wrath, and that they were all with one common fury rushing toward me to wreak vengeance upon me and upon Almah for the slaughter of the nightmare hag.

All this was the work of but a few moments. And now as I stood there holding Almah—appalled, despairing, yet resolute and calm—I became aware of a more imminent danger. On the top of the pyramid, at the report of the rifle, all had fallen down flat on their faces, and it was over them that I had rushed to Almah’s side. But these now began to rise, and the hags took up the corpse of the dead, and the paupers swarmed around with cries of “Mut! mut!” (dead! dead!) and exclamations of wonder. Then they all turned their foul and bleary eyes toward me, and stood as if transfixed with astonishment. At length there burst forth from the crowd one who sought to get at me. It was the Chief Pauper. He still held in his hand the long knife of sacrifice. He said not a word, but rushed straight at me, and as he came I saw murder in his look. I did not wait for him, but raising my rifle, discharged the second barrel full in his face. He fell down a shattered, blackened heap, dead.

As the second report thundered out it drowned all other sounds, and was again followed by an awful silence. I looked around. Those on the pyramid—paupers and hags—had again flung themselves on their faces. On the square below the whole multitude were on their knees, with their heads bowed down low. The silence was more oppressive than before; it was appalling—it was tremendous! It seemed like the dread silence that precedes the more awful outburst of the hurricane when the storm is gathering up all its strength to burst with accumulated fury upon its doomed victim.

But there was no time to be lost in staring, and that interval was occupied by me in hastily reloading my rifle. It was my last resource now; and if it availed not for defense it might at least serve to be used against ourselves. With this thought I handed the pistol to Almah, and hurriedly whispered to her that if I were killed, she could use it against herself. She took it in silence, but I read in her face her invincible resolve.

The storm at last burst. The immense multitude rose to their feet, and with one common impulse came pressing on from every side toward the pyramid, apparently filled with the one universal desire of reaching me—a desire which was now all the more intense and vehement from these interruptions which had taken place. Why they had fallen on their knees, why the paupers on the pyramid were still prostrate, I could not tell; but I saw now the swarming multitude, and I felt that they were rolling in on every side—merciless, blood-thirsty, implacable—to tear me to pieces. Yet time passed and they did not reach me, for an obstacle was interposed. The pyramid had smooth sides. The stairways that led up to the summit were narrow, and did not admit of more than two at a time; yet, had the Kosekin been like other people, the summit of the pyramid would soon have been swarming with them; but as they were Kosekin, none came up to the top; for at the base of the pyramid, at the bottom of the steps, I saw a strange and incredible struggle. It was not, as with us, who should go up first, but who should go up last; each tried to make his neighbor go before him. All were eager to go, but the Kosekin self-denial, self-sacrifice, and love for the good of others made each one intensely desirous to make others go up. This resulted in a furious struggle, in which, as fast as anyone would be pushed up the steps a little way, he would jump down again and turn his efforts toward putting up others; and thus all the energies of the people were worn out in useless and unavailing efforts—in a struggle to which, from the very nature of the case, there could be no end.

Now those on the pyramid began to rise, and soon all were on their feet. Cries burst forth from them. All were looking at us, but with nothing like hostility; it was rather like reverence and adoration, and these feelings were expressed unmistakably in their cries, among which I could plainly distinguish such words as these: “Ap Ram!”

“Mosel anan wacosek!”

“Sopet Mut!” (The Father of Thunder! Ruler of Cloud and Darkness! Judge of Death!) These cries passed to those below. The struggle ceased. All stood and joined in the cry, which was taken up by those nearest, and soon passed among all those myriads, to be repeated with thunder echoes far and wide.

At this it suddenly became plain to me that the danger of death had passed away; that these people no longer regarded me as a victim, but rather as some mighty being—some superior, perhaps supernatural power, who was to be almost worshipped. Hence these prostrations, these words, these cries, these looks. All these told me that the bitterness of death had passed away. At this discovery there was, for a moment, a feeling of aversion and horror within me at filling such a position; that I, a weak mortal, should dare to receive adoration like this; and I recoiled at the thought: yet this feeling soon passed; for life was at stake—not my own merely, but that of Almah; and I was ready now to go through anything if only I might save her: so, instead of shrinking from this new part, I eagerly seized upon it, and at once determined to take advantage of the popular superstition to the utmost.

