By this time the sun was bathing everything in splendour, and turning
away from the wonders about me, I set off at best pace along the
well-trodden path which led without turning to the west coast village
where the canoes were.
It proved far closer than expected. As a matter of fact the forest in
this direction grew right down to the water's edge; the salt-loving
trees actually overhanging the waves--one of the pleasantest sights in
nature--and thus I came right out on top of the hamlet before there had
been an indication of its presence. It occupied two sides of a pretty
little bay, the third side being flat land given over to the
cultivation of an enormous species of gourd whose characteristic yellow
flowers and green, succulent leaves were discernible even at this
distance.
I branched off along the edge of the surf and down a dainty little
flowery path, noticing meanwhile how the whole bay was filled by
hundreds of empty canoes, while scores of others were drawn up on the
strand, and then the first thing I chanced upon was a group of
people--youthful, of course, with the eternal Martian bloom--and in the
splendid simplicity of almost complete nakedness. My first idea was
that they were bathing, and fixing my eyes on the tree-tops with great
propriety, I gave a warning cough. At that sound instead of getting to
cover, or clothes, all started up and stood staring for a time like a
herd of startled cattle. It was highly embarrassing; they were right
in the path, a round dozen of them, naked and so little ashamed that
when I edged away modestly they began to run after me. And the farther
they came forward the more I retired, till we were playing a kind of
game of hide-and-seek round the tree-stems. In the middle of it my heel
caught in a root and down I went very hard and very ignominiously,
whereon those laughing, light-hearted folk rushed in, and with smiles
and jests helped me to my feet.
"Was I the traveller who had come from Seth?"
"Yes."
"Oh, then that was well. They had heard such a traveller was on the
road, and had come a little way down the path, as far as might be
without fatigue, to meet him."
"Would I eat with them?" these amiable strangers asked, pushing their
soft warm fingers into mine and ringing me round with a circle. "But
firstly might they help me out of my clothes? It was hot, and these
things were cumbersome." As to the eating, I was agreeable enough
seeing how casual meals had been with me lately, but my clothes, though
Heaven knows they were getting horribly ragged and travel-stained, I
clung to desperately.
My new friends shrugged their dimpled shoulders and, arguments being
tedious, at once squatted round me in the dappled shade of a big tree
and produced their stores of never failing provisions. After a
pleasant little meal taken thus in the open and with all the simplicity
Martians delight in, we got to talking about those yellow canoes which
were bobbing about on the blue waters of the bay.
"Would you like to see where they are grown?" asked an individual
basking by my side.
"Grown!" I answered with incredulity. "Built, you mean. Never in my
life did I hear of growing boats."
"But then, sir," observed the girl as she sucked the honey out of the
stalk of an azure convolvulus flower and threw the remains at a
butterfly that sailed across the sunshine, "you know so little! You
have come from afar, from some barbarous and barren district. Here we
undoubtedly grow our boats, and though we know the Thither folk and
such uncultivated races make their craft by cumbrous methods of flat
planks, yet we prefer our own way, for one thing because it saves
trouble," and as she murmured that all-sufficient reason the gentle
damsel nodded reflectively.
But one of her companions, more lively for the moment, tickled her with
a straw until she roused, and then said, "Let us take the stranger to
the boat garden now. The current will drift us round the bay, and we
can come back when it turns. If we wait we shall have to row in both
directions, or even walk," and again planetary slothfulness carried the
day.
So down to the beach we strolled and launched one of the golden-hued
skiffs upon the pretty dancing wavelets just where they ran, lipped
with jewelled spray, on the shore, and then only had I a chance to
scrutinise their material. I patted that one we were upon inside and
out. I noted with a seaman's admiration its lightness, elasticity, and
supreme sleekness, its marvellous buoyancy and fairy-like "lines," and
after some minutes' consideration it suddenly flashed across me that it
was all of gourd rind. And as if to supply confirmation, the flat land
we were approaching on the opposite side of the bay was covered by the
characteristic verdure of these plants with a touch here and there of
splendid yellow blossoms, but all of gigantic proportions.
"Ay," said a Martian damsel lying on the bottom, and taking and kissing
my hand as she spoke, in the simple-hearted way of her people, "I see
you have guessed how we make our boats. Is it the same in your distant
country?"
"No, my girl, and what's more, I am a bit uneasy as to what the fellows
on the Carolina will say if they ever hear I went to sea in a
hollowed-out pumpkin, and with a young lady--well, dressed as you
are--for crew. Even now I cannot imagine how you get your ships so
trim and shapely--there is not a seam or a patch anywhere, it looks as
if you had run them into a mould."
