Thunderbolts
From our vantage-point near the cavern roof, we could not clearly
follow all that was happening a mile beneath; however, we were able to
observe more than a little. In the beginning, we were astonished to see
the doors at the base of the excavation all thrown open, to admit a
multitude of black ant-like mites, which we did not at first recognize
as human beings. So minute were they, in view of their distance, that
they might have been mere swarming insects. To discover much about
their appearance or costume was out of the question; nevertheless,
we were not long in learning their nature, for they immediately drew
themselves up into precise rectangular formations, each of which was
divided into scores of long, mathematically even columns.
"By Heaven!" I gasped, as I lay peeping across the edge of the abyss.
"If it isn't an army!"
"Sure enough, an army!" agreed Clay, his mouth agape till the lower jaw
seemed ready to drop off. "I'll swear they look like the devil's own
recruits! Just see the banners gleaming!"
By straining my eyes, I could distinguish flashes of yellow and purple,
as from the waving of battle flags.
"Say, look down there!" my companion ejaculated the next second,
leaning over the edge of the void until I feared he would take a
mile-long fall. "There's not one army! There's two!"
"Sure you're not seeing double, old pal?" I demanded. And then, at
the risk of losing my own balance, I leaned out fully as far as Clay,
staring into the dreadful chasm directly below.
It was indeed as my friend had said! Just under us was a second army,
its innumerable multitudes arrayed in neat rectangles, and its banners
flashing in vermilion and green!
From the opposite sides of the cavern the two great masses of men,
each composed of scores of thousands of individuals, were approaching
one another with slow and gracefully coördinated movements. Had
they a hostile intent?--or were they merely on friendly parade? So
quietly were they advancing that both Clay and I leapt to the latter
explanation. It would not be long before we would learn our mistake!
"By my grandmother's ghost, Frank! Where do all those fellows come
from?" exclaimed Clay, turning toward me with eyes bulging in wonder
and alarm. "What would you have said only yesterday, old chap, if some
one had drawn you a picture of all this?"
"I'd have said he was dafter than a mad hatter!"
"Chances are we'd have had him locked up!" agreed Clay. "Say, do you
know--"
But he was not to complete his sentence. For at this point a
never-to-be-forgotten demonstration burst forth.
It was as if the entire cavern had shot all at once into flames. It was
as if a thunder-storm of unparalleled fury had flared simultaneously
at a hundred points. There came a wave of dazzling white light which
flashed across the cavern on a jagged course and all but blinded us;
then, while our stunned senses reeled beneath the blow, we were smitten
by a clap of thunder so severe that our ear-drums fairly rang. Almost
instantly, other detonations followed, with a banging as of tremendous
explosions; and new lightnings streaked and blazed, with red and green
and orange coruscations as their long twisting lances zigzagged from
wall to wall. At the same time, the ground began to shake once more, to
shake so violently that we had to cling desperately to a rocky ledge;
and from moment to moment the tremors increased in severity. At last we
could understand the source of the earthquakes!
[Illustration: New lightnings streaked and blazed with red and green
and orange coruscations as their long twisting lances zigzagged from
wall to wall.]
Speechless as deaf-mutes, Clay and I stared across at one another in
horror. But in his startled eyes I read a message: "Come, let's go!"
And his hand was motioning away down the gallery.
Gladly I would have followed his suggestion. But I was as if glued
to the ledge. My panic-stricken muscles would not obey my will; I
quivered, rose to my knees, and then dropped down full-length once
more, terrified lest the heaving earth should pitch me over the
cavern edge.
Yet terror could not subdue curiosity; I still gazed down at that
fantastic cavern floor, over which the colored lightnings flickered.
And what a ghastly discovery I made! Where were those orderly armies
that had thronged across the abyss a minute before?
* * * * *
For a moment, I merely gaped wide-eyed, wondering if my senses were
deceiving me. The armies had both vanished! In their place were
multitudes of black specks strewn pell-mell about the cavern floor, in
all manner of distorted positions, some of them bunched together in
great dark heaps, some of them clustered amid little new-made crimson
patches!
"Do you see? Do you see?" I exclaimed, when a lull in the thunder once
more permitted conversation. "Shot to tatters, the whole lot of them!"
"Shot to tatters!" Clay echoed, his bruised face performing wry antics
as he spoke. "Wonder what the whole infernal mess was all about."
"Marvelous, anyway, how they use their lightnings to kill," I commented.
"Marvelous the way both sides won!" he snapped back. "Doesn't seem to
be much left of either of them!"
In this statement, however, Clay was mistaken. We were soon to learn
that all too much was left of both factions.
While the lightnings still leapt and vaulted through space, crossing
and criss-crossing the atmosphere with dagger-flames of blue and
yellow, there rose a low, regular, distant rumbling--a rumbling too
even and continuous for thunder, and yet more ominous-sounding than
thunder, since it gained each moment in force and volume and had a
monotonous, rhythmical, thudding effect reminding one of the motor of
some great machine.
"God be merciful, what's this coming?" suddenly cried my companion,
pointing far down the cavern. "See, Frank! Can you make out what it is?"
At the renewed risk of falling over the edge, I peered in the indicated
direction; and, as I did so, I received perhaps the severest shock I
had yet had on this day of horrors. "Lord Almighty!" I gasped. "It's a
battleship on wheels!"
"It's not one of them! It's two!" shouted Clay.
And indeed, two monster shapes, each as large as the dreadnoughts of a
modern navy, were gliding toward us out of the greenish-yellow glare
far to the right. With long, pointed, steel-like prows, thin tapering
sterns, and squat funnels belching smoke and steam, they had the shape
and appearance of warships, except that they displayed no masts or
gun-turrets. But little dark tubes curving from their sides looked very
much like guns.
"See the wheels," yelled Clay, trying to make himself heard above the
increasing uproar of the monsters' approach; and I observed how scores
of wheels, each of them twenty or thirty feet across, were arranged all
along the sides of the great machines, bearing them forward with the
speed of an ocean liner.
"Seems to be in a hurry!" I yelled back, as I noticed with what steady
roaring haste the vessels pressed forward.
But I had no time to wonder what the machines might be, or what
incredible people, populating the abysses of the earth, had developed
such giant mechanisms. Before I had half recovered from my surprise, I
was aware that Clay, no longer able to make his voice heard above the
din of the approaching monsters, was nudging my elbow and pointing in
great agitation to our left.
"See! See there!" I read the unexpressed words on his lips. "Just look
at that! Just look! Just look!"
Well might he be agitated. From far down the cavern to our left, three
more land-battleships were rumbling toward us, shooting out flashes of
red and white lightning like a challenge, while hastening to meet the
other Titans as though intending a head-on collision.