X.

Many people will probably judge us callous as well as mad for thinking

about the northward tunnel and the abyss so soon after our somber

discovery, and I am not prepared to say that we would have immediately

revived such thoughts but for a specific circumstance which broke in

upon us and set up a whole new train of speculations.

We had replaced the tarpaulin over poor Gedney and were standing

in a kind of mute bewilderment when the sounds finally reached our

consciousness--the first sounds we had heard since descending out of

the open where the mountain wind whined faintly from its unearthly

heights. Well-known and mundane though they were, their presence in

this remote world of death was more unexpected and unnerving than any

grotesque or fabulous tones could possibly have been--since they gave a

fresh upsetting to all our notions of cosmic harmony.

Had it been some trace of that bizarre musical piping over a wide

range, which Lake's dissection report had led us to expect in those

others--and which, indeed, our overwrought fancies had been reading

into every wind howl we had heard since coming on the camp horror--it

would have had a kind of hellish congruity with the æon-dead region

around us. A voice from other epochs belongs in a graveyard of other

epochs.

As it was, however, the noise shattered all our profoundly seated

adjustments--all out tacit acceptance of the inner antarctic as a waste

utterly and irrevocably void of every vestige of normal life.

What we heard was not the fabulous note of any buried blasphemy of

elder earth from whose supernal toughness an age-denied polar sun had

evoked a monstrous response. Instead, it was a thing so mockingly

normal and so unerringly familiarized by our sea days off Victoria Land

and our camp days at McMurdo Sound that we shuddered to think of it

here, where such things ought not to be. To be brief--it was simply the

raucous squawking of a penguin.

The muffled sound floated from subglacial recesses nearly opposite to

the corridor whence we had come--regions manifestly in the direction

of that other tunnel to the vast abyss. The presence of a living water

bird in such a direction--in a world whose surface was one of age-long

and uniform lifelessness--could lead to only one conclusion; hence our

first thought was to verify the objective reality of the sound. It was,

indeed, repeated, and seemed at times to come from more than one throat.

Seeking its source, we entered an archway from which much débris had

been cleared; resuming our trail blazing--with an added paper supply

taken with curious repugnance from one of the tarpaulin bundles on the

sledges--when we left daylight behind.

As the glaciated floor gave place to a litter of detritus, we plainly

discerned some curious, dragging tracks; and once Danforth found

a distinct print of a sort whose description would be only too

superfluous. The course indicated by the penguin cries was precisely

what our map and compass prescribed as an approach to the more

northerly tunnel mouth, and we were glad to find that a bridgeless

thoroughfare on the ground and basement levels seemed open.

The tunnel, according to the chart, ought to start from the basement of

a large pyramidal structure which we seemed vaguely to recall from our

aërial survey as remarkably well-preserved. Along our path the single

torch showed a customary profusion of carvings, but we did not pause to

examine any of these.

* * * * *

Suddenly a bulky white shape loomed up ahead of us, and we flashed on

the second torch. It is odd how wholly this new quest had turned our

minds from earlier fears of what might lurk near. Those other ones,

having left their supplies in the great circular place, must have

planned to return after their scouting trip toward or into the abyss;

yet we had now discarded all caution concerning them as completely as

if they had never existed.

This white, waddling thing was fully six feet high, yet we seemed to

realize at once that it was not one of those others. They were larger

and dark, and, according to the sculptures, their motion over land

surfaces was a swift, assured matter despite the queerness of their

sea-born tentacle equipment. But to say that the white thing did not

profoundly frighten us would be vain. We were indeed clutched for an

instant by a primitive dread almost sharper than the worst of our

reasoned fears regarding those others.

Then came a flash of anticlimax as the white shape sidled into a

lateral archway to our left, to join two others of its kind which

had summoned it in raucous tones. For it was only a penguin--albeit

of a huge, unknown species larger than the greatest of the known

king penguins, and monstrous in its combined albinism and virtual

eyelessness.

When we had followed the thing into the archway and turned both our

torches on the indifferent and unheeding group of three, we saw that

they were all eyeless albinos of the same unknown and gigantic species.