"That's just what we have done, sir, and now you will witness the
moulds at work, for here we are," and the little skiff was pulled
ashore and the Martians and I jumped out on the shelving beach, hauled
our boat up high and dry, and there right over us, like great green
umbrellas, spread the fronds of the outmost garden of this strangest of
all ship-building yards. Briefly, and not to make this part of my story
too long, those gilded boys and girls took me ashore, and chattering
like finches in the evening, showed how they planted their gourd seed,
nourished the gigantic plants as they grew with brackish water and the
burnt ashes; then, when they flowered, mated the male and female
blossoms, glorious funnels of golden hue big enough for one to live in;
and when the young fruit was of the bigness of an ordinary bolster, how
they slipped it into a double mould of open reed-work something like
the two halves of a walnut-shell; and how, growing day by day in this,
it soon took every curve and line they chose to give it, even the
hanging keel below, the strengthened bulwarks, and tall prow-piece. It
was so ingenious, yet simple; and I confess I laughed over my first
skiff "on the stalk," and fell to bantering the Martians, asking
whether it was a good season for navies, whether their Cunarders were
spreading nicely, if they could give me a pinch of barge seed, or a
yacht in bud to show to my friends at home.
But those lazy people took the matter seriously enough. They led me
down green alleys arched over with huge melon-like leaves; they led me
along innumerable byways, making me peep and peer through the chequered
sunlight at ocean-growing craft, that had budded twelve months before,
already filling their moulds to the last inch of space. They told me
that when the growing process was sufficiently advanced, they loosened
the casing, and cutting a hole into the interior of each giant fruit,
scooped out all its seed, thereby checking more advance, and throwing
into the rind strength that would otherwise have gone to
reproductiveness. They said each fruit made two vessels, but the upper
half was always best and used for long salt-water journeys, the lower
piece being but for punting or fishing on their lakes. They cut them
in half while still green, scraped out the light remaining pulp when
dry, and dragged them down with the minimum of trouble, light as
feathers, tenacious as steel plate, and already in the form and fashion
of dainty craft from five to twenty feet in length, when the process
was completed.
By the time we had explored this strangest of ship-building yards, and
I had seen last year's crop on the stocks being polished and fitted
with seats and gear, the sun was going down; and the Martian twilight,
owing to the comparative steepness of the little planet's sides, being
brief, we strolled back to the village, and there they gave me
harbourage for the night, ambrosial supper, and a deep draught of the
wine of Forgetfulness, under the gauzy spell of which the real and
unreal melted into the vistas of rosy oblivion, and I slept.
CHAPTER XI
With the new morning came fresh energy and a spasm of conscience as I
thought of poor Heru and the shabby sort of rescuer I was to lie about
with these pretty triflers while she remained in peril.
So I had a bath and a swim, a breakfast, and, to my shame be it
acknowledged, a sort of farewell merry-go-round dance on the yellow
sands with a dozen young persons all light-hearted as the morning,
beautiful as the flowers that bound their hair, and in the extremity of
statuesque attire.
Then at last I got them to give me a sea-going canoe, a stock of cakes
and fresh water; and with many parting injunctions how to find the
Woodman trail, since I would not listen to reason and lie all the rest
of my life with them in the sunshine, they pushed me off on my lonely
voyage.
"Over the blue waters!" they shouted in chorus as I dipped my paddle
into the diamond-crested wavelets. "Six hours, adventurous stranger,
with the sun behind you! Then into the broad river behind the yellow
sand-bar. But not the black northward river! Not the strong, black
river, above all things, stranger! For that is the River of the Dead,
by which many go but none come back. Goodbye!" And waving them adieu,
I sternly turned my eyes from delights behind and faced the fascination
of perils in front.
In four hours (for the Martians had forgotten in their calculations
that my muscles were something better than theirs) I "rose" the further
shore, and then the question was, Where ran that westward river of
theirs?
It turned out afterwards that, knowing nothing of their tides, I had
drifted much too far to northward, and consequently the coast had
closed up the estuary mouth I should have entered. Not a sign of an
opening showed anywhere, and having nothing whatever for guidance I
turned northward, eagerly scanning an endless line of low cliffs, as
the day lessened, for the promised sand-bar or inlet.
About dusk my canoe, flying swiftly forward at its own sweet will,
brought me into a bight, a bare, desolate-looking country with no
vegetation save grass and sedge on the near marshes and stony hills
rising up beyond, with others beyond them mounting step by step to a
long line of ridges and peaks still covered in winter snow.
