The world below
I threw the axe towards the cave, and went to help the one that I had
ventured to rescue, and doing this, I had a strange feeling of
repulsion, as from an alien body, and of attraction, as to a kindred
soul.
I knew that she was mortally injured, and feared that I must horribly
hurt the limp body as I picked it up.
I was startled by its lightness, and surprised that it made no sound.
As I lifted her, I was conscious again of the interchange of wordless
thought, but when I answered mechanically with a spoken word I was
rebuffed by the expression of repulsion and wonder which crossed her
eyes.
But as I laid her down in the cave-mouth, wondering what I could do to
aid her further, her thought answered mine clearly, “Do not touch my
body. It is dead.”
Then our minds met, and for some moments wrestled abortively, till I
realised that I could not understand unless my own were willing, and
blank, and receptive. Nor could she understand my thought unless it were
consciously approached to hers.
After that, we conversed in silence for some time, but very slowly. So
wide was the gulf of separation in knowledge and experience, so baffling
the mental shorthand by which agreed fact is implied without expression,
so difficult was it to avoid the continual byways of explanation which
only led to others, that it was a long time before I could receive even
a blurred outline of the urgent facts which she was striving to give me.
By this time I realised that she regarded me as something strange and
beast-like, and that any noise from my mouth would intensify this
feeling against me, and confirm the judgment. I knew also that she
recognised me as sympathetic, and in some measure intelligent, however
physically repulsive--a repulsion made more acute by the clothes I wore,
of which I was made to feel a sense of acute shame, so strongly did her
mind impress my own with a conception of their indecency.
I thought that she regarded me much as we should do a half-tamed dog,
ferocious, but amenable to kindness and reason, and of a possible
loyalty.
I knew also that she regarded her body as a broken and negligible thing,
and that her mind had concentrated on persuading me to undertake, and
enabling me to understand, an errand which the accident had interrupted,
and which was of a very urgent nature.
So I sat there at the cave-mouth, while the sun rose clear from the
hateful vivid green of the forest, that was still vocal with fear and
excitement, while I slowly took my first and very difficult lesson in
the new world I had entered.
“And now,” she thought, “if that be all, and you understand, I shall be
very glad to die. You will not touch me when I am dead? If you are a
beast that needs such food, you will find that the jelly in the
tentacles will supply you. You must wait here till the twilight.”
And then she turned over, with a movement of surprising ease in the
broken limbs, and curled up, and I knew that she had left the cave.
And I sat there thinking of all she had told me, and felt a great
loneliness, and a great fear.
CHAPTER IV
THE OPAL WAY
I sat there a long time, trying to reconstruct her tale, and to find
some possible explanation of its apparent paradoxes. Why should I stay
there till the twilight came? I had learnt that where I sat I was in the
very shadow of death. I knew that the way was long, and the message I
had undertaken was of the utmost urgency.
Some reason for delay there had been, but it was like a dream which
eludes waking thought. And how, in light or dark, could I cross the
great chasm where the pavement ended? I had asked her this, but she had
replied as though she did not understand my difficulty. The bridge was
where it was not. There was no meaning in that. Perhaps my physical
limitations were beyond her understanding. Surely, if I tried that road
by night, though I should avoid the terrors on either hand, I must fall
into the abyss beyond, and perish.
I resolved that I would go forward, at least as far as the path was
clear, and, at the worst, I knew that there were other cavities, such as
this one, in which I could take refuge with no greater danger than was
behind me here.
But again my resolve faltered. I _knew_ that there was some reason
against my going, though my thought could not recall it.
Why should I go by night?
Patiently I recalled the visions which had crossed my mind as our
thoughts encountered.
But there was nothing there to guide me. Only there were gaps I knew in
the cliff-wall, and these were associated with the idea of deadly
danger, but of what kind I could not discover. Her thought had gone
forward with the message I was to bear to her kinsfolk on the dim grey
beaches. These I saw clearly, and strange and mist-like as the vision
rose, there at least was the lapping tide of the unchanging sea. I would
go also to these creatures which were intelligent, though they were not
men. Creatures which could understand, and perhaps show friendship,
though they might think of me as the uncouth Caliban of some forgotten
age.
Why should I wait for the dark? Safety to them might be to me the
deadliest peril.
I would go now.
But first for food, and--_was there no fresh water in this accursed
place_?
The thought struck me with such fear as I had not felt till then. There
had been rain in the night, or at least a heavy mist, but now the sun
shone with increasing strength in a sky of absolute and cloudless blue.
There was a slight steam rising from the hot dark-purple powdery soil of
the forest. The cliff-side was hot to touch. There was no moisture on
the opal pavement now.
Had I to wait till the long-distant night and the cold mist returned?
Well, I might live till then, if I must, but at least it was a new
reason for exploring further.
