Return to Part I The Amphibians
This is file from the Books For Today Ltd., edition
50-52 Old Brompton Rd., SW7. 1949.
Printed by: Jarrold & Sons Ltd., Norwich. MCMXLIX
Several editions of this popular and reprinted work are redacted, as is the Gilbert Dalton edition of The World Below (containing The Amphibians and The World Below (originally called The Dwellers).
In several other (non early) publications, The Dwellers story is called The World Below.
Contents
| I. | Counsel |
| II. | The Unknown Way |
| III. | The Peril of the Lake |
| IV. | The Silence in the Wood |
| V. | The Temple |
| VI. | The Downward Path |
| VII. | The Living Book |
| VIII. | The Treaty |
| IX. | The Flame of Life |
| X. | Visions |
| XI. | War |
| XII. | The Fate of Templeton |
| XIII. | Separation |
| XIV. | Love and War |
| XV. | Release |
| XVI. | Return |
CHAPTER I
COUNSEL
The night had fallen to blackness while we still lay in the rock-cleft.
The ashes of the central buildings glowed with a pale blue light, and an occasional flame would rise up and lick across them like a ghostly tongue.
The long curve of the living-wall had fallen in from end to end, but the ashes were burning still, with a paler flame, so that it showed like a white bow in the darkness.
There were no stars; the night had clouded while we slept - for I lay long in a sleep of utter weariness and exhaustion, both of mind and body; and so, I think, in her own way, did my companion.
But I waked at length, with a dim sense of peril ended, and the short pause of security which is so precious to those who walk in dangerous ways, but conscious also of thirst and hunger, and of the shadow of great events, of which the significance was beyond my knowing.
I lay for some time in silence, pondering the strange things I had seen; reviewing - not without some mental discords - my judgement of the bat-wings, and the fate to which it had cast them, and wondering vainly what new marvels or terrors might be before us, when we should penetrate the subterranean world of which we were about equally ignorant.
As I lay I became aware that the night was chilly, though, being cloudy, it was less so than we had experienced previously. But I was suffering from a lowered vitality, and though my wounds were trivial I was conscious of the throbbing of my scalded foot, and that my right shoulder was both stiff and painful.
I then fell into a mood of depression, in which I saw very vividly the folly of the adventure which we had undertaken. How could we hope to penetrate undetected into the domain of the Dwellers? There was no sanity in the supposition. If I wished to live till the year of my exile were over, should I not endeavour to find some crevice in the surface-world, of which I already knew something, where I might hope that my insignificance would save me?
If those whom I had come to seek survived at all, was I not more likely to discover them under such conditions, than among those whom I had seen squeezing the juice from the living bodies of the Killers, as casually as a cook stones raisins?
While I thought thus, my companion's mind gave no sign, nor had I heard any movement from her. With a sudden start of terror I imagined that she were no longer beside me. It was in that panic fear that I realised how greatly I had come to depend upon her: alike upon her body for its vigour, and upon her mind for its counsel. And beyond this I knew that there was a spiritual quality in our intimacy, through which I was able to face the shadows of the unknown with something of her own serenity.
It was a simple action to reach out to feel where she lay beside me, and yet my hand delayed it.
Partly I may have been deterred by the atmosphere of aloof virginity which always made me diffident of any physical contact, partly it was that I dreaded to test my fear, as a man with a coward's mind may leave a letter unopened, knowing that it may hold the news of his ruin.
At last, I felt across the narrow space which had divided us as we lay and watched the concluding drama of our adventure, and with a sense of measureless relief my hand touched lightly for a moment on the smoothness of the soft warm fur.
Her mind opened instantly, realised the mood I showed her, and crossed it with the dancing gaiety with which she ever faced the thought of peril. Then - with the subtle distinction which she always drew between myself and the body in which I lived she asked me, "Is it more trouble than usual? Has it no gratitude for the rest you have given it?"
I answered, "It is rested by sleep, but has gone without food long beyond its accustomed time. It can do this while it shares your vitality, but afterwards the need reasserts itself with increased urgency. It is cold also, and, as you know, it has suffered recent damage, which it needs rest to repair."
She replied, "I can give you strength, if you need it, and if you think it wise; but consider.
"We have resolved on an adventure of which we do not know the length or the end. Of myself, I should continue in the ordinary course without food for about four months, after which I should require a time of rest and nourishment, before I should be fit for another year. If necessary, I could continue living, and in some measure of activity, for a much longer period. But I have been giving you of my own energy so freely that, if we continue in this way, I shall be exhausted in a much shorter time. Then I must return to my own place and people, as the food on which you rely - and the Dwellers also - is of no use to me. I ask this - is it better, that we should continue to share the strength I have, or should we find food for your body, and so regulate our movements in future that we can make it self-supporting?"
I answered, though my body ached for the vitality on which it had learnt to rely, "I think that it will be wiser for us to conserve the strength you have, which we may need in days to come, when there may be no means of renewal. But it will make important differences, for which there must be allowance in the plans we form. I am used to sleeping at short intervals, because my accustomed day is only about a quarter the length of that which you now have; and even though I obtain regular and suitable food, I shall still be incapable of the rapid and prolonged exertions which I have endured with the stimulus of your hand to help me.
"It appears to me that we must commence our enterprise by penetrating one of the tunnels that open on to the opal pavement. It is true that there must be other means of access inland, by which the Dwellers emerge in the daytime, but there are two reasons against attempting to use them. One is that we do not know their location, and though they may be nearer, it is equally possible that they may be more distant. The other is more serious. We are told that the Dwellers come up through the inland passages, and descend by those which are on the lower level. By choosing the latter, and following behind them when the night has fallen, we may reasonably hope that we shall be able to enter their abodes without encountering any who are coming in the opposite direction. In addition to these reasons, it occurs to me that the country inland is of an extremely forbidding and mountainous formation, and though the Dwellers are able to traverse it, it might be absolutely impossible for us to do so."
My companion answered with her usual equanimity, "It is a choice which must be made, and your decision contents me. But I notice a quality in your reasoning which must, I suppose, introduce the adventure of your life to many avoidable difficulties. I think the arguments which you gave me were good, but they did not cover all the considerations which might influence such a decision, and of which I feel sure you could have thought, had you wished to do so.
"It appears to me that you first elect your own preference, and then call upon your mind to furnish arguments to support it. It is not bound to do this, and it knows that you rely upon it to suggest any serious danger or difficulty which might impel you to alter your decision, but, no less, it understands your wish, and that if there be any sufficient arguments to justify your choice it is expected to find them. Like your body, it is separate from yourself, and may even work without your own awareness, but it is of a readier loyalty.
"I think, had you any reason desired to adventure into the mountains into the mountains, that your mind would have been quick to suggest that you could travel in greater security on the surface if you should avoid the paths which you have traversed already, where the Dwellers would be most likely to seek you. It would have used the argument of the unknown distance in an exactly contrary way, and it would not have failed to remind you that the tunnel which you have already explored contained no possible hiding-place, so that an alternative passage could not be worse, and might be better. It would have recalled that the whole length of the opal pavement is without any possible cover: that the bridge would be difficult for you to traverse in the darkness, while the Frog-mouths would be dangerous in the day: and that you have already been discovered once in the tunnel, so that it is at least possible that a watch has been set to take you there, should you again invade it.
"I could give you many more arguments of the same kind, but I am not resisting your plan. I am only interested in a method of decision which has, at least, the merit that it can operate more speedily than mine is easily able to do."
I had not thought her to be slow of decision when the need was urgent, but I felt that she had more to tell me, and I kept my mind open and receptive.
"You slept very long," her thought continued, "and I considered these things, after my own method. I first collected in my mind all that I have known of the Dwellers from the beginning, and of the things you have told me. I added that which I know of your own character and capacities. From these facts I endeavoured to deduce a method by which we could succeed in our objects, if we be not already too late. I made little progress, for the facts are few and insufficient. But I made progress to this extent, that I realised that we are supposing some things which we do not know.
"In particular, you have shown me your mind, and I have seen that you visualise an end to these tunnels which opens into a hall, a chamber, or a large passage, or at least some public space, populated by the Dwellers, and where concealment for ourselves would be difficult, if not impossible. Your imagination may be correct, and it is less a possibility for which we must be prepared. But in your mind it is less a possibility than an expectation, for which there is no sufficient ground whatever. Yet you had imagined it so confidently that I had difficulty in separating it from the facts you had shown me.
"I thought of this very long, and I see that your life is so brief, and so confusingly occupied, that you are obliged to proceed through a labyrinth of assumptions by which you hope to reach the thing you wish more rapidly than would otherwise be possible. But in this case, I cannot see that the assumption has any basis of probability.
"I know, from what you have shown me already, that you come of a race which has lived only on the earth's surface, and any cave or tunnel by which you enter it implies the approach to a confined and narrow space, so that when you attempt to visualise the condition of a race which lives under the surface, your imagination is of a cave, and not of a country.
"Now if the interior of the earth be completely solid, or nearly so, this imagination may be quite accurate. But is it? Neither of us knows. We do know from your own experience that the tunnels go down for many miles, though we do not know their ultimate depth. That suggests that there must be some reason for so deep a penetration. To make such tunnels must have been a great labour. To descend and ascend them continually must be an unceasing toil. There must be some compensating advantage in the depth which is reached. The hollowness of the interior would supply it. But there might be quite different reasons. We know that there are areas of great heat that lie closely under the surface. There are parts of the ocean floor where this heat causes eruptions. Such areas may be of great extent. They may render it difficult or impossible to live under the surface till a greater depth is reached. True, the tunnels must penetrate this region, on this supposition, and it must therefore have been found possible to render them heat-proof.
"We have one other fact. The Dwellers reach the surface at very distant points. But this has no certain significance."
I answered, "I see the point you make, and I agree that I was inclined to a too-hasty assumption. Also it enters my mind that if the earth be indeed hollow at a depth of a few hundred miles, and an inner surface be land only, it must be of far greater extent, not merely than this continent, but than the whole of the solid land of the earth's surface as I knew it, and as it appears to be today. It is also possible to imagine tiers of hollowed space in which such areas might be many times repeated, but the artificial creation of such tiers would require an amount of labour which appears stupendous and the dumping on the earth's surface of excavated material to an incredible volume."
She responded, "All that you think appears reasonable, and part is new to my mind. It would help us greatly if we knew whether the Dwellers are a numerous race, but of this I am able to tell you little.
"Before the time of the Great War, we believe that they dwelt on the surface only, or, at least, until a comparatively short period before it. Up to that time, for reasons into which I must not now enter, being irrelevant, we knew little of them, or they of us. That was about eleven thousand years ago.
"We know that they are bi-sexual, like the race from which you come. We suspect that their bodies age and decay, and are replaced by others, but of this we have no certain knowledge.
"In all the time I mention I cannot recall having seen more than two hundred of their men and three of their women. We do not suppose that they exist in these proportions. Our observation of the sea-creatures is that they cannot dwell in peace together unless their females are at least equally numerous, but we have seen those only who first negotiated the treaty with our Leaders, of which you have been told, and such as have been in attendance at the fish-tanks. Of these I mention, I cannot recall that more than thirty have been seen at any one period. As the centuries have passed, there has been a gradual change. But this might only mean that they have exchanged to other duties. I have never seen one that showed signs of age, nor that was less than full-grown. The eight which we saw last night I had not seen previously."