The outlook was anything but cheering. Not a trace of habitation had
been seen for a long time, not a single living being in whose
neighbourhood I could land and ask the way; nothing living anywhere but
a monstrous kind of sea-slug, as big as a dog, battening on the
waterside garbage, and gaunt birds like vultures who croaked on the
mud-flats, and half-spread wings of funereal blackness as they
gambolled here and there. Where was poor Heru? Where pink-shouldered
An? Where those wild men who had taken the princess from us? Lastly,
but not least, where was I?
All the first stars of the Martian sky were strange to me, and my boat
whirling round and round on the current confused what little geography
I might otherwise have retained. It was a cheerless look out, and
again and again I cursed my folly for coming on such a fool's errand as
I sat, chin in hand, staring at a landscape that grew more and more
depressing every mile. To go on looked like destruction, to go back
was almost impossible without a guide; and while I was still wondering
which of the two might be the lesser evil, the stream I was on turned a
corner, and in a moment we were upon water which ran with swift, oily
smoothness straight for the snow-ranges now beginning to loom
unpleasantly close ahead.
By this time the night was coming on apace, the last of the
evil-looking birds had winged its way across the red sunset glare, and
though it was clear enough in mid-river under the banks, now steep and
unclimbable, it was already evening.
And with the darkness came a wondrous cold breath from off the
ice-fields, blowing through my lowland wrappings as though they were
but tissue. I munched a bit of honey-cake, took a cautious sip of wine,
and though I will not own I was frightened, yet no one will deny that
the circumstances were discouraging.
Standing up in the frail canoe and looking around, at the second glance
an object caught my eye coming with the stream, and rapidly overtaking
me on a strong sluice of water. It was a raft of some sort, and
something extra-ordinarily like a sitting Martian on it! Nearer and
nearer it came, bobbing to the rise and fall of each wavelet with the
last icy sunlight touching it up with reds and golds, nearer and nearer
in the deadly hush of that forsaken region, and then at last so near it
showed quite plainly on the purple water, a raft with some one sitting
under a canopy.
With a thrill of delight I waved my cap aloft and shouted--
"Ship-ahoy! Hullo, messmate, where are we bound to?"
But never an answer came from that swiftly-passing stranger, so again I
hailed--
"Put up your helm, Mr. Skipper; I have lost my bearings, and the
chronometer has run down," but without a pause or sound that strange
craft went slipping by.
That silence was more than I could stand. It was against all sea
courtesies, and the last chance of learning where I was passing away.
So, angrily the paddle was snatched from the canoe bottom, and roaring
out again--
"Stop, I say, you d---- lubber, stop, or by all the gods I will make
you!" I plunged the paddle into the water and shot my little craft
slantingly across the stream to intercept the newcomer. A single
stroke sent me into mid-stream, a second brought me within touch of
that strange craft. It was a flat raft, undoubtedly, though so
disguised by flowers and silk trailers that its shape was difficult to
make out. In the centre was a chair of ceremony bedecked with greenery
and great pale buds, hardly yet withered--oh, where had I seen such a
chair and such a raft before?
And the riddle did not long remain unanswered. Upon that seat, as I
swept up alongside and laid a sunburnt hand upon its edge, was a girl,
and another look told me she was dead!
Such a sweet, pallid, Martian maid, her fair head lolling back against
the rear of the chair and gently moving to and fro with the rise and
fall of her craft. Her face in the pale light of the evening like
carved ivory, and not less passionless and still; her arms bare, and
her poor fingers still closed in her lap upon the beautiful buds they
had put into them. I fairly gasped with amazement at the dreadful
sweetness of that solitary lady, and could hardly believe she was
really a corpse! But, alas! there was no doubt of it, and I stared at
her, half in admiration and half in fear; noting how the last sunset
flush lent a hectic beauty to her face for a moment, and then how fair
and ghostly she stood out against the purpling sky; how her light
drapery lifted to the icy wind, and how dreadfully strange all those
soft-scented flowers and trappings seemed as we sped along side by side
into the country of night and snow.
Then all of a sudden the true meaning of her being there burst upon me,
and with a start and a cry I looked around. WE WERE FLYING SWIFTLY
DOWN THAT RIVER OF THE DEAD THEY HAD TOLD ME OF THAT HAS NO OUTLET AND
NO RETURNING!
With frantic haste I snatched up a paddle again and tried to paddle
against the great black current sweeping us forward. I worked until
the perspiration stood in beads on my forehead, and all the time I
worked the river, like some black snake, hissed and twined, and that
pretty lady rode cheerily along at my side. Overhead stars of
unearthly brilliancy were coming out in the frosty sky, while on either
hand the banks were high and the shadows under them black as ink. In
those shadows now and then I noticed with a horrible indifference other
rafts were travelling, and presently, as the stream narrowed, they came
out and joined us, dead Martians, budding boys and girls; older
voyagers with their age quickening upon them in the Martian manner,
just as some fruit only ripens after it falls; yellow-girt slaves
staring into the night in front, quite a merry crew all clustered about
I and that gentle lady, and more far ahead and more behind, all bobbing
and jostling forward as we hurried to the dreadful graveyard in the
Martian regions of eternal winter none had ever seen and no one came
to! I cried aloud in my desolation and fear and hid my face in my
hands, while the icy cliffs mocked my cry and the dead maid, tripping
alongside, rolled her head over, and stared at me with stony, unseeing
eyes.
