Authors: George England
"Well, we're here, anyhow, wherever
here
is!" exclaimed the
engineer. "Hey, you fellows, let me loose, will you? What kind of a
way is this to treat a stranger, I'd like to know?"
Two of the men waded through the water, tepid as new milk, to where
Stern lay fast-bound, lifted him easily and carried him ashore. Black
though the water was, Stern saw that it was clear. As the torch-light
struck down through it, he could distinguish the clean and sandy
bottom shining with metallic luster.
A strange hissing sound pervaded all the air, now sinking to a dull
roar, now rising shrill as a vast jet of escaping steam.
As the tone lowered, darkness seemed to gain, through the mists; its
rising brought a clearer light. But what the phenomenon was, Stern
could not tell. For the source of the faint, diffused illumination
that verberated through the vapor was hidden; it seemed to be a huge
and fluctuating glow, off there somewhere beyond the fog-curtain that
veiled whatever land this strange weird place might be.
Vague, silent, dim, the wraithlike men stood by, peering with bent
brows, just as Dante described the lost souls in Hell peering at
Virgil in the eternal night. A dream-crew they seemed. Even though
Stern felt the vigorous muscles of the pair who now had borne him up
to land, he could scarce realize their living entity.
"Beatrice! Beatrice!" he called. "Are you all right? Don't mind about
me—just look out for yourself! If they hurt you in any way, shoot!"
"I'm all right, I'm coming!" He heard her voice, and then he saw the
girl herself. Unaided she had clambered from her boat; and now,
breaking through the throng, she sought to reach him. But hands held
her back, and words of hard command rose from a score of lips.
Stern had only time to see that she was as yet unharmed when with a
quick slash of a blade somebody cut the thongs that bound his feet.
Then he was pushed forward, away from the dim and ghostly sea up an
acclivity of smooth black pebbles all wet with mist.
Limping stiffly, by reason of his cramped muscles, he stumbled onward,
while all about him and behind him—as about the girl, who
followed—came the throng of these strange people.
Their squinting, pinkish eyes and pallid faces showed ghastly by the
torch-glare, as, murmuring among themselves in their incomprehensible
yet strangely familiar tongue, they climbed the slope.
Even then, even there on that unknown beach beside an uncharted sea at
the bottom of the fathomless abyss, Stern thought with joy of his
revolver which still swung on his hip.
"God knows how we're going to talk to these people," reflected he, "or
what sort of trouble they've got ready to hand out to us. But, once I
get my right hand free—I'm ready for whatever comes!"
As the two interlopers from the outer world moved up the
slippery beach toward the great, mist-dimmed flare, escorted by the
strange and spectral throng, Stern had time to analyze some factors of
the situation.
It was evident that diplomacy was now—unless in a sharp crisis—the
only role to play. How many of these people there might be he could
not tell. The present gathering he estimated at about a hundred and
fifty or a hundred and seventy-five; and moment by moment more were
coming down the slope, looming through the vapor, each carrying a
cresset on a staff or a swinging light attached to a chain.
"The village or settlement, or whatever it is," thought he, "may
contain hundreds of them, thousands perhaps. And
we
are only two!
The last thing in the world we want is a fight. But if it comes to
fighting, Beatrice and I with our backs to the wall could certainly
make a mighty good showing against barbarians such as these.
"It's evident from the fact that they haven't taken our revolvers away
they don't know the use of firearms. Ages ago they must have forgotten
even the tradition of such weapons. Their culture status seems to be a
kind of advanced barbarism. Some job, here, to bring them up to
civilization again."
Slow-moving, unemotional, peering dimly through the hot fog, their
wraithlike appearance (as more and more came crowding) depressed and
saddened Stern beyond all telling.
And at thought that these were the remnants of the race which once had
conquered a vast continent, built tall cities and spanned abysses with
steel—the remnants of so many million keen, energetic, scientific
people—he groaned despairingly.
"What does all this mean?" he exclaimed in a kind of passionate
outburst. "Where are we? How did you get here? Can't you understand
me? We're Americans, I tell you—Americans! For God's sake,
can't you
understand?
