IN THE NINTH CIRCLE
As we arrived our noses were greeted with a most stupendous and
enwrapping stench. It took me just about the twentieth part of a second
to realize that the black objects that lay above the tide mark were the
half-dismembered bodies of sea-lions, the intestines protruding black
and decayed upon the smeared and oily sand. Round about them were
tramplings and churnings of the mud, and spreading away across the
landward rubble to the entrance of the ravine were great sloppy
paddings—the slow trudge of some ponderous and long-nailed quadruped.
It was almost with gratified expectation that I recognized the trail of
the Horror of the cañon. Here doubtless was his feeding-ground, his
private _abattoir_, where he came down to prey upon the sleeping
sea-lion, even as centuries before he had lumbered down upon Alfa,
Hardal, and probably many another of those hapless immigrants besides.
Here as in a trap he found his prey. Often one could suppose the
sea-lions passed through the sea entrance at the far end of the bay,
failed to find exit, and, tired with wearily threshing round their
prison walls, landed to take their siesta in the sun. Here asleep they
fell unawares into his maw, or, surprised in the rock-ringed pool, gave
him many a jovial hunt in the clear depths between the cliffs.[1]
Footnote 1:
Lord Heatherslie makes a mistake here. Professor Lessaution’s
subsequent researches proved “the god Cay” to be without doubt
_Brontosaurus excelsus_, remains of which have been found in the
Jurassic formation of Colorado. It was purely a land animal.—F.S.
At the far side of the beach were other lumps, embedded in the sand. To
them we strode and began to dig at them with our axes. It scarcely came
as a surprise when the powdery silt fell aside to disclose timbers
sticking up gauntly from below—the worn joists and ribs of some stranded
vessel.
One or two of the great timbers—carven and decorated by hands long
dead—were now wind-planed and worn by the sand drift, and slanted deep
into the pebbles. We shovelled and scraped to trace them further. Below
the soil they rounded almost at right angles, and we uncovered one of
them at full length. It measured a good forty paces—the keel, as we
could but suppose, of some Mayan bark, sole remnant of what had been a
gallant ship in the squadron of that lost and hapless race.
We scratched and delved, but nothing further than dried wood splinters
did we discover. Finally we decided to explore the ravine for traces of
the Mayans, or for the track of the great Beast. This latter was plain
as a cart trail on the softer ground, but soon faded and was lost among
the rubble.
We felt no fear of consequences should we suddenly unlair the monster,
for though the walls of the cañon were steep, they were broken by
ledges. Up these we could skip swiftly enough, while he, with his
ungainly body, would be unable to follow. So up the loose, rattling
pebbles we toiled to draw near by degrees to the top, where the ravine
passed into a scar of the mountain ridge, and then sinking rapidly,
clove its way deep among the spurs and gullies of the far side.
At this point the immensity of the glacier we had crossed that morning
was apparent. It stretched away westward in broad, horizon-touching
acres of snowfield. Through another cleft a branch of it sank into the
valley below us. Far down we could see a streamlet issue from its foot.
From the heights above, the tumble of crevasses converged in the narrows
like the handle of some huge fan. It smote into the gorge at its
straitest, the brook pools glinting away between the rocks. On the spur
between the valleys was broken rubble dotted with great boulders. Above
all, in sunlit, cloud-like purity the snow crest hung majestic. Out in
the distance, seen through the tunnel-like formation of the cliffs, the
sea glanced and gleamed, flecked with white bergs to the far horizon.
It was the sight of this last that brought us up all standing. It seemed
a trifle astounding to be confronted with the sea again when we had thus
turned inland, and for some few moments we debated on the problem
unavailingly. Then as I gazed round me various things seemed familiar.
In an instant the explanation came. We were standing in the very cañon
up which we had marched the previous day, only we were entering the
other end. No wonder that I had thought I had seen before that blue
glacier foot and that chain of broken pools down the stream. I had—not
twenty-four hours before, too—but from the other side. Our ship and the
sunk lake basin were on a great promontory. We had followed the circle
of the eastern shore and turned inland. Thus we had cut across the cape
as the great fissure did—almost at right angles. If we had followed the
cañon the previous day we should have attained to the very spot on which
we stood.