Well, I am no fine writer. I sat down to tell a plain, unvarnished
tale, and I will not let the weird horror of that ride get into my pen.
We careened forward, I and those lost Martians, until pretty near on
midnight, by which time the great light-giving planets were up, and
never a chance did Fate give me all that time of parting company with
them. About midnight we were right into the region of snow and ice, not
the actual polar region of the planet, as I afterwards guessed, but one
of those long outliers which follow the course of the broad waterways
almost into fertile regions, and the cold, though intense, was somewhat
modified by the complete stillness of the air.
It was just then that I began to be aware of a low, rumbling sound
ahead, increasing steadily until there could not be any doubt the
journey was nearly over and we were approaching those great falls An
had told me of, over which the dead tumble to perpetual oblivion.
There was no opportunity for action, and, luckily, little time for
thought. I remember clapping my hand to my heart as I muttered an
imperfect prayer, and laughing a little as I felt in my pocket, between
it and that organ, an envelope containing some corn-plaster and a
packet of unpaid tailors' bills. Then I pulled out that locket with
poor forgotten Polly's photograph, and while I was still kissing it
fervently, and the dead girl on my right was jealously nudging my canoe
with the corner of her raft, we plunged into a narrow gully as black as
hell, shot round a sharp corner at a tremendous pace, and the moment
afterwards entered a lake in the midst of an unbroken amphitheatre of
cliffs gleaming in soft light all round.
Even to this moment I can recall the blue shine of those terrible ice
crags framing the weird picture in on every hand, and the strange
effect upon my mind as we passed out of the darkness of the gully down
which we had come into the sepulchral radiance of that place. But
though it fixed with one instantaneous flash its impression on my mind
forever, there was no time to admire it. As we swept on to the lake's
surface, and a glance of light coming over a dip in the ice walls to
the left lit up the dead faces and half-withered flowers of my
fellow-travellers with startling distinctness, I noticed with a new
terror at the lower end of the lake towards which we were hurrying the
water suddenly disappeared in a cloud of frosty spray, and it was from
thence came the low, ominous rumble which had sounded up the ravine as
we approached. It was the fall, and beyond the stream dropped down
glassy step after step, in wild pools and rapids, through which no boat
could live for a moment, to a black cavern entrance, where it was
swallowed up in eternal night.
I WOULD not go that way! With a yell such as those solitudes had
probably never heard since the planet was fashioned out of the void, I
seized the paddle again and struck out furiously from the main current,
with the result of postponing the crisis for a time, and finding myself
bobbing round towards the northern amphitheatre, where the light fell
clearest from planets overhead. It was like a great ballroom with
those constellations for tapers, and a ghastly crowd of Martians were
doing cotillions and waltzes all about me on their rafts as the
troubled water, icy cold and clear as glass, eddied us here and there
in solemn confusion. On the narrow beaches at the cliff foot were
hundreds of wrecked voyagers--the wall-flowers of that ghostly
assembly-room--and I went jostling and twirling round the circle as
though looking for a likely partner, until my brain spun and my heart
was sick.
For twenty minutes Fate played with me, and then the deadly suck of the
stream got me down again close to where the water began to race for the
falls. I vowed savagely I would not go over them if it could be
helped, and struggled furiously.
On the left, in shadow, a narrow beach seemed to lie between the water
and the cliff foot; towards it I fought. At the very first stroke I
fouled a raft; the occupant thereof came tumbling aboard and nearly
swamped me. But now it was a fight for life, so him I seized without
ceremony by clammy neck and leg and threw back into the water. Then
another playful Martian butted the behind part of my canoe and set it
spinning, so that all the stars seemed to be dancing giddily in the
sky. With a yell I shoved him off, but only to find his comrades were
closing round me in a solid ring as we sucked down to the abyss at
ever-increasing speed.
Then I fought like a fury, hacking, pushing, and paddling shorewards,
crying out in my excitement, and spinning and bumping and twisting ever
downwards. For every foot I gained they pushed me on a yard, as though
determined their fate should be mine also.
