"Proceed, Mr. Meigs," added the professor. "This is all intensely
interesting. Was the car seriously damaged?"
"I haven't seen the car," resumed Meigs. "A hiatus followed the blowing
away of the castle, and when I opened my eyes again I was a prisoner in
the hands of a legion of those one-eyed creatures. For two weeks I was
kept confined--an object of curiosity for the whole kingdom, if I could
judge from the way the little imps flocked to stare at me.
"After a time I was led off to a place where I joined Popham and
Markham. Need I tell you how affecting that meeting was? Popham shed
tears, and both Markham and myself were nearly unmanned.
"Our captors had some sort of a contrivance consisting of a small shaft
and cord. One end of the cord was put to Markham's head and a slide
flew up on the end of the shaft. Then Markham was led off, given a
plate and paddle and cast adrift.
"Popham was the next one to have the queer machine tried on him. When
he was removed my turn came."
Meigs wrung his hands despairingly.
"After the storm," he continued with an effort, "my costume was not as
complete as I would have had it, but those impudent creatures denuded me
still further. In self-defense I was forced to steal this red cloth and
run for my life. Oh, it was terrible! Woe is me that I should ever
have lived to see this day!"
"Some good may come out of this unfortunate experience, Mr. Meigs," said
the professor.
"Good!" almost shouted Meigs. "Sir, you express yourself strangely. Is
it good to have a man used to such luxury as I have been fleeing through
these rocky underground hills merely because he committed theft in order
to retain his self-respect? Have a care, sir! Do not think for a
moment that I am under any misapprehension as to the real cause of my
sorry situation."
"The king of this country is evidently a man of a humorous and practical
turn," observed Professor Quinn after a little thought. "The
indexograph made him familiar with the natural bent of you three
gentlemen and he is seeking to show you the error of your ways. On
Earth you were at one end of a trust; here you are placed at the other
end. Really, I think the experience will prove most wholesome."
J. Archibald Meigs stared at the speaker with distended eyes.
"Is it possible," said he, "that your brain has been turned, like
Gilhooly's?"
"Nonsense!" I struck in. "The professor's head is as clear as a bell.
He's got the right of this thing, Meigs. The king of Baigadd is making
you take a little of the medicine you measured out in such large doses
on the other planet."
"You are both crazy," snarled Meigs. "I never stripped a man to his
hide and threw him out in the cold world--as the king of this country
has done to me, in a figurative sense."
"You don't know how much evil you have done," said Quinn, an expression
on his face similar to the one I had seen when he jerked the lever and
shot us into the unknown. "You have taken your pound of flesh, Mr.
Meigs, but are now under the heel of a monopoly yourself."
"Stuff!" cried Meigs. "We will talk no longer about a matter in which
you display such poor judgment. Although I have told you my story, I
have heard little of yours. Am I to conclude that you and Munn
purposely cut loose from myself and my friends? After bringing us to
this miserable planet did you have the heart willfully to abandon us?"
"Not at all, Meigs," said the professor hastily.
I wondered if Meigs had forgotten all about the attempt he and his
friends had made to abandon the professor and me? He was one of the
most inconsistent men I have ever encountered.
"Like yourself and the others, Mr. Meigs," continued the professor, "Mr.
Munn and I were taken prisoners----"
"But you were not treated with the same barbarity as the rest of us,"
burst out Meigs, his small mind finding even that a cause for temper.
"You, who engineered the plot, and plunged us all into these terrific
difficulties, escape the consequences. What is that banner?"
"We are under the protection of the ruler of the neighboring kingdom of
Baigol. That is the royal standard."
"Ah," said Meigs bitterly, "you are even received at court--you and a
professed thief--while Markham, Popham, Gilhooly, and I are no more than
outcasts! Is there no such thing as justice, even on this disgusting
planet? Look at me! _Look at me!_"
His final request for us to look at him was a frantic wail. He yanked
savagely at his kirtle, and twisted his bare feet around in fearsome
dejection.
"We are looking at you, Mr. Meigs," observed the professor quietly.
"Do you find any pleasure in the spectacle? Does not my situation arouse
even a spark of pity? I do not ask Munn for his sympathy, but you,
Professor Quinn, although criminally careless in evolving plans and
carrying them out, are a scientist, and you must have a heart."
"My heart is wrung with your misfortunes," replied the professor gently,
"but I realize that desperate diseases require desperate remedies."
"What disease are you referring to," snapped Meigs, suddenly changing
his tack, "and what remedy?"
"The disease that afflicts our common country, and which you would deny
and ridicule were I even to name it. The remedy, too, you would
consider no remedy at all, but a useless infliction of discomfort and
mental anguish. What you are undergoing, Mr. Meigs, is not accidental,
but providential. The workings of fate are as marvelous as they are
effective. Patience a little, and we shall see what we shall see."
