"Yeah," said Harker. "Some kind of phosphorescence. I don't like that
river. It may stop us."
They went on in silence. The glow grew stronger, the air more damp.
Patches of phosphorescent lichen appeared on the walls, glimmering with
dim jewel tones like an unhealthy rainbow. The roar of the water was
very loud.
They came upon it suddenly. It flowed across the course of their
tunnel in a broad channel worn deep into the rock, so that its level
had fallen below its old place and left the tunnel dry. It was a
wide river, slow and majestic. Lichen spangled the roof and walls,
reflecting in dull glints of color from the water.
Overhead there was a black chimney going up through the rock, and the
cool draft came from there with almost hurricane force, much of which
was dissipated in the main river tunnel. Harker judged there was a
cliff formation on the surface that siphoned the wind downward. The
chimney was completely inaccessible.
Harker said, "I'll guess we'll have to go upstream, along the side."
The rock was eroded enough to make that possible, showing wide ledges
at different levels.
McLaren said, "What if this river doesn't come from the surface? What
if it starts from an underground source?"
"You stuck your neck out," Harker said. "Come on."
They started. After a while, tumbling like porpoises in the black
water, the golden creatures swam by, and saw the men, and stopped, and
swam back again.
They were not very large, the largest about the size of a
twelve-year-old child. Their bodies were anthropoid, but adapted
to swimming with shimmering webs. They glowed with a golden light,
phosphorescent like the lichen, and their eyes were lidless and black,
like one huge spreading pupil. Their faces were incredible. Harker
could remember, faintly, the golden dandelions that grew on the lawn
in summer. The heads and faces of the swimmers were like that, covered
with streaming petals that seemed to have independent movements, as
though they were sensory organs as well as decoration.