"
Once more the word "Merucaans" passed round from mouth to mouth; but
beyond this Stern got no sign of comprehension.
"Village! Houses!" shouted he. "Shelter! Rest, eat, sleep!"
They merely shoved him forward up the slope, together with the girl;
and now Stern saw a curious kind of causeway, paved with slippery,
wet, black stones that gleamed in the torchlight, a causeway slanting
sharply upward, its further end hidden in the dense vapor behind
which the great and unknown light shone with ever-clearer glowing.
This road wash bordered on either hand by a wall of carefully cut
stone about three and a half feet high; and into the wall, at equal
distances of twenty feet or so, iron rods had been let. Each rod bore
a fire-basket, some only dully flickering, some burning bright and
blue.
Numbers of the strange folk were loitering on the causeway or coming
down to join the throng which now ascended; many clambered lithely up
onto the wall, and, holding to the rods or to each other—for the
stones, like everything here, were wet and glairy—watched with those
singular-hued and squinting eyes of theirs the passage of the
strangers.
Stern and Beatrice, their breathing now oppressed by the thickening
smoke which everywhere hung heavy, as well as by this fresh exertion
in the densely compressed air, toiled, panting, up the steep incline.
The engineer was already bathed in a heavy sweat. The intense heat,
well above a hundred degrees, added to the humidity, almost stifled
him. His bound arms pained almost beyond endurance. Unable to balance
himself, he slipped and staggered.
"Beatrice!" he called chokingly. "Try to make them understand I want
my hands freed. It's bad enough trying to clamber up this infernal
road, anyhow, without having to go at it all trussed up this way."
She, needing no second appeal, raised her free arms, pointed to her
wrists and then at his, and made a gesture as of cutting. But the
elder boatman of Stern's canoe—seemingly a person of some
authority—only shook his head and urged the prisoners upward, ever
upward toward the great and growing light.
Now they had reached the top of the ascent.
On either hand, vanishing in shadows and mist, heavy and high walls
extended, all built of black, cut stone surmounted by cressets.
Through a gateway the throng passed, and the prisoners with them—a
gateway built of two massive monoliths of dressed stone, octagonal and
highly polished, with a huge, straight plinth that Stern estimated at
a glance never could have weighed less than ten tons.
"Ironwork, heavy stonework, weaving, fisheries—a good beginning here
to work on," thought the engineer. But there was little time for
analysis. For now already they were passing through a complex series
of inner gateways, passages, detours and labyrinthic defenses
which—all well lighted from above by fire-baskets—spoke only too
plainly the character of the enclosure within.
"A walled town, heavily fortified," Stern realized as he and Beatrice
were thrust forward through the last gate. "Evidently these people are
living here in constant fear of attack by formidable foes. I'll wager
there's been some terrible fighting in these narrow ways—and there
may be some more, too, before we're through with it. God, what a
place! Makes me think of the
machicoulis
and pasterns at old
Carcassonne. So far as this is concerned, we're back again in the Dark
Ages—dark, dark as Erebus!"
Then, all at once, out they issued into so strange a scene that,
involuntarily, the two captives stopped short, staring about them with
wide eyes.
Stretching away before them till the fog swallowed it—a fog now
glowing with light from some source still mist-hidden—an open plaza
stretched. This plaza was all surrounded, so far as they could see,
with singular huts, built of dressed stone, circular for the most
part, and with conical roofs like monster beehives. Windows there were
none, but each hut had an open door facing the source of the strange,
blue-green light.
Stern could now see the inside of the wall, topped with torches; its
crest rose some five feet above the level of the plaza; and, where he
could catch a glimpse of its base between the huts and through the
crowding folk, he noticed that huge quantities of boulders were piled
as though for instant use in case of attack.
A singular dripping of warmish water, here a huge drop, there another,
attracted his attention; but though he looked up to determine its
source, if possible, he could see nothing except the glowing mist. The
whole floor of the enclosure seemed to be wet and shining with this
water; and all the roughly clad folk, now coming from the huts and
concentrating toward the captives, from every direction, were wet as
well, as though with this curious, constant, sparsely scattered rain.