It was evident that the glacier, into the recesses of which we had
penetrated, and on the edge of which the ruined temple hung, was a
branch of the one we had crossed an hour or two back. Amidst this
identical chaos of boulders we had watched the wounded beast disappear,
and from some unseen cave or cranny he might now be spying us with
gloating eyes. I stared round me apprehensively, but nothing moved to
break the long waste of gray rock and virgin ice. I turned to explain my
discovery to my companions.
It did not take them long to recognize the familiar landmarks when I
pointed them out, and they at once agreed with me that it was useless to
carry further our quest for a beach. It was borne upon us with great
conviction that the cliff barrier here stood just as remorselessly
between us and the sea as it did on the western side of our lake. We
might, therefore, as well give up at once all thought of launching our
boat in the ordinary manner. With the endless line of crags stretching
for miles in either direction, it but remained to essay the lowering of
it by davits or windlasses down the precipice, to chance its escaping
uncrushed by the floating floe. For the present we set gloomily back
across the glacier to carry news of our discovery to our friends.
We roped up as we left the cliffs, proceeding gingerly upon our way. The
crevasses honeycombed the ice at every step; some we bridged with our
poles; some we jumped unhandily; some, too broad for either leaping or
bridging, we rounded by circuitous ways which took us far out of our
dead point for home. At this height upon the glacier slopes we found the
passage far more difficult and broken than upon the lower levels we had
crossed in the earlier morning.
It was after a couple of hours of hard work, that, with red and
glistening faces, we found ourselves within a few score feet of the
further side. We stopped to mop our streaming brows and to congratulate
ourselves on the conclusion of the hardest part of our labors. I
produced my flask, at which the others smiled approvingly.
I took an inspiriting pull, handing it on to Garlicke, who was roped
between Gerry and myself. He took it with unfeigned gratitude, and
sucked at it sensuously, bestowing a wink at Gerry over the rim. The
latter observed him earnestly as the flask tipped gradually higher, and
then, dropping his axe upon the ice, strode towards his friend with a
very unbenignant air and an outstretched hand. The axe fell with its
point buried in the rough surface at Garlicke’s feet; the blade on the
opposite side of the handle was uppermost.
“Kindly leave a saltspoonful,” said Gerry irritably. “I happen to be
just about as thirsty as you.”
Garlicke turned slowly, the bottle still glued to his lips. He winked
again with an indescribably annoying slyness. Gerry—with a touch of
temper, it must be owned—snatched at his hand. Garlicke, with mock
ferocity, warded him off.
There was a crackling sound as Gerry’s foot burst in an ice-bubble, and
he stumbled. He rocked forward to fall prone beside a crevasse edge. The
tense cord fell dead upon the keen blade of the axe set so rigidly
uppermost.
There was a hum and a flick as the rope parted, the two released ends
springing apart like rent elastic. Gerry gave a wild scrabble at the
glass-like, elusive surface, and shot like a flash into the yawning gap.
There was a yell and a fierce rush from Garlicke, and I instinctively
dug my heels into a crevice, bracing myself starkly to meet his sudden
pull. I thrust my own axe-point into the ice, buttressing myself upon
it. But for this three bodies would have been racing into the womb of
the ice-hill instead of one.
A dull thud came echoing up from the dark shadows beneath us; a few
glassy splinters crackled and pattered downward; then came a silence
broken only by the throb of our pulses as they sang dull and muffled in
our ears.
Garlicke was as one possessed. “My God, my God,” he shrieked, “I’ve
murdered him—murdered him. What am I to do? What am I to do? Speak, you
fool,” he yammered, “tell me what I’m to do—to do,” and his voice rose
to a scream, while he shook at my coat tempestuously. “Don’t tell me
that we can’t reach him. My God, I shall go mad,” and he flung himself
down upon the ice, tearing at it with bruised and bleeding fingers as he
chattered hysterically. “For God’s sake, Heatherslie, say there’s
hope—that we can get him up. We must—we must. Lord, have mercy upon me;
what am I to do?” and he leaned desperately over the crumbling edge,
peering hopelessly into the depths.