They crowded round me in a compact circle, their poor flower-girt heads
nodding as the swift current curtsied their crafts. They hemmed me in
with desperate persistency as we spun through the ghostly starlight in
a swirling mass down to destruction! And in a minute we were so close
to the edge of the fall I could see the water break into ridges as it
felt the solid bottom give way under it. We were so close that already
the foremost rafts, ten yards ahead, were tipping and their occupants
one by one waving their arms about and tumbling from their funeral
chairs as they shot into the spray veil and went out of sight under a
faint rainbow that was arched over there, the symbol of peace and the
only lovely thing in that gruesome region. Another minute and I must
have gone with them. It was too late to think of getting out of the
tangle then; the water behind was heavy with trailing silks and
flowers. We were jammed together almost like one huge float and in
that latter fact lay my one chance.
On the left was a low ledge of rocks leading back to the narrow beach
already mentioned, and the ledge came out to within a few feet of where
the outmost boat on that side would pass it. It was the only chance
and a poor one, but already the first rank of my fleet was trembling on
the brink, and without stopping to weigh matters I bounded off my own
canoe on to the raft alongside, which rocked with my weight like a
tea-tray. From that I leapt, with such hearty good-will as I had never
had before, on to a second and third. I jumped from the footstool of
one Martian to the knee of another, steadying myself by a free use of
their nodding heads as I passed. And every time I jumped a ship
collapsed behind me. As I staggered with my spring into the last and
outermost boat the ledge was still six feet away, half hidden in a
smother of foam, and the rim of the great fall just under it. Then I
drew all my sailor agility together and just as the little vessel was
going bow up over the edge I leapt from her--came down blinded with
spray on the ledge, rolled over and over, clutched frantically at the
frozen soil, and was safe for the moment, but only a few inches from
the vortex below!
As soon as I picked myself up and got breath, I walked shorewards and
found, with great satisfaction, that the ledge joined the shelving
beach, and so walked on in the blue obscurity of the cliff shadow back
from the falls in the bare hope that the beach might lead by some way
into the gully through which we had come and open country beyond. But
after a couple of hundred yards this hope ended as abruptly as the spit
itself in deep water, and there I was, as far as the darkness would
allow me to ascertain, as utterly trapped as any mortal could be.
I will not dwell on the next few minutes, for no one likes to
acknowledge that he has been unmanned even for a space. When those
minutes were over calmness and consideration returned, and I was able
to look about.
All the opposite cliffs, rising sheer from the water, were in light,
their cold blue and white surfaces rising far up into the black
starfields overhead. Looking at them intently from this vantage-point
I saw without at first understanding that along them horizontally, tier
above tier, were rows of objects, like--like--why, good Heavens, they
were like men and women in all sorts of strange postures and positions!
Rubbing my eyes and looking again I perceived with a start and a
strange creepy feeling down my back that they WERE men and
women!--hundreds of them, thousands, all in rows as cormorants stand
upon sea-side cliffs, myriads and myriads now I looked about, in every
conceivable pose and attitude but never a sound, never a movement
amongst the vast concourse.
Then I turned back to the cliffs behind me. Yes! they ere there too,
dimmer by reason of the shadows, but there for certain, from the
snowfields far above down, down--good Heavens! to the very level where
I stood. There was one of them not ten yards away half in and half out
of the ice wall, and setting my teeth I walked over and examined him.
And there was another further in behind as I peered into the clear blue
depth, another behind that one, another behind him--just like cherries
in a jelly.
It was startling and almost incredible, yet so many wonderful things
had happened of late that wonders were losing their sharpness, and I
was soon examining the cliff almost as coolly as though it were only
some trivial geological "section," some new kind of petrified
sea-urchins which had caught my attention and not a whole nation in
ice, a huge amphitheatre of fossilised humanity which stared down on me.
The matter was simple enough when you came to look at it with
philosophy. The Martians had sent their dead down here for many
thousand years and as they came they were frozen in, the bands and
zones in which they sat indicating perhaps alternating seasons. Then
after Nature had been storing them like that for long ages some
upheaval happened, and this cleft and lake opened through the heart of
the preserve. Probably the river once ran far up there where the
starlight was crowning the blue cliffs with a silver diadem of light,
only when this hollow opened did it slowly deepen a lower course,
spreading out in a lake, and eventually tumbling down those icy steps
lose itself in the dark roots of the hills. It was very simple, no
doubt, but incredibly weird and wonderful to me who stood, the sole
living thing in that immense concourse of dead humanity.
Look where I would it was the same everywhere. Those endless rows of
frozen bodies lying, sitting, or standing stared at me from every niche
and cornice. It almost seemed, as the light veered slowly round, as
though they smiled and frowned at times, but never a word was there
amongst those millions; the silence itself was audible, and save the
dull low thunder of the fall, so monotonous the ear became accustomed
to and soon disregarded it, there was not a sound anywhere, not a
rustle, not a whisper broke the eternal calm of that great caravansary
of the dead.
