The next evening at an early hour Arthur was seated in the least
conspicuous corner of my room, a spot which he seemed to have selected
as his own; and, as usual, Doctor Bainbridge entered promptly at eight
o'clock. After the customary minute or two of thoughtful quiet, and a
glance at the map of Hili-li, which each evening I kept spread on my
table in the centre of the room, Bainbridge continued his recital:
"Last evening brought us to the moment when the rescue party, having
entered Volcano Bay, were about to land at the foot of the great
mountain, called Olympus--the Hili-li synonym for Mount preceding the
name Olympus when the peak, some eight miles high, was referred to. Now
if you will examine this map with a little care you will observe here,
near the inner extremity of Volcano Bay, an apparently narrow inlet
passing directly into the mountain-side. This does not represent an
inlet from the bay, but an outlet from Crater Lake, a very deep lake,
the surface of which is several thousand feet below its banks, the lake
being on the top of the mountain, just south of Mt. Olympus, and
emptying into Volcano Bay. This outlet is a small stream at the bottom
of a chasm which cannot correctly be represented on my map, as it is
relatively very narrow, being only from ten to one hundred feet in
width. This chasm is what we here term a canyon, or _cañon_, the walls
of which in this instance rise perpendicularly from the water to the
average height of ten thousand feet. The paths up the mountain are on
the sides of this outlet--not close to the water, but winding in and out
along the mountain-side above, there being a passable way on each side
of the canyon from the bay to the lake, the distance from bay to lake
along either path being, in its tortuous course, about thirteen miles.
At Crater Lake the mountain rises to a height of about six miles, the
surface of the lake being about four miles above the sea level, its
banks some ten thousand feet in height. A perfectly straight line down
the mountain-side would measure about eight or nine miles.
"As the canyon leaves the bay, its walls are about a hundred feet high,
and are separated by about the same distance; but as the mountain is
ascended, the walls rapidly rise, and soon become far above the water
between, and they gradually approach each other. At certain points the
walls actually overhang the stream below, and almost meet, at one spot
approximating to within ten feet of each other. Three miles from the bay
the walls are twenty feet apart, and for the remaining five miles they
do not at any place approach closer, but on the other hand very
gradually separate to about sixty feet at the extreme top. At five miles
from the bay the walls are fully ten thousand feet in altitude, and are
nowhere less in height from that point to the edge of Crater Lake.
"Our party started up the mountain on one side of this canyon, or giant
chasm, Diregus appearing in some way to know that this was the proper
course to pursue. When they were some three miles on their way, a young
man was seen approaching, but on the opposite side of the chasm. He was
a young fellow of prepossessing appearance, dressed in plain, coarse
loathing, and having the elastic movement and grace of the better
classes. Peters observed, when only the width of the chasm separated the
two, that the young Hili-lite had a laughing eye, full of latent
mischief, but also of intelligence.
"He was known to Diregus, and the two began a conversation. He was one
of the exiles, by name Medosus. Diregus soon ascertained that the exiles
had long known Ahpilus to be insane; that, three days before, his
condition had become much aggravated, and that on the preceding day he
had suffered from an attack of raving mania which lasted several hours.
Medosus did not know of the abduction of Lilama, but he had three hours
earlier seen Ahpilus a mile or two from Crater Lake.
"When the party heard this, they were anxious to proceed, but Medosus in
turn had a few questions to ask, and in common courtesy Diregus was
compelled to wait and reply to the poor exile's interrogatories.
"Whilst the two conversed, Medosus took from his pocket some dry, brown,
crumpled leaves, and put a wad of them into his mouth, much as would an
American planter who raises tobacco and chews the unprepared leaf. Now
Peters was a lover of tobacco, and the sight of this action, so
suggestive of his loved weed, excited him greatly, as he had not so much
as seen a scrap of tobacco for months. When it developed that it was
tobacco that Medosus had placed in his mouth, and that in some of the
valleys between these mountains a species of wild tobacco grew, Peters
was determined to have some of it, the craving of months seeming so near
to gratification; and he asked Medosus to give him a little of it, to
last until he could procure a fuller supply. Medosus was perfectly
willing to grant this request; but on rolling up a wad and attempting to
throw it across the chasm, it fell into the abyss and fluttered downward
to the water nearly two miles below. He was about to make a second
effort, when Peters stopped him, and then a pretty, though a really
terrible thing happened--to relate which was the real purpose of this
digression from my story proper.
