The world below
feeling, which made my feet slow as I left the cave, and my glance go
backward.
Then I turned resolutely to the task which I had undertaken.
The day was very still. There was no cry or motion from the great
cliff-height above me. There was no flying life that crossed the
unbroken blue. The forest had stilled its fear, and the monstrous
growths were sprawling open upon the steaming soil. I wondered what
control it might be which held them so far backward that none could
reach a deadly arm across the path I kept. Perhaps the nearer soil was
too shallow for the growth they needed.
I went forward in this quiet peace for about four hours, stopping twice
to eat from the store I carried, which I found, though only semi-liquid
at the centre, had a gratifying quality of quenching thirst almost with
the first mouthful. I suppose it to have been formed largely of water,
as many solids are, and to have been soluble to digestion to an unusual
degree. But it is a matter which I have no competence to decide.
I know that I must have covered more than twelve miles in the first four
hours, with times for rest included ... and then came the abyss.
The cliff-wall ended, and ran back in a black and barren hill, immense
and desolate in the daylight.
The forest ended abruptly on the edge of a chasm so deep that, though it
must have been nearly a quarter of a mile to the further side, the great
depth made it look narrow.
Far below, dim and snake-like in the distance, a great river wound,
between deep shelving banks that looked moss-grown, but were covered
with (perhaps familiar) trees.
I stood upon the edge, which sank like a wall, and I saw no possible way
to go forward, or to clamber down.
I knew that there was a way which I had been meant to take, and more
than once I walked from side to side of the path on which I stood,
bending perilously over an edge which fell almost sheer to not less than
five-thousand feet below.
As I did this, the rope-like tentacle, which I was carrying over my
shoulder, slipped forward. I made one effort to clutch it; then,
conscious of my peril, let it go, but I was overbalanced already. With
an involuntary cry, that echoed and re-echoed through the barren
heights, I fell forward.
CHAPTER VI
THE FROG-MOUTHS
Was the abyss an illusion only?
Dizzy and blank of mind, with a heart that beat to choking, and with a
bruised and injured knee, I lay upon a level vacancy, and the cause of
the accident lay, as on nothing, beside me.
How long I lay there I have no conception. I believe that as my
heart-beats slowed, and my senses cleared, I fainted from a revulsion of
terror, and, reviving, I lay afraid to move, and gazing with
half-delirious eyes into the appalling depth beneath me. But memory is
indistinct, and it is a terror which I recall with reluctance.
Soon or late, at last I realised that the path, though invisible to me,
must run out across the gorge, and timidly, and then more boldly I felt
to right and left, and wriggled back, and stood once more upon the
evident platform.
I remained there for a long time, seeking courage to go forward. With a
knowledge of what to look for, I fancied that the sunshine caught a
faint gleam of opal light that crossed the chasm.
How should I venture to tread it? How could so frail a bridge extend so
far without support or suspension? Would it sway beneath me as I
advanced? Would it break at last, and drop me, a dead thing, before I
reached the silver streak below?
In vain I tried to stimulate myself to the adventure. What hope was
there if I did not cross it? Was I not pledged in honour to the attempt,
and might not the path of honour be the path of safety also? Here,
without apparent reason, an old line of forgotten verse intruded,--
“‘Be bold,’ ‘be bold’ and everywhere ‘be bold.’”
My mind searched backward to place it. In that remoteness of time, when
all material things were unimaginably far, the imagination which formed
the greatest romantic poem in the English tongue could reach to inspire
me. I saw the vision of Britomart, her shield lifted over her face, go
forward into the certain-seeming death of flame, against which her
trusted weapons were useless.
With no conscious change of resolution, I rose slowly and stepped
forward, sounding my way by tapping to right and left with the axe-head,
and giving that snake-like tentacle a push that sent it over the
invisible edge into the depths below.
As I felt my way, I tried to look downward to watch my steps without
gazing into the gulf beneath me, but when I found it impossible to do
so, in a sickening terror I closed my eyes and felt forward blindly, or
opened them only to gaze at the further hills, which I was so slowly
approaching.
And in this way, when I was more than half across, I first saw them, and
as I did so I recalled in a moment the forgotten warning that had eluded
my mind before. These were they which must be avoided at all costs, even
at that of waiting in the deadly cavity till night had darkened.
They were descending the cliffs with an awkward waddle, comic enough to
watch from some place of security, their bodies showing dead-white
against the dull grey background.
I could not tell certainly that I was their objective. They would reach
the level some distance to the right of the end of the bridge I was
crossing. The cliffs on that side left some margin by which they could
reach the bridge-head, but if I could pass that, I saw that the cliff
ran on as before, flush with the path, and with a similar expanse upon
the left to that to which I had become accustomed. If, I thought, I
could reach the bridge-end first, I should at least have a clear course,
if I could outrun them. If I were caught here, I had no hope whatever.
