THE MOVING EYES
I jerked out my revolver; I reached over and gave Rhodes a shake that
would have awakened Epimenides himself; then I grabbed the electric
light and flashed it upon the descending monster.
I could scarcely believe my eyes. Nothing but the empty air. The
monster had vanished.
"What's the matter?" came the sudden voice of Rhodes. "What in Paradise
is going on now?"
I rubbed my eyes and stared upward once more.
"Look there!" said I, pointing. "Tell me, do you see nothing there?"
"There isn't anything there, Bill--_now_."
"But there was something there a second or two ago, and it didn't go
away."
"Ergo it is still there," said Milton. "But, you see, it isn't. What
did you see?"
"I wish I knew. I thought at first that it was a demon, phosphorescent
or something. It was up there. I tell you it was up there. And it was
coming down, coming down straight towards this very spot."
"Great Caesar's spook!" exclaimed Rhodes.
"I can't understand," I told him, "where the thing went. It was there,
and the next instant it wasn't. And yet it didn't go away."
"Turn off your light," Rhodes said quickly. "Turn it off, Bill."
"Great Zeus, what for? You'd better have your revolver ready."
"Revolver fiddlesticks! Off with it, Bill; off with the light!"
The light went off. And look! There it was again, and almost directly
over us. It was not descending now but was hovering, hovering, as
though watching, waiting. Waiting for what? And it seemed, too, to
thrust out arms or tentacula. And look at that! Something started to
drop from it--phosphorescence (I shall call it that) dropping to the
floor, where it writhed and crawled about like a mass of serpents.
Writhed and crawled and grew dimmer and dimmer, faded, faded.
We sat staring at this mysterious, inexplicable phenomenon in
amazement, fascination and horror.
"What in the world can it be?" I asked, my voice a whisper.
"Who," returned Rhodes, "would ever have dreamed of such a thing as
that?"
"I'm afraid," I told him, a shudder passing through me, "that our
revolvers can't hurt a thing like that. It seems to be watching us.
Look! Aren't those eyes--eyes staring at us, moving?"
"Eyes? Watching us? Eyes moving? Oh, Lord, Bill!" said Rhodes.
"Then what is it? It's moving."
"Oh, it's moving. But it hasn't any eyes."
There was a momentary silence.
"As for sending a bullet into it," he added, "don't do anything so
foolish."
He arose, stepped over and awoke Ondonarkus. The monster was still
hovering over the spot. The Droman bestowed upon that ghost but a
cursory, careless look, then yawned sleepily.
"Yam-yump!" said Ondonarkus, stretching himself.
Milton Rhodes laid a hand upon the other's shoulder and pointed an
interrogative finger up in the direction of the phantom. The Droman
gave a careless, airy toss of the hand.
"Drome," said he, then lay down again.
It was obvious from this monosyllabic answer, to say nothing of the
manner of Ondonarkus, that there was absolutely nothing to apprehend
from this mysterious apparition hovering above us. Certainly, though,
there had not been any remarkable clarification. Indeed, in a way,
Rhodes and I were more puzzled than ever. Drome, Drome. What could be
the meaning of that word? Drome.
"It seems, Bill," said Rhodes, "that we are on our way to a very
strange place. As for that ghost up there, it must be a fragment, as it
were, of the _light_ of this subterranean land."
"Suppose it is--a harbinger, so to speak--then what, in the name of
wonder, can that light be?"
"That, of course, we can not tell. It may be phosphorescent or auroral,
or its origin may be one of which no man of our own world ever has even
dreamed. I believe that I forgot to mention, when we were speaking of
this the other day, that even human beings sometimes evolve light.[12]
One thing, however, is certain: there is light somewhere in this
underground world. And I believe, Bill, that we are drawing near to it
now."
[Footnote 12: "A very decided luminosity has been observed to proceed
from dissecting-room subjects, the light thus evolved being sufficient
to render the forms of the parts (which are peculiarly bright), almost
as distinct as in the daylight.... Three cases are recorded by Sir
H. Marsh, in which an evolution of light took place from the living
body.... The light in each case is described as playing around the
face, but not as directly proceeding from the surface; and in one of
these instances, which was recorded by Dr. D. Donovan, not only was the
luminous appearance perceptible over the head of the patient's bed,
but luminous vapours passed in streams through the apartment."--Dr.
Carpenter.]
