A GLIMPSE OF THE UPPER WORLD.
“CHENOBI!” the baronet roared, “Chenobi!”
“Where the deuce can the fellow have got to?” he went on. “He
said he’d meet us, and here we’ve been waiting over an hour, and not a
sign of him yet.”
“Perhaps he’s met with some accident?” Mervyn suggested.
“I guess not,” replied the Yankee, “the Ayuti’s cute enough to
keep out of danger. He’ll be along here presently, you’ll see. There
you are”--as the sound of hoofs became audible--“I reckon
he’s arrived.”
The next moment Chenobi’s hounds burst out of the gloom, followed
a few seconds later by Muswani.
“I was delayed,” the king explained as he drew up; “I found three
of the wolf-people hunting along the shore.”
“Did they attack you?” Seymour questioned.
“They will not follow the hunting trail again,” returned Chenobi
significantly. “See, I have brought their weapons,” and he flung three
spears to his friends.
[Illustration: “SEE, I HAVE BROUGHT THEIR WEAPONS” (_p. 181._)]
“Give the other to Wilson,” Mervyn said, when Seymour and the
Yankee had each taken one, “he will make better use of it than I
should. And now for the next stage of our journey.”
First renewing their supply of water--which they carried in
two skin bottles--from the lake, the adventurers turned and
trudged forward again in the track of the elk. Now their way led over
a bare, stony plain, with never a fungi-clump to relieve the gloom,
and here the king’s jewel became once more of service. This part of
the journey was by far the most trying to the foot-weary travellers,
and they were glad to take advantage of the Ayuti’s offer, that each
should ride in turn for a space upon Muswani’s broad back. Mile after
mile they covered in this way, until a line of cliffs loomed before
them, sheer and impregnable.
The adventurers gazed at Chenobi in amazement. Had he mistaken
his route? So far as they could see, there was no opening in that
towering wall, yet he dismounted at its base as though he had reached
his goal.
A smile passed over his features as he noted the astonishment of
his friends.
“All is well,” he said, “we will rest here a while, ere we ascend
the cliff.”
“Ascend the cliff?” Seymour gasped, staring amazedly at the rocky
barrier.
“Ay,” returned the Ayuti; “see you not that there be steps carven
in the rock?”
Then the baronet saw what he had before overlooked. Up the very
face of the cliff ran a rude stairway, hewn out of the solid rock.
“It was carven by my people,” Chenobi went on, “when they first
came to this underworld, so that they might at times look upon the eye
of Ramouni, the sun god, whom they worshipped.”
“Another instance of the remarkable engineering ability of this
people,” remarked Mervyn to the baronet; “it must have taken years to
carve out that stairway, rude though it looks.”
“Guess it’s a bigger job than I should care to tender for,” put
in the Yankee. “Say, the old planet lost some real hustlers when the
Ayutis pegged out.”
“Nothing seems to have been too great for the beggars to tackle,”
murmured Wilson admiringly. “If they’d been above ground, they would
have built a staircase to the moon, or something of the sort.”
Mervyn smiled.
“They were a wonderful race,” he said reflectively; “it is a
thousand pities they have become extinct. Thoroughly civilised, they
would have become one of the first nations in the world. Think of
it--with their great bodily strength, splendid courage--as
evidenced by our friend the king here--their engineering skill,
what would they not have accomplished? Of course we may take it for
granted there were wastrels among them; there is no community without
its ne’er-do-wells. But the majority, from what I can gather from
Chenobi, appear to have been an intelligent and utterly fearless
people. Of the fate which overtook them, wiping them out of existence,
I can learn nothing. The king always avoids the subject when I
approach it.”
“I expect it’s too painful a matter to talk about,” returned
Seymour; “but, whatever the cause of their dying out, I can well
imagine the wolf-men had a hand in it. If their former priests were as
diabolically ingenious as Nordhu is, I fear no race could have
withstood them long. Just imagine, if you can: five millions of the
brutes--I think that’s the number you mentioned,
Meryvn?--they would overwhelm a world, let alone a city!”
