“In that case, we won’t discuss the man or his doings. We have a theory
that it is ungenerous to speak evil of the dead, who can’t hear, and
who don’t care. If the same sentiment were extended to the living, who
can hear, and who generally do care, there would be less work for my
profession.”
However, MacCaskill spoke differently.
“He ain’t dead, Rupe. Folks like him never do die. Anyhow, when you
make dead sure such a one’s snuffed out, he always comes up again. If
Redpath had got to work, and run off into clean bush, maybe he’d have
fell some place, and bruke a leg, and starved, just ’cause no one would
have ever looked for it. It don’t look possible for him to escape outer
that mud before he chokes, and that’s just the reason why I look for
him to turn up again. Now, where’s that little skunk of an Olaffson?”
“Gone to find Redpath,” I said; but MacCaskill laughed.
“He don’t give a darn about Redpath. He’s gone inland, in the direction
we oughter be a-going now.”
“He doesn’t know the way.”
“Redpath told him, likely. If he ain’t, Olaffson will smell it out for
himself. Say! You and me must get a move to-night, and slip away quiet
when the boys are asleep.”
We had supper at the usual hour of six, and afterwards gathered round
the fire, to smoke and talk before sleep.
Inspector Hanafin warned us to prepare for a local thunderstorm, with
other electric manifestations in the hollow; but Sandy, who held
himself weather-wise, asserted that the “night” would be clear. Said
the inspector:
“You forget that this hollow is apparently directly influenced by the
magnetic North Pole. The magnetic change occurs once every twenty-four
hours, as a result of the free electric currents in the atmosphere
above, and so, directly the aurora rises, we shall have some kind of an
electric display. Wait until the sun pretends to set.”
The sun left us about one hour before midnight, and straightway the
trouble began. There was, of course, no darkness, yet the ghastly
effulgence down the hollow could not have been mistaken for honest
light; the atmosphere became frequently flooded by a curious radiance,
grading from the palest to the darkest shade of blue, sometimes
cross-hatched by shadows, which I could not help thinking had no
natural right to be present. The bush behind our camp was “naked,” that
is to say, the foliage was all overhead; there was no undergrowth;
the bare slim boles supporting the fungus-like masses made the bluff
resemble a cave filled with stalactites; a lambent light quivered and
played away into the distance, running softly about this nakedness,
changing its direction, intensity, and tint many times in a minute,
while a series of diminutive explosions cracked here and there above.
The vines spread along the open side, and the long runners now appeared
to be rising and falling, like the surface of the lake when ruffled by
wind. A vibration passed periodically through the ground. When I stood
up I could sometimes see the arc-globes, whenever they jumped higher
than usual, in their mad, irresponsible dance over the pools.
The men were as frightened as they could be, and one of Hanafin’s
troopers expressed his opinion that the mouth of the pit lay in the
immediate neighbourhood. What he meant I could not tell; but Akshelah
assured us that the Evil Spirit always chose such a spot to disport
himself in with his associates. We should be safe, she said, so long
as we kept away from the water, and if we sought shelter upon rock,
directly we saw any unnatural shape. There were rocks hard by.
These rocks were of pure silica, and as it had been observed that
the factor and myself carried mining implements, Lennie linked the
circumstances, and questioned my partner. MacCaskill confessed that
he had tired of an unremunerative employment, and decided to make a
prospecting trip, “the boy spoilin’ to get away after the ole man
hopped.” He would not own that we knew anything, but while he talked
I made the discovery that Leblanc and Morrison had broken themselves
from the circle, and were listening as closely as they dared. I caught
also the inspector’s keen eyes fixed upon me, and I had the sense to
know that the clever Englishman was forming his own deductions from my
partner’s speech and my manner. But he asked no question.
“I always wonderful well wanted to look for the dirt,” admitted Lennie;
“but minin’ luck’s too queer, an’ a man gen’rally quits poorer than
he started. I used to read that Garden of Eden mines chapter outer me
Bible when I was a younker--read it hundreds of times, I guess I did.
Used to make me mouth run to read all about the gold and the diamonds
a-lying around Eden; an’ I guess Adam just loafed around sorter
careless, an’ let all the stuff lie.”
“Bet you Eve didn’t,” said the factor, having his own ideas concerning
women. “She’d pick up a chunk o’ yaller, and set it against her arm,
and hello to Adam, ‘Say! how’s that?’--”
He was knocked off by a mighty explosion. The air became dense and very
hot, and permeated by a sour odour, while an intense blue light glared
strongly out of the bluff, and made every face ghastly. Our camp fire
blazed up as though a blast of wind acted under it. For a minute all
was shouting and confusion.
“I’d just as soon be on the _Carillon_,” said Lennie. “I’m out of this.”
The cold-blooded inspector laughed. The light thrilled again, a darker
blue. Hardly had it gone when Pete, whom we considered stupid after his
late ill-treatment, wiped his mouth and exclaimed:
“Captain, there’s a ter’ble nasty sorter black beast on yon tree
a-watchin’ of us.”