Do you know the horrible, leaden, choking pain that leaps up and takes
you by the throat, strangling you in a very fog of horror, when,
suddenly, swiftly, in the midst of light and laughter, the Great Shadow
falls between you and one at your very side? When your heart swells with
quivering pulses that shake your flesh? When your eyes burn and the
deafness of despair is in your ears; when your knees rock, and the
guides and thews within you string themselves like cords against your
tense nerves?
Those of you who have been in like case to mine can realize what I felt,
when I saw the friend who had been to me as a brother, snatched into the
darkness of that cold pit. You of the majority, who have stood in no
such brain-wrenching mist of terror—to you no words can describe it.
Those two seconds stand out redly scarred against the map of my life.
They seemed ages untold of cruel anguish.
The strain of Garlicke’s weight had nearly knocked all the breath out of
my body, but I managed to swing him to his feet.
“Oh, you fool, you—you, what are you?” I gasped. “Pull yourself into the
semblance of a man. Race to the ship for help. Get ropes. Run, you fool,
run,” and I thrust him from me roughly as I sat down panting.
He tottered across the few yards of ice between us and the rocks, and
began to reel unsteadily down the slopes toward the great basin and the
ship. As he disappeared, and the breath began to slide back into my
cramped lungs, I seized my axe and hewed myself a standing-place beside
the crevasse. Then I lay down upon my face, my head and shoulders
outstretching far above the blue gulf, and set myself to listen with
hopeless ears.
The hard damp silence of a vault was over all. No vestige of a sound was
there, but the chill drip of the melting ice, and far away out of the
distance the half-heard break of waves upon the sea-cliffs. Now and
again the wail of a tern or the call of a gull broke jarringly across
the stillness, but from the grave below came nothing—no smallest sound
to poise a hope upon; only the hush of death and the ceaseless drip.
Yet—was it the self-mesmerism of a hope that would not be denied?—so
faint that it left the merest echo of a tremor in my ears, a tiny sound
seemed to float up from the depths. I called aloud. I shrieked to a
fierce unnatural falsetto in my excitement. I struggled desperately to
pierce the dulling thicknesses of ice. I strained hazardously across the
gulf in my agony to listen, listen, listen for the ghost of a reply.
Still no answer came; only the pitiless drip pattered on monotonously. I
pictured it falling on Gerry’s cold, upturned face.
I struck savagely at the opposite wall of the crevasse. I cut a cranny
and thrust the point of my axe-handle in it. Then leaning on the head I
hung out over the depths, my shoulders almost half-way across the cleft.
There was a jerk as the sharp point snapped through the brittle support.
My head plunged forward, hitting with tremendous force the smooth, blue
surface beyond me. A thousand stars and planets flashed before my eyes,
spreading from a core of foaming light. Then swart and sudden as the
night closes over a tropical lightning flash followed darkness and
insensibility.
* * * * *
I blinked curiously, groping with owl-like eyes in the gray-green light
that swathed me. Before me rose a slope of ice—a gleaming hill blue with
the cold azure of undying frost. The smooth surface shone duskily; the
twilight fell upon it from above in uncertain patches. Behind and above
me was a curtain-like overshadowment of rock.
To my right rose the columns and porticoes of a building, shaded and
deepening into blackness where the cloistered frontage retreated into
the background. Close to my head, rising with gentle gradient from the
pebbly floor, was a paved ascent to the main door of the building. To
the left was a dark emptiness, and bell-like out of the hollow distance
came the tinkle of running water.
A few yards away lay a man’s form—face to earth and still. The forehead
leaned upon the fore-arm; the other hand was stretched abroad, as if
grasping an unseen hold. The whole body had the pose of death as we find
it when met with suddenness. In the tired apathy that follows a great
shock I stared upon it wearily—unthinking, unreasoning, seeing something
of familiarity, but with listless inability to follow the crude
remembrancing of my brain.
As intelligence grew slowly back to me I struggled weakly and sat up. It
was as in a long-forgotten and half-remembered vision that I knew
Gerry’s brown shooting-jacket and his greasy field-boots. With further
recognition memory began to ooze back.
Gerry had been upon the glacier with me. And Garlicke. And my flask.
Gerry had wanted the flask. Well, he couldn’t have it now. I’d lost it.
