THE SINKING POOL.
FOR some time Wilson plodded on, his one idea being to escape from the
ghostly valley. The weirdness of the place, enclosed as it was on every
side by towering cliffs, its unnatural stillness, and, above all, the
grim remains with which the ground was littered, sent an uncanny thrill
through the engineer; and, despite his resolution, he found himself
continually glancing backward, to make certain that no spectral form
was dogging his steps.
All unconsciously he was moving in exactly the opposite direction
to that he wished to take, straying farther at each step into the
interior of the underworld. The valley seemed to be endless, and the
lonely traveller grew tired after awhile of the eternal monotony of
the scene around. More, he grew afraid; afraid that he would never
find his way out of these ghostly wilds, where reigned an everlasting
silence--afraid that he would never again see the _Seal_ or
the comrade from whom he had been snatched so suddenly.
The fear grew. Try as he might he could not shake it off. It
seemed to be gripping his heart with icy fingers, paralysing his every
energy, and turning him into a craven coward. He started at his own
footsteps. The shadow of a boulder, cast in a grotesque, distorted
form by the fungi light upon the ground at his feet, brought him up
with a jump, and only with great difficulty did he restrain a cry.
The valley seemed to grow full of strange sounds. Ghostly voices
whispered in his ears, hideous faces peered out from the shelter of
the fungi.
He was in the grip of a terror such as he had never known
before!
Then, upon the heels of this wholly imaginary fear, came a real
one. Footsteps--stealthy, all but noiseless
footsteps--sounded behind him, He glanced backward. A score of
yards behind him a black shadow was moving, a shapeless smudge against
the green of the moss.
For one terrible instant his heart seemed to stop beating. What
was the _Thing?_
Nearer it crept, sliding from shadow to shadow with a sinister
movement horrible to witness. And still the lad stood motionless, his
very soul withered by the fear that gripped him.
Nearer still--but a few feet separated the thing from the
engineer; then the latter recovered the use of his limbs, and, with a
wild yell of terror, dashed madly down the valley. As he did so, the
creature behind rose from its crouching position, disclosing to view
the hideous form of a wolf-man.
A moment the savage stood gazing after the rapidly-vanishing
Wilson, then, picking up something the latter had dropped, he turned
without troubling to give chase, and, plunging in among the fungi,
disappeared.
Like a hunted stag Wilson bounded over the ground, all other
thoughts lost in the one mad desire to get away from the creature
behind. He never turned to look if the brute was following. He rushed
on blindly, madly, the fear that gripped him lending him fictitious
strength. He knew nothing, saw nothing, until, utterly exhausted, his
trembling limbs refused to carry him farther, and he dropped full
length upon the ground.
A long while he lay where he had fallen, too wearied to move,
thoroughly disgusted with himself for so allowing fear to overcome
him. When at last he arose he was astonished at his surroundings.
Although he had no recollection of so doing, he must, in his flight,
have emerged from the valley of bones, for he was in a gloomy defile,
between towering cliffs.
From which direction he had come he could not tell, but, trusting
to luck, he strode forward into the darkness of the defile.
His terror had gone, but it had left him weak and trembling as
with an ague. Not a single fungus grew in the gloomy gorge; not even
the twilight peculiar to this strange subterranean world relieved its
dark obscurity. Yet, despite this absence of light, Wilson felt safer
than amid the fungi. If the darkness concealed dangers, it also hid
him from the sight of Lurking enemies.
For a little over a mile he strode on between the cliffs, then a
bright light ahead warned him that he was approaching the end of the
defile.
Redoubling his caution as he advanced, he soon emerged from the
gorge into another valley, much smaller than the one he had left, but
lit by the same weird growths. At first he hesitated to advance into
the light, the memory of his recent fright being still very vivid;
but, putting a bold face on the matter, he moved forward at length
from the shadow of the cliffs.
As he stepped into the light of the luminous growths, clear and
distinct to his ears came the clang of a bell.
He pulled up short in sheer astonishment, and stood listening for
a repetition of the sound.
Clang! Once more it rang across the valley. Drawing his
sheath-knife, Wilson moved forward, determined to investigate the
mystery. What could be the meaning of the sound, he pondered? Had he
reached the haunts of the wolf-men, and was the ringing of the bell
some signal? Whatever it was he was resolved to get to the bottom of
it.
Clang! For the third time the musical note echoed amid the
cliffs. The sound seemed to rise from a dense thicket of fungi, which
covered the further end of the valley, and towards this the engineer
hurried. Amid the towering growths he threaded his way, moving
cautiously, having no wish to fall foul of any savages; then, with a
low exclamation, he checked himself upon the edge of a clearing.
Before him, tottering in the last stage of decay, rose a ruined
building. Gaunt and ghostly, its roofless walls stood, the relics of
some past civilisation. Fascinated, Wilson moved nearer. What was the
history of this crumbling pile, the one sign of civilised life that he
had seen in this underworld? For what purpose had it been erected, and
by whom?
The pillars, which once had graced its front, lay half buried in
the spongy ground. Climbing fungi ran riot in the gaping cracks in its
walls, and its stone pavement was covered with a carpet of moss. Its
air of desolate grandeur strongly impressed Wilson, and for a while he
forgot what had brought him thither.
His engineer’s eye took in the monstrous size of the blocks which
had formed the walls, and he marvelled how they could have been raised
to their places. Surely they who erected such a building must have
been men of gigantic stature and strength, unless indeed they were
equipped with the appliances of modern engineering?