"I certainly hope that we are. But look at our ghost. It is moving
again--thank Heaven (even if it is only a mass of light) away from us."
"Yes," said Rhodes. "But look down there. There is another one coming."
It came, and another and another. I don't know how many. On they came
through the cavern, now lingering, now hovering; on they passed like
some unearthly, ghostly procession. And, even though one knew that
these phantoms, so dim and so misty, were perfectly innocuous, were
as natural (as though there is anything that can not be natural!) as
the light of the fire-fly, as the glow of the auroral arches and
streamers--all the same, I say, the sight of that spectral company,
passing, passing, was one indescribably strange and uncanny.
However, a man can get used to anything. I got used to them and ere
very long was asleep once more. In the morning, not a single ghost was
to be seen. Nor did we see one until near midafternoon. That ghost
was all by its lonesome and so dim that it vanished when our lights
drew near. But soon they were about us in all directions. One of these
phantoms, large, amorphous, writhing (its light so strong that it was
bright in the rays of the lamps but not of the electric ones) came
crawling along, swaying and shaking, straight toward us. Rhodes and
I, as if by instinct, moved over so as to miss it; but Drorathusa and
the others walked right into it. As they emerged from the spectral,
phosphorescent cloudlet, the light clung to them like wraiths of fog,
to be slowly dissipated as they advanced in little streams and eddies
behind them.
It was during this afternoon, too, that Rhodes made the first discovery
of animal life in this fearsome place--little fish, like those in the
Mammoth Cave, totally blind. But, though they could not see, they
could _feel_ the light. When the rays fell upon the stream, they would
drop to the bottom and seek the concealment of the shadow-places. Poor
little blind things! What an existence! And yet how like them, after
all, are we poor humans! How often have I thought of these sad words of
Dr. Whewell's:
"It is not necessary here to inquire why those faculties which appear
to be bestowed upon us for the discovery of truth, were permitted by
Providence to fail so signally in answering that purpose."
Yes, blind are we, though we have eyes; our souls shrinking from the
light to wander, lost and happy and doubting and fearful, in psychic
caves and labyrinths more terrible even sometimes than this cavern
through which we were making our way--making our way to we knew not
what.
We journeyed on until about seven o'clock, when we reached another
depot, and there we halted for the night. All were much fatigued, but
the Dromans were in high spirits, and ours rose, too. Whether we were
drawing towards the end of our strange journey was not clear; but there
could be no doubt that a great change was imminent.
To the surprise of Rhodes and myself (nothing in the place seemed to
surprise Drorathusa and her companions) not a single light-wraith was
anywhere to be seen. The cavern was as black as the deepest pit in
Erebus.
And it was still the same when we awoke. How I would have welcomed the
appearance of the faintest, loneliest ghost, as we called the small
apparitions of light.
We noticed that Ondonarkus and Zenvothunbro, and the ladies also, were
at some pains to have their bows in such a position that they could
be drawn at an instant's warning. Ondonarkus saw us watching, and,
sweeping a hand toward the darkness before us, he said:
"_Loopmuke._"
That, as we well knew, is the Droman word for ape-bat. Also, he tried
to tell us about something else; but the only thing intelligible to us
in his pantomimic explanation was that it was about a creature even
more formidable than a wild _loopmuke_.
It was with keen anticipation on the part of Rhodes and myself that
we set out that morning. For an hour or so, there was no change. Not
a single light-wraith had shone in the awful blackness. Then, after
passing through a particularly broken and tortuous place, we began to
see them. Not many, however, and all were small and faint. Another hour
passed, and of a sudden the walls drew together, and the roof came
sloping down, down and down until we had to go bended over. Narrower
and narrower grew the way, crowding us at last to the water's edge and
then into the very stream itself.
Drorathusa and Ondonarkus were leading, Rhodes and I bringing up the
rear. Fortunately the current was a gentle one; had it been otherwise,
the place would have been simply impassable.
"I certainly," said Milton at last, "admire the man (maybe he was a
woman) who first came through this awful place."
The next moment he made a rush forward. Nandradelphis, the white-haired
girl, had slipped out into deep water. Rhodes caught her just in time
to save her from immersion and drew her back to the shallow water by
the wall. Not a cry, not the faintest sound had escaped her, and now
she only laughed. Beauty was not the only admirable quality that these
Droman ladies possessed.
