Chapter 18
"That's Where They Are Waiting for Us!"
For some moments those yellow eyes gleamed at us, then vanished. The lids of that waiting monster (so to speak) had closed over them.
I had watched them very closely, and I was sure that there had been no movement of the eyes themselves. Milton, however, was just as sure that they had moved.
"To the right or to the left?" I queried.
"Neither. Down," said Rhodes.
"Then it must have been straight down."
"It was—behind a rock mass or something."
We waited, watching closely, but those yellow eyes did not gleam again through that Stygian gloom.
"Must have been at quite a distance," I remarked at last.
"It seems so, Bill; and that means that this cavern is very straight for a mile or more or that it is one of enormous size."
"It may be both."
"It may be. And it may be that those lights were not so far away as they appeared to be. One may easily be deceived in such matters."
"We don't know what it means," I said, "but we know this: we're spotted."
"Oh, we're seen, all right, Bill. Our every movement will be watched."
Some minutes passed, during which we stood peering down the cavern and waiting; but no light gleamed forth again. Then we started back.
"We'd better keep a sharp lookout," I said suddenly. "Remember, a demon doesn't have to come along the ledge."
"I have not forgotten that, Bill; but we are armed."
As I believe was made sufficiently obvious, the crossing of those places where the ledge narrowed to the width of but a couple of yards had been no pleasant matter; but during the return the thing assumed an aspect truly sinister. That we were being watched both of us regarded as certain. That we might at any moment find a demon or a dozen demons driving at us—well, that was a possibility which never left our thoughts for one single second. And, in those narrow places, where the ledge contracted to a mere ribbon of rock, it was all one wanted to do to hug the wall and make sure of his footing. A frightful place, truly, in which to meet, even with a revolver, the attack of even one of those winged monsters; and we might find ourselves attacked by a dozen.
It can easily be imagined, then, the relief which I felt when we had passed the last narrow spot, though, forsooth, we might be going toward something far more terrible than any we had left behind us. But the angel had gone down, and where a woman could go, there, I told myself in masculine pride, could we also.
"That is," I subjoined, "supposing we do not meet ape-bats or something more terrible."
At length we stood once more at the mouth of the gallery. And scarcely had we stopped there when an unpleasant thing flashed into my thoughts—which, as it was, resembled anything but the rainbow.
"Great heaven!" I cried, peering into the tunnel, which, at the distance of only thirty feet or so, gave a sudden turn to the right.
Something could be in there, very close to us and yet unseen!
"What is it, Bill?"
"Could those lights that we saw have been here? Are they waiting in there to dog our steps or to do something worse?"
Rhodes, peering into the gallery with a curious, half-vacuous expression on his face, made no reply.
"Well," I queried, "what do you think of it? We could not tell where those lights were, how far away—anything."
"I don't think that they were here," Milton Rhodes returned. "I think they were much farther down and on the other side."
"On the other side? How on earth could anyone cross that chasm?"
"We don't know what it is like down there. And, of course, I don't know that the lights were on the other side. But I believe that they were."
A silence ensued, which at length I broke:
"What is the next thing on the program?"
"Make our way down the ledge. That is the only way we can go. But first we 'll try a little finesse."
He took a position in the mouth of the tunnel, one. that permitted him to look down the cavern. He signed to me to follow suit, and, when I stood at his side, he said: "Off go the lights!"
Off they went, and the terrible blackness was upon us. So terrible was it and so strange and fearful that place in which we stood, I actually found myself wondering if it would not all prove a dream.
"Why," I asked at last, "did we do this?"
"To see if the lights will show again. They may think that we have lost heart and started back."
I saw it all now: instead of our advancing to those mysterious beings somewhere down the cavern, he would bring them to us.
But they did not come. They did not show even the faintest light. Wc waited there for many minutes, but nothing whatever was seen.
"Hum!" said Rhodes at last, snapping on his light "Wary folk, Bill, these Hypogeans."
"And so," I replied, "we'll have to go to them."
"That's what we shall have to do."
"Walk maybe right into a trap."
"It is possible," Rhodes admitted. "But it is possible too that the trap may not prove so terrible—possible, indeed, that there is no trap at all. I tell you, I certainly would like to see that angel again."
"Then let's go see her."
"That's what we'll do."
And so we started.
A strange, indefinable dread had its grip upon me, and yet I was anxious to go, to put the thing to an issue. In all probability, we should not have far to travel. Nor, in fact, did we.
The way was much like the one that we had traversed in the opposite direction. One or two spots were even more dangerous than any we had found up there. And, over these dangerous, terrible places, where a false step or a slip of the foot on tlie smooth rock would have meant a most horrible death—along this airy, dizzy Stygian way, the angel had passed. Well, she was a brave angel, at any rate.
We were descending all the while, sometimes at an angle that I was glad was no steeper. This, does not mean, however, that our distance from the bottom, of that terrible chasm, on our right, was decreasing. The sounds that came up from the black depths of it told plainly that the descent of the stream was as pronounced as that of the ledge we were following, and perhaps more so.