It is strange how a more urgent fear may drive out one which had seemed
invincible. By some optical difference the path here was very faintly
visible, a thin ribbon of opal-coloured transparency, and the fact that
I could fix my eyes on the point at which it reached the solid ground
gave confidence. I ceased to feel my steps, and ran forward.
Doing so, I thought for a moment that my time was ample, but when they
were on level ground their gait changed. They were coming with great
bounds, and straight for the bridge-head, to pass which was my only hope
of safety.
I saw them more clearly now. They were as white as an ant’s egg, and in
shape like a squatting man. There were more than twenty coming with
bounds of thirty feet, but with a distinct pause between each leap.
I was running hard now, and as I did so I shouted what I meant for a
bold defiance, and the sound echoed and re-echoed up the gorge, and came
back like a wail of terror from the depth below.
As I left the bridge, I saw the foremost coming on my right hand, not a
hundred yards distant. In another moment I was on the path that ran on
as before, the high cliff on my right, and what I had taken for a
similar forest to that I had been passing hitherto, on my left hand.
I knew that it would be useless to run further. No human speed could
equal those gigantic leaps. I had no mind to feel one of the loathsome
brutes upon my shoulder as I ran.
Fear more than courage, desperate fear it was, which turned my feet, and
swung the axe to meet them. As I did so, I was aware that the cliff-wall
was open. Not an irregular cave-hollow, but another of those masoned
tunnels towering high overhead. Then the foremost of my pursuers came
down floppingly not two yards away.
I saw a hairless, dead-white, ape-like, frog-mouthed form, a width of
jaws in a flat skull, and small malignant eyes, that had in them a
malevolence different from anything I had known, or to which I can make
comparison. Its hind-limbs ended in large round pads of flesh which
splayed out as it hit the ground, and took the force of the impact, and
appeared, with a jerking motion of the strong forelimbs against the
ground, to give the impetus to the next leap.
All this I saw as I realised that for a second’s space it could not
recover itself and leap again, and I swung the axe and struck. As I did
it the thought crossed me that if the blade caught in the skull I should
be weaponless, and I brought it round to take the side of the neck as
though I felled a tree.
If they were strong brutes, they were not agile. The sharp blade cut
straight through the throat some inches deep from side to side. The
creature made no cry or motion, and no blood came from the wound. As I
recovered the weapon, I stepped quickly back into the archway.
It was twenty feet wide or more, and disproportionately high. An upright
bar of a grey metal thinly veined with red divided the entrance for six
feet upwards.
There were a dozen of them by now that were close around the entrance,
or that had leapt short, and were coming along with an awkward shambling
motion.
I stood within, with the poised axe, desperately alert and watchful, and
they squatted motionlessly around. Even the one I had cut still sat with
intent gaze fixed upon me,--no, not on me, suddenly I realised, it was
at that red-grey bar that divided us. And then I knew that it was not
fear of me, but of it, which held them back, and that they dared not
enter.
And as my own fear relaxed, I looked around, and saw that I was at the
entrance of a very lofty passage which ran curving downward behind me.
Step by step I went backward, still facing them, till the turn hid them
from view.
There I waited. Perhaps in time they would retire, and leave me a free
exit.
After hours, it seemed, I went forward again, but they were there still,
only there were so many more that all the space was crowded.
I was conscious now that I was tired to the point of exhaustion, and
thirsty beyond patient endurance. To stay there was not hopeful. I
gathered my remaining courage, and commenced to explore my refuge
further.
CHAPTER VII
CAPTURE
Very fearfully I went forward. The fact that those fierce beasts did not
dare to follow was itself a warning. One thing was certain. I was in the
presence here of an engineering capacity such as I had not seen
previously, unless it were in the opal pavement. The passage sloped down
steeply in a steady spiral. It was of ample width, and of great height.
The floor was not earth or rock, but a smooth rubber-like substance that
gave pleasantly underfoot. The walls were smooth and hard, coloured a
light grey, having a polished surface. The ceiling was opalescent,
giving a faint but sufficient light, which was reflected from the
polished walls.
I went down, expecting always that the steady turning descent would
bring me into some great hall or chamber, or at least into a level
passage, but it did neither. I went on because I was too tired to stop,
or at least because I was too tired to think of climbing upward, and to
stay was hopeless.
There was no least change in the monotony of floor, or wall, or ceiling,
till I felt that they must surely go on for ever, till I swayed dizzily
as I descended on that continued curve, till I lost consciousness of
time, and went on half-asleep, and half-believing myself to be in some
nightmare of illusion. And because I was so dazed, when it came, I
almost missed it.
It was a niche, or rather a cavity, in the wall, flatly paved, and
having a great jar standing in it. I think the instinct of my parched
frame told me it was water. The jar or basin was of the height of my
shoulder, and about ten feet across. I bent my head into it and drank,
and knew the joy of life as I had not imagined it to exist before.