THE PLACE OF THE HORROR.
Was he awake--asleep and dreaming--or--dead?
All these questions did Laurence Stanninghame ask himself by turn as he
recovered his confused and scattered senses; and there was abundant
scope for such conjecture for, in truth, the place wherein he found
himself was a strange one.
A wall of rock arose on either side of him--one straight, perpendicular,
the other overhanging, arching out above the first. As he lay there in
the semi-gloom, his first thought was that he was in a cave; a further
glance, however, convinced him that the place was a gigantic fissure or
rift. But how had he come there?
With an effort, for he still felt strangely languid and confused, he
sent his mind back to the events of the previous day. Stay, though--was
it the previous day? Somehow it seemed much longer ago. He remembered
the long hurried march into the heart of the mountains with his gruesome
escort. He remembered partaking of a plentiful meal and some excellent
corn-beer; this he had done with a view to keeping up his strength,
which he might need to the full. Then he remembered no more. The liquor
had been drugged, he decided.
But to what end? To what end, indeed, was he there? How had he been
brought there? He raised himself on his elbow and looked around.
He started. A large bundle lay beside him--something rolled up in a
native blanket. Speedily undoing this, he discovered several grass
baskets with lids. These contained pounded corn, such as is eaten with
_amati_, or curdled milk--and, indeed, a large calabash of the latter,
tightly stoppered, was among the stores. Well, whatever was to become of
him, he was not to starve, anyhow. But was he only being fattened for a
worse fate?
Then a thought struck him, which set all his pulses tingling into
renewed life. He, too, had been sent out of the country, and these
stores were to last him for, at any rate, part of his journey. True, the
prospect was anything but an exhilarating one, seeing that he was
unarmed, and had but the vaguest idea which way to turn; that the
Ba-gcatya country was surrounded by ferocious and hostile races. But
then, everything is relative in this world, and to a man who has spent
hours of a long day journeying towards a mysterious, horrible, and
certain death, the discovery of release and life, even with such slender
chances, was joy after the boding dread which those long hours had held
for him. Yes, that was it, of course. Tyisandhlu had not been faithless
to the friendship between them. While openly consenting to his
sacrifice, for even the king dare not, in such a matter, run counter to
the feelings of the nation, Tyisandhlu had given secret orders that he
should be smuggled out of the country.
Having arrived at this conclusion, it occurred to Laurence that he
might as well explore a little. He would leave his stores here for the
present; for a glance served to show that the rift or fissure ended
there, so taking only a handful of the pounded corn, to eat as he
walked, he started at once.
But there was a something, a cold creepiness in the air perhaps, that
quelled much of his new-born hope. The rift seemed to form a kind of
circle, for he walked on and on, ever trending to the right, never able
to see more than a short distance in front; never able to behold the
sky. There was something silently, horribly eloquent in the grim
sameness of those tomblike walls. Just then, to his relief, the
semi-gloom widened into light. The cliffs no longer overhung each other.
A narrow strip of sky became visible, and, in front, the open daylight.
But with the joy of the discovery another sight met his gaze, a sight
which sent the blood tingling through his veins. Yet, at first glance,
it was not a particularly moving one. On the ground, at his feet, lay
two unobtrusive-looking pebbles of a bluish gray. But as the next moment
he held them in his hands, Laurence knew that he held in a moment what
he had gone through years of privation and ruthless bloodshed to
obtain--wealth, to wit. For these two unobtrusive pebbles were, in fact,
splendid diamonds!
More of them? Of course there were. The exploration could wait a little
longer. An accident might cut him off from this spot--might cut him off
from such a chance forever. The hands of the seasoned adventurer
trembled like those of a palsied old woman as he turned over the loose
soil with his foot, for instrument of any kind he had none; and indeed,
his agitation was not surprising, for in less than an hour Laurence was
in possession of eight more splendid stones as large as the first,
besides a number of small ones. He knew that he held that which should
enable him to pass the remainder of his life in wealth and ease, could
he once get safe away.
Could he? Ah, there came in the dead weight--the fulfilling of that
strange irony of fate which well-nigh invariably wills that the good of
life comes to us a trifle too late. For his search had brought him quite
into the open day once more. Before him lay a valley--or rather
hollow--of no great size, and--it was shut in--completely walled in by
an amphitheatre of lofty cliffs.
