A Strange Discovery Part 7

"He pointed to a cube of crystal near him, which, Peters will swear, was a moment earlier perfectly transparent. But now it looked as if filled with milk of purest whiteness. As they gazed at it, a fire appeared in the centre; and soon around the fire there sprang into being a circular range of mountains, and on the side of one of these--the nearest--stood two persons.

"'Lilama--Ahpilus,' screamed Diregus; 'he has stolen her away!'

"Yes: for though Pym and Peters had never seen the exiled lover, they recognized Lilama; and even they could surmise the rest.

"'The youth is mad,' said the Duke. 'We must rescue our darling from the maniac.'

"Pym, in his impatience, was about to rush from the room; but the old man beckoned for him to approach. He did as desired. Then the aged man placed a hand upon Pym's head, and drew it down to him; and the man who had lived thousands of years whispered some words into the ear of the youth who had lived not yet four l.u.s.trums. As Peters described for me in his homely way the change that came over the face of Pym as that human millenarian spoke perhaps one hundred words into the young man's ear, I was reminded of reading as a boy, some years ago, a description of the burning somewhere in South America of a great cathedral. The fire occurred during a morning service, and with the alarm the doorways of the building were at once obstructed by a ma.s.s of struggling humanity.

Some two or three thousand persons were consumed in this terrible holocaust. The correspondent who wrote the description of the fire of which I speak said that for ten minutes he stood outside the cathedral after the surrounding heat had become so intense that efforts at rescue ceased, and from a raised spot he looked through the windows from which the gla.s.s had crumbled--looked across the great window-sills raised eight feet from the cathedral floor, looked into the faces of the doomed. And as he gazed, he saw the faces of many maidens with their lovers by their side--(it was a gala day, and all were in their best attire). As he looked, within a brief ten minutes he saw horror-stricken eyes gaze at the approaching fire, and at other victims sixty feet away already burning; then quickly would the fire approach the owner of those eyes, reach him, consume him: And in those fleeting moments the face of a young girl would pa.s.s through every stage from youth to extreme age, and then sink down in death. As the aged mystic whispered to Pym, the young man's face turned ghastly, then worked convulsively, then settled into firm resolve. And Peters never again saw on the face of the youth whom he loved with the love of a mother and of a father in one--never again saw the old, careless, boyish smile. Did the old man--shall we call him a man?--did the old man whisper into Pym's ear the secret of eternity? Would such a revelation have changed youth to manhood in a hundred seconds?

"As Pym was led by Diregus from the room, Peters started to follow; but the aged mystic motioned for him, too, to approach. Peters says that after what he had just seen he felt much more like taking to flight than he did like obeying the summons; but he obeyed it. The old man pointed to one of the smaller crystal cubes, which would have measured some five feet across. As Peters gazed upon it, it began to take on the milky hue which he had before witnessed. Peters says that at first he thought these cubes were of solid crystal, but after he witnessed the strange alterations of which they were capable, he believed they were hollow. He continued to gaze as directed, and soon he saw, sitting at a table, with a lighted candle by her side, knitting, his poor old mother, from whose side he had, fifteen years before, when a thoughtless, wicked boy, ran away to sea. He had never seen her again--he has not seen her again to the present day. As he gazed upon that aged, wrinkled face--that hard, Indian face (his mother was a civilized Indian), he saw that look which man sees nowhere else on sea or land save only in a mother's face. He threw himself face-downward on the floor, and wrung in agony his hands, and moaned out pleas for forgiveness; but the poor, old, fragile form knitted on, and on, and the face was never raised. Alas! why must we all feel the full force of a mother's love and sacrifices only when too late? Why must it be that the deepest of all unselfish love goes ever unrewarded?

"Peters scarcely knows how he got from the room. He staggered out into the grounds, and saw that the remainder of the party were already seated in the boat.

"But I must hasten on. Let me say in a few words, that the party returned to the ducal palace, and immediately prepared to rescue Lilama from the power of her discarded lover, the exiled Ahpilus. The rescue party, on the advice of the Duke, was small. He explained to Peters that so far as mere human force was concerned, a thousand men could never rescue the maiden. Her return to them, alive and in health, would depend upon strategy, or possibly might be accomplished as a result of some superhuman individual effort. He was of opinion, he remarked--and he judged from what he had been told by government officials lately returned from 'Crater Mountains' and also from changes in the young man observed by himself preceding the sentence of banishment--that Ahpilus was a maniac. The Duke went on to say that he really felt but little hope of ever again seeing, alive, his loved young 'cousin.' Then he explained that, whilst there were spots on 'Crater Mountains,' from five to eight miles from the central crater, on the far side of the nearer hills, hot enough to roast a large animal, there were other spots on the far side of the remoter mountain ranges where, protected from crater radiation and exposed to antarctic air-currents, the temperature was almost always far below the freezing-point, and sometimes so cold that no animal life, even antarctic animal life, could endure it for an hour.