I answered, "But, even in the absence of more direct evidence, the works which we have seen suggest that they are a numerous race.
"The protective belt which surrounds the continent cannot be less than five thousand miles in length, and it was twelve miles in breadth at the point at which we crossed it. Even for giants such as they, it would be an impossible task for a small community. Then we see that they patrol the coast, which must be the work of many."
She replied, "That is also probable, though not certain. We do not know that they patrol the whole coast. This region may be their headquarters, as I believe it to be. The work you mention is great, but so are their skill and knowledge. Their methods may be beyond our imagination. Or they may have worked through the agency of subject creatures.
"It seems that we have little certainty. Our safety must be in assuming nothing, so that we may understand the true significance of the facts that meet us.
"But our first purpose must be to gain the entrance of the tunnel by which we propose to descend. To do this we may retrace the path we came. But is this necessary?
"Our Leaders wished to recover the body which we are now seeking, and for that reason they had to go as far north as the second tunnel.
"They may have had other reasons, but, if so, I do not know them. If we choose to explore the one by which you descended, the distance must be much shorter across the wide valley which lies beneath us, and the way does not appear impracticable. The crossing of the further hills, and the descent of the cliffs, may be difficult, and in this strange world there may be dangers in a new way of which we can have no foresight. It is certainly shorter. It will avoid the long transit of the opal path which is perilous if they be watching to take us. But I do not pretend that I think it the safer way. It is the doubt that calls me."
I answered, "I do not think it the safer way either. I have lost the axe on which you have seen that I relied for any defence I could make against the creatures which threatened me. I have also lost my knapsack, and with it all the necessities I carried, except such small things as my pockets held. I have a damaged arm, and a lame foot. I think that I shall be unable to move more than slowly, however urgent the call. But if you are not afraid to venture with one so useless beside you, it is the doubt of the unknown way that calls me also."
She answered generously, "You are too good for the body in which you live. I have the javelin still, and, as I said before, we will pass in peace, or there will be one that will sorrow."
CHAPTER II
THE UNKNOWN WAY
I did not ask, for I remembered our compact, and I closed my mind securely against her doubt of my welfare, but there are times, with thought as with the spoken word, when silence is of an equal significance.
"It is in my mind," she told me, "that the intention which we have formed to feed your body when next we may, will give it no strength beforehand. It is in my mind, also, that the food of the Killers would hardly please you, if we could find it amid the ashes.
"Beyond this, I think that the Dwellers may return very early to resume their investigation of events which (I hope) are still of some mystery to them, and that it is well that we should be clear of this place before the darkness leaves us."
Again I felt the silk-soft palm in mine, and the slim webbed fingers closing, and again the current of her finer life possessed and thrilled me.
It was a reluctant pleasure, since I had realised the concealed repugnance with which she touched me, but my need was too great, and the wisdom of her action, in our common interest, too evident for me to refuse.
"I am stronger now," I replied, after a time, "shall we start?" and side by side we let ourselves down into the darkness.
Clear of the shelter which had protected us, I was conscious of a thin cold rain, and of a chilling wind from the north, which penetrated the leather rags that I had no longer the means of stitching together, and made me glad to move my stiffened limbs as rapidly as I could, while we crossed the enclosure, to where the still-smouldering ruins gave a dim, unearthly light from both before and behind us.
I drank again at the pool-side, while my companion dived for a moment in the cool darkness. We passed near enough to the great tank for her to see that there was no longer any water within it. To this end, the Dwellers must have taken some action while the fire still burned, for our vice of curiosity led us backward to view it, and she showed me that the bodies which it contained were charred beyond recognition.
Then we made for the gap in the barrier of the burning ashes where the gate had been, and left that desolation behind us for ever.
As we passed out, our steps were lighted for some distance by the glow from the line of smouldering ashes beside us, but the darkness became denser at every yard as we turned from it to cross the plateau. Yet she went on swiftly, and, in the confidence that her hand supplied, I found no difficulty while the level ground continued. When the path fell roughly I held back to a slower pace, and even then I stumbled frequently. "Can you not see at all?" she asked, "for if we can do no better than this our plan must be altered. We have eighty miles to cover before the dawn, if we are to reach the valley woods while the night-time cloaks us."
I answered, "I cannot see when the darkness is absolute, and you go forward as though the day were round you. I suppose that other creatures are like me in this, or how would the darkness aid us? Can your eyes see when there is no light whatever?"
She replied, "When there is no light whatever, I can see nothing that is more than a few yards away, but within that space it is not my eyes only, it is my whole body that perceives what is around it. I do not see, but I know. My body is too much alive to walk into any tree that confronts it. But we must do something. If you would keep your mind blank and ready, I think I could show you always for a few steps before us."
This we tried, and for many hours we went forward with the way visible to me for about three yards ahead, and, beyond that, blackness. It was difficult, and very tiring, for neither of us could think at all, but we made good progress. Steadily she kept me aware of things before me, but more than once my own mind wavered, and in a moment I was stumbling in the darkness. And the darkness did not lift at all. There came a cold and steady rain, without wind, which descended straightly upon us. My rags were quickly drenched, and for the most part of the remaining night this rain continued pitilessly.
Our way was often very rough, and in the darkness we could not choose it. We could only go forward directly, and take what came. For the most part we descended, but not regularly. The ground we crossed was not cultivated in any evident way, nor was it enclosed, or protected - or not till we had crossed the lake, and that was later.
At times we walked on a prickly growth of some kind that was too close and stiff for our feet to break it. Often we walked, or, I might say, waded, through herbage such as we had encountered on the previous day, making our progress slow and heavy, but always her buoyant vitality sustained me.
Once we found the ground falling precipitously before us, and discovered that we were on the bank of a river. We could not tell its width, and my companion's suggestion that we should swim it found me unwilling. Bearing leftward, we continued beside it for some miles, and then found it had left us. It was about here that we began to feel touches as of light hands on the face, in a place where trees were frequent. I was frightened at first, till I realised that they were only trailing leaves - creepers, I thought, but they were really of the trees themselves, as we saw when the daylight came.
But the real horror of the night was at the last. For some time the ground had been flat and bare, soft from the rain, which had now ceased, but easy to traverse, so that we increased our pace, and were making good progress, when we found our feet sinking in a shaking bog, from which we pulled them with difficulty. Then it was firmer again, and then softer at times, till we were in a swamp which became worse as we went forward. For a moment we stopped, and I found myself in darkness, as my companion's mind asked me, "Shall we not go back, if we can? If we sink deeply in such slime we cannot swim or live. Nor can either of us think clearly while I show you the way. If we move from the straight line ahead we should remember our turns. Shall I lead you only?"
I agreed, and we turned back, as we thought, with exactness. Indeed, it must have been so at first, for she saw the marks we had left, but it was unexpectedly difficult. I was in darkness now, following the guidance of her hand, and content to think that her own sight and thought were concentrated on getting us clear of the swamp, when I suddenly felt her sinking beside me.
Cool, but urgent, her mind called me, "I have no footing: pull." I was up to my ankles in the slime, and found my left foot slipping from beneath me as I leant away from her. (For I had been at her left hand previously, but when we turned back we had changed hands, not positions, and I was now on her right). A step ahead, it was firmer ground. A struggle to the right, and she had footing once more. Then I went in deeply. After that we moved as best we might. One only at a time, and feeling each step carefully. I lost sense of direction entirely. And it was there - or nearly there - that the dawn found us.
But that was after, - well, I cannot hope to describe it, but I must tell it as best I can.
It was fortunate that our minds were in closest touch at the moment, or the second's interchange of thought might have been a half-second later, and there my life would, I suppose, have ended.
Her own mind was alert to give me the indications that her sight supplied, when it suddenly changed to a great doubt, paused on the brink of consternation, recovered to the high gaiety with which it was accustomed to encounter peril, shot me a thought-swift warning, reverted to its poised serenity, and closed from me entirely; and, in the slow process of words the warning that she gave was this, -
"We come here of good right, fearing none, and we mean no harm to any. Therefore we move in security. Our minds are serene and friendly, and we walk at peace with all things. If you doubt or fear we are both lost entirely. As your body fought the Killers with the axe for both of us, so my mind fights for both now. You must help now, as I helped then. I have passed you the javelin, for there is no use for weapons here, and I must not hold it. All is well. Be quite sure to believe it. Step as I guide you. Jump when I call on you, I will tell you just how far. Separate now."
The whole thought was instant, and in the same moment I knew that that on which we walked was swaying beneath us. Her hand pulled me quickly to the left, and we ran up something that moved from under us like a treadmill, - if we had been on the outside of the wheel, - jumped at last, landed on something smooth and slippery, like that which we had left, and having - the thought crossed me - a living softness. Then I caught my foot, stumbled, recovered, jumped again, clambered a few yards of rising ground, slimy enough, but firm also, and felt the soft touch on my cheek that I had felt before, and knew that trees were round us.
We went on for a hundred yards, while the ground sloped upward. Then it commenced to fall away, and we stopped at once. There we stayed, and there, at last, the dawn found us, still distant from the cover which we had aimed to reach in the darkness.
We were on a narrow twisting tongue of land, perhaps fifty yards broad by two-hundred long, the conformation of which had betrayed us to the swamp in the darkness. On the left hand it merged into bog and water, with occasional islands of verdure, and scattered trees. On the right hand was the deep water of the great lake that we had seen from the mountains two days before.
The sun had not yet appeared above the ridge of higher ground that ran between us and the sea, but the faint light of dawn was sufficient to show us a mile-width of still water, and beyond it a level woodland of great trees, the extent of which, from the low ground on which we stood, we could not determine.
The few trees that surrounded us were of a different character. Most of them were of the kind that had touched us in the night to weirdly. They had trunks of a livid white, not more than eight feet high, from the top of which a cluster of rising boughs rayed outward. On the length of these there were no leaves, but large flowers of a very brilliant scarlet only, while at the end of every bough grew a cluster of long ribbon-like leaves of a bright green, that hung downward, almost to the ground in the still air, or fluttered very lightly when the wind stirred them. I was not sure whether I thought them beautiful, or strange only. I had an unreasonable feeling that they were unfriendly.
In the hollow of one of these tree-tops, where the branches rose, there sat a duck-billed bird, of a halcyon blue colour, and of the size, and somewhat of the shape of a partridge. As the dawn widened, it rose and flew outward, not crossing the lake, but going up the mid-water, to the right, where it extended for many miles, gradually widening as it did so.
"It does not fear us at all," I remarked to my companion, before it rose to leave us.
"I made peace in the night with all things," she answered, "come and see. You will know that it was needful."
I walked with her to the end of the tongue of land on which we stood, and, where the lake and swamp were mingling, there were huge shapes that wallowed in the mud like gigantic tadpoles, but with two fore-limbs, short and thick, and ending in a row of claws of great length. A hippopotamus would have been small beside them. The most part of the head was a large-toothed mouth, flat and shallow, with one down-curving tusk, growing like a hook from the centre of the upper jaw. There were two large circular eyes, on the top of the flat head.
