The valley of eyes unseen
inclined to blame him for this, but Poyning, despite his own nerves,
took a more generous view.
'Depend upon it, Mirlees,' he said, 'Philipson would come if he could.
I have a pretty shrewd notion there is more happening in this valley at
the moment than we know anything about.'
'What's to prevent him coming?'
'I make no dogmatic assertion. But from what I saw of that rather
picturesque ceremony the other day I would venture a hypothesis that
the said and so-called Philipson, having been for reasons best known to
themselves received by this people with such extraordinary favour, is
now state property and no longer master of his own movements. That's my
way of it, anyhow.'
At last, on what I think was the eighth day, Kalliboas came. He seemed,
or it may be pretended himself totally unconscious of our burning
impatience to get out, greeting us as if he had only been an hour gone;
and when lunch was brought in, with an additional couch for him, he
reclined there slowly and delicately sipping his wine and eating as if
it were no way unusual for strangers to be brought into the city and
imprisoned after getting the barest glimpse of it.
'We have many things to ask you, Kalliboas,' burst out Poyning at last.
The old man returned a suave, measured reply, which I found to my
delight I could understand.
'I await your questions,' he said.
'Your people are of Hellene descent, are they not?'
'Hellene blood runs in our veins.'
'So. Now we ourselves know the original Hellas, which is many thousands
of miles from this country. How did your people come here?'
'Have no fear, the time is not distant when you shall learn of our
origin. But tell me, how did yourselves come to this country? Was it by
design or did you stumble upon us?'
I am tolerably sure Kalliboas was already in possession of all the
facts about this, and that he merely wanted to hear our version of it.
Yet he started and bowed his head realistically enough when Poyning
mentioned Philipson.
'Our comrade,' said the former, 'came of a set purpose. He had
discovered evidence that somewhere in this region lay a valley
inhabited by an unknown people. He determined to search for that
valley. Together with us and the two native servants who are now dead
he set out across the mountains.'
'What guided you here?' demanded Kalliboas.
'A monument in the mountains, on which was a record of this land. The
writing had been made by a priest who penetrated into the valley but
retreated at once into the heights, where he perished. We found the
monument again, and from there struck across the mountains until we
were carried down into this valley by the snow.'
The mention of the _obo_ had put the old man into a perturbation which
even his mask-like reserve couldn't altogether hide.
'Do others of the outer world know of this monument?' he said with a
curiously grim inflection.
'We do not know. When our comrade found it on his former coming he
copied the inscription and then effaced it, so that probably only we
know what was written.'
'How, then, did they obtain their knowledge, those other men?'
'What other men?'
'They from whom you fled when you came hither.'
Kalliboas may, of course, have learned of this matter from Philipson.
On the other hand, he may not.
'I cannot tell,' said Poyning, staring at the old man. 'But in some way
they had come to suspect the existence of this valley, and believed our
comrade had more exact knowledge. They strove to steal his secret. But
tell me, Kalliboas, are we the first men from the outer world whom you
have seen?'
The old man shook his head. 'There was one before,' he said.
'What manner of man was he?' cried Poyning with a curious eagerness.
'He was tall, and of a fair skin like yourselves.'
'Then he was _not_ the native priest who made the inscription?'
'He whom we knew was no priest.'
'Whom you _knew_? Then he too has departed again?'
'On a long journey. He died in this land.'
'He is buried here?'
'We judged him to have been a man of standing in his own country, and
our rulers decreed that his tomb should be of a fitting splendour.'
'Where is it?'
'It stands on the foothills southward of the valley.'
'When did this stranger come?'
'Some years gone--ten, eleven years.'
'How long had he been here when he died?'
'But a few months.'
'How did he die?'
'No man saw his end. The body was found on the hills, unwounded, and
word passed in the city that the stranger had died from a bursting of
the heart, in climbing.'
Poyning rapped out these enquiries in a way that got me distinctly
alarmed. It seemed inevitable the old man must resent being thus
brusquely cross-examined--there is no other word to it--and I noticed
that he was indeed scanning Poyning's face with that curious intentness
he had shown when the subject of former explorers first came up. I did
my utmost to catch Poyning's eye and warn him to go lightly, but his
head had fallen to his breast.
'You are much concerned for the stranger who died,' said Kalliboas at
last.
Poyning looked up and gave the old man a look as straight as his own.
'He may have been of our race,' he said. 'We would at least go to his
tomb to pay honour to the dead.'
'So,' said Kalliboas. 'But it may not be yet. The foothills to the
southward are still impassable by reason of much snow which has
recently fallen. But come, it is the will of the Prince that I should
show you our city. You have asked to know more of the great birds you
have seen in the valley, and to learn how our people first came here.'
