How can I make clear the dismay, the confusion that swept over us at
this unexpected outcome to our supposedly successful escape? What could
we do? Retrace our way back through the winding tunnel? There were many
diverging passageways: we would lose ourselves hopelessly in this
honeycombed mud-bank. And before us was the cave, into which we could
not venture without the practical certainty of capture.
Too bewildered to do otherwise, we crouched and stared down into the
cave. It was less crowded now, but there were still a hundred or more
Maagogs on its floor, and dispersed about its wall niches.
Across from us, almost at the same level, was that other ledge on which
we had formerly perched. Behind it, its tunnel showed as a small circle
of blackness. Perhaps we could swim across the cave unnoticed—get into
that other, now familiar, passageway—then through the coral barrier and
into the open water. . . To safety. . . Unless the monster were still
there. . .
Atar aroused me from these thoughts. He was pointing downward into the
cave.
“Nemo. Caan. What is he doing there?”
On the platform, Og and three of the white old men were gathered. Around
them a small school of fishes was swimming. Ten or twenty fishes—short,
squat things, two or three feet long, smooth, dull black skins, and with
huge distended mouths. For all their size there was about them an aspect
of extraordinary strength—their powerful squat build, the alertness of
their movements.
My heart almost stopped with the sudden realization that these
fishes—or were they fishes?—were not swimming aimlessly, but were
waiting for Og’s command! Like a pack of trained animals they circled
about their master. Then Og called to them. They answered with
full-throated, yelping cries! Fishes with voices, you exclaim? You need
not be amazed. There are “shouting fishes” even in your own waters of
Earth.
Og was bending over the shell where Nona had been bound. The rushes that
had bound her and which Atar had cut, were still lying there. At Og’s
call these swimming creatures gathered around him eagerly. The sound of
their voices—yelping, whining—was blood-curdling. Og was raising up
the severed bonds—holding them out; and the fishes were smelling of
them!
Then, in a pack they gathered; and Og, leading them, swam with them
across the cave up near its ceiling to that other ledge from whence,
with Nona, we had made our escape.
The black fishes entered the other passageway, with Og and half a dozen
other Maagogs after them. As they swept down into it, their gruesome
cries died away into the distance.
You, with your knowledge of similar things, will doubtless think it
stupid of us to be puzzled at the meaning of all this—at its danger to
us. Yet—we had no way of knowing. We stared at each other, relieved
that these ugly black things which uncannily answered Og’s commands, had
disappeared.
“Nemo! You are hurt!” It was Nona, who now had noticed that my arm was
bleeding where the Maagog girl’s dagger had ripped it.
“Nothing.” I said; and I wiped it against my robe.
We tried to plan what we should do. Could we cross the cave? The Maagog
girl was still down there, near the platform, with eyes alert to
everything around her—eyes that still smouldered with hate and jealous
rage. No. To enter the cave would be to court almost certain discovery.
We would have to retrace our way—find some other tunnel to lead us out
into the open water.
We were starting back, had gone perhaps a hundred yards, when far ahead
of us down the narrow passageway, we heard sounds. Yelps! Cries! Whines!
Not human—the cries of those squat fishes with their huge slimy jaws!
Panic seized us. We darted back toward the cave. Then forward again,
trying to find a side tunnel. But along here there was none.
The yelps grew louder; Og’s voice mingled with them. And then, before we
could decide in which direction to go, like a pack of eager hounds
following a trail and come at last upon their quarry the black fishes
swept down upon us. I tried to fight them off—tried to protect Nona.
But they darted about me, under me, over me, and gripped me from every
side. Teeth like needles, ripping, tearing at my flesh. . . Og’s voice
shouting a command. . . Caan screaming a warning at me. . . Then
something heavy struck my head. Silence and blackness descended upon me.
* * * * *
I recovered consciousness to find myself lying in a bed of mud in a dim,
cave-like room. My first sensation was one of heat; the water I was
breathing was hot, stifling. My head throbbed.
Nona, Caan and Atar were gathered over me, waiting anxiously for me to
recover my senses. Nona, hearing my weak voice, seeing my eyes open,
threw herself down beside me.