He said that poor Lilama was lost, unless some other exile should save her--which was unlikely, even if possible--or unless we could invent some plan of capture so peculiar as to baffle the madman--a man, by the bye, of enormous physical strength, and with a madman's cunning. Peters stood drinking in every word spoken by the Duke; whilst Pym listened as if heartbroken, but in an impatient, anxious way, indicative of a restless impulse to be gone. The Duke continued to instruct and advise them, until a large sail-boat was provisioned and manned, when the rescue party hastened away on its errand of love and mercy.

"The party consisted of the young man Diregus, Lilama's cousin; of Pym and Peters; and of six boatmen, who might or might not be employed directly in the attack and rescue, as should later seem best. The party had no weapons other than a few peculiarly-shaped clubs, similar to those mentioned by me in describing the fight of the early Hili-lites against the invading barbarians, and a long dirk-knife in the possession of Peters.

"By glancing at this map of Hili-liland, you will observe that the sea-course to 'Crater Mountains' was almost direct, it lying in a straight line out of Hili-li Bay and across the open sea for thirty miles. They were to enter 'Volcano Bay,' which pursued a tortuous course amid the mountains, until they should reach a certain pa.s.s between two of the highest mountains in the whole range. In the centre of one of these mountains was a peak some eight miles high, named by the founders of Hili-li 'Mount Olympus.' It was possible to sail (or to push their boat) to within seven miles of a point where the lavabed was still red hot--about thirteen miles from the edge of the central, white-hot, boiling lava. This, however, they did not do; first, because the pa.s.s mentioned, which was the best course up into the mountains, began about three or four miles short of the inner extremity of Volcano Bay; and second, because within a mile or two of that extremity the water of the bay sometimes actually boiled, and the heat would there be quite unendurable."

Here Bainbridge paused for a moment, and then continued, "Well, my attentive friend, 'the witching hour' approaches. We lost too much time in discussion this evening--What! only ten o'clock?" he said, looking at his watch. "Well, I am at a good resting-place in the story, anyway, as you will to-morrow evening admit. Why, if I started you up into those mountains to-night, we should get no sleep before daylight. No, no: 'sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof; more I would'--how does it go? Well, it means that the evils of two days should not be crowded into one day. The attempted quotation--as generally happens when I attempt quotation from the Bible--is a double failure: not a success simply in accuracy of repet.i.tion; and, at best, not appropriate. For I have more, and a great deal more. But"--rising from his chair--"I must depart. So adieu until the morrow--and good-night to you."

He had not been gone five minutes, and I was just complimenting Arthur on his silence and otherwise commendable behavior, when Doctor Castleton bounced into the room. He knew in a general way the drift of Peters'

story, up to the developments of the evening before. His curiosity to hear what Doctor Bainbridge had so patiently and laboriously gleaned from Peters did not seem intense, or it was wonderfully well suppressed.

Still, he liked briefly to learn from me the outlines of the story, and had not failed to meet me at some period of each day, and to hint at a desire for information. Therefore, I knew with what object he had this evening come to see me, and I ran rapidly over the facts developed the preceding evening, and then over those of that evening.

"Yes, yes," he said, "I see, I see. Rich people, but money no good; poor people, but poverty no hards.h.i.+p. That's Bainbridge's nonsense--he never got anything out of Peters along that line. Money, but money no value!

Oh, well; Bainbridge is young and full of theories. The next thing he'll be saying that they've found a way in Hili-li to make life as valuable and agreeable for the lazy and the vile as for the industrious and moral cla.s.ses. He's just philosophizing to suit himself. Why, a people would have money if they had to make it out of their own hides, and the money would have value, too--yes, and labor-purchasing value. No people will ever have all they want, for they will invent new wants forever, and more rapidly than the old wants can be gratified. They may get all they require of food and clothing, and that, too, in exchange for next to no work; but they will always want things that they are unable to procure.

