The world below
it, as we had done before, and my companion was quick to perceive my
exhaustion. Again I felt the small life-giving hand in mine, and, for
the time at least, the effects of thirst and starvation, and the long
night-hours, were overcome by the reserves of her vitality.
She was very quiet at first, and indisposed for conversing.
At length I asked her, “I know how I must appear to you in many ways,
but why was your Leader so contemptuous of me, beyond anything I have
met among your people previously?”
She answered, “She was not contemptuous. She did not regard you at all.
Why should she? She had more serious things of which to think. Besides,
you think of our Leaders as one, because their decisions are always
unanimous. But this is wrong. Each is different. There is none like this
one in all practical issues, and in control of material things. That is
why it was she who came to seek the first one, when she did not return.
I think she regards the whole expedition as a mistake, and that she
should have been left to her own ways. But such things are not for me.
They are for themselves only.
“She taught me much while we talked together. When I am with you only, I
think myself superior in many ways. Your body breaks so easily, and you
are never sure when it will fail you. Your mind is confused, and
inconsequent. It is only when I think of yourself as of a Leader whose
followers are mostly treacherous or disloyal, but who still endeavours
without loss of courage to fulfil his purpose, that I respect you at
all. But when my Leader showed my stupidity I felt that there is little
difference between us.
“She showed me, among other things, that I accept your conclusions
without thought, and that I do not even take notice of what is beneath
me.
“You are used to opening doors in certain ways, and so you assumed that
this could not be opened at all from the inside, and I believed you
without reason. The Killers must have been preparing an attack from
beneath our feet, and were only interrupted when they ran out to waylay
my Leader, and I did not hear it. I know that your senses are
rudimentary, but do you not hear it now?”
No--I heard nothing. But she said that they were moving busily under our
feet, so that we must be prepared for an attack at any moment. She
showed me what her Leader had known at a glance, that if we pressed the
hinge the door would open.
I said, “If there be a cavity beneath us, there is probably a trap-door
from it to this hall. In that case, I wonder they haven’t used it
earlier. Let us see what we can discover.”
We examined the floor from end to end. It was of the same hard smooth
substance as the walls. It was laid in squares, about a yard each way,
so finely morticed that the divisions were scarcely perceptible. But
there was one in the middle of the hall that attracted our attention.
It was set as close as the others, even more so, but there was no
appearance of mortar between it and those adjoining. I cleaned the dust
from the floor with my ragged sleeve, and the difference became more
evident.
As we bent above it, there was a slight sound overhead, and looking up
suddenly I saw a row of yellow heads that were regarding our movements
with interest. “I wish I could kill those creatures. They will harm us
yet,” I thought, and my companion answered, “They wish us evil, but you
will do us injury if you fear them. They know every thought they cause
you. But tell me what plans you have. Our Leader is rescued--if any
rescue were needed. We can open the door when we will, and there is
nothing to keep us here, if we have courage to venture out. But perhaps
it would be better to defend this sheltered place, till our friends come
in the evening?”
I answered, “I think we can go free together when we will, though I
could not have done so singly, for I shall have no strength of my own
till I come on food of some kind; but we shall need to know where we are
going, and to what purpose.
“I suppose that at any moment this stone may move, and there will be a
rush of enemies upon us. Yet if we wait till that moment we lose
nothing, for they could not come up quickly through such an opening, and
the more of our enemies that are congregated beneath the building when
the door is opened, the better it will be. But you are right that we
should have a plan as to where we are going, and why we do it, either
together or separately.
“When I came here, it was with the object of finding two of my friends
who had preceded me. Almost at once I involved myself in another
obligation. It seemed to me that the one might help the other, and apart
from that I had no guidance as to where to search, nor hope that any
creature would aid me.
“So far, I have not found them, though I have seen evidence that one has
been near here. I think it is most probable, if they live at all, which
I greatly doubt, that they are in the hands of the Dwellers, and it is
there that I should seek them.
“I have no wish to do this. It is very perilous, and not hopeful. Also,
I do not wish to part from you, and I know you cannot come there.
“But if I should return with you, I suppose that there is no way by
which I could live in your own element.
“If you will help me to get clear of this danger, and back to where food
and water are possible, I think I ought to leave you, and by doing this
I shall also relieve your Leaders of a difficulty with the Dwellers,
which they have indicated already.”
She replied, “I think we shall not part so soon, if we escape the vats
of the Killers. I have something to tell you. When my Leader wished me
to go with her, and leave you here, I objected. Then I told her my
reasons--as our custom is--knowing that she would judge them fairly, and
more capably than I could do myself. She found that they were not good.
