THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE
I had now resolved to go forward while I had the use of daylight to
guide me. Yet, so pliable is the human mind, I felt already the
reluctance with which a man must take farewell of familiar things, to
face the perils of a homeless way.
I glanced again at my companion of an hour, and with a more detailed
consideration than I had previously given.
Slim and graceful still, the body curved in death.
Very close and soft was the fur that covered her, silver-grey on the
back, but changing forward into a deepening chestnut. The legs were well
and finely shaped, but below the knee of each there was a slender
snake-like appendage, ending with curving fingers, like a tiny monkey’s
hand, which could close round the opposite limb and bind them together.
The feet also were delicately shaped, but deeply slit into three webbed
toes, of which the central one was the longest. Others--one at each
side,--set far back, were curled up normally, but could open sideways
with a thumb-like claw. The feet were furred equally with the legs, the
silver-grey of the undersides lying so closely that it looked almost
like a shining skin. They showed no sign of damage from the long rough
journey that I knew they had made, nor was any road-dust upon them.
The limbs were coloured in the same way as the body,--silver-grey behind
and chestnut-brown before, and the hands were almost human, but for the
webbing which had shown between the open fingers.
The head was to me the most singular, being furred like the body, and of
a similar colouring. The eyes were of a very human quality, and I had
seen them to be alert and intelligent. Now they were covered by a heavy
lid which rose upward, and in its turn was protected by a thin film
which closed down, and was lashed like a human eyelid. The ears were set
far back, and were covered by a furry flap which could be closed at will
to shut out air or water.
The mouth was lipless, a thin slit, with no sign of teeth. The cheeks
were covered by retractile pads beneath which was a gill-like device for
water-breathing.
The tail, which could curl up beneath the body till it was practically
invisible, was forked, with two more of those tiny monkey-hands at its
extremities.
I saw, or guessed, these details and their significance imperfectly at
the time,--the more so for my pledge not to touch the abandoned
body,--but it was evident that it was adapted for land or water living
with almost equal excellence.
I recognised that the novelty of what I saw was not surprising, but
rather that there was so little structural change in the form of animal
life over so long a period of earthly time. Still there was the
vertebrate body, the limbs, the head; still a general similarity of
external and, presumably, of internal organs.
I looked at the sinuous, graceful body, and wondered what it was that
repelled me.
To an impartial intelligence it might be considered more beautiful than
even an ideal human body, and the ideal in the human race is not the
majority.
Surely, it was more so than the average of our domestic animals.
Was it the unfamiliarity only, or was it the doubt of humanity, which
repelled me?
But repulsion, from whatever cause, was countered by a very different
feeling, which made my feet slow as I left the cave, and my glance go
backward.
Then I turned resolutely to the task which I had undertaken.
The day was very still. There was no cry or motion from the great
cliff-height above me. There was no flying life that crossed the
unbroken blue. The forest had stilled its fear, and the monstrous
growths were sprawling open upon the steaming soil. I wondered what
control it might be which held them so far backward that none could
reach a deadly arm across the path I kept. Perhaps the nearer soil was
too shallow for the growth they needed.
I went forward in this quiet peace for about four hours, stopping twice
to eat from the store I carried, which I found, though only semi-liquid
at the centre, had a gratifying quality of quenching thirst almost with
the first mouthful. I suppose it to have been formed largely of water,
as many solids are, and to have been soluble to digestion to an unusual
degree. But it is a matter which I have no competence to decide.
I know that I must have covered more than twelve miles in the first four
hours, with times for rest included ... and then came the abyss.
The cliff-wall ended, and ran back in a black and barren hill, immense
and desolate in the daylight.
The forest ended abruptly on the edge of a chasm so deep that, though it
must have been nearly a quarter of a mile to the further side, the great
depth made it look narrow.
Far below, dim and snake-like in the distance, a great river wound,
between deep shelving banks that looked moss-grown, but were covered
with (perhaps familiar) trees.
I stood upon the edge, which sank like a wall, and I saw no possible way
to go forward, or to clamber down.
I knew that there was a way which I had been meant to take, and more
than once I walked from side to side of the path on which I stood,
bending perilously over an edge which fell almost sheer to not less than
five-thousand feet below.
As I did this, the rope-like tentacle, which I was carrying over my
shoulder, slipped forward. I made one effort to clutch it; then,
conscious of my peril, let it go, but I was overbalanced already. With
an involuntary cry, that echoed and re-echoed through the barren
heights, I fell forward.