So long as people do different kinds of work--supply the community with different necessaries--they will trade; and when they trade, common-sense will soon invent a circulating medium. And so long as one man is the mental or the physical superior of another, and fills more of the demands of the community than another, he will have the means of gratifying more of his own wants than the other man; and as differences increase, and different temperaments develop their varying propensities--some antic.i.p.ating their ability to expend, others desiring to acc.u.mulate for the everlasting rainy day--there will, and necessarily must, arise stable methods of preserving values. Oh, pshaw! Who wants to make all men--and all women, too--in a single mental and physical mould?--and a mighty insignificant mould at that? The world is not made better by ease and plenty, but by hards.h.i.+p. Ease and plenty come not but as a reward of striving. When every man is like every other man, and all are too lazy to want anything, the reign of money will be ended.

"Why not enroll the whole world, and have a great army in civil life, constantly under command, with the nature of its wants and their form of gratification fixed or regulated by--well, by a majority of these dough men? That's the only way I know for the people to get rid of a circulating medium, and live."

He paused for a moment, both in his locution, and in his walk back and forward across the floor. Then he resumed both:

"I do not know of anything quite so idiotic as is this howl directed against the possession of wealth. I myself am a poor man: if I do not earn a living each year, I go hungry or go in debt. But I would not trade off my chances of a competency and of wealth--a reasonable ambition for every man in England and America--no, not to see every rich man on earth starve--or even sent to h.e.l.l. This howl is the mark of a plebeian, or at least of a wickedly childish cast of intellect. I know of nothing quite so foolish, and of nothing half so brutal. The Jew-baiting folly is a phase of the same nonsense. It is foolish, because if the possession of capital is denied to the men who can best acquire and hence best continue to employ it, then commercial civilization must take a back seat--in fact, go, and go to stay; and this means abject poverty for everybody but a handful of state and church aristocrats. It is brutal, because it is unreasoning and mistakenly vindictive. It is the howl of the mentally weak--of the mob; and the mob is always brutal.

"If we are to suppress those whose possessions evidence a past or a present performance of some service that the world demanded and paid for, we cast aside the useful of the earth: we know that their possessions were gained, not from the pauper, but from those who held material wealth; and I know, and can most solemnly swear, from personal experience, that in this world n.o.body gets anything for nothing.

"Oh, the first French revolution! The French revolution was all right.

The fight was not against commercial wealth, but against a corrupt church, state, and social order. And n.o.body maintains that the commercial cla.s.s is immaculate: every cla.s.s should come under the regulation of good statutory law. I only claim that it would be wrong and foolish to take away in whole or in part the acc.u.mulations of the commercial cla.s.s. With us the only wealthy citizens are commercial people, and those who have acquired wealth through them, for with us here, at this time, the wealthy owners of realty are commercial men who have put their surplus money into land. Oh, yes: control them; but it's not the business men of the world who need the most looking after."

And with that he shot out of the room and down the stairs; and I soon after retired to rest.

The FOURTEENTH Chapter

The next evening at an early hour Arthur was seated in the least conspicuous corner of my room, a spot which he seemed to have selected as his own; and, as usual, Doctor Bainbridge entered promptly at eight o'clock. After the customary minute or two of thoughtful quiet, and a glance at the map of Hili-li, which each evening I kept spread on my table in the centre of the room, Bainbridge continued his recital:

"Last evening brought us to the moment when the rescue party, having entered Volcano Bay, were about to land at the foot of the great mountain, called Olympus--the Hili-li synonym for Mount preceding the name Olympus when the peak, some eight miles high, was referred to. Now if you will examine this map with a little care you will observe here, near the inner extremity of Volcano Bay, an apparently narrow inlet pa.s.sing directly into the mountain-side. This does not represent an inlet from the bay, but an outlet from Crater Lake, a very deep lake, the surface of which is several thousand feet below its banks, the lake being on the top of the mountain, just south of Mt. Olympus, and emptying into Volcano Bay. This outlet is a small stream at the bottom of a chasm which cannot correctly be represented on my map, as it is relatively very narrow, being only from ten to one hundred feet in width. This chasm is what we here term a canyon, or _canon_, the walls of which in this instance rise perpendicularly from the water to the average height of ten thousand feet. The paths up the mountain are on the sides of this outlet--not close to the water, but winding in and out along the mountain-side above, there being a pa.s.sable way on each side of the canyon from the bay to the lake, the distance from bay to lake along either path being, in its tortuous course, about thirteen miles.

At Crater Lake the mountain rises to a height of about six miles, the surface of the lake being about four miles above the sea level, its banks some ten thousand feet in height. A perfectly straight line down the mountain-side would measure about eight or nine miles.

