The world below
squatting was their more natural posture. Each of them carried some kind
of rope or cord in considerable quantity.
There was a fourth that followed, of the same form and colour, but of
more than twice the size, and of a ferocity more brutal, though not more
malevolent, than that of those who preceded him. He carried a powerful
bow of dark wood, bent for use, and with a shaft ready for the cord.
It was conveyed to me that these were not adult and young of the
species, but that the archer was of an exceptional growth, of which they
had two or three only in each generation.
In the vision, I could hear plainly that others of their kind were
whistling to them through the trees, to whom they replied with notes of
rising excitement. Soon I perceived that one of the frog-mouthed apes
that I had already encountered was being driven towards the party that I
watched. I understood that it had been separated from its companions,
and headed off from the safety of its native rocks. It now came bounding
in a heavy bewildered terror toward the waiting archer.
Remembering how my own axe had cut through the throat of one of these
creatures without apparently disturbing its equanimity, I was curious to
see how a shaft could discommode it. I soon learnt. The hunted creature
saw its new foes, and turned sideways. As it did so, it crossed the bole
of a giant tree, and at the instant the archer wrenched the bow back to
his ear, and the shaft flew. It drove through its victim’s neck, and
deep into the trunk behind it. Before the shaft had ceased to quiver,
the three that bore the ropes leapt forward and were twining them round
the now struggling victim, binding it first to the trunk, and then,
heedless of the gnashing teeth above the fastened neck, till every limb
was useless.
By now the beasts that had driven it were arriving, and with an inferno
of exultant whistlings the worm-pink crowd had loosed it from the tree,
and drawn the shaft out of its neck, that they might drag it with them,
now roped beyond movement. I watched it drawn for some miles in this
way, clear of the woods, and up by rocky paths, until a high plateau was
reached, a mile-wide shelf of rock, beyond which the mountain rose
abruptly once again. On this shelf was their stronghold. A low,
continuous, smooth-sided back-sloping stone-seeming wall, very broad at
the base, and rising to a sharp ridge, swept crescent-shaped from the
cliff, and enclosed the larger half of the plateau.
To this wall there was one barricaded entrance only, through which the
hunters dragged their victim. Many more of their kind, of all sizes,
were within the enclosure, but the sight of the captured prey was
evidently too commonplace to attract their attention, and I saw that
they squatted in the sun, or moved on their own errands, in complete
indifference, while it was dragged toward a large cistern of boiling
water, which was sunk in the ground, and into the centre of which a
stone pier jutted. By carrying their ropes round the sides of the
cistern they were able to draw their victim along this pier, so that it
fell off at the extremity into the boiling vat. It was bound too tightly
to struggle, and sank at once to the bottom, where it continued to move
spasmodically as long as I observed it. I understood that it would boil
there for many hours till the contents of the tough skin should be
reduced to a semi-liquid form, such as its captors could draw in through
their sucking mouths, and the whole sight filled me with a loathing for
these bestial forms, and for the cruelties they practised. I did not
reflect that the boiling of living fish, which is common in Asia, or of
lobsters in our own country, is a far greater cruelty, being exercised
on creatures of higher sensibility, and with far less excuse, as they
could be killed without difficulty, which was by no means certain in the
instance which I was observing.
I saw also that the centre of the crescent did not contain any buildings
except such as were of a public character. Of these one confined the
selected victims of the approaching feast, and this was built over one
end of the boiling tank, and guarded by one of the giant archers, with a
number of assistants round him. There was one other giant lying with a
leg discoloured and useless against the cliff-wall, in an evidently
dying condition,--shortly, no doubt, to share the fate of a dead body of
one of their number which I saw flung over the farther side of the
plateau, where it fell abruptly to a great depth.
I saw that the wall was hollow, with many doorways on the inner side,
and that it formed the dwellings of the settlement. There were many
young, moving in a more lively manner than the adults, and including two
of the archer kind, which, though evidently immature, were already
larger than the rest of the tribe.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HALT
I was recalled from this contemplation by the pressure of the minds
around me, and my first thought was to ask why, if the Dwellers were
supreme, they allowed the existence of such foulness. I was answered
that it was all as strange to them as to myself, but I learnt later that
the blood of creatures of a malevolent kind had a chemical quality which
was required for certain purposes in connection with the defence of the
continent, and that these creatures were deliberately bred to supply it.
I was then asked whether I were familiar with the weapon carried by the
archers, and could use it if necessary. I replied that the bow had long
been regarded as a deadly weapon in the world from which I came, but
that in my own time and country it had fallen into disuse. I was not
entirely unfamiliar with it, having consorted with some who had used it
in competitions of skill, in which I had done indifferently well, but
the bows I had used had been little better than toys when compared with
that which I had now seen, and the memory of the depth that the shaft
had been driven into the hard wood made me doubt whether I should have
the strength to bend it.