"They were lying closely," she told me, "in the deeper mud. We were walking on, or slipping between them for some time before I knew they were living.
"It was only as one of them woke to consciousness of us, and began to roll over, that I became aware of that on which we were walking.
"I knew that he had already decided to spill us in the mud, so that he should reach us the more easily, and that if the others should combine against us we should be helpless. They are the Dwellers' creatures, not of the sea, and for a moment I almost had the doubt which would have destroyed us. But I think I have not ruled the monsters that the oceans hold for so long, to lose my body at last in such talons. Also, you did well.
"A javelin, such as this, is a cunning weapon, and I had joy when I used it, but I think that our ways of peace are greater than those which you are designed to practise.
"You see the monster that still has his tusk hooked on to that projecting root, to steady him while he slept in the shallow? It was in the edge of his eye-socket that your foot caught when you stumbled."
CHAPTER III
THE PERIL OF THE LAKE
We watched for some minutes while the giant leviathans lazily moved themselves from the mud-shallows to the deeper water. They seemed half-asleep, and very slow, and somewhat clumsy, as they did so, with no life in the flat unlustred eyes, and a thought crossed me as to whether they were really as formidable as my companion had supposed them, when I noticed that one of them, who had moved out a short distance, had sunk his head, and raised his tail, as a duck does when he feeds under water.
Suddenly his tail waggled in an uncontrolled excitement, and in an instant a dozen of these huge creatures had flung themselves at the spot.
Those that were already in the deeper water drove like huge torpedoes toward it.
Those that were still in the shallows propelled themselves at almost equal speed with huge claw-grips and flapping tails through mud and water.
So great was the converging rush that the spot at which they aimed was splashed bare for an instant, and we saw that tusks and claws were tearing up the muddy bottom in chase of something that was burrowing deeply to avoid them. The next moment something of a dirty-white colour, and of the size of a small cow - but we could not see clearly - was dragged out and torn to pieces.
Then with contented grunts, and a switching of great tails, they swam out phalanx shape into the deep water, where they dived together, and the still lake gave no sign of their presence.
It was after this that my companion closed her mind from me, as she would do when a doubt came which she could not quickly answer.
At last she told me, "It is in my mind that we have done wrongly to come this way. The morning is here, and we have not reached the forest which should be our immediate safety. Between us and it the swamp is extending far on the left, and the lake for many miles on the right. If we try to go round on either hand, I have little doubt that we shall be observed from the heights behind us, where the Dwellers will be patrolling.
"If we hide through the day, we shall have a long way to go over the low land, which we have proved to be an evil path in the darkness, and to cross the hills beyond may be still more difficult. Beside that, the delay is misfortunate, for we should not arrive at the tunnel-entrance at the beginning of the night, as we had planned to do."
I replied, "Can we not swim the lake?" and surprised a thought of relief and wonder in the mind that heard me.
She answered, "I could, of course, do so very easily. I should swim under the water, and land beneath the cover of the trees upon the father bank. But I supposed that you could only swim on the surface, if at all, and that in any case the distance would be beyond your power."
The answer annoyed me, for her contempt of my physical capacity was always hurtful, friendly and entirely reasonable though I knew it to be, and I had always accounted myself an accomplished swimmer.
I said, "I have swum longer distances. I can swim under water for a short time, if necessary; but one of us swimming on the surface will be far less conspicuous than two walking on the bank, and we shall be out of sight very much sooner. Beside that, if we are seen and chased, we shall have a far better opportunity of escaping."
I do not think my reply quite satisfied her. I saw that she thought I was illustrating the habit of collecting all the available arguments for a course that I had pre-chosen, of which she had already accused me, but after a moment she answered equably, "It is far best, if you are sure that you can do it; and for myself it is far pleasanter. If we are going that way, it is foolish to stand here longer, where we may be observed easily.
"But can you swim in those rags, or will you not at last discard them?"
I think that most people would have hesitated, as I did. I could not swim such a distance encumbered by the clothes I was wearing. I could make them into a bundle in such a way that they would not impede me too greatly. All my instincts were against their abandonment. There were still a few things in the pockets which I greatly valued - my claspknife, - some matches - some cord - a note book (but I had made no use of this, so far) - some small scissors - a razor, and a quantity of spare blades. But I knew that the rags I wore in this new world exposed me to the contempt of every eye that beheld them. To be modest is to be inconspicuous. It is to follow the mode. By that test my present clothes reached the last extreme of indecency.
I had no means of stitching them further, and the rough usage they had received had already caused such damage that they would dispense with me, if I did not dispense with them very promptly.
I considered temperature, but the sun was already gaining power, and I knew how warm it became on the lower levels in the daytime.
Under the surface I knew that I had found the tunnel to be of a comfortable warmth.
I took off my boots, and knew that the operation was final. A sole already tied with string on the previous day, was now entirely loose. The other was scarcely better. The uppers were leaving me by successive details. My socks - what was left of them - were clotted with dirt and blood.
My companion watched the gradual revelation with amused and lively eyes, but she hid her thoughts from me as it proceeded.
In the end, public opinion was too strong for me. All my life I had made myself grotesque in the ugliest garments by which the human form can be hidden, because my fellowmen required it.
Here I was conscious of a different verdict, and the slave crouched instinctively to the crack of a new whip. On a sudden impulse, I resolved to leave them.
I wrapped my small possessions in my waistcoat, which was still a fairly sound garment. I tied it securely. Then I threaded a piece of cord through the button-holes, which I fastened round my waist, so that the little parcel could be easily carried behind me.
I made of the boots and other garments a bundle which I resolved to sink in the lake, so that there should be no sign left of our presence, and we dived into the water together.
The lake was smooth, and the water was not too cold to be pleasant. It became clear and very deep as we left the bank behind us. I swam strongly at first, rejoicing in the morning freshness of sun and air and water, and buoyed by the exhilaration of my companion's mind. But a time came when I looked with doubt at the distance of the wooded headland which we had agreed to make our objective. The shore was far off, but yet I seemed to have made no progress to the one before us.
My comrade swam beneath, but not closely. In the delight of her recovered element she dived and rose, and swam beneath and round me, with a speed and ease that did nothing to encourage me to satisfaction with my clumsier efforts.
I had a strong desire to call on her for the vitality of which I was learning to rely too absolutely, but against this I fought with a stubborn wish to show her that I was not entirely incapable, even in an unfamiliar element.
For a moment she stayed quietly beside me, sliding through the water at the same pace as myself, but without apparent effort, while she rose sufficiently to view the scene around her.
"Look back," she suggested suddenly, and I changed a stroke which was becoming wearier than I was willing to recognise, so that I might turn my eyes to the distant heights behind us.
I searched them, but could see nothing of a new interest. Once I thought that there was a flicker of flame on the hillside, but it was too minute and far off for any certainty, and the next moment I had lost it entirely.
"I'm afraid your sight is not much use, even in daylight," she considered, "but please swim as low as you are able, for the Dwellers may not be equally deficient.
"There is one who has scraped together all the ash and litter of the burning, and it has flamed up afresh."
I changed to the breast-stroke, and she sank to three feet under the surface, as I answered, "I suppose they will make and end to it entirely. Is it because of the Forbidden Thing, and do they, I wonder, wrongly blame the Killers for using it?
"I cannot understand why they should object to fire so strongly. In the world from which I come there are so many inventions less useful and with greater potential for mischief; and their own works show that their engineering skill and practice is advanced beyond the knowledge of my contemporaries."
She answered, "Perhaps it is only that they do not wish the creatures that they allow to live on the surface to develop knowledge. I can only guess, as you can. But we are likely to learn many things before the next dawn comes, though we shall not see it."
I did not answer, for a trailing growth of water-weed had caught my left leg, and I kicked free with difficulty. The next moment I was surrounded by the floating growth, and I was some moments under water before I could release myself sufficiently to continue.
My companion regarded me with the merriment which my bodily difficulties always prompted, only now it was more irrepressible, because she was intoxicated by the joyous freedom that the water gave her, after so long an absence.
"Is it really so," she asked, "that if you were below the surface for more than a few moments your body would become useless beyond repair, and you would die out of it entirely? and did you know this when you offered to swim so far across the surface?"
"It is true enough," I answered, "but I have no intention of drowning. In my world, we live dangerously in many ways, and when there is sufficient necessity we take such risks as we must, and we have contempt for those who will not take them."
"It is very well," she replied, with a mocking gaiety of mind which would not quieten, "but the contempt of your fellow-men is a somewhat distant eventuality; and as I desire your company when we invade the tunnel of the Dwellers, I hope you may decide that the risk will still be sufficient if you swim in some other direction."
I replied, "I am swimming to the nearest point at which we can land, and at the best pace I can. I do not know what better I can do, unless I am to sink to the bottom. But if you can give me any reason why I should not swim in this direction I shall be glad to have it."
She said, "I can give you two, and they are both rather good ones. Let me show you them as I see them."
She then gave me a most unwelcome vision of a mass of floating weed through which to swim would be hopeless, and downward, through clear water below it - for it was not rooted - to where our acquaintances of the morning lay scattered on the lake-floor, with wide unwinking eyes looking upward, doubtless for the capture of any prey which might be caught in the green snare above them. I do not think it needs excuse that the sight appalled me. We were in the very middle of the lake, and I was tired already.
"How far do the weeds extend?" I asked.
"I cannot say. It is farther than I can see. If you will turn and rest for a minute, I will find out which way we can best attempt to go round them. But swim quietly backward, for you will not wish to rouse our friends below while I am absent. I know that when you meet any strange thing your first thought is to fear, and then to fight it, but as your axe is gone, and you would not find it easy to reach your clasp-knife, I suggest that you should not rouse them."
I agreed very heartily, although I knew that she mocked me, and, indeed, the idea of using an axe in the water to defend myself from such an attack was sufficiently comic, as she visualised it to me.
The fact was that now she was in her natural element the idea of any living thing within it provoking either fear or hostility had regained its normal absurdity. Had she been alone, I knew that she would have dived beneath the weeds at once, without a second glance or thought for the creatures that lay below her.
She had left now, and I swam back for a short distance, and then turned on my back, and floated on the sunny water, glad of the rest, but becoming increasingly frightened as I reflected that at any moment I might find myself in the grip of those wide flat jaws. I understood why these beasts had their eyes so flatly placed, as I recalled that unwelcome vision. How far could their sight extend to the surface of the lake above them? Were they resting oblivious of such small things as I, that might be swimming in the water, or did they watch there, as a kestrel hovers, ready to rush upward at the first sight of their expected prey?
I was somewhat reassured, as the moments lapsed, by a shoal of silvery fish which passed me. They were as long as salmon, but much slimmer, and they swam in a long line two or three broad, straight toward the place of danger which I was avoiding. They, at least, had no cause for fear, unless they were too stupid to know, or sufficiently agile to avoid it.
And then she was again beside me:
"It is not very far round on the left, and there is clear water for a long way forward. There is a cold spring at the bottom when we have rounded the weed. The water there is purer than the lake itself, and I am desirous to bathe in it. If you swim on, I shall catch you up very quickly. But we will stay together till we are clear of this place."
