ESCAPE?
Who could, indeed, suspect aught of this threatening danger?
Outwardly all now was peaceful. Each waking-time the fishers put forth
in their long boats of metal strips covered with fish-skins. Every
sleeping-time they returned laden with the fish that formed the
principal staple of the community.
The weaving of seaweed fiber, the making of mats, blankets, nets and
slings went on as probably for many centuries before.
At forges here and there, where gas-wells blazed, the smiths of the
Folk shaped their iron implements or worked most skillfully in gold
and copper; and the ringing of the hammers, through the dim-lit gloom
around the strange blue fires, formed a chorus fit for Vulcan or the
tempering of Siegfried's master-sword.
Stern took occasion to visit many of the huts. They were all similar.
As yet he could not talk freely with the Folk but he took keen
interest in examining their household arrangements, which were of the
simplest. Stone benches and tables, beds of weed, and coarse blankets,
utensils of metal or bone--these completed the total.
Stern groaned inwardly at thought of all the arts he still must teach
them before they should once more even approximate the civilization
whence they had fallen since the great catastrophe.
Behind the village rose a gigantic black cliff, always dripping and
running with water from the condensation of the fogs. This water the
Folk very sensibly and cleverly drained down into large tanks cut in
the rock floor. The tanks, always full, furnished their entire supply
for drinking and cooking. Flat, warm and tasteless though it was, it
seemed reasonably pure. None of this water was ever used for bathing.
What little bathing the Folk ever indulged in took place at certain
points along the shore, where the fine and jet-black sand made a good
bottom.
Along the base of the vast cliff, which, broken and jagged, rose
gleaming in the light of the great flame till it gradually faded in
the luminous mist, they carried on their primitive cooking.
Over cracks in the stone, whence gas escaped steadily and burned with
a blue flicker, hung copper pots fairly well fashioned, though of
bizarre shapes. Here the communal cuisine went steadily forward,
tended by the strange, white-haired, long-cloaked women; and odors of
boiling and of frying, over hot iron plates, rose and mingled with the
shifting, swirling vapors from the sea.
Beatrice tried, a few times, to take some part in this work. She was
eager to teach the women better methods, but at last the patriarch
told her to let them alone, as she was only irritating them. Unlike
the men, who almost worshipped the revolvers, and would have handled
them, and even quickly learned to shoot, if Stern had allowed, the
women clung sternly to their old ways.
The patriarch had a special cooking place made for Beatrice, and got
her a lot of the clumsy utensils. Here she busied herself preparing
food for Allan and herself--and a strange sight that was, the American
girl, dressed in her long, brown robe, her thick hair full of gold
pins, cooking over natural gas in the Abyss, with heavy copper pans
and kettles of incredible forms!
Almost at once, the old man abandoned the native cookery and grew
devoted to hers. Anything that told him of the other and better times,
the days about which he dreamed continually in his blindness, was very
dear to him.
The Merucaans were, truly, barbarously dull about their ways of
preparing food. Day after day they never varied. The menu was limited
in the extreme. Stern felt astonished that a race could maintain
itself in such fine condition and keep so splendidly energetic, so
keen and warlike, on such a miserable diet. The food must, he thought,
possess nutritive qualities far beyond any expectation.
Fish was the basis of all--a score of strange and unnatural-looking
varieties, not one of which he had ever seen in surface waters. For
the most part, they were gray or white; two or three species showed
some rudiments of coloring. All were blind, with at most some faint
vestigia of eye-structure, wholly degenerated and useless.
"Speaking of evolution," said the engineer, one day, to Beatrice, as
they stood on the black boulder-beach and watched the fishermen toss
their weird freight out upon the slippery stones--"these fish here
give a magnificent example of it. You see, where the use for an organ
ceases, the organ itself eventually perishes. But take these creatures
and put them back into the surface-ocean--"
"The eyes would develop again?" she queried.
"Precisely! And so with everything! Take the Folk themselves, for
instance. Now that they've been living here a thousand or fifteen
hundred years, away from the sunlight, all the protecting pigmentation
that used to shield the human race from the actinic sun rays has
gradually faded out. So they've got white hair, colorless skins, and
pinkish eyes. Out in the world again, they'd gradually grow normal
again. How I wish some of my old-time opponents to the evolutionary
theory could stand here with me to-day in the Abyss! I bet a million I
could mighty soon upset their nonsense!"
Such of the fish as were not eaten in their natural state were salted
down in vats hollowed in the rock, at the far end of the village.
Still others were dried, strung by the gills on long cords of seaweed
fiber, and hung in rows near the great flame. There were certain days
for this process.
At other times no fish were allowed anywhere near the fire. Why this
was, Stern could not discover. Even the patriarch would not tell him.
Beside the fish, several seaweeds were cooked and eaten in the form of
leaves, bulbs, and roots, which some of the Folk dived for or dragged
from the bottom with iron grapples. All the weeds tasted alike to
Stern and Beatrice; but the old man assured them there were really
great differences, and that certain of them were rare delicacies.