I tried wretchedly to remember how or where. Why, of course! that was
what Garlicke had taken. That ice-hill, now, over there—just like the
toboggan slide at Toronto two winters ago. I wondered if old Jim
Paleriste was still _aide_. No; seen him in town since. Then there was
that sweet little—— Oh, my God! Gerry had fallen in—fallen in—and I
listened—and the tern had shrieked just as I thought I heard something.
Well, that _was_ Gerry—must be—snoozing away over there on his face. And
that building? Well—Why, of course, this was a dream. There was that
absurd beast. That was part of a dream. Why on earth couldn’t I wake
myself? Baines would bring my hot water directly. Beastly unpleasant;
just as well to know it was a dream. I’d have another wink or two.
Confounded wet and cold—and, by Jove, cord breeches on. In bed, and
blood upon them. Ouf! how my shoulder hurt. And what a scratch upon my
palm!
A huge drop splashed from the roof upon my forehead.
At the touch of the cold water, suddenly as the sunbeams rend the
sea-mist, my senses leaped back to me, and dread—sickening dread—took
possession of my heart.
I stared across intently at Gerry’s rigid limbs. So we had fallen
together into the depths—into the cold that kills. He was dead, no
doubt; a little struggle against the numbing cold, and I too should pass
into the land beyond forgetfulness. We had found the ninth circle of the
lost.
I rose and touched and stretched myself warily. How my back and
shoulders ached, and what a sharp pang ran through my ankle as I dragged
myself across the floor. I knelt beside Gerry and turned his face to the
light. It was white and hollow-cheeked; his eyes were closed. I ran my
hand beneath his coat and laid it above his heart. Was it still?—or was
it my own anxious pulse that beat beneath my palm?
No, there was a stirring—a fluttering, faint and scarce discernible, but
the life-light still burned. I placed my eyeball before his parted lips.
The out-draught of his breathing struck against it, though ever so
lightly. I moved his arms. They were limp, but with no unnatural droop.
Very, very gently, but perceptibly, his chest rose and fell again, and
something like a sigh fluttered out from between his lips. There was a
faint flicker of an eyelid, and his fingers twitched automatically at
the pebbles.
The worst of the overpowering weight of dread slid away from me
hesitatingly. Perhaps after all Gerry was no more than knocked out of
time—not injured fatally at all. I shouted into his ear; a tiny movement
of the eyelid answered me. I raised his head, scraping the loose sand
into a pillow beneath it. I took his hand and began to rub it briskly,
clapping it against its fellow. A faint shade of color rose into his
cheek; he sighed perceptibly. Again his eyelids fluttered, half closed
again, and then opened wonderingly to their widest. He stared about him,
his gaze wandering with a drowsy air of astonishment from point to
point. His hand swept the floor, picking at the little stones, and his
breathing grew louder and more regular.
I called aloud his name, smiting him on the shoulder. He jerked a look
at me from his drowsy eyes, frowned, made as if he would turn his head,
and then a sudden faint consciousness seemed to return to him.
“W’as’r matter?” he whispered indistinctly.
“Good man,” I bawled joyously. “Wake up, wake up, old chap. Are you
hurt? Feel yourself,” and I dragged him to a sitting posture.
“W’as’r time?” he gurgled again sleepily.
“Time! Hang the time. You’re not in bed. We’re in the glacier. Get up
and feel yourself.”
He scrabbled weakly at the ground, caught at my sleeve, and leaned
against me. He stared at his surroundings, regarding the temple portico
with desperate astonishment. Then the ice-hill, sinking down to our very
feet, caught his eye. He turned to me with wild amazement in every
feature.
“It’s a nightmare,” he declared.
“No such luck,” quoth I, sadly. “We’re here right enough. The question
is how to get out before we’re frozen stiff. Can you stand?”
He staggered to his feet, still lurching against me, and began gingerly
to press his limbs and ribs. He moaned eloquently as his fingers roamed
about his battered bones, making fearful grimaces.
“Ribs nearly bashed in,” he remarked, “but no other damage that I can
discover, bar bruises.”
“That’s all right. Now let’s hustle round and see if there’s any sort of
way out. That stream over there must go somewhere, if there’s room to
follow it. I can hear it tinkling away down some sort of channel.”
In the direction in which I pointed the sides of overhanging rock and
glacier converged till they almost met, forming a low tunnel which
struck further into the blackness. It was from this burrow that the
sound of running water came.