Cliffs on all sides--at some points smooth and perpendicular, at others
actually overhanging, at others, again, craggy and broken into terraces;
but, even with the proper appliances, probably unscalable; that detail
his practised eye could take in at a glance. How, then, should he hope
to scale them, absolutely devoid, as he was, of so much as a stick--let
alone a cord.
A cord? How had he been brought there? Had he been let down by a
cord--or brought in by some secret entrance? the latter appeared more
probable; and that entrance he would find,--would find and traverse, be
its risks, be its terrors what they might. He had that upon him now
which rendered life worth any struggle to preserve.
He stepped forth. The sky was over his head once more, clear and blue.
That was something. By the slant of the sunrays he judged it must be
about the middle of afternoon. The floor of the hollow was bumpy and
uneven. Sparse and half-dry grass bents sprung from the soil, but no
larger vegetation--no trees, no brush. Stranger still, there was no sign
of life--even of bird or insect life. An evil, haunted silence seemed to
brood over the great, crater-like hollow.
The silence became weighty, oppressive. Laurence, in spite of himself,
felt it steal upon his nerves, and began to whistle a lively tune--as he
walked slowly around, examining the cliffs, and every crack and cranny,
with critical eye. The echoing notes reverberated weirdly among the
brooding rocks. Suddenly his foot struck something--something hard. He
looked down, and could not repress a start. There at his feet, grinning
up at him, lay a human skull--nay, more, a well-nigh complete skeleton.
It was a gruesome find under the circumstances. Laurence, his nerves
unstrung by the effects of the drug, and recent alternations of
exultation and what was akin to despair, felt his flesh creep. What did
it mean? Why, that no way of escape did this valley of death afford.
This former victim--had he been placed there in the same way as himself,
and, all means of exit failing, had succumbed to starvation when his
provisions were exhausted? It looked that way. Bending down, he examined
this sorry relic of humanity--examined it long and carefully. No bone
was broken, the skeleton was almost complete; where it was not, the
joints had fallen asunder without wrench, and the smooth round cranium
showed not the slightest sign of abrasion or blow.
With sinking heart he pursued his search; yet somehow his attention now
was given but languidly to potential means of exit which the faces of
the cliffs might afford. Something seemed irresistibly to draw it to the
ground. Ha! that was it. Again that horrid gleam of whitened bones.
Another skeleton lay before him--and look, another, and another, at
short distances apart. All these, like the first, were unshattered,
uninjured; but--the whole area here was strewn with skulls, yellow and
brown with age,--was strewn with bones also, mossy, mahogany-hued, and
which crackled under his tread.
No one could be more ruthless, more callous; no man could view scenes of
cruelty and bloodshed more unmoved than Laurence Stanninghame,--as we
have shown,--or bear his part more coolly and effectively in the
fiercest conflict; yet there was something in these silent human relics
lying there bloodless; in the unnatural, haunted silence of this
dreadful death-valley that caused his flesh to creep. Then he noticed
that all were lying along the slope of a ridge which ran right across
the hollow, dividing the floor of the same into two sections. He must
needs go over that ridge to complete his explorations, yet now he shrank
from it with awe and repugnance which in any other man he would have
defined as little short of terror. What would await him on the other
side?
Well, he must go through with it. Probably he would find more of such
ghastly relics--that was all. But as he stood upon the apex of the
ridge, with pulses somewhat quickened, no whitening bones met his
gaze--fixed, dilated as that gaze was. The cliff in front--he thought
to descry some faint chance of escape there, for its face was terraced
and sloping backward somewhat. Moreover, it was rent by crannies and
crevices, which, to a desperate and determined man, might afford hand
and foothold.
And now for the first time it flashed upon Laurence that the mystery of
"The Spider" stood explained. This horrible hole whence there was no
escape--where men were thrust to die by inches as all of these had died
before him--the repulsive and blood-sucking insect was in truth a
fitting name allegorically for such a place, which swallowed up the
lives of men. Besides, for all he knew, the configuration of the crater
might, from above, resemble the tutelary insect of the Ba-gcatya. Yes;
he had solved the mystery, as to that he was confident--the next thing
to do was to find some way out, to break through the fatality of the
place.
For the first time now his shoulder began to feel stiff and sore, where
the stick hurled by Lindela had struck him. That was a bad preparation
for the most perilous kind of cliff-climbing. Then the incident recalled
to mind Lindela herself. Her sudden change of front was just such an
oddity as any of the half-ironical incidents which go to make up the sum
of life's experiences. Well, savage or civilized, human nature was
singularly alike. A touch of superstition and the god of yesterday
became the demon of to-day.
