"Halloa! Below there!"
When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the
door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short
pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground,
that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but
instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep
cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked
down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing
so, though I could not have said for my life what. But I know it was
remarkable enough to attract my notice, even though his figure was
foreshortened and shadowed, down in the deep trench, and mine was
high above him, so steeped in the glow of an angry sunset that I had
shaded my eyes with my hand before I saw him at all.
"Halloa! Below!"
From looking down the Line, he turned himself about again, and,
raising his eyes, saw my figure high above him.
"Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?"
He looked up at me without replying, and I at him without pressing
him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then there
came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing into a
violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start back,
as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapor as rose to
my height from this rapid train had passed me, and was skimming away
over the landscape, I looked down again, and saw him refurling the
flag he had shown while the train went by.
I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to
regard me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag
toward a point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant.
I called down to him, "All right!" and made for that point. There,
by dint of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag
descending path notched out, which I followed.
The cutting was extremely deep, and unusually precipitate. It was
made through a clammy stone, that became oozier and wetter as I went
down. For these reasons, I found the way long enough to give me time
to recall a singular air of reluctance or compulsion with which he
had pointed out the path.
When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again,
I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the
train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me
to appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow
rested on his right hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was
one of such expectation and watchfulness that I stopped a moment,
wondering at it.
I resumed my downward way, and stepping out upon the level of the
railroad, and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow
man, with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in as
solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side, a
dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of
sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this
great dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction
terminating in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a
black tunnel, in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous,
depressing, and forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its
way to this spot that it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much
cold wind rushed through it that it struck chill to me, as if I had
left the natural world.
Before he stirred, I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not
even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step, and
lifted his hand.
This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my
attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity,
I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped? In me, he merely
saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and
who, being at last set free, had a newly-awakened interest in these
great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure
of the terms I used; for, besides that I am not happy in opening any
conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.
He directed a most curious look toward the red light near the
tunnel's mouth, and looked all about it, as if something were missing
from it, and then looked at me.
That light was part of his charge? Was it not?