THE TORRENT SWEEPING UNDER THE MOUNTAINS
The boat drifted on. The light given by the aurora and the low moon
seemed to grow fainter; and as I looked behind I saw that the distant
glow from the volcanic fires had become more brilliant in the
increasing darkness. The sides of the channel grew steeper, until at
last they became rocky precipices, rising to an unknown height. The
channel itself grew narrower, till from a width of two miles it had
contracted to a tenth of those dimensions; but with this lessening
width the waters seemed to rush far more swiftly. Here I drifted
helplessly, and saw the gloomy, rocky cliffs sweep past me as I was
hurled onward on the breast of the tremendous flood. I was in despair.
The fate of Agnew had prepared me for my own, and I was only thankful
that my fate, since it was inevitable, would be less appalling. Death
seemed certain, and my chief thought now was as to the moment when it
would come. I was prepared. I felt that I could meet it calmly,
sternly, even thankfully; far better was a death here amid the roar of
waters than at the hands of those abhorrent beings by whose treachery
my friend had fallen.
As I went on, the precipices rose higher and seemed to overhang, the
channel grew narrower, the light grew fainter, until at last all
around me grew dark. I was floating at the bottom of a vast chasm,
where the sides seemed to rise precipitously for thousands of feet,
where neither watery flood nor rocky wall was visible, and where, far
above, I could see the line of sky between the summits of the cliffs,
and watch the glowing stars. And as I watched them there came to me
the thought that this was my last sight on earth, and I could only
hope that the life which was so swiftly approaching its end might live
again somewhere among those glittering orbs. So I thought; and with
these thoughts I drifted on, I cannot tell how long, until at length
there appeared a vast black mass, where the open sky above me
terminated, and where the lustre of the stars and the light of the
heavens were all swallowed up in utter darkness.
This, then, I thought, is the end. Here, amid this darkness, I must
make the awful plunge and find my death I fell upon my knees in the
bottom of the boat and prayed. As I knelt there the boat drew nearer,
the black mass grew blacker. The current swept me on. There were no
breakers; there was no phosphorescent sparkle of seething waters, and
no whiteness of foam. I thought that I was on the brink of some
tremendous cataract a thousand times deeper than Niagara; some fall
where the waters plunged into the depths of the earth; and where,
gathering for the terrific descent, all other movements--all dashings
and writhings and twistings--were obliterated and lost in the one
overwhelming onward rush. Suddenly all grew dark--dark beyond all
expression; the sky above was in a moment snatched from view; I had
been flung into some tremendous cavern; and there, on my knees, with
terror in my heart, I waited for death.
The moments passed, and death delayed to come. The awful plunge was
still put off; and though I remained on my knees and waited long,
still the end came not. The waters seemed still, the boat motionless.
It was borne upon the surface of a vast stream as smooth as glass; but
who could tell how deep that stream was, or how wide? At length I rose
from my knees and sank down upon the seat of the boat, and tried to
peer through the gloom. In vain. Nothing was visible. It was the very
blackness of darkness. I listened, but heard nothing save a deep,
dull, droning sound, which seemed to fill all the air and make it
all tremulous with its vibrations. I tried to collect my thoughts. I
recalled that old theory which had been in my mind before this, and
which I had mentioned to Agnew. This was the notion that at each pole
there is a vast opening; that into one of them all the waters of the
ocean pour themselves, and, after passing through the earth, come out
at the other pole, to pass about its surface in innumerable streams.
It was a wild fancy, which I had laughed at under other circumstances,
but which now occurred to me once more, when I was overwhelmed
with despair, and my mind was weakened by the horrors which I had
experienced; and I had a vague fear that I had been drawn into the
very channel through which the ocean waters flowed in their course to
that terrific, that unparalleled abyss. Still, there was as yet no
sign whatever of anything like a descent, for the boat was on even
keel, and perfectly level as before, and it was impossible for me to
tell whether I was moving swiftly or slowly, or standing perfectly
still; for in that darkness there were no visible objects by which
I could find out the rate of my progress; and as those who go up in
balloons are utterly insensible of motion, so was I on those calm
but swift waters.
