The Mysterious City
The next few hours showed us a continuous amazing panorama. The
marble temple proved to be but one of a series connected by long and
graceful colonnades; and in the central structures, the Ionic and
Doric architecture were curiously mingled with a type that seemed
scarcely Grecian at all, since it admitted of all variety of arches and
curves unknown to the builders of classical Hellas. Most remarkable
of all, perhaps, were the gorgeously ornamented vases--some of them
six or eight feet in height--which were of a style akin to those
excavated from the ruins of old Ilium. But what caught my eye even more
strikingly were the statues that occasionally appeared in niches along
the marble galleries or in alcoves of the temples--statues that would
surely not have been unworthy of a Praxiteles, since even Praxiteles
could not have surpassed the symmetry of form and the unstrained
reality of pose and expression with which these unknown artists had
depicted their wrestling heroes and dancing fauns and stern-browed
old men and queenly maidens and gracious youths. For one who had been
nurtured on modern art, these busts and marbles were as old paintings
would be to him who had known only sketches in black and white; there
was none of that snowy coldness or bronze severity of hue which are so
common in sculpture today, but all of the statues had been skilfully
tinted with the complexion of life, and such was the verisimilitude,
that several times I started in surprise on beholding what I took to
be a living man but which proved to be only an image of stone. I was
interested, moreover, to note that none of the sculptured features had
that peculiar hardness and selfish keenness so common among the men
I had known, but that all seemed suffused with a clear and tranquil
spirituality; and every lyric impulse within me was awakened when I
observed on many of the faces of the women that same unearthly Madonna
look which had graced the butterfly-gowned dancing maiden.
But, of course, Rawson and I did not allow our pleasure in the
statuary to keep our minds from more vital subjects. Above all, we
maintained a constant lookout for the inhabitants of these queer
regions, for we could no longer suppress the suspicion that unseen
furtive eyes were peeping out at us from behind every pillar and
wall. For my own part, I had more than one qualm that I did not care
to admit, and secretly wished myself back on the X-111; and as for
Rawson--I found that youth afflicted with far too much imagination for
an adventurer, and repeatedly begged him to keep his fantastic fears to
himself.
But there was no repressing the excitable young Rawson. When he was
not drawing pictures of the serpents and wild beasts that probably
infested the thickets beside the temples, he would be diverting me with
the most grewsome ghost stories I had ever heard; and he went so far
as to suggest that the dancing girls had been only airy apparitions,
while the brilliant golden lights above us had no more reality than a
will-o’-the-wisp. Evidently he had been too much nurtured on fiction
of the blood-and-terror variety, for only a devotee of the most hectic
adventure tales could have imagined, as he did, that our pathway was
beset with robbers’ lairs, pirates’ dens, scorpions and crocodiles,
head-hunting cannibals, siren women luring us to destruction, and
murderous desperadoes of a thousand ilks and guilds.
Fortunately for my peace of mind, I heard not half of Rawson’s ravings,
for my interest in the wayside architecture served as a distraction.
For two or three hours I was occupied with inspecting the gracefully
connecting galleries of five or six temples; and, having passed the
last of the group, I was absorbed in my observations of a long, marble
colonnade which extended apparently for miles in a straight line amid
the gray and brown fantastic vegetation.
And now it was that I made the most startling discovery of the day.
At intervals along the floor of the colonnade, which was of a red
and yellow mosaic of baked and hardened clay, appeared deeply-graven
inscriptions which I paused eagerly to survey. At first I thought
that they were in no known language, but it was not long before I had
detected a certain resemblance between the characters and those of
the ancient Greek. Profiting from my collegiate study of that tongue,
I puzzled over the words while Rawson stood by impatiently urging me
to be off; and one by one I succeeded in identifying the letters with
those of the Greek alphabet! Not every one of the characters, it is
true, could be recognized with assurance, but enough of them were
unmistakably Greek to give me a clue to the whole; and at length I
found myself making a translation that might solve the entire mystery
of this extraordinary land.