Dare he enter? The place seemed as deserted as the grave. If
there were savages about, they would, without a doubt, have shown
themselves ere now. He longed to examine the ruins more closely. There
appeared to be no danger, and, if it came to that, he was not safe
where he stood. Thus reasoning, curiosity got the better of his
prudence, and he strode across the clearing.
Just outside the great arch that had once been the doorway he
paused, and stood for a moment with ears strained for any sound from
within; but the place was wrapped in silence as in a shroud, and,
reassured, he crossed the threshold.
There was danger in his enterprise other than that from savages.
At any moment a block of stone might come crashing from the walls,
and, were he beneath such, his career would be ended on the spot.
Knowing this, he made his examination as brief as possible, keeping
well back from the walls.
The building appeared to have been used as a temple at one time,
for in the centre stood a stone altar. Time, the destroyer, had not
quite obliterated the rude hieroglyphics with which the side of the
sacrificial slab had been covered, but Wilson could not gain from them
the information he so much desired. To him they were mere meaningless
scratches. Mervyn, perhaps, could have read in them the life-history
of the builders of the place; but the engineer’s education did not
include the sign languages of defunct races.
Suddenly, clear as ever through the silence, came the
bell-note.
The sound recalled to Wilson the object of his search, the
mysterious bell-ringer. Not a little curious as to the identity of the
being, whoever it was, he thoroughly examined the interior of the
temple--but in vain. The place was entirely deserted. Not a hole
was there large enough to conceal a dog, yet the engineer was certain
the sound came from the building.
Was there a vault beneath the temple? It seemed probable, but how
came it that the sound was so distinct if the ringer were underground?
The thing puzzled him.
Determined to solve the mystery, he examined the moss-grown flags
of the floor, but with no better result. Outside the building, when he
essayed to search there, failure still attended his efforts. The time
flew by, and, though at intervals the musical peal still fell upon his
ears, he was no nearer the discovery of the mysterious being; bell and
ringer seemed invisible.
Probably he would never have hit upon the true solution of the
mystery but for an accident. As he moved amidst the fallen blocks
which strewed the ground at the base of the walls, he stumbled and
fell, whereupon, from the shelter of a stone close by, scuttled an
enormous beetle. The creature was almost a foot in length, and its
branched antennae, held over its back as it ran, beat furiously upon
its metallic body-covering, thus producing the clanging sound which
had puzzled Wilson for so long.
“Well, I’m hanged!” was the engineer’s graceful exclamation as he
rose; “to think that it’s only a beetle, after all! But now ‘to get a
move on,’ as Silas would say,” and with that he turned his back upon
the mysterious temple and resumed his way.
Around the valley he tramped, but no opening could he find in the
encircling wall of cliffs, and soon he found himself back at the
defile by which he had entered. Loth though he was to return to the
valley of bones, there was nothing else to be done.
So through the gorge he hurried, and stood once more, ere long,
in the feeding ground of the vampires. He paused a while to consider
his course, deciding at length to move along the base of the cliffs
until he came to some gorge or pass which would lead him out of this
weird valley. To this end he started off at a swinging stride, keeping
a sharp look-out for vampires as he went. Before he had covered many
yards a distant report broke upon his ears, followed by an explosion,
which awoke every echo in the valley.
At the sound, hope leapt into his heart. That first was surely
the report of a rifle, which meant that his friends--whom he had
deemed lost--were within a few miles of him. Instantly he started
off at a run in the direction whence the sound had come. No further
reports reached him, yet he did not doubt that he should be able to
find his comrades. Occasionally he shouted as he ran on, hoping to
attract their attention should they be anywhere within hearing.
He took little heed to his steps as he went, tripping and
stumbling among the scattered bones, but ever pressing forward. Had he
been more cautious the accident that befel him might have been
avoided.
He was moving through a thick clump of fungi, when once more the
report of a rifle echoed across the valley. At that he quickened his
pace, raising his voice in a lusty shout as he did so. But there came
no answering hail. His friends were as yet too far distant to hear his
call. Then straining every muscle in his headlong race, he suddenly
burst out of the fungi. Before him, almost at his feet, its placid
surface unbroken by a single ripple, lay an eerie-looking pool. Its
banks rose steeply from the water’s edge, making it impossible to note
its presence until close upon it. Wilson, striving in vain to check
himself, blundered over the brink and pitched with a splash into the
water, eight feet below.
He was a good swimmer, and, though unfortunate, the situation did
not cause him the least uneasiness. His wounded arm was now healing
rapidly, thanks to Garth’s attentions, so he anticipated little
difficulty in escaping from the pool. With a couple of strokes he
reached the bank, but failed to touch bottom. Evidently the pool was
of considerable depth.
Digging his fingers into the side, he commenced to claw his way
up. He was almost clear of the water when the rotten earth crumbled
beneath his clutch, and he fell backward, sousing clear under.
“Hang it!” he gasped as he rose spluttering. “I must try another
place.”
Treading water for a moment he looked round for a place where the
bank would be easy to scale. A spot quickly caught his eye, and
towards this he was about to strike out, when a strange phenomenon
startled him. _The bank appeared to be rising slowly out of the
water!_
He could scarcely believe the evidence of his own eyes. The sides
of the pond had not been more than eight feet in height when first he
struck the water; of that he was perfectly sure; yet now, at the very
lowest point, they were twelve feet, and seemed to be getting higher
each moment.
Was he the victim of some delusion? He rubbed his eyes, he
pinched his arm to assure himself that he was not dreaming.
Then, with startling suddenness the truth came to him.
_The water of the pool was slowly sinking!_