Not a quadruped of any kind was to be seen. Neither cat nor dog was
there, neither goat nor pig nor any other creature such as in the
meanest savage villages of other times might have been found upon the
surface of the earth. But, undisturbed and bold, numbers of a most
extraordinary fowl—a long-legged, red-necked fowl, wattled and huge
of beak—gravely waddled here and there or perched singly and in
solemn rows upon the huts.
"Great Heavens, Beatrice," exclaimed the engineer, "what are we up
against? Of all the incredible places! That light! That roaring!"
He had difficulty in making himself even heard. For now the hissing
roar which they had perceived from afar off seemed to fill the place
with a tremendous vibrant blur, rising, falling, as the light waxed
and waned.
Terribly confusing all these new sense-impressions were to Stern and
Beatrice in their unnerved and weakened state. And, staring about them
as they went, they slowly moved along with the motion of their captors
toward the great light.
All at once Stern stopped, with a startled cry.
"The infernal devils!" he exclaimed, and recoiled with an involuntary
shudder from the sight that met his eyes.
The girl, too, cried out in fear.
Some air-current, some heated blast of vapor from the vast flame they
now saw shooting upward from the stone flooring of the plaza, momently
dispelled the thick, white vapors.
Stern got a glimpse of a circular row of stone posts, each about nine
feet high—he saw not the complete circle, but enough of it to judge
its diameter as some fifty feet. In the center stood a round and
massive building, and from each post to that building stretched a
metal rod perhaps twenty feet in length.
"Look!
Look!
" gasped Beatrice, and pointed.
Then, deadly pale, she hid her face in both her hands and crouched
away, as though to blot the sight from her perception.
Each metal bar was sagging with a hideous load—a row of human
skeletons, stark, fleshless, frightful in their ghastliness. All were
headless. All, suspended by the cervical vertebrae, swayed lightly as
the blue-green light glared on them with its weird, unearthly
radiance.
Before either Stern or the girl had time even to struggle or so much
as recover from the shock of this fell sight, they were both pushed
roughly between two of the posts into the frightful circle.
Stern saw a door yawn black before them in the massive hut of stone.
Toward this the Folk of the Abyss were thrusting them.
"No, you don't, damn you!" he howled with sudden passion. "None o'
that for
us!
Shoot, Beta!
Shoot!
"
But even as her hand jerked at the butt of the automatic, in its
rawhide holster on her hip, an overmastering force flung them both
forward into the foul dark of the round dungeon. A metal door clanged
shut. Absolute darkness fell.
"My God!" cried Stern. "Beta! Where are you? Beta!
Beta!
"
But answer there was none. The girl had fainted.
Even in his pain and rage and fear, Stern did not lose his
wits. Too great the peril, he subconsciously realized, for any false
step now. Despite the fact that the stone prison could measure no more
than some ten feet in diameter, he knew that in its floors some pit or
fissure might exist, frightfully deep, for their destruction.
And other dangers, too, might lie hidden in this fearful place. So,
restraining himself with a strong effort, he stood there motionless a
few seconds, listening, trying to think. Severe now the pain from his
lashed wrists had grown, but he no longer felt it. Strange visions
seemed to dance before his eyes, for weakness and fever were at work
upon him. In his ears still sounded, though muffled now, the constant
hissing roar of the great flame, the mysterious and monstrous jet of
fire which seemed to form the center of this unknown, incomprehensible
life in the abyss.
"Merciful Heavens!" gasped he. "That fire—those skeletons—this black
cell—what can they mean?" He found no answer in his bewildered brain.
Once more he called, "Beatrice!
Beatrice!
" but only the close echo
of the prison replied.
He listened, holding his breath in sickening fear. Was there, in
truth, some waiting, yawning chasm in the cell, and had she, thrust
rudely forward, been hurled down it? At the thought he set his jaws
with terrible menace and swore, to the last drop of his blood,
vengeance on these inhuman captors.