For ten minutes or so, we toiled our way down that tunnel, now hugging
the wall, now following the shallows out into the stream and at times
to the other side. Then of a sudden there was an exclamation from
Drorathusa, and the next moment we had issued from the tunnel and the
stream and found ourselves in a great lofty cavern.
"Great Rameses!" I exclaimed as we stepped forth. "Look at those
things."
Rhodes, I found, had already halted and was gazing up at them--two
colossi, one on either side of the mouth of the tunnel. These carven
monsters (we were, of course, standing between their bases) were
seated, and one was a male, the other a female. They had not been
fashioned _in situ_ but clearly had been brought to the spot in
sections. But how had those massive pieces of rock, the smallest of
which weighed tons, been raised into their places? Who can tell? It
remains, and probably always will remain, one of the mysteries of that
lost and mysterious land.
We were getting rather used to strange things now; but, so remarkable
were these great statues, for some minutes we lingered there before
them.
The Dromans had moved on. We followed, to find ourselves in a few
moments before a monstrous carven human head. There was the great
pedestal, and there, lying face upward before it, was the great head,
that and nothing more.
"Poor fellow," said I as we walked around the caput, "where is the rest
of him? And why did they leave the head lying here like this?"
"I have an idea," Milton returned, "that there was no rest of him, that
this head was all that was to be placed upon that pedestal."
I suppose that Rhodes was right. One wonders what happened there so
long ago, why the great caput was never raised to the place which
they had prepared for it. No man can tell that now. All we know is
that there the great head lies, that there it has lain for, in all
probability, untold thousands of years.
At last Milton Rhodes climbed up and stood upon the chin, in order,
as he said, "to get a good view of the poor gink's phiz." And not
only that, but he stood upon the poor fellow's nose; yes, he balanced
himself on one foot on the very tip of it.
I turned my look to the Dromans with some apprehension, for I did
not know what superstitious ideas they might entertain, feared that
to them this acrobatic stunt of Rhodes might be sacrilege itself. My
misgivings, however, were groundless. The Dromans were delighted. They
burst into merry laughter; they applauded vociferously. Even Drorathusa
laughed outright.
Little wonder, forsooth, for a pretty figure Milton Rhodes made
balanced up there on the poor gink's olfactory protuberance. A fine
posture truly for one of the world's (I mean, of course, our world's)
great scientists; and I could not help wondering what certain dignified
old fellows (Milton called them fossils) would have thought could they,
by television or some miracle, have seen him there. And what would the
Dromans themselves think? Well, I was glad when he came down and there
was an end to that foolishness.
And I put in a prompt remonstrance.
"We," I told him, "have--or, at any rate, we _ought_ to have--a certain
dignity to uphold. For we are the representatives, as it were, of that
great sunlit world above, the world of Archimedes, Kepler, Galileo,
Newton, Humboldt, Darwin, Edison--not a world of Judys and Punches."
"Aw, Bill," was the answer that I got, "now quit your kidding."
I ask you this again: what can you do with a man like that?
We soon quitted the spot. The light-cloudlets were all about us
now. Some came slowly gliding, some crawling, along the floor; some
along the walls and the roofs. Others floated along overhead or hung
motionless in the air. The changes of form were sometimes very rapid
and certainly as unaccountable as the masses themselves. Occasionally
we would see a mass slowly take form in the darkness and as slowly
fade into darkness again. Where did the light come from, where did it
go? And the explanation of this uncanny phenomenon? Undoubtedly some
electric manifestation, said Rhodes, analogous perhaps to the light
of the aurora. That, I objected, really explained nothing, and Rhodes
admitted that that was just what it did explain--nothing.
Which reminds me of the beautiful eclaircissement which Professor
Archimedes Bukink gave when the little girl to whom he was reading a
fairystory asked:
"But what is that flamingo thing?"
"_Phoenicopterus ruber_," said Bukink!
The spirits of the Dromans rose higher as we toiled our way onward
and down. They quickened their pace, and, as we swung along like
soldiers marching, they suddenly broke into a song or rather chant, the
wonderful contralto voice of Drorathusa leading, the sounds coming back
from the dark secret places of the cavern in echoes strange and sweet
as voices heard in fairyland.
The light-masses were steadily increasing in number and volume.
