Drome
A Weird-Scientific Serial
By John Martin Leahy
The Story So Far
Milton Rhodes and Bill Carter, following an "angel" and her ape-bat "demon" (which has killed Rhoda Dillingham on Mount Rainier), penetrate into the subterranean caverns beneath the mountain. There they are attacked by the ape-bat, which they slay, and they rescue the "angel" from being dragged down to her death by its death-struggles. In company with the "angel" and four of her companions from some underground city, they begin the descent to Drome.
Chapter 24
What Next?
For a mile or more, the way led amongst pillars and stalagmites. Oh, the wonders that we saw in that great cavern! The exigencies of space, however, will not permit me to dwell upon them. There is, I may remark, no deposition of sinter going on now; undoubtedly many centuries have rolled over this old globe since the drip ceased, perhaps thousands upon thousands of years. Who can say? How little can scientists ever know, even when their knowledge seems so great, of those dim lost ages of the earth!
"One thing that puzzles me," I remarked, "is that each of these Hypogeans has nothing but a canteen. So far as I can see, the whole party hasn't the makings of a lunch for a ladybug. Can it be that we have not far to go, after all?"
"I think, Bill, that we'll find the way a long one. My explanation is that, on starting for the bridge, they disencumbered themselves of the provision-supply (if they were not in camp) so that, of course, they could make greater speed. That the angel had a companion back there, we know. We know, too, that that companion—in all likelihood it was one of the girls—went for help."
"What on earth were they doing there, with the men off some place else?"
"I wish I could tell you, Bill. And what was the angel doing up in the Tamahnowis Rocks all by her lovely lonesome? I wish you could tell me that."
"I wish that I could. And that isn't the only thing that I wish I could tell you. What on earth are they doing here? And what at the Tamahnowis Rocks?"
"What, Bill, are we?"
"But women!" said I. "Our explorers don't take women along."
"Lewis and Clark took a woman along and took her papoose to boot. And this isn't our world, remember. Things may be very different here. Maybe, in this subterranean land, the lady is the boss."
"Where," I exclaimed, "isn't she the boss? You don't have to come down here to find a—what do you call it?—a gynecoeracy. Which reminds me of Saxe."
"What does Saxe say, sweet misogynist?"
"This, sweet gyneolator:
"Men, dying, make their wills,
But wives escape a work so sad;
Why should they make, the gentle dames,
What all their lives they've had?"
"Bravo!" cried Milton Rhodes.
And I saw the angel, who, with the older man, was leading the way, turn and give us a curious look.
"And that," said Rhodes, "reminds me."
"Of what?"
"Who is the leader of this little party—that man or our angel?"
"I'd say the angel if I could only understand why she should be the leader."
At length we passed the last pillar and the last stalagmite. All this time we had been descending at a gentle slope. The way now led into a tunnel, rather wide and lofty at first. The going was easy enough for a mile or so; the descent was still gentle, and the floor of the passage was but little broken. The spot was then reached where that tunnel bifurcates; and there were the packs of our Hy-pogeans—or, rather, their knapsacks. There were five, one for each, the men's being large and heavy.
"You see, Bill?" queried Milton. "Evidently our little hypothesis was correct."
"I see," I nodded. "We have far to go."
"Very far, I fancy."
Also, in this place were the phosphorus-lamps of the Dromans, one for each. These were somewhat similar to the ones that Rhodes and I carried, save that the Droman lamps could be darkened, whereas the only way we could conceal the light of ours was to put them into their cylinders. As was the case with our phials, the light emitted by these vessels was a feeble one. Undoubtedly, though, they would remain luminous for a long period, and hence their real, their very great value. Besides the lanterns, oil-burning, of which the Dromans had three, the phosphorus-lamps were pale and sorry things; but, when one remembered that they would shed light steadily for months perhaps, while the flames of the lanterns were dependent upon the oil supply, those pale, ghostly lights became very wonderful things.
"The light," I said as we stood examining one of these objects, "is certainly phosphorescent. But what is that fluid in the glass?"
"I can't tell you, Bill. It may be some vegetable juice. There is, by the way, a Brazilian plant, called Euplorbia phosphorea, the juice of which is luminous. This may be something similar. Who knows?"[1]
The men unbent their bows and thrust them into the, quivers; each took up his or her knapsack, and we were under way again. It was the right branch of the tunnel into which the route led us. That fact Rhodes put down in his notebook. I could see no necessity for such a record, for surely we could not forget the fact, even if we tried.
"We'll record it," said Milton, "certitude to the contrary notwithstanding. And we'll keep adding to the record as we go down, too. There's no telling, remember. It may not be so easy to find the way out of this place as it seems."
"You said," I reminded him, "that we may never want to return."
"And I say it again. But I say this too: we may be mighty I glad indeed to get out!"
Soon the slope of the passage was no longer gentle. An hour or so, and the descent was so steep and difficult that we had to exercise every caution and care in going down it. "Noon" found us still toiling down that steep and tortuous way. We then halted for luncheon. The Dromans ate and drank very sparingly—though this work gives one a most remarkable appetite. Rhodes and I endeavored to emulate their example.
As we sat there resting, the Dromans held a low and earnest colloquy. The girls, though, had but very little to say. The subject of the dialogue was an utter mystery to us. Only one thing could we tell, and that was that the matter which they were revolving was one of some gravity. Once and only once did we hear the word "Drome."
Also, it was then that we first heard the name of our angel. We could not be certain at the time that was her name, but there was no uncertainty about the name itself—Drorathusa. Ere the afternoon was far advanced, however, we saw our belief become a certitude. Drorathusa! I confess that there was in my mind something rather awesome about that name, and I wondered if that awesome something was existent only in my mind. Drorathusa. It seemed to possess some of that Sibylline quality which in the woman herself was so indefinable and mysterious.
Drorathusa. Sibylline certainly, that name, and beautiful too, I thought.
In our world, it would, in all likelihood, be shortened to Drora or Thusa. But it was never so here. No Droman, indeed, would be guilty of a barbarism like that. It was always Drorathusa—the accent on the penultimate and every syllable clear and full. Drorathusa. Milton Rhodes declared it was the most beautiful name he had ever heard in all his life!
