"THAT'S WHERE THEY ARE WAITING FOR US!"
For some moments those yellow eyes gleamed at us, then vanished. The
lids of that waiting monster (so to speak) had closed over them.
I had watched them very intently, and I was sure that there had been no
movement of the eyes themselves. Milton, however, was just as sure that
they had moved.
"To the right or to the left?" I queried.
"Neither. Down," said Rhodes.
"Then it must have been straight down."
"It was. Down behind a rock-mass or something."
We waited, watching closely, but those yellow eyes did not gleam again
through that Stygian gloom.
"Must have been at quite a distance," I remarked at last.
"It seems so, Bill; and that means that this cavern is very straight
for a mile or more or that it is one of enormous size."
"It may be both."
"It may be, of course," he nodded. "And it may be that those lights
were not so far away as they appeared to us to be. One may easily be
deceived in such matters."
"We don't know what this means," I said; "but we know this: we're
spotted."
"Oh, we're seen, all right, Bill. Our every movement will be watched."
Some minutes passed, during which we stood peering down the cavern and
waiting; but no light gleamed forth again.
Then we started back.
"We'd better keep a sharp lookout," I said suddenly. "Remember, a demon
doesn't have to come along the ledge to get at us."
"I have not forgotten that, Bill; but we are armed."
As I believe was made sufficiently obvious, the crossing of those
places where the ledge narrowed to the width of but a yard or so had
been no pleasant matter; but, during this the return, the thing assumed
(in my imagination, at any rate) an aspect truly sinister. That we were
being watched both of us regarded as certain. That we might at any
moment find a demon or a dozen demons driving at us--well, that was a
possibility which never left our thoughts for one single second. And,
in those narrow places, where the ledge contracted to a mere ribbon of
rock, it was all that one wanted to do to hug the wall and make sure
of his footing. A frightful place truly in which to meet, even with a
revolver, the attack of but one of those winged monsters; and we might
find ourselves attacked by a dozen.
It can easily be imagined, then, the relief which I felt when we had
passed the last narrow spot, though, forsooth, we might be going
towards something far more dangerous than anything that we had left
behind us. But the angel had gone down, and where a woman could go,
there, I told myself in masculine pride, could we also.
"That is," I subjoined, "supposing that we do not meet ape-bats or
something more terrible."
At length we stood once more at the mouth of the gallery. And scarcely
had we stopped there when an unpleasant thing flashed into my
thoughts--which, as it was, resembled anything but the rainbow.
"Great Heavens!" I cried, peering into the tunnel, which, at the
distance of only thirty feet or so, gave a sudden turn to the right.
Something could be in there, very close to us and yet unseen.
"What is it, Bill?"
"Could those lights that we saw have been _here_? Are they waiting in
there to dog our steps or to do something worse?"
Rhodes, peering into the gallery with a curious, half-vacuous
expression on his face, made no reply.
"Well," I queried, "what do you think of it? We could not tell where
those lights were, how far away--anything."
"I don't think that they were here," Milton Rhodes returned. "I think
that they were much farther down and _on the other side_."
"On the other side? How on earth could any one cross that chasm?"
"We don't know what it is like down there. And, of course, I don't
_know_ that the lights were on the other side. But I believe that they
were."
A silence ensued, which at length I broke:
"What is the next thing on the programme?"
"Make our way down the ledge. That is the only way there is for us to
go. But first we'll try a little finesse."
He took a position in the mouth of the tunnel, one that permitted him
to look down the great cavern. He signed to me to follow suit, and,
when I stood at his side, he said:
"Off go the lights."
Off they went, and the blackness was upon us. So terrible was it and
so strange and fearful that place in which we stood, I actually found
myself wondering if it would not all prove to be a dream.
"Why," I asked at last, "did we do this?"
"To see if those lights that we saw will show again. Those Dromans may
think that we have lost heart and started back."
I saw it all now: instead of our advancing to those mysterious beings
somewhere down the cavern, he would bring them to us.
But they did not come. They did not show even the faintest gleam. We
waited there for many minutes, but nothing whatever was seen.
"Hum," said Rhodes at last, snapping on his light. "It didn't work.
Wary folk, Bill, these Hypogeans."
"And so," I replied, "we'll have to go to them."
"That's what we shall have to do."
"And," I added, "by doing so, walk maybe right into a trap."
"It is possible, certainly," Rhodes admitted. "But, as the brave Pliny
said, _Fortes Fortuna iuvat_."
"I don't remember much of my Latin," I told him; "but I remember what
happened to Pliny. And I remember enough to know that _Fortuna caeca
est_."
"So's Love," returned Rhodes. "And he's pretty clever, too, the little
chap is, when it comes to setting traps. But men and women, for all
that, still keep going to meet him.
"But in this business now before us," he went on, "it is possible that
the trap may not prove so terrible, possible, indeed, that there is no
trap at all. Be that as it may, I tell you, old _tillicum_, I certainly
would like to see that angel again."
"Then let's go see her."
"That's just what we'll do."
And so we started.
A strange, indefinable dread had its grip upon me, and yet I was
anxious to go, to put the thing to an issue. In all probability, we
should not have far to travel. Nor, in fact, did we.
The way was much like the one that we had traversed in the opposite
direction. One or two spots were even more dangerous than any we had
found up there. And, over those narrow, dangerous places, where a
false step or a slip of the foot on the smooth rock would have meant a
most horrible death--along this airy, dizzy Stygian way, the angel had
passed. Well, she was a brave angel, at any rate.