At length there came into view something which arrested my attention
and engrossed all my thoughts. It was faint glow that at first caught
my gaze; and, on turning to see it better, I saw a round red spot
glowing like fire. I had not seen this before. It looked like the moon
when it rises from behind clouds, and glows red and lurid from the
horizon; and so this glowed, but not with the steady light of the
moon, for the light was fitful, and sometimes flashed into a baleful
brightness, which soon subsided into a dimmer lustre. New alarm arose
within me, for this new sight suggested something more terrible than
anything that I had thus far thought of. This, then, I thought, was to
be the end of my voyage; this was my goal--a pit of fire, into which I
should be hurled! Would it be well, I thought, to wait for such a
fate, and experience such a death-agony? Would it not be better for me
to take my own life before I should know the worst? I took my pistol
and loaded it, so as to be prepared, but hesitated to use it until my
fate should be more apparent. So I sat, holding my pistol, prepared to
use it, watching the light, and awaiting the time when the glowing
fires should make all further hope impossible. But time passed, and
the light grew no brighter; on the contrary, it seemed to grow
fainter. There was also another change. Instead of shining before me,
it appeared more on my left. From this it went on changing its
position until at length it was astern. All the time it continued to
grow fainter, and it seemed certain that I was moving away from it
rather than toward it. In the midst of this there occurred a new
thought, which seemed to account for this light--this was, that it
arose from these same volcanoes which had illuminated the northern sky
when I was ashore, and followed me still with their glare. I had been
carried into this darkness, through some vast opening which now lay
behind me, disclosing the red volcano glow, and this it was that
caused that roundness and resemblance to the moon. I saw that I was
still moving on away from that light as before, and that its changing
position was due to the turning of the boat as the water drifted it
along, now stern foremost, now sidewise, and again bow foremost. From
this it seemed plainly evident that the waters had borne me into some
vast cavern of unknown extent, which went under the mountains--a
subterranean channel, whose issue I could not conjecture. Was this the
beginning of that course which should ultimately become a plunge deep
down into some unutterable abyss? or might I ever hope to emerge again
into the light of day--perhaps in some other ocean--some land of ice
and frost and eternal night? But the old theory of the flow of water
through the earth had taken hold of me and could not be shaken off. I
knew some scientific men held the opinion that the earth's interior is
a mass of molten rock and pent-up fire, and that the earth itself had
once been a burning orb, which had cooled down at the surface; yet,
after all, this was only a theory, and there were other theories which
were totally different. As a boy I had read wild works of fiction
about lands in the interior of the earth, with a sun at the centre,
which gave them the light of a perpetual day. These, I knew, were only
the creations of fiction; yet, after all, it seemed possible that the
earth might contain vast hollow spaces in its interior--realms of
eternal darkness, caverns in comparison with which the hugest caves on
the surface were but the tiniest cells. I was now being borne on to
these. In that case there might be no sudden plunge, after all. The
stream might run on for many thousand miles through this terrific
cavern gloom, in accordance with natural laws; and I might thus live,
and drift on in this darkness, until I should die a lingering death of
horror and despair.
There was no possible way of forming any estimate as to speed. All was
dark, and even the glow behind was fading away; nor could I make any
conjecture whatever as to the size of the channel. At the opening it
had been contracted and narrow; but here it might have expanded itself
to miles, and its vaulted top might reach almost to the summit of
the lofty mountains. While sight thus failed me, sound was equally
unavailing, for it was always the same--a sustained and unintermittent
roar, a low, droning sound, deep and terrible, with no variations
of dashing breakers or rushing rapids or falling cataracts. Vague
thoughts of final escape came and went; but in such a situation hope
could not be sustained. The thick darkness oppressed the soul; and
at length even the glow of the distant volcanoes, which had been
gradually diminishing, grew dimmer and fainter, and finally faded out
altogether. That seemed to me to be my last sight of earthly things.
After this nothing was left. There was no longer for me such a thing
as sight; there was nothing but darkness--perpetual and eternal night.
I was buried in a cavern of rushing waters, to which there would be no
end, where I should be borne onward helplessly by the resistless tide
to a mysterious and an appalling doom.