It was about 4 o'clock when we issued from that passage, steep to the last, and found ourselves in a great broken cavern. The rock was granite, the place jagged and savage-looking as though seen in some strange and awful dream.
Here we rested for a while, and I, for one, was glad enough to do so. I was tired, sore and stiff from head to foot—especially to foot.
Just by the tunnel's mouth, there was some writing on the wall. Before this, Drorathusa and the older man (his name, we had learned, was Narkus) stood for some moments. This examination, and the short dialogue which followed it, left them, I noticed, even more grave of aspect and demeanor than we had ever seen them. I wondered what it could mean. I felt a vague uneasiness; a nameless forboding was creeping over me.
It was futile to think and wonder what it meant, and yet I could not help doing it. Glad had I been to stop, but, strangely enough, glad I was to get under way once more. For 'twas only so that we could hope to get the answer.
Well, we got it—an answer that I wish never to know again.
Chapter 25
The Labyrinth—lost
We soon saw that we had entered not a cavern but a perfect labyrinth of caverns. I could never have imagined a place like that. It was bewildering, dreadful, forsooth, in the possibilities that it limned on the canvas of one's imagination. How on earth could anyone ever have found his way through it? But somebody had, for these were the inscriptions and signs on the wall. For these Dromans kept a keen watch, and the relief evinced whenever one was sighted showed what a frightful thing it might be to lose the way.
An hour passed, another, and still we were moving in that awful maze.
"Great Erebus," said I, "do you think that we can ever find our way back through this?"
"I've got it all down here, Bill," returned Rhodes, tapping his notebook. "The angel, the leader now, is finding her way through it: what she can do can't we do also?"
"She isn't through it yet! It is some time, too, since we saw one of those directions on the wall. The fact is, unless I am greatly mistaken, our Dromans are becoming uneasy."
"Think so, Bill? I confess I thought that myself, but I was not sure that it wasn't only a fancy."
"I wish that I could believe so."
As Rhodes had remarked, Drora-thusa was the leader now. And a striking sight it was—her tall white figure leading the way, the shadows quivering, swaying, rushing over the broken, savage walls and deepening to inky blackness in the secret places we passed.
Farther and farther we went, deeper and deeper; but never another inscription was seen. The advance became broken, irresolute. Then suddenly there was a halt. And at that instant the last vestige of uncertainly vanished: Drorathusa had lost the way.
There was a sudden panicky fear in the eyes of the girls, but it soon was gone. The little party met this most unpleasant truth with exemplary philosophy. There was a short consultation, and then we began to retrace our way. The object was, of course, to return to the last mark on the wall. If we missed it, then heaven help us!
"Perhaps," I thought, "it will be heaven help us, anyway!"
And it was.
We reached our objective without misadventure, and then a new start was made. Rhodes and I were greatly puzzled, for it was patent that neither the angel nor anyone else knew how they had gone astray. And, not knowing that, how could anyone tell which way to go?
"Better get it clear in that notebook," I admonished Rhodes. "It's a queer business, and I don't pretend to understand it at all."
We came along for a half-mile or so, carefully and with no little apprehension, and then, hurrah, there was a sign on the wall! The route to Drome again! But for how long?
Drorathusa quickened her pace. She was moving along now as though in confidence, certitude even. I have never been able to explain what followed. For a time, an hour or more, that confidence of hers certainly was fully justified. Then came the change. Suddenly we became aware of an unpleasant fact—there was something wrong. Not that we remained in doubt as to what that something was which was wrong. A few minutes, and we had a fact even more unpleasant presented to our contemplation—again we had gone astray.
Once more there was a consultation, and once more we retraced our steps—I mean we started to retrace them. Neither I, nor anyone else, could tell how it happened. Not that I marveled at our failure to return, even though I could not explain just how we had missed the way. However, it was no longer possible to blink the fact that we were utterly lost in this maze of passages, caverns and chambers.
I raised my canteen and shook it; my heart sank at that feeble wish-wash sound. The canteen was almost empty. Nor was any one of the others, in this respect, much more fortunate than myself. Our position truly was an unpleasant one—appalling even in the grisly possibilities which it presented to the mind.
Chapter 26
Through the Hewn Passage
I could set down no adequate record of those hours which followed. It was late now, and yet on and on we went, mile after mile, deeper and deeper, but only, it seemed, to involve ourselves the more hopelessly in the dread mysteries of that fearsome place. I wondered if it was my imagination that made it so, but certainly the confusion of those chambers and caverns seemed to become only confusion worse confounded.
At last and suddenly came the discovery.
We had entered a long and narrow chamber and were drawing near the end, wondering if we should find an exit there. Of a sudden there was a sharp exclamation from the lips of Drorathusa, who was some distance in advance—an exclamation that fetched me up on the instant. She had stopped and was pointing toward the left-hand wall, her attitude and the look upon her face such that I started and a sudden fear shot through me.
"What on earth can it be?" I said.
Rhodes made no answer. He was moving forward. I followed. A moment, and he was beside the Dromans, his light turned full upon the wall.
"Look at that, Bill!" said he.
I moved to his side, and we stood there gazing, for some moments motionless and silent.
"Well, Bill," he queried at last, "what do you think of that? We are not the first humans to stand in this spot."
"But probably thousands of years have passed since any human being stood here and gazed upon that entrance—went into it. I wonder what it leads to. Why should men have cut that passage into the living rock? In such a horrible place!"
The entrance was about four feet in width by eight in height. Above it there was some striking sculpturing, evidently work of a mystical character. Its meaning was an utter mystery to Rhodes and me but not, I thought, to our Dromans. Very little dust had accumulated, though,
I had good reason to believe, many, many centuries had passed since that spot was abandoned to unbroken blackness and silence.
Many were the pictures that came and went as we stood there and looked and wondered. Who had cut this passage into the living rock? In what lost age of a people now perhaps lost as well? And for what purpose had they hewn it?