Thus musing, he came, suddenly and unexpectedly, upon another skeleton.
But the effect of the discovery of this was even more disconcerting than
that of the first. For, around, lay rotting rags of clothing, and a
gold ornament or two. These remains he recognized at a glance. They were
those of Lutali.
Yes, here was a broad bracelet of gold, curiously worked with the text
of the Koran, which he had seen last on the Arab's sinewy wrist. Now
that wrist was but a grisly bone. There, too, were parchment strips,
also inscribed with Koran passages, and worn in a pouch as amulets. The
identity of these remains was established beyond a doubt.
But the discovery inspired within him a renewed chill of despair. If
Lutali had been unable to find means of escape, how should he? The Arab
was a man of great readiness of resource, of indomitable courage, and
powerfully built. If such a one had succumbed, why should he, Laurence,
fare any better? He sat down once more, and, gazing upon the sorry
remnant of his late confederate, began to think.
What a strange, vast, practical joke was that thing called life. Here
was he at the end of it, and the very means of ending it for him had, at
the same time, put him into possession of that which rendered it worth
having at all. He felt the stones lying hard and angular in his pockets,
he even took out one of them and turned it over sadly in his hands. He
would gladly give a portion of these to be standing on the summit of
yonder cliff instead of at the base; not yet had he come to feel he
would gladly give them all. It was only of a continuance with what life
had brought him that he should be there at all. He had sacrificed
himself for another. The sublimity of the act even yet did not strike
him. He regarded it as half-humorous, half-idiotic,--the first because
his cynical creed was bolstered up by the consciousness that Holmes
would never more than half appreciate it; the last, because--well--all
unselfishness, all consideration, was idiotic.
Then it occurred to him that it would be time enough to sit down and
dream when he had exhausted all expedients, and he had not explored that
side of the hollow at all yet. To this end he moved forward. A very
brief scrutiny, however, of the face of the cliff sufficed to show that
for climbing purposes the cracks and crannies were useless.
Ha! What was this? A cave or a rift? Right in front of him the cliff
yawned in just such a rift as the one in which he had awakened to find
himself, only not on anything like such a large scale. Eagerly Laurence
plunged into this. Here might be a way to the outer world--to safety.
He pressed onward in the semi-gloom. The rocks darkened overhead,
forming, in effect, a cave. And now it seemed that he could hear a
strange, soft, scraping, a kind of sighing noise. A puff-adder was his
first thought, looking around for the reptile. But no such reptile lay
in his path, and he had no means of striking a light. With a dull
shrinking, his flesh creeping with a strange foreboding, as with the
consciousness of some fearful prescience, he decided to push on, being
careful, however, to tread warily. This was no time for sticking at
trifles.
But as he advanced the air became foetid with a strange, pungent,
nauseous odour. There were lateral clefts branching off the main
gallery, but of no depth, and to these he had given but small notice.
Now, however, something occurred of so appalling a nature that he stood
as one turned to stone.
There shot out from one of these lateral recesses two enormous
tentacles--black, wavy as serpents, covered with hair, armed at the
extremity with a strong double claw. They reached forth noiselessly to
within a couple of yards of where he stood, then two more followed with
a quick, wavy jerk. And now behind these, a head, as large as that of a
man, black, hairy, bearing a strange resemblance to the most awful and
cruel human face ever stamped with the devil's image--whose dull, goggle
eyes, fixed on the appalled ones of its discoverer, seemed to glow and
burn with a truly diabolical glare.
Laurence stood--staring into the countenance of this awful thing--his
blood curdled to ice within him, his hair literally standing up. Was it
the Fiend himself who had taken such unknown and fearful shape to appear
before him here in the gloom of this foul and loathsome cavern? Then, as
his eyes grew more and more used to the dim shades, he made out a huge
body crouched back in the recess, half hidden by a quivering mass of
black, hairy tentacles.
For a few moments thus he stood--then with a cry of horror he threw out
his hand as though instinctively to ward off an attack. The four
tentacles already protruded were quickly withdrawn, and the fearful
creature, whatever it was, seemed to shrink back into the cranny. One
last look upon the hairy heap of moving, writhing horror--upon those
dreadful demon eyes, and this man, who had faced death again and again
without shrinking, now felt it all he could do to resist an impulse to
turn and flee like a hunted hare. He did, however, resist it--yet it was
with flesh shuddering and knees trembling beneath him that he withdrew,
step by step, backwards, until he stood once more in the full light of
day.