The world below
been evolved by the Amphibians, in an unforeseen way. In our own race,
we know that the desire of life may persist in a body which is both old
and organically defective, and that the brain is usually the last
stronghold of a vitality which is reluctantly surrendered. Their
experience was opposite. A time would come when the body functioned, but
the mind grew weary. Year by year, an increasing lethargy would be
succeeded by a more active desire for death, till the slow operation of
their own will-power would destroy their bodies through the misery of
its final centuries. To the young, this condition would appear
incredible, and they would confidently boast that they would resist it
successfully, but, sooner or later, it would inevitably descend upon
them.
Such was their individual doom: as a race they lived under a darker
shadow. When it became evident that they had so far overcome the threats
of disease and decay that the individual might continue indefinitely,
they had naturally been concerned rather by the fear that there might be
an ultimate congestion of population, than that the race should fail in
fecundity. But this fear had not been acute, because they were then
engaged in exploiting a new, and seemingly almost limitless,
subterranean territory. Also, they passed through a period of warfare
with the inhuman population of other portions of the earth’s surface, in
the course of which many of them were destroyed, and which remained as a
continuing menace when the actual conflict ceased.
They had soon learned that though the lives of their women were
prolonged indefinitely, their power of procreation did not continue, and
they had first observed, immediately after the war of which I have
spoken, that the children that were born were males in a considerable
majority. They were not alarmed at this circumstance, which those who
specialised in such matters assured them to be of a temporary character,
either because (as some held) their males had been weakened in strife,
and their boldest and strongest killed, and it was (they said) a natural
law that the young should be of the sex of the weaker half of the
community; or (as others held) because the spirits of the dead were
reincarnated, so that, in time of warfare, an excess of male births was
a natural consequence of the fatalities which preceded them. With all
their wisdom they could not resolve this question with certainty. They
were not even agreed as to whether there were any necessary relation
between the births and deaths that occurred among them, or whether,
should they cease entirely to die, new spirits could be incarnated
indefinitely from the Unseen.
But the war ceased, and the years passed, and the excess of male births
did not cease, but augmented continually. Many troubles resulted, many
expedients were tried, many laws were passed, but this condition
persisted.
At this day, while the males and older females must have numbered tens
and may have numbered hundreds of thousands, there were less than
seventy women of marriageable age alive, and of some two score of
children there were three girls only.
* * * * *
As the Dweller stood thus, a feeling of desolation came upon me,
settling into a dull despair, which I had no force to combat. It may
have been the attitude in which she stood, solitary and silent, in that
strange setting, the vacant beauty of the temple before, and the golden
circle of the woods behind her, her arms lifted in dumb protest against
the inexorable destiny which overshadowed her.
It may have been her attitude only, or it may have been more than that,
as I realised later.
For when at last she cast down her arms with a gesture of impotence, and
turned with bowed head, and descended into some cavity of the ground, my
companion opened her mind toward me, and the shadow darkened as she did
it. Then her thought grew clear to this issue,--“When you have shown me
the dark things of the time from which you came, I have been curious, or
repelled; or I have sympathised or marvelled only; yet it has been as
unreal as is a reflection in water. But here I find it close, and very
terrible. Its meaning is beyond me, but I had not imagined that the
world could hold such sorrow.... It is strange that we could receive
thoughts which were not directed to us, but it may be that when they are
cast loose in such intensity of petition they may be received by all who
are near them.”
I replied, “That is scarcely so, for I saw only, and her thoughts were
hidden.”
She answered, “It may be that you do not receive the thoughts of the
Dwellers as easily as we do, or as you receive ours, or there may be
another cause, but to me her thought was clear and vivid, though it was
formless, being a desire that was so strong that it could endure with
little hope to support it. I do not know for what she asked, but I think
she called for help which will not be given. I can show you her
thought.”
Then she gave me the prayer which had gained so unexpected an audience,
and my mind was filled at once with a sense of intolerable calamity, and
with the cry of one who knew that the time for hope was over, and who
struggled to reject a despair which would be beyond her endurance, so
that her mind beat lamentably against the repulse of closed and
indifferent doors.
I suppose it to have been because her trouble was of a nature more
easily explicable to myself than to my companion that I found in the
transmitted thought a more concrete quality than she had recognised as
she received it.
I could not tell the cause of her calamity, or its incidence, but I
became aware that it was the impending destruction of her race against
which she pleaded, and that this was joined in some undisclosed manner
with a personal grief, the larger shadow being a connected background to
the more imminent catastrophe.