Well, probably the answer to that last awaited us there within.
Rhodes and I moved over and peered into the tunnel.
"About fifty feet long," he observed, "and evidently it enters another chamber."
We started in, but when we had taken a few steps we stopped and turned our look to the Dromans. Why did they stand hesitant, with that strange look in their eyes and upon their faces? Even the angel was affected. Affected by what? The mere mystery of the place?
"I wonder what is the matter with them," I said.
"Superstitious dread or something, I suppose," returned Rhodes. "Well, it ill becomes a scientist to let superstition stay his steps, and so on we go."
And on we went into the passage. When we were nearly through it, I glanced back. The Dromans had not moved.
"Look here!" said I, coming to an abrupt stop.
"What is it now, Bill?"
"Maybe this is a trap."
"A trap? How can it be a trap?"
"How on earth do I know that? But to me the whole business has a queer and suspicious look, I tell you."
"How so?"
"How so? Why, maybe they brought us to this hole. We don't know what's in there. Maybe they do. Maybe 'hey aren't lost at all. Why didn't they come in, too? What are they standing out there for, standing and waiting—waiting for what? Probably for their chance to steal away and leave us to our fate!"
"My gosh, Bill," said Milton, "your imagination goes like a jumping-jack!"
"Heaven help us if that's what you think when a. man would be cautious and watchful!"
"Cautious and watchful. Yes, certainly we want to be cautious and watchful. After all, there may be something in what you say. But not much, I think. No, Bill; this is not a trap. There is no faking about it: they are lost."
"I don't like it," I told him. "Why won't they come in?"
"Goodness knows, Bill. Why won't some people sit down to the table if the party numbers thirteen? And why should we stand hesitant? Suppose that they do plan to steal away from us. I don't believe it, but suppose that they do. What then? Are we going to run after them, like lambs after little Bo-peep? Not I, old tillicum. If they are as treacherous as that, the quicker we part company the better. For, sooner or later, their chance would come."
"There may be something in that," I admitted. "Lead on, Macduff."
A second or two, and we had stepped from the passage out into a great and lofty chamber.
"Great heaven!" I cried, my right hand going to my revolver. "What is that thing?"
Rhodes made no answer. He stood peering intently.
"Look out!" I cried, pulling out my weapon and drawing back toward the entrance. "It's moving!"
Chapter 27
The Monster
Rhodes made no response. Still he stood there, peering toward the end of the chamber. Then of a sudden, to my inexpressible surprize and horror, he began moving forward—moving toward that monstrous thing which reared itself up out of the gloom and the shadows, up and up, almost to the very roof itself.
"What are you doing?" I cried. "I tell you, I saw it move!"
Rhodes paused, but he did not look back.
"It didn't move," he said. "How could it move? It must have been only the shadows that you saw, Bill."
"Shadows!"
"Just so—shadows."
He moved his light slowly back and forth.
"See that? A certain way you look at it, that thing up there seems to be moving instead of the shadows."
"But what on earth can it be?" I asked, slowly advancing to his side. "And what is that white which, though so faint, yet gleams so horribly? It looks like teeth."
"It is teeth," said Milton, whose eyes were better than mine. "But the thing, of course, is not animate, even though you did think that you saw it move. It is simply a carven monster, like the great Sphinx of the Pyramids or the Colossi of Thebes."
We were moving toward it now.
"And look at all those horrors along the walls," I said, "dragons, serpents, horrors never seen on land, in air or in the sea. And look there. There is a demon—I mean a sculptured demon. And that's what the colossus itself is—a monstrous ape-bat."
"Not so, Bill. See, it is becoming plainer, and it is unequivocally a dragon."
Yes; it was a dragon. And a monster more horrible than this thing before us never had been fashioned by even the wildest imagination of artist or madman.
The dragon (not carven from the rock but made of bronze) crouched upon a high rock, its wings outspread. At the base of this rock—upon which base rested the hind claws of the monster—was a platform some twenty feet square and raised five or six feet above the floor of the cavern. In the front and on either side of this platform there were steps, and, in the center of it, a stone of curious shape—a stone that sent a shudder through me.
And up above rose the colossal dragon itself, its scaly fore claws gripping the edge of the rock, twenty-five feet or so above the platform. The neck curved forward and down. The head hung over the platform, forty feet or more up in the air—the great jaws wide open, the forked tongue protruding hungrily, the huge teeth and the huge eyes sending back the rays from our lights in demoniacal, indescribably horrible gleams.
"Talk about Gorgons, Chimeras and Hydras dire!" I exclaimed, and it was as though unseen things, phantom beings, so eery were the echoes, repeated the words in mockery and in gloating. "Why should men create such a Gorgonic nightmare? And worship it—worship the monster of their own creating? Look at that stone there in the center of the platform. Ugh! The things that must have taken place in that spot—the thought makes the flesh creep and the blood itself turn cold in one's veins!"
"What a dark and fearsome cavern, after all, is the skull of man," said Milton Rhodes, "a place where bats flit and blind shapes creep and crawl!"
I turned toward him with a look of surprize.
"That from the man whom I have so often heard sing the Song of the Mind; that from a scientist, one who reveres Hipparchus, Archimedes, Galileo, Newton and Darwin; from one who so often has said that the only wonderful tiling about man is his mind and that that mind, in its possibilities, is simply godlike."
"And so say I again, and so shall I always say. In its possibilities, remember! But man is a sort of dual creature, a creature that achieves the impossible by being in two places at the same time: his body is in this the Twentieth Century, his mind is still back there in the Pleistocene, with cave-bears, hyenas and saber-toothed tigers."
I uttered a vehement dissent.
"But 'tis so, Bill," said Rhodes, "or at least back there beyond the year 1492. The world knows but one Newton, one Archimedes, one Galileo, one Darwin, one Edison; but heaven has sent the world thousands."
"I don't believe it. There are no mute, inglorious—Shakespeares."
"No; there are no mute, inglorious Shakespeares, no mute, inglorious Newtons: the world, this glorious mind that we hear so much about destroyed them."
"Or," said I, "they destroyed themselves."