"As the canyon leaves the bay, its walls are about a hundred feet high, and are separated by about the same distance; but as the mountain is ascended, the walls rapidly rise, and soon become far above the water between, and they gradually approach each other. At certain points the walls actually overhang the stream below, and almost meet, at one spot approximating to within ten feet of each other. Three miles from the bay the walls are twenty feet apart, and for the remaining five miles they do not at any place approach closer, but on the other hand very gradually separate to about sixty feet at the extreme top. At five miles from the bay the walls are fully ten thousand feet in alt.i.tude, and are nowhere less in height from that point to the edge of Crater Lake.

"Our party started up the mountain on one side of this canyon, or giant chasm, Diregus appearing in some way to know that this was the proper course to pursue. When they were some three miles on their way, a young man was seen approaching, but on the opposite side of the chasm. He was a young fellow of prepossessing appearance, dressed in plain, coa.r.s.e loathing, and having the elastic movement and grace of the better cla.s.ses. Peters observed, when only the width of the chasm separated the two, that the young Hili-lite had a laughing eye, full of latent mischief, but also of intelligence.

"He was known to Diregus, and the two began a conversation. He was one of the exiles, by name Medosus. Diregus soon ascertained that the exiles had long known Ahpilus to be insane; that, three days before, his condition had become much aggravated, and that on the preceding day he had suffered from an attack of raving mania which lasted several hours.

Medosus did not know of the abduction of Lilama, but he had three hours earlier seen Ahpilus a mile or two from Crater Lake.

"When the party heard this, they were anxious to proceed, but Medosus in turn had a few questions to ask, and in common courtesy Diregus was compelled to wait and reply to the poor exile's interrogatories.

"Whilst the two conversed, Medosus took from his pocket some dry, brown, crumpled leaves, and put a wad of them into his mouth, much as would an American planter who raises tobacco and chews the unprepared leaf. Now Peters was a lover of tobacco, and the sight of this action, so suggestive of his loved weed, excited him greatly, as he had not so much as seen a sc.r.a.p of tobacco for months. When it developed that it was tobacco that Medosus had placed in his mouth, and that in some of the valleys between these mountains a species of wild tobacco grew, Peters was determined to have some of it, the craving of months seeming so near to gratification; and he asked Medosus to give him a little of it, to last until he could procure a fuller supply. Medosus was perfectly willing to grant this request; but on rolling up a wad and attempting to throw it across the chasm, it fell into the abyss and fluttered downward to the water nearly two miles below. He was about to make a second effort, when Peters stopped him, and then a pretty, though a really terrible thing happened--to relate which was the real purpose of this digression from my story proper.

"Peters was at the moment standing some fifteen feet from the edge of the chasm, the chasm being at this point about twenty feet in width--twenty feet in width, and even here, where it was two thousand feet less in depth than it was a mile higher up, at least eight thousand feet in descent--sheer to the raging torrent and the huge, jagged lava-bowlders below. It was all done so quickly that none of the party had time to become alarmed. Peters, whose arms when he hung them reached to within four inches of his feet, stooped just enough to bring his hands to the ground. Then, as a lame man using crutches might swing himself along, but with lightning-like swiftness, Peters took two rapid jumps toward the edge of the chasm, the second jump landing him directly on its edge. Then he shot up and out into the air over that awful abyss, and landed on the opposite side as gently as a cat lands from a six-foot leap; and it did not seem to require of him an unusual effort. He received his tobacco, and turned to make the leap back.

"When Peters mentioned to me the circ.u.mstance of this leap, it was only because he had at the time it was made been so interested in the incident of getting the tobacco, that he never forgot the occurrence; in fact, it seems to have impressed his mind and memory almost as deeply as did the old man with the 'snow-drift beard and the eyes of a G.o.d.'

"I attempted to get out of Peters just how he made the leap--whether with the legs, or the arms, or both as an impelling force; but it was no use. I believe that he does not himself know--he did it by an animal instinct, and that is all there is to be said. The old fellow does not really know his age, but I should place it, at the present time, at from seventy-eight to eighty years, which, if correct, would indicate that he was twenty-eight or thirty at the time he was in Hili-li. He must have been as strong generally as three average men, and in the arms as strong as five or six such men. You remember telling me yourself how he twisted that iron poker, and broke the oak pole; and that was the act of an invalid nearly eighty years of age. Oh, he must have been a Samson at twenty-eight, and as agile as a tiger. What I could draw out of him concerning the leap, reminded me of descriptions I have read of the _Simiidae_--particularly of the Borneo orang-outang.