"Peters was at the moment standing some fifteen feet from the edge of
the chasm, the chasm being at this point about twenty feet in
width--twenty feet in width, and even here, where it was two thousand
feet less in depth than it was a mile higher up, at least eight thousand
feet in descent--sheer to the raging torrent and the huge, jagged
lava-bowlders below. It was all done so quickly that none of the party
had time to become alarmed. Peters, whose arms when he hung them reached
to within four inches of his feet, stooped just enough to bring his
hands to the ground. Then, as a lame man using crutches might swing
himself along, but with lightning-like swiftness, Peters took two rapid
jumps toward the edge of the chasm, the second jump landing him directly
on its edge. Then he shot up and out into the air over that awful abyss,
and landed on the opposite side as gently as a cat lands from a six-foot
leap; and it did not seem to require of him an unusual effort. He
received his tobacco, and turned to make the leap back.
"When Peters mentioned to me the circumstance of this leap, it was only
because he had at the time it was made been so interested in the
incident of getting the tobacco, that he never forgot the occurrence; in
fact, it seems to have impressed his mind and memory almost as deeply as
did the old man with the 'snow-drift beard and the eyes of a god.'
"I attempted to get out of Peters just how he made the leap--whether
with the legs, or the arms, or both as an impelling force; but it was no
use. I believe that he does not himself know--he did it by an animal
instinct, and that is all there is to be said. The old fellow does not
really know his age, but I should place it, at the present time, at from
seventy-eight to eighty years, which, if correct, would indicate that he
was twenty-eight or thirty at the time he was in Hili-li. He must have
been as strong generally as three average men, and in the arms as strong
as five or six such men. You remember telling me yourself how he twisted
that iron poker, and broke the oak pole; and that was the act of an
invalid nearly eighty years of age. Oh, he must have been a Samson at
twenty-eight, and as agile as a tiger. What I could draw out of him
concerning the leap, reminded me of descriptions I have read of the
_Simiidae_--particularly of the Borneo orang-outang.
"But to return: The party separated from Medosus, who, when about two
hundred feet away, shouted back, 'You'd better stay with us, Diregus. We
do not here have to hide away when we play--or at--' (mentioning the
names of two very rough games prohibited by law on all the islands of
the Hili-li Kingdom--games corresponding to our foot-ball and our
wrestling). The party continued up the mountain-side, resting as they
felt the need of rest. No preparation for the darkness of night was
necessary; for here the crater-light was very bright--in some unshaded
spots it was even painfully brilliant.
"After several hours of laborious ascent, the small party of four
(Diregus had taken with them only one of the boatmen) came within plain
sight of the rim of Crater Lake, half a mile ahead of them, and almost
perpendicularly above, though nearly two miles away measured along the
shortest route that travellers might pursue. It was not at the time
known, and therefore never will be known, whether or not Lilama had
caught a glimpse of her approaching friends; but at that moment a
piercing scream rang through the air from above. Peters thinks that
Lilama saw some of the party, because the quality of the scream was not
such as to convey an impression that she was in instant danger. The
signal, if signal it was, was not repeated, nor did the party wait for a
repetition. They all hurried onward with renewed vigor; and, in a short
time, considering the severity of the ascent, had reached a point near
which they supposed the scream must have been uttered.
"The party had scattered, and were searching among the mammoth
lava-bowlders, and in the small side valleys and fissures; Peters,
however, as he then always instinctively did, keeping by the side of
Pym. The two had separated to quite a distance from the others, when,
being then quite close to the edge of the great chasm, they heard a deep
though penetrating voice say the one word (of course in the Hili-li
language), 'Well?'
"Looking in the direction from which the voice came, they saw on the
opposite side of the chasm a young and handsome man, dressed much as was
the exile, Medosus. There could not for a moment be any doubt in the
minds of Pym and Peters concerning the identity of this young man; but
if there had been, it would immediately have been dispelled.
"'Well, gentlemen?' the voice further said.
"Pym and Peters had stepped up close to the edge of the abyss, which
here was, as it was throughout the upper third of its length, from
forty-five to fifty-five feet in width (Peters thinks that at this part
of its course it was fully fifty feet broad).
"'Well, gentlemen: why are you two, strangers to me, and to my people,
also, I think--why are you here?'
"The speaker would have seemed very far from insane, had it not been for
his large black eyes, shifting and glittering in the bright volcanic
light.
"At last Pym spoke:
"'Sir,' he said, very calmly, 'we came to assist our friends of the
neighboring island--friends who have been very kind to us--to search for
a maiden who by some strange mischance has been lost from her
people--from her people and her friends, who grieve sorely over their
loss.'