"You are not making the mind's case any the brighter, Bill, by putting it that way. Yes, the mind, the glorious human mind destroyed them and turned forthwith to grovel in the dust before monsters like this one before us—before Prejudice, Ignorance, superstition and worse."
"What a horrible piece of work, then, is man!"
"Take the average of the human mind," went on Milton Rhodes, "not the exceptions, so brilliant and so wonderful, but the average of all the human minds in all the world today, from our Newtons—if we have any now—to your savage groveling in the dust before some fetish or idol made of mud; do that, and the skull of man is found to be just what I said—a dark and fearsome cavern, a habitat for bats and ghostly nameless things."
"What a strange, a horrible idea!" I exclaimed.
"The world is proud of its Newtons now," said Rhodes. "But was it proud of them when they came? Whenever I see a man going into ecstasy over the wonders of the beauties and the glories of the human mind, I think of these words, written by the Philosopher of Ferney: 'When we reflect that Newton,! Locke, Clarke and Leibnitz would have been persecuted in France, imprisoned at Rome, and burned at Lisbon, what are we to think of human reason?'"
"Alas, poor, poor humans," said I, "you are only vile Yahoos!"
Milton Rhodes smiled wanly.
"Don't misunderstand me, Bill. The mind of man is a fearful thing, but it is wonderful too, as wonderful as it is dreadful—and the more wonderful, perhaps, than it intrinsically is because of the very grossness and sordidness that it has to conquer. We are prone, some of us, to think the record of the intellect a shabby one; but, after all, the record is not, all things considered, so bad as it may seem at a first glance. It might have been better; but we should rejoice that it is not worse, that the mind, the hope of the world, has made even the slight advance that it has. Mind is on his way at last! And, with Science on his right hand and Invention on his left, he can not fail to conquer the ape and the tiger—to win to a future brighter even than the most beautiful of our brightest dreams."
"Well," said I, turning and seating myself on one of the steps, up which steps perhaps many victims had been dragged to sacrifice, "this is a fine time truly and a fine place indeed in which to discuss man and the glorious destiny that may await him, in view of the fact that some spot in these cursed caverns may soon be our tomb.
"And," I added, "there come the Dromans."
Never shall I forget that look of awe and horror upon their white faces when at last they stood there in a huddled group before, almost under, the great dragon. Rhodes had seated himself beside me, and it was obvious that this temerity on our part was a source of astonishment to the Dromans. What dread powers they feared the monster might possess, I can only conjecture; but I do know that we could never have induced even Drorathusa herself to thus, on the very steps of his altar, hazard the wrath of an offended deity.
Chapter 28
I Abandon Hope
At last Milton and I arose and proceeded to examine carefully this chamber of earven horrors. By the altar, another passage was discovered. Like the great chamber itself and the passage by which we had entered, this tunnel had been hewn out of the living rock by the hand of man. It was some sixty feet in length and conducted us into a small but most remarkable grotto—or, rather, a series of grottoes. We advanced, however, but little way there; a few minutes, and we were again in the hall of the dragon.
We continued, and finished, our examination of the place. Another passage was discovered, in the roof and leading to we knew not where. Then there were those stone horrors ranged along either wall; but I shall not attempt to describe those nightmare monstrosities, some of which, by the way, had two heads.[2]
The Dromans had drawn back some distance from the altar, and all had sunk down to a seat upon the floor, all save Drorathusa.
Our examination ended, we moved toward the little group, Milton looked at his watch.
"Midnight," said he.
As we drew near, Drorathusa suddenly raised a hand and made a significant motion toward the entrance. Those seated rose from the floor with an alacrity that astonished me. Evidently they were very anxious to quit this chamber of horrors. I was not sorry to do so myself.
"Shades of the great Ulysses," said I as we moved along in the rear, "are we going to keep up this wandering until we drop?"
"Just what I was wondering myself, Bill. I fancy, though, that our Dromans are beginning to think that a rest would not be inexpedient."
Shortly after issuing from the passage, the party came to a halt, and Drorathusa, to my profound thankfulness, announced that the time for rest and sleep had come.
"Sleep?" said I to myself. "Who can sleep in such a place and at such a time?"
From his pack, Narkus took a small silklike bundle; like the tent that Captain Amundsen left at the South Pole, one could have put it into a fair-sized pocket. The white-haired girl handed Narkus the sort of alpenstock which she carried, and, lo and presto, there was a tent for the ladies!
Rhodes and I betook ourselves off to a hollow in the wall, where we halted and disposed ourselves for rest. This disposition, however, was a very simple affair: we simply removed our packs and sat down on the floor—the softness of which by no means vied with that of swan's-down.
I drank a little water, but it seemed to augment rather than assuage my burning thirst. For a time I sat there, my aching body leaning back against the rock wall, my fevered, tortured mind revolving the grisly possibilities that confronted us. Meditation, however, only served to make our situation the more appalling. With an exclamation of despair, I lay down, longing for sleep's sweet oblivion. At this moment Narkus and the young man—whose name, by the way, was Thumbra—were seen approaching. They laid themselves down near by, their lanterns extinguished. We had shut off the electric lights, but our phosphorus-lamps, and those of the Dromans, shed their pale and ghostly light around.
Rhodes was sitting up, engaged in bringing his journal forward, as carefully and coolly as though he were in his library at home, instead of in this mysterious and fearful abode of blackness and silence, thousands of feet below the surface of the earth, far—though how far we could only guess—below the level of the sea itself.
When I closed my eyes, pictures came and went in a stream—pictures swaying, flashing, fading. The amazing, the incredible things that had happened, the things that probably were to happen—-oh, was it all only a dream?
I opened my eyes and raised myself up on an elbow. I saw Milton Rhodes bent over his book, writing, writing; I saw the recumbent forms of the two Dromans, whose heavy breathing told me that already they slept; over there was the tent, in it the beautiful, the Sibylline Drorathusa and her lovely companions—and I knew, alas, that it was not a dream!
