"LEPRAYLYA!"
Steadily we made our way along and downward. The light-streams
were increasing in volume, the luminosity becoming stronger and
stronger, the vegetation more abundant, the weird shapes larger
and more unearthly than ever. The silence was broken by the drone
of insects--creatures meet inhabitants, forsooth, for a place so
indescribably strange and dreadful.
The cavern we were following was very tortuous, our route even more so,
what with the twists and turns which we had to make in order to get
through that phantasmagoria of fungal things. I do not mean to say that
all of those growths were horrible, but most of them were, and some
were as repulsive to the touch as they were to the sight.
As we toiled our way through them, my heart was replete with dire
apprehension. I could not banish the vision of those great burning
eyes, the horror of those shrieks, which perhaps were still ringing
out. What if we were suddenly to find ourselves face to face with one
of those monsters (or more than one) here in this nightmare-forest?
_Gogrugron! Gogrugron!_ What in the world was that monstrosity known to
the Dromans as a _gogrugron_? Well, most certainly, I was not desirous
of securing firsthand knowledge, upon that interesting item, for the
great science of natural history.
At length the light no longer lay in streams and rifts in the
darkness, but the darkness, instead, lay in streams through the light.
The Dromans quickened their already hurried pace, and there were
exclamations of "Drome! Drome!"
"Drome!" echoed Milton Rhodes. "I wonder what we are going to find."
"Something wonderful," said I, "or something worse, perhaps, than
anything that we have seen."
Rhodes laughed, and I saw Drorathusa (Ondonarkus was leading the way)
turn and send a curious glance in our direction.
"Well," I added, "anything to get out of this horrible forest of fungi
and things."
Some minutes passed, perhaps a half-hour, perhaps only fifteen. Of a
sudden the great tunnel, now as light as a place on a sunless day, gave
a sharp turn to the right; a glad cry broke from the Hypogeans.
"Drome! Drome!" they cried.
We all hurried forward.
"Look!" I said as we reached the turn. "The mouth, the mouth! _The
tunnel ends!_"
There, but two hundred feet or so away, was the great yawning mouth
of it; nothing was visible through that opening, however, but light,
pearly, opalescent, mystic, beautiful.
"Drome!" cried Nandradelphis, clapping her hands.
A few moments, and we were standing at the entrance and gazing out over
the weird and beautiful scene.
"Drome!"
I turned at the sound and saw Drorathusa, her figure and mien ineffably
Sibylline and majestic, pointing out over the strange landscape, her
eyes on the face of Milton Rhodes.
"Drome," she said again.
"Drome," echoed Milton.
"I wonder, Bill, what this Drome really is. And I have an idea that
this is only the outskirts that we see. Can we at last be near our
journey's end, or is that end still far away?"
"Who can tell? This place seems to be a wilderness."
"Yes; a forest primeval."
"What," said I, "are we destined to find down there?"
"Things stranger, Bill, in all likelihood, than any explorer ever found
anywhere in that strange world above us."
"No _gogrugrons_, I hope."
Rhodes laughed.
"_Gogrugron!_" said Drorathusa.
And I saw that horror and fear again in her eyes.
The cavern had come out high up on a broken, jagged wall, which went
beetling up for hundreds of feet, up to the roof, which arched away
over the landscape before us. We were fully half a thousand feet above
the floor, which was a mass of luxuriant forest. Glimpses were caught
of a stream down to the left, possibly the one which we had followed
for so long. I judged the place to be over a mile wide; Rhodes,
however, thought that it was perhaps not quite a mile in the widest
part. Down this enormous cavern, the eye could range for three or four
miles, at which distance the misty light drew its veil over the forest,
the dark walls, and the roof arching across.
At times the light quivered and shook and there were strange
flickerings, and dartings of opalescent streaks through it--streaks
ineffably beautiful and yet, strangely enough, terrible too, terrible
as the blades of plunging swords in hands savage and murderous.
Once more Drorathusa raised a hand, and this time she pointed into the
misty distance.
"_Le-prayl-ya!_" she said.
Again her eyes were on Milton Rhodes, and, as she spoke that name, I
saw in those wondrous orbs of hers one of the strangest looks that I
have ever seen. I wondered if Rhodes too saw it. I found his eyes upon
Drorathusa, but there was in them so abstracted an expression that I
believed his thoughts were far away and that he had not noticed. When I
turned to Drorathusa again, it was to find that that strange look was
gone.
What a fascinating and mysterious creature this woman was!
"Lepraylya," she said again.
"Lepraylya," Milton nodded.
He looked at me.
"I wonder who or what this Lepraylya can be, Bill."
"King maybe."
"Queen, I hope," said Milton Rhodes.
He drew forth his notebook and pencil and handed them to Drorathusa,
pronouncing as she took them that mysterious name:
"Lepraylya?"
A few strokes with the pencil, and Drorathusa had given us the answer.
"You see, Bill?" said Rhodes, smiling. "A woman. In all likelihood,
too, the queen."
Drorathusa's Sibylline look was upon him once more--and _she_ did not
smile.