We swam on, side by side, in silence. I was already aware that I must conserve my strength to the utmost, if I were to reach the shore unaided. After a short distance, the weed receded so that we were able to approach the shore obliquely, and then it disappeared from before us, and again we could head straight forward.
It was here that my companion left me. I know that she was in some doubt as she did so, for she asked me whether I would not prefer to float only, till she could rejoin me. But I was anxious to get forward while my strength lasted, and I had caught a glimpse of her mind, from which I knew how keenly she desired and needed her intended pleasure, so I answered only, "I will go on. You will catch me easily. The farther I leave the beasts behind us, the better pleased I am. But you will keep your mind open, in case there should be anything to let you know."
"Surely," she answered, and the next instant had left me.
The headland was nearer now, and it was with the hope that the struggle would soon be over that I settled down to swim the remaining distance. Once I called to my companion, and she gave me a sight of herself as she lay with lifted fur on the lake-floor, and let the cold stream go through it. But, for the most part, I tried to think of distant or abstract things, to turn my mind from the weariness which now made every stroke an effort.
Then a swell came from the left hand, as though a large boat were passing at no great distance.
I looked round in wonder, but for a moment I could see nothing to cause it.
Then a huge black body rose from the water, like an enormous porpoise, and turned a somersault which sent a heavier swell across the level surface of the lake.
My stroke quickened without conscious effort as I beheld it. But at the first moment I was not greatly frightened. It was evident that it did not pursue me, and my course was not toward it. Fortunately, I called my companion, and the answer, "I am coming now," was unperturbed in its promptness. I had an instant's vision of her, as the loose fur contracted, and the slim swift body shot forward.
But the next minute was rapid in thought and action.
My mind called urgently, "There is another one that has risen nearer."
"They may not see you while they are on the surface. Their eyes look upward only."
"They may do so, as they roll in their gambols - I think they have done so now. They are both coming."
"I am coming quickly."
"It is useless. What can you do against them?"
The two huge brutes were racing over the surface in their competition to secure me, with a speed which would have left a motor-boat behind very quickly. I could not doubt that in twenty seconds they would be quarrelling over my divided body.
My terror warned her only to avoid the danger which must destroy me.
"Refuse fear," she called back, "it is that which gives them power to destroy you."
But fear I must, and as she realised it, I think - though I am not sure - that there was a second during which her own mind faltered. But if so, it was for an instant only. Then she realised the full peril of the moment, and her courage rose to meet it.
Cool and swift, and very urgent, she thrust forward the full force of her mind to overcome the panic which had possessed me. "I shall be first. Swim on. Listen. You are safe if you hear me. You must stop thinking. Give your mind to mine, and I can save you. Do not think at all, but believe it. It is everything that you do this."
The rest is a dream only.
I was dimly conscious that the first of the rushing beasts was upon me, and that it dived slightly as it came, so that it should snap at me from below. I saw the wide flat shovel-jaws opened to take me, and then two things happened. Almost into the mouth of the gaping jaws she came between us - she had swum at least three times the distance that our opponents had covered - and at the same instant the second monster charged sideways into its rival in its eagerness to get a share of the expected dainty.
They were afraid of her, clearly. They both recoiled for a moment.
But it was clear also that they regarded me as a prey of which she had no right to deprive them.
On they came again from different sides, and into their very teeth she swam to thwart them.
Even so, had they been capable of concerted action, I do not see how she could have saved me. But she was cooler, swifter, more agile, with a mind that mocked them and bewildered. Nor was she content with defensive movements only, but as either would draw back for a moment, she followed the retreated mouth as though she dared it to harm her, as no doubt she did.
How it would have ended I cannot say, but at that moment fate interposed to help us. We were still a hundred yards from the shore, when the ground beneath us shallowed, and they pursued us no further.
We climbed out into a place of shade and of mossy softness, but I was too exhausted to regard it. Where I sank I lay. Perhaps, she was exhausted also. Anyway she gave me no thought, but remained in silence beside me.
After a time I slept.
CHAPTER IV
THE SILENCE IN THE WOOD
WHEN I waked, she was sitting looking into the water with brooding eyes in which amusement flickered more than once as I watched them, but which seemed, for the most part, to be puzzled by some thoughts for which she could find no solving.
She looked at me at last, and saw that I was awake, and offered me her mind in a moment.
"I am glad," she thought, "that I saved you, and I think that the Leaders will approve it; but of this I cannot be as certain as I gladly would be.
"As we were made companions in this enterprise, it seemed that it was right to do so. But it is a law of our kind that, as no creatures in all the oceans will dare to harm us, so we do not interfere between them.
Were we to withhold their prey from them I cannot say that our immunity would continue. It is a thing so fundamental that from the beginning I have never known it attempted. We cannot be as one of themselves, and above them also. It comes to me again, as I have thought before, that you are like a seed of death to the world I know, and the end is beyond my dreaming."
I answered, "I owe you the debt of my life, and I cannot tell at how great a risk you have saved it. But I do not wish you to do things for me of which the consequences may be beyond our understanding.
"I thought to show you that I could cross the lake unaided, and I have only made my weakness more evident. I think it may be right that I should go alone in future; for when you called upon me first not to fear, I am aware that I failed you, and I suppose it was from that that the danger became so imminent."
She answered, "That is true; and by my code it may be right to say that you failed me, where it was beyond the power of your body (which is truly contemptible) to do otherwise. But I have thought, and see that by your own code I failed you for my pleasure only, for which I have no excuse of weakness to offer. I do not think another man would have left you, as I did. You think I showed courage because I interposed to save you, at some risk to myself.
"Whether there were risk I do not know; nor how great it may have been; but I think you showed a greater courage, being what you are, to go forward alone, and that, not to save my life, but to give me a needless pleasure, against which you might have protested reasonably.
"But we have still a long way to go before evening, and we shall do well to face the remainder of the journey, the difficulties of which we cannot tell till we meet them."
While we conversed in this way, I had been observing the scene around me. We had landed upon the edge of a forest of a more varied luxuriance than that in which we had rested upon the higher land two nights before.
Here, as elsewhere, I saw no sign of grass, nor of any similar straight-bladed growth, but the ground was covered by mosses, very deep and soft, and close-creeping herbage of other kinds in many shades of green and yellow. The trees were of many beautiful and unfamiliar forms, some of great size and height, but not too crowded to show their contours, nor the sky between them. Their foliage was of shades that varied from the palest yellow to the deepest gold, with infrequent hints of red, and there was one broad-spreading bush which was entirely of a beetroot crimson.
It was very still - for the coming storms of which I had been told might bring rain in the night, but did not yet disturb the peace of the daytime - and of a beauty at which my breath paused for a moment, and of which I cannot hope to tell you.
But I was not looking for beauty. The need for beauty is continual, and for food is intermittent only.
Yet the last is the more urgent while it remains unsatisfied.
It is true that man cannot live by bread alone, but it is equally so that he cannot live long without it. I remembered our compact that I should be self-supporting in future. I knew the swiftness with which my companion considered it natural to travel. I was aware of the importance, not merely of reaching the tunnel-entrance by nightfall, but of doing so in such condition that we should be prepared at once to explore it. I looked round in a natural anxiety to discover some means of nourishment.
I saw nothing to encourage hope, except that there was a curious fruit-like formation upon the hanging branches of a tree behind us.
The leaves of this tree were very long and narrow, and of so light a yellow as to give an effect of whiteness, like the palest petals of the Californian poppy. At the root of many of the leaves there was a smooth-skinned tawny fruit, of the size of a loganberry. Opening it, I found that it was a fruit very certainly, containing a juicy pulp, and in the midst a single slender seed, of the size and shape of that of a lettuce. I tasted it cautiously, and found it delicious. My companion watched me with a friendly but unconcealed amusement.
After a time, she gave the glance by which I knew that she wished our minds to communicate.
"You have really no means of knowing," she asked, "whether they may assist or kill you? Is this because you are in a world of strangeness, or are you accustomed to this exciting uncertainty?"
I replied, "I have senses of taste and scent, which warn me that many things are unfit for eating, but they are not entirely reliable. The creatures of my kind depend largely upon tradition, as their own lives are too short to acquire much knowledge - and as, even were it otherwise, they would doubtless die in the experimental stages of obtaining it - and we eat such things as our ancestors have eaten before us.
"Here, my only method is to choose such substances as appear most like to those which I have known to be wholesome, and eat a small portion. If the taste be good, and no ill consequence follow, in a few hours I can eat more freely."
"Your lives may be short," she said, "but, at least, they lack dullness. How shall you go bad, if it should chance to be a wrong thing that you are now eating?"
I controlled an impulse of irritation before I answered, "I shall not go bad, for I am testing the food very carefully. But I shall be the more careful because of the thoughts you have, and I may keep you here in consequence till you are tired of waiting. There are many ways of going bad for those who eat the wrong things, and none of them is pleasant."
"If your kind can avoid such poisons through their traditions, how do you know of the effects of many?" she asked me.
It was ever so, when we commenced exchange of thought upon the world which I had left, that the starting-point was quickly out of sight behind us.
"There are a variety of very poisonous substances, either vegetable or mineral abstracts, which can be mixed with food or drink without easy detection. As our bodies frequently break down through defective construction, or our own misuses, or from unavoidable hardships, before their final dissolution, we employ men to repair them, and they make use of these poisons in minute quantities, and in the honest belief that we benefit from them.
"It follows that these poisons are prepared in great quantities, and are readily procurable.
"There is a custom among us of mixing one or other of these poisons in the food or drink of an acquaintance or relation whose life might be terminated to our advantage. Probably this custom is not very general, but that is difficult to judge, as it is practised very quietly, owing to a law which provides that the neck of a successful poisoner shall be broken, after an interval of some weeks, during which they are kept alive in great mental agony." ("Do you mean that an unsuccessful poisoner would be treated with comparative leniency?" her mind interpolated. "Yes," I replied, "our laws always encourage incompetence). However many of these cases may escape notice, it is usual to detect a few every year."
"The one who is considered to be the most likely to have committed the crime is then arrested, and all the available evidence is so arranged as (if possible) to prove his guilt. But strict proof is not necessary for a conviction in such cases, the practice being that the degree of proof required is in an inverse ratio to the repellent nature of the crime committed.
"I suppose that the great majority of those who are convicted are guilty, although, owing to the way in which these trials are conducted, and the nature of the evidence which is accepted as conclusive, it would be a very simple matter for anyone of average intelligence to poison another in such a way that suspicion would fall upon some other member of the household, and it is not reasonable to suppose that this is never attempted successfully.
"But my mind wanders.
"At these trials it is usual to announce in public the nature of the poison used, the quantities required, the methods by which they may be procured, their effects, and the ease or difficulty with which they may after wards be detected, and these particulars are distributed throughout the nation, so that anyone desiring to poison another need not be hindered by ignorance of such essential details.
"There is also, every year, a large number of people who destroy their own bodies, although we have (grotesquely enough) a law prohibiting this practice, - and here, at least, we discourage incompetence, for we can only punish those who fail, the rest being beyond the reach of our cruelties, - and a proportion of these people use poisons to effect their purpose, so that you will see that there is no difficulty in obtaining knowledge of the effect of such substances."