“The presence of the priests is a puzzle to me,” the scientist
went on. “Obviously they are a different race from the savages they
govern, yet they are certainly not Ayutis! It may be that they are
half-breeds, the result of a union between the two races? The
offspring, perhaps, of some criminal, who, banished from the city for
his misdeeds, joined himself to the wolf-men and became their
leader.”
“But how do you account for their speaking the same language as
the islanders of Ayuti?” questioned Seymour.
“I have formed a theory to account for the coincidence,” was the
scientist’s reply, “whether it is the correct one or not remains to be
proved. When we reach the end of our present journey I shall be better
able to decide. But, see, the king is preparing to move on again.”
“Come,” Chenobi cried, approaching the base of the cliff
stairway.
Rising, his friends followed. With a sharp word of command to his
steed and hounds, the Ayuti commenced the ascent. Allowing a few
moments to elapse, Mervyn followed, then in turn came Wilson and the
American, Seymour bringing up the rear. Upward they toiled, their eyes
strained to catch the gleam from Chenobi’s jewel, their only guide
amid the gloom.
Slowly Muswani and the hounds--left to their own devices at
the foot of the steps--faded from view. Then the plain itself
vanished, seeming to give place to an illimitable black void. And afar
off, miles and miles away, a silver haze hovered. It was the uncanny
radiance from the fungi jungle. But even this faded at length, and
still the rough-hewn ledges rose before the climbers, and their limbs
grew weary of the treadmill-like motion. Occasionally an encouraging
shout would peal downward from Chenobi, cheering the flagging spirits
of his followers.
“Courage!” the king cried at length, “the end is at hand.”
Within a few moments they all stood in the mouth of a narrow
tunnel, which stretched before them far into the heart of the
cliff.
“Thank heaven that’s over!” muttered Wilson. “My leg’s still too
stiff to stand much of that kind of thing.”
“Your wound hasn’t broken out afresh?” Seymour inquired
anxiously.
“No,” the engineer returned, “there’s no chance of that now.”
“That’s good,” cried Haverly; “a wounded leg’s kinder awkward to
rub along with. Jupiter!”
His sentence ended in a gasp, as a brilliant light flooded the
tunnel.
“The sun!” Mervyn cried excitedly; “let us move forward again,”
and, suiting the action to the word, he strode on over the slanting
floor of the tunnel. But he pulled up again in a moment with a
startled “Oh!” as the light, dying out as suddenly as it had come,
left him in pitchy darkness.
Seymour burst into a laugh.
“You were a bit too previous, Mervyn,” he said. “Did you forget
that the light only lasted for a few seconds?”
“I had almost persuaded myself that we should emerge into the
open air within a few yards,” returned the scientist; “but I think
I’ll let Chenobi take the lead. Come along; are you going to stand
there all day?”
“Don’t get impatient, old chap,” retorted the Yankee; “we’re
comin’ along right now.”
And now began a journey which taxed their strength to the utmost.
The floor of the passage sloped almost as steeply as a house-roof, and
the adventurers had the greatest difficulty in keeping their feet.
Chenobi, going barefoot, got over the ground rapidly, but with
the others, in their heavy boots, slips were frequent. Hour after hour
they pressed upward, pausing occasionally for rest and refreshment;
then on once again with unflagging energy, knowing that each step
brought them nearer to the daylight. Thrice in the course of that
climb did the light of the sun penetrate the recesses of the tunnel,
so that the journey must have taken them at least three days.
Then the water began to run short, and many were the anxious
queries addressed to Chenobi as to the means of renewing the
supply.
“There is water above,” he replied to all these questions. “Ere
the light shall again strike upon the eye of the carven Ramouni our
journey will be at an end.”
Thus encouraged, they increased their pace, and before long a
cool breeze fanned their heated cheeks. Used as they had become to the
stagnant, motionless atmosphere of the underworld, the gentle current
came to the adventurers as a veritable life-giving elixir. It
intoxicated them, indeed, for a little while, caused a species of
madness, wherein the only thing of which they were conscious was the
yearning to get out into the open. It spurred them on to such efforts
that the Ayuti, for all his strength, had considerable difficulty in
keeping pace with them. Never before had the prospect of gazing upon
the face of Nature inspired them with such wildly delirious joy. Even
the cool-blooded American succumbed to the rapture of the moment. Hope
surged high within them all.