I was not greatly injured. Og had struck me on the head with the flat of
his spear. It had cut my scalp and raised an ugly lump. Besides that,
the flesh of my legs, arms and shoulders was torn by those fishes’ teeth
as if by needles.
The plight of Caan, Atar, and even my dear Nona, was similar—but with
none of us was it serious.
They told me now, that we were captives. Back there in the tunnel Og had
called off his attacking fishes—called them from us or we would have
been torn to ribbons. Then, floating me with them, the Maagogs under
Og’s direction had brought us here to this small room adjacent to the
main cave—and left us.
I sat up, then swam a little. I was all right! Nona was all right—we
were all safe and sound! My hopes revived. Why should we not now escape?
But none of my companions reflected my jubilant mood.
“Let him look around,” said Caan to Atar. Never had I heard Caan speak
so sourly, so despondently.
I did look around. We were in a black mud room some forty feet square
and half as high. It was bare of furnishings; and lighted overhead by a
crude sort of illuminated bladder that gave off a dull green glow. On
one side against the black wall were beds, hollowed out of the mud. To
_you_ they would have looked like shallow graves; and in one of them I
had been lying. Across the room was a shelf of mud with a dozen clay
seats on it—like a row of huge toadstools.
A third side gave into a tunnel. I approached it eagerly; then drew back
shuddering. That pack of blood-hound fishes was out there, circling back
and forth, on guard. They saw me, and darted lazily forward. As I
stopped, they seemed satisfied, and went back to their endless circling,
following every twist and turn of two or three who seemed to lead them.
Caan laughed cynically. “Not there, Nemo, you see.”
My arms went protectingly about Nona, and she drew me wordlessly to the
fourth side of the room. The wall here was gone. A grating of woven
seaweed like prison bars, took its place. I stood on a precipice, gazing
through the bars into a black void of water.
Can I make you understand the shuddering fear that possessed me? This
water out there was moving swiftly downward, like a torrent, or a
subterranean waterfall. Its current, drawing the water out of the room,
flattened me involuntarily against the bars.
I had never seen swiftly moving water before. I felt as _you_ would feel
gazing from a great height into a dizzy abyss. And this water I could
see, was boiling hot down there. But for those bars, I should have been
whirled down into it! And from far below I could hear a faint sizzling,
as of water dropped on a bed of embers.
I forced myself away from the grating, back into the center of the room;
and now I was aware that all the water in the room was coming from the
tunnel and passing in a current through those bars.
“You see,” said Atar, trying to speak calmly. “You see now—”
But Og abruptly entered from the tunnel. He hovered before us, leering.
Nona shrank against me, and I folded her in my arms.
Og did not glance at Nona. He said to Caan: “Have you decided?”
“No,” Caan answered. “He is but this moment recovered. We—”
“Tell him now. I will wait.” Og turned away, swam over to the grating
and gazed through it to that boiling, tumbling water.
Then Caan told me. Og offered us freedom—us three men. He would send us
back to Rax. The price of it was Nona’s promise to be his Queen—a
willing, smiling Queen, none other would the Maagogs have.
I could feel Nona shudder against me, but she said no word.
“No!” I shouted. “No! No!”
Og heard me and smiled. “There is another way. Tell him, Caan.”
And if we did not agree—if Nona did not give her promise—Og, the
Executioner, would open the grating and let us three men slip out—down
into that boiling water our helpless bodies would be sucked. . .
As Caan said it, my Nona burst out: “And Nona, too. _That_ is best.”
But even that, Og heard. “No,” he smiled. “Not Nona. She will stay here
with me—to rule as Queen when I have coaxed the smiles back to her
pretty face.”
I was suddenly aware of another figure in the room. That Maagog girl had
slipped in from the tunnel. She heard Og’s words. Her face smouldered
with fury; but it was Nona, not Og, at whom she gazed so balefully. And
I knew then that if ever Nona were left with Og—if we men were
killed—this woman would kill Nona if she could.
Og faced the girl.
“Well, Maaret? Why do you come here?” He addressed her gruffly. “Did I
not tell you to stay away?”
She gestured behind her. “The time is on us. They are ready—coming now.
And Og, I knew that you had forgotten.”
