_In Which I Lose My Way._
I stood a full minute with the astonishing paper in my hand, too stunned
to speak or move. It seemed too incredible an outrage to realise. Then a
torrent of feelings swept over me--wild fear for her I loved, and
impotent fury against the miscreant who had dared even to conceive so
foul a sacrilege. To think of her beauty subject to such coarse
ruffianism! I pictured her bound and gagged and carried along through
the brush in the bestial grasp of filthy negroes, and it seemed as
though my brain would burst at the thought.
"The audacity of the fellow!" exclaimed the "King," who was the first to
recover.
"But Calypso!" I cried.
The "King" laid his hand on my shoulder, reassuringly.
"Don't be afraid for her," he said. "I know my daughter."
"But I love her!" I cried, thus blurting out in my anguish what I had
designed to reveal in some tranquil chosen hour.
"I have loved her for twenty years," said the "King," exasperatingly
calm. "'Jack Harkaway' can take care of himself."
I was not even astonished at the time.
"But something must be done," I cried. "I will go to the commandant at
once and rouse the settlement. Give me a lantern," I called to one of
the negroes, who by this had come up to us, and were standing around in
a terrified group. I waited only for it to be lit, and then, without a
word, dashed wildly into the forest.
"Hadn't you better take some one with you?" I heard the "King" call
after me, but I was too distraught to reply, plunging headforemost
through the tangled darkness--my brain boiling like a cauldron with
anger and a thousand fears, and my heart stung too with wild unreasoning
remorse. After all, it was my doing.
"To think! to think! to think!" I cried aloud--leaving the rest
unspoken.
I meant that it had all come of my insensate pursuit of that filthy
treasure, when all the time the only treasure I coveted was Calypso
herself. Poor old ignorant Tom had been right, after all. Nothing good
came of such enterprises. There was a curse upon them from the
beginning. And then, as I thought of Tobias, my body shook so that I
could hardly keep on walking, and, next minute, my hatred of him so
nerved me up again that I ran on through the brush, like a madman, my
clothes clutched at by the devilish vines and torn at every yard.
I fled past the scene of our excavations, looking more haunted than ever
in the flashing gleam of the lantern. With an oath, I left them behind,
as the accursed cause of all this evil; but I cannot have gone by them
many yards when suddenly I felt the ground giving way beneath me with a
violent jerk. My arms went up in a wild effort to save myself, and then,
in a panic of fright, I felt myself shooting downward, as one might fall
down the shaft of a mine. Vainly I clutched at rocky walls as I sped
down in the earth-smelling darkness. I seemed to be falling forever, and
for a moment my head cleared and I had time to think of the crash that
was coming, at the end of my fall--a crash which, I said to myself, must
mean death. It came with sudden crunching pain, a swift tightening round
my heart, as though black ropes were being lashed tightly about it,
squeezing out my breath; then entire blackness engulfed me, and I knew
no more.
* * * * *
How long I lay there in the darkness I cannot tell. All I remember is my
suddenly opening my eyes on intense blackness, and vaguely wondering
where I was. My head felt strangely clear and alive, but for a moment I
could remember nothing. I was conscious only of a strong earthy smell,
and my eyes felt so keen that, as the phrase goes, they seemed to make
darkness visible. They seemed, too, to see themselves, as rings of light
in the blackness. My head, too, seemed entirely detached from my body,
of which, so far, I was unconscious. But, presently, the realisation of
it returned, and involuntarily I tried to move--to find, with a sort of
indifferent mild surprise, that it was impossible.
So there I lay, oddly content, in the dark--the pungent smell of the
earth my only sensation, and my head uselessly clear.
Then, bit by bit, it all came back to me, like returning circulation in
a numbed limb; but as yet dreamily, as something long ago and far away.
Then I found myself partly risen, leaning on my elbow, and looking
about--into nothingness. Then feeling seemed slowly to be coming back to
the rest of me. My head was no longer isolated. It was part of a heavy
something that lay inert on the ground, and was beginning to feel
numbly--to ache dully. Then I found that I could move one of my legs,
then the other, and eventually, with a mighty effort, I could almost
raise myself. But, for the moment, I had to fall back.