The very rattle of the shingle under my feet and the jingle of my navy
scabbard seemed offensive in the perfect hush, and, too awed to be
frightened, I presently turned away from the dreadful shine of those
cliffs and felt my way along the base of the wall on my own side. There
was no means of escape that way, and presently the shingle beach itself
gave out as stated, where the cliff wall rose straight from the surface
of the lake, so I turned back, and finding a grotto in the ice
determined to make myself as comfortable as might be until daylight
came.
CHAPTER XII
Fortunately there was a good deal of broken timber thrown up at
"high-water" mark, and with a stack of this at the mouth of the little
cave a pleasant fire was soon made by help of a flint pebble and the
steel back of my sword. It was a hearty blaze and lit up all the near
cliffs with a ruddy jumping glow which gave their occupants a
marvellous appearance of life. The heat also brought off the dull rime
upon the side of my recess, leaving it clear as polished glass, and I
was a little startled to see, only an inch or so back in the ice and
standing as erect as ever he had been in life, the figure of an
imposing grey clad man. His arms were folded, his chin dropped upon his
chest, his robes of the finest stuff, the very flowers they had decked
his head with frozen with immortality, and under them, round his crisp
and iron-grey hair, a simple band of gold with strange runes and
figures engraved upon it.
There was something very simple yet stately about him, though his face
was hidden and as I gazed long and intently the idea got hold of me
that he had been a king over an undegenerate Martian race, and had
stood waiting for the Dawn a very, very long time.
I wished a little that he had not been quite so near the glassy surface
of the ice down which the warmth was bringing quick moisture drops. Had
he been back there in the blue depths where others were sitting and
crouching it would have been much more comfortable. But I was a
sailor, and misfortune makes strange companions, so I piled up the fire
again, and lying down presently on the dry shingle with my back to him
stared moodily at the blaze till slowly the fatigues of the day told,
my eyelids dropped and, with many a fitful start and turn, at length I
slept.
It was an hour before dawn, the fire had burnt low and I was dreaming
of an angry discussion with my tailor in New York as to the sit of my
last new trousers when a faint sound of moving shingle caught my quick
seaman ear, and before I could raise my head or lift a hand, a man's
weight was on me--a heavy, strong man who bore me down with
irresistible force. I felt the slap of his ice-cold hand upon my throat
and his teeth in the back of my neck! In an instant, though but half
awake, with a yell of surprise and anger I grappled with the enemy, and
exerting all my strength rolled him over. Over and over we went
struggling towards the fire, and when I got him within a foot or so of
it I came out on top, and, digging my knuckles into his throttle,
banged his head upon the stony floor in reckless rage, until all of a
sudden it seemed to me he was done for. I relaxed my grip, but the
other man never moved. I shook him again, like a terrier with a rat,
but he never resented it. Had I killed him? How limp and cold he was!
And then all of a sudden an uneasy feeling came upon me. I reached
out, and throwing a handful of dried stuff upon the embers the fire
danced gaily up into the air, and the blaze showed me I was savagely
holding down to the gravel and kneeling on the chest of that long-dead
king from my grotto wall!
It was the man out of the ice without a doubt. There was the very
niche he had fallen from under the influence of the fire heat, the very
recess, exactly in his shape in every detail, whence he had stood
gazing into vacuity all those years. I left go my hold, and after the
flutter in my heart had gone down, apologetically set him up against
the wall of the cavern whence he had fallen; then built up the fire
until twirling flames danced to the very roof in the blue light of
dawn, and hobgoblin shadows leapt and capered about us. Then once more
I sat down on the opposite side of the blaze, resting my chin upon my
hands, and stared into the frozen eyes of that grim stranger, who, with
his chin upon his knees, stared back at me with irresistible,
remorseless steadfastness.
He was as fresh as if he had died but yesterday, yet by his clothing
and something in his appearance, which was not that of the Martian of
to-day, I knew he might be many thousand years old. What things he had
seen, what wonders he knew! What a story might be put into his mouth
if I were a capable writer gifted with time and imagination instead of
a poor outcast, ill-paid lieutenant whose literary wit is often taxed
hardly to fill even a log-book entry! I stared at him so long and
hard, and he at me through the blinking flames, that again I dozed--and
dozed--and dozed again until at last when I woke in good earnest it was
daylight.
By this time hunger was very aggressive. The fire was naught but a
circlet of grey ashes; the dead king, still sitting against the
cave-side, looked very blue and cold, and with an uncomfortable
realisation of my position I shook myself together, picked up and
pocketed without much thought the queer gold circlet that had dropped
from his forehead, and went outside to see what prospect of escape the
new day had brought.