Og grinned. “Yes, girl, you speak well—I had forgotten.” It was
doubtless very amusing; he was chuckling as he whirled on us who were
hovering in a huddled group. “A fortunate occurrence, my friends from
Rax. You shall swim aside now—and watch me as I perform this little
duty of mine. You shall see how cleverly, how gracefully I do it.”
He was still grinning; his voice was ironical, mocking—but his eyes
were gleaming at Nona. “It will help _you_ to decide, my Queen—help you
to choose the fate of your Nemo, your little toy Prince Atar, and your
Caan the shell-gatherer!”
There were sounds in the tunnel now—a low wailing, monotonous, like a
chant, a dirge. Og waved us imperiously away. Maaret, the Maagog girl,
led us to the side of the room near the grating. We followed her, but I
kept myself between her and Nona. And there, flattened against the mud
wall, we watched and listened.
* * * * *
The wailing swelled in volume, then ceased abruptly. From the tunnel a
line of figures came swimming—Maagog women, eight of them. Each held a
child; an infant hugged to the mother breast; two or three older little
boys dangling in the water held by the mother’s hand; and one, a boy
almost half grown, swimming close by his mother’s side.
The children were all naked—puffed, dead-white little things, with
goggling eyes and gaping mouths. One or two were crying.
The line slowly passed me, swung about, and went to the platform. On
that row of toadstool seats the mothers took their places. They sat
there drooping, hugging their children. The older boy huddled against
his mother’s knees; his face, turned my way, showed great, staring eyes,
dark with a terror but half understood. He was whimpering a little, but
his mother silenced him with a low-spoken word.
Og, swimming slowly, went the length of the line, counting the women,
searching their faces and the faces of the children. Evidently he was
satisfied that all who should be, were there.
“You are ready?” he said.
My gaze, following his, swept the line. A woman sobbed; another clutched
her infant hungrily; but they all nodded assent.
“You first,” said Og abruptly. He darted an arm at one of the women. A
tremor shook her; a shudder; but obediently she held out her infant to
Og. He took it, swam with it to the grating, and opened a little gateway
that was there.
As he held the infant poised, his glance turned to me; his eyes were
grinning sardonically. Atar was cursing softly. I started forward, but
Caan held me back.
“No use, Nemo!”
Og’s arms went up; he slid the infant through the little gateway. I
heard its mother scream; but my eyes, fascinated, were on that black,
tumbling void of water.
The baby’s body, caught by the current, floated out and downward—slowly
at first, then more swiftly. Gradually it turned over. . . An infant
face—big eyes full of staring surprise. . . a puny wail of protest as
the water grew hotter. . .
Down it went, whirling now—a tiny white blob. . . white, then
pink—then turning red. . .
I sank back, sick and faint. And Nona, who had not looked, whispered
tremblingly to me the meaning of it all. There were too many male
children being born to the Maagogs—too many useless mouths to feed.
After each tenth time of sleep, male children were drawn by lot in the
different community houses and sent up here to this death chamber for
execution.
Og the Executioner! How efficiently, with a smile on his lips, he
performed his grisly duty!
_You_ read of this with a shudder perhaps? You marvel that in even so
remote a hole of the Universe as this Water of Wild Things in the bowels
of my little meteor, such ghastly, inhuman things should take place? You
forget. Can you not recall that on your own fair Earth, not so very long
ago, they cast infant girl-babies into the sacrificial waters of the
Granges, to the hungry, eager jaws of the crocodiles?
I did not look again. Occasionally there was a sob—a scream; once, a
brief, despairing scuffle as some mother found the ordeal beyond her
strength. The little half-grown boy, as he passed me with Og’s hand in
his, gazed at me with a dumb, terrified appeal . . . I hated myself as I
looked away. . .
Then—it was all over. The little gateway was replaced. The
mothers—empty-armed—swam silently out into the tunnel, through the
parted ranks of those alert-eyed, guarding fishes.
Maaret, the girl, had disappeared. Og was again alone with us. His lips
were leering triumphantly.
“You see how well I do my work? Quickly—without confusion.” The leer
abruptly faded into grim menace; his eyes blazed at us.
“You may take your choice. The hot water, there—” His gesture was to
the grating—“Or the cool, sweet water of Rax. But in either case, Nona
shall be my Queen.”
He turned away. At the tunnel entrance, he paused. “Soon I shall come
back for your answer.”
He was gone.