Their size reminded us of some of the archaic penguins depicted in the

Old Ones' sculptures, and it did not take us long to conclude that

they were descended from the same stock--undoubtedly surviving through

a retreat to some warmer inner region whose perpetual blackness had

destroyed their pigmentation and atrophied their eyes to mere useless

slits.

That their present habitat was the vast abyss we sought, was not for a

moment to be doubted; and this evidence of the gulf's continued warmth

and habitability filled us with the most curious and subtly perturbing

fancies.

We wondered, too, what had caused these three birds to venture out

of their usual domain. The state and silence of the great dead city

made it clear that it had at no time been a habitual seasonal rookery,

whilst the manifest indifference of the trio to our presence made it

seem odd that any passing party of those others should have startled

them.

Was it possible that those others had taken some aggressive notion or

tried to increase their meat supply? We doubted whether that pungent

odor which the dogs had hated could cause an equal antipathy in these

penguins; since their ancestors had obviously lived on excellent terms

with the Old Ones--an amicable relationship which must have survived in

the abyss below as long as any of the Old Ones remained.

Regretting--in a flare-up of the old spirit of pure science--that we

could not photograph these anomalous creatures, we shortly left them

to their squawking and pushed on toward the abyss whose openness was

now so positively proved to us, and whose exact direction occasional

penguin tracks made clear.

* * * * *

Not long afterward a steep descent in a long, low, doorless, and

peculiarly sculptureless corridor led us to believe that we were

approaching the tunnel mouth at last. We had passed two more penguins.

Then the corridor ended in a prodigious open space which made us

gasp involuntarily--a perfect inverted hemisphere, obviously deep

underground, fully a hundred feet in diameter and fifty feet high, with

low archways opening around all parts of the circumference but one, and

that one yawning cavernously with a black, arched aperture which broke

the symmetry of the vault to a height of nearly fifteen feet. It was

the entrance to the great abyss.

In this vast hemisphere, whose concave roof was impressively though

decadently carved to a likeness of the primordial celestial dome, a few

albino penguins waddled--aliens there, but indifferent and unseeing.

The black tunnel yawned indefinitely off at a steep, descending grade,

its aperture adorned with grotesquely chiseled jambs and lintel.

From that cryptical mouth we fancied a current of slightly warmer air

and perhaps even a suspicion of vapor proceeded; and we wondered what

living entities other than penguins the limitless void below, and the

contiguous honeycombings of the land and the titan mountains, might

conceal.

We wondered, too, whether the trace of mountaintop smoke at first

suspected by poor Lake, as well as the odd haze we had ourselves

perceived around the rampart-crowned peak, might not be caused by

the tortuous-channeled rising of some such vapor from the unfathomed

regions of earth's core.

Entering the tunnel, we saw that its outline was--at least at the

start--about fifteen feet each way--sides, floor, and arched roof

composed of the usual megalithic masonry. The sides were sparsely

decorated with cartouches of conventional designs in a later, decadent

style; and all the construction and carving were marvellously

well-preserved.

The floor was quite clear, except for a slight detritus bearing

outgoing penguin tracks and the inward tracks of those others. The

farther one advanced, the warmer it became; so that we were soon

unbuttoning our heavy garments. We wondered whether there were any

actually igneous manifestations below, and whether the waters of that

sunless sea were hot.

After a short distance the masonry gave place to solid rock, though

the tunnel kept the same proportions and presented the same aspect of

carved regularity. Occasionally its varying grade became so steep that

grooves were cut in the floor.

Several times we noted the mouths of small lateral galleries not

recorded in our diagrams; none of them such as to complicate the

problem of our return, and all of them welcome as possible refuges in

case we met unwelcome entities on their way back from the abyss.

The nameless scent of such things was very distinct. Doubtless it

was suicidally foolish to venture into that tunnel under the known

conditions, but the lure of the unplumbed is stronger in certain

persons than most suspect--indeed, it was just such a lure which had

brought us to this unearthly polar waste in the first place.