Far away over the crests of the mountains I saw the golden edge of the sun’s disc, and the light flowed therefrom in broad effulgence, throwing out long rays of glory in a luminous flood over all the land. I pointed to the glorious orb, and cried to the paupers, and to all who were nearest, in a loud voice:

“I am Atam-or, the Man of Light! I come from the land of light! I am the Father of Thunder, of Cloud and Darkness; the Judge of Death!”

At this the paupers all fell prostrate, and cried out to me to give them the blessing of death.

I made no answer, but leading Almah to the edge of the pyramid, told her to fire the pistol. A million eyes were fixed on us. She held up the pistol and fired. Immediately after, I fired both barrels of the rifle; and as the reports rang out and the smoke cleared away, I heard a mighty murmur, and once more beheld all prostrate. Upon this I hurriedly loaded again, and waited for further revelations. All the time I could not help wondering at the effect produced by the rifle now, in comparison with the indifference with which it had been regarded at my first arrival in the country. I could not account for it, but supposed that the excitement of a great religious festival and the sudden death of the Chief Pauper and the Chief Hag had probably deeply impressed them. In the midst of these thoughts the whole multitude arose; and once more there came to my ears the universal uproar of innumerable cries, in the midst of which I could hear the words, “Ap Ram!”

“Mosel anan wacosek!”

“Sopet Mut!”

CHAPTER XXXI

CONCLUSION

In the midst of this the paupers and the hags talked earnestly together. Some of those who had been nearest in rank to the late Chief Pauper and Chief Hag were conspicuous in the debate. All looked at me and at Almah, and pointed toward the sun, which was wheeling along behind the distant mountain crest, showing a golden disc. Then they pointed to the dead bodies; and the hags took the Chief Hag, and the paupers the Chief Pauper, and laid them side by side on the central altar. After this a hag and a pauper advanced toward us, each carrying the sacrificial knife which had belonged to the deceased.

The hag spoke first, addressing Almah, in accordance with the Kosekin custom, which requires women to take the precedence in many things.

“Take this,” she said, “O Almah, consort of Atam-or, and Co-ruler of Clouds and Darkness. Henceforth you shall be Judge of Death to the women of the Kosekin.”

She then handed Almah the sacrificial knife of the Chief Hag, which Almah took in silence.

Then the pauper presented me with the sacrificial knife of the Chief Pauper, with the following words:

“Take this, O Atam-or, Father of Thunder and Ruler of Clouds and Darkness. Henceforth you shall be Judge of Death to the men of the Kosekin, and Sar Tabakin over the whole nation.”

I received the knife in silence, for I had nothing to say; but now Almah spoke, as was fitting for her to do, since with the Kosekin the women must take the precedence; and here it was expected that she should reply in behalf of both of us.

So Almah, holding the sacrificial knife, stood looking at them, full of dignity, and spoke as follows:

“We will take this, O Kosekin, and we will reward you all. We will begin our reign over the Kosekin with memorable acts of mercy. These two great victims shall be enough for the Mista Kosek of this season. The victims designed for this sacrifice shall have to deny themselves the blessing of death, yet they shall be rewarded in other ways; and all the land from the highest to the lowest shall have reason to rejoice in our rule.

“To all you hags and paupers we grant the splendid and unparalleled boon of exile to Magones. There you can have all the suffering which heart can wish, and inevitable death. To all classes and ranks in the whole nation we promise to grant a diminution in their wealth by one-quarter. In the abundance of our mercy we are willing ourselves to bear the burden of all the offerings that may be necessary in order to accomplish this. All in the land may at once give up one-quarter of their whole wealth to us.”

At this the hags and paupers gave a horrible yell of applause.