It was not much. Upriver there was not the remotest chance. Not even
a Niagara steamer could have forged back against the sluice coming down
from the gulch there. Looking round, the sides of the icy
amphitheatre--just lighting up now with glorious gold and crimson
glimmers of morning--were as steep as a wall face; only back towards
the falls was there a possibility of getting out of the dreadful trap,
so thither I went, after a last look at the poor old king, along my
narrow beach with all the eagerness begotten of a final chance. Up to
the very brink it looked hopeless enough, but, looking downwards when
that was reached, instead of a sheer drop the slope seemed to be a wild
"staircase" of rocks and icy ledges with here and there a little patch
of sand on a cornice, and far below, five hundred feet or so, a good
big spread of gravel an acre or two in extent close by where the river
plunged out of sight into the nethermost cavern mouth.
It was so hopeless up above it, it could not possibly be worse further
down, and there was the ugly black flood running into the hole to trust
myself to as a last resource; so slipping and sliding I began the
descent.
Had I been a schoolboy with a good breakfast ahead the incident might
have been amusing enough. The travelling was mostly done on the seat
of my trousers, which consequently became caked with mud and glacial
loam. Some was accomplished on hands and knees, with now and then a bit
down a snow slope, in good, honest head-over-heels fashion. The result
was a fine appetite for the next meal when it should please providence
to send it, and an abrupt arrival on the bottom beach about five
minutes after leaving the upper circles.
I came to behind a cluster of breast-high rocks, and before moving took
a look round. Judge then of my astonishment and delight at the second
glance to perceive about a hundred yards away a brown object, looking
like an ape in the half light, meandering slowly up the margin of the
water towards me. Every now and then it stopped, stooping down to pick
up something or other from the scum along the torrent, and it was the
fact that these trifles, whatever they were, were put into a wallet by
the vision's side--not into his mouth--which first made me understand
with a joyful thrill that it was a MAN before me--a real, living man in
this huge chamber of dead horrors! Then again it flashed across my
mind in a luminous moment that where one man could come, or go, or
live, another could do likewise, and never did cat watch mouse with
more concentrated eagerness than I that quaint, bent-shouldered thing
hobbling about in the blue morning shadows where all else was silence.
Nearer and nearer he came, till so close face and garb were
discernible, and then there could no longer be any doubt, it was a
woodman, an old man, with grizzled monkey-face, stooping gait, and a
shaggy fur cloak, utterly unlike the airy garments of my Hither folk,
who now stood before me. It gave me quite a start to recognise him
there, for it showed I was in a new land, and since he was going so
cheerfully about his business, whatever it might chance to be, there
must be some way out of this accursed pit in which I had fallen. So
very cautiously I edged out, taking advantage of all the cover possible
until we were only twenty yards apart, and then suddenly standing up,
and putting on the most affable smile, I called out--
"Hullo, mess-mate!"
The effect was electrical. That quaint old fellow sprang a yard into
air as though a spring had shot him up. Then, coming down, he stood
transfixed at his full height as stiff as a ramrod, staring at me with
incredible wonder. He looked so funny that in spite of hunger and
loneliness I burst out laughing, whereat the woodman, suddenly
recovering his senses, turned on his heels and set off at his best pace
in the opposite direction. This would never do! I wanted him to be my
guide, philosopher, and friend. He was my sole visible link with the
outside world, so after him I went at tip-top speed, and catching him
up in fifty yards along the shingle laid hold of his nether garments.
Whereat the old fellow stopping suddenly I shot clean over his back,
coming down on my shoulder in the gravel.
But I was much younger than he, and in a minute was in chase again.
This time I laid hold of his cloak, and the moment he felt my grip he
slipped the neck-thongs and left me with only the mangy garment in my
hands. Again we set off, dodging and scampering with all our might
upon that frozen bit of beach. The activity of that old fellow was
marvellous, but I could not and would not lose him. I made a rush and
grappled him, but he tossed his head round and slipped away once more
under my arm, as though he had been brought up by a Chinese wrestler.
Then he got on one side of a flat rock, I the other, and for three or
four minutes we waltzed round that slab in the most insane manner.
But by this time we were both pretty well spent--he with age and I with
faintness from my long fast, and we came presently to a standstill.
After glaring at me for a time, the woodman gasped out as he struggled
for breath--
"Oh, mighty and dreadful spirit! Oh, dweller in primordial ice, say
from which niche of the cliffs has the breath of chance thawed you?"