I sank back with an inward groan and closed my eyes again. Oh, those thoughts that came thronging! If I could only go to sleep! A vision of treachery came, but it was not to trouble me now. No; Rhodes was right; our Dromans were lost. If only those other visions could be as easily banished as that one!
Ere long, however, those thronging thoughts and visions became hazy, confused, began to fade; and then suddenly they were blended with the monsters and the horrors of dreams.
It was 6 o'clock when I awoke. Rhodes was sitting up. He had, he told me, just awakened. One of the Dromans was stirring in his sleep and muttering something in cavernous and horrible tones. As I sat there and listened, a chill passed through me, so terrible were the sounds.
"I can't stand that," I exclaimed. "I'm going to wake him up. It's time we were moving, anyway."
"Yes," nodded Milton. "Surely, though, we'll find water today."
"Today! Where is your day in this place? It's night eternal. And for us, I'm afraid, it is good-night with a vengeance."
Ere long we were again under way. My canteen was now as dry as a bone, and I felt mighty sad. However, since I could not banish them, I endeavored to mask those dark and dire forebodings. When we set forth, it was with the hope that we might find, and be conducted by it to safety, the road by which those old worshipers had journeyed to and from that hall of the dragon. But not a vestige of such a route could we discover.
Hours passed. On and on we went, deeper and deeper. Noon came. No change. No one had a drop of water now. Rhodes and I estimated the distance traveled since quitting the temple of the dragon at ten miles and the descent at something like four thousand feet. This estimate, or rather guess, may, however, have been wide of the truth. We still were involved in the maddening intricacies of the labyrinth.
I confess that our situation began to assume an aspect that made my very soul turn sick and cold. Rhodes, however—divining perhaps what was in my mind—pointed out that we had not been lost very long, and that surely we would find water some place. A man, said he, in the equable temperature of this subterranean world, could live for quite a time without water. I had no doubt that a man could—if he were lying in bed! But we were not doing that; we were in constant motion. The arduous exercise that we were undergoing, our fatigue, the anxieties and fears that preyed upon the mind—each was contributing its quota to the dire and steady work of enervation.
No, I would fight against despair; but certainly I could imbibe no consolation, no strength, either mental or physical, from a deliberate blinking of facts. And one of the facts was that, unless we soon found water, ours would be that fate which has overtaken so many of those who have gone forth to search out the secrets of mysterious places.
During that halt for lunch—and
what an awful lunch that was!—Milton
brought forward his journal,
and Drorathusa, by means of
pictures drawn in the book, made it
clear to us that they would never
have missed the route had it not been
for the loss of their beloved demon.
That, of course, made Rhodes and me
very sorry; but, if the demon had not
been killed, we certainly should have
been even more sorry—and, I'm
afraid, in a worse place than this in
which we now found ourselves.
This strange intelligence, too, reminded me of Grandfather Scranton's wonder as to how his angel and her demon had journeyed over rock, snowfield and glacier to the Tamahnowis Rocks through that, dense, blinding vapor. I understood that now—they were guided by the wonderful instinct of the ape-bat. How truly wonderful that instinct is, we were yet to learn. Little wonder that Drorathusa mourned the loss of her dear, beloved and hideous demon!
The bat has in all ages been the personification of repulsiveness, gloom and horror; and yet it is in many ways a very wonderful creature. For instance, it can fly through intricate passages with ease and certitude when blinded, avoiding any obstacle in or across its way as though in possession of perfect vision. No marvel, therefore, that some scientists have declared that the bat must possess a sixth sense! The accepted explanation, however, is that the creature discovers the objects, in the words of Cuvier, "by the sole diversity of aerial impressions."
However that may be, this wonderful faculty is possessed by the great ape-bats of Drome. Not that it is for this that they are valued by the Dromans. It is because it is impossible for an ape-bat to get lost. It matters not how long, how devious, how broken, savage, mysterious the way; the demon is never uncertain for one single moment. And a singular feature of this most singular fact is that the creature does not have to retrace the route itself, and it does not matter what time has elapsed. It may be a month, years; it is all the same to the demon. He may return to the point of departure by the outward trail, or he may go back in a bee-line or in a line as closely resembling a bee-line as the circumstances will permit.
From this it may easily be inferred how greatly the Dromans value these dreadful, repulsive creatures. When venturing out into the "lands of shadows" or into the caverns of utter darkness, these beasts are simply invaluable. In the "lands of shadows," they never fail to give warning of the approach of the wild ape-bats (those wolves of the air) or of other monsters; whilst, in the dark caverns—into which the wild bats sometimes wander for considerable distances—a man, though he may be utterly lost himself, knows that his demon will guide him safely back to the world of light.
In other ways, however, save as veritable Cerberi, they are of little use, are, indeed, objects of distrust and not a little dread. For they are, as a rule, of a most savage and uncertain temper. Not that the owner fears attack upon himself, though instances are not wanting in which master or mistress has been set upon. To its owner, a demon is truly doglike; but other people had better be careful.
"Since the loss of a demon on such a journey as this may spell disaster, I wonder," I said, "why they didn't bring along more than one."
"Food, Bill, food," returned Rhodes. "I am no authority, of course, on demonian dietetics, but I don't imagine that they feed the monster on canary-bird seed."
On we went, blindly and in desperation, on and on and deeper and deeper into the earth. At length there was a change, whether for good or ill we could not know; but we welcomed it, nevertheless—simply because it was a change. At last we were emerging from the labyrinth. But what lay ahead?
Yes, soon we were no longer in a maze of caverns, grottoes, passages, but in a wide and lofty tunnel. We had made our way down it but a little distance when an inscription was discovered on the right-hand wall. The discovery was made by Rhodes, who happened to be in the rear. A rectangular space, perhaps three feet by six, had been hewn perfectly smooth, and upon this rock tablet were many chiseled characters, characters utterly unlike any we had seen. Before this spot we clustered in hope and questioning. It was at once patent, however, that our Dromans could make nothing whatever of the writing. But we regarded this discovery as a happy augury and pressed on with a lighter step. On to bitter disappointment.
Hours passed. We were still toiling down that awful tunnel.