* * * * *
But the process was a slow and plodding one, and I did not make the
progress I had expected. Even though the letters were clear enough,
the meaning of the words was not. Evidently this was not the Greek
of Plato or Thucydides, in which I had been thoroughly schooled; but
rather it was a language that was to classical Greek what Chaucer is
to modern English. Still, I was not completely discouraged, for I did
manage to make out an occasional word, though not at first enough to
give meaning to any passage. All in all, considering the limited time
at my disposal, my efforts seemed futile; and I was about to yield to
Rawson’s importunities and give up this diverting study for further
exploration, when suddenly I made a successful discovery. I must have
come upon a passage simpler than the rest, for unexpectedly half a
sentence flashed upon me with clear-cut meaning at once so striking and
so enigmatical that I stopped short with a little cry of surprise.
“Placed here in the year Three Thousand of the Submergence,” ran
the words, which occurred in large lettering at the base of a statue
of a strong man trampling down the ruins of what looked like a steel
building. “Placed here ...” at this point were several words that I
could not make out--“in celebration of the Good Destruction.”
“In celebration of the Good Destruction!” I repeated, after translating
the words aloud. “Sounds as if written by a madman!”
“Maybe you didn’t read it right,” commented Rawson.
This suggestion, of course, I ignored. “Wonder what the Submergence can
mean,” I continued, meditatively. “That doesn’t seem to make sense,
either.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Rawson admitted, with a thoughtful drawl. “Everything
down here seems sort of topsy-turvy. Suppose we go on and see what else
we can find out.”
I nodded a hesitating assent, and we proceeded on our way in silence.
But, though we did not speak, our thoughts were active indeed, for
more than ever I was convinced that somehow, unaccountably, we were
amid the remains of a Grecian or pre-Grecian countryside. Had Socrates
or the radiant Phobus himself stepped out of the grave to greet me, I
would not have been surprised; and I more than half expected to catch a
glimpse of Athena’s robe from behind the dark shrubbery, or to see the
winged feet of Hermes or hear the clear notes of Pan.
But neither Pan nor Hermes nor any of their famed kindred presented
themselves upon the scene. And after walking at a good pace for more
than an hour along the marble colonnade, I forgot those interesting
individuals in contemplation of a scene that left me gaping in greater
astonishment than if I had invaded a council of the high Olympian gods.
For some minutes a series of huge templed domes and columns, dimly
visible through rifts in the vegetation, had attracted my attention and
aroused Rawson’s misgivings; but neither of us had had any intimation
of the sight that was to greet us when at length we came to the end of
the colonnade.
Suddenly we saw a clay road sloping down sharply beneath us, and
found ourselves gazing out over a valley more dazzling than we had
ever before known or imagined. Through its center flowed the great
river, with gentle loops and twinings; above us, as before, reached
the dark-green sky illumined with the golden suns; and an innumerable
multitude of palely tinted columns, like the tree trunks of some
colossal forest, shot upward to that sky as though to support it. But
what were truly remarkable were the buildings that adorned the plain.
On both sides of the river they stretched, far to the distance and out
of sight, palaces of white marble and of black marble, of jade and of
alabaster, some with an elegant symmetry of Greek columns, some with
a solidity of masonry that seemed half Egyptian, some with an almost
Oriental profusion of spires and turrets, of porticoes and balconies
and arches and domes. But all alike were reared in perfect taste, and
with perfect regard to the style of their neighbors; all alike faced
on wide avenues, flowery lanes or lawny and statue-dotted parks; all
appeared but parts of a single design which, when seen from above, was
like some consummate tapestry patterned by a master artist.
As Rawson and I stood staring at this matchless scene, I suddenly
recalled the steeples and towers of that city we had seen beneath us in
the submarine. A strange similarity in the outlines of the buildings
impressed itself upon me--then in a flash it came to me that the two
cities were one and the same! And at that instant I shuddered, amazed
and horrified at the abrupt solution of the mystery ... It was as the
Captain had suggested; we were indeed beneath the ocean, thousands
of feet beneath the ocean, in some cavern inexplicably spared from
the waters and haunted by the ghosts and relics of some ancient and
vanished race!