"This is no time for oracular remarks!" scowled Meigs. "These
four-handed, one-eyed demons are forcing Gilhooly, Markham, Popham, and
me steadily toward destruction. Gilhooly, daft as he is, is pulling his
heart out on their ugly little transportation system; Markham is
galloping from place to place pounding his paddle against his dish and
begging a few morsels of food; Popham is working like a galley-slave,
and his wages, already insufficient to give him the necessary food he
requires for his heart-breaking labor, are being systematically cut
down; as for me, the army of Baigadd is at my heels. Baigadd!" and, in
his extreme discouragement, Meigs gave vent to a wild, mirthless laugh.
"Baigadd and Baigol! They sound like expletives from our own good
planet, but altogether too mild to express the state of my feelings."
"Be calm," adjured the professor, with an apprehensive look at me.
"Calm!" echoed Meigs brokenly. "I shall be as mad as Gilhooly if this
keeps up much longer." He started forward with a truculent air. "What
are you going to do for me, Quinn?" he cried. "How are you going to get
me out of this fix? Those infernal little soldiers went away, but
they'll come back again. Then what?"
"We are here in the role of ambassadors," answered the professor,
"and----"
"Munn an ambassador!" sneered Meigs, drawing away from me.
"And, as such, we are entitled to some courtesy at the hands of King
Baigadd. I feel quite sure that, when the higher authorities understand
you are my friend, they will be lenient in their treatment of you."
"That is rather a vague supposition on which to ground a man's hopes of
life or death," muttered Meigs.
"It is all we can fall back on, Mr. Meigs. There are but six of us on
this small planet, and we must make the inhabitants our friends. If we
do not, annihilation will overtake the lot of us."
"We were fools ever to land on Mercury in the first place," pursued
Meigs, still wild and unreasoning.
He stamped with his bare foot to emphasize his anger, and a sharp stone
unexpectedly gave point to it. With a howl of pain he caught his foot
in his hands.
I have never been called particularly hard-hearted, but somehow I took a
measure of enjoyment out of all this. However, I had the grace to turn
my head and conceal the smile.
"You must be careful, Mr. Meigs," warned the professor. "Sit down and
rest yourself."
"Rest!" fumed Meigs, "just as though such a thing were possible! I am
one of the miserable victims of your duplicity, and if I could have
recourse to the law of our planet for about an hour, I would soon put
you where you belong."
"Be sensible," I struck in, perhaps ill-advisedly. "You act like a
whipped schoolboy, Meigs."
"I'll hear nothing from you," he cried, glaring at me.
"As I was saying, Mr. Meigs," proceeded the professor, "Mr. Munn and I,
although we appear to be free, are, nevertheless, virtual prisoners of
the king of Baigol. We are being sent to Baigadd upon an important
mission, and on our success or failure depends, very largely----"
"That will do," interrupted the broker irritably; "I don't care to hear
an account of your experiences, Quinn. It is evident, I think, that you
and Munn have not been crossed by the same adversity which has overtaken
myself and the others. I have a demand to make."
Meigs arose from the bowlder and struck an attitude which he intended to
be both dignified and compelling. With his unshaven face and red kirtle
he succeeded only in making himself ludicrous.
"What is the demand?" inquired Quinn.
"You and Munn are fairly well-clothed," replied Meigs, "and I demand
that you share my distress to the extent of donating enough of your own
clothing to make me presentable."
On the impulse of the moment the professor began removing his coat.
When the garment was half off he changed his mind and slipped back into
it again.
"No," he returned. "You have made your own bed, Mr. Meigs, and I think
you should lie in it until you experience a change of heart. When you
can truly say to Mr. Munn and me that you realize how sadly mistaken you
were on the other planet, we will share your distress--but not till
then."
"Out on you for a pair of heartless wretches!" exclaimed the broker
angrily. "Your reasoning is false, and I will never yield assent to it.
I wash my hands of both of you"--and he went through the motions--"and
if our paths should cross in the future, it is my desire that we pass as
strangers."
He glared at us, turned on his bare heel and made his way to the road.
Then he strode off in the direction of the bend.
We watched him silently, the professor with apprehension and I with
unrestrained enjoyment. As he was about to vanish from our sight we saw
him come to a startled halt, gaze off along the road that lay beyond the
bend, then throw up his arms, whirl and race back to us.
"They're coming!" he shouted frantically; "the whole army is coming! Is
there no way you can save me, gentlemen? Think, for mercy's sake,
_think_!"