A kind of huge, misshapen sea-turtle was the chief prize of all. Three
were taken during the strangers' first fortnight in the Abyss; but the
fortunate boat-crews that brought them in devoured them, refusing to
share even a morsel with any other of the people.
Stern and the girl were warned against tasting any weed, fish, or
mussel on their own initiative. The patriarch told them certain deadly
species existed--species used only in preparing venoms in which to dip
the spear and lance-points of the fighting men.
Beyond these foods the only others were the flesh and eggs of the
highly singular birds the strangers had seen on their first entry into
the village. These tasted rankly of fish, and were at first very
disagreeable. But gradually the newcomers were able to tolerate them
when cooked by Beatrice in as near an approximation to modern methods
as she could manage.
The birds made a peculiar feature of this weird, uncanny life. Long of
leg, wattled and web-footed, with ungainly bodies, sparsely feathered,
and bare necks, they were, Stern thought, absolutely the most hideous
and unreal-appearing creatures he had ever seen. In size they somewhat
resembled an albatross. The folk called them _kalamakee_. They were so
fully domesticated as to make free with all the refuse of the village
and even to waddle into the huts in croaking search of plunder; yet
they nested among the broken rocks along the cliff to northward of the
place.
There they built clumsy structures of weed for their eggs and their
incredibly ugly young. Every day at a certain time they took their
flight out into the fog, with hoarse and mournful cries, and stayed
the equivalent of some three hours.
Their number Stern could only estimate, but it must have mounted well
toward five or six thousand. One of the most singular sights the
newcomers had in the Abyss was the homecoming of the flight, the
feeding of the young--by discharging half-digested fish--and the
subsequent noisy powwow of the waddling multitude. All this, heard and
seen by torch-light, produced a picture weirdly fascinating.
Fish, weeds, sea-fowl--these constituted the sum tote of food sources
for the Folk. There existed neither bread, flesh--meat, milk, fruit,
sweets, or any of the abundant vegetables of the surface. Nor yet was
there any plant which might be dried and smoked, like tobacco, nor any
whence alcohol might be distilled. The folk had neither stimulants nor
narcotics.
Stern blessed fate for this. If any such had existed, he knew human
nature well enough to feel certain that, there in the eternal gloom
and fog, the race would soon have given itself over to excesses and
have miserably perished.
"To my mind," he said to Beatrice, one time, "the survival of our race
under such conditions is one of the most marvelous things possibly to
be conceived." Out toward the black and mist-hidden sea that rolled
forever in the gloom he gestured from the wall where they were
standing.
"Imagine!" he continued. "No sunlight--for centuries! Without that,
nothing containing chlorophyl can grow; and science has always
maintained that human life must depend, at last analysis, on
chlorophyl, on the green plants containing it. No grains, no soil, or
agriculture, no mammals even! Why, the very Eskimo have to depend on
mammals for their life!
"But these people here, and the Lanskaarn, and whatever other unknown
tribes live in this vast Abyss, have to get their entire living from
this tepid sea. They don't even possess wood to work with! If this
doesn't prove the human race all but godlike in its skill and courage
and adaptability, what does?"
She stood a while in thought, plainly much troubled. It was evident
her mind was far from following his analysis. At last she spoke.
"Allan!" she suddenly exclaimed.
"Well?"
"It's still out there somewhere, isn't it? Out there, in those black,
unsounded depths--the biplane?"
"You mean--"
"Why couldn't we raise it again, and--"
"Of course! You know I mean to try as soon as I have these people
under some control so I can get them to cooperate with me--get them to
understand!"
"Not till then? No escape till then? But, Allan, it may be too late!"
she burst out with passionate eagerness.
Puzzled, he turned and peered at her in the bluish gloom.
"Escape?" he queried. "Too late? Why, what do you mean? Escape from
what? You mean that we should leave these people, here, before we've
even begun to teach them? Before we've discovered some way out of the
Abyss for them? Leave everything that means the regeneration of the
human race, the world? Why--"
A touch upon his arm interrupted him.
He turned quickly to find the patriarch standing at his side. Silent
and dim through the fog, he had come thither with sandaled feet, and
now stood with a strange, inscrutable smile on his long-bearded lips.
"What keeps my children here," asked he, "when already it is long past
the sleeping-hour? Verily, this should not be! Come," he commanded.
"Come away! To-morrow will be time for speech."
And, giving them no further opportunity to talk of this new problem,
he spoke of other matters, and so led them back to his hospitable hut
of stone.
But for a long time Allan could not sleep. Weird thoughts and new
suspicions now aroused, he lay and pondered many things.
What if, after all, this seeming friendliness and homage of the savage
Folk were but a mask?
A vision of the boiling geyser-pit rose to his memory. And the dreams
he dreamed that night were filled with strange, confused, disquieting
images.