"I think," she replied, "that my Leader showed the accuracy of her judgement when she classified you as of the Batwing Kind, though your race is, at least collectively, of a stupidity which it must be hard to rival throughout the ages.
"But tell me this. You have shown me already that there are many other species of animals which dwell in your world, and which you consider to be inferior, because you have the power to destroy them, - Surely no conclusive reason! - Do they also suffer from the same disability, or are they better able to select their appropriate foods?"
I answered, conscious of the derision which laughed within her, and not entirely without a flicker of satisfaction, as I recognised that the ellipses of my thought confused her.
"It is true that for one species to have the power of destruction over another is a practical supremacy, and I may have impressed my thought upon you in that way without careful differentiation. To admit it absolutely would be to place the germ of a disease which we might be unable to conquer as beside or above us.
"We do consider that we are supreme of earthly creatures, but we could assert this supremacy on widely different grounds. . . .
"As to your first question, the physical senses of the lower animals are more acute than our own, because they depend entirely upon them.
"Those that are allowed to live wildly, through our indifference, or in parts of the earth which we have not yet populated, appear to avoid unwholesome food without difficulty. But if they cause us any annoyance we are able to show our superiority by cunningly mixing poison with some attractive substance, by eating which they die very miserably."
"I am glad to think," she answered, "that there are some parts of your earth which are still clean," and then she received my thought in silence as it continued.
"But I must qualify my thought to this extent. There are numerous species of animals which we have subdued to our own purposes, and that we confine around us, either that they may do work on our behalf, or that we may eat their bodies, or both, and there is a diminished ability to avoid poisonous substances among these creatures, as their lives approximate more nearly to the condition of those who keep them. - But this touches on much which would be long to explain, and I see that you do not understand fairly, if I give you the facts only."
She answered, "It is a wonderful world, and a very hideous. But I have much to ask concerning these creatures that dwell with you and that you eat when they die. For the time, let us leave it."
While we had conversed in this way, I had been occupied in opening the small parcel of my remaining possessions, and drying them as well as I was able, their importance to me being too great for my mind to be seriously affected by the knowledge that she regarded them as a humorous evidence of my inferiority to every other created thing, though she admitted very frankly that the Dwellers were not entirely exempt from a corresponding necessity.
Now I made up my bundle again, and having eaten freely of the strange fruit, I expressed my readiness to explore the golden lights and shadows of the forest that lay before us.
We had agreed that I should now depend upon my own vitality, even though our progress must necessarily be slower in consequence, but I rose and went forward very buoyantly, and though I knew that she was restraining her natural pace to keep beside me, I was well content to feel that I was moving with a lightness and energy which she could not have expected from any previous experience. There may have been some exhilarating quality in the food which I had just eaten, but, apart from that possibility, I had rested well, the air was pleasantly warm, and I had a sense of unaccustomed freedom from the rags which I had discarded.
Had there been a hard surface beneath us, I might have regretted the impulse on which I had left my boots, - though it would have been equally correct to say they had left me, - but the moss was soft and deep, and though it gave a curious tingling sensation (which I forgot subsequently) it was otherwise a very soft and pleasant carpet on which to tread.
The wood which we were now entering must have stretched (as I calculated) for about forty miles along the great valley which lay within the ridge of coastwise hills which we had to reach and cross to gain our objective. It was probably about ten miles wide at the point at which we were attempting to pass it.
We had gone about half-a-mile at a very quick walk, the trees not being sufficiently close to obstruct us seriously, when my companion asked me if there were nothing that occurred to me as unusual in the scene around us.
I had not thought of anything. I had been occupied by the beauty and variety of the trees which we were passing, but as she asked I felt it, and shuddered.
"Yes," I said, "it is the silence."
She answered, "Silence is good, but it is the cause of the silence. The trees live, but they do not move. I think that wind is forbidden. Besides the trees and the moss, it seems that we are the only creatures that live."
And I knew, as her thought reached me, that she was right. There was no moving life in the trees, nor in the air, nor in the moss beneath us. I searched, and if I could have found the smallest insect, I think it would have broken the spell which oppressed me, as I realised the isolation in which we moved.
I stood, and hesitated. I was ashamed of my thought, but at last I gave it. "I do not want to go farther."
"Do you feel it?" she answered, "I felt it sooner."
"It is not that I fear," I answered, "there seems no cause to fear in so great a peace, but I find it hard to go forward."
"Yes," she said, "the Dwellers may not be here, but I think that they have left their wills to protect it. It is a new thing to me. Shall we yield, and turn, or resist it?"
I hesitated for a moment, for I felt a curious disinclination to go farther, beneath which there was a stubborn unwillingness to turn back with so little of reason to justify it.
"It must be a long way round," I thought at last, "and it might be even more perilous. You shall decide."
She answered readily, "Then we will go forward.
"I will go first, if you will, because I am the more sensitive to the power against which we shall be contending, and I may also be more resolute to resist it.
"I know that you were trying to decide in this way, though you found it hard to do so.
"My own decision is not because it is a long way round, which is of little moment, nor because it may be more dangerous to take that way, for it may be less so, which is more probable. But I think that these were not your reasons. They were only those which your mind supplied, as best it might, to support your preference.
"You know, as I do, that there may be great danger if we go forward, though you cannot understand what it may be. Therefore you fear it. But you have within you a spirit which has been trained to conflict by the conditions of your life, and which is reluctant to turn aside from a chosen path, and especially so when the danger is not immediately evident, nor physically apparent.
"My own reason is different. I feel that these woods are held by a power which will turn us back, if it be sufficient to do so. I suppose this power to derive from the Dwellers, because I know them to be supreme in these regions, and I cannot think that there could be any other whose wills could contend against my own so stubbornly. But it is in my thought that if we accept defeat here we may as well abandon our attempt at once. It is your nature to depend upon weapons for your protection, and you have none. It is mine to depend upon the assertion of my own will, and if, at the first challenge, we confess defeat without effort, in what confidence may we continue? We have this to think also. The Dwellers have much knowledge which is not ours, and many powers, but of the issue of such a conflict neither we nor they have had any experience.
"I supposed that the meeting of last night would resolve it, for I believed that my own people had determined to go straight forward, and that the Dwellers were resolute not to move aside to allow it. But the appearance of the lizards between them caused my people to halt of their own will, and the issue was not contested in that way."
Then she went forward, and I followed closely behind her. Peace was round us, and a dream-like beauty, golden-green, and deep blue sky where the trees showed it. The stillness could be felt.
As the body feels when a great wind meets it, so that, though it stoop against it, it can make no headway, so was the pressure against my mind to hold me backward.
My companion gave me no thought, and I saw her go on slowly, but with no sign of effort.
As the pressure increased against me, my heart began to beat very violently. I became sick with terror. I forced each limb forward with difficulty, as though there were a weight that dragged it backward. I concentrated my thought on the fear that if she should leave me I should be lost entirely, and strove with a despairing energy to lessen the gap between us, as it threatened to widen. And then, suddenly, I knew that the pressure ceased, and she looked back with laughing eyes, and a mind which was elate with victory.
The trees here became very dense, so that we could not see far ahead, and there were many of the fruit-bearing bushes, such as that on which I had fed before, that grew between them. I had a sense of great exhaustion, which I think she shared also, and we sat down and rested.
I saw that she was elated that we had not been turned by this obstacle, but I found myself less responsive to her mood than usual. I felt that we were confronted by powers which were entirely beyond our calculation, and against which we could make no effectual provision. I even doubted our present success.
"Suppose," I suggested suddenly, "that while we think we are victors, we are caught in a trap which we cannot break? Suppose a new danger were to confront us, how could we flee backward through the stubborn wall we have passed? Suppose that it is a circle through which return may be more difficult than the entrance?"
"We may suppose what we will," she answered happily, "and we may be right one time in a hundred, but what use is there in that? And such thoughts seem to me to be of a great folly, for by such means you make those against whom you should contend the more formidable. You defeat yourself. You are frightened by a new thing. It is new to me also, but it is no more wonderful than are many of the invisible powers of which you have told me, which are known to your own kind, and of which even the Dwellers - for all I know - may be ignorant."
I answered, though still unable to rise to her own mood. "I know that you are right when you say that I defeat myself, for it is the weakness of my kind to do so. Even in our wars, it is only rarely that a battle is fought out to the extremity of either side, but a moment comes when the spirit of confidence dies in one side or the other, and it retires or surrenders. Often, it is found afterwards that its opponents were dispirited also, and that the defeated could have been the victors had they endured for a short time longer.
"But your comparison with the powers of my own world gives me little encouragement. In our last war it was considered necessary to prevent people from crossing from one country to another. To effect this a wire fence was erected along the boundary. It looked harmless, and easy to pass. Those who touched it died instantly, as by lightning. To an earlier generation it would have seemed incredible. How can we tell by what incredible-seeming horrors the Dwellers may be able to protect their territories?"
She answered buoyantly, "I agree with what you think, though not with the mood it induces. You are exactly right that we cannot tell, and it is useless to speculate. But the moment is ours, and I am content to have a mind untroubled.
Why is it that your mind and body are alike in this, that they will fear when there is no cause, or a doubt only, but will rise above it when a cause confronts them? You are at least clear from the barbarisms of your own time, which appear to be such by your own telling that it is a marvel that any of you remain alive to endure them. And you can take courage from the thought that the Dwellers are not of your kind."
I did not answer further, for I was now rested, and had eaten freely, and with the physical comfort the mood was passing, but I had less confidence than she in the Dwellers, and a greater fear than I had felt before.
CHAPTER V
THE TEMPLE
Now the trees were thinner again, and of a changing character. They appeared to be a larger variety of those which we had encountered during the previous night. Light and graceful they rose around us, with a crown of spreading boughs from which long ribbon-leaves fell thickly. These leaves were many yards in length, of the width of a finger, and of an almost incredible lightness. The air was quiet, but not with the unreasonable stillness of the area of that forbidding will, and when a light wind moved, the leaves were lifted like a woman's hair, and blown aside, so that the straight slim trunks showed nakedly between them.
Always these light leaves murmured with a stealthy whispering sound, so like to speech that I had a feeling that there were words which I almost heard, which I should catch if I should listen more carefully. I began to imagine that they were urgent to warn or threaten.
I turned to my companion's mind to break the spell they were casting, and found her receiving it with a like pleasure to that with which she bathed in the cold springs of the lake-floor.
Her mind paused reluctantly from its enjoyment to answer me when I queried in wonder how she should find a delight which approached to ecstasy in such a way, when I had understood that the sounds of speech, and (I supposed) all noise, were a barbarism that repelled her.
She answered, "You confuse things the most opposite. Is the beauty of bird or beast increased if it be torn open? The sea is full of sound, and like the wind it has many voices, which it contains within itself, as the air contains them. These voices are as the very basis of life to every sea-born thing. Even a dead shell cannot forget them. The unending murmur of these leaves soothes me with delight, while it arouses longing to return to the ocean-depths where there is neither noise nor stillness. Do you not hear that it is at once monotonous and many-toned, as all sound should be? Would not even such as you are shrink to violate it with the intolerable noises of the speech you practise?"