“As rulers of Light and Darkness, we will henceforth govern the nation in the light as well as in the dark. We will sacrifice ourselves so far to the public good as to live in the light, and in open palaces. We will consent to undergo the pains of light and splendor, to endure all the evils of luxury, magnificence, and boundless wealth, for the good of the Kosekin nation. We will consent to forego the right of separation, and agree to live together, even though we love one another. Above all, we will refuse death and consent to live. Can any rulers do more than this for the good of their people?”

Another outburst of applause followed.

“In three joms,” continued Almah, “all you hags and paupers shall be sent to exile and death on Magones. As for the rest of the Kosekin, hear our words. Tell them from us that the laborers shall all be elevated to the rank of paupers, the artisans shall be made laborers, the tradesmen artisans, the soldiers tradesmen, the Athons soldiers, the Kohens Athons, and the Meleks Kohens. There shall be no Meleks in all the land. We, in our love for the Kosekin, will henceforth be the only Meleks. Then all the misery of that low station will rest on us; and in our low estate as Meleks we shall govern this nation in love and self-denial. Tell them that we will forego the sacrifice and consent to live; that we will give up darkness and cavern gloom and live in light. Tell them to prepare for us the splendid palaces of the Meleks, for we will take the most sumptuous and magnificent of them all. Tell all the people to present their offerings. Tell them that we consent to have endless retinues of servants, soldiers, followers, and attendants. Tell them that with the advent of Almah and Atam-or a new era begins for the Kosekin, in which every man may be as poor as he likes, and riches shall be unknown in the land.”

These extraordinary words seemed to fill the paupers with rapture. Exclamations of joy burst from them; they prostrated themselves in an irrepressible impulse of grateful admiration, as though such promises could only come from superior beings. Then most of them hurried down to communicate to the people below the glorious intelligence. Soon it spread from mouth to mouth, and all the people were filled with the wildest excitement.

For never before had such a thing been known, and never had such self-sacrifice been imagined or thought possible, as that the rulers of the Kosekin could consent to be rich when they might be paupers; to live together when they might be separate; to dwell in the light when they might lurk in the deepest cavern gloom; to remain in life when they might have the blessing of death. Selfishness, fear of death, love of riches, and love of luxury, these were all unintelligible to the Kosekin, as much as to us would be self-abnegation, contempt of death, voluntary poverty, and asceticism. But as with us self-denying rulers may make others rich and be popular for this, so here among the Kosekin a selfish ruler might be popular by making others poor. Hence the words of Almah, as they were made known, gave rise to the wildest excitement and enthusiasm, and the vast multitude poured forth their feelings in long shouts of rapturous applause.

Amid this the bodies of the dead were carried down from the pyramid, and were taken to the Mista Kosek in a long and solemn procession, accompanied by the singing of wild and dismal chants.

And now the sun, rolling along behind the icy mountain crest, rose higher and higher every moment, and the bright light of a long day began to illumine the world. There sparkled the sea, rising far away like a watery wall, with the horizon high up in the sky; there rose the circle of giant mountains, sweeping away till they were blended with the horizon; there rose the terraces of the amir, all glowing in the sunlight, with all its countless houses and cavern-openings and arching trees and pointing pyramids. Above was the canopy of heaven, no longer black, no longer studded with stars or glistening with the fitful shimmer of the aurora, but all radiant with the glorious sunlight, and disclosing all the splendors of the infinite blue. At that sight a thrill of joy passed through me. The long, long night at last was over; the darkness had passed away like some hideous dream; the day was here—the long day that was to know no shadow and no decline—when all this world should be illuminated by the ever-circling sun—a sun that would never set until his long course of many months should be fully run. My heart swelled with rapture, my eyes filled with tears. “O Light!” I cried; “O gleaming, golden Sunlight! O Light of Heaven!—light that brings life and hope to man!” And I could have fallen on my knees and worshipped that rising sun.