As to food--the severed tentacles lay on the soil before me. I had been
advised to try them. Raw? I looked at them more carefully than I had yet
done. They had not bled, as severed limbs would do on the earth I knew.
But not plants.
Dare I go again across the burning soil, and would the monster dare to
renew the conflict? Every moment there had been less sign of the havoc
the axe had made. The hacked and shredded petals were growing to their
old form again, but now they lay half-open to the sun, as did the whole
of the forest.
Should I fear to approach it? And could it also read my thoughts, and
would my fear give it confidence?
If that were so, I must school myself to feel courage. Is it not always
the unknown that inspires terror, and was I not as strange to them as
they to me?
My thought stopped to watch a new thing that was happening. Very
cautiously, one of the petals moved aside, and very slowly an uninjured
tentacle crept out across the soil. Was it feeling in the hope that its
first victim still lay there? Did it hope to retrieve those broken
tentacles? No, not that; for it touched one, as it seemed by chance, and
shrank back, and trembled, and crept forward a different way.
Well, I would resolve it confidently. Axe in hand, I went forward. As I
did so, I commenced to sing a lively tune that my subconscious mind
suggested to the occasion.
But before the first line ended, it was drowned in the shrill scream of
the monster, and the creeping arm leapt back to safety.
And again the scream was taken up and re-echoed by a hundred voices,
hideous and deafening beyond description; and with no more thought of
danger I went forward into that deadly space, among creatures that could
destroy me in a moment, but that a song could terrify.
I walked quickly over the steaming soil, which was much hotter than
before, picked up a piece of tentacle, perhaps six feet in length, and
flung it on the pavement. Then I took it into the cave to examine it.
The skin was tough and flexible, with a curious fibrous growth inside
it, with hollow cells intervening. Then there was a thin membrane, and
inside this a ruby-coloured jelly-like substance, outwardly firm, but
semi-liquid towards the centre, from which a few drops fell as I turned
it.
I tasted this jelly and found it very sweet, but otherwise unlike
anything to which I can make comparison. I ate a little, hesitating, and
then decided to sling my snake-like larder over my shoulder, and have a
good meal later, if I felt no ill-effects from my first adventure.
CHAPTER V
THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE
I had now resolved to go forward while I had the use of daylight to
guide me. Yet, so pliable is the human mind, I felt already the
reluctance with which a man must take farewell of familiar things, to
face the perils of a homeless way.
I glanced again at my companion of an hour, and with a more detailed
consideration than I had previously given.
Slim and graceful still, the body curved in death.
Very close and soft was the fur that covered her, silver-grey on the
back, but changing forward into a deepening chestnut. The legs were well
and finely shaped, but below the knee of each there was a slender
snake-like appendage, ending with curving fingers, like a tiny monkey’s
hand, which could close round the opposite limb and bind them together.
The feet also were delicately shaped, but deeply slit into three webbed
toes, of which the central one was the longest. Others--one at each
side,--set far back, were curled up normally, but could open sideways
with a thumb-like claw. The feet were furred equally with the legs, the
silver-grey of the undersides lying so closely that it looked almost
like a shining skin. They showed no sign of damage from the long rough
journey that I knew they had made, nor was any road-dust upon them.
The limbs were coloured in the same way as the body,--silver-grey behind
and chestnut-brown before, and the hands were almost human, but for the
webbing which had shown between the open fingers.
The head was to me the most singular, being furred like the body, and of
a similar colouring. The eyes were of a very human quality, and I had
seen them to be alert and intelligent. Now they were covered by a heavy
lid which rose upward, and in its turn was protected by a thin film
which closed down, and was lashed like a human eyelid. The ears were set
far back, and were covered by a furry flap which could be closed at will
to shut out air or water.
The mouth was lipless, a thin slit, with no sign of teeth. The cheeks
were covered by retractile pads beneath which was a gill-like device for
water-breathing.
The tail, which could curl up beneath the body till it was practically
invisible, was forked, with two more of those tiny monkey-hands at its
extremities.
I saw, or guessed, these details and their significance imperfectly at
the time,--the more so for my pledge not to touch the abandoned
body,--but it was evident that it was adapted for land or water living
with almost equal excellence.
I recognised that the novelty of what I saw was not surprising, but
rather that there was so little structural change in the form of animal
life over so long a period of earthly time. Still there was the
vertebrate body, the limbs, the head; still a general similarity of
external and, presumably, of internal organs.
I looked at the sinuous, graceful body, and wondered what it was that
repelled me.
To an impartial intelligence it might be considered more beautiful than
even an ideal human body, and the ideal in the human race is not the
majority.
Surely, it was more so than the average of our domestic animals.
Was it the unfamiliarity only, or was it the doubt of humanity, which
repelled me?
But repulsion, from whatever cause, was countered by a very different