"Never a niche at all, Mr. Hunter-for-Haddocks'-Eyes," I answered as
soon as I could speak. "I am just a castaway wrecked last night on
this shore of yours, and very grateful indeed will I be if you can show
me the way to some breakfast first, and afterwards to the outside
world."
But the old fellow would not believe. "Spirits such as you," he said
sullenly, "need no food, and go whither they will by wish alone."
"I tell you I am not a spirit, and as hungry as I don't particularly
want to be again. Here, look at the back of my trousers, caked three
inches deep in mud. If I were a spirit, do you think I would slide
about on my coat-tails like that? Do you think that if I could travel
by volition I would slip down these infernal cliffs on my pants' seat
as I have just done? And as for materialism--look at this fist; it
punched you just now! Surely there was nothing spiritual in that
knock?''
"No," said the savage, rubbing his head, "it was a good, honest rap, so
I must take you at your word. If you are indeed man, and hungry, it
will be a charity to feed you; if you are a spirit, it will at least be
interesting to watch you eat; so sit down, and let's see what I have in
my wallet."
So cross-legged we squatted opposite each other on the table rock, and,
feeling like another Sindbad the Sailor, I watched my new friend fumble
in his bag and lay out at his side all sorts of odds and ends of
string, fish-hooks, chewing-gum, material for making a fire, and so on,
until at last he came to a package (done up, I noted with delight, in a
broad, green leaf which had certainly been growing that morning), and
unrolling it, displayed a lump of dried meat, a few biscuits, much
thicker and heavier than the honey-cakes of the Hither folk, and
something that looked and smelt like strong, white cheese.
He signed to me to eat, and you may depend upon it I was not slow in
accepting the invitation. That tough biltong tasted to me like the
tenderest steak that ever came from a grill; the biscuits were
ambrosial; the cheese melted in my mouth as butter melts in that of the
virtuous; but when the old man finished the quaint picnic by inviting
me to accompany him down to the waterside for a drink, I shook my head.
I had a great respect for dead queens and kings, I said, but there were
too many of them up above to make me thirsty this morning; my respect
did not go to making me desire to imbibe them in solution!
Afterwards I chanced to ask him what he had been picking up just now
along the margin, and after looking at me suspiciously for a minute he
asked--
"You are not a thief?" On being reassured on that point he continued:
"And you will not attempt to rob me of the harvest for which I venture
into this ghost-haunted glen, which you and I alone of living men have
seen?"
"No." Whatever they were, I said, I would respect his earnings.
"Very well, then," said the old man, "look here! I come hither to pick
up those pretty trifles which yonder lords and ladies have done with,"
and plunging his hand into another bag he brought out a perfect fistful
of splendid gems and jewels, some set and some unset. "They wash from
the hands and wrists of those who have lodgings in the crevices of the
falls above," he explained. "After a time the beach here will be thick
with them. Could I get up whence you came down, they might be gathered
by the sackful. Come! there is an eddy still unsearched, and I will
show you how they lie."
It was very fascinating, and I and that old man set to work amongst the
gravels, and, to be brief, in half an hour found enough glittering
stuff to set up a Fifth Avenue jeweller's shop. But to tell the truth,
now that I had breakfasted, and felt manhood in my veins again, I was
eager to be off, and out of the close, death-tainted atmosphere of that
valley. Consequently I presently stood up and said--
"Look here, old man, this is fine sport no doubt, but just at present I
have a big job on hand--one which will not wait, and I must be going.
See, luck and young eyes have favoured me; here is twice as much gold
and stones as you have got together--it is all yours without a question
if you will show me the way out of this den and afterwards put me on
the road to your big city, for thither I am bound with an errand to
your king, Ar-hap."
The sight of my gems, backed, perhaps, with the mention of Ar-hap's
name, appealed to the old fellow; and after a grunt or two about
"losing a tide" just when spoil was so abundant, he accepted the
bargain, shouldered his belongings, and led me towards the far corner
of the beach.
It looked as if we were walking right against the towering ice wall,
but when we were within a yard or two of it a narrow cleft, only
eighteen inches wide, and wonderfully masked by an ice column, showed
to the left, and into this we squeezed ourselves, the entrance by which
we had come appearing to close up instantly we had gone a pace or two,
so perfectly did the ice walls match each other.
It was the most uncanny thoroughfare conceivable--a sheer, sharp crack
in the blue ice cliffs extending from where the sunlight shone in a
dazzling golden band five hundred feet overhead to where bottom was
touched in blue obscurity of the ice-foot. It was so narrow we had to
travel sideways for the most part, a fact which brought my face close
against the clear blue glass walls, and enabled me from time to time to
see, far back in those translucent depths, more and more and evermore
frozen Martians waiting in stony silence for their release |
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