"But to return: The party separated from Medosus, who, when about two hundred feet away, shouted back, 'You'd better stay with us, Diregus. We do not here have to hide away when we play--or at--' (mentioning the names of two very rough games prohibited by law on all the islands of the Hili-li Kingdom--games corresponding to our foot-ball and our wrestling). The party continued up the mountain-side, resting as they felt the need of rest. No preparation for the darkness of night was necessary; for here the crater-light was very bright--in some unshaded spots it was even painfully brilliant.

"After several hours of laborious ascent, the small party of four (Diregus had taken with them only one of the boatmen) came within plain sight of the rim of Crater Lake, half a mile ahead of them, and almost perpendicularly above, though nearly two miles away measured along the shortest route that travellers might pursue. It was not at the time known, and therefore never will be known, whether or not Lilama had caught a glimpse of her approaching friends; but at that moment a piercing scream rang through the air from above. Peters thinks that Lilama saw some of the party, because the quality of the scream was not such as to convey an impression that she was in instant danger. The signal, if signal it was, was not repeated, nor did the party wait for a repet.i.tion. They all hurried onward with renewed vigor; and, in a short time, considering the severity of the ascent, had reached a point near which they supposed the scream must have been uttered.

"The party had scattered, and were searching among the mammoth lava-bowlders, and in the small side valleys and fissures; Peters, however, as he then always instinctively did, keeping by the side of Pym. The two had separated to quite a distance from the others, when, being then quite close to the edge of the great chasm, they heard a deep though penetrating voice say the one word (of course in the Hili-li language), 'Well?'

"Looking in the direction from which the voice came, they saw on the opposite side of the chasm a young and handsome man, dressed much as was the exile, Medosus. There could not for a moment be any doubt in the minds of Pym and Peters concerning the ident.i.ty of this young man; but if there had been, it would immediately have been dispelled.

"'Well, gentlemen?' the voice further said.

"Pym and Peters had stepped up close to the edge of the abyss, which here was, as it was throughout the upper third of its length, from forty-five to fifty-five feet in width (Peters thinks that at this part of its course it was fully fifty feet broad).

"'Well, gentlemen: why are you two, strangers to me, and to my people, also, I think--why are you here?'

"The speaker would have seemed very far from insane, had it not been for his large black eyes, s.h.i.+fting and glittering in the bright volcanic light.

"At last Pym spoke:

"'Sir,' he said, very calmly, 'we came to a.s.sist our friends of the neighboring island--friends who have been very kind to us--to search for a maiden who by some strange mischance has been lost from her people--from her people and her friends, who grieve sorely over their loss.'

"'Ah, ha,' said Ahpilus--for it was he--'very good. And they grieve, do they? Curse them, let them grieve! And a certain lover--and curse him, too--does he grieve? He would better! Ah, ha, ha, ha'--the voice rising with each syllable, until the last was almost shrieked at Pym--'Kind to you, were they? Well, there is one of them near by--on this side the chasm, curse you--who won't be kind to you again. Yes, and you may see her, too.' Then Ahpilus stepped off behind some thick, stunted bushes of a variety of evergreen, whence, in a moment, he returned, leading by the wrist Lilama. 'Great Jove above! Girl, do you see your lover over there?

You have no love for me--you never had; but never again in time or in eternity shall I lie with burning brain, thinking of those snowy arms about the stranger's neck--aye, as once I saw them in the palace grounds. Curse you all, and may you all alike be d----d. Why should a stranger come through ten thousand perils to add to all my untold agonies.' Here for a moment his voice softened, almost to a gentle whisper. 'Ah, Lilama, once, only once, you shall, of your own free will, clasp those arms around me--if not in love, then in terror. A moment more, and over this abyss together we shall go!' With terror in his eyes, Pym glanced at Peters; and even the phlegmatic Peters was startled. 'Yes, for one moment in each other's arms; and then for me, the everlasting darkness of Tartarus, or of endless oblivion.'

"As he talked, he had dropped the wrist of Lilama, and she crouched upon the ground with her hands before her face, whilst Ahpilus continued to rave, and to pace from the chasm's edge away and back again, in maniac strides, until he had almost beaten where he paced a pathway. There was not the slightest necessity for Ahpilus to guard Lilama, for the awful chasm was more than twice the width that any sane and normal man, even an athlete, would dare attempt to leap, even to preserve his own life; and the distance to be traversed to gain a point in the chasm so narrow that an ordinary man would dare attempt to leap it, was several miles down the mountain-side; so that Lilama was at least ten miles beyond the reach of Pym, though less than eighty feet away.

"The mental strain on poor Pym was almost enough to make him a madman.