Gerry looked at the dark entrance with much distaste.
“Ugh,” said he, “filthy and cold it’ll be. Don’t you think——”
Click, click, click, and he stopped his argument to stare up to where
something clattered above our heads. Gently, invitingly, a flask
pattered into view, sliding down the slopes of the ice-hill at the end
of a string. It hopped and jigged away most suggestively. We both gave a
tumultuous yell of welcome, and dashed at it. I seized it, opened it,
and poured half its contents down Gerry’s throat before he could make
any demur. Then I took a good pull at it myself, smacking my lips with
intense enjoyment. We clutched the string and tugged at it lustily, and
those above tugged gladsomely and heartily back. Then I found an old
envelope and began to scribble on it, using a rifle-bullet for pencil.
“All right. Get a rope!” was the terse message I attached to the string,
and we saw it flit upward when our pressure relaxed, watching it
disappear into the blue shadows of the ice-roof with indescribable
sensations of relief.
In a few seconds the yell of voices was borne down to us, faint as the
chirp of a bird, but delightfully distinct, and we knew that our
bulletin was received. Within a minute the flask dropped down for the
second time—full too—and on it another bit of paper showed white and
welcome. The inscription was—
“Have no rope long as this string. Parsons has gone down for another to
splice. Hope all well.”—S.G.
We knew that this meant a wait of half-an-hour at the least, and we took
another pull at the spirit to fortify ourselves against the cold, which
was wrapping us creepily in its embrace. Then we stamped and tramped
violently round the cavern once or twice to enliven our circulations,
and this brought us face to face with the stone portico at the back of
the cave. We halted before it to stare at each other inquiringly.
I nodded; then together we sauntered up the steps and stood in the
entrance.
The temple was square fronted, with an oval doorway; along the _facade_
ran pillared cloisters. It was built of carefully cut and morticed
stones, hewn—as we could plainly see by the gaps—from the cliff behind
us. Upon the twelve great pillars of the portico were decorated
pilasters, chiselled with a clean nicety in the hard stone. They gave
evidence of a patient skill and an artistic conception beyond the
average. Within their shadow was a pavement, whereon a mosaic of
graceful lines and figures entwined themselves. Centrally opened the
portal.
The light filtered dimly through the entrance, and as we stood upon the
threshold the interior was black and mysterious before us. As our eyes
grew more accustomed to the gloom, and the shapes of things defined
themselves in the twilight, we discerned the grandeur and the horror of
the place.
The interior was round—in shape something like the Roman Pantheon—and
along the circling walls ran long inscriptions in the Mayan symbol,
twisted in varying folds and weavings of devices. The floor was wide and
thick with dust. The disturbance of our footsteps made gaps in this,
showing the smooth, hard-blocked granite that paved it. It rang hollow
beneath our feet, when the nails of our shooting-boots reached it
through the carpet of powdery refuse.
At the far end was a towering erection, dominating the emptiness, dimly
shadowing through the dusk. It was not till we approached within a yard
or two of it that we knew it for a graven similitude of the great Beast.
It stood in a sort of chancel of the building, looming high upon a rough
majestic mass of granite. This pedestal—a boulder without any mark of
hammer or chisel apparent upon it—filled one side of the sanctuary, and
the image—carved from virgin rock—reached to the domed roof.
Every loathsome detail of the Thing was reproduced with a skill most
marvellous. The horrid foot-webs with claws aspread were there; the
long, lowering neck; the malignant head fiendishly erect; the saw-like,
serrated tail; the horrible dewlap; the filthy bloatings of the carcass;
the thick legs, with bunches of muscle staring harshly out of the stone
fore-arms. Below were inscriptions in the familiar symbol.
Far up in the fiercely poised head were eyes that glinted evilly—eyes
that licked up into themselves all the poor light of the dim vault and
concentrated it into two glistening points of wickedness. They seemed to
follow us with such poignancy that we shuddered.
But the greater wonder and the heavier horror lay not in this foul
image, terrible though it was in its life-like imitation.
Circling round the throned idol—symbol of the loathliest worship, as I
suppose, and the cruellest that the world has ever seen—was a ring of
brown and shrivelled objects. They were cloaked with rotting garments,
and lean with the waste of centuries. They were mummified by time, but,
in the undying cold, undecayed. It was the last worship of the priests
of Cay, overwhelmed in the sanctuary, defying the long-drawn death of
numbing famine in the presence of their god.