At last—it was then 9 o'clock—the way became very difficult. The rock had been broken, rent, smashed by some terrible convulsion. The scene was indescribably weird and savage. And there we halted, sank down upon the rocky floor. Rhodes and Drorathusa evinced an admirable nonchalance, but in the eyes of the others burned the dull light of despair. And perhaps, too, in my own. I tried to hide it, but I could not disguise it from myself—the numbing, maddening fact that I had abandoned hope.
For a time I lay watching Rhodes, who was writing, writing in his journal. How could he do it? Who could ever find the record? At any rate, even though found, it could never be read, for the finder would be a Dro-man. It made me angry to see a man doing a thing so absurd. But I bridled speech, curbed that rising and insensate anger of mine, rolled over, closed my eyes and, strange to say, was soon asleep.
But that sleep of mine was an unbroken succession of horrors—horrors at last ended by an awakening as horrible.
Once more I was in that hewn chamber, once more I stood before the great dragon. But we had been wrong: the monster was alive. Down he sprang as I turned to flee, sank his teeth into my shoulder, raised his head high into the air and shook me as a cat shakes a mouse. Then suddenly I knew that it was not all a dream.
Teeth had sunk into my shoulder. I struggled madly, but the jaws only closed the harder. And, horror of horrors, the spot in which I had lain down was now in utter blackness. Then I was wide-awake: the teeth were Rhodes' fingers, and I heard his voice above me in the darkness:
"Not a word, Bill—unless guarded."
"What is it?" I whispered, sitting up. "And where are our phosphorus-lamps?"
"In their cylinders," was Rhodes' low answer. "We want to see without being seen, that is why. I can turn on the electric, of course, at any instant. I wish the Dromans had been nearer, on this side of that rock mass; I would have darkened theirs too."
"Without being seen?" I queried. "In heaven's name, Milton, what does it mean?"
"I don't know. Got your revolver handy?"
"Yes."
"Good! Keep it so!"
"But what is it?"
"Did you," said he, "notice that passage in the opposite wall, a few yards back?"
I whispered that I had.
"Well," said Milton Rhodes, "there is something in there. And it's coming this way!"
Chapter 29
The Ghost
We waited, listening intently; but the place was as silent as the tomb.
"What," I asked, "did you hear?"
"I have no idea, Bill, what it is."
"What were the sounds like?"
"I don't know."
"Were they loud or faint?"
"Faint—mysterious."
"Great heaven!" said I; "what can it be? How long since you first heard it?"
"Only a few minutes. I can't imagine why the sounds have ceased. I wonder if it has discovered our presence." "Hadn't we better wake the Dro-mans?"
"I see no necessity for it. When the thing comes—and it was coming, I know—they may be awakened suddenly enough. The men are farther from the passage than we are, the ladies farther still. It must pass us before it can reach them; and we have our revolvers."
"Yes; we have our revolvers. But we don't know what's coming."
"There!" Rhodes exclaimed, his voice a whisper. "We'll soon know. Did you hear that?"
"I heard it. And there it is again!"
"It's coming, Bill!"
It was coming. What were we to see issue from that passage? I gripped my revolver and waited in a suspense that was simply agonizing. The sound ceased—came again. It was a pad-pad, and once or twice another sound was heard—as though produced by something brushing along the wall.
"Look!" I said, crouching forward. "Light!"
The rays grew stronger, casting long shadows—shadows swaying, shaking, crawling. Then of a sudden the light itself appeared and a tall figure came gliding out of the passage.
"Drorathusa!" exclaimed Milton Rhodes.
This sudden lurch from agonized suspense and Gorgonic imagination to glad reality left me for some seconds speechless.
"Well, well," laughed Milton Rhodes, pressing the button and flooding the place with light, "isn't imagination a wonderful thing?"
"But," said I, "what on earth does this mean?"
"Look there, Bill, look!" cried Rhodes. "Look at that!"
Drorathusa was moving straight toward us, a strange smile on that Sibylline face of hers.
"What do you mean?"
"The canteen! Look at her canteen!" Milton cried, pointing excitedly.
Drorathusa stopped and raised the canteen, which was incased in canvas-like stuff. It was wet—yes, wet and dripping.
"Water!" I cried, springing up and rushing toward her.
"Narranawnzee!" said Drorathusa, reaching the canteen toward my clutching fingers.
Great Pluvius, how I did drink! I'd be drinking yet if Rhodes hadn't seized the vessel and wrested it from me.
"You must be careful," said he. "We mustn't drink too much at first."
And he raised the canteen forthwith and proceeded to swallow a couple of quarts.
"For heaven's sake," I told him, "leave some for the others!"
"Yes," said Rhodes, handing the water to Drorathusa. "We have been kind of ungallant, Bill—hoggish. But I was as dry as a burnt cork."
Ere he had ceased speaking, Drorathusa was moving toward her companions. How wonderful was that change, that rush from out the black depths of despair! And yet our situation was still truly a terrible one, for we were lost. But we did not think of that. Water, water! We had water now, and we rejoiced as though we had been caught up and set down in the loveliest of all the lovely glades of Paradise.
A few minutes, and we all (with tent and packs) were following Drorathusa through the passage, were hurrying toward the stream or pool that she had discovered. What whim, what freak of strange chance had led that mysterious woman forth whilst others slept the sleep of despair, forth into that particular passage? Even now I do not know the answer.
After following its sinuosities for several hundred feet, we suddenly-stepped out of the passage and into a great chamber. This, like our sleeping place, was weird and savage in the extreme. Broken rock masses rose up, in all directions. There were distorted pyramids, fantastic pinnacles, spires, obelisks—even pillars, but they were pillars grotesque and awful as though seen in a dream.
Wider and wider grew the place, more and more broken and savage. Soon even the walls were involved in darkness. The roof, as we advanced, became more and more lofty. Clearly this cavern was one of enormous extent. I began to glance about with some apprehension. How had Drorathusa found her way into such a place—and out again? I marveled that she had not got lost. But she had not, and evidently there was no likelihood that that could happen. She was moving forward, into that place of savage confusion, with never a sign of hesitation, with the certitude of one following a well-beaten path.