"'Ah, ha,' said Ahpilus--for it was he--'very good. And they grieve, do
they? Curse them, let them grieve! And a certain lover--and curse him,
too--does he grieve? He would better! Ah, ha, ha, ha'--the voice rising
with each syllable, until the last was almost shrieked at Pym--'Kind to
you, were they? Well, there is one of them near by--on this side the
chasm, curse you--who won't be kind to you again. Yes, and you may see
her, too.' Then Ahpilus stepped off behind some thick, stunted bushes of
a variety of evergreen, whence, in a moment, he returned, leading by the
wrist Lilama. 'Great Jove above! Girl, do you see your lover over there?
You have no love for me--you never had; but never again in time or in
eternity shall I lie with burning brain, thinking of those snowy arms
about the stranger's neck--aye, as once I saw them in the palace
grounds. Curse you all, and may you all alike be d----d. Why should a
stranger come through ten thousand perils to add to all my untold
agonies.' Here for a moment his voice softened, almost to a gentle
whisper. 'Ah, Lilama, once, only once, you shall, of your own free will,
clasp those arms around me--if not in love, then in terror. A moment
more, and over this abyss together we shall go!' With terror in his
eyes, Pym glanced at Peters; and even the phlegmatic Peters was
startled. 'Yes, for one moment in each other's arms; and then for me,
the everlasting darkness of Tartarus, or of endless oblivion.'
"As he talked, he had dropped the wrist of Lilama, and she crouched upon
the ground with her hands before her face, whilst Ahpilus continued to
rave, and to pace from the chasm's edge away and back again, in maniac
strides, until he had almost beaten where he paced a pathway. There was
not the slightest necessity for Ahpilus to guard Lilama, for the awful
chasm was more than twice the width that any sane and normal man, even
an athlete, would dare attempt to leap, even to preserve his own life;
and the distance to be traversed to gain a point in the chasm so narrow
that an ordinary man would dare attempt to leap it, was several miles
down the mountain-side; so that Lilama was at least ten miles beyond the
reach of Pym, though less than eighty feet away.
"The mental strain on poor Pym was almost enough to make him a madman.
There strode the maniac, to and from the edge of the abyss,
rhythmically, rarely varying the distance by a yard--twenty yards off,
then back again, then away. On every third or fourth approach he stepped
literally to the edge of the chasm, and glanced down, ten thousand feet
to where the stream below looked like the finest silver thread, lighted
by the dazzling light from the giant crater, reflected into every
smallest fissure. Now and again the madman would lash himself into a
fury, and stop for a moment to gaze at Lilama, who never moved from her
crouching position some ten feet from the canyon's brink. Even Peters,
the stoic, was moved--but moved to anger rather than to grief or fear.
He inwardly chafed, and madly raved, by turns, at the impotency of his
position; whilst Pym seemed frozen into statuesque despair. How much
longer would this scene of terror last? Oh, the thought of that awful
leap into space! The maniac might any moment end the scene--each time as
he approached in that wild rush backward and forward might be the last.
The slightest move, the slightest sound, might precipitate the dire
calamity--and Lilama as well as Pym and Peters seemed to feel this
truth. The madman, like the wild beast, appears to need an extraneous
stimulus, be it ever so slight, to suggest an initiative: the crooking
of a finger, the whispering of a word, may be sufficient, but it must be
something.--Ah! Has the moment come? Has the insane man caught some
sound inaudible to the others? He pauses. Yes, he is going to act.
"'Oh! friend,' wailed Pym to Peters, in a low voice, 'save her, save
her, or where she goes, there go I.'
"Then Peters looks across the chasm, down upon the scene beyond. The
opposite brink at this point is ten or twelve feet lower than the spot
where Pym and Peters stand, which gives them an excellent view of Lilama
and Ahpilus. It is impossible to say just why, but it is obvious that
the time which they dread has come. Ahpilus stands looking at the
beautiful maiden who crouches in front of him; and as he gazes his
powerful form seems to swell, as does that of a wild animal that has
determined to spring upon its prey. His arms move forward to grasp her.
He has no fear of interruption--he has for the moment forgotten the
strangers. He slightly alters his position--his back is toward the
chasm--his hands touch the person of his prey. Lilama partly raises her
head. She glances past the maniac for a last look at her lover. She does
not scream, even as those vise-like hands close upon her, and slowly,
oh, so slowly, but steadily, draw her within that iron embrace--slowly,
slowly, as might a maniac devotee move in the desecration of his idol.
"But why does she not scream? Why are her eyes fastened--not on her
lover--not on the madman, but upon another object? What is that object?
