The Temple of the Stars
Far from echoing the agitation I felt, Rawson seemed actually pleased
at the turn of events. It piqued his imagination to think that we
should be so far beneath the sea; and he conjured up all manner of
alluring possibilities that testified more to his youth than to his
common sense. He suggested that we were the discoverers of a great
and magnificent empire which we should explore, conquer and then
annex to the United States; and he formed his plans regardless of
the probability that we should never see the United States again,
and almost as though there were regular transportation facilities
to the upper world. The sheer scientific difficulties--the apparent
impossibility that a cavern free from water could exist beneath the
ocean, the even more striking impossibility that human beings could
inhabit such a cavern--seemed to make little impression upon the
illogical mind of Rawson; and he was convinced that only by the rarest
good fortune had we been entombed in these fantastic and dream-like
depths.
So intense was his enthusiasm, that he urged me to descend at once with
him to the many-templed city. But I did not willingly accede; I pointed
out that it would be wiser to hasten back to the submarine, inform
Captain Gavison of what we had seen, and return here--if we returned at
all--in greater numbers than at present. Besides, as I reminded Rawson,
the Captain had ordered us back within twenty-four hours; and, if we
dallied, some mischance might delay us until too late.
Had Rawson but had a dim prevision of the black hours ahead, he would
certainly have accepted my suggestions. But, perversely enough, he
seemed to be almost without his usual fears just when those fears might
have proved most useful. And since of course I could not allow myself
to be outdone in bravery by a mere boy, I had to signify a grudging
assent to his proposal. I must confess, however, that my motives were
not unmixed, for pictures of the iridescent dancing girl kept flitting
before my mind and would give me no peace; and I may have had hopes (I
will not say that I did) of meeting her again in this city of fountains
and palaces.
But not a living creature could be seen stirring in the avenues of that
strange town as Rawson and I began our slow descent. Once or twice we
thought we saw the glimmer of a light or the flash of some moving thing
in the far distance, but we could not be sure; and the silence and the
immobility gave the general effect of a city of the dead. There was
something ghostly about that calm, still atmosphere, something that
might have made me turn back in alarm had it not been for the presence
of Rawson; but there was also something soothingly peaceful, a charmed
quiet that brought to mind the fairy tales I had heard in childhood,
and in particular that enchanted palace where the Sleeping Beauty had
slumbered for a hundred years. Here, I thought, one might dream away
a hundred years or a thousand, and never know that time had passed at
all; here, conceivably, the ancient world might lapse into the modern,
and the modern into the far future without apparent change.
My reveries were interrupted by our arrival at the gates of the city.
We passed beneath a high arch almost Roman in style, with marble base
and facade ornamented with strange blue sea-shells; then, proceeding
along a winding cement walk inlaid with mother-of-pearl, we approached
the most stately palace of all. In architecture, it was totally
dissimilar to anything we had ever before observed: although perhaps
five hundred feet in length, it was as much like a great statue as
like a building; it had none of those features common in edifices for
the shelter of man and his works, but seemed to have been erected
exclusively as a piece of art. Its form was that of a woman, a woman
reclining at full length, her breast to the ground, her head slightly
elevated, propped meditatively upon her palm; and the structure as
a whole had been planned with such subtlety and skill, with such
consummate attention to every detail of the woman’s position, form and
garments and to the beatific and yet lifelike expression of the face,
that Rawson and I could only pause in bewildered silence and stare and
stare as though this work had been created through no human agency but
by some superhuman master hand.
In that first spellbound moment, it did not occur to us that there
might be an entrance to the palace. But at length, where a lock of
the woman’s dark, sculptured hair fell across her breast, we noted a
little doorway so skilfully concealed that it had originally escaped
our attention. Since the gate swung wide upon the hinges, curiosity,
of course, prompted us to glance within--and with results that proved
but a further spur to curiosity. All that we could see was a pale,
golden glitter against a background of black; but imagination supplied
that which our physical sight could not reveal, and we had visions of
gorgeous halls and corridors which we longed to inspect.
* * * * *
Had our courage been sufficient, we would have entered at once. The
idea, in fact, came to both of us simultaneously, but at first neither
of us could summon up the requisite boldness. There seemed to be
something mysteriously, almost irresistibly, attractive about that
twinkling darkness, something that held us fascinated and forbade us to
leave; and for several minutes we stood hesitating, and straining our
eyes, yet making no motion to invade the unknown.
Then, when the suspense had become so protracted as to be ridiculous,
Rawson surprised me by exclaiming, suddenly, “I’m not afraid!” And at
the same time he slapped his sides energetically as though to prove
to himself that he had no fears. “I’m going right in!” he announced,
with what I thought to be unnecessary loudness. And, feeling for
his revolver with a hand that trembled perceptibly, Rawson strode
resolutely into the building.
There was nothing for me to do but follow. But, somehow, I could not
help wishing that my friend had not been so rash; and, somehow, I
foresaw that we might not be able to leave this strange edifice so
easily as we had entered.
But, once within, we forgot our misgivings in contemplation of
the magnificent scene around us. I had been in luxurious galleries
before; I had seen the most ornate salons of the Old World, and the
most lavishly bedecked of mosques and cathedrals; but never had I
viewed or imagined so utterly sublime a hall. Here was a new art of
the interior decorator, an art that seemed wholly without parallel in
human experience; I was scarcely conscious that I was indoors, but
rather felt myself to be in the open, in the open at night, under
the wide and glittering heavens, with the light of innumerable stars
above me, and the dim cloudy arch of the Milky Way. How the artist had
produced his effect was more than I could say, but somehow, in his
limited space, he had given the impression of vastness and distance,
of the mystery and infinite silence of the starlight; and as I stood
there entranced, I could almost imagine that I was back again on
earth, gazing out into the night-skies as I had gazed so often from
the Vermont hills with Alma Huntley.... And yet, perfectly patterned
as they were, these skies were not the skies I had known. As I stood
there watching, I became aware that certain of the constellations were
slightly, almost indistinguishably out of position, the stars not quite
in their proper relations to one another--and why this was, I could
not attempt to say. But more striking was another alteration that had
been wrought deliberately and with subtle artistry: above the stars,
and about the thin girdle of the Milky Way, were filmy formations of
light, which--perhaps it was only my imagination--gradually resolved
themselves into tenuous human figures. One, an exquisitely graceful
woman, seemed to be playing upon some lyre-like instrument; another,
a youth with head uplifted as though in enraptured contemplation,
impressed me as the spirit of all human aspiration; and still others,
no less consummately outlined, appeared to represent the hopes and
loves and immortal yearnings of man.
But while I remained rooted there in ecstatic contemplation, filled
with wonder at the paradox of beholding the stars thousands of
feet beneath the sea, there occurred one of those changes by which
occasionally a beautiful dream becomes distorted into a nightmare.
Imagine the consternation of one who, while gazing at the cloudless
night-skies, finds blackness suddenly sweeping all about him--a
blackness that has quenched the stars as a storm might quench a candle
flame. Such consternation was ours, and even greater horror, for
without so much as a flicker of warning, the lights of the seeming
heavens flashed out, and darkness stretched above us and all about
us, a darkness so all-consuming that not even a shadow remained. With
half-suppressed cries of terror, Rawson and I turned to one another,
each totally invisible in the blank night; and before we had had time
for coherent speech, there came a rattling and a slamming from behind
us, and we knew that the one possible exit had been closed and that we
were prisoners in this unknown place.