The remembrance of what had happened began to grow in force and keenness
and, of a sudden, the thought of Calypso smote me like a sword! Spurred
to desperate effort, I stood up on the instant and leaned against a
rocky wall. Miracle of miracles! I could stand. I was not dead, after
all. I was not, indeed, so far as I could tell, seriously hurt. Badly
bruised, of course--but no bones broken. It seemed incredible, but it
was so. The realisation made me feel weak again, and I sat down with my
back propped up against the rock, and waited for more strength.
Slowly my thoughts fumbled around the situation. Then, as by force of
habit, my hand went to my pocket. God be praised! I had matches, and I
cried with thankfulness, out of very weakness. But I still sat on in the
dark for a while. I felt very tired. After thinking about it for a long
time, I took out my precious match-box, which unconsciously I had been
hugging with my hand, and struck a light, looking about me in a dazed
fashion. The match burnt down to my fingers, and I threw it away, as the
flame stung me. I had seen something of my surroundings, enough to last
my tired brain for a minute or two. I was at the bottom of a sort of
crevasse, a narrow cleft in the rocks which continued on in a slanting
downward chasm into the darkness. It was a natural corridor, with a
floor of white sand. The sand had accounted for my coming off without
any broken bones.
After another minute or two, I struck another match, and lo! another
miracle. There was my lantern lying beside me. The glass of it was
broken, but that was no matter. As I lit the wick, my hopes leapt up
with the flame. At the worst, I had light.
"_Lux in tenebris!_" I seemed to hear the voice of the
"King"--inextinguishably gay; and, at the thought of him, my inertia
passed. What could he be thinking? His daughter spirited away, and now I
too mysteriously vanished. What was happening up there, all this time?
Up there! How far was it to "up there"? How far had I fallen? All about
me was so terribly still and shut away. I could believe myself at the
very centre of the earth, and it seemed ages ago, æons of time, since I
had last seen the "King." What time was it? I felt for my watch. I found
but the wreck of it. It was the only thing that had suffered. It was
smashed to smithereens.
Then I moved myself again, and, taking up the lantern, raised it aloft,
but the chasm down which I had fallen went up and up in a slanting
direction, and lost itself in darkness. Bringing the lantern down to the
level again, I examined the rock corridor. Behind me, as before me, it
continued--a long, deep fissure, splitting its way through the earth. I
limped my way along some yards of the section that lay before me, but it
seemed to me that it was growing narrower as it went on, as though it
were coming to an end; and indeed, after a while, I came to a place too
narrow for me to pass.
I swung my lantern aloft, seeking the possibilities of a climb, but
everywhere it was sheer, without a ledge or protuberance of any kind to
take advantage of, and it was utterly devoid of vegetation--not a sign
of a friendly shrub or root to hold by.
So I turned back to try my luck in the other direction. But first I
shouted and shouted with all my might. I could not be far away from the
ruins, and there was a chance of some one hearing me. However, I had
little faith in my effort, and was too tired to keep it up; so I turned
with my lantern toward the other end of the corridor. And here it was
easy going, along a gently-graded descent, covered, as I have said, with
white sand, in which shells were here and there embedded. My heart beat
wildly. Perhaps I had only to walk on a little farther to come out on
the sea--for here certainly the sea had been once, whether or not it
came up there any more. Vain hope!--for when I had followed the corridor
some fifty yards or so, it suddenly widened out for a few yards into
something of a cavern, and then as suddenly narrowed into a mere slit,
and so came to an end.
The deadening of my spark of hope weakened me. I slid down, with my back
against the rock, and gave way to despair. As I looked up at the smooth
implacable walls that imprisoned me, I felt like some poor insect
clinging to the side of a bowl partly filled with water. How frantically
the poor creature claws and claws the polished sides, at each effort
slipping nearer and nearer to the fatal flood.
I had sense enough to know that I was too tired to think profitably, and
drowsiness coming over me told me that an hour or two's sleep would give
me the strength I needed to renew with a will, and more chance of
success, my efforts to escape.
Light was too precious to waste, so I blew out my lantern, and, curling
up on the sand, almost instantly fell asleep. But, before I lapsed into
unconsciousness, I had clutched hold of one sustaining thought in the
darkness--the assurance of Calypso's safety, so confidently announced by
her father: "Don't be afraid for her. I know my daughter." Whatever
happened to me, she would come out all right. As her brave shape flashed
before my mind's eye, down there under the earth, I could have no doubt
of that.