We saw several penguins as we passed along, and speculated on the

distance we would have to traverse. The carvings had led us to expect

a steep downhill walk of about a mile to the abyss, but our previous

wanderings had shown us that matters of scale were not wholly to be

depended on.

After about a quarter of a mile that nameless scent became greatly

accentuated, and we kept very careful track of the various lateral

openings we passed. There was no visible vapor as at the mouth, but

this was doubtless due to the lack of contrasting cooler air. The

temperature was rapidly ascending, and we were not surprised to come

upon a careless heap of material shudderingly familiar to us. It was

composed of furs and tent cloths taken from Lake's camp, and we did

not pause to study the bizarre forms into which the fabrics had been

slashed.

Slightly beyond this point we noticed a decided increase in the size

and number of the side galleries, and concluded that the densely

honeycombed region beneath the higher foothills must now have been

reached.

The nameless scent was now curiously mixed with another and scarcely

less offensive odor--of what nature we could not guess, though we

thought of decaying organisms and perhaps unknown subterrane fungi.

Then came a startling expansion of the tunnel for which the

carvings had not prepared us--a broadening and rising into a lofty,

natural-looking elliptical cavern with a level floor, some seventy-five

feet long and fifty broad, and with many immense side passages leading

away into cryptical darkness.

* * * * *

Though this cavern was natural in appearance, an inspection with both

torches suggested that it had been formed by the artificial destruction

of several walls between adjacent honeycombings. The walls were

rough, and the high, vaulted roof was thick with stalactites; but the

solid rock floor had been smoothed off, and was free from all débris,

detritus, or even dust to a positively abnormal extent.

Except for the avenue through which we had come, this was true of

the floors of all the great galleries opening off from it; and the

singularity of the condition was such as to set us vainly puzzling.

The curious new fetor which had supplemented the nameless scent was

excessively pungent here; so much so that it destroyed all trace of the

other. Something about this whole place, with its polished and almost

glistening floor, struck us as more vaguely baffling and horrible than

any of the monstrous things we have previously encountered.

The regularity of the passage immediately ahead, prevented all

confusion as to the right course amidst this plethora of equally great

cave mouths. Nevertheless we resolved to resume our paper trail blazing

if any further complexity should develop; for dust tracks, of course,

could no longer be expected.

Upon resuming our direct progress we cast a beam of torchlight over the

tunnel walls--and stopped short in amazement at the supremely radical

change which had come over the carvings in this part of the passage.

We realized, of course, the great decadence of the Old Ones' sculpture

at the time of the tunneling, and had indeed noticed the inferior

workmanship of the arabesques in the stretches behind us.

But now, in this deeper section beyond the cavern, there was a sudden

difference wholly transcending explanation--a difference in basic

nature as well as in mere quality, and involving so profound and

calamitous a degradation of skill that nothing in the hitherto observed

rate of decline could have led one to expect it.

This new and degenerate work was coarse, bold, and wholly lacking in

delicacy of detail. It was countersunk with exaggerated depth in bands

following the same general line as the sparse cartouches of the earlier

sections, but the height of the reliefs did not reach the level of the

general surface.

Danforth had the idea that it was a second carving--a sort of

palimpsest formed after the obliteration of a previous design. In

nature it was wholly decorative and conventional, and consisted of

crude spirals and angles roughly following the quintile mathematical

tradition of the Old Ones, yet seeming more like a parody than a

perpetuation of that tradition.

Since we could not afford to spend any considerable time in study, we

resumed our advance after a cursory look.

We saw and heard fewer penguins, but thought we caught a vague

suspicion of an infinitely distant chorus of them somewhere deep within

the earth. The new and inexplicable odor was abominably strong, and we

could detect scarcely a sign of that other nameless scent.

Puffs of visible vapor ahead bespoke increasing contrasts in

temperature, and the relative nearness of the sunless sea cliffs of the

great abyss. Then, quite unexpectedly, we saw certain obstructions on

the polished floor ahead--obstructions which were quite definitely not

penguins--and turned on our second torch after making sure that the

objects were quite stationary.