I did not answer, for her mind left me as it ceased its protest, and we went forward in silence, soothed to drowsiness of thought by this monotony of multitudinous sounds, till the trees ceased, and I was suddenly conscious that my companion was left behind, and that her thought was urgent to call me.
Thoughts that pass from mind to mind are swifter than speech, a thousand times, and more luminous. So it was that we had mutually realised in a moment that which would have been beyond the ready apprehension of human intercourse.
She stood back because she was confronted by a wall of blackness, where I saw sunlight, and a level lawn. It was not darkness that she saw, as that of night, but a blackness as of a curtain, gross and palpable.
When she knew that the way was clear to me, and that it held no visible menace, she decided instantly to go forward. "We will hold our purpose of boldness, as the better hope both of success and of safety. I will see with your mind, as you saw with mine in the night-time."
I agreed, and we joined hands, and went on together.
Now, as we had found before, it is the disadvantage of this method of helping another mind that it hinders thought, so that I went on with my will fixed on conveying that which I saw to my companion, and could not reflect, or even wonder, without some blurring of the vision which I was transmitting.
The forest which we had left swept a wide forward curve on either hand around a level plain, on which was a circular building which must have been more than a mile in diameter. It consisted of a series of platforms, each receding from the one below. There were many of these, each about four feet higher than the last, and the central elevation must have been considerable, though the extent of the building dwarfed it. In colour it was opalescent, reminding me of the pavement which I had first encountered, but it was of such extent and such beauty that the comparison is one of kind only.
So far as I could see from that position, it was crowned by a level platform. It was entirely silent: no life moved nor was visible.
All this I showed to my companion, who received it without interruption as we paused for me to view it, but when the survey was completed, and I would have continued our advance, I found her slow to follow, and it was only after an interval of irresolution that at last she told me. "I am afraid. I have doubted whether we should go forward. There is a mystery here which awes me, whereas the unknown, or the perilous, has allured me always. I have thought backward as far as mind will reach, and the feeling is new. But, after this, I thought that we have taken a new road with minds aware of its danger. We may come through harmless, or with broken bodies, or, for all we know, we may be destroyed by forces which are beyond experience or imagination. But there is one thing that remains to our own wills, that if we fail we may do so conscious either of a bold or of a craven failure. Having lived so long, I have no will to perish with shame in my thoughts. You have walked where your sight failed, and I can surely do so. We will go forward together, and you can give me the sight I need, unless a greater urgency should require you. It may be that the darkness will pass, as did the pressure.
"But, perhaps, you are yourself unwilling to continue with a comrade so helpless? If you would rather that we turn aside, or that you go forward alone, I am content for it to be as you will."
I answered readily, "I am well content to go on together. I do not share or understand your feeling. So far as I can see them, the platforms are quiet and vacant, and nothing warns me of danger. It is a strange thing that you cannot see, and may be ominous. But we have chosen a dangerous search, and we are little likely to reach success if we turn from shadows. To do so, would be (it is your own thought) to defeat ourselves, before any hostile movement should avail to thwart us. Let us at least go round the base of the building until we find whether the other side be alike. We might do this without penetrating the space within which you cannot see."
She answered, "Not by my will. For the fear is less since my resolution denied it; and how do we know that the higher platforms may not show us the entrance which we seek? Or that my sight may not avail when we gain them?"
But her sight did not return, and though I was able to convey the scene so that she walked confidently, yet our minds could not divert to the exchange of other thoughts, - could, indeed, scarcely think at all, without reducing her to a darkness which was not merely such as I had experienced on the previous night, but blackness absolute and unrelieved.
We went straight upward from one circular platform to another, finding no change whatever. We walked on surfaces as smooth as polished granite, in some places of a milky opaqueness, at others of deep and multi-coloured transparencies. Always before us was a wall of the same substance; climbing it, we found another similar platform to traverse. The outer edge of each curved very slightly upward, not more than a few inches, like the low rim of a gigantic saucer. It was nothing, proportionately, to the dimensions of the platforms themselves, but was enough to make me wonder how they were drained, when the rain fell. Then I wondered whether rain were allowed to fall in that solitude. Looking closely, I noticed, at the foot of the next wall, that there was a space of an inch or two between its apparent base and the platform beneath it.
Apart from these apertures, which gave to each of the circular walls an appearance of being unsupported, there was no opening anywhere, as of door or window, nor sign of joint nor division in the whole extents of walls or platforms.
The colours before and beneath us were of innumerable variety, and of deep and glowing intensities, changing continually as we advanced. They changed, but did not flicker, nor sparkle. We walked on lakes of frozen fire, that faded as we advanced to the quiet green of an English sunset when the mists are windless. Here, I thought, might be the place of the birth of sunsets. Sometimes the approaching wall would show a violet colour of an intensity which I had neither seen nor imagined, but this colour was never beneath our feet, nor could we reach it closely, for as we approached, it always changed and faded, if fading it could be called which was most often into a blue of more than peacock brilliance. But it was dull to the violet light which had preceded.
So we climbed unhindered, till we traversed a much wider platform than those below, and knew that the last wall was before us. It was higher than the previous ones had been, and we mounted it with some difficulty. We then saw a circular space of a diameter of about two hundred yards, and of an absolute flatness. It seemed that there was nothing more than the sides had shown already to reward our climbing. Except - so small a thing. A tiny point of light on the surface at the centre - so small a point. As we walked toward it I expected it to show more largely, but it did not do so. When we stood within a few yards, which was the nearest that we dared to venture, it was still too small for the eye to measure. It was a point without magnitude. I cannot say that it was embedded in, or that it lay upon, the surface. I cannot say that it was red or yellow: it was fire. It did not change or sparkle.
We stood there for a long time. I had no thoughts that I can translate to words. I have none now.
At last, we continued our way to the farther side of the platform, where we found a new reason for pausing. Beneath us lay the penultimate terrace which we had noticed to be so much wider than the others.
Where we had crossed it in ascending there had been no other difference. But here I looked upon the body of one of the Dwellers, who lay face-downwards before us.
She did not lie on the flat surface, but in a shallow depression, hollowed to the shape of her body, which was half beneath and half above the surface of the platform on which she lay. It fitted her as though it were a mould in which she had been cast. It fitted her arms, that lay stretched straight and wide above her head. The whole attitude was one of grief or adoration. We watched, and saw no movement.
We walked aside for some distance, before climbing down to the platform on which she lay. Having done this, I looked toward her, and saw that she was now standing. We remained motionless. We could merely watch. If she saw us there could be no escape nor evasion. We could not exchange thought, for my mind was occupied in conveying to my companion the vision of what I saw, but she contrived to let me know that it was as inexplicable to her as to me, and I remembered that she had told me that she had never seen more than three women among the Dwellers, although she supposed them to be more numerous.
The one we now saw stood upright, showing a girlish slimness, her great size neutralised by the parity of her surroundings. She was gazing towards the point of light, her arms held down before her, and the joined hands twisting as in an extremity of controlled emotion.
Unlike the male Dwellers, she had hair on her head, abundant, though not long. It was golden-brown in colour, and extended down the spine, a narrow lifted ridge. Otherwise the body was hairless. The back was the brown of a burnt biscuit, changing in front to rich cream-colour. Otherwise, she might have been a woman of today or yesterday, with the grace and symmetry of a Grecian statue.
So, for a time, she stood, and then turned, and descended.
As I watched her do so, I became conscious that she could see no more than my companion. For though she walked confidently enough down what to her were no more than very wide and shallow stairs, I saw her twice put a foot forward, as with an instant's doubt, to feel the slight flange which rose at the edge of each platform.
Before we descended farther, we walked to the edge of the hollow in which she had lain, and I had an impression of the enormous mould of a human form, as though it had been pressed in wet sand, but all the substance of that hollow showed the violet light of which I have told before, and though it did not flash nor shine into the eyes as sunlight does, but was, as it were, buried within the stone that contained it, yet it was of such intensity that my sight was lost as I saw it, and for some moments after I turned away I was a sharer of my companion's blindness.
It was inevitable that we should take much longer in our descent than had the Dweller, whose stride from platform to platform was so different from our shorter steps, yet when we arrived again on the level ground she was still there, and had turned to face the temple (if such it were) with thrown-back head, and uplifted arms, and an expression as of one who has been hopelessly repulsed, and yet makes one more appeal, not with expectation, but because it is intolerable to turn away, and to admit defeat which is final.
*
It may be convenient here to explain certain facts regarding the Dwellers of which I learnt later, and in gradual ways. They had, in the course of numerous millenniums, developed bodies which were immune from disease, and (in comparison with our own) from accidental injury also. So far as their experience showed, there was no physical deterioration, nor any reason why they should not continue indefinitely. Yet their solution of the problem of longevity proved inferior to that which had been evolved by the Amphibians, in an unforeseen way. In our own race, we know that the desire of life may persist in a body which is both old and organically defective, and that the brain is usually the last stronghold of a vitality which is reluctantly surrendered. Their experience was opposite. A time would come when the body functioned, but the mind grew weary. Year by year, an increasing lethargy would be succeeded by a more active desire for death, till the slow operation of their own willpower would destroy their bodies through the misery of its final centuries. To the young, this condition would appear incredible, and they would confidently boast that they would resist it successfully, but, sooner or later, it would inevitably descend upon them.
Such was their individual doom: as a race they lived under a darker shadow. When it became evident that they had so far overcome the threats of disease and decay that the individual might continue indefinitely, they had naturally been concerned rather by the fear that there might be an ultimate congestion of population, than that the race should fail in fecundity. But this fear had not been acute, because they were then engaged in exploiting a new, and seemingly almost limitless, subterranean territory. Also, they passed through a period of warfare with the inhuman population of other portions of the earth's surface, in the course of which many of them were destroyed, and which remained as a continuing menace when the actual conflict ceased.
They had soon learned that though the lives of their women were prolonged indefinitely, their power of procreation did not continue, and they had first observed, immediately after the war of which I have spoken, that the children that were born were males in a considerable majority. They were not alarmed at this circumstance, which those who specialised in such matters assured them to be of a temporary character, either because (as some held) their males had been weakened in strife, and their boldest and strongest killed, and it was (they said) a natural law that the young should be of the sex of the weaker half of the community, or (as others held) because the spirits of the dead were reincarnated, so that, in time of warfare, an excess of male births was a natural consequence of the fatalities which preceded them. With all their wisdom they could not resolve this question with certainty. They were not even agreed as to whether there were any necessary relation between the births and deaths that occurred among them, or whether, should they cease entirely to die, new spirits could be incarnated indefinitely from the Unseen.
But the war ceased, and the years passed, and the excess of male births did not cease, but augmented continually. Many troubles resulted, many expedients were tried, many laws were passed, but this condition persisted.
At this day, while the males and older females must have numbered tens and may have numbered hundreds of thousands, there were less than seventy women of marriageable age alive, and of some two score of children there were three girls only.
*
As the Dweller stood thus, a feeling of desolation came upon me, settling into a dull despair, which I had no force to combat. It may have been the attitude in which she stood, solitary and silent, in that strange setting, the vacant beauty of the temple before, and the golden circle of the woods behind her, her arms lifted in dumb protest against the inexorable destiny which overshadowed her.