Suddenly Drorathusa stopped, and, after making a sign of silence, she said, pointing into the blackness before us: "Narranawnzee."
Narranawanzee! Yes, there it was, the faint murmur and tinkle of water.
We hurried forward, the wall of the cavern merging from out the darkness. And there it was, a large spring of the purest, coolest water gushing out from the base of the rock, to fall in a gentle cascade and then flow away to a great pool gleaming dark and sullen in the feeble rays that found their way to it.
It was near 9 o'clock of the day
following when we left that spot.
Rhodes and I were smooth-shaven
again; yes, he had brought along a
razor—one of your old-fashioned,
antediluvian scrapers. Narkus and
Thumbra too had gladly availed
themselves of this opportunity to get
rid of their beards, which, however,
they had kept trimmed close with
clippers. Your Droman has a horror
of mustaches, beard or whiskers. As
for the ladies, they were now radiant
and lovely as Dians.
We were following the stream. An hour passed, another. We had advanced five miles or so and had descended probably half a thousand feet. And then we lost our guide; the stream flowed into a cleft in the rock, to burst forth again perhaps far, far down, in some black cavern that has never known, and indeed never may know, the tread of any human foot.
For some minutes we lingered there, as though reluctant to quit the spot; and then, with a last lingering look at those pellucid waters, flashing dark and sullen, however, as the light moved from them, we pressed grimly on and soon were involved in a cavern so rugged and smashed that we actually began to despair of ever getting through it. But we did get through, to step suddenly out into a place as smooth almost as a floor. The slope was a gentle one, and we pressed forward at a rapid rate.
We had gone perhaps a mile and a half when Rhodes, who was walking in advance with Drorathusa, abruptly halted, cried out and pointed.
Something white was dimly visible off in the darkness. We moved toward it, the Dromans evincing a tense excitement. A cry broke from them, and they made a rush forward.
It was a mark upon the wall, a mark which they themselves had placed there. We had found the way to Drome.
"And let us hope," said I to Rhodes in the midst of the rejoicing, "that we don't lose it again."
Drorathusa turned her look upon Rhodes and me and pointed down the cavern.
"Narranawnzee," she said.
We understood that and took a drink upon it.
Again Drorathusa pointed.
"Drome," said she.
That too we understood—that is, we thought we knew what she meant by Drome.
It was a few minutes past 7 (p. m.) when we reached the narranawnzee, a fine deep pool without any discoverable inlet or outlet, and there we halted for the night.
In this spot the Dromans had left a food-depot, and right glad were we to see this accession to the larder. There was also a supply of oil.
That evening (I find it convenient to use these inaccurate terms) I fished out my journal and carefully brought it forward, up to the hour, to the very minute. I felt blithe as a lark, and so, indeed, did everybody else, everybody save Drorathusa, and even she was somberly happy. I thought that our troubles were over!
Of a sudden Rhodes slapped down his journal and, to the surprize of the Dromans and, forsooth, to my own, made a dive at an oil-container, which Narkus had just emptied.
"At last—our depth, Bill!" he cried.
And he proceeded to ascertain the boiling point of water, the heat being furnished by Drorathusa's lamp and that of Siris, the older of the young women. Delphis, by the way, was the name of the other, the white-haired girl.
It was a strange, a striking picture truly—Milton Rhodes bending over his improvised hypogemeter, the Dromans looking on with curiosity, perplexity and strange questionings in their looks.
At last Rhodes was satisfied with the result, that it was as near accuracy as the circumstances would permit.
"We are," said he after computing for some moments in his journal, "at a depth of a little more than twelve thousand feet. The exact figures are 12,260 feet—though we can not, of course, claim for our determination any high degree of accuracy. I feel confident, however, that it is near the truth. Call it twelve thousand feet."
"Twelve thousand feet! Below the level of the sea?"
"Yes, Bill; below the level of the sea."
"Great Erebus, I knew that we had descended a long way, but I would never have believed that we had gone down over two miles. Two miles below sea-level. That is a record-smasher."
"Rather," Milton smiled. "Before us, no man (of our sunlit world) had penetrated into the crust of the earth to a greater depth than 3,758 feet below the level of the sea. That is the depth of the mine at St. John del Rey, Minas Geraes, Brazil."
"Two miles—over two miles down!" said I.
"And probably we are only started."
"But the pressure. We can't go down very far into this steadily increasing pressure, increasing in a geometrical ratio whilst the depth increases only in an arithmetical one."
"But," Milton said, "I showed you that there is something wrong with the law."
"Then how do you know that we have reached a depth of twelve thousand feet and over—if the law breaks down?"
"I don't believe that it has broken down yet. It will hold good for this slight descent which we have made. And, of course, if fact is found to coincide with theory, then our descent will be arrested at no great depth."
"And," I said, "unless the discrepancy between fact and theory is a remarkable one, we will have no means of knowing whether the law has broken down or not."
"We shall have no means of knowing, Bill—unless, as you say, truth and theory are remarkably divergent. Of course, in that case, we should not long remain unaware of the fact. Of the depth, then, we can not be certain; but the boiling point will always give us the atmospheric pressure."
"That isn't what is worrying me," I told him; "it is the pressure itself."
"The pressure itself," Milton returned, "would produce no dire effects. It is not the diminution of pressure that produces the dreaded mountain sickness, as was clearly shown by Dr. Paul Bert. Of educated people, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand will tell you that the acceleration of the pulse as one ascends to lofty heights, the short, troubled breathing, the disordered vision, extreme weakness, nausea, vertigo, bleeding at nose and lungs, in short, all the symptoms of the terrible mal des montagnes, are caused by the diminution of the atmospheric pressure. The average human being—such is their explanation—having a surface of about fifteen square feet, sustains an atmospheric pressure of more than thirty thousand pounds; at an elevation of eighteen thousand feet, the pressure is but one-half of that; is it any wonder, then, that a man gets mountain sickness?"
"Shades of ten thousand Gullivers," I exclaimed, "do you mean to say that those nine hundred and ninety-nine are wrong?"