Is it a man? Can any man move as that thing moves? Surely that cannot be
a man, that streak of drab color--yonder thing that casts to the ground
a garment, then shoots backward twenty feet from the abyss--swifter than
a panther, as silent as death, with two balls of living fire glaring
from--from a face? Surely not a human face! Yes, it is a human face. She
does not see the pallid face, the wild eyes of her lover, looking, too,
at that thing--that human embodiment of animal agility. No: she has not
time to look, for though the human eye is quick, that thing is quicker;
and if she take her eye from it for half a second, her gaze will lose
it. She cannot take from it her gaze--she is fascinated. Within the past
second of time an heroic resolve has been formed, and a drama has begun;
in the next two seconds an act in the drama will be completed; in sixty
seconds more, a whole tragedy will be added to the list of human
sorrows.
"No tongue can tell what cannot quite be seen. A rush of color toward
that awful gap; it reaches the edge; it rises in the air and shoots out
over that gulf that might indeed have been the portal of Tartarus. Fifty
feet as flies the bird. It is in the air--it is half-way over--and yet
the maniac has seen it not. But the maniac is turning with his victim in
his arms. The streak of drab has passed forty feet--ten feet further if
it is to reach the other brink--ten thousand if it fails to reach it;
and it has already sunk ten feet in space--with ten feet more of
horizontal distance to cover, it is already on a level with the edge of
the abyss which it must safely reach, or--The maniac has turned; and the
streak of drab has reached the brink--but, ah! below the surface. The
form is that of Peters--the only man who could be in such a situation
yet live on. One of those invincible arms is thrown upon the surface
above the chasm, and those long fingers fasten upon the immovable lava.
And now the madman sees the danger that menaces his design--but too
late, for Peters the unconquerable stands erect between him and the
chasm. Then Ahpilus quickly sets on the ground his living burden; and
Peters, the human bird of passage, risks again his life.
"But, for a man like Peters, such a contest was scarcely a risk. Had
Ahpilus been less savage in his baffled rage, Peters would have spared
the madman; but it was not to be. There was scarcely a man in all
Hili-li that could physically cope with Ahpilus; but he was no match for
Peters. For a few moments the sailor protected himself without any act
of aggression; but it soon became apparent that he would be obliged to
destroy his adversary, or himself be destroyed. Ahpilus had pushed
Peters, or Peters had carelessly allowed himself to shift his own
position, to within dangerously close proximity to the chasm, and at the
moment when Peters noticed this circumstance, he also saw that he was
between Ahpilus and the abyss: and Ahpilus, in all his furious madness,
also observed his advantage. Peters had in his possession a very long
and keen knife, but, as he afterward said in talking over this incident,
he had never yet seen the time when he was compelled to use an
artificial weapon in an encounter with a single combatant; and
particularly would he never have used a knife, even though his adversary
were a maniac, if a maniac without an artificial weapon. Peters saw that
Diregus had found Pym, and, as was also the boatman, he and Pym were, of
course, viewing the struggle. I should not, however, have included Pym
in the party of observers; for he knew too well how the combat would end
to be much absorbed in it. He had no eyes for anything but Lilama.--But
to return: As Ahpilus saw his advantage, by a supreme effort he summoned
all his great muscular strength, and aided by that invincible motor, the
will of a madman, he endeavored to force Peters over the brink. At that
precise moment the sailor had his right hand closed on the top of
Ahpilus's left shoulder, and his left hand just beneath Ahpilus's right
arm on the side of the exile's chest. He quickly shifted his left hand
to the side of the hip; and then those great gorilla arms raised from
the ground the body of the madman, swung it overhead as another man
might swing the body of a three-year-old child, as he did so bringing
the back of his adversary downward; and then came a movement of
Herculean power in which the long arms approximated with a twisting,
bending effect; two vertebras in Ahpilus's back at the point of least
resistance separated, the spine was dislocated, and a mass of helpless,
vibrating human flesh fell at the feet of the victor. Peters, whilst his
brute instinct was in full possession of him, might, instead of dropping
Ahpilus to the ground, have thrown the body into the abyss; but Diregus
had anticipated such an action, and called to Peters not to injure the
poor insane fellow more than was necessary to prevent him from injuring
others. Ahpilus was not dead--that is, he was not dead over his entire
body: the hips and all below were as nerveless as the body of a corpse;
but above the hips, the same old vigor remained--and so it would be
though he lived for yet a hundred years."
Here Doctor Bainbridge ceased to speak. Doctor Castleton had entered the
room two or three minutes before, and, keeping silent, had heard the
last three or four hundred words, which described the close of that
brief but terrible combat.