But the light which was so glorious to us was painful and distressing to the Kosekin. On the top of the pyramid the paupers crouched, shading their eyes. The crowd below began to disperse in all directions, so as to betake themselves to their coverts and to the caverns, where they might live in the dark. Soon nearly all were gone except the paupers at the foot of the pyramid, who were awaiting our commands, and a crowd of Meleks and Athons at a distance. At a gesture from me the few paupers near us descended and joined those below.

Almah and I were alone on the top of the pyramid.

I caught her in my arms in a rapture of joy. This revulsion from the lowest despair—from darkness and from death back to hope and light and life—was almost too much to endure. We both wept, but our tears were those of happiness.

“You will be all my own now,” said I, “and we can fly from this hateful land. We can be united—we can be married—here before we start—and you will not be cruel enough to refuse. You will consent, will you not, to be my wife before we fly from the Kosekin?”

At this Almah’s face became suffused with smiles and blushes. Her arms were about me, and she did not draw away, but looked up in sweet confusion and said,

“Why, as to that—I—I cannot be more your—your wife than I am.”

“What do you mean?” I exclaimed, in wonder. “My wife!”

Her eyes dropped again, and she whispered:

“The ceremony of separation is with the Kosekin the most sacred form of marriage. It is the religious form; the other is merely the civil form.”

This was unintelligible, nor did I try to understand it. It was enough to hear this from her own sweet lips; but it was a strange feeling, and I think I am the only man since Adam that ever was married without knowing it.

“As to flight,” continued Almah, who had quite adopted the Kosekin fashion, which makes women take the lead—“as to flight, we need not hurry. We are all-powerful now, and there is no more danger. We must wait until we send embassies to my people, and when they are ready to receive us, we will go. But now let us leave this, for our servants are waiting for us, and the light is distressing to them. Let us go to the nearest of our palaces and obtain rest and food.”

Here Featherstone stopped, yawned, and laid down the manuscript.

“That’s enough for today,” said he; “I’m tired, and can’t read any more. It’s time for supper.”

Table of Contents

- COPYRIGHT INFO
- A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
- The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series
- THE LOST WORLD, by Arthur Conan Doyle

- PEOPLE OF THE PYRAMIDS, by William P. McGivern

- KING SOLOMON’S MINES, by H. Rider Haggard [Part 1]

- KING SOLOMON’S MINES, by H. Rider Haggard [Part 2]

- LAND OF THE SHADOW DRAGONS, by Eando Binder

- JOURNEY TO THE UNDERGROUND WORLD, by Lin Carter

- PART I: THE LOST LAND
- PART II: THE UNDERGROUND WORLD
- PART III: MEN OF THE STONE AGE
- PART IV: APEMEN OF KOR
- PART V: THARN OF THANDAR
- PART VI: WAR IN THE STONE AGE
- APPENDIX: A STONE AGE GLOSSARY
- THE MOON POOL, by A. Merritt [Part 1]
- THE MOON POOL [Part 2]
- THE MOON POOL [Part 3]
- THE METAL MONSTER, by A. Merritt [Part 1]
- THE METAL MONSTER [Part 2]

- A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 1]

- A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 2]

- A JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, by Jules Verne [Part 3]

- THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, by Rudyard Kipling

- THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 1]

- THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 2]

- THE DEVIL-TREE OF EL DORADO, by Frank Aubrey [Part 3]

- TERROR ISLAND, by Alex Shell Briscoe

- AT THE EARTH’S CORE, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

- PELLUCIDAR, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

- THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

- THE PEOPLE THAT TIME FORGOT, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

- OUT OF TIME’S ABYSS, by Edgar Rice Burroughs

- UNDER THE ANDES, by Rex Stout [Part 1]

- UNDER THE ANDES, by Rex Stout [Part 2]

- THE MAN WHO MEASURED THE WIND, by Harold Lamb

- DWELLERS OF THE DEEP, by Don Wilcox

- VRIL, THE POWER OF THE COMING RACE, by Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton

- SYMZONIA: VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY, by Adam Seaborn

- A STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER, by James De Mille [Part 1]

- A STRANGE MANUSCRIPT FOUND IN A COPPER CYLINDER, by James De Mille [Part 2]