It was not evident that we were concerned in the troubles of any one of
the Dwellers, or in their general welfare. Indeed, their perils or
pre-occupations might contain our safety. They were alien from, and
might be contemptuously hostile to, my own humanity. Yet the depression
of that telepathy would not lift, and it was with a sense of overhanging
tragedy, illogically enough, that we advanced to investigate the cavity
by which she had descended.
The ground declined as we approached it, becoming a rounded channel or
gutter, down which we moved, the temple on our right, and the surface
soon above the level of our heads on the left. We must have descended
thirty or forty feet when we came to the lowest point, the ground
commencing to rise before us, and at the same time we became aware of
the entrance to a tunnel on our right which sloped down and inward
beneath the temple.
In dimensions it reminded me of the tunnels beside the opal path with
which I was already familiar, but it was otherwise different. There was
no vertical rod, such as that which had drawn the eyes, and stayed the
pursuit of the Frog-Mouths. There was no difference between floor and
walls, but all were marble-smooth, and hard, and cold. They were
opalescent, but of a kind and colour which I had not seen previously.
The sides and roof were of the dim green of the under-surface of an
arching wave, and like a wave they curved over, differing from the
upright walls and flat ceiling of the earlier tunnels. The floor gave an
impression of dark green depths through which we could have seen to the
remoteness of the earth’s interior, had the faint light allowed it.
We had ceased to think as we moved forward, so that I might once again
give to my companion the benefit of the sight she lacked, and it must
have been my own volition that caused us to take a few steps within the
entrance of the cavity. But as we did so, her thought broke sharply
across my own, “You need show no more: I can see here.” It was a relief
that did not lessen the marvel. She showed me that the blackness still
fell like a curtain over the very mouth of the cavity, where I looked
out into sunlight, but the gloom within was alike to both of us, and in
the relief of this renewed equality we sat down, not very prudently,
against the wall of the passage, forgetting its potential dangers in the
pleasure of needed rest, and in the necessity of reconsidering our
position.
“The question is,” I began immediately, “shall we continue the plan we
made before we knew that this tunnel existed, or shall we do better to
attempt to descend it?”
“It is one question, among several,” my companion answered, “but it is
hard to answer. We have some facts now of which we were ignorant when we
decided two nights ago. If we exchange our thoughts at once, we shall
make confusion only. Let us think separately till we have each resolved
what is best, and have made our reasons clear to ourselves. Then, should
we differ, and either prove unable to convince the other, I will give
way very willingly.”
I assented to this, knowing it to be unlikely that such a difference
would arise or continue, and we remained silent for a considerable time,
for my own thoughts were chaotic, and I was anxious not to interrupt the
exhaustive logic of the mind beside me.
My inclination was to explore the cavity to which we had now come, but
when I attempted to formulate arguments in support of this preference, I
knew that I could not do so conclusively. I was in a state of nervous
exhaustion, and my courage sank at the thought of struggling outward
through the belt of the resisting will, only to front the perils of the
pathless hills, and the jaws of the waiting Frog Mouths. Though to
descend to the Dwellers might mean destruction, I was in no mood to
defer it, but rather to cast myself upon their mercy, with a feeling of
indifference as to what the end might be. So that when my comrade
indicated her willingness to converse again, I was quick to ask her
opinion first, to which she assented with her usual equanimity.
“It is evident,” she began, “that though we know more than we did, we
still know so little that all decision must be guessing, and each new
fact, as we gain it, can only demonstrate how foolish may have been the
choice we made before we perceived it. Yet, when the roads branch, a
choice must be made.
“The Dwellers may have information by which they know of our movements,
or they may be searching for us, in ignorance of where we are; or they
may be entirely unaware or indifferent.
“In the first case, it seems clear that should we return we are adding
useless dangers to a sufficient peril, for we must face them, first or
last, and we can gain nothing by wandering upon the surface before we do
so; in the second, we may be more likely to avoid them if we descend
here, by an entrance which appears unwatched, and where they do not know
us to be, than if we return to those with which they already know us to
be familiar; in the third case, it may still be to our advantage to
descend at once, rather than to wander farther upon the unfriendly
surface of an unfamiliar world. I can see that there may be facts which
would make folly of these conclusions. We are certainly distant from
where my Leader’s body was left to their mercy. We have no reason to
suppose, if it have been preserved at all, that it has been conveyed
below the surface in this direction. We have no reason to suppose that
we shall be able to penetrate under the surface toward the point from
which our search should commence more easily than we can do above it. We
have no certainty that there is any connection whatever between this
passage and those of which we knew previously. Should we descend, and
escape capture or destruction, it may still be that a later day will see
us emerge with time lost, to no end but the experience of an abortive