It may have been her attitude only, or it may have been more than that, as I realised later.
For when at last she cast down her arms with a gesture of impotence, and turned with bowed head, and descended into some cavity of the ground, my companion opened her mind toward me, and the shadow darkened as she did it. Then her thought grew clear to this issue, - "When you have shown me the dark things of the time from which you came, I have been curious, or repelled; or I have sympathised or marvelled only; yet it has been as unreal as is a reflection in water. But here I find it close, and very terrible. Its meaning is beyond me, but I had not imagined that the world could hold such sorrow. . . . It is strange that we could receive thoughts which were not directed to us, but it may be that when they are cast loose in such intensity of petition they may be received by all who are near them."
I replied, "That is scarcely so, for I saw only, and her thoughts were hidden."
She answered, "It may be that you do not receive the thoughts of the Dwellers as easily as we do, or as you receive ours, or there may be another cause, but to me her thought was clear and vivid, though it was formless, being a desire that was so strong that it could endure with little hope to support it. I do not know for what she asked, but I think she called for help which will not be given. I can show you her thought."
Then she gave me the prayer which had gained so unexpected an audience, and my mind was filled at once with a sense of intolerable calamity, and with the cry of one who knew that the time for hope was over, and who struggled to reject a despair which would be beyond her endurance, so that her mind beat lamentably against the repulse of closed and indifferent doors.
I suppose it to have been because her trouble was of a nature more easily explicable to myself than to my companion that I found in the transmitted thought a more concrete quality than she had recognised as she received it.
I could not tell the cause of her calamity, or its incidence, but I became aware that it was the impending destruction of her race against which she pleaded, and that this was joined in some undisclosed manner with a personal grief, the larger shadow being a connected background to the more imminent catastrophe.
It was not evident that we were concerned in the troubles of any one of the Dwellers, or in their general welfare. Indeed, their perils or pre-occupations might contain our safety. They were alien from, and might be contemptuously hostile to, my own humanity. Yet the depression of that telepathy would not lift, and it was with a sense of overhanging tragedy, illogically enough, that we advanced to investigate the cavity by which she had descended.
The ground declined as we approached it, becoming a rounded channel or gutter, down which we moved, the temple on our right, and the surface soon above the level of our heads on the left. We must have descended thirty or forty feet when we came to the lowest point, the ground commencing to rise before us, and at the same time we became aware of the entrance to a tunnel on our right which sloped down and inward beneath the temple.
In dimensions it reminded me of the tunnels beside the opal path with which I was already familiar, but it was otherwise different. There was no vertical rod, such as that which had drawn the eyes, and stayed the pursuit of the Frog-mouths. There was no difference between floor and walls, but all were marble-smooth, and hard, and cold. They were opalescent, but of a kind and colour which I had not seen previously. The sides and roof were of the dim green of the under-surface of an arching wave, and like a wave they curved over, differing from the upright walls and flat ceiling of the earlier tunnels. The floor gave an impression of dark green depths through which we could have seen to the remoteness of the earth's interior, had the faint light allowed it.
We had ceased to think as we moved forward, so that I might once again give to my companion the benefit of the sight she lacked, and it must have been my own volition that caused us to take a few steps within the entrance of the cavity. But as we did so, her thought broke sharply across my own, "You need show no more: I can see here." It was a relief that did not lessen the marvel. She showed me that the blackness still fell like a curtain over the very mouth of the cavity, where I looked out into sunlight, but the gloom within was alike to both of us, and in the relief of this renewed equality we sat down, not very prudently, against the wall of the passage, forgetting its potential dangers in the pleasure of needed rest, and in the necessity of reconsidering our position.
"The question is," I began immediately, "shall we continue the plan we made before we knew that this tunnel existed, or shall we do better to attempt to descend it?"
"It is one question, among several," my companion answered, "but it is hard to answer. We have some facts now of which we were ignorant when we decided two nights ago. If we exchange our thoughts at once, we shall make confusion only. Let us think separately till we have each resolved what is best, and have made our reasons clear to ourselves. Then, should we differ, and either prove unable to convince the other, I will give way very willingly."
I assented to this, knowing it to be unlikely that such a difference would arise or continue, and we remained silent for a considerable time, for my own thoughts were chaotic, and I was anxious not to interrupt the exhaustive logic of the mind beside me.
My inclination was to explore the cavity to which we had now come, but when I attempted to formulate arguments in support of this preference, I knew that I could not do so conclusively. I was in a state of nervous exhaustion, and my courage sank at the thought of struggling outward through the belt of the resisting will, only to front the perils of the pathless hills, and the jaws of the waiting Frog Mouths. Though to descend to the Dwellers might mean destruction, I was in no mood to defer it, but rather to cast myself upon their mercy, with a feeling of indifference as to what the end might be. So that when my comrade indicated her willingness to converse again, I was quick to ask her opinion first, to which she assented with her usual equanimity.
"It is evident," she began, "that though we know more than we did, we still know so little that all decision must be guessing, and each new fact, as we gain it, can only demonstrate how foolish may have been the choice we made before we perceived it. Yet, when the roads branch, a choice must be made.
"The Dwellers may have information by which they know of our movements, or they may be searching for us, in ignorance of where we are; or they may be entirely unaware or indifferent.
In the first case, it seems clear that should we return we are adding useless dangers to a sufficient peril, for we must face them, first or last, and we can gain nothing by wandering upon the surface before we do so; in the second, we may be more likely to avoid them if we descend here, by an entrance which appears unwatched, and where they do not know us to be, than if we return to those with which they already know us to be familiar; in the third case, it may still be to our advantage to descend at once, rather than to wander farther upon the unfriendly surface of an unfamiliar world. I can see that there may be facts which would make folly of these conclusions. We are certainly distant from where my Leader's body was left to their mercy. We have no reason to suppose, if it have been preserved at all, that it has been conveyed below the surface in this direction. We have no reason to suppose that we shall be able to penetrate under the surface toward the point from which our search should commence more easily than we can do above it. We have no certainty that there is any connection whatever between this passage and those of which we knew previously. Should we descend, and escape capture or destruction, it may still be that a later day will see us emerge with time lost, to no end but the experience of an abortive adventure. This is the more likely because there is no evidence of traffic to or from the entrance, but the whole aspect is of the reservation of a peculiar and sacred place. I cannot tell which may be best, but my inclination is to go down."
I answered, "So is mine; and I can add to your reasons two at least which you have not mentioned. The one is that while within the tunnel you have lost the disability of the blindness which had hindered us in the surrounding area; the other, which is more serious (because I suppose that we could quickly reach the woods where you would presumably see as before) is that, after this delay, it is doubtful whether we could cross the hills before the night falls, and now that my last remnants of clothing have left me, my body is ill-adapted to meet either storm or frost, and I have less fear of the more even temperature of the subterranean places.
"It is true that this passage is not like the one which I first penetrated. Its slope is less. Its current of upward air is less evident. Its floor is less easy to tread. Its roof does not give the same measure of light. It may not be frequently used, and it may lack the stores of food and water on which I subsisted. But beyond this, all is conjecture. It is a choice of risks, and we agree as to the one to be chosen."
So we rose, and went down together.
CHAPTER VI
THE DOWNWARD PATH
I have often speculated as to what might have happened had we decided differently, and had I survived the dangers of the surface world, and attempted the penetration of one of the seaward tunnels. Knowing what I do now, I suppose that it must have ended fatally for myself, if not for my companion also. But so much is still mystery, so much conjecture, that even that may not be certainly true.
As it was, we went on for some time in an eventless silence, the dark green shadowy smoothness of the surface on which we trod sloping gently downward, the glassy arch above us becoming gloomier as we left the daylight. The idea oppressed me that we were actually traversing a wave's interior cavity. I think that I had been mentally exhausted by the prolonged effort of conveying the scene through which we had passed to my companion's mind.
Once or twice I tried to establish connection with her, but her thoughts were closed against me, and I gained no more than a knowledge that she was abstracted and troubled, and indisposed for conversing. Then we came to a place where we must needs pause and consult, for the straight path ceased. The slope ceased. We stood on a level path that curved forward, right and left, with a blank wall before us. Either side we might turn, and the choice could scarcely be made in silence.
I questioned my companion with thought and eyes. It was too dark for me to see hers, but mine may have been visible to her better sight. She answered readily.
"Yes, we must choose; but I have been concerned with a greater urgency. As we entered the tunnel my mind inquired for my own people, with whom I had been disconnected since the encounter with the Dwellers which we witnessed together, and though I have learnt nothing of their welfare I found that an urgent message is being sent out to me continually, - 'Return at once. Further concealment useless. The animal must go to the Dwellers, who have already dealt suitably with those he seeks. Do not reply.'
"That is the message, about which I am troubled. I cannot quickly tell what is right to do. I conclude that no reply is desired because there is either fear or certainty that it would be intercepted, and understood by the Dwellers, and might do harm in ways which I cannot know, and might not therefore avoid. It may be from the same cause that the message contains no mention of the body of my Leader, though that is the object for which I am here. It may be that this trouble is over; even that it is returned already. Yet the objection to any reply being sent indicates less than complete harmony, and there may be actual hostility between the Dwellers and ourselves.
"From these thoughts two questions follow.
"If there be dissension between the Dwellers and ourselves, and concealment be useless, how can I hope to return openly and in safety? Possibly they may have agreed that I shall not be hindered, if you remain, though there are some improbabilities in this supposition. So far, I have thought of no other.
"The second question. which is greatly the more important, is this. Am I right to leave you? Never, from the remotest memory, have I known such a doubt to rise, nor can I tell how to resolve it. Always we have acted together. Our Leaders have thought for all, and our will has been single."
The news which she gave had disconcerted me sufficiently for my thoughts to be both confused and depressed at the first hearing, and I cannot say to what protest or reproach they might otherwise have led me, but to this appeal there could be only one answer possible.
"If you feel under the obligation of the promise that we should explore the tunnels of the Dwellers together, there is no need for concern on that point, for I release you from it. Even if I should not, I think that your first duty must be to your own kind, and that the news which your message gives has altered the whole position so radically that no arrangement could be binding which was made in ignorance of it."
She answered, "You confuse me with vague thoughts. Let us be silent," and for some minutes she closed her mind.
Then she continued, "Your thought is generous, and I should be unfair not to recognise it, but it is born of conditions which are as alien from ourselves as are the ways of the Frog-mouths. If I be under obligation to keep an undertaking to you which may have already altered your course, and changed the experiences which you must now encounter, how can it affect what is right for me to do, that you should accept my desertion without protest? When you suppose that you can release me in such a way, you assume a position of Deity - and of a Deity who could alter the essentials of what is right and wrong. It is not your willingness that I should go which concerns me - it is the verdict of my own mind."
