Out of Time's Abyss
contact; but he only cut the rope from about her body and lifted her to
the little shelf at the river's side.
"How can we leave here?" she asked.
"By the river," he replied; "but first I must go back to the Blue Place
of Seven Skulls and get the poor devil I left there. I'll have to wait
until after dark, though, as I cannot pass through the open stretch of
river in the temple gardens by day."
"There is another way," said the girl. "I have never seen it; but
often I have heard them speak of it--a corridor that runs beside the
river from one end of the city to the other. Through the gardens it is
below ground. If we could find an entrance to it, we could leave here
at once. It is not safe here, for they will search every inch of the
temple and the grounds."
"Come," said Bradley. "We'll have a look for it, anyway." And so
saying he approached one of the doors that opened onto the skull-paved
shelf.
They found the corridor easily, for it paralleled the river, separated
from it only by a single wall. It took them beneath the gardens and
the city, always through inky darkness. After they had reached the
other side of the gardens, Bradley counted his steps until he had
retraced as many as he had taken coming down the stream; but though
they had to grope their way along, it was a much more rapid trip than
the former.
When he thought he was about opposite the point at which he had
descended from the Blue Place of Seven Skulls, he sought and found a
doorway leading out onto the river; and then, still in the blackest
darkness, he lowered himself into the stream and felt up and down upon
the opposite side for the little shelf and the ladder. Ten yards from
where he had emerged he found them, while the girl waited upon the
opposite side.
To ascend to the secret panel was the work of but a minute. Here he
paused and listened lest a Wieroo might be visiting the prison in
search of him or the other inmate; but no sound came from the gloomy
interior. Bradley could not but muse upon the joy of the man on the
opposite side when he should drop down to him with food and a new hope
for escape. Then he opened the panel and looked into the room. The
faint light from the grating above revealed the pile of rags in one
corner; but the man lay beneath them, he made no response to Bradley's
low greeting.
The Englishman lowered himself to the floor of the room and approached
the rags. Stooping he lifted a corner of them. Yes, there was the man
asleep. Bradley shook him--there was no response. He stooped lower
and in the dim light examined An-Tak; then he stood up with a sigh. A
rat leaped from beneath the coverings and scurried away. "Poor devil!"
muttered Bradley.
He crossed the room to swing himself to the perch preparatory to
quitting the Blue Place of Seven Skulls forever. Beneath the perch he
paused. "I'll not give them the satisfaction," he growled. "Let them
believe that he escaped."
Returning to the pile of rags he gathered the man into his arms. It
was difficult work raising him to the high perch and dragging him
through the small opening and thus down the ladder; but presently it
was done, and Bradley had lowered the body into the river and cast it
off. "Good-bye, old top!" he whispered.
A moment later he had rejoined the girl and hand in hand they were
following the dark corridor upstream toward the farther end of the
city. She told him that the Wieroos seldom frequented these lower
passages, as the air here was too chill for them; but occasionally they
came, and as they could see quite as well by night as by day, they
would be sure to discover Bradley and the girl.
"If they come close enough," she said, "we can see their eyes shining
in the dark--they resemble dull splotches of light. They glow, but do
not blaze like the eyes of the tiger or the lion."
The man could not but note the very evident horror with which she
mentioned the creatures. To him they were uncanny; but she had been
used to them for a year almost, and probably all her life she had
either seen or heard of them constantly.
"Why do you fear them so?" he asked. "It seems more than any ordinary
fear of the harm they can do you."
She tried to explain; but the nearest he could gather was that she
looked upon the Wieroo almost as supernatural beings. "There is a
legend current among my people that once the Wieroo were unlike us only
in that they possessed rudimentary wings. They lived in villages in
the Galu country, and while the two peoples often warred, they held no
hatred for one another. In those days each race came up from the
beginning and there was great rivalry as to which was the higher in the
scale of evolution. The Wieroo developed the first cos-ata-lu but they
were always male--never could they reproduce woman. Slowly they
commenced to develop certain attributes of the mind which, they
considered, placed them upon a still higher level and which gave them
many advantages over us, seeing which they thought only of mental
development--their minds became like stars and the rivers, moving
always in the same manner, never varying. They called this tas-ad,
which means doing everything the right way, or, in other words, the
Wieroo way. If foe or friend, right or wrong, stood in the way of
tas-ad, then it must be crushed.
"Soon the Galus and the lesser races of men came to hate and fear them.
It was then that the Wieroos decided to carry tas-ad into every part of
the world. They were very warlike and very numerous, although they had
long since adopted the policy of slaying all those among them whose
wings did not show advanced development.