Meigs was continually building barriers between himself and the
professor and me, only to knock them down again whenever the slightest
danger threatened him. Had I been the one to decide, he should then and
there have been left to shift for himself.
*CHAPTER XII.*
*CONDEMNED TO DEATH.*
"Have courage, Mr. Meigs," said Professor Quinn. "It is my hope that
some high personage may be with the approaching army, in which event the
royal banner given us by the king of Baigol will be respected and prove
the salvation of all three of us."
This great and good man was utterly incapable of harboring resentment
against any one. He beguiled the plutocrats into his castle, I grant
you, and shuffled them from the scene of their grievous labors, yet this
was not because he loved the rich man less but the poor man more.
As I write these words, piecing my narrative together out of my
commonplace book, a wave of affection and reverence rolls over me.
And often I steal forth o' nights when skies are propitious, gaze at
Mercury through my telescope, and can almost fancy myself in communion
with the gentle soul forever lost to its native planet. But I
anticipate.
The retreating Gaddbaizets had reached headquarters and acquainted the
high chief in command with the fact that two more colossi had appeared;
so the major part of the king's forces had been ordered out. By tactful
maneuvres, they were approaching from all sides.
A cordon was drawn around us--a cordon of soldiers with their flashing
zetbais presented. One hostile move would have placed the seal on our
death warrant.
The high chief, perhaps fearing his word-box might be wrecked as his
captain's had been, had evidently laid plans and given all orders in
advance of his attack on our position. The assault was noiseless,
swift, and sure.
When completely surrounded by the troops, a number of the soldiers
disengaged themselves from various points of the circle. These soldiers
carried lances at least ten feet long.
The lances were held high, and to the point of each the upper edge of a
net was made fast, the lower edge of the net trailing along the ground.
As the lancemen advanced the net took the form of a rapidly contracting
circle, the professor, Meigs, and myself in the centre.
In less than five minutes we three colossi were stoutly encompassed by
the net, hurled together and thrown in a helpless jumble. The web was
finely woven and of a material that defied our efforts to break through
it.
Professor Quinn made a fierce attempt to use his word-box, but he was
held so rigidly that he could not do so. One by one we were
disentangled, the upper parts of our bodies were wrapped about in
sections of the net so that only our legs were free, and we were forced
to proceed with our captors, the army marching on every side of us.
Meigs was loudly bewailing his evil fortune.
"Take heart, man!" cried Quinn. "If I can see the king or get word to
him I am sure that all will yet be well."
"It's all day with us," returned Meigs with a groan, "and you cannot
make me believe otherwise."
There was no twilight in the nether kingdoms. Day leaped into night as
swiftly as a curtain falls on a stage play.
Long before we reached our destination we were in Stygian blackness.
There were no artificial illuminants known to the creatures of the
under-world, and they had no need of them. Their single eyes were gifted
with power to see at night almost as keenly as in the daytime.
When we had traveled several hours we were made to halt and a circle of
zet, similar to the one that had imprisoned Quinn and myself in Baigol,
was reared around us. Thereupon we were freed of the nets and left to
ourselves.
The instant he was able to make use of his hands the professor grabbed
his word-box and began shooting questions into the opaque gloom that
hemmed us in.
"Why have you taken us prisoners? What harm have we ever done you? We
are under the protection of King Golbai. Did not the captain of the
other detachment so inform you?"
Answer came back:
"You have been taken prisoners because you resisted the royal authority
and tried to protect a man who stole goods from our regal master. Theft
of goods from his majesty's storehouse is punishable with death. Even
ambassadors from King Golbai are not above the laws of our realm."
"What is to be our fate?"
"Zet," was the laconic answer. "You will all three be slain by the
executioner-general as soon as may be after the great reflector sends
its first gleam of day through the kingdom."
That ended the professor's talk with our unseen enemy who, presumably,
was the high chief of the forces. It was sufficiently discouraging,
although I was reckless enough to ease my feelings with a few expletives
on Key 7--the most insolent and defiant that I had learned in Baigol.
"Mr. Munn, Mr. Munn!" cried Quinn in rebuke. "This is no time to express
yourself in that key."
"I am not endowed with your magnificent forbearance, professor," said I,
"and I had to say something."
"What's it all about, anyway?" asked Meigs.
"We are to die at sunrise, Meigs," I answered roughly, "or as soon after
sunrise as the executioner-general may find it convenient."
"I would have spared Mr. Meigs that information," said the professor.
"He ought to have time to prepare himself," I returned. "As the night
is far spent I am going to turn in and snatch forty winks against the
time the reflectors begin to work. Good night, professor," I added, as
I stretched out on the ground. "I don't amount to much more than Meigs,
and will never be missed, but I am sorry for you."