I answered, "I have no doubt that you are right, and that you have rebuked me justly. Yet, no less, I should like to feel that you have decided with a mind untroubled by any thought of consequence to myself; for any event, whether you stay or go, is beyond forecasting. Either way may be the more dangerous for me. It is beyond knowing. But for yourself, it seems evident that should you stay you will incur a needless risk of the anger of the Dwellers, and must be troubled by the additional fear that you will have disobeyed your Leaders, and may have to face the consequences of their anger, should you escape the perils of our present enterprise. It seems to me that your position would then be worse even than my own, and I cannot willingly agree that you should incur such dangers to aid me."
"You think," she answered, "after your own kind, and suppose a fear which I could not feel, and a contingency which will not occur. If it be evil that there should be discord of thought between me and my people, is it reasonable that either side should desire to continue and perhaps increase it, in a vain quarrel concerning what will have happened?
"Should I finally return, I shall give my reasons, and, should they be found insufficient or otherwise, the event must be a source of wisdom for all of us. But that must wait its time. In which direction shall we go?"
We looked to right and left, along corridors that curved forward on either hand, and which were more nearly of the kind that I had first explored than was the tunnel behind us, excepting that they were level-floored, and were not lighted in the same way.
The walls were vertical: the ceiling flat: the flooring was of the material that looked like polished steel, and was soft to the feet, with which I was already familiar. But in place of the dove-gray walls, and the faint opalescence of the roof of my first experience, there was an intermittent darkness, broken by moving fires that glowed, as it seemed, deep within the substance of the walls, and changed, and faded, and revived elsewhere.
It shows how dulled we had become to unfamiliar wonder, or how concentrated our minds had been upon the new problem which had disturbed us, that we had not observed these shifting lights when first our eyes must have beheld them.
Now, as we gazed, the left-hand side of the leftward passage glowed with a sudden redness of twenty yards away. The light spread, and spread, along the glassy surface of the wall, until it had almost reached us. It rose up till it neared the gloom of the distant roof, of which the darkness was not pierced but was changed to a dusky red. The steel-gray floor was stained also with a faint reflected redness. The glowing colour showed the lofty passage before us till it curved out of view.
"Come," she said, "while the light lasts," and I knew that, with the decision made, her mind had recovered all its buoyant serenity.
As we left the light, it was already fading, but others showed ahead, and we went on in an ever-changing darkness, seldom far from some luminosity which was sufficient to guide us on a plain and unimpeded way.
The colours in the walls were various, not only in their kind, or in their intensity, area, or duration, but they had an appearance of being of varying distance from us, so that we would look at the dark wall, and see the transient motion of same glowing splendour, as it seemed, a mile within it, and then an interval of darkness and then a burst of light and colour, like an open rose, that seemed to be scarcely covered by the surface of the wall that held it.
So we went on until, in no great space of time, we came to an opening on the left hand, wide and high as the passage in which we were, and on the same level, but in an absolute blackness.
We were of one mind to explore it, for the thought had come to both of us that if we continued to traverse that in which we were, we must return to the point from which we started, should the curve continue. My companion, whose judgement was far more accurate than my own on such points, was definite that we had completed a quarter of the full circle when this side-corridor was reached. So we decided, not doubting that it would be lighted in the same manner, and foreseeing no obstacle. I have little doubt from our later experiences that we were right on the first point, as we were certainly wrong on the second, for we found at the first step that we were confronted by the same withstanding force that had obstructed our passage of the sleeping wood, but more instant and urgent in its application, so that we did not attempt to hold our ground, but fell back at the same impulse to consult whether we should again adventure against it.
Recalling our previous decision, and our successful effort, I was disposed to accept the challenge it gave us, but my companion differed. She pointed out that it had then resisted the straightforward path which we had resolved to take, but that now we should be turning aside to face a needless difficulty, without knowing that the passage we left might not be in every way the more direct to our purpose.
So we went on, and twice again, at similar intervals, did we come to such a passage, and each time we attempted it for a few paces, and recoiled from the resistance of the will that met us.
But the third time we did not accept defeat as we had done previously. We considered that these passages had appeared at similar intervals, and that it was probable that this was the last we should meet, the fourth quarter of the curving path returning us to the point from which we had started. Faced by this probability, we rested awhile, and then, hand in hand, that my companion's vitality might give me the physical strength I needed, so that my will should be free for the nervous conflict before us, we went resolutely into the dark mouth of the cavity.
In the course of a few steps, taken with difficulty, as though our feet dragged in a heavy sand, and our limbs and bodies were pressed against a trammelling and resisting garment, we found that we were in an absolute blackness, so that we could not see our steps, and it is doubtful, indeed, whether we should not have retired at once from so menacing a prospect, had not my inferior power of progression caused us to bend our course somewhat to the right, on which side I was, and as we drew nearer to the wall we discovered that it was of a quality which I may best describe as having an interior luminosity. It gave no light to the passage, at all, but standing closely to it we could look into it, as into a glass, yet seeing no reflection of ourselves, but a vision that held us absorbed and silent. At first we saw a dark pool, or it might be the shadowed space of a river, but it showed no current, nor any motion of wind. Strange, fronded trees grew beside it. At some distance, there was a touch of moonlight on the water, but it did not waver. We watched for some time, as though expecting something to happen, and yet I thought it to be nothing more than a picture of some primeval creation. Then it seemed that the dark surface of the water broke, and a long snout, as of an alligator, moved into the lighted space, and sank again very quietly. Nothing else. We watched a long time further, but nothing changed, unless, perhaps, the light on the water was slightly fainter. "Is it real?" I wondered. "No, surely," she thought, "I suppose it to be a picture of things long past. I do not think it to be of the earth of this time. Shall we look at the other wall?"
I agreed, though I was reluctant to withdraw my gaze from that primeval night, where I might see I knew not what of mystery or of wonder if I should wait till its morning came. The pressure was more tolerable while we made no effort to move directly forward, and we crossed the interval of blackness quite easily, to find, as my companion had thought, that the opposite wall held a corresponding wonder. But it was not of any strange or terrible or momentous scene.
There was a faint light, as of the late evening, or the very early dawn of a winter day, and snow was falling thickly. Bare trees showed dimly, and one ivied trunk was close, as though we might have reached to touch it, and on the dark berries a pair of haw-finches were feeding. They were so real and close that it seemed strange that no sound came as they changed footing with a flutter of wings, or pulled the sprays apart.
That was all. It might have been a scene from winter of my own day, or of millenniums before or after.
And while we gazed, we became aware that something with a heavy tread had entered the passage. We thought it (and rightly) to be one of the Dwellers. The steps passed us, and went forward. We were of one mind to follow.
Returning to the centre of the tunnel, we were again in darkness, but the footsteps led us, and we found that the resistance against which we had fought had ceased to trouble us while we followed the unseen feet. Realising this, we increased our pace to a run, lest the dividing space should widen, so that we were but ten or fifteen yards behind - our feet making no sounds on the soft flooring - when our unseen guide turned sideways into a chamber on the right-hand side of the passage.
CHAPTER VII
THE LIVING BOOK
We stood at the entrance of a room of (to us) enormous proportions. It was filled with an equally-diffused light, of which I saw no origin.
Neither, when I considered it later, could I observe any appliances for the regulation of temperature or ventilation. Yet the warmth was such that I did not suffer from my lack of clothing; the air was fresh and exhilarating. The arched entrance to the room had no door, but the light stayed at the threshold. Standing on the outer side of the entrance, we supposed ourselves to be unobservable in the darkness.
The Dweller that we had followed was a woman, like the one that we had last seen, but her colouring was different. The hair on her head was short, curling, and glossy black. It extended down the spine in the same way. The body-colour varied from a dark bluish-black to the softest, palest greys. The effect was beautiful beyond describing.
Her form was as straight and graceful as had been that of the other, nor did it give an impression of great size in a room which was proportioned to it. It was not she that was large, but we that were small. Her body was slim and perfect in its proportions, and her face was flawless, yet where the other had given an impression of youth, there was here an atmosphere of age incalculable. I cannot say from what it came, unless from one thing only. Her eyes were intolerably tired.
As she entered the room she had an object about the size of a football perched on her left shoulder. There was a table in the centre, of a transparent blue substance. It had three legs which joined in a twisted knot, and then spread out. I noticed that these legs moved so that the table adjusted itself to her as she approached it, but whether this movement were sentient or mechanical I could not tell. She extended her left arm to the surface of the table, and the object on her shoulder rolled slowly down.
It was of the colour of a boiled lobster, with many bluish-white appendages hanging from its surface. They were about an inch in length, and of the shape to a dachshund's ear. As it rolled forward they spread out like hands, to balance and control its motion, and when it rested those that were close to the ground would support it steadily.
It was evidently alive, but it had no other features that I could observe, and it appeared equally comfortable whatever part of its surface were uppermost.
The table was relatively higher than those to which we are accustomed, and there was no chair or other seat in the room.
The Dweller remained standing, as though her attention were fixed upon the red globule before her. I turned to my companion to convey my wonder, but she gave me a quick thought that she was trying to follow what was happening, and did not wish for distraction, so I looked quietly round the room while I waited.
The wall on the side on which we stood, and those to right and left, were blank of all but colour, which was blue, of a very delicately-beautiful tint, which I had not seen previously, evidently designed to harmonise with the colouring of its occupant.
The farther wall was of the same nature as those we had passed in the passage, having a living picture within it - if living it could be called, which was an epitome of desolation.
It showed far more plainly, or at least to a far greater distance, than did those into which we had looked before. It was a scene of a frozen river, which itself must have been half-a-mile in width, and of an endless solitary frozen plain beyond it. The sky was frosty blue and cloudless. There were no trees, - nothing but the frozen river, and the frozen snow.
I had a perception that it had lain thus for many centuries, lifeless, windless, and unchanging, and that it was in some inexplicable way akin to the one who appeared to have selected it to companion her, and that within it lay the explanation of the weariness in her eyes.
But its desolation was less than hers, for it must have ended at some time in the earth's history. Though it might have endured for millenniums, yet the time had come when the earth again swung sun-ward, and the warmth found it. But for the weariness from which she suffered there was no hope at all.
Following this impression, it occurred to me as a natural thing that, if reflections of the earth's changing past were used as mural decorations, such scenes and periods would be preferred as would show little or very gradual differences, or their suitability might be lost.
The articles in the room were few. There was a wide shelf at the centre of the left-hand wall, on which were stacked a number of flat boards which were probably pictures, or material for them, for, to the right of the table, there was an easel, such as would have looked natural enough, apart from its size, in a studio of our own day, with a similar board upon it, on which a picture of the frozen desolation was half completed.
There were various smaller articles ranged beneath the shelf, of which I could not understand the nature or utility.
I returned my attention to my companion, to find her ready for conversing. She said "I cannot learn much, as the thoughts which are passing are not meant for us, but it seems that there is something here similar to your own device, of which you have told me. I know that you have a method of recording ideas and facts by means of marks on retentive substances, so that the knowledge of them may remain, though the brain in which they originated be ended, and that, by this means, you have partly overcome one of the defects of your individual mortality. It seems to me that this method must be subject to great disadvantages, as it must be even easier for such as you are to make marks which will be false, or the record of foolish imaginations, than to be accurate in fact, and wise in deduction; and, as you have no authority to distinguish between them, your children must often be induced to foolishness, or misled to disaster. Possibly the confusion may be so great that they are distracted from any continuing path, and the res