"Certainly they are wrong, so wrong as to cause Dr. Bert to write:
'It is amazing to find a theory so plainly at variance with elementary physical laws accepted by eminent men.'"
"Well, well," was my sage remark, "I suppose the next thing on the program will be the statement that it is not the fire that makes the pot boil; it is the heat."
"If it doesn't rain, Bill, tomorrow will be Monday. However, Dr. Bert (Professor in the Paris Faculty of Sciences) proved 'that the lessening of the barometric pressure,' to use his own words, 'is of no account, mechanically, in the production of the phenomena.' Yes, he proved that, to use his own words again, 'it is not the lowering of mechanical pressure that produces the symptoms, but the low tension of the oxygen of the dilated air, which low tension prevents the oxygen from entering the blood in sufficient quantity.' Dr. Bert not only experimented on sparrows but entered the air-chamber himself. As the pressure was reduced, he experienced all the symptoms of mountain sickness. 'But,' he says, 'all these symptoms disappeared as by enchantment as soon as I respired some of the oxygen in the bag; returning, however, when I again breathed the air of the cylinder.'
"In one of his experiments, the pressure was reduced to 246 millimeters—9.7 inches. 'This,' he says, 'is exactly the pressure on the highest summit of the Himalayas—the same degree of pressure which was so near proving fatal to Glaisher and Coxwell; I reached this point without the slightest sense of discomfort, or, to speak more accurately, the unpleasant sensations I felt at the beginning had entirely disappeared. A bird in the cylinder with me was leaning on one side, and vary sick. It was my wish to continue the experiment till the bird died, but the steam-pump, conspiring, as I suspect, with the people who were watching me through glass peep-holes, would not work, and so I had to return to normal pressure.'
"So, you see, Bill, it is the low tension of the oxygen and not the diminished pressure that produces the distress and suffering and even death."
"All this is very interesting, but our problem is not one of rarefied air; the atmosphere here is compressed."
"And, in compressed air," said Milton Rhodes, "it is the oxygen again that produces the symptoms. Subject a sparrow to a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and the bird is thrown into convulsions, stronger than those produced by tetanus or strychnin, convulsions which soon end in death. If pure oxygen is used, a pressure of only five atmospheres kills the sparrow. But—and mark this—if the air be deficient in oxygen, the pressure of twenty atmospheres does not produce even a tremor. So, you see, Bill," he concluded, "we could descend to a very great depth in an atmosphere poor in oxygen."
"But how do we know that the atmosphere down there is poor in oxygen? It may be nothing of the kind. It may be saturated with it."
"Of course, we don't know. All we know is that we know nothing. And that reminds me of Socrates. That is what he said—that all he knew was that he didn't know anything. Arcesilaus declared that Socrates didn't even know that! However, hope is as cheap as despair. And, remember, here are our Hypogeans. They can ascend to our world, to a height of eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, and that, so far as we know, without suffering the slightest inconvenience."
"Something queer about that," was my comment.
"It is queer, Bill. However, we know that they can live in the (to them) rarefied air of our world; why, then, think that conditions down there, whether five miles down or fifty miles, will prove fatal to us?"
On the following morning, we
were under way at an early hour.
The route led down a great tunnel;
we could not have got lost now if we
had tried. Shortly before noon, the
welcome sounds of narranawnzee
were heard, and there was a large
stream gushing out of the wall. At
times, as we advanced, the stream
would move along dreamy and silent;
then it would be seen rushing and
glancing and again growling and
foaming in lovely cascades.
Steadily, save for the noon halt, we toiled our onward and downward way. It was half past 7 when we halted—the eery silence of the place broken by the soft, musical murmuring of the narranawnzee. Again Rhodes ascertained the boiling-point of water. It was 251° Fahrenheit. We were, therefore, under a pressure of two atmospheres; we had reached the depth of 18,500 feet. In other words, we were three miles and a half below the level of the sea!
It seems strange that I awoke, for I was dreaming the loveliest dream—a dream of fairy landscapes, birds and flowers, with lovely Cinderella in the midst of them. Nor do I know why I turned over onto my right side, for I was very comfortable as it was. But turn I did. And I was just going to close my eyes, to return to the dreamland of the fairies. But I did not close them. Instead, my heart gave a wild leap, and I opened them wide. The next instant I was sitting up, straining my eyes as I looked into the darkness. Pear had its grip upon me, and I felt my hair begin to stand on end.
For there was something in that blackness, something visible—moving!
Scarcely had my eyes fallen upon this amorphous, ghostly thing when it rose into the air, slowly and without the faintest sound. Up it rose and up, whilst I sat watching, immovable, speechless, as though in the clutch of some uncanny charm.
Up! Up to the very roof of the cavern! Of a sudden there was a fearful change in its form. Then the ghost, now of monstrous shape, was coming down—coming down straight toward me!
Fantastic adventures, terrific dangers, strange and horrible monsters, loopmukes and gogrugrons, make the next installment of "Drome" one of eery thrills and shivery fascination.
- ↑ "One dark night, about the beginning of December, while passing along the streets of the Villa de Natividada, I observed some boys amusing themselves with some luminous object, which I at first supposed to be a kind of large firefly; but on making inquiry, I found it to be a beautiful phosphorescent fungus, belonging to the genus Agaricus. . . The whole plant gives out at night a bright phosphorescent light, of a pale greenish hue, similar to that emitted by the larger fireflies, or by those curious soft-bodied marine animals, the Pyrosomae. From this circumstance, and from growing on a palm, it is called by the inhabitants 'Flor de Coco.' The light given out by a few of these fungi in a dark room was sufficient to read by."—George Gardner.
- ↑ "The Chevalier d'Angos, a learned astronomer, carefully observed, for several days, a lizard with two heads, and assured himself that this lizard had two wills independent of each other, and possessing nearly equal power over the body, which was in one. When a piece of bread was presented to the animal, in such a manner that it could see it with one head only, that head wished to go toward the bread, while the other head wished the body to remain still."—Voltaire.