Quinn groped for my hand.
"Life, in itself, is a small thing," said he, "no matter whether it is
long or short. It is what we do with life that counts, Mr. Munn."
"I have no regrets for what I have done with mine," I declared.
And I had not. Conscience did not accuse me in the least. Never had I
taken a penny from those who could not afford to lose it.
"Think again, Mr. Munn!" implored the professor. "I would not have you
face your doom in that mental attitude. Surely your senses are not
blunted to the evil of your past life?"
"Sir," I answered, imbued to the core with the sophistry that had made
me what I was, "I have been a financier in a small way. Not having the
requisite capital for large operations, I was compelled to work in a
small way. My business, however, while it may not have been as
legitimate, was every whit as honest as that of Meigs and his
associates."
"If you men would stop that useless palavering," called Meigs, from
somewhere in the dark, "and try to think of some way for making our
escape, you would be putting in your time to better advantage."
"Never mind him, professor," said I. "This is probably the last
opportunity we shall ever have for an extended talk. At such a time a
man speaks from the heart, and I want you to know just where I stand."
"Just a moment, Mr. Munn." The professor turned his head to answer
Meigs. "It is impossible for us to escape," said he. "Even if we could
get away from here, we should find the entire country in arms against
us."
"Possibly we could get back to that other benighted kingdom from which
you and the thief come accredited as ambassadors?" returned Meigs.
"It is a hard journey from here, Mr. Meigs, and we should be overtaken
and recaptured before we could cross the border into a friendly country.
Before we could take to flight, however, we should have to beat down the
barrier of zet that hems its in. That, as I know from experience, is
out of the question."
Meigs began to complain, and to find fault, and the professor turned
from him and went on talking with me.
"I have brought these troubles upon you, Mr. Munn," he continued, a sad
note in his voice, "and upon the others. It seems impossible to
accomplish any great good without causing some small amount of misery."
"Don't let my situation worry you," I remarked. "While constantly
exercising my wits to secure the best fortune for myself, I have always
made it a point to be prepared for the worst. I shall face the zetbais
in the morning without the quiver of an eyelid."
"Don't misunderstand me, Mr. Munn," said the professor earnestly.
"While I grieve that matters should have fallen out in this fashion, yet
I would not undo the one thing which brought us into these troubled
waters. In other words, I would rather be here, in Njambai, with death
staring us in the face, than back there on Terra, with Meigs, Markham,
Popham, and Gilhooly free to work out their nefarious plans."
"That's the spirit!" I cried warmly.
"It's the spirit that has put many a man in the penitentiary," called
Meigs, who appeared to be following our conversation even if he was not
taking any part in it.
I turned with a stinging reply on my lips, but the professor dropped a
hand on my arm, and I held my peace.
"We are sharing together our last few hours," said he, "and let us have
no quarrelsome talk. Personally, I have a good deal of charity for
Meigs. He is a man who, until very recently, has been accustomed to
having scores of people wait upon his slightest nod. Here he has been
subjected to much indignity, and at the hands of a people whom he
believes to be his inferiors. Naturally that renders him disagreeable."
"He might, at least, have the grace to leave you alone," I answered.
"Not so, Mr. Munn. He is perfectly right in badgering me. I am at
fault, so far as he and his associates are concerned, and he knows it. I
do not expect approbation at their hands, but at the hands of those, in
far-away Terra, whom my drastic actions have helped. Your calm
acceptance of your fate is so different from the attitude of Meigs that
it touches me deeply. You have the same cause to blame and abuse me,
and yet you let the opportunity pass."
"It has been worth something, professor," I responded, "to stand at your
side and to pass through these remarkable adventures shoulder to
shoulder with you."
"Thank you for that, my friend."
"I have no doubt," I continued, "that if you and I were to be spared,
you might in time lead me to see what you are disposed to call the error
of my way, for you are a master hand at arguing; but, as I am at
present, I feel that my chances in the next world are as good as any
one's. The rich have taken from the poor in a way that the law
sanctions; and I have taken from the rich in a way the law does not
sanction, and, in a few rare instances, have given to the poor. There's
nothing in that to oppress my conscience. The only thing I am sorry for
is that I entered your castle with my felonious intention centred upon
your property. Now that I know you so well, my plan to steal from you
looks more like a crime than anything else I have done."
"Munn," he replied, "it grieves me to think that your career is to be
cut short before you have had an opportunity to reform. However"--and
he sighed softly--"there is no escaping fate on our own planet or on
this. Good night to you."
I was dog-tired and went off into slumber the moment I closed my eyes.
About the last thing I heard was the peevish voice of Meigs resisting
what little comfort the professor tried to offer him.