"It took ages for all this to happen--very slowly came the different
changes; but at last the Wieroos had wings they could use. But by
reason of always making war upon their neighbors they were hated by
every creature of Caspak, for no one wanted their tas-ad, and so they
used their wings to fly to this island when the other races turned
against them and threatened to kill them all. So cruel had they become
and so bloodthirsty that they no longer had hearts that beat with love
or sympathy; but their very cruelty and wickedness kept them from
conquering the other races, since they were also cruel and wicked to
one another, so that no Wieroo trusted another.
"Always were they slaying those above them that they might rise in
power and possessions, until at last came the more powerful than the
others with a tas-ad all his own. He gathered about him a few of the
most terrible Wieroos, and among them they made laws which took from
all but these few Wieroos every weapon they possessed.
"Now their tas-ad has reached a high plane among them. They make many
wonderful things that we cannot make. They think great thoughts, no
doubt, and still dream of greatness to come, but their thoughts and
their acts are regulated by ages of custom--they are all alike--and
they are most unhappy."
As the girl talked, the two moved steadily along the dark passageway
beside the river. They had advanced a considerable distance when there
sounded faintly from far ahead the muffled roar of falling water, which
increased in volume as they moved forward until at last it filled the
corridor with a deafening sound. Then the corridor ended in a blank
wall; but in a niche to the right was a ladder leading aloft, and to
the left was a door opening onto the river. Bradley tried the latter
first and as he opened it, felt a heavy spray against his face. The
little shelf outside the doorway was wet and slippery, the roaring of
the water tremendous. There could be but one explanation--they had
reached a waterfall in the river, and if the corridor actually
terminated here, their escape was effectually cut off, since it was
quite evidently impossible to follow the bed of the river and ascend
the falls.
As the ladder was the only alternative, the two turned toward it and,
the man first, began the ascent, which was through a well similar to
that which had led him to the upper floors of the temple. As he
climbed, Bradley felt for openings in the sides of the shaft; but he
discovered none below fifty feet. The first he came to was ajar,
letting a faint light into the well. As he paused, the girl climbed to
his side, and together they looked through the crack into a low-ceiled
chamber in which were several Galu women and an equal number of hideous
little replicas of the full-grown Wieroos with which Bradley was not
quite familiar.
He could feel the body of the girl pressed close to his tremble as her
eyes rested upon the inmates of the room, and involuntarily his arm
encircled her shoulders as though to protect her from some danger which
he sensed without recognizing.
"Poor things," she whispered. "This is their horrible fate--to be
imprisoned here beneath the surface of the city with their hideous
offspring whom they hate as they hate their fathers. A Wieroo keeps
his children thus hidden until they are full-grown lest they be
murdered by their fellows. The lower rooms of the city are filled with
many such as these."
Several feet above was a second door beyond which they found a small
room stored with food in wooden vessels. A grated window in one wall
opened above an alley, and through it they could see that they were
just below the roof of the building. Darkness was coming, and at
Bradley's suggestion they decided to remain hidden here until after
dark and then to ascend to the roof and reconnoiter.
Shortly after they had settled themselves they heard something
descending the ladder from above. They hoped that it would continue on
down the well and fairly held their breath as the sound approached the
door to the storeroom. Their hearts sank as they heard the door open
and from between cracks in the vessels behind which they hid saw a
yellow-slashed Wieroo enter the room. Each recognized him immediately,
the girl indicating the fact of her own recognition by a sudden
pressure of her fingers on Bradley's arm. It was the Wieroo of the
yellow slashing whose abode was the place of the yellow door in which
Bradley had first seen the girl.
The creature carried a wooden bowl which it filled with dried food from
several of the vessels; then it turned and quit the room. Bradley
could see through the partially open doorway that it descended the
ladder. The girl told him that it was taking the food to the women and
the young below, and that while it might return immediately, the
chances were that it would remain for some time.
"We are just below the place of the yellow door," she said. "It is far
from the edge of the city; so far that we may not hope to escape if we
ascend to the roofs here."
"I think," replied the man, "that of all the places in Oo-oh this will
be the easiest to escape from. Anyway, I want to return to the place
of the yellow door and get my pistol if it is there."
"It is still there," replied, the girl. "I saw it placed in a chest
where he keeps the things he takes from his prisoners and victims."
"Good!" exclaimed Bradley. "Now come, quickly." And the two crossed
the room to the well and ascended the ladder a short distance to its
top where they found another door that opened into a vacant room--the
same in which Bradley had first met the girl. To find the pistol was a
matter of but a moment's search on the part of Bradley's companion; and
then, at the Englishman's signal, she followed him to the yellow door.
It was quite dark without as the two entered the narrow passage between
two buildings. A few steps brought them undiscovered to the doorway of
the storeroom where lay the body of Fosh-bal-soj. In the distance,
toward the temple, they could hear sounds as of a great gathering of