We two drew very near together, and I laid my hand upon Gerry’s shoulder
for mere support of a warm and sentient body. The fog of our startled
breathings went up steamingly in the air. It smoked like incense before
a yet sacred shrine of evil. We gasped as those who seek fresh air in a
stuffy atmosphere, and at the same time huddled to one another for
warmth. Never in any other condition of heat or cold do I remember to
have experienced a freezingly hot oppression.
There were thirty of these poor hapless souls; all were face to earth,
with garments hanging about them by mere stillness of pose. Their hands
were yellow and claw-like, and were spread abroad upon the pavement.
Their faces were swathed in brown hoods that covered their features
utterly. Their bony, shrunken outlines showed haggard through the musty
rags that clothed them.
We looked questioningly in each other’s eyes before we laid hands upon
the rigid kneeling form nearest us. We raised the low-laid face from the
floor and turned it towards the scanty light.
The wrinkled features were drawn and crisp with the dryness of a hundred
frozen years; the deep-sunk eyes were blurred—the smoothness of the
pupils dulled to roughness by the shrinking of the temporal muscles and
nerves. As we moved the head, a tooth or two clattered on the floor from
the dried, fleshless gums, and gleamed white against the dust. The arms,
set stiffly in their parchmenty skin, flopped helplessly abroad as we
raised the body from its crouching position. The joints were tense as
the bones. The whole body moved as one solid piece, as if it had been
run into an invisible mould. Across the drawn forehead was a white band,
and on it was broadly sealed the similitude of the great Beast. On the
floor in patches remained a few rags of the texture of the rotten
clothing.
Silently we gazed on this luckless remnant of a long-forgotten religion
and race; then the ghastliness of the thing crowded upon our nerves
fearsomely. Reverently we placed the poor gaunt body in its original
position, and turned hastily to the door. We shivered as we gained the
portico, and I passed the flask to Gerry. At the moment he gulped at the
spirit the rope came flapping and uncoiling down the ice-hill opposite,
and slipped up almost to our feet.
I sprang forward to catch it up; and began briskly to knot a running
loop at the end of it. Gerry eyed me with approval.
“That’s right, old chap,” he remarked. “Up you go.”
I wasted no time or words in argument, being well aware that he would
defend for half-an-hour if necessary his proposition that I should have
the first chance of ascent. I merely smiled upon him compassionately,
reeving a deft hangman’s knot. This done I flung myself suddenly upon my
companion, threw the loop over his shoulders and drew it tight beneath
his arm-pits. Then I yelled lustily, dragging at the rope with hearty
tugs.
Amid the faint echo of an answering shout from above, I had the pleasure
of seeing my friend fly swiftly toward the roof of the cavern, using
language which might well have melted the adjoining ice. In a very halo
of cursing his legs disappeared into the intricacies of the ice-dome,
his feet kicking extravagantly at space and dislodging an occasional
icicle upon me like a malediction. There was silence, and I was left
alone with the ceaseless drip and the dreamy tinkle of the underground
waterway.
I will own that for the few moments I was left companionless in the near
presence of that musty ring of shrivelled corpses I felt as
uncomfortable as I remember to have felt in my life.
You must not forget that I was physically weak from the shock of my
fall, and that my nerves had been wrung past tension point by my anxiety
for Gerry. Then you will understand that the drip, the purr of the
stream ripple, the gray-green light from above in the uncertainty of its
shadowing, the knowledge of the gruesomeness behind me, and the
vault-like atmosphere, combined to make me almost hysterical. I could
have screamed aloud, but didn’t for reasons only known to my English
birthright of prejudice and pride.
I wrestled through these æon-long instants of mental breakdown, and then
there came the heartsome sound of a crack from above. I opened my eyes
to see the rope fall anew upon the pebbly floor. With eager fingers I
looped it over my shoulders, and with a mighty jerk gave the signal to
haul away. So I fled cherubim-like up out of the glassy solitudes into
the untainted air and the blessedness of the sun, and never have I
rejoiced with more whole-souled gratitude in the same.