Especially was this pronounced in the great chambers. Fungoid growths
were seen, coleopterous insects and at last a huge scolopendra of
an aspect indescribably horrible. From this repulsive creature, the
Dromans and myself drew back, but Milton Rhodes bent over it in a true
scientific scrutiny and ecstasy.
"Look, Bill, look!" he cried suddenly pointing, "Look at that. The body
has thirty-five somites or segments."
"Thirty-five segments?" I queried, scratching my head and wishing that
the scolopendra was in Jericho. "What is there so wonderful about that?"
"Why," said he, "in the Scolopendridae of our own world, the segments
of the body never exceed twenty-one. And this one has thirty-five.
Really, Bill, I must keep so remarkable and splendid a specimen."
"Great Gorgons and Hydras! Keep it? Don't touch the horrible thing. It
may be venomous, deadly as a rattlesnake. And, besides, you'll have
plenty of time to collect specimens, and probably some of them will
make this one look like the last rose of summer. Leave the hideous
thing alone. Why, the Dromans will think that you are dippy. Fact is, I
believe that they are beginning to think so already."
"Let 'em!" said Rhodes with true philosophic indifference. "People
thought that Galileo was crazy, and Newton and Darwin; Columbus was
_non compos mentis_,[13] Fulton was dippy, and Edison was looney. Yes,
at one time the great inventor bore the beautiful sobriquet of Looney
Edison. Listen to me, Billy, me lad: the greatest compliment that a
scientist can ever receive is to be called a sap by sapheads."
[Footnote 13: "The very children, it is said, pointed to their
foreheads as he passed, being taught to regard him as a kind of
madman."--Irving.]
All that, I admitted, was very true and truly cogent in its place;
but this was not its place, and the Dromans certainly were neither
sapheads nor saps. To my relief, and, indeed to my surprise, I
dissuaded him from taking the thing as a specimen, and on we went once
more.
At length we left the stream, which went plunging into a most fearsome
place, into which no man could even dream of following it. Soon after
that, the descent became very steep. The going, however, was good, and
we went down at a rapid rate. This lasted for two or three hours, and
we had descended many hundreds of feet. The slope then suddenly became
gentle, and we were making our way through a perfect maze of tortuous
galleries and passages, which at times opened out into halls and
chambers.
The light was no longer in masses but in streams--streams that crawled
and shivered and shook, as though in it spirit-things were immersed and
were struggling to break from it. The fungal growths were everywhere
now. There were mushrooms with pilei bigger than umbrellas. Shapes as
grotesque as if seen through the eyes of madness. There were growths,
too, that one could almost think beautiful, and masses hideous and
slimy as so many octopi. A strong and most unpleasant odor filled the
place. And here and there, almost everywhere in the strange fungoid
growth, were things creeping, crawling--things for which I can find no
name, and for some of them I am glad that I can not.
It was a weird scene, an indescribable scene, one horrible, mysterious
and yet strangely wonderful too. A place gloomy and weird as any ever
conceived by Dante or Doré. And through it human forms were moving, and
its stillness was broken by human voices raised in song; and, moving
with those human beings, those inhabitants of a world as alien as that
of Venus or of Mars, were Rhodes and I, we two modern men from the
great modern world above--the wonderful, the awful world of the sun.
Of a sudden an exclamation rang out--an exclamation that stilled the
song on the instant, brought the party to an abrupt halt and the bow of
Ondonarkus and that of Zenvothunbro from the cases.
The exclamation had broken from Rhodes; he was pointing into the gloom
off to our right, a tense, expectant look on his face.
I peered with straining eyes, but I could see nothing there. A few
moments passed, and still nothing was seen. I then turned to Rhodes
to ask him what it was; but the words I was about to speak were never
uttered. Instead, I gave something like a cry and whirled round. For a
sound had come from out the fungoid growth and the darkness behind us,
a sound as if of a slimy thing moving, slipping.
Nothing, however, was to be seen there, and silence, utter silence, had
fallen upon the spot--silence abruptly broken by another exclamation
from Milton Rhodes.
"Great Heaven!" I cried as I whirled back to the direction in which he
was pointing. "They are all around us!"
"Look, Bill--_look at that_!"
I saw nothing for a second or two. And then, off in the darkness beyond
the reach of our lights, the darkness itself was moving--yes, the very
darkness itself.
"See that, Bill?"
I saw it. And the next instant I saw two great eyes, eyes that were
watching us. And those eyes were moving.