The darkness grew so intolerable that I longed for something to dispel
it, if only for a moment. I struck a match. The air was still, and the
flame flashed out, lighting up the boat and showing the black water
around me. This made me eager to see more. I loaded both barrels of
the rifle, keeping my pistol for another purpose, and then fired one
of them. There was a tremendous report, that rang in my ears like a
hundred thunder-volleys, and rolled and reverberated far along, and
died away in endless echoes. The flash lighted up the scene for an
instant, and for an instant only; like the sudden lightning, it
revealed all around. I saw a wide expanse of water, black as ink--a
Stygian pool; but no rocks were visible, and it seemed as though I
had been carried into a subterranean sea.
I loaded the empty barrel and waited. The flash of light had revealed
nothing, yet it had distracted my thoughts, and the work of reloading
was an additional distraction. Anything was better than inaction. I
did not wish to waste my ammunition, yet I thought that an occasional
shot might serve some good purpose, if it was only to afford me some
relief from despair.
And now, as I sat with the rifle in my hands, I was aware of a
sound--new, exciting, different altogether from the murmur of
innumerable waters that filled my ears, and in sharp contrast with
the droning echoes of the rushing flood. It was a sound that spoke of
life. I heard quick, heavy pantings, as of some great living thing;
and with this there came the noise of regular movements in the water,
and the foaming and gurgling of waves. It was as though some living,
breathing creature were here, not far away, moving through these
midnight waters; and with this discovery there came a new fear--the
fear of pursuit. I thought that some sea-monster had scented me in
my boat, and had started to attack me. This new fear aroused me to
action. It was a danger quite unlike any other which I had ever known;
yet the fear which it inspired was a feeling that roused me to action,
and prompted me, even though the coming danger might be as sure as
death, to rise against it and resist to the last. So I stood up with
my rifle and listened, with all my soul in my sense of hearing. The
sounds arose more plainly. They had come nearer. They were immediately
in front. I raised my rifle and took aim. Then in quick succession two
reports thundered out with tremendous uproar and interminable echoes,
but the long reverberations were unheeded in the blaze of sudden light
and the vision that was revealed. For there full before me I saw,
though but for an instant, a tremendous sight. It was a vast monster,
moving in the waters against the stream and toward the boat. Its head
was raised high, its eyes were inflamed with a baleful light, its
jaws, opened wide, bristled with sharp teeth, and it had a long neck
joined to a body of enormous bulk, with a tail that lashed all the
water into foam. It was but for an instant that I saw it, and then
with a sudden plunge the monster dived, while at the same moment all
was as dark as before.
Full of terror and excitement, I loaded my rifle again and waited,
listening for a renewal of the noise. I felt sure that the monster,
balked of his prey, would return with redoubled fury, and that I
should have to renew the conflict. I felt that the dangers of the
subterranean passage and of the rushing waters had passed away, and
that a new peril had arisen from the assault of this monster of the
deep. Nor was it this one alone that was to be dreaded. Where one was,
others were sure to be; and if this one should pass me by it would
only leave me to be assailed by monsters of the same kind, and these
would probably increase in number as I advanced farther into this
realm of darkness. And yet, in spite of these grisly thoughts, I
felt less of horror than before, for the fear which I had was now
associated with action; and as I stood waiting for the onset and
listening for the approach of the enemy, the excitement that ensued
was a positive relief from the dull despair into which I had sunk but
a moment before.
Yet, though I waited for a new attack, I waited in vain. The monster
did not come back. Either the flash and the noise had terrified him,
or the bullets had hit him, or else in his vastness he had been
indifferent to so feeble a creature as myself; but whatever may have
been the cause, he did not emerge again out of the darkness and
silence into which he had sunk. For a long time I stood waiting; then
I sat down, still watchful, still listening, but without any result,
until at length I began to think that there was no chance of any new
attack. Indeed, it seemed now as though there had been no attack at
all, but that the monster had been swimming at random without any
thought of me, in which case my rifle-flashes had terrified him more
than his fearful form had terrified me. On the whole this incident
had greatly benefited me. It had roused me from my despair. I grew
reckless, and felt a disposition to acquiesce in whatever fate might
have in store for me.
And now, worn out with fatigue and exhausted from long watchfulness
and anxiety, I sank down in the bottom of the boat and fell into a
deep sleep.