We looked, in the spirit of unbelief, and I suppose we all saw a
dark object, something a little thicker and blacker than the shadows
surrounding it, slide noiselessly down the smooth tree. I know we
rushed at once for the rocks, and I confess that I was one of the first
to reach the shelter which Akshelah believed to be infallible. It says
a good deal for our credulity when I say that in less than a minute we
were all clambering over the quartz, the men who could not obtain a
first footing literally blubbering with fear, all except Hanafin, who
never shifted a muscle, and his troopers, who were forbidden by their
discipline to leave the officer. The shapeless black object lay at the
bottom of the tree like a heap of mud.
“Say!” muttered one of the men; “think it’s _him_?”
“Course it is, you fool,” answered the chorus.
Hanafin got up, the lights flickering around him, and a warning cry
was issued by the choir upon the rocks. The figure stirred, and hopped
queerly over the ground, stopping by the fire, and there warmed itself.
Hanafin held out a biscuit; the creature grabbed furiously, and
finished it with gulps like a dog.
The inspector spoke, but received no reply.
“I saw it a-settin’ up above quite a time,” said Pete unhappily. “It
was a-settin’ lonesome, a-lickin’ its paws an’ watchin’. ’Tis one o’
they pesky things what looks for men sleepin’ out, an’ sucks ’em dry.”
It was not easy to tell the creature’s exact size, because it remained
bent, and its face and body were thickly covered with hair. When
Hanafin called again the creature yapped, and put out a hand for more
food. The inspector complied with the demand, then turned to us with
the grave assurance that the visitor had once been a fellow-man.
“Lost, gone crazy, and become a beast,” he said.
Nobody believed him, and Akshelah scoffed openly when asked if she knew
what he was.
At that time, while surrounded by all the strange sights of that weird
hollow, I was convinced with the others that the supernatural was
enjoying full sway, and that what then occurred to us was entirely
due to the mysterious appearance of the hairy, speechless being. A
description may sound grotesque, but to me at the time it was more a
thing to shudder at than laugh over.
A thunderstorm had been in operation for some time, the lightning
being apparently flung just over the trees out of the low clouds which
separated the hollow from the outer country. The thunder took the
form of constant explosions, entirely different from the customary
long-drawn-out rumbles and echoes. In addition to this intensely local
storm, erratic sheets of light constantly flooded the bush, and the
peculiar sour odour never failed to follow.
An unusually brilliant blue current thrilled, just as Hanafin walked
round the fire to interview the monkey-like monster. Instantly the
inspector vanished, and with him the entire camp. The fire, the
bluff, the ground, everything was wiped out, even the rock we stood
on; we might have been suspended on the edge of a precipice, peering
hopelessly into a thick sea fog; the world seemed to have floated away
from us, leaving us standing erect in space.
Whether the other men had any sensation beyond fright, I cannot say;
but for my own part I felt mightily exhilarated, and with the elation
of the sudden strength that thrilled into my body, as scores of minute
blue sparks broke from our persons, I had a mad desire to relieve my
energies by snatching up each one of my companions--Akshelah, who held
to me, excepted--and hurling them one by one into the apparent abyss.
What would have happened had I attempted to do so is again impossible
to say, because the gulf which had been so remarkably fixed about us,
which entirely divided us from the planet our world, which blinded and
deafened us, and made us helpless castaways upon the invisible rock,
was purely magnetic. Backward we could move, but not an inch forward.
There did not appear to be any particular resistance; it was not
at all like trying to force a solid body; we were simply unable to
move. The magnetic barrier was non-conducting; sound would not travel
through it any more than eyesight. For all the assistance we could
have rendered Inspector Hanafin, and for all our knowledge of what was
happening on the other side of the current, we might have been placed
respectively at the opposite poles of the earth.
The resisting fluid swept away with all the suddenness of its coming;
and at the withdrawal of the magnetic force, the men scurried away from
the rocks like so many jack-rabbits worried by a dog.
MacCaskill whispered to me hurriedly, and as we both preferred to face
the chance of fever on the shore, rather than the unknown powers of
natural forces, we made straight for our tools and packs, caught them
up and ran, Akshelah leading our flight, away up the slope from the
lights and explosions of the hollow, through the vines that caught at
our legs and arms, and thrilled us like so many electric wires; past
the pools that were black no longer, but living and dazzling, and where
the gleaming balls were leaping excitedly; through the poison-grass,
quivering and stiff in the electric air, and emitting bright sparks
when touched by our hurrying legs; over the sand-dunes, and so out
under the aurora, where the wind moaned out of the lake, and brought
the foul odour of malaria through the “night.”
We looked down from the summit of the sand-hills, and, as in the early
morning, the hollow was concealed by its roof of cloud, which spread
beneath our feet like a smoky floor. We could make a good guess as to
what was taking place in the depths by the manner in which the clouds
were continually bathed in blue light, by the distant, but faintly
audible, explosions, and the sour odour arising, until we turned to
face the far more noisome miasma ascending from the beach of the great
Lake Peace.