"And here's something that I don't understand," was my remark as we stopped in a particularly broken spot: "to say nothing of our being below sea-level, here this stream has been pouring down for untold centuries, for how many thousands of years no man can even guess, and yet the place isn't full. Where does all the water go?"
"Think," was Milton's answer, "of all the rivers that, for how many millions of years no man can tell, have been running into the sea, and yet the sea is not overflowing."
"I don't see the application of that to this underground world, don't sec how all the water—there must be more streams than this—can possibly return as vapor to the region above."
"I admit," Rhodes said, "that the problem is a formidable one and that, with our present paucity of data, we can not hope to solve it. Still I think my suggestion sound."
"But where are the openings to permit the. escape of so enormous—for enormous it must be—an amount of water vapor?"
"There may be countless vents, fissures, Bill, ways of egress that man will never know. Whatever the explanation, there can be no doubt that the water is going down and that this subterranean world is not full."
"But where docs it go? Down to some sunless sea, perhaps, though, if that hypothesis of yours is a sound one, bathed in light, light never seen, in that world we have left, on land or sea."
Rhodes was a silent for a moment, leaning on his alpenstock. Then: "It is strange, truly, the descent of the waters. And yet it would not, I believe, have been to you so very strange a thing had you known that the sea itself flows into the earth."
"The sea itself?"
Rhodes nodded.
"Surely, Milton—why, the thing is Jules Vernesque!"
"On the contrary, the fact has long been known. At Argostoli in the Island of Cephalonia, the sea flows right into the limestone rock."[1]
"Shades of Lemuel Gulliver, but this old ball that men call the earth is certainly a strange old sphere!"
"How strange," said Milton Rhodes, "no scientist has ever dreamed, though your scientist has thought of things far stranger than any ever conceived by your wildest romancer, who, after all, Bill, is a pretty tame homo."
"I have an idea," I said, glancing down the cavern, "that we are going to find the homos here in this place anything but tame."
Milton laughed and, without any other answer, turned and resumed the descent.
For one thing I was profoundly thankful: the wall ran along without any pronounced cavities or project ions in it, so that we had little to apprehend from a sudden attack on this our giddy way—except, of course, by a demon. Had the wall been a broken one, any instant might have found us face to face with a band of Hypogeans, as Rhodes called the denizens of this subterranean place.
But how long would the wall remain like that? And, after all, did it really greatly matter? Meeting, sooner or later, was inevitable. 'Tis true, I could not conceive of a worse place than this, supposing the meeting to be, in any measure, an unfriendly one. And, from what had happened up there at the Tamahnowis Rocks, I could not suppose that it would be anything else.
This, however, was to prove simply another instance of how inadequate the imagination, when confronted with the reality, is sometimes found to be, for even now we were drawing near a place more terrible even than this—and that was the place where we met!
It required but little imagination, though, to make us aware, and painfully so, of the extreme probability (regarded by ourselves as a certitude) that eyes were watching our every movement. But where were those eyes? And what were the watchers? To what fearful thing—or could it be wonderful?—were we drawing near at every single moment now?
Some minutes passed, perhaps fifteen, perhaps more; I can not say how long it was. Of a sudden, however, Rhodes, who was still leading the way, stopped. No. sound had escaped him, and he stood there like a statue, peering intently straight ahead.
"Look there," he said in a low voice, pointing with his alpenstock, "and tell me what you see."
I was already looking, and already I had seen it. But what on earth was that thing which I saw?
I remained silent, gazing with straining eyes and wondering if I really saw what I thought that I did.
"What," asked Rhodes, "do you make of it?"
"The thing is so faint. 'Tis impossible, and yet, if it were not so, I would say that it is an arch—part of a bridge."
"Just what I thought. The thing is so strange, though, that I didn't know whether to believe my eyes or not."
"And so dim," I observed, "that it may be nothing of the kind. A bridge? Now, who on earth would build a bridge across this frightful chasm? And why?"
"Quién sabe, Bill?" said Milton Rhodes.
The next moment we were moving toward it.
"Look!" ejaculated Rhodes suddenly. "It goes clear across!"
"Yes," I said, stopping and gazing at that strange dim mass; "it goes clear across. And that's the place, over there on the other side—that's where they are waiting for us!"
- ↑ "The cases are certainly not numerous where marine currents are known to pour continuously into cavities beneath the surface of the earth, but there is at least one well-authenticated instance of this sort—that of the mill streams at Argostoli in the island of Cephalonia. It had been Ions: observed that the sea water flowed into several rifts and cavities in the limestone rocks of the coast, but the phenomenon has excited little attention until very recently. In 1833, three of the entrances were closed, and a regular channel sixteen feet long and three feet wide with a fall of three feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger cavity. The sea water flowed into this canal, and could be followed eighteen or twenty feet beyond its inner terminus, when it disappeared in holes and clefts in the rock."—George P. Marsh: Man and Nature.