We followed him into the open and struck out westward on foot, skirting
the margin of the lake and making towards a broad grassy plain from
which we could see the gigantic birds rising into the air. News of us
was, of course, by this time general in the city, and I noticed that as
soon as we emerged from the guest-house we were watched at courteous
distance by a considerable crowd, who only desisted when Kalliboas
ordered certain city wardens--the closest approach to police I ever
saw in the valley--that we were to be pursued no farther. We must have
walked a mile at a round pace--the old man was astonishingly vigorous
for one of his age--and at last drew near enough to discern the true
nature of these gigantic wing-flapping figures.
'Then they _are_ men!' cried Poyning.
'Not so,' replied Kalliboas. 'They are boys. This is the school where
our people are taught the art of flight.'
We were so close now that we could see several pairs of great wings
lying on the ground beside a knot of youths in white skin-tight attire.
They were gathered round an older man, whose voice we heard raised
in the level tones of a set lecture. Our arrival caused no little
commotion: the boys drew away from their tutor and ranged themselves in
a half-circle, staring towards us with the liveliest curiosity. I make
no doubt we were more interesting to them even than the art of flight
was to us.
As Kalliboas approached, all saluted him with a profound obeisance,
which having gravely acknowledged the old man obtained a pair of the
great wings and had them held up while he explained the principle of
their use. Much that he told us of the origins and development of
flying in the valley I omit for brevity's sake. Suffice it to say
that the people had, some hundreds of years back, after a long and
systematic study of the feathered creation, begun experimenting in
wing-building for themselves, designing their implements so as to unite
the best points they had observed about the wings of the best-flying
birds. They were soon in possession of a wing that would support the
flier in the air, but the perfecting of the pattern and the elimination
of accidents had been a work of years, and to this day experiments were
still made. The wings we saw were of a very thin, very tough skin,
ribbed with some rigid horn-like substance which Kalliboas told us
was hollow and hermetically sealed full of a light gas. The buoyancy
thus derived was merely an adjunct, however, and should one of the
ribs become punctured and the gas escape, the flier was in no danger
of falling, since he depended for support in the air almost entirely
on wing-purchase. When in use the wings were worn on the shoulders,
being hinged together by a most ingenious device on the principle of a
ball-and-socket joint; there were thong loops on the under side of the
main rib, through which the arms of the wearer could be slipped in or
out at will, and lower down a light framework serving as a rest for the
feet during flight. The distance from tip to tip of the wings Kalliboas
showed us was something over twenty feet.
When he had explained their construction he bade the tutor select a boy
to demonstrate how the wings were used. A youth of about sixteen years
was chosen. As he came forward, I noticed a faint trace of a smile on
the face of the tutor, and when the demonstrator had donned his wings
and stood waiting, the other pupils broke into a downright cry of
derision.
The tutor quelled this outburst, and turned to us.
'I have chosen this boy, O Kalliboas,' he said, 'that the strangers may
see what our least skilful can do. He is my most backward scholar. See,
he waits for a favourable wind. No bird does that.'
The youth flushed on hearing these words. He at once put his wings
into a vigorous commotion, then threw his weight forward, poising on
tiptoe at about forty-five degrees, and in another instant had swung
clear of the ground. The wind-puff came, on which he soared almost
still, and had risen to a hundred feet in surprisingly little time.
When the current failed he climbed with a flapping of his wings to
another, higher and higher, until at last the tutor had to shout at
the top of his lungs to make the boy hear. It was a command to descend
and demonstrate the way of other manœuvres, which the boy did, gliding
down, wheeling, plunging, soaring, and finally, at a word from the
instructor, coming to within about ten feet of earth. He then seemed
with a sudden effort to shake the wind out of his sails, so to speak,
and alighted so gently that I didn't hear his sandals touch the ground.
Whatever the tutor may have thought of the performance, to our eyes
it was bewildering, marvellous. I had all I could do to refrain from
clapping my hands.
'Tell me,' cried Poyning, 'how far can these boys travel on their
wings?'
'But a little way,' replied the old man. 'I do not think there is one
student in the school who could fly out of this valley without becoming
weary. But when long distances are to be flown we use other wings than
these.'
He spoke a few words in a low tone to the instructor, who nodded
and gave a curt order to the boys nearest him. They ran to a large
pavilion-like building near where we stood, threw open the doors,
and carried out a pair of wings wider and apparently much heavier
than those we had seen. I noticed at once that at the point where
they joined, instead of the simple metal hingeing there was a curious
shield-shaped contrivance, about eighteen inches broad by nine deep.
'These wings,' said Kalliboas, 'demand higher skill and strength
than the others. No student is permitted to touch them until he has
thoroughly learned to fly by his own exertions.'
The tutor himself had donned the wings and risen into the air with an
ease and grace beside which, as we now saw, the performance of his
pupil had been merely elementary. For about five minutes he amazed us
by evolutions that brought my heart into my mouth time and again: he
somersaulted like a gymnast, tumbled like a tumbler pigeon, swooped
almost to the level of our heads, then rocketed up as if he had
been shot out of a catapult, and finally seemed to poise dead still