The Ayuti alone was grave and preoccupied. The hours he had spent
with these new comrades had been pleasant enough, but he knew that
they longed to return to their own world. They could not be happy in
the gloom of the underworld. They were children of the light, and
Ramouni, the sun god, was calling them back to bask once more in his
bright rays; and he, Chenobi, must return to his life of solitude, to
range the jungles till death came to him.
So thought the king. Little wonder that he was silent and grave.
It had been better, he mused, if these white strangers had never come
to his land; he would then have been content with his animals, and
with the lonely life to which a cruel fate had doomed him. But now he
longed for a comrade to share his solitude, and to divide the spoils
of the chase. With an effort he shook off these imaginings, and
applied himself more vigorously to the ascent. An hour passed by, and
then an excited cry broke from Seymour:
“The moon!”
An instant later the party emerged into the full glory of the orb
of night. For a while they stood drinking in the beauty of the scene
around. They were standing in the crater of an extinct volcano.
Imagine a vast well, many hundreds of feet in depth and over a mile in
diameter at its base, its rugged walls--sloping slightly outward
as they rose--covered with a mass of tropical vegetation whose
every leaf gleamed like silver beneath the beams of the full moon that
hung high above. This was the scene that met the gaze of the
adventurers.
Leaving them gazing, Chenobi vanished into the shadow of the
cliffs, returning presently with the skin bottle he carried full of
clear water.
“Drink,” he said shortly, and to such good purpose did his
friends obey that the bottle had to be replenished ere their thirst
was satisfied. Then, thoroughly tired out, they flung themselves down
where they stood, and, with the rich scents of a tropical forest in
their nostrils, dropped off to sleep, leaving the Ayuti pacing to and
fro across the crater floor.
The moon swung slowly across the dark blue dome above, and still
Chenobi kept his vigil, moving back and forth with the regularity of
an automaton. Yet it could not be that he feared danger. What danger
could threaten in this peaceful spot?
No, it was not the fear of possible peril that kept the king from
his slumbers. His mind was busy with other things. A daring thought
had come to him, and, as he pondered it, the more feasible it
appeared. It was nothing less than this: that he should forsake his
old haunts and cast in his lot with his new friends. For hours he
revolved this idea in his brain, until the moon disappeared below the
crater rim; then he aroused the sleepers, and beneath the quickly
paling sky the explorers had their first breakfast above ground since
passing the great ice barrier. Anxiously they awaited the coming of
dawn, eager to commence the last stage of their journey--the
ascent of the crater wall.
With a suddenness peculiar to the tropics the sun rose. A fiery
arrow flickered across the sky, followed by a blaze of golden glory,
before which the stars rapidly paled and died. The day had come!
Rising, the king led the way across the crater, passing the tiny
spring whence he had obtained the water the previous night. This, the
explorers noted, overflowed its basin and trickled through a little
crevice in the crater wall out into the open, to become, perhaps, a
rushing river on the other side of the cliffs. Moving to a spot where
the ascent promised to be easier than at any other point, Chenobi
began to climb. The creepers and low-growing shrubs made progress very
easy. Within an hour the summit was reached, and the party stood in
the full glare of the sun on the rim of the great crater. This same
rim proved to be a rugged ledge some twenty feet in width, from which
the outer cliffs descended for the first hundred feet or so as sheer
as a wall and about as devoid of foothold.
Below, the morning mists still veiled the base of the cone and
the country which lay beyond it; but, as the sun gained power, the
banks of vapour slowly dispersed, exposing to view the waving forests
of a large island.
Eagerly Mervyn peered downward; then a glad shout pealed from his
lips:
“I thought so! Look, Seymour! _The island of Ayuti!_”
“Great Scott! so it is!” gasped the baronet in amazement.