She showed me that you are yourself of the kind of the Killers, that you
have little faculty of reason or self-control, that you are violent and
untrustworthy, and (she thought) untamable. If that should prove to be
so, we could not even make you as one of the sea-dogs. Also, you could
only live on the roof of our island, where you would probably die when
the first storms swept over it.
“First or last, you would have to go to the Dwellers.
“She has seen that, every day, as the sun sets, one or more of them will
come over the mountains, and disappear to seaward. She supposes that it
is a regular patrol, and that they come out at some inland spot during
the earlier day, and retire down one of the passages which you have
seen.
“When they pass, the Killers are afraid, and hide in the wall.
“She proposed that we should leave you here, where you could defend
yourself till the evening, and you could then go out and give yourself
up to the Dwellers, or escape entirely, while the Killers will be
hiding, if you should prefer to do so. She thought it best that you
should give yourself up, as they would deal with you as you deserve, and
would not kill you unless it should be desirable, as she thought likely.
“At first I could not answer this; but then I had a new thought. I
replied that now she was safe we had still to rescue the body of our
Leader which was left in the tunnel, if that should be possible. I
should be willing to go to seek it, if you were with me, but not
otherwise. It is plain that we cannot take it by force from the
Dwellers, even though we should all go together. If we go secretly, we
must be few. In many ways you might help me there, for you are more
nearly of their kind, and you do not fear them as you do smaller things.
Even if the body be destroyed it is necessary that we should know.
“She did not like my plan. I thought that she would refuse it, and I
held to it with all the force I had, which was little. Then she closed
her mind from me. I knew she had many thoughts which she would not show
me. At last she decided, ‘You may do this, if you can. But you must not
ask this animal to go down to the Dwellers to aid you. If he offer to do
so, you may take him with you. But he must make his own plan before he
hear of yours, and to that he must keep. You must be in hiding before
the sun goes down. If we should return this way, and should meet with
the Dwellers, you may watch us meet, but you must hold your minds blank
and closed, so that neither they nor we can perceive you, unless we
ourselves should signal to you. You must not release the Bat-winged men,
nor allow their escape. They must die, as the Dwellers have willed.’
That is all she told me, but there is none like her for foresight, even
of the Seven, or for plans that are so made that they can change as the
chances alter, and still reach to where they will. She saw me foolish,
but she decided to make a plan which used my folly. I am glad that we
shall go together, and shall see the homes of the Dwellers.”
I answered, “I am glad also. I cannot say that if I had no search to
make I should give myself to the Dwellers, as your Leader advised so
kindly. They might decide my fate with great wisdom, but I prefer to do
that for myself. As she said, I am not easily tamable. Besides, if I
once get clear of this place, I think I might find means both to hide
and to live in this new world, and I should well like to explore it. It
is already apparent to me that it is full of beauty and of strange
wonders, of which I have yet seen very little--and the tunnels of the
Dwellers seem the more perilous way. But we both have good reasons for
the choice we have made, and I think we may do better together than
either could do separately. But why should we not attempt escape
immediately? Why should we not return to the lower way while there is
still daylight to guide us, and before the Dwellers appear, to add a new
peril to the road we take?”
“I am not certain which is best, and I think, as you do, that we might
escape at any time with no great risk, if we were sudden and rapid in
the attempt; but I think that she wished us to remain to see whether my
friends will still come by this way, and are allowed to pass in safety.
There is also this to think, that if the Dwellers always return to the
interior when the night comes, and they travel more rapidly than we
should do, they might overtake us if we enter one of the tunnels
earlier, while, if we follow behind them, we may do so in safety, with
little fear that they will know of our coming till we have passed the
tunnel and arrive at that which lies beneath it.”
So we agreed to wait, and as we thought that the loose stone in the
floor was now the point that threatened us, we sat closely round it. I
kept the bow beside me, thinking to send a shaft through any opening
that might appear, but as the time passed without movement I loosed my
knapsack, and finding thread and a strong needle, I commenced to repair
my rags as best I was able, my companion watching, half in amusement and
half in sympathy, and wondering why the creatures of my race never tried
to train their skins to utility.
Then for some time she was silent, her head rested on her updrawn knees,
and when at last she moved again she told me, “I suppose you think of us
as all being alike, as we live the same lives, just as I should think of
your kind, if I were among them, while to you they are widely different
by character and appearance and occupation. But we are not so. I have a
vice which I cannot break, which is shared by one only among all our
thousands. Our Leaders have considered it, and showed us that it comes
only when our minds are tired by new things, and desire rest when we do
not will to take it.
“Then our thoughts change to sleep of themselves, and on a note which is
not of our own choosing.
“There was a distant time when I was very foolish, and I went into a