This information was received with quiet satisfaction. I began to have
an increased respect for these Amphibians, as I recognised the serenity
with which they faced a problem which might well seem insoluble, under
conditions which were in some respects more alien, and must have been
far more repugnant, to themselves than to me.
I noticed the unhurried care with which they arranged the facts as they
perceived them, and that while they had outlined an intention of
effecting the rescue by the power of their own wills, without arousing
the opposition of the will-power of their opponents, they were careful
to avoid any detailed plan, until all the available information had been
obtained to guide them. I began to understand how it was that they could
rely upon arriving at unanimous decisions for all their actions, and the
unquestioning faith with which these decisions were received by their
followers. I felt that if the Dwellers were to appear at that moment
with the threat of some overwhelming penalty, it would not radically
disturb the equanimity of the minds that met them.
I was next asked whether I thought I could descend the cliff that rose
at the back of the settlement in the moonlight, as the vision had shown
it, and replied with certainty that I could not do so, either by night
or day. I am without any special aptitude for climbing, and I think
there are few men who would have attempted that descent under any
conceivable circumstances.
I was then directed to await my previous companion, and the crawling
march continued. As they passed me, two and two, I was able to estimate
their numbers, for the Leaders had been at the head, and my own place
was at the rear of the procession. I found that there were over three
hundred whose lives had been committed to this enterprise.
On rejoining my companion I asked her whether this were the whole of her
tribe or nation, to which she replied that there were many more, but
that they could not have been summoned without delay, being scattered in
many oceans, and a proportion of those available had to remain, that the
Dwellers might not notice the absence of their accustomed service.
Only, I learnt, at an annual date which the stars showed them, did they
all congregate, to sleep for three days’ space in the feeding-tanks, and
gain strength for the year to be.
I gathered that my own method of continual eating, and the swallowing of
waste matter, which my body promptly rejected, placed me definitely with
the lower animals in her thought, though not unkindly--or rather with
the sea-dogs and the fishes, for of a lower terrestial creation she had
little previous knowledge, and it was, indeed, stranger to her world
than to that from which I had wandered. I wondered how she regarded the
Dwellers, of whom the one I had seen was certainly more of my own kind,
but I recognised that she had other reasons to respect, if not to love
them.
I next asked what might be the natural longevity of her kind, and if
there were no old, infirm, or children that had been left behind, but to
this she replied that they were not fishes, and their bodies did not
alter or decay as the years passed. Obviously, if their bodies were
damaged beyond remedy, they withdrew from them.
How, I queried, if they were not subject to birth or change, could one
so disembodied hope for any new incarnation, and by what channel could
it be gained?
But I could only learn that she was unperturbed by the suggested
difficulty. Beyond this, her explanation faltered, or my mind was
deficient to comprehend it. But the longer that I conversed with my
companion, while the slow hours passed, and the crawling march
continued, the more I realised that life persisted to the same ends, by
the same methods, through all its physical changes, and even these--how
slight they might appear to a detached observer!
In the softened golden light of this unending forest, could I have said
certainly that I was not in some untravelled part of the world I knew?
Nothing was too strange for that, except perhaps the Amphibian whose
hand I held, and whose nervous strength it was which enabled me to go
forward. And even she--was her form as grotesque, even to my human mind,
as that of many beasts or reptiles which I could have seen in my own
garden, or behind the bars of menageries? And was she not, of all the
things around me, becoming the most familiar through the mental intimacy
which was growing up between us?
In this great forest there was an atmosphere of enduring peace; it was a
lake of stillness, rippled by softly-rustling unseen wings above us, or,
more faintly, by the stir of slighter life in the moss below. Frequently
we crossed the narrow roads I have mentioned, and as I looked at them
more closely I was confirmed in the opinion that they were the work of
the beetle-bipeds, one of which I had seen for a moment, for the moss on
either side was trimmed with formal regularity, for doing which the
mandibles of such a creature would be well adapted. The moss would be
far too close in its growth for them to penetrate it in any other way,
and yet not close enough for them to walk over it without sinking, so
that it would otherwise form an insurmountable barrier. I was confirmed
in this opinion when we passed an open glade which was white with low
regular mounds of mushroom shape, from one of which I had a glimpse of
two of these creatures issuing, and passing rapidly out of sight behind
it....
I began to think of the Amphibians as being independent of sleep, as
they were of food, but as the morning advanced an order came that we
were to move sideways to the left (the two in front of us moving to the