We were descending all the while, sometimes at an angle that I was
glad was no steeper. This does not mean, however, that our distance
from the bottom of that black chasm, on our right, was decreasing. The
sounds that came up from the unknown depths of it told plainly that the
descent of the stream was as pronounced as that of the ledge we were
following, and perhaps more so.
"And here's something that I don't understand," was my remark as we
stopped in a particularly broken spot: "to say nothing of our being
below sea-level, here this stream has been pouring down for untold
centuries, for how many thousands of years no man can even guess, and
yet the place isn't full. Where does all the water go?"
"Think," was Milton's answer, "of all the rivers that, for how many
_millions_ of years no man can tell, have been running into the sea,
and yet the sea is not overflowing."
"I don't see the application of that to this underground world, don't
see how all the water--there must be more streams than this one--can
possibly return as vapor to the region above."
"I admit," Rhodes said, "that the problem is a formidable one and that,
with our present paucity of data, we can not hope to solve it. Still I
think that my suggestion is sound."
"But where are the openings to permit the escape of so enormous, for
enormous it must be, amount of water-vapor?"
"There may be countless vents, fissures, Bill, ways of egress that man
will never know. Whatever the explanation, there can be no doubt that
the water is going down and that this subterranean world into which we
have found our way is not full."
"But where does it go? Down to some sunless sea perhaps, though, if
that hypothesis of yours is a sound one, bathed in light, a light never
seen, in that world we have left, on land or sea."
Rhodes was silent for a moment, leaning on his alpenstock. Then:
"It is strange truly, the descent of the waters. And yet it would not,
I believe, have been to you so very strange a thing had you known that
the sea itself flows into the earth."
"The sea itself?"
Rhodes nodded.
"Surely, Milton--why, the thing sounds like something from Jules Verne
or from Lucian's _Icaromenippus_."
"On the contrary," he told me, "it is not a bit out of romance either
modern or ancient, but it is a fact that has long been known. At
Argostoli in the Island of Cephalonia, the sea flows right into the
limestone rock."[7]
[Footnote 7: "The cases are certainly not numerous where marine
currents are known to pour continuously into cavities beneath the
surface of the earth, but there is at least one well-authenticated
instance of this sort--that of the mill streams at Argostoli in the
island of Cephalonia. It has been long observed that the sea water
flowed into several rifts and cavities in the limestone rocks of the
coast, but the phenomenon has excited little attention until very
recently. In 1833, three of the entrances were closed, and a regular
channel, sixteen feet long and three feet wide, with a fall of three
feet, was cut into the mouth of a larger cavity. The sea water flowed
into this canal, and could be followed eighteen or twenty feet beyond
its inner terminus, when it disappeared in holes and clefts in the
rock."--George P. Marsh: _Man and Nature_.]
"Shades of Lemuel Gulliver, but this old ball that men call the earth
is certainly, after all, a strange old sphere!"
"How strange," said Milton Rhodes, "no scientist has ever dreamed,
though your scientist has thought of things far stranger than any that
were ever conceived by your wildest romancer, who, after all, Bill, is
a pretty tame homo."
"I have an idea," I answered, glancing down the cavern, "that we are
going to find the homos here in this place anything but tame."
Milton laughed, and then suddenly, without any other answer, he turned
and resumed the descent.
For one thing I was profoundly thankful: the wall ran along without
any pronounced cavities or projections in it, so that we had little
to apprehend from a sudden attack on this our giddy way--except, of
course, an attack by a demon. Had the wall been a broken one, any
instant might have found us face to face with a band of Hypogeans, as
Rhodes called the denizens of this subterranean place.
But how long would the wall remain like that? And, after all, did
it really greatly matter? Meeting, sooner or later--and, in all
likelihood, very sooner--was inevitable. 'Tis true, I could not
conceive of a worse place than this, supposing the meeting to be, in
any measure, an unfriendly one. And, from what had happened up there
at the Tamahnowis Rocks, I could not suppose that it would be anything
else.
This, however, was to prove simply another instance of how inadequate
the imagination, when confronted with the reality, is sometimes found
to be, for even now we were drawing near a place more terrible even
than this--and that the place where we met!
It required but little imagination, though, to make us aware, and
painfully so, of the extreme probability (regarded by ourselves as a
certitude) that eyes were watching our every movement. But where were
those eyes? And what were the watchers? To what fearful thing--or could
it be wonderful--were we drawing near at every single moment now?
Some minutes passed, perhaps fifteen, perhaps less, perhaps more; I
can not say how long it was. Of a sudden, however, Rhodes, who was
still leading the way, stopped. Of course, I stopped, too. No sound
had escaped him, and he stood there like a statue, peering intently
straight ahead.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Look there, Bill," he said in a low voice, pointing with his
alpenstock, "and tell me what you see."
I was already looking, and already I had seen it.
But what in the world was that thing which I saw?
I remained silent, gazing with straining eyes and wondering if I really
saw what I thought that I did.
"What," Rhodes asked, "do you make of it?"
"The thing is so faint. 'Tis impossible, and yet, if it were not
impossible it can be that, I would say that it is an arch--part of a
bridge."
"Just what I thought myself, Bill. The thing is so strange, though, so
very strange, that I didn't know whether to believe my eyes or not."
"And so dim," I observed, "that it may be nothing of the kind. A
bridge? Now, who, in the name of wonder, would build a bridge across
this frightful chasm? And why? And how?"
"_Quién sabe_, Bill?" said Milton Rhodes.
The next moment we were moving towards it.
"Look!" ejaculated Rhodes suddenly. "Look at that! It goes clear
across!"
"Yes," I said, stopping and gazing at that strange dim mass; "it goes
clear across.
"And," I added, "that's the place, over there on the other side--that's
where they are waiting for us!"